Chapter 6

Six Thousand

"But I was certain that I wasn't perfect. I hoped they knew that I'd do anything to save the ponies I loved, and that that was enough."

My heart was pounding against my chest – I had lost sight of the tower as I descended from the slums, its light disappearing behind Poneva's concrete skeletons. I clambered over a mound of frozen debris, my hooves scrambling for purchase. Blocks of rubbish fell away beneath my limbs as I struggled to catch a glimpse of the tower's rays once more.

"Come on, come on!" I muttered, throwing a hoof over the collapsed concrete edifice that had been blocking my path. With a heave and a grunt, I hurled myself over and a shaft of orange light painted a smile across my face. There it was.

I stood upon my four legs atop the hill of snow and rubble, DD's scarf rippling in a light breeze. "Finally!" I gasped, grinning madly at the brightest light I had ever seen in the wasteland. For some reason, with my mouth agape, I was encapsulated by the tower's radiant glow like some curious, buzzing insect.

Never before have I seen something so bright. Never before have I seen anything so immense. Shiny. Ooooh …. I reached out with a hoof, as if the gleaming facade was within my reach.

Then I began to tip forward. "Whoa –" I flung my legs in front of me in an attempt to plant them into the earth, but that only aggravated my forward momentum. With a crackly yelp, I toppled forth, rambling curses as I tumbled end over end down the snowy embankment.

I punched a four inch outline into the snow as I slammed head first into a bed of fresh powder. I winced at the dull pain in my ribs, pushed myself to my knees and found myself staring at an oncoming wagon. Like a deer in headlights, I watched its lantern glow come closer and closer. My eyes darted around me, searching for a way out as lantern-lit wagons painted yellow tracers across my dilating irises. I realized that I was sitting in the middle of a Goddesses damned intersection.

"Well, fuck!" I shouted, leaping out of the way as the wagon puller, who either didn't see me, or didn't give a shit about the fact that he nearly ran me down, hurtled past me. I turned my head into oncoming traffic with another f-bomb on the tip of my tongue.

The wagon's glowing reflection flashed in my eyes as I dove out of the way, at the last possible second. I was getting pretty good at avoiding certain death and I clung to each little victory like precious gems. A thin smirk creased my lips.

With the Stable-Tec tower at the other end of the intersection, I spared not a single moment more sitting on my ass.

"YOU STUPID SHIT!" Somepony shrieked as I narrowly evaded an oncoming crash that would've killed us both. Kicking up powder beneath my hooves, I galloped off to the home stretch, dodging several more that clipped my tail and showered me with powder. Haha! Red: Seven; Wasteland: Zero –

Then I felt somepony run into my flank.

The collision threw me off my hooves and I spun ninety degrees to slam into a scorched guard rail that knocked the wind from my lungs. A mare screamed and the sound of a box full of nails and glass being thrown against a wall followed in suit as her wagon veered off the road and careened into the metal rails.

And life went on. Not a single pony stopped to see if the wagon puller, or myself, was okay. Well, that's the fucking wasteland for you. I limped across the snowy sidewalk as ponies hurried past me, not wanting to be a part of whatever had just transpired.

A pair of orange hindlegs wiggled and bucked through the snow, but the rest of the pony that they were attached to ramained to be seen. I cocked a brow at the … assault rifles, shotguns, and pistols that lay strewn about the crashed wagon. I reached for the pony's legs and hesitated when I saw the strange emblem emblazoned across the wagon's sideboard.

I studied the pair of black, angel wings that bloomed out of the downward arrow stenciled onto the metal frame. A plume of snow showered my muzzle as the pony kicked her legs once more.

"I'm going to regret this." I muttered as I yanked her out of the drift. In a second, I was panicking and she was on top of me with her pistol jammed into my mouth. Why wasn't I surprised?

"YOU! YOU FUCKING STUPID SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU FUCKING DOING RUNNING ACROSS THE ROAD LIKE THAT – YOU DEER IN THE HEADLIGHTS FODDER FUCKER!"

It was rather difficult to reply with the barrel of a firearm lodged in between my teeth. "Ish … shar …" I struggled in desperation, trying to formulate a response that would hopefully not get me killed.

She parted the red and orange ocks that fell over her brown eyes as she craned her neck and glared into my own. For a second I thought she was going to paint the snow pink with my brains, until she snorted a jet of mist and loosened up. Her brows flattened with exasperation and she pulled the pistol out of my mouth. "Grrr … you're helping me clean this up." I sat up on my ass and rubbed my lower jaw, wincing. "Fodder fucker …" The mare added as she trotted to the fallen weapons. She glanced at me as I sat there, trying to pull myself together. "WELL?!"

"Sorry. Sorry about your wagon." I murmured to which she didn't respond, scrambling across the snow to clamp my teeth around a horribly maintained assault rifle. I was about to drop the weapon into the wagon bed when I saw that winged emblem again. "Whash dat?" I asked through my teeth.

"None of your fucking business, just –"

She turned to look at me and narrowed her eyes at the way I held the gun in my teeth. "You retarded something?"

I tossed the rifle back into the wagon. "Look, I'm sorry about all this, but can you please stop fucking calling me names?" I sighed, rubbing at the dull pain in my ribcage. It felt like I was talking to a female Bone Charm. Except with excessive swearing.

"I mean, your horn, why're not using your magic?" the mare asked.

Another rusty piece of scrap metal clanked in the back of the wagon. What was she doing with these things anyways? They'd blow up in her face if she tried shooting any of these.

"Uh, well, my horn's –"

She waved me off, throwing the last rifle into the back of the wagon.

"Whatever, I don't really give a shit." She said with a grunt as the earth pony threw on her harness. The mare lifted a hoof but hesitated for a moment. She glanced over her shoulder and saw my bitter expression, sighing a cloud of gray mist. "Sorry about that, I can be real rotten sometimes. Just running a little late on my uh ..." The mare looked at the rusty firearms in the back of her wagon. "... my business. Next time, don't run through the fucking street like a … fodder fucker."

Well, how nice of you, I wanted to say, as she rejoined the speeding wagons that plowed through the streets. My flank stung where she had run into me, but, needless to say, I was closer to the Stable-Tec tower than I was several minutes ago.

Though a part of me really wanted to know what she was doing with all those guns. And that symbol? Maybe she's some kind of gangster, the kind that Duster was talking about? If she was one of those hooligans outside, I'd probably have been dead by now. I glanced over my shoulder gloomily, watching wagons race by. I can't let my excitement get ahold of me like that again.

Here I was, at salvation's doorstep. I survived my friends, snow furies, bloodletters, and Blood Brothers. It was sort of embarrassing thinking about how I could've died just now when I had come this far. Get a fucking grip, Red Dawn. Wait. I don't have thumbs.

I shook my head vigorously. I needed to get to Stable-Tec before I got too unhinged and get myself killed. A hot bath and several days of undisturbed sleep sounded really great right about now; the sooner I got a water talisman, the sooner I could return home and save my stable.

As I approached, the titanic nature of the Stable-Tec tower became more apparent; though it was not by far the tallest, it was undoubtedly the brightest. In comparison to the dimly-lit lights flickering behind the broken or boarded up windows of the inhabited skyscrapers and apartment buildings that towered over me, the Stable-Tec – or the World Tree Company building, was a tree in a field of gnarled weeds.

It was a titanic obelisk of concrete and riveted metal, elevated above the street upon a tremendous estrade, accessible only by a flight of wide stairs that narrowed the closer you got to the top. Surrounding it were four immense, ramped bridges that connected the ground level streets with the skyscraper's platform. Built upon four great concrete arches, the wide structures held the bridges aloft over the four lane streets below.

I stared in awe as busy ponies brushed past me, unable to move as everything I'd learned about Equestrian cities before the Great War came to life before me.

