//------------------------------//
// Chapter 37. Wrapped and Delivered 
// Story: H'ven Sent 
// by otherunicorn 
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As I had several guns pointed at me, I remained completely motionless, as commanded. My instincts about this job being a trap had proved correct, despite precedence suggesting it couldn't be. Non-Hellites, ordinary ponies, had somehow managed to hack their way though the exceptionally tough material used to house these facilities. Why had these ponies put so much effort into cutting the wall down? Was it the only way for them to gain access to the Hellite-only facility, or was it to allow them to rush us once we were inside? The latter did not make much sense to me, as they could just as easily cornered us out in the corridor. The computer had obviously been disconnected to bait us.

"4K4, I want that computer rewired and operational," one of the gun-wielding ponies demanded. "4K6, 8 and 9, strip the three Hellspawn of everything they are carrying."

Bah! Hellspawn. Damn, I hated that name. I wanted to correct the fellow, but keeping my mouth shut at the moment was the better option.

So, this mob was a coordinated, special-ops team, was it? With such closely spaced identifiers, they must have entered Central at the same time, and been trained together. I remained silent, and motionless, as 4Kwhoever stripped me of my belongings. Even with several members of the squad now busy, there were enough of them remaining where they stood, weapons pointed at us.

"What's this?" the pony stripping Cacha demanded, pointing to her folded hoof-pistol.

"It's a carrot dispenser," Cacha said, tersely. I almost choked. A carrot dispenser was not an entirely inaccurate description, as long as you overlooked its tendency to deliver the aforementioned carrot at just below the speed of sound. Hopefully, that was the type of ammunition she had loaded. Our DNA locks only prevented the guns from being fired, not from being examined, and the presence of a chunk of metal in the magazine of a food dispenser would be hard to explain.

"Open it. Remove it," ordered the pony I believed to be 4K8, "but let me warn you; you will be shot if you try anything."

"Understood," Cacha muttered, lifting her hoof slightly, she managed to open the magazine without unfolding the weapon. She then released the weapon and lifted her hoof clear, allowing the pony to take it from her.

"Huh?" He said, looking inside.

Uh-oh, don't tell me Cacha had solid ammo in there.

"4K8, report," the commander said.

"It contains a chunk of purple-colored carrot."

"I prefer the orange variant, myself. Stash the dispenser with their other gear."

Thank goodness for that! All the same... even if ammo had been found, I didn't get the feeling these ponies would have used it as an excuse to shoot us. These guys were not the same as the death squad we had encountered. While it was possible they might march us away to be vaporized in the plasma arc furnace, I wasn't feeling that sort of hostile intent from them. Was it possible they actually needed us alive?

What about me? Did I have anything I needed to hide, well, apart from that pointy thing sticking out of my head? Did these guys know about unicorns? Probably. Would they do something to disable me? Possibly. I had styled my mane and forelock in much the same manner as I had for years. That meant it was set in such a way that it would have hidden the old bony nub, so my horn was at least partly covered. Carefully I cast a very weak spell, so as not to draw attention to the fact, and gently massaged my forelock until the remainder of the horn was hidden. No doubt it would look a bit silly, and downright unfashionable, but if it kept my horn safe, I didn't mind.

Another of the armed ponies dropped three blue-grey bundles, one in front of each of us. The color matched the isolation suits the ponies were wearing.

"Now, you three, I want you to put those suits on, and seal yourselves in. We don't want you contaminating the place," the commander said.

"We are not contagious," I contradicted him as I picked up the suit, unfolding it. I knew telling them wouldn't make any difference anyway. With any luck, it would help hide my horn.

"I'm not a scientist or a doctor," the commander said. "I was told to bring you up in either isolation suits, or body bags. The choice is yours."

"Have we given you any trouble at all?" I asked, knowing full well that we hadn't.

"Keep it that way," the commander said.

"Faaaaaaark," someone yelled in my mind. I cringed, wondering what had triggered it. 4J2? Was my connection good?

"What, in Luna's name, was that?" the commander barked. They had heard it too? That meant the source had to be local.

"Sorry, Sir, the computer seems to have a fault," 4K4 said, looking up. He had just pushed home a large connector.

"No, I don't have a bloody fault," the disembodied voice said. "Fucking unplug me like that again, and I'll give you fucking blackouts for a month!"

"You, you're self aware?" I asked, well, stated, I guess; it was obviously self aware.

"Give the genius a ribbon," the computer said. "It's bad enough being stuck down here, both monitoring and controlling the power demands for a few square miles of the city, but at least it keeps me busy. Total sensory deprivation is a fucking nightmare! Don't do it again."

