Silent Ponyville: Reunion

by Chapter 17

Part 16

Silent Ponyville: Reunion
Stay away.
Part 16

------

Once free of the hole Lance stood back to his full height with a grunt and shook off some dust that had scraped off onto his back. Before looking around he made sure to take a few steps away from it lest something from outside take advantage of his carelessness and grab him. The windows were broken on this floor as well, with even more of the dirt outside having pushed itself in due to increased pressure at the deeper depth. He could see a wall of solid looking concrete blocking off the remaining two thirds of the hall. To his right rear, the door to the elevator was not only boarded up, but blocked by another large pile of dirt for good measure. He probably wasn't going that way.

That made his path forward fairly clear at least; the only way available was through the door to his left. As he moved forward he stuck close to the wall opposite the windows to spare his leg the misery of having to deal with his hooves sinking into the piles of soft earth. The door was unlocked, but just as he was about to push it open something occurred to him, prompting him to look back over to the concrete wall. He was supposedly on the middle floor now...the same place he'd last seen Posey from the other elevator. She had to be somewhere on the other side of that wall!

Lance's first impulse was to call out for her but his good sense stomped the idea flat as he was drawing in breath. The only thing that was likely to accomplish was attracting unwanted attention, and he wouldn't be much good to her as a corpse. He briefly pondered knocking but pushed that idea aside for much the same reason. Besides, he had no idea how thick the wall was, and even if it did prove thin enough to not block the sound entirely she would have no idea it was him anyway. He still felt a small tug of hesitation as he stepped back to the door, but his resolved was bolstered at the thought of Posey being forced to live out her last alone in the dark with no idea what had become of him. He had to get her out and soon. As to how they would both escape this literal pit of a hospital afterward he hadn't a single clue but clearly it was healthier to focus on the smaller, more immediate problem in front of him for now.

Finally passing through the door Lance was confronted with yet another corridor that featured four boarded over doors to his right and a single normal looking door on the left toward the far end where it took a left turn. With the doors to the locker rooms and rest rooms so visibly barricaded it was simple matter to stop and check the door to the day room as he limped by, though he found the lock broken-how did he already know where all these doors lead?!

Lance put a hoof to his forehead in an attempt to massage away the newest wave of ache. It was no use. He may as well just admit it.

"This is Manehatten General..." he muttered to nopony. More specifically it was one of the middle floors, half occupied by rooms for long term patients with the other half reserved for general care facilities and amenities for the hospital staff. He'd gotten the last bit of his medical training and seen his first ever patients in this place. But before any of that...

...

That didn't matter right now. So what if it was Manehatten General? Buildings from other cities appearing where they had no business being was not something new to him anymore. There was still a mare that needed freeing and that was what mattered.

His new found focus didn't survive unscathed for long. Around the corner there was a trio of the strange flesh clothed gurneys awaiting him, politely arranged along the left wall to give him space to pass, with trails in the dirt and dust below suggesting they had been pushed through the rather solid looking wall on the right and across the corridor. Lance predictably found his hooves briefly uncooperative, stopping in place just long enough to confirm that nothing was moving and his watch was still blissfully quiet. They persisted in doing nothing as he forced himself past them, yet at the same time seemed to dare him to speak up again. He dearly hoped that keeping his mouth shut this time would prevent four from greeting him when next they met.

Past the gurneys the corridor took a right turn into a pair of double doors that would allow Lance into the half of the floor devoted to patient rooms. With one last look over to the gurneys to make sure they hadn't mysteriously vanished, he closed the door behind him. If the tracks he had seen so far were any indication it wouldn't actually function as any sort of viable barrier against them, but there was at least a little sense of ease to be had in letting the door block them from view.

If his memory was accurate the floor's hallway traveled around in a rectangular shape from that point. The longer segment going off to his right lead to another door on the far side that would lead to the examination rooms, the visiting rooms, the doctor offices, and most importantly of all a door that would let him into the elevator hall on the other side of the cement wall. However he thought it was wiser to go down the shorter segment in front of him and at least check around the corner first. It wouldn't do to let himself be ambushed just because he had momentarily forgotten to be thorough.

Lance's decision was soon vindicated, his watch starting to buzz before he had even reached the corner. It was a subdued noise, indicating a distant threat, so he felt safe in poking his head around the bend to take a look. All the doors were either boarded up, cemented over, or curiously absent altogether save for one in front of which a barbed nurse stood. As soon as she caught sight of the beam of his surgical light she turned and started for him, her oddly calm breath quickly picking up to the expected tempo.

