Silent Ponyville: Reunion
Sickness unto foolish death.
Part 24
------
...
"Wh-...what do you mean Posey? Of course they were accidents."
She spent the longest time simply standing there facing the door. Then she shivered with a sad sigh that bordered on an outright sob before finally turning to look back at him. Tears were quickly forming in her eyes, and her mouth gave a single subtle quiver as though she were restraining herself. In an instant of silent panic Lance's mind went in what felt like a hundred different directions trying to think of what he had done, what he had given away, how much she knew now, or how the hoof he was now going to fix any of this. His thoughts were refocused as she finally made clear exactly what it was that had doomed him.
"That's that same voice you used before...the first time I fell and couldn't get up, and you told me I was going to be okay," she clarified, turning the rest of her body around to face him and taking a moment to wipe yet more tears from her cheeks. "I never forgot that voice. It worked so well the first time," she continued, pausing to make a short sound that tried to resemble a laugh but only managed to cut Lance's heart in half when he heard it. "But I figured out pretty quick. That was what it sounded like when you had to lie to a patient...so they wouldn't panic."
Lance's ears flattened as his scattered thoughts were concentrated into a single ice cold spike of fear that jammed its way into the back of his skull.
"I noticed back at the apartment. The little things you do when you're talking to me, they were...different then. At first I just sort of ignored it. I mean, with all the stuff you'd been through, nopony would blame you for acting a bit off. But even aside from that I really...really trust you...so that was all the more reason to keep some of my thoughts to myself," she started to explain, her words coming as though finally saying them were some form of relief. "But...you're lying Lance. Why is that? What happened to Fluttershy that was so bad you can't tell me about it?" She started to approach him, her teary eyes fixed upon him with greater scrutiny than ever before.
For a moment his brain ceased to function. Only when he took half a moment to glance away from her was he able to grasp at any of the potential explanations his brain was fabricating. He took the first one he could get a hold of, forcing it through his mouth before he could hesitate even longer. "She was...bullied at school Posey."
"She was bullied to the point where they broke her wing." She didn't believe a word of it and having his implication repeated back to his face made it sound just as ridiculous to him in turn. But coming up with another explanation would only look more suspicious so he allowed himself no other choice than to stick with it.
"Yes...she wasn't talking to me remember? I...didn't hear about it until-"
"So you, the greatest doctor Cloudsdale has ever seen, failed to notice our little filly coming home with bruises that escalated to a broken wing."
"..." His mouth opened but then slowly shut before he looked downward. He couldn't look into those tear filled violet eyes anymore...it was too much. But she wasn't going to let it go. She sat down in front of him and a pair of cream colored hooves took hold of his face, gently coaxing his gaze back up to meet with hers.
"You don't have to be so afraid Lance. I'm your wife...there is nothing you can tell me that will make me stop loving you, okay?" she assured him, trying to coax him out of whatever shell within which he had trapped himself.
It was working. His vision once again blurred as the tears he'd been able to restrain started breaking free all over again. He closed his eyes tightly as if trying to force her out. "Yes there is."
"No." She let go of his face and pulled him into a tight, warm hug. "There isn't."
He spent the longest time standing there with his eyes closed, chin resting on his wife's shoulder. This was it. There was no way out anymore. His already shallow capacity to effectively lie to her had been utterly exhausted and now there was nothing left to do but let her go...because that was the only thing that could possibly happen. But...he'd made some small amount of peace with that already in just putting the photos into place, hadn't he? Was it really in him to admit the truth to the ridiculously loving mare holding him?
But again...there was no choice anyway.
Lance opened his eyes and exhaled in a shuddering sigh as he tugged at every mental chain holding him back. "Posey...you didn't really-" he was stopped mid sentence, his eyes shooting open in horror as he saw that a cleanly written note railroad spiked to the wall.
"Kindly shut her up."
The spike of fear that had remained lodged in his skull gave a sudden gut wrenching twist as images of the dead barbed nurses rushed through his mind sporting Posey's face. He would defy the blasted deaf colt all he needed to in order to get the two of them out of there and home. But he had no idea what he would do to Posey if properly provoked. He couldn't take that chance. All thoughts of confessing fled from his mind in an instant.
"I didn't really...what?" she prodded at his continuing silence.
Lance pushed her away as gently as he could considering the circumstances. "N-nevermind, we need to get out of here, we can talk about this later," he stammered, the fear plain on his face. It was not the sad fear of before but more visibly frantic, a fact Posey picked up on as she raised an eyebrow and looked behind her at what he might have possibly seen. Apparently seeing nothing, she returned her eyes to him with more than a hint of confusion shading her previously gentle expression.
