I wake up to heavy boots on the cement outside, and the click of shined black dress shoes approaching my door. It takes me a moment to remember where I am, and what is happening. I remember just before they start shouting.
“Surprise interrogation of the prisoner requested!” the suited man shouts, stopping directly outside of the holding cell door. Then the voice of my captor brings back my now ever present headache.
“Surprise interrogation of the prisoner permitted!”
Then the door slams open. I struggle a little bit in an attempt to stand, but all I can do is glare as they snatch me up, trapping my wings to my sides as the shackles are removed, falling to the ground with heavy clangs.
“Apply hood!”
At this point I notice that they don't have a hood, and in fact the armed man shrugs helplessly, receiving only a conspiratorial wink from Mr. Suit.
“Um...hood applied!” the armed man yells, not actually covering my head.
Then he tries to tuck me under his arm, in the most awkward display of terrible coordination, while also trying to shove the muzzle of his gun into my mouth. At this range I can see that the rifle is in fact loaded, with the safety on, but a round chambered. hardly optimal for an escape attempt. So I hang limp.
“Um, I can’t exactly…” He nods towards his gun, and the suited man misunderstands, trying to take hold of the weapon.
“Negative!” the man carrying me said quickly, causing the Suit to back away a little. It’s hard for me to believe that he would misunderstand the gesture so badly as to try taking the weapon.
There is a bit of silence as they stare each other down.
The gun toting madman speaks first. “You are not cleared for operation of this weapon, are you?”
“I was going to finish training, honest. I just never found the time. I guess that means…” He holds out his arms, obviously meaning to carry me.
Before I can protest, he has wrapped his stick thin, bony arms around me, like a wire cage. I feel him shake, either from exhaustion or from pure revulsion at having to touch my body.
I can’t help but think that I must be horribly filthy, and maybe he has a hygiene obsession, which wouldn’t be the first for a psychologist... But no matter how small I have to make myself, I’m sure that I am offending him with my presence.
Laughing, the military themed man watches my new transportation specialist struggle not to drop me on the floor, as he snaps back.
“Don’t laugh! I haven’t been feeling that well lately. I think there’s something in the water,” he objects, as though he wants to start an argument over it.
I stop trying to find a good way to be carried, and go limp again, staring down at the peeling linoleum flooring.
“Just... Just go,” I sigh, wishing fruitlessly that they would let me take a shower before we start some process of farcical question and answer.
After struggling to carry me to a cart, finding out that the elevators were out of order, dragging the cart and carrying me up some stair, and talking idly about regulations that should have starved me to the point of being immobile, I am placed into the cart and they are finally quiet, and I can really think.
This suited man is a stranger. Not just to me, but to this place. He doesn’t seem to know why he is working with these people, and they don’t seem to trust him entirely. It’s almost comical how they seem to dance a fine line between being best friends and throwing verbal punches, all while cooperatively holding me captive.
For a moment, I look up at him and wonder if maybe he is a captive, like I am. It would explain a few things, but you don’t ask if someone is “cleared” for a weapon if they are your prisoner. You shoot them.
Then I go back to watching cardboard blacked windows move past me.
Suit is obviously safe, otherwise he wouldn’t have entered my room standing so tall, so proper, addressing everyone as a lesser.
Yet he seems to cave whenever he’s not explicitly in charge, whenever he isn’t in a situation of guaranteed safety.
Maybe he is playing an act, trying to trick me?
Yet there’s no reasoning to that. I don’t know anything, I can’t fight back, and I’m the weakest link out of a set of six. Maybe he just wants to mess with me for fun...
Except he’s not happy. He moves nervously, looking around a lot, trying to move past the curious gaze of each worker standing idle in a hallway or room. I start counting guns. It’s so much easier to imagine a bunch of murderous machines, than a crowd of people who individually have judged me worthy of death.
Gun man watches Suit, but not too close. He watches him casually, but keeps his gaze locked on the path ahead for the whole ride, his hands wrapped around that cheaply made Kalashnnkov with the ease of a businessman carrying a suitcase.
I wonder if he would actually shoot me.
There’s a reason why birds are hunted with a scatter of tiny shot that cannot penetrate, and doesn’t carry much inertia. The bones of a flight-oriented creature are hollow, and are designed for compression load, like an aluminum pole. My bones aren’t any stronger than a thick staff of balsa wood. One good shot, and the shock wave could shatter my ribcage. I’d be far beyond dead, yet he probably has no idea how weak I am.
Or maybe he knows exactly how weak I am. So what does Suit think of me? He doesn’t mind my status as a prisoner, yet he wanted to hold the gun, to threaten me with it.
