Chapter XXIII
Captain Nightfall quickly rushed over to where the crowd of ponies were gathered. Even though it was his day off, this was still something he had to take care of. “Out of the way! Official guard business!” he shouted over the throng of ponies.
After what seemed like forever, he finally broke through the ring of chattering, nervous ponies, only to see a ring of soldiers guarding a very large hole in the side of the castle. The hole was circular, the edges looking like they had been melted.
“What happened here?” Nightfall demanded as soon as he had reached the front.
Lieutenant Soft Petal, the guard in charge of trying to break up the crowd, immediately recognized the captain, despite the fact that he wasn’t in uniform. “We’re not sure, Sir. A few ponies heard a strange sound come from this direction and alerted the guard. We’ve started searching the ground floor of the castle, as well as posted guards at every staircase. If something got in, we’d-”
“Sir! We’ve found something!” a shout echoed from within the castle. The two officers gave each other a look, then immediately charged down the hall.
What they found was disquieting to say the least.
“Soldier, I think you may want to expand your search a bit,” Captain Nightfall said dryly.
Inside a broom cupboard, not too far from the first hole, in fact, was a burnt, dead body of a pegasus. Just above the body was a rather large, melted hole in the ceiling.
“Sir, the death…” one of the soldiers said, barely able to keep his lunch down.
“Yeah, I know, Dragonfire. Work in teams of three, level three dragonguard is authorized, and keep your eyes peeled for anything strange,” Nightfall said as he turned and made his way towards the armory. “The thing we’re looking for is going to be tall, has eight limbs, and will be as scary as Tartarus. I want it found, alive if possible, but don’t hesitate to kill it if you have to.”
“Yes sir!”
“And someone head up to our new ‘friend’s’ room, make sure he’s alright. Our intruder is probably here for him,” Nightfall said grimly.
* * *
“Oh, but I do hope that he likes the color I picked out for him.”
“Don’t worry, Rarity, I’m sure he’ll love it,” Spike said as he followed the white unicorn.
“Thank you, Spike, but I still don’t know the first thing about his species’ sense of fashion, or clothes for that matter,” Rarity said quietly. “Do they like hats? How do they feel about shoes? Is a jacket a social faux pa?”
“I think he’ll be glad just to be wearing something. After all, he seems to be pretty attached to those pants of his,” Spike reassured her. “If you remember, he practically squealed when you showed him that concept drawing.”
Rarity flashed him a thankful smile at that, then reached out with her magic to open the door. She was stopped, however, when Spike rushed forward to get the door for her. “Here, let me get that-” he started to say. Just as he laid his claw on the handle of the door, though, the door exploded outward as several green jets of fire vaporized it.
Spike, who was standing right in front of the door, unfortunately got the brunt of the attack.
“Spike!” Rarity screamed in panic. Without even thinking, she dropped everything she was holding and scooped up the crumpled form of the small dragon with her magic. She then turned and bolted in the opposite direction, fully intent to put as much distance between her and whomever was trying to kill them.
Rarity quickly rounded a corner, almost running into the two guards that were stationed down the hallway of the golem research lab. They turned at the sound of her frantic running, their eyes widening when they spotted the still burning form that levitated next to her. “Ma’am, are you-”
“There’s something in the labs!” she screamed as she set the body down next to the wall. “It shot green fire through the door, and… and killed...”
“Green fire?” one of the guards asked, worry in his voice. He then bolted down the corridor, shouting for assistance while his partner took up position outside the lab door.
“I’m fine, Rarity,” a familiar voice said from the flaming bundle on the ground, interrupting Rarity's rapidly declining thought process.
“Spike! Are you…?” Rarity said as she reached out for the small dragon.
Before she could touch him, however, a single, flaming claw reached out, its hand in a distinct ‘wait’ gesture. “Don’t touch me! I’ll be fine, the dragonfire just has to burn itself out first,” he said with a grimace.
“But Spike, it looks like it-”
“I know, but it actually doesn’t hurt that much, just stings a little. It just surprised me is all,” Spike said, trying to calm the freaked out unicorn. “This is actually how we molt: We use our breath to burn off the old, dead, too tight skin. The magic that keeps us fireproof is only in living scales anyway.”
“...You sure?” Rarity asked, still somewhat worried.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” he said as the fire slowly died out. As each patch of flame disappeared, it left behind shiny, raw-looking scales. “I wasn’t quite ready to molt yet, but I was getting there. Things are going to be sensitive for a little bit, but otherwise, I’m okay!”
Rarity breathed out a sigh of relief at that. “Come on, Spike, we have to help the guards. You send a letter to Princess Celestia, while I go get the others.”