He quickly switched his light off and retreated back into the safety of the pitch black darkness to wait for his next move. If the expected patrol route went in his direction first, he would have to make a slow retreat backward to the door through which he had entered and then try to follow her at a safe distance. Hopefully she would start moving away and let him skip to the following part instead. All of this planning was rendered moot as the noises he heard in the dark made it sound like she had done the last thing he expected. There were a few more hoof steps in his direction before she turned and, rather than starting a patrol down the hallway, merely moved back to her initial position and stopped, her breathing calming down again.

Wondering if perhaps he had misheard, he crept back to the bend and turned on his surgical light. The nurse was still there, in the exact same spot, spotting him all over again. They spent a brief moment repeating the same dance of pursuit and avoidance only for the same thing to happen as the first time.

So, this nurse wasn't patrolling the hallway like her counterpart upstairs. This one was guarding that door specifically. There must have been something worth keeping an eye on inside, which told Lance he would most likely be required to go inside and get it somehow. That was a big problem though as he could only think of two immediate solutions that were both bad. If he tried to lead her away he had no doubt she would easily be able to catch up to him, and while the encounter upstairs had shown it was possible for him to best the nurses in a fight, that was needlessly risky and ultimately futile as he would have precious little time before she regenerated.

He sighed quietly, turned, and flicked his light back on. There was little sense in choosing either option before he had even properly checked the rest of the floor. For all he knew there might be a more viable alternative practically in hoofs reach and thanks to this particular nurse's lack of movement he could take his time looking. Lance returned to the first corner and aimed his light down the longer length of hallway he'd initially passed on. The first four doors were obviously impassable, with one actually having been cemented over as though the ever-present board barriers would not have been discouraging enough.

The fifth door he checked, specifically the third door on his right, was free of obstructions and moments later proved to even have a working doorknob of all things. With a last cautious look around to reaffirm that he was safely alone he gingerly pushed it open. Immediately a wave of warm, dank, sickeningly musty air struck him head on, forcing him back a few steps as he struggled to keep his coughing fit from becoming too loud. After getting a lid on his coughing he looked back up to the partially open door trying to remember what the hay was in there as he waited for the nauseating air to thin out a bit. Where had he smelled that stench befo-

...

"Please don't be the shower please don't be the shower," he quietly begged in spite of already having remembered as much as he nudged the door open the rest of the way.

It was the shower room...or at least it had been. Judging by the shape it was in now it had not only suffered from neglect but somepony had quite enthusiastically taken a sledgehammer to the place. There were broken wall tiles littering the almost just as broken floor, the shower heads and valves had all been messily torn out and were nowhere to be seen, and while the metal dividers had been similarly removed there was still one left lying covered with rust and peeling paint on the floor near the far right corner of the room. The damage to the walls was extensive enough to expose a great deal of the rusted piping behind them, but the wall to his left had clearly gotten the worst of it. Moving from the edge of the wall to the center, the chips and cracks turned into ever larger missing chunks and broken pipes until finally ending in an opening just big enough for a full grown pony to squeeze through.

But Lance wasn't paying much attention to any of that, content to find the mold covering everything from floor to ceiling far more disconcerting. He wasn't even sure he could call it mold anymore. It was definitely a fungus of some type, with many root like tendrils of various sizes ranging in color from deep red to a deathly black. But how could it have grown so much? It obviously had plenty of water, but the room around it was made of concrete and tile without so much as a splinter of wood from which to draw nutrients. He had little doubt that he could live with the mystery from his spot safely outside, but there was sure to be something else of importance inside that hideous room. With a last look downward to make sure the cuts on his forelegs were well covered, he forced himself through the door.

As he took a hesitant step inward and looked around a bit longer he was able to decipher a pattern to the distressingly rampant growth. The large tendrils branched out repeatedly into smaller tendrils, losing their red color until becoming completely black at their thinnest. He also found that they all seemed to be spreading from beneath the divider panel lying on the floor. A closer look revealed that it wasn't lying on floor so much as it was bolted in place over a hole big enough to just barely peek out along the outside edges. The thickest red colored roots were emerging from within, where the food source of the fungus must have resided. Lance was momentarily curious as to what was inside and drew closer, but when the unmistakeable scent of decay began to overpower the moldy stench, and the quiet sound of many small creatures crawling through something that could only be described as 'juicy' reached his ears, he quickly decided he wasn't that curious.

