//------------------------------// // Part 18 // Story: Silent Ponyville: Reunion // by Chapter 17 //------------------------------// Silent Ponyville: Reunion Stay away. Part 18 ------ Lance took his time pondering whether there was any way at all that going inside wouldn't be considered completely insane. After some very intense thought on the topic he concluded that no, there was not...but he had to go in anyway. Obviously there was something he needed in there, but now there was something more to it. Certain very recent events had implanted within him the idea that if he didn't do these insane things despite knowing full well they were insane, something even worse might end up happening instead. Or perhaps he was just being paranoid...there really wasn't, nor had there ever been, any way of telling. The lump of fear in the pit of his stomach stayed his hooves a moment longer before he nudged the door open and peered inside the formerly inaccessible day room. Dirt and grime covered the worn down floor tiles but curiously the dust that seemed ever present in the rest of the building was absent. Lance looked around quickly, his uncertainty spiking as he realized there was no trail on the floor he could use to safely pinpoint the location of the five gurneys. Following a tense half minute of illuminating nothing but the overturned furniture pressed against the walls, he spotted them arranged in a semi circle around a small metal box...located at the far corner of the room, the single spot furthest from the door. Of course they would be there. He had been right next to the gurneys a number of times already yet, from their spot clear on the other end of the room, far from being able to harm him in the slightest, they had never looked more intimidating. But he would need whatever was in that box...so he spent a final moment gathering his courage, reminding himself that these gurneys had never hurt him, before taking a step inside. Lance's ear twitched as the sound of his hoof hitting the floor echoed above him in a way entirely uncharacteristic of a room of that size. He started looking up, the beam of his surgical light rising up along the wall...and up...and up...and up as he quickly discovered the reason for the room's strange acoustics. When finally he saw light hit the ceiling it was easily two hundred feet above him. He kept looking up wide eyed, trying to remember if he'd seen such a large tower in the void between floors on his way up but pulling a blank. It made about as much sense as a stairwell that compressed the distance from one floor to the next into the space of a single flight. At the very least he was able to plainly see that there were no malcontents lurking in the vast empty space above him. But somehow that observation proved of little comfort as he brought his light back down and started to advance toward the gurneys. With everything else he had seen, how easy would it be for that place to just materialize something in the now darkened void above when his attention was turned? It hadn't happened yet but but that only made the thought that it was perhaps overdue to happen nag at the back of his head even more sharply. Lance was suddenly halted by the sound of wood creaking above wrenching his eyes and light back to the ludicrously large expanse above. There was still nothing. Normally he would scold himself for letting his nerves get to him, but by that point he was quite appreciative they were going to the trouble. His watch maintained its silence as he covered the last of the distance to the box and the assembled gurneys. As always they remained outwardly unthreatening while at the same time making the amber pegasus feel like somepony was breathing down the back of his neck. For a while all he could do was stare at the metal box on the ground and wonder with dread what would happen when he dared to pick it up. Lance swallowed nervously and looked back up at the gurneys that had been growing in number with every encounter. At least this time they had lead him to something of value. "Th...thanks," he offered timidly. It couldn't hurt...right? Well, there was no sense in dragging things out any further. Lance undid the clasp of the lightest feeling saddlebag, saw that there would be more than enough room for the entire box, plucked it off the ground, and tucked it away in his bag before taking another glance at the quartet of gurneys that, thankfully, were continuing to remain absolutely motionle- WAIT. A pair of hooves set down on the floor behind him an instant before his watch jumped all the way from pristine silence to a fever pitch of buzzing that made his heart try to break out of his ribcage again. The reflexive attempt to turn around was again foiled by his leg, sending him stumbling sideways a few steps as a horrible gurgling, retching noise reached his ears. There was only a split second to look at the gurney that had somehow appeared behind him before he was forced to act on what precious little information he was able to comprehend; there was some pony shaped thing beneath the gurney, that sound could only mean it was about to vomit something up at him, and he'd already had enough of being covered in liquid foulness to last him a good lifetime or two. He managed to get enough balance onto his good leg to push forward and avoid being in the path of the ensuing eruption of dark red blood that splattered