FoE: The Solaris Effect

From Calidity

“How was that not the doozy!?”

I collapsed in shadow.

Something was wrong. Pain flared in my stomach as I vomited blood. Definitely wrong. I rolled over and whimpered as I hurt more. The lights were turned out, and my eyes weren't adjusted.

What was going on? Had something happened? Why was I coughing blood?

Where is Finder?

I fumbled around for the light switch, stepping on the sticky floor. While stumbling, I stepped on something sharp. Pain shot up my hood, as I stumbled back and collapsed again. I remembered the lamp on the PipBuck, switching it on with a flick of my hoof. I regretted it instantly.

The world was a nightmare, and someone was screaming. Was that me? I looked at where I had stepped, and heaved. It was a skeleton, or at least part of it was. The front half of the pony could have been sleeping, but the back was decayed, crushed bone.

I looked around the room, holding my forehoof from the ground. There were corpses everywhere, all decayed like the first. The floor was red with a layer of caked blood, like someone had decided on a new tile color.

I turned, and my heart dropped. It was a pony, but the stomach was extremely bloated, like something had been rotting in it for centuries. The ponies face was open, eyes frozen in horrified shock. I screamed again, sobbing. There were my friends. Ponies I knew. The mare that slept a few rooms down from me was sticking out of my forehoof.

I collapsed again, and closed my eyes. I was back at the part, nopony was dead, and I wasn't lying in blood.

Beep

A noise brought me back. I recognized it, and was sure I dreamed it.

Beepbeepbeepbeepbeep

What the buck? I opened up my E.F.S. and saw the notification.

Request to raise temperature in Security Booth 4C

Finder! By the sisters, that had to be her! That was her booth, and only she would pound the button like that. Well, maybe her and some foals. I vomited again, the foals were on the floor too.

I tagged Finder, marking her on my E.F.S., and headed to the Security Booth. I walked in, illuminated by the glow of my PipBuck, and the glow of my horn. I was washing my telekinetic field over everything, making it glow softly. I didn’t know a light spell, but this worked just fine.

I say Finder lying near the temperature control leaning against the counter. Her muzzle was soaked red, and her hooves were covered in blood. I probably looked the same. Panic rose as I realized she was unconscious. “Finder!” She had to be alive. “Finder c’mon wake up!” She was just tired. “Finder I need you!” She coughed, spitting blood.

Shifting slightly, she looked at me groggily. “Medical office… healing potions… hurry!” It sounded more like “Mdkl ofs… heal poshn… hre” But I got the idea. I didn’t want to leave her side, but I went anyway. I ran down the corridor, heart pounding as I dodged corpses and various objects. The medical station was still organized.

As I levitated the healing potions, I chugged one of them. I heard a light clattering as shards of bone dropped to the floor. After a long run back to Security Booth 4C, the shards were gone, and the skin around it closed up. From the lack of pain and blood, I assumed my stomach had stopped bleeding too.

As I entered the Booth, I slid down to Finders level and tipped the glowing red liquid down her throat. My PipBuck, when I held the potion, read ‘Greater Restoration Potion’. I needed that ‘Greater’ now more than ever. They were saved for injuries like lost limbs and massive gashes, or other injuries that killed of blood loss. Normal potions healed slowly, and I needed speed.

After a couple painful minutes, Finder gasped, breathing in life. “What- wha--- Cali? What happened, why are the lights out?” There was a fear in her eyes, like I had when I first saw the nightmare around me.

“Hey hey, it's okay, do you remember anything since the party?”

“What do you mean? The party just ended. You feelin’ okay Cali?” My heart pained. I would have to show her the corpses, our old friends. At least she, at the moment, was still blissfully ignorant. I leaned my head against the wall.

“Finder, what do you notice about the room right now?” The room was dark, save for the frozen light of my PipBucks lamp. Finder flicked her wrist, bathing the room in a red light, creating purple when it hit my light. The walls that were illuminated were worn down, rusted by time. There was a skeleton and bloody patch in the corner.

“Its dark and…” Her irises shrunk when she noticed everything. “Oh buck. What the bu-”  She backed away from the skeleton, and vomited over the counter. “What in Celestia's name happened?”

“I don’t know, but time has passed since the party, I’m not sure how much. My PipBucks clock has been counting from the party. Before we go out, I want to warn you that this skeleton is a nice sight compared to out there.” Finder looked at me, at first confused, then fearful.

She braced herself, and I opened the door, our lamps flooding the hallway with purple light. She gasped and cried out as the corpses were shown. Some could have been sleeping, others had maggots crawling on them.

