Alone With Them

Cathryn spent at least an hour sitting in her chair, her head lolled to the side and her eyes threatening to close. Periodically, she'd let out a long yawn.

Unlike the night before with Chica, Bonnie had messed with Foxy. He'd propped the fox's limp body up against the corner of the room. The rabbit glanced at the other animatronic as if to check it hadn't moved every so often, but besides that, his main goal was to stare boredly at Cathryn for as long as possible.

Cathryn, meanwhile, felt trapped in a daze. Her body was exhausted from night after night of no sleep, and now her mind was struggling to comprehend this idea that Bonnie, and the other animatronics, weren't killing people? Supposedly. Or at least some of them weren't.

The thought was too much to handle and shivers were already glued to her arms thanks to the cold room, so Cathryn shut her eyes and imagined herself away from everything. Somewhere safe, warm, where the world made sense. Like her bed, which was where she was longing to be now that she had nothing to do but wait out the rest of her shift. She could feel her office chair slowly morphing into her pillow at home. Applying for the night shift had been a terrible mistake.

Her bones ached. Her stomach grumbled as it untangled itself from the mess her adrenaline had caused. Cathryn's skin tingled as she sensed Bonnie's robotic, magenta eyes glance over her form again. She wanted to ask him to leave, but after the situation with Chica and the way he'd shouted, she didn't dare.

Cathryn was hoping to fade deeper into her daydream, but instead, her pulse spiked as her face tipped from its resting place on her hand and about crashed hard into the plastic armrest. She jolted awake, sucking in a breath and turning to make eye contact with Bonnie.

He smiled, his gaze still wide, before returning to his new favorite hobby of blankly watching.

Cathryn sighed and craned her neck back, wishing her chair was tall enough for a headrest.

"What's wrong with you?" If the question hadn't come paired with Bonnie's stabbing voice, Cathryn would've assumed it was her own thought.

"What?" she grumbled, her voice cracking.

If robots could show concern, that might've been the expression the animatronic was trying for. More likely, he was still bored and wanted attention. "Did Chick break you?"

"Excuse me?" There was a succession of blinks before Cathryn felt she could hold her eyes open, "I'm not broken."

"Alright," Bonnie said doubtfully. She waited for him to make a snarky remark or at least keep talking now that their moment of silence had been shattered, but he didn't.

So against her better judgement, Cathryn turned her chair so she was facing her desk and put her head down.

The generator's loud buzzing became soft background music. The intense scuffle she'd endured drifted to the rear of her mind, and there was an overwhelming moment of peace. It almost brought a sense of hope that soon Cathryn would be able to go home and rest. She was on the brink of the weekend and her first paycheck. And maybe when Sam greeted her in a few hours, she could exclaim she was quitting, and he would congratulate her and take over. Sure, that meant Sam would probably be in charge of night shift, but after his insistence and all the warnings he'd handed out, that would be his problem.

And the best part was, Cathryn was too tired to feel guilty about any of her thoughts.

But the bliss was surprisingly cut short by a sound she would've been dying to hear any other time. Her beach bag vibrated with static on the floor. Then a voice emerged.

"Cat?" came–

Markus!

Cathryn was already sitting up, but her foggy mind couldn't register her best friend's wonderful voice before the entertainment-starved rabbit.