Breakfast was simple and almost tasteless. It consisted of granola bars with some oats and processed wheat chunks. Also tasteless, but filling at least. She hadn’t expected gourmet meals, but she had hoped for some flavor. Still, she ate, and worked, and the day went by. When they had done enough, as judged by Bon Bon, they retired to the entertainment room and relaxed after supper, with Lyra playing her lyre for Bon Bon again.
“I found your lyre in the storage room, today.” Bon Bon said. Lyra froze in her playing. “I didn’t want to bother you about it during the day, but did something happen last night?”
“Oh… I… couldn’t sleep. I thought a little walk and some music might help. I guess I left it in there when I was done.”
“It was just laying in the middle of the floor, though. Do you really not want to talk about it?”
Lyra sighed. She didn’t know how much she could tell Bon Bon without making her worry, but she knew keeping it a secret was doing her no favors. “I… thought I heard something.”
“In the storage room?”
“Well, I was in there when I heard it. A singing voice, singing along with my music.”
Bon Bon pursed her lips in thought. “Could have been a siren. Strange that you should hear it even inside. The thing would have to have been inside to hear its voice, right?”
“I… don’t know? I don’t know how sirens work.”
Bon Bon stood up suddenly. “Come on. For safety’s sake, I want to make a run-through of the facility before we go to sleep. We don’t need to take chances.
Lyra put down her lyre and followed. Bon Bon was intense sometimes, but she knew her stuff. She could fight off a bugbear, beat up a timberwolf, and subdue a cragadile. She was tough, and if she was worried about sirens, it was a good idea to let her be worried about sirens.
The two of them wandered from room to room. Bon Bon checked the barriers in the storage room and assembly room. She studied the seals between the doors, making sure they were watertight. She checked the locks, checked the handles, and checked the handles in the door to seal them against water. When they were done, they had found nothing out of the ordinary. The only water on the floor was spread by themselves the other day when they had come in from outside. The bathroom was wet, but that was to be expected. They bathed in there. There was no signs of anything else having come into the habisphere. They were alone. As alone as they could be, isolated deep down underwater with curious creatures swimming about.
“I don’t know what you might have heard, but it sounded like a siren. If it was a siren, then we need to worry, but it’s not inside the habisphere. Only those with a necklace or accompanied by one should be able to get through, but it still worries me. I wonder what it was you heard and how you heard it.”
Lyra shrugged. “I don’t know, but it didn’t do anything. It just wanted me to keep playing.”
Bon Bon nodded as if that made perfect sense. “That does sound right for a siren. I just wonder where it came from. Tomorrow I’ll go have a look around. We don’t need that kind of strange magic affecting us while we’re trying to work.”
When they went to bed, Lyra once again lay awake, though not for lack of exhaustion. She was tired. She and Bon Bon had been working all day, and her exhaustion was expected. No, this time she was lying awake in bed out of worry about the supposed “siren” she had heard. With how nervous she was, she wanted to play her lyre for comfort, but now she couldn’t even have that without worrying about whether she would hear some strange voice talking to her. She stared over at the door for a while, then made up her mind.
Lyra crawled carefully out of bed and trotted purposefully down the hall to the entertainment room. There was no window, but it felt like there were eyes on her just the same. From Bon Bon’s earlier concern, she almost believed somepony was in the room with her, but she was reassured by the magic barriers only allowing ponies wearing the necklace inside. They could stare through it, but nothing and nopony could enter without the necklace.
Lyra played, softly at first, but as she played and heard nothing, she was reassured by the silence. Once she began singing, she heard it, and she stopped immediately. The voice was back. She took her lyre and went back to the bedroom. She set it down next to the bed, crawled back under the covers, and covered her head with the blankets. Bon Bon’s smell helped her fall asleep as she hid and waited for her to wake up.
In the morning. Lyra stuck with Bon Bon as they got breakfast and checked the facilities. Everything was functioning the way it was supposed to, everything was where they had left it, and a quick run through the place found nopony in the building save themselves.
“I’m going to go check around the hab for any signs of sirens,” Bon Bon said. “Do you want to come with me?”
