Chapter 1: The Last Stage

Chapter 1: The Last Stage

The air in Showbiz Pizza tasted like a memory. It was a thick, greasy concoction of stale pepperoni, day-old sugar, and something metallic that tickled the back of the throat—the distinct, ozonic hum of aging electronics. For Leo Martinez, it was the smell of home.

He lay on his back, the sticky, patterned carpet a familiar scratch against his neck, his world narrowed to the guts of a vintage "Galaxy Raiders" cabinet. At twenty-two, most of his peers were chasing futures in cities that had them. Leo was chasing ghosts. With a final twist of his screwdriver, the machine whirred to life, its attract-mode music a triumphant, tinny fanfare. Another ghost, captured and restored.

“Attaboy, Leo,” a raspy voice called from across the dim arcade. Ms. Jackson, the owner, a woman whose frame seemed as weary as the building she ran, gave him a thumbs-up from behind the prize counter. “You keep this up, the Smithsonian will be calling.”

Leo just grinned, wiping grease from his knuckles onto an already-stained rag. This wasn't just a job; it was a crusade. He was the sole mechanic, the custodian of relics, for the last operational Showbiz Pizza in the state, maybe the country. It was a crumbling mausoleum of 80s nostalgia, a place where childhoods like his were preserved in amber.

His gaze drifted from the flashing arcade to the main dining hall, settling on the real reason he was here: the stage.

There they stood, silent and waiting under the warm glow of the stage lights. The Rock-afire Explosion. To anyone else, they were a sad collection of decaying animatronics. Their synthetic fur was matted with decades of dust and grime, their plastic eyes clouded and scuffed. But to Leo, they were friends.

Billy Bob, the big, banjo-strumming grizzly bear, stood center stage, his overalls faded, his toothy grin a permanent fixture. To his right, Mitzi Mozzarella, the mouse cheerleader, was frozen mid-pom-pom shake. On the left, Fatz Geronimo, the silverback gorilla, loomed over his keyboard, his felt tuxedo jacket worn thin at the elbows.

Leo knew their inner workings better than his own. He knew the specific hiss of the pneumatic lines that gave Fatz his signature sway, the exact voltage needed to make Mitzi’s ears wiggle. He spent his days patching their cracking rubber skin, lubricating their stiff joints, and splicing wires that were older than he was. He wasn't just maintaining machines; he was keeping a promise to the kid he used to be, the one who saw them as real, living things.

The tinny chime of the front door announced the arrival of the afternoon's main event: a birthday party. A small troop of kids and their harried-looking parents shuffled in, their modern clothes a stark contrast to the pizzeria’s time-locked decor. Leo felt a familiar pang of excitement. This was what it was all about. The show.

He gave a nod to Ms. Jackson, who forced a weary smile for the customers, and headed to the main control booth at the back. He flipped a series of heavy switches. A low hum filled the room as the air compressors kicked in, the lifeblood of the band.

“Alright, folks,” Leo whispered to the empty room. “Let’s give ‘em a good one.”

He pressed the play button. The familiar, upbeat country tune blasted from the speakers, a wave of nostalgia so potent it was almost dizzying. On stage, the band jerked to life. Fatz’s fingers hammered the keys, Mitzi bounced on her heels, and Billy Bob began to strum his banjo, his head bobbing in time with the music.

A little boy, the birthday honoree, stood transfixed before the stage, his face aglow with a mixture of awe and fear. He couldn't have been more than seven. Leo smiled. This was the magic.

But then, something went wrong.

It started subtly. Billy Bob’s strumming fell out of sync, his banjo-plucking hand twitching erratically. A normal glitch. Leo had seen it a hundred times. He made a mental note to check the solenoid in the bear's wrist later.

Then the head movement started. Instead of the cheerful, side-to-side bob, Billy Bob’s head began a slow, deliberate turn. It was too smooth, too fluid for the old hydraulics. It swiveled past Mitzi, past Fatz, and kept going until its cracked, lifeless plastic eyes were locked directly on the birthday boy.

The music began to warp. The cheerful vocals slowed, pitching down into a demonic drawl, the instruments groaning like twisting metal. A low, static-laced hum replaced the banjo.

Leo’s blood ran cold. This wasn't a glitch. This wasn’t a crossed wire.

Billy Bob’s head tilted, a gesture of eerie, predatory curiosity. The red lights in his eyes, normally a soft, friendly glow, pulsed with a brighter, more malevolent intensity. His jaw, powered by a pneumatic piston strong enough to crush bone, slowly began to open and close. Click. Clack. Click. Clack. The sound was sharp, hungry.

The birthday boy took a step back, his smile gone, replaced by a trembling lip. He pointed a shaking finger. "Mommy… the bear is looking at me."

His mother, who had been on her phone, looked up. Her face went pale. The other parents fell silent, their chatter dying as the atmosphere in the room curdled. The air felt heavy, charged with a palpable sense of menace emanating from the stage.

Leo’s hands flew across the control panel, his mind racing. Cascade failure? Power surge? Nothing made sense. He slammed his palm down on the big, red emergency stop button.

The music cut out with a screech. The compressors hissed into silence. The band froze.

But Billy Bob’s eyes remained fixed on the child. The red light in them seemed to linger for a moment longer before finally fading to black, leaving an afterimage burned into Leo’s vision.

The silence that followed was more terrifying than the noise. It was thick, broken only by the whimpering of the now-sobbing birthday boy. The party was over. The parents, snatching up their children, fled with hurried, fearful apologies.

Ms. Jackson rushed over to Leo, her face ashen. “What in God’s name was that?”

“I… I don’t know,” Leo stammered, his mechanic’s mind failing to find a logical foothold. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It was like… it was deliberate.”

The word hung in the air between them. Deliberate.

“The motherboard must be fried. Or maybe there was a short in the main harness,” he said, forcing the words out, trying to cage the unexplainable horror in the familiar language of circuits and code. “I’ll have to take him to the back.”

Ms. Jackson wrung her hands, looking at the dark, hulking shape on the stage. “Just fix it, Leo. Please. Another incident like this… and we’re done for good.”

Leo nodded, his throat tight. He felt a heavy sense of duty, but it was laced with a new, chilling dread. He looked at Billy Bob, no longer an old friend but a menacing effigy, a source of a cold, inexplicable terror.

After locking the front doors behind the last of the staff for the night, Leo went to the utility closet and retrieved the heavy-duty dolly. Its wheels rumbled loudly in the cavernous silence of the empty restaurant. He unbolted the bear from its mountings on the stage floor. The animatronic was dead weight, a quarter-ton of steel, rubber, and wiring. As he heaved the massive figure onto the dolly, its limp arm swung down and brushed against his. The synthetic fur was cold, and for a terrifying second, Leo felt as if it had flinched away from his touch.

He shook his head, dismissing the thought. He was just spooked. Tired. There was a rational explanation for everything. There had to be.

He began to wheel the silent, colossal bear across the darkened dining hall. The rows of empty tables and chairs looked like tombstones in the dim glow of the emergency lights. Every creak of the dolly’s wheels echoed like a footstep behind him. He couldn’t shake the feeling of the bear’s plastic eyes on his back, even though it was facing the other way.

With a grunt, he pushed open the swinging doors that led to the back hallways, the entrance to his sanctuary: the maintenance room. It was a place of logic and order, of schematics and diagnostic tools. In there, every problem had a solution, every ghost in the machine was just a faulty line of code or a stripped gear.

He was determined to find the source of the problem, to dissect the malfunction and put his old friend right again.

He was walking into a trap, and he didn't even know it. The show was only just beginning.