Dead Space: Isolation

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!”