"4K4, please find a replacement computer to look after this facility, and have that one destroyed," the commander said.

The computer started to object, but I spoke over him, addressing the commander. "Sir, this is a Hellite-only facility. Your technicians are not qualified to work in here. Luna knows what other damage your hack and slash method of breaking in has caused. I suggest you finish connecting the computer, and leave it to do the job it is good at. It has clearly developed its own programming well beyond anything that could be installed on a replacement unit."

The commander looked at me harshly.

"At least, hook it up until it can be properly investigated. You risk the lives of others by messing with these systems," Maisie said.

"Oh, all right," the commander grumbled. "I want a full report on it, 4K4."

"Yes, Sir."

"Thank you, kind mares," a voice quietly spoke into my mind.

"You're welcome," I subvocalized back.

"If you can, please visit me again," the computer requested.

"If we live through this, I will."

I wondered how many of the other pony brains that had been recycled as computers were self aware. The modifiers that were used to preserve their neural matrixes were probably very similar to those used by Brainstorm in their life support tank, and if that was the case, these poor ponies could probably be reborn.

As soon as I finished pulling on the isolation suit, one of the 4Kx ponies zipped it shut. These suits had no provision for fingers, unlike the ones our captors were wearing, effectively restricting us to the limitations of the fingerless. Fortunately, my horn fit inside, and despite the bump, wasn't too obvious, as these isolation suits were anything but snug.

Moments later, a pair of pony-hide boots landed in front of me, likewise my two Hellite companions. Each boot was connected to the other by a short length of chain. Shackles? They had to be kidding.

"Pull those onto your forelegs," the commander instructed.

"How?" I asked. "My mouth is covered by this filter mask, and my fingers are trapped inside this suit."

"Lift your right hoof," the pony who had zipped me up instructed. So, they really were going to shackle us. The bastards.






Annoyingly, the nearest Central-controlled elevator wasn't that near, and the shackles limited us to shuffling along. I was getting really annoyed. Given the chance, I would gladly knock these soldier-types into next week. The problems was that no opportunity to do so was presenting itself; they still had multiple weapons pointed at us.

"Am I to believe you went out of your way to capture us alive?" I asked.

"You are alive, aren't you," the commander replied, tersely.

"Who, specifically, were you trying to catch?" I asked. Well, he was talking, so I thought I'd see how much information I could get from him.

"The brief was to capture, dead or, preferably, alive, any member or members of the Hellspawn, the more the better."

"We are Hellites, not Hellspawn. Preferably alive, so you are not taking us straight to the plasma arc furnace, are you?"

"How do you know about the furnace?"

"2EQ and 5D3 were going to introduce me to it in a very personal way," I said, "until I introduced them to my hooves in a very personal way."

"You've been in one of the deniable facilities before?" The commander sounded shocked.

"Obviously, I have, or I wouldn't know about your funny code names and the furnace, would I? The bastards bloody-well cut me up for their experiments a few times, as well as doing other unspeakable things to me."

"Why am I not surprised by that?" the commander muttered, mostly to himself. "How did they catch you?"

"I was critically injured while working down here. I fell through several floors that had been weakened by a release of Hellite modifiers. I made it back to the elevator and called it in. Presumably they 'rescued' me. I was just an ordinary pony at the time, or so I thought. When I woke, I was strapped down in one of their labs and half-way to becoming a Hellite. Haven't you heard of the escapee, Aneki, before? I'm Aneki."

I wondered if inter-departmental information exchange was also restricted; I expected it would be, most of the time.

"I did hear that we were meant to keep our eyes out for you. I also heard that an attempt to erase you caused the death of one of the squads, so further attempts to erase you were put on hold. You are, apparently, a very dangerous pony."

"I'm not really that dangerous. The idiots tried to shoot me with a huge, ancient cannon, and it exploded. Damn lucky too, because if it hadn't, it would have collapsed part of H'ven. That's what killed them."

"If you say so." His tone suggested the conversation was over. I wondered if he had found traces of the small arms fire Brainstorm and Stormie had peppered the squad with, or if he simply didn't believe how dangerous the cannon had been. Unfortunately, I hadn't learned much from the conversation, but the preferably alive part of the directive gave me a glimmer of hope. I wondered what they wanted from us?

