The rest of the briefing was a bit of a blur. Jerry and Bastion discussed details, but it was all wordless mumbling to my ears. I was stunned into silence. It seems that, one way or another, we had to head back to the museum. Just as my mother had said. Trying to put together what exactly was happening was consuming all of my focus. So much so that I only absently noticed Bastion and Jerry stand and make to leave.

I followed after them, my head in a cloud of confusion and… hope? Confusion that it all appeared real. And hope that it was. That I’d actually talked to my mom. That she still existed somewhere. That it wasn’t just some sort of freak coincidence. That-

“FREE!”

I jerked suddenly, bracing myself for an impact and then slowly relaxed as I saw both Jerry and Bastion looking at me. We’d left the cafeteria and now stood not too terribly far from the main gate into Deepwater.

“Ya’lright son?” he asked, giving me a concerned look.

“You were a million miles away, Free,” Jerry said, looking equally concerned.

“Sorry,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “Just… thinking. Is there any reason we couldn’t bring Sentinel along?” I asked Bastion.

“The ghoul? Don’t see why not. ‘Fraid you’ll have to pay him out of your own pocket. We don’t typically spring for bodyguards,” he said. I nodded. That shouldn’t be an issue. We haven’t spent our caps on pretty much anything.

Jerry peeled her gaze from me, turning back to Bastion and offered him a warm smile. “We’ll get ready to head out. Just gonna pick up some supplies first.”

“That’s great. When you’re ready to head out, talk to one of my guards. Try and get everything on the list and stay safe out there,” Bastion said as he trotted off to see to his own duties.

Jerry waved politely until Bastion was gone and then turned back to me, all concern. “What’s wrong? You weren’t really there for any of that conversation.”

“It’s just… it’s odd, right?” I asked. “I’m telling you about my dream and then… boom. This happens. Sending us just where my dream said to go?”

Jerry smirked. “You’re not wrong. But maybe we heard someone mention it yesterday and just forgot. We were kind of conditioned to tune out a lot of things.”

She had a point. The Dig was a horrible place of suffering. A place where you had no control. You learned very quickly to tune out the horrors around you and bury yourself in your work so you didn’t join them. Doc had said it was a coping mechanism. A way to deal with things beyond your control. “That makes sense…” I said after a moment. “C’mon. Let’s see if we can find Sentinel.” I turned and started for The Watering Hole, the last place I’d seen our slightly rotted friend.

“Why do we want him to tag along?” Jerry asked. “He’s… well… kind of a jerk.”

“Protection. I swing around a piece of concrete and metal and you’ve never shot a gun before this week. We’re not really ready for wandering the wasteland alone.” I reached out a hoof and pushed open the door, allowing Jerry to walk in first. The interior was just as dark as it had been the other day, only now the only occupants were the bartender, and a single unicorn ghoul. They were chatting like old friends as we approached.

“...look all I’m sayin’ is, if anything, the world is simpler now.” Sentinel said with a clarity that surprised me given that he’d spent the entire night in a bar. “Horrible. But simpler.” The bartender smiled and nodded, and then pointed at us as we approached. Sentinel twisted in his seat and gave us a half smile. “Hullo love birds. How was your first night in your new home?”

“Best rest I’ve ever had,” I said. “What about you? You been drinking all night?”

“Nah. Stopped after you crazy kids went to bed.” He lifted a bottle of water with his magic and gave it a shake. “Just been taking in some needed rads and chatting with my new friend.” he said, gesturing at the bartender.

“You didn’t sleep?” Jerry asked.

Sentinel shook his head. “Ghouls don’t need sleep.”

“Well, ponies do. So, if you will excuse me,” the bartender chimed in as he disappeared through a small door behind the bar. Sentinel waved after him and then turned to Jerry and I.

“Guess I’ll be ‘eadin’ out then. Maybe go back to Vi’s,” he said as he dropped a small sack of caps behind the bar and then slipped off the stool and onto his hooves.

“Actually, we’d like to hire you again,” I said quickly.

Sentinel stopped and glanced between the two of us. “What’s the matter? Leaving already?”

“Yes and no,” Jerry started. “We’re the newest scavengers. With the other two on the mend, they need us to go out.”

“And neither of us are particularly good at being wastelanders,” I continued, “So we’d like your continued aid. If you’re willing.”

Sentinel chuckled to himself. “Alright. Where we going?”

I smiled. “What do you know about archeology?”

Sentinel’s eyes widened and he pointed a hoof at me. “No,” he said flatly, turning his back on us.

