Fallout Equestria: Burdens

Chapter 2- Oversight

“Sometimes things fall through the cracks, but never something like this…”

The Vertibuck’s right engine is visibly shooting sparks against the indigo-orange sky and occasionally puffs black clouds. The Outpost Engineer pulls herself from the source of the smoke with a sharp wingbeat. Her seasoned gaze falls on Avie. “Remind me who checked the diagnostics for your Vertibuck, again? Sergeant…name?”

“Aviatrix,” She answers before following up on the first thought, “I didn’t catch their names, but they ran through the procedure three times. The Vertibuck was doing fine until we were well on our way to our objective.”

The Engineer rolls her head back and wipes her brow. “Well, either they and their skills were undercooked coming out of the Engineering course, or they were attempting sabotage.”

Avie’s ears fold into her cap when those words reach her, and her eyes fall just slightly. “They were just kids.”

The Engineer stomps her hooves into the sand in front of us. “That doesn’t excuse their mistakes, and their negligence could have cost us much more. How can you expect to preserve anything with oversights like that– ” I snort. Those dull periwinkle eyes drag in their sockets towards me. “Something wrong, Staff Sergeant?” She asks with clenched teeth.

Do veterans' rants always have to leave a bitter taste in the back of my throat? I can’t be the only one in my generation who thinks it’s grating, nowadays. Instead of answering her question with any of that “generation gap” bullshit, I take a deep breath and focus on why she’s here. “How long until the Vertibuck can be fixed… ma’am?”

She holds her stare on me for a good while, then walks away from us with a tired sigh. Her eyes now look to the orange-indigo sky. “Nightfall’s coming. I can’t guarantee a quick fix, but…”

I raise my brows. “But?”

She looks back at me. “If you consider my deal, I can make this thing work as fast as possible— even in the dark.”

Somehow it sounds counterintuitive to everything she’s just said the past few minutes– wait. “Deal?”

She looks back at us. “Yeah. I think what I gotta say is a very fair bargain with less to lose for the both of us.”

I look at Avie, and we’re mirroring confusion right back at each other. Avie looks back at the Engineer. “What do ya want, exactly?”

The Engineer tilts her head towards the Vertibuck behind her. “This bird can’t fly without my know-how. You can’t fly this thing without me. All I’m asking for is home.”

A chill, a pang of discomfort; something that leaves my stomach roiling. Several instinctive sensations are telling me to not look away, like it’s something I’ll regret. “We’ll see what we can do on our side. Just please do what you can while we report the findings to our Captain,” Avie steers the conversation, then pulls me along and off the landing pad.

“See you soon. I’ll take gooood care of her.” The Engineer calls out.

We put some distance between the Vertibuck and the Engineer, and us. The farther we get away, the more I realize the tingling in my gut is not going away, but it’s not getting worse either. I can feel my muscles harden slowly like drying clay while my ears flick about trying to hear things above my heartbeat’s climbing tempo. This isn’t normal… This isn’t—

“Ward?” Avie’s voice reaches my ears from right in front of me, waiting patiently for an answer. I look down from her eyes with my cheeks burning, and cover my eyes with a wing to get them to stop feeling so damn big. “What’s wrong?” She asks.

I shake my head. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.”

“Ward, please.” She pleads softly. “It’s not nothing. You don’t just freeze up over nothing.” That’s what I want to say about the things I heard—the things I was just processing. I thought things would be different out here; that maybe I can go for a little longer in a different setting without feeling like I’m being fucking watched by vultures out in the open. I can still see them in my head—the pegasi in this dingy sand fort of an outpost. They way they all looked at us…. “Ward,” She gently puts a hoof on my shoulder. “It’s just us.”

“I don’t like any of this, Avie.” I tell her, letting my head fall on her hoof. “I didn’t like the way she spoke to us. I don’t like how any of them greeted us when we came here.” I rub one of my hooves through my mane, twitching from every hair the rubber soles pluck from my scalp. The twinges of pain make me think about where we are; what this place can do to a pony, and what it makes them want to do to others. I look up at her, seeing one of her ears is folded into her cap, again. “Do you feel… like this place is still friendly?”

I don’t know what describes what she’s expressing more; it’s either “confusion” or “discomforting realization.” She looks to her left, then her right. Does it mean she knows what I’m talking about? “Of course I do, but it’s only because I’ve been out here more often.” She tells me quietly. “I haven’t seen places this bad, but… they’re not Greenhorn Raiders. Remember what we were told growing up?” I suck my teeth trying to remember the hundreds of things we’ve been told about this place. It could be anything. I shake my head when I can’t think of what she wants me to think about, specifically. “The Arids have a tendency to drive ponies a little crazy with the extremes. Remember what the General told us: a Catalyst Storm just happened.”

It gets me thinking about those things— those “Catalyst Storms”. If memory’s clear, those Storms were always briefed as “Major Enviro-Hazard Phenomena” along with the word “unpredictable”, and a description of “high displacement rates.” I never got a straight answer on that last bit, only that it’s “nothing to worry about.” With what I’ve seen just a while ago, I call bullshit on Command. “Fucking assholes.”

“It’s not their fault. They’re just stressed.”

I give her hoof back. “The only stressed pony I know right now is the Captain. Let’s just find hi—” My shatters when a mare bumps right into me, knocking my helmet off my bag. “Watch it!”

She doesn’t acknowledge my comment and just continues her ungraceful walk, nearly running into Avie the same way she did to me. “Soldier,” Avie tries to get the mare’s attention, “Soldier?” The hobbling mare doesn’t react and just keeps going until she’s out of sight. Avie looks back at me, and I’m not sure what she wants me to say.

I pick up my helmet off the ground and dust off the sand with one of my wings. I look back to Avie and freeze up to see a sunken face behind her. She turns around to see what’s got me tensed up and nearly jumps into me in surprise. This hollow-cheeked mare gives us the same glare as the Engineer, only… more featureless. I don’t know how else to describe this absence in her eyes.

