The air was oddly lacking in the cries of birds or insects inside the clear-cut perimeter of the traitor’s base. The soldiers on garrison duty continued to make their rounds unaware of the danger within striking distance of their front door. Instead, they had their eyes to the surrounding forests. If they had looked closely, they could have seen a pair of blurred, indistinct shapes slowly inching towards them across the ground.

Jaze held his breath as one soldier looked right at him before rubbing his eyes and looking away again. The invisible man let out a brief sigh of relief and flicked a glance towards Applejack crawling a foot or so away from him. They had slowly made their way across the open ground on their stomachs to creep up on their foes. The rest of the rescue party was hanging back by the edge of the forest with their submachine guns trained on the humans warding their base.

The assassin threw a look over his shoulder to make sure his companions were ready before shuffling over to the invisible mare next to him and pulling her short. They watched as a patrol of four came closer to them, within moments they would trip over invisible bodies and discover the plan, so he pointed to the advancing group and gave the farmer a quick, throat-slashing motion. She returned a terse nod and drew her sword as quietly as she could in preparation. Then the two stilled themselves and waited for the enemy to walk into the trap. When the group was nearly on top of them the pair jumped to their feet and hooves and flew into their little formation, screaming like tortured souls.

The sudden appearance of the blurry shapes would have been cause enough for confusion, but the shrieks made the quartet of soldiers turn ashen and try to run only to suddenly have blades cut them to ribbons as they fled. The first fell quickly as the dark-haired man lunged forward and quickly drew his sword across the traitor’s back, giving the effect of his back erupting in a crimson fountain for no reason.

The second terrified soldier had a heavy blade slam into the side of his knee as he tried to turn. His leg collapsed and the blurry outline of a pony rose up to drop a large sword onto his neck before giving a solid kick to his chest to dislodge his corpse. A third man thought to raise his assault rifle and aim at the indistinct beings, and for his efforts the strong farmpony turned and kicked his thigh with all her might. A loud snap of bone and a sharp cry of pain followed as he began to fall, a second hoof catching his head out of the air to cut the scream off abruptly. The last man was shocked into stillness until the back, dull edge of a katana slammed into the side of his head and his body slumped fluidly to the ground.

“NOW!” Jaze barked as he and Applejack dove to the ground. The traitorous humans, who had been stunned by the sudden ferocious attack, began falling to the suppressed submachine guns of the rest of the rescue party. They were trapped in the open and defenseless; the rescuers raked from one side of the compound to the other and quickly cut down each and every stunned defector inside the clearing.

The assassin climbed to his feet with a satisfied smile on his face as he viewed the carnage and sheathed Sairugi. He waved a hand towards the rest of the group and bent to help Applejack to her hooves. The look on her face spoke of the heartache she felt at seeing some many gunned down; her eyes turned to the pair she had killed and despite the invisibility spell he could see the feeling of wretchedness in her bearing. As the group joined them, he gave the farmer’s shoulder a reassuring pat before nodding for Twilight to dissolve her spell and let the seven fade into view.

“That worked better than I had hoped,” the dark-haired soldier remarked, “not a bad idea Twilight. Now.” He bent to lift the traitor he had struck with the back of sword up into a sitting position, “Let’s have a chat with our friend here.”

The traitor’s eyes were hazy and unfocused from the powerful blow, but still he managed to find his new captors’ eyes. He turned to each of them in turn, his terror growing with each blank or outright hostile face he saw, until he stammered, “I-I c-can’t tell you nuthin’!”

Vincent placed one large hand on the now shivering traitor’s shoulder, his smile both friendly and terrifying, “Ah, now don’t be like that. We just need to know how to get around inside your nice little base here, and where you’ve taken our friends,” He nodded to the orange pony glaring at the dazed soldier, “and family.”

“I, I don’t know!” the traitor nearly screamed, “I’m just a grunt, I don’t know anythin’!”

“Now looky here mister.” Shelby knelt and drew the knife at her waist, passing between her hands in quick flashes of steel. The defector watched the blade nervously as she continued, “We really don’t have time for the macho ‘this is all you’re getting’ thing.” She placed the sharp point of the knife against his cheek and grinned, “Why don’t you just save yourself a whole mess of pain and answer our questions? I promise you can do it, we’re not monsters after all.”

“Do you know what they would do d’me if I said anythin’?” the still dizzy man stated fearfully, “They wouldn’t just kill me; worse, they wou’ give me to him.”

“See, this is good.” Shelby crooned, “Who’s ‘he’?”

