"Hey, Mochi, I think I found something!" Scootaloo called. The two ponies had realised that what they thought was a turn at the end was actually a horizontal split, so they decided to split up to cover more ground and to check all the little office rooms more quickly. At first, Mochi hadn't wanted to let Scootaloo go by herself; the filly told her, though, that they weren't even going to be that far away from one another and, what's more, she was a perfectly capable pony that could take care of herself.

"You mean, like, stairs?" Mochi asked, turning her neck. She brushed her mane away as it fell in front of her face.

"Yeah, there's a little sign with an up arrow. That does mean up on this planet, right? The line with the little triangle on top?"

Mochi blinked. "Um, yeah? Why wouldn't it? Wait, 'on this planet'?"

"C'mon." Scootaloo beckoned towards herself with a hoof and then darted off into a room on the left. Sighing, Mochi galloped down the hall to follow the filly into the little office.

The room looked much like the others they'd passed—nondescript metal walls with nothing inside but a light fixture. What set it apart, though, was the door on its far wall that Scootaloo had mentioned. There was a little black plastic sign to its left that, again as the filly had said, had only an upward-facing arrow.

"You tried the door?" Mochi asked.

"Oh, um, not yet." Scootaloo reached up and pushed down and inwards on the handle. The door swung open, revealing a small metal room that was very much like a vertical tube. The floor was red metal grating that made a landing in the stairs that led both up and down, to more landings that Mochi could see through the grating. She followed Scootaloo, who had just limped inside. The filly shut the door behind them and, even though she closed it quietly, the click of the latch reverberated all up and down the stairwell.

"So, uh, up or down?" Scootaloo asked. "How do we even know what floor we're on? We need to get to floor 30, right?"

"Yeah, if we're taking Grey by his word," Mochi replied. "I mean, I guess we don't have any reason not to... what else can we do?" She tilted her head back to look up. "Wherever we are, it's gotta be below floor 30 because we hadn't gotten up that high in the elevator. I dunno how far we fell before we jumped, though—we could even be below where we started."

"Guess we'd better get started, then," Scootaloo replied and, in conjunction with what she said, the filly started limping up the stairs. Mochi walked at an even, slow pace alongside her.

"Looks like this'll take a while," Mochi said, once they had walked up three floors.

"Ungh... yeah. I'm really sorry I can't go any faster... it just hurts pretty bad if I move my leg too much."

"Don't worry, it's no trouble," Mochi replied. "We probably have some time before they figure out where we are. Heck, they probably think we're dead already—and even I'm kinda surprised we're not. That elevator shoulda killed us."

"Heh... no elevator can take this awesome pony down," Scootaloo replied, smiling. She and Mochi kept walking upwards, floor after floor, hooves clinking on the metal grating.

Velvet leaned back in his seat as he stared at the black-and-white image of the ponies on his computer display, pressing a button on his control sphere to flick from camera to camera as they passed out of view. He let out a sigh. "When will these ponies ever learn?"

"I'm not sure, sir, but the other members of the guard and I await your command," Guard Verbosity said stiffly. He stood across the desk from Velvet, in front of the sofa.

"Please, please, be patient. It helps to actually figure out what we're doing before we just dive into these things." Velvet ran a hoof through his mane. "They're in the central stairwell, trying to make their way to the thirtieth floor which, for some reason, they presume to be a way out. I don't want any guards to go down in the stairs, but I need you to make sure that ponies are there waiting for them once they get to that floor."

Guard Verbosity nodded. "Will do, sir." He turned tail and trotted out of the room.

"Ah..." Velvet exhaled. "Now to figure out how they got out in the first place."