“More of you on the way? It’s an awfully small group to manage an outpost like this.” She comments to us with a wispy voice.

Avie’s words fumble at this mare’s weary voice, “I-I’m sorry–I don’t–”

“You’re here to rotate us out. That’s why you’re here.” She clarifies. Nothing about that mare’s voice tells me she’s confused. She sounds dead sure about it.

I don’t like the way that mare’s gripping the lantern’s handle in her mouth. The way her teeth lock around the thick crooked bail handle felt unnerving to look at. It’s like seeing puzzle pieces fall into place when they’re not part of the same set. “Avie, we need to be someplace.”

“You’re here… to rotate us out,” She says with more force.

I look at her fatigues—at the lapels for any insignia or rank identification, hoping that it’d be enough to use mine to diffuse the situation. I’m not sure what rank she is. Her uniform is devoid of everything and anything necessary for identification. No rank or insignia, but what about clean tears with suspicious dark stains? Which of the dark camo blobs is the one that tells me? Just how far gone is she— if she even is some pegasus of the “flock”? I would ask, but my stomach sinks thinking what kind of attention that question will draw. We don’t even know how many like her are in this outpost with us. I shouldn’t be thinking about that now, and instead act on this mare right now.

I lunge to grapple the lantern mare as she lurches at Avie without warning. She growls and pushes into the hoof and wing I’ve got her by as she screams. “You were supposed to get us out! You were! You w—”

A hard shove sends her fumbling into the dirt, knocking out her lantern’s light. My muscles tense and my wings begin to unfurl slowly as she pulls herself up. She glares at me with bare teeth and flared nostrils; looks like the fall broke her “friend” mask. It doesn’t budge me, but it does make my lungs tighten up. There’s a looming suspense in that maddened expression, telling me… us to leave while we still can. I look over my shoulder quickly, flicking my head to tell Avie it’s our time to go. She catches on and leaves while I keep my front towards the danger, not taking any more attention away from the animal until there’s enough distance between the two of us. Walking backwards is over faster when she trots off in the opposite direction– away from me and Avie. That mare took the suspense with her, and I can breathe a little easier now. My lungs are still so shaky, though.

“Thank you.” She tells me with a tone that’s as soft as her usual wingbeats, or maybe even her feathers. The warmth in those words can be felt easily from where I’m standing. It might as well be one of her hugs. Those thoughts don’t linger for long.

“Fucked.” That's all I can say about it. No other words can accurately describe that mouth full of dull broken daggers hanging in my head like a disturbing portrait on the walls of my mind. It’s something I never asked for, and trying to tear the image down before it settles in begins to make my skin crawl. It’s like a spiteful parasitic emotion that paints a clearer picture now that I’m dead set on trying to not think about the worst. A bitter tang overwhelms my tongue seeing those fangs ooze with warm crimson in my head. Death hangs in my nose as a revolting compliment to the unwanted imagery. It all makes me belch, and the tremors rile my already irritated stomach.

My knees become jelly, and I stumble in place. I feel her wings and her small frame immediately meet my weaker side. She’s to my… two o’clock— to my right, looking into me with worry in her eyes. Her ears are folded into her cap, again.

What do I tell her? How do I tell her that the whole event played differently in my head; that I imagined what would’ve happened– what I thought could have happened, and it meant I couldn’t protect her from something that was a danger the whole time? “I don’t like this place. I don’t like what happened back there.” I finally say shaking my head, disappointed in myself and embarrassed at the fact it’s all I have to say about it.

I don’t know what I’m waiting for, now. The silence settles in with the grainy whistling of blowing sand and chilly young-night wind. I guess I feel lost for words to her answer, or maybe she expected something else out of me. Maybe I know, or maybe I don’t. Who the fuck am I kidding?

“I didn’t like it, either. But Ward, there’s no reason for you to be upset, okay?” Her gentle words stroke my mane.

As comforting as those words are, they don’t make me feel any more at ease with myself. It feels like those words relate to more than just what went on, and they weigh in on everything I’ve held onto up to now. A worthless, troublesome bag of insecurities and worry that will kill anyone who looks too deep. I’ve put up with it for a long time, and I still wonder how long I can keep up with holding it all in for her sake. I won’t put her in danger.

She leans into me a little more, gently, then the whole of her head brushes up my neck. I breathe a sharp breath of cold air, and my chest starts feeling tight. Everything feels hot. My neck feels prickly; my legs are stiff and my wings feel itchy. My eyes won’t stop looking everywhere else but Avie. All my warning bells are ringing in my head with a ferocious vibrato that makes me go numb. “Why don’t I do something? I should know better?!”, are the two most consistent thoughts ringing the loudest— roaring like angry drill sergeants; demanding the answer that will give them every right to tear me apart from the inside.

I do know those answers…

She looks back at me with a smile. A split second later, her smile disappears as her eyes flash like something had hit her. “Oh.” She unfurls a wing and digs her muzzle into her side and pulls out a small worn box in her mouth. My heart jumps when she gently reaches for my hoof and brings it up to level, where the box is gently dropped into my hoofboot’s sole. “I meant to give you these back home. I almost forgot about them now.” She didn’t have to grab my hoof to do it, but she did it anyway. I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel about that…

My attention is on the box now, and my first thought is to hear what’s inside the small thing. It rattles like there are marbles inside, and it’s a sound that gets my dry mouth-watering. I take one more look at the box and make out the cartoonishly saturated green and red borders under the aged grime that coats the wax. I can feel delight welling up inside seeing the caricature of a dapper pony in a bright red suit and polka-dotted bow tie; tipping his large black hat with one hoof and pointing his cane to the title like it’s a major show attraction. It’s ridiculously hard to miss the attention-grabbing font, huge letters, and its accompanying spiky text bubble: “Dandy Pony's: Candy Apple Bites; {NEW!!!} Green Apple.”

I don’t think it’s normal to be producing this much saliva just remembering the flavor; it definitely isn’t normal to be hurting from feeling my mouth gush with anticipation. I don’t want to burn through these, already, but fuck do I want to for that sour-sweet zappy candy flavor.