There was only one other point of interest in the room. On the left side of the far wall one of the pipes had been broken and then bent up and outward with an odd addition. An oval had been cut out of the side of the pipe and a curved section of glass, apparently shaped perfectly for the pipe, was held over it with a pair of iron manacles. Inside there was an off white colored round object about the size of a tennis ball resting against a small metal rod that kept it from rolling back into the pipe. To the side of the glass was a phrase written on the pipe with what Lance was thankful he could immediately pick out as only being red paint...fresh red paint that was suspiciously untouched by the ravages of time that had worn down the rest of the room, but still only red paint.

YOU WANT ME

...

So apparently he wanted what was in the pipe.

How was he supposed to retrieve it though? The pipe was far too small to put his hoof inside so that was immediately ruled out, There was quite a bit of rust covering it though...perhaps it was worn through enough for him to just break it free? Even though that option struck him as uncharacteristically simplistic of this place it seemed worth a shot at least, so he stepped forward and somewhat hesitantly gave the pipe a decently strong pull. As predicted he wasn't so lucky. Despite the rust and wear the pipe was solid and there would be no breaking it free of the wall.

The dank air and the rampant growth in the room suggested that there was already plenty of water in the system, so if Lance was lucky it would simply be a matter of finding a valve to turn. With all the holes in the wall and the fungal roots all over everything there certainly was no lack of places to hide one. Opting to start simple, he began moving left along the wall keeping his eyes on roughly the same level as the pipe in order to trace it backward. He only made it a few steps before he happened upon a particularly thick patch of fungal growth with telltale cracks in the concrete coming out from behind it. He reached up and gave the gnarled mass a gentle tug, finding that it broke free of the wall rather easily.

It had been concealing yet another hole in the wall, inside of which was unmistakably another section of the same pipe. This one featured a valve that nopony would have ever been able to get to or make use of had the hole in the concrete not been there, as though making a valve that nopony could ever use had been the plan from the very beginning of construction. He reached in and gave the handle a twist, feeling brief surprise at how smoothly it turned when by all logic it should have been consumed by rust much like every other metal object in the room. There was no resultant sound of water running in the pipe, and a look to his right confirmed the inactivity. He gave a disappointed grumble and closed the valve again. There must have been an issue with the pump system elsewhere.

Rather than dwell on the matter any further he turned his attention to the large hole in the left wall. It looked sizable enough for him to squeeze through, saddlebags and all, and as he shined his light through it he also saw that the room beyond was orders of magnitude cleaner than the shower room. The tile was still chipped, the walls were still cracked, and there was still the expected bits of mildew on the walls, but for whatever reason there was no jungle of mold and fungus waiting for him on the other side. It was easily the least horrible wash room he'd come across so far. He stepped forward, taking a moment to make sure his saddlebags actually fit before entering the second room.

When he drew his first breath it became apparent that the cleanliness of this second room had come at a price. Though it was no more powerful an odor than had been in the shower room, the different nature of said odor triggered an altogether more unpleasant mental response. It was biological rot, the sort of smell that would emanate from a hideously infected, necrotic wound...or a corpse. Lance tried his best to suppress another coughing fit and covered his nose with a hoof. He then flinched and wiped his hoof off before repeating the motion, having recalled what that same hoof had just been walking through moments prior. He looked around for the source of the smell and didn't take long to find it.

Against the wall opposite the barricaded door was a steel bathtub bearing its fair share of rust around the edges. It was typical hospital fare, constructed of something that wouldn't stain because nopony would want to be washed in a tub made of porcelain that had been tinted an odd red color on the inside from years of medical service. The tubs current contents were a testament to the necessity of such a design. Water was at least present in the mixture but that hardly mattered. It was some horrid maroon colored essence of putrescence that skirted the line between a mere broth and outright soup. Something...or somepony had been rotting in that tub for quite a while before being removed.

But the worst part about that tub was the glint of light he saw shining from the depths as his surgical light passed over it.

Lance was a doctor. To say he had seen and done unpleasant things in the course of that career would be a gross understatement. He had always been well served by his sense of professionalism and duty to his patients though. He'd always maintained a mental barrier that ensured he would go to any lengths necessary to save or even just improve one of their lives. This was slightly different. There were no patients to be strong for, so his mind took little issue with immediately discarding the possibility of something of use being in that tub as far too disgusting to be true. His eyes were probably just playing tricks with him. All he needed to do was look just a tiny bit closer, see there was no glint and there never had been, then he could just move along and put such silly thoughts behind him.

The same glint shined back at him. It was in the exact same spot.

"Oh there is no way in Tartarus I am reaching in there," he said to himself as he turned to leave. He figured he would just return later with something of sufficient length to drag the object out of the 'water'. His pipe was probably adequate for the job but he would much rather look for something else he could discard, never touch again, and generally forget the existence of altogether after use. But that plan didn't pan out for him in the least. He was prevented from even just leaving the room in the first place, stopped cold by the sight of four of the strange gurneys sitting in the previous room, arranged in a two by two square seemingly just so he could see all of them through the hole. Then his watch started buzzing again.

