Sure enough, there's no way back up the elevator shaft. I don't bother hitting the barrier again, because the last time I did that, I got knocked through the bottom of the elevator like it was made of paper. I've learned my lesson as far as that goes.
“I need to get back up somehow. This clearly isn't the way,” I think aloud. I find that doing that helps me calm down. Frankly, I'm freaked the fuck out because of how I got down here. Something down here canceled out my magic and is now holding me here. It's not the Oppressed, either, so I'm dealing with an unknown enemy.
There's only one way forward, and that's out into the basement level. There has to be another way back up around here somewhere. There are parts of the science building that I've never been to before, so with luck, there will be more elevator shafts, or perhaps a set of stairs.
The elevator doors are still open from when I forced them open several months ago, and I can see a little of the hallways of the basement just outside, through the omnipresent darkness. With a little effort, I hoist myself over the lip and into the hallway.
The moment I leave the elevator, the doors slam shut on their own with an earsplitting screech of metal on metal, scaring the fuck out of me to the point where all of the hairs shoot up on my body. “Jesus fuck!” I cry out in shock, whirling around to glare at the offending doors. However, I can't see them anymore.
The doors are now covering the light of the barrier, so the entire hallway is plunged into total darkness. I can't see a thing, not even my hand in front of my face. The idea to try and use my magic for light strikes me, so I open my palm and create a small ball of darkness...only to realize how stupid that is. My magic IS darkness, so how the fuck is it supposed to dispel darkness? I let the magic dissipate, feeling foolish. That's certainly not my best idea.
My breathing quickens. The darkness around me is so thick, it feels like it's crushing me. I considering looking around for a way to make a torch or something, but then I realize how stupid I'm being. I fish my phone out of my pocket and open up the flashlight application. A quick flick of a button later, and a bright circle of light illuminates the floor in front of me. Thank god this app doesn't use the internet. As long as I have magic, I can keep this light going.
The first thing I notice about this hallway is that it seems to be in much better condition than the floors above. By that, I mean the place just looks abandoned, and not decrepit and falling apart. Which means either this place was built recently...or someone has been maintaining it.
“Damn, I wish I could just blow my way out of here,” I grunt, looking up at the ceiling. With my power, it would be simple to blow a hole through the ceiling and get out of here...but with the instability of the upper floors, I'd bring the whole place down and kill most of the ponies working. No, I have to do this the hard way.
With that in mind, I start to walk. I don't know anything about the basement levels, so I'm mostly walking blindly through the area, hoping to find something that looks like a way up.
Fuck, I wish it wasn't so quiet. There's nothing at all, apart from the sound of my foot falls and my own breathing. There's got to be another elevator shaft around here, or at least some stairs.
The light from my phone soon illuminates set of doors in the wall, with slightly tarnished bronze plaques labeling each one. Out of curiosity, I shine the light onto the nearest door, which is labeled as “executive offices.”
Offices? Down here? That can't be right. The offices for the science building are on the top floor. Hell, that's even where the head of the science department keeps his office. So what “executives” would be working down here? That's it, I'm curious enough to look for myself.
I turn the handle with a shaking hand and push the door open. The hinges creak loudly from the effort, making me wince and look around to make sure I'm completely alone. After all, someone is keeping me down here. It wouldn't be paranoid of me to think that I might be observed.
These certainly look like offices. It actually looks like a workplace divided into cubicles. As I walk through the offices, I notice that each cubicle has a filing cabinet and a computer. Some of the desks are in differing states of disrepair, but mostly everything seems to be in rather good condition, considering how old this place should be. As I draw closer to the back of the offices, I notice something shocking in one of the cubicles. Hold on...is that...a standby light on that computer?
Everything else forgotten, I set my phone down on the desk and sit down in the chair, which surprisingly holds under my weight. It's an old chair, but a well maintained one. This isn't right.
Sure enough, the power button on the computer console is gently pulsing orange, which means that it's on, but on standby. “This is impossible,” I whisper, pulling out the keyboard tray. This console should be three thousand years old. Inspecting the console closer, I notice that the design isn't one I recognize. There's no symbol telling me what brand it is, or what OS it's running. Usually windows computers have the logo engraved into the hardware somewhere. The same goes for Mac, Linux, and other such computers. It's almost as if this one was built from the ground up...and relatively recently too.
The monitor turns on when I tap a key, causing me to wince and squint at the sudden change in light level. “What the hell is this?” I ask myself, as the display screen that appears doesn't resemble anything from any operating system I've ever seen. “Oh...son of a bitch.”