Lyra stopped chewing and looked at Bon Bon. She turned to look at the door out of the entertainment room. They’d taken to eating in there for every meal so Lyra wouldn’t have to be reminded of the yawning darkness staring at her while she ate. She had to deal with it when she was working and that was bad enough. Sometimes she wondered why she even bothered coming down here. She hated it. Still, she wanted to help.
Lyra took a deep breath, chewed, swallowed and nodded. “Yes, I’ll come. I can’t hide in here the whole time. This way you’ll have both hooves free.”
Bon Bon hugged her tight. “Thanks, Lyra. It means a lot that you’re standing up to your fear of the ocean. Just stick with me. We’re going to look, not touch.”
“Okay.”
Once they’d finished eating and gone to the wall in the storage room, they tapped themselves with their necklaces and hopped outside. The cold water closed over them, mitigated only somewhat by their seapony forms. They floated for a moment, adjusting to the new sensations and breathing through gills, then Bon Bon took Lyra’s hoof.
“Okay, quick circuit around the hab, with light on every nook and cranny you can see. Look for anything strange and listen for anything strange. Silence at all times. We’re listening for music, even if it’s bad music.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be bad music. Her… it? Its voice was beautiful.”
“That’s how sirens get you. They sound good, but without magic they can’t sing. Not like us, anyway. It’s terrible music, but magic makes it sound like it’s good.”
“Okay, I get it. Any music out of place.”
Bon Bon nodded fiercely, grabbed Lyra’s hoof tight, and swam. They went around the hab, swimming close to the ocean floor. They investigated coral formations, rocks, underwater caves (those were terrifying, especially after Bon Bon explained that sometimes eels lived in those caves and would jump out at anything that got close. Lyra had refused to go close to any others, even after Bon Bon explained this one wasn’t full of an eel because of sand or something. Lyra wasn’t interested in hearing it. The mere thought of something living inside the cave had her terrified.
“It’s fine, it’s fine. I’ll check it out. Just stay some distance away and point the light inside, okay?”
“That I can do.” Lyra stayed a healthy distance away from the hole and turned her horn light to the cave. It spilled inside and Bon Bon swam in after it. There was no eel that Lyra could see, but her light would only go so far. She had to hope Bon Bon didn’t get herself in too deep. In addition, she was waiting outside the cave in the dark. No matter what she did she was uncomfortable. It was a losing game down here.
While she waited, Lyra listened in silence to the sounds of things swimming about in the dark. Some distant rumble of volcanic activity. Some deep, mournful warbling of a whale. The shuffling of other things moving about on many legs or just a few, and some… voice?
The faintest sound of singing reached her ears. It was coming from all around her, enveloping her. “Play for us.” It begged. She couldn’t, because she didn’t have her lyre, but the voices kept begging, asking for music. For lovely, lovely music.
Lyra wasn’t interested in playing music for the voices. Not out here where she might draw them closer. She’d seen something moving near the habisphere when she had played the last time, and although she couldn’t confirm that what had moved was the source of the voice, she was worried.
“Bon bon?” Lyra asked quietly. Too quietly to be heard. She got no answer.
The voices continued pestering her, begging and pleading for more music. “Show us your instrument!” “Teach us!” “Give us more!” “Please!” “Please!” “Please!!”
“Aaaaaaah!” Lyra screamed, clutching at her head. Bon Bon came racing out of the cave at the sound, but there was nopony there but Lyra, screaming and grabbing her head in her hooves. She grabbed hold of the mare and tried to comfort her, but Lyra was panicked as the voices assaulted her ears. Her horn light went out.
When Next Lyra opened her eyes, she was back in the hab in bed. Bon Bon was sitting next to her, calmly reading a book. When Lyra shifted, Bon Bon immediately put the book down and turned her attention to Lyra.
“Good morning, sunshine. How are you feeling?”
“Fine, I guess. I’m fine. Just fine.” She wasn’t really fine, but she didn’t want to worry Bon Bon anymore than she already had. Her head was spinning, and she felt like there was something pressing against her skull. Some insistent pressure, not painful, but worrisome. Like something was trying to get in.
