//------------------------------// // Part 23 // Story: Silent Ponyville: Reunion // by Chapter 17 //------------------------------// Silent Ponyville: Reunion Sickness unto foolish death. Part 23 ------ Posey didn't have to get a look at the snout-less, pony shaped mass of stitched together skin that emerged from beneath the gurney. The sound of it's gurgling and the loud buzz of her husband's watch told her all she needed to know. Lance was trapped between the two of them and the only way she could fix that was by running for the end of the tunnel as fast as she could. She bolted, thankful to hear Lance fall in step behind her as they both fled from the abomination behind them, the end of the passage still nowhere in sight. At first they seemed to be outpacing the gurney bound creature quite capably, the squeaking of its wheels quickly growing more distant behind them. But their early lead didn't last. A few moments after, it stopped falling behind. A few moments after that it began to gain on them, the combination of its wheels and momentum starting to make up the difference. "Just keep going!" Lance shouted to her as the roller grew ever closer. The hair on the back of his neck felt like it was standing completely upright, every fiber of his being telling him to turn around and look. But he knew it would do no good, both of them did. His breath started coming heavier and his legs began to ache with more than just fatigue. Despite having been tended to, his injuries still left him with physical limits that were being pushed dangerously close to breaking by his moving that fast. As the moments ticked by like small centuries, his wife pulled further ahead bit by bit while his failing stamina eased him closer to the roller. How blasted long was that tunnel?! Finally, when it sounded like the pained gurgling behind him was in hoof's reach, he spied the end of the passage over his wife's shoulder. The exit was a bit narrower than the average doorway, though it still looked like a pony would fit through. He could only hope that wouldn't be the case for their pursuer. Reaching deep to find his last vestiges of energy, he put on a last burst of speed to catch up to his wife and evade the roller for just a bit longer. The very instant Posey had cleared the doorway her wings flew open and canceled out her momentum with a powerful flap. Lance dashed out immediately after her, hanging a right and sounding like he was about to have a heart attack, desperately sucking in ragged gasps of air. Half a moment later she was shaken by a loud clang as the gurney failed to fit through the opening. Her eyes widened in fright as she finally got her first glimpse of the creature, saw the dripping hole where the lower half of its face should have been, and the way it quivered in an agonizing rage, but she stood her ground, determined to stay between it and her husband now that they weren't trapped in that passageway. It looked right at her, the featureless upper half of its face managing to glare at her before a strong retch shook its body. She let out a yelp of surprise as Lance grabbed her and flung the both of them to the side. Just before they hit the floor she heard a splattering of liquid right where she had been standing, and after they both landed with a grunt there came a progressively more intense hissing sound. Posey got back to her hooves as fast as she could, only stopping a moment to note that Lance's watch had suddenly gone completely silent before pointing the surgical light back toward the doorway. The gurney was absent, vanished without so much as a sound of squeaking wheels retreating. Neither of them knew where it was now...but at least it wasn't there anymore. They were standing on another catwalk made of rusted metal grating over a bottomless void...and the section she had been standing on before being grabbed was completely gone. Nothing remained of it save a ring of thinning smoke rising from the edges of the hole that it had left behind. It was suddenly crystal clear to her what the gurney things could do and why Lance had pulled her off her hooves. Had she stayed in that spot there would be about as much left of her as there was of the walkway...but on the other hoof she wouldn't have tried to stay in that spot in the first place had she known they could do that...and Lance was at least that familiar with them. "So when were you going to tell me they could do that?!" she asked, turning to glare at him as she pointed back to the missing section of catwalk. Though she tried to keep a measured tone, her irritation at having almost gotten herself melted was quite plain. It was short lived though. Lance was leaning heavily against the wall, head hanging low, still panting to catch his breath. She found it difficult to remain angry at the sight of her bandaged up, wounded husband looking exhausted, and her expression softened. Instead of glowering at him any further she instead stepped a bit closer and set herself to keeping an eye out while he recovered. It was another large, bottomless room with a single walkway, though the decor had changed a bit. The walls were covered in gigantic swathes of the same strange fleshy cloth that covered the top of the gurneys. These had been cut in several places, the incisions held open by hooks at the end of wires that extended down into the darkness beyond their sight. The open cuts revealed yet more piping behind the cloth, packed ludicrously tight together and seeming to teem with some sort of crawling black ooze. "I didn't...I didn't think that-" Lance coughed a few times, clearing his throat. His breath was still heavy but obviously he had rested long enough to try and talk again. "I didn't think they...would go after you...you know...like outside...I thought that I...was the only one...who would have to...worry about it," he finally managed to say before putting his weight back on all four hooves, ceasing to lean against the wall. "You going to be alright?" she asked, managing to relay her concern while not sounding any less angry at him. "Yeah...I'll be fine...just hurts a lot," he replied, taking a few more moments before he raised his head again. "That was...that was stupid of me to go and...assume like that. I'm sorry Posey." "..." She stared at him a few moments more before closing her eyes, taking in a breath, then letting it and her irritation out at once. "Honest mistake then. Don't let it happen again," she said, managing a small smile. "Do you have one of those drinks?" "I think so. It was frozen when I found it, it should be alright now though." It only took him a moment to find the bottle in question. The placement near to his body heat made it simple to