Gazing upon its current state was like traveling back in time 200 years, for it must have looked largely the same as it did before the bombs fell. The tower looked virtually untouched by the holocaust, apparently subject only to the passage of time as the centuries dragged by.

The ponies who trotted past me paid no attention to it, as if such a thing was normal to them; it probably was, but for me? For a stable dweller who has seen nothing but white walls and pipes his entire life? This relic was the most magnificent thing I'd seen since I stepped a hoof out into this wasteland. And it was probably one of the last of its kind, standing proud and tall amongst the skeletons that languished around it as a gleaming monument to the grandeur of historical ponykind. Even stained by old age and weathered by the unforgiving elements, the structure was, for the most part, still standing.

It was a lighthouse in an ocean of darkness. Here, standing beneath its shadow, it was even more magnificently intimidating up close. I cantered up a flight of narrow stairs that led to the bridge an entire storey above me, and found myself standing before the tower and all its glory.

Weaving through the wagon and hoof traffic that slogged through the ashen streets, I finally arrived at the tower's front door. I panned my gaze up the icy concrete steps that led me to the collapsed remains of an ancient revolving door, minus the revolving part. I lifted my chin, tipping my head as far back as I could. Wow, I couldn't even see the tip of the skyscraper from down here. Now that was impressive.

I took a step forward, but hesitated; there were hardly any ponies loitering about here. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that not that many ponies were approaching the tower either. I wasn't sure if that was a good sign.

This was my only way in. Gulping a lump down my throat, I tried to put on the most confident face I could muster as I walked up the steps. As my hooves clopped against the last set of steps, I peered through the revolving door, and my heart nearly skipped a beat.

The blood drained from my face as I stepped a hoof through that door. Im...possible. The lobby was dilapidated; dark lines where furniture or counters had once been standing marked the remains of whatever may have furnished its interior. Piles of dust – or was that snow – were scattered across the floor. Did snow get that gray?

Now I was truly bemused. Shit, bemused didn't even begin to describe how I felt. The warm glow of artificial light or civilization was absent here. It was nothing like what I imagined the inside of the tower to be. My teeth bit my lower lip so hard I almost drew blood.

I turned my head over my shoulder and saw that the window panes that lined the walls on either side of the revolving door were singed black, layers of melted glass riming the concrete beneath. I looked down at my hooves; the floor and everything here had that blackened, charred look – just like all the other ruined shells outside. The balefire had blown through the windows and obliterated everything inside.

My red saucers absorbed the entire void, and beheld nothing; no door, no stairwell, no sign that anything had ever occupied this now empty space. This couldn't be possible; there were lights flickering through the windows in the stories above me! This place looked just about as dead as the rest of the wasteland.

Hot anger welled up inside of me as I began to panic, sweat beading up on my forehead. This can't be possible ... I made it this far, and I can't even get in! I paced back and forth, fruitlessly checking and rechecking the bare facades around me. Nothing. There was fucking nothing!

I cried out, punching a hoof into the snowy detritus.

"Goddesses damnit!" Was this some kind of fucked up joke? I ran a hoof vigorously through my unwashed mane, standing on my hinds as I tried to make sense of what this place was. I planted my rump into the icy floor, tapping my forehooves together, my mane itching. I exhaled harshly, licking my chapped lips in frustration.

Did I come all this way just to – fuck! Okay, just calm down, Red. I took a deep breath. Maybe I was in the wrong building; maybe there was no way in through here - wait. Everything that led directly into rest of the tower was missing.

A bulb flickered in my head. Walking to a bare wall, I reached into my satchel bags and drew my spade. I narrowed my gaze at the it's icy surface as I scraped at it inquisitively, chipping off a chunk of frost. Beneath it, I uncovered a bulkhead of blackened steel.

How didn't I expect this from Stable-Tec? The company that built balefire bombproof bunkers? This entire floor was contained - isolated from the rest of the tower.

My left brain obsessive curiosity with all things mechanical possessed my limbs as I ran my hooves frantically along the walls, shuffling across the charred concrete floor on my hind legs. I remembered that even my Stable's doors had controls to open it from the outside. If this place was built in the same way, there had to be a way in - controls, a button - something! My hoof ran over a bump in the rime, and I exhaled sharply, realizing that I'd been holding my breath. It was a small cylindrical piece of metal, painted a clever white to hide itself among the frost and snow that piled up inside. I peered into it; it was some sort of eye hole, or maybe it was a camera?

I cocked an eyebrow, tapping it with a forehoof. It blinked red.

"Yow!" I cried out in shock, jumping back as I rubbed my now blinded right eye.

"You are trespassing on private property," a mare's voice warned in monotone, her voice crackling through the walls around me. It sounded like she had said that same line hundreds of times already and I was just another one of those bastards making her job harder than it should. "Leave the premises immediately, or we will be forced to remove you."

The sound of machinery whirring to life made the hairs on my coat stand on end. I swung my head frantically over both my shoulders and curse was lost on my lips. A dozen turreted weapons folded out of the ceiling above me; their bare wired barrels exuded an aberrant violet glow.

Oh. Goddesses. I cleared my throat, trying not to flinch. "Uh, w-what the hell are those?"

"Magical energy turrets. Leave immediately, or we will be forced to remove you." The mare ordered a second time. I glanced sheepishly at the gray powder beneath my hooves as I realized what it really was.

Then it hit me like a hoof in the gut: I was going to die. Again. I'd be swirling across the floor with the rest of them in no time.

No, no - this can't be happening! I planted my hooves onto the wall, staring into the red light as I spoke, my voice tinged with desperation. "Listen, I really need help -"

"Everypony needs help," It remarked, cutting me off. "If you need food, you'll find our agents at the Old Bank District." It paused for a moment, and added, the energy turrets glowing brighter, "Leave the premises, immediately, while you still can –"

I shook my head, sitting before the light with my forehooves wrapped together pleadingly, "No, no, no – I-I can't do that!" I stammered. "You don't understand – I came all this way from –"

A high pitched whine rang shrilly behind me as the turrets cycled in new charges. "This is your last warning."

They were going to fucking kill me. My breaths came out and in as frantic gasps as I struggled to convince them to do otherwise. I shouted, desperately, "Wait, don't do this –"

"Three." The room began to glow a sickly purple as all twelve of the magical energy weapons spurred to life.

My stable was doomed. "N-no! You have to listen to me –"

"Two." Their high pitched whirring intensified, drowning out my own thoughts; it was as if the all 293 ponies of '91 were shrieking in unison.

My eyes widened to saucers as I realized I wasn't getting out of this alive.

"Please!"

The shrieks reached their deafening crescendos, and I could already feel my flesh sloughing away.

"One."

I threw my forelegs in front of me.

"STOP!" I screamed.

And they did. The turrets' acute purrs decelerated to a groaning halt. A rivulet of cold sweat ran down my snout and spilled onto the blackened concrete at my hooves.

"Please … my stable … our water talisman's broken; our purifier's shot out … we need help, or we're all going to die." I begged, sweat dripping down my face.

"Let him in," Said a different voice, this one a stallion. The red light flickered orange.

There was a silent, hesitant pause; the only sound echoing in my ears was the rhythmic pounding of my temples.

"Sir?" The mare asked, dubiously.

The stallion's voice crackled over the comms, ignoring her. "Take a step back, please, away from the camera so I can see you," The pony asked … or was that an order? He must've seen the anxiousness in my grimace, because he added, "It's okay. You'll be alright. We won't hurt you," He told me in a voice a parent would use to comfort a frightened child.

I blinked, trying to stay my gasps. He was talking to me. I obeyed with a terrified look on my face, my flushed visage glowing dimly in the violet glare.

What felt like an eternity passed – which was really more like a few heartbeats – and the stallion's voice crackled over the speakers once more. "Let him in."

