Dead Space: Isolation

Chapters

Chapter 1: Make us whole, daddy
Chapter 2: Food
Chapter 3: Friends and Enemies
Chapter 4: Healing Through Faith
Chapter 5: Guardians and Power

Chapter 1: Make us whole, daddy

The alarm sounded through the facility while I rode the elevator down. I leaned against the wall as the siren from the lockdown faded away in my decent. My security R.I.G’s helmet receded into the rest of my armor and I sighed. I had barely gotten away from those... things in the security lockdown. I hadn’t known what the scientists were up to in her but they had to have something to do with this. Their crazy experiments with the holy Marker were going too far now!

A small holographic projection displayed in front me from my R.I.G as it made a connection to somepony else’s comm system. A familiar frantic sounding buck called to me from the other side of the call.

“Radius! Where are you!? They’ve broken past the barricade and we can’t fight them off!” Screams, gunfire, and the cries and screeches of whatever creatures were attacking us sounded in the backround of the call.

“Damnit, Blue! I’m almost there! I’m in the elevator, I just need to-” I was cut off by his horrifying scream before it was quickly silenced by a sickening wet slashing noise and the growls of a monster I couldn’t even guess what it was. Soon after, only the sounds of the abominations were all that could be heard on the call.

I sighed once more and exited the comm link. Damnit, Blue was the greenest buck I ever met. But he was a good brother... There was nothing left for me in this place. All that mattered to me now was to somehow get back to the colony and warn them. Get my wife and daughter as far away from this place as possible.

With a kick, the Seeker Rifle mounted on my side reloaded, inserting a new clip of ammo automatically. I also made my R.I.G use a health pack from my inventory on me, filling the yellow holographic health bar on my back and changing it back to it’s healthy blue. On command, my security helmet extended from it’s hiding spot in my armor, sliding over my face, covering it in metal plating. The two thin slits in the armor glowed a deep blue, going over my eyes and mouth in what I once heard could be compared to “an evil smiley face” in appearance.

I changed the elevator’s destination on its console to the garage, hoping to find transport out of this hellhole. No point in going back for Blue...

After a few moments, the elevator doors opened up as I had reached my destination. I couldn’t believe what I saw. My daughter, Sunny, was at the end of the hall, smiling warmly at me as a damaged light flickered above her. The surprise to see her here in this horrible place, so far away from our home and her mother was enough, but the part that horrified me the most, that chilled me to my core was... she was sitting in a pool of blood. An almost completely skinned pony leaned dead against the wall right beside her, red and drenched in blood, one green eye open wide while the other was a black empty socket, it’s lipless face open wide in terror before it died. Yet... Sunny was unphased by the grotesque corpse just next to her. Smiling happily in it’s blood before she giggled a bit. “H-honey?...” I called out to her, my helmet echoing my voice slightly and making it sound almost mechanical.

“Come on daddy, come make us whole.” She laughed cryptically before running down the hallway.

“Sunny wait!” I yelled in panic as my daughter fled away from me, down the halls of this monster infested science facility of terror, and ran after her, cursing these cramped hallways for not allowing me to use my wings.

I turned the corner, almost slipping in the dead pony’s blood. Sunny disappeared around another corner as I rounded this one. I tried to continue pursuit but a vent exploded in front of my path. A creature jumped out of it and onto me before I could think, pinning me on my back with a blood curdling screech. I screamed in surprise as the beast loomed over me. Seeing it up close I could see it wasn’t just some creature at all. It was a pony! At least it had been a pony at one point. Now the remnants of it’s grey mane were as torn as it’s skin under its pale white hide. It’s eyes widened in rage and it’s mouth open wider than any natural pony’s could be, it’s lips removed, teeth sharpened to a point, and tentacles whipping out of its throat.

I held up my hoof and screamed again at a bloody appendage rose from its back and whipped a sharp, bone like point down at me. I raised my forelegs to shield myself from the strike right before the blade hit. I shrieked as it pierced my thickly armored fetlock and dug into my joint.

My other hoof slammed into its face repeatedly, each hit drawing more blood until, eventually, it resulted in a loud crunching sound as part of the monster’s head caved in. But it still pushed the blade deeper and roared angrily into my armored face. Another bladed appendage rose from it’s back. I raised my other hoof, praying to Ascension that it wouldn’t lead to the same result.

My prayers were answered and the monster’s blade slashed instead of stabbed, sending sparks off my armor as it glided against the metal. Without thinking, I grinded my teeth and shoved my hoof against the bloody limb until I heard it crack.

The ‘once a pony’ let out a pained wail and backed off of me, pulling its blade out of me. I cried out, tears in the corners of my eyes as its limb was ripped out of my wound, taking blood and meat with it. I clenched one eye shut and let my side mounted Seeker Rifle rotate and take aim at the creature’s head before it fired, showering me in blood, bone, and grey matter.

It slumped lifelessly over me and I immediately pushed it off, I didn’t have time to be scared. I rose to my hooves with a groan, yelping and stumbling when I put pressure on my injured joint. I really didn’t have time for this!

I was able to push myself further to the corner Sunny had disappeared down and tumbled into the wall with a curse. I looked down the long hallway now ahead of me. Sunny’s bloody hoofprints showing me the way to her. Most of the hall was darkened like the rest of the place when a power surge took out the main generators. But no sign of my filly...

I growled in frustration, not even pondering what she was doing here in the first place and injected another health pack into my R.I.G. The hurting in my hoof lightened a bit, but it still shot shocking pain through me when I put my weight on it. But I had to push on for my daughter.

I limped down the hall, groaning and cursing under my breath is each painful step. My eyes stuck on her little bloody hoofprints. Determination racing through me while I made it to the end of the hall. I rested against the wall a moment as I got to the end and continued around another corner, which lead to a door. I pressed the holographic “open” button and the door automatically receded into the walls. The room was large and had a wide pit between this door and another.

“Now entering a zero gravity testing area.” A mechanical mare’s voice informed me over the speaker system when I stepped onto a amll platform just outside the door. I looked to my side to see Sunny’s hoofprints leading along the wall and onto the rounded ceiling, back down to the door on the other side.

Relieved to get off my injured foreleg even for just a moment, I spread my armored wings and pushed myself up into the forceless room. I flapped my wings to push me toward the other door but before I could reach it, something barreled into me, sending me against a wall with a grunt and bounced back.

Both the new creature and I floated in the air, staring at eachother. It thrashed and flailed trying to reach me while I studied this one in shock. It too had the appearance that it could have once been a pony. Patches of skin was missing once more but it appeared as if it’s hind legs had twisted together into a meaty, muscley tail, tipped with a much more brutal bone like blade at the end. Its teeth extended into very long sharp fangs that jutted out of it’s mouth in a way that could only be compared to that of a snake.

As it hissed and shrieked at me, I shook my head away from the sight. My daughter was in this mess with things like these. Who knows what they could do to her if I didn’t get to her first. If they haven’t already...

That last thought pushing me away from the thrashing nightmare in front of me, turning my back on it and making my way to the door below. I followed the hoofprints through it and I exited the zero gravity testing area, immediately leading me to a larger already open door. Another mutilated corpse lay slumped against a terminal, a key card pressed between a terminal and her hoof which allowed the door to open to this area.

This body looked much more fresh than the scattered remains of the torn up, bloody piles of meat that lay inside. I glanced at the dead mare’s back to see three blood covered spikes shot into her shoulder blades. Other than that, she was fine, which meant she was a much more recent death.

