PonyShock-Survivors

"Hello? Is anybody there? Pick up if someone's here!" A staticky voice echoed in Twilight's mind. Her mind was foggy, and her eyesight almost completely blurred. She awoke, eyes still drooping, and looked around the room for the source of that voice. The room she was currently in was cramped, with only one window adjacent from her. Rubble lay scattered around the room, and desks were covered in papers and...blood. "Hello? Please, pick up if anyone is there!" All around the purple pony was nothing but blood, fire, and sparks, plus the occasional flickers of light coming from the lamp swinging freely above her.

         An alarm blared suddenly, echoing all around the room, filling Twilight with an awakening rush of adrenaline. A male voice accompanied the alarm. "PLEASE EVACUATE THE MEDICAL BAY IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: PLEASE EVACUATE THE MEDICAL BAY IMMEDIATELY." A loudspeaker blared, making Twilight's ears hurt to the point where her eyes began to fill with tears.

         "Alright, Last chance, IF ANYBODY IS ALIVE, ANSWER THIS MESSAGE!" Twilight surveyed the room, looking for the source of the sound. More static went on after the message had ceased, giving Twilight a constant sound to go off of. Twilight's eye stopped at a blink of light coming from under what seemed to be an operating table. She moved closer, as one last staticky message came up: "It seems nobody is aboard," Twilight heard a female voice from within the device, "Yes? Fine, once more. IF ANYBODY IS ALIVE, PLEASE ANSWER IMMEDIATELY!"

         "H-hello? Who is this?" Twilight asked the mysterious voice coming from the small machine she now held with her magic. The device wasn't something Twilight had ever seen before. It was shaped like a rectangular prism, but had wire mesh in the middle, and two small buttons on the sides.

         "Ah! Thank god, someone answered," The voice coming from the speaker had a deep voice, and spoke quickly and quietly, as if avoiding detection. "Please tell me your name, madame?" Twilight didn't know whether or not to trust this strange voice yet. A hiss came from behind her that made her jump. Her head shot behind her, and she saw a pipe, leaking steam which diffused through the room, forcing Twilight to sweat.

         "My name is," Twilight had to think for a moment, hurting her head as she did so. "Um...T-Twilight. Twilight Sparkle." Her eyes looked around and came to a stop at the ground, which reflected her face back to her. Her fur was covered in some form of viscous substance, which was odorless, and tasteless, but had a tint of light blue.
        
         The radio's voice sighed. "Okay, Thanks. At the moment, you need to leave the Medical Bay, Twilight. " Twilight's question of where she was had been answered, for the most part. She still felt a need to know exactly where she was.
        
         "Wait! Where am I? Well, other than the... Medical Bay?" Twilight asked into the radio. It remained silent. "Hello? I asked you where I was!" The radio was still silent. Yet again, the voice sighed. As Twilight impatiently awaited a reply, she took note of the many medical kits lying around the room, either covered in the rubble or spattered with blood. She took as many as she could possibly salvage on her back, and sat in front of the radio, still awaiting an answer.

         "I hate to tell you this, seeing as how you just woke up, but you're on the U.N.N Rickenbacker, A military ship sent to escort the Von Braun to Tau Ceti V to respond to a distress signal. The ship was overtaken by an infection that supposedly originated from Tau. You're on the Medical deck, and from you being alive, it seems it's not completely overtaken. I'll explain later, but right now, I need you to GET OUT OF THERE!" The voice urgently screamed.

         Twilight hobbled over to the exit in panic, obeying the urgency from the radio's voice. A pile of rubble blocked the way to the large and rectangular door, which was ruined by holes of some sort, and scorch marks. She appeared to be at an impasse. "Maybe there's another way out. There has to be!" She spotted a corridor that seemed to be an exit. As she approached the door, she then smelled an odd odor, and she screamed in terror at the decomposing flesh of the Pegasus. She couldn't look away. She'd never seen such a horror with her own eyes. She tripped over a pipe behind her and crawled backwards into the wall. A loud clang sounded from behind her, which startled her further. Behind her was a large vent grate, big enough to fit a pony.  

Twilight still couldn't look away from the body. Every time a maggot made a squeak her heart raced even further. She spotted a wrench next to the front leg of the pegasus, which was still strapped to its hoof. She thought about the vent behind her, remembering four screws that held it to the wall. "Oh no." Twilight gagged at her thought, which made her stomach want to relieve itself even further than it did before. She needed the wrench to open the vent.