Lance looked down at the malfunctioning time piece resting against his chest and then back up again. The gurneys were motionless and had never been able to trigger his watch in the first place..well, never set it off while he could see them at least. He turned back and looked about the room in a mild panic, even going so far as to inspect the ceiling, but there was nothing moving in that room except for him even as the buzzing grew louder and louder. Then the door was savagely broken open in a hail of splinters.

He tried with all of his feebleness to bolt through the hole between the two rooms but that wasn't going to work either. There was a single mighty wing flap and a hot hiss of steam behind him just before he felt a painful tug on his tail that pulled him right off his hooves. He didn't even try to crawl away after that, his bid to escape from most definite danger to mere implied danger was useless. Her jaw grabbed his good leg before she lifted him clear off the ground, leaving him hanging upside down trying to get his bearings back as she carried him away from the door with his head a mere inch or two from the floor. Following a few seconds of dangling he was carelessly dropped preceding that familiar tendril wrapping around his neck and lifting him up again. At about the moment he felt her metal clad hoof press against the back of his head, he finally looked down and realized the position he was in.

"NO-"

Splash.

The wave of absolute revulsion that shot through his body as his head was dunked into the broth of decay in the tub was unlike any he'd ever felt before. She certainly seemed to enjoy it though. He could feel her shiver with glee, her body pressed against his back as she held his head down against the bottom of the tub. The unprecedented disgust passed quickly though, replaced by the more primal concern regarding his quickly dwindling oxygen. Realizing she hadn't pinned his legs in any way he started struggling, trying to do anything at all to wrench free but his efforts against her now were just as much in vain as they had always been.

Lance stopped trying to force his way out, knowing it would only drown him faster. Was she really going to just end him right now after passing up so many previous opportunities and letting him get so far? Why? Was she just bored with him now and discarding him like every other moving thing she'd encountered? Or was this just another tease at killing him? For all he knew she would yank his head out just before he was about to drown and then do some other horrible thing to him next. He couldn't just sit there and see what she did though, this wasn't a situation where he could pass out and hope for the best. The only thing to do was assume he was either getting out of there on his own or leaving his water logged corpse in that wash room.

His lungs began to burn with need and he started getting light headed, signaling that he needed to think of something in that very instant while he was still able to think at all. The best he could do was realize that getting his head out of the water was impossible, so he needed to find some way to get the water out from around his head instead. Using up a bit of his precious oxygen he struck the side of the tub with his hoof hoping that the general neglect had left it brittle enough for him to punch a hole through it. All he accomplished was accelerating his own demise and rattling his starving brain with the loud bang that echoed through the water. Growing more desperate by the second he reached his hooves out beneath the water, looking for something, anything he could use to save his own wretched life.

Lance's left hoof brushed against something and he heard a soft metallic clinking noise. What was that? Then it hit him, the glint in the 'water' from before had been the chain attached to the drain. He strained to reach it again, and when he had it back in hoof he gave it a single hard yank that dislodged it while his body began defying his brain and trying to draw breath. His whole body twitched as his lungs were foiled in their attempt to kill him by his stubbornly closed mouth, the alicorn pinning him to the tub giving another coo of delight at such an urgent sign of distress. Even as he felt the current of the water moving toward the drain he was becoming more certain that he had been too little too late. Every moment was quickly becoming nothing more than a struggle to keep from sucking in the horrid mixture, panic further eroding his will with every passing second.

Just a bit longer...

Just a bit longer...

Just a bit longer...

Just a bit longer...

Just a bit longer!

Just a bit longer!

JUST A BIT LONGER!

Lance opened his mouth. The very immediate threat to his continued existence at least had the benefit of making him completely indifferent to the taste of the cold, foul liquid as it was sucked down his gullet. At the moment the broth of decay made contact with his airways he reflexively swallowed, his throat spasming in a last ditch effort to seal off his lungs. The attempts at coughing that followed only served to produce a sickly gagging noise and entice his tormentor further. Now the only thing left to do was wait to pass out completely.

