Cypress Zero

by Odd_Sarge

2300

“Ugh.”

It was way too early to be sleeping. Station time was one thing, but Sundown was still a bat pony through and through.

She squeezed her eyes shut tighter this time, and willed herself back to dreams.

Or at least, she made a valiant attempt.

“Sundown?”

That wasn’t the confident monotone of an elite espionage operative.

“Are you awake?”

That was the voice of a filly woken by her nightmares.

“...Yes, Fokienia.”

“Are you still afraid?”

“I...” Sundown shook her head, and lifted her head off of her pillow. “What do you mean?”

“When I left, you were afraid. I could feel it.”

“You’re not supposed to feel, Fokienia.”

“But I do. And when you told me I had to leave, you were afraid. Afraid for Cypress. Afraid of the ‘destruction’ and ‘war’ that would come. Afraid... for me.”

Sundown stared at her. In the darkness of the doorway, Fokienia’s augmented eyes glittered in their natural yellow.

“Don’t you think we have a chance?”

“...I don’t know anything yet, Fokienia. You need to... rest.” Sundown had no idea what her charge’s specs were like now: the training was supposed to turn mare to machine, where had she failed? Why did she still care about her own ‘success’ in training the ‘perfect’ operative? She’d defected. And did it even matter anymore, given that Fokienia could feel? She was free... wasn’t she?

Sundown pushed her doubts aside. “Go back to bed.” With that, Sundown once more curled up in her blanket, turning her back on Fokienia.

“You gave me this chance. I didn’t know that then, but I do now. You weren’t trying to scare me, you were trying to encourage me. You weren’t telling me to leave, you were telling me to stay.”

Sundown’s barrel rose. Up, down.

“You didn’t tell me any of this directly. I learned all of this after putting it all together. And it took seeing what life was really like before I could do that. An opportunity that you gave me, a chance you pushed forward with an ultimatum of Cypress’ destruction. One last chance to look at all, and decide whether or not it was worth saving.”

Fokienia paused, and her voice fell ever-deeper. “You sent me blindly into the world. The real world, with real ponies, who live real lives. Five-hundred thousand lives. You didn’t tell me that, either.”

Sundown swallowed thickly. Still, she didn’t move.

“Why did you lead me to believe that a cyborg would destroy Cypress, while me and Sequoia have a chance to save it?”

Her voice was soft. So, very, very soft.

And the worries Sundown had buried for the mare she’d created washed away.

“Because I lied, Fokienia.” Sundown’s eyes fell open, only to stare at the wall she’d come to face. “I lied because you believe in lies. Lies are easy to manufacture, easy to ingest for a young, ageless mind. Your life is built upon them. I helped make it happen. And now, you’ve tasted the truth. You deserve it. It was selfish for me to even think I deserved to feel close to you, given everything I’ve done to hurt you.” She hefted a breath, then closed her eyes again. “I didn’t want you to get hurt. So I lied. I exaggerated the circumstances. But you’ve proven your independence beyond measure. You don’t need me to believe anything, Fokienia. The truth is in what you’ve discovered, and what you believe.”

“Then I believe that I’ve found the life I want to live. I want Cypress. And I want you here with me.”

Sundown stared into the near-black gray behind her eyes.

She heard the telltale servos of Fokienia’s motors. It was a sound she’d intimately memorized, and she was one of the few who could hear it to begin with. The cyborg mare was practically dancing in place as she shuffled about, no doubt awaiting a reply. Sundown didn’t grant her that.

“...I’ll go back to Sequoia. Sorry for bothering you, Control.”

A twitch ran right across the entire lower half of Sundown’s muzzle. She heaved a heavy breath, and flung herself up.

But the doorway was empty.

The bat pony was left grasping at her sheets, forelegs curling as she squirreled back under. A lingering moan idled in her throat, and her head churned with pain. She lashed out, slamming her hoof down into the bedspread. Finally, she opened her mouth, but all she could manage were a few weak curses at the world, the ECW, and herself.

