Silent Ponyville: Reunion
Familiar places.
Part 7
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...
The mare half's mouth opened wide and let out a distorted roar as it charged at him. Lance moved in practically the same instant, throwing himself at the nearest bedroom door in the hall leaving the scavenger to slam into the wall behind him. The first door didn't work. As the scavenger was shaking off the daze he dashed to the second door and was able to open it. He scrambled inside and closed the door just in time to block another charge, the creature letting out a pained grunt as the impact put a single crack in the door. Lance backed away from the door as the scavenger growled loudly on the other side for a few more moments before he heard it go back into the living room, satisfied at having chased off the intruder. His watch grew quiet.
He was safe again, though doubtful it would last long.
The wall separating the two bedrooms had been knocked down, creating one large room that had been converted into an indoor plantery. Shelves lined three of the walls, stocked with planter pots filled with dead plants and dry, barren dirt. But these aren't what he noticed the most. There in the middle of the room, illuminated by what was probably the only functional light in the building, was a stool. On top of it was yet another pot, but instead of a dead plant and arid soil, a single flower with cream colored petals stood proudly blooming from dark brown soil rich with nutrients.
The light from the ceiling mounted lamp glinted off of something in the soil that caught his eye, prompting him to move closer. It was the top of a key, barely visible and mostly buried. Lance was very careful to not disturb the flower as he moved some of the soil away and then pulled the key out, even taking a moment to replace the disturbed dirt afterward. He brushed off the dirt clinging to the key and briefly examined his new acquisition. It was gold in color, and on the top was an etching of a stalk of wheat. Was it for that altar thing down in G-9? Even if it wasn't it still unlocked something, so Lance gave it no further thought before depositing it into his bag.
The scavenger outside would probably still be busy eating so he would most likely be safe just going further down the hallway to check if he could get into the bathroom. When he looked back to the one functional bedroom door though he saw another note nailed to it. Had that been there before? He plucked it off to find it was the same hoof writing as the note down found on the ground floor:
"Dear Esteemed Guest
Perhaps I was not clear. Perhaps you are not aware of the meaning of the word 'linger'. I make this assumption because otherwise it would mean you willfully disrespected my polite request and then we would have a problem. So in the spirit of that assumption I present you this short list of synonyms and a general definition.
Loiter
Delay
Amble
Dawdle
Dillydally
Falter
Hang out
Hesitate
Procrastinate
Remain
Stay
Tarry
Vacillate
Wait
Linger. 'Leeng-Ger' Verb.
To remain or stay on in a place longer than is usual or expected, as if from reluctance to leave: "Lance lingered near room 303 contrary to the polite request he had recieved."
There, clear as day, no misunderstandings. Please do not linger near door 303 any further.
Thank you for your time!"
Willfully disrespected fairly aptly described Lance's reaction as he put the note into his bag indifferently and continued into the hallway.
His watch began buzzing again but this time he had been expecting it, and from the sound of the scavenger's renewed chewing it wouldn't give him any problems in the small distance from the second bedroom door to the bathroom door. Inside he found another unexpected blessing. The bathtub was missing, but in its place was a ladder that went up and through the ceiling into the bathroom of room 208. Finally he would be able to get on the other side of that cursed wall!
After scaling the ladder and poking his head up into 208's bathroom, he instantly regretted that his head was the first part of him to be at floor level. It was almost as bad as the mare's bathroom at the cafe had been. The floor was covered with mildew and mold that looked to have crept down from the ceiling along the walls. The mirror was missing, the porcelain fixtures had been broken, and the exposed pipes were rusted over. That smell was back too. Lance finished climbing the ladder and got his head away from the floor in a hurry.
The rest of 208 was in a similarly advanced state of neglect. The paint was gone and the exposed wood had begun to rot through, the carpeting only remained on the border of the floors in ragged patches, the cement below was stained and cracked, and the furniture was half ripped apart. It seemed the farther he got from the ground floor the more the apartment complex resembled the rest of the town. No matter now though, all he had to do now was find a way down on the other side and he could leave.
He opened the door into the second floor's central hallway and turned right...and the wall was still there.
Lance stood in mute confusion for a moment. Was the wall taller than he thought it had been? He'd already flown over it a number of times, running into it on the second floor didn't seem right to him. Was the section inside the building actually taller than the rest of the wall outside? Why?