A log on screen appears, and it's asking for both a username and a password. I'm no hacker, so it doesn't look like I'll be finding out anything from this console after all. It's certainly not going to take my school ID and password. Still, it's odd that this computer even exists, and works at the same time. Maybe some humans survived in here past their defeat...but that wouldn't explain how this computer is getting power.
I peer under the desk and follow the computer's power cable all the way to an outlet in the floor. Well shit, that doesn't tell me a good goddamn thing. I'm just as in the dark as I was when I landed here.
I've wasted enough time here already. I'll look through the rest of these offices and then continue with my primary objective: getting the fuck out of here.
Leaving the miraculously still operating computer behind, I make my way through the maze of cubicles all the way to the back of the room, where there's a larger office set in it's own room, separated from the rest by a mottled glass wall and a wooden door.
“Dr. Vanta Pallor,” I state, reading off of the plaque on the door. Yeah, I certainly don't know who the hell that is. He's no Rainier executive that I've ever heard of. Maybe he's a member of the military? I'm curious now, so I might as well check it out.
A quick check tells me that the door is locked. I step back and give it an incredulous look. “Seriously?” I ask the door as if it could hear me...and then I kick the fucking door down with a light application of magic. The door is so old that it shatters like matchsticks, allowing me entry.
It looks like a typical office to me. I don't feel like I need to repeat myself that it looks to be in much better condition than it should be, given this place's age. There are some manila folders on the desk. Maybe one of them will tell me more about what's been going on down here.
I open one of them and fish out what looks like a printed out email from one employee to another...but it doesn't look like they're talking about school related topics. In fact, without any context, I have no clue what I'm reading.
“From: Frozen Soul
To: Dr. Vanta Pallor
Here are the results of yesterday's experiment, as requested. All but Subjects Three and Four aren't responding well to the modifications. The mutations have proven to be detrimental to the motor capabilities of each subject, to the point where their overall effectiveness as units has decreased. I request permission to terminate the process for the failed subjects. Enclosed is the data for each individual trial...”
“What the fuck? Experiment? Subjects?” I say aloud, setting the folder down. After the first part of the letter, I can't really understand because all there is are a bunch of a charts and data tables that I can't decipher without more context. “Mutations? And who the fuck is Frozen Soul?”
I don't like the feeling that I'm getting from this letter. Whoever these people were, they were smart enough to build their own computers and felt that they needed to keep their work secret enough to use codenames. Though...Frozen Soul sounds a lot like a pony name...though that's probably just because I've lived among ponies for several months and they all have names like that.
I leave the offices entirely, feeling a little foolish for wasting that much time looking for answers, only to find more questions instead.
More exploring takes me to a set of stairs...but they only go downwards. I curse as I peer down the stairwell. The path has been pretty much linear ever since the elevator shaft, and even looking through the other rooms didn't uncover any new paths. So this is seriously the only way forward?
“Fuckin' hell,” I grunt, and then I walk down the stairs. If this is the only way forward, I have no choice but to see where it goes.
It's only a short flight of stairs, consisting of only twenty steps. There's no option to go further down, so I'm hoping there will be a way back up further on in.
“Okay, what the hell?” I demand, looking at the short hallway stretched out before me. If I thought that the floor above me was in suspiciously good condition, this one is even better. That settles it. Someone has to be down here still, despite the fact that the place seems to be abandoned. This place should be falling apart.
There's a door on the left wall not too far from me that's hanging wide open, but I'm not close enough for my light to reveal what's inside. There's another door at the far end of the hallway that's shut. I guess I'll look into the one that's open first.
Just as I near the door on the left, it slams shut seemingly of its own accord with a loud bang, once again causing me to jump and yelp in shock, adrenaline shooting through my body. At the same time, the door at the end of the hall swings open on its own.
“Okay...that's not right,” I stammer, once again feeling like there's something else down here besides me. These doors are opening and closing on their own, and I don't even see a magical aura like what a unicorn would exhibit.
Part of me wants to kick down this fucking door that just slammed in my face, but I decide against it. I'm not here to explore, I'm here to get out. Once I'm out, I'll figure out what to do next from there. With that in mind, I ignore the now locked door and pass through the door at the end...which also proceeds to shut behind me. “Fucking stop that!” I snap at it, and then I realize that I'm shouting at a door.
