The Moon, chapter 41: Transmission

The decision was already made for her. Susie simply did not posses the dexterity to deal with such a quick enemy, even at her best. Attempting to best everything via combat would be the death of her. Susie looked around the house, the sense of familiarity being tainted by the incredibly disturbing circumstance it was placed in. Not that there were many great memories in that house to corrupt in the first place. Upon entering the kitchen, the realization came that everything had been left the way she remembered it in her own world. Broken down and non functional furniture, without power, without polish. It wasn't much, but it was enough. Susie flicked off the flashlight, just in case it somehow attracted the creature outside. This left only the faint gray light that shone in the windows as light sources.

Susie thought back to her previous actions, regretting her decision to leave the duffle bag and ax back at Toriel's place. It would've raised suspicion, no doubt, but having any means to protect herself would've been incredibly beneficial. While thinking of means of self defense, she was reminded of the knife in her backpack. She swung the pack off her shoulders, ruffling through its contents until she found the knife once more. Without any sort of sheath to speak of, she had to work with holding onto it. Susie zipped the bag back up and swung it around her shoulders, still being incredibly cautious around the front door. Susie decided she would inspect the upstairs. The floorboards creaked painfully below her feet, every step making much more noise than Susie would've liked. She no longer felt the presence of the creature outside, but she was sure it was still there.

She felt a little dread in her heart when she entered the upstairs hallway to find her bedroom door wide open, the faint sound of crying coming from within. She could tell from the top of the stairs. Susie hoped more than anything in the world that nothing would be in her room to greet her. Every creak of the floor below her built the tension higher as she made her way to the door's edge, knife ready to strike, and peeked from behind the wall into her room. And there, sitting on the edge of her bed, was an exact copy of herself. She was still wearing her usual white-blue shirt and torn jeans. She was sobbing into her palms when she looked up to meet Susie's gaze. Her hands shook as she uttered something in a shaky, shy voice.

“N-No... Not another one... Not again...”

Susie's heart leaped into her throat when she felt the floor below her give way, first her right foot sinking into the floor, followed by the surrounding floor cracking and giving way as well, sending her falling to the kitchen floor below. Landing on her back sent a wave of pain through her entire body, and shortly after, the kitchen floor began to crack as well. Without any time to get up, the floor buckled beneath her once more, sending her falling into a dark, dimly lit room a couple meters down. A loud splash echoed through the room as she hit the layer of liquid that covered the floor, covering her entire body. If not for the mask, she would've surely swallowed and choked on this liquid. Susie got to her feet and, being incredibly winded from the fall, could barely hold herself up. She knew these feelings would fade soon enough, but in the moment it felt like she was weaker than ever before, and was on the edge of throwing up. These feelings only got worse when she realized what the liquid was. She couldn't smell anything due to the mask, and she wasn't able to taste it. But the color was a dead give away.

Susie's senses returning to her fully now, she found that she was waist deep in a pool of almost black blood. The only light sources in this basement area came from the floor above, and even in its dim light she could identify the liquid. She felt her body shake, but knew that if she was to get discouraged and scared from this alone, she wouldn't be prepared for anything after this. It could only get worse from here. She needed to be strong. Susie began to wade in the water for a second before realizing both of her hands were empty. She panicked, looking around the room frantically before sighing in relief. The knife and flashlight had been floating in the blood around where she landed. She picked up the weapon and tried to survey her surroundings a bit more by flicking on the flashlight.

She was met with dozens of pairs of teal eyes staring back at her, reflected off of the light.

Susie backed away slowly as a cacophony of growling and snapping came from the direction she had the light pointed in. There were too many of them. No matter what they were, if they had hostile intent, they could easily outnumber her. She only had one choice. Susie turned and began to sprint as fast as she could in the pool. She didn't dare look back. As long as the eyes weren't in the direction she was heading, she needed to keep moving. Luckily she could spot the light of a half open door seeping into the room. The growling only got more intense as she reached a dozen feet away from the door. The creatures behind her were desperate for a meal, now, and the gnashing of teeth and erratic howls that echoed across the water were proof of this.

As soon as she entered the room, she had barely any time to pay attention to it as she slammed the door shut. Nearly glossing over the large wheel in the middle, she began to turn it clockwise, praying to anything that would take her prayers that it was the correct way to turn it. A couple loud bangs against the door, followed by frantic scratching, let Susie know that it was the right choice. The echo of her boots upon the floor were deafening as she stepped back from the door, her back hitting the wall behind her. Blood dripped from her clothes, staining the floor as it made little pools of dark red liquid on the floor. She had a few things to mull over now that there was air in her lungs. She was now in a gray, featureless steel hallway, which made a sharp turn to the left on her left side, and ended abruptly on the right. It was very akin to the hallway outside of the flesh prison that lead to the sea. Her surroundings, however, were the least of her concerns.

