There was nothing to be seen.
Nothing that could be seen.
He tried to argue. It did not bend to him. He would watch, he would twist himself and bleed out of his eyes, but he would watch. It was important.
For now, it was a shapeful void of dark semi-shapes that lumbered in the distance and gave out a spasmatic toxic stench. They knocked and knocked. They shuffled and dragged. What was of him that looked at the images from beyond reality could not possibly begin to comprehend the workings of it. His being itself was not built to compress this kind of image. He knew he was lucky to see as much as he did.
The Orb gave out a roar as it settled down in temporary defeat. If not even he could see all of it, then it would make him. Not now, however. His trace was beginning to fade.
It was time to return. Essence became flesh again, and he felt the damp stone of the chamber, the choking winds replaced by the odour of decaying bodies and fresh vomit. The tunnel was no more, the light was no more. The Orb itself seemed to be no more, but he knew better, he felt it now. The greyish light shone closer now. He was given a better purpose.
He had something to fix.
- Detective?.. Detective?! Lt., what just happened? Where did you—
Outside of the system.
---
He did not expect to wake up, he really did not. That had to have been it. An end to the insanity, whatever it was. It did not matter, not when he had his skull crushed through. There was no pain, there were no thoughts, there was no world gone wrong. There was only whatever was left of the afterlife, if there ever was one.
His fully intact and breathing body seemed to disagree.
“Nothing is wrong.”
With little space for external thought, he ran a check of limbs and insides. Everything was in place. Much like the other times he thought he was dead, he appeared to be entirely alive.
This time, the problem was that there was no explanation for how that could possibly come to be. No lucky fall, no lucky existence shift, no freak coincidence. Yes, the world made no sense anymore, yes, the laws of physics stepped down in favor of reality-bending Errors, and yes, everything around him would shift on a whim, but he just had a huge metal spike run right through his head, piercing his left eye and crushing the cranium along with the brain.
He had no business lying down on something soft, seemingly devoid of not only a gaping hole in his head, but also the numerous bruises and cuts he had sustained over his time in there. The vest was still on, and he could feel some form of faint light touching his tightly shut eyelids.
“Nothing is wrong.”
As his consciousness returned from wherever it stored itself for when he blacked out, he had begun to realize that whatever caused this could not possibly have been any good. A possible best case scenario was that all of it was, in the end, just a dream, and he merely woke up - and even that would signify at least a dozen of mental disorders. The other best case scenario was that it was, once again, a death dream, in which case he was dead. Somehow he struggled to think which of these was better.
“You’ll carry on. Good.”
That proved to be irrelevant, as something much less desired made him realize that this was no best case scenario.
- HEllo?
“Nothing is wrong nothing is wrong nothing is wrong nothing is wrong nothing is wrong nothing is wrong”
- aRE yoU -
He recognized that wretched sound. It was one of the Errors. The memories, painful as ever, drilled their way through his head again, and started to form a very conflicting realization.
- alRIght?
There was nowhere to go, it was close. His body was awake enough to recognize what used to be slight tingling as the desire to jump out of its skin, curl into a ball and hurl out intestines.
- pleASE answER itis difficult
He tried to jump out and run away, but was immediately betrayed by the massive migraine that went over him as he shot up from what seemed to be a bed. Naturally, the sickness had decided to stay, even though all other damage to his body was no more. He tumbled onto the floor and felt the cold touch of dry stone.
- I’m sOrry I I I I frighten very diffiCULT
One last attempt at escape was thwarted in what felt like the most shameful way possible - he got himself tangled up in the blanket, his head ripping apart and his lungs pumping out blood for him to cough. He was curled up in front of a non-thing that broke reality by every second of its existence. The spike through the eye seemed like the superior choice.
“Nothing is wrong.”
Of course, that was not considering the realization that had been forming in the minute that passed since he breathed again.
This was an Error, yes. Not just an Error - there was never just an Error, no, they were all different. This was a particular one. He recognized the distorted sounds and noises it was emanating.
- pLEase I cAnt see
Each of the Errors had a particular… sound-set, of sorts. Having encountered as many as five by that point, Fixer was able to recognize their “voices”. Those that he had dispatched stayed in his memory as well, as it unmercifully refused to discard the blood-curdling distorted half-sentences they would form.
