After setting a motion detection alarm, Sassi let herself doze, or at least, tried to.
Her attempts were immediately corrupted by nausea that ran through her frame. The mare’s chest tightened, her hooves shaking as the memories came flooding back.
I could have killed him. I would have killed him.
All it would have taken was an order.
If not for Astral’s intervention, far more would have happened with Split Tie and his guards.
They’d have…
Tears began to run down her cheeks, the mare trying not to sob. The feeling had been so horribly familiar. Trapped in her own body and unable to do anything but watch, listen, and wait. The threats and spell had evoked the waves of nausea and a cold, shivering sensation that had often visited the mare after her modification sessions.
It was a violating sense of…Sassi wasn’t sure how to describe it. She hadn’t known about a command spell, but it had been an identical feeling as when the control chip was active. Her body refused to respond to her mind, yet the mare could feel everything that was going on. It was the reason she had been so unsettled back when that spider had bitten her. The memories surge to the fore, just like then. The cold syringes, doctors talking about procedures.
She couldn’t even cry out during those times, no matter how much she wanted. There were other times Sassi could…but nobody had listened.
The mare wasn’t sure which was worse.
The only cure for any of those times had been a long, cold shower. Or breathing exercises as the mare sat on her bed in a dark room. Even Flask’s usually comforting touch was too much afterward. It took Sassi hours, days, sometimes a week or two to feel even remotely ‘herself’ again.
A barb of self-loathing darted into Sassi’s heart. The thought of even Astral’s hug made her fur prickle and squirm illogically, her muscles tensing. It was only holding his hoof that was a balance, and even that threatened to cross over from comforting to illogical fear. She wanted the safety the stallion’s embrace could provide, but it was too soon to even think about.
Her hoof squeezing Astral’s gently, the mare rested her head down on the medical table. Would he understand?
Would he even wake up?
It was so much for her to realize, and the command spell had just made things even murkier. Sassi could only dwell on that for a moment; it was still too soon to deal with.
Even after that, she still was having trouble processing what this stallion had been thinking. Astral’s immediate decision to protect her up to killing Split Tie, undergoing the modifications, and everything involved. It was too much when she couldn’t have any sort of exterior comfort. She still felt the doubts threatening to return. What did Astral want? Why was he willing to go through all of that?
The mare had an answer this time. The words that rang in Sassi’s mind made her chest glow with warmth, the kind that beat back the tendrils of fear and doubt. She had managed to see the fierce snarl on Astral’s face as he had tossed Split down into the elevator shaft, a fire in his eyes that made everything seem a bit brighter.
‘Not to me!’
Any festering doubts in Sassi’s mind about how Astral had viewed her had been torn to shreds. He cared enough to be right here, in this horrific place with her. She didn’t fully understand, but the mare didn’t logically doubt. Yet it was so hard to ignore the ‘what-ifs’ from her life. Almost every good deed had been predicated on wanting something.
But now there was an opposing force. What if she was all Astral wanted? A friend. Something more? The idea was a beautiful one, and Sassi could only partially understand it. Her entire life, Sassi had been only seen for what the mare could offer. Be it combat experience, her modifications, or…other things.
To consider somepony wanted to be close to Sassi simply for being herself was such an unsullied concept. But it threatened to be extinguished both metaphorically, and in a very real, physical way as Astral lay on the medical table.
I’m not going to let you go, Astral. I want to find out.
The memories were close, far too close to the surface to have the mare pause and think. If she stopped and ruminated now, she’d lose it. Astral bearing near death. Her implied fate from Split Tie. The command spell; it was all battering at the doors of her mind.
Sassi could barely focus, a dozen fears and traumatic memories starting to tear apart her training. It was all the mare could do to keep breathing steadily. Astral couldn’t help her right now; she’d have to make do.
The lights abruptly shut off, a disembodied voice echoing down the hall from a crackly speaker.
‘Warning. Damage to primary electrical grid. Rerouting. Rerouting. Re-re-re-re-rerouting,’ the voice paused, ‘Successful. Warning, circuits unstable. Fuse junction box now misaligned. Manual reset required. Automatic reset in t-minus two hours.’
All of her thoughts took a back seat as the healing crystals around Astral dimmed ever so slightly. The disembodied voice had clearly encountered a glitch; that wasn’t a good sign when trying to reroute power. If the primary grid was down…
‘Warning. T-minus twenty-five minutes until primary healing crystal spell matrix failure. Reactor output unable to sustain additional spells.’ The message scrolled across Sassi’s HUD. ‘RASP armor healing capacities unable to sustain vitals. Primary user’s vitals will degrade immediately if primary healing spells fail.’
Immediately getting up, the mare snagged extra material for a barricade. She slotted on the second minigun, hating the very idea of leaving Astral alone.
But there was no other way. If the spells died, so did Astral. Sassi wasn’t about to allow that. In an obnoxious bit of respite, Sassi realized that this miniature crisis was a twisted blessing. At least her thoughts were quiet now.
After listening for any odd creature steps, the mare unblocked the main door, then made sure that multiple pieces of metal were bent around the handles of the door. A few thin shivs of metal also were shoved into the hinge gap. Short of ripping the doors off their hinges, they weren’t opening. While Sassi had cleared the offices, these would stall anything that snuck past her. It'd buy the mare some time to get back and beat whatever-it-was into a pulp.
“Set timer for twenty minutes. Locate fuse junction box on this level and plot route,” Sassi whispered, wanting to give herself plenty of time. She frowned as a single dot appeared in the HUD.
“Timer set. Full schematics for Silo Three incomplete. Scanning. Electrical grid schematics obtained. Location available. Plotting.”
It was something.
The mare trotted back down the tunnel, eyes flickering to the motion tracker every so often. Just as before, everything was silent, unnatural. Having grown up in a silo where the constant hum of electronics and air conditioning was a part of life, it just felt wrong here.
The room with the fleshy remnants of ponies was passed by without incident. Sassi paused at the sharp turn in the hallway. There was a small supply closet to her right, but the main hall took an abrupt left. The motion tracker read clear, so the mare crept around the corner. The infrared lit up the hall with a sickly, green glow. Bloodstains were smeared up and down every surface as the mare snuck along.
The hallway continued, branching at least twice. Her objective was to the right and then doubled back slightly.
A turn of the corner and the fuse box was in sight. It was large, and old, a microwave-sized metal box.
Pulling open the lid, Sassi’s eyes widened on seeing more than a dozen fuse switches. Half of them were burned and melted.
Only three were flipped into the red. The helmet highlighted a single fuse- and Sassi carefully flipped it over to green.
No lights came on, but a chime in the helmet made Sassi’s ears twitch.
‘Primary power source restored. Recharging backup batteries. Healing spells at full strength.’
The timer read ten minutes. At least she had a window.
She carefully made her way back down the halls. Pausing outside one of the rooms, the mare’s heart began to beat a little bit faster.
When Sassi had passed by not a few minutes ago, there had been three skeletal figures plastered against the wall.
They were gone.