"Yes, Director." The mare replied with a hint of uncertainty.

I gulped a lump down my throat, my eyes darting back and forth as the turrets retracted into the ceiling and the light flickered green. I trembled beneath my barding; despite having dodged a heavy bullet, or a laser, rather, I was unsure what I was going to do next.

Unsure what they were going to do to me next.

The wall in front of me began to crack and I took a cautious step back, the layer of rime chipping away as the machinery underneath spurred to life. A grating, mechanical hum echoed through the empty room and a chunk of frost with a diameter of both my forelegs held out to my sides broke off and shattered on the concrete at my hooves.

A thick steel cog jutted out of the gap it had left behind. Seconds later, a grinding metallic shriek that made my ears ring followed as it spun 360 degrees before retracting back into the wall with a resounding thunder clap. The steel bulkhead – what was actually a giant steel cog, began to part like a curtain on a stage, quaking the concrete beneath my hooves and tearing away from the frost that had encased it for two hundred years.

Billowing clouds of pale mist seethed out of the widening divide before me, chilling the bare flesh on my face. I held a hoof over my eyes, a yellow strobe light flickering blindingly through the clearing fog. Several equine silhouettes were trotting towards me, the mists parting in their wake.

I took a cautious step back, wiping away the sweat that clung to my wary features. This was it.

A gray coated mare with the same voice that had threatened to dust me across the floor earlier, stepped forward into the light, and said, "Let's go, stable colt. The Director would like to speak with you."

---

My eyelids fluttered as I entered into the soft light. Sighing softly, I quickly adjusted to the same pale fluorescent lights that had illuminated the hallways of Stable 91 my entire life, and possibly the last 200 years.

Flanked by two security ponies and the mare whose voice nearly condemned me to death, we trotted into a flickering vestibule that didn't look like it had been walked upon in centuries. It probably hadn't, as my hooves summoned up poofy clouds of dust that mingled with the mist that lingered around my legs.

A grating, metallic groan echoed behind me as the cog rolled back into place with a floor-quaking slam, sealing this place off from the outside once more. Inside, it was utterly silent except for the hooves that clopped in our gait.

I was still shaking from the passing possibility of being cauterized to death, and it showed in the legs that wobbled beneath me. And they would have, if it wasn't for this Director; had he not intervened, I would have been another speck of dust on these unswept floors. The others who escorted me did not seem happy that I was walking amongst them. The two that flanked me exchanged with each other cautious glances, eyeing me watchfully, and then glancing imploringly at the mare at point.

I tried not to look, but I caught one of my escorts staring at me and she quickly turned the other away, focusing upon the door at the far end of the hall. I realized that I was still gasping for breath.

"What's your name, colt?" The gray mare asked me, glancing over her shoulder.

I took a deep breath, running a shaky hoof through my dirty mane. "My name's Red Dawn. I'm from Stable 91."

She nodded to herself, still trotting. "You seem flustered, 'hun," She remarked crassly as we neared the door at the other end of the vestibule.

"You nearly incinerated me," I snapped, glaring at her as my voice cracked with hoarse resentment.

She stopped suddenly and turned to meet my eyes with a severe expression that didn't match the tone of her voice. I gulped down the sassiness in my tone.

"If it wasn't for that pipbuck of yours, I would've thought you were a snow fury or something. Hell, if it wasn't for the Director I probably would have dusted you anyways." My musckes tensed as she leaned into my muzzle so that we could see eye to eye. "Just know, Red Dawn, that if you try anything, and I mean anything stupid, we'll dust you across the floor. Understand?"

My head dipped slightly at the holstered energy pistol that was slung around her neck. I took a deep breath, clenched my jaw and nodded, bitterly.

"Crystal Empire clear." I intoned. I was getting real sick and tired of being antagonized all the time.

"Good boy," the mare cooed. "If you really are from Stable 91, then it'd be a shame if you got atomized after coming all this way," She added.

I felt the urge to say something I'd regret, but I held my tongue. She didn't even know half of it.

"Both of us can agree on that." I said, glaring at her.

"Good to know." She tipped her chin up and held out a hoof, interjecting, "Before we go any further, I'll need you to relinquish all your bags, guns, knives, explosives – anything that you're carrying. We'll need to search your belongings, too." Apprehension skittered across my features, my lower lip quivering. "Standard procedure for visitors here at the World Tree Company."

"Do I look like I have bombs on me?"

She shrugged, "Let's find out."

I spared a languid glance at the two guard ponies on either side of me, and saw that they had their hooves planted on their holsters. I reached over reluctantly, hesitating as my hoof brushed against my satchel bag's straps. I'd nearly killed myself trying to get these back earlier; hell, I nearly killed somepony.

"Alright." Pursing my lips, I shrugged off my bags and unhooked my pistol's holster. I knelt on the floor, my bags sitting between my forelegs. Parting its flaps, I spared a glimpse at the pictures of my friends, pain and loss flickering in my heart.

The gray mare noticed the apprehension that haunted my visage as the faces of my friends flashed before my eyes I didn't want to let go of … them … again.

Her hoof lowered and so did her tone. "You'll get them back," She said, softly, in a voice I didn't think she had.

A moment passed and I nodded, slowly. Staring down at the floor, I pushed the bags away from me and gave the mare my pistol, barrel down as I felt hooves brush me up from head to hoof. After patting me down, the two ponies proceeded to part the flaps of my satchel bags, poking through my belongings. I cringed as I heard a security mare comment on how cute I looked in my foal picture.

"Excellent. Then we shouldn't have any problems. The Director never has any visitors, well, any visitors that weren't threatening to hang his head over the ramparts outside. If he thought you were a threat to security, then he would've let me atomize you." She paused for a moment, considering what she was about to say. She jutted a forehoof at me, lowering her voice. "But don't think for a single moment I'll let you off easy. Get in, get what you need, and get out."

My brow crinkled at her indifference. "Are you like this to everypony? Or … do you just not like me?" Shit, I really wanted to take that back as she narrowed her eyes at me. Now wasn't the time for my smart ass mouth.

"I hope to the Goddesses that nopony else saw you walk in. Because I don't want anypony else thinking they'll get treated the same way as you." The mare replied, gruffly, implying that she's seen it happen before.

I sighed, "If I'm some kind of threat, then why'd you ponies let me in?"

"Wasn't me. Wouldn't have let you in even if you were being chased by a flock of haunters." You uptight … wait, what the hell are haunters? "The good Director crawled out of a Stable like you did; probably felt a connection with you or something."

This Director was a Stable pony too? I wondered how many Stables existed in this region. 91 couldn't have been the only one.

She nodded to the ponies that flanked me, and they seemed to ease up a bit. "By the way, I'm Dapple Gray, Chief of Security here at the World Tree Company, and I'm in charge of keeping this slice of sanity safe," Dapple Gray declared, fervently. She turned to hoof a control panel.

"Safe from what?" I asked, half expecting her to say 'you'.

Her foreleg stopped mid-reach. "Why, everypony, of course," she said, giving me a portentous half-smile. Dapple Gray tapped the panel in front of her and the door rumbled and shook, its internal mechanisms sliding and rolling into place.

"BRRZT -" I inhaled with a shallow gasp as crackling bouts of static noise echoed throughout the vestibule. An amusingly catchy jingle, completely out of tune with the grim dark reality inside and outside these walls, tooted above me. I spotted its source – a pair of dusty speakers that were built into the door's lintel.

"Welcome to Stable-Tec, Equestria's premier in life-sustaining and subterranean habitation technology," a mare's hauntingly familiar voice startled me as a cog in the door spun.

I loosened up somewhat as the pony's melodic words soothed my frayed nerves; even dampened through the ancient speakers overhead, her voice was still as smooth as silk. The others wore annoyed expressions on their faces as I listened to a greeting they must've heard thousands of times.