locate. Much to his distress however it was still mostly ice with little more than a paltry sampling of the miracle drink having collected in the bottom of the bottle. "Seriously? How long ago did I find this?" he asked...and couldn't really think of the answer. He'd spent so much time unconscious that it would be impossible to recollect...and come to think of it neither of them had seen so much as a single clock their entire time there. "Better than nothing," Posey pointed out as she popped the top of the bottle off for him. Lance silently agreed by drinking what he could of the concoction. Despite how little of an effect it had compared to a proper dose, he was still thankful it took a bit of the edge off for him as he put the lid back on and stashed the bottle again. That run really had done a number on his still healing body. He could only hope nothing had torn. "Good, come on, you can tell me all about those things while we walk," she said as she started to make her way along the grated path with husband at her side. The walkway led to the right along the wall, following it until about midway on the opposite side, at which point it crossed the room, ending at another door. It took a few moments for Lance's muscles to ease back into a familiar walking pattern without a sharp ache, but he replied once he was certain he would do fine. "You've pretty much seen everything those gurney things can do now...assuming they don't have some other trick I haven't seen yet." "Okay, anything else I should know?" she pressed further as she tried to avoid looking at the walls any more than was absolutely necessary. "Um...those nurse mares in the room back there used to be alive and limping around." Posey stopped mid-stride and looked over at him with slightly widened eyes. "With the barbed wire and everything?" "Yeah...I don't think we need to worry about them though. They're slow enough that I was able to stay away from them even before I got patched up," Lance elaborated as he held up a bandaged hoof demonstratively. His face fell slightly as he remembered the ultimate result of his last encounter with the deaf colt in the vault however. "Though we might be in trouble if we run into a lot of them in a closed space...just look around if you hear really heavy breathing." "That's it though? No teleporting? No gravity defying? No upchucking acid?" She resumed their leisurely paced trip along the walkway, casting a quick glance about them to make sure there were no more gurneys in sight. "Nope," he assured her. "That sounds pretty tolerable for once," she mused as they started to make their way across the section of catwalk that spanned the room's bottomless depths. "Are you going to tell me how you got so banged up now?" "Can we...save that for later?" Lance diverted his gaze away from her, suddenly having a bad taste in his mouth...and a pain in his chest...and a burning on his leg...and an ache in his head. "Alright...I'm sorry to pry. I'm just trying to keep talking right now," she apologized, stopping at the door and looking back towards him. "I can't believe you went through this alone for so long," she lamented with a sad frown as she reached for the door handle. "When this is behind us, I will tell you everything you could want to know about it, but right now it is literally the last thing I want to be reminded of," he said quite decisively. She nodded in understanding once more before turning the door's handle and opening it...or at least starting to open it. By the time the door was a quarter of the way open she immediately slammed it shut and backed away, holding a hoof up to her nose as she coughed and gagged with eyes held tightly closed. Lance opened his mouth to ask what was wrong but then a wave of dank air bearing a frighteningly familiar stench that had been sadistically doubled in intensity assaulted him. He was taken by a similar coughing fit, made all the worse by the ever present lump of fear in his stomach suddenly growing spikes. "What the buck is that?!" Posey retorted after she managed to avoid emptying her stomach. "I'm sure we're going to find out," Lance managed to reply before gagging again. His first impulse was, of course, to run away from that room and never return. But the lesson he had learned regarding what happened to ponies who refused to stick their hooves in was still sticking with him. "Please tell me you're kidding," she said in disbelief before looking back towards the rusted over metal door. As it turned out a pony who specialized in growing colorful, pleasant smelling flora did not fare well when confronted with what smelled like vaporized rot. "It's either the door or the hallway." "..." She let out a shivery sigh of resignation before turning back toward the door. She couldn't really argue with that point. Posey put her hoof back on the doorknob while placing her other hoof over her nose, then reluctantly pulled the door open and looked inside as Lance stepped up next to her. The bathtub was gone. Instead, the now inexplicably round room sported a central pool that was half full of the same wretched 'water' that Lance remembered and surrounded by six panels of rusted, blood spattered chain link fence arranged in a hexagon. Above the pool was suspended the body of a stallion, held aloft at the ankle by a chain bolted to the ceiling, and held in place by more chains bolted to the inside of the pool and ending in sharp hooks that were dug into his flesh. He was covered in cuts, dark bruises, and his head from the jawline upwards was submerged in the liquid decay. As though all of that weren't enough, a plethora of black fungal tendrils were emerging from the sides of the pool, extending outward along the floor before going up the wall. Lance could see the hole bashed through the wall to the shower room to their right, but the direct way there was blocked by a seventh panel of chain link that was missing the blood spatters of the others. They would have to take the long way around. "Come on, I don't want to be in here long," Posey said, her voice made somewhat odd by her covered nose. Lance promptly followed after her, trying as he might to keep his eyes off the worryingly reminiscent sight in the center of the room. They only made it a few steps before their ears twitched and they both stopped, both ponies hearing the sound of Lance's watch beginning to quietly buzz. They looked about frantically anticipating another appearance of a gurney...but nothing happened. No gurney or creature of any sort appeared, and though the buzz did persist it did not get any louder. There was definitely something to be worried about, but it didn't appear they could do anything about it yet, so Posey looked