It seemed like such a pointless question here. Why move the library? Why have buildings from Manehatten pop up here in Ponyville? Why fill the entire town with fog and monsters and memories?
His only answer was a resounding 'because'.
So this floor wasn't any good for getting over the wall either. He'd just have to find the way up to the third floor and hope his luck was better. Lance knew the door to the stairwell was no good from his glance upward earlier so the elevator was the next obvious thing to check. It also seemed to be the only thing to check at all so far, every other door he could see was boarded over. Strangely he welcomed the return of the boards that had plagued him outside for so long. At least with them in place he didn't have to bother to check every single doorknob he came across.
There were no monsters in sight down either end of the side hall and he could see that both 201 and 210 were likewise boarded off. It afforded him a tiny sense of security as he made his way over to the elevator. He was met with disappointment again. Not only were the buttons to call the elevator up not there, it looked like nopony had even built a place to put them in the first place. The elevator door wasn't even a door either, it was just a series of fancy bars that resembled one.
Wait...there was something wrapped around one of them. Something green. Lance reached a hoof up and grabbed it, pulling it free to see that it was a length of wire with green insulation...just like the cut wire downstairs. He could probably use this to fix it, and then surely the elevator would work, although the only pair of buttons he knew about was down on the ground floor behind the drowning mare...not to mention the other beast down there. From the looks of things it was his only way up to the third floor. He would have too make it work somehow.
He stashed the length of wire and then headed down the hall in the other direction, intent on at least giving the other end a look. It proved a fruitful endeavor.
There was an open apple barrel in front of the externally blockaded stairwell door. As he approached it looked empty, but once close enough he peered down to see what resembled cement that had been molded into the shape of an apple, a thick iron band going around the glorified rock. Lance tipped the barrel over and allowed it to roll free out onto the floor. In the full light he could see it wasn't one shaped chunk of cement, but two pieces split down the middle and held together with the iron band. He gave it a nudge with his hoof and as it rolled onto its side he could hear the quite rattle of something inside. Could it be another key? How would he get it open though?
...of course!
He set the apple upright and pulled the vial of acid from its place in the tool holster. Very carefully, he unscrewed it and poured the contents out onto a section of the band right in front of the split in the apple, then backed away a few steps as it started to hiss and smoke. There was no telling how much tension was in that band, if he was too close it might come apart so violently that-
Lance flinched again as the band flew apart with a loud metallic snap. The two halves opened up and the anticipated key did indeed fall onto the cracked cement floor. This one had an apple engraving on the top.
He had found two keys, and there had been two padlocks at the altar on the ground floor. That couldn't be a coincidence. He clearly needed to find out what was hidden down there in addition to fixing and using the elevator to get to the third floor. Now Lance had to backtrack his way down there...and he did not look forward to the last drop down to ground floor. He was just about to pass by room 201 when he realized it wasn't actually room 201...
------
It was the dead of winter. The first semester of Lance's classes had passed with him getting the highest marks possible, and now he was on break, with holiday vacation from his weather service job to boot. They'd spent a lot more time together in the last few days than had become usual for them in the hectic previous months. It was a little paradise for the two of them.
At the moment they were both in bed quite successfully warding off the cold with the assistance of three blankets and their own shared body heat as they talked of this and that long into the night. Sleep would come eventually but they were in no hurry. Neither of them had any place to be the following day.
"I'm glad this worked out...this whole thing with you moving in." She said, snuggling against him affectionately.
"Me too...I thought getting my schooling here would be some long haul I'd just have to endure but with you around it hasn't felt like that at all." He replied with fore hooves wrapped around her.
"Hehe...hey, Lance, have you thought about what we're going to do after you graduate?" She asked, looking up at him.
His eyes moved away from hers as he looked contemplative for a moment, "Well, I haven't really thought about that, it just seems so far away right now. I've still got years of study left, volunteer work, the MCAT, medical school applications...so much left to do. I know I wanted to go home to Cloudsdale before I met you but now I don't even know if I want to do that anymore. I guess I just don't know enough yet to say for sure."
"Hrm...fair enough...but if we're going to stay together long term I need you to answer one question for me." She replied, voice a bit more serious now.
