Chapter 11: Top of the Tower

"Damn... Bastard... Stairs..." Cantor breathlessly grumbled as he clawed himself up the final few bumpy non-slip metal steps. The last six songs being dreadfully sung through his earpiece by the growingly irritating grey mare had been forever branded onto his mind like a number on the posterior of cattle.

Cantor lie there on the cold metal surface, his vision pulsing black as he took deep, rapid breaths which hurt his chest. Faith's somewhat intentionally bad singing had become background radiation - nothing like ambience at all. "Maybe this is what she meant by 'motivation'. Cantor thought; too tired to even speak. "Or at least the quirky way she said it..."

After several minutes, Cantor had recovered enough breath to comfortably speak. To his great agitation, he had to wait for Faith to finish making a meal of 'Stairway to Heaven' before he could quickly interject to avoid giving the pegasus a chance to ask if he 'liked it' and start another song.

"Faith-" Cantor quickly started. "I've got a headache. I've just climbed over a hundred flights of stairs with a dislocated leg and a punctured lung. To say I've had a bad day is an insulting understatement. Please... No... More... Singing..."

"...Just one more?" Asked Faith with enthusiasm, followed by a jestful laugh.

"No!" Cantor snapped in response.

"Okay, fine, jeez..." The pegasus replied, sounding a little hurt. "So you say you're at the top of the stairs?" She asked, adopting a much more austere approach.

"Yeah." Cantor breathed as he struggled back to his hooves.

"You should see three doors: one on the left, one in front of you, and one to the right." Informed Faith as she looked to Flitter for support. "Now if I'm right in thinking, only the front one and the right one should be open: the left one's closed."

Cantor nodded. "Correct."

"Go through the one in... fffront...?" She instructed, sounding a little unsure towards the end. "It was the one straight ahead, wasn't it, Flit?" She asked, failing to take her hoof from the transmitter before she did so.

The sound inside Cantor's ear disappeared, and he was met with the looming silence of the two extremely dark corridors. To break the chills of the silence, Cantor touched his hoof to his earpiece. "Uhh, girls... Which door do I go through?" He asked cautiously, changing focus between each entrance, expecting something sinister to leap out from the shadows when he wasn't looking.

Hesitantly, Faith responded. "T-the r-right one."

"Which is...?" Cantor replied in monotone, rolling his eyes.

"Huh?" Came the mare's dumbfounded reply.

Cantor rolled his eyes for a second time before answering. "You said 'the right one'." He stated dryly. "Does that mean 'the door on the right' or 'the correct door'?"

"The one on the right." Faith answered, still sounding somewhat unsure.

"You don't sound all that convinced." Cantor replied with a dull tone. "Why can't you come to me?"

There was a long silence until Faith responded gingerly. "...W-we're... feeling sick." She said with a little sincerity. "Ooh, my stomach keeps cramping every couple of minutes!"

Cantor grumbled a sigh and stared blankly ahead with dark eyes. "Sounded fine during those half-dozen songs..."

Again, another long silence occurred. "Be a gentlecolt and come to us girls." Faith spoke harshly, though her playfulness was evident on her tone. "The door on the right..."

There was only silence on the mares' end after Faith stopped speaking.

Cautiously as ever, Flitter turned to the grey pegasus, who seemed to be wearing a troubled expression. "You think he's going to be okay?" The lilac mare asked with concern.

Faith shrugged as she screwed up her cereal bar wrapper and threw it against the opposite wall. "I'm sure he'll be fine." She affirmed confidently. "But I doubt he'll be thanking me for my efforts in 'motivation'..." The blonde mare continued, a subtle smirk reforming on her lips. "How rude..."

"You look like shit." Faith remarked to Cantor as he slowly hobbled closer to the couple of mares.

"Thanks..." Cantor replied sarcastically, stopping some distance from Faith and Flitter to allow them to make up the distance. "Nice to see you, too..." The alicorn leaned against the wall and continued to take long, deep breaths. The immediate pain in his chest and punctured rear leg had become so much of a constant that the bloodstained stallion had grown somewhat used to it.

