Pegasus Device: Reckoning

Cloud Cover roused groggily, her sight and hearing an oily blotch. A distant memory of haunted hallways and calamitous caterwauling drained from her mind, and she weakly shook her head to clear it completely. She ached from every joint and every organ. Her vision slowly came to focus, and she found herself strapped down onto a bit of a makeshift table. It was a stretcher, propped up onto a counter, and her legs were splayed out and strapped to it with the leather scraps of what she figured was her saddlebag. She tested her right foreleg and found that, though there was some give, it was holding on to her pretty tightly.

Damnit, not again, she thought, and as her hearing returned she took in her surroundings. She was in a smaller sort of medical room that reeked of sterility. There were some counters at the front of the room with various laboratory equipment and vials of chemicals, and then some simple office desks against the right wall. To her left was a series of lockers and a chemical shower, and past that was a stallion in a black armoured vest emblazoned with the Corporation’s logo. He sat steadfast in front of the only door Cloud Cover could see.

Her head pounded, though she would have been shocked if it didn’t. They hadn’t knocked her out until after they had performed a various number of tests on her. She felt as if somehow they had managed to extract her dignity along with every other form of biological fluid in her body. Her legs stung in the soft parts under the joints where blood had been drawn. Her mouth had an awful taste from the variety of swabs put in and around it. There was a lingering trace of violation below her waist, and the returning memory of it infused her with anger.

She looked at the guard at the door, and softly tested her straps again. He was staring straight ahead at the right wall, seemingly alert but not responding to her stirring.

“H-hey, buddy,” she said, her voice catching on her dry tongue before dipping into her favorite honeyed speech she used when she wanted information. “What are you doing here, uh? You didn’t sign up for this, right? You wanted to make clouds, spread the rain, be the hero cleaning up fog and bringing in the sun, right? None of this super-sketchy ‘make sure a helpless mare can’t escape torture at the hooves of your boss’ bullshit, right?” She smiled sweetly at him.

“Shut up, failure,” he said, and continued staring ahead.

“Uh. Okay, gotcha,” she continued, dropping the sweet talk. “Don’t consider me a pony, I can work with that. No worries.” She was silent for a moment as she looked the stallion over. “You into warm holes then? I mean, they already did a lot of weird stuff to me, I’m on a bit of a roll right now I think. You take these straps off, I suck your cock, you blast rope in or on me and I sneak out of here and never come back. Sounds fair?”

“I’d rather fuck a leaf-shredder. Eat shit.”

Fuck, she thought. She twisted around a bit, testing the straps again. They were tight, but the leather on her fur didn’t hold well. If she could squirm around enough, she figured, she could slip out. It wouldn’t help if the guard was paying attention to her while she did it, though, and it would be obvious. Unless…

“Alright, one more try. Can you blame me?” She asked him with a tired chuckle, and he turned and sneered at her. “Legitimately this time,” she continued. “I’ve got an itch on my back, middle of my wings. Driving me crazy. I think it’s from where they did a spinal tap. Please?” she pleaded.

“Listen, failure,” the stallion sighed, “They pay me to stand here, an’ not to interact with you, save for making sure you shut up an’ wait for the surgery team to clock in. I’ve been through all the training, a’ight? Stand still, look ahead, no sexual favors, no favors of any kind, especially not the ol’ ‘lean in and scratch the itch because you’re still a decent sorta stallion and get knocked out cold by a headbutt’ trick. An’,” he said, pawing the floor once, “I ain’t about to give up a lifelong career for some sens’a morals or ethics or whatever. Corporation’s got good benefits.”

Cloud Cover nodded eagerly as he spoke, muttering “mmhmms” and “ahas” while she twisted and writhed in place. Slowly, she could feel her hoofs inch out of the straps. “That’s fair, but, like, really, it’s really itchy,” she said.

“Give’r up, failure.” The stallion returned to looking at the desks ahead.

