Needles poking and prodding. The feeling of being sick to my stomach all day, everyday. This was the life I resigned myself to. I wasn’t sure what was in the needles they always injected me with, but I knew it wasn’t good. Not that any of them cared of course. If I complained, or tried to fight them off, I was pushed into the solitary room with no food, two days minimum each time. It had become more of a home to me than the rest of this fucking place, that’s for sure.
A knock rang out against my door. “A-1, ready to continue?” came the voice of one of the doctors. He had a writing pad and a pen in hand, a white mask covered most of his face, leaving only his piercing gray eyes left to haunt me.
“No, fuck off.” I said. I’m sick of this life, sick of always being the test subject for their dumb little experiments. I always felt like shit afterwards and, if I didn’t already lose my appetite, my food would end up on the floor and walls anyway.
“Very well, have it your way.” the doctor said as he wrote something down on his note pad.
Usually that was where they would leave me alone, only to come back the next day and repeat the routine. This would go on until I couldn’t stand the hunger anymore and let them do whatever they wanted to me. Usually.
This time was different. A few moments later I heard rushed footsteps at the door, before the sound of the lock turning clicked through the silence. There stood the same doctor, his gray eyes fierce and fiery, as if he was filled with excitement. Next to him were two other men, much larger than he was, with black uniforms.
“I refuse to have you think you can continue to be a thorn in my side for much longer.” the doctor said, a shiver ran down my spine. “Should you ever refuse me again, this will be your punishment from now on.”
He signaled to the two men, who stepped into the room and watched me closely. Before I knew it, the door was closed and locked once more, trapping me with these two men who towered over me.
“So what, are you guys gonna tell me I’m being disrespectful or-” I started, but didn’t finish as the man on my left swung his fist into my cheek.
The pain wasn’t immediate, the shock came first, followed by a moment of confusion and then pain. I could feel tears stinging my eyes already, but they weren’t done yet. This was a punishment after all. The second man kicked me in the stomach, sending me skidding to the wall behind me. My only sanctuary at that moment was the fact that the walls were padded to avoid self harm from us ‘patients’.
The first man was on me again, pulling me up from the floor by my hair. He brought me face to face with him, smiling at me before slamming my face against the wall. I’d never been so happy for padding before, not that it did much in the long run as he kept bashing my face into the wall. What once was a pristine white now looked like somebody smashed a tomato onto it, and I didn’t look much better.
Blood ran from my nose and mouth freely, and tears streamed from my eyes like two waterfalls of lost innocence. The man held me up once again, this time facing away from him so his partner could have a go. The two treated me like their own personal punching bag, taking turns every few minutes. I think they had two go’s each before finally dropping me and banging on the door for their release. It’s all a blur of pain really.
Sure enough, the door opened and there stood the gray eyed doctor once more, his mask now gone as he gave me a sneering smile, a large scar on his upper lip only adding to his visage as a villain.
“Now, unless you want that to become your usual treatment, Ms. Rainbow Dash, I recommend you do as I say, when I say it.” He said as the two large men left the room. “Am I understood?”
I couldn’t respond at the time, but if I could, I’d probably spit out a vicious ‘fuck you’ to him. As it stands, as my body throbbed with pain and I lay in a small pool of my own blood, I stood silent. My eyes felt heavy, and my vision wavered for a moment before I succumbed to the deep blackness of unconsciousness.
“Ms. Rainbow Dash!” I heard his angry voice once more, before my mind completely cut off everything.
Dash
Dash
“Dash!”
Dash jumped, startled from her daydream. She looked over to see AJ staring at her, a worried expression on her face.
“You ok there Dash? You spaced out on me for a bit there.” AJ said.
Dash nodded. “Yea, I’m fine. It’s just…” she trailed off for a moment, looking around at the room they had found a few minutes ago. It was a solitary confinement room, much cleaner than the one she had, especially after what she had just remembered. “I was kept in a room just like this. It brings back some bad memories.”
AJ stared for a moment longer before nodding. “Right, I get it. Say no more, let’s move on.”
Dash nodded. “Yea, sure. Thanks.” she said as they left the room and continued exploring. Room after room, hall after hall, it all began to blend together.
“This place is so...clean.” AJ said as they passed by another room that looked like all the others.
“More like creepy.” Dash rebutted, fighting the shiver that was beginning to crawl up her spine. Some things couldn’t be fought though, especially such a natural reaction from one's body, and AJ took notice.
“Hey, Dash, you sure you’re ok? D’ya need a break or something?” she asked, knowing how hard it must be for the other girl to see a place like this. She had heard from her great uncle once that when somebody goes through something so distressing in their life, it sticks with them forever.
Dash stopped walking for a second and turned to look at AJ, she could see the hint of worry in her eyes. “Yea,” she said “let me just take a moment here.”
AJ watched as Dash took her bag off of her back and sat against a wall. Now that she was given a good look at the smaller girl, she noticed the beads of sweat accumulating on her forehead and face, as well as the shallow breaths she was taking. They weren’t running, and it was plenty cool down here, so there was only one explanation left.
