I tumbled down the air vent, sliding rapidly through the ductwork and into darkness. The Equus-like artificial gravity meant I was plummeting more than sliding, but that was a blessing. Falling was the only way I could move faster than the damn thing. On my way down, I shouted something familiar:
"Starlight Glimmer? Star Swirl the Bearded? Twilight Sparkle? ANYPONY?" I cried out.
As a spy, shouting while on the run felt highly unnatural, but it wasn't like my position was a secret. I needed a deus ex from a pony whose special talent was magic, because the odds of my escape were precisely zero.
The slope of the duct slowed my descent a little, but I hit the base painfully hard with my dock, bruising it again. The force was enough to dent the aluminum beneath me. Wincing from the pain, I squeezed my head down so I could fit into the only opening other than the one I'd fallen through. I crawled further into darkness.
It was fascinating how automatic my actions were, even for a trained veteran like Special Agent Sweetie Drops. It felt more like I was watching a movie than participating in one. The Academy taught us there's a subconscious autopilot inside everyone, but only soldiers and victims of trauma will ever experience it. Left front hoof, right rear hoof, right front hoof, left rear hoof: no mental effort required. There was only one direction left to go and only one thing left to do. Anything else meant a certain and horrible death.
I saw a trickle of light filtering through a vent just below me. I swiveled my body to face away from the vent and struggled to buck against it with a rear hoof. It was a challenge to operate in such a cramped position, but I'd had plenty of practice, so it went like clockwork. After three kicks the vent popped open. I fell backwards out of the opening and landed on all fours on the mess hall table, then performed a quick backflip onto the floor. There was no time to lose. As I looked upward, I noticed half of the monster had already arrived.
It would have been beautiful in any other circumstance. The multifarious aerial twinkling that drifted intangibly through the ceiling was mesmerizing to behold, but I knew it led the way for something far less pleasant. The colorful sparkles were like the headlights of a psychopathic bulldozer. Not far behind the lights was a dark entropic mist, currently chewing its way through the interior of the ship. When the mist touched solid matter, it would mix it, like a fork swirling two kinds of frosting together. It wreaked havoc on clothing, carpet, metal, flesh, and everything else it touched, blending and knotting any tangible substance into a ragged, twisted mass that reeked of hundreds of unnatural chemicals pony noses had not evolved to interpret.
It was merely minutes ago when I first saw what the mist could do, yet the memory felt distant and foggy. I had arrived on the bridge after the beast had done its work. As an agent of the Diarchy I've seen some terrible things, but nothing could have prepared me for this. Raw adrenaline flooded my heart the moment I saw the tragic looks on the crew's faces.
What remained of their faces, anyway.
The lights themselves were harmless, but death incarnate would catch up soon. Without blinking I turned and beelined for the only nearby exit. I knew Science Lab 2 was a dead-end, but my legs moved of their own accord. The telltale sounds of nails-on-a-chalkboard and groaning metal were loud enough now that I could hear them over the noise of carpeted hoofbeats and my own heart thumping in my ears. The only thing slowing down the nightmare was the bulkhead it was currently pithing its way through. It was almost a pity the beast hadn't punctured the outer hull of the ship. Things were so bleak that if I were anywhere near an airlock, I'd probably have chosen to sky myself into the deadly emptiness by now.
It was obvious that Science Lab 2 was where the monster first appeared because its trail of carnage ended right at the experimental device. It was difficult to walk on the flooring in here, which took me from a full gallop down to a walk. The floor resembled icing on a cake, with little swirls and peaks making everything prickly and uneven. The smell was horrid beyond description. I tried not to look at the vaguely-pony-shaped corpse that had merged with what remained of the cupboards.
"Keep it together, Bon Bon," I whispered to myself.
As I stumbled across the mangled flooring of the lab, I couldn't help but curse my luck. This was supposed to be a simple trip into the void, but the Agency always sends one of us along when ponies push the boundaries of the unknown. In this case, we were penetrating the deep sky further than ever before, which meant Princess Luna had to sign off on the mission. I was tired of background duty, so I requested a temporary reassignment and this just happened to be where the Agency sent me. The rest of the crew were told I was a schoolteacher coming along for public relations purposes. Not that my cover story mattered anymore, now that I was the only soul left on this stupid aluminum skyboat.
Ironically, the point of the mission was to get away from the Heavens. In my briefing, I learned the Sun produces a Solar wind made up of invisible particles called "neutrinos" which constantly flood the sky. It even happens at night as the Sun travels through Tartarus along the Phlegethon river. Unlike most forms of radiation, neutrinos can pass through anything, even antimagic fields and solid lead. Some idiot genius had a theory about something called "antineutrinos" which could be caught with a special kind of antenna. As the name implies, antineutrinos don't get along well with normal neutrinos, so the device wouldn't work until we got far enough away from the Sun—much further than Princess Celestia is capable of moving it by herself.
Unfortunately, my briefing was incomplete, probably because the Agency hadn't known about this detail either. Once we arrived in the deep sky, one of the scientists told me why antineutrinos were interesting: it's possible they can travel faster than light. To put it mildly, this is a definite scientific "no-no". If two particles going faster than light pass each other in opposite directions, it's possible to make an effect precede its own cause, which could potentially create a time paradox.
And now, in the back of the lab, here it was. The attenuation device sat directly in front of me, miraculously untouched by the hoof of chaos despite the floor beneath it having been mutilated beyond recognition. It looked like a simple, flat steel disc, a shallow platform of sorts about five hooves wide. Bizarrely, it required no energy input and it had no moving parts. It was filled with nanotubes, or something like that. Understanding how it worked required a tremendous amount of weird math, so it lay well beyond my comprehension. There were competing theories about what would happen when it finally activated, but not in a thousand years would anypony have guessed that an alien specter of death would suddenly spring into being. Was this some new form of life we'd attracted out of the void? Was it a faceless guardian of Harmony exacting revenge for our naive scientific hubris? Was I simply having an incredibly vivid hallucination? Buck if I knew the answer.
I turned around and saw my executioner before me. The pretty lights hovered around me, and then the mist followed. If it were a quick death, I could have accepted it, but feeling it seep into my eyes and skin was worse than being burned alive. I needed to escape the agony at a primal level. Before the thing could reach my brain, I allowed my body to fall backwards onto the platform. I did it because I had to. I had no choice.
Forty-two seconds passed in an instant, but in the wrong direction.
Now I was standing in the hallway next to the bridge, looking at my watch. Everything was precisely the same as it had been forty-two seconds ago, with one exception. I could remember everything that had happened over the forty-two seconds that hadn't happened yet. And it wasn't just a single set of memories. I remembered doing this over and over. I had fallen onto that platform so many times I'd lost count long ago. I couldn't become tired or hungry, because my body returned to its original state each time. I was unbruised, rested, and filled with adrenaline. Even my subconscious drive to avoid death at all costs felt renewed.
Once again, in front of me lay the gaping hole of a broken airway intake. The mist would be here soon. I only had two options. Either I jump into the shaft, or do anything else and die horribly. Naturally, I wanted to die, but I couldn't let it happen here. This hallway had no magic platform to stop the agony if I changed my mind. My instincts of self-preservation demanded the choice the platform would offer me. Ironically, if I did anything other than jump, it would eliminate the only choice I had left to make. I had to jump, just as I had forty-two seconds ago, and eighty-four seconds ago, and one hundred and twenty-six seconds ago...
So I crouched and hopped into the gaping maw of my only escape, trying not to think about the futility of it all as once again I tumbled down the air vent, sliding rapidly through the ductwork and into darkness.