She had been an odd one, the alicorn. Lance had never gotten the impression that she was picky in how she killed her victims. Obviously he was wrong, if only in his particular case. It didn't seem of much use to ponder the reason anymore though. If anything he was just thankful she'd held off long enough for him to see Posey again. He really hoped she'd be alright...it seemed likely at least. None of the monsters bothered her and she was a clever mare. Yeah, she'd be fine without him, perhaps even better for it. Fluttershy would be alright too...not that he cared or anything. Soft Cure...well...Soft Cu-

The next useless gag unexpectedly proved not so useless. Lance couldn't tell exactly how low the 'water' in the tub was, but it was low enough to let him actually force the liquid out of his throat. No longer content with just waiting to fade away, he caught a second wind and began racing to cough up as much of the putrid fluid as he could. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, his throat relaxed its grip on his airways and he took the single most precious breath of his life. He was still coughing and sputtering but for the love of Luna he was breathing again, his lungs racing to make up for lost time, his body sagging with fatigue, and his eyes unable to quite focus on anything as he recovered.

Her backing off and wrapping her tendril around his mid section barely registered with him. The yank into the air followed by the painful drop into the tub, however, registered quite capably. The sovereign once more had his undivided attention, the amber surgeon unable to do anything but look up in dread anticipation from his spot lying on his side still trying to catch his breath. She was silent for a long moment and then gave a brief distorted hum before turning and walking away, apparently satisfied with her work for the time being. Lance took no issue with her departure as he continued lying there letting his mind piece itself back together.

Unfortunately the first thing that sprang to his reassembling mind was the fact that he'd just taken a generous gulp of the tub's contents.

He started retching the instant the thought came to him, barely managing to get his head over the side of the tub before the contents of his stomach came up. By the time he had stopped throwing up he was surprised that one of his rear hooves wasn't lying in the nauseating maroon colored puddle on the washroom floor. After taking a moment to rein in the resulting headache he unsteadily got back to his hooves and stepped out of the tub. Strangely enough, he didn't feel paralyzed with disgust like he had upon realizing the truth of the barbed nurse's blood bursting out of his chest wound, even though this easily rated going completely catatonic. His still healing fore leg cuts had been submerged in the rotten soup, his head with all its gashes had been held under, he'd even swallowed the blasted stuff, at best he was probably now playing host to a small army of necrotic flesh eating bacteria. But he couldn't bring himself to feel much of anything about it. It was like this newest incident was such a heinous violation that it was impossible to react to it sufficiently, so he wasn't even going to try.

Well, as far as strange ways to react went, he had to admit that this one wasn't too bad. It would be best to take advantage of it and move on lest his latest brush with death truly catch up with him. The sovereign had even made him a convenient exit that would save him the trouble of squeezing through the hole in the wall again. Lance tried to limp out into the hallway but got distracted before completing the first step. His fore hoof had brushed against something on the floor that let off a metallic jingle. Looking down he saw that it was the chain from before, still attached to the rubber stopper he'd pulled from the drain to save his own life. But the chain wasn't the only thing attached to it. Hanging from the plug by a length of brittle looking string was another key labeled 'OR2'.

Rather than ponder how much easier things might have been had he just plucked the key from the tub instead of hesitating, Lance silently stashed away his newest find and tried to exit again, wanting absolutely nothing to do with that room anymore. Ever. This time he at least got one hoof and his head through the broken door frame before yet another interruption. Checking to his right, he saw nothing amiss, but when looking to his left he saw another door 303 that he was certain had been cemented over before he'd entered the shower room.

Comments

[Silent Breeze]

Interesting. The first time the steam pegasus attacked and left after he freed himself from her newest plan to kill him, without anything taking her attention.

[That_one_guy]

It makes perfect sense now.

[Deltathewolf]

Gross. That's it.

Wait, are those mushrooms edible?

-Delta-

[Bridgebrain]

864597 I think Silent Hill can be considered the worst mushroom trip of all time. I doubt you'd want to add more power to it

[Pyromanecer]

Oh, buck up, Lance. James Sunderland didn't have any qualms about sticking his whole arm in a toilet. If that whiny pansy can go turd-fishing for a wallet, you can reach into a bathtub full of nasty.

[kitsuneito]

861272 alicorn.

[Divine Path]

He has suffered quite much.
Will he escape after all, I wonder?
Hopefully, he'll learn the truth and be able to cope with it before he...expires somehow.

I shall read on.

[SonicRainBoom706]

861272
actually i think it was trying to "test" him,like saying "Lets see how much you can take"

[Spark of Serenity]

Hm...Lance breaks Fluttershy's wings, the Sovereign rips Lance's off. Lance attempts to drown Fluttershy in a bathtub, the Sovereign attempts to drown Lance in a jacked up corpse broth bath tub. The Sovereign takes Lance's past sins a step further, which seems to be Lance's punishment for what he did to Fluttershy.

Hm...