Cloud Cover felt a sense of excitement as he ignored her, but tried not to move any quicker. She slid back and forth, pressing out with her wings to gain a bit more leverage. A rear leg was almost out, and sweat was starting to form on her body from the effort- a factor that she was grateful for, as it helped her other hooves shimmy up the leather.

“Hey! What did I say? Knock it off!” The stallion shouted, pointing at Cloud Cover.

“It’s just… so… damn… itchy!” On her final word, all four legs popped out of their prisons, and with reflexes honed through a lifetime of dancing through crowds and chasing celebrities, she flipped forward onto her hooves and launched off the stretcher. The guard had turned and was starting to lift off to move towards her, but Cloud Cover made it to him before he could gain any ground. She rocketed at him, forelegs outstretched like Supermare, and his neck rotated into her hoof.

She carried through, bringing the guard’s head right to the cloud wall. The wall did not give as she expected though, and there was a sickening crack as she slammed the guard’s skull against the unrelenting cloud. He shuddered once, and then fell, silent.

Cloud Cover landed and stepped back, raising a hoof in concern. She just wanted to disorientate him. She didn’t realize the walls were reinforced; it was just going to be a bit of a discombobulation, that’s all. She looked at the limp pegasus on the floor before her. She tapped him gingerly once, and then a second time with more effort. He did not move, and a small stream of blood started to pour from his nose.

Cloud Cover sighed. It was hard to maintain the moral high ground when she kept accidentally killing Corporation workers every time she was in their headquarters. She did not grieve, however; there was no time, and she knew that soon enough she would have been dead herself.

“Should have taken the blowjob, huh?” she said, nudging the limp body back against the wall.

She checked--and double checked--that the door was fastened tight before getting to work, looking around for anything that might help her escape. She knew where the elevator was, but getting there without anypony catching her was her worry. She checked the desks and swore when she found them all locked. She moved over to the lockers and tried them, finding the middle one to be unlocked, with a solid white, full-body covering inside it. She pulled it out and inspected it; it was a hazmat suit, with a dark tinted visor in the hood. Perfect, she thought, dropping the bundle to the floor and sidling over it.

In the midst of stepping into the suit, she paused. Why would a worker be walking through mainly office hallways in full protective gear? She shook her head in frustration-- she’d be caught immediately. She scanned the room quickly and her eyes locked on the chemicals on the workbench across the room. Smiling, she finished zipping up the suit, and tucked her mane into the hood. She went to the chemicals and inspected the labels.

Most of them were marked with various large combinations of letters and numbers she figured might have been names, but couldn’t recognize any of them. She never finished high school, of course, having been expelled from the system after failing the flight test. However, the other stickers on the jars gave her more than enough information. She quickly slung the straps of a carrying tray over her withers and gently placed her selection upon it; three erlenmeyer flasks of different coloured liquids. One had a diagram of bone showing through hoof in a diamond frame. Another had the pleasant image of eyes with a large red line through it, and the last one had the simple depiction of an arrow moving through a pony’s mouth and into its lungs, with another red cross. Cloud Cover did not need a high school education to know each one of these alone would justify the gear.

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly to calm her pounding heart. She just needed to make it to the elevator, and she would be able to get out. She would have to leave Cloudsdale unfortunately, but she knew she had pressed her luck too far with this. The thought of never seeing her colleagues from Cloudsdale at Seven, or her few friends from around the western neighbourhood where she lived, or the little cafe she liked to visit on Sunday mornings stung deeply. There was something deeply ingrained in her, just as it was for most pegasi, that made the city call to her. Something that always felt like comfort and warmth in the depths of her heart. It felt almost genetic, and it wouldn’t surprise her if she found that it was. Alas, despite all that, she would need to leave. She would rather live somewhere safe, like Canterlot, than constantly be looking over her shoulder here, waiting for the day a stranger threw a mask over her head and hauled her away to face the factory once again.

Ever since what happened with Corona, she had feared being labelled as cowardly or meek. She shook her head, deciding not to give any thought to the colt who had run away; the one who had succumbed to his own fears and left her to fend for herself. She used to think herself brave for staying in Cloudsdale, for fighting to survive and for making it so far in her career and life. And here she was now, plotting her final retreat from her home.

