She pulled her hand from the cavity she had created, her hand charred black, and rested it at her side, extending and retracting her fingers as though making sure they still worked.

“Now, we are done,” she said. She brushed past Jessica and went to the cabinet, and emerged with a long needle. She strode purposefully to William Afton’s side, stopped with her fist raised over her head, then brought the needle down, plunging it into his chest.

A second passed, then he heaved an enormous breath and groaned. The girl pulled the needle from his chest and set it gently on the table beside him. William Afton opened his eyes, and his single eyeball moved back and forth between Jessica and the animatronic girl.

“Is it done?” he asked.

Jessica screamed. The intensity of it roused her from her daze and she screamed again, letting the sound drown out everything else. Her throat went raw, but she screamed again, clinging to the roar of her own voice; for an instant, she felt like if she kept screaming nothing worse could happen.

The air around the girl shimmered, and Jessica’s vision blurred in front of her: something was moving. In a moment, her eyes cleared, and Charlie was standing in front of her.

“Jessica, don’t worry! You can trust me,” Charlie said cheerfully.

CHAPTER NINE

A hand was stroking her hair. The sun was going down over a field of grain. A cluster of birds were fluttering overhead, their calls echoing out over the landscape. “I’m so happy to be here with you,” a kind voice said. She looked up and nestled against him; her father smiled down at her, but there were tears in his eyes. Don’t cry, Daddy, she wanted to say, but when she tried to speak, the words did not come. She reached up to touch his face, but her hand passed through empty air: he was gone, and she was alone in the grass. Overhead the birds began to wail, and their calls sounded like human voices, breaking with despair. “Daddy!” Charlie screamed, but there was no answer, only the birds’ lamentation as the sun vanished beyond the horizon.

It was dark, and he had not come back; all the birds were gone but one, and that one sounded more human with every cry. Charlie stood unsteadily; by some trick of time she was no longer a child, but a teenage girl, and the fields around her had turned to rubble; she stood in the midst of a ruined place, but there was a single wall standing in front of her, and a door at the center of it. The birds were silent, but someone was crying on the other side of the door, crying alone in a small, cramped space. She ran to it, banging her fists on the metal surface. “Let me in!” she cried. “Let me in! I have to get inside!”