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The Eternal Lonely Day

by Starscribe

Chapter 17: Chapter 17: A Little Digging (292 AE)

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The teleport took her in a flash, briefly blinding her and setting off all the thaumic energy indicators in her helmet. She had given herself a full twenty feet of breathing room over where she guessed the surface to be, in case her calculation had been vastly wrong. It was, and twenty feet was more like fifty.

The parachute on the back of her armor exploded outward as she started to fall, but it wasn’t enough. Parachutes weren’t meant to work at such short distances. It was night, but even the gloom of evening did not take away her view of the ground rushing up to strike her, not with the night vision her helmet gave her.

The fall was slower than she had expected. Archive had jumped from moving planes before, more often than any sane person. In all her falls, she had never found the laws of physics not responding correctly. If this was 9.8 m/s^2 of acceleration, then she knew less about physics than she thought she had.

She landed with a thump, robotic joints and actuators forcing her into the optimal posture to absorb the worst of the landing. Nothing broke, and over the next few moments, she could hear the parachute retracting. Evening in Motherlode looked unchanged, at least as much as she could see it in the distance. As she had suspected, this mine was past the active mineshaft by some distance, though still sheltered by hills on one side and thick forest on the other.

Before she could set off, Archive needed to make good on her word and lower the elevator. So she hurried back towards the mine. A rusty padlock hung on the door, along with a sign in poorly painted English: “Danger, disused mineshaft.” Alex raised one of her legs, switched on the cutting torch, and blasted through it in less than a second. She didn’t buck the door down, much as she wanted to. She might hurt her legs if she tried.

She found nothing overtly dangerous inside, and rapidly made her way to the elevator. They weren’t like the computerized marvels from her own time: a mining elevator was really just a large platform with a direction indicator. The more you pushed (or the more weight you had), the faster you would descend and the slower you would ascend.

She released the lock, then tilted the direction indicator down as lightly as she could. She still had to jump in order to make it to the nearby platform before it had dropped too far. “It’s coming down!” she shouted, her voice assisted by the exterior speakers. As though the rattling and shaking wouldn’t be enough for them to know. After several floors, she glimpsed a pink figure jump onto the platform and stop it. The pony waved; Alex waved back.

It was time to go.

She emerged onto the moonlit scrubland with cautious steps, conscious that her teleport had been loud and that blasting the lock off with a torch had been bright. If ponies weren’t already on their way to investigate, they would be soon. She had to act. A voice spoke from nearby, so close that she nearly jumped into the air when she heard it.

“Hello there, Alex. I didn’t expect to see you using that armor again so soon.”

Alex landed several feet away from where she had been, heart racing. “You scared me, Athena.”

“It would have been irresponsible if I hadn’t checked on you once your suit came into range.” Her voice hadn’t gained much emotion in the intervening centuries, but the flow of her speech had changed. It sounded almost natural now. Ponies hearing her often couldn’t tell she wasn’t real. Granted, most ponies these days didn’t have even a concept of artificial intelligence. They could be forgiven that mistake. “Are you in danger, Alex? Do you require assistance?”

“Yes and yes,” she admitted, creeping slowly forward. She avoided the path, moving instead up the steep hill towards the untrimmed forest. It had once been a national park, after all. The trees would hide her.

Or they would’ve, if she had still been the sort of pony who could get help from a forest. She didn’t change directions, not when she had already committed to this path. But she didn’t expect it to help much. “I don’t think you can do much for me, though. I was under the impression the HPI couldn’t assist in my private matters.”

“The Initiative cannot assist without the approval of their director. I am not a member of the Human Preservation Initiative, however. If you are in need of assistance, I would be happy to provide it. That might take the form of forwarding your request, if you have need of human intervention.”

“I’m…” She hesitated. “I’m probably about to fight for my life. I don’t think any help you could give would arrive in time. Not unless you’ve got a bird parked less than a mile from here ready to pick me up.”

There was a pause. “My apologies Alex, I do not operate any aircraft not affiliated with the Initiative at this time and would not be authorized to divert them. Whatever this conflict may be, you cannot be in any serious danger, correct? I understand you die as easily as I do.”

Alex was not enthusiastic about that comparison, and what it might mean for what Athena thought about these days. The fact she thought of herself as separate from the organization that created her and whose equipment she essentially controlled did not encourage her either. No time to think about it now. She saw ponies hurrying down the path towards her, camp guards with torches glowing beside them and guns over their shoulders.

“If I get killed now, I won’t be able to complete my mission, and human Refugees will die.” Archive took another look at the thick forest, and the increasingly steep slopes behind them. A powered Interceptor suit might handle terrain like that. Even so, she doubted very much it would last all the way into Radio Springs if she tried. She had to cut sideways through the village, and invite whatever retribution might come.

“How well do you think this armor can resist black powder bullets?”

“Adequately. Can’t your body resist bullets without armor?”

“Not anymore. I don’t want to talk about it now.”

