"A trap? YOUR TRAP?" I yelled. "You mean you placed those bloody modifiers there deliberately?"
Immediately before me stood the blonde haired, black skinned... creature... that had set the traps into which I had fallen: the traps that had robbed me of my old life, converted me into a Hellite, and necessitated me fleeing down to these lower levels. I lifted my right forehoof a little, reaching for the virtual trigger of my inbuilt weapon system, feeling the pistol form around my hoof.
"Yes," the mare in front of me answered without really thinking, taking a step back when I raised the weapon to the height of her face.
She had no chance to dodge as I pulled the trigger repeatedly. With each pull of the trigger I felt better. What annoyance I had felt evaporated, leaving me calmer and more in control of myself. So this gun thing could also serve as stress relief? Good stuff. All the same, shooting others to relieve stress was a tad... excessive? immoral? Whatever. Shooting others was a bad idea, whatever the reason.
The mare was still standing in front of me, colored, luminescent gasses swirling around her face, which bore an expression that was a cross between puzzlement and fear. She blinked a few times. "Huh?" she said quietly. "What did you do to me?"
"Startled you, I think," I responded. "That stuff's harmless."
"Then why?"
"If you had any idea of the hell you have put me through, of how much pain I have been forced to endure, of how many times I have nearly died thanks to your traps, you would be apologizing, and thanking me for not shooting you with something more substantial," I said, making a show of pretending to put the weapon in my saddle bag. She hadn't seen me form it, so there was no need for me to give away its secret this early. "Fortunately for all involved, the only 'ammunition' I packed was so I could shoot pretty lights for my own amusement," I added. Hey, it was true! Spells couldn't be packed!
"I still don't understand how that little exposure could have converted you," the Hellite said, lamely.
"It wasn't my first encounter with the modifiers. I ran into them a few days earlier and was already half converted by the time you found me. I took a few good breaths of them that day too, before I got my mask on, as well as staying in the cloud for some time while I investigated things," I explained. "I doubt my mask was a perfect fit, so I probably sucked in even more of the little buggers then. They probably managed to attack me via every exposed mucus membrane too. Now, before I really do decide to get violent, and give you a good slapping, kindly explain why you set traps in the first place."
"Oh, all right," she answered, sitting before me. "It's kind of a long story, and it is about survival of our kind. Oh, and I'm sorry."
I sat down myself, using my recently discarded clothing as a convenient cushion on the cold floor. I dug out my water bottle and took a sip. "Go on. What were you trying to achieve by setting traps?"
"I was trying to catch a stallion," the mare stated, bashfully.
"We do that all the time, but find feminine charms work better than a cloud of modifiers," I retorted.
"That's okay for you, but there aren't many Hellite stallions down here. We have to make new stallions when we need them. Oh, I suppose it is your problem now too," she replied. "And it's getting a bit desperate. We haven't caught one in quite a few years. Most of them escape and don't come back." No doubt they escaped straight into the clutches of Central and got vaporized, despite any warnings the Hellites gave them.
"They would all be dead. Hellites don't survive up there for very long. Central hunts them down and kills them," I stated, "which is why I am down here now. They were going to vaporize me, but I escaped."
"Oh, that's horrible! That makes me feel really rotten," the mare confessed. "We were always told to stay out of sight when we were up there, and not to get caught. I knew it was dangerous it was for us, but I didn't realize they actually hunted us."
"Yeah, it's rotten, but what you were doing is just as bad. Kidnapping is just wrong, no matter the reason. How many have you caught?" I asked.
"Me? Just you, it seems. I was just on my way up to try again. It was my assigned task and I failed last time."
"I suggest you find an alternative. Seriously, what of the colts born down here?" I asked. "Even if a few of you have to share a stallion, it could be made to work."
The Hellite mare immediately rose to her feet, and turned on the spot, lifting her tail as her nether regions shifted into view. She finished turning and settled to the floor again.
"What was that about?" I asked. I wasn't used to mares randomly showing me their private parts.
"I'm a boy," she stated, despite her obviously feminine attributes.
"You look like a mare to me, right down to the plumbing," I insisted.
"True, but I don't have all of the required equipment. I may look female, by I have the male karyotype."
"Huh? The male what?" I asked.
