Wheatley's Nights at Freddy's: Chapter 4

"And then they were both gone! Can you imagine? It was horrible!"

"Uh, yeah, is there any point to this?"

"I'm getting to that!"

"Fact: The ID core said that an hour and twenty-two-point-four minutes ago."

"C-could've figured out how to get to space by then!"

"All right, fine. To make a long story short—"

"Already failed there, bucko."

"Rrrgh. The point is, I damaged one of the androids, and—and she says they understand the concept of revenge, so—"

"Payback time!"

Rick's enthusiasm was met with a dismayed groan as Wheatley turned to face the bottom of his casing. "This is hopeless—I'm gonna bloody die there!"

The Fact Core regarded him with a tilted optic. "You said that yesterday."

"A-and space friend didn't die!"

Wheatley glanced back up. "I suppose that's true."

"Yeah, but pinky here's only right about half the time," the Adventure Core noted, twitching his face plate in the direction of the aforementioned core.

"The Fact Sphere is always right, and the Adventure Sphere is an idiot."

"Ooooh, you're askin' for it now!" And with no further warning, Rick rolled forward and rammed into Fact. The two began flailing their handles at each other, filling the bin with a rhythmic clang, clang, clang.

Wheatley, meanwhile, eyed the two askance before turning to face the only core that was listening at this point. Space regarded him with a wide, interested optic—or at least, what Wheatley hoped was an interested optic.

"Well, mate, do you know anything about fending off murderous, revenge-seeking androids?"

The corrupted core blinked. "Go to space?"

Immediately Wheatley tipped his faceplate back to face the ceiling. "I walked right into that, didn't I?"

"Can you walk into space?"

"Look, mate," he grumbled, swinging his face toward the Space Core again, "I can't even walk around this bloody bin, let alone—wait…" He blinked. "You know, killer androids wouldn't be able to reach space, would they?"

"Nuh-uh, nope. Maybe with rockets." Space Core perked up. "C-can we get rockets?"

"Those guys definitely do not have rockets," Wheatley said, only half-paying attention now. "Why didn't I think of this before? If we go back to space, we won't have to deal with those androids or her! Perfect! Why did I ever want to leave space in the first place?"

His companion squirmed in delight. "YEAH! Yeah! Go to space! Great idea! Best idea! Space."

"Space does not exist," came Fact Core's voice, and Wheatley and Space glanced back at him. The other two cores had momentarily stopped fighting—or at least, Fact had. Rick was still repeatedly thwacking the other core with his upper handle, an action that Fact tolerated unflinchingly.

"Hey!" Rick growled. "This isn't over, punk!"

Fact spun his faceplate. "Yes it is," he replied, and rolled away.

Or tried to.

Clunk.

The two corrupt cores exchanged glances and simultaneously tried to roll backward, away from each other.

Clunk.

Wheatley stared at the two for a few moments before giving a laugh at their mounting horror. "Hah! I'll have to give it to you, mates, I did not know that was even possible," he said, optic lighting in a smile. During their squabble, the two had, by some miracle, locked their lower handles together. "Hope you don't mind hangin' around each other for the rest of your life."

Rick's face contorted into a mix of fury and horror. "Let go, you little—!" Unsuccessfully he tried to pull himself away, only dragging the Fact Core with him.

"Correction—you let go of me."

"Let go?" Space Core parroted, tilting his face. "L-let go, to space? Let us go?"

Wheatley rolled his faceplate in amusement and turned back to Space. "Sure, mate! Let's just convince her to take us there, eh?"

"Yeah, yeah!"

"Great! Well, as soon as she rears her big ol' ugly head—"

"I believe the cores are the ugly ones, actually."

All four robots froze.

"In fact, let me look that up." There was a pause, then a low beep. "Oh, look. It says right here in the engineers' files that personality cores were very poorly designed. Fancy that."

"Hello!" Wheatley's voice jumped up an octave, but he tried to keep a straight face. "You know we were j-just talking about you…"

"Really."

