Chapter 14: Blood, Sweat, and More Blood

"Get off!" Growled Faith with a gritty throat, coughing up yet more blood. "What the Hell's going on!?" She cried again as she was dragged through the invisibly dark halls.

As her own pungent life fluid soaked into her haunches and left a trail down behind, she felt a remarkable mutuality with the unconscious alicorn being dragged along beside her, whose coat was now nearly entirely red with blood.

The pegasus' neck was beginning to ache as it was stretched and rubbed raw by the rope firmly secured around it and pulling her along. Her hooves were also tightly bound in two pairs - unlike Cantors. She felt mildly jealous over the stallion as his bindings were only secured in a loop under his forelegs. But she didn't have time to acknowledge this emotion as the 'convoy' rounded a corner and her shot shoulder scraped painfully along the wall.

She elicited a long, afflictive groan as the cold, wet metal pressed along her leg. Fresh tears formed in her eyes from the pain. She had never been shot before, and to be honest, she had no idea it would've hurt this much. The wound in her upper leg stung like, how she relayed, "A bitch", but the new cavity in her stomach sent waves of black sickness throughout her entire series of nerves whenever she shifted position - even slightly. The grey mare was astonished Cantor had not only been walking (albeit with a heavy limp) all this time, but also that he hadn't been complaining over his own multiple bullet-wounds dotted along his belly like a surgeon's edition of join-the-dot.

"Blue?" Faith called up, listening to the clopping of hooves on the metal flooring several paces ahead. "Blue Bolt, I know it's you." She added with hostility.

There was no reply.

Faith, struggling one more arduous time against her bindings, found she had little choice than to slump down and hope she was being taken somewhere of relative safety... Still, regardless of the deep blue unicorn's intent, the pegasus let her body fall into a limp, heavy lump that was difficult to pull. To her surprise, the old stallion did not seem to notice this change in cargo, and carried on his steady pace.

The pained mare turned to look at Cantor. With any luck, he'd have come around and would be formulating some fantastically risky plan. Unfortunately, this thought remained as mere hope, as the alicorn remained quiet and motionless.

More profanities spilled from the grey mare's mouth as she was hauled through a set of large double-doors that swung quickly shut behind her. During her 'travels', the environment had gained some much needed lighting - however it appeared to be fed some kind of emergency backup power: the few lights drilled into the low ceiling were far from being 'homely' by a long shot. Many tiny bright bulbs ran in two rows behind their clear plastic casing, shining down harshly on the equine convoy and casting stark shadows across their bloodied bodies.

Taking a pause from cursing for breath, Faith turned once again to check up on Cantor. He was grumbling in his sleep: fidgeting as his face gently contorted and grimaced to some unseen horror.

But Faith did not have time to try and once again wake her friend, as the tow-pony dropped the alicorn's bindings and he slumped to the floor, still sleeping. The distance between the two captives grew. Faith was plunged into a deeper depth of worry, and even though no harm befell the stallion, she still cried out his name in alarm.

Once again the pegasus tried her luck against the bonds around her ankles. She thrashed her forelegs about until the rope stung. She kicked and bucked at the constriction around her back knees, but all she managed to do was wake up the sickening pain in her deeply gouged stomach.

Having been dragged cruelly toward the corner of the room, Faith felt herself being hoisted slowly upwards like she was on some kind of winch. Panic began to twist her heart as a clean white platform was positioned under her and she was lowered onto the soft fabric. Her flanks burned as they connected with the new material - grazed by the excessive dragging along the metal hallways. In that moment, she felt oddly grateful that this part of the hellish facility hadn't been struck by the worst of the rot of time. What her rear end would have looked like after fifteen minutes of sliding over that cheese grater of rusted iron the lower floors were made of bear not thinking about.

But there was little time to focus on the pain: a rich blue face appeared overhead, right ear missing a substantial chunk that sent a messy smattering of blood across that side of the unicorn's face. His silvery-green hair fell down over his face, casting all but the glints of light reflecting from his teal eyes into shadow.

Stunned only for a moment by her manic situation; startled by the silence that had now fallen over the scene and enveloped it like a thick, hot cocoon, Faith took in a steadying breath and spoke.

"...Blue Bolt...?" She questioned after a nervous pause. The stallion didn't move. The notion of insanity on the unicorn's part flashed before her mind, and stuck there, becoming ever more convincing as events unfolded. "Did... W- were you the one who shot me...?" Faith asked submissively, admitting to herself that she was indeed very scared.

Blue held his manic expression for some time after the question. So much so, that to say he had 'frozen' would not be immediately dismissed.

"I'm so glad I found you." The doctor said loudly, the abrupt sentence giving Faith a shiver. "Where are the others?" He said a little quieter, sounding fractured, as if apprehensive to asking the question in the first place.

Hearing the stallion's tone, Faith knew she was in a dangerous situation. With shortened breaths, she twisted her neck around to peek at Cantor - he was still out cold. "Damn..." The pegasus spat vilely inside her head.

Her attention was rapidly drawn back to Blue Bolt as he became distracted and started rummaging through the tattered leather saddlebags clinging to her sides.

"Hey-!" Faith cried with a surprised start. "Don't go through my stuff!" She tried to sound threatening, but the underlining tremors in her voice proved otherwise. Bullets and bandages and empty syringes fell from the bags, landing with clangs and dull thuds on the shiny metal floor.

After a short while's bewilderment, "What are you looking for?" Came Faith's dumbfounded voice.