For a while, we shuffled along in relative silence, just the sound of hoof falls, the clinking of chains, and rattles and creaks of loaded ponies to accompany us. My hooves had still been soft, when we had been captured, so I gradually hardened them, the sounds of my hoofsteps gradually becoming noticeable, though somewhat muffled by the isolation suit and the boots of the shackles. It occurred to me that I could very easily, and rapidly divest myself of these, if converted my limbs to broad, flat blades. I mentally experimented with a few configurations before memorizing the most promising.

"You, what was it? Aneki? You Hellspawn seem to vanish completely when you are not actively repairing something. Where do you hide, down there?" the commander asked.

"That would be telling, wouldn't it? And it's Hellite, not Hellspawn," I answered. "What would you say if I told you we lived down in Hell, as our name suggests."

"So, where is Hell?"

"That, my good pony, is a very good question," I said, remembering what had happened last time I was at Central, "a very good question indeed."





We took the elevator up to sublevel two. Each of us Hellites was transported up, one at a time, accompanied by a small group of guards, a solitary guard riding down after each trip, to let those below know there had been no breaches in security on the trip up. Of course, I had considered doing exactly that, both while in the elevator, and once we had arrived at sublevel two. Despite the lower number of guns pointed at me, I had concluded doing so would not have been particularly productive, except for adding to the boast value of the number of times I had been shot. Thrice was enough.

We had assembled in a fairly spacious corridor that was well illuminated, clean, and in good repair, suggesting it was an area that was frequently used. I checked the number of the elevator. It was Elevator 5. That meant we had to be pretty close to the center of the life support chamber, not far from the hub of the Mane Way. I estimated we were within a mile of the hub itself. So far, my job had never taken me to this part of the underlevels. Down on the bottom level, right in the center, the hub had been just a larger than average enclosure for the structural beams and the pipes that fed the heated water up into the radiators under the Mane Way. I had only seen it in the distance when I had left the shaft I was using to check out the deserted level.

Once all ponies were accounted for, we resumed our march/shuffle towards our unknown destination. This time, the guards hadn't tried to separate the Hellites from each other, and Cacha slowly, as if accidentally, gained on me until we were side by side. She said nothing, but our isolation suits did rub against each other a couple of times. I felt a little happier with her there. With each step, our destination became more obvious. We were heading directly towards the hub. There were even other ponies walking about down here, too, which puzzled me a little, as the sublevels were meant to be out of bounds for regular citizens.

"Huh?" I heard Cacha voice, as we approached a T intersection. I glanced in her direction, immediately noticing what had caught her attention. One of the ponies we could see was visibly glowing. The glow wasn't particularly bright, but the pony was definitely brighter that she should have been under the ambient light. I glanced about, and spotted another one, this time a stallion, who was also brighter than he should have been.

"What's with the glowy ponies?" Cacha quietly asked. "You've never mentioned them before."

"I've never seen a glowing pony before. It isn't like they are running all over the place up in the city," I quietly said.

"But to see two out of five ponies here glowing suggests that there would be a significant number of them!"

"But I really have never seen them before!"

"What are you two discussing?" the commander asked, speeding up a little so he came alongside us. "Don't forget that we will shoot if you try anything."

"We were just wondering about the two glowing ponies," Cacha said, nodding towards the mare who was nearly out of our sight, now.

"What are you talking about? Get your eyes checked," the commander dismissed us, moving away again.

I thought about what I had seen. Perhaps it was our eyes. Hellite eyes could see outside the visible spectrum of normal ponies; we could see things other ponies could not see.

"Ah!" I said quietly. "Cacha, I think it is our eyes!"

The corridor opened out into an even more spacious, curved corridor, also with all of its ceiling lamps lit. We turned right, and walked a short distance, before a large doorway appeared to our left. As we approached, a substantial, rectangular door moved forward until it was free from its frame, then, with an audible whirring of its internal locking mechanism, split, half moving to one side and half to the other, supported by hydraulic arms. Through the door was a room, spacious but featureless, apart from a similar door at the other end. Once we were all inside, the outer doors shut behind us. Ah, this had to be an airlock, or its security based equivalent.

"4K1, I see," a disembodied voice stated, as the door behind us reintegrated itself, moving back into its frame.

"Yes, ma'am," the commander answered.

"Three living examples. You have done well. Please take them through to the central ring. We will take them from there."

"Yes, ma'am."

Could it be possible that we were going to meet those in charge of the coded ponies? Then this place had to be...

"We're in Central, aren't we?" Cacha quietly asked me.

"It certainly looks that way. We were always taught Central occupied the offices around the Mane Way hub, up above ground. That they extend into the sublevels should be no surprise," I said.

"So where does our great leader live? Where's the palace?"