back and motioned for them to keep going. The shower room hadn't changed quite as much as the bathing room had, retaining it's rectangular shape if little else. The mold and fungus in the room was even thicker than last time and there was little remaining that it had not destroyed. Yet more ridiculously thick and elaborate piping had been exposed by the destruction of the walls, the entire needlessly complex assembly left to rust away and leak as various black and dark red tendrils intertwined with it. Why were there so many pipes? No plumbing system needed that many pipes! Though the way out that Lance remembered was covered to the point that they would need a hatchet and about half an hour's worth of work to make it usable, that was rendered moot by the gap in the piping on the opposite side of the room just barely large enough for a full grown pony to squeeze through. Following a brief bout of removing and replacing saddlebags to fit through the gap, they emerged into a what he remembered to be a linen closet. The wall to their left had been knocked down so that the closet essentially became an extension of the adjacent corridor, and the shelves were obscured by hanging sheets stained with what he hoped was only partially blood. Though he felt a slight twinge of curiosity as to what was behind them, the nagging sound of his watch made sure he left well enough alone this time. Most important of all, he was able to finally take a breath of...well, it wasn't exactly fresh air but it was certainly an improvement. "Oh thank goodness," Posey muttered, taking Lance's removing his hoof from his nose as an 'all clear' signal. She still grimaced briefly upon noticing the lingering smell of mildew but she could hardly complain after the bathing room. "What's following us?" Lance pondered as he looked at his watch before peering out into the hallway. The passage to his right was blocked off by a dented, scratched up, partially corroded steel barrier that was bolted in place, and that was as far as his lantern light extended. "Is it that gurney thing again?" Posey asked as she stepped closer to him and took a look for herself. Of the six doors they could see, only two were accessible; the second to farthest door on the left, and the door on the opposite end of the corridor. The farther door had a sizable padlock holding it locked, but that looked a great deal more negotiable than the piping that had seemingly burst out of the wall across the frames of the other four doors to prevent any access. She noted with some distress that the walls there were still sporting a few tears that were made to look like fresh, held open wounds. Just about the only good thing was the lack of holes in the grated floor through which one could fall into the endless black abyss below. "No, if it were, we wouldn't hear the watch until it was right on top of us, remember?" "Well I don't hear any 'really heavy breathing' so it's not one of those nurses either, maybe it's just broken?" she suggested. Lance had to admit that the option that didn't include a monster lurking silently out of sight was pretty appealing...but... "I hope not. You'd have found me dead in the street before I would have been able to find you in the apartment if it weren't for this thing," he reminded her. "We'll just deal with whatever it is when it shows itself then, I don't want to stay in one spot so those gurneys can find us again," she replied, moving warily into the hallway. "Somehow I doubt they ever lost track of us," he muttered to himself as he followed suit. The buzzing of his watch continued to remain steady. Maybe Posey was right, maybe it was broken? For it to do something like that, a monster would have to be following them at an almost unchanging distance. Was it possible to do something like that with the hospital's new layout and completely elude their notice? He brought the watch to his ear and gave it a shake, hearing broken parts rattling around inside to his very brief horror before his memory kicked in again. "Oh, right, this was broken when I found it," he said quietly to himself, managing an amused grin as he thought of how glad he was that Posey hadn't noticed that. She would have- "GAH!" Lance flinched back from whatever it was that had just brushed against his ear, and in the second or so it was close enough to his lantern, he saw a tendril withdrawing back into the darkness above. The blood drained from his face for a moment before he turned to his wife, "Posey! Get the light up there now!" She whirled around in confusion but complied with his adamant request, first feeling a sense of dread upon spotting the retracting tendril before escalating to match his sheer horror as she traced it upward to the source. The ceiling was a grid of metal bars that was far more distant from the ground than any ceiling a sane architect would design. Atop of them was standing a large, tan coated, crimson maned alicorn mare wearing a crudely shaped steel mantle on her chest and matching greaves on her hooves, each piece of armor looking to have been bolted straight into her flesh. She was covered in cuts, and her head was trapped inside of a angular, horned helm attached to a series of restraints traveling down her neck. Her tail and what parts of her mane that were exposed through the gaps in the restraints drifted unnaturally through the air in defiance of gravity. She looked like some mockery of the Equestrian royal caste. Well that explained the watch at least. "Oh Celestia it's her," Posey practically squeaked, ears folding down in fear as she recognized the monster her husband had described. "Lance, run!" she shouted, and was about to follow her own advice except that he didn't move as expected. "Wait, look back up!" he requested of her instead. "What?!" "Please!" he urged instead of wasting time trying to explain himself. Posey swallowed and then aimed her light back up to find the sovereign still standing in the same place, only sparing her a passing glance of curiosity before riveting her eyeless metallic stare back at Lance. He likewise stood still, squinting his eyes trying to make out some important detail for a moment before coming to a conclusion. "She can't get through those bars." "Huh? Why not?" she asked incredulously. The bars that comprised the ceiling didn't look like anything the monstrous mare couldn't power her way through if Lance's stories were to be believed. "It's the black pattern all over them. I don't know how, but it makes it impossible for her to break things," he replied as he started to walk down the hall, seemingly indifferent to the metallic hoof falls that began following him from above. "And if there were any other way to