"No, we can talk about this now."
"You don't understand, it's not safe here-"
"Why not? She could've gotten through that door in another minute but chose to stop," she said, her hoof pointing toward the partially broken door. "We have the right door, and the elevator is right over there, open and waiting for us," she continued, pointing at each of the mentioned objects in turn. "We're not being chased, we know the way out, so why can't we do this here and why is it not safe exactly?" she asked again, the confusion in her voice slowly turning to irritation.
"Shut. Her. Up."
"Posey...please, trust me!" he plead in desperation.
"Lance, I love you...but you've been lying to me and I can't ignore that. If you want me to trust you again then...you're going to have to prove I can before I do, alright?" Her mood was quickly elevating past irritation from having come so close to getting the truth out of him but then suddenly having it jerked away for no reason readily apparent to her. Those violet eyes he could barely manage to face were shimmering with tears again. It was actually hurting her to have to say such things to her dearly beloved.
He took a moment to put a mental damper on his panic. Maybe she would listen to him if he just explained what he had seen. He knew before he even opened his mouth that it was going to sound ludicrous but since ludicrous was the new normal there wasn't any sense in not trying. "There is a note from that deaf colt on the wall behind you telling me to make you drop this Posey. I'm fine with telling him to buck off if it's only my flank on the line, but I am not risking you, okay?"
"Oh...right, so there's an invisible note on the wall behind me that so happens to let you just comfortably ignore this like you want to, right?" she replied sarcastically, briefly wiping a hoof across her eyes.
"Posey, look at me!" he demanded, looking her dead in the eyes. "I am not lying about this. I would never lie about seeing something here that you can't, because we are the only ponies here, and if we can't trust in each other to keep ourselves sane then it's all over!"
"Then not taking advantage of your dead wife by making up whatever's convenient to fill all the years of her daughter's life she missed might have been a better start!" she retorted angrily as her irritation finally bubbled over into outright painful fury. "Do you not even respect me enough to tell the truth just this once? Because you used to!"
"SHUT HER UP OR I WILL."
The much less patient change to the note effectively obliterated Lance's mental damper. Without a second's thought more he grabbed Posey's hoof and tried to force her to her feet. "Come on! We don't have time to argu-"
He was silenced by the back of Posey's other hoof striking him across the face, stunning him into releasing her.
"You keep your hooves off of me!" she shouted, getting right in his face before he even had time to bring a hoof up to his aching cheek. Her eyes widened as she realized she had just hit her husband, but then closed tightly just long enough for her to remind herself what she was doing and wipe away another round of tears. When next she spoke her voice was trembling with a mix of grief and rage. "Lance...I don't know what your problem is...but you had better figure it out..."
...
"Because I am not moving one more step until you tell me everything...so you can either get over yourself and explain things, or you can just leave me here." As shaky as her voice was, it was untainted by even the slightest speck of doubt. There was no questioning that she had every intention of sticking to her ultimatum.
He stood there silently looking back at her, absolutely lost. Then a flicker of movement caught his attention. It was the note behind her again. The black inked text had ignited into an unnatural black flame that quickly consumed the paper it was written upon...and then moved on to start burning away the wall around it. "Wait, no!"
Seeing again where his eyes were pointed, Posey looked over her shoulder to see for herself that the wall was very quickly being turned to pitch black ashes in the wake of a furious black fire. They both watched on in equal parts terror and awe as it proceeded to burn the entire room, distorting the air around them as though giving off intense heat even though neither of them could feel the slightest change in temperature, even when it passed directly beneath their hooves. Once everything around them had been burnt to black ash, it started falling apart. The inexplicable bending and blurring of the light around them became even more intense, each individual detached particle shrinking and vanishing from sight entirely like they had never existed in the first place. All that was left untouched by the ravaging black flames was the massive metal door that now stood there, sitting on the floor with no frame attached. Something on the other side gave it an almost comically gentle tap, causing it wobble perilously before falling over with a final ear drum rattling clang.
The sovereign was lying there with hooves tucked beneath her. She looked at the the two stunned ponies a moment before starting to calmly get back to her hooves. Lance hadn't placated her with his earlier pseudo confession in the slightest. She had merely chosen to wait patiently instead of waste any more of her seemingly endless stores of energy, as though she knew what would inevitably transpire.
