The Springtrap Saga Book Four: Darkness in the Stars

Chapter Fifteen

The Sound That Ruined Everything bursts in during a night that was supposed to be blanketed in peace.

     Springtrap is in one of the rooms hollowed out into the soil passages, cradling his daughter and singing the kids a lullaby, when a peculiar crumbling sound reverberates through the earth compacted above their heads. He halts the song he was singing and swivels his ears through the air, straining to decipher the origin of the intrusion. The ends of his mouth wilt in the slightest of frowns.

     Confusion tugs Summer's brow into an upward furrow. "What's wrong?"

     When he speaks, he subdues his voice, as though afraid of piercing the attention of some dangerous entity. "Did you kids hear something?"

     Silence presses down on them all as they comb through the soundscape with their senses, trying to pluck out anything unusual. The sound eludes Springtrap now, and he begins to wonder if it was woven by his paranoid imagination. But if he's learned anything from this ordeal, it's to trust his instincts.

     Sure enough, another muted scrabbling disturbs the soil above them. A chill prickles down his spine. He draws Summer closer, protective parental instinct flooding his mind.

     "Whatever that noise is, I don't like the sound of it." He diminishes his voice to a nervous murmur. "We should find Cosia." Cosia, he learned, is the name of the scientist who escorted them here.

     He plants his feet on the spongy earth and allows energy to flow into his legs, pushing him into a standing position. A muted whisper seeps up from his padded feet as they brush the soil in a stride shot through with urgency. The hiss of pursuing feet tickles the walls as Crystal and Leo join him. An eerie quiet suffocates the maze of passageways, as though everyone else is also probing the air for sounds of intruders.

     He doesn't realize just how anxious he is until he jumps at the contact of a hand snagging his arm. The jolt of panic subsides when he realizes it's Leo. He suppresses the urge to flinch, already bracing himself for a scathing remark.

     Surprise washes away his other thoughts when he sees a new emotion softening Leo's features, one he's never seen on the boy before... remorse.

     "Leo, what's wrong?" Springtrap coats his voice in gentleness. Concern unfurls in his mind. He hates seeing the kiddos in distress.

     Leo's eyes sidle toward the ground, unable to retain his stare. His words are depleted into sheepishness. His fingers wind around each other in an uneasy fidget, and his feet dislodge rich grains of soil. "I- we-" he angles his head in a glance toward Crystal, whose face is also shriveled into an expression of shame- "wanted to say sorry for how we've been treating you. And... to be honest... we weren't doing it just because we were mad at what you did. We..." His throat constricts in a forced swallow. "We were doing it to be mean. But we also thought you wanted to hurt us."

     "We were wrong," Crystal adds. Her brows curve up into a furrow ingrained with sorrow. "Even when we were being completely horrible to you, you barely ever got mad. You were so nice to us, even- even when we didn't deserve it." Her eyes flick in a glance toward the ground, and the guilt in her stare swells. "We listened to your conversation with Summer the other day. We can see you really care about us." She drags her stare back toward him. "We're sorry."

     For a moment, he's too stunned to speak. After all the violence he blemished the world with, these kids are apologizing to him. Horror fragments across his mind, but he continues to saturate his voice in gentle compassion. "No, little ones. Don't say sorry. You have nothing to say sorry for. I deserved all of it."

     "But you didn't." He's startled by the plaintive urgency glowing in Crystal's voice. "You're trying so hard to be good, and you've been through a lifetime of pain. We've been absolutely awful, when all you wanted was to be our uncle. To be part of the family."