Amnesia: A Machine for Puppets

Lamentabilis Identidem

Silence

I carefully walked to the doorway with increasing trepidation bordering on an anxiety attack. This can’t be happening, this can’t fucking be happening! I... I went through all the shit on the above floor... I had to hide, I--I was chased and scared shitless... I made it to the elevator! I turned on the power! That was suppose to be my escape -- I had escaped from that thing, the Puppet! I was almost mutilated by pink organic masses! I... here... this place... I came down here -- it was supposed to be safe! A fucking sanctuary!

This was a load of Celestia’s grade A horseapples!

I didn’t deserve this crap! But don’t you? No, of course not! Why would I? I’m trying to get out of here, wherever the fuck ‘here’ is! Why would I deserve this? How could I deserve this? How could I even think something like that!? I haven’t done anything--

I worked here. Wasn’t that enough? I willingly worked in a prison factory, where ponies were foalnapped and imprisoned. Then, they were killed, and turned into horrible monsters. I aided these ponies in doing that. I helped them commit genocide. I heard what I saw: myself sitting there as two of my coworkers beat a guard into submission! I saw it. I watched it! I didn’t care then. Wasn’t that enough? Why don’t I deserve this? I should deserve more than this!

Flashes and sparks of light erupted in the Production Room, and I knew that the machine was wielding the blades wings onto the reanimated corpse of another poor soul, whose life was being blasphemed as he became another megear abomination. It was sick. It was twisted. I felt my gut writhe and freeze over as I mused about it. I was now, or never. I had to make a run for it, get out of this area of the floor, or suffer a very painful and brutal death. I made for the door, but my hooves were frozen into place. Come on damn it! Move! But I couldn’t. Should I, though? Should I escape? I... I...

Son of a fuck! This isn’t the time to be debating psychology with yourself!

The high-pitched sound of the wielder stopped, and the room grew dark once more, all but for the light of my flashlight, which I grabbed in my mouth and bit down on to keep it from falling. I continued biting down on it, until I was afraid my teeth would crack from the pressure. I wasn’t letting go of this flashlight. Nothing was making me let go of this flashlight! I took a deep breath in through my nose, held it for a second, then let it out slowly. Everything was quiet. Nothing moved, and the pain in my wing reminded me of my injury. I held back a grunt of pain. I breathed again. In. Hold. Out.

Then I broke into a gallop.

My hooves beat against the floor with tremendous force, and I knew that every single creature on this whole floor could hear me.

Bang-slam-bang-slam!

That Puppet was going to be on me in no time, and so I booked it. Past the bins of dead bodies, past the beds with dried blood on them. Past the Puppet. Through the corridor. I ran until I was back in the central area, where all the signs were displayed. I pressed myself against a perpendicular wall and tried to force my breathing back to normal. Tears welled up in the corners of my eyes as I began to choke on sobs. I waited.

I waited for it to make some sort of sound. The rhythmic thumping of its hooves foretelling death. The ghastly snarl as it tried to communicate to me my certain doom. That growl as it prepared for the hunt. Anything. It was still in there, with all of the bleached bodies and futuristic machines. Questions rose to my mind, questions that never occurred to me before, and raised even more questions with them. Why is every one of those bodies an earth pony? Why are their bodies so pale? Why are they all broken and beaten? And yet the one important question never occurred to me: How? How was every one of those bodies earth ponies? How are their bodies so pale? How were they all broken and beaten? But my musing was cut short.

The Puppet finally made a sound.

It came from the entranceway to the Production room, and it wasn’t a snarl. It wasn’t a growl, or any guttural utterance of any kind. It wasn’t the thumping of its hooves against the ground, as the Puppets movements were fluid and silent. The sound it made cause my mind to go numb as the darkness clawed its way into me again. The single light above flickered, then died. Almost instantaneously did the shadows begin to crawl to me, and the walls writhed and squirmed and tried to pry themselves away in their efforts to smother me. The pained echoes of mares and stallions became a choir of wails and screams, and I did the first thought that enter my head: I ran. I ran for the opposite end of the room, across from the Puppet Production Room, and the monster inside.

The sound the Puppet made, was one low, horrifying note.

The Puppet fucking moaned.

When I halted near the rusted gate barring entrance to the rest of the hall, I found that at first, I was relieved. It was only a Puppet. Up top, whatever made that noise was the same as the one that snarled and growled. It was all one creature. That was all it was, just a pale, dead, revived earth pony with metal wings. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t all that good, but it was better than the alternative.

I swallowed as I waited for it. Shadows had overtaken the hall I was just in, stealing with it any hope of visibility or vision of the haunting creature--not until it was biting into my flesh would I know of its proximity. Something was off. I knew there was something wrong, but I couldn’t place it. Something was wrong with this picture. I slowed my breathing down to the bare minimum in an effort to hear any signs of the monster’s existence. To my utter surprise, I found I could not hear any noise, none at all. Everything was silent. The pipes that undoubtedly ran from or to Sewage made no sound. The whisper of wind was absent. It was like even sound itself feared the Puppet, the same one that was somewhere in this place, veiled by the darkness.