Okay, let's see. Where am I now? Judging by the pipelines and concrete walls, I'm assuming that I'm in or near the foundations of the building. These pipelines must be for carrying the water to and from the reservoirs. The pipelines have long since rusted, however, and now seem to be covered with mold, if the musty smell in the air is anything to go by. Just fucking lovely. And to top it all off, the atmosphere is completed by all of the spiderwebs everywhere.
Part of me is starting to think that this is pointless, and the chances of me finding another elevator or stairwell that doesn't just go further down are slim to none. Whatever canceled out my magic and brought me down here really wants to keep me here, though I'm not sure who did it or why.
The silence is broken by the sound of water dripping from an unseen source, echoing eerily throughout the concrete hallways. The air is dense and seems to press down around me, making it slightly hard to breathe. I think it might just be my nerves though. I'm strong, and I know that nothing can hurt me very easily...but an enemy that I can't see is terrifying nonetheless.
I near an four way intersection. The sight of that makes me groan, because I know that if I want to find what I'm looking for, I'll have to check down each one. All of these passages look the same, so I could very easily get lost if I'm not careful. I mark the hall I came from by punching it lightly with my magic, leaving a crack behind. Then, I pick one of the corridors and take it.
I wonder what the other ponies must be thinking right now. Rainbow must be freaking the fuck out right about now. I wonder if the barrier keeps the other ponies out as well, because if I know Rainbow, she'll be beating her head against the barrier right about now. With luck, Flash can find a way to unravel the barrier and send help for me. Until then, I'll just keep looking around for a way out. Maybe in the process I can find out what the hell happened down here.
Just then, as I near the end of this particular hallway, I hear the whispering starting up again. Immediately the hairs on the back of my neck start to rise, and my heart starts to beat faster. Not this shit again. There's a door at the end of this hall. If I can reach it, I'll barricade myself in there and face whatever the hell is making these whispering noises. If only I could tell what they're saying!
The whispers grow louder as I approach the door. As I reach for the handle, I feel a current of air passing over my back, as if something was moving behind me at an extremely fast pace. Reacting on instinct, I power up and whirl around, immediately forming a crystalline pistol and firing several shots down the hallway in an attempt to hit whatever it is that's in here with me.
The bolts of magic tear chips of ancient concrete out of the wall on the other end, but that's about all it does. There's no sign of anything moving behind me at all, even though I know I felt something. “Y...You've got to be kidding me...” I stammer, letting the pistol dissipate. Something in here is fucking with me. If only I could see what it is! I know something is here...and not knowing what it is is scaring me.
The whispers die away once I manage to get inside the room at the end of the hall. This time I don't wait for the door to shut on its own; I fucking do it myself, even bolting it with the old fashioned lock on the other side. Now I feel a little reassured, but not by much.
And that feeling of reassurance dies when I turn around and discover that I'm in a very small room, filled with more pipes as well as a relatively well constructed manual generator set up against the far wall. It looks like one of those ones that you can crank up by hand a few times to get it running. Once again the question of how the hell something like this can still be in such good condition strikes me, but just like before, I have no answers apart from the idea that someone is maintaining this place.
I don't know if turning on the generator would do anything for me, but it's worth a shot. Maybe it will put some light into this place. Who knows? It certainly doesn't hurt to try starting it up.
“Here goes.” I kneel down in front of the generator and grasp the crank. A few quick jerks of my wrist later, and the generator hums to life. Dim light floods the room, coming from two small lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling. “Fucking thing should be a mess after all these years. Still, I wonder what else this thing powers?”
Almost immediately after the generator turns on, the lock on the door clicks and unbolts, causing me to jerk up and once again form a pistol. That's bullshit; I locked this shit from the inside...and yet the deadbolt just fucking slides open right before my eyes.
“Fuck you!” I yell, and then I squeeze the trigger, firing several shots right through the door without waiting for it to open. I hear the sound of my magic colliding with rock, but nothing else. With a shaking hand, I push open the door...only to find several steaming holes in the wall from my magic and nothing else. A bolt of fear runs through me, but it is soon replaced by anger. “Quit toying with me, goddammit!”
After saying that, I swear I hear a faint sinister laugh echoing throughout the corridors. My eyes widen. It's so faint that it could just be my imagination...but I doubt it. Something here knows I'm at its mercy, and it's enjoying that.
This is a dead end, so staying here would be pointless, as much as I hate to admit it. I gingerly step out of the room, leaving the perforated door behind. Thanks to the generator, other small flickering light bulbs are illuminating the the hallways. I keep using my phone's flashlight, however, because the amount of light it gives off is way more substantial than these light bulbs.