"My chromosomes are those of a male, but due to genetic tampering, male hormones have zero effect on me, so my body appears to be female," she explained.
"So why claim to be male?" I asked.
"Because I am not really a female. I am sterile. I have no uterus. I still have testes, hidden inside me." Ugh. Genetic abnormalities. I had read about this extremely rare condition in biology class: complete androgen insensitivity syndrome.
"Oh, that sucks," I managed.
"All of our males have been born like that since the bastards up above modifier bombed us," the Hellite stated. So much for 'extremely rare'.
"When was that?" I asked. I had no doubt she was telling the truth. Or should I be calling her a him?
"Oh, at the time of the extermination." I mentally moved the extermination from breezie tale with some anecdotal evidence to most likely a fact. Oh, what a wonderful place Habitat Eleven was. The ponies in power were using all sorts of nasty methods to wipe out who they didn't want in their society. Were they justified in doing so? I didn't think so. Did they think they were justified in doing so? My conversations with 4J2 suggested they thought they were.
"I was a victim of that sort of modifier too, although it didn't mess up my gender. It messed up my horn instead," I stated.
"We have that modifier down here too. As for your horn, what happened to it? It looks a lot better than last time I saw you."
"It was fixed by a couple of mad geniuses. Hey, speaking of that pair of reprobates, that gives me an idea," I bubbled, "but first, I have an annoying itch in my mind that needs scratching."
"So scratch it."
"What's your name?" I asked, "And do you prefer to be addressed as he or she?"
"Oh, that sort of itch? It doesn't really matter, does it? Mostly ponies call me she because I look like a girl. I was brought up as a girl. It wasn't until puberty didn't hit that we realized. Some of the males just call us those things."
"So, what do you do for partners, or do you just live alone?"
"Oh, rub it in, why don't you." She game me a dirty look. "Usually, neither females or males want anything to do with us, as we are of no use procreating. Mostly we live with others of our type. We are considered expendable too, so no one really wants to start a serious relationship with one of us."
"Expendable?" I queried.
"We are usually given the more dangerous tasks, as our demise does not reduce the gene pool, thus why I was given the task of trapping a male."
"That's pretty rotten," I muttered. Sure, I had taken on a lot of dangerous tasks as part of my profession, but that was because I had chosen to. "And what's your name?"
"Catwalk Runner," she said quietly. "It's a stupid name, but they gave it to me because I liked zipping around, even when I was a foal. Most just call me Cacha. And you?"
"Aneki," I replied.
"What's that mean?" she asked, head tilted.
"I don't know. Big sister, maybe, but that's according to my aunt. I really don't think it means anything. It's just a name," I admitted. I'd never really considered it to have any significant meaning, and my mother was the same. It 'sounded pretty' according to her.
"So what's your idea?" Cacha asked.
"You have Hellite modifiers, right? I mean with you, right now."
She nodded.
"I have, assuming the bastards are still where I left them, a pair of unicorn stallions who want to become Hellites."
"Wow, let's go get them!" Cacha was on her feet immediately. "C'mon."
"I just got down here!" I complained, "but okay, our chances are better the sooner we start upwards."
"What are our chances of finding them?" Cacha asked nervously.
"Well... they have been in the same place for the last twelve hundred years... but I kind of lit a fire under their asses last time I saw them!" I admitted as I climbed to my feet, stuffing my clothing back into my saddlebags.
"Twelve hundred years. You have to be kidding! No pony lives that long!"
"What? aren't you guys meant to be immortal?" I asked.
"Immortal? Hell no. We usually only manage 300 to 400 years before something kills us."
"Is that all? Brainstorm will be disappointed!" In their current pickled condition, they were more immortal than the Hellite! Then again, knowing that pair, they'd work out how to overcome any shortfall.
"Some do live longer, but often they are quite mad because the stray modifiers left from their Hellite conversion eventually stuff something up in their brains. Then there are those that argue we are in fact already dead. We are no longer made of just pony, but a combination of pony and machinery. Even our brains are reworked. Some believe they are now robots, and nothing will convince them otherwise," Cacha expounded. "That doesn't stop 'em having foals though!"
"Strange view. I still think of myself as a pony," I insisted.