"In all seriousness, though," Faith started as she grew close to Cantor, breathing a relieved sigh. "I'm glad to have you back with us. Though I'm a strong,"

"Strong." Cantor repeated agreeably.

"Confident," Faith continued with a grin.

"Cocky." Cantor proposed in place of an improvement.

"Independent mare," The grey pegasus finished, finding it difficult to keep even the slightest straight face. "It's always good to have a stallion around to provide the bulk... Shame we don't have one of those anymore..." She rallied, shooting Cantor a shameless wink before her glow dimmed slightly as her eyes fell to the floor. "...It's a shame about Red..." She muttered, scuffing her hoof on the slightly rusted metalwork.

"Hey," Cantor quietly, but firmly spoke, drawing the downhearted pegasus' eyes to his rousing smile. "He died protecting ponies he cared about. That's more of a hero's death most ponies could hope for..." He affirmed, allowing the grey mare to mimic his slight grin.

With an accepting sigh, Faith closed her eyes and nodded her head. "Yeah..." She breathed. "But still, he was only like, forty... He still had a lot to do. More so," She continued with sensitivity. "He had a family... They're gonna be heartbroken..."

Upon hearing this, Cantor's expression dissolved from sympathetic to sinister; his eyes widened slightly and he found himself staring straight through Faith like she was made of glass.

In a concerned sense of curiosity, Faith tried to intercept the stallion's vacant line of sight. "...Cantor...?" She asked, moving her large golden eyes in front of his. "What's wrong? A-apart from the obvious...?" She tried to crack a smile, but the alicorn's face remained omer and hard.

Cantor remained only breathing for several seconds before he collected enough of his thoughts to form a scentence. "Oh..." He began, seemingly startled. "I... I was just thinking about my f... family..." He relayed openly, unsure as to why he so freely expressed himself. "When you said about Red's, I... I realised I might never get to see my family again..." Despite his tone and topic, Cantor couldn't help but form a nostalgic smile. "We're not a very big family: only two and a half members, you know... Unless of course you count our close friends. In that sense, we're huge! Regardless, Twilight, our foal and I are a family, and... and I want to be a part of it..."

Faith began to take on a more sympathising persona, yet she was wise enough to know that these kind of feelings were as impairing as they were delicate.

"Come on, Cantor," Faith began with confident enthusiasm. "You've said this before! And didn't you decide not to dwell on these feelings while there was still hope?"

Cantor nodded weakly before looking up and gauging coinciding eye-contact with the mare. "You're right." He said, admitting quick defeat in his own argument; knowing it was for the better.

"While we still have options available, there's no way we can let ourselves fall into self-pity." The pegasus continued with unnaturally occurring vigour. "We haven't even searched all of this floor yet, and I'm confident that there's gonna be some kind of landing site when we're this high up; away from everything."

Cantor's placiated and reformed composure gave rise to that of proud stature and an expression of leadership as he pried himself away from the wall and accepted Faith as an organic crutch for him to find stability in.

With a confident stride, the three equines steadily made their way down the corridors and hallways, checking the many rooms and areas of storage for anything and everything that looked like it might help them off this planet. They had each other's backs: even the very young, hesitant Flitter seemed to be coming out of her shell of innocence and taking the lead at intervals. Whatever prejudices they may have held before; whatever opposing beliefs they may have kept, didn't matter at all now. The three lost and homesick ponies moved together as one: a group of soldiers, comrades... A group of friends.

They had decided to fight, to survive...

...To live.

The thick metal plate separating the cold, moist hallway from the thinly carpeted room slid up into the ceiling. Immediately, the stench of the damp, rotting carpet hit the ponies like it had done for the other half-dozen rooms. The contents of this office-like enclosure was difficult to set aside from the other rooms too; thin, dark plastic chairs were left in a dissarayed congress around a large oval table. Papers were scattered across the stained grey enamel surface as well as broken glasses and jugs of stagnant water.

