Deceptive

Doors

"Rude." Ballora frowned.

"Yeah, a bit." Foxy made his way over to the room Elizabeth had disappeared into. He was greeted with a small room littered with mildew-covered boxes that were all pushed up against the walls. Unsurprisingly, the animatronic was no longer in sight. He quickly pushed his way through the door at the opposite end of the room.

Seven more doors stood before him, all of which lined the walls of a hallway that was equally as poorly lit as the one they had just stood in moments before.

"Sh-should we split up again?" Freddy queried, peeking his head over Foxy's shoulder.

"I don't know... Being apart wasn't exactly beneficial to us a few minutes ago."

"But it might take forever to search this place if we don't, Bal," Foxy argued.

"We can split into groups," Michael suggested, which seemed to satisfy everyone.

The next thing Foxy knew, he and Michael were going through one of those doors together. The faded sign next to it had read Storage, which certainly wasn't a lie. The space was full of rows, and rows, and rows of shelves that were shrouded in darkness.

Foxy was the first to step inside, deciding to take the lead.

The sound of his sneakers hitting the concrete floor was magnified in the echoey room.

A few limbs stuck out here or there, but it was clear they were just discarded animatronic parts that weren't properly packed away.

Foxy came to an abrupt halt, causing Michael to nearly bump into him.

"Something wrong?"

Foxy peered into the gap between a couple of boxes on a shelving unit right beside him. It appeared that the only thing past it was more of the same.

"No, I just thought... never mind." He was almost positive that he had heard something, but, in actuality, he had probably just imagined it. After all, the echo was making everything a bit muddled and confusing.

He continued forward.

And then, a few seconds later, he stopped again.

He was definitely hearing something.

It was a third pair of footsteps that did not belong to either of them but were very close in rhythm to Michael's. Almost as if they were trying to hide behind the sound.

Foxy spun around.

There was nobody behind them.

Michael was squinting because of the light being shined directly at his face. "You sure there's not a problem?"

"I definitely just heard somebody walking," Foxy whispered, as though that would stop anybody following them from hearing.

"Yeah?"

Foxy turned back around to better investigate the room. Maybe they weren't that close to them? "Did you not hear it?"

He received no response.

"Michael?"

There was a clank, which was followed by multiple quick footsteps.

Foxy whipped back around.

Michael was gone, his flashlight rolling in a half-circle on the floor.

"Michael?" Foxy repeated nervously. There was no way that he could've gone far. Unless whoever took him was capable of vanishing like Miles, it simply wasn't possible.

But as he quickly paced around looking for signs of any other human beings occupying the room, Foxy wasn't finding anything. No Michael. No... whoever had been following them.

He looked down.

A muddy bootprint poked out from between a large gap between two shelves. One that was bigger than his feet by a decent amount.

Foxy squeezed his way through the narrow space, searching for more. Sure enough, he found quite a few. They led from a door -- one narrower than doors usually were --in between another set of shelves, to where he had seen the first print, and back to the door. One thing of note was that there was a lot more space in between the prints after they turned back toward the door.

After a bit of a struggle, Foxy forced open the small door. What greeted him was another hallway with about ten doors. He dully wondered how many rooms could possibly be in this place. He followed the prints as far as he could, but they soon grew faint, disappearing completely before getting close to any of the doors.

Where was he supposed to go now?

Foxy looked around a bit more. There was a large opening in the wall that appeared to have some sort of dirt passage. The shoeprints appeared to have originated from it. Maybe whoever took Micheal went back through there?

Foxy shined his light into the gap. He couldn't quite tell where it led to. The dirt floor sunk in a good few inches under his weight.

Before he could manage to make it decently far in, Foxy was stopped in his tracks by another disconcerting noise. A few different ones, actually.

A wet thud, something hitting the floor, very noisy footfalls, and then a loud slam.

Foxy had already backed out of the opening by the time the second noise came, so he had managed to gauge the general direction of the slam. It came from somewhere near the far end of the hallway.

Upon closer inspection of that area, one of the doors had not been closed fully. Slowly, Foxy reached out and pushed it open.

Immediately, he was reminded of that small space from the old pizzeria. The one crammed full of old, musty, robotic animals.

Crossing the threshold, he checked the floor again, silently hoping for another clue of some sort. To his surprise, there was one. A small bit of blood was right in front of his feet. Unlike the blood he had seen in the shed, it was still fresh.

Foxy wasn't sure if he wanted it to be Michael's blood or not. On one hand, that would mean he really was on his trail. On the other hand, that would mean he had been injured again.

A rotting door stood opposite where he was. Was that where the slamming sound had originated from?

Foxy headed even further into the room, feeling a bit wary of the dark shapes crowding the walls.

A crunch sounded from somewhere near him. Like glass being stepped on.

He wasted no time in turning towards the place it seemed to come from, stepping back as he scanned over everything with his flashlight. He stopped when he backed into something, causing him to flinch.

Spinning around yet again, Foxy came face to face with something suspended from metal bars by a couple of chains, which rattled loudly when he bumped into it.

The Wolf.

It looked to be completely undamaged, fitted with a brand new rubbery covering and everything. Without the illusion disc turned on, it looked like a garish Halloween prop.

Foxy instinctively backed away from it. Even though it wasn't powered on, it still made him feel uneasy.

"Quite the beauty, isn't he?"