Hadn't I been down this corridor before? Twice? It all looked the same to me. Clearly there had to be some sort of way to tell the levels and passages apart, but so far, I hadn't worked it out, other than the floor level name (which were just colors) marked at the elevator. The floors themselves were not numbered, so I had no idea where I was relative to ground level. The damn buttons on the elevator were alphabetical too; one could easily find themselves going down instead of up, despite pushing a button for a level listed above the one I had just visited. Having not found any exits on a particular floor, I would try the next elevator button above that, and then the button below that, then I would get confused, and maybe end up on the same floor I had been on two attempts previously. Some buttons were locked out too, demanding I enter a passcode.
As such I was getting pretty fed up with this place. It was larger than I expected, and, to my surprise, mostly deserted. The good side of that was there were less ponies to impede my progress. The bad side was there were less ponies I could ask for advice on how to get out of this damn maze, not that a single one of them I had already asked would tell me. I understood that this institution was a black facility - totally deniable, and that the ponies were prepared to die rather than tell its secrets, but did the nearest exit constitute one of those secrets? Perhaps it did. The only way they could ensure my knowledge of the place was never shared beyond its walls was to simply never let me leave.
And if I never got out of here, I would eventually be caught. And if I was caught, I would be vaporized. Literally. Maybe I could take up living in the ventilation shafts, hiding, constantly on the move between rooms, sneaking out at night for food, like I had heard happened in urban legends. Nah. I'd rather be dead than cooped up like that. I had to run.
Eventually, I had concluded that it was currently after business hours. The only ponies left here were the janitors, for a lack of a better description of the two that were going to feed me to the furnace, and the minimal night crew. It would also explain why 4J2 had said he wouldn't be here.
"Yo, Ann baby, when you leavin' work? I'm gettin' tired of waitin'," a voice suddenly spoke into my head. Despite the strange choice of words, and pseudo drawl, I recognized the voice. Even if I hadn't, the comms unit supposedly had only one operable channel, and it was to him. I guessed he was playing it safe in case my comms unit had fallen into the wrong hooves.
"What for, Jay? Too late for that now," I subvocalized. I may as well play the same game.
"So I see you've figured me out. I had to make sure I had the right mare," he said, confirming my suspicions.
"You do. Now that you've called, I'd like to know how to get out of this wretched building," I said. "I've covered several floors, but so far none of them have had an exit."
"Sorry I couldn't be more specific before," he apologized, "but first let me ask: the ponies you've run into, have you had to kill any of them?"
"Kill them? Of course not!" I said, shock evident in my tone, "although some seemed prepared to die rather than help me. There will be a few concussions when they wake up."
"I'm glad to hear that you haven't killed anypony," 4J2 said. "I didn't think you would be the sort of pony who would." His tone told me that if I had killed, this call would have ended here and now, leaving me to my original, gaseous-state fate.
"I wish I could say the same about you guys! You were going to feed me to a plasma arc furnace!" I pointed out. "Actually, I'm surprised the ponies here aren't already running around after me. Maybe they are just scared of me."
"They may be, at that. The thought of turning into Hellspawn is pretty terrifying, as is knowing what we do to any we catch," 4J2 said.
"A delayed death, after being observed for several weeks?" I asked.
"You may as well know. You weren't just watched. You were prodded, poked, injected with various experimental concoctions and had multiple biopsies taken. They subjected you to vivisection twice."
"What?" I gasped, both mentally and in the real world. "You are joking, aren't you? How can I have survived through that?"
"Joking? No. There wasn't anything funny about how you were treated. They did take care to keep you alive during the process, but that's only part of it. That body of yours is amazing. It has unbelievable healing abilities. I think you will grow to like it."
"Assuming the electromagnetic sterilization didn't disable that ability," I mused. "So what now? If I'm going to like it, I have to survive long enough to try it out, and that won't happen unless I get out of here," I pointed out the obvious.
