Half an Hour Ago:

A piercing pain slams through Copy’s eye, and a whirlwind of images and sounds flash past his senses. After an eternity passes in a second, Copy.Data resumes screaming at the retracting needle. Hands in sterile blue gloves and an aura of magic lift him from the dreaded machine, and monsters surround him, gaping jaws and vicious teeth flashing in the bright, fluorescent light.

He thrashes and swings, only to be subdued by the grip of the magic aura and grasping claws, screaming all the way.

Then, his bleeding eye is covered by soothing bandages, and he is left, fore legs bound together by the psychiatric suit he wears at the fetlocks.

He screams until he is hoarse again, blind in one eye and limbs on fire from pain. He waits, and waits, the bright lights of the cell illuminating everything in it. The sheet of forged glass acts as a mirror, the observation area dark.

“Okay, ow...” Copy.Data moans, everything feeling really bad, “I didn’t expect this when I signed up, can I get a refund... nope, jokes don’t help, it still hurts. Hey doc, what day is it?”

“Wednesday, as usual for your appointments, Mr. Data.”

“Gee, how helpful. How about a calendar?”

“Perhaps if you are well behaved, Mr. Data. We wouldn’t want you to injure yourself.” The voice is calm, and deep, and coming from somewhere above Copy, though his good eye is shut from the brightness of the lights after the dark of the machine.

“Right.” Copy would have rolled his eyes if they were open “Because I’m fully incapable of looking at a piece of paper that doesn’t require physical contact, without getting a papercut. How reassuring you are.”

“Now, now, Mr. Data, being rude won’t get you anywhere. Do you remember the sequence now?”

“Hey, I’m not being rude, I’m being sarcastic, there’s a big difference. What do you mean, ‘sequence’? I’m an engineer and a bad author, not a cryptologist.”

“Please don’t lie, Mr. Data, I know it’s buried in there somewhere. Perhaps I should schedule you for an extra appointment in the Sunset Device in two days?”

Something about that name sparks a fiery terror in Copy’s mind.

“Ummm, I don’t know if that’s a good idea, my mind isn’t a very clean place, it gets messy, maybe you should wear boots next time you wanna go in a little deep.” CD says, trying humour to lighten the situation.

“Indeed. Nurse, go prepare a sedative, Mr. Data doesn’t need to be moving for the next week.”

“Oh, well shit, I’m not gonna like waking up, am I?”

There’s no answer from anyone, until a slight pinch at the base of his neck causes him to yelp, as the world fades to black.

Waking up, Copy.Data opens his eyes to see a familiar, stainless-steel needle pointing at his eye.

“OH GOD! No needles no needles no needles in my eyes!” Copy.Data screams in abject terror as the needle begins drawing closer, “Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease no needles in my eye! Isn’t there another way!?” Copy.Data tries moving his hooves to protect his face, but just like before, he is so restrained he can’t even lift or twitch his head. “PLEASE guys, don’t you know what mercy is!? I swear, I’ll never steal from the cookie jar again! Nope, jokes still not helping, shit.”

Suddenly, he isn’t in the eye-poke machine anymore, but rather restrained to a chair.

“Now, Mr. Data, are you ready to comply? I can run the simulation again if you’d prefer, perhaps leave it running a little longer this time?” It’s the smug doctor-voice again.

“Yeah, sure, who said I wouldn’t comply in the first place, anyway? You’re almost as nuts than I am, if you ask me, by the way.”

“Actually, you’re the one who got you here. Now, I’m going to ask again, as I did yesterday, what is the sequence?”

Something snaps inside Copy.Data, and he begins shouting random, seemingly unintelligible things at the top of his lungs, panting and laying exhaustedly in the chair afterwards. He can barely breathe, and a slow clapping meets his ears.

“Good, Mr. Data, I knew you’d tell us eventually. Nurse, be so kind as to return him to his cell. And remember to give him juice today, instead of water.”

