First Draft

by Cherry Rie

Tunnel Vision

All the King’s Horses
A Conversion Bureau story.

Chapter Two: Tunnel Vision

While they had long since shaken their pursuers, after a somewhat narrow escape the unusual pair avoided the major streets where ever they could. Scrabbling across fallen rubble in the old factory district and cutting through alleyways between the still standing buildings, they kept an exhaustive pace until the tepid shadows of night threatened to steal the path from under them. An old fire escape had served as a beacon of respite, so the flat rooftop of an old apartment complex had played host to the slumbering travelers.

Come the light of morning, Katrina awoke stiff and uncomfortable under a grey featureless sky. Though the unbroken cloud cover served to trap the heat of the day, it had still been a bitter night out in the open. Perhaps it would have been more poetic if she had rested her head on Sarah, but right now she wanted to keep as far away from the synthetic woman as possible. Besides, the harsh pebble dash ground would have been softer. Instead she had made do with pilfered filthy sheets and a handy wall. As yet unclosed wounds sung prickly pomes of pain as her stretching muscles disturbed them, neck and spine joining the chorus with plaintive aches from the awkward sleeping posture.

Presently the youth was grudgingly seeing to the wounds on her companions hands. Though the floor had been just as rotten as Sarah had expected, the boards of the ceiling beneath had not. Several matchstick sized splinters had become lodged beneath her torn skin. For any normal human this would have been a simple matter of pulling the splinters and disinfecting the wounds, a task most could accomplish by themselves. From the look of Sarah’s limbs though, the digits elongated and palm shrunken where the flesh had begun to retreat, it was clear this was no ‘normal’ human.

Biting her lip in concentration, Kat carefully guided the sharp metal shard along the plastic like coating that had grown over the protruding splinter. Cutting the faux flesh wasn’t the problem, it was avoiding the healthy skin on either side that held the challenge, especially with hands that trembled from malnutrition. With the first splinter exposed, the teen picked up one of the small grey cubes that represented their remaining provisions and bit off a chunk. Chewing carefully, she gripped the end of the wood between a finger and thumb and pulled in one swift movement. Clear gel oozed from the split, quickly swept away as Katrina thumbed the reconstituted foodstuff into the fresh lesion.

Satisfied, she straitened the crick in her neck before turning her attention to the next splinter, choosing to ignore a telltale movement in her peripheral vision. This close to her companion, the younger could see the green eyes twitching and blinking as they navigated some crude internal menu. Given that, with such a longwinded method of communication, Sarah rarely said anything unless it was necessary, Kat would have normally waited attentively if it looked like her mute partner was about to speak. Today however, she didn’t feel like debating her decision with someone who had all the charisma of a half brick and even less tact.

“You are troubled Do you want to talk about it.” Crackled the artificial voice, emanating from beneath the barber coat.

Pulling rather harder then necessary, Kat discarded the next slightly bloody splinter and affixed the last of the nutrient cube to the bleeding arm.

“No, my mind’s made up. I’m going and that’s final.”

In the long pause while Sarah’s next sentence assembled itself, the girl turned away to check over her own dressings. Deep cuts and burns were present across her frail body, a reminder of her recent ordeal though not all were inflicted by her captors. Kat shuddered at resurfacing memories, each moment attached its corresponding injury. They’d need to find some medical gel soon, or these were going to get infected… again.

“Not what I meant Kat.” Sarah replied at last, another brief silence interrupting while another response was assembled.

“Katrina what you have been through is terrible and I am sorry I couldn’t find you sooner. I know it must hurt but you are safe now.”

“That was awfully quick, Sis.” Cut the youth, narrowing her bitter expression, “Do I smell a pre-prepared response? You must have been running that over in your head for hours. What? You want me to think you care? The only reason you’re even asking me at all is to find out whether I’m going to slow us down.”

Without so much as glancing at her cybernetic ‘sibling’, Kat carefully stood up and walked to the edge of the rooftop, hoping to pick out a route through the abandoned dockyard. Though they were above the heaviest smog, she still could only just make out the waterline through the yellow haze. That was something else too; the colors here were far brighter than the rest of the otherwise grey cityscape. Old brick buildings had a definite ‘redness’ about their walls, rusted lampposts had a brown gloss to their mottled surface and the smog had a vividly poisonous tint.

During the progressive emergence of the Equestrian universe, ambient magic that radiated from the boundary of the two worlds swirled in unpredictable storms across the globe. Salem had been one of the first cities to experience hotspots of lethal thalamic radiation.

Had the youngster been familiar with the history of the once infamous town, she would have appreciated the irony. As it was, the only thing that concerned Kat was avoiding any places where the colors of the world became so bright that they melted away the corruption of human flesh. Thalamic radiation was present throughout the whole city to some degree, but the true hotspots meandered unseen through the streets, generally giving the unvigilant a few seconds notice before their skin began to blister and burn.

“I am here and if you need to talk I am very good at listening.”

Katrina scoffed, feeling her ever present grin straining as felt the anger bubbling through her stomach.

“Gods that line is so overused you must have it on quick select or something.”

Clenching her fists, she turned to regard the plastic woman with an air of mirthful distain. “Okay, you want to talk? Fine, let’s talk then. How about numbers? You really like numbers don’t you, heck you practically ARE numbers. Let’s talk about the number forty seven, hmm?”

