The walk down the metal hallways was, thankfully, not too long. There were a few twists and turns along the way, and more than once Scootaloo had to blink to attention to keep from ramming her face into a wall. Nonetheless, they made it to a door at the end of the hallway with no major incident. There hadn't even been any other ponies she could see in the hallway. Scootaloo wondered if it was the night.

She snapped back to attention as the doors in front of them split in the centre, sliding into the wall. What was revealed was a small metal box, even smaller than her cell or any of her ship's rooms. Its back wall appeared to be glass, but Scootaloo couldn't figure out why because on the other side just lay more metal. Nonetheless, the stallion she was following walked inside, so she followed suit. She watched as he pressed a button—one of many to the right side of the door—and it lit up orange. The doors slid closed in front of them, and Scootaloo heard a mechanical whirring all around them. She shuddered as the room around them slowly started moving upwards, taking them with it.

They had already risen several meters when Scootaloo realised why the back panel was glass; once they rose, the metal behind it gave way to the view of a larger room outside. She gazed out at this massive metal room that extended upwards further than she could see and down to a floor dotted with colourful shapes—ponies—that she could barely make out as they got further and further away. It didn't look like it went very far depth-wise—Scootaloo could see where it ended and a few small tunnels led out from that far wall. As they rose higher and higher, she briefly wondered whether this entire place was underground, like Kevin had mentioned.

This train of thought was interrupted as the room ground to a halt with a mechanical squeak. Scootaloo turned her head back to face the stallion, to see he was already leaving through open doors. She followed him out the doors and into the hallway outside of them.

In contrast to the naked, unadorned hallways below, this hall—although still composed of that sheer metal—was definitely not naked in the same way. A few ponies passed them as they started down the hall, leaving side-rooms through wooden doors that bore small black placards with unfamiliar names on them in that script Kevin had showed her. Interspersed between the doors occasionally were posters of upcoming events or photographs of impressive landscapes.

They only made one turn as they traversed the hall, eventually coming to what looked to be its end—a wall of sheer metal. There was a door to the left, with a short, six letter name. Fortunately, these letter shapes were close enough to hers that she could figure it out; 'VELVET', it read.

The stallion who brought her up there rapped on the door with a foreleg. She heard shuffling noises inside. "Who is it?" a voice called through the door.

"Guard Verbosity, sir. I am here with the prisoner you requested to see."

There was a definite pause before the voice replied. "The filly?"

"Yessir."

There was more shuffling and then hoofsteps. The handle turned and, with a squeak, the door swung inwards. A white-coated unicorn stallion stood in the doorway, plastic smile across his face. He was smaller in stature than the guard, but his expression was so smug and lofty that it more than made up for what he lacked in size. "Come in, come in," he said, beckoning Scootaloo forward. He looked up at the guard. "Thank you... erm... Veracity. You may go."

The guard nodded and trotted off down the hall, though Scootaloo barely noticed this out of the corner of her eye as she was practically whisked inside the room. Velvet—assuming that's who this pony was—walked ahead of her and around a desk in the back of the room to take a seat in a plush navy chair. He indicated with a hoof that Scootaloo was welcome to sit down on the long sofa that lay directly across from the desk; the filly did so and was pleased to find it was incredibly comfortable, especially compared to the bunk in her cell. Or even the pilot's seat on her ship.

"If you'll give me a minute, filly, I need to finish up a report and pull up your file before we start talking," Velvet said. His voice was smooth yet cool; he wanted to appear approachable, but to his distance as well. Scootaloo nodded, but she got the feeling that he wasn't looking for her input in the first place.

As Velvet turned to the computer console on his desk—this one much smaller than the ones Scootaloo had seen on Tank's ship—the filly turned her head around to get a better look at the room in which she sat. Overall, the room was fairly sparse; there was only one shelf on each wall, and each held only a few books and maybe a vase on top with a few flowers. To her left, there was a framed photograph on the wall with a bunch of ponies all in the same black outfit she had seen on Guard Verbosity. The only other features to the room were the sofa on which she now sat, the black rug with white spots in front of it, and Velvet's desk.

His desk, however, was about as minimal as the rest of the room. Its main feature, besides the small name plate on the left corner, was the computer console, with its bulky screen up top and the box that held the computer brain—about as tall as Scootaloo—on the floor beside the desk, connected to the screen by a thick black cable. Velvet was currently entering something into it; at least, that's what she presumed based on the small orb he held in his purple magical aura. Small buttons on its surface that were marked with small version of their letters kept being pushed in and rising out at a rapid speed.

When Velvet finally looked up from his computer and set the orb onto a stand on the desk, Scootaloo was staring straight at him. "Alright, I'm ready." He adjusted the lamp on his desk—the only light in the room, as there were no windows and the ceiling light remained off. "I'm going to ask you a few questions, and it's gonna be in both our best interests if you answer them truthfully."

Scootaloo gulped. She already felt nervous around this strange stallion, in this strange environment, being held in some sort of prison. "Um... okay, I'll try."

"Good, good." Velvet looked to his screen and then back at Scootaloo. "Who are you, and where do you come from?"