The change in tone really got his attention, "Okay, ask away."
"I want to have a foal someday. Do you?"
"Yes." He answered with nary a hint of doubt.
She smiled and kissed him before resting her head against his chest and closing her eyes, "Good...if you can say that for sure at least, then I'm happy. Good night Lance...I love you."
"Good night-"
Before the name could be uttered the world once again froze in place.
------
Lance grimaced as he stepped away from the door with hooves once more over his ears until they stopped ringing. Notes be damned, he was going to listen to his late wife's voice at every opportunity and that was that. The door to 303 had once again been replaced with a concrete slab, this one cracked and slightly mossy to match the increasingly poor conditions of the upper stories. It was time to move on now and take a short break from the squalor as he descended before heading up to the third floor, the condition of which he didn't want to imagine ahead of time.
As it happened he would get no such reprieve from the sordid conditions. Upon getting to the bottom of the ladder down into108's bathroom he was dismayed to find that the conditions upstairs had inexplicably spread downstairs. The bathroom was just as filthy, and in 108's hallway the carpet just as absent, the cement below just as cracked and chipped, and the wooden walls just as unpainted and rotting. The scavenger was absent from the living room, but the now mysteriously age rotted corpse in the corner had been joined by two more, fresher looking half eaten cadavers. This wasn't good. Monsters he lost track of could never be good.
His watch remained quiet as he exited the apartment and headed down the side hall to the elevator door with the missing button panel. Lance retrieved the bit of green insulated wire then sat down to free up his fore hooves for the somewhat delicate task of tying the wire back into place. Moments later the last two ends connected with a spark that caused Lance to yank his hoof free and shake some of the shock out of it. He was rewarded with the sound of machinery above and below in the elevator shaft finally whirring to life.
Now he had to get back down there. He made for the stairwell door but just before he passed the central hallway his watch began buzzing again. The followup growl made it clear he had indeed located the missing scavenger.
It was apparently much more aggressive without a corpse to nibble on, as Lance had to duck under an attempted pounce by the monstrous pony before he bolted off at a gallop for the other end of the hall. The scavenger had to spend a few moments redirecting its momentum to more effectively chase its quarry, which bought Lance valuable seconds. He used them to quickly look down after opening the door. The dilapidation had spread all the way to the ground floor, but he couldn't see any sheet shrouded unicorn waiting below. Just the discarded, torn, blood stained sheet it had been wearing and various cut ropes strewn about.
He looked back to see the scavenger almost upon him and made a split second decision between very likely death right in front of him or instant death that only might be there. Lance quickly zipped out into the stairwell and hovered in place while he pulled the door shut and held it long enough to make sure the scavenger didn't escape. The door shook a few times with the ravenous pony's efforts to get out but it soon lost interest and left Lance to do as he would.
He descended and looked out into the ground floor side hall through the opening that had once been a door before the shrouded unicorn had bashed through it. His wings were spread and ready to get him back into the air at a moment's notice but it looked to be unneeded. The watch was quiet, and if she was still down there with him she would have made it apparent by now, especially considering the racket he'd just made exiting the first floor. The only monster remaining at ground level looked to be the drowning mare still lying still in front of the elevator.
The furniture barren apartment G-9 would be perfect to lure her in as it would afford him plenty of space to move around her and escape. But first he had a couple of keys to use before he added the element of a blade swinging creature to the room. The painting of the saint pony inside had not aged well during the spread of the decay from up stairs and was barely recognizable as a pony anymore through all the missing paint. The metal plate had weathered it quite a bit better, and despite being much more rusted over now the engraved text was still very much legible.
"Your gifts ma'am." He quietly muttered as he retrieved the two keys and used them to undo the padlocks. Lance had planned on letting the plate down to the ground slowly to avoid making any more noise but as soon as the second lock had been removed it fell off and it was all he could do to just get out of its way. It landed with an ear splitting crash that would no doubt have been audible two floors up. If he'd had any stealth before, he didn't now, and his best bet was to hurry and get whatever was behind the metal plate.
Which was all of nothing.