all over the floor. The flesh covered gurney itself had not changed, but an emaciated pony's front half had now emerged from an unseen hole in the underside. It's skin was formed from oddly shaped patches of various deathly shades that had been sewn into place, dried blood caking the edge of each patch. It was like somepony had flayed the skin off of the poor wretch and tried replacing it with pieces cut from many different corpses. It was missing any trace of eyes like all the other creatures, but more uniquely it was also missing the entire lower half of its face. The snout had been removed in a single clean cut, leaving behind a toothless, blood dripping maw that was impossible to close. As the roller aggressively used its front hooves to drag itself closer it quivered with agony and rage, the former gurgling and retching replaced by the sick wheezing of a pony trying to breathe with a compromised lung. But none of this was as immediately alarming to Lance as the way the blood it had just spewed at him began to sizzle and smoke as it corroded the flooring. "What?!" Lance exclaimed as he took off limping in the general direction of the room's exit with all the haste he could manage. His efforts did little to put any distance between himself and the sound of the squeaking wheels behind him. In fact, with every painful step the fleeing stallion took they started to get closer, the creature behind him gaining momentum and closing what precious little gap there was. The gurgling noise started to seep into its strained breathing again as what he could only assume were its lungs began to fill up with acidic blood anew. He was doing an even worse job of running away from this one than he had with the barbed nurse! Unless he did something different he would end up a twitching, bloody, smoking, roughly pony shaped mass on the floor long before he reached the door. Instantly his thoughts turned to the pipe that had resolved the nurse problem and he stopped to grab the impromptu weapon. His mistake of not taking the gurney's momentum into account struck him from behind and sent him stumbling forward after a grunt of pain. After barely managing to avoid falling over, he pulled the pipe out at the same time as he heard another loud, retching gurgle signalling that his time was short. He gripped the pipe with both hooves and aimed a solid swing at the roller's head. Clang! The metal frame of the gurney had interrupted the arc of his swing. There was no way he would be getting at the roller with anything but a stabbing motion, the sort of attack he would either need a sharper weapon or less mangled legs to make any use of. He would not be killing this one any time soon. There was also the whole 'about to be sprayed down and melted' issue. With a last wretch the roller spit up another batch of the acidic blood. Lance flung himself out of the way, barely managing to avoid the worst of it as a jolt of pain shot through his injured right rear leg. He then smelled burning hair before felt his other rear leg practically light on fire. Looking back in a brief moment of panic, he was a bit relieved to see that his back leg had gotten misted at worst. It hurt badly but there was no deep damage, only a moderate corrosive burn on the skin that left the leg just as useable as before. The roller's wheezing brought him out of his brief self diagnostic, the monster content to sit there well within range while it prepared another salvo of acid. He looked back toward the door still half a massive day room away and struggled to his hooves, the mere touch of the air moving across the burn on his leg setting the nerves aflame. As he hobbled away the creature's next strained breath came out sounding more like a grumble, as though it was begrudging his making it go to the trouble of moving. If Lance had made it halfway to the door before his pursuer had been able to attempt to dissolve him, there was hope. All he would have to do is maintain his pace and he was sure to reach the door before it could attack again. But that was no longer as trivial as he would have liked since it felt like his dodge moments prior had just undone any healing his leg had managed. Every step was now excruciating and he wasn't exactly in a position to chug down the health drink in his bag. After ages of agony that had somehow compressed themselves into tens of seconds, Lance was in hoof's reach of the door. He didn't remember closing it behind him on his way in but that was of little consequence. Only a raise of a hoof and a turn of a doorknob separated him from freedom. The doorknob just kept turning, attached to nothing. The lock was broken. ... "Why is the lock broken?!" His presence in the room alone was proof that he wasn't crazy. The door had been open, but now it was just as closed and useless as when he had first passed by it. His escape route was cut off, and he was cornered. He turned and faced the roller that was nearly ready to attack a third time, his mind racing to think of anything he could possibly do. If it came down to having to continuously evade this monster, he and his battered, weakened body would lose in short order. There had to be something, there had always been something! Wait...there was something! He was even in the perfect spot to take advantage of it! Lance side stepped, placing himself between the acid spewing horror and the doorknob. He would need just one