The purple unicorn slowly crept towards the body, holding her nose with a hoof to avoid the smell. She made sure that none of her hooves came close enough to touch the flesh. Her horn lit up a faint purple, and the strap came undone. Next, she had to move the hoof up so she could take the wrench. She grimaced as she moved the hoof with her magic. She relieved her magical grasp and saw many maggots crawl from the hoof as it plopped to the ground. Her stomach couldn't hold it any more.

Recovering from the vomit fit she'd had, she strapped the wrench to her hoof, still grimacing from the smell that lingered on it.
        
"Are you still in Medical!? I told you to get out of there! It's not safe!" Now annoying Twilight farther than she could handle, the radio constantly chattered away ever since Twilight picked up the device. She threw the device on the ground, and smashed it with her hooves, sighing in relief at the quiet. Twilight then looked at the vent, and got ready to get to work.

        The vent was rusted, and very flimsy. Twilight gave it a few kicks, just in case, because the bolts on the corners looked rusted the the metal. She grunted as she kicked it, harder and harder each time, feeling an urgent need to escape the room. Barely a dent came upon the vent cover, making Twilight red with frustration. "Fine, I'll just use the wrench," she yelled at the vent as if it could hear her.

The rusted bolts barely moved when Twilight made attempts to twist them with the wrench. The first one she was on at the moment broke from the sheer force of Twilight's twist of the wrench. The bolt may have broken, but the corner also snapped off, since the bolt was rusted to the vent's corner. She repeated this step many times until the vent finally fell to the floor and broke into many pieces of rust and scrap. "Done. I hope I don't find any more 'surprises' in there." Twilight let out a weak giggle and went through.

The passage was relatively clear, until the main ventilation system came along, giving Twilight thousands of ventilation systems to check through. The stench of death once again came by Twilight's nose. Only this time, there wasn't one body, but hundreds. Though the main system was rather small, and housed a very large fan system in the middle, followed by thousands of pipes joining at the center, it was large enough to hold up to 200 ponies. Alive or dead. The smell of decaying flesh from hundreds of pony scientists made Twilight dry heave. Although she felt sick to her stomach, she couldn't help but cry for the poor souls who had to die for no reason at all. As far as she knew, anyway. Unfortunately for the already sick-to-her-stomach Twilight, the only way out of the main system was through.

The flesh of the dead ponies sloshed as Twilight ran through, holding back gags as she did so. The stench was beginning to overpower her, and the thousands of ventilation shafts messing with her vision didn't help much either. She found one labelled 'Engineering' and quickly ran inside. The vent she was in was much more cramped, and still smelled of decomposition. This didn't bother Twilight, because all she knew was that she was finally out of that horrible place. Her relief didn't last long. As she crawled through, the shaft creaked under her. This made Twilight panic, and she braced for impact, covering her eyes and hoping for the best.

The room she fell into seemed more like an office than an Engineering room. Then again, these rooms were far different than those of Ponyville. Memories of Ponyville flashed through her mind. Visions of Pinkie Pie's insane 'Pinkie sense', Spike bringing her letters. "Spike..." Twilight whispered, remembering her number one assistant, and a tear rolled down her cheek. She refocused on the office, which had a lone light sitting atop a wooden desk, papers strewn about its surface. A small door, with a red light flashing above it, sat in the middle of the adjacent wall, along with a small window next to it. The walls, including the one with the door, had strange symbols written on them, and each and every one of them was accompanied with an 'X' through it.
        
          Twilight sniffed around the room, getting used to the scent of putrid death, and found another pony's body right next to the desk. What was different about this pony was that this time he had no lab coat, but a pair of overalls and a hard hat, along with a pair of goggles on his neck. This particular pony was not decomposing, yet. Twilight jumped at a sudden click. "Warning, Virus contamination risk at Extreme levels," a loudspeaker's voice said this in a very nonchalant way.

         The purple unicorn found a device similar to the other one she found laying underneath the operating table in the Medical Bay, only this device glowed a very faint blue, and had blood spattered about it. She used her magic to pick it up, still not used to finding dead ponies around this place, and the device flickered brighter as her horn picked it up. 'WOULD YOU LIKE TO LISTEN TO LOG 00983?' the device displayed on its screen. Twilight tapped 'Yes' with her hoof and listened.
        
         "We really screwed it up this time. In order to contain the virus we..." The device became full of static and continued, "...the door. Just so I remember," it filled with static again, and continued once more, "Oh Celestia, NO!" At that last word, she heard a loud growl, and a scream. Finally, she heard nothing but silence. The body she picked the device from was horribly mutilated, it's torso flayed, and the ribs almost completely invisible. Only half of its face was visible; what was left of its face, at least.