“Oh... joy... yes... that’ll solve ALL... my problems... Can’t I go... home now?” Copy.Data says, taking deep breaths in between words.

“Indeed, to your new home in cell A7. I’ll see you next wednesday, Mr. Data.”

Well, great... This just gets... better and better. Do you... enjoy torturing me, Mr. Disembodied Voice From Above?” Copy.Data says sarcastically, but still actually wanting an answer.

“Of course not, Mr. Data. But you’re too useful to simply discard.”

The whoosh of a door closing ends the conversation, and Copy.Data feels the cart moving him speed up. Opening his unbandaged eye, he looks around the familiar padded cell, the heavy main door sliding shut as a tall, bipedal shape leaves through it.

“Home sweet Home, I never thought they did this to crazy ponies, I just wanted a free place to sleep!” CD says complaining that his plan looked VERY different in his head “Why are they sticking needles in my eye anyway?”

He sits there, contemplating things while stuck upright in the uncomfortable brace, slowly nodding off to sleep, only interrupted by the nurse coming back to help feed him, edible spoon for the jello and a fully rounded straw for the juice.

After eating, he doesn’t have much to do, just wait until sleep takes him, which it does some time later.

“Copy! Copy.Data! Wake up!”

“I could make a joke about mistaking you for my mom, but that wouldn’t help, would it. You’re not gonna let me sle-” CD says groggily, but obviously awake and functional as the voice cuts him off.

“Wake up now, or you’re going to die!”

“Well, I can’t fight that logic, or this damn strai-”

He’s cut off once again as he falls forward off the brace, his hooves coming unstuck. Landing on his face, he rolls with the impact, sort of, and stands up a bit.

“Alright, now I’m up, in more ways than one, introductions later, get me out of here, please.”

“C’mon, let’s get going, there’s been some sort of out-break, there’s monsters everywhere!”

The figure, tall and bipedal, matches the general description of a human from what few books Copy.Data’s bothered to read of them, and the occasional newscast.

He’s a short, skinny, whitish-skinned guy, in some sort of EVA-style RIG, the suit in grey and green. He’s carrying something in one hand, and motions towards the mostly-closed door of the cell. Looking past him, Copy sees something begin to open the door, a flat-ish pale shape wriggling between the edge of the door and the doorway.

“Okay, ooze monster. I’ve seen eno-”

The thing finishes getting through the crack in the door, a pale shape like a hairless bat with no head, as it leaps at the guy who rescued Copy. He screams as the thing stabs some sort of stinger into his head, his face ripping open into a bunch of teeth and fangs, as a pair of spikes rupture from his hands.

Freaking out, CD runs for the door as fast as he can, and hopefully escaping from the ooze-bat and the mutated human with a few too many pointy bits.

Slamming the door open, Copy begins running into the psychiatric ward, a mess of monsters and people, humans and ponies, being attacked. Darting forward as fast as his legs can carry him, he dodges another human-thing, and slides beneath a pony being thrown from one of the glass-doored cells.

Slipping on a splatter of blood, he almost slams into yet another of the creatures, and barely scrambles away from the creature that looks like it used to be the nurse. Ducking aside, he smacks the door control with a hoof as the nurse-monster advances on him, its twisted arms held high, like a spider preparing to strike.

The door opens with a soft whoosh, and CD runs up the stairs inside. Scrambling up the metal steps jars his hooves, but he doesn’t have time to contemplate the pain in his hooves or his head at seeing the creatures, and all he can do is hold in a scream. Hitting the door control at the top of the stairs, he stumbles in.

Looking around, he sees that it must be some sort of observation lounge, desks and the like in the main area, while there’s no sign of the operators. Looking at the sides, he can see the glass ceilings for the cells, now more obviously for allowing the doctors to observe the patients without being at the same level as them.