more good dodge now. There was no way to know exactly how much damage the corrosive blood would do to the door, but even if it just partially damaged the locking mechanism it would be that much easier to try and bash it open. He stared the roller down, waiting for the coming attack, confident that he would be able to see it coming after having already witnessed it twice. His body tensed, preparing for another painful exertion as the monster started retching again. But instead of the resultant spray of acid he had expected, it paused, looking at him for an unusual moment...and then turned its head before spewing its corrosive payload against the adjacent section of wall, leaving both the stunned doctor and door behind him untouched. "Wh...what-" Lance didn't get to finish his confounded utterance before the roller suddenly pulled itself forward, ramming right into him. He was knocked back again, his left side slamming into the wall followed shortly by the gurney's metal frame pinning him on his right. Then the pressure started increasing. He was being slowly crushed against the very same door he had sought to fool the monster into melting for him. Quickly realizing his body would break long before the door did, Lance started trying to push back, to pull himself free, to just escape in any way...but it was too late. Even if none of his legs had been injured in the slightest, they were all pinned and useless. The next thing he knew he hit the ground in the hallway just outside. As he looked around in a frantic daze trying to discern what had happened, he heard the door that had just burst open bang against the gurney as it attempted to swing closed again. Expecting the roller to continue its assault, he pushed himself away with his good leg while looking back, only to find that the flesh clothed gurney was inert and his watch was quiet. Lance spent a moment catching his breath, not taking his eyes off of it until it was beyond clear he was in that strange, threatening, unnerving, but still living state that this place dared to call 'safe'. There were large, bloody gouge marks in the metal of the door's lock where the mechanism had been cut clean through, and as Lance let his eyes drift downward he spotted a familiar trail of small red blood spatters leading down the hallway toward the elevator and stairwell. His stalker had saved him, and she was leading him somewhere else...again. As he struggled back to his hooves for what felt like the millionth time he couldn't help but wonder if she could be trusted after having freed that sadistic monster mare. He let out a final shaky sigh while the newest rush of adrenaline started to wear off...only to spike all over again as he looked around and realized that the four other gurneys had followed him outside while he hadn't been looking, now quietly positioned around him with their sides against the walls, leaving the hall unblocked. Trust issues be damned, he was getting away from that blasted room! His hooves carried him through the last section of hallway at a rate probably ill advised for such an injured pony, the near blinding pain worth enduring just to escape before anything else happened. After he had slammed the door shut behind him he fell back on his rump, another groan of pain catching in his throat as he grit his teeth waiting for the wave of pain to subside. It took a few moments before he was able to see straight again, at which point he immediately set about to rummaging through his pack looking for the health drink he needed so desperately. Soon he was left with an empty bottle in hand, having drained its contents in record time to ease the deep cutting aches all over his body. From thinking the stuff was useless snake oil to practically being an addict for it...that had certainly been a quick turn around. Now that he could see and think straight his thoughts turned to the box over which he had just almost been crushed to death. He fished it out of his saddle bag and looked it over. It was old and rusted as was to be expected, and there was nothing to keep him from opening it save a simple latch. The box opened with a small whine of its rusted hinges. The inside was lined with uncharacteristically gentle looking padding, upon which rested the welcome sight of the exact sort of fuse Lance and his wife and just been discussing. He closed the box and stashed it away again, figuring it was wise to leave the fuse inside of it where the glass casing wouldn't be cracked by the sudden movements that were so often inevitable. Standing up wasn't so mind rendingly difficult now, which was good because he had a bit of a trip to make. The next step was obviously heading back up to the top floor then taking the elevator down to the basement so he could unlock the electrical room and make use of the newly acquired fuse. Even the grinning stalker's blood trail was heading in the same direction, which he supposed was a good sign that he was on the right track. But as he entered the stairwell again he noticed that the trail did not lead along his intended route, but instead went down the stairs past the set of bars that had previously blocked his progress. They had been cut through, the now severed ends left slightly bloody exactly as the lock on the door had been. He should have just kept going up as planned, should have ignored it, by all sane logic should have felt lucky to be alive and stopped