“Hey, d’ya wanna talk about the time you spent down here?” AJ bravely asked.
Dash looked up from where she was sitting, locking eyes with AJ. “Why?” she asked. A simple yet firm question.
AJ sighed and sat down next to Dash. “‘Cause I can tell it’s eatin’ you up inside just being here. I figure it’d just help if you let it out a bit.”
Dash turned her head, looking straight ahead at nothing for a moment before she gave a deep sigh and leaned her head back against the cool wall behind her. She grabbed her bag from where it sat on the floor and unzipped it. Reaching in, she pulled out a bottle of water and took a sip before passing it over to AJ.
“Sure,” she said “what do you wanna know?”
AJ grabbed the water bottle and raised an eyebrow at the question. “Uhm, I’m not sure. What was life like down here?”
Dash closed her eyes, as if doing so would help her remember the memories she tried so hard to repress.
“Well first off,” she began “this isn’t the same place that I was kept. My hell hole was literally that, a hell hole. It wasn’t this clean or well taken care of. And it was way more…” she paused for a moment, searching her brain for the appropriate word. “It was more occupied. There were dozens of us, trapped like caged animals and experimented on.”
“Experimented on? Do you know what they did to you?” AJ asked. She knew they were doing something to the people they kept down there, hell, everybody knew that. But nobody knew what it was, and the only people that knew were Fluttershy and Dash, and neither one of them had said a word about it yet.
Dash sighed again. She didn’t think anybody could sigh as much as she had done recently. “It’s not like they told us what they were putting in us when they did it. It was either we let them do it or we were punished.” She held her arms out in front of her, there were no marks or scars but she could still tell exactly where she had been pricked and cut for every experiment. “I don’t know what they did to us, but I hated every moment of it. It would literally make me sick to my stomach. I’d throw up and black out, only to wake up in a pool of bile and blood. Then I’d have to go through it all again the next day. If I refused, they’d beat the shit out of me and then do their experiments anyway. What made it worse was that, for some reason, I became their favorite. They took me out more than any of the others.”
“Fuck.” was all AJ said as Dash finished talking.
Dash chuckled. “I’d have taken you to be too much of a momma’s girl to drop the F-bomb like that.”
AJ shrugged. “Yea, well, momma ain’t exactly around anymore.” she said with a smile, before standing up and stretching a bit. “Now c’mon, we still have things to do so I hope you worked out whatever kinks you had.”
“I’ll show you a kink.” Dash said under her breath as she got up and grabbed her bag, putting the water bottle back into it before putting the bag on her back. “Alright, we pretty much covered everything here. If we keep going this way, we should find the entrance to the next wing. If it’s anything like where I was kept, there should be three wings.”
“Alright,” AJ said, gesturing down the hall “lead the way.”
The two continued walking down the deserted halls, passing more empty rooms along the way. The more time they spent there, the more Dash realized that it looked less like an abandoned lab, and more like a lab that hadn’t been put to use yet. Either way, it didn’t feel right.
Soon enough, they reached a pair of double doors, just as Dash said they would. Dash pressed a hand against the doors and they opened effortlessly. The two stepped through and entered a small room with another set of double doors ahead of them. Behind them, the doors closed tightly and a gas began to fill the small room they were now trapped in.
AJ tensed up, but Dash placed a hand on her shoulder. “Chill, it’s just a decontamination spray. The scientist set it up in case of a virus outbreak or something.”
Soon enough, the spray ended and the doors in front of them opened outwards, leading them into a new section of the institute. The first thing either of them had noticed was that this place looked a lot more lived in than the last section. There were scuff marks on the floor, and hazmat suits hanging along the wall.
The two of them continued walking, the familiar beeps of machinery could be heard, but now the various rooms that they passed were locked. That is, until they came across a large metal door that read “Test Chamber 1” above it. Dash grabbed the handle and pulled it down, hearing the door click open, the two of them gave each other a quick look and a nod before Dash pulled the door open all the way.
A blue light filled the room and a much louder beeping could be heard. Large machines lined the walls, all filled with some sort of strange liquid. There was something else floating in the water, but AJ couldn’t quite make it out. She stepped further into the room, separating herself from Dash’s side.
“Bodies.” Dash said, as she walked over to a computer that was placed on the wall to the far right of the room.
“What?” AJ asked, walking even closer to the machines now, slightly hesitant to look directly into any of them.
Dash sat down in front of the computer and began messing with it, pulling something from her back and connecting it. “They’re bodies. Those are people in there. Don’t touch anything, you might trip an alarm or something. I’ll see what I can do from here, but let me do some searching first. The Doc wants any information we can get from this place.”
AJ swallowed hard and nodded her head. “Right, you never know what we might find here.” she said, walking through the room and looking at the machines. Each one seemed to monitor the vitals of the person within. The worst thing was the size. They clearly weren’t adults. Every single one of these machines held a small child. AJ could make out the features of them if she looked close enough. A small boy with brown hair, a girl with pigtails, and…
“Applebloom!”