The light blue one, the one that pursued him still, used a gruff, raspy, yet still feminine voice as the base for its screams. The dark blue one, the first one off the list, had a languid tone to its. The orange one, the one that herded him like an animal, had a hint of an accent in what its botched noises put out. The pink one, the debilitated thing from just a while before, seemed to have a naturally high pitch to what it used for its gurgles and muffled screams.
This was the yellow one. The one that he had barely seen at all. He was yet to open his eyes, dreading the experience, but he could tell that it was the yellow one. Soft, hushed tones, preserved even in the twisted transistor that the Errors used to vocalize.
The only times he remembered having seen or heard it were when his life was in direct danger, and always then inexplicably saved - be it through warning or through what he still could not explain. He could not count it as a coincidence anymore.
That thing was helping him.
- What, - the unicorn backed off to what felt like a stone wall, and faced, eyes shut, the source of the gut-wrenching feeling, - what are you?
A frightening moment came when the Error made a noise that he could only interpret as a sigh of relief. Very jumbled, ran through pitches and tones, but still audible. He did not want to consider the fact that the Errors understood him. He did not want to comprehend the fact that they had understandable intelligence. And yet, he had to suffer more blows to that desire.
- I am a FRIeND.
---
This was wrong.
He twitched in the bed, his cold sweat drenching the sheets. It hit another peak, almost depriving him of all senses but blurred, muffled hearing. That, and pain.
That was not what was wrong.
What was wrong was how she was still there. The others would leave if his condition got even half as bad. It did so, regularly, and perhaps mercifully, as his hatred for their sheer existance was even more debilitating than the sickness he was shackled with. This time was worse than before, though, but she did not leave.
He still could not understand why she kept coming. The others did so more as a sort of twisted courtesy, and then would thankfully go to run their putrid errands. This one, however, seemed intent to spend as much time near him as he coughed out dark ichor and convulsed in agony, his mind being ripped to shreds with the shuffling and the knocking of a world done right.
What was her angle in all this? He tried to come to any sort of logical conclusion, but nothing made sense. She would spend hours tending to someone revoltingly sick, someone whom she did not know, and someone who she knew may just have had something against her and the rest. That was pointless. Even the theory that she was the one sent to make nice with him - so that they may get around his pretense amnesia - fell apart when the others started to argue with her about what she was doing. They were not putting on a show, they were genuinuely as confused as he was.
That was wrong.
Something was wrong with her, on an even deeper level than the others.
The jagged pieces snapped through his veins yet again, and impaled the shivering lungs, sending him into a near-silent coughing fit. As the sound of turning gears filled his head, he began to recite his mantra to keep himself sane.
“Nothing is wrong. Nothing is wrong. Nothing is wrong. Nothing is wrong.”
Something soft and gentle pressed against his chest, tenderly gliding over it in what felt like an attempt to soothe the pain. He could barely distinguish it, but the soft, hushed voice hummed in an almost caring tone. The ripping and tearing stopped, and he was left to lax, only able to breathe heavily, with pain. The gentle feeling went to around his neck, and for a few seconds the top part of his body felt warm - as opposed to the scalding hot temperature it was enduring from the fever.
Maybe, nothing was wrong.
His eyes sharpened and grew wide, still shut tight. He took a second to realize what just went through his head.
He had found the problem.
---
Fixer stood in place, static, safe for the occasional twitching his limbs fell victim to, unable to keep control of themselves without the overworked mind’s assistance.
It was busy processing what was just said.
- I am vERY soRry I try
The Error was talking to him. Actually replying to what he was saying. It comprehended his simple language, and spat out bits and pieces of sounds to make a reply. Its sentience stretched to his lowly level.
Better yet, it was on his side.
He took what lasted like whole minutes to accept that fact as a reality. Then, he felt he had to make sure anyway.
- Do you… understand me?
- YEs.
- What… the fuck… is going on, - was a stupid question to ask. He cared little about that - he was glad he still had control of his speech in light of how his head felt like an overcrowded workshop.
- I don’T know.
“Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Nothing is wrong.”
“Nothing is wrong.”
