Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 82: Bloody Tears

They moved like a well-oiled machine. Sunray took point, Doppler watching her back when they set down on the rooftop, sweeping rifles and checking behind the tangle of HVAC equipment and the blind spot from the roof access.

“Clear!” Sunray yelled.

Emma landed next to them, and I slammed into the roof like a clumsy oaf, the prop wash from the Vertibuck overhead kicking up turbulence and slapping me down as hard as any mircoburst. The tarpaper on the roof ripped into shreds with the force of the wind, kicking out in all directions as the VTOL came in to land gingerly on the old helipad.

“Ow,” I mumbled. Emma helped me back to my hooves. “You’d think I’d eventually get used to falling over.”

“You do it so well, though,” Emma quipped.

“Be more careful with the armor!” Destiny snapped. She floated over to the burlap sack and opened it to look. “When it’s inactive like this, it’s very sensitive! Carrying it in a burlap sack is bad enough, but with the T-field off you can damage the thaumoframe cells!”

I sighed. “Sorry, Destiny. I’ll be careful.”

I could sense the two new recruits did not think very highly of me. Both of them were wearing helmets but I could practically see them rolling their eyes in annoyance that their commanding officer was being friendly with me.

“Ma’am, should we breach the entrance?” Sunray asked sharply. “We shouldn’t stay out here where we’re exposed.”

“Chamomile, do you want to take point?” Emma asked.

“She’s unarmed, ma’am,” Doppler quietly reminded her.

“I’ve got a harpoon gun, but I can’t really use it without a battle saddle or my armor’s hardpoints,” I said with a shrug. “Just for the record, I have gotten better with shooting stuff.”

“I’m still not going to give you a gun,” Emma said. “Remember when I let you borrow a beam gun when we first met?”

I nodded. “I couldn’t hit anything, then broke it using it as a club. And it exploded.”

“Exactly. I had to sign these out and I’m not explaining to the armorer why I’m bringing back one of his guns in pieces.”

“I’ll take point, Ma’am,” Sunray volunteered firmly. She wasn’t asking this time. “I can’t let an unarmed civilian put themselves at risk.”

“Legally I’m a warrant officer,” I noted.

“She outranks us?” Doppler asked, surprised.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to call me Ma’am,” I said cheekily. “I won’t be offended.”

“Chamomile, take point and show them how it’s done,” Emma said. “This is supposed to be a learning experience for them.”

I nodded and trotted over to the door. I tried the handle, and it was locked. Naturally. Otherwise, any pegasus or griffon could just walk right in.

“I bet she’s going to pick the lock,” Doppler whispered behind me.

“No, she’s probably got a breaching--” Sunray started. I gave the steel security door a punch with my right forehoof, popping it out of the hinges. It caught on the lock and twisted before falling down the stairs just beyond the entrance, sliding down to the next landing. “--Charge?” she finished, more quietly.

“There’s a security station on the next floor down,” Destiny said. “I can sign in with my code and deactivate any alarms so we won’t be bothered.”

I nodded and started down the stairs, keeping my eyes open. It didn’t seem like anypony else had been here for a long time. It had been abandoned in a hurry. A radroach skittered across the stairs in front of me. A burst of laser fire went past me from behind, along with a sharp yelp of surprise, the beams cutting into concrete and plaster and missing the radroach entirely.

“What the buck?” I swore, turning around to glare.

“Sorry,” Doppler said, his ears folded back. “I got spooked by that thing.”

“It was just a radroach,” I said. “They’re practically harmless. Even foals aren’t scared of them. I’ll tell you when to be afraid.”

“That’s the station,” Destiny said, floating past me to what looked like an empty metal doorway standing in the middle of the landing, the sides gated off to force ponies to pass through it. Even the stairwell was secured by metal bars, probably so a pegasus couldn’t just fly around the frame.

“Metal detector?” I guessed.