get at us she'd be finding it instead of watching us so...we're about as safe as we can possibly be while she's this close." "That doesn't really make me feel any better," she confessed as she fell into pace with him, letting him take the lead just that once so she could keep an eye on his biggest 'fan' up above. "Me neither," he agreed, pulling open the unlocked door so they might escape the unwelcome gaze. Posey stepped in and he immediately followed, shutting the door behind them. They found themselves standing in the visiting room in which they had earlier met when Lance had flipped the switch for her, only now it looked like a crime scene waiting to be found. The middle divider had been smashed through from the other side, and there were several closely grouped together blood splatters that turned into a longer streak that lead right through the wall to their right. It looked as though somepony had broken through the divider, knocked down the pony on the other side, smashed their head into the floor repeatedly, and then dragged the body out the door that used to be there. "I recognize this place...that's good, right?" Posey said, making a poor attempt at finding a positive side to the macabre sight before her. "There used to be a door there though..." "Well it's gone now," Lance replied for little other purpose than conversation. Beyond the divider, the wall had been knocked down and a couple of metal grating dividers set up in the hallway, providing a straight path into the other side of the vault. As they advanced, the buzzing of Lance's watch finally died down entirely, indicating there was no path above that the sovereign could use to continue following them. It was almost a relief stepping into the mostly normal interrogation room, though were it under any other circumstance Lance would just as well have never set hoof in there. Posey kept an eye on the door behind them while Lance stashed away the key and set to examining the notes on the table. "Wait...these aren't the notes I picked up before..." he thought aloud as he picked one up. Not only were they not the notes he remembered, they weren't notes at all. The key had been surrounded by five unused instant film sheets. "Something wrong?" "Not really...just not what I expected I guess," he answered, putting the film sheets away. "Let's go." Curiously, as they went back across the wrecked visiting room, Lance's watch neglected to make any noise, a fact which they had both clued in on by the time they reached the door. They stopped, glanced down at the busted, unexpectedly quiet time piece, and then back up to one another. "Do you think she wandered off?" Posey guessed with a look at the still closed door in front of them. "She's only ever wandered off after......she wouldn't have wandered off yet," Lance replied, interrupting himself mid sentence to deflect away from topics he did not yet feel comfortable discussing. There wasn't much else to say after that. They were left hesitating at the door a few moments before Posey took a courage steeling breath and pushed it open before they stepped out. A look upward and another down the hall confirmed the silence of Lance's watch. They were alone again; no sovereign, no nurse, no gurney, nothing. "Only one thing to do then," she said, looking over to the padlocked door. "Yep," Lance agreed as he retrieved the key from his pack. He was about to undo the lock when he paused, looked at the key, then looked back at the other door. After spending what felt like a year and a half in the hospital trying to work things out, here they find a key almost right next to the door for which it was made, and then the single greatest threat to either of them vanishes. It was all too generous. "That's not good." "Hrm?" "Let's just say this place has a habit of trying to make up for things it's about to do to you," he explained, undoing the padlock and twisting it free, after which both lock and key burned to small piles of ash. Lance's words proved prescient, as the first thing they saw upon opening the door was a sizable section of the ceiling bars resting on the floor with blood smeared at the very neat looking cuts on each end. They froze for ten solid seconds before either of them said anything. "I thought you said she couldn't get past those bars!" Posey snapped, rather unsettled at the newest development. "She can't, no," he said as he hurriedly moved past her through the door. Wherever they went from there, Lance knew they would have to do it fast now. There was no telling why the sovereign had not simply broken through the door to get to them after being freed, and he wasn't interested in staying to find out. The new room was yet another bottomless pit with a single grated path, this one leading to their right where he remembered going down the stairwell to the elevator. He started following it at a trot. "So there's somepony who can then? You forgot to say something about that too?!" she needled him as she caught up with him. "Posey I have been having the second worst time of my entire life ever since I woke up in that library, I'm not going to remember every single thing at every single moment so cut me some bucking slack here okay?!" he retorted as they reached the stairwell door. His hoof rose to open it, but the instant he made contact the rusted hinges snapped and the door fell backward...and kept falling. The stairwell was gone...it was just another bottomless pit. "There were stairs here...and an elevator..." Before he could lament their misfortune any further his mind was brought back into sharp focus by his watch's metallic screech all too quickly rising to a fever pitch as a quartet of metallic hooves landed on the walkway behind them. They only had time to whirl around and utter half a terrified exclamation before the sovereign surged forward and knocked them both off of their hooves and into the former stairwell. He couldn't hear Posey or manage to reach for her in the sudden pitch darkness...there was only the rushing of wind past his ears as he thought how nice it would be to have time to apologize to her for yelling. ------ "Lance...honey, wake up...please..." Was that...wait...what? Lance groggily opened his eyes, his head pounding as he saw his wife's face illuminated by the flickering light of a lantern running low on oil. Her eyes were sparkling with tears, her face a model of fear and worry as she looked down at him, seemingly oblivious to the small stream of dried blood that had been left behind by the scabbed over gash on her forehead. "I'm...sorry," he mumbled like they were the last words of a dream he'd been having. Though his mind was becoming more awake with every moment it did nothing