Chapter 3. Going Back Up
And thus ended the life of one silly mare named Aneki. I had fallen from H'ven (let's call it Heaven for the moment) to Hell. Literally. Okay, I did take an elevator down part of the way, but the rest of the trip had been uninterrupted. No, not uninterrupted. Continuous was a more accurate description, because although the descent had occurred all at once, it had been interrupted by every protrusion, beam or other bit of structure that could get in the way. I was pretty sure I had hit every last one of them before that last, rather terminal, stop, presumably on the floor, several levels below.
The good news was that my legs didn't hurt anymore. Actually, they probably did; I was just too busy hurting everywhere else to notice. This extreme pain took my concept of agony to a new level of understanding. Eventually it reached the point where it was simply too much to bear, so my mind decided not to bear it at all. Ah, that felt better. In fact, I didn't feel anything at all. This wasn't too bad; I could tolerate it indefinitely. Then again, if this was the worst Hell could manage, I could find myself getting really bored. Perhaps Hell had need of a structural engineer.
As if of its own accord, my body decided it was done with lying here, and slowly stood, making allowances for all the bits that didn't seem to work quite right. My survival saddle was still attached, somehow, but it looked as battered as I felt. In fact, it was quite squashed, as, no doubt, was everything in it. Despite that, its lamps were still working. The milky dust cloud was quite thick down here, and the light from the lamps was making it glow like some sort of halo or aura about me.
How in Luna's name hadn't I splattered when I hit? I glanced about. Oh, I had. There was a distinct, large, reflective, splatter shaped mark where I had been lying.
What a mess. No wonder I was dead.....
Hang on a moment....
If I was dead, why was I still in my body? How was I standing, albeit poorly? How was I even thinking about this? Oh, that was right; my boss had told me not to risk my life, or in simpler terms, not to die. That must be it. I wasn't dead because I wasn't allowed to be.
Now, where the hell was I? Oh, yes, I had already been over that, hadn't I. Hell was exactly where I was. I staggered around in a circle, trying not to walk through the mess of liquids that marked my impact point. Bah! That liquid was my water supply, although, admittedly it was mixed with some of my blood. What was I going to drink now? Whatever. That was a problem for later, when I was dying of thirst. That took a few days to occur. I would have to survive my injuries, first.
Mapper. Mapper. Check the mapper. Damn. Nothing. I poked at it with a hoof, in what had to be the century's worst case of poor coordination, eventually hitting a button that seemed to achieve something. Data scrolled past my eyes for a few moments before my return route appeared on the head-up display. Woo! That was a doozie of a trip. Somehow I had to go up five levels before I could follow that path. I could always try following the same general directions down here, if the corridors would let me. Getting back to Elevator Fifteen was now my priority. I could call for help there. Just to be sure I actually needed to make the trip, I tried to call the boss, but was greeted with failure. Yup, I still needed to make the trip.
South. That was where I had to go. I staggered off in that direction, dodging pieces of metal that had fallen from the failed structure above. Fortunately the structure seemed happy to just groan and moan at the moment; it wasn't dropping things on me. Ouch! Yes it was. I took another step. Ouch! Nope. I was right in the first place. Nothing was falling. Despite my general numbness, moving actually caused a lot of pain. If only there was some sort of magical healing potion I could simply drink and be healed. Ouch. Now wouldn't ouch that be something.
My perception for the rest of the trip to the elevator became somewhat confused, no doubt due to my condition. I seemed to have some sort of out-of-body experience because I was sure I was walking next to myself as I shuffled along, encouraging myself to keep going. When I stumbled, I helped myself get back onto my hooves. Navigating to the elevator proved to be really easy, as the other me seemed to know the area well, guiding me right up to the door. I looked up at the display, and it was still displaying zero, suggesting it hadn't moved in the entire time I had been down here. They could have afforded to let me finish my trip down to sub-level thirty-six.
Reaching up, I opened the secret panel, and extracted the wire, connecting it, with some difficulty, to the comms unit. "Boss, please be there," I said into it after the display had finished listing the failed connections.
To my relief, his voice came through immediately. "Aneki, you sound bad. What's it like down there?" he asked. Of course I sounded bad. I felt bad. I probably looked bad. Oh, I guess I sounded doubly bad because I was trying to talk through my filter mask. I whipped it off, something I immediately regretted when all the damaged nerve endings sent me reminders. I gritted my teeth and waited for the surge of pain to recede.
