--Sometime later

These past weeks had been hell for Trixie...

At the beginning of the month, she was helping Starlight with a science project, and now?

Everything she knew had been turned upside down ever since that meteor shower that popped up out of nowhere followed by a horrible real nightmare.

She was in Equestria's capital when she first heard of a strange new sickness that was going around that seemed to have spread when one of the much larger meteors hit the griffin isles.

Word got around that it was zombies or something but the griffins the prideful bunch that they were keep denying there was a sick or a meteor that hit their lands. The denying didn't last long when it began to spread out into the mainland, from yakyakistan then into the changing lands and the sickness poured into the crystal empire's borders.

Rumor had gone on that Shining armor was able to put up his shield before any of the infected got into the empire itself but somehow the infection got in. It was when word got around that the royals of the crystal empire fell to this infection that Twilight finally took action, the entire nation was on full on quartine with marshal law and strict crufue.

Ponies on the other hand thought it was all a big Hoax since Twilight had just become queen and before the virus had put new rules and such many ponies didn't agree with. Along with Twilight being kinda new to being a full leader, she didn't have the experience to deal with such a crisis since friendship couldn't really help with a biological virus and a bunch of angry ponies who not hold had to deal with non-ponies but they had to ration out food and couldn't do what they wanted anymore.

Riots poured out which caused Twilight to stop it but the infected broke through, Trixie couldn't really recall what happened that night the ponies were all bunched together in one spot where the infected go into the capital. All she remembered was packing her bag and the next thing she remember was waking up in the everfree, where after three days of living in the forest she came face to face with an infected.

Then leads up to her current predicament...

In a spaceship with a weird robot dragon and a ghost fox lady explaining what had happened and what she went through.

Looking up at 'Delta' who was looking down at her with those strange unnatural orange eyes.

"I'm sorry about your home," Delta stated giving her his condolences. "No one should see their home like that,"

The tone in his voice sounds like he was speaking from experience walking over to her he pulled the harness off her before Delta and held out a hand to her.

"You hungry?"

Trixie answered but not in the way she wanted as her gut gave a loud growl causing Delta to chuckle.

"I'll take that as a yes," He waved for her to follow.

Handing her a bag of 'freshly' cooked space noodles to the starving equine to which right away the light blue pony creature reached forth and snatched the warm plastic bag before drinking the soup through the bag's straw. In seconds she draw the whole bag of chicken-flavored ramen he watched the Equine squeeze the bag for more of the broth or remaining noodles.

"Damn I have never seen someone down an entire bag of chicken noodles," Tao's avatar appeared next to Delta who was sitting in a supply crate.

Trixie went wide-eyed at Tao's sudden appearance before lowering the bag from her lips.

"How did you do that?" Trixie asked.

Tao blinked at her.

"Do what?"

"Get bigger? You were like seven inches tall a few moments ago," Tao seemed confused by the question before giving a slight laugh.

"OH! That! My avatar is currently being projected from that," Point her hand up at the protection device on the ceiling that moved everywhere that the AI's avatar moved too.

"Avatar? So you are a ghost?" Trixie asked before the fox-like AI shook her head.

"Not quite... As an AI I don't possess a physical form so I use the ship's holographic display systems to project my avatar whenever Delta is close enough to the ship," Tao explain which didn't really seem to answer Trixie's question.

"I... don't get it... so your not a ghost but you don't have a body?"

"No, I kinda do... um... but not in the normal sense I... Delta helps me out here," Tao asked the heavily implanted 'human'.

"Her body isn't physical which is kinda similar to a ghost but she never died in the first place," Delta brought his ramen bag to his lips before taking a sip of the liquid food and lowering it. "Plus she currently lives inside my body though my many many implants as a sorta 'cyber-symbiote' to put it simply,"

Trixie looked at the AI's avatar who currently smiled at her then to Delta who was drinking from his bag.

"Wha-... okay! What kinda bucking dragon are you!?" Trixie spoke getting up. "Trixie has never a dragon like you before!"

"Did she just talk in the third person?" Tao asked through their link.

"She did... guess it's common here maybe?" Delta responded back to her while Trixie couldn't hear linked minds.

"I'm not a dragon... well technically I'm not but that would be cool though,"

"Explain," Trixie demanded in a somewhat expecting tone but probably from all the stress and what happened she need some answer to understand what was happening to her.

"I wasn't born like this," Delta pointed to his face before taking another drink of his soup. "This is what you get after two major surgeries and a few minor ones... what I'm saying is you can say I looked a lot different before I got this handsome mug,"

"Wait someone turned you into what you are now?" Trixie sounded horrified at the notion. "Did they do this without your consent?!"

"No... I sighed up for the program that did this to me," Delta took another drink of his soup while the equine couldn't believe what she heard.

"You 'sighed up' to look like that?!" Trixie nearly screamed standing up. "WHY!?"

"First of all: Calm the fuck down lady and second: Survival," Delta gave her a serious look. "My race kinda had something similar happen to our world where these creatures called nercomorphs flood our work in a mass worldwide outbreak because of a device known as 'Marker',"

Giving a sigh he took one last drink of his soup before twisting the top back on it.