- Can I… open my eyes? - he asked her, defying most of his own stances on sanity, - I’m… I can’t look at you for long.
- I unDersTand. Wait.
The unicorn kept taking deep breaths and exhaling slowly, the sickness in a low enough period to allow him to do so. He already knew what he would have seen should he have opened his eyes prior to that - a screaming amalgamation of colors, pictures and everything that was wrong with the world, plastered over every bit of the room. He felt it with his skin, and even had the writhing sensation reach the outsides of his eyelids, notifying him of the horror beyond. This Error was spreading it, he could feel it. The wrongness in it and the surroundings was very similar.
It was curious, to say the least, when it started to become apparent that there was less and less of it with every second.
- you caN open yoUr eyes. iT is sAfe. SorrY.
Damning himself for even considering the motion, he did so. The voice was coming from behind him now. And the surroundings felt… normal. Dry, old, dusty, abandoned, dead. Describable. Normal.
- I… - he stared at the chamber, dancing shadows still on his eyes from how long and how tight his eyes were shut, - thanks.
“I just thanked an Error.”
“There are worse things to do with one, I suppose.”
- aRe yoU feEling okay? I worRy.
- I, uh, - Fixer continued to examine his surroundings, weakly stepping away from what served him as a bed, - I’ll… live. What did you do to me?
That was just one of the very many questions he had regarding the situation. Naturally, he chose the most blunt way to phrase it, his throat revolting against the idea of letting the words out. It may not have been the best to treat something this complex this way, but he was glad his mouth still moved at all.
- I I I I I I diff ficc Iworry I very HArD I aM SoRRY
The painful screeching emerged at the back of his head as the world started to flash colors that neared undescribability. At the very least, his assumption regarding the statement’s propriety turned out to be correct - unfortunately, it did not feel like politeness could solve the issue.
He leapt over his previous place of residence via reflex, and crouched tightly. Everything shuddered, the blinking and flashing gliding over nearly all surfaces. Curiously, that was safe for where he found refuge. As the Error emanated what he could only describe as a disturbing attempt to cry, he tried to keep his sanity intact by checking off the question of his current location, the small corner left unchecked or forgone by the forms and shapes that screamed in the air.
- I am sO sOrrY no oTHer wAY
It was the morgue.
- I shoUld donE thIs mysElf but TOO WEAK
The precinct morgue. He had been there many times. Memories started to drill in as he looked at the empty cadaver carts and the perpetually abandoned equipment tables. Granted, they were devoid of actual medical equipment, instead littered with shards of glass and what looked like scrunched papers covered in stains of some dark liquid. It was cold in its dim light, and a slight chill ran down his spine, exiting him in a cloudy breath.
- so sOrrY but LittLe time PleaSe listen aRe you liSTening?
While Fixer looked towards the dark staircase that looked like it lead up to where the auxillary corridors used to be in the precinct, he struggled to keep his eyes open - the flashes and screeches had begun to take proper shape. They felt even more the same as the weeping Error, and emitted a faint yellow light. In a sense, they may have been its offspring or companions - incomplete, unfinished and not nearly as big as the main one, they faded in and out of existance, fluttering around with the desperation of birds whose nest caught fire.
Some took to the air, swirling around the defunct lamps, while some neared the ground, pouncing and leaping to and fro. They had different shapes, but discerning them was extremely taxing, as not only would they only fade in for but a few seconds before fading out, but also shared the Error’s main characteristic - they were wrong to the core, and even looking at them felt like taking a hacksaw to the skull.
In all that, the best choice coincided with the most outrageously logic-defying one.
He had to keep talking to it.
- I am! - the unicorn screamed out, trying to overpower the omnipresent noises, - I am listening!
To his major dismay, as soon as he replied, the chaos took a surprising low, and the flashes turned into flickers, shapes becoming mere dots before him. The incoherent struggling sounds the Error had been making throughout the whole ordeal calmed down, and again it uttered the same sigh of relief. The conversation between a mortal and an Error continued.
- good pleaSe uNDerstAnd itIS veRy diFFICult to tAlk, we nEed to bE quiCK.
- Okay! - it was devastatingly difficult to try and keep a proper tone, as half of his brain threatened to shut down if he continued what he was doing, - What do you want to say? I am listening to you, I’m right here!