I pushed my way through the messy piles of gore and overturned medical tables of what I guessed was a medical bay in pursuit of the hoofprints, bringing me back into a hallway with staticy monitors lining the walls.

I eventually made it to an elevator. It didn’t open... An alert kept popping up telling me it was jammed. But, the hoofprints led to it, so did Sunny get stuck in it? A growl from the medical bay brought my attention behind me. One of these things was in the other room!

I used my last med pack, hoping to ease the pain in my fetlock for what I was about to do. I pushed my hooves against the small opening where the door would split and go back into the wall. Moaning while pain surged through my injured hoof. But it was opening! Slowly but surely. A loud screech could be heard from the med bay, it must have heard me!

It opened enough for me to see inside the elevator shaft, lit my several red lights that ran up the sides. Another creature, one of the same ones that jumped on me from that vent appeared from where I once was. It turned to me with a loud cry before it charged on all four blood drenched hooves.

I put my shoulder into my struggle, opening it just enough for me to fit through. I quickly pushed through it just as the monster reached me, opening my wings and flying up, I had made it to safety. Or did I...? As the door tried to close once more, the zombie slid it’s bladed limbs in front of it, and pried it open once again. It shook as if it was struggling to keep it open and looked up at me with clear intent of murder in its clouded eyes.

I took aim at one of the thing’s quivering limbs that were holding open the door and fired a single shot into it. The limb severed from the powerful impact and the door closed forcefully on the beast, crushing its torso in a bloody mess and cutting off its head from the bottom of its neck and its remaining appendage, sending them down the shaft and onto the the top of the stuck elevator not far below.

That’s when I noticed something strange. Sunny’s tracks went down the side of the shaft, like she crawled down the wall and out the open door below. Puzzled, I followed it to the place I originally intended to go to. The garage.

The floodlights at the entrance temporarily blinded me, causing me to raise my hoof in front of my face to block the intense light.

“Daddy?” The sweet young voice pulled my eyes passed the searing pain to the silhouette of my filly just past the floodlights. My heart stopped a for a moment and I blinked, still finding it hard to believe she was here. But I had reached her, and she was safe! “Come with me daddy!” She instructed gleefully before running off further into the garage.

“Sunny, wait!” I cried out desperately. She stopped and turned back to me, hardly visible in the darkness.

“Come on!” She said once more and ran off again.

I did as she wanted and pushed past the lights and into the darkness. My metal hoofsteps echoing loudly off the concrete. The lights from my visor illuminated her bloody hoofprints, allowing me to follow. I kept seeing movement in the corner of my sight, hidden in the darkness, keeping me alert.

“Sweetie!” I called, getting tired of this game. I just wanted to get me and my daughter out of here safely.

“Over here daddy!” I found her once again, standing triumphantly next to a treaded snow transport. I smiled and made my way to her, but as I got closer pain shot through my head, causing me to groan and hold my hoof to my head. “Daddy?”

“I-I’m fine.” I told her and kept limping toward her. The pain grew as I got closer and a red orange almost static like haze pushed itself into the corners of my vision. I had to get her out of here safely. I grunted and pushed, finally reaching her.

As I stood over her, the static only got worse, now the sound of static punctured my ears loudly and I struggled to stay up. “Daddy, are you okay?” My filly frowned at me, her voice deepening in pitch for a few words.

“Y-yeah, hun, d-daddy’s fine.” I lied through gritted teeth. She flickered, one second as my beautiful daughter, the next to some horrifying pale filly like creature with dark eyes and tentacles coming from her mouth and back, hissing quietly.

Then the pain disappeared almost instantly and the static faded. All that stood before me was my daughter, staring up at me concerned. My helmet slid back into my armor and I began to inspect her more closely. “Daddy? What’s wrong?” She asked with slight fear in her voice.

I brushed my hoof over her mane, feeling it’s softness, confirming that it was really her. I smiled widely and hugged her tight, tears running down my cheeks. I was so happy to have her nice and safe. “Nothing. Nothing is wrong.” I told her happily. Embracing her for a few more blissful moments before pulling away from her.

“Can we go home now, daddy?” She smiled once more at me, beaming happiness.

“Yes sweetie,” I told her, wiping away a tear “we can go home.”

***

Sunny sat silently beside me, looking outside into the night sky as the transport trudged through the snow while I steered it to the colony of Harmony, to home. The lights of the colony shined up ahead, filling me with comfort and joy to be back with my wife and bring our filly back to her.

Sunny turned to me, still smiling brightly, but this time with slight curiosity to her eyes.

“Daddy?”

“Yeah, sweetie?”

“Will you make us whole?”

At those words, the intense pain shot through me once more, this time I fell to my side on the seat, clutching my head and shout out in pain. The static returned worse than before and Sunny looked down at me, blood dripping down her eyes and out her mouth as they let out a fierce light. Still with that same warm smile. Softly, she whispered into my ear. “Make us whooooooole...”

I’m not sure what happened after that, I remember crashing and waking up on one of the colony’s streets, through the transport window. The transport itself was on its side and on top of my back. I couldn’t feel my back legs and I kept coughing up blood and glass, but there was no pain. Everything just felt odd and hazzy.

Then she appeared before me once again. Suddenly in front of me, smiling, this time without the blood and light coming from her face. She flashed between the sweet filly I knew and loved to that filly like creature, flickering like a burning out light.

“Don’t be afraid to die, daddy.” She told me cheerfully. “We’ll be back together soon.”

With that, she disappeared. I could see the filly monster running along the side of a building not far away before running into an alley. Ponies on the street began rushing to my side in panic. I raised my hoof weakly pointing into the direction the thing went, but nopony seemed to understand what I was trying to do as they tried to push the heavy vehicle off me.

My last thought was on what that thing said. “We’ll be together soon.” All I felt was grief and fear for my family for the few moments I had in life. Then...

I died.

Author's Note

I don't expect this to be great, mainly cause I only wrote this in a day. And the characters in this weren't really described in appearance because I'm not planning on making them a big part of the story They were just supposed to show what the setting will be like and what's going to go on in the story. Kind of like the beginning of Dead Space 3. At least that's where I got the idea :P

Chapter 2: Food

You ever wonder why Unitologists do what we do? I never did. I lived in the Ascended colonies all my life, raised in the capital of Ascension itself, deep within the snowy peaked mountains of the Frozen North. And in my entire life I’ve never had a single blasphemous thought.

Now, however, seeing the soldiers within the armored transport strapped with Pulse rifles, wearing heavy arctic armor, and pockets filled with ammo while we rode into the populated city, I had to ponder our motives. Most of the soldiers hadn’t even known why they were going this geared for war. Still, I knew less than them, I was only here for mechanical support. I was only an engineer.

My mother had chosen me for this mission for whatever reason. It was really my first time out of The High City of Ascension ever. Yet my mom insisted I could be of use to the team. Probably trying to prove that the daughter of a senator was capable of more than fixing broken down generator or piping around the city. She had always wanted me the have some political role in society or become a successful soldier, but it simply wasn’t my calling. Especially when my fusebox cutie mark showed up on my flank when I did my first ever repair.

I stared down at my armored hooves in thought, listening two of the soldiers talking. Their conversation didn’t ease my mind about what we were going into.

