18. Not Even The World Of Its Victory
I.D. INJECTOR DOE
That Indestructible Something
By Chatoyance
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18. Not Even The World Of Its Victory
"One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory."
- Franz Kafka
"You know, there's something that has been bothering me." Gregoria had apparently finished being sullen and moody after leaving the specimen containment chamber. The three Equestrians had been making their way exceedingly cautiously through what appeared to be a set of store rooms, then a commissary, which featured a very large kitchen, and finally a rather cavernous dining hall. Everything had been done in stainless steel and gray.
Damon frowned as he sniffed at one of the many trays of food that remained, cold, over every available table. The kitchen had been filled with uneaten, recently prepared food, also cold. It appeared that dinner had been very suddenly interrupted, forcing every human to leave their meal. They had not, seemingly, ever returned. "What? What's bothering you, Gregoria?"
"We're still alive." Gregoria stopped and looked around the brightly lit hall. Everywhere, trays with uneaten, cold, congealed food surrounded them. "That, and all of this. I think there's a connection."
"Of course there's a connection, Jesus." Michel picked up a pork chop, sniffed it, then wolfed it down. He dropped the bone back onto the plate. Gregoria and Damon stared at him in disgust. "What? It's only been there for a few hours. It's not like it's gone bad!" The two ponies looked as if they were having trouble keeping their stomachs in check at that explanation. "Fuck you, I'm a goddamn dog, okay?" Michel growled at the two equines until they changed their expressions.
"It's like a ghost ship in here." Damon noted the cold cups of coffee and other beverages beside the trays. Some were half empty, most were full. "You know, one of those ships they find that have nobody on board and everything is like this - just left as if in the middle of something?"
"Something happened." Michel began to lope on, towards the double doors at the end of the commissary hall. "That's the only reason why we aren't in those jars with Joanna back there." Gregoria jerked at the statement. "Look at the trays, what, a hundred, two hundred - I'm not good at estimating numbers. A lot. There are a lot of humans stationed here. They should be here, they should be everywhere. But they aren't." The double doors were metal, with bar handles. "Something big happened. Really big."
"Everything's cold." Damon gave Gregoria a quick pony hug with his neck on the way to the door. "If they didn't come back in that length of time, then..."
"They aren't coming back." Michel put a claw on the long rail of the door handle. "We just won the lottery, kids."
"I still think we should be cautious." Damon watched as Michel slowly opened one of the double doors.
"You think?" Michel peered around the door. "Um... you might want to get your pony heads in order. I found our missing humans, and... they're not in good shape."
Gregoria and Damon worked hard to keep from throwing up as they joined Michel in the large corridor beyond the double door. Up until now, what they had seen of the S-4 facility had been gray on gray and steel, all in well maintained condition - even the older sections, like the lowest level. The corridor was not in good condition at all.
Forty feet from the double door, the hastily built barricade was broken and scattered. Bodies, some blackened and burned, lay about like rag dolls made of overdone meat. The smell of cooked flesh filled the passage and the two ponies suffered occasional heaves. Beyond the smashed barricade was some very impressive destruction.
The walls of the corridor had been smashed, on both sides, and a bit on the ceiling. Flakes of burned paint and ceiling tiles covered the floor along with even more bodies. Pools and streaks of sticky dark red mixed with splotches of what looked like blue cleaning fluid. As Michel led the way, the two dry-heaving ponies following him stumbled over the half-melted weaponry that the deceased humans had either dropped, or still clutched in seared hands.
"My... Celestia... Oh..." Gregoria did her best to just concentrate on following Michel's lumpen shape as he made his way through what must have been a very short fight.
"It must have been big. Really big. Like a rhino or something. Bigger. Oh... fuck." Michel stopped. Fortunately they were now past the pile of debris and bodies, the remainder of the long corridor was streaked and heavily damaged but free of corpses.
"What?" Gregoria stood, her legs shaking, not looking back as hard as she could.
"Not what, pony. Who." Michel, normally gruff, sounded sad. It was the first time Gregoria had seen the dog even capable of that emotion. "He accounted for himself with honor. Damn."
Damon walked to see the diamond dog's face. "Randal. Randal did this, didn't he?"