to quell his confusion. They'd just been free falling down a bottomless pit last he had checked. That memory didn't quite match with his still being alive in the present. "Oh thank goodness," she said in a quiet sigh of relief before nuzzling him affectionately. "What's...where are we? Didn't we just get..." The thought was left only half formed as he looked up, seeing a void of blackness overhead. Posey clicked on her surgical light and aimed it upwards, illustrating that it was indeed the same stair-less stairwell into which they had been so violently shoved. "How did we..." he started, his sentence once more ending in a confused silence. When had he even fallen asleep? His eyes then widened before he looked back to Posey, seeming to see the gash on her forehead for the first time. "Are you alright?!" he said, the sight of his injured wife seeming to pull him through the process of waking up just a tad bit faster. "It's fine, I hit the wall after she knocked us out the door, it still hurts a little but the bleeding stopped," she assured him while helping him back to his hooves. "I don't know how we're still alive, and I don't know where we are," she continued, leaving it on a bit of a negative note as she started examining their surroundings again. There were...more pipes...so many more pipes. It was like the near endless hallway from before extended into what resembled an entire maze around them. The ground was damp and dirty from untold thousands of leaks in the worn plumbing, and for the sake of his sanity Lance only let himself assume that there was only water trickling from those leaks. The worst part though was that he found it absolutely impossible to recall where they were, even after having spent so long wandering around. "Where did she go?" he asked, jumping right to his next concern. "I don't know that either. Your watch hasn't made any noise and I haven't heard any clanking or hissing since I woke up," she replied. "Did anything like this happen the first time?" "No, last time I remembered what put me to sleep, and when I woke up everything was back to the way it was before." He looked down each direction of the four way intersection into which they had 'fallen'. There was no way to distinguish one path from the other, in fact distinguish the edges of a wall from the wall behind it was even proving difficult. Not only did the densely packed piping blend into itself, he could actually see the air subtly distorting at random in small spots. Navigating would prove almost impossible unless they could find something to follow. Fortunately, somepony still seemed to be looking out for them. "Um, do any of the other paths have blood on them?" Posey asked as she spotted a few small spatters of blood and remembered their mysterious guide mare from before. Lance took another look around, and even with the limited radius of his waning lantern light he could tell there were no blood spatters on the other path. "I guess that's the way we're going then," he concluded before she started following the trail at a walk. This time there was a bit more room, enough so that if needed they could switch places, but not so much that they could walk side by side comfortably. They settled into a nervous silence for a while as they followed the trail, taking turn after turn that Lance tried and utterly failed to keep track of in his head. If they got lost he doubted they would have time enough to make use of the 'turn left' trick. "So what let her out back there?" she finally asked as the silence got to her. "Hm?" "That monster alicorn thing, what let her out if she couldn't get through those bars?" she clarified now that she had her husband's full attention. "It was that mare the lead us through the fog...she's not quite as normal are her silhouette looked," he explained, immediately regretting it as his brain caught up with his mouth and remembered their current situation. "Wait...and now we're following her again?" Posey asked incredulously as she stopped and looked back at him. "Yeah I know, I thought the same thing when I realized, but I still trust her...I mean, we have to right now unless you've been keeping a mental map of this place better than I have." He hoped that pointing out their circumstances would prevent them wasting any more time arguing like the married couple they were...and it worked. She looked at him pointedly a moment longer before putting her eyes forward again and continuing to trace the trail of spatters. "Fine...you're right," she admitted begrudgingly. For some strange reason she didn't seem to take kindly to ponies letting husband mauling monsters out of their cages. Following a few more turns spent in silence while her anger softly smoldered, they happened upon a dented up iron door with the blood trail leading right through it. Since the watch was still quiet they felt little hesitation in entering, though Posey did open the door a bit slowly in case there was a gurney in waiting. Though three of the walls were still made of the densely packed piping, the rest of the room was fairly normal. It was a simple, somewhat cracked cement floor, and the fourth wall's worst offense was mere dirtiness and a slot shaped hole that had been messily carved through. Above it were the words 'TRADE YOU' next to five squares, all written and drawn with the same white chalk. "This again," Lance said as he opened his bag to retrieve the five instant film sheets. "You did this before?" "Sort of, I bought a lift pass with one of those bits you found." He set the five film sheets in the slot, and they remained there for a few moments before being pulled out of sight with a few hesitant tugs. Following a couple seconds more of waiting, a small box was pushed through and fell to the floor. "And there's somepony back there?" she asked, crouching a bit to try and look through the slot. "I tried talking to them already but whoever it is doesn't seem interested," he replied as he picked the box up and opened it. There was a bundle of five staples inside. He removed them, discarded the box, then pulled out the stable gun he'd found in the nightmarish recovery room and loaded them in before putting it way. He still wasn't quite sure of what use they would be. They weren't long enough or plentiful enough to do anything but mildly annoy even the least threatening of the creatures they had encountered. "Seems like an odd thing to use film sheets for," Posey pondered as they started for the door. "They already had you use one bit to buy something, why didn't they just ask for the other?" "I don't know, and if somehow the staples get us out of here I don't care." Lance's attempt at opening the door was thwarted by the lock that