pushing his luck. But he didn't have a choice. Complaining, hesitating, resisting...all that would accomplish would be making him stay there longer. As Lance forced himself past the bars and down the stairs he couldn't help but wonder if this sense of resignation was what it felt like to lose one's mind and not even know it. Well, maybe there was another health drink down there? That sounded sane enough. The stairwell continued down another flight before abruptly ending in a short passage leading to some sort of cage bolted on to the side of the concrete structure surrounding him. The floor of this cage didn't appear to be a floor at all, but rather a platform to be raised and lowered via the chains attached to each corner. They rose upward into four holes in the ceiling that he assumed hid a pulley system. On the right wall, before the concrete gave way to the metallic cage, was a ticket booth that had no place being in a hospital. He was unable to see if anypony was inside because the reinforced window had been boarded over. There was a wooden sign hanging at an angle from a single nail, and as Lance's curiosity compelled him forward he saw that the writing on it said, "Lift Pass: 1 Bit". He looked back over toward the platform again and couldn't see any sort of button or switch on the inside of the cage that would allow him to operate it himself. There didn't seem to be any other option, and he supposed Posey had to have found those two spare bits lying around for some purpose, so he retrieved one from his bag and dropped it in the bowl shaped exchange slot beneath the window. After the noise of the coin dropping had reverted to silence he was left standing there waiting to see what would happen, feeling progressively more foolish until he heard steps on the other side. "Posey? Is that you?" he asked, moving his head side to side trying to find even the smallest crack in the boards he could see through. As far as he knew she was the only other pony there. The hoof steps approached the window and he heard the mysterious pony on the other side scoop the coin out of the slot. It wasn't Posey, there was no way he would not have been heard with so little distance between them, and she would never ignore him. "Who are you? Are you trapped here too?" Lance continued to prod as the unseen vendor continued to disregard his questions. A ticket was put in the one bit coin's place before the hoof steps retreated from the window and out of earshot. He was alone again. "Well...thanks I guess," he said as he took the ticket. Speaking aloud felt much less strange this time what with knowing there was actually something alive on the other side. He gave the ticket a brief look to see it was just a generic ticket with no special terms or instructions on it. Seemed there was nothing more to do now besides just step onto the lift to see what would happen. As he set hoof on the lift he could feel it shift beneath him, responding to the added weight of an occupant. He couldn't see anything that would hold the lift platform steady in transit so he moved to the center, resolving to hold as still as possible lest the lift start swinging unmanageably. There was a loud clank above him as the lift began lowering into the vast and dark void, a series of quieter followup clanks sounding off as the pulley device did its work. It was not long before even that bit of noise faded in the distance and he was left in unbearable silence wondering why he couldn't even see any sort of wall of dirt nearby, even though by all counts there should have been one. The silence wasn't quite silent though. He became aware of a very subdued sound coming from every direction in the darkness. It was a sort of quiet hiss, like a soft exhalation that he kept expecting to end, but it never did. Trying to get his mind off the sound he pointed his surgical light downward through the grated lift platform to get a glimpse of his destination but it was of little use. Just like the inexplicable pit in the nightmare at the apartments the darkness around him seemed to swallow the light before it could hit anything. For the duration of the trip downward he was left at the mercy of an imagination that had never been known for showing any, several times flinching at other distant noises he couldn't rightly distinguish as being real or imagined. At least one of them sounded like a pair of wings... Lance got another jolt as the lift suddenly tilted, the platform having been just slightly off center, leading to the corner catching on the side of the hole it was intended to descend through. The problem was quickly taken care of though. The platform had little difficulty slipping off and banging against the opposite side before re-stabilizing itself and finally setting down on the dusty floor. He was clearly still alive despite the rough landing, so Lance shook off the tension and stepped off only to see that the door leading into the lower floor was an altogether too familiar white painted- "No!" Lance shouted while averting his eyes. Nothing happened. He continued to remain in the present instead of being suddenly yanked into the past. "I...I have no idea who or what I'm even talking to right now but...just go away alright?! I don't need to remember Posey...I have her again, and I can't get either of us out of here if I just keep looking backward." ... He cringed in response to a sudden loud