"Good," Cacha said. "I may be a sexless freak, but I am a pony!"
"So how old are you, and if all males are born like you..."
"Where did my father come from?" Cacha took the cue. "He was 'recruited' from upstairs about seventy or so years back,"
"Recruited? An earlier trapping expedition?" I asked.
"Yes. Somepony got him with a Hellite modifier bomb, then dragged him down here, where he then fathered several of us over the years. He's one of the rare ones that didn't try to escape. I must have about eighty half-siblings by now. I also have three full sisters, real sisters. Mum's a lot younger than Dad is. I'm only in my twenties."
"Me too," I admitted.
"Oh yeah, while I'm thinking of it, these fellows we are going to fetch are the ones that fixed my horn. They can make new modifiers. Maybe they can undo your damaged genetic code, so at least the next generation won't be affected. It was their intervention that prevented the total erasure of unicorns."
"That would be awesome! I could be some sort of hero instead of a failure!" the mare enthused.
"Well, here's hoping. Have you got any way to get up thirty something levels without using ladders?"
"We could take an elevator once we get through the airlock," Cacha suggested.
"Oh, you have a way of bypassing Central's lockout?" I asked.
"We just use different elevators. There is no need for us to announce our presence! So, where are these stallions of yours exactly?"
"We climb up that ladder I just came down, and keep going. Their lab backs directly onto the service shaft."
"That's convenient. There's an elevator close by. We'll take it," Cacha said.
"But isn't that one decommissioned?" I asked, thinking of the very dead looking elevator with the doors welded shut.
"It's been blocked off on the first twenty or so floors, so ponies from above can't really use it. It is great for us though."
We began climbing as soon as we reached the ladder that went though the giant tank. That reminded me, I had so many questions to ask about this place, yet here I was, leaving almost immediately I had arrived. It seemed Cacha had as many questions as me though!
"How did these stallions live to be so old?" she asked.
"They were welded into their lab twelve hundred years ago by ponies who were afraid of their ability to make modifiers. Having no chance of escape, and little of survival, they put themselves into some sort of life preservation tank where they have been alternating between very long sleeps and short periods of alertness where they do things around their lab using remote equipment," I explained.
"So how do..."
I cut Cacha off. "My turn. What is this giant tank thing we are passing through at the moment?"
"Oh, that's the water jacket. It surrounds the whole of the life support chamber. Pipes also go up through the middle of the chamber where they spread out under the ground level radiator. It's how the system stabilizes the temperature in the life support chamber," Cacha explained.
"Ground level radiator?" I asked.
"A huge lattice that covers the whole of the ground level. There's a roadway built on top of it."
"Ah, the Mane Way!" I realized. "Not that it feels particularly warm or anything."
"Of course not. Any difference between its temperature and that of the air is minimal if the system is balanced," Cacha pointed out. "The water jacket is there to provide the thermal inertia. It is, of course, heavily insulated on the outside, so we don't get much benefit from it down here. We were never meant to live down here in the first place!"
I contemplated the Mane Way and was wondering why I hadn't encountered this radiator and its pipes in connection with my work, before I recalled Central dealt with all maintenance matters where the Mane Way was concerned, including following up anything detected by our sensors. I didn't think it had anything to do with censorship, rather it had to do with the Mane Way always being regarded as an asset that Central was directly responsible for.
"My turn." Cacha stated. "How do you know these fellows really are alive? Did you see them? You said they were in a tank."
"Correct, they were in a tank. I didn't see them, but I certainly... interacted with them. They are the ones who gave me that pistol. They make weapons."
"So you can't be sure they are alive? Could they be some sort of computer or a programmed response matrix made with horns?"
"I don't think so. I got into their heads with a spell and extracted their dialect, so there is something in the tank operating as a pair of brains," I said as we arrived at the top of the ladder. Then again, computers were little more than pony brains, weren't they? My earlier thoughts on Brainstorm returned. What if they were nothing more than a modifier constructed neural network floating in 'pony soup'?
"I hope they are okay," Cacha stated, no doubt having similar thoughts. "As interesting as their brains may be, it's their balls we need."
I nearly choked. After I recovered my breath, I asked my next questions. "Do you know the purpose of Habitat Eleven? Do you know what is outside? What shape is it? Is it spherical?" I fired off in quick succession. Yes, I was cheating.