neither of them heard click shut. They were left to stare at the knob in confusion and try turning it a few more times as they became increasingly unnerved before a sound from behind the slot distracted them. The sound came a second time, clearly being the click and whir of a camera taking a picture now that they were listening. It repeated three more times, then after another lengthy pause they saw the five film sheets pushed back through the slot with images slowly appearing. As they approached, the images grew more and more clear until they were fully developed. Lance stood there in shock, every thought in his head briefly banished by the intense fear that suddenly gripped him. Posey's hoof raised to her mouth, her eyes going wide and tearing up, the distraught mare's breath suddenly coming faster in panic before she practically threw herself at the small slot in the wall. "Fluttershy, baby, are you in there?! Say something sweetie! It's mommy!" she shouted as she desperately tried to see through the slot to the other side to no avail. "Please! Just please say something angel!" Lance picked up one of the photographs. Despite every fiber of his being wishing it were otherwise, the image failed to change or disappear. It was a close up shot of his daughter's eye when she was a little filly, her lid half shut and bruised from the swelling left behind from a vicious blow. The other four were similar close ups of other bruises, gashes...or fractures she had suffered under his care. In fact, he remembered each one distinctly. "Lance what are you doing just standing there?! We have to get in there!" she cried as she struck her hoof against the slot as though expecting the sheer drive she felt to get through would cause the wall to crumble. Snapping back to reality, Lance scooped up the five photos and hid them away in his bag before replying. "Honey I don't think Fluttershy's actually in there," he said, trying and barely managing to sound calm as he lowered his head to gaze through the slot. There was nothing there. Even the scant bit of light that should have shined through the slot failed to appear. "Somepony in there just took photos of her! What more proof do you need?!" she shouted angrily before shoving him out of the way and trying to see into the room herself. Lance stumbled to the side a couple steps before catching his balance again. "Posey, I heard you on the other side of a door before, and you weren't actually there. Besides, Fluttershy isn't a filly anymore, she grew up! I even know where she lives and everything, how could she be here as a filly again?" "I don't know Lance how could I be here alive again?!" she retorted sarcastically, wiping away the tears that were starting to burn her eyes. "Do you even know where we are, or when we are?! Who are you to start saying whether or not things can happen here?!" she continued yelling as she got right in his face. "I don't know Posey maybe I've been out here getting my flank handed to me a little longer than..." he stopped himself before he contributed to the argument anymore, letting his frustration ease a bit while Posey stood there glaring at him. Once he had calmed down a bit he tried answering again. "Honey, Fluttershy is not on the other side of this wall. If she were she would be terrified. She would be right there the instant she heard your voice, and you know it," he said, drawing her into a hug that she was a bit hesitant to allow. "You...you can't know that for sure...maybe she's hurt..." she said while making a single meager attempt to pull away from him. "We would hear her crying if she were, you know that too," Lance assured her as he held her close. "Fluttershy is safe and sound in her cottage Posey, all grown up with her own life. She's fine." ... Posey gently pulled away from the hug and stepped back over to the slot, bringing her head down to it again. "Sweetie...if you're in there...mommy and daddy are going to the elevator. Please meet us there...okay?" She took a further moment to wipe away her tears again, then looked back at Lance. "Just in case." He nodded in understanding before they both returned to the door, the conspicuously silent lock having undone itself during the interruption. Upon stepping out, Lance's watch started to quietly buzz. Then they became conscious of the flapping of wings briefly passing overhead. "Posey...does this place have a ceiling?" he whispered as audibly as he dared while looking up into the blackness above. "I don't know...I never checked..." she replied with just as much caution. The wing flaps stopped shortly before metal touched down upon metal above them and buzzing intensified. They could hear the creaking of a set of restraints...followed by a pleased, bestial murmur and a hiss of steam as somepony in the darkness spotted them. They didn't bother shining the surgical light upward. It didn't seem necessary compared to running for their lives. It was only the barest of coherent thought left in Lance's head that made him look on the ground for the blood trail that had changed direction. "Can we turn off the lights and hide somewhere?!" Posey said as she kept pace behind Lance. "I tried that already, she can smell us!" There was another sound of iron clad hooves landing as the sovereign touched down on the ground and started after them. Neither amber stallion or cream colored mare dared looked back as they fled, Lance in particular feeling particularly grim about their prospects. Running away from her never seemed to work out...and yet he didn't hear her gaining on them as they ducked and weaved through the maze. She was fast and nimble as ever of course, but she was also bigger than them and had to move through the same cramped quarters. The constant changing of direction must have been throttling her speed to the point where she couldn't catch up with them! She did not fail to notice this though. With a final frustrated growl and a spiteful striking of the obstinate pipes, they heard her take wing again and fly up into the darkness over top the maze. His watch abruptly began screaming at him as she landed ahead of them this time, tendril already emerging from her mane. Lance took the next right turn, coming to the obvious conclusion that no trail was worth following if it lead them straight into that. That thought did little to negate the fact that not only were they trying to avoid a sadistic beast in a maze she could easily fly over, they were now lost while trying to do so. The situation only grew worse as she landed in front of them again, forcing Lance to make another unplanned turn. For all he knew they were being herded into a dead end! Following a third close encounter, he was running