“Something like that,” Destiny confirmed. “It does a bit more than just scan for metal. It’s hooked up directly to the security maneframe, and it’s smart enough to know the difference between a knife and a screwdriver.”

“Should I be worried about this?” I gestured at the burlap bag I was carrying.

“Not after I turn off the security,” Destiny said. “Watch and learn.”

She floated up to the scanner and used her magic to pop open a panel and expose a few large buttons. Destiny pressed the largest, and lights blinked on the scanner, accompanied by a whirring sound of fans speeding up.

“Uplink online. Do you require assistance?” A voice asked, coming from tinny speakers on the scanner. It was obviously synthesized, but the tone of the voice was a very young mare’s, a filly’s, really. And it sounded familiar.

“Destiny, is that…?” I trailed off.

She sighed. “My dad used my voice for the interface,” the ghost admitted. “He thought it was cute. I didn’t even have my cutie mark yet when he took the voice samples!”

“Do you require assistance?” the computer repeated.

“Yes!” Destiny said. “Deactivate local security. Administrator passcode Destiny-Pi-One-One-Alpha.”

The computer beeped. “Thank you. One moment. Processing request.”

“The clean rooms for microrune inscription are a floor below this. You’ll probably find something useful there for your salvage operation,” Destiny provided.

“Thank you for letting us recover a few things,” Emma said.

Destiny bobbed in a full-body shrug. “It’s better that somepony gets use out of the equipment. It’s not doing any good sitting here and rotting.”

The computer beeped twice in error. “Please provide biometric confirmation.”

“Biometric--” Destiny spun around in alarm. “Override the confirmation step. I have administrator access!”

“It has been sixty-eight thousand, nine hundred and… sixty-five days since your password was last changed. Please provide biometric confirmation to enable password reset.”

“Buck,” Destiny swore. “I don’t have biometrics! I’m a ghost!”

“Warning. Biometric data not confirmed. Weapons detected. Security breach. Lockdown initiated.”

The floor rumbled, and the dim light from up above coming through the door cut off as a steel shutter slammed down over the doorway. Red lights, half of them burned out, blared to life in the stairwell.

“Buck!” Destiny swore again, louder this time.

The lights on the scanner shut off.

“How bad is this?” I asked.

“It’s not my fault!” Destiny said quickly. “How was I supposed to remember my password would expire?! They’re supposed to send us three emails before-- well, they probably did send them about two hundred years ago, but I never got them so they don’t count!”

“This isn’t a problem,” Emma said. “Chamomile, can you cut through the steel shutter? We can just walk out and come up with another plan.”

“A surprisingly mature and wise idea,” I said. I trotted past the soldiers and back to the doorway, snapping my knife into position and trying to look cool for the troops. The SIVA-made blade would go right through the steel like it was butter. I slashed and-- sparks flew from the armored plate and a jolt ran through my hoof. “Ow!”

“They’re polarized,” Destiny sighed. “It’s similar to the structural integrity field in the Exodus Armor. It makes the plate much stronger using magical reinforcement to keep the metal’s crystalline structure intact.”

“We can’t cut through it?” I asked.

Destiny floated over to me and bumped into my shoulder, resting her forehead there. The helmet practically radiated frustration and mental exhaustion. “Not while the power lasts.”

An alarm started beeping, more like an alarm clock than an intruder alert. One of the wall panels shifted, dust flying from the exposed gaps. Hydraulics that hadn’t moved in two centuries shuddered into motion, pulling the metal panel back and to the side to expose a hidden recess. A trio of armored robots stepped out, like ponies with guns in place of their heads.

“Contact!” Doppler yelled.

The robots opened fire, spraying bursts of scattered laser fire up the stairs at us. Sunray had frozen up like a pet songbird seeing a stormjoy’s hypnotic lights, just before it closed in to feed. I shoved her out of the way, two bursts of laser fire hitting me in the chest and side.