Jerry and I stared in stunned silence for a moment before she was able to shake herself out of it. “What? What do you mean ‘no’?”she blurted out.

“I’ve ‘eard of that place. Big building. Scary lookin’ as all fuck. Crawling with fuckin’ ferals. Ain’t goin’ there.”

“...you literally just followed me into a Stable and fought through dozens of… plant… things,” I said, struggling to wrap my head around what was happening here.

“Yeah. This is different,”

“How is this any different?”

Sentinel spun around and glared at me with his white eyes. “Kid, what am I?” he asked.

“Um…” I said, drawing it out to buy myself a moment to think. “Angry?”

“Drunk?” Jerry offered.

“I’m a fuckin’ ghoul, mate,” he said tersely. “Do you know what that means?” I fixed him with another blank stare. Relenting, he rolled his eyes. “I’ve been ‘alive’ for a long, long time,” he said, making quotation marks with his hooves. “Since the bombs fell, I’ve been rotting. Slowly. From the inside out.” He turned his head to the left, giving me a clear view of the missing right portion of his face. “Soon enough, there won’t be a Sentinel any more. There’ll be another mindless, frothing feral.” His gaze dropped to the floor. “All them ferals… they used to be ponies.” He looked up again and pointed his hoof at me. “To you,” he said and then pointed at Jerry, “and you, and every other smoothskin; they’re the past. But to me? And every other ghoul? They’re the future.”

“I… I didn’t know,” I muttered, my ears flattening against my skull.

“Yeah… s’alright… You’re right. The two of you aren’t ready to go traipsing around alone. I’ll… I’ll go…” he said after a moment’s pause.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Fuck no. But a job’s a job.”

It had taken us the better part of a couple of days to make it back to the museum. As the sky began to dim, we spied the huge building on the horizon. A cold dread welled up in the pit of my stomach and I did my level best to ignore it.

We stood in the entrance, peering into the dark interior. The museum was hauntingly quiet. Perhaps the two century old struggling systems had finally been put to rest. It was silent. Like a tomb.

“I don’t like this. None of it. Ya don’t go explorin’ pre-war ruins in the dark o’ night. Not even armed and armored like we are,” Sentinel muttered as we stepped through the entry hall towards the reception desk. He panned his machine gun back and forth, glaring into the darkness.

“We’re not exploring it. We’ve been here before,” Jerry muttered as she stepped closer to my side.

“This is where we escaped from Fortune’s Slavers,” I added. The building was different at night. There was a presence about it.

Ominous.

Scary.

Dead.

Each step seemed to echo through the quiet interior, sounding far too loud for my liking. Then, a careless step sent several things jingling across the tiled floor. I glanced down, carefully brushing a hoof across the scattered casings that littered it.

“Those’re new…” Jerry muttered as she retrieved her pistol from its holster.

“Keep your eyes and ears open. This place was crawling with ferals last time,” I warned as I trod through the spent brass. Behind the front desk was the tour guide, or what was left of it. Somepony had definitely been here.

Sentinel stepped over to the robot and fished something out of its innards, pocketing it without a word. “What are we looking for? Because I say we find it and get out A-S-A-fucking-P.”

“Bastion just said ‘anything useful’,” I muttered. “Apparently it was the mayor’s idea to send us out this way.”

“Beautiful. I just fished somethin’ useful outta this ‘ere clunker. We can leave now, right?” Sentinel asked. Jerry and I gave him flat looks and he sighed. “Too much to ‘ope for.” His horn flickered and flared into life, casting a glow around us as two thin sticks levitated from his bag and over to each of us. They bent and shook in his magic, and a weak green glow began to emanate from them. “Put these on. Don’t take them off.” He ordered as he retrieved one for himself and hooked it on his saddlebag.

Jerry tapped a hoof at the small light and made a face. “What’s it for?” she asked around her pistol.

“So I don’t shoot you by mistake,” Sentinel said. Jerry looked at me and I offered her a smile. She sighed and nodded.

“Alright,” Jerry sighed, “where do we start?”

“I don’t get it…” I muttered as we carefully moved down the corridor.

“Get what?” Sentinel asked, aiming his weapon at each dark shadow we passed.

“This place was crawling with ferals just a few days ago. Now…” I let my words trail off.

We stepped into an intersection, Sentinel’s gun lowered just a bit and he turned to glare at me. “You jinx us and I swear I-”

“No, he’s right. Its weird. If there were ferals here, they’d have come running at us from all sides,” Jerry added with a shudder.