“Very well. It sounds like a fascinating story, though. Would it have anything to do with these biofeedback readings? I’m reading an eleven percent variation from your last on file.”

“It would.”

They were getting close. Alex pulled herself back, into the trees and out of sight. There would be no supernatural help from trees today, but maybe she wouldn’t need it. Alex did not know how complicit these guards were in what was happening to humans here.

She would like to see as few of them die tonight as possible. Let Radio Springs decide what to do with them, once she got the word to it. In any case, her anger was probably nothing to a dragon’s. Let them face her fury when the time came.

Alex lowered her voice to a bare whisper, enough that the helmet would conceal it within the breathing equipment. Would she have done better escaping with active camouflage instead of armor? Too late now. The HPI had let her keep her equipment, but not take home the whole armory. She hadn’t been pressed for choice.

She had exactly one magazine of nonlethal rounds in each of the suit’s rifles. After that, she would only be able to kill. “You can use all my cameras, right?”

“Of course. I can always use them, but there generally isn’t much to see. Was that why you covered your equipment with a cloth?”

She didn’t respond, instead watching from the shadows for any hint the guards might search towards here. There were four stallions, and two of them were headed straight towards the mine. She hadn’t even shut the door. “Tell me when to shoot so I won’t miss. I don’t want them to raise an alarm.”

“Understood Alex.” The pegasus lifted her right foreleg, priming the rifle built right into the armor. She felt the mechanisms as they adjusted. There was no sight on the leg, not like the more primitive weapon she had used earlier. This one superimposed all targeting information before her eyes, letting her rest her belly on the ground and aim her leg. It might’ve been silly if she hadn’t killed with it before.

Athena spoke in a rush, filling the screen with information. Trajectories, delays, angles; Archive took in all of it and adjusted to match. Her leg fired four times, jerking only slightly against the recoil system. Four ponies dropped to the ground in twitching pain, unable to do more than whimper.

Alex took off at a gallop, barreling down the hill and straight past where they lay. The slope caught her off-guard with more than one out of place stone or sudden dip, and she very nearly tripped. Only the armor’s stability systems kept her upright, and even then she skidded and stumbled. She used every bit of strength the armor could give, and her gallop was more than twice as fast as most ponies could manage. Even without her former strength, she was used to the way the armor moved. As an earth pony, her magic had felt restricted by the metal: now it felt more like the metal was carrying her.

Buildings rushed up to meet her and she didn’t slow to look closely. “Thanks Athena! Keep an eye on my threat-detection, I don’t want anything sneaking up on me!”

“There is little danger of any sneaking now,” Athena said, over the ringing of an alarm-bell from somewhere ahead. The bell reserved for a raider-attack, something Alex had never heard outside of drills.

She swore loudly into her helmet, as distant ponies climbed up onto observation-posts or onto buildings, preparing themselves for an attack. Her attack.

“Your cameras observe nineteen armed hostiles. Six appear to be aware of your presence. The first–”

“I see him!” Alex lifted her leg and fired at the minotaur emerging from the guard-post that separated the camp from the mines. It took the rest of that magazine to bring him down, though part of that was because she hadn’t stopped moving to shoot.

She stopped her awkward hobble once she was done shooting, conscious of many shouting voices. Of them all, only Athena remained calm. “Eighteen hostiles remain, but now nine are–”

“I KNOW!” Alex dodged behind the guardhouse as bullets sprayed towards her. “Modern” weapons might be clumsy and inaccurate, but she couldn’t count on her armor protecting her indefinitely. Worse, there was likely to be some magic pointed at her too. “How long can I run the CPNFG before I deplete my fuel?”

“That question is too subjective to answer meaningfully. With its current settings, your field will activate only upon encountering a thaumic field of sufficient strength. Most ‘spells’ can be destroyed on contact, allowing the projector to–”

Alex only sort of listened. Mostly she waited for the gunfire to die down, before bolting out from behind the shack and towards one of the storage barns. Lead filled the air around her, striking her armor more than once with a brief shock of pain. Not enough to stumble her though, or pierce any of it at this range. She barreled behind the shed, and straight into an earth pony stallion wielding a cudgel.

She heard shrill beeping as the CPNFG engaged, depriving her adversary of his strength. Without it, she would’ve been slammed to the ground and probably broken half her armor. Instead, the stallion went flying, impacting the shed with enough force to rain splinters on her as she kept running.

“That was 3% of your power reserves.” Athena’s voice cut through the pandemonium. “Not to mention minor damage to the servos in your back legs. I would avoid trying it again.”

Alex hesitated for a second, taking in the remaining obstacles. Like all smaller settlements, the mining camp itself had a wall, meant to discourage wild animals and raiders from attack. The walls themselves were not too tall, perhaps fifteen feet, rimmed with spiked timber. Earth-pony Alex could’ve leapt the wall, but pegasus Alex would have to find a ramp.