"You, Gregoria, you ever spend any time with Randal?" Michel's question was almost accusatory.
Gregoria still felt queasy and shaky. "N-No. I... I was going to, but..."
Michel bared his fangs, and then calmed himself. "Yeah, fucking quonset hut waaayyy too far out there for ponies." The diamond dog walked to the scorched wall, and ran his paw over the flakes of blackened paint. "I know, I know, dragon. Scares you guys. It's in the show, it's in you. But know something." Michel fixed the two ponies with his eyes "Probably the only reason we're not caught or dead, the only reason we even have a chance, is because Randal, poor, lonely Randal, out there in the back forty, busted up their shit for us."
Michel looked back at the carnage behind them. "He must have gone nuts. You don't know..." Gregoria and Damon stared at their hooves, their ears down "...Randal wasn't some big nasty monster. He was a total sweetheart. He did crochet, with his long dragon nails, you know that?"
Michel turned around again and faced forward, down the remainder of the corridor, to the smashed, half-melted door at the end. "If he did all of this, then... things must have been bad."
Gregoria shook her head. "Wait... you sound like you know he's dead or something! What's with all the past tense?"
Michel glanced briefly back. "Dragon blood is blue. That isn't floor cleaner."
Only then did it register, in the flickering, broken lighting that remained, what the slick of blue goop on the floor, and the streaks of blue ooze on the walls, must mean.
The three were somber as they approached the broken doorway at the end of the corridor.
Beyond the broken door was an access chamber, which featured several elevators, some very large and clearly designed to carry heavy loads. Two stairways ran upwards, one with a crushed door, offering an alternative to the lifts. The chamber branched off into three other corridors, like the one that the three Equestrians emerged from. Overhead, an orange-red light flashed and spun, silently, indicating for the first time that an alarm of some kind had been activated. The floor had wide slicks of blue ichor.
Gregoria studied the walls as they were painted in alternating shades of emergency. "Whaddya think? Search the rest of this floor or what?"
Michel stood at the largest cargo elevator. He forced the door up and held it. Behind the door, what was left of the elevator appeared torn to shreds. Also torn to shreds were several uniformed humans and what had once been some kind of stationary gun. "He followed them down, and took out the gun crew in the elevator here. They probably got a few rounds off. Then he must have heard noise down the commissary way, took those guys out, then turned tail and left again."
Michel went to the other doors leading away. "No, didn't go this way. Randal could sense things. He had, like, Predator vision. He could see heat. Nobody down these other ways."
Gregoria and Damon watched Michel follow the splotches and scrapes on the floor to the stairwell with the broken door. The very door frame had been buckled by some terrible mass. "He came down and went back up, using these stairs. Slippery. Be careful." Michel began ascending the stairs.
"I don't understand." Gregoria followed behind, unsure why she was letting the diamond dog lead. "Why did Randal - if it was Randal - come down here, then go back up?"
Michel turned a corner and continued the ascent. "Oh, it was Randal all right. Nothing else like him in probably the whole world." Michel panted slightly as he climbed. "He was doing the circuit. S&D - search and destroy. I don't know if he imagined us coming to the rescue, or he just lost it entirely, but Randal was on the hunt. He wasn't sightseeing. He was clearing and securing." Another corner, another ascent. "He probably just went after any pocket of heat he could find. Like Godzilla, going after reactors."
Gregoria tried to make sense of what Michel had said as they climbed. "Wait... you mean Randal, from the farm, deliberately went around this place and... hurt... all the humans?"
"F'n ponies." The door to the next level lay in bent and twisted pieces, some painted with sticky blue ooze. Several charred human bodies lay strewn about, still clutching their rifles. Michel waited, and listened intently, then shrugged. "Not 'hurt', Randal took the bastards out. Kacked them. Burned them with fire and ripped the guts out of any who could still stand after that. Probably waded through bullets to do it. Randal's a sweetheart, like I said, but in the end, dude's a dragon."
Gregoria shuddered. Within herself, she decided that maybe it had been best that she hadn't visited much with such a frighteningly violent creature. Then again, if he was still alive somewhere, maybe she should have been bringing Randal cakes.