It was just more wall. There had been nothing behind it at all. Had it been a trick this whole time? He directed an angry glare at the metal plate but saw that his irritation might be misplaced. There was another engraving on the side that had been pressed against the wall and unviewable:
"#1: C4H4N2O3"
Was this somehow the saint's grace that would light his path? He pulled one of the notes and the marker from his bag, copying down the sequence, crossed out letters and all, before labeling it "Saint's Sequence". He stashed the modified note and when he tried to leave he spotted another such note newly nailed to the inside of G-9's door for him to read. Whoever was writing them was persistent...and unnaturally quiet.
"Dear Esteemed Guest,
Really?
Really?!
I spelled it out for you, in an absurdly complete manner. You're doing this on purpose. I can't bring myself to believe otherwise anymore. You just ignore my polite request, and then do even worse by finding both of them and then giving them to her!
You've pushed this a bit far...but not too far yet. I'm patient. I tolerate a lot.
Just take the thing you're thinking of doing, and expel it out of your head, just right out. Then you can walk away, out the door over there, and there will not have been a problem between us.
That's all I'm asking. Please. Is that really so much?
Thank you for your time!"
More scrap paper to write on. If the thing he wasn't supposed to be doing was getting on that elevator and getting the hay over the wall at long last this letter writer was going to be disappointed. Before he could do that though he had one last bit of tricky business to partake in.
The watch buzzed in warning as he walked down the side hall toward the now functional elevator and its drowning mare guardian. She began twitching to life, and after five more steps on his part she was on her hooves and stumps coming towards him, still making those gagging, choking sounds that made him sick to his stomach. He backed off slowly, keeping pace with her so she wouldn't fall behind. The two crept around the corner into the center hall and then through the door into G-9 where Lance lead her toward the right side of the living room. When it looked like he had the needed clearance he finally galloped around her left side and back out into the hallway successfully. With his way now clear he freely stepped into the elevator and hit the button for the third floor, the machinery springing into action and moving him upward at last. He sat down and caught his breath during the trip upward, trying to calm his frayed nerves.
The elevator slowed and finally stopped on the third floor, but the sight that greeted him after he pushed the elevator door aside negated any calm he'd managed to scrap together. There wasn't a trace of carpeting or paint anywhere to be seen. The wooden boards that had comprised the walls had apparently rotted away entirely up here, leaving nothing but a metal grating in front of moldy insulation in their wake. The cement floor was even more cracked, chipped, and worn away than before, leaving the rebar beneath exposed in several spots. There were no lights strung up on the ceiling either. It was the same shoddy, age worn, rebar exposing cement as the floor.
He shined his light down the hallway to see that this floor wasn't the same lay out as the previous ones at all. It was a single hall, no side doors anywhere, about half the length of one of the side halls below. The only door was at the end of the hall. It was that same clean white door that he'd already seen three times before. Door 303. Except this time it was covered by an array of criss crossing, taut chains that would prevent anypony from opening it. They were held tightly in place by three padlocks, each looking slightly different from the other and bearing an engraving of a number. From left to right they were labeled #1, #9, and #3.
Hrm...hadn't there been a #1 in the saint's sequence?
Lance looked at the #1 padlock closer. It was a number combination lock, four values. So that was it! He turned his head to pull the note with the sequence written on it from his saddlebag but was interrupted by yet another mysterious note from nowhere, right next to him on the wall, hanging from a section of grating that had been cut and bent inward:
"Don't."
...
Lance pulled the note with the sequence on it from his saddlebag and gave it a look. If he took out the crossed out letters, all that was left was "#1: 4423". Easy. He input the four numbers and gave the padlock a pull to open it, adding a twist to slip off the chains attached to it. A third of the web of criss crossing chains fell slack to the floor and would no longer impede his progress.
"...was that it?" He asked aloud. There were still two locks left and he didn't have any clue as to how to open them. So now for all his effort he was left here on the third floor with a partially unlocked door that still wouldn't open, being only partially unlocked and all. How pointless had that all been?
His ears twitched as they registered a new sound. It was distant...blaring...
A siren.
Lance's surgical light, his only light source, began to dim and flicker with no explanation. Was the charge running out already? He tapped and shook it, trying to see if something inside just wasn't connecting properly to no avail. The last thing he saw before his light went out entirely was the note hanging from the broken, bent grating. It said something different now:
"FINE."