She unlocked the door and opened it, stepping out slowly with her tray of hazardous chemicals. In the tinted hood, the white walls looked grey and imposing. She breathed in and out again, saw no workers in the hall, and continued on.

It was a small distance away, with two corners to turn, and she prayed there would be nobody in what she assumed was now the night. No windows, she thought, I wonder why I didn’t notice that before.

She turned her first corner and almost completely froze. There was a mare at the end of the hallway, flying casually down towards her. She had the same black, logoed vest on, and was humming along to a tune only she could hear whilst reading something on a clipboard. Cloud Cover swallowed hard and walked forward slowly, keeping her head down and looking at the chemicals. Her mind was racing, thinking about what she could do if the mare questioned her, and she jumped when the worker spoke.

“Hey, watch out there, that’s dangerous stuff.”

Cloud Cover looked up at the mare, who was looking down at her annoyed. She spoke again.

“I almost kicked you. We’re all busy here, heads up alright?”

“Uh, yes, of course, sorry,” Cloud Cover said, trying to shift the pitch of her voice. “I was just a little worried about these spilling.”

“Well, they’re corked, so worry about not getting knocked over a bit more.” With that, the mare continued on down the hallway past Cloud Cover, back to her humming.

Maybe you should look up so you don’t knock over a pony in a hazmat suit, she thought, rolling her eyes. She heeded the mare’s warning as she continued though, splitting her attention between the tray and the hallway.

The next corner held no surprises, and it took all of Cloud Cover’s concentration not to burst into a gallop towards the elevator. It was still unguarded, and she allowed herself a small “yes!” as she approached it. She pressed the call button, and a display appeared just above it in the cloud.

“Please present retina or employee ID pass to continue,” it displayed, with a small laser beaming out from the display.

“Are you fucking kidding me,” Cloud Cover hissed. “Am I really stuck in this goddamn factory again? For Flock’s sake, why me?” As she cursed beneath her breath, she heard a door open and close somewhere behind her. She risked a glance and found it was not in this hallway, but started walking forward again to not raise suspicion if anypony came.

Think, Cloud. What now? How do I get out? Her mind jumped from imagined scenario to imagined scenario. Maybe there’s a pass in another locker somewhere. I don’t think I can risk heading back to the medical office, they’ll probably be expecting me around there if they know I’m gone. I guess I could try and find out more of what they’re doing? She tilted her head, consulting with herself. On the one hoof, it would mean spending more time and risking being caught, but on the other, she was already currently stuck on this floor, and if she could find out what the Corporation was doing, or how they planned to do… whatever it was they were going to do, if she did get out, she could put a stop to it. And if they catch me, she reasoned, at least I’ll die with the satisfaction of knowing what the Tartarus is going on.

She stopped her absentminded pace forward, and looked around her. There were various offices with different labels-- ones she remembered from when she first headed to Gentle’s office. She turned to the Climate Studies room, gently opening the door and slipping inside quietly.

“Hey,” came a voice from the back of the room, and again Cloud Cover gave every inch of her strength to hold herself back from jumping. She looked over and saw a stallion in a lab coat at the back of the room who had glanced up from a pile of papers when she entered.

“Hey,” she said, walking forward into the room as casually as she could force herself. She took in her surroundings and noted various objects in the room- a workbench similar to the one in the medical office, three long counters which divided the centre of the room, and the desk the stallion sat at. It was a mess of papers and folders, with a filing cabinet next to it that was stuffed so full with documents that none of the drawers looked like they could be closed. She moved forward to the workbench and turned her back to the scientist in the room, racking her brain for some way to deal with him.

She struggled to think of what to do, and started absentmindedly fiddling with some of the equipment on the bench. She looked at one device, a weird thing with dozens of pipettes arranged in a circle, and pretended to work with it while she thought.

“Uh, what are you doing?”

She stiffened. Shit, she thought, but she said “Oh, uhm, well, I was just uh…”

“Just what?” The voice was getting closer, and she didn’t look. If thoughts had been racing through her head before, now they were rocketing through as if they were headed to the moon. “Are you, uh, new here? They didn’t say anything about a new employee.”

