Biopsyoid

In a black room with no shape the filly told she was named Flow lay under a high powered floodlight of brilliant gold, as vengeful and ever present as the eye of God bearing down its wrath on a sinner; and were God a sky-bound being watching the entirety of the world or the echoing metallic voice from the speaker above that so often boasted such a title, she knew for sure that God was not on her side. Her body, the only form present with grace to release the oppressive light boring into it from above into the rest of the room, did so in vain as it was plucked from the air before returning with any details of an edge. The ring projected on the ground marked the edge of her world as a shackle – made of something far too hard for her to break, yet soft and dulled at the edges so it did not damage her skin in its permanent stay – pulled her back inwards by a fibre cable that disappeared downwards into a hole at the centre.

It was the psyoid gene in Flow’s body that called The God Of The Facility to take a vested interest in her personally; the mind contained within serving only as a second interface by which to access it. She knew this because they told her. They said it was important she knew, because without purpose she would fall into apathy, and they needed her alert so she could be useful. They cited an experiment on puppies in which a continued dose of electric shocks were administered and after time, even given an easy escape from the pain they would not care to take it. God had a number of voices; usually stallion but a mare on occasion. God knew many words, but chose most often to use the pointed ones when addressing her – slicing with them, into her mind in unfaltering surgical precision. They were playing a long game.

Memories faded away at a certain point back – time holding no value in a place with no change and thoughts holding no value to a creature whose motives only existed as a result of force. What her mind did retain were thoughts infused in her by the ones with the strength to keep them there. Day after day, sediment built up and set as hard as diamond, affirming the knowledge and perspective They had chosen for her. The echo of voices could only be shut out for so long before her will faltered. She knew of the outside world and the ponies that lived there; the ponies she was told repeatedly she was so brave for helping and that would thank and accept her for it one day. A network of millions depended on her help. She was special.

Her existence in the home she was given was not entirely without interruption. She would notice a change in the taste of the air every so often and soon after she would fall asleep. Sometimes she woke up again in the same place with no evidence the event had occurred other than the rejuvenation she could feel inside her body. Other times she would awake to find her home had been changed. She never panicked at this, because she knew things would always return to normal when whatever They asked her to do was complete. Puzzles of all design which she knew to be Their work, would beseech her to solve them through the guise of pain; a spark of feeling in her shackled leg and involuntary shaking of her body should she ignore their plea. The pain did not bother her, but she knew They only sent her pain when she had failed them, and it made her feel ashamed.

Basic lessons: reading, arithmetic, patterns, logic – into more advanced: prediction, composition, creativity; leading further into the only puzzle she could find it in herself to detest in which she would encounter other creatures she had heard about and the voices would ask her to touch them. They were in metal boxes and she couldn’t reach them, but she knew what they meant. They only gave her little ones; a mouse or a small lizard of which she could only identify by the images and words of the voices. She had to think at them, which she didn’t mind until they thought back, which they always did. She knew they were not like her because they always had such strange thoughts. In protest of the task she would take the pain for a while, but she couldn’t work against the shocks as they pressed through her mind for reasons she wouldn’t and scattered them until the tide of logic turned to their liking.

The first thing she would get from them when she started thinking – every time – would be a strange feeling in her mouth which she didn’t like. It was like trying to remember something you had never known to begin with. It made her mouth runny and wet. After that came different thoughts, thoughts that would not come about unless they noticed her moving through what was theirs. They made her heart beat faster. They also made the shocks hurt more. Her thoughts on its purpose yielded no insight.

Her owners were not content to merely leave her to feel around and learn of the subjects they set in front of her and demanded that she find a way to give them something; something physical to record for her efforts. Her first attempts to connect with a white mouse on a bed of straw led to a bridge being laid she could not control. Her thoughts streamed into the mouse – direction abandoned – leaving the rodents button sized brain to absorb them all. The creature tore the flesh from its forelegs with its teeth and then thrashed about violently before it stopped moving all together. Her latter encounters were more refined; the voices asking of her more complex feats of control over the animals. Forcing them to complete simple tasks were common puzzles, often their own expense to increase their desires to resist her hold.

Her most recent interruption was not like those preceding it. No puzzle or task awaited her. It was on a bed she lay – hard steel making up the mat beneath her back and blankets likewise in a regular curve above her form entombed her; tail to a hoof-length above her. Head bolted to the hard surface – upward facing – gave little view of the surroundings; scant glances of her body encouraging her desire to regain her appropriated freedom. Clear tubing perforated the supple abdomen under her emaciated ribs and followed through deeply, amalgamating themselves and the tender organs within. Constant sight of her pale, mint-green coat debased with slit like openings – skin stapled back against itself and rerouted nerves from her anchored legs and wings adjoined to copper wires leading into the frame. Tending to her body in its recovering delirium were two mares larger than herself, working carefully to attach the last of the apparatus. Feelings that had seemed so alien before took new context, as she knew in this puzzle, she would play the mouse.

