Dead Space: Forsaken

The humming and clanking of the elevator drowns Fluttershy's winces as she tenderly unzips her medical suit and peels it away from her bleeding shoulder. Strings of blood stretch and snap on the blood soaked, formerly white suit, and a dark red gash runs right down the middle with lighter red blood oozing out with every beat of her heart. Fluttershy shakily removes a can of medical foam and awkwardly sprays it against the wound, making a sloppy mess of white that quickly turns to pink from mixing with the blood and turns into a semi-solid state. The searing pain weakens her grip, causing her to drop the can, and she bangs her head against the elevator wall, tears flowing past her shut eyes. There she remains, silent and trembling with only the sounds of the elevator and a dead monster to keep her company. A moment later she reaches into her saddle and pulls out her quick stitch kit.
To the untrained eye it looks like a staple gun, but for someone with Fluttershy's training she knows that the small silver block device is pain in a shiny package. And she also knows that it is going to absolutely suck doing it on herself with one hoof.

Fluttershy positions the quick stitch kit's pincer against the tip of her wound, rests her chin against it to stabilize it, and takes a moment to collect some courage before using her good hoof to pull the trigger.

SNAP!

The pincer snaps in and out of her skin, leaving a thin wire to tightly hold the edges of her wound together, and Fluttershy yelps and drops the device. She breathes heavily from her nose and rests her head against the wall, eyes closed, and face soaked in tears and sweat.

A few seconds later, she takes a deep breath and repositions the device.

SNAP!

She almost drops it again. Her hoof is almost trembling too much to hold anything and she can barely see from the tears in her eyes.

SNAP!

Fluttershy grinds her teeth, takes another deep breath and-

SNAP!

She leans over, chest heaving and sweat dripping off her muzzle, and she is using all her strength to keep the device against her shoulder.
She takes another deep breath, presses her back against the wall, takes a few more deep breaths, and then-

SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!

Fluttershy cries painfully, drops the device, and falls sideways to the floor with her good hoof pressed against her shoulder. She can feel the bumps of her flesh and the tiny metal strings holding them together. Hot air is expelled though her nose and her pink mane covers part of her face as she stares at the blood splattered door and the yellow lights that run up it. Thankfully the pieces of the monster have stopped twitching, but when the elevator jerks to a stop it leaves Fluttershy sick, and the pleasant ding that comes with the doors sliding open sounds horribly misplaced.

She really does not want to leave the elevator, but when she sees a sign reading “Transit” above the door at the far end being illuminated by a failing light she reluctantly stands, zips up her suit and limps out.

The room's walls are covered by pipes, and a small set of stairs leads to a raised level with a guard rail and a work bench that is surprisingly brightly lit. But the door at the end of the room has a red circle in its center, and next to it is an exposed glowing gem and a circuit board.

Fluttershy swallows and winces as she goes up the stairs, stopping cold when she sees an earth pony in a gray maintenance jumpsuit laying in a pool of blood, his hoof clutching a slash on his gut. His eyes are closed and near his body is a rectangular device with a mouth trigger and a thin front with a blue glow. There is also a small circular device with a hoof strap just a bit farther from the rectangular one.

Fluttershy gulps and approaches the body, and when she checks his pulse, she pulls her hoof away and slumps against the railing. She stares at the body for a little while longer, noticing the numerous small claw marks that have slashed his skin and torn his uniform, as well as a quick bandage over a wound on his hoof. She briefly wonders if he knew Zephyr but pushes that thought back as quickly as it came. Maintenance ponies are always dirty, and Zephyr never liked dirty things or people, unlike Fluttershy, who doesn't mind getting dirty if it means helping others or some animals. Like the animals at the sanctuary she used to volunteer for back home before joining the Medical Corp. Now she is longing to be home with her parents that haven’t spoken a word to her since she left for the Corp, as well as be with Zephyr who drifted away from her. Or her from him. Now here she is with a chance to fix things.

She needs to get him off the ship.

They need to start over.

They need to be a family again.

With those thoughts, Fluttershy looks over her shoulder and sees a tarp covering a pile of some kind, so she goes towards it and carefully pulls it off, revealing a stack of small crates with “Batteries” stamped on them. She then carries the tarp to the body and covers him, and then she grabs the circular device and straps it to her hoof. In the device's center is a speaker, and beneath it is a square, a triangle, and two set of double triangles facing opposite directions. Fluttershy takes one last look around before she pushes the small triangle, and instantly a wheezing voice of a stallion flows from the speaker.