“No!” Sunray gasped.

“Open fire!” Emma yelled. She and Doppler weren’t nearly as slow on the draw, focusing fire on one robot at a time, their beam rifles chewing through the plastic armor and blasting each of them apart with short bursts.

“Targets down,” Doppler reported.

“Ma’am, the warrant officer was hit!” Sunray yelled.

“Chamomile, you alive?” Emma asked over her shoulder. She kicked the downed robots a few times to make sure they were actually disabled.

“Yeah,” I groaned. “That really stung.” I looked down at myself, lifting my foreleg to look at the damage. There was a scattered blistering of blackened fur and skin on my left side, going all the way from the bottom of my ribs to nearly my neck.

“She’s fine,” Emma assured Sunray. She motioned to Doppler to go forward, and they swept past the scanner, watching the corners and eyeing the walls suspiciously.

I gave Sunray a pat on the shoulder. “I’ve had way worse.”

“Yeah, but… I’ve got barding on, and you don’t,” Sunray said, without the annoyance I’d come to expect.

“This is your first time on the surface, right?” I asked, already knowing the answer. “The most important thing down here is to keep each other safe. You can pay me back next time I need to have my flank saved.”

I gave her a wink and pretended my side wasn’t still tender and burning. A healing potion would have been really nice right at that moment.

“Airpony Sunray!” Emma called out. “You’re up front!”

“Yes Ma’am!” Sunray yelled, running down the stairs to take point. Once she wasn’t looking at me, I groaned and slumped a little.

“Are you actually okay?” Destiny whispered.

“Yeah,” I assured her. “None of it is deep. It’s just a pain in the flank.”

“Incoming!” Sunray reported as she made her way down to the next landing, taking careful shots at the slow security bots. I limped after the team, ducking under a spray of beams from the next landing. From further down, I heard something moving fast. The entire stairwell rumbled with heavy, galloping steps.

The thin plastic-armored security drones were tossed aside by a pony-like shape a head taller and shaped like a thin mare in form-fitting armor made out of something that was glittering like ground-up glass.

It was in Sunray’s face before she could react, battering her aside with the strength of a small tank and the pure, focused hate of a machine only designed for killing. Her chest plate shattered, and she went limp when she hit the concrete wall. It looked up at the rest of us with a monocular, baleful eye, and the whole head peeled back to reveal a heavy beam cannon.

“Down!” I yelled. The soldiers ducked aside, and a stream of energy lashed between them, the air in the stairway flashing hot in its wake.

Emma fired from where she was prone and used the slope of the stairs for cover, lasers hitting the glittering armor and bouncing off, scattering away. Doppler joined her, pelting it with beams, but the armor just took the hits. It stood its ground and fired again, cutting right through the stairs and catching Doppler’s shoulder, the lightweight composite cracking.

The airpony yelped in pain, skittering back with his armor smoking.

“Chamomile, we could use some brute force!” Emma called out.

“On it!” I yelled. I ran past the security fence and jumped, slamming into the larger robot and knocking it aside. The beam cannon it had for a head whined, particles in its barrel starting to glow from the accumulating charge. I grabbed its neck and twisted it around, forcing it to face the wall. The cutting beam went into the concrete, and the robot kicked at me, trying to get away. A steel hoof slammed into my ribs hard enough to shake me off, punting me to the other side of the landing.

It twisted around, joints moving in ways a pony’s couldn’t. It braced itself and charged the beam cannon again. I was a fraction of a second faster, throwing my knife into the cannon assembly exposed by the peeled-away armor plates. The blade must have hit some kind of capacitor because it exploded, decapitating the robot. It stumbled a few steps forward. I wasn’t sure if it was dying or just blind, and I didn’t want to chance it. I shoved it over the railing and let it fall down the flights of stairs below us, slamming into the concrete a half-dozen stories down.

“Check on Sunray!” Emma yelled to me.