- I am trYing to hELp you. yOu can fiX thIS oNly you I hAD to brING yoU back I canT do It aGAIN she wIll find me.
He sat still, pressing his temples. Deciphering the Error’s speech was a very difficult task, not only because it spoke in shreds of words that belonged to a world now past, but also because the notion that it was saying something that needed to be processed still seemed painfully atrocious to his mind.
He also did not like what it was trying to say.
- She? Who’s “she”?
- I dOnt KnoW I am afRAid pleaSE onLY you cAn Help.
- How? What do I do? Where do I go?
Fixer would rather lie down and smash his head against the cold hard floor till his cranium cracked apart. And yet, he asked the Error for advice.
- gO fuRthEr on aND keEP doIng whaT you WEre it HURts but theY are bettER now please
- They? - the other Errors, he realized, - Do you know them? Why are they here? What… what are all of you?
He scolded himself internally for being unable to keep a stable hold on his mouth. Not under any circumstances should he have asked her more than she was going to tell, but still, his internal curiosity went far beyond the limits of proper rationale.
- They… We… We doNT ReMeMbER.
The silence and calm that followed his question and the answer to it frightened Fixer. They could not have meant anything good. The stinging feeling in his head rushed on again, and he realized that from that point, what he said would have made little impact.
So he kept speaking, having had his rational thinking leave the reins of speech unattended.
- I… I am sorry, - the unicorn gulped, feeling the Error’s bludgeoned radiance pulsate incohrenetly behind him, - I will fix this. I will fix all of this. Everything will be fine.
- PleAsE… It iS awFuL. I wANt iT toBE oVer.
- I… so do I.
- I I I I I I diff ficc I worry I I did nOT hELP ENOUGH I need to I aM SoRRY
- I need to go too.
He stood up. He was going to.
- I I I sHe Will fIND mE I couldnT heLP PLEASE I AM
- She won’t.
The Shard felt so right, back in his grip. He would hold on to it for all eternity if he could.
- I I I plEaSE veRy difficUlt to tAlk I cant
Yellow. Weak yellow. Strings of rosetta.
- plEASE wHY I want tO
A small critter. A bright sky, crossed over by a window. A blood and sweat-stained bed. A blur of pain. A bottle of pills. The same faces. The same places. A horrible mixture of colors. A ray of hope.
- I am soRry I please just NOw
“Two to go.”
And so he collapsed onto the tray, aiming to pierce himself with the treasured shard, so that they may be together in blackness.
Naturally, it escaped him yet again.
---
Senseless.
That was the problem - she was senseless.
It fit in perfectly. The others took on something sensible that built up this joke of a world, but this one went further. She combined all of that, and got a blank, pointless sheet as a result.
Her actions did not make sense. They did not add up. Her existence was pointless, meaningless, and still she existed, and reaped all the fruits of privilege. The others revered and protected her as if there was any sliver of reason for her to exist. The puppet doctors even let her stay with a dangerously sick patient, all because it was her and not someone else - she was not even part of the staff. No, she did not make sense. Her sole being made the world make less sense.
She never had to embody any of the glaring underlying issues. She was just the perfect blanket for them to shape up and stand as the pillars of this broken world, because nothing would ever have to make sense.
That was no more.
He limped off, having lost control of his hind leg. He had very little time, the Orb was already getting started with the process.
The unicorn paid the corpse one last look. Slouched against a chair, she was surrounded by her fluttering critters that wailed and cried as their owned did not move.
Not even when they pecked out her punctured eye.
She still wanted to help him.
---
He awoke when he realized that he was bashing his head against the wall. Giving the action a second of now conscious thought, he proceeded, meeting the yet unstained concrete wall and scraping it with his horn.
There was no way to tell how much time had passed, but however long it was, it was not enough for him to deal significant enough bodily harm to himself. That was both a relief and a shame. Fixer was more considering of the latter conclusion.
It was so much better when there were no memories. Now, he could not help but do so. The speeding images burning through his head could not help but leave some of themselves visible, even if they were mostly a blur. So much he tried to hide away and not think of, but he could not do that with all of them.
Some things he just had to face.