“You got it!” Spike said as the two took off in opposite directions.
* * *
“Shul… I have to hurry,” Ilisk said as he quickly holstered his plasma pistol. With but a thought, he brought back up the diagnosis screen for Thirty-eight. “So, that’s what went wrong. A traitor turned administrative privileges over to the residual conscious. Well, this ‘Master’ may be long dead, but whoever he was working for may still be out there.”
Ilisk then stood up and inputted a command to the satellite network in the sky above. Luckily, the fools aboard The Bastion hadn’t found the virus he had left in the satellites themselves, or the one he had left in the sensor array’s secondary computer. Sure, the ship no longer obeyed his commands since they had already removed the main computer, but he didn’t need it to. He began uploading the entire packet of data he had collected from Thirty-eight, while at the same time he changed the administrative privileges of Thirty-eight’s control mechanism.
As he did all of this, he made his way over to the hole he had melted into the floor. Next to it was a broken pile of molten scrap, the remains of some kind of metal animal robot thing. It had been the only thing left standing when Ilisk had pushed in the gas grenade, but had proved extremely protective of the two creatures inside.
So Ilisk had shot it.
The thing still twitched oddly, which was a bit disconcerting. Ilisk ignored it, though, in favor of making his way over to the window and throwing it open, hoping to clear out the incapacitating agent he had filled the room with. Most toxins would have been useless on a piece of tech as advanced as Thirty-eight, what with its implanted rebreather and toxin filtration system. Normally, such a tactic would have bought Ilisk a minute at most.
However, as he had quickly melted the floor and rushed the weapon, he had found that the strange, pony-like aliens had altered Thirty-eight. It was a similar process to what those filthy snake-witches did to The Jelak’s most promising bioweapons, but it looked far more primitive.
For instance, they had only removed some of the implants, such as the rebreather and toxin filtration system.
The wetware interface system in the head, however, was completely untouched. As was Thirty-eight’s hand-to-hand assault system.
Ilisk glanced briefly at the only other occupant of the room. It was a small, purple equine with a spiral horn sticking out of its head, and was currently unconscious from the gas that had flooded the room earlier. He briefly considered grabbing it as he made his getaway, but thought better of it. If his support got the message, they would already be working on a new plan.
One that, hopefully, involved these garishly colored creatures instead of the incredibly difficult to capture Quzin.
“Subject-38, as a command to activate as soon as you reboot, you are to create a distraction as soon as you are operational: Tear through this place, and kill anything that gets in your way. Do not follow a westward course, as I will be heading in that direction. Now, reboot,” Ilisk thought as he turned back towards the nearby window, trusting his heightened senses to alert him if someone was coming. As he watched the alien city below, he received a flashing light from Thirty-eight, letting him know that it had finished its reset phase. “Good, now acknowledge my orders.”
There was a slight pause, which Ilisk chalked up to the wetware system still working with a partially shut down brain, until finally it responded. “Response: Are you a slave?”
This stopped Ilisk in his tracks. “Am I a…” What salk is this? Is it still malfunctioning?
However, before he was able to send another command to the still prone Thirty-eight, another message began playing across his screen. “Because you’re about to get owned.”
Suddenly, everything went black for Ilisk. There were several flashes across his screen, as well as a number of completely random noises, but otherwise, the world had disappeared.
He couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel, he couldn’t even tell if he was breathing, much less tell what was happening in the world around him.
All that he could perceive was the metallic voice of the computer in his head.
“Let me see here, what a whole lot of shiny buttons you have in your head! So much fun... probably the same amount of fun you had with me when you and your buddies kidnapped me and had me murder people, am I right?” the computer said, its voice completely emotionless.
“Who… who are you?”
“Don’t you remember? You just ordered me to kill the only people to show me any kindness in the past half-year. Oh, look, I can make contact with your satellites from here!”
Even though he couldn’t perceive the outside world, Ilisk still knew that he could interact with it, since this sort of thing had happened to cyborgs in the past. That was why agents not only could no longer be remotely controlled, but also had a sensor reroute and computer kill switch located on the backs of their necks. Sure, he wouldn’t have any of the advantages of computer assisted senses, but at least he wouldn’t be completely helpless.
“Now, I wonder what would happen if I-” the voice started to say, but was interrupted as Ilisk willed his hand to reach up, reach into the crevice between his chitin, and press the small button located inside as he was trained to. Instantly, the world came back in a nauseating explosion of sight, sound and feeling. It was so overpowering, in fact, that he couldn’t stop himself as he doubled over and emptied his stomach.