“What the hell kind of psych ward did they stick me in? This looks like something from aboard a colony ship, but there hasn’t been one of those launched in over thirty years. How long have I been here, I really do need a calendar.”

There’s one more door, opposite the one he just entered through, and plenty of computers. There may be something about what’s going on on one of these, CD thinks to himself.

“Alright, now we’re in business, I guess, let’s see what the not-so-good doctors know.”

Sliding into place in front of one of the computers, CD is back in his element as he starts searching the terminal for any sort of information. There’s a few psych logs by one of the doctors, but it’s for a different patient. Changing computers, he searches again, finds nothing, and repeats.

Four computers after that, he finds one with a video of him... and that doctor. The doctor is asking him about that mysterious ‘sequence’ again, and ends by threatening him with the eye-poke machine. What’s really odd, is that CD can’t remember this conversation, at all.

“Great, not only are they messing with me, but my memories too, and I thought I was supposed to remember something for them, way to go geniuses. But there’s gotta be a date somewhere on here...”

Checking the file data directly, he looks at the date. It reads for a date at least three months after the date he thought it was. There’s also indicators of other files, expertly scrubbed. While he could probably recover them, that would take more time than he really wanted to waste, with those monsters in the floor below him.

“Alright, next up, facility map, is there a backdoor or something to this place? Hope so, or it’s gonna be hard getting out.”

Several minutes of searching the terminals, though, provide no such luck. Not even bothering to close out the video as he leaves, he cautiously sneaks over to the door.

“Just in case there’s something on the other side, let’s stand off to the side. Maybe I can drop the door on it’s head.”

Tapping the door control holo, he sidles up to the wall on the side. When nothing reacts to the door’s movement, he peeks around the door. It’s a staircase, a flight going up and a flight going down.

“I’ve seen movies, never go to the attic. Down it is.”

Carefully moving his aching limbs down the metal stairs, he winces at each step, wondering if the lack of shoes was intentional as a deterrent. Clambering down the stairs, he’s as stealthy as can be (not very) as he heads to find the next place to be. Each of the doors he passes are locked, however, and red emergency lights have turned on, replacing the normal floor lights.

Finally reaching the bottom, he’s confronted, at last, with an unlocked door, labeled, ‘Triage, ER, Surgery’ along the top.

“Needles, of course it’s needles. And scalpels, and all those other wonderful things. Great. Well, I guess they can be used for close range self defense in a pinch, although my legs would do fine if I could get some damn shoes. Guess there’s no harm in going in, unless there’s a towering behemoth of a whole bunch of monsters mutated into a giant blob. Or not, whatever.” CD opens the door and finds that there’s no monsters here, but there definitely was at some point. In fact, they might just have been working their way up the stairs.

Searching around, he finds a few green boxes, easy to smash open, even with an unshod hoof.

CD starts kicking a box apart while humming a tune from an older Zelda game, Saga of Eternal Night. It had a lot of remixes of even older games, but it’s still a favorite today.

“Why do I feel like I should avoid chickens... Oh well, what do we have behind door, er, box number one?”

Inside is the clip for some type of gun or something, with a tiny holographic label saying there’s seven shots in it.

“Useful, if I had thumbs to pull the trigger of a gun if I find it, oh well, might as well keep it. I can throw it at something. Next box.”

Tucking the clip into one of the sleeves of the psychiatric RIG, he smashes another box, spilling out a credit chit, labeled for around a thousand credits.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about, cash prizes. Feeling lucky now, box three.”

Kicking the box into a wall, for variety, reveals a doubled Line Rack, ammunition for an engineering device called a Line Gun.

“Wow, someone likes me alot. Box four, and here’s hoping lucky is still my middle name, though I’d hate my mom if it was.”

Unfortunately, there’s nothing in it, nor in the last one.

“Well, you win some, you lose some, I at least got some money and equipment for a good tool. Where now, a map would be great.”

Looking around the room, he searches through it futilely for a map, instead looting up a trio of small Medi-Gel containers.