"The purpose of Habitat Eleven is obviously to preserve the life of ponies," Cacha stated as we entered the airlock. She hit the cycle button, and I immediately felt too warm. Ah! A temperature gradient. My body was compensating for the change, but it wouldn't stabilize until the temperature itself became constant.
"That Habitat Eleven is to preserve the life of ponies is obvious. What I want to know is why it was built. Why do we need such a structure to preserve ponies in the first place?" I asked. Surely she had understood the meaning of my question the first time.
"Stuffed if I know. Anypony who had that knowledge was killed during the extermination. That goes for what is outside the outer envelope too. It's supposedly nothing, but obviously it can't be nothing because there must be other habitats out there somewhere. Yes, the outer envelope is a giant sphere. And that was more than one question."
"So, I cheated," I admitted. Damn. I hadn't expected the Hellites to be as clueless about H'ven as the ponies in the life support chamber. So much for getting easy answers. Hey! I was right, the outer envelope was a sphere!
"That's okay. I'll save my other questions up for later," Cacha said. "You seem to have an enquiring mind. When we go back down to the lower levels, I'll give you a tour. There are sections we don't know enough about. We have our theories, but I'd like to see what you deduce before we pollute your mind with our conclusions."
"Interesting," I stated.
"If you really want to, we can sneak off into the restricted areas too. No pony has been allowed in those areas in years because they were deemed too dangerous, even for us expendables. Either they don't want us to know what is in there, or there is simply nothing in there worth risking injury or life over," Cacha explained.
"What about repairs?" I asked. It was starting to sound like these Hellites weren't doing much in the way of maintaining this place, despite what Crimson Garnet and I had figured.
"Oh, we repair what we can, or more to the point, what we need to. We don't want the systems to fail and kill us, after all."
"What about the ponies up in the H'ven dome?" I asked.
"The what?"
"Oh, in the life support chamber? Do you repair their systems too?"
"Of course! A lot of the systems are the same systems. The critical systems that are unique to them we have to sneak up and fix when we must. System balance must be maintained! If it failed, how many innocent ponies would die?"
"I saw dead systems when I was up there. There is a Celestial Body Simulator Emergency Control Room next to Brainstorm's lab, and it's nonfunctional. There is no simulated sun in the sky of the dome, so the main system must also have problems," I offered.
"Oh, that's where we are going? I know that place. All the doors are welded up, aren't they? That's part of why we haven't bothered servicing whatever is inside. Besides, that system is purely cosmetic. I isn't as if there are enough of us to waste our time fixing non-critical junk like that. If the sky went completely dark, then we might do something about it. Even then, it would just be to restore the general lighting, and not the theatrics," Cacha said.
"So what do you think about the ponies who live up there?" I asked.
"I tried to save you, didn't I? We realize that it isn't the individual pony, or even the masses that are our enemy. It's the institution. It is Central, and whoever or whatever are a part of it. Mostly it is their ingrained philosophy, and that goes back to before the extermination. Some nutty asshole with a lot of charisma and power decided he didn't like us because we were not pure or some such nonsense, and because he was such a moron, he failed to understand that he was killing off the very ponies that kept them alive."
"I don't understand how such a situation could arise. Surely the populous knew?"
"Did you know?" Cacha asked. "I mean before you became one of us, did you know?"
"No, I didn't," I admitted.
"We think some sort of worship or religion was involved. Our guess is that knowledge was considered 'evil', and was systematically purged from the life support chamber. Anything that wasn't deemed as correct or acceptable by their leader was destroyed, and that included libraries, storage media, even the signs on the doors. And of course, ponies. The compliant ones were brainwashed. The others were eradicated, sometimes quickly, by their death squads, and sometimes by genetic tampering like they tried to do with us."
"It's not like that now," I commented, thinking back to my relatively unrestricted lifestyle, and the absence of death squads.
"Isn't it?" Cacha asked. Her tone suggested I should know better.
She had a point. The populous were already suppressed. I was an aberration. The reason I had not been curtailed was I was useful, and the visible aspect of my aberration, a desire to run and jump, was apparently harmless. Had they realized I also thought about and questioned what I was taught, then the situation may have been very different.