Finder collapsed, mourning the dead. I joined her, we had lived with these ponies for 5 years, growing together and close. I opened my PipBuck and looked at the tags. They pointed in different directions, all marking a corpse. Gusty Skies. Wheat Field. Pop Fly. I knew them like family.

Finder was the first the two of us to stand back up, wiping tears away and forming a posture that befit her military background. “Cali, get up. We need to leave. Whatever caused this could happen again, and I don't want to join the dead.”

I got up, sniffling. “We need to find out what did this, and I’m betting the overmare knew. Let’s head that direction.” We walked through the halls solemnly, our hooves echoing on the metal floor. We walked through the overmares door, and spotted a unicorn skeleton collapsed on the desk. The was a gun lying next to it, and the skull had a hole in it.

We moved the skeleton aside, and turned on the terminal in front of her. Green text flickered on, and a large array of characters came on, with words interspersed. “What the buck?” I was perplexed, I had never seen something like this.

“It's a simple security system. You have to find the password by finding words like it.” Finder stared, lost by the screen, and started pressing keys with her pale magic. I was watching my E.F.S., fearful that something was going to come through the door. There was only the yellow arrow that indicated Finder and…

“OH BUCK NO!” I leaped back, scared by the red dot that was moving on the radar. Finder looked up, and flicked her E.F.S. on, her eyes gaining a red sheen. Her irises shrunk as she noticed the enemy too.

“Ok Cali, whatever comes through that door, shoot it with this.” She hovered the pistol that was next to Sapphire to me. I took it, though I barely knew how to use it. Seeing my confusion, Finder pointed to the bit in the back. “That's the trigger, push that in while pointing at the baddie.” Simple enough right? “Remember to use S.A.T.S. too.”

She continued on the security system, and the red dot stopped. That either meant it was heading our way, away from us, or had frozen. It dashed behind me, causing me to jump. I realized it was above or below us. I heard a click and text printing as Finder shouted.

“Aha! Got it.” She scrolled through the entries, and played the first audio file. Its date was before the bombs fell. The voice wasn’t Sapphire Moon’s voice, or even her mother's. It was definitely a mare's voice, although rather tomcolt sounding.

Hello, to any overmare who may hear this. You have been assigned to Stable 107, an underground fallout shelter designed to preserve the pony race in case of megaspell attacks. You will stay here until the surface is safe to inhabit again. My name is Scootaloo, and I am the President of Stable-Tec Industries.

She sighed.

I am sick and tired of making these tapes, but they’re mandatory.  This Stable has been built with a spell that, after 5 Years, will freeze all non-important in a 200 year stasis, except for a select few. After the spell ends, the surface, hopefully, will have returned to livable levels. We will return to our home and start rebuilding ponykind. A predetermined overmare will take hold of the group of ponies that lived in this stable, and she will be responsible for our brighter future.

The audio clicked, and stopped.

200 Years? Finder and I had been frozen for that long? These ponies bodies have sat here for two-hundred years? We opened the next entry.

Hello. My name is Amethyst Star, and I am the first overmare of Stable 107. They want me to try an keep these entries, so I'll try. It's been a week since the Stable closed, and it's been quiet.

There was a long pause, and when Amethyst spoke again, she sounded like she was going to cry.

I can't do this. I spend everyday knowing that these ponies have a clock, then they get frozen like ice cubes for two centuries. Then, once the bleeding stops and they learn about the side effects, they're supposed to be able to live with themselves? Will they even be Equine any more? The world is going to want them dead, and they won't know a thing about it. It's going to be a slaughter. This is Amethyst Star, and I hope Stable-Tec is happy.

Click. Yearning for answers, we played the next entry.

Buck. Some pony just tried to open the door. We almost died. I'm going to get someone to put a password on it, not sure why there wasn't one before. Anyways, I wanted to make this to talk about the Stasis spell. I'm going to go insane if I don't. The spell, in theory is simple. The pony just stops in time, and when the spell continues, it's like they just had a nap. It's just a prototype though. It's only been tested for months at a time, and was kinda spotty.

There was as long pause, we expected to hear the click of an audio file ending.

That makes me wonder, how is it going to act over two years? The spell has side effects not seen before in any spell. Any pony exposed to it… I'm not sure how to say this. They… Pause? Their body stops needing things like food, water and sleep, along with… It still seems like fiction. The ponies become immortal. They stop aging. I don't know if they thought about those effects, but there are foals here. They will be a child for the rest of their life. How bucked up is that? They would never be an adult. So, if you hear this, the spell has passed, along with me, hooray! You survived and don't have to eat any more. You can, but you don't need to.