"Run," Posey said in the odd sort of clarity that sometimes accompanied a sudden spike of adrenaline.
"You firs-"
"Run!" she repeated, shoving him toward the elevator. It seemed they were now both on the same track when it came to there being no time to argue. The monster alicorn mare casually trotting their way had seen to that. Lance made a break for the elevator, not agreeing in the slightest with Posey's decision to place him in front but finding there was nothing he could do about it now but just go as fast as he could manage.
Curiously, even with Lance's pace holding her back, they seemed to be quite readily outpacing their pursuer and her oddly relaxed pace. But about halfway across the catwalk, Lance realized that the sovereign was no longer their primary motivation for moving faster. The elevator door had begun closing at an alarming rate. It took him a fraction of a second to realize that he wouldn't be able to get there in time at his pace. But he knew somepony with a ready set of wings that would be able to manage it easily.
"Posey! The door's closing!" he shouted over his shoulder. She didn't seem to need much more in the way of explanation, and despite wanting to keep herself between her husband and the monster mare, she was in the air and dashing overhead towards the door in half a moment. Leaving her husband to fend for himself for a few seconds was far preferable to guaranteeing they would be trapped on that walkway with the sovereign.
Posey zipped through the closing doors and whirled around expecting to find a button to open the doors, but there was nothing save for a hole where a button panel had been, and some hanging, torn wire behind it. Completely lacking any other options, she was forced to try and force the door back open with her hooves. Whatever was pushing it closed was very determined though. The gap was already too small for Lance to fit through and it was still slowly inching closed despite her best efforts. "Hurry!" she cried out to her husband as he drew closer.
"Just push the open button!" he replied, out of breath as he reached the elevator and started giving what meager assistance his battered could provide in keeping the door open. Their combined strength only managed to stop the door from closing any further, and the sovereign was still looming ever larger behind him.
"There is no button!" she retorted, panic saturating her voice as her mind raced, trying to think of anything they could do to save him. But there was nothing to be done for it, except to pry the door open with brute force. No further words were exchanged, for that would've wasted oxygen the two of them needed. They both strained audibly against the closing door, trying to summon every ounce of strength they could and...it started to work. The halt of progress miraculously turned into the gap widening half an inch, and none too soon as the metallic hoof steps grew closer behind him. He tightly shut his eyes, trying to block out the unsettlingly familiar presence behind him, focusing completely on the door and being reward with an obstinate creak as they gained another inch of clearance. There was hope!
The small speck of optimism he had cultivated was mercilessly snuffed out as his ears began to ring. Upon opening his eyes he was greeted to the sight of the black veins creeping inward from the sides of the elevator door, but that paled in comparison to what he saw inside. The deaf colt was standing on the ceiling behind Posey, his 'eyes' focused solely upon Lance. He opened his mouth to warn his wife but before he could utter a single syllable he saw two blinding flashes of red light. Just like that the ringing in his ears overpowered every other sound, he could feel nothing, no thoughts in his head could connect, and his body went completely limp, as though the numbing effect he had experienced in the vault had skipped the brief ramp up and hit him all at once. He was forced to see Posey's face, screaming and horrified for him, before the doors slammed shut and the elevator car quickly rose up the shaft without him.
As the ringing in his ears steadily subsided the significance of what had just transpired finally dawned on him. He was instantly back on his hooves, banging against the closed metal door for a few moments before trying to pull it open himself. When that proved fruitless Lance looked for a button, or a crowbar, or a section of nearby railing that had been broken free, anything he could use to open it, hell bent on getting back to her even if it meant that he would have to climb the elevator shaft himself. There was nothing to be found though. This wasn't some puzzle left behind for him to solve. With all his options exhausted he slammed his hooves into the door again, letting out a frustrated, unintelligible shout of rage.
His anger was drowned out by the mental static of undiluted terror as the touch of metal against his neck reminded him of a rather important somepony. Lance's body went rigid. He briefly pondered jumping over the railing to get away from her but even if that weren't already an insane idea, she'd probably just pluck him out of the air anyway. She stepped even closer, and with the muzzle of her mask still planted against his neck she pulled in a long, slow breath that sent his skin crawling just like it had in the apartments. He wanted to tell her to stop, to tell her to get away, but his immediate instinct was buried beneath his hopelessness; it would do no good, why even bother?