The barrel of his rifle dipped slightly, and Sentinel’s ears flicked this way and that, listening. “I don’t hear anythin’ either. Everythin’ about this rubs me the wrong way.”

“There’s no way that Bruiser, Fricassee and Stitch got all the ferals. We weren’t here that long,” I muttered as we continued down the darkened halls. I shrugged my shoulders under my armor, thankful to have it. Its weight was a reassurance that whatever we might encounter, at least I had some protection from it.

“I dunno what a museum might have the could be useful to Deepwater…” Sentinel muttered. “We’d have been better off going back to that Stable.”

“Yeah… weird…” I muttered, fleeting images of my mother flashing into my mind. I glanced at Jerry and saw her glancing right back. She was thinking the same thing. “Should we split up?”

Jerry sucked on her bottom lip and looked to Sentinel. “I mean… I don’t want to… but it WOULD make everything go faster…” The two of us looked at Sentinel.

“Right… fine,” Sentinel said in clipped tones. “But keep your glow stick on ya at all times.” Two more levitated out of his bag and deposited themselves into ours. “They last a couple hours. But here’s another just in case. First sign of trouble you start screamin’ and runnin’ and you don’t stop til you get outside, clear?” The two of us nodded emphatically and Sentinel, seemingly pleased, trotted straight ahead and further down the corridor.

“I was expecting a fight…” I muttered to Jerry.

“Me too,” she replied. She turned to face me and opened her mouth wordlessly, something clearly on her mind. After a long moment she sighed and hugged me. “Be careful, Free,” she said and trotted down to the right.

I stood in silence for a moment until the echoing hoofsteps and the glow from the sticks fading into nothing. “Okay…” I muttered, looking around. “You got me here… now what?” I waited, half dreading that I might get an answer. A minute passed and I relaxed. “Right… that would’ve been weird.”

Without further pause I trotted down the last remaining hallway. I passed glass sealed alcoves containing various things. Old, dust-covered wall plaques next to each probably contained information about what they were or what they represented. None of it was familiar, telling me that I hadn’t ventured down this hallway last time I was here. Or if I had, I was too distracted by running for my life. The small displays gave way to larger, more elaborate set pieces. I stopped, looking at moldy mannequins arranged around a fake campfire, all of them made green by my glowstick.

The hallway widened into a large hall ahead, packed with more displays of life in the past. I walked through it slowly, piecing together a picture of life in ancient Equestrian history. I stopped in front of a large stone slab. I squinted, trying to make out details in the weak chemical glow of the glow stick. After a moment I relented and turned on my pipbuck lamp. The green light washed over the tablet and I took a step back to take it all in. “Weird…” I muttered, raising a hoof to brush it along to stone. A small speaker and a button rested on a pole next to it. Curious, I reached out and tapped the button. The speaker crackled loudly before it resolved itself into a normal mare’s voice.

“...and carved from a single piece. The tablet was discovered embedded in the bedrock near the foot of the Coltarado Plateau, the origins of the marble however appears to be Zebrican in origin.” The slab was huge, and carved with ornate and flowing script that resembled squiggles or random markings as far as I was aware. It was punctuated occasionally with carvings that depicted… the goddesses? Winged unicorns looking up towards the sky and stars raining down on them from above. And inside each star was another thing. A pot. Some coins. One even contained a foal. “While the text is indecipherable the images appear to convey a story. Our team is currently split, with half the researchers believing it to be some sort of catastrophic meteor shower, claiming various things from the ponies of the past. Hence their inclusion in the meteors in the sky. The others believe it to be some sort of symbolic work of art, the true meaning lost to us. I myself have a different notion. I theorize it’s something of a religious text. The remnants of large eyes just visible at the top of the tablet...” In the pale, green glow of the pipbuck, I could just make out what looked like large eyes disappearing off the broken top edge of the slab, “...would likely denote some sort of higher power looking down upon its creations. Or, conversely, it could be a depiction of… volent...ty...” The speaker degraded to a squeal of static and then fell silent. I stood there for a long moment, taking in the scene before shaking myself back to reality. I was here for a reason and it would do me no good to get distracted. I clicked off my pipbuck lamp, stepped away and tensed. I wasn’t alone anymore. I heard the shuffling hoofsteps long before I heard the gurgling growls. My ears flicked this way and that.

One...

Two…

Six…

Shit.