I finally pinpointed what was missing. The first thing, one that sent a shiver down my spine, was the absence of the Puppet’s ragged breathing. That wasn’t what made me sweat, however. On the top floor, I always knew where the Puppet was because of the thumping sound its hooves made against the grated floor. In the utter silence, the sound of hoofsteps was gone. The fall of this Puppet’s hooves was silent as ever. I had no hope to know of its location, which meant one thing:

I was blind.

Literally everywhere held the possibility of concealing the Puppet. Around the corner, across the hall, it could even be directly in front of me, and I would have had no warning. My only consolation was belief that perhaps if I couldn’t see it, or even hear it, then maybe, just maybe, it couldn’t see me either. But even I knew how ludicrous that sediment was.

My skin crawled with dozens of beetles, and very slowly and very quietly I grabbed the rusted key. I had difficulty placing it in the lock, because my hooves were shaking. After the third try however I got lucky and the key slid in with the most obnoxious sound. It reverberated off the walls and inside my head, sounding very much deafening in the unholy silence. The sound didn’t seem to end, and continued to grow in intensity and maddeningly sounded like an alarm ringing in my ears. I knew that the Puppet heard the key turn, and I knew that it knew my exact location. I had just painted the fucker a target, and it was now coming for me. I didn’t know what the monstrosity planned to do with me, or even if it had a plan, maybe it was just going to brutally kill me and mutilate my remains like its kin had done with my co-workers just because it was a savage creation that blasphemed the very idea of the sanctity of life!

With these thoughts pouring through my head, through the barrier of sound blocking everything else, I wrenched open the gate and slammed it shut behind me, cantering careless of any noise I made when--

BAM!

Something collided hard with the gate I just closed, and a new fear unlike anything else I had felt so far overtook me, and I abandoned all thought as I just continued my cadenced gallop away from from the entrance to the prison block and the savage Puppet that a mere few seconds ago had just crashed into said gate! I turned a corner and my blood became ice as the screech of the barred door was slowly pulled open.

Nothing.

Then, tink, thunk. The door was closed. Followed by a soft yet undeniable clink.

The door was locked. The Puppet was locked in the prison. Along with me.

A thin, white fog seeped along the grated metal floor, and I assumed that it was merely excess from the cloud flooring underneath rising. It swirled to and fro in the air, conjuring hypnotistic symbols in the darkness. The silence was unbearable. I could hear the soft thumping of my blood being pumped throughout my body reverberating in the inside of my ear. I could also hear my breath, loud as could be, and a surefire target in the quiet to anything with supernatural hearing (which in my paranoia I had subconsciously convinced myself the Puppets had) or possibly anything that had normal hearing capabilities.

The sound of blood pumping in my ears began to quicken as I started my journey deeper into the heart of the prison block I was in. Trepidation and fear guided my every move, as I knew that right on my ass was the monstrosity. There was only one way to go in or out, and It had shut and locked that exit. I also based every move on the assumption that the monster was in here with me. Where else could it be? While I had not given the Puppets any benefit of the doubt when it came to brains or tactical planning, another thought struck me that the Puppet was guarding the exit, waiting.

There was only one way in or out. And I couldn’t stay in here forever. And that left only one direction to go.

Forward.

I put one hoof forward tentatively, then cringed when my wing reminded me it was still broken. Only the fear still clawing its icy fingers into my guts was enough to restrain me from crying out loud. Instead I bit down on one of my hooves, hard. I hobbled forward, trying to put some distance between me and the entrance. An entrance that was being guarded by a pale, monstrous, disfigured and mutilated pony with metal, weaponized wing grafts and an extreme blood-lust.

So yeah, nothing to worry about.

Although my hoof was starting to hurt like hell.

After relinquishing my grip on my forehoof, I once again began my trek deeper into the dark abyss of the prisons. I traveled as slow as I possibly could, keeping my head low to the ground and my ears perked for any sound. Any sound.

Have I mentioned how disturbing absolute silence was?

Silence, normal silence, was usually just nopony talking or making noises. But even then, silence wasn’t absolute. There was always something to fill the void, some sort of noise to fill the awkward gap. The low, wispy sound of breath, or the soft falls of hoofsteps. Even silence had its own sound: the silent ringing when all else was absent.

This was... none of those. There was nothing.

I was trotting on a metal floor, albeit as softly as I could, but there was nothing.

Pipes lined the cloud ceiling, dipping in and out of the cloud wall, dispersing and congealing in numerous groups. There was no ominous hiss present, neither the sound of rushing liquids nor the steam that inevitably ran through them.

There was nothing.

Not even the whispers of my paranoia were able to claw their way through the wall of silence to tear at my mind.

Nor could the beating of my heart of the rush of pumping blood make its way through my ears.

There was nothing.

The silence was absolute.

A quiescence of noise.

It was pure, unadulterated, sheer utter silence.

And it was unnerving me to no end.

