It burns.
The flames blaze high up the sky and the black smoke hides the nightly clouds. My nostrils widen, and for the first time in my life I breathe the fresh night air.
The metallic noise coming from my chest remembers me, that I just escaped the torture.
Rustling.
My ears straighten up and I turn my head, searching for the cause of the noise.
It’s just a small bunny, but nonetheless my heart pumps blood through my veins, painfully, and the sudden adrenaline shock dazes me.
Ironically?
The whole escape I hadn’t felt a thing, and now I got a heart attack from a bunny? Escape... Yes, now I’m finally free. I will never have to return.
It started ages ago. So long ago that I can barely remember. I was just a filly back then, but don’t ask me how I even got to that- hell...
I don’t remember.
I don’t know if my parents are still alive, or even who they are.
I don’t have anything.
The facility was deep underground, and I didn’t see much of it. Just the cold, white walls of my cell; the grey hallways and the green surgery.
“I made it!”
How it started , I don’t know. I just know how it stopped.
First I tried to struggle as I awakened cuffed up in the horrifying, sterile room. But the drugs the doctors gave me made it impossible for me to move.
The experiments started on a wednesday. How I know that?
The doctors were talking about it during a break, while they pumped different liquids into my body.
They hurt, and the needles had broken underneath my skin, leaving sharp pieces behind.
They always chained me like a vicious dog to the wall, even though I never tried to resist.
I saw another foal trying to. They started kicking it, and it must have died. At least, I never saw it again.
But I digress.
After some time, I got used to it. I barely even felt the pain. Until something went wrong.
My blood pressure rose extremely, my heart was rushing painfully. Tears formed in the corners of my eye and I started to scream.
The guards called the white-coats, and before I had any time to react, a fist hit me and knocked me out.
The next thing I remember was a constantly repearting, beeping noise, ringing through my head.
“Wh-what happened..?!”
Blinded by the white light I wasn’t able to find out where I was, but it didn’t look like my old cell.
Then I saw it. A big metal plate loomed over my coat, right on my chest, attached to the machine that woke me up.
The rhythm of the beeping had changed, and I quickly realized that it was my heartbeat displayed in sounds.
“Project #4 has awoken. No signs of an allergic reaction to the metal. No visible injuries. Pulse normal. Device seems to be working.”
I ignored the coats. My thoughts were focused on the thing on my chest.
My hooves twitched, I wanted to stand up, but my hind legs were still tied to the bed.
“Let me go!”
I wanted to scream, but my voice broke.
“Look. The test subject appears to have earned its cutie mark!”
They were right: A cockwheel had appeared on my flank. I still don’t understand my special talent, though.
It seems to be the mechanical heart that is keeping me alive. It keeps me going and makes me endure everything.
“Project 4 actually got a cutie mark. A complete success!”
They opened my cuffs and untied me, shaking my hoofs.
Bursting with happiness, encouraging me.
How fake their smiles were.
They put me in a new cell, with another pony living in it, a light blue coated mare, her wine red mane cut short.
Her bright, cyan eyes looked keen and happy at me.
“Hey, I’m test subject #100724, but you can call me Glimmer Heart. It’s fitting better than 100724, don’t you think?” Her voice was just like her eyes, a cute, friendly sound in my ears.
“What a strange name…” I responded slowly.
“I gave it to myself, because of my cutie mark. Look.” She turned sideways, showing me her flank.
Her cutie mark was a silvern heart, spangled with small, twinkling stars.
“What is your special talent?” I wondered.
“I will endure everything, if pain, if suffering, because I want to be useful, even if it costs my life.”
“So…”
I didn’t understand.
A victim.
She accepted it, she was even proud to be maltreated and used. They had already broken her.
The next months were the happiest of my life, and even though the experiments grew more painful, for the first time in my life I had hope.
I had a friend.
Before I had gotten to know Glimmer, I used to cry myself into sleep. But with her as my “roomie”, I quickly forgot those times.
She was my shimmer, my bright light in the darkness I lived in.
But destiny never liked me.
The years passed by, and the little filly had grown into a young mare. Glimmer had lost her childish face, too. Her eyes now where dull, the shine she always seemed to have in them had disappeared, clusters of hair were missing on her hooves and chest.
I had physical injuries, too. My left ear was missing a piece which never grew back, and my forelegs were scarred.
“Project 4, Subject 100724, please come with me.”
The white-coats had come, and had made up another cruelty in their sick minds.
The hallway wasn’t quiet like usually, instead it’s silence was ripped by pained cries.
I grew anxious.
They took us to a different lab. It was tiled with white plates, and a plug valve was built in the ceiling. For what it was used I had to find out the hard way.
They inserted a clear liquid in Glimmer and me. Like usually, the puncture burned, and we felt the pressure on it. Like usually, they didn’t tell us a thing.
“The test subjects will now put on the suits. They are positioned in the vestibule, afterwards the subjects will return to the main room and stand in the middle of the room.”
We did what we were told and put the clothes on.
The suit sat skin-tight, was airproof and covered about 90 percent of my body. Only my legs, my tail and my face were revealed. Additionally we got safety glasses, which I had never seen before. Glimmer ensured me, that they were supposed to secure my eyes, so I put them on.
What a mistake. What a horrible, horrible mistake.
“Line up.”
In the middle of the room, side by side, we waited. My friend smiled encouraging and winked through her glasses. My lips rose to a small grin as a noise distracted us.
I rose my head to find the source of it.
It was the last thing I would see with my eyes. It literally burned it in my memory.
The first drop that hit my forehead made me wince, and I felt like I was drowning in an ocean of pain. The liquid seemed to be some sort of acid, burning away my skin. Blood ran down my snout and everything went black, though I am sure I did not lose conscience.
Tears and blood streamed down my face as I broke down. I felt my skin and coat drip to the ground, but I suppressed the screams building up in my chest. I wouldn’t grant them that satisfaction.
Glimmer screamed at the top of her lungs. It made my heart drop, the shrill noise pierced right through my soul. Her screams were desperate and full of panic.
My nostrils widened, and I could smell the blood.
The acid stream stopped, and Glimmer fell quiet, most probably unconscious. I wanted to move towards her, but my hooves didn’t carry me, and I felt dizzy.
I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear from pain, but I ignored it and slowly crawled through the blood towards where I thought Glimmer was.
“Glimmer Heart…” I whispered.
My cognition fainted…
“Project 4 is waking up, heartbeat stable, wounds are mostly healed, amputation and adding of the appliance without complications.”
Though I was waking up, and felt that my eyes were open, I couldn’t see anything. The night didn’t want to leave me.
“Subject 100724 isn’t breathing autonomous, ventricular fibrillation, the body didn’t accept the appliances. Starting defibrillation. 3… 2… 1…”
I heard an electric zap.
No…
“No response. 3, 2, 1…”
Zap.
No.
“3, 2, 1…”
Zap.
NO!
Save me! Save me!
Is this a kind of irony?
What’s going on?!
The glistening light of a neon lamp blinded me.
I saw something.
I could see again.
Some would call it a wonder, a bless.
To me it was a curse.
I looked down my body for the first time after that day. I shivered.
I wasn’t a pony anymore.
Whatever I was - I didn’t want to be it.
My hooves, my whole right foreleg were made of steel, and apparently my snout was, too.
That was when I noticed that my field of view was different. Something was totally wrong.
I rose my hooves. I actually was able to control them, though it felt weird.
As I touched my eyes, I surprisingly felt something through the steel.
But what I felt just strengthened my desperation.
My eyes were hard and cold, just like my legs.
I became a machine.