"Neromorphs were reanimated dead corpses similar to what you would call a 'zombie' but they were more deadly when a corpse is infected it breaks itself down to form natural weapons designed to kill living beings as to make more corpses and more necromorphs," Turning to Tao the AI didn't have to hear his thought before she brought up a blue holographic image between Trixie and the two of the most common type of nercomorph: the Slasher.

"What in Celestia's holy name!" The blue equine backed up.

"You think that's bad that's the one you'll mostly see trying to kill you," Tao explained before Delta looked at the hologram.

"These things were nasty but they weren't the true threat... the marker was," Delta explained.

Trixie looked away from the hologram before sitting back down.

"You said that before... what is this 'marker' thing,"

"Markers are these alien-like devices made by what I can only describe as the devil's who angels of death... these things at first seemed to be a device that could lead up to understand the secrets of evolution but in reality held a much darker propose. Creating Nercomorphs to birth a new brethren moon," A hologram of a marker and a brethern moon took the Slasher's place. "What was worse about it was that could infect the living by giving off a signal that in a nutshell would turn anyone insane given time,"

"Hallucinations, Suicidal tendencies, Self-harm, Increased aggression, Insomnia, and of course Madness," Delta explained further. "And Markers have a way of playing with the minds those who are influenced by their signal by making them experience things like seeing a dead loved one or tricking them into blowing them out an airlock and what's worse even if you do somehow escape a marker with your life, you can never be free after it marks you,"

"What happens then?"

"Same thing but followed by the urge to find a way to make a new marker... I believe," Delta gave a sign before hitting his chest plate with his fist. "But that is why I'm like this,"

The 'dragonoid' gave Trixie a determined look on his face.

"My body isn't as weak as the rest of my race... natural armor, reinforced metal bone implants, synthetic muscle tissue, and of course AI Implant," Delta explained. "This transformation not only protected my body but my mind too... my friends and I were to be the future of our race survival against the Nercomorphs threat,"

"Trixie feels a 'but' coming on," Trixie asked making the former human chuckle slightly at how close these equines were to humans.

"Some of my race believe me and my fellow 'converted' were heresy to their belief seeing how they saw the Markers as a gift from god and the nercomorphs were the true step in human evolution," Delta gave a sign. "Right in our war for survival, we had a goddamn civil war between our government and the 'church of unitology safe to say a people divided in the middle of a war between hell made sure no one but the devil's army,"

Resting his arms on his legs the cybernetic being hung his head.

"And those damn moons shallowed our planet like it was a ripe piece of fruit," His AI partner turned to him sensing his heart rate dropping before lifting her hand but knew she couldn't touch him here in real space.

Trixie sat in silence for a moment before speaking up.

"How did you survive?"

"We ran," Tao answered. "Halfway during our the sudden civil war my fellow AIs and myself included determined that there was a 98.99% chance that the species would be whipped out in a manner of weeks or a month if we were lucky. So we planned on escaping with as many people that we could but due to the short amount of time most of us were lucky to make it out with a single personal space shuttle with whatever we could gather,"

Turning to her partner who stood up to look at her.

"Delta and I could only get this ship and enough supplies to last us years and even longer if Delta remained in stasis and the shuttle was in stand-by mode drifting in space," Tao stated before looking at the equine. "But hopefully my kin and their hoists were able to escape with others but sadly I have not heard from any of them in over a century,"

Going wide-eyed Trixie couldn't believe she just heard, to which Delta noticed her surprised expression.

"Yeah we are most likely older than your great-grandparents," This caused the pony's jaw to drop while she was trying to process this information.

After a good few minutes, Trixie had finally collected herself before asking one final question.

"Why are you telling Trixie this?" Trixie asked.

"You told us about your world and it's only fair we tell you some of our worlds in exchanged... but also to tell you that we experience almost the same thing with our own home," Delta responded. "But never forget this... Trixie"

Standing up he then held out his hand out to her.

"You're not alone in this maybe we can save your world unlike our own,"

Looking at his hand the pony then saw the slight smile he held on his face before she reached out and took the hand she was offered.

"Trixie will remember that,"

Author's Note

Okay, first off, sorry for the slight delay... I finished dead space 1 and now I'm going to see if I can beat it on impossible! (So far so good as of right now 08/23/2022)

Now as for the story?

Hope this sheds some light on what's happened to Earth and why 'Delta' is what he is but don't worry I'll explain in future detail later on. I mean this is a story just tell you out right kinda defeats the point of a story...

I was somewhat inspired by a few things of Delta's design but I'll let you guys to guess.

As for how fast the strange virus spread across Equis so fast?

Well mostly because Equis never had such a plague like this before...

That and Twilight didn't know how to handle the undead, since a virus doesn't really care for friendship.

Tell me your thoughts and see you all in the next one!

(Also I was going to have the food differently to reference another SciFi movie but I decided differently and used a real-world example of space food since that movie has nothing to do with zombies... or even dead space for that manner)