cracking of wood and looked up again. Door 303 was gone, door frame and all having been somehow ripped out in a fraction of a second. There was a note nailed to the wall next to the jagged hole it had left behind: Too much of a good thing friend? That's okay. I'll fix it for you. Because that's what friends do. They help each other. Lance silently glared at the note before none too gently shoving it into his bag with the rest. Perhaps the door really had been following him of its own accord back in the apartments, but he was now entirely certain that it had been in the deaf colt's control ever since. The entire time his notes had been making it sound like he had nothing to do with it, he'd been practically beating him over the head with it until he was sick of it. Some favor it was to stop the problem he himself had started. Oh well, this suited him just fine, he really did need to keep going forward more than he needed to see things he already remembered. Emboldened out of little more than sheer spite for being manipulated, he looked into the next room fully prepared to push on and finish this. There was...dirt...a lot of dirt. Just like the floor above, the windows here had also cracked under the pressure, only the effect was much more severe. There was no spot on the floor that hadn't been covered with at least four feet of dirt, save for directly in front of the doorway where it was at least polite enough to have gathered into a ramp. He wasn't going to let this deter him, and now even more thankful he'd chosen to use up his last health drink he scaled the small, somewhat soft hill. His access to anything other than the door immediately to his left was cut off by ceiling high dirt, making his next move of ducking under the half blocked door frame rather obvious. It was difficult to tell exactly what the next room was at a glance since it was little more than dirt everywhere, but the general dimensions of the room combined with how low in the building it was led him to guess that it was the ground floor waiting room. The only object of any true interest was a mound of dirt where the receptionist's desk would be. As Lance drew closer he saw the mound was just the excavated dirt from a hole that had been dug down to the very same desk. He peered downward and saw yet another key resting there waiting for him. After an attempt to reach for it proved laughably impossible he gave a sigh of resignation and made the short climb down to pick it up. It was rusted over and covered with another black vein pattern, very reminiscent of the strange vault door he'd been looking before last finding Posey. Obviously this was the key...at least he hoped it was. His first instinct told him it was too rusted over to possibly function but the second instinct he was becoming increasingly attuned to told him it would work just fine. He put the key away and climbed out of the hole with a bit of difficulty. The only other way out of the waiting room he could see was through a small side room that he remembered had doors to the bathrooms and another to the floor's central hallway. There was another door behind the receptionist's desk that would take him to their documentation room, but it was half buried in dirt which meant opening it would involve far too much digging. After entering the side room, fate spared him another bout of hygiene related horror, as the doors to the bathrooms were both present and similarly blocked off with dirt. The third door to the hallway was clear though, so he ducked under it and into the corridor. Lance wasn't particularly claustrophobic, but being so far underground in increasingly narrow rooms filled with enough dirt to place the ceiling about a foot above his head was starting to nag at him. Even if closed in spaces were not a particular phobia of his, he was still a pegasus used to having the whole sky if he so desired it. It was of some relief then that the four doors he could see were all closed and blocked off, letting him just take the turn on his left and save significant time. There were two doorways opposite one another, both of them open and passable. From memory he knew that the left one was to the ground floor day room, where the more mobile patients could come down and visit with family more easily, and the right one was to the cafeteria. While the cafeteria was completely dark, there was a soft orange light in the day room that caught his eye. Pointing his light at it revealed it to be a lighter sitting on a broken section of cinder block which had a wire wrapped around it that both held the lighter in place and kept it lit. Not wanting to let any more of the butane inside burn away he promptly limped over and twisted it free of the wire. If nothing else it would be a source of light should his surgical light run out of power. When he turned back to the door he saw something that he had missed while coming in. To the right of the door was a sheet encrusted with old looking blood, held down by a set of tent stakes. It was hiding something sticking out from the ground...something that looked unnervingly like a mare's face. Lance looked at the newest macabre sight only a moment before breaking his eyes away and heading for the door. His watch didn't warn him of any danger so dwelling on it would do him no good, and if it somehow turned dangerous later he would just deal with it. After crossing the corridor he