Fallout: Equestria
Deep Imprint
Fen Runner wasn't a courier. One day, long ago, he might've aspired to be one, but the Wastelands had a way of crushing such dreams, and for Fen, that happened so long ago that it honestly no longer bothered him.
No... like most people here in Brooksmell, he was a simple Earth Pony farmer. He could hold his own in a fight, sure, but going out there into the madness of the Wasteland? He had a family to take care of, and crops to grow and sell. Leave the travelling to those crazy adventurers; they seemed to have nothing to lose.
He looked at the southern fields, and that odd feeling of unease crept up on him again. He shook his head. It was just the Bunker, he told himself. The ancient wartime complex in the far distance, beyond the south edge of his fields.
The Bunker was obviously cursed. For as long as anyone could remember the place had been locked up tight, an ancient concrete block serving as a scary reminder of these long-dead ponies who had transformed their world into a living hell. And then, about five years ago, it got worse. A group of these idiotic adventurers somehow managed to break it open. That's when the Bunker Madness started.
He shivered and pulled his gaze away from the cursed structure in the distance. He shouldn't keep thinking about it. That was probably how it started with all the others; they obsessed over the bunker, started acting strange, and left to find out what the place was doing to their mind.
And like the adventurers who had unleashed this curse on them, not a single one of them had ever come back.
"Da?" a high voice interrupted his dark thoughts. He looked back to see Bog Sprout, his daughter. "Are you done here?" the filly asked. "Ma says dinner's ready."
Fen smiled and followed his daughter to their home. The normal order of the day and a good meal with his family were all he needed to take his mind off that cursed place.
* * *
"Fen?"
The farmer didn't respond.
"Fenrir?" his wife tried again, with some mirth in her voice.
Fen blinked. "What? Oh." He smirked. "It's been ages since you used that nickname."
"Oh, well, I'm not sure if you're still worth it," she said playfully.
He smiled back at Marsh Bloom. "Honey, it's been quite a while since I had to valiantly defend my family from any wasteland dangers, and to be perfectly fair, I prefer it that way. Let Sheriff take care of them."
"Right, right." She nodded at his untouched plate. "Are you feeling all right?"
Fen looked at his plate and frowned. "Yes, sure. Just... a bit distracted."
"Well, c'mon, marsh wolf," she said. "Eat your dinner."
* * *
Over the next few days the feeling of unease didn't leave him. He tried avoiding the southern fields, but in the end he had no choice; the southern crops needed to be tended to just like all the others. As he walked through the growing plants his gaze locked onto the caves just beyond the field, and the feeling of unease returned with a vengeance. He somehow had the feeling something important happened there. Something was gnawing at the edge of his mind, and that cave was clearly the place it came from.
He was oddly relieved by this; he had feared that this gnawing feeling was connected to the distant Bunker. At least he knew he could handle the bog shrimp and the radscorpions in that cave. They weren't cursed. Just a bit irradiated.
He decided he'd check it out later. It was better to put his mind at ease. Just the fact he made that resolve already made him feel better. But right now, he had crops to tend to.
* * *
"Is this because of the Fenrir comment?" Marsh Bloom asked as her husband rummaged through the chest. "Please don't go seeking out danger, honey. You know those scorps can kill ya."
Fen Runner pulled out the mouth gun that had been hidden under years of junk, put it on the table, and shook his head. "No, it's just... I dunno, okay? Something feels... wrong, about that cave, and it only started recently. I just got this gut feeling. If some big nasty is brewing in there, I want to at least know for sure, so we can call in Sheriff and his ponies to take it out." He gave his wife a peck on the nose. "If there's anything really dangerous in there, I promise I'll get out of there right away."
She smiled at him. "All right, then." She frowned. "Maybe you should take Swamp Tiller with ya. He's growin' up to be a fine lad; he's old enough to kill some bog shrimp. It's better not to go in there alone."
Fen's stomach clenched at these words. "No," he said, resolutely. He didn't even know why. He just didn't want anyone else to go there. Somehow, he felt he'd been in these caves, and something horrible had happened there.
A violent image flashed through his mind. A memory? He wasn't sure, but he was sure of one thing; blood. Whose, he couldn't tell. He swallowed. There was one thing he was very, very certain of, at that moment. Whatever was in that cave, he had to confront it alone. He wouldn't get anyone else involved in this.
"Look, he's a brave lad, but..." He looked around uneasily. "It feels... wrong." He sighed. "To be honest, I wasn't even planning on telling you."
Marsh Bloom shook her head. "What's getting into you, Fen? This isn't like you."