There were at least three ponies on the wall. As she watched, a unicorn was rotating a crude gatling-gun to face inward. At eight-hundred meters, there was no chance nonlethal rounds would have enough force to stop him. “APR-engage!” She glared at the wall under him, and twitched her back-leg in the necessary activation command. Her single rocket streaked across the night, locking her armor briefly against motion as it resisted the recoil. White cut through the night, then struck the wall.

A rocket meant for the armor plates of a tank hit the wall like a wrecking ball. Logs feet thick turned into matchsticks as the shockwave sent everypony nearby tumbling through the air. Ammunition stored just above the wall was caught in the blast, starting a secondary explosion that consumed the gun and the top of the wall and sent bullets shrieking through the air. All over the camp glass shattered from the force, and the explosion shook Alex even within her suit.

As soon as her suit could move again Alex went pounding through the wreckage, ignoring bits of falling metal or wood as she ran. A few ponies on the other end of camp still had the presence of mind to shoot in her direction, but none fired very accurately.

What had been a wall was now a low mound of debris, and even without her superhuman strength Alex climbed it easily and charged down the other side. Untrimmed forest waited for her there, forcing her to slow her path a little. She might be able to see the trees clearly through the darkness, but that did not mean she could keep up a sprinting pace through them. Such things were reserved for deer and earth ponies.

What she could do was keep moving, directing her path at an angle that took her towards the train tracks and the sound of a distant locomotive. Unfortunately, she would not be able to ride it: night was when empty trains made their way back to Motherlode with supplies and empty space for more coal. She would have to run, run until she made it or her armor gave out. One of the two.

“Do you think they’ll try to follow you?”

“Unfortunately.” She didn’t slow, though in the armor she wasn’t winded. It did most of the work, she just had to keep her body going through the motions so the armor wouldn’t hurt her. There were horror stories of powered armor like this snapping delicate pegasus bones when they stopped too abruptly, and she wasn’t about to find out if those rumors were true. Breaking many of her bones would really slow down her ambitions of learning how to fly.

“I don’t suppose your satellites have enough resolution to see a flying pony at night.”

“Unfortunately not. The primary purpose of my Earth-based artificial satellites is facilitating communication. I have only one intelligence satellite still functional, and it is placed in geosynchronous orbit above Raven City. I can direct its cameras towards you, but not with sufficient resolution to discern individuals.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Alex made it out of the trees and beside the tracks, where she set herself into a rhythm. There was little light, and she could take comfort in the fact that it would take a thestral to spot her running through the dark like this. Her armor produced no exterior light. On the level ground beside the tracks, kept clear of debris, running was a mindless matter.

This was her moment of peace, the time between her escape and whatever attempt might be made to stop her. Her time to think and not be under the pressure of combat. She would have to think fast.

“Your records should include Cheyenne Mountain Complex.” Alex herself had read about the place, but she didn’t have the military database of the former US, not to mention every other HPI-treaty nation. Athena did.

“Affirmative. Its ruins should lie in your approximate direction. Is that your destination?”

“Yes — but I don’t think it’s in ruins.”

“I was not aware of this information.”

She couldn’t shrug. “You are now. It’s been maintained as a covert knowledge repository by a secret society of ponies. They’ve operated since the Event, but I can’t give you many of the details. All that matters is they’re the ones really in charge of Radio Springs. Most of the founders are dead… but one was a dragon, and we were personally acquainted. I believe her to be my best chance for completing my mission successfully.”

“Speculation: you provide this information for a purpose. How may I assist you with it?”

“I need to know if there were any alternate ways in. Secret escape routes, perhaps. Stuff that wasn’t ever published. I think my name is on the list of ponies their guards are supposed to let in, but I don’t have time to be wrong about it. I’d like to break in and find the dragon myself.”

“Is that advisable?”

Alex chuckled. It was a good way to avoid thinking about the ponies she may’ve killed just now. Human refugees or not, complicit in murder or not, it never got easier to take life. She was going to have nightmares tonight. “Probably not. But the last time I was invited, it was for a funeral. I didn’t come.”

She glanced once over her shoulder, searching the sky. But Athena was already using her cameras, and had said nothing. Whatever pursuit might be coming hadn’t caught up to her yet. It probably wouldn’t, unless it came on wings.

“Is your lack of attendance significant?”

“It might be. She’s a teenager going through emotional trauma, and I’ve known her to be unstable. I rate the likelihood of her being happy to see me as extremely low even if I don’t break in.” Pause. “Did you find me my entrance?”

“Affirmative.” The program spoke into her ear. “The passage you’re looking for is an emergency evacuation shaft hidden in the mountains at a location I will indicate to your GPS systems. You will likely need to excavate a few feet of loose earth in order to reach it, as no metal is visible in my most recent photographs.”

Alex sped up, conscious of the growing roar of a train ahead of her. She could see light on the horizon, no doubt the train’s headlights. When it got much closer, she would retreat to the trees again and wait until it passed. Best if the train could give no reports of her to Motherlode when it arrived.

“Ponies overhead!” Athena did not sound frightened, but she did sound urgent. “Flying in formation. Do not appear to be watching the ground very closely. Outside of weapons range.”