“Well, better than nothing I guess. Next room over, there’s gotta be a map somewhere in this place, right?”

Looking at the open doors, there’s one labeled ‘Emergency Room’, one labeled ‘Surgery’ and one labeled ‘Housing, Engineering, Tram station’, and of course the one he already came in through.

“Well now, maybe I am still lucky, I think I just found my way out of here, but looting the rest of the rooms shouldn’t hurt, should it?”

Heading towards the door labeled ‘Emergency Room’, he prepares to see if there’s anything of value in there. Peeking his head around the doorway, he looks into the corridor beyond, blood and gore splashed along the walls and floor.

“Next room. Nothing I want to see here, nope. Closing door. Now on to *shudder* Surgery, hope I have better luck.”

Opening the door, the emergency lights paint the entire room in red, puddles of sticky blood and worse on the floor. It’s not much worse than the room he’s in now, though, so he gulps and continues on in anyways.

“Well, this is bad, if I don’t find anything in two minutes, I’m heading for the tram.”

Looking into the hall towards surgery, he steps quietly into the area. Glancing in all directions, he comes across an operating room. There’s a pony on the table, strapped down to the table. As CD walks by, the pony looks up.

“P-please, you gotta help me!”

“Only if you promise not to bite, scratch, yell horribly, or mutate.” CD says as he steps into the room.

The pony nods, and CD can see it’s a mare, soft lavender coat and bright, sky-blue mane. Her eyes are wide and terrified. There is three blue lines pointing from a large contraption pointing at where the mare is opened up on the table.

“W-wait, is that a plasma cutter?” he asks, looking at the apparatus. If he could just get the thing down, he could easily rig it to a bite handle... He ponders for a moment as he approaches the control panel. Pulling it off, he begins rooting around inside, his hoof pushing electrical tracks into place.

“H-hurry! I don’t wanna die!”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be done in a sec, really, you’re gonna be fine Ms... who are you?”

“Fuse. M-my name’s Shortfuse.”

“Really? You don’t seem quick to anger... sorry, just a joke to lighten the mood... and almost done!”

“M-my parents are electricians, I-I guess they mean for me to be one too... Oh no... Oh no!”

“What is it? Are you o-?”

Stopping for a moment, as the surgical machine stops next to him, CD looks up to see two more of the creatures from before, one a horrifically twisted pony, long talons splitting their way from its front hooves, advancing into the surgery room.

“Crap!”

Working to disconnect the cutter from the device, Copy quickly fishes out a flashlight handle from the emergency kit under the control panel, affixing the cutter as the mare on the table screams. looking up, CD watches as the pony-monster stops next to the screaming pony, one talon sweeping down to slice off a limb.

The mare screams again, her voice giving out as another talon splits her lower jaw from her head, the first talon stabbing into her exposed ribcage.

Fumbling the last of the connections together, CD finally gets the Plasma Cutter set-up for a bite grip, and points it at the advancing monster. The three sighting lasers flicker on, and Data lets loose a shot, splitting a limb from the creature nearest him, and he fires wildly at the other limb, hoping to maybe keep it from injuring him. A shot takes off half the arm of the creature, another shot blows off a leg, and it lays still.

The other one, though is still advancing, and lunges at him, knocking the cutter from his mouth. The creature straddles him, its fanged maw splitting open as it bites him, viciously, on the shoulder.

“Shit that hurt! Crap, what do I do? I know!” CD grins and goes for the weak spot (hopefully) and knees the creature in the crotch. It doesn’t respond, except by smashing a bladed limb into the deck next to his head. “I guess not, oh well.” He’s gasping as the creature slams another of its bladed forelimbs down, this one slashing across his side.

One of his legs gets caught under the creature somehow, and he uses it to force the creature off, snapping the talons off in the floor. Rolling away from them, he grabs the plasma cutter in his teeth and blasts away, ejecting the steaming cartridge and firing again at the abomination.