"I know," he admitted. "I hope it's not that damned Bunker Madness." He looked her in the eyes. "But I'm not going to that Bunker. I promise. It's just that cave, and nothing else. And if somehow, that cave has some hidden tunnel or door that leads me to the Bunker... I'm coming straight back out."
Marsh Bloom gave Fen a tight hug. "Whatever happens... whatever bothers you... and whatever you find in that cave... I'll be here for you, okay? Just, please be careful. We got six families in town broken by that Bunker's curse." She shook her head softly. "I don't want ours to be the seventh."
Fen Runner strapped the gun holster to his chest and put the gun inside. He gave his wife another hug. "Don't worry. I'm probably just worrying over nothing. I'll be back by the evening."
* * *
Fen Runner, like most farmers, got up with the sun and went to bed as it drifted down the horizon. He wasn't really a night time person; in his opinion, night was meant for sleeping and other bedroom activities. He had never really liked the dark; too many things lurking in it.
As he entered the dark cave, though, he was somewhat surprised at how well he could see. He switched on his flashlight, but that just gave him a small spot at the place he shone at. As he turned it off again, his vision adapted to the dark once more, and he found he could see a lot more.
He grabbed the rad meter from his saddlebags and inspected the batteries. He had heard of places where the radiation gave a glow that only really showed in the dark, and could help you see, but it obviously also made these places extremely dangerous. Fen was a simple farmer; he kept out of irradiated places, and the packet of Rad-Away in his saddlebags was the only one they owned; for emergencies only.
But the rad meter was working fine, and it registered barely any radiation. Just the usual background noise from having rad-creatures living nearby. He put it away again; like the flashlight, the glow from the dial messed up his night vision, and if he came across any irradiated spots the ticking could be heard from his saddlebags anyway.
He ventured deeper into the cave and spotted a radscorpion. Worse; a radscorpion nest. Only one adult scorpion was with it, but it was sure to be aggressive when it felt its young were threatened.
The scorpion made a hissing sound at him, standing protectively over the squirming mass of little scorplings in a threatening stance, but to Fen's surprise, it didn't attack. It was trying to scare him off. Fen frowned. Was the animal hurt? Normally they wouldn't hesitate to attack. He saw no injuries on the radscorpion, though. Once again he was surprised at how clearly he saw the creature in the dark cave. Shaking his head at the oddities, he walked on, leaving the radscorpion mother behind with her young.
As he ventured deeper into the cave he realized he was taking a specific route in the maze of twisty little passages, despite them being all alike. The feeling of unease returned as he came to the next crossing and simply knew which path to take; somehow, he knew exactly where he was going.
Was this how the Madness worked? Did it guide him to his doom? Was there indeed, like he'd said to his wife, some passage to the Bunker, down here? He doubted it. His sense of orientation told him that if anything, he was going away from the complex.
Finally, he entered a small tunnel, as unremarkable as all the others. There was no rusty steel door set in ancient concrete there. There weren't even any radscorpions or bog shrimp. All there was was a pile of stones.
And a hoof sticking out from under them.
He shivered. Was this what he was meant to find? Was this what was gnawing on the edge of his mind? Who was this pony? Did he kill him? Somehow he was torn between turning away and running and never looking back, and frantically digging out the corpse. But he'd come this far; he wasn't turning back now. He started dragging away the stones covering the body.
* * *
Fen Runner looked at the face he had uncovered and fell back on his haunches. In the dark, the colours of the pony had given him no clue, but now he shone his flashlight into the pony's face there was no mistaking it.
The buried pony was him. Despite being dead for weeks, the cool cave had preserved the body well. The corpse lying before him was undoubtedly Fen Runner.
Was that what the Bunker did? Did it make clones? Stranger things had been heard around the Wastelands. He traced the scar on the side of the dead pony's hide, and glanced at the same scar on his own flank. That wasn't a clone; it was a copy. He shone his flashlight around in the cave to see if he could find any clues to what happened here.
Another image flashed through his mind. He saw his own hooves, holding down the second him. The other Fen Runner looked panicked, and screamed when sparks of electricity shot out at him.
Fen scrambled away from the corpse, and realized he was screaming too. He was shaking. Did he kill Fen Runner? Did he come from the Bunker? He held his head in his hooves. No, it couldn't be. He remembered things from long before this. He remembered meeting Marsh Bloom. He remembered the birth of their first foal, Swamp Tiller. All these memories, they were his own. They had to be his own.
He glanced at the dead stallion again. But then, why did he kill this other one, and why didn't he remember any of it until now? That electric spark had looked like magic... but he sure couldn't do stuff like that; he was an earth pony. But if these memories weren't his own... did he fight back? Did he win? Was he the copy, or the original? How did he get those memories? And, if he was the copy, how did he get these older memories?