Like the corpse that was lying on the tray.
- I killed everything, - Fixer said blandly, delirious from what felt like both phantom pain from his skull being crashed through and the aftermath of having bashed it against the wall.
“Congratulations. Now will you go?”
- I… killed everything, - the unicorn slid his back down the scrape-covered wall and propped himself against the tray. He said the words, but barely understood the meaning behind them. The subconscious came to the conclusion before the main conscious did.
“You have to carry on.”
- I know.
---
- Um… h-hello? Are you… are you alright? Oh, I’m so sorry, I just… I just wanted to check on you. The doctors said that you caught something awful in the forest. You… can’t remember anything?
---
He did not notice when the morgue changed.
What his blurred vision could show him included an eerie scene all over the chamber. The sections and holders used to be empty, looking near sterile, albeit abandoned. Now, they were stocked with corpses.
It would have disturbed him greatly, if not for the pain in his head and the thoughts it contained. As it stood, the overpopulation of the morgue was merely a curious fact that he only held on to in order to keep them in check.
Rising weakly from where he sat, Fixer nearly threw up, the inner imbalance and severe headache joining in with the sickness. It was not gone, not at all. Provided that his death and reformation were not an errant fever dream, - which he gladly would believe if he could - they were not perfect. Whereas he lacked the injuries he had sustained on his way there, the fever had remained. The shreds of logic his bleeding mind mustered together were coming to the conclusion that it was not at all a normal sickness, but something much worse instead. That fact was beginning to frighten him more and more as his head started to clear up.
---
- Please, I want you to understand how sorry I… we all are, for what happened to you. They might now show it, but they are concerned about you, they really are… I… I don’t know. It’s very difficult on all of us. But, please… please, don’t give up. Alright?
---
There was no exit that he could find. Even as his mind did the logical thing and shut off whichever part was responsible for the thoughts about his memories, there was nothing to be found. The stairway that seemed to lead up just went up until it took a logic-defying turn and became spiral, ramming into the solid ceiling, covered up by some dark cloth. Nothing else Fixer tried seemed to even hint at an exit.
It was a little funny. He wakes in a morgue after having thought himself dead, only to be locked there forever.
Unfortunately, he knew full well that the humor was likely inapplicable, as the sheer nature of the world would not have it that one place stay stagnant for long. Granted, he already did gain some company in the form of the numerous corpses, but that was not going to be the last change.
It was much more likely that yet another disaster would simply send him running for his life. Again.
---
- I just wish you could answer me. It must be so difficult to talk when it’s like… this, but I just want to hear you say something. I… I… nevermind me. I’m sorry. I wish I could help more.
---
He walked among the dead, and wished he never fought back. Every single face recoiled painfully in his comatose memory, and for every one he remembered a failure. These… he had seen them before.
They were in the ‘forest’. It felt so long ago now, but the events still stood fresh before him, the delirious climb through a sea of corpses towards the heaven-forsaken Orb. These were the corpses. Now he had nothing to distract him, and saw each and every one of them for who they were. Victims just as well.
Ignorance, reluctance, brutality. They all died to that. He remembered filing reports on one killing after another, and with each and every one, something died deep inside. Soon enough, there was nothing left to die.
As he felt the mourning and angst take a rise, sharing their spot with the fever, Fixer realized that that something was there again, and it was actively dying.
---
- What? Wh- what are you doing over here? How did you— Wait, please, wh—
---
He sat in the middle of the room and reduced himself to waiting for the world gone wrong to roar up another obstacle for him to cross. He could almost feel it coming, the tingling in his bones only partly owing to the fever.
It would not leave him to die like this, surrounded by corpses of those that he failed to protect from the world that once was. It would be too simple. Too lenient a death for someone like him, whom this new world seemed to hate furiously.
“A shared sentiment.”
- I know, - Fixer answered half-heartedly, his ears perking up as he realized that the echo had changed.
There was something new in the room. Some space was added - no roars, no flashes, nothing. This time it was silent.
- De- tec- tive.
Or perhaps, he was just too deep in his thoughts to notice it.
Fixer dragged himself off the paper table in the middle of the morgue, which he had been using as a chair for the passed while. His instincts still in place, he mercifully had little more than one thing on his mind, now that he heard those words - he had to run.