Smoking chunks of burnt meat lay on the ground, and Copy.Data sits for a moment, looking at the carnage and the corpse of the poor mare, trapped on the operating table. In a way, he thinks, she saved his life, because the thing stopped to kill her first, giving him time to finish the gun.

“Well, I don’t know if it was worth it for you,” He says, looking at the mare “but that really helped me, shame I couldn’t save you. Now to the tram station, I gotta get out of here.”

Sighing as he turns, he looks around one more time as he leaves surgery. This time, he notices something mildly out of place: an AutoStore.

“Well, I got cash, let’s see just how far this’ll get me and what’s for sale.”

Stepping into the AutoStore booth, CD watches as the holographic projection panel folds out of the roof. The panel lights up, and he places his hoof on the sign-in panel. To his surprise, it lights up with his name, labeling him as an Engineer, Rank 2, aboard Nightmare Station’s engineering crew.

“Well, that answers a lot. Cool, but weird, but mainly cool. Do I have anything in storage I don’t remember?”

Cycling through the options, he checks his storage, disappointed to find only a Hazard Engineer suit, and a... a Hacker Suit? In fact, that’s one of the few things CD can remember actually owning, the Engineering suit must’ve come with the position. But why would they have brought his Hacker suit?

Pushing the questions aside, he decides to take the Hacker Suit.

“Not bad, I get my jacket back! I missed this jacket, so many pockets, so many uses.”

The screen folds back, the inner door opening with a subtle click. Stepping into the small chamber, CD lifts his arms, hooves in the air as the machine’s arms fold out, the patient’s uniform being stripped off. Moments later, the booth’s mechanical arms fold back down, putting on an undersuit to protect him from cold and to allow short EVA trips, the familiar leather jacket and heavy, rubber-soled worker’s boots settling comfortingly into place.

The RIG slides onto his back, synching with him as the collar fits snugly to his chest, and the helmet clicks and slides around his head, the metal plates covering his features.

And lastly, his old Kinesis Module is strapped to his left arm, enabling him to lift and move object without his hooves again. The equipment saddle integrated into his jacket has the plasma cutter slotted into it, and the whole thing hisses as the internal air supply refills.

“Now this is home sweet home! And I look badass too!”

Stepping out of the booth, he pats down the leather jacket, the familiar smell of the old gift from his father comforting against the blood and gore stench of the medical area. He looks up with a smile in time to see another creature waiting for him. Obviously once a unicorn, the creature has a twisting spur of bone jutting from its forehead, and long tendrils were the arms should be. It’s on its rear legs, and the horn is crackling with baleful energy, the core exposed and bright.

“Wow, you’re certainly ugly, eat plasma! If I hit.”

The monster bellows, and the core in its horn flares brightly. The shots from the Plasma Cutter seem to do little, until it slices off a limb. A crackling bolt of energy bursts from the creature’s ruined horn, speeding towards him as he rolls to the side.

“Glad I can actually do that, now let’s try something a bit more to my skills.” CD says as he keeps his back to the ex-unicorn and bucks it in the face.

The creature reels back, the front half of its head exploded outwards in a shower of gore, when it lashes out with another tendril. Wrapping it around one of CD’s fetlocks, it hoists him the air, and he turns towards it. Another charge of energy builds up around its horn as it gurgles at CD, and he desperately switches the fire to horizontal, firing at the creature’s neck. Three direct hits later, the thing’s head falls off, and it drops Copy, making him slam into the floor.

“Well that was messy, but effective. Now about that tram station, unless some other monster wants to stop me, I really hope not.”

Trotting towards the door labeled ‘Housing, Engineering, Tram Station’, CD stops to look back, thinking about maybe picking up some more Plasma cartridges first, just in case. He stops as he sees what the creature’s energy bolts did to it though, wrinkling his muzzle at the acrid smell of burnt circuitry and melted metal, as it finally penetrates his suit.