“You’re clearly not fine. Can you tell me what happened?”
“It was the voices again. A bunch of them this time. They wanted me to play music for them, and they were insistent. I told them I didn’t want to, but they kept begging and begging and begging.” She said. “Then I woke up here.”
Bon Bon nodded again as if it all made sense. “Okay, well, we know what’s out there. There’s multiple sirens, and I was sent to take care of stuff like that. They haven’t contacted me, so it must be your music drawing them to you. I don’t want to hurt them if I don’t have to, but we can’t have them causing trouble.” She looked at Lyra intensely, brow furrowed. “What are you thinking about right now?”
Lyra was surprised by the question, but she took a moment to reflect. She found that she was thinking about her lyre, the instrument popping in and out of her thoughts as she sat in bed. Her desire to play, while normally high enough, was the pressure she was feeling. It was intrusive, as though she needed to play it and sing. “Music?” she said, unsure.
Bon Bon nodded yet again as though it made sense. “Okay, I know this is going to sound a little weird, and maybe frightening, but can I have your necklace?”
Lyra was shocked. “What?”
“I need your necklace so you can’t leave the hab. The sirens are after you, and if they get into your head, you’ll head out into the ocean. Without the necklace, you can’t leave without me. Please?”
Lyra clutched at her necklace. If she took it off, she’d be trapped down here. If anything went wrong, she’d be stuck, dependent entirely on magic and Bon Bon. But…
She did trust Bon Bon. She trusted her with her life, and Bon Bon knew about monsters. If the sirens were after her, keeping her in a prison of some kind was the best way to ensure she would be safe until Bon Bon could take care of them. She slowly pulled it off.
“Okay, but you gotta promise you’ll get rid of them!”
“You know I will. I’m just concerned about your safety right now. I need to know you’re safe while I do so.”
“I know. I’ll be fine. I’m stuck here now, right?” Lyra held out the necklace and Bon Bon took it. She stowed it in her bags and stepped back.
“My first priority is making sure you’re safe. The assembly of the hab can wait. You wait here and I’ll go take care of them, okay?’
“Okay. I trust you. Be safe, okay?”
“You know I’m as safe as I can be.”
“I know.” Lyra leaned out of bed and Bon Bon leaned closer. They touched noses, wiggled, then Bon Bon pulled away.
Bon Bon left the room, and Lyra listened to her hooves disappear down the halls. Then she was alone. Again. With nothing but her thoughts, and that pressure from the voices to play music.
The first thing Lyra did was get out of bed, grab the lyre Bon Bon gave her, and lock it in a locker. She grabbed one of the padlocks that was unused and slapped it on in an attempt to protect it. The passcode was still hidden somewhere, but she didn’t’ know it off the top of her head, and she didn’t know where the codes were kept. Bon Bon handled most of those, Lyra just did as she was told. Before coming here she knew nothing about building a habisphere, and so she’d defer.
With her lyre locked away, Lyra had nothing to do. She was worried she’d get idle, so she tried to read some of the books in the library, but they were all terrible. She busied herself trying to build some of the hab, but she didn’t really know what she was doing. She was bored very quickly.
Desperate for some entertainment but not willing to try and unlock the locker with her lyre in it, Lyra instead began singing. It was quiet and wasn’t a particular song, but she hummed along a little tune and sang about how annoying it was to have to be down in the hab without a necklace and without her usual entertainment.
“This song’s about the worstest thing, requiring me to only sing, instead of play my lyre sweet, I hope those sirens can be beat!” she sang. She giggled at the end, amused by her own cleverness. She continued to hum and sing as she went into the exercise room. She started working out, grunting while she sang in an effort to keep her mind and body busy.
It wasn’t enough. Even breathing hard between verses of her new song she was going to call “Stupid Sirens Ruined my Vacation” she couldn’t stop herself from being bored. Now she was just bored and tired. She showered, granting herself a brief reprieve from thinking about the sirens and her boredom, but when she was done, all that was left was eating, which Bon Bon wouldn’t be happy she’d done, and thinking about how bored she was.