There was no more time to ponder it though. Suddenly a tendril was around his neck and hoisting him into the air. His back legs flailed and he reflexively reached up to try and free himself, but before the threat of suffocating again could even register he was jerked to the side before another impact knocked the wind out of him. It was only after the tendril had wrapped around his midsection and over his legs, immobilizing them, that he was able to register what had happened. She had tossed him onto her back and pinned him with his legs held against her sides, spaced such that she would have no problem utilizing her wings. He wasn't about to see what she was going to do or where they were going to go though, the last bit of her tendril that held his head down also happened to cover his eyes, blinding him.
Lance heard her make a half snarling, half humming sound of contemplation, also feeling her neck muscles tense from looking upward. Before he could think too deeply into her actions she made an about face and started to gallop back along the walkway. He could hear the decrease in lingering echoes around them when they retreated back into the pipe maze, but past that he was entirely lost. There was no map in his head against which to compare each turn he felt her make, so deducing even the slightest idea of where they were was simply impossible. Even if he had miraculously produced a perfect mental map during the chase, he was not in the best of mental states to make use of such theoretical maps from his spot strapped and blindfolded to the most sadistic pony he had ever met.
His head bumped into the back of her neck as she came to stop and looked upward again. Then he felt her wings unfurl, the muscles beneath him flexing as she launched the two of them into the air with a strong flap. Normally Lance welcomed the sensation of rising into flight but at that very moment all it managed to do was make him feel sick...er. The sound of each wing beat began echoing off distant walls once again, signifying that she was now above the pipe maze in the dark void from which she had first spotted them. She flew upward for a long while, until at last he felt her reach out with her forelegs and grab hold of the edge of some metal...thing he couldn't see. Once all four greave clad hooves were on solid ground, she made sure that he wasn't getting too comfortable from his spot on her back.
Lance's only warning was the feel of her neck flexing before the sudden touch of metal against his left thigh caused him to flinch. The sovereign took another long breath, making him wonder if she had only stopped to partake of his scent again. She proved him disastrously wrong when the sharp hiss of scalding steam mixed with the searing pain that suddenly shot down his leg and the scream of agony that shot out of his mouth.
"Lance?!" came Posey's voice in the distance.
An invisible iron vice clamped down around Lance's chest as he suddenly realized exactly what was happening. The sovereign was after his wife...and for that task, he was serving as fantastic bait.
"POSEY GET OUT OF-" The section of tendril around his head rearranged itself slightly so that a section could cross the top of his snout and hold it shut. He heard Posey let out a terrified yelp as she too recognized what was coming for her, his captor responding by bolting in the direction from which the sound had come. Timed slowed to a crawl for him. The excited panting of the sovereign in hot pursuit, the periodic splitting of wood and snapping of metal as she burst through ineffective barrier after ineffective barrier, all of it was secondary to the gory images of Posey tearing through his mind, and the knowledge that were they to come true, it would be all his fault.
His ears twitched as he heard a particularly loud clang ahead of them prior to feeling the alicorn beneath him make a concerted effort to come to a stop before hitting whatever barrier had just separated her from her quarry. She let loose a distorted roar before striking it with all her strength, terrifying Lance further as he heard the metal bend and creak just like the previous heavy door she'd nearly gotten through. Posey would not be able to rely on it for long. But, curiously, after a couple moments spent trying to bash through the obstacle, the sovereign just...stopped. Then Lance found himself the center of attention again as the bit of tendril holding his mouth shut grew slack. Her muzzle met his thigh again, on the exact same spot no less, and another hiss of steam heralded a second, even worse shot of excruciating pain as the searing hot vapor struck the blistering burn marks she had already made.
He knew better now though. It took an extraordinary effort but he managed to bite back the scream trying to claw its way up his windpipe. She replied a seemingly amused grunt before she turned toward the wall to their left.
The tendril slid off of him, and he couldn't possibly scramble off her back fast enough. Lance ungracefully plummeted to the metal grating below and frantically looked about, hoping to not see his wife anywhere near them. The 'decor' was that of the two upper floors, with sheets of the strange fleshy cloth stretched over the walls and cut open to expose the black oozing assortment of densely packed pipes behind them. They were in an oddly placed turn in yet another blasted hallway, one that stopped at a formidable looking steel door that bore the scars of the sovereign's frustrations, turned to the left, continued a mere ten feet, then turn right to simply keep going in the same direction. It was not a layout he recognized from any part of the hospital, whether it be from his recent lone delve or his recollections of the days past in Manehatten. But what really counted was that Posey was nowhere in sight, and as long as that held true he didn't really care about anything else.