Flitter, who stood above the kneeling Faith and Cantor reached into the darkness and shone the light on her laser rifle across the less-than clinical walls, highlighting oddly-coloured posters, a wooden-framed cork-board adorned neatly with papers, and a large incandescent silver screen stretching from floor to ceiling.

"Nothin'." Faith declared spitefully. "Just like the others."

"One thing strikes me as odd, though..." Cantor began as the ponies entered the darkened room and tried the lights, which took several seconds to weakly flicker on.

"What's that?" Flitter asked, pulling out a chair and peering under the table.

Cantor admired the poster on the wall, attempting to decode the mind-boggling symbols printed in bold red. "It's that this area of the facility seems most derelict..." Stated the alicorn with a focused brow. "Yet all those creatures were back down below nearer the surface."

"Oh, yeah..." Faith mused thoughtfully as she scoured the filing cabinets at the far side of the room. "You're right, we haven't seen any of them since they swarmed us in that room." She shut the cabinet door with a 'bang' and continued searching the metal trays of illegible documentation, occasionally pulling out one which piqued her interest before declaring it incomprehensible and tossing it to the floor. "Why?" She asked whilst flicking through papers. "You wanna see more of 'em?"

"Pfft!" Cantor scoffed, limping further along the wall until he stopped before a curious - looking vent near the ceiling. "I don't want to see another one of those for as long as I live!" He spoke with direction. "I just find it... 'odd', that there were so many in clusters down below, but up here, it's like... It's like there's a whole different strain of chaos..." He shuddered. "Speaking of which, come and look at this, guys." Cantor beckoned, drawing great interest from both mares.

"What is it?" Faith inquired before seeing for herself what Cantor had discovered; only a second after asking her hollow question, she gave an out-of-character filly's squeal of disgust. "Eugh!" She wretched upon seeing the swollen red tendrils making their way like thick, bloody ivy through the grid-work of the ventilation grate in the top corner of the room. The fleshy-looking substance pulsed with fat, bulging veins running across its surface, as well as giving the odd appearance of 'breathing' as it very slowly thickened and deflated.

Faith, returning to her overly-uncouth nature expressed her disgust in the most simple way she knew how. "It looks like an old stallion's prolapsed ass!" She cried with revulsion.

Cantor gagged a little and turned to the grey mare, who appeared somewhat proud of her own fast-thought observation. "Thanks for that!" He spat with a scowl before turning back to the meaty anomaly. "But in all seriousness, what the Hell is this stuff?" He asked openly, dragging over a table to stand on for extra height.

It was a struggle to walk with only three functioning legs - let alone clambering onto a smooth plastic surface. He fell off once - much to the pair of girl's 'encouraging' laughter. Though they soon stopped their chuckling when they discovered Cantor was in real pain; and that it was a genuine struggle for him to find the energy to roll over onto his stomach.

After helping the amputee alicorn onto the tabletop, Faith and Flitter subconsciously accepted the job of spotting for the male pony as he made his observations verbal. "I think it's some kind of..." His sentence fell to a mumble as he refrained himself from finishing but continued to make out like he was investigating.

"What?" Faith questioned, skewing her head a little.

Sighing, knowing how ridiculous this was going to sound, Cantor retried his observation. "I think it's... some kind of, uh... 'living plant' matter..." He stated, pausing for Faith to snicker and diminish his point. However, no such mockery ensued, and after a few seconds, Cantor turned to the couple of mares wearing an expression of mild surprise. "That doesn't sound odd to you?" He asked openly.

"Cantor," Faith replied nonchalantly, eyes closed somewhat tiredly. "With what I've been through today, I wouldn't be shocked if you told me it had a mouth and eyes..." Spoke the pegasus with a smirk.

Cantor returned the smile before referring back to the strange vent. With a surplus of curiosity, he leaned forward and placed his ear next to the opening. As well as a light breeze, the alicorn noticed how the sound of what may be blood pumping through this odd growth's veins was similar to that of somepony swallowing viscously: thick, loud thumps as the bulging bloodlines flexed with a slow metronomic rhythm.