Twilight headed towards the door, trying to recover from the sickness she felt after looking at the body. Though it had no maggots, it was still very sickening to look at something like that, especially knowing that it was once a living, breathing pony. "Is that...Yes! It's a map!" Twilight felt a joy she hadn't felt since she got out of the room she woke up in. The map showed every room on the floor Twilight was in, and each of them was either incredibly small, or took up half the space on the map. Twilight was in an office that led into the Engineering corridors, and based on that she found Cryogenic Storage B on the map, pretty far from where she was. "I guess it would make sense to head to where XERXES insisted."

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         "No! Stay away from me! HELP! SOMEONE! PLEASE!!" A scream that sounded slightly muffled broke her focus on the map, forcing her to look out the window to her right. A pony, wearing a white coat, which looked a lot like the bodies in the main ventilation system wore, who also had a yellow mane, along with an orange coat ran past her. Twilight wanted to scream for her to wait, but before she was able to open her lips, a much taller pony, along with the same attire, walked in front of the other pony.

         The pony was bloodied, and had missing patches of fur and skin covering its body. Its mane was plastered to its face, making it impossible to see it, which was probably for the best. Twilight panicked and hid behind the wall beneath the window. She heard a thundering boom, and another, accompanied by a gagging that sounded inpony. The mare's screaming had ceased.

         "No! Oh please, Celestia! This isn't happening! It's against all laws! Monsters are not real, Twilight, not real at all! The books say it can't be done. Books are always right!" Twilight began to hyperventilate as she repeated those words, attempting to comfort her self. Her attempts were sadly in vain. The room around her began to spin, and Twilight felt herself beginning to pass out.

         "This is XERXES, Please evacuate all personel to Cryogenic Storage B. Contamination event imminent." The purple unicorn was awoken by the loud alarm accompanying XERXES' announcement. The map she looked at earlier stated that to get from Medical to Cryogenic Storage B, she would have to go through Engineering. Luckily for her, she was already close to Engineering.
                                         The corridor to the Engineering deck was very old-looking, and appeared to have seen better days. The walls sparked, and the pipes hissed from the high pressured steam blowing in all directions. Water from the hydro pumps covered the floor, making Twilight act incredibly circumspect to avoid slipping, on top of avoiding the steam's heat. She halted. A three way intersection now stood directly in front of her. Each of them equally dimly lit. "Hmmm...What way should I go? The map should have been more detailed! It didn't say anything about a three-way intersection!" Twilight whined in frustration and regret at the fact that she couldn't find her way out, and to make it worse, she broke the radio. "Better just try all of them," Twilight muttered, and went down the left corridor.

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         The corridor Twilight had ventured into was very long; Or so it seemed. The lighting was so inefficient and dim that she couldn't see three inches in front of her face. "Dah! Owwch!" Twilight moaned in pain and she covered her muzzle with a hoof as she sat up. She rubbed her muzzle and it felt wet. She felt around with the other to find out what she probably broken her nose running into. Smooth. Crease in what appears to be the middle. A door! Twilight leaned forward even more, and a hiss was heard. Twilight then fell forward, hitting her nose again. "Luna, what the hell is wrong with this place and my nose!" Twilight cursed, clamping her nose with both hooves.

         As Twilight walked down the new corridor, the light became better, and she was able to see well throughout the halls. The walls were splattered with blood and oil, and a strange substance covered most of the way. A window went all along the hall to Twilight's left, along with Celestia's sun. What appeared to be a pony sat out of reach of the sun's light. "Are you alright?" Twilight asked. If there was a response from it, Twilight couldn't hear it over the sound of the explosion. Before she fell to the ground, she saw a fuse box, completely charred and still spitting sparks at her.
        
         The flames seared her flesh and fur until they burnt to the very base of the skin. Twilight screamed in pain, but that stretched her burns further out than they could handle. The skin on her face began to separate from itself, gushing blood which made Twilight scream louder. After many minutes of pure agony and horror, Twilight was able to just barely stand up. Her wounds were still bleeding, and her fur had almost completely burned off. "Please! Help me!" She yelled over to the figure crouching in front of her. It turned around, revealing the deformed face of a colt, along with a tentacle streaming down his face and back into his body through his chest cavity. It veered closer, and leapt upon a very weak Twilight. "You will...become...one...of The Many!" it wheezed. Twilight used her magic to raise her wrench from her side, weakly at that, and swung it forcefully against the side of the monster's head, making it wail in pain. It slumped to the floor, still wailing. Again, she brought her wrench up, and shot it straight through the monster's eye, ending its 'life'. -----------------------------------------------------------------------
The end of part one.