Okay, this path didn't turn up anything substantial, so I turn down one of the other passages that I haven't taken yet. Once I take a few steps in that direction, I start to hear things again. This time, it isn't just whispers. I think I'm hearing an indistinct woman's voice echoing from somewhere deeper down the hallway. She seems to be shouting something frantically, but I can't make out what she's saying. The sound of a crying baby can be heard as well, muffling whatever the woman might be saying.
“I have to be going crazy,” I admit to myself. There's a huge difference between believing in magic, and believing in ghosts. I never did believe in the supernatural, but I don't see any other explanation for what's happening in this place. There's definitely a sentient entity around here capable of using magic, because that's how I got down here. But as for the rest...I have no explanation.
As much as I don't want to, I progress down the hallway towards where I think the voices are coming from. They gradually grow louder, until finally I reach the end of the hallway. They seem to be coming from this door here, so I shove it open, revealing a thin, rickety set of stairs leading fucking downwards.
“Dammit, I don't want to go down!” I curse. Despite my misgivings, however, I descend the staircase. Oddly enough, the voices seem to die down the closer I get to the bottom, until finally I can't hear them at all anymore. However...I think I would have preferred the voices to the contents of this room. “What...in the hell is something like THIS doing down here!?”
I'm looking at a dungeon. I'm not even kidding. There are several barred jail cells dug into the walls in such a way that it suggests that they were installed much later than the building itself. Still, why are they even here? This is a school building, and everything needed to keep the place running is upstairs! You don't need executive offices, a backup generator, and certainly not a fucking dungeon in the basement.
Though, if I think about it, the condition of everything down here suggest hat all of this was built later than the rest of the building. It would make sense if it came around sometime after when the Oppressed showed up.
A single light bulb hangs from the ceiling at the end of the aisle between cells, providing a faint illumination, but most of the cells remain dark. I don't see signs of other lights, so I'm guessing that that one light is all the prisoners got.
I have to know. I reach for one of the cell doors and push, but it doesn't budge. A quick inspection lets me know that it's a sliding door, so I try again with this in mind, easily breaking the old lock and forcing my way inside.
Sure enough, there's human remains in here. A lot of them, actually. And...oh god, this is horrible. There's three skeletons in here. Two of them are huddled together over the third, as if trying to protect it. The two both have differing pelvis sizes, so I'm assuming they were a couple. The third...is the skeleton of an infant. At the risk of repeating myself...what the fuck. Something happened down here after the Oppressed showed up, and it's not looking good.
“Damn, I wish there were at least some kind of written record of all of this,” I curse, stepping out of the cell with a look of pity at the skeletons. I don't know what happened, but it's obvious that this was a couple trying to protect their child...even though it cost them their lives. That much I can respect.
When I step back into the aisle...I can faintly hear the voices again. It's the sound of the woman again, only now she's crying out with despair. Her cries are accompanied by a percussive sound, almost like someone getting beaten. At this point, as unsettled as all these voices are making me, I have to admit that in the absence of any type of record, they're the best way I have of finding out what the hell this place is.
The light bulb starts to flicker, briefly plunging the place into darkness every time it shuts off. After it shuts off for more than a few seconds, I look back up towards the end of the aisle. The light turns back on then, and what it reveals gets me to drop my phone out of shock.
There's a woman standing there, right beneath the swinging light bulb. The shadows cast by the light obscure most of her face, but I can tell she's staring right at me. Her hair is ragged and greasy, her skin is grayish and deathlike, and she's wearing a tattered hospital gown stained with blackened blood.
My first reaction is to form my pistol and aim it right at her...but the light goes out once more, obscuring the entire room in impenetrable blackness. “T...That shit's not...not right,” I stammer, fumbling around on the floor for my phone with one hand while keeping the pistol aimed in that direction with the other. When I signed up for this expedition, encountering fucking specters wasn't in the description! I expected monsters from the Everfree, and maybe an Oppressed...but this shit? I can't take it. I can't fight what I can't touch.
The light bulb turns back on...and the woman is gone, as if she was never there to begin with. Okay, I can't deny it now. There's something supernatural going on down here. I don't know what these ghosts want with me, but...hang on, did she leave something behind?
After picking up my phone from where I dropped it (thank god for otterboxes), I approach the spot where she'd just been standing. On the floor where her feet had been, there's a small credit card shaped object lying there. I pick it up and inspect it, and what I see is shocking.