“What do you think could cause an entire city to go dark?” A buck asked behind his visor.

“Not sure. You’d think with five thousand ponies living there somepony would pick up the phone.” A bright orange mare, lacking her helmet, pointed out.

“You think it could be an attack from the Equestrian forces?” The masked buck asked with a hint of worry in his voice.

“We haven’t seen hide nor hair of them since they gave us the Marker.” I reminded him, thinking back to lessons I took about the skirmishes between those of the Church and E.F, eventually leading to Celestia personally handing over the Marker. The marker itself was in the Grand Church in Ascension, I remember the first time I saw it. The glorious dark purple twisted pillar Unitology was created around. Our means of convergence and salvation.

The stallion turned to me, his glowing blue visor staring me down even if he wasn’t. These helmets intimidated me, even though they put me in one too. “But is that really a reason why they wouldn’t come here now? How do we know they haven’t found us?”

“We don’t.” The orange mare pushed herself between us, her green gaze punching through to his. “We’re going so we can find out.”

I rolled my eyes, staring out a window, allowing the two to continue their conversation. There was a reason why the area was called the Frozen North. Just like the past few hours, all that was out there was a barren wasteland of snow and ice. All the territory that belonged to the Unitologists was like that. One of the few places that the princesses wouldn’t look for us.

A door opened from the driver’s port of the military vehicle and Captain Cutter, the superior officer of this mission, entered the back of the transport, grabbing my attention on his red coat, brown buzzcut, and his deep blue eyes. Most of his body was covered in the rune coated armor our soldiers, and I in this case, wore.

The fully armored buck turned in surprise and saluted frantically. The mare did the same but in a more relaxed manner and with a bit of a sneer. Cutter regarded her with a grimace and turned toward me with the same unpleasant expression. My eyes widened. Was I supposed to salute? I mean, I wasn’t technically a part of the military. Crap, was I about to be chewed out?

“Caasi, the boys up front are talking about you fixing some power station.” Oh praise Ascension. “I’m guessing miss techhead over here would know more about that.” He growled, rolling his eyes toward the brown mare.

“Techhead!?” She exclaimed in disbelief, glaring daggers toward the captain.

“Oh, sorry. I meant Shorty.” He replied sarcastically.

“Short Fuse.” The mare told him through gritted teeth, her reddish orange mane partially covering her bright green eyes. Her pretty apperance clearly masked her bitchy side.

“Mhm.” The large red stallion disregarded her, instead putting his attention back to me. “Caasi, my boys will get you down to the power station where you and Shorty over here will get it back online. Understood?” Fuse let out a protest behind the Captain.

“I can do that.” I assured him with a nod.

Cutter nodded back and trotted back to the drivers’ part of the vehicle, glaring at Fuse as he did so.

“I think...’ I whispered under my breath.

***

When we had finally arrived at the city, everything was dark. Wow, the power station really was down. I’ve never seen a full city in a total blackout before. Then again, I’ve only seen one city, and it was the biggest one under the Unitologist’s flag.

Captain Cutter and the two drivers of our transport were already outside, fully covered in armor and protection against the cold. When I finally exited the vehicle, I was blasted by a burst of chilling wind and snow.

Seeing my startled grimace, the nervous buck tapped my shoulder. “Hey put your helmet on.”

“H-how?” I asked with chattering teeth.

“The suit’s already hooked up to your nervous system.” He began. “It’s a part of you. At least for the time being. You just will it out like you would move a leg, or flap a wing.” He added, facing his coat covered wing and lightly fluttered it

It sounded so simple yet so odd. I started thinking about moving the helmet like I would a limb and sure enough, my head became covered in metal and protective fibers. Bits of the helmet poked out of ports in both the front and back of my suit and extended around the entirety of my head. A metal plate wrapped around my muzzle protectively, covered with religious runes that vaguely took the image of an eye. Two more large metal plates with the same runes covered each side of my head, with symbols matching my muzzle plate while a much thinner orangish brown strip of metal ran between them from the center of my forehead down to the back of my neck. My ears jutted out of the middle of the large head plates, coated in a warm fluffy protective material. Finally, three thin slits of my visor provided vision while they went over my blue eyes and nose, glowing a bright blue. Now my face, grey coat, black mane, and all, were invisible to all others.

The only thing setting me apart from the soldiers was their battleframes with pulse rifles attached to their sides. Instead of any weapon at my flank, I had a standard rivet gun in case we needed to put something back together at the power plant. I don’t know what good a rivet gun would really do there but better to be safe rather than sorry.

“There.” The buck said as I stared at my hooves getting used to the slightly blue and obscured vision of my visor. “Now you should be kept warm.”

“Why didn’t you get us closer to the power plant then?” The Captain’s growl brought our attention to him. He stared down one of the drivers through his helmet while the mare cowered under his gaze.

“W-we don’t have enough fuel to go deeper into the city and then go on a return trip.” She tried to explain to the larger stallion.

“Shouldn’t there be fuel depots around the city?” I put in, trotting up to them, the pegasus buck following behind me.

“Not the kind we’d need.” The other driver, a buck, explained to me. “The only place with the same kind of transports we have is a science facility a few miles away.”

“Why couldn’t we get some from there?” I asked.

“We have orders to avoid that area. I’m guessing they don’t want us to see what they have going on there.” He told me with an echoing grunt beneath his helmet.

“Why?” I wondered out loud, knowing I wouldn’t get a clear answer.

“A better question would be why isn’t anypony around?” Fuse pointed out to the side. “This is a city housing thousands of ponies, so where the hell are they?”

I looked around. Sure we were on the outskirts of the colony, and it was freezing, but you’d think somepony would be out. Especially when a bunch of army ponies just came out of an armored vehicle in the middle of the street.

“Probably frozen over.” Cutter told us. “The power’s been out for a long while, everypony would be huddled together in these buildings for warmth.”

“What about ponies with snowsuits like us?” I asked.

“I doubt many ponies would have snowsuits quite as good as ours.” Short Fuse pointed out.

“So I suppose we should get moving.” Cutter suggested. “Tight Wind,” he faced the pegasus buck “you and I will escort Caasi and Shorty to the power station.”

***

We hadn’t been walking for long when we came across several blocked roads covered in scattered civilian vehicles. We all knew we could climb over them but it would be easier to go through one of the residential buildings. And if we were lucky, maybe we could find somepony that needed help. Upon opening the doors to the housing complex, an apartment building judging by the eight floors, however, we found something that we never expected.

Blood.

Not just a bit here and there, it was everywhere.The room had a coat of splattered blood over it from the floor to the ceiling and with no sign of gun fights or anything that might point us to an E.F invasion. I was sure that guns couldn’t leave this much of a mess anyway. There were signs of struggle such as knocked over chairs and tables but this was clearly no military attack. Nopony could do this... right?

What sent chills down my spine wasn’t the absurd presence of blood or the putrid smell of death, it was the writing on the walls and the bloody hoofprints running along the floor and even the walls and ceiling. The writing was in the Unitologist language but what it meant was cryptic and didn’t make sense.

“They need our flesh.” One read.

“I can see my wife... she wants me to come with her.” Another said

“Make us whole.” For some reason the last one creeped me out the most.

“The hell...?” The Captain whispered, venturing deeper into the dark room, leaving the rest of us stunned near the entrance. I could hear Wind whimper behind his mask, I think I might have done the same. The Captain’s glowing visor illuminated more of what seemed like a lobby to show there was much more devastation.