"Er, yes! J-just talking about, um, how terrible it would be if you sent us back to space."

"HUH?" the Space Core blurted, and Wheatley shushed him.

"How terrible," she repeated.

"Yes! Horrible. Cold… and… and lonely, and… boring…" He blinked—wasn't space actually all of those things? "And, um—no androids there!" he added, partially to remind himself. "Yes. No androids—too bad, absolutely love them."

"Well, how fortunate for you that I will not be sending you back to space."

"Yeah! How fortune—err… what?"

"NO!" Space cried, flailing his handles until he tipped himself over. "SPACE PLEASE SPACE!"

"I need you here, as you know." A portion of the ceiling pulled away, and a claw reached down toward him. "You have a very important job to do." And with that, the claw clamped around him, and pulled him away.

"Oh bloody heck," Wheatley whimpered as his optic darted around the musty office.

"I've got some good news," GLaDOS's voice crackled from the speaker in the corner, and Wheatley glared at it.

"Good for me or good for you? 'Cause I'm pretty sure there's a big difference between those two concepts."

"That depends entirely on your perspective. The good news is that the androids are showing signs of becoming more active."

"How is that a good thing?! How could that possibly be a good thing by any stretch of the imagination for any of the parties involved?!" He shook in a mix of fear and anger, nearly tipping himself off the stool.

"It's good for me, because it means that this place is getting closer to being ready to be opened. And it's good for you because it will make your job more… interesting."

"More interesting?! My job is interesting enough, lady!" His optic contracted in a twitch. "If it were any more interesting, I think I'd bloody crash!"

"We'll see about that. You know what they say: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Unless you're a robot. In which case, what doesn't kill you could potentially damage you beyond repair."

"D-damage…?"

"Oh, look at that. It's midnight. I suppose I'll see you in six hours, should you manage to survive." Beep.

Wheatley screwed up his optic and faceplate, shutting his eye shields tightly and pulling his face inward. "If I manage to survive—I've bloody done that, haven't I?! Went through two bloody nights of this—isn't that enough?! Isn't that—isn't that bloody good enough for you?" Opening his optic to a slit, he glared at the dusty speaker again, as though that would change anything. "I'm bloody sick of this."

But his anger quickly faded—there was no way to get himself out of here other than to survive the night. That's all. If he could do that, he would… well, he would live to survive another night of this.

"Space sounds really good right about now," he grumbled, and pulled up the cameras.

The bird was already gone.

"Oh, great, yeah—h-have fun there, mate," he said, vocal processor opting for something between terror and mild annoyance. "Just—just go ahead, then. That's what I've got the doors for." He closed and opened said doors experimentally, and switched the camera to the party room.

The bird was frozen in mid-walk, jaw slack and eyes wide. But its eyes looked different, somehow—the sclera were solid black, the pupils a glowing white.

"GAH—!" Wheatley jumped back and quickly struggled to rebalance himself, blinking rapidly. Looking at the android again, the eyes were back to normal—had they even changed in the first place?—but the look was no less unnerving. "Oi! What's that look for?! Y-you don't have to be so…" A shiver racked his casing, and he turned the camera to Pirate Cove.

Normally the androids were quite good at keeping still on-camera, so it came as a surprise to Wheatley when he noticed an occasional flash behind the decorative blue curtains.

"Err, what? …Oh. Oh, you're broken, aren't you? M-moreso than you already were." GLaDOS's words came back to him, and he tilted his face in a cocky smile. "Heh. You know what they say, mate. If you're a robot, what doesn't kill you damages you permanently—or, er, something along those lines." For a brief moment he wondered if he could just crush the android under a door again, thus making it less dangerous, but then he remembered what GLaDOS had done to him when he'd done that accidentally. "Well, uh, you just watch it, mate. Got my eye on you—optic. Got my optic on you. S'all the same."

Though wasn't there something else he needed to be keeping his optic on? …Oh, right, the power.