It's an ID card. More specifically, it's the ID card of one Dr. Vanta Pallor...and it turns out he's not human at all. No, the face of a dark furred unicorn stallion stares up at me from the card, a confident smirk on his muzzle. There's no feeling or emotion in his yellow eyes at all. As for clothing, he's wearing a set of armor consisting of overlapping plates, similar to what I saw Sombra wearing. Lastly, there's a staff slung over his shoulder.
“A pony? Vanta is a pony?” I state aloud to myself, as if doing so would make this any more plausible. This doesn't make any sense. This place is ancient, and ponies didn't exist way back when this place was likely built. The only pony around in this time had been Sombra, and he didn't even stay for very long. So who the hell is this Vanta?
I might need this ID card. I pocket it and glance through some of the other cells, finding more human skeletons..and even a pony skeleton, much to my shock. That's two ponies now. Or is that Vanta himself? Because there's no way he's still alive if he was as old as this place. The only immortal ponies are Celestia and Luna. Too bad Celestia isn't here right now. She'd know what to do.
There's another path behind where the ghost (that's what I'm assuming it was, because there's no sign of her now) was standing. I feel like I'm close to discovering what happened here. As long as I'm stuck down here, I'm determined to find out what the hell this Vanta asshole did to my race.
The passage leads to a high security door made of metal – looks like stainless steel, seeing as how there's no rust on it. I could be wrong though, I'm no chemist. There's no handle on the door, only a place to...swipe a key card. That ghost...she delivered this card to me. Was she...trying to help me?
Sure enough, Vanta's ID card opens the door, the slab of metal sliding upwards into the door frame like something out of a Star Trek episode. That's another thing. If Vanta was a pony, it doesn't make sense that he'd know how to operate computers or construct doors like this.
After stepping into the room, I immediately choke and cover my mouth, trying not to throw up. This room...looks like a slaughterhouse.
The one feature of the room that stands out more than any other is the metal table in the center that's completely covered in blackened blood and horribly mutated human bones. I say mutated, because one skeleton is twisted into an awkward shape, and its arm bones are much larger than they should be.
The next thing I notice is that there's a computer running in the back of the room...and something is operating it. I step back in shock upon seeing the upright unicorn skeleton standing at the computer, tapping at the keyboard with a fragmented hoof. “What in the hell?” I ask, and then immediately regret it, because the undead pony seems to be aware enough to hear me. Its head turns slightly to regard me with a sightless eye...and then it turns to face me entirely.
“Excellent...” the thing hisses in a gravelly voice, its horn lighting up with a sickly violet light. It steps towards me, various knives, scalpels, and other surgical tools rising off of the tables and counters nearby to float in the air above it. “I've been without a test subject for so long...”
The creature steps towards me, and before I can react, all of those pointy instruments fly towards me at an incredible speed...only to bounce entirely off of my magical aura that I just flared up. A twisted grin forms on my face, a submachine gun forming in my right hand. This place's one mistake is presenting me with something physical.
“What...? Lord Sombra's...” the undead pony exclaims when it looks into my green and purple eyes. Before he can say anything else, I whip up the gun and squeeze the trigger, firing a stream of magical destruction into its bones.
“Finally...something I can kill! Die, motherfucker!” I scream, clutching my submachine gun with both hands until the monster falls onto the ground in a motionless pile of perforated bones. I can't help but let out a laugh.
Seconds later, as I stare at the creature's bones, I suddenly regret acting so hastily. I shouldn't have killed it. If it was that much weaker than me, I should have questioned it. After all, it wasn't a ghost, but something physical that I can handle just fine. Now I lost my chance to find out what the fuck...hold on a minute. That thing mentioned Sombra. And it even called him “Lord Sombra.”
Suddenly everything makes sense. The hauntings, the undead, the ponies...it all makes sense. According to what little I know about Sombra, he dealt heavily with necromancy, leading an undead army against the Crystal Empire over a millennium ago, and even turning my race into twisted versions of their former selves.
I look down at the undead pony I just re-killed. If he called Sombra “Lord,” then it must have served Sombra...which means that Vanta must have also served Sombra.
I guess that also explains who's been maintaining this place. In order to use everything at its max capacity, this pony must have been keeping the place in a good condition. Who knows how long that thing was down here? Undead don't have a lifespan, after all.
Okay, I'm feeling a little better, now that I know what I'm dealing with. The ghosts are still an enigma, but now I have a little more to go on. An idea strikes me, and I look at the computer that the undead pony had been using. It's still on, waiting for more input.
“Good, it's still logged in. Time to figure out what the hell happened down here,” I say, pulling up a chair and sitting at the computer. I have a feeling I'm not going to like what I find, but it's just something I have to know. I look at the screen, confused at the spreadsheets before me. “What are these? Graphs?”