Stood practically chin to chest with Sarah’s looming figure, Kat glared up at the unchanging expression. “Two months. Two. God. Damn. Months I was with those… those monsters! And on day forty seven you wandered in and took a seat in the back row! Were you there to watch the ‘performance’, or just to socialize?”

Seeing the jade eyes flicking franticly, the girl cut in with an accusing finger before a defense could be mustered. “Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare pull out some shit about ‘tactical advantages’, you could have taken out everyone in that room if you wanted! You could have killed every one of those fuckers, but you just sat there and WATCHED!”

Some instincts can bypass even the best programming. Sarah blinked, slamming a hand across her throat in an effort to muffle the speaker within.
“Katrina what you have been through is terrible and I am sorry I couldn’t find you sooner. I know it must hurt but you are safe now.”

“The sooner I’m away from you the better.” Grimaced the shaking youngster, stalking away to bundle the sheets into a moth eaten backpack.

“And that’s another thing." She barked again, eyes returning to their assesment of the hidden horizen "First open medical terminal we come across, get you’re damn voice fixed. It’s like talking to some retarded AI. Bad enough that you look like a wax manikin without sounding like a kitchen utensil-”

Braking off mid sentence, Kat’s eyes narrowed at the distant riverbank. Something large was moving up the road along the dockside, sending up a ripple through the smog before it. Through a slim gap in the puss-like mists she caught sight of glinting solar panels on top of a long vehicle. Several others crawled along in its wake, the procession moving slowly to avoid attention.

“A convoy!” She yelped with a hint of desperation, foul mood suddenly abandoned. “They must be making a short cut though to Portland!”

Slinging the backpack across her shoulder, the girl leapt onto the fire escape and started to descend, taking the stairs two at a time. Mute once more, Sarah followed close behind, moving steadily as though in a daze.

They caught up with the caravan of vehicles in the open ground beside a crate peppered loading dock. Luckily the precession had slowed to a crawl through the previous built up area, for fear that the clunking engines might draw the ears of marauding ‘fun seekers’. From behind the rusted remains of an overturned wagon, Katrina watched the convoy gradually accelerating to just above walking pace.

“Okay,” she whispered, rummaging around in the rucksack and withdrawing a crime against fashion, “Put this on. Let me do the talking and try not to look so… scary.”

Taking the abomination, Sarah remained distant, staring into the middle distance even after Katrina began to pull her by the arm towards the open road. Anyone who had followed their heated interaction over the last hour might have thought she was upset over her ‘sister’s open rejection. Yet this was not and had never been the case. With implants limiting her emotional range, the doll-woman felt little more than voids labeled with the socially expected response. Useful for following orders unquestionly, useless for any real empathy.

What was bothering her was far more physical; something wasn’t quite right with her biological nerves. What little remained of her original unscarred skin was tingling, itching like a dermal disease had managed to evade the billions of nanites constantly repairing her body.

Had she still been human (and willing to tempt fate) Sarah might have openly said ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this’.

Had she been completely unaffected by Kat’s harsh words, she might have at least paid attention to the vibe.

As it was, all she did was cycle her radiation scrubbers.

This was a mistake.

Comments

[Cherry Rie]

125714
125716

Thanks alot you two :D
Really this is one big experiment for me, and its likely to turn into an abomination by the end. But if you have any suggestions on how I can improve (whether it be the plot itself, the characterizations or my writing) just holler and I'll endeavor to work from any critique!

Allons y!

[Chatoyance]

Yay! I am glad you are raging on the page, writing into the night, and letting loose the words like a flock of beautiful birds.

This should prove to be an interesting premise, and I am looking forward to it!

Yay!

[Da Bunnana King]

Dun Dun DUUUUUU. Is the sound that played in my head at the end.
Keep it up.

[Midnightshadow]

126792
What you need to do, seriously, is make sure you have the entire story mapped out as at least one-sentence phrases for each chapter until the last one. With that, at least, you will not fail. I know it's boring, I never want to do it and have only once so it is definitely not a case of practicing what you preach (I will, though, in future, attempt to do just that).

[Cherry Rie]

I'm so glad everyone seems to be enjoying reading this as much as I am writing it

127771 Yeah, you’ll find that with any of my writing. MS spellchecker is wonderful and all, but it doesn’t help if you can't tell the difference between two phonetically similar words. Chaty already pointed out a rather embarrassing error between ‘Bald’ and ‘Balled’, which I’ve hurriedly changed If you spot any others, I’d be eternally grateful if you could just point me too them.

Also; Curse your good ideas! They do so complicate matters Started mapping the story as you suggested… developed a posible twelve chapters of material, two plottwists and four new major characters from Celestia knows where. *Cracks knuckles and looms over keyboard* Let the madness comence!

[Cloudhammer]

Found this story through Midnight's page, really enjoying it so far, excellent pacing. Tracking to see what happens next

[darkmatterbutterflies]

“Okay,” she whispered, rummaging around in the rucksack and withdrawing a crime against fashion, “Put this on. Let me do the talking and try not to look so… scary.”

Oh, no! That's going to risk an encounter with the fashion police, and they'll beat them with their fabulous batons!

Seriously, though, I like what you did with the magic radiation. A lot of authors use it is as a looming threat in the future. This setting has it as real, unpredictable, and very dangerous threat in the present. Poor Salem.