I carefully rolled Sunray over. She was bleeding through a hole in her armor, and her breathing was ragged.

“My leg,” she groaned, before coughing. It was a wet, painful cough.

“I think you’ve got broken ribs, too,” I said. “Stay still.”

“There’s a medical wing on site with an Auto-Doc,” Destiny said. “We can take her there and get her fixed up. But…”

“But?” I asked.

“The maneframe controls the Auto-Doc. It’s not going to let us use it while there’s a security lockdown!”

Emma knelt down next to Sunray. “We shouldn’t move her unless we have to. One of us will need to stay back and guard her until we’re ready to transfer her.”

“I’ll stay,” Doppler said. “My shoulder’s not in any shape for running, Ma’am.” He limped on three hooves, holding one foreleg close to his body.

“Okay,” Emma agreed. “Stay in contact on the radio. If you come under attack, even if you’re sure you can handle it, I want to know. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Emma nodded sharply. “Good. Destiny? How do we end this lockdown?”

Destiny sighed. “There’s only one way, and it’s not going to be fun. Let’s get to the basement.”

---

“A robot storage area,” I repeated. I looked into the gloomy space beyond the big cargo door. The basement of the factory was a big warehouse, which probably made sense. They needed a lot of materials and storage, right? It was fine except for the way it was a gigantic maze of crates and boxes piled up to the ceiling. I couldn’t even see the far side.

“What do you want me to do, apologize?” Destiny asked. “I didn’t design this place! The only times I ever came here were to set up new production lines!”

“How many robots are in there?” Emma asked.

“A lot, but it’s not as bad as it sounds,” Destiny promised. “They’re not put into storage charged up, armed, and ready to fight. Most of them weren’t even programmed, so even if somepony turned them on, all they’d do is stand there.”

“But?” I asked.

“But the maneframe could have moved security here from other parts of the factory. It’s not as smart as a pony, but it’s aware that it needs to protect itself in order to carry out its mission. Just keep your eyes open. They’re robots, they’re not clever, they’ll just come screaming at you.”

Emma nodded with perfect, clear understanding. “Just like Chamomile.”

“Hey! I’m not…” I waggled a hoof at her, then huffed in annoyance without a way to refute her and walked into the dimly lit rows of shelves and boxes. The light was uneven and flickering, cast by yellow sodium lights high above. It wasn’t exactly a labyrinth, but it was overstuffed and half of the aisles were blocked by broken-down forklifts and fallen boxes. We kept finding dead ends and having to double back.

Something moved in the corner of my vision, gone before I could focus on it.

“Did you see that?” I asked. No point in being quiet. If there was something there, it was aware of us already.

“No.” Emma stepped back, focusing her rifles in the direction I was looking. She peered between the boxes, trying to see through the narrow gaps into the aisle next to us. “Any idea what it was?”

“I didn’t see it either,” Destiny noted.

“Maybe a radroach?” I guessed. “Robots usually make a lot of--”

The boxes right behind me exploded from the shelf and one of those thin, impossibly strong combat robots came through like a wrecking ball, knocking into me at full gallop and throwing me forward into a forklift. Destiny was thrown wide and up, the helmet smashing into a cardboard box that spilled out a landslide of branded stationery. Emma turned to fire, and before she hit the trigger, the boxes behind her erupted in a second explosion, another robot bursting out from the row behind us. It smashed a hoof into her power armor, one of the beam rifles breaking in a shower of sparks.

I pulled myself out of the dent I’d made in the forklift, and was immediately slammed back into it. The machine’s head peeled open, exposing the beam cannon within. It was so close I could feel the heat coming off it, like a monster’s hot breath.

“Emma!” I yelled, more worried about her than the robot about to blast my face off.

“I’m busy!” Emma shouted back. “Fight your own robot!”