“How did ya find these?” I ask her after a hard swallow. I’m even surprised I was able to say anything clearly without the cramps making my jaw seize up. I can feel my face turn red or…purple just thinking about how that’d make me look. My question goes unanswered, and my eyes look up from the box. The beaming light in her eyes is impossible to look away from, and neither is the way her fur plumes gently from the V-shape of her suit’s zipper placket. Just thinking about how soft and warm it is… was… I take a deep breath before I get too lost. “Thank ya.”

Her wings flutter. “I just had to keep looking. It wasn't too hard.” I know I should be concerned about this. I should, given what this means— no. I’m playing too much into it. It’s just candy; really, really good one-of-a-kind candy…

I don’t know. There’s an irrelevant feeling that’s growing in the back of my head– something having to do with this candy and something a little more forlorn. Out there, beyond the rampart that surrounds this outpost— somewhere out in the great, bonedry nothing we’ve been forced to call home…

How does candy make me think of hope? Why does it? Hope is just a claptrap— and I don’t have to look far to see what that looks like. Buried alive, but complacent to the cramped living conditions; comrades eager to turn on you for their own benefit; times when home isn’t the place you can feel the safest because the monsters can easily get through the walls when you’re sleeping and unaware. Hope is a placebo, and I know my fair share of those things. It only makes things worse. I don’t want that.

A gentle nudge snaps me back to reality. Avie’s looking right up at me with that familiar, yet watered-down look in her eye. She sighs. “Feeling a little better?” I nod to answer her question while I enjoy a piece of candy.

The conversation ends with that, and we continue on the path. We keep on a little more cautiously through the sandbags, canopies, and reinforced trenches until we finally reach the entrance to the Outpost’s Command Post. There are no guards, only a wooden doorway fixed in place by sandbag walls and a roof of sheet metal. I enter first through the door, and the cold air is eager to rush into the room. Some of the hanging lanterns inside go out shortly after. “Who’s up there?!” A voice shouts from a short way down. “Shut the damn door! You’ll let it in!”

“Lieutenant, calm down!” Another more collected and familiar voice talks over the last one, immediately. “Sound off! Names?!”

“Captain, it’s us!” Avie calls out.

“Aviatrix? Ward?! Get down here–”

“Don’t let the other candles go out, do you hear me?! Shut the damn door!” The cold breeze kicks up and howls around Avie and I. The door slams shut behind us while we make our way down a small square spiral of wooden stairs. There’s only two flights of stairs, and it feels like with every step we take the air gets a bit thicker. It reminds me of the showers back at the bunker; the salty stink of sweat, the humidity; I can almost see a haze enveloping the room at the end of the descent.

The Captain’s there waiting for us, and across from him– on the other side of a large wooden crate doubling as a desk, is who I assume that first voice belonged to. His side of the desk is littered with empty cans of what I assume is foodstuff, and his uniform looks stained with thick fluids glistening off his front and placket. Does this pegasus not know he’s been talking to the Captain? “I expect the two of you to relight those candles when you leave. And don’t fucking take my tinderbox when you do!” The way those words hit me is like a very familiar shove. I don’t hear a leader, but a bully.

“Lieutenant, get a grip,” Our Captain sternly pulls his attention away from Avie and me.

The Pegasus responds by slamming his hoof on his corner of the table-crate, “Captain, you haven’t the slightest clue what just blew through here last night.” As he says that, I notice something between his hooves. It’s a small cube of some sort that he constantly fidgets with. Whatever’s inside shimmers to life for a moment, and then goes dark. It’s hard to see what it is that’s doing that, exactly, in this lighting condition.

There’s a sharp exhale from the Captain, “Don’t condescend me, Lieutenant. You know that’s not our call.”

He shakes his head furiously, breathing heavily, “So we don’t matter then, is it? The General’s got us out here for slaughter or sacrifice? You don’t care for your own kin—from how I see it, Captain. The General doesn’t either, from what it feels like. That whole Flock Ideology crap is just cirrocumulus clouds.”

I’m not sure what The Captain thinks but a big part of me knows how true that statement is. We just die in the dark and behind closed doors compared to them. I can’t say either side is truly enviable.

The Captain shifts his attention towards us while the Lieutenant goes back to fidgeting with the thing in his hooves, “Aviatrix. Ward. You have something to say?”

Avie snaps to a salute as she addresses him. “Captain. The Head Engineer tells us it’s going to be a while.”

“The cause?” He asks.

“An… oversight.” She answers.

The Captain takes a long drag of musty air. I can see the haze curl up and around itself as his breath slowly jets itself from the nostrils. I half expected him to explode, but it never seemed to be in him. Maybe that’s why he’s captain, and from looking at the Lieutenant– and hearing him, too– it’s no wonder.

He doesn’t say anything but only pulls something already on the desk towards him. He puts his hoof to it like a book and beckons me over. When I do, I get a clear view of what it is he’s looking at. It’s an old physical map of the region. The details are few and far between, from the overlapping reference grid to barely discernible colors of regions to railroads and named dots. The Captain’s hoof is pointing right at our current position: “Outpost SE-7.” His hoof then glides several squares to the east– right near a striped area labeled “Gray Zone.” He taps that part of the map twice, “We’re close.”

* * * * * *

Without my forehoof boots, I can feel the talisman in my frogs again. The more I think about this Outpost and its smell, the slower I move my necklace’s rock around in my hooves to feel its soft faces in its rough cut. My quills feel like they’re standing. Somepony’s watching me. I look up, and it’s our Scout’s maroon eyes gawking from across our Vertibuck cabin. My hooves stall as I stare back. “What?”

She double-takes and shakes her head. “Oh, it’s just, you’re smiling. Since when do you smile about anything?”

I almost look at Avie, but the nosey Scout’s got my full attention. I furrow my brow at her. “What’s it to you, Sergeant?”