So Lyra sang more. Eventually she got so into it she started singing louder, and louder, until she was belting out her song alone, having forgotten why she had been so quiet in the first place. She got a rude reminder when she heard the voices singing along with her. She stopped, fearful, but the voices kept singing. They began making up their own lyrics to her song, adding to the verses she’d already made.
“The ponies won’t party with us, they hang out inside their big bubble! What they don’t realize is the fuss, when they came here both looking for trouble!”
“I didn’t say I wanted trouble. You’re the ones who tried to make me play music!”
The dull thump of something hitting the hab echoed through the halls. Lyra didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t strong enough to damage the building. It was just the sound of someone or something swimming into it.
Was it Bon Bon? Were the sirens throwing her into it? Was she chasing something? Was it the sirens themselves, congregating around the outside of the hab? Surely Bon Bon would find them and stop them if they had come so close.
The thumping moved down the side of the building. It bounced along the outside of the hab, thumping down, down, down to the magic wall blocking the assembly room, then it stopped.
Had it gotten inside? Bon Bon and the sea ponies insisted that only a pony with the necklace could get through the door. They needed to be accompanied by somepony with one, or they had to have one themselves.
What if Bon Bon had been killed! What if they’d caught her, and had taken her necklace?! Worse yet, that meant Lyra’s necklace was gone! What if she was stuck down here alone, trapped for weeks in the dark until they sent some other ponies down to see how things were going? What if Lyra was alone in the dark in the water at the bottom of the sea by herself for a whole month!
Lyra saw spots and realized she was hyperventilating. She had to calm down. The worst-case scenario hadn’t happened. Bon Bon was the best agent S.M.I.L.E. had. There was a reason she had been sent. She was fine. She was perfectly fine.
Lyra slowly calmed down. The thumping had stopped, and the voices were quiet. They couldn’t get in without a necklace, and Bon Bon was the best agent ever. There was no way something had gotten—there was a thump in the hall—in.
Lyra slowly turned her head, the chills and hyperventilating were back. Something had moved, and it hadn’t been her. Was Bon Bon back?
Lyra walked slowly to the door of the entertainment room. She put her ear to the door and listened. The thump had come from the hall, but there had only been one. It wasn’t the same as the wet thumps from outside, slapping against the hab. This was a clatter and a bump, like something had been spilled. There were plenty of boxes out there to spill, but Bon Bon surely wouldn’t have been that quiet. She would have announced her presence. They knew each other too well.
When Lyra heard nothing, she cracked the door open. She peered out into the lit hall. The lights followed the sun on the surface, so they knew when it was daylight and when it wasn’t. It was well-lit right now, but in the hall, Lyra saw nothing. There was no upturned box or crate or other item. Nothing to indicate something had simply fallen. Likewise, there was nopony in the hall, so nopony was here.
Unless they had gone around the hab the other direction. If they wanted to distract her and sneak up behind!
Lyra spun around, looking over at the other door. She waited, but there was no sound, and the door didn’t open. She turned back to the door she had cracked open, and was met with a garish, toothy face with an ear-splittingly wide smile grinning at her. A light dangled off its forehead, and it was baring its teeth! She screamed and fell over, smacking her head on the floor. Everything went dark.
Lyra heard something sweet and melodic. She listened with rapt attention as it wafted through the air to her ears. She heard the sound of the ocean and a sweet voice graced her ears as she lay in… something? It wasn’t an uncomfortable something, but it felt fluid, like it was moving in place. It was warm, and comforting in a strange way. She lay in it and allowed it to carry her along, until she bumped into something. Lyra opened her eyes and saw the toothy face looking down at her, and she jumped in surprise.
When Lyra pulled herself to her hooves, there was nothing there.
No warm water greeted her, no strange, toothy creature, no nothing. She was alone, like before, in a hallway of the habisphere.
She touched a hoof to her head. She felt a bump and winced. She’d smacked her head on the floor harder than she thought. Then she remembered the face she’d seen. She looked back at the half-open door and saw nothing. No face, no signs of wetness, nothing. Lyra sighed in frustration and concern. What time was it? The lights were still on, but Bon Bon was nowhere to be found. A quick circuit of the hab revealed nothing was out of the ordinary still, and Lyra was alone.