entered the cafeteria. There was not a single one of the usual tables in sight, obviously having all been buried. Despite his efforts to ignore them he could not help but notice another three of the blood encrusted sheets as well. The actual door into the kitchen on the other side of the room was unusable, but he would still be able to get in since the open section of wall through which ponies placed and received orders looked like it would be easy enough to get through. The useless door still held his interest though thanks to a glimmer of light on the elevated ground in front of it. As he drew closer he saw that the glimmer had come from the last untarnished spot on a thermos lid sticking out of the dirt. It took a bit of effort but after a minute or two he was able to twist free the entire thermos, quite worn but intact and still looking like it could hold liquid, though at the moment it felt empty. A quick uncapping and look inside not only confirmed that it was empty, but also that no pony in their right minds would ever drink anything that had been held inside of it. The term "liquid tetanus" came to mind. He brushed off as much dirt as he could before stashing it, noting with some irritation that his bag was becoming stuffed with random objects that for all he knew might be useless. Next up was the kitchen. On approach he could feel the air around him take a sharp turn for the colder, and looking down he noticed a notable layer of frost on the ground. "Oh, good, they have enough power to leave the fridge on for Celestia knows how long but I have to nearly get melted for a fuse to turn on one light," Lance grumbled under his breath as he made his way in, sliding down a small hill of the intruding earth to the actual floor. The divider had apparently kept the dirt clear of the kitchen for the most part. If the device responsible for the sudden shift from notably cold to positively arctic was a mere open refrigerator then Lance was secretly a fire breathing six armed dragon. He was shivering in seconds thanks to still being a bit damp from his little dip one floor up, frost already forming on the tip of his nose as he nudged open the swinging door to the kitchen proper. Unfortunately it was even colder inside, a fact reflected by the layer of white ice that had gathered on the various counter tops, cupboards, and drawers. But these were trivial compared to the column of crystal clear ice located at the back of the room where he could only assume it was coldest. There was something trapped inside the column. Though his view of the object was distorted by the light refractions inside of the ice, he was sure it was a round, off white object just like the one stuck in the shower room pipe. His comparison was made all the more relevant when he spotted the writing on the wall next to it in the same fresh red paint. YOU NEED ME "Yeah I get it." Lance remarked with a shiver, the cold increasingly getting to him. Curiously, the last two letters were thinner than the rest of the writing, the last stroke of the E looking positively anemic, as though the writer had run out of paint. So then, all he needed to do was break the ice. It looked formidable but it was still just ice, right? He shook some of the gathering frost off of his hooves before approaching, the freezing temperature quickly numbing his face and forelimbs. It was obviously a bad idea to stay there so he would have to content himself with one good test swing before getting the hay out. Lance drew his pipe, raised it, then smashed it against the side of the column as hard as he could. Nothing. Not one crack. Having had more than enough of the local temperature, he began making his way out, stopping only to observe one more curiosity after exiting the swinging doors. It was a health drink lodged in the dirt just to the side of the opening through which he had entered. To his chagrin it had been frozen solid...but he supposed it was still better than nothing. He took it with him as he climbed out and back into the cafeteria, moving away from the kitchen until the temperature normalized again. It wasn't exactly warm, but it was not so cold that he couldn't breathe on his hooves and rub them together until the feeling came back. Once paranoia regarding frostbite was no longer a concern, he wrapped the frozen health drink in a spare bit of note paper to hopefully absorb most of the water it would perspire while thawing, then placed it in his pack, making sure it wasn't next to anything he'd mind getting a little wet. That was it then. Barring any surprises on his way out, he had explored everything not sealed off by the rampant dirt. As fate would have it there was in fact one little surprise on his way out. After exiting the cafeteria and turning he saw an emptied can of red paint and a brush lying discarded in the junction of the T shaped hallway. That...that had already been there right? Yes that must have been it...he must have just missed it the first time through just like the health drink in the kitchen...and the blood sheet covered face in the day room. The explanation was just plausible enough to suppress the tingle along his spine and let him continue on his way. Fortunately the ticket he had paid for hadn't been for a one way trip, so when he stepped back onto the lift and retook his position in the center the chains were pulled taut moments before he began rising. Lance