out of stamina again, his breath coming heavier as he realized that he was starting to move slower despite his best efforts. But then a flash of a light grey tail retreating around a corner a ways down his current path caught his eye. Still trusting her with both of their lives, he dutifully took the indicated turn when they reached it, greeted by the sight of the grinning stalker moving down the next necessary turn. The buzzing of his watch died down a little, and next he heard the impact of the sovereign's hooves, they were where Lance and Posey would have been if they hadn't made the suggested turn. In this moment of panic and terror he was at least able to feel some bit of satisfaction as he heard roaring and banging pipes while their pursuer threw a fit at their absence and took to the air again. With one last turn they emerged into a long, wide open corridor where the walls of pipes were covered in the same creeping black ooze from earlier. They were both exhausted, Lance doubly so as he was forced to stop and catch his breath despite an ever so intense desire to keep going. This at least gave him a chance to look around, following the beam from Posey's light as she did the same. Then he saw something that gave him a second wind: one of the thick, rusted metal doors that had saved him in the apartments was sitting there open at the end of the hallway. "Come on!" he shouted weakly as he started toward it at a gallop. The sovereign touched down again behind them, just outside the corridor, before forcing her way inward and quickly gaining on them now that there was no maze to negotiate. "Lance!?" Posey exclaimed at his side as the gap between ponies and monstrosity grew alarmingly small. "Trust me!" They reached deep to put out one final burst of speed, crossing the threshold of the door and wincing at the momentous clang it produced as it slammed shut behind them, a second one sounding as the sovereign once again careened right into it. Lance collapsed to the floor, completely worn out and well aware of what had happened whilst Posey looked back in wonder at the door that had just moved of its own accord. After catching enough of his breath to let his eyes focus, he brought his head up again to take in their new surroundings. It was Fluttershy's old room. The walls had peeled and rotted and the window had been broken out, leaving holes that showed the nightmarish grating behind them. There was equal parts dust and mold covering the damp carpet, save for one corner in which her bed used to reside. The carpet was clean there, having been covered by the bed until very recently from the looks of it, suggesting that somepony had been sleeping in that room for a long time despite all the decay going on around them. In the center of the room was another mannequin, this one free of any photographs, blood, or cracks. It would have been fitting for a store display in fact, save for five marks that had been drawn on with a black marker. Each was a square, one located where the eye would be, one on the back the head, one on the side of the body, one a bit further up where a pegasus wing would attach, and one on the lower right front leg. "We're...safe in here then?" Posey asked, pausing to sniff back the tears that were welling up again. She didn't need any of the absent furniture, toys, or crayon drawings pinned to the wall to recognize her little girl's room. "She won't...get in...at least," he replied, still out of breath and trying to struggle back to his hooves. The impact current events were having on his wife were not lost upon him, but at the moment he was more concerned with getting the both of them out of there alive. Being trapped in a room with no other apparent exit and a murderous alicorn guarding the only entrance was not a good place to accomplish that. There had to be some other way out. "You alright?" he asked her again. "I think so...it's just that, looking at this and thinking about how much I missed is kind of hard...especially after those pictures." She wiped the tears from her eyes and sniffed again. "I know this can't really be her room though," she continued in order to assure the both of them that she was still sane. "No, her room still looks a lot nicer than this," he replied, telling the truth for once. She smiled at him. "Good." The moment was interrupted by another clang from the sovereign slamming herself against the door outside. Followed by another...and another...and finally the clang was joined by an audible crack as the plate hinges bolted into the wall started to tear free from the force of the consecutive blows. Apparently the armor plates she had shed in the operating theater had been heavy enough to prevent her from such assaults in the apartments. With them gone the heavy iron doors were now just another delay tactic. "Uh...um...okay! There's another way out right? We just need to find it," Posey said hastily, trying her best not to panic as she looked around frantically. Lance cast his eyes about with just as much fervor but found nothing, there was just broken down walls and a mannequin...with five squares on its body. "...No..." he said under his breath as he started to realize what was being asked of him. He had five pictures of Fluttershy's injuries about the size of those squares...and five staples to use for them. There had to be some...other way though. Some other way that wasn't so suspicio- He flinched away from another deafening impact that caused a bolt to shear off and shoot across the room. There was no more time. He had to do this. "I know what to do Posey," he said somewhat hesitantly as he retrieved the pictures and then the loaded staple gun. She stopped searching and looked back towards him, her eyes flitting over to the door before the sovereign slammed into it again, the metal and the wall around it breaking and deforming enough to create a visible opening. "Hurry!" Lance paused, finding one last mental barrier staying his hooves. But when he looked back at Posey once more...that was all he needed. There really was no telling what she might infer from what he was about to do. But if it made her hate him...if it made her never want to be with or speak to him again...she would still be alive. His own deep reaching terror was no excuse to let her die. He picked up the first photograph of his daughter's bruised eye and stapled it onto the square on the mannequin's face. ------ "Oh…he did, did he?" Her father said walking up to Fluttershy. Fluttershy looked up at her father, taking a step back from him getting so close. Fluttershy fell to the ground as her father's hoof hit her hard across the face. The candy bar slid across the room. ------ He picked up the next photograph of Fluttershy's bruised leg and stapled it to the appropriate square below the mannequin's wrist joint. ------ "What have I TOLD you about FLYING without permission!? You're NOT allowed to do it even in the house!" He yelled at her, gripping her hoof hard. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" She cried out as tears streamed from her eyes, her hoof hurt like crazy as he gripped it hard. ------ The third picture he picked up was of a bruised wing joint stuck at an unnatural angle...he only stopped for a second to clear his vision before stapling that one to the side of the mannequin's back. Something was getting in his eye. ------ His mouth reached down, gripping down hard on her wing, forcibly extending it despite all of her efforts to shut it. "NO! NO DADDY PLEASE! STOP!" She cried out as pain shot through her back. But it was too late, he wasn't going to stop. ------ "Stop it," he ordered himself bitterly under his breath as something continued to get in his eye. He recognized the subject of the fourth picture as Fluttershy's bruised ribs. ------ "F-Father…I…" Fluttershy hiccuped, trying to say something, anything to explain the sight before her father. However, she was silenced. Her father's hoof struck her, hard. Her small body was sent sailing across the room and smashed into the wall. She let out a yelp of pain before hitting the ground. ------ "Stop it," he repeated, rubbing what was clearly just random debris from his eyes before taking a long look at the final photograph. He was broken out of his paralyzing hesitation by the next strike against the door that resulted in a particularly worrying crack of stone and snap of metal. A look over his shoulder revealed the sovereign pushing her head in through the small gap and trying to pry it open the rest of the way. Lance quickly stapled the final picture to the back of the mannequin's head amongst the cacophony of screeching metal. ------ Without warning he pushed her head down under the water. Fluttershy scrambled at the unexpected movement, her mouth and nose filling with water as air escaped her lungs. Her hooves flailed as she tried to push herself up out of the water, but the hoof holding her down was too strong. ------ The racket suddenly died down. When next he looked back all he saw was the sovereign's horn spike withdrawing from the opening she had wrenched apart. There were no more strikes against the door. For whatever reason, what he had done had convinced her to stop. Lance looked to his wife again, hoping to see some relief on her face but only finding a harrowed, unnerved expression as she shifted her gaze from his slightly reddened eyes to the mannequin and back again. Her mouth open, then shut again as she briefly examined the ground before finally finding her voice. "How...how did you know where to put those?" "It's...not hard to tell if you look-" "No, I mean, sure the eye...and the wing...but the other three are so close up...how did you know where to put them?" ... "When your little girl gets hurt you remember it," he answered weakly, unable to meet her eyes. The staple gun in his hoof burned to ashes, it's purpose fulfilled. ... He was saved from having to explain any further by the sound of a soft, ethereal sob that came from everywhere and nowhere all at once. As they looked on, small rivulets of blood began trickling from the points at which the staples pierced the mannequin. They gathered in a rather tiny pool at the base, and after a few more moments there came another sob as the pool rippled with an invisible hoof fall. The wracking ghostly sobs continued as small, bloody hoof prints trailed from the mannequin to the wall, whereupon a final hoof print appeared on the wall. It smoked, then glowed a bright orange color before the smoldering heat spread outward and consumed the entire section of the wall, revealing a grated door that had been previously hidden from view. ... "I guess she was a bit rambunctious at times...accidents happen," Posey said, though neither she nor Lance were sure as to whom she said it. She stepped past him toward the door. "..." he followed after her, his eyes still more interested in the floor than looking her in the face. "Yeah..." He passed through the door and...suddenly the floor looked oddly familiar. "Lance..." Posey took a step back and nudged his side to get his attention. He raised his head again. They were back at the room inside of which they had first started, or at least a near perfect replica of it. The mannequins from before were both gone, and the second walkway in the distance was traveling to their right instead of their left. It was the second catwalk they had been looking for all that time at last. But how were they supposed to figure out which door to use now? There was nopony to ask...but there was a pair of phrases adorning the doors to the path of needles and path of pins that proved helpful. One answers with lies One answer is all Lance knew this was his last chance to get it right, and there was no pony or mannequin to ask, no age old riddle that had a logic proofed solution to lean on. The clues didn't make it seem like he was even allowed to ask a question anyway, only give an answer. How would that be anything more than a guess? It would be about as reliable as just taking the first answer given in the old riddle with the two ponies at the intersection...only now that he thought about it, it wasn't. The tricky part of that old riddle was that there was no immediately apparent way to tell the lying pony from the honest pony. Their current situation was different...because no matter how he tried to justify doing so, he had been feeding his wife falsehoods and half truths ever since she asked about her death. There was no confusion over which pony in the room was the liar this time. "Posey...I'm going to pick a door. Then I want you to go and open the opposite door. Got it?" "Um...sure?" she said in a voice that didn't sound sure at all. He spent a moment pondering which door to choose before remembering that it really didn't matter. "That door is the way out," he said, pointing to the door of needles. It replied with the click of the lock opening. Still not quite understanding, Posey walked over to the door of pins and was quite surprised when the knob she had assumed had remained locked instead worked flawlessly and let her pull the door open. There was no wall of concrete this time either, only a clear passageway that she assumed lead around to the catwalk. They spent a few moments in a heavy silence, his wife adding a few things up in her head before speaking again in a completely unreadable tone of voice. "Lance...they were accidents...right?"