The next floor up from the lowest level was much more modern. Gregoria thought it looked like a hospital, and it had once been sterile white and pale green. Red, blue, yellow, and red lines on the floor led to various sections. It was a probably a research and development level, likely where most of the work at S-4 was done. The bottom level, with all of the pumps and electrical systems, the commissary and the storage and specimen room almost certainly served as a barracks too. Likely, it was considered the safest level, the 'bomb shelter' of the facility. The place had been built during the cold war, so the mentality of that time doubtless influenced its design.
The sterile white and green was not sterile any longer. What had once been a laboratory was now a ruin. Walls were caved in, partitions destroyed. A heavy support beam not far from the elevators and staircases was partially broken. The space was bathed in red and blue splashes and smears, with red dominating. It became apparent that there were bodies everywhere - lumps and tubes of charcoal turned out to be the torsos and limbs of soldiers and scientists. Both ponies choked at the barbecue stench that filled the air.
"I'm... I'm sensing something. It's weird, but it's kinda like how radar works in the movies, you know, 'PING!', like that." Damon closed his eyes to concentrate, but that only made the smell of dragon-roasted human more intense. He opened his eyes and began moving his head from side to side, trying very hard not to actually look at the carnage around him.
"What does that mean?" Gregoria tried to press her right pastern against her nostrils and breath only through her mouth. "Is it Rachel?"
Damon's ears clung to his skull, flat and low. "I don't know, but it's something, and it feels like it could be. But..."
"What?" Pasterns could not press hard enough to stop the horrible smell. Gregoria put her hoof down in resignation.
"...it feels wrong, somehow." Damon's eyes held a serious expression, and a worried one.
"Let's go. This base won't remain empty like this forever. When they come, they'll come in force, and they will not ask questions." Michel waved his paws to shoo Damon on. Damon began following his strange 'ping', his horn glowing silver as he walked.
The level was divided into concentric rings, each section sealed with security doors. Each ring was wide, and subdivided into areas presumably devoted to specific subjects. It soon became clear that Damon's unicorn senses were superfluous, all that was necessary was to follow the path of destruction. Something large and impossibly strong had smashed its way through thick walls, bending metal and crushing concrete on a truly incredible scale. The path bored straight through wall and door and beam, winding a zig-zag path through the rings straight to the center chamber.
Everywhere spinning alarm lights flashed, and Gregoria found her mind trying to create the missing klaxon sound that the scene seemed to demand. But there was no audible alarm, despite the clear state of emergency. The research and development level was silent as the tomb it had become.
As the three passed through the ragged breaches between the concentric rings, they noted the blasted remains of defensive positions that had been set up, presumably to counter the threat of a large, raging, magical dragon ripping its way through both architecture and personnel. Gregoria stared at the remains of a mounted gun the scale of which boggled her mind. It was like something out of a movie, set on a heavy tripod, with a feeder belt that did not seem to have bullets so much as small rockets set along it. The floor was slick with blue here, and it came to her mind that this was probably the weapon that had finally pierced the scales of a dragon.
Randal had clearly responded in kind.
"It's Rachel." Damon didn't need to say more. The three Equestrians began to move more quickly now, following the path that Randal had presumably created right through the very walls. If there were any traps, they would have been obliterated along with the walls, portions of the ceiling and floor, and anything else that had impeded any part of the raging wyrm.
As they rounded the last zag of Randal's erratic course to the center, they found Randal.
The huge green mass of blue-stained scale and muscle lay prostrate as if praying. They found the tail, first, long and sinuous, gradually widening until it met the dragon's hindquarters which nearly blocked the breach in the final wall. Michel, Damon and Gregoria walked slowly between concrete and rebar, and razor-sharp scales, to enter the center chamber of the research level. The floor was littered with blocks that had been the wall.
Randal's long neck lay coiled around the base of a large, round, transparent chamber. The dragon's massive forelimbs lay on either side of the chamber, protectively. His vast, leathern wings, torn and shredded by what must have been a constant rain of bullets, were bent back as though Randal no longer cared what happened to them in his eagerness to force himself into the room. The floor was awash in thick blue goo which had long ago stopped flowing from within the monstrous creature's body. Randal's enormous, dull and sticky eyes stared at oblivion, impossible rubies set into a horrifically fanged face.