Which was at 81%.

"Wuh—it's not even 1 AM yet! Rrrgh…" With a frustrated growl, Wheatley switched off the camera and brought himself back to the security room. Maybe he could hold off on using the cameras for a while and save some power should he need to shut the doors. That sounded reasonable—he could just wait for a few minutes before checking the cameras again.

His mind drifted back to Space Core and the thought of being out there again. Sure, Space Core wasn't the most ideal companion, and space wasn't exactly number one on his "places I want to go to" list, but anything was better than being stalked by killer androids in this special little corner of Android Hell.

Android Hell—maybe that's what this place was. He'd imagined it to be a fancy name for the incinerator, but for there to be a place where killer androids were stuffed into deranged animal costumes and forced to sing for children by day and roam the halls by night—what else could this place be but a section of that mythical afterlife for doomed AIs?

"Honestly, if this isn't Android Hell, I'm not sure I want to know what is," Wheatley mused, glancing at the time. It was past 1 AM, finally, so he figured he should see how the androids were getting along.

The camera flicked to the stage, and the bear stood alone, its shadowed eyes facing the camera.

"AGH!" Wheatley cried, recoiling in horror as he frantically flipped through the cameras. "Where'd the rabbit go?!"

The party room was empty, the storage was empty, the back room was empty, the bathrooms were empty, and nothing stood at the end of either hallway. Which meant…

Cautiously Wheatley switched his camera to one of the ones outside his room, and saw the missing rabbit on one side, and, switching to the other camera, found the bird on the other. They were both glaring into their respective cameras… and twitching.

Well, maybe "twitching" wasn't the right word for it. Twitching was what Wheatley did right now, sparks shooting out of the corner of his constricted optic. The androids, meanwhile, were making erratic, jerky movements every few seconds.

And they did not look happy.

With another twitch and a terrified whimper, the core slammed both doors shut before either of the infuriated androids could make it to his room. Hoping to conserve power (and to stop looking at the crazed robots), he switched off the cameras. "O-okay, mates, no need to—to be upset," he stammered. "If you just turn around and—and head back toward the stage, everything'll be j-just… just fine."

In my bloody dreams, he thought gloomily, pulling himself into his casing and casting nervous glances at the windows. After hesitating for a few seconds, he flicked his flashlight toward the east window and gave a strangled gasp at the sight of a beak full of far too many teeth. Twitching over to the other window, he could see the shadowed optics of the rabbit staring down at him.

"G-go away," he whimpered, shutting off his flashlight and closing his optic. "Goawaygoawaygoawaygoaway…"

It took a few agonizing minutes, but eventually he heard the clank, clank, clank of retreating footfalls as the two androids left his booth.

Heaving an artificial sigh, Wheatley opened both his optic and the doors. "Well, that's over," he muttered, knowing that was far from the case. "Let's see how our other android friend is doi—OI! Get back in there!"

The android of Pirate Cove was now poking its head out of the curtains, its glowing optics staring straight into the camera. But just below its head was something giving off an occasional spark—the part that had been damaged.

"Yeah, I see it, mate," Wheatley growled, trying and failing to mask his fear with anger. "You'll get the rest of you damaged, too, if y-you don't get back in there!"

The android gave off a particularly nasty spark at that, and Wheatley turned off the camera with a sparking twitch of his own.

It was just past 2 AM, and he was already at 49%.

"Wonderful," he said, resting his faceplate against the bottom of his casing, his handles drooping. "Th-this cannot possibly get any worse…"

Hehehehehaha…

Wheatley's servos froze.

He'd heard a lot of terrifying sounds during the two-and-a-half nights he'd been here, but never a sound like that. Trembling to the point of nearly knocking himself off his stool, he turned the camera to the stage to find it empty.

"AaaaaAAAAAAAAAUGH!" Wheatley screamed, scrambling through the cameras faster than he could actually process the images. "YOU DON'T LEAVE! NOT UNTIL THE BLOODY POWER GOES OUT! AND IT'S STILL ON, MATE! IT'S STILL ON!"