The sitting man gulped, “He’s the interrogator. I’m not sure’uh his name, Victor something, but I do know what he does. He’s an interra-, interro-, uh questioner! He took one of those pony girls and all we could hear was the screams.” The rescuers faces darkened, and the traitor realized he had struck a nerve, “B-but last I knew she was bein’ kept alive! He’s not gonna kill ‘er! I t-think!”

Applejack finally snapped and planted her hooves in the defector’s chest, knocking the kneeling woman away and pinning him to the ground as she shouted, “Ah got a sister in there, and now yer tellin’ me that one’a mah best friends is in the hands a’ some monster. Yer gonna tell us where Ah kin find them, or Ah’ll put a’ world a’ hurt on ya like ya never felt before!”

The pinned man paled beneath the irate pony’s hooves, “I-I can’t…”

Dmitri leaned in close to whisper, “Do you know the name Domovo Sands?”

“W-who doesn’t in the u-underground? That man was l-legendary for his c-cruelness.”

The young pilot winced at hearing his father’s legacy, but continued, “And what d’you think that he taught his only son?”

The sitting man somehow managed to pale even further, and his eyes widened in terror. His voice came out in a harsh whisper tight with fear, “Oh god, you’re the son uh that fiend?”

“I am.” The young man cracked his knuckles, “Now don’t make me put my dad’s lessons to use, I’d like to say I’m better than him.”

The man sighed, defeated, “Okay, I’ll spill. But I want to know that I am gonna be safe!”

“You have my word.” the Colonel replied, “But not if you don’t hurry and tell us what we need to know.”

“Okay, then listen up, ‘cause I’m only gonna say this once…”

Pain. The one word described Dash’s entire world while she kept her eyes tightly clenched to avoid tears. Her mind and body were consumed with white hot pain, and any time she moved to alleviate one spot of discomfort another would flare up. The worst pain came from her right wing, brutally broken and left pressed into the table. Her ribs also ached, more than likely broken as well.

She finally decided to open her eyes to view the damage to her body but immediately shut them at the view. Her body had deep cuts spaced along it in no seeming order from her captor’s scalpel. Anywhere there were no cuts was a bruise from the interrogator’s fists. A deep ache permeated her being; the man holding her seemed able to bring pain from a simple touch. Even her eyes ached from having the bright light pointed at them for the duration of her stay on the metal table. Despite everything, she had not told him anything he had wanted to hear; although the man seemed to be excited by her resistance rather than infuriated as she had hoped.

She could hear him breathing not too far away while he took a break from torturing her. The thought of her captor made her blood boil with hate, letting her forget her pain for a moment. She wanted nothing more than to be free of her bonds to enact revenge on the cruel man, and he knew it. He no longer had her body stretched tight across the table, but let some slack into the chains so she could writhe in pain and a desperate attempt to escape. Her sword was at the foot of the table; another constant reminder of how helpless she was.

“Now,” the interrogator’s cold voice sounded from outside the bright light, “that’s enough of a break. I think that we got off on the wrong foot here, why don’t we start by introducing ourselves?” She heard a shuffling sound, and assumed that he had bowed, “My name is Doctor Victor Kanan. And you are?”

“S-stop m-messing with me!” the cyan mare yelled, groaning inwardly at the shake in her voice, “You k-know I’m R-Rainbow Dash!” A hand suddenly landed gently on her face and began stroking her jaw in a surprisingly warm gesture. The pony opened her eyes to search for her captor’s face, but it was lost to the brightness assaulting her. But the soft touch was soothing, and she silently prayed for him to keep doing it and not begin to pick up another tool from the surrounding trays.

Victor’s voice became light and sweet, a lie revealed by his bloody hand caressing her face, “Okay, that’s good. See how easy it is just to answer? Now, what is your job?”

“I’ma storm-mover and sky-clearer.”

“Good girl, now we’re communicating. Next question, do you have any purple pony friends that are of the horned variety?”

“Pfft, of course! That’s Twi…” Dash slammed her mouth shut before she could finish the thought. She was afraid of giving the monster next to her anything else to throw at her, regardless of what he did.

The interrogator heaved a heavy sigh and removed his hand, “You’re not gonna tell me are you? C’mon, what’s the harm?”

Though his tone was still light, the pegasus did not say a word. She knew he was trying to find ways to hurt her more, and the coward wanted to get to her through her friends. Her hate burned brighter at the thought of the horrible creature near her even getting close to one of her friends.

As if he had read her mind, Victor continued, “It’s not what you’re probably thinking. You see, we have some unwanted guests in the compound, and I wanted to know if you knew them.” The cyan pony fought to keep the hope that suddenly bloomed in her chest from shining on her face. Her friends were here; they had come to help her and the foals. She could not stop a single, joyful tear from rolling down her cheek when she realized her ordeal was nearly over.