“Well, you see, no, I’ve just been uh, transferred from, medical, and,” she stuttered, keeping her voice low and muffled through the hood.

“I don’t think you should be here.” His voice was right next to her. “Hey! Who are you?” He started to shout. “Guar-” it started, and Cloud Cover felt a hoof on her back.

She bucked and whipped around, launching the tray of flasks at the questioning stallion. She felt her hindhooves connect, and when she completed her turn she saw her kick had buckled one of his legs and brought his head down.

Straight down in fact, into the path of the flasks now projectiled into the air by her violent movement. One of them, the one with the label showing bone through flesh, shattered on the worker’s muzzle. The liquid evaporated almost instantly, but in a shock of pain from her kick, he had gasped- breathing it in as a yellow-brown haze quickly appeared and then disapparated around his face. He went to scream, but almost immediately it became a muted gurgle, and he collapsed.

Cloud Cover backed up in terror, safe from the shattering vials in her suit, and she watched horrified as the stallion’s eyes and skin melted before her. He was still alive- unable to scream, he was flailing on the ground, rolling and pawing at his face, bringing away melted flesh from skull. Soon his violent shaking stopped, and he lay on the floor, dry heaving. A blast of blood vomited from the remains of his mouth, and he became still.

Cloud Cover had run to the back of the room where the worker had come from and tore off her hood, just in time for herself to vomit into a wire trash can below the desk. She coughed as the bile stung in her throat, and spat after another wave erupted from her. She stood there for several minutes, spitting into the mess on the floor, before finally stepping back and coughing once.

There, on the floor by the bench, lay the remains of most of a pony. There was a small dip in the cloud floor where the acid had etched away at it, and the spray of fluids that had come from the worker had pooled there and started to coagulate. If it weren’t for the stinging, lingering scent of Cloud Cover’s last meal, she suspected the smell of death would be overpowering her by now.

She looked down and spit one more time before sitting and holding herself. She had been okay with the likely death of the guard--she could justify that, after all, right? He was paid to make sure she would suffer. But the scientist… The spinning flurry of thoughts she had been dealing with the last half hour had vanished. Her mind was blank, wondering what to do and finding no answer. He was going to report her, right? She would have been caught and tortured and killed, right?

She couldn’t just have explained her plight and asked him to let her go, right?

A final wave of sick smashed into her like a monsoon, and she puked one more time into the already-leaking can.

Well, her voice seemed to croak even in her head, I suppose it’s already done. She pushed down the other voice shrieking at her yet somehow even quieter than her normal internal monologue, screaming about what she had done and why, and silenced it. No time for that now.

She sighed, and--clenching her teeth--moved up past the corpse and locked the door. She turned the lights off and waited for her eyes to adjust to the faint glow provided by the numerous laboratory machines in the room. When she was satisfied she could see well enough, she began to investigate the room.

She started by opening the various cupboards and drawers in the three middle counters, finding mainly supplies she would have expected - pipettes, cylinders, pencils, and burners. In one cupboard she found what appeared to be some sort of table cloth, stained with the history of dozens of experiments, which she unfolded and draped over the melted carcass. Moving on to the desk, she found amongst the stacks of documents a crisp, clean, dark red folio that had stood out amongst the manilla and white disaster. She flipped it open, and the cover page had big capital letters that caught her attention and even made her forget, for just a moment, about the pony she had just killed. It read, “RECKONING: UPDATED PREDICTIONS AND CONTINGENCIES”.

She flipped through the documents, finding most of them to be complicated graphs and printouts with hundreds of coded numbers and scrawled, shorthoof notes that she couldn’t understand. At the end, though, there was a summary, and she sat down at the desk to read.

“It has long been known,”the page started, “that a severe and extended overcorrection of weather systems would occur due to widespread, long-term manipulation of said systems. Little was known of this event, which in the literature has come to be known as the ‘Reckoning’, when manipulation was isolated to small pockets of civilization within the country of Equestria alone. It is even suspected that such a Reckoning would not occur if the small scale of manipulation was maintained.