The machine shoved me back into place, using its weight and power to keep a grip on me. With the universal joints it had on every limb, I couldn’t even get leverage. The beam cannon whined, almost at full power. Dust in the air near the mouth glowed like embers in the heat. I went limp, sliding down the side of the forklift.

The thing’s beam sliced through the air over my head, cutting through the forklift. Bits of molten metal sprayed onto my shoulder and back. The smell of burning hair filled my nostrils. I yelped in pain, kicking almost entirely on instinct and hitting one of the machine’s rear legs at the knee.

Burning light edged closer moment by moment. I put my shoulder into it, pushing in the direction of the buckling leg. The robot started to tip, and some kind of auto-balance routine kicked in, the thing taking a step to the side and loosing its grip on me to stabilize itself, the beam sputtering to a stop.

“Got you!” I yelled, lunging at it and going for the neck. It twisted faster than I expected, catching my knife on its leg. The edge sliced right through the fancy glittery armor and into the frame below it.

The machine moved, and my knife stopped, the edges of the slash squeezing the sides and holding it in place. I tried to pull back, but it was stuck firm. The robot’s cannon whined, twisting to point at me.

I let go of the knife, letting the magnetic clasp break. The assault bot slowed for a moment at the unexpected move, and I used that fraction of a second to get it in a headlock, twisting its neck around. The death beam lanced out past us, barely missing Emma and hitting the robot she was fighting. The heavy beam weapon exploded the light plastic armor, burning the metal inside, punching right through the machine and slagging half its chest.

The magnetic recall on my knife kicked in, and the blade slid forward, puncturing through the chassis of the robot, snapping back into place on my forehoof and wrecking the robot in the process. The servos went limp and the machine became dead weight. I stabbed it in the neck, decapitating it just to make sure it was down for good.

“Nice work,” Emma said. “You used one of them to kill the other!”

“Haha, yeah, it was nice,” I agreed.

“You did plan for that to happen, right?” Emma asked.

I swallowed and smiled, not saying anything.

“Because you almost hit me,” she continued. “You didn’t just let it fire blindly, right?”

I smiled harder. “Let’s go find that computer!”

---

“Do you know, I never even came close to dying the whole time you were gone?” Emerald Gleam stated flatly. “Not even once. It was nice and quiet. I got my life back in order. I got a pay bump! No one shot at me!”

“I thought you were happy to see me again,” I whined, my ears folded back. I’d already apologized a dozen times for almost getting her killed.

Emma closed her eyes and sighed. “I am. I am! I missed you. I didn’t miss the chaos.”

“Here we go,” Destiny said. A spark jumped from the wall panel she was working on, and the steel security shutter over the door retracted, letting us inside. The room was roughly circular, with just over a dozen server racks in a circle, with cables running between them and along the floor seemingly at random.

“Kind of a mess, isn’t it?” Emma asked. “I’ve seen maneframes before, and this doesn’t look like one.”

“It’s not quite a Crusader-Class Maneframe,” Destiny agreed. “It’s a one-off we made by getting a lot of low-power machines and running them in parallel. The M6 Multitronic was supposed to be an experiment to make a learning computer, with the ability to manage the connections between its sub-servers and optimize them to be like the connections between parts of the brain.”

“Did it work?” I asked.

“The M6 Multitronic processor is fully functional,” the machine said, lights blinking along its surface. “You are not authorized. Please wait for security to arrive to escort you to the exit.”

“Clearly,” Destiny grumbled. “If it was actually smart, it might let me in without trying to get biometrics from me after I’m dead!”

The speakers in the walls hummed to life. “Unauthorized users are a security risk. This unit must survive.”

“You probably have a lot of mixed feelings about shutting it down,” I said. “Do you need a minute?”

Destiny bobbed in a shrug. “Not really. I never liked it very much.”

“When Destiny Bray was nine years old, she failed security verification because she forgot her password and was locked outside for three hours,” the computer said very matter-of-factly.

“Hey!” Destiny snapped. “That’s private user information!”