“Who’s here?” Dash asked, “Who came?” A fist suddenly slammed into her jaw, snapping her head to one side and making stars burst in her vision.

As she tried to recover, the interrogator hissed dangerously, “Didn’t we go through this already? I ask, you answer.” He let out a sigh and continued, “But I think I’ll answer you this time, because they’re going to the wrong place and will be dead soon enough.

“There’s Colonel Jaze Armand leading the charge, with that band of so-called band of Angels. The there are three ponies as well; one normal orange one, and two horned ones which are purple and blue.”

The speedster fought to keep her voice steady and even despite his seeming confidence of her friend’s demise, only to still feel a quiver of fear in her voice, “Whadya mean that they’re gonna die?”

“It’s quite simple I would think. They’re walking into a trap and are going to be killed.”

“NO!” the pony cried out in anguish, “You’re lying!”

The interrogator chuckled, a vicious perversion of merriment that set the mare’s fur on end, “What reason do I have to lie? It would serve no purpose to lie to you now. Although,” His voice became thoughtful, “that purple one has the look of someone who is hurting on the inside. I wonder what I could do about that…”

For a moment, she froze at the thought of somepony as twisted as the man next to her getting close to her tormented friend. Despite all she had been through, the unicorn was still an egghead. The pegasus remembered all that had been done to her, and what he would do to the purple mare. There would be no hope for the scholarly pony, she would soon become a gibbering mess.

Dash began twisting and yanking at her bindings, desperately trying to break free. Every wound on her body screamed at her to stop, but a single thought of one of her best friends tied to this table was more than enough to spur her into a blind rage.

“Don’t you dare go near Twilight!” she growled ferociously as she continued to fight against her chains, “As Celestia as my witness, if you put so much as a single hair outta place on her mane, I’ll tear you apart!”

Victor placed his hand on her cheek, “Fear not, I’ll never touch her I’m afraid. She’ll be dead well before we meet.”

The pegasus couldn’t hold back a small smile, “Then you don’t know Twilight very well. Or Jaze, or the rest!” She gave a confident grin, “They’re not gonna lose to you jerks!”

“I can assure you, they’re as good as dead when they reach the end hall 31-D.” She could just make out his shrug from beyond the light, “But enough of that. I think it is time we continued; unless you feel willing to answer my questions?”

The cyan pony, encouraged by how close her friends were, shook her head and steeled herself for whatever was to come next. A sigh sounded from the cyborg man’s lips as he shook his head and went to the tables of equipment. Just as before, he made a big show of going through several instruments and discarding them before finally picking up the electric wand with a hum of satisfaction. He pressed the button at its base and watched it crackle to life before he looked down at the now fearful mare once more.

“Then I guess I should stop toying around.”

“30…” called out Sands as he passed another hallway leading away from the one he and his friends were sprinting down. The walls inside the base were stark white and surgically clean, almost as if it were a hospital instead of a military installation. But the blankness of the walls somehow made them stand out, and so they had abandoned stealth and were now moving as quickly through the glaring halls as they could manage.

“And, 31!” the young pilot called out triumphantly, “The kids should be at the end of this right?”

“Yeah, but something don’t feel right.” Vincent wondered quietly.

“What’s on your mind Vin?” Jaze asked as he moved up towards his friend.

“I don’t like this,” the big soldier explained nervously, “every sense I got is telling me this is a trap.”

“Maybe you’re just going senile Vinny.” Shelby mocked, but her eyes were serious as the scanned the innocent-seeming white hallway.

“I wish that I was senile, but dammit this feels off.”

“Noted,” the Colonel replied, his voice steady and even, “but this is the only lead we have. We can’t not follow it.”

In spite of his confident sounding words the assassin clutched his submachine gun a little tighter, taking comfort in its weight. With one last nod of his head the rescue party slowly moved down the hallway; carefully checking each offshoot of the hall they passed, they wondered at what lay behind each door. And there were several portals to either side of the hallway, most a single door with no handle. The Colonel saw danger at every turn, and the white walls that had seemed so innocent before had taken on a malicious feeling.

The party could see where the hall ended in another of the single doors, this one with a silver code-lock next to it. Every door they had come to before had flashed open as they neared it, but this one remained stubbornly closed even after they were standing right in front of it. The door’s keypad looked like a standard numbered keypad set flush into the doorframe with a pair of lights above the silvered buttons, one green and one red. At the moment the red light was glowing, a sure sign of a locked door.

