The center of the old factory was bare. No curtains, no lights, no working machinery. Just a wide circle of scuffed linoleum, ringed with broken props and shattered bulbs, dimmed to a quiet gray by time and ruin. At its center sat Vinnie, still, limbs draped unnaturally long across the floor like spilled ink.

His mask-like face tilted forward ever so slightly, as if weighed down by its own expression. The painted blue tear streaks, dulled and cracked, ran crooked along pale cheeks. His yellow eyes were open, but unseeing; glass orbs catching only the shadows. A faint dusting of ash settled along the shoulders of his black-and-white striped form, blending him into the wall like a figure from a dream someone tried to forget.

No music played. No stage cues blinked to life. The building held its breath around him, as if afraid to wake whatever memory he came from. The air was too still, too untouched.

His hands rested palm-up in his lap, fingers curled just slightly inward, posed like a marionette whose strings had been let go long ago. His body had none of the idle twitches or servo whirs of the animatronics-because he wasn’t one. Not really.

There was no shutdown to witness, because nothing had powered him on. No system. No code. Just presence.

A ghost of guilt staged beneath broken lights, already paused mid-performance before the show could even begin.