The days that followed moved with quiet, mechanical precision.
Harry's fingers learned the rhythm of delicate work—fine soldering, bending tiny metal arms, shaping seals and reservoirs that would one day hold something alive and terrible. His eyes burned from long hours of study, his thoughts flickering between blueprints and possibilities. He worked until the edges of his vision blurred, then worked a little more. There was no urgency beyond the slow, steady tick of his plan.
Remnant.
He reminded himself of the word every hour. It sat heavy in his thoughts, half threat and half promise. If it truly was the condensed essence of a living soul—alive, volatile, burning with will—then the alley had only been a fluke. That single night had given them one vial. It would never be enough.
While Harry built, Plushtrap hunted. The animatronic became a shadow moving through town, returning each evening with reports—soft, eager, and edged with excitement.
"Not morgues," Plushtrap said one night, eyes glowing in the dark. "Not the dead. Remnant from a corpse is weak—washed out. It won't bind right. It has to be hot. Present. Alive."
Harry set down his soldering iron and rubbed his eyes. "Alive," he repeated. The word settled into the shape of his plan. It made things harder—cleaner, too. Controlled. Predictable.
If they were careful, they could take what they needed without drawing the kind of attention that destroyed plans.
They began to define parameters. Children were too visible, too likely to cause panic.
"Not kids," Harry said evenly. "They're a last resort. Too noticeable."
Plushtrap clicked his teeth, almost laughing. "Of course not. You're not an idiot."
Their shortlist took shape: men who prowled the late streets for victims, small-time dealers, predators who preyed on the weak. People who lived unnoticed and would vanish unnoticed. Harry didn't think of it as murder. He called it necessary. Efficient. Inevitable.
Meanwhile, his workshop grew more intricate. The injector—sleek, sterile, mechanical—took form beneath his hands. It looked nothing like a weapon, but it would perform the same work. He built valves, cooling systems, filters, and containment spheres lined with chilled metal. He made something that could inject a soul without destroying the body that received it.
Plushtrap watched, pacing the bench like a child waiting for a secret to be revealed.
"You're good at this," he said one evening. "You make things that work."
Harry didn't reply. Praise was unnecessary. The work spoke for itself.
They needed a base—a place quiet and forgotten. Plushtrap found it first: the half-ruined shell of Fredbear's Family Diner. The building was empty, its stage rotting, its mascot head lying like a skull in the dust. It was perfect.
They turned the storage room into a workshop. Harry reinforced the walls, installed a small temperature-controlled safe for storing Remnant, and wired an alarm system that whispered on a frequency only Plushtrap could hear.
"When the infusion starts," Harry said, "I'll sleep. Two and a half months, maybe longer. You'll watch. No interruptions."
Plushtrap's LED eyes pulsed with excitement. "You'll be asleep for months? I don't sleep. That'll be fun."
"You'll keep to the plan," Harry said flatly.
Plushtrap tilted his head, grin widening. "Of course. I'll be your eyes."
For the next week, they moved in perfect synchronization. Harry tested the injector, practiced timing, refined every cycle. He built redundancy into redundancy—filters within filters, failsafes behind failsafes. He considered every possible failure point and engineered against it.
At night, Plushtrap brought back new observations: men who stalked alleys, those who dealt in hidden corners, the predators that fed on others. He catalogued them the way Harry might label components—habits, routines, the likelihood of being missed.
Harry folded each piece of information into his plan. The first doses would be small, barely measurable.
For the first half of the five months, he'd remain in medically induced sleep while the Remnant bonded. Each vial would be tested and stabilized before infusion. If the body held—if tolerance grew—they would increase the flow.
But they both knew the truth: no plan was perfect. People noticed absences. Patterns broke. Questions were asked.
So Harry built diversions. False trails. Anonymous tips to misdirect attention. Layers of quiet safety over a foundation of calm ruthlessness.
When the final test cycle completed, the diner hummed faintly with machinery. The injector gleamed, ready. The safe was sealed. The path ahead was set.
That night, Harry stood by the back door of Fredbear's, a dry case of containers at his feet. Plushtrap perched on his shoulder, faintly whirring with life.
"You ready?" Plushtrap whispered, voice almost human.
Harry drew a slow breath. "Ready," he said, the word steady, without tremor.
They stepped into the night together.
The town lay quiet and careless around them. Somewhere ahead, warm-blooded and unaware, their targets moved—living sources of the soul metal he needed.
They were not immortal yet. They had only begun the path. But the path had shape now—cold, precise, inevitable.
And Harry never walked anywhere without a plan