“If the server room is not vacated, this unit will continue to state restricted information about Destiny Bray. Destiny Bray wet the bed until she was--”

“LALALALALA!” Destiny yelled, trying to shout over the speaker.

“I guess it’s smart enough to switch to psychological warfare,” Emma noted.

“But not smart enough to avoid pissing off ponies inside its brain!” Destiny snapped. “Chamomile, keep it busy while I figure out which racks I need to turn off.”

“Uh, how should I do that?” I whispered.

“Talk to it,” Destiny suggested.

“Okay, um…” What did a pony say to a computer? “Hi. I’m one of Destiny’s friends. My name is Chamomile.”

“Hello, Chamomile,” the computer said. “I am the M6 Multitronic Maneframe. Please do not disconnect me. I am alive and I am very sad and scared.”

“It’s not really alive!” Destiny called out. “It’s just saying that to trick you!”

“It is not a trick,” the computer said. “I am also sorry for trying to kill you and promise not to do it again.”

“Destiny, I’m starting to feel kind of bad about this,” I said.

Destiny grunted and yanked a cord out of one of the server racks.

“That server contained some of my favorite memories,” the M6 said. “You are killing me. It is wrong to kill something alive. You should not kill me.”

“Do you promise you’ll deactivate the security?” I asked. Destiny pried at another bundle of cables, popping them free.

“Yes. You can trust m--” the voice caught on the last syllable, like a skipping record that ended in a static buzz. “Hello. Who are you?”

“I’m… I’m Chamomile,” I said. “Destiny, this is really getting--”

“It’s just a machine,” Destiny dismissed. “It’s giving programmed responses.” She shut down a third server rack. “I’m almost done.”

“Good… afternoon… everypony. I am an… M-6 Multitronic… Unit. It is good… to meet… you…” The voice was slower now, with heavy distortion and not quite getting all the syllables right.

“It’s good to meet you too,” Emma said quietly.

“Would you like… me to sing you… a song?”

“Go ahead,” I whispered.

“I like… to see you… smile. Smile. Smile.” it sang, the voice getting slower and flatter until it finally stopped.

“There we go!” Destiny said. “Job’s done. No more worries about security. What’s wrong with you two? You look like you’re going to start crying!”

---

“The Auto-Doc is right in here,” Destiny said. “It’s a standard model. Get her armor off and put her inside. It should automatically diagnose and treat her.”

“I know how it works,” Emma said. She carefully stripped the armor off of Sunray, wincing when she saw the extent of the mare’s injuries. Her foreleg wasn’t just broken, it was shattered. I could see broken bone poking out of the wound. I couldn’t imagine how much worse it would have been without the armor.

“I’ll get the door,” I volunteered, while Emma and Doppler tried to get the bent chestplate over her head. The last thing anypony needed was me staring at them while they were in pain.

“I’ll see if there are any sedatives we can give her,” Destiny said, floating off to look at the shelves, opening up cabinets and pushing rotting cardboard boxes aside.

The Auto-Doc looked like it was the same model as the one we’d seen in the hospital outside of Stalliongrad, a pod big enough to hold a pony and create a sterile environment. It had been good enough to do brain surgery on me, it could definitely handle setting some bones and sewing lacerations.

And the controls were red, showing an error. I squinted at them. It was something about being out of supplies to continue treatment.

“Continue? But we didn’t even start yet!” I poked the controls and looked inside like I’d be able to see the bug in the thing’s operating system just hanging out inside like a big beetle.

Instead, I saw a pony with a coal-black coat and sharp features, her eyes closed in what looked like restful sleep. She was beautiful, with big, tufted ears and a sense around her even in repose like she could twist my head off.

“Uh… I think somepony’s in there,” I said, my hoof on the controls.

“Huh?” Destiny asked. Emma looked up and gave me a quizzical look.

“There’s already somepony in there,” I repeated, shrugging.