“Diamond Dust managed to kill some of those things,” says the voice weakly in the recording. “We have to cut them to pieces... I got a few of them... But one got me good and I don't have any more medical supplies... To whoever finds this... Shoot for the limbs... Bleed them out... It is the only way...”

The audio abruptly ends, and Fluttershy looks at the rectangular device, now realizing that it is a gem powered energy cutter that maintenance use to cut materials, mainly metal. It is a great tool, but also extremely dangerous. She has fixed plenty of injuries from such devices to know that they can easily cut through flesh and bone, so she picks it up and goes to the workbench, finds more gem batteries and puts them in her medical bag. With all that done, she grabs her crude weapon and slowly creeps her way to the door, using every bit of willpower she has to not run back to the elevator.

BANGBANGBANG!

The banging startles Fluttershy, and when the banging returns, she sloppily aims her weapon at the locked door, trembling and whimpering.

“Help! Somepony help!” cries a mare on the other side.

Fluttershy stares at the door, heart racing and body shaking. The banging continues and a shriek echoes from the other side of the door. Fluttershy shakes her head, keeping her cutter trained on the door while the banging intensifies, and the mare’s screams turn to wails.

“Please, somepony help!” sobs the mare.

The monstrous shrieking reaches the mare, and her wails are cut off by a wet slashing. There is a thud on the other side, and Fluttershy flinches and jumps back, her eyes now burning with tears and her aim unsteady.

“I’m sorry,” whimpers Fluttershy, still backing up. “I’m s-sorry.”

Metal breaks on the other side of the door, and the vent overhead rattles, going from the doorway, up overhead, and finally behind Fluttershy. She trails it with her cutter with ragged breathing, and the vent cover nearby breaks down with a creature similar to the one that chased her jumps down.

Fluttershy’s throat closes and her eyes widen, and the creature stands up and raises its scythe claws over its head. Then it roars and charges her while flailing its sharp claws.

Fluttershy screams and shoots wildly at it as she backpedals, but the beams do everything else but hit it. She manages to dodge the swings when it reaches her, but this causes the throbbing in her stitched wound to flare and for her to drop her weapon. She attempts to grab her weapon after dropping it, but the creature takes another swing at her, and she screams and quickly backs up. She ends up falling over a create resulting in the back of her head slamming against the metal floor. Her ears ring, her eyes roll, and she barely sees the creature coming at her in time to grab a small crate and hold it in front of her like a shield.

The scythe is brought down hard and fast, and Fluttershy's hoofs buckle under the impact with a flash of hot pain going through her injured shoulder. The crate shatters, showering her with gem batteries that beat against her face, and with adrenaline flooding through her veins she manages to scramble away from the creature and dive for her weapon. She successfully grabs it with her hooves, turns on her back and fires right as it rushes her.

The red beam slices off one of the scythe limbs, causing the creature to reel back and shriek in pain as blood sprays all over the wall, floor, and itself. And Fluttershy fires another shot, this one takes off the other scythe, and with gritted teeth and fire hot tears in her eyes she unloads everything she has into the creature.

Red beam after red beam rips through its flesh, flinging chunks of meat and streams of blood everywhere, with sparks flying off the walls from where the beams hit. The creature stumbles back with each shot, blood gushing from its wounds, and by the time it collapses it is a heap of mangled flesh with its limbs, face and chest destroyed, and Fluttershy's heart is racing and her lungs and eyes are burning. She keeps pulling the trigger despite the empty clicks coming from it, and when it registers that the beast is dead and her weapon is empty, Fluttershy flops flat on her back and covers her face, shaking and whimpering with pain pulsing through her body.

A few minutes later, Fluttershy forces herself to drop her hoofs and she gingerly rolls upright. She then looks at the dead monster. It hasn’t moved yet, but she can see some exposed organs twitching, so she pushes herself against the wall and walks as far away from it as possible. When she reaches the door, she tries opening it, but an “Unauthorized” message appears. She tries again with the same result. And again, with the same result… And one more time with the same result.

