"Director Tiedemann has updated your locator", is what VANDAL had heard when he walked through the door. He was still recovering from the encounter with the massive thing in the previous room. VANDAL was limping, he was sure he had broken bones. "No, not sure... I know!", he said to himself. He found it harder to breath. He was sure he had broken bones in lots of places. He was sure that they were his arm, leg, collar bone, and his right ribs. He also felt light headed, and nauseous, "I probably have a concussion.", he thought. He couldn't move, any further, so he sat down against the wall, and rested. He fell asleep.

He found himself stuck in a dark room, with dimly lit lights. He was stuck in something that he couldn't see, it was invisible. He also felt himself constricted by some sort of invisible cold dark thing, that he still couldn't see; paralyzed. He could still move his head though, and when he looked around, he saw ponies everywhere, coming towards him, but they weren't getting any closer. While he was looking around, he saw visions of someone else battling Necromorphs, and he could easily tell it was a guy. He noticed this person was surrounded by Necromrphs, they were everywhere around him. But no matter where VANDAL turned his head, he saw different visions of this person battling these people turned monsters. No matter how many he saw surrounding this guy, however, he noticed that this man was not faltering a single bit. When they got too close for comfort, he didn't shoot, or use a Plasma Saw, but swung his hands and weapon at them violently, knocking them back. And when he saw one calling towards this man, he could easily hear him curse out the Necromorph as he shoved all his body weight into this monster with his foot.

Suddenly, VANDAL heard someone talking, a sort of light, yet firm voice say, "So, it appears you ran into a problem, much like me." The owner of this voice came towards him through the darkness, and he could see his face now. He had a round face with a short haircut, and a dark scruff on his face. He was wearing an engineers' suit; dark, coarse material, and his armor plates were white, with some blood spatter.

"The only difference is, that you're dealing with something else.", he continued. They look a lot like–" "Let me guess, you were going to say ponies?"

"Exactly!" "Well, they are! Who are you?"

This person said, "I'm Isaac Clarke.", VANDAL had heard of this person. He remembered a while back before the carnage of this, he had heard secret news about a man named Isaac Clarke who had single-handedly cleared out the USG Ishimura and hurled an object known as the Red Marker back onto Aegis VII, destroying the Necromorph threat, or so everybody thought.

It turned out that Waves from the destroyed marker caused dead ponies on Earth to become reanimated, and they started killing people, growing appendages and major resistance to bullets. Scientists had no choice but to launch them off into space, in hopes that they would die from suffocation.

VANDAL then said, "I've heard about you. You're the person who completely wiped the Ishimura clean of Necromorphs, and sent a marker back to Aegis VII." "That's right, but since then, I've been locked in cryo storage, and I'm starting to forget what happened. I don't even remember why I volunteered to go there in the first place. All I know is that since then, I've been fucking going crazy, and I'm locked in my own world. Now, I believe that you haven't told me your name.", Isaac said.

"Just call me VANDAL." "By the voices what's up with the voice filter. It appears that whatever you did, you didn't want people to know who you are." VANDAL said, "Yes, I was selected by the Unitologists for a secret mission to cut off communications to certain parts of the Sprawl, but it turns out that it let the ponies loose." Isaac stood there for a moment, before saying to VANDAL, "Damn Unitologist bastards! Well, have you come into contact with a marker? They fuck your mind up! You start seeing the most fucked up shit you could never imagine." "Does it matter? What does matter is that I have been seeing shit lately! Like I was recently attacked by a Necromorph, but it disappeared out of thin air! How the fuck do you explain that?" "Well then welcome to my world." Isaac started to walk away, and he returned to the darkness where he came.

VANDAL finally was free to move, and the ponies started to advance towards him. He completely forgot they were there. The last thing he noticed was that he didn't have any of his weapons. He heard Isaac's voice in his head, saying, "Hey, VANDAL, that's it right? Listen to me, you're not armed it seems, so you'll have to take 'em out with your fists! What are you doing? Don't just stand there, kill them!" VANDAL immediatley followed his "orders", punching the ponies until they were down. He continued on with Isaac saying, "Now, stomp on them with everything you've got!" He listened, and with no less with four stomps, he killed one of the ponies on the ground. "Nice Work!"

Then, as he did the same with two other ponies, he saw lights flicker on in the room. He noticed that he was in some room that had an adjustable-tilt gurney in the middle; the one that VANDAL deduced was the one he was strapped in. He took a second to let the scenery soak in. There were bodies all over the room, covered in blood, ripped in half. What bothered him the most was the person that was behind a glass window, most likely the person running diagnostics and checking the vital signs of patients.

This person was stuck in the small room with nothing to use as a weapon. He was beating on the door, screaming in fear. VANDAL didn't know why until he noticed the Lurker in the corner, with its tentacles raised. Within a matter of seconds, the man's left hand was stuck to the door, and he screamed in agonizing pain. He continued beating on the door with his other hand, and the Lurker shot another barb into his other hand. At this time VANDAL realized that it was already too late, as the third and final barb was shot directly into the man's head. At this sight, he cringed, and he thought he even heard the man's skull crunch as it was penetrated.

Blood flew all over the room when this happened, especially on the floor and wall not far behind the man who was shot. All that VANDAL could do was watch in disgust, as he thought, "Holy shit! I never knew that they could be that fucking deadly!" Even though his vision was somewhat obscured by the blood spatter, he could see the thing crawl up the wall and into a vent, and a few moments later, he heard the sounds of it in the wall, crawling down the sides, and he followed the sound to a floor vent, when it suddenly became quiet. He stood there for a moment, and said, "Fuck, I don't have any weapons to defend myself! I'd probably be best off if I started running."

