Force of Five: Sundered Together

by DustyDominic

Chapter 1: Awakening

Darkness. There's nothing here. Real, honest-to-Celestia, soul-crushing darkness. Running. Stopping.

Heart pounding. Hiding. Wild. Darting. Hoping. Praying.

Screaming.

They've found her.

At this point Emerald Thistle awoke. She gasped and cried, consoling herself over a horrible dream.

She had dreamed of terrifying legions of ponies, with black suits and gas masks. Their identities were totally obscured. No faces, no cutie marks, not even the smallest patch of colored mane peeking out. They were black reapers, and they were breaking down her door.

In the dream, it was early morning. She was making coffee, fancy roast, ready to start her weekend right. And then came the loud crash, and the sounds of advancing booted hooves, and Emerald was filled with unimaginable terror.

They followed her into every room. They poured through the hallways. She tried to barricade herself in the bedroom. It was to no avail.

They soldiered on and battered down the door, their radios clicking and hissing incomprehensibly, frenzied statics and mumbled orders. They pointed inside their black gloves, and they encircled Emerald as she clung desperately to the bedposts.

*crrk* fhr abgr lrgs. Yto pshrf rmthbd, they crackled to each other.

They took ahold of her legs by the cannon, and three others pried her from the bedposts, shoving hard against her chest, bruising her forelegs. All the while she was screaming and begging them to stop. They pinned her to the ground, and she fell apart on the floor, pleading and whimpering.

When they took out the vial and the five inch needle, that was when she woke up.

She held herself underneath the covers of her bed. It was a horrible dream, the worst of her nightmares yet. Though she'd had them since she was a foal, never before had they been this terrible. Dreams of demons and the end times, dreams of loss and loneliness, sure, but there was no equal in the powerlessness she had felt.

But it was only a dream, she consoled herself. She was back under her covers in her own home in Phillydelphia. She untangled her legs and rubbed the covers to emphasize to herself how at home she was.

That's when she realized she wasn't home.

Emerald Thistle sat up. These weren't her sheets. These were rough cotton ones. That meant this wasn't her bed. That meant this wasn't even her house.

That meant it wasn't a dream.

It was pitch dark, wherever she was. It wasn't her room though, she could tell. The bed was not her plush goosefeather, it was a plain cot suspended from a wall. She touched the wall, and it was not her beloved cherry wood wall, it was a cold, smooth, sterile wall. She couldn't see the rest of the room she was in, but she could tell its dimensions were much larger than those of her cozy townhouse.

This wasn't her house, this wasn't her house, this wasn't her house. She began to inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale much faster than she should. She knew she was starting to hyperventilate. She took ten seconds to calm down.

And then she cried. She cried a good long time, maybe twenty minutes, who knows how long. Time loses itself in the dark.

At once, the ceiling flickered on, and twenty fluorescents made the room unbearably bright. Emerald Thistle backed against the cold wall and gasped. Her containment room was made apparent; she was in a bare, white room, a hundred feet by a hundred feet. The only piece of furniture in the room was the cot that she was deposited upon. All else was sterile, off-white tile.

The room was a cold shock to Emerald. There was nothing organic about her environment. Nothing natural. Only pure sterility. The walls were blank, entirely featureless, except for one door on the opposite side of the room. The only sound was the overbearing hum of the air conditioning, pumping clean air in and out of the contained cell.

Yes, Emerald thought, no mistake about it. This is a cell.

She noticed a camera in the far corner of the ceiling. Unsteadily, she edged off her cot, and she tremblingly tiptoed towards the camera to face it directly.

She shivered and turned her eyes into the black pupil of the video camera, demanded as loud as she could manage, "What have you done with me?"

She got no answer from the electronic installment, except whirring as it focused and unfocused.