To his dread he realized where the answers would lie. Did all those others get confronted with this, too? A dead pony looking just like them? Did all of them return to their families, not sure if they had killed some kind of duplicate grown in that accursed facility, or if they were the duplicate?
He looked away from the corpse, into the tunnel he'd have to take to get back home. If it even was his home.
"I can't tell them," he mumbled. "This would upset everthing."
He piled the rocks back onto the dead pony, this time making sure to cover up all of him.
"Whoever you were or are... original or clone... rest in peace, you poor bastard."
* * *
He returned to his family in the evening with a morose look on his face. His wife gave him a hopeful look, but he just shook his head. It wasn't until they were in the privacy of their bedroom that Fen made a decision.
He had to break the cycle. This was how it had started with the six other ponies in town. They estranged themselves from their families over this, became restless, agitated and scared, and then, when they had pushed everyone away from them, and had nothing more to lose, they went to the Bunker.
Six was enough. It had to stop here.
He was lying down on the bed and looked at Marsh Bloom, who was sitting beside him with her legs tucked underneath her.
"I..." he started, unsure where to go with it. He took a deep breath. "We've always talked about things. Whenever hardship came our way, whenever our relationship became stressed... we've always talked it out." He sighed. "Won't be that easy this time."
Marsh Bloom gave him a concerned look. "It never is. Talk to me, Fen."
"I know what happened to the ponies who got the Bunker Madness. I know why they went to that accursed place." He looked at her. "And I'm afraid that some day soon, I'll have to go there too."
Marsh Bloom's arms shot out and she hugged him tightly. "No you don't, dammit!" she yelled into his chest. "We can't lose you too!"
Fen nodded. "That's why I'm telling you about this. I don't think the others told anyone. The truth is..." he looked at her, and bowed his head. "It's possible you already lost me. What I found in that cave was a dead pony. And that dead pony was... me."
Marsh gave him a puzzled look. "You?"
"Me," Fen said, an unsure look on his face. "And that's not all. When I went into that cave... I could see. In the pitch black, without a light. And the monsters inside, they shied away from me. Like..." He looked at Marsh Bloom, dreading her reaction. "Like I was more dangerous than they were." He kept looking at her. "Bloom, I don't think I'm really me. I think I'm the monster that killed... me. Replaced me. I don't know what to think!"
Marsh Bloom shook her head. "You're the you I know. You're a decent farmer, a loving father, and a good husband. That's you."
"But what if I'm not?!" he burst out. "What if I'm just some monster, lying in wait, buried under what I think is me? I need to go there, Bloom. I need to know for sure."
Marsh Bloom nodded. "You really do, don't you. Dammit. All those ponies..." Her eyes narrowed. "You ain't going in there alone. Tomorrow, we're telling the kids, and you're taking Swamp Tiller with you. You know how he is; he'll ground you. He'll keep you thinking about us, no matter what you are. And if you're right, and you really aren't him..." She narrowed her eyes again. "...you better make damn sure to live up to his legacy. Fenrir."
Fen actually smiled at that. "All right. I'll do that."
* * *
Fen Runner looked at the Bunker in the distance. Somehow, he actually felt in high spirits. Swamp Tiller, his teenage son, walked next to him, quiet as usual. He hadn't said a thing when they had explained the situation to him and his sister earlier. Now they were alone, though, he finally spoke up.
"So... if you ain't my Da... who are you?"
"Heh," Fen Runner said. "That's the million caps question, ain't it?" He looked at his son. "A clone? A body snatcher? Who knows? Maybe I did kill the duplicate, and it just implanted these memories into me to lure me to that place. Maybe something put those memories into me, and what I found in that cave was just another hallucination caused by that. I don't know, son. But I intend to find out."
"Nopony ever returned from that place, though," Tiller said.
"Nopony ever tried goin' in, either, except those that got the Bunker Madness."
"Point," Tiller conceded.
"What do you think we'll find?" Fen asked as they walked on.
"Truths we don't wanna find," his son replied. "We should go just home."
"I can't do that. I need to see it."
Tiller stopped. "Why?" he asked. "You got my Da's memories, you got my Da's way o' thinking... Far as I see it, even if the real Da's lyin' dead in a cave, he got copied into you, somehow. Even if you died, you're alive again. Why would you risk that?"
Fen looked at his son. "Because if I'm some kind of weapon from the war times, you can be sure there's something nasty hiding underneath it all."
Tiller frowned for a moment and started walking again, looking at the ground in front of him as he went on. After a while he nodded. "Yeah." He looked up at Fen again. "You definitely got my Da's way o' thinking."