"We hope that you will find your visit enjoyable, and that you will choose Stable-Tec again in the future!" The mare chirped, cheerily.

Somepony's sleeping … I heard Sweetie Belle coo as my mind became encapsulated in the returning memories of her delightful sing-song. The cog snapped into the door's frame and a loud clank interrupted my distant musing. Sweetie Belle. This was the same Sweetie Belle I heard on the radio in Spring Fresh's memory orb.

Then the door swung open and a glaring blanket of white engulfed me. I gasped as I stepped into the light, shielding my eyes, inhaling only to have my brain go haywire at the aromatic, alien scents that flooded into my nostrils.

My body quivered with electrifying euphoria as something, no, some things, rather, ploughed my virgin senses. Dapple Gray led us across the mezzanine to a veranda overlooking the storeys below. I wasn't exactly following her at this point. Instead, the scents spirited me over to the railing where they happened to be standing, the fruity fragrances intensifying the closer my nose came to the stone balustrade.

The catchy jingle that ended Sweetie Belle's welcoming message played for deaf ears as I tried blinking away what had to be another delirious hallucination. One level down, lab-coated and jump-suited ponies led formations of tracked robots that towed behind them dozens of carts filled to the brim with, what I could not believe, were verdant, green vegetables.

Containers with the breadth of two ponies standing next to each other with their legs outstretched and as tall as a stallion on his hinds were overflowing with a mouthwatering plethora of golden apples, and succulent oranges, and bright red tomatoes, and Goddesses – are those strawberries – and exotic fruits I thought I'd never see with my own eyes. Some of these fresh morsels had names that were right on the tip of my tongue – and holy hell, did I wish that they actually, physically were.

When I was younger, the names of a number of fruits and vegetables, among other historical, extinct things, were lost to me, because, why the hell would I need to know something I'd never see or touch?

But I was wrong. Goddesses, was I wrong.

My escorts looked amused, the face I wore simply priceless. Wide eyed and slack jawed, I uttered the only words I could put together.

"Bwaahhh … ummm…" A thin line of drool trickled out of my lower lip and I shook my head vigorously, wiping it dry as I blinked my eyes back into focus.

"W-what is this place?" I murmured under my breath as I realized that the tower's floors extended far beyond what I could make out above me and deep into the earth thousands of feet below me. Alternating tiers of mezzanines and open air floors descended into the depths below, flickering with flashing yellow siren lights as swarms of robot cart pullers hustled across. Other balconies were illuminated by fluorescent beams where employees lounged on lunch breaks.

"This the heart of all innovation in Poneva. We've got so much pre-war tech just sitting here that everypony wants a slice of the pie." Dapple Gray replied, proudly, sweeping a forehoof over the railing.

"This is why we can't just let anypony in. Why we can't have our doors wide open. Can't risk losing … all this." She added, leaning over the edge. "The folks back at Stable-Tec left us a going away gift, but it was the Director who opened it for us."

"That's incredible. I-I've never seen so much fresh food, so many robots, so much … of everything." I said, breathlessly as I stalked a crate of breathtakingly yellow banan… bananas? I've never seen actual bananas before. And … are those pineapples? What the hell are those spiky things? Never mind that! How the hell can they grow all of this in this frozen hole in the earth?

There were too many questions to ask; the little hamster in my cranium was struggling to decide on whether to pose them, or to crave for a crate of strawberries that was being carted away from me. I stared astonishingly at the bustling plantation that unfurled further the farther down I looked.

I found that my mouth was incredibly parched, and I licked my lips before saying, "What don't you grow here?"

Dapple Gray just shrugged casually, vaguely amused at my blabbering.

"I'm just here for security. The eggheads upstairs do all the research. Well, resurrecting, as the Director likes to call it." She chuckled, vaguely amused. "They're bringing back all sorts of good stuff from the old world up there," The mare added. Dapple Gray patted down her uniform, tipping her chin back slightly as she regarded the massive, clanking procession of labor bots below. "We're the third largest source of food in all of the Northern Wastes. Hell, probably in all of Equestria."

"Huh?" My jaw plummeted to my hooves, a stupid expression widening across my features. "Third largest?" I repeated, incredulously. "This place is huge!" I gawked, unable to believe that there were … others. Others even more expansive than this.

I couldn't even fathom the scale of their yields.

Dapple Gray groaned, visibly irritated at my ignorance and questioning. "We've got stiff competition." She bit her lower lip, brushing her energy pistol as she nodded to herself. "Big competition, rather." I saw her glance at me through my peripherals; my eyes too busy devouring a crate of golden apples that was sadly rolling farther and farther away from me. "And our competitors really don't like competition." She added with a crass chuckle.

I peeled my focus from the cornucopia of mouthgasms and caught the sternness in her gaze.

"I think I can see where this is going'" I said out loud.

"When the other plantations want something, they always get it," She spat with blatant resentment. "And they want to put us out of business." The mare pushed herself off the parapet and nodded to my escorts. The two ponies motioned for me to follow them. "For all I could've known, you were one of them, trying to get inside."

"What? Did my bloodied up barding give it away?" I scoffed with a sly grin.

She chuckled bitterly, folding her legs across her chest. "Don't give me any ideas. I might just find a reason to buck you out that door."

I just turned my eyes elsewhere and shook my head.

"I can't risk letting anypony ruin what the Director's started. Can't let all of his work go up in flames." The mare stated, earnestly. I thought I detected a hint of admiration in her voice. Given the fact that the Director wasn't as trigger happy as Miss Gray here, and the way she spoke of him, he seemed like a decent pony.

"You sound like you're very fond of this Director," I scoffed.

"And you ask too many Goddesses' damned questions." Dapple Gray snapped, suddenly as the two guard ponies exchanged smirks. "We've dillydallied enough. The big egghead's probably wondering about his esteemed guest right about now."

We stepped into an elevator and Dapple Gray tapped its flashing buttons, our destination gleaming the brightest. The elevator rumbled once and began to ascend with a whirring lurch.

I quietly watched as the storeys dinged by, hoping that the Director was just as generous as Dapple Gray.

---

The elevator dinged 91 and the doors parted. Dapple Gray led me across the hall to the only room on this floor: the executive suite. We walked passed rows of hanging picture frames depicting, what had to be notable members of the Stable-Tec corporation. I paused for a moment to look at a picture of three mares, one with a yellow coat, another orange, and the third alabaster, holding each other's hooves up high before a cheering audience, a projector beaming across a screen behind them an image of a newly built Stable door.

Stable-Tec – On a Crusade to build a better tomorrow, said the plaque beneath it. It took me a moment to recognize just who these mares were … I'd seen these mares before in the textbooks at school. Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle – the founders of Stable-Tec. How can I forget the very ponies that designed all the stables in Equestria?

I looked closer, craning my neck, admiring the pale unicorn. Wow, Sweetie Belle was gorgeous. She sounded just as exquisite as she looked.

Dapple Gray cleared her throat, and I snapped out of it, cantering up the hall to catch up with them. With me in tow, we arrived at the Director's executive suite. As I watched Dapple Gray approach the door, I found that my heart was drumming against my chest. I felt a little sweaty as well. I trembled – not from fear, but from sheer anticipation.

I took a deep breath as the mare knocked on the Director's door. Seconds passed, and a thin line of sweat trickled down the side of my face.

A shallow gasp escaped my lips as the door opened and a copper-coated unicorn stallion stepped out into the hall to meet us. He saw me first, catching my uneasy stare. His right eye red, and his left, a green orb with a deep scar running down his brow, flickered for the briefest of moments with perplexity as they turned to see me.

