Flames licked the foundation of the gutted attraction once called Fazbear's Fright. A haunting carnival of rotted suits and faded screams, it now collapsed in on itself like a dying animal. Smoke twisted up into the midnight sky, a coughing pillar reaching for salvation it would never receive.
From within the inferno, something moved.
Clang. Clunk. Crunch.
A silhouette trudged out from the flames—tall, crooked, and terrifying. What looked like an animatronic rabbit in decaying green fur dragged itself over scorched flooring and smoldering steel. Exposed wires coiled like veins around dented limbs. One eye glowed faintly, flickering. The other was clouded with ash and time.
But the creature did not scream. He never did.
Springtrap had escaped.
Not simply the fire, but the decades—the decades of rot, hallucinations, and static. Caged in hellish hallucinations and whispering phantoms that fed on regret. But the fire, somehow… had freed him. Torn the floor apart. Split open a tunnel. An accident. A blessing.
He stood at the edge of a crumbled highway under the open sky. The stars above were thin and cold, and the moon stared down like a dispassionate eye.
Springtrap tilted his head upward.
He couldn't breathe.
Not really. The lungs inside him had long since become something else. More pulp than organ. But if he could breathe… he would.
"…Fresh air," he muttered, his voice like static caught in a meat grinder. There was no one to hear him. "Smells like... nothing. Still better than burning."
His feet shuffled forward on rusted toes. Each step groaned beneath his weight. He reached the edge of the embankment overlooking the outskirts of the city beyond. There were no searchlights. No helicopters. No sirens.
Just silence.
Springtrap stopped, his head twitching faintly. Something stirred in the breeze. Something… wrong.
His vision blurred.
The world folded like wet cloth.
When he woke, the sky was red.
A deep crimson hue painted the clouds like dried blood, swirling in unnatural patterns. Buildings in the distance were half-destroyed—skyscrapers turned to broken teeth, scattered across the horizon. Fires burned freely with no signs of suppression. The ground rumbled with distant violence.
Springtrap rose slowly, the dirt beneath him cracked and warm. His joints clicked into place, reluctant but obeying.
Then he heard them—screams.
He limped forward. The air was charged with electricity. Gunfire rattled in the distance. Shapes darted through the air—winged, snarling, armored. Not drones. Not machines.
Parademons.
He didn't know their name. Not yet. But he recognized monsters. He had been one. Still was.
Down the road, a young family—a mother, father, and small child—ran from a falling shuttle van. Behind them, two humans… no, not quite. Twisted men with scavenged weapons and mad eyes chased them with cruel intent, hoping to rob or worse while chaos reigned.
Springtrap's eye gleamed.
Predators. The kind he used to be.
The kind that reminded him of himself.
He moved.
Fast.
Faster than they expected for something that looked like a mascot's corpse. The first thug raised his makeshift blade—Springtrap's arm punched through his chest like a hydraulic piston. Blood sprayed across his fur in a sharp arc. The second tried to flee, stumbling—
But Springtrap's hand lashed out, grabbed him by the throat, and lifted.
"Leave them," he growled, voice full of gravel and hate. "Run. Or rot."
The parademon sobbed something, but Springtrap crushed his windpipe before he could finish.
He turned to the family, who stood frozen near a flaming wreck.
The child stared, wide-eyed. Not crying. Just looking.
"...Go," Springtrap said. "Find shelter. Don't waste it."
The mother hesitated—then pulled her son away, running with the father close behind.
Springtrap didn't follow.
Instead, he dragged the bodies into the alley behind a broken grocery store. There, beneath a collapsed canopy, he paused.
A shattered phone kiosk flickered under the store awning. Shards of glass glinted like teeth in the light.
With care, Springtrap reached in and pulled out a burnt but functional smartphone. The screen was cracked but lit up. GPS… disabled. No signal.
"Offline," he muttered. "No surprise."
He stuffed it into a rusted panel on his thigh, where his endoskeleton had been hollowed for storage.
He walked.
Past rubble. Past the dead. He found a warehouse—barely intact. The sign had once read "Hardy Shipping Co."
It was abandoned.
And perfect.
Weeks passed.
Springtrap had moved bodies, set traps, scavenged supplies. He learned to walk the streets during curfews. The red sky never faded. Sometimes the flying things returned. They didn't see him as prey. Perhaps they sensed something wrong.
He had learned their patterns. Studied their weapons. Even salvaged parts from one that crashed on a rooftop—its corpse still twitching.
He cracked it open. Mechanisms unlike anything he'd seen. Alien alloys, pulsing green circuitry. He didn't understand it. But he would.
He always did.
The phone buzzed once in his thigh. He'd rigged it to steal nearby broadcast signals. Finally… something came through.
A news anchor, bloodied but speaking.
"…invasion has slowed following the resistance by the Justice League… confirmed sightings of Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash… many cities still in ruin… the world is not the same…"
The feed cut out.
Springtrap sat on a shipping crate, one eye glowing faintly in the dark.
"...Heroes. Mainstream. Hmm."
He opened a panel and stared at the Parademon tech laid out like organs on a table.
Alien. Unnatural. But filled with potential.
His claws tapped the edge of a reinforced joint.
His voice was low, deliberate.
"It's time for an upgrade."