She waves a hoof, dismissively. “Ah, don’t worry about it. I just— I don’t think any of us have seen you smile. Always thought you had face paralysis or something.”

My brow rises. “What… made ya think that?”

“I don’t know, maybe the food we’re always having to eat?” She says with what sounds like a half-hearted chuckle. What’s so funny? “It’s a bad joke, Staff Sergeant. Trying to lighten the mood.” She breaks eye contact, umming out loud before grabbing Avie’s attention. “So, Aviatrix. Did you and the Staff Sergeant find anything noteworthy out here?”

Avie and I look at each other. I guess we both thought the other would say something about it, at the same time. She looks down at my clasped forehooves, and a pang of embarrassment hits me when she does. Her eyes go back to the Scout. “We did, but it wasn’t anything too unnerving. Just a couple of worried pegasi wondering why we’re here.”

And the nervous wreck of a Lieutenant…

What Avie said is probably the best way to put it. I can’t get those broken teeth out of my mind, and the intrusive thought of what got them that way only prompts me to fidget with my talisman even more.

“This place gives me the fucking creeps. Every pegasus here just stares like we’ve got the blight or something with their glassy eyes and disheveled-ness.” The Scout comments while sweeping her mane to one side of her face. She wipes her brow, then pauses to look at her sleeve. The way her face shifts slightly makes me think she’s growling at whatever’s wrong with what she’s seeing. “Say Doc, can I borrow the sewing needle?”

“You know that’s for emergencies only.” The Doc rejects her request, outright. “I’m not wasting any kind of thread for something like… what is it you want my needle for?” The Scout answers by presenting her sleeve like an offering. I can see what she’s on about: the sleeve definitely opened up where it met her knee. The Doc just pulls away from it. “That’s what I thought. Still not happening.”

THUNK! THUNK!

All of our ears are pulled up. A stillness settles in as we wait for something. What it can be is anyone’s guess, but I’m keeping my carbine by my side and making sure I know where Avie is. Nothing happens after all, and there’s a pensive sigh of relief.

“The Engineer, right?” Our Heavy Gunner spoke up. They, on Scout’s right, look to Avie. “How can you trust her?

“We have to.” Avie answers.

“I thought the engines were in the back of the cabin. Is she trying to listen in?” Scout steps in with a grimace clear on her face.

“You can’t hear through carbon fiber composite like that.” Avie answers her question with her eyes looking up. “She’s probably just trying to check the wiring from the outside; looking for any other problem that can be fixed while she’s at it.”

“Well, I’m sure some of us didn’t fall asleep through the entirety of the mandatory Vertibuck remedial.” The Scout comments aloud with a sigh. “We should've just taken our chances. I don’t like this place.”

“Neither of us do.” I speak up, still keeping most of my attention on the talisman.

“Did anypony notice their own E.F.S. readings while they were looking around? Or am I the only one who’s been seeing red here and there?” She continues on.

“Probably just tech showing its age,” The Heavy responds, “I haven’t seen any with mine. How old is your E.F.S. Spell Matrix?”

“Same age as yours, I’d think.” The Scout slumps back with a hoof to her chin, “You know what? Huh, what are the odds of the Corporates even having more of them?”

Hearing their conversation go back and forth makes me look back and realize I never had my Eyes Forward System toggled on while roaming about the Outpost. I didn’t need to have it on to feel the red in the ambiance and in the silence. The Lantern Mare, the Engineer, the Lieutenant; just thinking about all their quirks, their appearances, and the flavors of desperation in their voices all reinforce the idea of what our Scout may be trying to say. We’ve given these ponies some way out of the shit they went through. We’re out in the middle of nowhere, and we’re on our own. I wouldn’t want to think about it, but circumstances won’t let me ignore it– especially when Avie’s well-being comes to mind.

My thoughts are broken by their conversation, which somehow shifted to the Corporates. “They’ve been dealing with these Storms all their time here, right? Why don’t they do more for us? I mean, we contribute to their stuff going on in their part of the Great Arids. Can’t they do more for us?”

Heavy just bobs his head to the Scout’s questions. “You’d think that, but no. They’re quality lovers, and that’s why the Wonderbolts are always out on assignment with them. Why would they want second rate? Wonderbolts are few; we’re a bit more numerous than them.”

“Exactly. Shouldn’t that make you feel overlooked? What part of “More Stormtroopers than Wonderbolts” don’t the Corporates get? They’d be getting more bang for their buck, right?” Scout continues on with the subject. A pang of validation can be heard in her words and even seen in her eyes.

The Heavy looks unfazed and breathes deeply. “You’re missing the point. There’s more of us than there are Wonderbolts; that means there’s more of us to police our patch of heaven.”

“If you can call this patch of dead dirt and sand a patch of heaven. It’s bullshit.” The Scout’s gaze falls onto me and she calls my attention, “Sergeant Trade Wind, you’re the General’s kid, right? That means you know a bit more about the goings on between the Corporates and the General, right?” Discomfort ties a knot in my stomach from the questions.

One of the cabin doors opens and a gust of cold, sandy air races inside. I brace my carbine when the occurrence paints the image of emaciated pegasi crowding in with broken teeth, skeletal faces, and wild, despairing eyes. A dark shape stretches across what little moonlight shines in from the outside, and the chill I feel in my hooves grows stronger as that shadow grows. Not a word is said when a leg comes into view, and after that the Captain himself. As soon as he closes the door, it’s as if the room just breathed a sigh of relief. I know I did. “Captain.” The title strays from my mind and through an exhale.

He settles in around the small stockpile we’ve made of everything we brought for the mission; from plasma weaponry to combustibles, and ammo packs to medical packs. We’re huddling around it all like a campfire—something that isn’t too far off what is a small mound of travel-sized lifeline essentials. The Captain stares into all of it intently to the point where anyone meeting him now might’ve thought he’d gone blind or dozed off with his eyes open. “This is all we brought?”

“Yes, Captain,” I speak up for the group, then begin to wonder about what he’s done out there. “Did ya square away things with the Engineer ?”