Quickly composing himself, the tawny stallion, older than his eyes showed, creased his lips with a curt smile, opening the door wider. The faint sound of whining mechanical servos whirred beneath his shabby white lab coat as his slender frame stepped out into the hall.

"Sir." Dapple Gray grunted, straightening her spine at the pale-maned stallion.

He brushed her shoulder with a forehoof and her posture wavered, somewhat.

"Thanks, Gray." Then he turned his weathered face to me, seized by a peculiar warmth I never thought I'd ever see in the frozen wasteland. "Hmm," He murmured, studying me pensively as he tapped a hoof to his chin. "I'm the Director, but ponies call me Steam Sprocket." He held out a hoof to me, to which I stared at cautiously as if he were drawing a knife. It was just a simple hoofshake. But nopony out here has ever been this kind to me until now. His polite smile widened, but my heart was gripped with wary hesitation. "What about you, my boy?" At least he didn't call me stable colt, like everypony fucking else. He seemed like a nice pony … but …

I took his hoof, feverishly. "My name's Red Dawn," I replied, unable to remove my gaze from the unnerving pair of multicoloured orbs that were holding my stare. "I'm from Stable-"

"91," He said suddenly, plucking the words right out of my mouth. I stood there with my lips parted open, confounded. "I never thought I'd see the day when those doors would open," Steam Sprocket intoned. One of my hooves came to scratch at the number stenciled on my collar. It was muddled with a black stain, almost unreadable.

"I never thought I'd see the day …" He repeated again, under his breath.

My hooves shifted uneasily beneath me. How did he know where I was from? The stables were cut off completely from the outside world, not to mention there could be dozens around here nopony's heard from or seen in two centuries. There's no way he could've known.

"Have we met?" I asked, abashed.

He thought for a moment, even though I knew the answer to my own question.

"You will soon, I suppose." The old pony held the door open for me, and motioned me forward. "Do come inside. We have much to discuss, yes?"

Suspicion stifled the movement in my legs. I found it hard to trust a pony who knew more about where I was from than anypony else in the entire wasteland.

I glanced at Dapple Gray, who was giving me that stern 'I'll break you if you try anything' look again. Nodding slowly, I stepped inside his office as the Director leaned out the door to have a few words with the Chief.

While they spoke, I glanced around his penthouse office, curiously. Soft white light cast shadows against the ancient, graying facades and painted the dark hardwood floor a coarse black.

Potted plants, filing cabinets, and tables of glowing terminals and flickering monitors furnished Steam Sprocket's personal suite. A staircase led to a wide mezzanine with a couch, drawers, closet, and a bed that must've been there since the bombs fell.

Hanging from the walls were pictures of ponies in pre-war garb. One was of a pair of ponies tipping their hats to the newly built Stable-Tec tower – its structure largely the same as it was when I saw it outside.

Looking past the half-mooned desk at the center of the office, I peered through a wide, panoramic view of the flickering labyrinth below us. I trotted toward the window, and placed a hoof against the glass.

The city was incomprehensibly larger than I had initially thought. Although the black sprawl stretched on beyond what I could see, the city of the lights – indicative of life – grew sparser and farther in between the further I stared out into the distance. Far from here, beyond a dark forest of skeletal highrises, I saw only an opaque curtain of night. But where there was light, there was life. At the heart of this darkness, it was shocking to see so much of it in one small place.

The office's door closed, and I heard hooves clopping towards me against the hardwood floor. "Six thousand souls," the old pony said. I heard him before I saw him. His mechanical servos sighed as he came to a stop at my side. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the stallion looking out the window, too. "Six. Thousand. You don't see those numbers anywhere else in the wasteland, do you?"

"I wouldn't know," I replied, simply, running a hoof through my messy mane. "I haven't been out and about for too long."

"I wouldn't have been able to tell you were new to the Northern Wasteland. You look like you've seen it all." He said, noting the dark stains on my chest. Blood wasn't the only mask I was wearing right now. So many things were bothering me at the moment, that if I were to allow my brain to feel them all at once, I'd probably snap again.

"I've seen enough of this place for a lifetime." I said, quietly.

Steam Sprocket leaned against the window, folding his legs across his chest. "The wasteland is a rough place for a stable dweller," he remarked, regarding the outlying city sprawl. "You haven't even seen a third of it, if that's the case. It's a whole 'nother world."

I turned to him curiously and saw that, beneath his white sleeve, his right foreleg was encased within a glowing pipbuck as well. "You're from a stable, too?"

He nodded, avoiding my gaze. "You remind me of myself when I left mine." The stallion contemplated the stains on my barding. "Alone. Bloodied. Searching for something," he trailed off, staring out the window once more.

"That why you tugged on Dapple Gray's leash?" I muttered, loud enough for him to hear.

The stallion was silent for several heartbeats.

His servomotors yawned as he shuffled his back hooves. "I knew 91 would open its doors one day," He digressed. "But … I wasn't expecting this. I wasn't expecting you … to be the only one."

My shoulders drooped and I casted my eyes to my hooves.

After a difficult moment of silence, he finally spoke.

"How bad is it?"

I frowned, leaning against the window. "Not bad. Yet." I replied, as he reminded me about my stable's ticking clock.

His question lingered in the air as the unicorn waited for me to continue even when I was not. I paused, my heart fluttering with doubt at the patience this pony had for me. I would've asked him why he cared, but he wouldn't have stopped Dapple Gray from atomizing me if he hadn't. But really, why did he? To Dapple Gray, I was just another trespasser. To him, I wasn't sure what I was.

A few heartbeats passed by as I stared out the window with butterflies in my stomach, looking at our reflections in the glass. "Our water purifier broke, and so did our water talisman. The damage was repairable, but the talisman was not." I remembered vividly the shattered fragments of scrap metal that had remained. The sounds of pipes shrieking and exploding coalesced with the memories of cackling snow furies still fresh in my mind. I cupped my mouth with a hoof for a moment, gasping quietly as the voices faded away.

Steam Sprocket caught the ghosts that haunted my scarred eyes. To my surprise, the unicorn placed a hoof on my shoulder, nodding slowly, telling me, without words, to take all the time I needed.

"I was of a scout party of six. We came out here looking for a new one." I ran a hoof against the window, my leg slumping down its surface to the floor. I felt … better, talking about them. But I stopped myself from speaking more, inhaling sharply.

It didn't concern him who died or what those ponies had meant to me.

"I'm the only pony who made it this far," I trailed off, exhaling deeply. "I'm the only one left." I looked up and the Director was pondering me quietly once more.

He remained silent for some time, nodding to himself in the somber quietude that followed. "And you're hoping that I can provide?"

My bloodshot eyes turned to face him, and the stallion found it difficult to hold my gaze. He looked … hesitant.

"I want to go home," I murmured. "Though I'm not quite sure if I can anytime soon." I dipped my head to him, a lock of my mane falling before my right eye. "That depends on if I can get one."

"Come." He said, trotting away from the window. "Follow me; I'd like to show you something. I may be able to wipe that frown from your face."

I trailed after him as we exited his office to take another elevator ride several floors down the tower. With an audible ding, the doors parted and my nose crinkled at the same overwhelming scents that I had smelled earlier. Only here, they were far more intense. And I saw why.

Towering above me, upon dozens of tiers of hydroponic gardens, were trees, hanging vines, and green stalks – their fruits hanging proudly upon their thick branches or blooming from their lush tendrils.

Networks of irrigation piping wove through the brush, trickling sparkling freshwater directly into their submerged roots. I followed Steam Sprocket down a hanging walkway between hydroponic groves of apple trees.

Unlike the ones at 91, these apples were a mouthwatering shade of yellow, the same ones I was admiring on the first floor. The Director looked over his shoulder and saw the curiousness in my eyes and endeavored to humor me. Brushing past a labor bot that was inspecting the arcane machinery that fed the plants at our hooves, he picked an apple from a branch and floated it towards me. I tensed, unsure of what I was supposed to do with it as I held it in one of my hooves.