The narrow hallway I was cautiously tiphoofing through opened up into a not-much-larger corridor, lined on all sides with small, narrow, claustrophobia-inducing rooms (prisons, I reminded myself). They were barred with iron that had rusted to the point where a simple gust of wind was all that was needed to blow them down. Although I imagined that any prisoners kept in these cells were also kept in no shape to match the power of a gust of wind themselves. It only occured to me now that the rust on the bars might not actually be rust...

And I think I’m going to be sick.

No! No throwing up. That... thing was still here, somewhere. I only had a hunch that the Puppet was guarding the entrance. What if I was wrong? Regardless of what I believed, the one fact I had was that I heard the gate open and then close. Which meant that it was in here. Where? I had no inclination. Perhaps I had been giving it too much credit in the metal aspect of the creature, I mean, it’s called a Puppet for a reason. Perhaps that’s all it is, just a...

Hold on...

No...

Fuck no!

If it really was a puppet, (if the Puppet was a puppet, my mind couldn’t help adding, in a shallow attempt at humor that caused me to wince inwardly), then that meant it was attached to strings. All puppets have puppet-masters. Which begged the question: if it truly was a puppet, then who the hell was pulling the strings? And if somepony else, or Luna-forbid something else, was the puppeteer pulling on the Puppets’ strings like they were marionettes, then it wasn’t the Puppets ability to think I should be worried about. It wasn’t their intellect I was up against. It was the Puppeteer’s. And that just made this whole game of cat-and-mouse substantially more horrifying.

And that was not something I needed.

I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, and flashbacks of the Puppet roaming the Living Quarters slipped their way into my brain, warning me of the danger and certain death that was coming for me, cantering towards me on hooves of death and mutilation! I reflexively ran and coward myself in the shadows, foolishly allowing myself to fall under the impression that it couldn’t spot me.

But I needn’t have worried.

Alright, I admit. That was a very poor choice of words. Very poor choice, given where I was and my proximity to at least one known blood-hungry monster. I had every reason to worry, and to believe any movement not sanctioned by myself was the result of something trying to kill me. But after waiting, shivering in a corner for a couple of minutes, nothing revealed itself. Given my choice of hiding spot, should anything have come it surely would have taken notice of me, regardless of its stupidity. Or the intelligence of the puppeteer.

As I opened my eyes, the door to one of the previously locked cells caught my eye. When I first cantered into the prison block, I noted that every cell within my limited eyesight was closed. Locked, I presumed. But now, as I cowered in the corner, I saw that one of the barred doors was open. I forced myself to stand up, wincing horribly at the fire in my wing, and slowly made my way over to the cell. In the Silence, the door made no absolute sound. I pushed it back and forth experimentally a few times, then stopped abruptly when the thought struck me that just because I was deaf, didn’t mean the Puppet was. A cold chill washed through the underside of my skin, and I shivered involuntarily. I would give anything to out of this place. I felt like I had all the color drained out of me.

The cell was small, smaller than the Guard Quarters. There was one cot, stained with liquids and fluids that I had no wish to discover, and a bucket for the prisoners to shit in. Or piss, whichever was necessary. I cringed at the living conditions, but I assured myself by remembering what Glaze said, “The worst of the worst”. The worst of the worst. Like that made it right, said a small part of my head. The worst of the worst.

My body tensed and froze, sending a fresh wave of fire burning through my side and I collapsed. As soon as I stepped in the cell, somepony began to scream! So did I, then I shoved a hoof into my mouth and bit down hard enough to draw the taste of copper over my tongue. Tears rolled down my cheek.

“No! Noooo! Pease, No! Take me, take me instead! Please! PLEASE! Ahhh! No, PLEASE!” It was a... mare. She was screaming herself hoarse, crying to deaf ears to take her, no! Please, take me instead! Take me! She continued to cry, and scream, until her throat was too ripped to even make a whimper. But even then, she still cried. Take me... instead... please...

I could only stare at the emptiness of the cell. What could cause a mare to scream like that? It was... she was so tortured. But nopony was torturing her, no she instead was begging to be tortured instead! But who was being hurt? Who was it that caused a mare to act in such a way? What happened? What the fuck was going on?! And how the fuck do I fit in!

This deathtrap was a fucking prisoner factory that worked in secret, stealing criminals and dragging them here in the dark of the night... to what? Experiment on them? Was that what the Puppets were? Experiments? And, what about the previous guards! How did they figure into this equation? What happened to them! Why was this factory experimenting with bringing ponies back from the dead? Who the fuck sanctioned this horseshit! And... what happened here? What caused the Puppets to kill everypony? Everypony... but me...

Creak.

With a start, I whipped my head back and forth as I was certain I heard the grafted, metallic blades of the Puppets wings. I quick check told me that there was no Puppet in sight. But I did find the source of the noise. In the middle of the prison block, hanging from steel chains was a large sign. The words painted on it in a dull white explained to me why everypony was dead, why I was left.

I whispered the words to myself, horrified, "Nopony escapes the factory..."

It was because I wasn’t left.

I was last.