"Well..." Cantor started again after a moment. "It doesn't seem to pose any kind of threat: I don't think there's anything hiding in this vent..." He affirmed, allowing Flitter and Faith to once again help him clamber from the tabletop.

They were about to leave when Faith unexpectedly cupped her hoof around one of the heavy plastic chairs and tossed it across the room. It struck the iridescent screen with a crash before making an almighty, clattering descent to the messy floor over the other chairs and a table.

The sound had, to say the least, startled Flitter and Cantor. Both of which had now frozen in shock before the stallion found the initiative to turn around and inspect, finding the large screen glowing bright white before a cocky-looking pegasus.

"What the Hell, Faith!?" Cantor barked viciously. "Why'd you do that?" He asked, becoming sidetracked by the white square illuminating the wall.

Faith didn't answer: for she, too had become engrossed and intrigued by the glowing white space. Flitter was staring at the wall too, mesmerized by the oddly-occurring light.

And then all of a sudden, the harsh white lite cut to a shot of one of the ape-like creatures from before. It looked like another male, however it was different than the one seen in the video in the destroyed lab. He leaned back in his chair as he drew his broad, three-digit hand away from the camera, staring into the lens with his large, bulbous green eyes. He wore a lab coat with a large, albeit feint stain over the right shoulder. Beneath which, he wore a pale red shirt with a black tie done up loosely around his unbuttoned collar. Facial hair surrounded his lips and chin, and several pens varying from ballpoints to highlighters lie in disarray within his breast pocket.

"Tower Eight, research log number eighty-seven. Day, 0-4, month, 0-1, year, 30-74. Chief biological engineer and head of creature research, Dr. Harpin recording... " He said, his voice coming over surprisingly soft and well spoken contrary to his rather brash appearance. "We have been able to create a compound which does not send the subject into a crazed fit of pain and violence. However, we have been unsuccessful in controlling their temperament. Though motor function seems to be stable under the creature's own control, attempts to domesticate them have been futile..."

Intrigued to no end, the three ponies paced warily over to the screen with the vividly moving images and watched the creature take out a red pen from his coat pocket and begin scribbling down notes on a piece of paper off-screen. This cinematic reminded the equines of the motion-picture theatres they had back home - only this was much more advanced.

"The easy part is over." Continued 'Dr. Harpin' as he wrote, taking on a much more relaxed and opinionated persona. "Sure some may see the investment into biologically engineered predators as 'impossible', but when one understands meiosis to such a degree as the Noxi Faction, then building such a creature is a breeze..." He turned his gaze from the papers under his hands and stared up at the camera with an off smile. "Some might say we are playing 'God'..." He stated darkly. "But really, what difference is there when comparing oneself to that of a God? Omnipotence? Will? Or is it some kind of sick sense of 'judgement' believers feel they owe themselves the duty to bestow...?"

Harpin let his eyes fall slightly, though his amusement seemed to grow. "My apologies..." He continued with a laugh. "I seem to work myself up somewhat whenever religion becomes involved..." He put an unpleasantly cruel emphasis on that particular word.

Cantor turned nervously towards Faith, but she was too absorbed in the ape-like creature's ramblings to notice the alicorn's eyes staring at her. Seeing as how she didn't react, Cantor shifted his gaze from Faith to the moving images on screen.

"Not many people are aware of old-world history, but less than a thousand years ago, religion was a main factor in many wars: whenever someone should do something that seemed morally 'wrong' from a sensible man's point of view, the notion that the act was spurred by the assailant's 'God' seemed to provide moderate cushioning to their blame..." Dr. Harpin paused for a second or two; simply staring into the camera before he coughed nervously into his large, three-digit fist and sat back in his chair.