“However, it was not, and it is not up to this author to weigh in on the benefits and drawbacks of the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation’s--hereby referred to as ‘the Corporation’--activities. The last major study on the Reckoning was held about fifty years before the commissioning of this paper, and at that time it was found that with current projections of company activity and weather statistics, the event would occur sometime in about two to three thousand years, be of typically experienced severity of weather, and last for a decade or two.

“New modelling was performed over the last four years, and these projections were found to be severely outdated. As has been presented in sections one through fifteen…”

The paper continued on, referencing the various science-y pages Cloud Cover had flipped past, and she moved down the page hoping to find another section she could understand. Two pages later, it seemed to reach a conclusion, and she focused on it again.

“...Of figure 16.24b. In all, there is much that can be garnered, and much to sum up, but in the interest of brevity the author will now explain the consequences of such data as understood.

“The Reckoning is here already--in a sense. In about a hundred year’s time, the Corporation, and in fact any assemblage of labour and equipment from any organization, will be unable to maintain current weather patterns. At that time, atmospheric conditions will form that cannot be controlled, that cannot be predicted, and cannot be survived by any means save for the two Contingencies outlined in Appendix B of this document. Some areas of the atmosphere, likely in the southern hemisphere, will have such a drastic change in air pressure that the ozone layer itself will be obliterated. That air must move to other locations, and it can be expected that the usual effects of low pressure systems meeting high pressure systems will occur, only on a factor of about a hundred thousand times as violent.

“There is more than this simple inevitability. If, within the required time limit, either of the Contingencies are pursued, the Reckoning can be made survivable. There will still be planet-wide destruction, but for less time, and at the end there will still be ponies, and still be livable land. Action must be taken within the next decade, however, or else this window of opportunity will be lost forever.”

Cloud Cover turned the page and found the end of the folio, and she swore. Where are the appendices? She set the folder aside and rifled through the piles of papers and reports in as calm a manner as the frantic mare could do. She found nothing that stood out, and swore again.

Okay, so, where would those be? Gentle’s office? For something this important she would have to have a copy. She nodded, resolute. She began to move towards the door and then stopped. First off, she had forgotten about the body on the floor, and gagged at the sight of the covered lump. But seeing it, she also realized that the chemicals she had used as an excuse to wear the suit were now seeping into the clouds around her.

She looked back to the desk and saw a black leather saddle bag emblazoned with the old logo of the Corporation. She would be less disguised as before, but with luck she wouldn’t need a disguise, and with misfortune she would be faster without the suit. She muttered a quiet “Okay” and then stepped out of the suit, tucking it under the desk next to the half-digested remains of her breakfast. She grabbed the saddle bag, put the red Reckoning folder into it, and buckled it tightly closed. She made for the door once again and stopped once again.

Hesitantly, she turned to the mound of covered sin behind her. She gulped and inched towards it before grabbing the edge of the cloth. She steeled herself, and then lifted it up and checked the neck of the pony.

There was an identification tag there, but the acid had clearly splashed and eaten away through the barcode under the picture. Cloud Cover gently replaced the covering and looked down to the floor. That could have been done a lot… cleaner, she thought, and a tear from her tired eyes trailed down her cheek. Done with her distractions, she moved to the door and unlocked it, pressed an ear against it, and listened.

She didn’t hear anything.

She breathed slowly, counting down, three, two, one-- She opened the door and stepped out casually, looking each way down the hallway and seeing no one. She lifted off, flying as relaxed as she could, and started flapping her way towards Gentle’s office.

What if she’s in there? Well, I guess I just turn around and find a different office. One of them will probably have a card I can use for the elevator, anyways. Just find one with all the lights off. That will do. She felt her nerves settle as she talked her way through what she could do. She was running out of options, but it brought her calm instead of worry. If she only had one way to go, she figured, it wouldn’t be an issue to have to decide to go that way. She passed by another one of the vents blasting cold air and paused.