“She’s with us, and will help out however she can to the best of her abilities.” He answers. I guess Scout’s eating her words, then. “Still, we’re behind schedule and need to move in spite of our current predicament. I thought about it while I was working things out with the Engineer, we’re going to need a skeleton crew to watch over the old girl.” He pauses for breath and looks at Avie. “Aviatrix, you’re the better flier out of all of us. We’re going to need you here until she’s ready.”

His sentence doesn’t settle with me, and neither does Avie’s nod. The thought of just leaving her here with a shaky ally just isn’t enough of a counter-argument for me to be fine with this. I wait until The Captain says more after that—another name-call at least, but it never comes as The Captain begins going on about how equipped we should leave her.

“I volunteer as the plus one.” I nearly shout as these thoughts just begin to get louder in my head and threaten to make me pop. My hooves clasp the talisman a little tighter than usual. “Captain, ya can’t just leave… Aviatrix out here with these pegasi. What if the EFS isn’t lying, and we’re leaving her to fuckin’ wolves in sheep's clothing?”

The Captain holds his gaze on me, and I feel a lingering sense of success that I made my case of keeping Avie safe. “Denied.” He tells me simply. What? Is he serious?

“It’s a mistake, Captain!” It’s a struggle to keep my tone from rising. I clear my throat and take a deep breath. “Four Pegasi are enough for the mission– it’s more than enough.”

“It won’t be.” He tells me immediately after I finish my sentence. “This is Search, Retrieval, and Rescue, Ward. We know where we need to go, but remember the circumstances that lead to where we all are right now— us and those of us out there waiting for us. We’re going to need to cover a lot of ground.”

My wings ruffle at my sides and I snort at the situation. “She’s gonna be alone, Captain—”

“You’ve got two minutes to gather your things.” His eyes peer into me. When I open my mouth, he tilts his head at me as if he wants me to challenge him. “We’re not doing this, Sergeant. One more word, and its insubordination. You’ve now got one minute—I will not repeat myself.”

I hold my eyes on him for a while longer, then look at the rest of the crew. The Heavy and Scout just look on as if I’ve threatened murder. The Medic just looks on with a typical cold disposition. And Avie… her ears are folded into her flight cap.

I can’t be the only one seeing what’s wrong here. Why am I the only one? Just… why?

* * * * * *

I didn’t want the silence to follow us from the Outpost. The further the distance between Avie and myself, the more it just taunts me. If something happens, I won’t be able to hear it. If she screams, how will I know? If my heart isn’t so loud from the weights upon weights it’s enduring; if my swallowing wasn’t so hard, or my breathing even harder, maybe I’d be able to hear her then. To hell with the rushing altitude winds, to my heartbeat in my ears, and to the quiet static in my headgear; all of it.

Eight kilometers away from the Outpost—away from Avie and that much closer to the Gray Zone, we find it: the great crack in the earth where our objective is. From up here, I can’t see what's in that gaping crevasse; I can’t see the bottom, even with the moonlight. If anything, the light just makes it all much more prominent— like a scar from long ago. Just how far does it go?

“Follow my lead, and stay close. We don’t know what to expect.” The Captain instructs us as he dives into it from our current height with a controlled fall. As I’m the second in command of this group, I follow immediately after— wings spread and falling just as the Captain did. The rest of the team follow.

Six seconds later, our hooves touch the gritty ground. Our weapons are primed, the Low-Light Optic Function in our helmets filter out the dark with an orange glow, and we take a minute to scan our surroundings before we continue with our objective. I make my ears focus on every small noise and every gust of wind that blows through here. The hardest part is trying to filter out the soothing power hum of my plasma carbine. In the stillness, there’s nothing outwardly concerning. No suspicious activity or anything out of the ordinary; just bending walls reaching up into the sky and seem to get narrower and narrower, further and further away from where I stand.

My radio feed crackles to life. The first voice is a mare, our Scout. “Clear south.”

Immediately after her, the Heavy. “Clear up.”

“Clear north. We’re all alone down here.” I had the need to speak my mind. Something isn’t sitting right with my stomach; it’s a familiar feeling that comes with telling bullshit to those who don’t deserve it. There’s no reason for me to be lying, not in a place like this. So why am I feeling this way? Why won’t it go away? Why won’t my eyes peel away from the dark path in front of me?

Wait… is that—

A horrible, frightening squeal came into my ears to break my thoughts. I nearly threw my helmet off my head in frustration at the signal quality. It’s the Captain’s voice that mellows out the squealing in my ears and breaks through the small feelings of tinnitus. “Ward, fall in. We’re waiting on you.”

I groan and shake my head before giving an answer. “Right. On my way.” As I turn, my wings rustle with the unease I feel lurching up on me, threatening to twist my head violently in a hundred and eighty degrees; telling me to not look away from the nothing staring right back at me. Get a fucking grip… Not even mentally slapping myself is helping.

As I meet up with the team who huddle in a half-circle, I can feel the Captain’s eyes on me through two layers of reinforced plastic visor— my own and his. “Something the matter, Sergeant?” he asks. There’s no reason to bring up the concerns I brought with me that involved leaving Avie behind. What else should I tell him? That I saw nothing? That I had another one of those “hunch episodes”? I don’t know, I feel like telling him that it’s nothing just isn’t convincing.

“It’s fucking cold.” I tell him, despite being used to the temperature.

There’s a slight jerk in his figure, maybe a silent laugh? “It always is at night, isn’t it? Nothing to complain about, really—we’re weatherproof horses by nature. You all know that...” Yeah. Yeah, we all know that. It’s just a shiny plus one for the Pegasus race according to the stupid propaganda. He quickly steers the subject back to the matter at hoof with a quick throat-clearing, “We’re at the objective sight, and now we search and rescue. According to our briefing, the package is priority number 1. If we find it, odds are we’ll find our missing team.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard, we’ve only got two directions to look.” The Scout quips about the order, and then lets out a long sigh, “What are the odds of them having buried it? How much sand are we going to have to comb through? Any way we can more accurately find it without spending a whole night looking?”