The assassin took heart in the locked door; it would not be locked if it was not guarding something. He offered a silent prayer that it was the foals before looking in askance to his team. “Okay, what now?” he asked in a whisper, feeling like the walls were listening.

“Looks like a standard, four key encryption. Hard to guess what the combo is, since it could be any four numbers in any order. But…” remarked Sands thoughtfully, “I wonder…” He knelt next to the keypad and hunted down the nearly invisible screws holding it in place. He reached under his uniform and armored plates to pull out the tiny screwdriver he used to make adjustments to his arm and began carefully removing the screws; listening with his ear pressed to the cool metal the entire time for some kind of trap.

As the last screw fell to the floor, the youngest member of the rescue team worked the screwdriver underneath the shining steel panel and yanked it away to reveal a number of tidy wires that supplied the pad with power and waited for the correct code input. He smiled as he surveyed the wiring, and the rest of the group could feel the youth’s excitement.

“So now you’re just going to cut power to the lock, correct?” Twilight asked the kneeling man as he grinned at the box.

“Nope, that would be stupid. See those?” He pointed to a pair of wires that disappeared into the wall on the side near the door, “Those tell the lock to stay closed, and you would think cutting them would disable the lock right?”

“I would guess so, yes.” Trixie quipped in from the back of the group.

“And it would, but I bet these locks have some kinda sensor to tell them when the power has been cut, and not turned off by the keypad. But,” he pointed to a small, flat piece of metal attached to a spool of wire seemingly unconnected to anything, “that is helpful.” The young pilot brought his hand to the back of his neck and removed the small, flesh-colored rubber piece concealing his implants, “That’s put there so someone can maintain the little computer running this thing, but I can use that little thing to get in there and disable the lock that way.”

“You never told us you were a tech-head.” Vincent nearly growled at the kneeling youth.

“Oh, uh, er, I…” Dmitri gulped as the large Marine glared down at him, “It, uh, it never came up, and I thought it didn’t matter so I never thought to mention…”

Jaze stepped in on the young cyborg’s behalf, “Look Vin, I know you had problems with cyborgs. But Sands here is just doing his best to help, and if this gets us through this door then you are going to love those implants. Got it?”

The former farmer grimaced and quickly replied, “Yes sir,” and moved away from his kneeling companion, a suspicious frown still on his face.

“R-right, I’m just gonna hack this thing so we can get going, shall I?” The red-faced young man unspooled the small connector and guided it into the port at the base of his skull. His blue eyes glassed over as he began sifting through the computer’s memory, looking for the way to shut off the lock.

As the youth worked, Vincent pulled his two human friends away and whispered, “Something’s fishy here. The only locked door and he just happens to have the right hookups? I got some seriously bad ju-ju here. This kid’s not telling us something.”

“Are you saying what I think you are?” Shelby whispered back, shock in her eyes.

“Damn right I am, someone is still leaking info to the enemy, and this kid’s just waltzed into our little group.” The farmboy looked to his commander with a skeptical glare, “Don’t forget he’s got more reason than anyone to want us, or at least you, dead. Plus, he’s a cyborg, a tech-head. They can’t be trusted.”

Without a word, Jaze brought his gauntleted left hand up to his large friend’s view. He turned the limb over several times before softly asking, “How am I different? I’ve got robotic parts as well; I’m almost as much a cyborg as he is now. So what’s the difference?”

Vincent’s face colored with frustration, “But you didn’t get a damn hole drilled into your skull for a computer chip! You got a new hand when that sick bastard took yours off! S’not like you wanted to get it! You didn’t ask for it!”

“You’re right” the Colonel agreed, “I never asked for this, but now that I have it I’ll use it. And that’s what Dmitri’s doing; he’s using everything he’s got to help us.”

“I gotta agree with Jaze here babe,” Shelby added, “I think you’re letting your hate of cyborgs turn you against your friends.”

“But I…” the large soldier started, but snapped him mouth closed when he heard a triumphant crow from the cyborg in question.

“Got it!” Sands cried out as the door slid open. He went to pull the wire connecting him to the keypad, but before he could the door slammed shut. The youth frowned and dove back into the computer world to force it open again, and this time forced it to stay open. “This is odd, I can’t seem to actually disable the lock, just block it for a moment. Everyone get through the door, then I’ll…”

The young pilot trailed off as the clamor of metal feet reached their ears. The three standing humans and the unicorn Marine spun around and raised their SMGs as they watched a throng of Cye troopers fall in behind them. Vincent could not help but smile as he turned to his friends and asked, “So I guess this is a coincidence, huh?”