My eyes locked onto a pile of ripped up pink meat in the corner next to a corridor that faintly resembled a pony. The head was barely visible under a blanket of shredded organs and four limbs sticking out beneath the mess.

Cutter also noticed this after my gasp of disgust, making his way toward the mess, looking closely at the unfortunate pony and even... ew, poked at a piece. He grunted quizzically and said something that made my stomach churn.

“Somepony’s been chewing on it...”

Tight Wind gagged next to me and Short Fuse showed no audible emotion. Ignoring our reactions, Captain Cutter continued, “These are a pony’s teeth marks.”

“We’re getting out of here right captain?” Wind asked, sounding almost short of breath.

“Of course not.” Cutter growled, getting a soft whimper from Wind. “We need to look into this and see if we can’t find the sick fuck that did this. Now come on.”

Fuse made a small nod and trotted to his side. Wind and I hesitated however, glancing at each other before slowly making our way to him, leaving our own bloody footprints as we stepped in the unavoidable sticky red liquid.

The first thing we noticed was the blood trail leading up a set of stairs. One coming from the lobby and one from the hallway leading to the rooms on the first floor. A blood trail from each room going into the one in the center of the hallway. Something even stranger though was on the wall at the base of the stairs was another trail of blood. Like somepony had been dragged on the wall upstairs.

“Wanna bet where they went?” Fuse joked coldly. A flashlight shined from the Captain’s rifle and three thin blue light shot up the stairwell as he aimed his rifle and took point.

“Stay behind me.” He ordered peering over his shoulder at us before beginning his climb.
he moved slowly, alert for any noise or movement in the darkness. When we made it up three flights of stairs, each bearing resemblance to the first floor with the blood trails,and kept leading us up, I began to hear something. It was very quiet and hushed but it sounded like... whispering. We approached the next flight of stairs and it only increased in volume, if just a bit.

“Anypony else hear that?” I asked quietly, looking around for any other sign of massacre like the lobby, but the only mess was the trail we were following.

“Yeah” Wind assured. “It sounds kind like-”

“Whispers.” Cutter finished for him. “Keep alert, somepony is here with us.”

Once we reached the fifth floor, the whispers could be understood, and the trails now lead to a single room. From the looks of it, even ones from higher floors.

“They need our flesh.” One echoed softly as we seemed to move slower toward the door. “They need our minds.” My heartbeat rose in my chest as I treaded the bloodstained carpet. “They took my mind.” I could feel sweat dripping down my grey coat while I listened to my quickening heartbeat, very audible in my metal cocoon. “Now they want my flesh.” We were a door away from where the trail led and my fear grew more and more quickly as the captain’s light illuminated the silhouettes of something in the corner of the room. The last whisper as we reached the edge of the door was a different voice than the original, and what it said made me want to halt in my tracks. “Follow the path...”

Yet, some force kept me going, and as the inside of the room became visible, I nearly threw up in my helmet. Corpses of all sizes laid in the room that housed hardly any furniture, barely lit up by our glowing visors. All horribly maimed and... and gnawed on. Near the wall just ahead of us was the form of a small buck. It was hard to tell, but his coat seemed to be a light flowery yellow and his mane a darker orange. Between the corpses around him, it looked like his hooves were tipped in red. He was slumped over doing something when the captain spoke up.

“What are you doing, son!?” The buck’s head perked up, facing the wall before slowly glancing back at us. He lifted his hind end off the ground, out of his sitting position and turned to face us. His muzzle and teeth glistened red. It was him who had killed these ponies and ripped them open to chew on their insides...

“Y-you!” He stammered, shaking heavily. “Th-they told me you’d come! Oh praise Ascension! P-p-please! Will y-you separate my mind and m-my flesh!?”

“Yes.” I heard Fuse hiss before the sound of a levitation spell triggered and the loud noise of a gunshot rang out with a flash. The bullet caught the buck in the eye and he fell over with a thud, shaking for a moment before going limp.

I stood stunned at the side of such horror the buck had done and witnessing his death right before me. The past few minutes alone were the most traumatic moments of my life up to this point, and it was hard to grasp what I’d just seen. Tight Wind wasn’t faring much better as he had backed into a corner sobbing quietly and shaking.

Short Fuse seemed to hold no remorse for the killing of the twisted pony as she returned her pistol to her holster. Cutter just sighed but hadn’t done much more to display his disapproval. My guess is he truly didn’t disagree with what Fuse did. And even though I was horrified by the sight of his death, I didn’t disagree either.

Captain Cutter turned to face the rest of us prepared to say something when the most grotesque noise came from back inside the room. The best way to describe it was the crinkling of a candy wrapper or when you crack your neck, except much louder, followed by a gargling sound.

Cutter turned quickly back into the room and took aim with his rifle, lighting up more of the room. One of the corpses had risen...

Just when I thought this situation couldn’t get more mentally scarring, one of the flayed, gutless bodies had risen. It was once and blue pony, it’s grey eyes glazed over and wide, it’s bottom jaw was just gone, replaced by several tentacles coming out of it’s throat. Two long, skinny, red, wet appendages jutted out of its back, tipped with yellowish white gnarly looking blades.

The Captain reacted to the sight with some sort of warcry, firing round after round of the automatic rifle into the demented beast until the holographic ammo indicator that floated beside the rifle went red from an emptied clip. It dropped into a mushy mess from the many bullets tearing into it within seconds.

There was a moment of silence as we were frozen from shock and fright at the monster before it was broken by Fuse.

“What the fuck was that!?” she yelled to nopony in particular. None of us had an answer for her.The Captain grunted and reloaded his rifle, turning back to us.

“Come on, the sooner we get the power back on, the easier it will be to figure out what’s going on here.” He ordered pushing his way past us.

“Hold on.” Fuse jumped in front of him. “You can’t be serious. Didn’t you see that thing!? We need to go back home and far away from whatever that was! Do you really want to figure out what’s happening here? Cause I don’t!”

“We have a mission to complete, Fuse and I intend to finish it.” He replied in an assertive tone. “I can’t do this without you or Caasi, so you’re coming even if I have to drag you.” He finished by prodding her chest.

Fuse let out a huff, about to come up with a retort, but the cracking noise and gargling returned, much louder. I peered into the room to see that many other bodies were pulling themselves off the ground, some shrieking loudly once they stood at their full height. I yelled out a warning.

“Run!”

Chapter 3: Friends and Enemies

“B-but sir!”

“No buts. You’re the one with wings here, you can make it back to the transport easier than any of us ground ponies.”

The four of us had made it to an abandoned street after escaping the horde of monsters in the apartments. It had been an easy escape between all the adrenaline pumping through me and the creatures tripping all over each other. Still the mad dash was exhausting. The armored mare beside me as well as myself were still huffing even though we had already stopped running for several minutes. I was no soldier and I could tell Short Fuse wasn’t either. She didn’t seem like the soldier type with the way she talked to Captain Cutter. I’d never seen a soldier talk to their superior like she had with him. And I had seen a lot of Unitology soldiers, my mother being a politician who invested a lot of her faith in the military.

The Captain was set on getting rid of one of the only two trained fighters we had with us for the time being. I didn’t like the sound of that but I could understand why. Sometime during our investigation of the apartments and our sprint to this street we lost contact with the transport and Tight Wind would have the easiest time getting back to our ride. Fuse was convinced something was wrong with the long range receiver on the vehicle that allowed to talk with us further out in the city. As for me... those creatures made me paranoid.