"And as I implied, that is why I've contacted you now: to help you get out of there. You say you have access to several levels already?" 4J2 asked, bringing the subject back onto more important matters. We could chat about other things once I got out of here.
"I do have access to several levels," I said. "I've been up and down between five floors so far... I think. It all gets very confusing."
"You have somepony's ID card, don't you?" 4J2 asked.
"I have the ID cards of everypony I have encountered. I hoped taking them would help me and impede them," I said.
"And that is exactly why they haven't been harassing you, assuming they have woken," 4J2 said. "Low security doors open for those simple wearing their ID card. High security doors require a passcode as well. They are probably trapped wherever you left them."
"As am I trapped," I said. "Did you expect me to get out of here without any help?"
"I didn't. All I expected you to do was get out of the lab and survive until I could contact you again. I was extremely limited in what I could do to help you directly. Not only would I get in trouble if detected, but any chance you had would be lost. To keep up appearances, after I left work, I had to go home, just the same as I always would," 4J2 said.
"Let's cut to the case before something goes wrong then," I suggested. "It will only take one pony to hit an alarm button somewhere. Where am I, geographically speaking, I mean? How can I get out of here?" I was starting to sound like a broken recording.
"You are in the industrial ring near the outer wall. The facility has sections both above and below the Mane Way."
"Oh, great, so the exit is on one of the middle levels, just to be confusing," I muttered.
"Correct, but going out that way will expose you to more danger that I would like. A better option is to exit two levels below where you were being held. Down there you will find the service connections between the facility and H'ven. There is a heavy access hatch there that leads out to sublevel six. You will need both a card and a code to unlock it," 4J2 said.
"Heading down," I said, immediately trotting back along the corridor I believed would return me to the elevator. "But I only have ID cards. I don't have any codes."
"Whose cards?"
"5D3, 2EQ, 3C3, 1K8 and 5G4," I said, pausing to read of the identifiers on the cards around my neck. I had to retrieve 5D3's from inside the isolation suit to read it.
"Let me see," the voice in my head said. "2EQ. He's what we need. Casual bugger. Doesn't quite play by the rules. I'm betting he has his code written somewhere. Maybe in his clothes, in his locker, or somewhere like that."
"I know he is too casual. He didn't care that I was still alive, and his solution to finding my mapper was to incinerate it with me. All he was wearing was an isolation suit," I said, "and I'm wearing it now."
"No good. Those are generic, and disposable," 4J2 said. "His locker will be down on Red floor, which is the same floor that has access to sublevel six."
"For Luna's sakes, this place goes out of its way to make life difficult. No wonder I was getting confused," I complained.
"All in the name of security," 4J2 said. "It takes new employees a few weeks to come to grips with it all."
Eventually I managed to find the elevator again, being guided by 4J2's running commentary. I suspect I would have found it sooner if he just kept quiet, as he kept picturing me in different locations to those I actually was. I stepped into the elevator car which was still conveniently waiting where I had left it. There we go, Red level, I said, extending a hoof and tapping the button.
It beeped at me. "Please enter your five digit identification code to proceed to that level."
I facehoofed. "Jay, the key is locked in the box," I subvocalized. "I need 2EQ's code in order to access his code."
"Oh.... that is a problem," 4J2 confirmed. "Give me a moment to think."
"Just don't take the rest of my life," I muttered back, fearing that any delay could be exactly that.
After reading the pseudonyms on ID cards to 4J2 again, I decided to see if I could solve the problem of moving between levels myself. I looked about me, examining the elevator car. Clearly the elevator shaft had access to the other levels, even if the car would not take me there. The first step would be to get as close to level Red and I could. I had been held on level Yellow, so I hit the button for that level, and the annoying elevator gave me the same damn request for a five digit identification code. Oh, of course. It didn't know I had come from there, and any place that held the likes of me would be high security.
"Jay," I subvocalized, sticking with the pseudonym I had chosen for 4J2, "which levels are either side of Yellow Level ?"
"Green would be above, Orange below," he said.