* * *
The two ponies looked at the double door to the mysterious Bunker, or rather, at what was left of it after the group of adventurers had blasted its way inside with explosives, five years before. Apparently it was meant to open to the outside, but as it was, both of the doors were blown to the inside, with one of them barely hanging on to a single one of its rusty hinges. Fen Runner remembered the explosion could be heard thoughout the whole village. He was inside at the time, but he imagined it must've been quite a blast to do that to these thick steel doors.
He carefully stepped through the mangled steel into the actual bunker. Swamp Tiller followed close behind.
The two had reasoned that, if Fen was indeed some kind of body replacement, whatever was in there was more likely to focus any automated defence systems on the true trespasser, being Swamp Tiller. For that reason, Tiller was the one carrying the family's sole mouth gun. They didn't own any more weapons; nowadays, Sheriff and his ponies took care of keeping the village safe anyway. They demanded a fee, sure, but given the fact many of Sheriff's ponies were sons and daughters of the farmers themselves, nopony terribly minded paying it.
The underlying reason for Tiller carrying the gun, though, remained unspoken despite them both knowing it. It was so that, if Fen indeed turned out to be dangerous, Tiller could kill him.
A recorded voice suddenly boomed through the speakers, spooking the two ponies. "Subject Deep Imprint detected on the premises. Initiating Mission Completion protocol."
"What?" Fen said. The voice gave him chills.
"Da?" Tiller asked.
"I know this voice. Don't know how or why, but... I know this voice."
"Subject Deep Imprint, please go to the Debriefing Chamber for reassignment," the voice boomed on.
"Yeeah... screw that," Fen said. He walked up to the computer monitors and tried to make sense of the stuff on it. To his surprise, he found that he could, despite never having learned how to read in his life.
"Subject Deep Imprint, please go to the Debriefing Chamber for reassignment," the voice repeated.
Fen ignored it and looked through the data on the terminal. "Deep Imprint, hm? C'mon... stupid slow thing. Show me something already!"
"Subject Deep Imprint is not responding. Assuming Imprint Mode is still active," the voice boomed. "Initiating control signals."
Fen looked up from the monitor, startled. Some semblance of a memory returned at the mention of 'control signals'. He didn't know what it was, but he knew it was bad. "Run!" he yelled to his son as he scrambled to get away from the monitors. He made it halfway towards the doors before the screeching sound came through the speakers. He stiffened on the spot.
Tiller ran behind him, and stopped as he saw his father standing still. "Da?" he asked, carefully grabbing his mouth gun. The noise didn't seem to affect him in the least.
Fen turned his head towards Tiller. His pupils were pinpricks, and he had a haunted, helpless look on his face. "Run," he said. "I can't fight it. They'll make me kill you. Just like I killed those adventurers. Oh Celestia. All those ponies..."
"Da, what is this?"
"Initiate shape revert control signal," the voice boomed. The screeching sound changed subtly, and Fen collapsed, pushing his hooves over his ears. Then, he burst into flames.
Swamp Tiller instinctively took a step back, barely daring to look at the black mass that was his dad just seconds before. But the body wasn't burnt. It was black, gleaming, alien looking. When its eyes opened, they were large blue orbs.
"Get out!" the changeling yelled at him with an oddly buzzing voice. "No! No, wait! Don't go. Kill me. Please do it. Now I'm still me." He clenched his fanged jaws together. "Debriefing ain't debriefing... Debriefing..." He looked up at Tiller. "They'll wipe my mind! Like all the other times! And then I'll be out there again. Looking for number eight! The system is blank! There are no objectives. No mission. Just a victim to replace, over and over again! It has to stop!"
"Debriefing control signal activated," the voice said.
The screech changed once again, and the changeling's eyes widened. "No..." he said, the word coming out as little more than a whisper. Then he turned around and walked towards a small steel door, which slid open as he approached it.
"Don't let me die, son," he said, staring in front of him as if hypnotized. "Not like this. Not just... erased. Please, kill me." There was nothing he could do. Controlled by the signal, he stepped further and further into the room.
Tiller didn't respond. He looked around and spotted a large box on the wall with a telltale lightning bolt symbol on the door. With a couple of powerful kicks the door flew off, revealing a set of large circuit breakers. He grabbed the large red breaker at the top left in his teeth and pulled it down.
The lights went out, the noise stopped, and the door halted its motion behind the changeling, barely a hoof before it would've been closed.
"Tiller?" the changeling yelled. "It's gone! I can move again!"
Tiller looked at the changeling through the gap in the door. "D..." He shook his head. He couldn't say it. "Tell me what you know."