Just as he turned around, he heard the Lurker jump out of the vent, and come rushing towards him. He turned his head to see what was going on, and as he did, it stopped. "SHIT!! I better find something to defend myself, fast!" As he looked around, he noticed that there was an emergency room variant of the Plasma Cutter connected to an arm above the gurney. When he turned to run towards the center of the room, he heard the sound of something flying directly behind his head. Luckily, just as he made it to the operating platform, he had something to take cover behind. As he did so, he noticed some operating tools on the floor next to him. An idea came to mind. The plan that came up shortly thereafter was one that was great, since he had cover, and something to use as projectiles. "I'll just pop my head out of cover for a moment, and throw an operating knife at its head. If I hit it, I'll be safe for some time.", He thought.

He readied himself for the fight, fight as he lifted a kind with his kinesis. He popped his head out of cover, and threw the knife at the Lurker, missing. Take two, he lifted another knife, and threw again, this time landing a direct shot in the necromorph's eye. "Perfect" This bought him just enough time to disconnect it from the arm, and he made some modifications to the Cutter, making it viable for use in combat situations. as It was a good thing that he also had some ammo on him, so he loaded his makeshift Plasma Cutter and leaned out from behind the gurney, shooting the Lurker as it finally was over the bad hit it took. He had cut off only one tentacle, tentacles then it died. Just then, his vision started fading, and he found himself leaving the room he was in.

When VANDAL woke up, he instantly felt a sharp pain in his side. He remembered the fight he had recently had with the giant pony that nearly took him out for good. With this thought, he looked down at the diagnostic display that stuck out from the chest in his RIG. When he saw the time, he noticed that approximately five hours had passed since the encounter. "Damn, I can't believe I was out for that long.", is what he said. He got up, and noticed that he didn't hurt as much as when he fell asleep. When he ran a diagnostic of what his RIG was doing, his suit told him that he had sustained multiple injuries in his ribs and a broken collar bone, but they had healed in a very short amount of time, thanks to the new technology that had been inserted into RIGs, in order to help heal the user faster. "Well, that's great. Looks like the suit's doing its job correctly."

He continued with his mission, and accessed his locator to figure out where he was going. He turned to his right and walked down the short path, going through the door and walking down a big hallway, which had a big area to the left, which was meant for something, there were rails on the ceiling, and the floor, so he assumed that it was meant for trams. Just then, he had another objective, to navigate to the other side of the zero-g tank. "Oh great, Zero Gravity. Just what I need."

VANDAL was expecting some ponies, or necromorphs even, to be somewhere in the tank, just waiting for him. When he opened the door, a little speaker made a noise just loud enough to hear. He could easily hear this speaker say, "Warning! Now entering zero gravity area!" To his surprise, there were no enemies. He let out a sigh of relief. "Guess I'm safe for now."

He entered, and saw some stuff floating around everywhere, from debris, to boxes. VANDAL activated his suit's Zero-G feature, which set up a crosshair right in front of his eyes on the visor of his helmet. With this, the lights in the protective visor turn off, and tell LED lights turned on, one each on the side of his helmet, and the crosshair brightened up too. With this, it always let him know if the place he was aiming was safe to jump to. If it was, the crosshair would turn green. If not, red. He took a deep breath, and started breathing deeply. He thought, "Alright, let's do this."

After a few moments, he jumped, and he automatically was oriented to land on the platform safely. He ran around the band that was the walking path of the tank. At the top, he found a power node. He was lined up perfectly for his next jump. This time, he didn't hesitate, and he jumped onto the platform on the other side of the tank. He opened the door, and left the tank. He had access to the locator again. When the locator became available, the next objective came too. He had to go to Service Reservoir B.

The room he was in was like the one where he fought the giant pony. He said to himself, "Ugh, that fight was painful! I'm lucky I made it out alive!" He was feeling pain now, from his wounds. "I just want to go home." There were boilers and furnaces lined up against the walls. And the room was extremely wide, and deep. He made it to the other side with no problems, until he reached the door. "Initiating Lockdown Sequence."

"OH COME ON!" He really didn't feel like dealing with ponies right now. He had enough. And he swore to himself that if he saw another one he would- his thoughts were interrupted when he saw the necromorphs coming out. Slashers and Exploders and more Slashers. Great, now he had to deal with necromorphs. Of all the things, it had to be necromorphs.

VANDAL instantly lost it, it and he just went on a rampage slicing off arms and legs, swinging his arms violently when they were too close. While he managed to hold them off, there were still more coming out of the vents. At one point, a bat looking creature came down from above to attack him. VANDAL just raised up the Line Gun and sliced right through it with one shot. Then, a pony appeared. A pale yellow one with a pink mane, this one resembled the bat like creature. With a long appendage that had a sharp point at the end, that stuck out of its head, this jumped onto a dead body in the corner. It stuck this appendage into the head, and turned it into a necromorph. That was it, VANDAL crossed his line, and started shooting it, screaming, "DIE! YOU FUCKING MONSTER, JUST FUCKING DIE! AHHHH!" He used the Line Gun and cut off all four limbs with one shot. "NOBODY FUCKS WITH ME!" He was exhausted, and he was done, for he cleaned up the area in not even five minutes. There was blood all over the place, on VANDAL, on the floor, and against the walls. There were puddles of blood on the floor; thick, sticky, red blood. VANDAL could barely see out of his helmet, the blood covered him from head to toe.

He just walked away, nothing to say, no thoughts crossing his mind. He was empty inside. He even felt like crying, this shit was getting old. Fast. He remembered a song he heard, one that was over four centuries old. This song, he remembered, was called "From Can to Can't". He started singing the chorus:

"I know, what's wrong
God, could complicate everything
I know, you're gone, gone, gone
This is where, I will draw
The Line."

Author's Note

Here's the song that VANDAL was singing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?nomobile=1&v=d2GCp8vs168