"Go ahead, have at it," he said, smiling.

With an audible crunch and a spray of delicious apple juice, I took a bite and swallowed. My retinas dilated to saucers as liquid heaven made sweet, sweet love to my taste buds and dribbled down my chin. Goddesses' labial bits.

Steam Sprocket chuckled heartily as I took another bite, and another, and another. Before I knew it, the apple was gone, and I was eyeing dolefully at the ravaged core that rested upon my hoof.

"You got a little something on your lip," he said, prodding his own. I licked my lips ravenously and wiped away a stray apple chunk.

"Wow, this is fucking amazing!" I exclaimed, my apprehensive reticence falling apart as the light in my eyes returned. I cleared my throat, my cheeks reddening. "Sorry, I mean, they're just … so … guh-hooooood." A labor bot rolled before me and plucked the apple core from my outstretched hoof.

The Director snickered, dismissing my outburst with a wave of a hoof. "That's exactly what I thought when I had my first." He sighed, looking up at the hydroponic gardens that hung above us. "They're called 'Golden Delicious Apples'," he told me as my stomach grumbled. He picked two more, one for me and the other for himself. I caught the apple between my teeth, its juices trickling down my lip.

"I think they're my favorite," I said, relishing in the sweet aftertaste that lingered on my tongue

"They're my favorite too. Heh, and Goddesses, whoever named them that named them right." The old pony chuckled, plunging his teeth into the golden orb that floated in his levitation spell. I stopped chewing for a moment when he said Goddesses. Another adherent of the Goddesses? I smiled warmly at that; it was pleasant knowing that I wasn't alone in this godless place.

"At 10 caps per pound, these are the cheapest apples in all of Poneva. Ponies scramble for these when my agents cart them out into the markets." He took another bite, chewed, and swallowed. "Six thousand souls." Steam Sprocket waved a hoof above him, saying, "All this? Everything you see here? It still isn't enough for everypony."

I pivoted 360 degrees, gazing up and down at the hydroponic plantation around me. This wasn't even the entire plantation. "I can't believe that."

Steam Sprocket led me down the catwalk, nodding at a pair of lab ponies that trotted past us. "Tell me, Red Dawn, what was your job at Stable 91 before you left?" the old pony asked.

"I was … I'm an engineer." I was going to say apprentice … but … "Yep. An Engineer," I added. It's not like he needed to know I was still a student.

He chuckled, "Then you must know a thing or two about Water Talismans?"

I thought for a moment. "Of course," I replied. Hey, that wasn't a complete lie! I knew a thing or two; I just didn't know everything there was to know about them like Dew Drops did.

"What can you tell me about them?" he asked.

Alright, I got this. "Water talismans use purification spells to produce freshwater." Textbook definition. Fuck yes.

He nodded thoughtfully as we trotted across the catwalk. "Indeed. The water talisman is an intricate lattice matrix of crystalline superconductors that, when introduced to an expurgation spell, generate an arcano-distillation field to purify a liquid or aqueous substance for pony consumption." Steam Sprocket turned to my muddled expression. "Of course, any stable engineer would know that!" he added, with a chuckle as I stared at him blankly. "Don't worry, I had to learn that too when I was an engineer at my stable."

I nodded. "S-sure. Yeah." The pony laughed as we trotted along the catwalk.

"I was able to learn more about those talismans when I arrived here. This facility was one of the premier RND centers for agriculture research in Equestria back in the day. Many of the bio and arcanomechanical technologies used to grow and sustain plant life were developed here."

What with the hanging gardens that surrounded us, I wasn't surprised.

We stopped at the center of the room overlooking a massive cylindrical machine that seemed to stretch from this floor and into the floors above and below us.

"Holy hell." I muttered, unable to fathom the amount of work it must have taken to put this whole machine together.

It was gargantuan; it would take a several minute long trot to walk around its entire circumference and a long elevator ride to get to the machine's base. Pipes, branching out of the metal trunk, formed a vast byzantine network of piping that fed the hydroponic gardens.

"Any idea what this beauty is, Red Dawn?"

I touched a hoof to my chin. "It reminds me of the water purifier back home."

"That's because it is. This facility was used to research and develop new strains of fruits and vegetables that could be grown without conventional husbandry." He nodded to himself, saying, "Much like the white apples grown in many standard configuration stables throughout Equestria. But they needed something to provide water for all their plants," he stated. "It only made sense that the first water talismans were created and used here.

"During the war, Stable-Tec, with help from the Ministry of Arcane Science, researched the applications for advanced Crystal Imperial superconductor gems, which was the standard in the Empire at the time –"

"The Ministry of … what?"

Steam Sprocket chuckled, folding his forelegs over his chest as he leaned against the railing. "You didn't pay much attention in your Equestrian History class did you, my boy?"

"U-uh, sure I did. It's just been so long." I never thought I'd have to hear about the Ministries after I graduated. I hated history.

"Well the M.A.S did just what their name suggested; they researched and developed new magical spells for use in everyday home appliances and for military applications. They're the ones who invented the expurgation spell, or the purification spells used in conjunction with water talismans."

I nodded slowly. Again. "I knew that."

"Unlike the flawed, reverse engineered zebra talismans that Equestria used in mass-produced talisman designs, water talismans were built for quality over quantity, using Imperial gems that were guaranteed to increase their efficiency and output ten-fold.

"Here, they developed the very talismans used in every single stable in Equestria, field testing them through their hydroponic agriculture research."

My eyes lit up. "If they made them here, you must have enough talismans to last hundreds of years!" I exclaimed.

"Well," he began, tapping his hooves together. I noticed that he wasn't looking at me anymore. "Water talismans were made in labs, not factories. They were constructed by hoof in batches, tested, and shipped, before another batch was given the green light to begin assembling."

Was that a yes? He paused, looking at me severely as my enthusiasm slowly died away.

"The last batch of twenty never left its testing phase when the balefire came. That batch is currently being tested as we speak."

I rubbed my forehead with a hoof, exhaling a breath I just realized I'd been holding in. "Wait, what? They're being tested? Can't you stop the test? You don't need twenty water talismans to feed this plantation, do you?" I asked, nervously. I gulped a lump down my throat. Butterflies. I had butterflies in my stomach again. There was something he wasn't telling me.

Steam Sprocket looked hesitant to continue. "This water purifier was built to test several water talismans simultaneously." I listened to him carefully, craning my neck at him with my ears perked as I tried to understand where he was going with this. "Take one out, and the machine ends its testing phase." He looked at me with a grave expression. "And it was already on when I first came here."

I couldn't take the rising and falling anticipation that convulsed within me with every beat my heart.

"Well what's that supposed to mean?" I whinnied, my voice crackling with desperation. Yes or no, Goddesses, please!

Still, his gaze unable to hold my own, he continued. "Many of the systems were offline and irreparable when we converted this facility into a hydroponics plantation. End the testing phase, and the purifier may not be able to run another test –"

"Hey!" I snapped, suddenly, stomping my hoof. "I'm sorry, Steam Sprocket, but can you fucking help my stable or not?"

The weary old pony bowed his head to his hooves.

"I'm sorry Red Dawn ... if I stop the test, the plantation will fall apart." He chewed his lower lip, and shook his head. "No. I can't help you."

No, no, no … I stared at him with widened saucers, frozen with horror.

"What!?" I blurted out, unable to believe what he had just said. "You … you can't?"

He shook his head, firmly. "No," the old pony said, once more.

No. No? No! I collapsed against the railing, hanging my head over the edge as beads of sweat burned against my forehead. Everything I went through, everything my friends died for was for nothing.

Something shattered inside of me.