A thumping came down the hall behind her. The door back down the hall shook with the sound, and squeaked as it opened. A rush of ocean water poured in and Lyra shrieked and covered her eyes… but nothing touched her. She opened her eyes to see the door shut, with no water coming in. She breathed and tried to calm down.
“Bon Bon! Come back! Something’s happening! They’re here!” Lyra shrieked. Only the cold walls of the hab spoke back, echoing her words and muffling them with thousands of tonnes of seawater pressing in on all sides.
The thought of all that around her, combined with the darkness and the voices, had Lyra’s breathing shoot up to hyperventilation almost immediately. Spots filled her vision as she tried to calm down, but she could hear banging from all sides, voices from all around, and through it all, a faint voice singing, singing, singing. Lyra pushed her back up against a wall and tried to calm down. She needed something to help occupy her mind. She needed a distraction.
She needed her music.
Lyra crept her way back through the hab, the sounds beating down on her from all sides. She needed to drown them out with something else. Something musical. Something better. If she could get rid of the sounds coming at her from all sides, she would be fine. The whispering voice behind it all would be drowned out by the music and she could stop listening to it. The sirens would leave her be if she could please them. Please them and get them to stop. At least provide a distraction until Bon Bon could stop them. Something, ANYTHING, would be better than listening to all this banging and clanging and shouting and bashing. And then the visions would go away! The water would stop trying to flood the hab, and the doors would stop opening. She had bashed her head on three doors while trying to get through the hab because the voices had convinced her the doors were open and leaking. She wasn’t sure what was what anymore.
Lyra groped at the locker with her magic. She yanked and pulled, but the lock wasn’t breaking. Her Lyre was inside and she needed it! She needed it to get them to stop! She punched it, kicked it, bashed at it with her hooves and head, but she couldn’t get it open! She ran for the office where the codes and keys were kept.
She tore through the cupboards and shelves. She ripped open the desks and scrabbled through the contents, all the while screeching about how much she needed some different sound.
“I need to hear anything else! ANYTHING ELSE! You can have your music, just stop! Please stop! Leave me alone!”
Lyra was so involved in her search she didn’t at first see Bon Bon come on. “Lyra? I heard something and I came to make sure you were okay… what are you doing? Are you alright?”
Lyra looked up at Bon Bon, panic in her eyes. “I need my lyre! I locked it up so they’d leave me alone, but now they’re just louder! I need it! I need to make them stop! Help me find the key!”
Bon Bon came over and tried to hug Lyra, but she pushed her away. “No! I can still hear it! It’s whispering. The water’s been coming in for hours but it hasn’t gotten any deeper… the sounds… they’re pounding on the hab. They can’t get through, but they’re still pounding on it, trying to get in. If I play for them, maybe they’ll leave.”
“Lyra, you’re not okay. Come on, you need to calm down. Stop… stop messing up the desks! Please! Come sit down, tell me what’s going on, I’ll help, okay?” Bon Bon grabbed Lyra tight. She struggled at first, but she stopped and calmed down, though her ears were still flat against her head.
“Okay… okay…”
They talked about what she had heard. Lyra told Bon Bon what she’d seen, what she’d heard, and everything that had happened. She told Bon Bon about the toothy visage that had appeared during the sounds, and Bon Bon accepted that to be the vision of one of the Sirens.
“It’s probably the leader, if they have one. The siren of the deep sea.”
“I don’t know, it doesn’t say anything. It just looks at me and smiles while the water’s rising…” Lyra mumbled.
“How… how deep is the water right now?” Bon Bon asked.
Lyra looked down, head swaying. “It’s at my knees. It’s not cold… it’s actually rather warm. Comforting, even.” Lyra leaned on Bon Bon, putting all her weight on the earth pony mare. Bon Bon hefted her up and draped her over her back. She carried Lyra back to the bedroom and tucked her in. The unicorn was exhausted, but despite her apparent weakness she still struggled while Bon Bon tried to put the blankets over her. She complained about the noise, the water, and the hooves touching her. It took some time, but she eventually settled down and fell asleep, with Bon Bon brushing her mane.