I open my eyes as the cart stops, a door labeled “Interrogation Room #1” in the best labeling possible at such a primitive location, is next to us.
“Prisoner handover complete.”
Suit looks inside, before noting a camcorder on a tripod, pointed in through a mirrored window.
“Yes. Hey, why’s the video equipment on this side of the glass?”
“Power was turned off to the inner room,” Gun man says casually, “And we couldn’t figure out how to turn it back on again. I got you your radio, though.”
Then I remembered, the radio he had asked for, and how he had asked for it, as though he was slipping in cookies on his parent’s shopping list. He is trying to escape. The emotional flip flop, the desperate need to find power to hold onto, wanting to hold the gun...
The good doctor is going to try to escape, and he is going to get himself killed.
Also me, I will probably also die.
The Suit smiles. “I see that. Thanks for everything.” Almost seeming to tear up, he takes his hand, shaking it with a tight grip. “You know, you’re probably the nicest person I’ve met since being kid...starting here. So just in case we don’t bump into each other again…”
My ears flick towards him at the aborted word, wondering if he would really be stupid enough to talk openly about being kidnapped. But regardless, he can’t do this, he just can’t.
“There’s only the one cafeteria,” the soldier replies, staring at Suit as though he has lost his mind.
“Oh, uh...right. See you later, then.”
“Later. Like two hours from now, when it’s time to transfer the prisoner back to her cell.”
“Yeah, that. OK. At ease, or...something.”
Finally, the PAPA member leaves, leaving us just outside of the room, and even though I expect at some level for the Suit to simply make a break for it, I am still quite sure that I am being held captive. Until he speaks.
“Um... After you?” He says, making not attempt to grab me or move me.
I look up at him, wondering if he might suddenly turn sadistic if I don’t act like a prisoner.
“What? I... Can get up without getting shouted at?” I ask, noticing that he seems as nervous as I feel.
He just mumbles “Sure, I...guess?”
So I stand, without shackles holding me down for the first time in what must be a day or two, and step off the cart edge, my wings drifting open to carry me in a gentle glide to the floor, where I am immediately struck by an almost sickening scent of some sort of cheap fast food.
Once I’m back in Equestria, I’m definitely going on a few week long healthfood kick. Well, if I make it back to Equestria.
The room I have entered is just big enough for one table, a few plugs where a vending machine and fridge once were, and some cabinets that are now locked shut. There is a window on the wall that separates us from the hallway, and the mirrored coating is peeling a little at the edges. Though the sheen I can see a little red dot, glowing like an eye.
I move to the chair furthest away from the little red dot, facing it. On the table are the things that the Suit had requested, including a two way radio, which I take in my hooves, watching him close the door.
Then he locks it, and uses the other chair to wedge the door shut.
I don’t want to die today. My friends need me.
He turns around and faces me, face locked into an expression of terror.
“Could...could I please have the transmitter? I’ve been trying to get my hands on one of them for three months now, and this was the only way I could think of!”
I feel a twinge of pain in my chest as I keep myself from reacting, still cradling the device as I watch him calmly. “No. I don’t care what you’ve been through, your plan could not possibly succeed. I don’t want to die here. I have friends who I value more than I value your life or my own. My ability to help them depends on figuring out what is going on, and you aren’t going to get us shot in some escape attempt. Why don’t you sit down and play doctor, doctor.”
I feel like I am telling someone to jump off a bridge, but I know there’s no way an escape plan would work. It’s insanity.
He almost collapses to the floor, head between his knees, body quivering.
“Fine. Do...do whatever. But please, I’ve got to get out of here before they make me hurt anybody else.”
I recoil a bit, wondering just how sinister the Suit really is, despite his current state, if he has been hurting people.
“Hurt... anybody else? Who have you hurt?” I ask, not really wanting to know, but unable to stop myself from asking.
Then he begins to cry. He is shivering and his voice is choked off and wet.
“I see their eyes at night. I...I’m so weak! Why can’t I fight back? Why can’t I...end it all. Put this awful tool out of their hands once and for all.”
I can’t stand by. The radio goes back on the table, and I move closer, concern overriding my fear. “No... No don’t talk like that...” I whisper. “Please, we can make it, together,” I insist, draping a wing over his back, trying my best to comfort the poor man.
He doesn’t seem to be affected. “I’m a freak! That’s what they always told me, growing up. I didn’t want to believe them, but it’s true. I can see things...do things, that no normal person should be able to do. Should be allowed to do.”
Though the subject is odd, I recognize the words being used, the tone. These are the words of someone who has given up. Someone who wants to end their life. I’m not strong enough to save his life, he needs help...