took another mental inventory while trying his best to ignore the disconcerting noises around him. He needed to get power to that light, and water to that pipe, both of which seemed the sort of things one would be able to fix from the basement. The column of ice was a different beast though. It had been cold enough in that kitchen to make him worry for his well being simply by standing there, especially when he had been right next to the column. The only source of heat he was carrying was the lighter he had just found, but somehow standing there in such intense, freezing cold waiting for the its tiny flame to melt through the solid ice did not strike him as a good idea. He would just have to solve the first two problems and hope a solution for the third would present itself in good time. Lance was brought out of his thoughts by the clank of the machine overhead growing louder as he was pulled closer. A brief moment to brace himself against another slightly uneven arrival, this one much less severe than the last, and he was on the middle floor again. As much as he wanted to get back down to the basement and start finally sorting things out, his memory kept him from going up the stairs to the elevator straight away. The key he had found dug up from the dirt below and the key he had found attached to the drain stopper from the tub of rotten broth both opened doors he would be passing on his way up. It would be wise to take a look while he had the opportunity. The recent encounter still fresh in his mind, Lance cracked the door open and took a cautious peek into the hallway running alongside the day room that had almost claimed him. There were no roller gurneys waiting for him...whether that was a good sign or a bad one was anyone's guess. He took advantage of their absence for the time being and retraced his earlier steps, knowing the nurse further inside would be of no threat from her spot at the apparently precious door as he made his way past "that" room with understandable haste. Moments later he was face to face with the formidable vault door again, hoof rummaging about his bags until he pulled out his newly acquired key, still covered with a bit of dirt which he brushed off before inserting it into the lock. The following turn prompted the horizontal rods holding the door in place to retract into the wall nigh instantaneously with an ear splitting clang only made worse by the deafening silence that had preceded it. He took a moment to let the surprise and ringing in his ears wear off before pushing the door open with some effort, the heavy barrier letting off a metallic creak as it swung inward. The inside of the vault was much like the outside; a little slice of nightmare made real. Across from him was a divider, the top half formed of reinforced glass while the bottom half was made of a combination of wood and steel bracings. Seeing what exactly was on the other side of the glass was...difficult. There was a heat shimmer or something similar on the other side of the glass distorting his view to the point that all he could make out was a general coloring of red and brown and some mottled white shapes on the other side...vaguely pony like mottled white shapes. Two of them were against the far wall, almost like they were hanging from something. The third was on the ground...and it was moving in soft writhing motions. Lance became aware of the sound of quiet, raspy groans barely managing to penetrate through the glass and suddenly decided he was more concerned with his own half of the room. It was comparatively simple. Just a rectangular section of room, walls, floors, and ceiling alike formed of the same dirty, rust covered metal. There were only two major points of interest, one of which was puzzling, and one of which was...rather distressing to look at really. The first was a large lock box welded to the floor on the right end of the room. It was held shut by a six digit number lock for which Lance obviously did not know the combination, nor was he inclined to start at "0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0" and then go through each of the million possibilities until he stumbled upon the right one. Obviously it was written somewhere and he had only to find it. The distressing bit was on the other end of the room, taking the form of an old metal collar resting on the ground at the end of a chain leading to a plate that had been bolted into the wall. On the floor around the connecting chain were spots of varying size that looked to be of a much deeper red than the more orange tinted rust surrounding it... Clearly the lock box had been the only important detail and it was not worth bothering to ponder how that blood got there. Lance promptly made his way out of that particularly strange room then headed straight for the stairwell and upward. The "OR2" on the tub key was obviously pointing him toward Operating Room 2 on the top floor. Once at the crest of the physics bending section of stairs, he made the brief trip to the corner of the corridor encircling the operating theater and its surrounding rooms then turned off his light and waited. Getting to his destination wasn't going to be as simple as just limping over to it since this nurse insisted on patrolling her floor, but the plan wasn't complicated. He heard her approaching to his right along the predicted clockwise route around the theater, and held himself