Another Susie. Another one of herself. Really, she should've expected it, she had seen copies of herself twice already. One in the forest, though that was a less convincing copy, and Suze. Maybe it's the fact that in those two cases, there was enough of a visual distinction between them and her. Besides the clothes, this last time was like she was looking in a mirror. What was she doing alive in that dead, deserted world? How long had she been there, and why hadn't she turned into some sort of mutant? If everything else had been destroyed, why was she left behind? She'd love to ask her all of these questions, but now she was unsure how she would get back up at all. Even if the fall wasn't necessarily long, that room was uninhabitable.

Susie came to the conclusion that wondering how she would get back would have to be an issue dwelt upon later. Right now, she needed to keep moving. Time was of the essence. She turned to her left and began to walk down the corridor, attempting as best she could to keep her footsteps from making too much noise. Her backpack seemed to be intact, despite everything. The hallway kept turning left for a while until she reached another dead end, this time with two doors on each side of the hallway, both being about as blank as the hallway they were attached to, besides the wheels in the middle of them. The hallway's actual end was a simple, featureless steel wall. Deciding to enter the leftmost door first, she turned the wheel on its surface counter clockwise. The door squealed open with little resistance.

Gusts of wind pushed against Susie as she stepped into a large semi-circular room, the wall she was facing being comprised of glass. Lining this glass wall were strange, white, steel tablets with dark screens on their surface. Indiscernible trash and rubble littered the steel floors, making traversal of the room a bit harder than normal as Susie hopped from clear spot to clear spot, attempting to get closer to the glass to get a better look at what lay beyond. Before she could, however, a faint flickering light from underneath a rubble pile caught her eye. She moved a few pieces of steel and stone out of the way before she found a small tablet about the size of her head. The screen on its surface flicked to life as lines of strange white symbols flashed on a blue background.

A strange feeling overtook Susie as her vision began to blur. She didn't recognize these symbols from anywhere else that she could remember, but somehow she felt that she could understand them. Her hands shook as her eyes attempted to adjust to the screen.

“0: A complete failure. Terrain has failed to load correctly, and none of the organisms have matured efficiently. All turned within two minutes.
1: Shall we cut the chains?
0: I believe so.
2: Are you certain? There seems to be improvement in the memories of the subjects.
0: What did you observe?
2: Before turning, one of them called out for family members.
0: Were their names of significance?
2: Indeed. They were names of subjects we've yet to test.
1: We will keep our advancements and disregard our failures. It is foolish to think we would treat failures as just that. As embarrassing as it may be, there is much to learn from them. We'll send these advancements to the other spheres.
0: Of course.
1. We're cutting the chains and locking the chamber in ten minutes. Evacuate to your specified off sphere locations in the meantime.

[End Of Transmission]”

The next thing Susie feels is bile filling her throat. She scrambles to unmask herself, doing so just in time for the vomit in her mouth to flow out of her mouth and onto the steel below. It was like she had the wind knocked out of her once again. Was her understanding of the language from her so called “attunement”? Was the conversation she just read worth feeling this amount of nausea? She breathed in deep once her body had stopped heaving, feeling a stale and burnt air fill her lungs as she got to her feet. What was it that they were trying to do that required this amount of rigorous and volatile testing? And what did it mean by “off sphere?” Without any way to answer these questions, she pushed them to the back of her head as another curiosity overtook her. Susie's body shook as she walked to the cracked, slightly blue tinted glass wall in front of her, looking down at the sight below.

Before her was an enormous room, miles across each side. At least a mile or so below was what seemed to be what remained of another Hometown. This chamber was in an even worse condition than the last, with only a few buildings remaining as a massive sinkhole had swallowed up the rest. The ashy ground gave way to a deep, dark pit that covered the majority of the ground space below. What actually lurked beyond this hole was a mystery. Somehow, she could see all of this without any sort of light source. There seemed to be a sort of dim ambient light that covered this entire area. This looked like the way to go, as unfortunate and foreboding of a prospect that was. Hoping that the door across the hallway would lead to a way down, and dreading the implications if this turned out to not be the case, Susie walked back to the middle of the room and attached the mask back onto her face.

With nothing but a hope for answers and a fear of the unknown, Susie pressed on.