She slung herself below.

---

Holly’s guest bedroom was quiet. Serene. Furnished with love.

C1 hated it. Hate was all he had.

Because he knew he couldn’t have love.

Not a machine like him.

C1’s eyes were on the door the whole time.

Fokienia returned, creeping in like a pegasus on the breeze: flightless, and not fighting. She’d given him bits and pieces of her story since leaving the Facility, but he still didn’t know how she could be so... complacent. It was as if the whole interior they were in was designed to goad him into breaking out; it was too fragile, easy to strip bare. Nothing like containment.

And yet, here she was. Right at home.

“I’m back,” she whispered. “Didn’t fall asleep, yet?”

Trotting carefully—as if the floor was laden with alarm beams—she laid beside C1, and exactly in the depression she’d left on her way out. She snuggled in, hunkering down in the sheets like all was well with the world.

C1 breathed through tight lips. “I don’t like sleeping.”

“I don’t either. It’s hard to adapt.”

“We should be training.”

Fokienia sighed. “Not anymore.” Leaning up against him, C1’s metallic pinions clicked together like closing shutters. “There’s no going back, Sequoia.”

He felt the shudder coming, but his augments suppressed it for him. For some reason, he hated that, too. “I don’t like not having a plan.”

She was almost as big as him, but her laugh still bounced through his core. “Anything else you don’t like?”

“This.” As he spoke, she leaned in a little more deeply. He grunted. “This place. It’s not made for us.”

“The doorways could be a little wider, yeah.”

C1 didn’t dredge up a response for that, or at least, not at first. “Ha.”

She nudged him lightly with her muzzle. “So, what do you really mean? Use your words.”

“I am.” It was as if she was even more annoying outside of exercises and spars. “You wanted to be free. But we have no purpose here.” He gave her a second glance, but was quick to turn away from her yellow irises. “I have no purpose here.”

“But you went with Sundown. You came for me.”

“Because I wanted to know. I wanted to know why you wanted to be free.” He raised his head, and peered once more around the guest room. “This is for you. For Control. But I have no need to be here.”

Fokienia ran one of her augmented hooves along the edge of the bed. “You have plenty of reasons to be here.”

“Explain.”

“To find your purpose. Like I had to.” She sighed. “You’re not the only pony having to go through this. I think Sundown is, too.”

C1 blinked. Inquiring about Control was something he wasn’t supposed to do... anti-protocol behavior. And yet, nopony was going to stop him now. “How do you know?”

Fokienia stopped rolling her hooves. “It’s... something about the Facility. Something they did there. We’ve always had this capacity to... talk, think like this. But never openly.”

“Giving information to the enemy is prohibited.” C1 pulled the words straight from his training. “And so she told you?”

“No. I... felt it. It’s hard to explain.”

If she couldn’t explain her answer, then what hope did he have of understanding? Even at the slightest tick of anger welling up, he felt the suppressants kick in. His barely tense muscles relaxed. He took the moment to properly think.

Fokienia took the silence on first. “Everything outside here, everything in Cypress, it’s nothing like what we know. Ponies live their lives, and they don’t take any kind of training to do it. I can tell, because nopony’s actively trying to control the conversation. Our tactics are over-redundant with how simple it is to get information from them.”

“They’re not targets, they wouldn’t have the resistance we’ve been trained to expect.”

“Were there ever targets? Did we need this training? What were we intended for, if anything?” She turned her head to him. “I think... they just didn’t want us to show how we feel. To act like anypony else I’ve met. To have... visible...” Fokienia trailed off, but her thought was practically complete. She just needed to remember one word...

C1 blinked, and the missing piece swam up. He answered for them: “Emotions.”

For a stunned moment, they both sat there. C1 himself felt his neural inhibitors twitching, and he could plainly see it in her, too.

Memories tucked away, but never lost, suddenly revealed themselves.

“Empathy,” Fokienia murmured. “I remembered... empathy.”