“Y-you can’t send me back to the transport! We need to get the power back on!” Wind argued futilely.

“I understand your concern for the mission and the repair fillies-”

“That’s not it,” Fuse cut in, sneering under her helmet. “He just doesn’t want to be sent back alone. He’s scared of what he’ll find,” She let out an irritated humph before facing the hovering pegasus. “There’s nothing wrong. Something just broke on the damn receiver! The antenna probably snapped. It’s freezing and hardware for those trucks is getting cheaper and cheaper.”

“As I was saying...” I assumed Cutter was scowling behind his visor. “I can handle anything that gets in the way of the power plant. And if you run into trouble just use those wings the Ancient Ones blessed you with.”

“B-but-”

“Enough soldier! Get back to our vehicle or you’ll be worse off than the poor buck the techhead wasted!” I heard Fuse mutter something about that ‘poor buck’ being a sick bastard that deserved much worse. Tight Wind let out a defeated sigh and flew off back where we came. I pitied the pegasus and at the same time thanked the spirits I wasn’t in his place. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to go back on my own either after what we saw.

“Alright ladies,” Cutter began, bringing up a holographic map of the area we were in. “looks like we need to go through the Healing Through Faith hospital up ahead if we want to get to the power plant anytime soon.”

“A hospital?” I interjected in disbelief. “We just got away from a horde of zombies and you expect us to go through a hospital!?”

“It’s either that or try to find a quicker way in the dark,” Fuse pointed out. I honestly wasn’t sure which I’d prefer to do.

“Is that smoke?” Cutter cut in, looking off in the distance. I followed his gaze to a small pillar of smoke in between a few tall buildings. It wasn’t all too far away and was near our route to the hospital.

“Do you wanna check it out?” I suggested. “It wouldn’t divert us that far, it’s right there.”

“Yeah,” Cutter agreed. “I want to see if there are anymore survivors.” If we did, I prayed they weren’t like the pony we saw earlier. Short Fuse audibly disagreed with the idea.

“C’mon fillies,” Cutter ordered, ignoring Fuse’s comments.

It hadn’t taken long to make it to the source of the smoke. On our way, we heard sporadic gunfire in the distance on the way. Once we reached the scene, we saw the smoke came from a severely damaged civilian transport and the gunfire was from several bloodied ponies with small firearms shooting at a rooftop and an armored unicorn that was taking cover around the corner of a building.

One of the bloody ponies jumped out of their cover of the ruined transport to fire a shot at where the unicorn hid and took a bullet to the head from a rooftop. He fell in a heap, staining the snow around him red as blood spilled from his body. A unicorn and earthpony charged toward the unicorn with pickaxes, the bloody unicorn let out a shriek like I never heard a pony make. The armored pony peeked around the corner, levitating a Plasma Cutter and fired the tool into the charging ponies’ legs. The screaming unicorn tried to evade the shot and managed to get her forelegs out of the way but fell over with another scream of pain as the shot reduced her hindleg to a stump. I watched in stunned horror when the molten hot bolt of plasma cut into the earthpony’s foreleg. It didn’t cut completely through but it cut through enough for the pony to trip and bend the leg a way it really shouldn’t. The red fluid in her leg spilled onto the snow and concrete below. The pony yelled out in pain before a vertical bolt of plasma brought the pony’s suffering to a violent and messy end. The armored pony tried to do the same for the unicorn but she rolled out of the way with tears in her eyes and a look of sheer rage before throwing her axe. The weapon stabbed into armored unicorn’s shoulder who went back into cover with a somewhat masculine yelp.

I was in awe as I saw the grievously injured pony start to crawl her way to the other unicorn. The a blue dot appeared on the unicorn’s head that could be traced back to Fuse’s pistol. It was surprising that she could aim the gun so quick from this distance, being that she was a technician but she managed and sent a bullet into the wounded pony’s head with ease.

The unicorn in deep red security armor pulled the axe from his shoulder, panting heavily as he did so and looked toward our group. Captain Cutter wasted no more time charging into the battle. He aimed his rifle toward a pony hiding behind a mail shoot and shot a small round object from it. The object exploded on contact, tearing through the shoot and into the pony behind it just as a grenade should.

I followed Fuse behind a transport where she took to shooting. I couldn’t see who she was shooting at, instead focusing on Cutter. A pony with a Rivet Gun similar to mine in their magical grip fired at him but the shots barely penetrated his armor before he slammed into her. She yelped out in surprise as the bundle of stallion and metal struck her and fell over clutching her shoulder. Cutter let out a single shot of his pulse rifle into her skull. Another unicorn charged him with a plasma saw. I gasped. That thing would tear through his armor like tissue!

Cutter couldn’t move fast enough but whoever was on the roof was able to tear out most of the unicorn’s chest with a large caliber round. The pony fell into the snow with a crunch. A bullet ricocheted off the transport I took cover behind, causing me to scream and jump back, bumping into Fuse and knocking her over as she fired her gun.

“Hey! Watch it!” she growled, rising back to her hooves and regaining her composure.

“Sorry...” I apologized, feeling bad for getting in the way in an already intense moment. Fuse sighed and looked over the transport at something.

“There’s somepony behind that bench, I could use some covering fire,” she told me. I wasn’t sure if she really did need help or if she just wanted me to feel useful but I suppose it didn’t really matter. I aimed the rivet gun on my battleframe, taking from what I saw the mare Cutter killed doing.

The blue line shot from my tool, aimed at the bench and began firing rivets into it. Fuse did the same with her pistol. What we didn’t expect was for the pony to be a pegasus and swoop over the bench, firing a plasma cutter from his mouth. the bolt struck the transport but the vehicle protected us from the hit. We fired as he flew but none of my rivets hit him. One of Fuse’s bullets was buried into his side but it didn’t slow him down. Soon he was right above us and a bolt of plasma struck a metal plate on my back. Searing pain lanced through me as it burned through the armor and into my hide. Something in me kicked into overdrive and time seemed to slow as I screamed. It was like nothing else was there except for me and the pegasus. I hurt and I sure as hell wouldn’t let him do that again. My rivet gun quickly pointed up right at his wing. The pointed hunk of superheated metal embedded itself into his wing before he could aim another blow. He shrieked and dropped the tool before slamming into a building with a loud crack and a shower of blood. The corpse landed nearby with a meaty thud.

I stood there, frozen for a moment as the moment vanished and the pain flooded over me. I slumped over against our cover, panting heavily which echoed from inside my helmet. The cramped helmet made it hard to breath but I really didn’t want to take it off in the middle of a fight.

“Good shot,” Fuse commented with a smirk. “Your R.I.G is almost red, take a health pack.” I nodded and pulled up my inventory screen. A hologram projected off my R.I.G, showing me what supplies my suit contained. I selected a medium med pack and my suit began healing my wound with the supplies given to it from the medicine. I didn’t feel better right away but over time my suit would heal me better. The process took time, up to a half hour with more severe wounds.

I looked out to the battle, it didn’t look like many ponies were left. I heard Fuse reload her pistol beside me. “Damnit, used up a whole clip. I think Cutter can handle the rest.” I think Cutter could have handled them all...