"Sorry boss. Is that better?" I tried, still not sounding that great, despite no longer being muffled. "The situation down here is dire. First, I need medical assistance. Second, at least one major vertical structural element has failed from somewhere above sub-level sixteen down to at least sub-level twenty-one. The material in the area is severely corroded to the point of having no structural integrity. Make sure anypony approaches with caution, preferably while wearing safety harnesses anchored well out of the area. There is a welded plate blocking the direct route. Consider anything beyond that point to be compromised." I drew in a ragged breath. "There are old repairs where it has failed and I want the heads of the incompetent fools that did them. There is also a lot of unbreathable dust, so make sure the team knows to wear masks." As I finished relaying my report, a glowing indicator showed me that my mapper had automatically transmitted the relevant information it had gathered to my boss.
"Received. I'm relaying this to Central now," he said. "Now, what was this about needing medical assistance?"
"The floor collapsed and I fell from sub-level sixteen all the way down to sub-level twenty-one," I whimpered.
What the boss first said was unrepeatable. "Where exactly are you now?" the boss asked, clearly concerned.
"I'm outside Elevator Fifteen on sub-level twenty-one now," I said. Relief flooded my brain as it realized I had accomplished my near impossible goal - submitting my report: surviving long enough to submit my report. I was rapidly becoming light headed, and knew my grip on reality was about to fail. "I think I'll pass out now," I told my boss, then did precisely that.
When I woke again, I knew time had passed, although I can't say I had felt its passage. At first, the nothingness of my unconsciousness was pierced by a faint but persistent beep that grew along with my ability to reason. I soon realized that it was the sound of medical equipment monitoring my heart rate. I opened my eyes, expecting to see a drip line, and maybe a monitor wire. What I hadn't expected to see was just how much was attached to me: a full lab of equipment, judging by the number of wires and tubes connected to me. At least I felt a lot better than I had last time I was conscious. Either I had been out of it for so long I had healed up, or I was drugged up with pain killers. I tried to move my legs, but found they were either in casts or firmly strapped down. Looking beyond the immediate, I found the walls were all distorted and blurry, which concerned me for a few moments, before I realized I was in some sort of transparent plastic tent. Was I in quarantine? Why?
"Hello, what is going on here?" I asked, my voice a little wobbly. I was assuming there would be somepony monitoring the room, or, at the very least, a voice operated comms system so somepony could be contacted.
After a few seconds has passed, a male voice said. "Oh, you are awake, are you?"
"Either I am capable of holding a reasonable conversation while talking in my sleep, or yes, I am awake," I said, dryly. Damn stupid question, that.
"I'll send a doctor to put you back to sleep in a moment," the voice advised me.
"Why? I feel okay," I said. "I'd like to get up."
"More's the pity," the voice said. "It would have been better all round if you had just died down there. Now we have to work out what to do with you."
"I beg your pardon?" I just about exploded. This prick had a lousy bedside manner!
"You stumbled into something you should never have seen," the voice said.
"What? Are you talking about the shitty excuse for repairs that were done down there? That sort of thing can't be covered up. A great chunk of the city falling through the floor is sure to bring attention!" I spat. I still wanted the heads of that repair team. Even more so if these ponies were covering up for them.
"That? No," the voice said, remaining level and emotionless. "I am told the repairs will be addressed properly this time so we won't have another debacle like this."
"So, what's the problem?" I demanded. "And am I in quarantine for something?"
"Look, I shouldn't tell you this, but as you aren't going to have the opportunity to tell anypony else, I guess it doesn't matter," the voice said. That sounded ominous! "And your warnings did save the team from central from suffering the same fate. One of the ponies on that team was my father, so I guess I owe you."
"So, I am in quarantine then," I said.
"You are," the voice confirmed.
"Where? Which hospital?"
"None. You are in one of Central's deniable facilities. That's all I can tell you about that," the voice said, "however, as promised, I will fill you in on your situation."
"Go on, please," I prompted, lifting my head a little to see if I could see if I was wearing casts or was restrained. Both, it would seem. My legs were covered in some sort of glossy black shell, and were strapped down to the bed on which I was lying.
"Do you recall the pony who assisted you, down on sub-level twenty-one?" The voice asked.
"I was alone there," I corrected him.
"No, I assure you that you were not. Somepony rather expertly bandaged you and splinted your broken limbs. There was no way possible you could have done that yourself."
"Huh?" I thought back to my nightmarish trip from where I had fallen, to Elevator Fifteen, and how I had that out-of-body experience that led me to believe I had help. Could that be what he was referring to?