Gregoria stood, unable to process what she was seeing for the longest time. Damon had turned away, staring at nothing. Michel just stood, his massive, troll-like arms at his side, useless.
The cylindrical glass chamber was fifteen, perhaps sixteen feet in diameter. It was at least as tall, all set into a solid base and cap that went into floor and ceiling. In the center of the chamber was a large metallic rack set into a powered gimbal which allowed the rack to be put into any position. Stainless steel tables covered with medical drills and saws and other strange instruments and tools surrounded the centerpiece. From the top of the glass enclosure drooped cables and tubes placed for easy reach by human hands. Large, bright lights flooded the space, providing clear and clinical illumination. Half of the sealed glass chamber had been rotated open, to allow access.
On one of the metal tables were arranged the heavy, jeweled, solid gold barding of the solar princess of Equestria. Beside it, panting, shaking and wide-eyed, sat a fog-gray pegasus pony in a deep state of shock. The little pony had a sky-blue mane and tail. Her orange irises were lost within the milk seas of her unblinking, horrified eyes. Her body was criss-crossed with blue-stained, bandage-like straps which trailed broken and torn cables which lay around her. Presumably, Randal had freed her, whoever she was.
Strapped to the rack, bound at every limb, the body of Celestia, of Rachel Priss, gently squirmed. Her movements were slow and intermittent. Her breathing was steady and unpanicked. Rachel seemed calm, almost content, except for her occasional restless wriggling.
Rachel was alive! Some other pony had made it too, and the thought came to Gregoria's struggling mind that perhaps it was Chelsea, perhaps Chelsea had been given her wings back by Rachel on that night. But Rachel wasn't saying anything. She should be saying something, calling out to them, she should be amazed to see everypony come to rescue her.
The wide, staring eyes of the grey and blue pegasus mare inside the glass chamber slowly turned and began to focus on Gregoria. Tiny pupils quivered, as the pegasus continued to pant in fear and despair.
Gregoria looked up, as if in a dream, to Rachel's face.
Rachel was speaking, after all, just very, very quietly. None of the words made any sense. She couldn't seem to keep her eyes on any one thing for long.
It was then that Gregoria noticed Rachel's bare, shaved poll, the pink skin around her horn, and the rest of her head. Tiny dots of red made little crimson flowers on the bandages above her eyes, near her horn, and by her ear. Something was missing. Rachel was not glowing along her back. She had no rippling magic mane, nor tail, no eerie fields of glowing energy at all. They hadn't been shaved off - Gregoria couldn't even imagine how it would be possible to shave ethereal force - Rachel's glowing mane had simply been extinguished. In the place of the luminescent expression of divinity was only an ordinary, cloud gray mane and tail, bedraggled and dull.
Gregoria's dumbfounded mind finally made sense of what Rachel was trying to say.
She was mindlessly singing 'Giggle At The Ghostie' over and over, very, very poorly.
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Well... that escalated quickly. Goes to show why you don't mess with dragons
And so the plot thickens yet again. It's probably reached the consistency of drying concrete by now. Like a mindfuck within a mindfuck within a mindfuck within a mindfuck, again and again and again and again and again...
Did... did she get lobotomised?
Soo... Dragon rampage and a Celestia suffering from PTSD, sounds fun...? Oh wait, I forgot, our dear heroes are currently stuck inside a place where beings like them get dissected and there's something that can kill dragons in there. Joy, I can't imagine them getting out now.
2764247
It's also a place where not a single soldier, scientist or maintenance worker was left alive. As Holly said on the first episode of 'Red Dwarf' - "Everyone is dead, Dave."
"Even the captain?"
"Yes Dave."
"What about Miller and Rasmussen?"
They're all dead, Dave, everyone is dead."
"Come on, Kochanski? What about Kochanski?"
"Kochanski is dead, Dave."
"So... everyone is dead?"
"Yes, Dave. Everyone is dead."
"What about..." (lather, rinse, and repeat, until hilarity! I loved Red Dwarf)
Escaping a completely depopulated government facility is, I think, just about as easy as it gets. Still, to be careful, I expect they might choose to tunnel back out... just to be safe.