Him and the unicorn stranger were fighting beside one another, corpses of the crazed ponies all around them. Cutter loomed over a fallen one and bashed the poor pony’s head in with a single hoof. His legs were glistening with blood and his armor had numerous small dents yet his R.I.G was hardly in the yellow. The unicorn’s R.I.G had read a full blue despite having taken an axe to the shoulder and Ascension knows what else. I assumed he had med packs as well but the blood coating his armor made that difficult to confirm.

Two more ponies fell before the unicorn’s Plasma Cutter. The bloody dismembered corpses around them made me realize this wasn’t much of a fight and more of a slaughter. A small number of well armed and armored ponies vs a swarm of poorly equipped ponies with nothing more than a few packs and bandoleers for protection. A few of the bodies even had large holes that none of our weapons could have caused. It made me wonder what weapon the pony on the roof was using.

Things got quiet. I could practically hear Cutter’s heavy breathing over mine even from a distance. That’s when one of the bloodied ponies charged out of cover with two pistols and some sort of warcry. A barrage of pistol rounds rained upon Cutter and the unicorn buck, mostly the former. The buck with the dual weapons tried to make for a transport for cover while he fired but the Captain wasn’t having any of that. He grunted and took the hits, his RIG’s health meter slowly dropping with each shot that hit home, and fired a grenade from his rifle. The grenade hit the wall behind him, launching fire and shrapnel all around it. The buck with the pistols wasn’t hit directly but he was close enough to the blast that he was knocked off his hooves and took several wounds.

As the buck tried to rise to his hooves while Cutter ejected a spent canister from his rifle. The armored pony aimed his Plasma Cutter for the finishing blow but the bloody pony had different plans. He pulled a grenade from a pocket and pulled the pin. There was a gunshot and he exploded into a mess of goop. The sniper shot his grenade before he even had a chance to throw it. Fuse laughed beside me.

“Damn, I gotta meet this pony!” Clearly she was impressed. As for me I was still in shock from the fight and the fact that I had killed somepony was starting to sink in. With the danger passed, I made my helmet recede to breath easier and ignored the chilling wind that was nipping at my face and ears. My sweat didn’t help with that. The group started back towards eachother, I followed Fuse absent mindedly. I was still stuck on what I’d witnessed, what I’d done. The past hour or so I’ve been here was too much stress for me. I was just an engineer, how did I get caught up in this? I could blame my mom but really who could expect something like this would happen? So far I witnessed the aftermath of a brutal massacre, an insane cannibal eating ponies, ...zombies ugh, and the deaths of a few dozen ponies, one of which I was responsible for. I still couldn’t fathom the act I committed and I really didn’t want to think about it while I was stuck out here. I needed to go home, and the only way to do that was to cooperate. I shoved my thoughts away from the horror and guilt, instead focusing on what needed to be done. Grieving and therapy would have to wait until I got back home.

We reached eachother near where the unicorn buck took cover and soon a pegasus in similar security barding as the unicorn landed lightly beside us, a Seeker Rifle on their side. Soon Cutter’s helmet was away and Fuse’s followed. The two security ponies did the same. Under the unicorn’s helmet was a solid grey buck with a black mane, his appearance similar to mine aside from his coat being a darker grey and striking hot pink eyes. His face however was covered in small cuts and bruises. The pegasus was a mare with a long blonde mane that was done up in a bun for her helmet. Her coat was dirty and white with wounds much like the buck’s. Her eyes were a dark orange and they screamed that she’d seen too much.

“Thanks for the help,” the buck gave a small smile and holstered his tool. “I don’t think I would have made it if you didn’t show up.”

“It’s a pleasure to help, sir,” Cutter told the buck politely. “Maim,” he added to the mare. “I’m Captain Cutter of the Unitology Armed Forces by the way,” He announced, extending his hoof as a gesture. The buck grinned and bumped his hoof in return.

“Jury Rigger,” he informed us. “And that’s my marefriend Trigger Happy.” What kind of a name was Trigger Happy. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to find out. Trigger Happy grinned as well clearly happy about something.

“I was waiting for the military to show up, you gonna get us out of here?” she asked almost too hopefully. My heart ached, wishing we could. The Captain grimaced.

“Sadly we can’t...” Trigger Happy’s expression was turning sour fast and Fuse cut in.

“Some idiot only gave us enough fuel in our transport for a one way trip,” Fuse scoffed, shifting the blame away from us. “Now the only place to get the right fuel for our ride home is from the science facility. So because of some fucking idiot we’re just as stuck here as anypony else.”

Trigger’s face softened from anger to disappointment. “So we’re not leaving yet...” She growled and stomped her metal encased hoof on the ground. “We’re never getting out of here!”

“Hey,” Jury said softly, moving by her and giving her a nuzzle. “We’ll get out. We just gotta keep fighting until we do.” Trigger sighed and nuzzled him back, her face softening once more.

“Who were the ponies you were fighting?” Cutter asked, cutting into their moment.

Trigger glared at the many freshly killed ponies with clear malice. “Cultists,” she growled. We each looked at her questioningly. “Fucking loonies think this is our salvation. That this is what Unitology was leading up to. This isn’t the Unity we were promised!”

“Why would they think that?” I wondered.

“The Visions...” Rigger muttered.

“The what? What exactly happened here?” Cutter questioned.

“I’m not sure how this began,” Rigger started. “But about two weeks ago, there were several ‘incidents’ that Trigger Happy told me about. Ponies kept on going crazy and murdering each other. Not normal murder either, bloody and gruesome. Excessive dismemberment, disfiguration, cryptic writing on the walls much like you see around now.” He sighed. “Have any of you had the Visions yet? Of passed away loved ones or messages?” Cutter and I looked at eachother and I shrugged, Fuse, however, looked a bit shaken. “Don’t listen to them. They drive you mad and make you think things are different from what they really are. No matter how convincing they are they’re lies!” He ended with a huff

Trigger wrapped a hoof around him and continued for him. “A week ago, somepony made it here from the facility and from there it all went to hell. The Necromorphs, the zombie ponies that infest everyplace in the colony, started taking over. Within three days they had half the city, survivors flocked to the stadium. With the help of the Cultists they had the whole colony in five...” Before any of us could ask she iterated. “Throughout the two weeks of the murders and necro invasion, the Cultists were rapidly gaining power. I don’t know how they started or how they grew so fast, though I have a few ideas, but they became large and organized enough to bring down the stadium. They trashed the place from the inside and promised ponies safety if they followed the Cultist, death for anypony who opposed them.” She paused for a moment, as if thinking back to then was painful. I felt the others along side me listening intently. “They... they were true to their word. Rounding up anypony who would join them and opened the place up for the Necros once they left. It was a slaughter...”

“The ones we fought we call Berserkers,” Rigger told us. “They’re ponies who’ve fallen to the Visions. They’ve gone completely mad, almost as bad as the Necros in the sense that they’re reckless and don’t seem to care about their lives.”

“Where exactly can we find these Cultists?” Cutter’s tone didn’t mask his intentions. After hearing what they did I wanted to make them pay too, but I really didn’t want to get in there way if they were as big and organized as Trigger claimed they were.

“Dunno,” Rigger answered with a shrug. “That’s what we’ve been trying to find out for the past two days.”

“It’s hard enough to survive let alone fight these asshole,” Trigger growled.

“Listen,” Cutter began, “I can give you the coordinates to our transport to your R.I.Gs, we have enough food to survive there for awhile. It’s not that far from here. Rest up as much as you need.”