But there’s no help to go get. There’s no helpline to call.
“It doesn’t matter. You need to persevere. You can use any... difference for good. Please don’t give up.”
He seems shocked, surprised that I am so passionately supporting him, which sort of surprises me as well, that I would go from one extreme to another so quickly, but I don’t feel there is a choice.
The room is quiet as he thinks about what I have said, and I sit back, letting him have his space.
“I...never thought…” There’s another pause, as he gathers his thoughts. “To build instead of to destroy...but no. Surely, they’ll catch me. I… I don’t know what to do,” he admits with a sigh.
“You have to have hope,” I smile, thinking of my friends, the possibility of seeing them again giving me strength, and the optimism to carry on. I’m beyond that closet in an abandoned house, and I am wiser than the mare who lashed out viciously in an escape attempt, but I am not oblivious.
That red dot is still firmly present behind the shining mirror.
But I can’t give up.
“You just have to have hope that things will work out, that there will be an opportunity for everything to end happily, instead of...” I hesitate as I think of what would happen if he were to try to escape, yet maybe trying to escape will move things forward, open up an avenue for progress... Yet if he knew, then he would think I am using him. “A bloodbath, or a suicide.”
He seems to look at me with a bit of inspired strength, a little determination to his voice.
“I need to fix what I have done,” he says as he looks down, the words directed mostly to himself. “But I can only go into one mind at a time. Where did they move the colts after processing?”
My thoughts stop.
He said “Go into one mind at a time.” In a way that would imply a supernatural ability to explore the consciousness.
A deep seated fear of both sides of me surfaces, that I am secretly destructive, that I hurt those around me, a danger to the health and safety of every pony and human I meet, a mental time bomb with an unknown trigger.
He could prove this wrong or right.
I have trouble speaking, articulating my thoughts without stammering.
“Wait, what are you... That is your power, you can enter ponies minds?” I ask, trying not to show just how eager I am.
He looks up to me with puffy red eyes, and I start to second guess this desire.
“I told you I was a freak. And it’s not just ponies. Or maybe it’s not ponies at all, but only human minds. I haven’t dared use it on an animal--I’m afraid that if I do I may never make it back out again,” he explains hesitantly.
“No, no it’s okay. This is a gift.” I hugs him a little closer, trying to hold him but also trying to hide the look of confusion and conflicted eagerness on my face.
“You’ve been given a way to heal the sick... in a way noone else ever could, I...” The cosmic chance that somehow provided this man with an ability to walk through the brain, and the same crazy odds that would put us in the same room, and plant in me a craving to be validated, those are not the odds that should be taken lightly. I hesitate, deciding that I cannot just ask him, it’s not what should happen.
“No... You have such guilt... You don’t need all this. Who were you planning on calling with the radio?” I ask, stepping away and looking back at that red dot, the recording video camera. Let us see if it is attended. If it is, and they can get through that door in time to stop me, then this should be enough to spur them into action.
“The police? The army? Whoever I could find, frankly. Surely this isn’t legal. They told me they were the government when they picked me up, but that’s obviously a lie. They’re just building their own private army out of unicorns and pegasi.” He laughs derisively. “It’s stupid really. A bunch of kids--how could they possibly think they could succeed?”
“Strength in numbers, throw enough expendable troops at a target...” I shudder, as I walk towards the table that holds the radio. The door should be rattled and yelling should be heard by now. They should be watching their secret weapon fall apart with great concern, but there’s something not quite right.
I get back up on my seat, and pick up the device.
They might just be waiting, but why? Why would they wait?
I turn the radio on, glancing up at the window again, my waiting taken as hesitation. The suit gets up and starts tuning the signal for me, this hiss of static moving through a foreign language conversation, and finding some sort of remixed pony song, it sounds like Rarity.
“You find the weirdest things at 1 in the morning,” he says as I smile a little.
Then we start scanning through channels again. Before too long we run across some truckers talking. Something about getting pulled over by a police officer last week.
“Stop.” I say, once I hear them speaking. “Let me talk, they should be sympathetic to a female voice saying she has been kidnapped. No reason to say I am a pony.”
“Alright, Erishy,” the man says, giving me the microphone, seeming to relax a bit. “I’m uh...I’m Nate, by the way.”
“Thank you Nate.”
I look at the button cautiously.
This is it. I am signing my own life away on a gamble.
Because I am making a big gamble with life. This all feels wrong, it feels like there is something big I’m missing. The door is still immobile, they are still watching, but what is the point of all this? Why risk the escape? What could they possibly want from me?