- De... thec... thive?
As much pity as he felt for them, he still realized that a death by them would be a painful ordeal - unless he gets lucky, like last time. With the way of death, that is. Any more second chances were probably out of the question. The Error that made him be again was gone. He stepped carefully around the wall that separated him from the staircase, where the steps and voices were heard, and prepared himself to the sight of the lumbering shapes that mumbled his title.
The first thing he saw was a huge hole that consumed most of what used to be a solid wall, and lead into darkness.
- Oh, you f—
The second was each and every one of the Victims.
---
Noone else was good enough, just him. That was not a compliment, that was a sad, damning truth - that someone as miserable as he would be the one chosen to turn this travesty into something great.
Even then, he was not yet fit either. He could not see what it wanted to show him, he could not do what it wanted him to do - the one thing he could do was think the thoughts that it wanted him to, and willingly so.
He needed to be changed. It would be painful, and it would not fare well with any errant thoughts. He would learn to smell his own blood by experience. But it had to be done, and so he agreed.
He laid on the dry soil of Everfree and half laughed-half coughed to himself, catching a glimpse of that thought.
What the hell was in his head?
---
- De- tec- tive!
The Victims stood all around him.
- De- tec- tive.
Each of them. The broken one from the “forest”, still shaking and wheezing, barely standing still. The blinded one from the maze, still carrying the chain Fixer cut him loose from. The one that killed him, completely covered in leather, spikes protruding from nearly every joint in his body, rendering him barely mobile. And with them, every single corpse that laid dead until just a few minutes ago - now they locked him in their shambling, muttering circle.
Primordial panic left Fixer incapable of much thought beyond the capacity to realize the fact that what just happened was technically and realistically impossible. They never came in, they never rose - he saw the corpses in their places seconds before the three came to his attention. They gathered round him within a second. Beyond the initial circle, more of them seemed to appear every time he blinked - those he recognized as the ones that shared the maze prison with the chained one.
Logic said that it was nothing to be surprised about, as few things made sense anymore.
It also said that his time was finally at an end, painful or not.
- De- tec- tive.
They still would not move. They formed a full circle, and then some, to lock him in, but then, they did little more than stare, wheeze and mumble.
After a few seconds of paralysis, Fixer realized that something was off with their behavior. They had no reason to do any of it - just leap at him and tear him to pieces. It was unlikely that they even knew it was him - none of them had eyes of any description. But they were more complex than that.
They were waiting for something. Or someone.
Panting desperately, Fixer nearly fell to his knees as his memory control took a breach at the least opportune time, sending him into a fit of pain and delirium. When he lifted his head, another Victim stood in front of him.
- Detective.
He had never seen this one before. She was nearly intact, and had very little in the way of grotesque devices bolted into her. For all intents and purposes, she was just a dark vanilla mare with a very short grey mane, still donning an official-looking suit, covered in blood and dust, obscuring her slender frame. Blurry square glasses were perched at the root of her snout, obscuring the eyes.
- Detective.
Her mouth barely moved, but still her speech came out more directed than that of the others’.
She should not have been able to speak. There was a huge gaping hole in her neck.
- De… thec… thive?
- De- tec- tive!
- Detective.
Fixer’s eyes widened as the new Victim took a painful lean and looked right at him. This one had eyes - he could see them behind the glasses. Blank and unmoving, they stared right into his as he tried to understand what was going on.
Were they mocking him? Did they call in their superior to judge him, and then pull him apart? If that was the case, he would not blame them. They did not know any better.
And if they did, they would do much worse than that.
- Detective.
The vanilla one’s voice sounded strangely different each time she spoke. Perhaps, this was some language that, because of his failure, was shaped this way. This time, she had an almost commanding tone to her word.
He realized that this was it. The muttering stopped, all noises did - they were preparing himself.
As Fixer accepted the fact that he would never make things right, and merely tried to feel happy at how the end had finally come, he suddenly heard a simultaneous clop.
When nothing followed at all, the unicorn opened his eyes, feeling that if he were to die a final death, he would at least face it.
“So, what is your rationale?”
His jaw threw itself agape.
“What the hell.”
They bowed to him.