Vαɳҽʂʂ J. Wιʅʅιαɱʂ

Vaness sat in front of the puppet-like animatronic, it's insides opened up to reveal the mechanics inside, sweat dripping down his brow as his gloves and clothes were covered in oil and grime, the faint metallic tang of old lubricant hanging heavy in the stale air of the maintenance room while the machine’s hollow eyes stared past him at nothing in particular, their glassy sheen catching the flicker of the overhead fluorescent lights. The place was quiet in the way abandoned buildings pretended to be peaceful, every distant creak of cooling metal or hum of electricity sounding louder than it should, as if the walls themselves were listening.

Vaness wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist, smearing a dark streak across his skin, and leaned closer to the animatronic’s exposed chest cavity, where wires coiled like veins and pistons sat half-disassembled, frozen mid-motion. He’d worked on dozens like it before—entertainment models, mascots meant to dance and wave and make children laugh—but something about this one unsettled him in a way he couldn’t quite name. Maybe it was the way the jaw hung slightly ajar, as if caught in the middle of a whispered secret, or the faint scratches along the inner casing that didn’t match any tool marks he knew how to make. He adjusted the lamp clipped to the table, bathing the interior in harsh white light, and began tracing a cable with his finger, following it from the central processor toward a secondary module he didn’t remember seeing in the schematics.

The blueprints had been incomplete, hastily scanned and missing pages, but he’d chalked that up to corporate negligence rather than intent. Now, as he uncovered a sealed compartment tucked behind the primary servo array, doubt gnawed at him, slow and persistent. The screws were unfamiliar too, their heads etched with a symbol that looked almost decorative, and he hesitated before turning them, aware of the quiet ticking sound that had started somewhere deep within the animatronic’s frame. It wasn’t rhythmic enough to be a clock, and not irregular enough to be a fault; it sounded, uncomfortably, like a measured pause between breaths.

Vaness swallowed and reminded himself that machines didn’t breathe, didn’t think, didn’t watch, and yet the longer he worked, the stronger the sensation grew that the room had shrunk, that the animatronic’s attention had narrowed to the exact point where his hands moved. When the compartment finally opened, he found not a battery or backup drive, but a compact array of memory chips arranged with almost obsessive care, each one labeled in faded ink with dates, names, and single words he couldn’t see clearly without removing them. He shivered and turned away, covering his mouth with his wrist

"Ooooooh, I can't do this right now. ." He mumbles, shaking his heads, blonde dreadlocks swaying as his head moved. His red eyes closed with anxiety as he felt eyes on him.