“As long as it takes.” The Captain says simply. “If they turned on the encrypted tracker, we’ll find it. If not…” he takes a long, probably contemplative pause before bringing the subject back to the forefront of the situation. “... well, we’ll find it. So fan out and start looking. It can’t be far, so sound off when you do find something of note. Keep comms open and weapons at the ready. Understood?”

“Sir.” The entirety of the team acknowledges and disperses with caution. I turn on my helmet-mounted flashlight alongside my L.L.O. for an extra field of view. It’s still off-putting that I can’t see as far ahead in the canyon as I want. The walls look like they’re inching closer to one another until the moonlight can’t illuminate anything ahead of me anymore. There’s nothing but the dark ahead. How deep does this crack go? The closer I get to that unyielding darkness, the slower my pace gets; the tenser my muscles become; the smaller my steps, and the harder the knot in my stomach twists until it snaps.

There’s something there…

My legs stop moving, and I’m at a complete halt. The terrible unease in my stomach that I’ve been carrying changes into a gnawing dread. My eyes can’t stop searching the dark, and I can’t turn away. I shouldn’t turn away, or break my line of sight. If I do, I’ll regret it. These feelings and thoughts won’t leave me alone. They only fill my head with terrible thoughts and depictions from the cautionary tales of the deep recesses of this dust bowl.

There’s something in there, and it’s looking right at me. The dark bends and twists in strange, rigid ways around this thing. It’s just a trick of the light, or my eyes trying to make sense of the nothing, but then those eerie sockets spark a ghostly aura. A powerful tremor of fear makes me stumble backward, then a headache rakes forward from the back of my head to dig its claws into my eyes. Just as they close from the pain I hear raspy breathing. It’s not from my lungs trying to keep up with my hastening heart, because I hear it over my short, mousy bursts of breath from inside my own helmet.

“… Hello.”

My rapid breathing robs me of a scream. I throw off my helmet with my eyes still shut and my hooves desperately clasping my head. That was a voice— not my voice— inside my own helmet. It wasn’t grainy, or electric— it was alive, labored, and gravely sharing my own headspace inside my own fucking helmet! My mane crawls at the revelation; it hurts to have so much hair stand up all at once.

I open my eyes slowly, trying to keep my thoughts and hooves locked on my carbine. Once I feel the safety flip off, my eyes snap open completely to face that dark corridor ahead of me and the same, bending canyon walls that give it its shape. There’s nothing there… Nothing there at all. It still doesn’t warrant me dropping my guard completely. With my gun pointed down that way, I look for where I think my helmet is and find it staring up at me while it’s cradled in the sand. There’s something next to it, and it’s looking at me, too. After one more glance down the canyon, I angle my helmet till the headlamp shows me what’s next to it. Amid the sparkly-as-the-stars sand is something sleek; a familiar honeycomb pattern. Is that… I carve the sand around it to see if there’s more to it, and I keep carving as it keeps showing more of itself. “Son of a bitch…” I whisper under my breath, realizing what it is.

Any Enclave soldier can recognize those honeycomb lenses and onyx black plating. Staring up at me is a quarter of an Enclave-issue Power Armor Helmet. The first piece of evidence since we’ve shown up. I keep on digging in the hope of finding it all there. The cheek plate’s visible, now; the right ear, too. It might be completely intact, and that can mean it still has its black tape. I know the Captain will want to know if it has it, as soon as I get him on the coms.

Scraping and scraping, tracing the silhouette of the helmet; I notice it’s lopsided into the ground somewhat. I wiggle it to see how deep in the sand it is, but it comes out fairly easily to my surprise and utter shock. “Fuck…” It’s only half a helmet. The entire left side of it is gone, the respirator is missing; it can't even be called a helmet, anymore. That damage is extensive, and it’s not a clean cut, either; the edge of the metal looks angry and jagged like something blew up from the inside of it. I shudder to think what might’ve happened.

The black tape… seeing the mess of wires sticking out from underneath like guts… I don’t think there’s a black tape left— or even one that isn’t damaged or corrupted to be remotely useful. I turn it over—

Pressure booms in my chest, so fast and so sudden, that I lose my grip on the mask. Tremors run through me like a chain reaction, but the hoof that just held it shakes harder than the rest of me. Holding onto it— to try to control it— only makes it worse.

The color around me dulls and grays out, but the glow behind that mask in the sand remains. It takes it all in greedily, pulsing like a galvanized heart; spreading like a vile fungus along the inside of the mask's face; filling my ears with sounds like sifting, crackling glass...

The mask landed face-first into the sand when I dropped it. It wanted to show me; the whole of its being becomes exhumed by the scaly glass carpet of cancerous crystal rooting itself into the metal and consuming it from the inside out! The mask starts to shift in the sand like a writhing thing going through agony!

I can see them in my head. The mask— who it belonged to, being struck down by something I can’t see. My imagination shows those claw marks flare up with that glow as it crawls into the cracks of their armor— into their wounds. Their screams— how they writhed in agony as The Curse drank their blood, mauled their organs, and became their very sanity. Their cries for help devolve into unnatural, manic, glassy noises as the Curse Crystals burst from their gut, tear through their armor like paper from the inside, and distort the pony they once were—

‘We can never help them… we never could… We can only save ourselves, and save them by sparing them of their Affliction…’ It’s the rules, and it’s too late. Whoever they were— the Pegasus who owned the mask was their face. They tore their own face off to try and save themselves from a doomed existence.

They left it here when they should’ve burned it, too! The mask is overgrown; the Curse Crystals are wearing it. It’s… infected! It’s afflicted! The Curse got here first!

I got too close! I-I fucking touched it!