"Everypony in my stable is going to die …" I murmured desolately, staring into space with vacant eyes. "Everypony … in my stable … is GOING TO FUCKING DIE!" I screamed suddenly, my face red and contorted in anguish. Steam Sprocket took a step back.

"I'm sorry Red Dawn … I really want to help you –"

"BUT YOU CAN'T! YOU WON'T!" I shrieked, bowing my head as if ready to charge. "Your fucking business is worth more than other ponies' lives!"

"Red Dawn –"

"I SHOULD'VE KNOWN YOU WERE IN IT FOR THE CAPS LIKE EVERYPONY ELSE – "

"BE QUIET!" He roared.

I fell on my bottom, gasping for breath, my eyes widened to watery saucers.

"Six thousand souls, Red Dawn." He said, his voice trembling. "Six thousand – and all this … all this is not enough. Our yields are hardly enough to feed less than a thousand ponies. But it's all we have. We're the only source of large-scale free labor in all of Equestria. We're a clean business. We pay our employees. We sell modestly. The other plantations – they don't! If you haven't noticed, Poneva is a crime-infested tartarus perpetuated by the other plantations! They fund gangs and mercenaries to keep their business running; they enslave ponies to toil in their fields. And in turn, those gangs, those good for nothing merc garbage are allowed to run free throughout Poneva's streets!" The weary old pony knelt in front of me, looking me in the eyes, his muzzle close enough for me to see my downcast reflection in his multicoloured orbs.

"So long as everypony can eat, so long as everypony can get high, ponies will turn a blind eye to the things they do!" Steam Sprocket told me. "Cut our production, and ponies will start buying more and more from East Eden or from Sunny Days – and every cap that goes in their pockets goes to funding crime, extortion, and slavery in the north. If we let them win, the entirety of the north will become their playground." Steam Sprocket placed a hoof on my shoulder; as he spoke, I could see the pain and reluctance in his weary eyes.

I shook my head, exhaling sharply as I refused to believe that he was right. My stable would die so that six thousand would live. Six. Thousand.

My heart screamed that the two hundred ponies back at home meant more to me than anything or anypony else in the world.

"I really want to help you. I know what it's like to lose everything. To leave behind everypony you love ... But what I'm doing is worth more. I'm trying to make this city a better place, you have to understand …"

I didn't say anything as I lowered my head to my legs. I … I just gave up.

"Six thousand souls. Six thousand over three hundred … Red Dawn."

"I wasted my time coming here. Wasted everypony's time." Maybe I'd just find someplace to die out in the wilderness. Maybe I'd just run into a bunch of snow furies and get flayed alive. I didn't care anymore. I got to my hooves and turned to leave.

"Red Dawn, wait."

I kept walking.

"RED DAWN, STOP THIS INSTANT!" He shouted, and I stopped in my tracks. Though I didn't look back. "Let's talk."

"We already did. I've nothing else to say to you." I replied, desolately.

"Well I do." He said firmly, in a voice a parent would use on a problematic child.

"Why do you want to help me?!" I snapped, glaring at him.

Steam Sprocket looked at me hauntingly. "Because I was a stable pony - just like you." He said, hauntingly. "I lived in a stable … just like yours. If I can help other ponies, I'll do everything I can to try. And that's all you need to know."

"There's no point … I'll find another way – I'll search the entire wasteland if I have to!"

The old pony snorted, chuckling darkly. "You'd be wasting your time. Nopony would give up a water talisman as easy as I would."

"As if I haven't wasted my time already!" I shouted, baring my teeth. "It's over, Steam Sprocket, I'll find another way …"

Steam Sprocket held both my shoulders, and shook me. Hard. "It's. Not. Over." The pony said, sternly. "If the others … East Eden and Sunny Days fell, and I somehow absorbed their plantations, and somehow appropriated the arcane machines that keep their crops pure and rad-free we'd have enough food to feed the entire city, all six thousand souls … maybe even the settlements outside … maybe even the entire north."

"Somehow …" I muttered, burying my head in my hooves.

"If that happens … I'll be able to spare you as many water talismans as your stable needs. Enough to last you hundreds of hundreds of years."

My eyes widened incredulously. "I-is that a promise? Ha-ha!" I cackled derisively, a cruel, bitter grin stretching across my lips. "You want to steal from plantations several times bigger than yours? You're either dreaming too big or you're fucking insane, Steam Sprocket!" I screamed at him. A growl escaped my lips as I paced back and forth restlessly, butterflies ripping me apart from the inside out. "I'm running out of time, Steam Sprocket. "They're running out of time," I said, trying to stifle my tone. But it was in vain. "I don't need your hypothetical BULLSHIT! I need solutions – now!" The old pony stared back at me in silence, his jaw clenched.

My eyes fluttered closed and I bowed my head to my hooves. I flinched, lifting my gaze as he put a hoof on my shoulder. "I'm sorry … Steam Sprocket …" I sobbed, seeing the hurt in his eyes. "But how… HOW CAN I SAVE THEM!?" I screamed, suddenly.

I shrugged him off, inhaling sharply. Another sob. Another failure. Defeated. Again. I leaned over the railing, strands of my disheveled mane falling over my eyes. What the fuck was I going to do, now!?

"How … Steam Sprocket," I began, softly, cringing at an intangible agony that burned inside of me. My heart was torn between two worlds, and it was tearing itself apart. I covered my eyes with a hoof, grinding my teeth. "How can I choose them over the ponies I love? My mom … my stable… I can't … I-I just can't! If you can't help me now … then it's already over." Two months, more or less, was all they had. And nothing short of a revolution – no a war - was going to win this city … this wasteland back. I didn't have time to wait for that to happen. Nothing was worth to me as much as my own home. And Goddesses help me if I let this pony sacrifice them all so that … so that a few fucking ponies could eat Goddesses damned apples! "I made a promise that I'd find a talisman. Please … I can't choose … I can't betray the dead! Six thousand ponies … shit!" I cursed, slamming a hoof into the catwalk. "If letting my stable die is right, then I don't know what right is!"

He closed his eyes and I turned mine away. We stood there in silence as the water purifier hummed in our somber reticence.

Steam Sprocket's voice gently parted the curtains between us.

"If you won't do it for the wasteland, do it for your family. Do it for your … parents," he told me, achingly. "Do it for your stable, because there's no other way."

Bullshit. There … there had to be another way. Maybe I could look for one of those dead stables … take theirs. If looters haven't already. Maybe … maybe I could go south, find somepony. Somepony.

I clenched my eyelids shut. No … the odds of somepony … Damnit! I couldn't bring myself to accept that he was right. Goddesses help me if I had to move entire mountains to save them all! If there was even the slightest chance, I'd wrench the earth apart to find one!

But there wasn't.

I groaned, my innards churning. From one ultimatum to the next, the lives of other ponies continued to rest upon my hooves. A rivulet of sweat slaved down my wrinkled forehead. If he was right, if the ends justified the means, then I'd save my stable either way. Damnit all. The old pony was right … there really was no other way.

"How can I trust that you won't just fuck me over … ? How can I trust you won't just fuck my stable over?"

The pony locked his stern gaze with mine. "I can't make you trust me. But I'll be damned if I can't make you trust that you'd be doing the right thing."

The right thing. It was the only thing I could do.

And I'd do anything – anything – to save my stable.

"My hooves are tied," I whispered under my breath. "And I can't go home empty hoofed." I turned to him my pathetic gaze, my eyes watery and bloodshot. "How?" I asked, finally. "How can we stop the plantations?"

"The resistance," he answered. "You won't be alone, Red Dawn. Nopony ever is. The Orphanage, the Fallen Angels – we are all working against them."

"The what? The Orphanage … the Fallen Angels?" That emblem I saw on that orange mare's wagon was making sense now. "How … how can I help? How would I help? I'm just one pony." I hesitated for a moment, covering my mouth with a hoof. "What if they don't even need me?"