Down the hall, she heard voices come around from one of the corners. She looked around her quickly, and saw one door that was dark. She flew to it and tried the handle. It was unlocked. She opened it and slinked inside, closing it gently just as she heard the voices round the corner.

She ducked down by the door, holding a hoof over her mouth and keeping her breathing slow and steady. She could not make out the conversation, or what the voices sounded like, but waited until the rising volume turned course and began to decrease as the conversants moved beyond the door.

She exhaled in relief and stood up, locking the door and looking around the dark room. She hadn’t read the logo on the glass, and a quick check revealed it to apparently be the Office of the Head of Logistics. Cloud Cover tilted her head with a ‘hmm’, figuring her split second decision may have been one that worked in her favor.

All along every wall there were dim screens, providing a small amount of greenish light to the room for her to see by. They appeared to be the same wireframe map of the whole factory, repeated over and over with different aspects highlighted. She looked at one with the title ‘Water Transportation Systems’ and marvelled at the spiderweb of blue lines that traced their way throughout the complex. She tried to follow one line for a moment and a new headache began to bud in her skull, and she abandoned the effort.

Where there wasn’t a screen, there were old fashioned maps, faded and curled at the corners and pocked with the history of a million pins and scuffed, overwritten and oft-erased notes. She couldn’t tell what most of--or any of it, really--meant, or how any pony could constantly consider such information. Cloud Cover figured it would have taken over a dozen pegasi, twenty-four seven, monitoring the numbers of inputs and outputs and flows and timings that were assaulting her from every angle in the room; yet in the centre of it all there was a single desk. It was large, yes, and appeared to be the sturdiest piece of furniture Cloud Cover had seen in her entire time at the Rainbow Factory, yet again there was only one chair behind it. Stacks of folders and papers framed the sides of it, but the middle was clean and organized. There was only a notepad, a pencil, and a rotary phone in front of the chair.

Cloud Cover moved around the desk in silent marvel, still glancing at all the screens. She noticed that each one, with its specialized display of some individual factory system, had numbers that were changing every few seconds; percentages of pipe utilization here, current amperage of lightning reserves there, how many litres of clouds left until the next shipment was ready--Every screen was constantly blinking with its updates, and Cloud Cover felt dizzy.

Why is there only one desk? Who could do this job?

She moved to the desk and tried the drawers. They were all locked tight. She flew up quickly and examined the tops of the paper stacks and found nothing of importance to her investigation, just production quotas and ETA’s on shipments of raw resources. She landed again and tried the topmost drawer. The others had a little bit of give, but this one was absolutely solid, and had two keyholes in it.

Cloud Cover smiled and stepped back. “Time to show off the ol’ Cloudsdale at Seven lockpicking trick,” she muttered, and put her hindquarters to the desk. She leaned down, shook her shoulders, and bucked as hard as she could.

Old wood splintered and snapped, and she froze, scolding herself for doing something so stupidly loud. She waited, and listened, and after a minute figured nopony had heard--or if they did, they didn’t care. She returned to the desk and saw the top of it peaked up with a neat crack down the middle, and the drawer’s two lock plates no longer had anything to catch. Satisfied, she sat down in the chair and pulled the drawer open.

There were a number of items in the drawer, though no ID tag like she had been hoping to find. She wasn’t disappointed, however, because underneath the pencils and pins was a dark red folder, exactly the same shade as the first one she had found, and she giddily pulled it from the desk. She placed it down on the broken desk and opened it slowly; whether through reverence or fear, as if a viper may leap out of it and bite her, she didn’t know.

She read the title of the folder, ‘Appendix B’, and felt giddy.

She read the heading of the first page , ‘Contingency B’, and almost started dancing in her seat.

She continued reading down the page, and stopped her giddy movements. With each sentence, her sudden rush of good feelings drained from her; with each page, something dark and awful took their place. She couldn’t tell if it was despair, or terror, or disgust, but nevertheless it was something vile that seeped into her heart during every paragraph. She finished the report, closed the folder, and shook.