Hmmm... if they chose to tunnel out, they could go at Michel's maximum speed, because nobody is watching the detectors or sensors anymore. They wouldn't have to stop, or dig erratically, or even avoid making noise.
Thinking about this... I... probably shouldn't actually write their escape, as such. It would be hella boring:
Actually - this is a good point!
Should I do this? Is it necessary, or would it make more sense to just skip to the next interesting part of the story and only reference the boring escape as an event in the past?
2764270 So.... Who killed Randal? I mean he did free a pony so he wasn't 'consumed by his predator instincts' or something like that so it couldn't have been Rachael forced to defend herself right? Someone must have been alive enough to pull the trigger. Also, a bit out of point but I think your title is spelt wrong. You normally put a part of the opening quote inside but in this chapter, 'its victory' became 'it's victory'. I can't believe I just thought of this. The grey pegasus, it was Chelsea right?
Oh. My. Celestia!
Please resurrect them, and then kill them again in the slowest way possible!
*cough* Ahem... your story is probably the one that made me the most angry at a person or group of people till now
2764285
Thank you. FIXED. I hate when I do that.
Slow loss of blood killed Randal. Since the characters cannot know the full story - because they did not see it - they can only play detective in their minds to figure out what happened. This applies to the reader too, although Michel has helped a great deal.
I think the best explanation is this:
Randal must have either heard or witnessed something he could not tolerate, or he was in personal threat. Very likely, it was something to do with Rachel, or Chelsea. He must have broken free from wherever he was being kept and gone on a rampage, consumed with rage and grief. His dragon nature likely took over, and he destroyed all who opposed him and threatened that which he valued.
But, the humans he fought were not helpless, and the endless stream of ordnance eventually broke through his tough armor. He must have died the death of a thousand cuts, with hundreds of bullets lodged in his gargantuan body. His bleed out would have been slow, but unstoppable. He may have known he was not going to make it. In any case, he finished the job, and eliminated all resistance.
At the end, I think the evidence strongly points to him smashing his way to Rachel, to Celestia. He was likely half-mad with pain and blood-loss. At the end, I picture him crawling to try to wrap himself protectively around Rachel, probably hoping that she could magically save him - or, perhaps, he was simply desperate not to be alone.
This is what the evidence tells me, but, of course, I was not there. Michel and Gregoria and Damon saw it first hoof, but I don't think they would disagree with me. It seems a reasonable explanation, based on the available evidence.
Perhaps Randal's last moments were recorded on camera. If so, only government agents will ever see those images, not us, and not our heroes.
2764337
Wow. Thank you, then. It is my duty as an author to create an entertaining, emotionally powerful, intellectually stimulating story - at least those are my goals as a writer - and if I have made you feel something... say anger at the Black Budget secret shadow government troops... then I have not failed.
I never want to fail my readers. The biggest failure is if the reader feels nothing at all.
So, thank you for the compliment!
She was mindlessly singing 'Giggle At The Ghostie' over and over, very, very poorly.
You know that trope? The one where an innocent children's toy becomes something straight out of a nightmare? I'll give you a 9/10 on the creepy meter.
Powerful stuff. I think the government idiots are beyond crazy to risk permanent psychological damage to a being which can quite literally warp reality. I mean does anyone really want to live in a reality brought into existence by a mad-mare?
2764376
I want to imagine that it all turns out alright, as most of your stories do, in one way or another, but I'm having trouble.
In your goal to make us feel, you have most definitely succeeded.
Well... something tells me Rachel is for all intents and purposes, dead. It might be possible to use some clever cues, along with Celestia's Raiment, to force a 'reboot' so to speak... but I'm guessing the person that would bring back would be fully Celestia, not Rachel. And there's no doubt at all about what she'd do by this point: Remake the world in her image and damn the consequences, she will not allow her subjects to be harmed ever again. The monkeys will be better off as ponies... not that they even deserve it.
Never allowed to be easy, is it?
2765133 I believe she is more like broken, than dead...
I'm not sure if Rachel has been lobotomized or simply broken. In either case, it's going to take a miracle to bring her back, and she won't be able to provide one. You can't open the box with the crowbar inside. Still, at least she didn't go Nightmare Sun. And at least Chelsea got her wings back...