Steam Sprocket grinned. "They need all the help they can get. Find them. Join them. I don't know how, or where, but that's what you have to do."

I looked bemused. "How do you not know where to find them? I thought you worked with them?"

He shook his head. "They keep their safehouses a secret to protect themselves from everypony else." Steam Sprocket gestured me to follow him as we made our way back to the elevator.

"I … I would've thought the city would be more supportive of them." From what I've seen unfurl before me since I'd arrived, a resistance seemed almost unfeasible. Poneva was a brutal, uncaring place. It was everypony for herself. But so was the rest of the wasteland.

"They're afraid," He said, earnestly. "Say or do anything that makes the plantations' tick, they'll find you. Make you pay."

The elevator dinged from floor to floor.

"There's too few of us and too many of them. You said they might not need you. No, they need everypony they can get." Steam Sprocket said as we reached the ninety-first floor.

"Then I'll need to find them," I murmured. "How, though? I don't know where to start, - I don't know what they look like, what they're like."

I followed him to his desk where he took a seat at a chair behind it. He gestured for me to take one too. "We have little to no interaction with the Angels – all I know is that they're on our side, too. They're not very open with their membership, however. They're aggressive. Standoffish. Secretive. Mayor Salacity calls them terrorists. Me? They're just another part of the resistance."

That explained that orange ponies vehemence. She probably thought I was a gangster.

"I ran into one today," I began, running a hoof through my mane. "Ran her wagon off the road…"

"You're lucky she didn't kill you," Steam Sprocket murmured.

"She almost did."

The old pony snorted. "You're better off looking for Salacity's Orphanage. We give them portions of our yields to support their relief missions throughout the North. They're good ponies, Red Dawn. The kind that just wants to make this wasteland a better place."

"One problem just leads to the next," I said, quietly, chewing my lower lip. "Where would I start?"

"Ask around the Old Market. There's bound to be somepony who knows, there. Check the inns, bars – places ponies frequent. The wasteland's a very small place."

My hooves came to my face, rubbing the bags beneath my tired eyes. Soon, if the wasteland kept this up for me, I'd be looking too old for my age just like Steam Sprocket.

"Do you really think they can be stopped? This 'resistance' sounds pretty dislocated."

Steam Sprocket folded his legs across his chest.

"I've never once doubted that I wasn't doing the right thing." He replied. "I've dedicated my entire life to this plantation … I'm in too deep to think otherwise now." The old pony looked away for a moment. "The Orphanage and the Angels might not agree on some things – on how to deal with the plantations, but their goals remain the same. That, at least, is worth fighting for."

I nodded, understandably. He might have been naïve, but the look on his weary face burned with fervent ambition. But in a place like this, hope lied within dreamers; I could dream that the clouds would clear and the sun would touch my face, but that would only be a dream.

But dreams are better than reality … more so if somepony could make them become reality. If there was hope for this wasteland, then it lied within ponies like Steam Sprocket.

"Then I'd better start looking, soon." I said, finally, narrowing my eyes out the windows.

"It won't be easy, Red Dawn, not alone." He rested his hooves upon the table in front of me, leaning toward me. "The East Eden Company's led by Winter Blossom. She and I … we were business partners once. Didn't like the way I ran things, so she went ahead and started her own; attracted the Blood Brothers gang and hired her own private mercenary army. She's charming. Vindictive. Rotten to the core."

"She has her own fucking army?" I remarked. "What the hell am I getting myself into?"

"Then there's the Sunny Days Company. Alder Blaze runs the drug business in Poneva with the Silver Horseshoe Society and the Palomino mafia; he likes a good smoke. Likes it a lot. More than other ponies. Get in his way, and he'll smoke you too." He regarded me the way my mom did when I left the stable. "You need to be careful out there."

I regarded him quizzically, cocking my head. "You seem to care a lot about a pony you just met."

"I was just like you when I was younger. Nopony gave a shit about the lone stable dweller," he growled. I was taken aback by his choice of words, something I haven't heard him say until now. "I found out the hard way that the closest thing to being cared for is to care for somepony else. Oh … the things I had to do to get where I am now." He said, his voice tinged with a history of sin and regret. "Indeed. You made it this far. The least I could do was lend a pony that went through everything that you did to get here, a hoof. Otherwise, your journey would have been for nothing. And I know what it's like to be in vain."

"I … thank you. When those turrets opened up on me, I thought I was doomed. Thought my stable was doomed. You saved my life."

Steam Sprocket smiled faintly.

"Us stable ponies have to stick together. We're a dying breed out here in the wasteland. Not too many stables have been opening their doors … those that do … those that do haven't always been coming out alive."

"How'd you know? About Stable 91, I mean?"
The unicorn paused for a moment, before replying. His left ear twitched as he spoke. "My terminal's connected to Stable-Tec's monitoring network. This facility was used to keep track of progress on the North's stable construction projects. I know everything from project specs, equipment, population, which ones are currently online … which ones aren't, and et cetera, et cetera."

"Fair enough" I said, locking gazes. A few moments passed by in silence until I broke from his unwavering stare and said, "Time isn't on my side, Steam Sprocket. I need to go. Now." I stated, finally, standing up from my chair. "I don't have time to just sit around."

"Indeed." He nodded. "Before you go, I'll radio Dapple Gray to pack some supplies in your bags. Fresh food – fruits, maybe a few potions." I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me off. "You'll need it." The pony trotted to the door, holding his pipbuck to his muzzle. "Wait a minute while I radio for an escort."

Several minutes later, Dapple Gray and the same security ponies that had escorted me here earlier were outside the door, and Steam Sprocket was conversing with her outside. She didn't sound too happy. Something about packing lunches for stupid foals. I rolled my eyes – but in the process, they caught sight of the terminal at his desk.

I hesitated. Steam Sprocket seemed to know much about the stables in the region. He seemed to know much about 91. I clenched my jaw; a part of me didn't want to do it, but the other wanted to know more about this peculiar pony. No … how did he know I was from 91?

My hooves found themselves upon the terminal's keyboard. He'd left it on. I scrolled through its contents, glancing over the monitor every now and then as I tapped away.

I craned my neck, keeping one eye on the door and another on the screen.

REGIONAL ARCHIVES

There we go.

REGIONAL ARCHIVES

Stable 91.

Stable 98.

Stable 103.

Stable 105.

Stable #$%$

S$ !& #^&&

*$ ^ & #$%

I pursed my lips as I entered the very first entry, noting the gibberish at the bottom of the screen.

Stable 91.

Tap. Snippits of information, and some more gibberish appeared before my eyes.

Stable 91

Starting Construction Date...

#$%#$# #$

E%$#$% Const%&$##%$ %ate..

##*&% #%#

Total N#$#ber Of Occu&ants...

3#0

#$% $% Control Sys#$#

#$%# #

Pri#$ P%w#r Supply...

Ge##ral Arc%$#%s Spark Gene%#tor

#eco%##%y #we# S$%%&#...

%$#$

N%# St#$&#%# Equi%$&#t...

#ou%d &qu%&$%nt (item%&$ in $#&o #3%##46-2A)

musical%^#$$#&* #$&^$*&#&*^$^#&**29

#(&$^&((#*$&^^&#&))(*#$&8-012*(*^#^$*

St&tus …

I scrolled down to the bottom and entered the final entry. I needed to know how he knew.

St&tus …

Tap. The screen flashed and I glowered at it, swearing under my breath.

****ERROR****

File Corruption Detected.

Please Re-install Operating System Software.

I stared at the monitor, perplexed. I returned to my seat and reclined in the chair, pondering curiously the tawny pony whose head was still outside the door.

He lied.

Footnote: Level 4