We walked in moderate silence. Occasionally a conversation would crop up, but it was often short-lived. I never joined in, and if anypony tried to talk to me directly, I just ignored them. It had taken a while for the full scope of the situation to sink in.

I was trapped in a place I was completely unfamiliar with, surrounded by ponies I didn’t know. I had a bomb in my stomach that would blow up if I didn’t abide by a series of complex rules. And I had no idea how to get out of this mess.

“Arrell would know what to do...” I muttered to myself.

Coin seemed to hear me. “Who?” he asked. He didn’t sound like he simply couldn’t hear me, but rather he knew what I said and wanted clarification.

I hesitated before speaking louder. “...Arrell.”

“You mean the Windigo guy?” Element asked, turning to face us. I nodded. “You know him?” I nodded again.

“Interesting...” Thursday muttered, having also picked up on our conversation. By now, in fact, everypony seemed to be listening. Even if they weren’t looking back completely, they had their heads cocked to the side enough to appear that they were glancing back at us.

“Interesting? What do you mean?” I asked.

“Most, if not all, of us have only heard rumours about this ‘Arrell’,” she explained. “Yet here we have one of his companions.”

Hooves rolled his eyes. “I doubt she’s one of his ‘companions’, Thursday. She only said she knew him. Probably just some crazy fangirl.”

What he said didn’t sit well with me, and I glared. “For the record, I am one of his ‘companions’, and I would appreciate it if you used the word ‘friends’ instead.”

“Crazy indeed.” Hooves turned and faced forward as he kept walking. I bit back a growl.

“Hey, what’s that?” Cloud finally spoke up, pointing to the side down a hallway we were just about to pass by. We all stopped and turned to look.

Down the hall was a door, but it wasn’t an ordinary door. It looked like it was made out of solid metal; likely too sturdy to even budge. On the front of it was, in that same bloodlike paint that was on the door of my room when I woke up, a giant number 4. Beside the door was what must have been a RED.

“Four,” I said aloud, slipping out from under Coin’s wing to step closer to the door. The others followed me. “I guess this is one of the numbered doors...”

“Looks like it,” Uno agreed. “Who’s gonna go through?”

The rest of us looked at the feminine-looking stallion like he was crazy. Angle was the first to speak up. “Are you seriously suggesting we go through it?!”

“Well...yes?”

“There is a bomb in our stomachs!” Angle shouted. “And walking through that door activates it!”

Uno sighed, facehoofing. “Yes, and there’s a scanner inside the room beyond the door that shuts it off. Didn’t you read the letter?”

“I’m with Angle on this one,” Coin piped up. “We don’t know how long the bombs take to detonate. Zero might have just worded it like that to trick us into walking through. It might go off as soon as we go through the door!”

“Why wouldn’t he just lie rather than word things weirdly?” Cloud pointed out. “He...well…did kind of kidnap us and make us swallow bombs. I don’t really think he’d consider himself too good a pony to tell the truth all the time.”

The shy stallion’s words made sense, but all the same, Angle shook his head. “I’m not going through that door.”

“You don’t have to,” Hooves replied. “Only three to five ponies can go through the door. You can just be one of the six to four who stay behind.”

“What?! No! I’m not letting any of you go and kill yourselves either!” The teal stallion stomped a hoof. “We shouldn’t have to jump when Zero tells us to! We have plenty of time to just find a safe way out!”

Hooves shook his head. “No, we don’t.”

Our attention went from Uno and Angle to him. “Come again?” I asked.

“We only have nine hours,” Hooves elaborated. “Once our time is up, all our bracelets will activate immediately. If we aren’t out of the castle by then...I shouldn’t have to finish that sentence.”

“Wait...how do you know this?” Coin demanded. “And how does leaving the castle save us?”

Hooves sighed and took a moment to think of how to word his answer. “The bracelets will shut off when taken out of the vicinity of the castle, or if they sense the pony wearing them to no longer have a heart rate. Once shut off, the bracelet will detach and will no longer work on any REDs, DEADs, or bombs.” He held up a hoof to stop anypony from interrupting. “Before you ask...I know this, because when I awoke, there was a note attached to my cape. Zero apparently decided to grace me with an advantage by giving me more specific rules and instructions, which I could choose to either share or keep to myself. As you can see, I chose to tell the rest of you.” He looked off to the side. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

We all let this sink in. I wasn’t sure how accurate this information was; for all I knew, Hooves could have made it all up. But I knew it was better to be safe than sorry, so while the jury was still out on whether the story behind how he knew all this was true or not, I chose to at least believe what he told us about the time limit and bracelets.

“So we only have nine hours,” I finally said, breaking the silence. “Then we need to get moving.”

The rest of the group, one by one, agreed. Angle was the last to cave in, but he still insisted he wouldn’t go through the door.

“Then let’s figure out who will go through,” I decided. “I want to get out of here as soon as possible, so I’m going through. I’m number 8. Anypony gonna join me?”

They looked at each other for a while before Uno stepped forward. “I don’t see what’s so dangerous about pressing onward.”

Hooves, with a sigh, stepped forward as well. “I suppose I might as well join you two.”

I looked between the three of us. “So that’s eight, one, and four...that adds up to 13. One plus three is four...” They nodded, as did I. “Let’s go, then.”

I walked up to the RED and pressed my front left hoof against the screen. There was a beep as it registered my number. Uno and Hooves walked forward and did the same, and a green light blinked to life on the RED.

With a slow, metallic screech, the door opened.

Beyond the door was a stone hallway, looking less like the well-decorated and lit rooms we were used to and more like a dungeon from medieval times. Two doorways on the side led off into halls we couldn’t see from where we stood. At the far end of the hall, however, was…

“Sunlight!”

As soon as he noticed this and cried out, Cloud shot past us and ran through the door, heading for the source of the light. We yelled out after him, but he didn’t turn back.

We were too surprised to move through the door ourselves. We could only watch as Cloud reached the end of the hall and looked up…

“...it’s just a candle.” He groaned, oblivious to our cries.

Suddenly, the doors swung shut as quickly as they opened - which, while not a particularly fast pace, wasn’t slow enough for any of us to get through. I had to stop short to avoid getting my nose taken off as it slammed shut.

We were all silent. After a few seconds, there was a knocking from the other side of the door. “Um...guys? Can you l-let me out…?”

I dashed to the RED, only to discover that putting my hoof on it yielded no effect. No beeping or anything. The door remained shut and the RED remained inactive, a red light replacing the green one from earlier.

“G-Guys?” Cloud’s voice, worried and shaking, came through the door again. “M-My bracelet is b-beeping...”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. None of us did. Hooves, Angle, and Coin rushed forward to try prying the door open manually, but they had no success. Hooves even tried turning and bucking it, but he didn’t even dent the metal.

“G-Guys, please! Get me out of here!” Cloud was screaming now. “I don’t wanna die! HELP! GET ME-”

BOOM!

His sentence went unfinished.