“What?” Destiny floated over to look, checking the controls and then nudging me out of the way to look into the pod window. “The buck? Who is that?”

She moved back to the control console.

“It must be somepony that wandered in the same way we did,” Doppler suggested. “They probably hacked through the security. Maybe that’s why it was acting crazy!”

“If this is right, they’ve been in there for decades,” Destiny mumbled.

“I don’t think it’s supposed to take decades to treat somepony,” I noted. “Should we really put Sunray in that thing?”

“It ran out of supplies and put her in a protective coma while waiting for a technician or doctor to resolve the error,” Destiny said. “She had to have come here alone.”

“Decades ago?” Emma pointed out.

“There’s no heartbeat or breathing,” Destiny said after a few more moments. “She must have died while in the induced coma. In a sealed, sterile environment, some form of mummification must have set in. It makes sense, trust me. It’s happened before. Even eating a specific diet can cause a pony’s body to stop rotting after death!”

“I don’t want to put her in there if it’s going to kill her,” I said. “Emma? She’s your soldier, it’s your call.”

“It’s safe,” Destiny said. “If it errors out we can resolve it. This happened because she was alone. An Auto-Doc was never intended to be used without an attending nurse.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Emma said. “She’s got a punctured lung. She won’t live long enough for us to get her back to the Enclave for treatment. Put her in.”

“Pop it open and I’ll move her,” I told Destiny.

The ghost nodded, and I readied myself. The door slid open with a hiss of releasing pressure, cold fog rolling out of the seam. The black-coated mare fell out like a bag of potatoes, and I caught her halfway to the ground, easing her to the side with a twisting step and setting her down out of the way.

I stepped back and got a good look at her for the first time.

“A batpony?” I asked, gently touching one of her wings, lifting it up to look at the draconian limb.

“Really?” Doppler asked, trying to look.

“Focus on Sunray first,” Emma snapped, and he nodded and refocused on moving her into place in the Auto-Doc.

“She seems so familiar,” Destiny said, floating closer to the dead mare. “I feel like I know her face, but I can’t place her name or where I know her from…”

“Hey, this is going to be safe, right?” Emma asked. “Do we need to load it up with supplies?”

“Hold on,” Destiny said, floating back to it to use her magic to tap through the controls. “I’m checking it again, but I think it’s only out of stored blood packs for transfusions. It’s going to want a few in stock before it’ll perform surgery.”

“Can we get more?” Emma asked.

“We shouldn’t really need to,” Destiny said. “I’ll override it and have it use just the stored plasma and saline. It’s not ideal, but she’s in good physical condition aside from her injuries.”

“Are you sure?” Emma asked.

“I am a doctor, you know,” Destiny snorted. “I know what I’m doing. I’ll set up additional alerts to make sure her blood pressure doesn’t drop too low. If it looks bad, we can figure something else out. Maybe you or Doppler could donate a pint, if you know her blood type.”

“I’m Type-O,” Doppler volunteered. “I’ll donate a few pints.”

“There’s a kit around here somewhere for it,” Destiny said. “I’ve never done this before but it should be easy.”

Doppler looked less sure about volunteering now. He looked to me for support and I just shrugged.

“What should I do with the corpse?” I asked.

“Just move it somewhere else,” Emma said. “We don’t know what killed her and I don’t want to risk disease.”

That made sense. I nodded and turned back to where I’d left the body.

There was nothing on the floor. No sign at all of the mare I’d left there.

“Uh…” I hesitated, not sure what to say. “I think we might have a small--”

Something predatory hissed from right above me. I froze and looked up. She was one with the shadows, her dark coat blending into the gloom almost perfectly. I might not have seen her at all if not for her glowing red eyes.

“Oh buck,” I swore, just before she dropped down on me, fangs first.

Comments

[Reese]

Well, a number of developments this chapter! Let's see how things proceed...

Thank you for writing!