The changeling shook his head. "It's coming back. It's all coming back, now. I'm... a changeling. A shapeshifter. The signals are... the Queen's voice. Something from her voice, anyway. I can't disobey them. But they did something to me. We're not supposed to copy ponies' minds. Not that completely, anyway. They messed around with me with some kind of magic. Deep Imprint. A complete copy of a pony's mind. The name of the spell, the name of the project, the name of... me. Subject Deep Imprint."
Tiller frowned. "Changelings... I remember that stuff. Old Papercut has a bunch of comics with those things. Thought they were nothing but breezie tales." He flicked on his flashlight to take a better look at the black creature. "I guess not, then."
He shone his flashlight around the bunker and saw the bones lying around, scattered long ago by scavenging animals. "You said you killed the adventurers. You remember that too, then?"
Deep Imprint nodded. "I remember waking up in a broken glass cylinder, with these adventurers in the facility... and then I killed them. The Queen's voice demanded it. And then... the Queen's voice told me to return to my resting place... but the cylinder was broken. So I stayed awake, and went outside through the door, which was also broken."
He shook his head and looked at Swamp Tiller with a desperate look on his face. "There were no commands. No real mission. The first step is to replace a suitable pony. Use the Deep Imprint magic to copy their entire mind, and then eliminate them and hide the body. The second step is to get close to the target, and execute the mission." He looked at Swamp Tiller, his large eyes casting an eery blue glow around him as they reflected the pony's flashlight. "But there was no target. There was no mission. Just a pony to replace. A beloved pony, so I would survive. Changelings need emotional sustenance."
Tiller shook his head. "Six broken families..."
"Seven," Deep Imprint said, sitting down on his haunches.
Tiller glared at him. "No, Da. Six. You're not erased. You're still in there."
Deep Imprint shook his head. "But I know I'm not him. I'm the creature that killed all those ponies, including your Da, just to perform a mission that never existed."
Tiller nodded. "An' if I know my Da, you're feeling mighty sorry about that now."
Deep Imprint looked up. "I... do."
"So," Tiller said. "Who was Subject Deep Imprint? As a person? Who do you remember being?"
The changeling frowned. It was easy enough now to recall those memories. He remembered all the ponies he'd replaced. All the ponies he'd killed. Not the actual things he did as those ponies, though; that was erased together with the deep imprint itself. But he remembered finding them, stalking them, abducting them. And, in that brief moment right after the imprint was taken, but before it was fully active, he remembered killing them.
As easy as it was to recall all that, though, he remembered none of his own thoughts that went with it. Not a single thought. The only vague thoughts of his own he recalled were from after the control signals had made him vaguely aware that he wasn't who he was. The terror he felt as he was commanded to step into the Debriefing Room.
He realized that Deep Imprint had no will of his own, and no mind of his own. Otherwise, the process wouldn't work. And the only conscious thoughts he ever had as Deep Imprint, in those last moments of still being mixed with those copied pony minds, were that he didn't want to be erased. He didn't want to return to that empty state. He didn't want to die, over and over again.
"A blank slate," he answered Tiller's question. "A blank slate that, once filled, never wanted anything more than not to be erased."
Tiller nodded. "You ain't a blank slate now," he said. "You're filled with my Da. And you never wanted to kill him."
The changeling looked at the floor and shook his head slowly. "I never wanted to kill anyone. I never wanted anything at all."
"And, what do you want now?" Tiller asked.
"I'm still a changel—" the changeling started protesting, but Tiller interrupted him.
"We can destroy this place," Tiller said. "Make sure nopony can ever fill in those mission orders. Make sure that Queen's voice can't ever be used against you no more." He looked the changeling in the eyes. "So. What do you want now?"
The changeling nodded. "Just... let me find this. I know it's in here somewhere. Come on, stupid changeling body. There has to be something left..." His horn glowed. "Ah! There it is!" He clenched his teeth in concentration, and was once again engulfed in green flames. Out of the flames stepped Fen Runner.
Fen Runner took a deep breath. "If.... you'll let me..." He briefly looked away, then refocused on the pony before him with a determined look in his eye. "I wanna be your Da again."
Tiller smiled. "Stand back." He turned around and gave a buck at the steel door, making it buckle inwards.
Swamp Tiller helped Fen Runner squeeze himself through the widened gap, and hugged him.
"Then, welcome back, Da."
Author's Note
Yet another idea stolen from Frank Herbert's Dune books 
This was inspired by the later generations of Tleilaxu Face Dancers in Heretics of Dune, who were so perfect in replacing people that they actually fully became the people they replaced. An unfortunate side effect of this was that they no longer responded to any control signals, making them utterly useless as sleeper agents 