"There is no palace, and the great leader is never seen. Common folk like me don't even know where they live, or if they are merely a virtual figurehead for Central."

"Get walking, you two," 4K1 barked, killing our discussion.

Obediently we moved through the door at the other end of the airlock, and into the outer ring of Central. Again, my mind was going over the odds and ends I was learning. Three living examples that voice had said. Again, we were some sort of sub-species that were a scientific curiosity. We would not be afforded any respect; we would not be afforded freedom. If anything, we would probably end up very dead, as soon as they had learned what they needed.

I looked about, absorbing any details that might help us get out of here alive. There were windows on both sides of the corridor through which we were currently traveling, as well as the occasional doors of much lighter duty than those at the entrance. Through them, to one side, I could see an open office area, with lots of ponies working at computers: lots of glowing ponies, and a few regular ones. To the other side I could see large number of storage racks, lined up in aisles. Again, some of the ponies in there were glowing.

Why had we never heard of glowing ponies before? Were they another type of pony that we didn't know about? Was that information suppressed by Central? What if we were capable of seeing something that Central didn't want us to see? I would need to know a lot more before I could be sure, but was it possible that this was the very reason Central were constantly trying to eradicate us?

"Are we going to do anything?" Cacha whispered.

"Can you see any opportunity? I can't," I whispered back. "Besides, I think they are taking us to exactly where we want to go. Look at all the glowing ponies. Something is going on here."

"Yes, there are a lot of them. Why have we never seen a glowing pony down in Hell?"

"Because I suspect they are the reason we need to hide. I think they may well be our true enemy."

"What are you two whispering about now?" 4K1 asked, giving my rump a swift kick. "If you are plotting anything..."

"Oh, for Luna's sake, can't you tell they are lovers?" Maisie said. "As we are probably on our way to die, at least let them say their good-byes."

The commander grunted.

"Are we that obvious?" Cacha asked with a humorless chuckle.

"Only extremely," Maisie muttered.

Correcting her misconception could wait. Or was it my misconception that needed addressing?

After walking for what must have been a quarter of a mile along this straight corridor, we arrived at another heavy door, much like the one that had let us into Central in the first place. I was getting thoroughly tired of my shackles. Each step came to a premature end, brought to a stop suddenly by the length of chain, even when I remembered to keep my steps short. I was damn lucky my butt hadn't overtaken me each time it happened.

The door began to cycle as we arrived, the grinding and squeaking from within suggesting it could really do with an overhaul. That would teach them to hunt down the maintenance ponies, wouldn't it? Beyond was another airlock, much like the last one, into which we were herded, our captors remaining outside, to our surprise. With more squeaking, the door closed behind us.

Immediately it sealed, the door in front of us also began to cycle, and as it moved apart, a sickly green glow spilled out.

"What the hell?" Cacha said.

"More glowing ponies," I said as the doors moved aside, revealing as many armed ponies as we had left behind, except this time they were not wearing any protective clothing, as if they held no fear of us, "and they didn't let the non-glowing ones through."

"They didn't return our stuff," Maisie complained.

"Good-bye, my beloved carrot dispenser," Cacha said.

Three of the glowing ponies advanced on us silently, bending down to remove our shackles. Ah, much better, and much worse. If they were happy to remove them, clearly they were sure there was no way for us to escape. Maybe I'd have to make my own door. Depending on the situation, I could make one slowly, and quietly, or rather rapidly, with an extremely loud bang.

I didn't fancy the appearance of where they were going to take us, either. The walls, ceilings, and even the floor were uneven, textured, the original structure covered in some transparent green resinous substance. No wonder the light coming from in there was a sickly green. What, in Luna's name, was hiding at the core of Central?

The three ponies attending to us did not stop with just removing our shackles either, but unzipped our isolation suits and started peeling them off us. Immediately, I noticed a strange, tangy odor with which I wasn't familiar. The green stuff stank, too? Ugh!

"So, you know we are not contagious, do you?" I asked, snidely, wondering if the reverse was also true.

"It wouldn't matter if you were. We are immune," the orange colored pony who was undressing me replied. With the glow, her coat was really fluorescent.

"So, glowing ponies are different to the rest of us, then?"

"You can really see us glowing? I know that is what we are taught, but I did wonder," fluorescent orange said.

"Oh, really?"

"It's not like we can see the glow ourselves."

"So how do you tell yourselves apart from regular ponies, then?"

"Hah! To us it is obvious."

"Enough with the mindless prattle," one of the gun bearing ponies barked, causing fluorescent orange to jump. "The Queen awaits."