Obviously this is an interrogation, and Nate was supposed to go into my mind, but why not force it to happen? Why not break me just like all of the others...
I press the button.
“H... hello? I need help. I’ve been kidnapped. I’m being held in a farmhouse in a New York City suburb.”
Predictably, they keep talking, not hearing me at all. My first thought is that they must have known he would betray them. Of course they know, so why aren’t they marching in? Why leave him with me at all?
“They disabled the microphone...” I theorize, ripping the covering of the button off with my teeth, before checking the switch. It is making contact. Next I pop open the cover of the radio itself, aided by the fact that the screws were already stripped and nearly falling out.
This is where I see it.
The transmitting dial’s internals have been removed. Rather, a single wire runs across the empty void where it should be.
This device will only ever transmit to one frequency, and of all the equipment I have worked on, this is so far beyond me I don’t even know the terminology to explain it.
They knew.
They knew the entire time that this would happen, so obviously they don’t trust Nate, yet he has been given time alone with me, he only wasn’t allowed to have a gun out of some regulation, and he was on equal standing when this all started...
“No luck.” I lean back against the chair, sighing. “You have that fancy watch of yours? I could try to wire up an antenna, but to be honest I’ve never worked on radio equipment.”
I’m lying of course, there is no way that I could restore this.
There’s no way that I ever could have escaped. Because they have been watching, and now they have decided to act. The door handle is shaken a few times, before several sharp gunshots sound out, punching holes through the doorknob, and spitting chunks of linolium up from the floor and into the wall.
Nate is already moving in front of me, blocking me from the gunfire and the implied danger, but my eyes don’t move from the radio. It would have taken several hours to modify it.
But he had only requested the radio an hour or two ago.
This was all part of the plan. Maybe. But I cannot know for sure.
“Well, well, well,” the dark voice of a hateful man slithers into my ears, and I look up to see him, a massive man in military colors, but unarmed. His smile strongly suggests that he would laugh while choking me to death.
It’s unfortunate for him, that idea doesn’t scare me right now. At this moment, it’s nothing.
“I’ve long suspected it, but I finally have my evidence of disloyalty from our ever-eager mental specialist!” Behind him that first military man who brought me here, along with a second gun toting stereotype, march into the room, scanning between Me and nate.
I don’t know what to do, but I don’t have to do anything, as this leader smirks.
“Kill Hostage 37,” he orders.
“No!” Nate screams angrily, and I decide to make my move. I know what they want, They want me to be altered by Nate’s abilities. Fine. I will let him. I step up onto the table, speaking up.
“I forced him to do it!” I shout, and knowing they have no desire to actually kill me, I continue. “Kill me, I’m the one who is trying to escape. He was trying to stop me.”
He cackles, that stubborn smile plastered on his face. “Oh, this is perfect! My superiors have been trying to keep the two of you apart this entire time, afraid that vaunted ‘Stare’ of yours will counteract Agent Franklin’s Dreamwalking. Now I’ll get to see which one of you truly is the stronger.”
I fall back on my haunches, baffled that they think I would use the Stare on Nate, and also concerned that Nate is called an “agent.”
“I...I won’t do anything you tell me to do anymore,” Nate says, trying to act brave. How much of this is an act? “With her gone…”
“Well, she isn’t dead yet, is she?” he askes, a wicked smile on his lips.
Oh, that’s right. They might not just kill me, they might just torture me for a for hours. That’s not something I would pick over having my brain melt out of my ears. At least one of those lets me not take responsibility for my future actions, and in some way I prefer that idea, take a dream and never wake up...
Nate keeps shouting back, whether it is an act or not, it is enough. “Forget it!”
“Do it Nate.” I finally speak up, staring down the bald military man, hoping that I at least make him sweat. “If this is what they want, then do it. You’re just following orders.”
“I…” Before looking at me, Nate looks down to the ground. He looks defeated. He looks like he is tired and has given up, and maybe, just maybe he looks like he is at least trying to be honest with me. I smile a little as I meet his gaze.
I imagine that I am standing on the edge of a bridge, wings bound, and I am about to jump. It doesn’t matter how I scream at my captor, it doesn’t matter if I make him feel bad. It only matters for this short moment how I feel.
I’ve always wanted to die smiling.
I close my eyes, and take a deep breath, laying down as far as I know to be murdered in such an insidious way that I will not even know that I am dead.
I tone out the noise of their speech, the sound of the room, and I let myself relax.
I am picked up, limp and breathing slowly, and laid down on something soft and warm, and there is a prick on my foreleg.
Then I forget to remember.