Alex looked up, letting her helmet highlight their distant specks. Sure enough, she could see five ponies in the air, flying in a diamond formation not at all unlike the ones used by migrating birds. They were very high up, too high for a pegasus to get much of a look at the ground this late at night. As Athena had said, they were well outside weapons range, and flying fast. They flew almost directly parallel with her. No doubt hey were intent on the same destination.

They were going to warn Radio Springs about her approach. It was a good thing her destination wasn’t actually in the city. “I’m going to need a path that takes me around the pony settlement, but as directly to the escape tunnel as possible. Can you make me a map?”

“Uploading now.” An arrow appeared superimposed on the ground around her, guiding her. “So long as you don’t use the CPNFG again, you won’t deplete your suit’s power. At your current speed, you will reach your destination in three hours, seven minutes. Can you continue running that long?”

“No.” Again Alex felt a pang of anger at Discord. Couldn’t he have asked when she was ready to get a blast from his magic? Being changed into another tribe might be the boon he suggested for her quest to become an alicorn, or it might not. But if she’d had the choice, Alex would’ve taken it while safe at home, where she could enroll in a university flight class and not be placing herself and an adoptive child in danger. “I’ll need water at least. Find me a river or something as close as you can. That should be all I need.”

“Sure. Uploading route suggestion now. Is there anything else I can do?”

Alex hesitated. If she said what she was thinking, she would not be able to take it back. “I need an audio conference with Director Gideon. Can you get him for me?”

There was a silence, and Alex ran on through the dark for several minutes before she heard her reply. “Gideon is asleep. I could wake him for you, but–”

“No. It can wait until he wakes up. Just set me up with a meeting and get him when he’s available.”

* * *

Alex dug. She dug until she scraped the paint off her foreleg armor. She dug until her limbs were screaming and she had to stop. After she had sat to have a breather, she kept digging. It took from 24% to 18% to get the heavy steel uncovered. So much of it had rusted away that the dirt went from tan to deep red, yet still she dug.

Eventually she exposed the entrance, or what was left of the intact metal. Her suspicion, that the group who had co-opted Cheyenne Mountain hadn’t discovered this tunnel, appeared confirmed. Her sensors detected no magic waiting within the tunnel, so they hadn’t planted traps or alarms for her to stumble into. No electricity either, at least not enough to register EM through steel.

She was in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but the hills and a distant coyote for company. Alex found she had made the right choice by staying away from Radio Springs, even if avoiding it had lengthened her route. There was nobody to watch her switch on her arc-welder and burn another 1% of her reserves blasting through thick steel.

Eventually she had cut enough that gravity did the rest of the work, and a roughly circular mass fell inward with an echoing clang. “Can you get me a map of the interior?” She leaned forward, glancing inside. “I know you won’t be able to help once I get underground.”

“Unfortunately not,” Athena admitted. “Here’s your map. Be safe, Archive. Director Gideon has been in some kind of tactical meeting since morning, so I cannot yet offer a time when you will be able to meet with him. I am sorry.”

“No need.” Alex took a deep breath, then leapt down into the open pipe. “I’ll be gone for at least an hour, perhaps more. Better not schedule anything until you read my signal again. So unless you can magically make a spurned dragon forgiving, I don’t need anything else.”

“If I had diamonds to give you, I would suggest a bribe.”

She smiled slightly. “That’s an interesting suggestion.” She took one last look towards the sky, as though she could see the numerous satellites that carried out Athena’s local assignments. She imagined antennas pointed towards her, perhaps with a woman in a spaceship full of flashing screens. She waved, then started walking.

It was over a mile before she reached the facility. Alex feared she would find her way to some collapsed tunnel and that would be that, but this fear proved in vain. Thick steel and little moisture or seismic activity appeared to have preserved the tunnel proper. It hadn’t been made very large, just high enough for a single-file line of humans to walk without scraping their heads. The ceiling was still around, with a long line of defunct emergency lights.

To a pony, the space wasn’t cramped at all, though she couldn’t help but be nervous all the same. Something inside her felt trapped down here, and occasionally fear would bubble up in her and send her hyperventilating.

This is stupid, she told herself. I was fine in that mine. I’ll be fine down here. Of course, the mine had been freshly cut through solid stone. The dirt above her would turn to stone eventually, but she wasn’t sure when. This tunnel had probably been dug more than three centuries ago. Every few paces brought another creak, or another groan from the steel. Hopefully there was concrete outside, to give even greater strength to this escape-tunnel. Hopefully.

The end of the tunnel couldn’t come soon enough. Eventually it did, without any past or present cave-ins to prevent her from reaching her destination.

She stopped at a complex pressure mechanism, rusted to near-ruin. Fortunately for her, whatever door had been here had already been opened and was resting against the wall. It did not look like the door would ever move again. At a glance, it looked to be several feet thick.

Several feet of metal she couldn’t have moved if she wanted to. Beyond the door was a stairwell set into concrete and covered with dust. Alex climbed, checking her remaining power with every step. 14%. Enough to get her through a few spells, if she had to.