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I’ve gone deaf from how hard the warning bells in my head rung, and it’s like I can feel The Curse’s influence eating through that boot like liquid plasma. I throw the hoof boot that touched the mask as far away from me as I can, snatch my headwear, slap it on, and raise the coms as fast as I can while the crystals spread along the sand. It’s too hard to coordinate these tiny movements with my hooves with the way my body’s still shaking. I can’t get a grip on my breathing while watching that blight creep from the mask in all directions. I’d turn my back, but the crest on my hairs pleaded for me to keep my eyes on it. If I turn away, it’s like I’ll regret it! Those feelings have my focus shift between the mask and the darkness ahead.

“C-Captain…” I try raising him, but my voice is too shaky. One more time…“C-Captain!” My words are louder, but there’s only static listening to me. Stupid fucking waves! Work! “Captain the Curse! The Curse– it’s here! Captain?! Captain?!” More static and whining sounds that don’t help me any. Stupid tech– why now?!

What should I do?! I thought somepony would’ve heard me with how loud I’m being— Where is anyone?! Did they go deeper into the other side of the canyon? Am I the only one here?! ‘Don’t turn around’ I hear myself. ‘Don’t turn around. Don’t turn around. Don’t–’

I have no choice; it’s either make a break for it now or collapse from the mountain of panic building! I snap back around, and my heart sinks to see what’s behind me isn’t the slot canyon, but complete darkness staring right back at me.

No…

I look up from where I stand, the starry slit above is completely gone. Shining a headlamp up there or anywhere around me shows me nothing. The dark doesn’t give an inch to the light from my headlamp, and my L.L.O. can’t peel it away, either. It’s as if I’m looking into nothing— no, no this is bullshit! When did this happen? How long have I been displaced? Why didn’t I notice?! "No! No! Dammit! Dammit– fuck!!!” Eerily my words bounce back and forth with inconsistency from different angles– some close, some far away, above and below.

My radio perks up slowly. The white noise and the whirring are leveling out into some form of stability. It gives hope that a signal can be reached, but I stop myself from fiddling with it. I reach for the killswitch, knowing damn well how pointless it is to try. “CHHHHHHHHrrrrriiiii— No-rrerrreccchhhhHH” I hesitate, did I hear a mare just now? It sounds like someone I know– no. No, no, it’s just my ears making sense of the nonsense. “Riiiiiii—e–rrrrrrrr—t’s there— rrrraaarrroooo—so real—rrraarriii—” It cuts out. Toggling the controls doesn’t stir it. I know what it means… ‘A hungry thing’... That’s how they describe The Curse, and it ate my radio…

What happens now? What can I do? All these questions flood my mind one after another, and they won’t stop. My heart is pounding as I keep looking around myself over and over, trying to look for something. Anything. Anyone! I can’t see my own body, not even the hoof I’m waving in front of my face. I can notice the reinforced glass that makes up my plasma shroud. It’s definitely on—I can make out the green plasma glow clearly at my side, but the light doesn’t give anything, either; just like my lamp and my optics. There’s something else, and it’s coming from that curse-rotted helmet. It’s a sickly, cold, iridescent growth spread across the floor like a moss, twinkling and filling the void with that glassy sound. I can see something strange– like an aura– wisp and curl from the glow it emits into the air, and it’s unnerving to see the dark void curl with it; sometimes mixing, and sometimes fighting. Terror, discomfort, all these things scream at me to stay far away from it.

My ears twitch and my feather quills stand on end. Every fiber in my body is screaming through the paralyzing chill coming over me. It’s happening again. There’s something there, and I can’t see it. I pull up the helmet’s integrated target identifier as quickly as I can. The HUD’s become spasmodic, glitchy, and the T.I. 's spell matrix— in the times I can see it clearly— is reading red whichever way I turn. It’s confused… It’s dying, too…

Stop thinking about it!

There’s a squawk in my ear that makes my head spin. I fall over from losing my balance, and all I hear is ringing and swelling static. It’s that mare voice again, bending the sounds to make coherent phrases that make me want to vomit. “Riiiiiii—e–rrrrrrrr—’most there — rrrraaarrroooo—almost—rrraarriii—” I frantically try to turn it off, but it already is. Panic takes hold of my hoof as I try to fix this stupid machine by pounding it, not even caring how much worse it makes me feel. “Errrrrrr—n’t—rrreeeaaaa—going—rrarreeeiii—here–rrrrrrr— something he—”

“Shut up!” I scream at the static and pound harder and harder at the frequency knob. My eyes are burning, watering, swelling; too much to keep them open, anymore.

“Reeeraarrrr— path— reerreaarrreee— lost—wrrrrrerrrrr—here—’’

I can’t take the misery anymore. Frantically, haphazardly, I throw my helmet off and away from me while screaming into the void. “SHUT UP!” It vanishes, and I don’t hear it hit anything. Regret roots itself into me, and forces me on my knees. I just threw away my lifeline to my squad; to the outside… to Avie…

Avie… “DAMN IT!” There is no one to hear it. It just echoes back at me again, and again, and again. I fight the pain in my eyes and grab my carbine, fuming with frustration, and fire into the void indiscriminately. The plasma bolts fizzle out and die before they even fly an inch from the barrel. Sickly-sounding hums come from my carbine, and the toxic green light flickers and dies. Panic and confusion crushes my heart like two bricks. I thought closed systems were protected from the sapping!

I fumble along my body to feel for the spare microspark batteries, find them, pull one from its strap pocket and hold it in my mouth as I throw away the dead one in the gun’s battery mount. The new spark battery is in and the gun charges up when I engage it, my hopes rise with the hum and die just as quickly. The glow didn’t come back, and the gun fizzles out, again.

My helmet’s internal lighting is beginning to flicker and grow weak. I clasp my head, thinking it’s what will keep it safe. It’s all around me– just beyond the lenses looking in. Watching me. Waiting. Curious about how long I can hold onto my dying light. Don’t take it away from me… Don’t take this away from me!

The static is restless. It wants me to hear the nonsense it’s producing. I’m brought to my knees as the HUD lights go off like desperate fireflies in my helmet.

Why… why…why why why why!!! The more I ask the question, the more I can’t stop saying it. The more the word bounces in my head the more the static drowns out my own thoughts and threatens to split my head open. I can’t hear myself think anymore. I can’t see anything anymore. I can’t rely on this stupid Enclave tech anymore. The static in my head… “SHUT UP!!!!”