Fluttershy sniffles, looks at the dead monster, and then back at the door. Specifically, the panel, where the circuits and gem are exposed. She stares at the wires for a few seconds before aiming her cutter at it. She is about to pull the trigger. Stops. Backs up a couple of steps. Aims. Takes a deep breath. Aims some more. Then she fires.

A burst of red slices through the circuits and gem, creating a display of red, green and yellow sparks, and the door's lock flashes blue before sliding open to reveal a red lit hallway with a sign that says, “çTRANSIT”, and below the sign is the corpse of the mare she let die.

The mare’s ribs have been broken through her suit, and a large puncture wound is on her back with her skull broken open. There is a dent on the pipe above the mare, and blood has soaked her body and floor as well as splattered on the wall. The mare’s lifeless eyes stare at Fluttershy, and the medic bites her lip and pushes herself against the wall to avoid stepping in the blood. As she walks, she passes the broken vent cover, and she keeps her eyes on the dead mare.

“I’m sorry,” whispers Fluttershy.

Fluttershy’s communicator turns on with audio wavelengths being displayed in front of her, but rather than hearing voices, all she hears is static.

“H-Hello?” calls Fluttershy.

The static ends and Fluttershy blinks in confusion before looking at the dead mare again. Her lifeless wide eyes are still looking back at Fluttershy. It is sickening to see such a sight, and Fluttershy has seen plenty of corpses from her training to recovering bodies after an accident or a fight, but she has never gotten used to it. And she has never seen anybody die in front of her either until today. However, the more she stares at the mare, seeing how she died alone and terrified, the more she thinks about Zephyr. He is alone. He is terrified. But she will not let him die alone. He is somewhere on this ship and Fluttershy will not rest until she finds him and brings him home.

With this desire, Fluttershy slips a fresh battery, gives the corpse one last look and quiet apology, and then limps down the hallway. As she walks down the hallway, the pipes hiss and shake, and the lights flicker on and off, making the shadows dance against the walls.

Suddenly, Rainbow Dash’s face appears in front of Fluttershy, making her yelp and jump back.

“Fluttershy, report!” says Rainbow Dash.

“I-I-I, um, I… I’m somewhere,” says Fluttershy, blinking tears out of her eyes. “Somepony else also died and I had to kill again!”

“Well toughen up or you’re dead, got it?”

Fluttershy nods, even though she doesn’t want to.

“What’s the status on the mission? Did you get to the hub yet? I need details!” says Rainbow Dash.

“I’m in a hallway heading to the transit hub,” says Fluttershy.

“Rarity is saying that the transit has a connection issue. Something may need to be rebooted or something.”

Fluttershy passes through another door that is thankfully unlocked and after doing a quick sweep of the area she cautiously enters. Once she enters the lights flash on with a hum and soothing music plays over the speakers. The sudden activity halts Futtershy, but after another scan she continues forward.
The room is long with wide windows, and its interior has tipped over luggage carts, a smashed vending cart with expired ingredients everywhere and on the wall is a screen displaying a message: Please Remain Calm.

Fluttershy glances at the message, looks down the length of the room to see another door waiting to be opened, and finally she looks out one of the windows to see Rainbow Dash's group on a platform across a chasm with a rail network. The group is looking at her, too, so she looks left to right, and then up, and once she is confident that she is alone she approaches the window.

“There you are!” says Rainbow Dash.

“Hello,” says Fluttershy with a timid wave.

“Fluttershy, you doing okay?” asks Applejack, peeking from behind Rainbow Dash.

“Not really,” replies Fluttershy.

“You’ll be fine. Nopony else is dying here, got it?” says Rainbow Dash.

Fluttershy nods, despite her doubt, and the rest of team makes weak, vocal affirmations.

“Good. Now, we need you to get to the administration room, which, according to Rarity is right above you,” says Rainbow Dash.

Fluttershy looks up and Rainbow Dash turns the camera to Rarity.

“Your turn,” says Rainbow Dash.

Rarity sniffles and wipes her face with a shaky hoof before looking into the camera. “Fluttershy, the room you need to go to is above you. I believe there is a faulty circuit board that needs to be replaced, which can be replaced by a spare in the Transit Maintenance Department. Once that circuit is replaced, the transit system will be back online.”

“Where is the Maintenance Department?” asks Fluttershy.