At the top of the stairs was a metal plate, along with a simple pull mechanism. She pried it open with one retractable claw, and brought it down in a single forceful motion. The metal plate clicked, and light spilled down through a faint opening. She had to shove up against it, pushing with all the force her armor could manage. Eventually it started to give, and she leaned into the effort.

With one final shove and a grunt she lunged up through empty air, even as the plate swung outward and around to clatter atop many identical thin flooring plates.

The first part of her mission was complete: Archive was inside. Now all she had to do was find an emotionally unstable dragon, get her help against ponies who hadn’t done anything to directly harm Radio Springs, and somehow not get roasted in her nearly-depleted Interceptor armor.

How hard could it be?

* * *

Alex clambered out from her hidden entrance, out onto the concrete floor. She wouldn’t be disappearing in any dark hallways with her forelegs both almost polished silver from the effort of digging. Alex did not remove her helmet, not yet.

If she knew anything about this group, it was that paranoia ran strong. She wouldn’t be past the traps and dangers just because she had skipped her way in. Could they kill her? Probably not, but she didn’t feel like chancing it with her pegasus body on the line.

If she died today, there would be nopony to help the miners, and she would have no way to learn weather magic. It was time to survive or die, and she felt like surviving.

Cheyenne Mountain Complex had once been the headquarters of NORAD, but those days were long gone. As she walked, Alex was conscious of the heights of technology once reached here. Though the ponies who had co-opted the bunker had tried to keep it running, they had been as powerless to halt advancing time as the ponies living everywhere else. Strip lighting set into the floors no longer glowed, and there were frequent cleared areas, once the home of computer stations.

Even the exposed pipes and wires bore the evidence of time, and hasty repairs were evident everywhere. In some places wires ran right across the hall, insulated and buzzing with energy. Whole patches of concrete had been dug up and replaced in some areas, and the walls looked to have been replastered so many times that they no longer had a uniform color. Yes, she was walking around in a structure that had been continuously occupied for three centuries. Occupied by a civilization that could not recreate the achievements of its predecessor.

Archive knew now how the people of the middle ages must’ve felt as they looked upon roman monuments. It was all she could do not to weep.

But she couldn’t be distracted, not when so much was on the line. She had to find somepony and get directions to the dragon. Archive had the map, but what she didn’t have was any idea where a teenage dragon might be living, or what any of the rooms had been changed into for that matter.

Yet of one thing she could be fairly confident: Radio Spring’s characteristic radio was still running. It must take some amazingly-skilled engineers to keep an ancient transmitter like that working. She could find them, and then politely ask for directions.

The transmitter itself would be trivial to find: follow the EM. Stone or not, that much power couldn’t be masked. She overlayed the additional information onto her HUD, and started walking.

The facility was still lit, albeit by flickering “modern” bulbs instead of the steady light of the ancients. The low hum of machines echoed all around her. Even so, Archive couldn’t help feeling the place was more a tomb than a bunker.

As she wandered, she passed several powerful thaumic readings, and couldn’t help but take a peek inside one of the rooms she had detected them from. She glimpsed a large stone room, packed with pre-Event server racks. She almost ducked her head out again, until she noticed that the machines looked intact. No corrosion, no rot, no decay. How was that possible in a room open to atmosphere? Wouldn’t the digital materials within have lost whatever they were storing?

Maybe, but the runes she saw written just a little way in suggested otherwise. The ground was covered with them, and the walls. An intricate spell, but one she recognized at a glance: Stasis. The servers had been frozen in time. “Clever bastards.” She didn’t inspect any of the other enchanted rooms. She hadn’t come for the tour.

She found her first ponies inside some sort of equipment room, its ceiling several times her height and packed with machines that were clearly still in use. How anything in here could still be working after all this time she couldn’t guess, but she didn’t particularly care just now. There were ponies here, dressed in simple technician uniforms and working on the machines.

Alex stepped into the doorway, waving to get their attention. “Excuse me, but do you know where I can find Gwyn the dragon? I’m pretty sure she still lives down here.”

A unicorn working nearby dropped his wrench, staring open-mouthed at her. Across the room, an earth pony mare didn’t seem to have been caught as off-guard. “Who are you? And where the hell did you get Initiative combat armor? Is that you in there, Elease? I swear, if you stole–”

“It’s mine,” she answered, running a hoof along the edge of her helmet. After a few seconds of fiddling, the connecting clasps released. Rather than falling off, the helmet began to retract, unfolding and pressing itself into the armor around her neck. This deprived her of the HUD, but it also let her look ponies in the eye. She could still see her power-percentage by glancing down at an indicator near her neck, and a speaker could still give her status updates, but that was all.

“I haven’t ever actually been here before,” Alex admitted. “But I’ve got to see your dragon. It’s life and death.”

“Where’s your escort?” The unicorn stallion finally collected himself, staring. “They just let you come in here in that walking tank?”

She wasn’t about to lie. So she didn’t even bother responding. “Do you know where I can find the dragon or don’t you?”