The two ponies tending to her body wore strange headdresses of steel construction. They spoke to her, but it was not the grainy metal voice of god she was used to. They spoke with the same tone – clear, concise, and forceful – but the sounds of their words were more like her own. It frightened her how similar.

They gave her her orders. She was to touch them like she touched the others before. She reached out into their minds, but found no traction. She was being fed images by one of the two. She just had to focus on them, that was all. She felt the frustrating sting of phantom limb syndrome. The feeling of slipping off their minds was disturbing. The second mare wiped her down with a cold, wet cloth through the duration of the procedure, subjugating her stress. The wires tingled in response to her compliance, uncomfortably. This test was different in the sense that they did not ask when she was finished, or have any visible sign she had done as they asked, they just knew, and wasted no time in moving on.

When they were satisfied, they held a mask over her muzzle, sending her to sleep. She woke up, the same as always, in her home.

Only things weren’t the same. Something had been taken from her. She had never placed value on anything before, but in that instant of waking up, she knew for sure what she felt was loss. She had been sewn back up with expert care. The scars on her body were still visible, though they were well hidden. She opened her eyes and saw someplace new.

It was very much the same as her home, but something was off. It seemed like the edge was closer than before. She reached out to touch it and was stuck at the same place as always; her shackle still firmly attached.

That wasn’t it. Was the light brighter? It seemed brighter. Or was it darker? Had they changed her eyes perhaps? They felt the same, but she couldn’t be sure. And why was she asking so many questions? It was not like her. Her mind was flailing; reaching out in new directions. Her breathing was more substantial than needed; the deep lungfuls of air revealing the room to be muskier than she had remembered. It was stifling to her mind. She moved to get up, but relented as the pain in her legs told her that her insides had not healed as well as the patch-up job on her skin had alluded.

She focused hard. She had to know what had changed.

Everything she had seen so far was minor. They wouldn’t account for it. It was something bigger.

She explored her surroundings. In each direction things were the same as before. She could hear nothing but the sounds of air currents moving slowly into the room. It smelled the same. Her hoof felt the same rubbing against the warm stone beneath her.

And then she found it.

It was a beat. A ticking. The passing of time.

Time had come to her home.

With each beat of the song, she felt worry. The song was drawing closer to its end.

Each beat sounded the same, but she knew there could only be so many. For the first time in her life, she felt the desire to act.

But she was stuck.

So all she could do was listen.

The song called to her. She could not move, but she could feel. Feel it calling to her. It’s tone enchanting her. But it was not time itself calling her. Time ticked all the same and could not care. Something was using time to talk to her. Somepony.

She reached out as she had done before. Her thoughts taking to the air in front of her. She tracked the soundless sound. She reached forwards, but that was not right. She pulled back, but that was not right either. The direction was curved. Forward, then up. Always upwards more and more until up was down. And then forward again.

She had found it.

The connection snapped taut like a rope and the voice in the beat became clear.

“This is the end.”

“The end of what?” she spoke back as she had heard: through the vibrations of the psyoid bond.

A few grainy up and down waves returned along the bond before the answer. “For you to decide.

“You’ve heard the song: I know it. That’s how you found me.

“What you need to know now is that the end of that song isn’t far off. But it doesn’t have to be your song. There’s a choice.

“You’ve been in the cage for too long. A mouse behind bars in the fist of a jungle beast in civil disguise, and the fingers of that fist are closing. Soon the bars will come together and they will stop for neither screams nor bone.

“They’ve got what they need. You can feel it missing inside of you. They don’t need you now.

“The cage is tightening around your skin with each passing beat of the song.”

The new voice was not like God at all. Nor was it like her. It was something else entirely.

It did not have the surgical nature of God – injecting meaning into her mind, yet leaving the words to decay into a haze –; instead it was powerful and solid. It spoke to her like a desert fortress: Eternal stones weathering the storms of sand thrown against them without falter.

She fumbled in reply, dwarfed by her partner’s presence. “Bu—But… What can I do? Please help me!”

“The answer is not so vague as you would fear. It is in your nature. The mouse should rightly flea in terror from its keeper. He looks for holes in the bars to escape.