The brief chance he'd been granted to get his bearings was brought to a swift end as a metal shod hoof callously bashed him against the wall, leaving him lying on his left side with his back against it. Still desperate to lead her as far from Posey as possible he tried getting back to his hooves but was struck stone still with fright as the sovereign slammed her hoof down right in front of his face, a motion that would have crushed his snout flat with but an inch's difference in placement. He slowly looked up to see her unseen gaze boring a hole through his skull, relaying her 'polite' request that he kindly lie still more effectively than words could ever manage. Having made sure her catch was staying put, he noticed with some alarm that her leer was now slowly moving along his body, her breath still coming a bit heavier even though he knew for fact that she couldn't possibly be winded from such a chase.
It was alright...he didn't have to run...Posey had already run, right?
Her slow head movement came to a stop, finding herself very interested in the metal bracing around the grievous wound to his right rear leg. A tilt of the head betrayed her curiosity, made only more obvious as she examined it more closely.
Yeah...there was no way she was still behind that door...she was a smart mare...
Another hiss preceded her head suddenly shooting forward and capturing the brace in her jaw. The machinery in her helmet gave an audible strain as it tried to bite through but the black veined metal proved just as ridiculously resilient as ever. Once she had grown irritated enough with the effort, she lashed out against the wall with her hoof in a fit of rage, tearing through the sheet of flesh and bending the pipes behind it. It didn't take her long to come up with an alternative solution, one that apparently required her to wrap her tendril around his midsection again before slamming him against the opposite wall, taking special care that he landed on his other side this time.
All Lance had to do was not scream...if he didn't make another sound Posey would have no reason to come back...
The sovereign almost immediately put his resolve to the test, forcefully bringing her hoof down on his fresh and tender burns and twisting the rough, rusted greave into them. Lance's eyes shot open and he barely managed to cover his mouth in time as the sharp edges of her hoof armor cut through the already horribly sensitive skin. The way his body shuddered with the sudden agony, the muffled sound restrained behind his hooves, they sent a delighted shiver along her spine and she promptly twisted her hoof in the other direction. She spent a while just doing that...moving her hoof in new ways, trying to elicit an even better reaction from her amber coated plaything. Then, apparently remembering why she had begun grinding her hoof into his thigh in the first place, she gave a reluctant, monstrous sigh and set about making her bait a bit more suitable. Suddenly Lance was without the aid of his hooves in quieting himself, his all too enthusiastic torturer having used her tendril to pull them away from his mouth and pin them to his chest. She started pressing her hoof into his burns even harder, forcing him to grit his teeth, close his eyes tightly, and arch his back as his body instinctively tried to do anything it could to escape the unremitting pain.
That was it...he could do it...he could take what she was dishing out without making a sound...
Then something new started. He felt something sharp press against his side and turned his head just in time to see her horn break the skin over one of his ribs and start dragging the blade along the bone. For his part he still managed to not cry out, shuddering as every bit of his willpower subdued the needed exclamation to a distressed gurgle in his throat. Posey might not have been able to hear the noise he made but somepony sure had, the sovereign unable to contain a distorted moan as she finished with one rib and moved to the next. She could feel his resistance breaking, her breath coming even heavier as she pushed him closer and closer to giving in for her. But that proved entirely unnecessary as Lance opened his eyes to see the single worst thing he could have ever seen in that particular moment.
Posey was standing there in the open doorway.
"Get off of my husband!" she shouted at the alicorn aberration, her eyes filled with tears and fury.
Time seemed to slow down for him. Suddenly the sovereign's imposing presence was gone. She made a mad dash straight for Posey and Lance swore that he saw his wife completely ignore the charging beast and look straight at him. She smiled at him. It was the bittersweet expression of somepony who had won...at great cost. The next moment she was knocked off her hooves, and the moment after that the sovereign kicked the massive door closed behind her, cutting Lance off from the two of them.
Then the screaming started, accompanied by an unnatural, sultry sigh.
Lance leaped to his hooves and grabbed the door's handle only to find it broken and useless. He wasn't going to get through it. There had to be another way into that room, there had to be! His first instinct carried him around the corner to his left, a move that proved correct when he saw the beginnings of a door on the right side at the very edge of his...of Posey's lantern's light. There was no other place it could lead but into the room with Posey. He had no idea what he could possibly do once he was inside but he had to get inside!
His hoof was just about to touch the doorknob when a flicker of light at the far end of the hallway caught his eyes. It was a spontaneously activating ceiling light that blindsided him with the illuminated sight of door 303.