My eyes water up and sting. It’s like my own tears are boiling the moment they come out and coat my eyes. I claw and rub at them ferociously. The burning is too intense like my eyes are melting in their sockets. Every time I rub at them— every time they blink, shapes begin to dance in the dark. The more I rub them, the more I realize that all but one change in shape and position; all but one gets closer and closer the more I blink. The closer it gets, the tighter the knot in my stomach paralyzes me with discomfort and fear. It’s not my mind or my eyes, anymore– It’s right in front of me, now. I don’t know how I can see it, but it’s there— a dark…thing that stands out from the void around me. The more I try to focus and make it out, the clearer it makes itself out to be; the clearer it is, the more uncomfortable it makes me. The only thing that isn’t a vague shape or a blur, is that curse-rotted Enclave helmet at my eye level. The single orange lens blinks open– revealing one tiny, but piercing dot of dark light. It thrusts a part of itself into me, and my breathing stalls to a suffocating halt. I fall back and then…

* * * * * *

I jolt upright, screaming bloody murder. I can’t stop, and trying only makes me scream harder and harder until my throat is raw and my lungs burn from the lack of air in them. My forelegs pull themselves into me for support as my chest feels like it’s collapsing and the volume in my voice begins to die and become a raspy wheeze. My throat tightens from the strain and there’s no air left in me. My chest burns, then it explodes, forcing cold air into my lungs until I’m gulping all of it in as much as I’m letting it out. It doesn’t help my raw throat, the stinging forces me to get control of my shaky breath. “Calm down…” I mouth to myself, rocking back and forth. “Calm down… Calm down…”

My body still rattles from the chill in the air brought on by my damp fur, and the lingering terror in my bones. The static in my head is gone. My body creaks with lethargy and sore muscles, like I had been running, flying, and given fair beating in training. With the sweat heavy on my brow, I’d think I did if my eyes didn’t have that ‘just-woke-up’ fatigue and burning. Only it isn’t. “They’re just dreams…” I tell myself in the most motherly voice I can. I bury my swollen eyes into my hooves and press them hard into the frogs. “It was all just a bad dream. It was all just…”

I’ve always told myself these things. It’s always the same, in the end. The words are numb and they do little to make me feel any better, but I still hold onto the hollowest of hope that they’d somehow still make it all go away. It’s always just— it always feels too real for a fever nightmare. How many times have I been there? I’ve lost count.

I peel my eyes back with my hooves like it’d loosen the weight on them, then my ears twitch to an unfamiliar sound. I pull my hooves back and there the sound is again. I blink to clear the blurry vision. I can see my hooves as vague dark shapes, but everything else is just a blinding white nothing. They come into focus, my stomach sinks and my senses blare in alarm to see shackles and a chain running through and down the middle of them. “Wait…” I say as a lump in my throat begins to lump up, and my limbs become uncomfortably tingly again. “Wait, wait, wait—what the fuck?!”

I yank my hooves up in the air to get a clear look at what I’m seeing. The length of it is running through my bed from under the sheets. I throw the damp cover off me to see that the length of the chain runs off the side of the bed and into some hole in the very white ground. I can see the hole clearly… huh? I look up from the hole to see what’s around me. It’s still a great white nothing. I blink quickly, then harder when the scene doesn’t change. I rub them the same way and nothing changes. I’d think I’ve gone blind, but I can still see the chains and myself in them. This can’t be real; it couldn’t be real. This is another dream—it has to be. My head won’t stop shaking, as if it’s denying what I’m saying all on its own. “It has to be a dream!” I scream when my thoughts just aren't making me feel any better.

I yank at the chain, then try using my wings when I realize there’s more slack to it. My wings feel stuck—they just won’t open! I try to get a good look at them, but I can’t see any of my blue feathers. I feel them struggling at my sides. I look there, too, and don’t find my fatigues but a strap harness around my waist. Now my heart is in my throat, and the tingling becomes too much for me to sit still. I jolt off my bed and tighten the slack on the chain. I yank hard, trying my best to get free. My knees scream from the stress of trying to break them. I claw at my harness but get nowhere. While I did so, I realized my necklace had vanished from where it always was. The weight of the realization makes my guts want to fall out of me. My hooves begin to shake when I don’t feel its cord around my neck.

“No! No!” I forget the chain and the harness, the necklace has my full desperate attention. I search all around me, around the bed. I throw everything off to scatter the pillows, the bedsheets, and the mattress. I try flipping the bed frame, but it won’t budge. I want my talisman; I want it to give me my talisman. My forelegs burn from the strain, I try to get a better grip using my heels. The edge of the frame digs into them, I begin to scream as my strength and pain tolerance reach their limit. Even at my best, I just couldn’t. I clench my teeth, growl at the stupid thing, and buck at it until either my hind hooves break or the tremors sap what leg strength I have left. The weight got harder and harder until my hooves were becoming too heavy, too numb, and too painful to use. The air makes my throat raw, it feels like I’m choking. I look back at it, all of it, by now I should’ve found something to tell me it’s still here. It doesn’t tell me anything at all. “No! No! NO! NO!”

How could I have lost it? Where did it go?! Where is it?! Where are you?!Mother...

I forget how to stand and fall on my bare rump. Breathing becomes like taking air through an ever-shrinking pinhole. The inside of my head is like clouds, and my ribcage is sore from my heart beating it down from the inside. My nostrils, eyes, and throat are on fire. My mouth is dry, and my vision gets fuzzier and wet. I can’t– I can’t–

Everything’s too heavy for me to keep standing. It’s too cold for my fur. I curl up on the floor, trying to emulate the warmth I crave. It doesn’t help. It just doesn’t…

I want to feel glad that this is all a fucking night terror; that the stress was just the nightmare, and the talisman is with me and hugging me close. That Avie… that she’s there waking me up, waiting for me.

Please…