"Excuse me," He said with a curt laugh. "I didn't mean for this to turn into a lecture on opinionated history..." Added the doctor with a sigh. "Moving swiftly back to topic," Harpin re-affirmed with volume. As he raised his voice slightly, one of the other creatures peered over from the background as he walked past, only giving a quick glance of curiosity before he continued on his way. "The 'easy' part is over, now we need to develop some form of domesticative inoculation for the creatures, as well as a name for the beasts... Yet this, as with all solutions, will come with time... perhaps some form of telepathy could work to influence these... 'animals'..." The video ended with Harpin staring slightly to the side of the camera, tapping his bearded chin lightly with his taloned finger, a knowing smile spreading across his lips.

The screen shut off abruptly, plunging the room once again into darkness, sharply enough to make the ponies flinch with the sudden change in lighting.

For not the first time that dreadful evening, the ponies were at a loss for words. Though the silence seemed to promptly pass - as it always did in the end...

"So..." Cantor started with a soft advertent tone, turning to Faith, who was still staring blankly at the shiny square where the picture just was. "The... people who used to live here... Made those creatures that've been trying to kill us?"

Faith changed her gaze to the stallion, her expression difficult to tell from uncaring or absolute. "What gave you that idea...?" She asked in monotone before the slightest elements of amusement grew on her face. "That guy literally just said that."

Cantor, however, found little humour in the remark. "But why?" He asked, not expecting either mare to provide an answer. "Why would they think it would be a good idea to make something so... so vicious, so dangerous, so... experimental..." He queried, focusing his eyes on the dark carpeted floor.

"...Sounds a bit like the last party I went to..." Faith interjected after a longer than adequate pause.

"That one took you long enough." Cantor quickly responded, drawing a light smile from the grey mare. However, he did not loose his conspiration over the matter. "But the big question here is: ...'Why the Hell did someone try and make these monsters...?" Asked the alicorn openly, not sure about pursuing this discussion further. Or, for that matter, unsure as to whether he wanted to find out at all. "Whatever the reason," Cantor began to speak again in dark monologue. "I doubt they were trying to open a petting zoo here..."

And the subject was left at that.

With nothing else to say, the trio exited the musky room, leaving the door open as they had done for all the other rooms they inspected. Doing this so they could easily tell which they had already visited if the need to back-track arose. Their most recently searched room seemed to be the last in the corridor - yet their options were not yet exhausted: a while ago, the ponies came across a barely furnished room around halfway down the corridor: pipes were left bare and exposed along the walls - yet they did not keep uniform like the cables of the facility below. It very much took on the persona of a boiler room, yet without the dry, comforting heat.

Faith walked slowly alongside Cantor to help him keep his balance. Occasionally, whenever she felt it necessary to ruffle her feathers for comfort, the bone protruding from the alicorn's badly amputated wing jabbed along the top of her wing. Even with the bandages wrapped around the entirety of the stallion's mid-section, the jagged bones still seemed to jut out quite alarmingly.

Looking upon the room the ponies had last searched from the front, the corridoor took a sharp right-angle turn to the left, extending some distance before turning another ninety degrees to the right, to follow the perimeter of the last conference-type room.

Cantor and company reached the sharp right corner of the hallway and stopped, waiting for Cantor to check to see if the coast was clear.

Slowly edging his head around the edge of the metal wall, the alicorn kept his own personal visibility in mind: keeping a clear mental image of how much of himself he was exposing to the other path.

But then, once he had had enough of an eyeful to decide the next course of action, Cantor quickly withdrew his head from the area and fearfully turning to console with Faith with mortified eyes.

"What was it?" The pegasus asked impatiently, whilst bearing in mind that she should keep her tone hushed. "What's down there?"

Cantor slowly shook his head, his mouth slightly open in an expression of horrified disgust. "Fuck. That. Shit..." He quietly breathed, his words doing little else than ignite Faith's curiosity - for better or worse.