I bolted straight for the nearest door. Immediately a chorus of sibilant hisses, inarticulate growls and the clamor of hooves followed. I swear I could hear the gnashing of teeth just behind me as I scrambled around the corner, skidding across the worn flooring and nearly slamming into the wall in an effort not to slow down. My hooves fought for purchase before the first ghoul hit me. I slammed into the wall, putting a significant dent into the drywall as cracked and bleeding hooves ripped at my armor.

“Get off!” I grunted through clenched teeth as I righted myself. I needed to move. If this thing slowed me down too much the others would swarm me and no amount of armor could protect me from that for long. As if to make my point, the ghoul succeeded in dislodging a piece of my shoulder plate, sending it skittering across the floor. “Hey! That’s brand new!” I shouted as I veered into the opposite wall, slamming the ghoul into it with all my weight. Drywall crumbled and collapsed as I tried to scrape the ghoul off my armor. The tough little bastard held on while simultaneously trying its level best to rip into my flesh. Behind me, the grunts and growls of the other ghouls were hot in pursuit. I was never very fast, but I was even slower when dragging a thrashing, flesh-eating ghoul.

I slammed into the wall again, ripping a long gouge out of the wall until, finally, the ghoul caught a support and tore free. Freed of the excess weight I sped up as much as I could, which wasn’t much. I needed a plan, and quick. Up ahead, a ruddy stain on the floor caught my eye.

Is that… mine?

A ghoul threw itself into my flank, nearly knocking me to the floor. Time for thinking over! I sprinted for the ruddy stain and took a hard right through a door with a blasted out lock. I nearly fell down the first flight of stairs, barely managing to catch myself on the landing and start down the second flight as the ghouls burst through the door behind me. They tumbled over one another, a tangle of rotted limbs and sloughing flesh. I risked a glance back as I descended. There were at least a dozen, all fighting with one another for the opportunity to kill me.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” I shouted as I shouldered open the bottom door. A wave of stench washed over me, and I gagged, nearly tumbling from my hooves. This was definitely it. Where Bruiser had shot me and left me for dead. It was also, as I began to recall, a dead end. With no time to stop or find an alternate route, I barrelled for the room where Dig Deep had been. The doors has been ripped from the frame and lay partially in the hall. There would be no sealing myself in and locking them. I came to a stop just at the edge of the dig site.

A stone entryway lay half buried in the dirt, a yawning black void leading to Goddesses only knew what in the center of it. Across from the opening, slumped against the edge of the pit, was the body of a brown pony. I was suddenly acutely aware of my surroundings, and despite myself, gagged and vomited onto the rotting corpse below me. I took a deep breath and then was hit from behind as the ghouls at finally caught up. I tumbled into the pit, thankfully missing the putrid corpse as I tangled with a different one.

My luck finally ran out as the ghoul lunged forward, its broken teeth sinking into the flesh of my cheek. I screamed as it shook its head violently, ripping free the prize it had sought. Blood spilled down my neck and beneath my armor as I pushed it clear and crawled towards the opening. I had to get away! I had to regroup!

Teeth closed around my ankle and dragged me back as a second and third ghoul joined the fray. I twisted, kicking wildly as my adrenaline surged. The muzzle caved in on the first ghoul. I dearly hope it choked on me! I raised my free hind leg and smashed it into the nose of the one holding my ankle as hard as I could. I regretted it instantly as its broken teeth punched through the leather and into my flesh before the bones broke and the ghoul released me as it staggered away trailing brackish fluid. I twisted and pushed myself back to my hooves but a third ghoul was ready. It leapt onto my back and I threw my head to one side as fouled teeth snapped shut where my ear had been just a moment before. The opening was just a few feet away, if I could just-

A pair of luminous blue eyes flashed into life in the entryway accompanied by the sound of grinding stone. I stared into them, feeling my heart stall in my chest. Then teeth snapped closed again, this time on the back of my neck. I screamed as the ghoul on my back shook its head violently, trying to tear free a piece of me. Terrifying eyes or no, I lunged forward, turning my momentum into a dive and pitched myself into the dark opening. I landed and began to roll, the ghoul and I tumbling end over end as the ground sloped away beneath us. The ghoul ripped free and we both shrieked as we tumbled into darkness.

Save Game?
[Y]/N

Author's Notes:

Hey guys and gals! Just throwing the next chapter up here for those eager to see some more of my story. My editor is extremely backed up, but this should get the once over soon enough. In the meantime if you spot any spelling or grammar mistakes, please let me know.

I know its on the short side. But it ends at a good point for a chapter break.