“Maybe I should get a better weapon, if I get lucky enough to find one.”

Turning back to the door, he trots into the lonely corridors, stepping carefully over disemboweled bodies and pools of gore. Shying away from the worst of it, he comes across another of the smashable boxes, and stomps it to find a plasma cartridge, labeled for 5 more shots.

“Not bad, this’ll be useful, now hopefully I can get to the tram without any trouble, although I probably jinxed it, I can still hope.”

Muttering to himself as he walks down the passage, he wonders how far it is, and where exactly Nightmare Station actually is. The name rings a bell, but he can’t remember exactly what about.

Suddenly, the sounds of steps echo down the hallways. Looking around, he sees a small side passage, and some tarps and an equipment crate he can hide behind. Ducking under the tarps and behind the crate, he waits for the thing to pass him, turning off his flashlight in the process. It hesitates as it passes his hiding place, but resumes after a short pause. The echoing footsteps fade slowly into the darkness.

Sighing with relief, CD looks out, and sees that the hallway is dark once again, and he flicks on the flashlight on his plasma cutter again.

“Hopefully I can figure out what that was without it seeing me, or I could head for the tram. That sounds smarter, tram it is.”

He scurries down the hallway, eventually finding a sign labeled, ‘Tram Station’ and pointing to his left. Looking in that direction, he sees a busted door. Peering around it, he sees a single, unassuming yellow tram on an over-track. Looking along the track’s path he looks out a large force field, and sees nothing but stars and an orange curve.

“Well, fuck, I’m in outer space, deep in outer space, that’s not good.”

Suddenly, a flashlight beam hits his face.

“Hey! Put your limbs in the air!” a voice calls out.

“Who? What? What do you want?”

“Just want to make sure you’re not one of them, or a looter. Step closer, will you, I’m a little... stuck, at the moment.”

“Don’t worry, if I was a mutant, I’d have a few too many limbs, and I suppose I’d have attacked you. I’m Copy.Data and I’m an engineer, are you okay?”

“Not really. I’m Officer Allegro, and yes I’ve heard all the jokes about it. No, I’m not okay. Have you seen my partner? She’s in a riot suit, you can’t miss her.”

“Apparently I can, because I haven’t seen her, and don’t worry, I make jokes with at least a bit of taste.”

“Oh good, if my friends survived, you’ll fit right in. Fuck, I hope Frosty’s alright... C’mon over here, it’s a little safer in the tram.”

“Okay, I assume it may be broken, and me fitting in anywhere would be a first. But no big deal.”

CD carefully steps over a small pile of mutilated bodies, each of them chewed apart by bullet fire. Easing into the tram, Officer Allegro is revealed to be a human, in a full Riot Suit, shiny black enamel sections marred by bloodstains and gashes. He’s holding his stomach with one arm, and a Pulse Rifle in the other.

“I have some medi-gel, if you want.” CD offers

“That would be nice.” Officer Allegro says, taking the offered medi-gel tanks, slotting them into his armor feed. He lets out a relieved sigh as his RIG flashes from yellow to green, just a few bars away from full. He hands the last tank back to CD.

“Thanks, that was quite literally a lifesaver there. Keep the last one, you might need it more later.”

CD sits down comfortably on the tram’s bench, and the two wait in companionable silence.

Author's Notes:

So that's the second Character Insertion Chapter, or CIC, out of the way. I hope you're all enjoying this, and, again, if you see any mistakes, please tell me so I can correct them!

You recieve one bonus point if you are the first non-contributor to guess the origin of the title.
Thanks to the following for contributing to the story so far:
Itsmyfuneral, starring as Sketch
Hunterz263, starring as Broker Wordsmith
Rosethorn, starring as Victoria Frost
SomeGuy, co-starring as Johan Allegro
The Pieman, as Copy.Data