Eventually he regained enough of his senses to actually look at the camera feeds he was accessing, but nothing was there. Or, well, the rabbit was there, standing in the backstage area, and the bird was looking around by the bathrooms, but the bear was nowhere to be found.

"Did… did I just imagine that?" he wondered, relaxing a fraction.

Hehehehaha…

"NOPE! DEFINITELY NOT IMAGINING THINGS!" And immediately he was back to flipping through the cameras, frantically searching for the missing android. As much as he hated to do so, he forced himself to closely study each feed to see if he could find the thing hiding in the shadows somewhere. "C'mon, mate, where are you? You've… you've got to be here somewhere, right? Can't just—just disappear… Can you? Oh gosh, please don't be able to disappear—!"

Wheatley was about to give up when the camera came to the bathroom the bird usually lurked by. He'd already looked there, and hadn't seen the—

Wait.

Looking closer, he spotted something: Inside one of the bathrooms was a dark shadow, its head peering out of one of the doorways. Somehow Wheatley got the feeling that this was not a stray test subject taking a bathroom break, and his suspicions were confirmed when the head suddenly looked up, revealing a pair of white, pinprick optics.

The camera cut to static.

Wheatley really wished he knew a few more curses, because now would have been a tremendous time to use them. But as it was—

"Bloody heck mate this is bloody insane—mad—I can't even keep track of all these bloody robots and their bloody crazy—RRRGH!"

As soon as the cameras were back online, he resumed his hunt for the bear, and was rather baffled when he came to a camera with no video feed. Sure there was no visual, but there was a lot of noise there. "O-oi! Get out here w-where I can see you!"

Yet the noises—which sounded like metal objects clanging around—continued to ring out throughout the pitch-dark room.

"You've got to come out of there sometime! Er—wait—um… come out of there from the way you came in, not… not so you'd be closer to my door… Actually, if that's where you were planning on heading, h-how about you just… stay there? Yeah, go ahead and keep clankin' around in there… a-all night."

Even though he couldn't see anything in that camera, he felt too scared to look away, as though the action would cause the killer android to come bolting to his door.

Bolting to his…

Wheatley's camera snapped offline and his aperture constricted to a pinprick.

"Oh gosh," he whimpered, his voice nearly reaching a pitch his aural sensors could not hear. "Oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh…"

The thought swirled around his head, a harsh taunting voice reminding him you bloody idiot you forgot to check Pirate Cove, that thing's going to come after you any second now and your door's not even shut—

Twitch. "It's okay—it's okay—I can sh-shut the door—" He went to access the electromagnetic door to his left. "I-I'll be o—"

Clunk-clunk.

"What."

He tried again, and his attempt was met with the same broken sound.

Clunk-clunk.

"No—" clunk-clunk "—no, no—" clunk-clunk "—that's not—" clunk-clunk "—not—!" clunk-clunk.

Shakily looking off to the side, he spotted a few wires sparking from the wall—they'd been severed. When he'd been wasting all that time tracking the bear, something had severed the wires that ran to the door. But what had—

Ga-a-a-a-aaasp…

Wheatley's processor blanked.

The sound had come from his room.

If he were human, he wouldn't have been able to breathe. But as it was, his vocal processor emitted a series of noises resembling the sounds of hyperventilation. He sat rooted to his stool, shivering and sparking and generally being too terrified to move. Behind him he could hear the sound of something shuffling around, and he didn't want to know what it was—he didn't want to know, he didn't, but some distant part of him did—he wanted to at least get a glimpse of his fate before he…

Knowing he would regret it, he tipped his faceplate as far back as it would go, and was met with the sight of two white, pinprick optics hovering directly above him.

Two padded hands clamped down on his sides.

Wheatley was screaming before he realized what was even going on, flailing and struggling as much as he could, trying to shake the thing off of him, but it only gripped his casing more tightly. His overtaxed vocal processor hiccupped with a spark, and it was in that gap that he managed to hear a hoarse, stammering croak—the thing was laughing.