On a lighter note, dragon blood uses hemocyanin or something like it? Interesting. Certainly emphasizes the alien nature of the wyrm. This is a creature so foreign to our cosmos, not even its blood chemistry behaves as you'd expect it to.
Also, pair of minor typos you'll want to know about:
2765665
FIXED
well, except for the 'it's' in the title. That is deliberate, because that is how Franz Kafka wrote the word in the quotation that is the source of the title. Did he make a mistake? Were there different writing conventions in 1914? I honestly don't know. But - all of my titles come from the quotes that start the chapters.
2764659
I suspect their immediate goal was to prevent Rachel from being able to do anything at all, while still keeping her alive for study. A creature with that level of reality control is both the greatest possible threat, and the greatest possible opportunity for anyone interested in real power over others. The ultimate prize - and the ultimate risk.
Damn, that was a good turn with the dragon rampage - I expected them to be in some kind of rat's maze, but it turned out the agents just got their shit jacked. In their position I'd still be wary there're some panic room(s) hidden away on the upper floors, away from the research areas, where the brass and their bodyguards are holed up, but apparently Randal is a pretty conscientious guy.
It's interesting that all the troops had to work with were ordinary chemical-fueled firearms, instead of goodies reverse-engineered from decades of captured Injectors. X-Com, they ain't.
It makes me think they haven't really assimilated their own belief that the solar system is a computer simulation, or else they'd just be engineering wars and disasters to force code injections, which would be a far more valuable resource than anything they could traditionally claim to be fighting over - A dragon is valuable, but not as valuable as something that makes dragons.
Looking forward to seeing what's up with Rachaelestia. So far I'm holding out hope that her behavior is just due to her head hurting a lot.
I hope when they get back to Crown he's not just like "Why didn't you take everything that wasn't nailed down?" If anybody could hack and disable hidden tracking devices in any of their kit, it'd be him and his team, I'd think.
From the last chapter:
I dunno, don't most people already believe some version of this, except instead of "a programmer" it's "God" and instead of "a giant computer" it's "you're not supposed to ask how"?
2764368 I love it when the story that lives, and author is only reporter that tell as what he/she sees. the way you wrote this comment indicate that your story is one of them. Only those are true stories. I noticed that those cannot be canceled, author simply resume it after some time. but cannot stop until it is done. Is it similar to you? because I may be wrong, but it looks like that.
2766999
This is so. I had to come back and finish the tale.
This shit's fucked up, yo.
This is so depressing :( I hope... I really hope some good can come of all this. I really do hope so... I'm afraid to click to the next chapter... but... I know I have to. I'll.... I'll see you there.
Thinking that they could contain a Dragon with anything less than ten meters of concrete on all sides is probably dumb; maybe the 'subconscious censor' kicked in and they saw a Spike rather than a Garble. If so, it was death to them.
The site's title for this chapter is correct, but in the chapter body, in its heading, you have "Not Even The World Of It's Victory". So you should fix that error there.Apparently that's deliberate.Someone fucked up. Royally.
Good for them though.
Another rather ominous titlequote…
Let me guess: You're bothered by the fact that there's no one around? Yeah…
Oh, and that too. Though I'm personally not particularly bothered that you're not dead yet. :)
Well, Majik was fighting a battle they were destined to lose eventually. Sooner or later, something would come along they couldn't handle, a Godzilla, a Sauron with his ring in a safe deposit box, a lemonaded-off Captain Nemo with a Nautilus full of SLBMs, an Independence Day saucer not compatible with PowerBooks… Their luck would run out eventually.
Hm.
Which provides a more positive interpretation of the titlequote, actually! The world is more than Majik…
…Sunfire, perhaps? :D
Oh, or dragonfire. Still :D
And yeah, like I said. They were bound to meet something they weren't up to handling eventually, and since they weren't so very good at making friends…
Pity about Randal, but he almost certainly didn't die in vain.
Well… Chelsea seems physically more or less fine, but things don't look too good for Rachel at the moment. And at this point, I've pretty much abandoned any pretense of getting to bed on time; no way I'm going to sleep without knowing how this turns out!
…And, scrolling down through the comments to post this before moving on to the next chapter, I spy a Red Dwarf reference. :D