In answer, the earth pony working on the other side of the room struck something on the wall, hard. An alarm started to sound, echoing through the room and throughout the bunker all around them. “Security alert in Engineering!” called a voice, over and over and over.

“You’re lucky I didn’t come in here to hurt anybody!” Alex shouted at the mare, glaring. She pressed at her neck, and her helmet reassembled, covering her face. The unicorn levitated a length of cable towards her, unraveling it in the air and going for her legs. The cables got within about a foot of her before falling limply to the floor, levitation extinguished.

“Damnit, I don’t want to fight you people!” She retreated a pace from the engineers, pulling the door and slamming it shut behind her. A few tools struck it moments later, no doubt thrown by the stallion as she retreated. Before they could force the door, Alex turned her welder to the door and blasted the knob, melting through almost at once and leaving only molten slag. She didn’t have time to do a better job, because at that moment security arrived.

She had to hand it to these ponies, they were fast. Not running, but literally flying down the halls, halls barely wide enough for their wingspan and with only a standard human height to work with, often interspersed with cables and pipes. She was a little less surprised to see all three of the security ponies were thestrals, since their flight magic was a little more adaptable to underground use than a pegasi’s. They wore what looked like bulletproof vests, along with helmets with adorable holes for their ears. All three were stern-looking stallions, and all were armed.

She made no attempt to flee as they surrounded her, not as they drew their weapons and not as they aimed. She was reasonably certain they wouldn’t shoot.

“I don’t know how the hell you got in here,” said the bat pony directly in front of her. “But you’re not getting out again. No sudden movements.”

“I need to see your dragon,” Alex said, holding still. She watched the ponies behind her through her HUD, ready to react if they went to shoot. She was not about to die today. “I haven’t stolen anything, or broken anything aside from the door.” She glanced briefly over her shoulder. “Sorry about that. Some of your staff were getting violent. It was either that or hurt somepony.”

“Somepony,” repeated the pony on her left, mockery thick in his tone. “Who’d you steal that armor from, sympathizer?”

“I need to see Gwyn,” Alex repeated. “If that means I have to wait in a prison cell, that’s fine. I’m not here to fight. Wherever I see her, it’s gotta be soon.”

The lead stallion lowered his weapon. “You’re under arrest, pony. You aren’t in any place to make demands. As a matter of fact, I’m going to need you to get out of that armor immediately. You’re going to remove it, and then we’ll–”

“I will not remove it,” Alex interrupted, her voice neutral, but cutting over the stallion by aid of the speakers. “It’s proprietary technology. I swore I wouldn’t lose possession of it under any circumstances.” She shrugged, hoping to look apologetic. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, you’ll be sorry,” said the same voice from behind her. “Talk back to the commander again and you’ll be sorry. He said to take it off, that means it’s on the floor five minutes ago!” He prodded her lightly with his rifle, right in the side.

Archive had seen many intimidation tactics before. She had in her memory a rich history of human diplomacy, along with much personal experience. More often than not she had been a tiny, weak-looking pony. Ponies frequently underestimated her, and regretted it. She didn’t move. “I don’t wish to harm you,” she answered. “But if you attack, I will have no choice.”

As hot as his words might be, the stallion behind her didn’t attack as he had threatened. Discipline prevailed, and his eyes were all for the commander.

“There are three of us,” he said, more calmly than his subordinate. “Two rifles aimed at your back.”

“Two toys,” Archive corrected. “My armor is programmed to detonate when I’m killed. If that happens, I swear to God this place will be radioactive so long even your fucking dragon won’t be able to set foot in here in her lifetime.”

“Maybe.” The commander shrugged, evidently as unmoved as she had been. “But you’ll be dead.”

Alex reached up, careful never to point her leg at anything but the wall. She moved slowly, pressing it to the place that would retract her helmet. Of course this was a gamble, a gamble that might very well end in her death. True, a full power module might irradiate this whole complex if it detonated. But hers was nearly dry. It might not even have enough juice to blow up her suit when the time came.

Her helmet retracted again, folding up against her armor. Alex shook out her mane, forcing a smile. “Not for long. My name is Lonely Day, Archive of Humanity.” Her true age was revealed once the helmet came off. Even so, she met his eyes and did not blink. However tough this stallion might be, he was a child compared to her. She wasn’t about to be frightened by a child. “Patron Saint, sapient symbol, whatever you wanna go for. How about ‘immortal.’”

Surprised, frightened faces. Unmistakable recognition. These ponies knew who she was. The only stallion who had yet to speak muttered, “She looks just like the statue.”

She had no idea what he was talking about, but she didn’t ask. The captain gestured, and ponies on either side of her lowered their weapons.

“We have specific instructions for you, Archive.” Though neither looked happy about it, the ponies that had been aiming at her turned away and walked over to stand behind their commander. “I apologize for our hostility, you were the first intruder my team has ever caught. I hope the rest of your stay with us will be more pleasant.”