"Bah!" I said, facehoofing again. "They are in spectral order, and if they follow the industrial standard color codes, there will be Red level below that, and a Brown level at the very bottom."
"Correct," 4J2 said in a distracted sort of way. He must have still been puzzling over how to get an identification code for me.
It was button pushing time! I was on level Violet at the moment, so I pushed the button for Green, and was greeted with the doors closing, and the elevator beginning to descend. After its doors opened, I tried the buttons for levels Yellow, Black and Brown, finding I was denied access to all. Fine. Green was as low as I could go.
"What about stairs?" I asked.
"Same problem," 4J2 summarized.
"What about the doors themselves. Or the walls? Could I kick through them?"
"I sincerely doubt it," Jay quashed the idea. It was back to trying to take the shaft down, sans elevator car.
Stepping into the door opening, I reached back into the car and poked the button for level Violet, before rapidly exiting. As soon as I was clear of the doors, they closed and I heard the elevator car moving upwards. A quick glance around found me a decent sized garbage bin, which I lay on its side, hard up against the doors. Now for the hard part. Extending my fingers, I worked them into the crack between the doors, and pulled hard. Much to my surprise, I slammed the doors back into their cavities! After that, they fought back, trying to close again, so I edged the bin forward, allowing the doors to close up against it. That left me a decent sized gap to peer though, or climb through if I so desired.
The action of opening the doors also tore my isolation suit at the forehooves. That invalidated me wearing it. It would only hinder me with what I was about to try anyway. I removed the mask, and peeled myself out of the suit, bundling it all up as a toxic ball for whoever found it. A passing thought had me retrieve both, and give them a once-over in case 2EQ really had written his passcode on either. No such luck. I balled it all up again and tossed it back in the corner.
Putting my head through the open elevator doors and into shaft, I studied what I could see in the relative darkness. Actually, the light filtering in through the open doors was more than enough for me to make out the details of the shaft. As was typical of elevators used in H'ven, this one had motors and gears mounted on the elevator car, and climbed its way up and down on the gear racks at each corner of the shaft. There were no dangling cables, protrusions or any other significant obstruction between me and the floor way down below.
"Jay, where is Black level?" I asked.
"Huh?" 4J2 said, absently, clearly still concentrating on how to get me a passcode.
"Black level," I repeated. "Is it below level Brown or is it above level White." Black represented zero, so it could have been used for either zero or ten.
"Oh, it's above level White. Incidentally, Grey has the main entrance," Jay said. "I do not recommend you go up there."
"Without an identification code, I don't have access to Grey anyway, so it's a moot point," I said, as I turned from the elevator and walked away. "All I needed to know was how many floors Red was above the bottom."
"Just the one," Jay said. "Why?"
"Because I can jump that high," I said. With that, I turned and ran straight at the gap between the elevator doors, leaped over the garbage bin, hit the opposite wall hooves first, launched, twisted in mid air, hit the closed doors of the level below and launched again. A shaft like this really wasn't that great a challenge to a pony that enjoyed freerunning; I had bounced my way down the gaps between buildings often enough. I landed safely on the floor at the bottom of the shaft, turned, and stared up at the closed doors one level above. Bouncing up there, and getting a good grip on the doors to force them open would be a real challenge. Perhaps I didn't need to, though. There may be something on Brown level I could use to climb back up. Even standing on a desk would help.
Extending my fingers, I worked them into the crack between the doors to Brown level, and pulled them apart, stepping through the resultant gap into the dimly lit bottom level of the facility. It was time to start hunting for things to climb on!
"I think I know where you can get another code," 4J2 interrupted my thoughts. "5G4. She's relatively new here, and I bet she had her code hidden in her office. You could try looking for a piece of tape stuck to the bottom of her desk, or the bottom of one of the draws. She may have hidden it in her comms address book."
"Irrelevant," I said. "I'm down on Brown level now. I'm looking for a ladder or something I can stand on while I open the elevator doors to Red level."
"How did you get down there?" 4J2 asked.
"I jumped," I said. It was a pity he couldn't see my smirk.