"I thought I had some sort of out-of-body experience," I admitted. "I can kind of remember a second me helping. Have I turned psychic or something?"
The voice chuckled. "You really must have been out of it. You were helped by a member of what we call the Hellspawn."
"The what?" This conversation was getting seriously weird. "And I am in trouble for seeing this creature?"
"No. I was just wondering if you remembered the pony."
"No, so why ask if it isn't relevant?"
"It will become relevant," the voice assured me. "What you saw, the cause of all of this concern, is the dust. More to the point, the concern is that you got a lung full of it."
"Oh... contagious?" I asked.
"I'll get back to that. First we need to set some common ground. Are you aware of how you came to grow your fingers?" the voice asked.
"What is the relevance of that? Isn't that just something that happens as we grow?" I asked, confused.
"No, it isn't. Genetically speaking, ponies don't have fingers. The fingers you have are the result of a class one modifier that was injected into you at the same time as you received other foalhood inoculations."
"A what? A modifier? What is that?" I asked.
"Modifiers are extremely small machines, for the lack of a better description of them. Once they get into your body, they scavenge the materials required from what you eat, then build your fingers, modify your brain so it can use them, and connect them together," the voice said. "You would have been given a couple of special meals after inoculation. Ponies that don't eat these meals need to chew on alternative sources of material, but hey, foals will be foals, and no pony pays much attention to a foal chewing on a toy or nibbling at the spoon their mother is using to feed them."
"So, fingers aren't natural? That would explain why fingers look different to the rest of me," I pondered aloud, thinking of the tough yet slender, black skinned digits. I wondered what other modifications were done to us without our knowledge. "How come we never hear about this?"
"The modifiers are some sort of ancient technology. We have very little in-depth information on them, other than the finger creating branch and one or two others from class one. Frankly, we consider the subject of modifiers to be dangerous knowledge," the voice said. "Not even the doctors administering finger creating modifier are aware of what it really does."
"Okay, so I think I know where you are going with this. That dust was a modifier, wasn't it? I got a lung full of it, as well as walking through it, rolling in it and so on."
"Yes, that is the case. You received such a massive dose there was nothing we could do for you. Had it been just the minor exposure, and had we caught you early enough, we could have destroyed the modifiers with an electromagnetic pulse, with you being none the wiser, except perhaps for a few aches and pains. Unfortunately, we missed the clues when that happened. To compound that, you were allowed to go down into an area of even greater contamination."
"Pardon?" I asked. "You are saying I was exposed twice?"
"Correct. By the time we recovered you, you had been under the effect of a class five modifier for several days, from the last time you were in the underlevels in fact."
"Oh. My legs were hurting since then." I was starting to fear where this was going. What were these modifiers going to do to me, and why would that prevent me from going back to my old life?
"Yes, your level of conversion was already advanced. The latest exposure merely accelerated the process beyond all hope of recovery," the voice said.
"So.... what does this modifier supposedly do?" I asked, not really wanting the answer.
"It's too bad you didn't get a good look at the Hellspawn, because then you would know," the voice said. "Have you seen your legs?"
"They are in a cast, so how could I?" I asked.
"No, they aren't."
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Ooh, intriguing!
And I'm pretty sure all of these hits were the reason you never reached very-terminal velocity, and in fact survived, hmm?
Ah, she's in shock. Yup, that's about how that feels.
Yup, clearly in shock. That fun state in which the pain in your body is dulled by dulling everything that goes through your mind. Been there, done that. Could pull myself out of it enough to think more clearly, but with that, the pain came back too. Not a fun experience
I see what you did there
3812691
Indeed. Unintentional Parkour.
It would be more of a shock if she wasn't in shock.
Fallout: Equestria
Changelings?
Changelings? It looked like her.
Hmmmm, wonder if being black is a clue.
Interesting turn of events. Just what does this black stuff do? And no more fuzzy, huggable Aneki.
6373322 Well... there is still a black, squishy, huggable Aneki.
6373376 So this is my second comment today regarding this genetic engineering which turns out to be biotech. Either way this biotech was created for ponies living outside of the Equis magic field. This other biotech however makes less sense to me until I am able to catalog the complete effects of it.
So far this seems like a long-term experiment possibly conducted by book-horse on the evolution of isolated species.
ROBO Pony activate finger two, direct at male. Mission complete, shut down.
I like how finding out a natural feature is false didn't make her upset. The fingers are probably quite helpful. Shes more confused why you wouldn't just tell ponies what they are, since it is pretty harmless lacking greater context.