A shower of sparks exploded somewhere inside him, and he ignored the burning pain, forcing his breaking vocal processor to scream again: "L-LAAA—krrzzzz—DY!" Desperately he redoubled his efforts to struggle away, flailing his handles and squirming in his casing, but only succeeding in knocking the stool out from underneath him. The android's grip held firm. "G-GETKkrkrrrrrrzzME O-OUT OF H-H-H-Hee-eeeee-eeEEERRE!"

He didn't care that he was screaming for her help and if she was listening she didn't show it and the thing holding him was still laughing and—

StampstampSTAMPSTAMPSTAMP

Another set of glowing optics set above a gaping, fang-filled maw reared through the doorway, and the android of Pirate Cove reached toward him—

And overwhelmed by everything, Wheatley's processor crashed.

AIs—with the exception of a few—generally had no concept of time when they were offline, and such was the case for Wheatley.

Thus he had no idea how much time had passed when a surge of electricity bolted him awake. All he knew was that he felt like he'd just come out of the other side of a spinny blade wall, and he did not feel like moving at this point and time. Not that he could, anyway—he noted in dull surprise that he was dangling by the cable that was attached to the wall behind him, since his stool was still on the floor. The lights were on, too, so the power hadn't gone out.

Also, he was still alive. Somehow. That was also a bit of a surprise.

"Well, moron, I can safely say that you are in an… interesting position."

"Y-yeAH I a—KRRRZ—ow."

"On one hand, you completely failed to watch four androids for a mere six hours."

He gave a twitch, not feeling like hurting his broken vocal processor again trying to comment on that.

"On the other hand, you have survived the night."

Count your blessings, mate. He shut his optic.

"I should punish you for failing your job, but I don't think I will."

Wheatley blinked his optic open again, trying and failing to look up at the speaker. He'd meant to make a noise of confusion, but all that came out was a static grunt—not that he was ungrateful that she wasn't going to hurt him, but…

"In fact, given the circumstances, I should praise you." There was a pause, as though she was regarding something. "Access the camera facing Pirate Cove."

He really, really didn't feel like doing that right now. But a sudden bolt of pain urged him to comply, and he accessed the cameras again.

Throughout this wing of the facility, all the lights were on (They can do that? he thought dully), making the place seem slightly lessfrightening. But he saw nothing of interest until he peered through the proper camera, and flinched at seeing the familiar blue curtains drawn back, exposing the android in full light.

Its costume was a rusty red, shredded and torn in places, and it wore a patch over one eye—it was a pirate, wasn't it? Made sense, given the name of the location. Strangely enough, though, it was no longer sparking, as it had been before. He tried to focus through his haze of pain, straining to see what was different. Oh, there—it had been missing a hand before, but now it was replaced with a hook. But why was she—

Wait.

Though he could not usually feel temperature, Wheatley suddenly felt very cold as he stared at the new appendage on the android.

That wasn't a hook.

The black-and silver metal was crudely bent into a curved shape, and a few wires were poking out of one end of it.

Snapping the cameras offline, he turned his optic up, then down, and his vocal processor gave a glitched, horrified squawk at the sight that greeted him.

"HE STkkKKKkkSTOLE M-MY BLOODY H-H-HA-A-aANDLE!" He swung on the cable, flailing his upper handle and cringing as sparks shot out of the lower part of his casing where his other handle should have been.

"I told you they would be out for revenge. But don't worry—I think that urge has been satiated."

Wheatley finally hung limp, twitching and watching the sparks scatter on the floor beneath him.

"I suppose that's enough for now. You'll need to be well-rested after that experience in order to function properly at work tomorrow."

"T-toMOoor—?!"

Before his glitching vocal processor could finish failing at producing that word, the claw appeared to retrieve him, dragging him back to the corrupt core bin—which he undoubtedly belonged to at this point.