“It should be a couple of floors above you, and it'll be overlooking the trolleys.”

“Okay.”

Rainbow Dash turns the feed back to her. “Call me back when you get there and stay safe.”

Fluttershy nods and the feed cuts out, and she watches the team move around on the next platform. Applejack is talking to Rainbow Dash, Rarity is sitting against the wall, and Thunderlane is pacing in circles. After a few seconds of watching, Fluttershy takes a deep, shaky breath, goes to the door at the end of the room and after putting the cutter in her mouth she opens it. As soon as the door opens Fluttershy is greeted by an empty hallway with emergency lights and a creature laying in the hallway in a pool of blood, its limbs severed and its head nowhere to be seen.

Fluttershy stares at it, her body stiff, and after a slow gulp she presses her body against the wall and slides past the destroyed corpse. She proceeds to slowly go down the ramp of the hallway. Her legs shake, the fur on her neck and spine rises with the tingles, and her wings flex all on their own. After reaching the bottom of the ramp she travels for another minute in silence, coming to an unlocked door that opens to a long spacious area.

Bands of light illuminate small areas of the wall, and the floor is littered with garbage, blood, broken bones and chunks of ripped muscle. Such a sight makes Fluttershy gag and she briefly takes a step back to cover her nose. She forces herself to go forward a moment later, and upon stepping into the large area she immediately looks up and sees darkness hiding the ceiling. She looks down one way and sees a destroyed barricade, further down are more makeshift barricades made of tables, crates, and desks, and off in the distance is a pair of bright lights mark a ramp leading up to what Fluttershy hopes is the exit.

Fluttershy tensely walks down the bloody corridor, passing a limb here, a bone there, plus a few corpses of whatever those creatures are as well as various weapons, both military and makeshift. But there are no bodies of the crew or colonists, and the closer she goes towards the light, the louder a peculiar noise becomes. It is metallic in nature, but Fluttershy has never heard a noise like that before, which slows her steps to near stillness when she is by the light.

It is not just the noise that almost petrifies her, though. There is also a lot of blood, spent bullet casings and unaccompanied weapons as well as crates. With her next to the noise she sees that it is coming from a crimson splattered door at the top of the ramp; a door that keeps opening and shutting in rapid secession. Next to the ramp is a terminal with its keyboard dangling off, exposing its gem and circuits, and on the ramp is a security pony is laying in a sea of red, his hind legs missing and his entrails dangling out the back.

Fluttershy backpedals and turns her head, dry heaving and using a crate for support; this leaves her throat burning from the stomach acid, and she must take a deep breath to ease the pain. A few seconds later, she looks at the door.

The door snaps open and shut, open and shut, open and shut, open and shut, open and shut, and Fluttershy's eyes snap back and forth in an attempt to follow it and see if she can pass it. From what she can see of the door and from the half body lying next to her the door had become an automatic guillotine.

Fluttershy looks around the general area to see if there is anything she can fly to, like an open door or a vent, but all she sees is solid metal and flickering lights. She looks down, growling in a mix of fear and aggravation and tensely raises her hoof... Just so she can timidly tap the floor and pace in circles.

“It's okay, Fluttershy, you can figure this out. You can find a way through the evil door,” says Fluttershy.

She stops pacing, looks at one of the metal crates, then at the door, then at the crate again and an idea pops in her mind. It takes her a moment and a lot of muscles she didn't know she had, but she manages to push the crate up the ramp, and after taking a moment to move the corpse, catch her breath and recollect her strength, she gives the crate one final push into the doorway.

The door obliterates the crate, forcing Fluttershy to shield her face from the flying metal shards and contents, and when she lowers her hoof she glares at the door, which is still snapping ridiculously fast.

“Are. You. Kidding me!?” She stomps over to the broken terminal and tries pushing some buttons, but the dangling keyboard falls off and shatters, scattering the little letters all over the floor. “No! Daaaahhh-rn it!”

She stomps the floor and releases an aggravated growl. That is when she notices out of the corner of her eye that the corpse is wearing a strap with a light blue orb like the one Rainbow Dash has. This brings another idea to mind.

Fluttershy goes towards the corpse and carefully unstraps the orb and straps it above her audio device. There is a beep and the orb shines a bright blue with some cold mist seeping out. After it is strapped to her hoof, she aims her hoof at the door, thinks about firing the device, and a blue whispy ball flies out of the orb and hits the door, bringing it to a crawl.