In these spreadsheets are what appears to be raw data that I can't make out. It's split up into different rows, each one labeled in Equestrian. That much catches me by surprise. How the fuck did these ponies figure out how to program Equestrian into a computer? I glance down at the console, and sure enough, it's a custom constructed one. That leaves me with one conclusion.
These ponies must have had enough time to study human technology and learn how to use it themselves. Which means they must have been left in the past by Sombra. That's...actually a smart investment. If I was Sombra, and I was in a world that I didn't have enough time to study, I'd leave my minions behind too if they were undead and unable to die. That way by the time I came to retrieve them, they'd know a lot about the world I left behind.
“Hah, fuck you Sombra. I'm ruining your plans even after your death,” I remark, feeling a bit of twisted satisfaction. I turn my attention back to the graphs in an attempt to find out what the hell this undead fucker was trying to do.
“Growth rate, total growth, chemical composition, response time?” I say, reading off the different row labels. None of this makes any sense to me, so I minimize the window to try and see what else I can find on this machine.
The first thing I notice is the name listed at the bottom right, near the notification center. Frozen Soul, the name of the user logged in right now. I glance back at the pile of bones. So that was Frozen Soul. I knew that sounded like a pony name. I should really learn to trust my own instincts.
There's a folder on the desktop labeled “Subject Logs.” I double click it, and a window pops up with a listing of different files. Some of them are video files, while others are text files. There's quite a lot of them. It might take me some time to get through them. Whatever. I guess I'm just waiting for help anyway.
I click on the first file, which happens to be a video file named “Introduction.” I guess that's as good a place to start as any.
The machine whirs to life, and the video starts to play, showing this very room, with a light blue furred pony staring at the screen. He's wearing similar armor to what Vanta was in the picture I saw, and he also has a staff. He looks rather pleased with himself.
“The invasion went well. With this, the last bastion of this inferior race is exterminated,” the pony proclaims. The sound of screams can be heard in the background, likely coming from the dungeon. “However, their leader was a brilliant tactician. All of us are trapped underground now. Who would have known that she managed to rig the mountain to explode? There's no getting out for us now without a significant amount of work.”
“But the purpose of this video isn't to be an accounting of past events. My name is Frozen Soul, and I've been tasked by Dr. Pallor to study the human prisoners we've taken. They're pathetic things, but they seem remarkably sturdy. It might take me some time to study them, but I have all the time in the world. Dr. Pallor assures me his magic will keep me alive far past my time. I'd expect nothing less from Lord Sombra's top general.”
The video ends there, leaving me with a myriad of feelings shooting through my mind. I feel anger, understanding, and a little bit of pride. This bastard Frozen Soul was one of the assholes who led the Oppressed against my race. Now, I don't regret turning his bones into a pile of ash.
I've also finally learned how the entire campus fell underground. That detonator I saw Maka use in the video I watched several months ago was connected to explosives up in Rainier Mountain, beneath which the college is situated. There must have been a lot of explosives, because I don't remember the Everfree being very mountainous. Once that shit blew up, no doubt it caused a colossal landslide. And that's why this place is buried.
Maka, you brilliant motherfucker. You knew you couldn't defeat them, so you took them all with you...or at least you tried to. Any normal enemy would have died of starvation down here without supplies, or of old age if they did have supplies. Adam, you really sired a genius. I couldn't be more proud of her right now.
But...on a darker note, I understand why there's cells down here. Those bastards took prisoners...and then experimented on them. I don't know what their goals were yet, but judging by the skeleton on the table behind me, it wasn't anything benign. I feel sorry for whoever that was...dying by mutation or whatever must have been painful.
Vanta Pallor. He's a hell of a lot more important than I expected. He's Sombra's top general...and apparently he has some knowledge of necromancy as well, according to this video. He kept Frozen Soul alive for this long...which means he could also still be alive. If Vanta is still around...then I'm still in danger.
I'm not reckless. If Vanta was Sombra's top general, then he's likely to be strong. I want to kill him if he's still around, but my initial objective hasn't changed. I need to get out of here, and then I'll let Celestia know about all of this. Then, if Vanta is still around, Celestia will nuke the crap out of him.
Just as I'm about to open the first text file, I hear a sound from the hallway outside, and I recognize it instantly. My blood freezes, hoping with all of my heart that I misheard. My heart plummets when the sound echoes throughout the room once more, much closer than before.
Click-sccraaape.