C1 was frozen, glued to the sheets. Inside his mind, a total conflict had ensued: battling against his artificial life, his memories toiled, working and working. To remember what it meant to be a pony.

He looked back. His hind was still stamped with a blend of color. But instead of a meaningless mural, he saw his cutie mark.

He tore his gaze away from the wooden shield on his flank, and to Fokienia. Her eyes were elsewhere, no doubt scouring the rich, fertile plains of her own mind’s memories. He thought to stop himself, to force himself to look again, to see what else the inhibitors had suppressed for so long.

But he was free, now: he had time.

And Sequoia sought to fulfill his purpose.

His jaw trembled as the ever-inflamed itch in his brain dissipated. Instead, his right wing ached. He unfurled the pained wing. Stretching, he reached out until he could safely place the thin, delicately-crafted pinions across Fokienia’s back and withers. Her body jumped at the initial touch, and she looked at him, eyes wide. She was a mixture of emotions. He could finally see that.

“Sequoia?”

“...I remember, now.” He breathed slowly, pushing air through his mouth, and gently through her mane. Leaning down, he planted his neck against the front of her own. “I’m sorry for not fighting hard enough.”

“W-what are you talking about?” she whispered. She pushed herself into him, until her muzzle brushed up against the top of his mane.

He closed his eyes and whispered back. “C1 is gone. It’s me. It’s just me.”

She didn’t reply, but the wet tears that dribbled across his neck soon after were answer enough.

His heart wrenched up, and for once, it wasn’t from an augmentation’s interference, it was from the prevailing sense of freedom flooding all throughout his mind. He smiled lightly, pulled back, and moved to place a kiss right between Fokienia’s eyes. It was slow, methodical, and all-too calculated, but it was the best he could give her. “Kept you waiting, huh?”

“Oh, gosh. You’re...” Her laugh broke so quickly; frothing over with overwhelming joy, she managed to speak up as she nuzzled into him again. “It’s been so long. Let me have this, Sequoia.”

Appealing to her wish, Sequoia slipped into his memories, and let his body go limp.

The room was a blindingly bright white, and the air sterilized with the heavy scent of ethanol. Through the open door, a little filly trot in. Her colors weren’t quite what he remembered, but with a little strain, two apricot-colored forelegs ended up over his withers. And instead of a supervised spar, he hugged her back.

Opening his eyes again, Sequoia looked at the mare wrapped around him. Having been safely rolled away from the edge of the bed, he allowed her steel forelegs to run across him. Somehow, they were warm.

“They’ve put so much in you... I can see all the connections.” Two strips of blue light pulsed up and down her sclerae. “But you were still in there all along.”

He chuckled. “Don’t interface with me, now.”

Fokienia giggled, running her hooves across him with a deep fondness. “In your dreams.”

“Then I’ll see you there.” Dreams... even with what he was beginning to remember, sleep remained a foreign concept. But the taste of familiarity he’d recovered provided him with purpose: to live for her. And right now, he could tell she needed it. “Because where you go, I’ll go.”

Fokienia shivered with mirth. “Sequoia... I’ve missed you.” She had a sharp, yet gentle smile: it was a bright lance in the dark. “Just... don’t let this be a lie.”

“I promise, I remember everything.” He pulled her close, and kept his grip tight. “I’ve missed you, too... Fokienia.”

Pressed together, the steady, unified beat of their hearts brought them to dreams.

Comments

[Rambling Writer]

C1 breathed through tight lips. “I don’t like sleeping.”

Lot to unpack in that line.

Using names to show the viewpoint character's perspective on things! I like that.

Nice, sweet, cozy chapter. Which means the next one is going to have everything fall apart very fast, doesn't it?

[Blewfire]

Very intimate chapter. Very well done. I was a little disappointed last chapter with Fokienia saying she loved Sequoia because I didn't really have any basis for this interaction. But this chapter gave really good explanation for it.

[Odd_Sarge]

11526349
I’m very glad to hear it.

[redmar]

This is a nice chapter and it seems that the lab tried to suppress the identity of the cyborg ponies.