Mimicking Cantor's cautious approach, Faith nosed ever so slowly around the corner, and instantly, she could see the reason behind the alicorn's vexation. Not too far down the hallway; perhaps ten feet or so, was the last door of the hallway. But something was most definitely wrong... near the foot of the door, there was a small-ish circular opening - only several inches in diameter. The hole looked like it had been drilled through. (And somepony hadn't taken the care to sand down the 'rough' edges...) Surrounding the already rather macabre opening was a substance similar to the curious fleshy matter found growing out of the vent in the previous area.

As well as the vein-scarred tissue spreading halfway up the rest of the wall like thick, skinless fingers, the majority of the walls and floor surrounding the pitch-black hole was saturated with dark, stale, marroon-coloured blood. Even the faltering light above had flecks of red lashed onto it: completing the eerie, sinister scene to a tee.

"Shit..." The unnerved pegasus breathed with an out of place tone of awe, wearing an ill look.

"I know, right." Cantor replied agreeably, going to walk away. (As if there were any other option.)

Despite her next question, Faith began to follow on after the alicorn. "Where are you going?" She asked, returning to the stallion's bad side.

"Back to that place with the door going outside." He replied knowingly. "I saw something we might be able to walk on when we briefly opened that door..." Inside the boiler room-type place the ponies had passed a while ago was a large service hatch to the outside world. However, once Cantor had manually opened the door, gale-force winds stormed inside, making it difficult for the ponies to keep their eyes open with the dust and sand being pelted at their faces. Once Faith had collected herself over the interior hurricane, (or to whatever similar re-affirmation could be applied) she slammed the hatch shut, restoring 'peace' to the inside.

Everyone caught a chill from the winds, yet it was only after a peek through the cramped, reinforced window within the door that told the ponies why there was such an unrelenting wind: this planet, as far as the equine eye could make out, was perfectly spherical. (Or thereabouts...) There were no hills, mountains or even trees, just the baron, cracked, dry, dusty earth: nothing to stop the winds as they smoothed this world and became faster and faster, more violent as time marched on...

Regardless, Cantor was aware that the next step was the step outside, and what was left of his team would have to follow suit.

Back near the corner as she watched Cantor and Faith shuffle back the way they had just came, Flitter's curiosity was at a high - though she was certain what the other two had seen was unpleasant to the highest degree, the young unicorn couldn't help but steal a glimpse.

"Uugh..." She groaned in revolution, attracting the attention of the two older ponies.

"What are you doing, Flit?" Cantor asked with a forbidding tone.

"It's like that stuff in the vent from before..." The unicorn observed, taking a step closer. "It's really weird..." She added as she took small paces towards the opening.

Both Cantor and Faith turned around and made their way towards the lilac mare, though it was Cantor who continued to question the young girl's intent. "Flitter," He began sternly. "Don't go near that." He said, his volume raised.

Flitter shook her head dismissively. "It's alright," She began to justify, scanning the dark hole with curious eyes. "My gun's got a torch on it: I just want to see inside."

"Be damn careful, Flit..." Faith warned, staying by Cantor's side some distance from the corner.

Flitter continued to advance on the strange hole, holding her flash light low to the ground, able to make out the deep red tendrils beyond the morbid opening, when all of a sudden, Cantor felt a wave of unease surge through his shoulders as the hairs on the back of his neck stood to attention.

"Stop!" Cried the alicorn, making both mares flinch slightly.

"What?" Both Faith and the adventurous young girl asked in imperfect unison.

"Honestly, Flitter," Cantor started, worry evident on his tone. "I really think we shouldn't be anywhere near that. Look at all the blood." He could hear that his voice was starting to tremble himself, and he somewhat hoped his company might pick up on this. Yet they did not.

Stealing one last glimpse of the fleshy interior of the room sealed shut by the red vines, Flitter began to walk back towards Cantor and faith, trying to dismiss herself as she neared. "Sorry, Cantor, I just wanted to see what was on the other side... See if the stuff in the vent was-"

Flitter's sentence was cut squeamishly short as she felt the unwelcome sensation of something warm and wet firmly wrap around one of her back legs.

And her confusion turned to panic as it began to pull her backwards.