especially still, going so far as to even hold his breath as the panting noise and hoof steps came to a stop right in front of him. She hesitated in that spot for a moment that went on far too long for comfort. Memories of the monstrous alicorn sniffing him out in the darkness of the transformed apartments returned, and Lance began to wonder if the deformed nurse standing in front of him in the pitch black dark wasn't capable of a similar trick. He was about to start retreating when she proved his assumptions wrong and started walking away from him just as he had expected. As quietly as possible, the amber surgeon let out the breath had been holding and followed her around one right turn, then stopped when he heard her turn again, waiting until he was sure she would be too far away to notice his light before turning it back on at last. He'd done that just right; Operating Room 2 was almost in hoof's reach of where he was standing. Wasting no time he quickly retrieved the still rather foul smelling key, unlocked the door, then slipped inside and closed it behind him well before the barbed nurse could circle round again. For the first time he was glad when a key burned to ash in his hoof, since it took the abhorrent stench with it. Hopefully he would never have to smell that again. Thinking about that particular event was still a little much and Lance had to suppress a gag before looking around. It was just a very dusty, very empty, plain white room, with the only remotely interesting features being a section of missing wall criss crossed with rebar across from him, and a peephole in the wall to his left. The room beyond the larger hole in the wall looked like a perfectly normal, if somewhat small, living room. It even had a ceiling light on, the illumination partially flooding into the bare operating room to the point that if he had felt the inclination, Lance would have been able to turn off his surgical light and still be able to see for the first time in what felt like ages. If the room beyond the rebar had any occupants he very much envied them for apparently being spared the miseries of the rest of the building. His thought of potential occupants proved startlingly accurate when he was made to jump at the sudden sound of a door bursting open beyond the far right corner of the room as two sets of hooves clumsily made their entrance before slamming that same door shut. Lance then caught a brief glimpse of two ponies passing by the rebar covered hole in the wall, their drunkenly flushed faces practically glued together in a deep kiss as they attempted to navigate through the building without parting lips. One was an amber coated pegasus stallion he certainly hoped he was familiar with, and the other was a blonde maned, white coated pegasus mare with a pink nurse uniform that had already been half pulled off. That was odd...he didn't remember seeing another Door 303 anywhere, yet there it was, plain as day, a memory of a night he liked to pretend never happened. A few dangerous questions had been asked in his office, a few too many drinks had been consumed at a bar, a few answers had been given out of either trust or manipulation, and the entire thing had ended with an ill considered trip to a certain nurse's Cloudsdale apartment. Perhaps it had been the wine, maybe he had been too lonely to think straight, it might have even been that in his drunken stupor he'd intended to use his own body as a bribe in exchange for silence, but no matter what the reason, it had been wrong. Fortunately his shame had caught up with him in time to cut the whole thing short before he had betrayed... ... Who would you have been betraying, exactly? Another door was recklessly pushed open behind the wall to his right. He knew this time it wouldn't be closed. They had been alone in her apartment at that time after all so why should they have bothered? Then he heard the two of them fall onto the bed, the mattress springs offering a brief creak of protest for the less than gentle treatment. "Oh Lance..." she said in a breathy moan that was muffled through the wall. He sighed heavily. Now was the part where he stopped, apologized, and left, leaving a sobbing mare behind him who would then proceed to be just as alone and miserable as he wa- The memory in his head and the memory being played out in the surrounding rooms jarringly broke synch as he heard a sharp moan of bliss that he distinctly remembered never happening. After a moment of confusion he hobbled over to the peephole and peered inside, the iris of his eye contracting at both the flood of light after spending so long in the darkness and the shock of what he saw transpiring on the other side. "No...no! That didn't happen...that didn't happen! Stop!" he shouted, completely unsure of whom he could possibly be talking to and perhaps unable to care. "I didn't do that!" Oh. Your devotion to a corpse is just...touching. "Lance? Is that you shouting in there? Are you alright?" He froze. That was Posey's voice. She was out in the hallway. How? Why now of all times?! Lance backed away from the peephole and saw something even worse as his light incidentally lit up the wall just above it. There in the most exquisite black inked calligraphy he had even seen randomly scrawled onto a wall were the words "For Posey", complete with a black arrow pointing downward. He heard the doorknob start to turn. "I'm coming in!"