“Yes!”

Fluttershy leaps through the opening of the door and looks over her shoulder, watching in fascination as the door crawls through the motions. Though, once the blue fades it resumes its fast speed, and Fluttershy takes a deep breath and looks down both ends of the hallway. She decides to go right, first, but comes across a locked door with a dead pony in a gray maintenance jumpsuit slumped against it. His hoof has left a bloody streak just below the door's lock, and after a quick inspection she finds that on his hoof is a silver band with a gold key marking inside a white circle. She decides to put it on her other hoof and is about to leave for the other side but stops herself.

She looks at the key symbol, and then at the locked door, and one quick mental debate later she presses her hoof against the lock. It flashes green and the door slides open. With the door opening, lights flicker on and Fluttershy is immediately met with confusion.

The room is bare, except for a single camera with a blinking red light aimed at a shrine surrounding a double helix made of dark metal. The shrine has spent candles, photos, and in front of it is a large vase.
Fluttershy cautiously walks further into the room and tips the vase to see folded paper stuffed inside. She also notices that the photos around the odd sculpture are of various ponies, griffins, goats, yaks and even a few changelings. There is also a podium near the shrine that has the same double helix stamped on it, and next to it is a locked box. She taps the box and scrunches her brow when she hears coins rattling inside.
“You in the room! You are not Drill Bit!” says a stallion over a speaker.
The sudden voice makes Fluttershy yelp and jump, and she looks for the source of the noise, quickly settling to looking at the camera.
“Yes, you. You are not Drill Bit. Who are you?” says the stallion.

“I-I'm Fluttershy... I'm looking for my brother,” says Fluttershy.

“Who’s your brother?”

“Z-Zephyr... Zephyr Breeze.”

“Oh, I know him! He did my plumage quite a bit. Nice guy. Kind of a dope.”

Fluttershy gasps happily. “You know him? Then you must know where he is!”

“Well I don't. I have been looking for survivors for a while, which is hard to do since the cameras are showing more Necromorphs than not. And I'm going to take a wild guess and say Drill Bit is no longer a survivor since you are wearing his master key band.”

Fluttershy looks at the new band on her hoof, ears drooping and feeling wet lump in her throat. Drill Bit had been so close to the sanctuary of this room when he died, and now she took his prized possession without even paying him respects.

“So, those things out there...” Fluttershy slowly looks at the camera. “They are Necromorphs?”

“Yes, I didn't pick the name, though. Lexicon did, but he’s dead, making you and your group the only survivors as far as I can tell.”

“You can see all of us? That means you have control of the cameras. You must be on the bridge! Can you-”

“Stop. I'm not on the bridge. I'm in the Section 0 Laboratory. I just had to do some creative rearranging and hacking to get the camera feeds to me, which was not easy, mind you.”

Fluttershy sulks. “Oh.”

“But you look like you can take care of yourself. If you can, oh, I don't know, help me get off this ship alive then I can pull some strings with some powerful contacts I have on Sparkle Station and give you a generous reward.”

“I'm not leaving this ship without my brother.”

“Fair enough. Do you have any clues of his whereabouts?”

“All I know is that he was staying in Section C, Room 60.”

“Ah, Section C. The pegasus section. Of course... I'll tell you what, I'll do what I can to find your brother in return for you helping me off this ship. I'm locked in the lab, but my eyes will be valuable.”

Fluttershy gasps and clamps her hoofs together as she flies up to the camera, smiling brightly.

“Really?” says Fluttershy. “You'll do that?”

“Of course! Us survivors got to stick together, after all. Now, go. I'm sure your friends stranded on the tracks are getting worried.”

The speaker shuts off, and Fluttershy gallops to the door, but before she opens the door she skids to a halt and trots back to the camera.

“Um, excuse me, Mr. Camera-pony, I didn't get your name,” says Fluttershy.

“You may call me Dr. Rock and I’m a griffin, so that’ll be Mr. Camera-bird, thank you very much,” says the voice. “And by the way, there's a Necromorph outside. Good luck.”

The speaker shuts off, and Fluttershy looks at the door, paling and taking a step back when she hears a shrieking and banging on the other side of the door.

“Oh dear.”