“That depends.” Alex frowned, retreating a pace from the group. This sudden change wasn’t entirely uncharacteristic, when this group was involved, but it didn’t necessarily mean she was out of danger. Plans within plans within plans, or so she had come to expect. That was why she hadn’t worked with them, why she had refused to come even when one of their last surviving founders died. “Will you let me see Gwyn, yet?”

“Of course.” He turned away from her, not so much as glancing over his shoulder to see if she was doing anything hostile. His subordinates were less trusting, but she didn’t mind. She hadn’t wanted to fight. “You can wait for her in the library. It’s not far from here.”

The other guards fell into step beside her, half honor-guard and half escort. She didn’t mind. She followed them through the twisting bunker hallways, until they reached the library. “We’ll let her know you’re here,” the commander said, gesturing in at the empty room. “Make yourself comfortable, she may be a while. It’s… somewhat unwise to rush her.”

“I understand. I’ll be fine here until she arrives.”

“If you need anything else, use the phone on the wall, there. Someone will fetch it for you.” He shut the door, and she heard no lock on the other side. That left her alone with the library.

Though obviously built for the staff, the library seemed far more old-style than much of the “decayed modern” that she had seen elsewhere. Rich wooden shelves, antique tables, and even more antique books. She spotted more than a few Equestrian reprints made in Alexandria, though just as many titles here appeared to be reprintings of pre-Event volumes. The chairs looked comfortable and well-worn. There was some kind of golden liquid in a decanter on one end table, along with what she swore was an old-fashioned snuff box.

Alex didn’t bother sitting down in a comfortable chair; she wouldn’t be able to enjoy it from within the armor. Not to mention she probably smelled like wet bird under all that steel, and it felt wrong to soil such a comfortable space. So she took a book she had found sitting on an end table, Good Omens, sat down on the ground, and opened it to read. She could wait. Exhaustion could wait for this last conversation. All she had to do was tell the dragon about the plight of her miners, and it would be downhill from there.

Unfortunately, Alex had been up for well over twenty-four hours now. Stress from her escape and stimulants from the armor had kept her awake, but now her helmet was off and the stress faded into the background. It was so hard to stay awake. So hard… she couldn’t. Within a few minutes, Alex’s head had dropped onto the book, and she was snoring.

Alex woke up to find Good Omens had been replaced with a pleasantly downy pillow. A wistful dragon sat across from her in a chair that obviously hadn’t been made for somepony her size, deeply engrossed in the missing book.

“A fine choice. Two of my favourite authors, Pratchett and Gaiman. ‘If knowledge is power, power is energy and energy is mass, then ultimately a library is a genteel black hole that knows how to read.’” She closed the book carefully with two of her talons. Now the dragon known as Gwyn to her organization and White to just a few looked either like a depressed teenager or a weary librarian. It was hard to say for sure which.

White was ill-named: her scales shimmered crimson. She stood, or rather slouched about 7 feet tall, not quite fully grown and with all the tell-tale signs of adolescence. Her gangly proportioned limbs made her look less like a dragon and more like a praying mantis.

“I have several copies, and books yearn to be read. You may keep it, if you wish.” She gently lowered the book and inched it back towards Alex, before clasping her hands together and peering down upon her. Tired though she looked, embers of the sun gazed keenly out beneath those lidded eyes.

“I have heard no end of stories about you. I’ve promised quite a few of the deceased that I would slap you something silly if I got the chance.” She let the words hang in the air. The embers scanned Alex’s every move, every reaction. “Why are you here? Why are you bothering me? Why now?”

Alex sat up, blinking away the tiredness and the confusion of her sleep. It hadn’t been long, she was sure about that. There was no earth pony magic to fill her with energy and wake her up, not this time. She tried the suit with a twitch of a hoof, but it refused. The flashing medical icon in the corner of her vision probably meant it wasn’t safe to give her any more stimulants.

The most important facts took little of her concentration to determine, however. She had fallen asleep, and the dragon hadn’t attacked her. Stories of dragons in the old-world might describe them as proud creatures with their own codes of honor, but she held no illusions about the truth of that now.

As she sat up, it was harder not to be intimidated by White than any of the guards she’d had to make it past earlier. She was the one in powered armor, but White needed no armor to stop bullets or express superior strength. She found herself wondering idly how well Interceptor armor would protect her from a dragon’s fire. Was it magical enough to be neutralized by the CPNFG? She prayed she wouldn’t learn the answer today.

“I’m sorry to bother you here, White.” Dragon or not, Alex would not look away. She would not be some child to be intimidated and frightened into humility. Of course, that didn’t mean she couldn’t have respect. “I won’t waste your time.” She rose to her hooves, retreating a pace.

“I’ve been living in the nearby town of Motherlode for the last few months,” she began. “It’s where Radio Springs gets its coal, in case you didn’t know. Up in the old national park.” There was no easy way to say this. “Though the Frontier Mining Company pretends to have legitimate status here in Radio Springs, I’m sure what they’re actually doing would violate your laws. The specifics of how they do it are complex, but what matters is that the ponies they have working for them are slaves. Slaves working in poor conditions, without pay, and nothing in place for their safety.”