Rigger smiled and Trigger looked relieved to have someplace to stay for the night. The buck saluted. “We promise we won’t make that much of a mess,” he gave us a wry grin. The pegasus slapped the back of his head. I think I blushed.

“What are you going to do?” Trigger questioned.

“We were going to get the power back on and try to find some fuel for our transport or a different one fit enough to take us home,” Cutter told them, nodding to each of us. “These two fillies here should be able to bring the station back online.”

“I hope so,” the mare sighed. “It’d be nice to have some light again. Be careful though, we haven’t been up there, don’t know what it’s like.”

Cutter nodded and his helmet wrapped around his head once more. “You should get going before it’s night. There should be some ponies down there already. Tell them we sent you.”

Soon the two were on their way to our vehicle, Trigger carrying Rigger as they flew. We watched them for a few moments before Cutter finally turned to us. “It looks like we’re in something bigger than we were prepared for.”

“Crazy ponies, zombies, we should have brought more soldiers,” Short Fuse rolled her eyes and her helmet covered her face once more.

I just looked down, trying to push those thoughts away. This would be hard to deal with even without thinking about our situation. I just needed to think about what we had to do now, I didn’t need to remind myself of all that was happening. Fix the power station, that’s all I needed to know. That’s when I noticed my companions were looking at me.

“Cassi?”Cutter asked with a surprisingly gentle tone.

“Let’s just get to the station,” I responded before my helmet extended around my head. The stallion nodded and lead our way to our objective. We were going to be stuck in Harmony for a while.

Chapter 4: Healing Through Faith

I don’t know what happened!” Tight Wind explained frantically from the other side of the call. We were nearing the Healing Through Faith hospital when the pegasus soldier got the transport’s receiver working again. Well maybe it wouldn’t be appropriate to give him the credit, the receiver was working fine. Truthfully, his fears were correct, the soldiers just couldn’t pick up.

“It looks like they shot each other...” The pegasus mused, looking off at something. Presumably the other two soldier’s corpses. “Danik looks like he was hit by a grenade,” this was the first time I got to see Wind without his helmet. He looked like a skinny, frail buck with a dark grey mane and soft yellow eyes. His pale tan coat grew more white while he examined the bodies. “And seems like a few shots went through Tiedemare’s helmet.”

“That doesn’t seem right...” Cutter mumbled. The next few minutes were theories between the two soldiers of what might have happened. Eventually Cutter told Wind to expect two friendly ponies. I hardly listened, instead looking to the hospital in the distance. I could see it at the end of the long street we were on. The purple, twisted crest in the shape of the Holy Marker sat on the top of the large building, covering a large portion of the front. Underneath it was the hospital’s name in Unitology. It was hard to tell from a distance but it looked like the place was boarded up.

Fuse was at my side, studying our destination as well. “So Caasi,” she began, still looking toward the hospital. “What’s your story?” I was surprised by the question and if I didn’t have my helmet on my feelings would have been obvious.

“I didn’t know you cared,” was my response. She wasn’t the friendliest pony, she made no effort to hide that but she wasn’t not friendly to me. I mean she wasn’t nice to me either but she hadn’t really interacted with me much since we got here either.

“I’m just curious,” she explained. “You seem so... different from everypony else on this mission.”

“What do you mean?” We all seemed different in my opinion. A cowardly pegasus, a senator's daughter, a technician that was pretty good with a pistol, Cutter seemed to be the most normal pony among us that would be chosen for something like this. He was a strong and effective leader, a good soldier.

“Well everypony here has had combat training,” she pointed out. “Even Tight Wind I’m sure has shown some fighting prowess to be here now. You’re different though, you’re not a soldier.”

“What about you?” She was a technician but she fought like a soldier. At least to me she did.

“I’m an army technician, Caasi. They taught me how to defend myself,” a chuckle echoed from her helmet. “Why do they think you were chosen to come with us?”

“My mom,” I sighed. She looked at me, her expression masked by metal but the tilt of her head told me she was confused. “She’s a senator housed in Ascension. I was an engineer working for the city there. She was able to pull some strings and get me here. Not that I really wanted to,” I rolled my eyes.

“Then why’d you come here?” she asked.

“I...” I really had no answer to that. It was something my mother wanted me to do but I never really cared much for her anyway. So why had I? “I honestly don’t know. I suppose simply because it’s a job,” I shrugged. “I got jobs all the time back in Ascension and did them without question. I guess I just saw this as one of those.”

“Well look here that got you.”

“Yeah...”

***

“ARG!!” Cutter bellowed while he slammed himself against the boarded up entrance of the hospital. With a loud crack, the boards and doors broke open after the third impact from the massive stallion.

“Well then,” Cutter huffed, panting loudly, “Here’s our way in.”

“Why are we even going through here?” I asked, looking at my holographic map. The hospital wasn’t anywhere near the power station and we certainly didn’t need to go through it from here. If we were hoping to get to the power station before nightfall, I doubted we’d make it. The clouds above already shined a brilliant pink, telling me that dusk was arriving.

“The tram,” Cutter said, moving into the building. The light from his Pulse Rifle illuminated the room as he scanned it with his weapon. The interior was much of the same as the apartments we saw. I assumed the inside of all the buildings were similar. Writing on the walls, the chairs from a waiting area were strew about, ridiculous amount of blood on the walls and ceiling. Much like the apartments, there was no corpses to be found. Not even horribly mutilated, chewed on ones. More small hoofprints lined the wall and ceiling, except instead of only one set, there were dozens and it sent chills down my spine for some reason.

“The what?” I looked around the room, taking in each gruesome detail. The initial shock from when we stumbled upon the apartments wasn’t as strong, but I wasn’t used to the sight of the carnage. I was expecting it, but it was still very hard to accept.

“There’s a series of tram tunnels underneath the city, linking to major sites in the colony,” Cutter finished his scan and glanced back to me. “This isn’t my first trip to Harmony. Best part is that they run on their own power, incase something happens and ponies are in need of quick travel.”

“And there’s one in the hospital?”

“The hospital is an important place,” Cutter pointed out. A sound echoed from a nearby hall.. It was a sickening wet noise and the only thing I could compare to it was when I was sent to an old factory where I found a swarm of cockroaches that bred in the walls. At first I thought it might have somehow been the bugs but then there was another sound that accompanied it. This one was similar to something sharp penetrating flesh followed by growling and hissing I traced back to the zombies, the Necromorphs from the apartments.

Cutter and Fuse remembered too, readying their respective weapons. I aimed my tool toward the hall as well but I wasn’t sure how effective it would be against the undead. The bright blue beams of light from our aiming systems seemed to dance with each other’s as we moved toward the the hall. The entrance of the hospital branched off with stairs and a ward.

We turned to the ward, where the noises sounded from. The ward was somehow worse than the entrance or the apartments. The bodies of the patients were either torn to pieces or simply gone. The beds were drenched in red liquid and blood trails led from them to smashed open vents. The beds also had some pale, chunky, vomit like fluid strewn about them.

Our weapons aimed at the source of the sound, which was partially obscured by a dirty curtain and a medical table. Something poked out slightly, a pale hide with the tips of tentacles flailing about. Soon the growling was louder and the sound of ripping flesh echoed through the ward.