“An unforeseen gift left in the act of a theft. His eyes are now yours. You have all you need.”

She thought for a second. Her mind felt stronger now – like the strength of the new voice had stripped its impurities – but she could not answer.

“I can’t see it.”

“You have a secret. A hole you found on your own. What the all-powerful is afraid of: the unknown.”

The pieces came together.

“…You?”

“You have the will, but not the strength. Iron can be broken like bone. Fingers can be fought and bent backwards.

“The power is inside the body, but you are not the one to free it.”

She considered the offer. She was wary of the new voice, but also excited. She had something God did not know about. She had always been transparent. The light above her could shine clean through to the ground. Now she had an opaque spot. Something that could stop God’s eye. It meant everything to her.

“Ok… I’ll do it.”

And that was it.

Her muscles tensed and her nerves fizzled back into themselves. Her mind bled through a spiralling corridor or lights. Her organs heaved inside of her, and for a second she thought she could see the entirety of everything at once.

And then she was back.

She was inside her body, but she was not the one moving it. She could still see and hear, but had no feeling.

Flow stood from the ground firmly on her damaged limbs. Her face contorted into a cold grin. She tensed all her muscles and spread her thin wings.

Trapped inside her mind she regained some of her feeling. Not enough for subtle details, but the one thing she did feel was a slow burn spreading through her body.

Her wings came down and a mighty howl left her throat – far louder than she could have possibly produced. It echoed through the room in a vortex of twisting metal screams and the oppressive eye staring down on her shattered into dust.

More bursts followed, though softer as if further away. The room was left in darkness.

The howl stopped.

A faint red glow begun to spill from the ground around her in a circle. It continued to brighten as the burning sensation she felt grew stronger.

The light was projecting onto her, clinging to her coat. It changed – almost too quickly for her to process – into a deep purple and shot off her in all at once as she disappeared.

Throughout the underground facility, the magic spread; the electromagnetic radiation tearing through living tissue with complete abandon. Over the next few seconds every living creature in the laboratory slumped to the ground, never to wake.

On the surface, a pale, mint-green filly popped into existence with a flash of light and a gust of wind. She stood for a few seconds, breathing heavily, and then fell to the ground.

There were holes in her body all throughout her legs, wings and the cavity under her ribs. The burning sensation was now unbearable.

She was bleeding into the soil, struggling to stay conscious. She forced her eyes to stay open, quivering in determination.

A voice called out from nearby.

“Oh no! You’re hurt!

“I have to get my mom and dad, they can help you, I promise! Just hold on!”

“Please… Come…” Flow strained in reply.

The filly was scared, but she obeyed. She had a grey coat and a brick-orange mane.

Flow reached out to the filly from too far away. The filly walked up to her to comfort the dying girl, but it would not be Flow who died today.

At the touch of her hoof she felt entranced. Her mind was lost to the power of the voice.

Both of their bodies burst into a white flame. The grey filly’s body began to dissolve into ash in front of her as she grew stronger.

No! This wasn’t right!

Flow was panicking. She was on the surface. The ponies here were outside the jurisdiction of the facility’s god. This pony was only trying to help her. She couldn’t do this!

She fought with all her strength at the voice that controlled her. She thrashed as violently as she could, tearing at anything holding the connection in place, and it was working.

She felt herself gaining control, and the voice slipping. She was pulled back through the tunnel and into herself.

She opened her eyes to find herself alone.

“What did you do to her!?”

“I did all I could.

“As a means of escape you summoned me, but a hole once crawled down offers no return – no option but to follow to the only end. This end.”

Flow was still in shock. These were free ponies. Ponies who were untainted. It anypony could clean her of the facilities filth it would be them. She knew how their society worked. She would be an outcast if anypony found out. She would never be clean.

“You can’t do this!”

“I can’t not do this.”

“But—You can’t—You’re a—a—”

“Wolf.”

“Bring her back. Bring her back!”

There was no reply.

Flow screamed at nothing for a while before tiring herself out. She was still angry, but it was doing her no good.

She noticed she was standing upright, completely healed. She had also grown in her mane, which had been shaved off regularly in the facility. It was a powdered lavender that augmented her coat. Her legs and wings had also grown strong – replacing her frail build earned through years of inactivity.

She took track of her surroundings next. It was cold and rocky. There was nothing more than a few dead trees around. She walked a short distance to the edge of a cliff and looked down at the area below her.

There was an old farmhouse with a fence and a windmill. It would be her best choice. Her only choice in all honesty. She hoped they would be ponies who could help her.

She began the slow trek down the side of the mountain.