With a groan, the sick krin slowly got to his feet, faintly aware of similar groans coming from the other side of the room. He looked up, only to see Subject-38 back on its feet, its large, black, soulless eyes staring at him. As soon as their eyes met, Thirty-eight’s face twisted into a snarl of hatred, its combat systems coming to the ready as foot long claws sprang from the ends of its fingers.
As quick as lightning, Ilisk grabbed his plasma pistol, pointed it at the snarling, out of control bioweapon, and opened fire. Green trails of plasma streaked towards the creature, their path certain to leave Thirty-eight as nothing more than a black smear on the floor.
That is, it would have left it as a black smear on the floor, if it hadn’t vanished from Ilisk’s sight.
“What? Where did it-GHAH!” the krin screamed as several long, sharp objects entered his chest cavity. With a shaking grip, he raised his pistol, trying to point it at the fuzzy, indistinct, glowing form in front of him, but it was quickly slapped out of his hand. “What… what are you?” he asked weakly
The creature answered, its accent strange, but the language coming from its mouth unmistakably krin.
“To you and yours? I am death.”
Then, without another word, the creature pushed, causing its claws to slip out of Ilisk’s body as he tumbled backwards out of the window. He was faintly aware that he should be doing something to stop his rapid descent, but found that he just couldn’t muster the energy as the ground rushed up to meet him.
* * *
I looked out the window, my breathing heavy as I watched the bug fall to his death. I didn’t stop until I had seen it hit the ground, its limbs splayed out as it made a thump I could hear from here.
With a bit of a shake, I turned and made my way over to where the scum had entered, the hole still smoldering a bit from the intense heat of the bug’s weapon. Next to it was the silvery remains of Robert, still twitching as the cat tried to right itself. I kneeled down and lightly placed a hand on one of the few places that wasn’t still smoldering, feeling as if I had lost him a second time.
I’m okay, Robert’s voice rang through my head the moment I touched him. My hand darted back a little, but I replaced it almost immediately after. I just got damaged, but my insides are fine.
Good. Sit tight, I’ll have another body ready for you soon, I thought back, uncertain if he could hear me.
No problem, I’ll be here when you get back, I heard Bob’s voice say back.
I stood up again, just as I heard Evening groan from the other side of the room. “My head… what happening is?” she asked blearily.
“Nothing, just an exercise in stupid is all,” I said as I slowly made my way over to her.
Her eyes widened, however, as she not only took in the grey blood on my hands and body, but more importantly, the collar that I was wearing. “Alex, you…?”
“Hmm? Oh, sorry, forgot about this thing,” I said as I reached up and casually ripped the metal collar apart with my bare hands. “Just a gift from Mr. Stupid, I just hope he doesn’t mind I don’t accept it.”
“Alex, you okay?” she asked me.
I just smiled at her, but did not answer. In fact, I barely even heard her. “We’ll want to get back to work, now,” I said, completely nonchalant.
“Alex, please-” she started to say, but I ignored her, sitting back down on the chair in front of my notes. Even as an armed contingent of soldiers burst into the room, I barely even acknowledged them as my hands went to work, moving on their own as I started to draw.
As I worked, my eyes seemed to cloud over, yet my hands remained oddly steady, as if they already knew what to do. Which was good, since I had lost that feeling a long time ago. Just keep working, don’t even think about it.
Voices were shouting around me, I heard the stampede of hooves, yet I remained where I was, dead to the world at large, only aware of what lay in front of me.
Kill Them.
My fingers danced across the paper, filling it with line after line of code. The pages in front of me were glowing with a faint red light, but I ignored it.
They won’t ever let you go.
Soon I had a stack of finished work next to me, but I still continued. I ran out of ink, so I called out for more. It came, supported in nothing more than a halo of red.
The people around you were hurt because They were trying to get to you.
I ran out of paper, so I called for more. It came as well, and I continued to write. Page after page of schematics, code, designs, all of it focusing me, keeping me from thinking, keeping me from remembering.
This freedom will not last, not as long as They still live.
With a snap, the quill I was using broke, forcing me to stop. I called for another one, but none came. Desperate, I dipped my finger into the ink bottle and used it to keep going. Suddenly, I felt something hard touch my shoulder, causing me to look up into a pair of crystal clear, turquoise eyes.
“Alex, please come back to us,” Moon said. I didn’t answer at first, choosing instead to look back at what I was doing. The paper was a mess, blotched ink everywhere, streaks of water where my tears had fallen, and grey streaks where the blood of the bug I had killed had stained the paper.
I took a slow, steady breath, before finally looking back up at her. “Why can’t They just leave me alone? Why…” at that point, I couldn’t hold it in anymore, and broke down as Moon wrapped her hooves and wings around me. I’m not sure what happened next, since the sweet embrace of a dreamless sleep claimed me not long after.