Click. We looked at each other, horrified. Stable-Tec had used the spell, knowing that it might not even work. Not only that, but this spell scarred the ponies afflicted. What other side effects would manifest now that we had been frozen for 200 years?

“What the actual buck was wrong with Stable-Tec?” I asked, shaking, furious, and terrified. May the holy grace of Celestia give those buckers mercy. I looked at Finder. She looked furious.

Finder spoke through clenched teeth. “I don't enjoy being treated like a rodent. I grew up in a hellhole of a city with aristocratic ponies that thought the idea of not being able to put food on your plate was a joke. Not only that, but I'm part zebra. I represented everything wrong with their otherwise perfect lives. So they beat me, hoping that if I could run from battle, the zebras could too.”

I was silent, she had never talked about her foal hood before. She was right though. We were, in Stable-Tecs eyes, lab rats. Chosen to be experimented on, overseen like a cage of mindless rodents. I didn't enjoy it either. But I knew we couldn't stay here. Wasn’t right. I downloaded the rest of the files and nudged Finder, who was in tearful memories.

“C’mon, we gotta go. It's not right to stay here, this Stable is nothing but a tomb now.” She agreed, and we headed out. We grabbed our saddlebags, supplies, and weapons from the security both. It was just some simple batons and 10mm pistols, but it would do. Better than nothing. The only intact security barding was Finders uniform, so I stuck with my Stable suit.

We were walking down the entry hallway to the massive steel door, when Finder and I froze. Our E.F.S. had lit up red in the sides, indicating hostiles behind us. Whatever we had seen before had returned. We spun, dismayed to find that most of the radar was now marked red, or diamonds for Finders already red display. We walked down the hallway as a scuttling sound grew, then we ran. As we saw our attackers.

They were massive cockroaches, swollen in size by the radiation of the surface. How had they gotten it? I didn't recall any roaches in those 5 years. Finder turned and let loose a torrent of shots from her pistol, killing only a segment of the massive hoard of insects. A door was up ahead, so we closed it after getting through. Only three roaches made it through, and they pounced at us.

I slipped into S.A.T.S. For the first time in combat. I was familiar with the slow feeling, but I had never actually used it for combat. Two roaches, titled radroaches by the overlay, sailed towards me slowly. I targeted both their heads, then felt the spell take my body over, firing shots into the radroaches.

The spell lasted as long as it had energy, which was based on your agility. If you were fast, the spell lasted a long time. Every shot tagged and fired drained a chunk of energy.

The radroaches flew back, dead. I heard a shot from Finders gun as the last roach fell too. “What the buck? Why are the roaches so big?” I panted out, adrenaline still pumping. The roaches bleed a white liquid that spread across the ground from where their heads once were.

“Didn't you see? The E.F.S. tagged them as radroaches. Radioactive roaches. The rads outside must have changed them up, mutated them. If that's what roaches look like…” Finder trailed off, but I got the message. The animals on the surface could be nasty.

Something in Finders head rebooted as she exclaimed, and rushed over to the Stable door controls. “When Amethyst put a password on the door, she had security do it, and i just so happen to be security!” She turned on the terminal, and the same jumble of characters came up. She typed in ‘apologies’ and the security screen fell.

She navigated the terminal, pressing the option to unlock the Stable Door controls. “Ready to see whatever mutated horrors lie out there?” Not really, no. I grabbed the switch with my magic, and pulled it.

Machinery whirred and hissed, a massive drill descending from the ceiling. The drill placed itself into the cog-shaped door and spun, creating a screech of rusted metal. The drill, with the Stable Door in tow, pulled back, and swung to the side. A platform extended through the door to connect to the other side.

I hadn't seen this room for 5- no, 205 years. It was the first room in the Stable. It was here that a Stable-Tec medic healed my burned vision. I'm a way, that was a representation of giving up my previous life. My last glimpse of the outside was cleaned away. Time to start again.

Finder spoke up. “So, you ready? Who knows what hellscape awaits us out there.” I gulped, swallowing my fear.

“Yeah, I'm ready.” Saddlebags on our backs, we stepped onto the elevator platform and ascended to the new world.

Calidity Level Up!

Level 3

New Perk: Gunslinger (1)

Damage from pistols increased by 20%

Finder Level Up!

Level 3

New Perk: Hacker (1)

You can now hack advanced terminals.