Whatever was blocked now jumped out of its cover. This had to be a Necromorph, but the Necromorphs we saw were different and all had similar appearances... I think. I didn’t get too good of a look at them. I was too busy running for my life. I think I got the basics though, namely the large blades that come out of their backs that they used to balance on their hindlegs.

This one though... It landed on a pair of pale, messy wings that seemed to stretch over most of its body. It’s head was a light blue eyeless pony head though. The most disturbing thing about it though was a meaty wet meniscus justing out of its forehead, ending in the pony’s horn. Scratch that, the most disturbing thing about this creature was the realization that this thing was made of two different ponies. A unicorn and a pegasus almost like a horrific pseudo alicorn.

Fuse’s shot buried itself into the creature’s eye socket. It let out a shriek that nopony could possibly make and retreated into the broken vent with a flap of its grotesque wings. That’s when two familiar blades jabbed into the floor and a Necromorph similar to the first few I’d seen rose off the medical bed with a large hole in its head. This one was darker than the other necromorphs, it looked more decayed and a yellow light shined at us from its eyes.

Cutter growled and sent a barrage of Pulse Rifle rounds deep into its rotted torso. It did nothing to stop the undead beast as it calmly walked towards us on it’s hind legs. The blades coming from it’s back clanged on the ground being used as its forelegs. Its mouth opened much wider than possible for a pony, the skin on its cheeks stretched like taffy until the bottom jaw detached from the rest of it and dropped to the ground. Its cheek skin sagged beside its mouth and several wildly flailing tentacles extended from its throat, dropping a green substance from them.

I was so focused on the monster’s face that I didn’t realize the rest of its body was going through similar disgusting changes, bones jutting out of its hooves, hair and fur dropping from it, even its ribs beginning to poke out of its skin and as these changes went on, it moved faster.

By the time Cutter’s gun clicked empty the thing was charging us. Fuse took off a portion of the Necromorph’s head with a well placed bullet but it did nothing to slow it down. I was too petrified having the corpse running toward me to do anything. Luckily I didn’t need to. Cutter bashed his body into it when it was close enough to us. It tumbled back on the ground while Cutter stood over it menacingly.

“The elevator is on the second floor!” Cutter yelled as the creature’s back bent awkwardly to get back up. “I’ll catch up!” A blade launched at the stallion but Cutter deflected it with one of his gauntlets and bashed his helmet into what was left of the monster’s skull. It flinched back and sent another blade at the Captain with a roar. Cutter tried to deflect it as well but the sharp appendage found purchase in a less armored part of his leg. Cutter yelped from the limb digging deep into his leg but he yanked it out and slammed his armored hoof into its face, pulping the rest of its head.

The beast wasn’t done yet but I didn’t have a chance to see the rest of the fight because Fuse and I took off up the stairs. The second floor wasn’t much better off, bodies ripped up, blood everywhere, several Necromorphs stalking the halls... exactly like the first floor besides the layout.

The necros somehow didn’t see us right away and Fuse used this to her advantage. She lifted her hoof above the ground and a blue light shot down from under it, shooting down the hallway and to the right in the form of a line.

“Locator says this way. Come on!” Fuse barked and raced down where the locator told her where the elevator is. I followed without hesitation. The necros noticed us but we ran past too quickly for any of them to successfully attack us. Soon we amassed a large amount of zombies after us. They were slow and clumsy on their hind legs however, giving Fuse a few seconds at a time to check her locator.

We reached the room with the elevator to an unsettling sight. A nurse stood before it, waiting for us. Her blue eyes were lifeless and secreted the sick green goop that came out of the dark monster’s mouth. Her coat and scrubs were coated in blood and more of that green stuff. She held both a bonesaw and a bottle in her magical grip.

She flung her bottle at Fuse but the unicorn charged right through it, her armor protecting her from the shards, and collided with the nurse. The nurse stumbled back and heaved her saw into Fuse’s shoulder, bouncing off in a flurry of sparks. Fuse pressed her pistol against the nurse’s horn and fired. The nurse let out a long inequine moan as Fuse caught the saw in her magic grip, digging it into the nurse’s neck with a whirring sound.

She continued this until the nurse’s head of cut from her neck but the nurse didn’t die. Instead, her body rose onto its hind legs and the flesh of her upper torso ripped to shreds like tissue, large flailing tentacles taking her body’s place.

“Fuck me...” Fuse stared up at the tentacles flailing above her. She narrowly dodged one of the barbed appendages as it slammed into the ground where she once stood, destroying a medical bed that was behind her.

The tentacles were too preoccupied with the technician to notice me watching in amazement. I aimed my Rivet Gun at the base of one of the new limbs and shot molten steel through it. It dropped to the ground detached to the rest of the body. Fuse noticed this and jumped over a low sweep from one of the barbed tentacles, the saw still held in her grip. She brought it horizontally along the base of one more limb and the rest of the body fell over limp, including the last tentacle.

The group of necros had gotten uncomfortably close and I ran after the other mare. We made it to the elevator and clicked the down button but nothing happened. The group of necros behind us hissed and roared down the hall, prompting her to click repeatedly.

“Fuck!” she yelled out in a mixture of frustration and fear. “It’s locked!”

“Hang on.” I told her, looking at a panel to the side of the elevator.I pulled the panel out and I could see a variety of wires behind it. “Buy me some time!” I told her, calibrating my kinesis module on my foreleg to a gentler setting.

“Easier said than done.” Fuse growled, looking at the hall with her pistol at the ready. The necros finally made an appearance from the hall, stumbling on each other while they tried to get to their next victims.

An explosion shook the room and Cutter charged through the horde of zombies, a dozen severed limbs following him. His dash had a domino effect on the necros in the hall, knocking most of them over. Once he was at a halt he turned and fired a line of Pulse rounds into one of the few standing monsters, severing it’s bladed appendages and mulching the head. These ones seemed much weaker than the dark one.

“Aim for the limbs!” he shouted to us, firing another grenade into a pile of knocked over necros. “It’s the only way to kill them!” Soon Fuse charged into the fray with Cutter but after that I’m not sure what happened with my companions. I was focused on re wiring the elevator. I blocked out the gunfire and roaring from the zombies behind me, giving my full attention to the energy from my forehoof extending and lifting the wires inside the wall almost like a unicorn’s magic. Soon enough the red light above the elevator glowed blue, telling me that it wasn’t locked anymore.

“I fixed it!” I yelled out, pressing the down button. The door opened to an occupied, dim elevator. My eyes widened. The pseudo alicorn was waiting for me. It jumped on me, knocking me on my back as I screamed for help. Its wings wrapped around me and the intestines from two different ponies gripped around my body, holding me close to it. I struggled and fired rivets into its underside but its grip didn’t loosen.

It raised its horn into the air, ready to penetrate my skull. That vomit like fluid spewing from its mouth and onto my chest. A pistol round penetrated the creature’s horn and it screamed from its toothless, vomit filled mouth. Cutter charged and bucked the monster off of me with enough force to send me to my belly. My companions ran past me and into the elevator.

“Come on, Caas!” Fuse called out. I rose to my hooves only to duck again as a blade slashed above me. I launched myself toward the elevator and jumped in just as Cutter launched a grenade, decimating another large portion of the Necromorphs and pressing the button down.

I leaned against the wall and sighed, tears rolling down my cheeks. How was I going to survive this? I was going to die in this city.

Chapter 5: Guardians and Power

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