She stopped, having to catch her breath. “I… didn’t know who else I could tell. There’s no way… a bureaucracy… would be able to make a difference in time to help those ponies.”

White continued to stare down impassively. “Bureaucracy has its purpose. And purpose dictates to me that I should ask you to present evidence towards me, I should hear their defense, there should be a sanctioned investigation which would give them plenty of time to cover up their horrible misdeeds...” droned on, as if reading rote from a script.

“However. I’m under the impression you wouldn’t skulk into this facility and browbeat our guards just to tell me lies. Tell me, have you read our charter? Because I assure you, if what you say is true our friends in the FMC have not.”

“I don’t know if it’s a question of reading; they’ve got a license to operate and they’ve been paying their taxes and all. But they’ve also been only recruiting Refugees, who don’t understand the post-Event world and don’t have an idea in hell what their rights are. Wage slavery would be bad enough, but what they’re actually doing…”

Alex gestured, bringing the helmet over her face in a few smooth motions of rotating metal. She spoke quietly into the microphone. “Activate projector, playback helmet video from timecode–” A bezel near the front of her helmet rotated towards the nearest flat surface, the ceiling. Images began to play there, sound projected from the speakers in her helmet.

It was the mineshaft, filled with refugees. Images her camera had taken on her way out. “The mining director killed me when I confronted him about what he had been doing. When I returned, I discovered the miners had tried to unionize. The Frontier Company sealed them all underground to starve. As you can see from the timecode, this footage was taken about eight hours ago. They’re down there right now, starving.” Alex cut the projection, folding up her helmet again. It was unwise to be partially blind when dealing with dragons, apparently friendly or not.

White unfolded herself out of her chair. Now that it was not hidden amongst her furled limbs, Alex noticed a shotgun slung over her hip. “We shall rectify this immediately. Are you capable of flight, or shall I carry you?”

“I can’t fly. But I don’t think you understand what we’re up against. They’re about ten miles out into the wilderness. They’ve got a private militia of at least thirty men. At least…” she trailed off. “Well, one less gatling gun than they had this morning. Regardless, I don’t think one pon– one person is going to convince them to change their way of doing things with just a shotgun. They’ll lie, they’ll stonewall, and nothing will change. And my–” She whimpered. “My friends will die.”

“Back... Back when there were nine of us, each of us had a role in the running of the settlement. It may surprise you to look at me, but I stood as the moral heart of our group." She paused, running a claw along the edge of her shotgun. "If this situation requires a greater show of force, than that is what we will provide.”

White strode purposefully down the corridors of the CMC, leading Alex deeper into the complex. At one point, White left Alex in the hallway as she “made some phone calls to some important people.” The deeper they went, the less people they saw. At one of the lowest levels of the CMC, White walked down a final corridor that was thick with dust, which ended with a giant, pneumatic blast door. White used a single talon and punched a code into the keypad.

“This is where I keep the most prized possessions of my hoard. Absolutely no other living person has ventured down here other than myself. Not since…” White’s voice strained and she cleared her throat. “Consider this the highest honor I can bestow. You may look, but please, do not touch.”

The door rolled open and before them was a colossal room reminiscent of the warehouse from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Unlike the corridor outside, there was not a speck of dust in the entire room. At the very back of the room there was a closed in portion that looked very much like a shrine. The room was mostly full of armaments. A smooth bore musket lay propped in one case, its neighbors were repeaters from the late 1800s. Mortars, LMGs, RPGs.

“Over the past 300 years, I’ve gone out of my way to locate items I find interesting from all over the world. Firearms have always fascinated me, even when I was human. Bit hypocritical for a pacifist, I know. One can appreciate the art without using it to hurt people.” White opened a strongbox and pulled out a grenade launcher. She didn’t load it, instead pulling out a bandoleer of grenades, which she somewhat clumsily fit over her neck and wings. “My grandfather was a coal miner. He lost his uncle and three of his brothers to the Gresford disaster and his father to the riots shortly afterwards."

She took a breath. "We shall go and speak to this 'Frontier Mining Company', Alex. I will hope very hard that they shoot first.”

Author's Notes:

Hey everypony! Just a few more chapters (probably two) in part 2 of Eternal Lonely Day. Expect some information about my plans for the future of this story. For now, though, I hope you'll enjoy the last little bit of this part of the story!

In case you couldn't tell, there's some crossover material here. I'd like to thank WolfmanWhite of Our Not So Simple Plan. Guess we're seeing a bit of a spoiler for the future of that character, but... that's just how these things go! I guess you could say that these last few chapters have been a crossover with the whole Colorado group, since I kinda borrowed elements of the setting from them.

Hopefully you all enjoy the ending of this part, anyway. Just a few more chapters, and we'll be solidly into part three. So much for writing all 10,000 years X.x

Next Chapter: Chapter 18: A Day for Justice (292 AE) Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 56 Minutes
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