"They're dead, aren't they!?" The blue unicorn replied without hesitation with a volume that was almost a yell. He leaned across Faith and placed both hooves beside her head, something in the clutch of supplies he held in his left cutting the mare's cheek with a shallow gouge.

Faith winced briefly, yet she easily held her focus. She slowly began to nod her head in regrettable response, then picked up the pace. "Yes..." She said softly, forgetting her place for a moment. "It's just us three left."

Appearing to have been expecting a far different response, Blue Bolt dropped everything in his hooves and stormed off into the shadows of the room, brutishly bucking the many skeletal stretchers littering the floor like improper tombs.

Somewhere in the near distance, Faith could hear the unicorn ranting to himself and tossing more medical equipment about the place. As always, She struggled against her bindings, but had even less luck than before given that all of her limbs were suspended above her stomach by some kind of winch with a hook on the end.

"Oh, chrome plated messiah..." The pegasus sighed quietly in a breath as she noticed the pristine condition and sharpness of the claw holding her legs in the air. Turning to check Blue Bolt's proximity, she realised he had escaped her sight - but she could still hear feint rumblings of rubber wheels upon the floor and the occasional clatter of a table filled on every step with 'tools'.

Faith, strong as she happened to be, had suffered extreme damage from the shooting incident some minutes ago, and could barely pull her top half up against its own weight a couple of inches. Regardless, in true pegasus spirit, physical limitations were a mere challenge before the goal. And so she persisted.

Flexing her forelegs backwards and forwards, Faith managed to balance the middle of the thick rope upon the sharp point of the hook. She tugged at the bindings, and was miraculously able to cut the rope in half. With a gasp of immanent freedom as she dropped the short distance back onto the bed, the pegasus realised she was a great deal closer to taking her fair control of the reins of the situation. She started to tug and tear with all her exerted might at the weakened rope; pulling herself up on the hook: trying to get all the weight of her equine body against the morbid captivating twine.

The rope finally gave in and snapped around its frail section after an intense bout of thrashing on the pegasus' part. It slackened immediately: the ecstasy of freedom overpowering the sting of returning blood as Faith shook the broken bounds from her forelegs and began to make a start on pulling herself up to untie her rear hooves.

But predictably, and grievously so, Faith realised that her captor had realised what she was doing, and was now storming across the room with hostile vigour, overturning a number of the empty stretchers and leaving a mess of medical tools in his wake.

Blue Bolt reached the struggling mare and took hold of her right foreleg as he stepped up to the table, earning himself a sturdy thump in the side of the head from the riled pegasus' left.

"Get-" Chocked Faith as she struggled against the doctor's hold. "Get off me, you fuck!" She growled, not noticing the shiny scalpel gleaming in the stallion's hoof holding her leg. The next thing she knew, the blade was against her throat, and she had telepathically agreed to stop struggling with such a precision instrument so close.

"Shhhhshhhshhh.... ssshush..." Blue bolt whispered almost in a hiss. That churning fear washed over Faith once again, and she noted the sudden curtness of her breath. "Don't.... struggle." Said Blue softly - madly. "I would really rather not... kill you."

Faith found herself at a loss, and started to cry. She didn't want to submit to whatever the doctor's clearly warped state of mind could conjure up at the moment, and yet, the thought of having her neck cut was seriously frightening. What horrors she had faced before always put her in with a chance. But now, she was as good as defenceless lying here.

"Please roll over, now." Blue said with that eerily soft-spoken tone. Faith did not move. Although she was an impossible distance from home, cornered, and whimpering like a puppy, she still held her own stubborn air of defiance when it came to kneeling to ponies 'below' her.

After a frozen moment, Blue Bolt shivered and turned around, taking the sharp piece of metal away from Faith and placing it next to a large notepad where he began to furiously scribble with a capped pen. "Patient... is... un... co... operative..." He trembled as he 'wrote'. He finished, discarded the pen with no care, pulled the scalpel back into his hoof and plunged it into Faith's breast.

Panic and pain rocketed into the mare's mind. Once again, she howled in terror as the doctor continued to thump the blade onto her chest. Faith could not see nor even begin to reason the fact that the scalpel was not slicing into her far enough to hit anything vital, so to her, this was the end. Still, she swung her hooves upwards, knocking the unicorn off-beat. In her flurry she managed to bump herself free of the hook suspending her hind legs and fell to the bed's surface.

Choking and spluttering from the deadly concoction of breathlessness and panic, Faith made a scramble for the edge of the bed, but came to a cold, dead stop when she felt a single point of pain between her shoulders. She soon discovered, to a whole other level of dismay, that she had no control over her legs. She squirmed, but could barely lift her face from the pillow now moist and warm with her own blood, sweat, and more blood.

She couldn't move, but could feel every rough way Blue Bolt was manhandling her. She was pulled to the centre of the stretcher and both forelegs drooped limply over the sides. Her hind legs were pulled back out straight, and she could feel the ropes still around her hooves being tightened to a more than uncomfortable extent.

Blue bolt disappeared under the bed and after a second, began to tie Faith's front hooves together. He tied a knot which would tighten, but never grow loose until it was un-threaded, winching Faith's legs tighter and tighter until Faith was sure something would snap. In a short time, she decided that she would rather that happen; fearing the slightest movement would pull her forelegs off - not that she could move anyway.

Faith grew weak, tired - but not at all sleepy. She must have blacked out for a moment, because when she awoke, she could feel an uncomfortable tautness in her left wing. Straining only to shift her eyes a little, she discovered that her feathered appendage had been fastened near the middle with yet more rope. The other end of the rope was tied securely to an adjacent bed.

Discomforted by the rope tightly bending her feathers flush to the wing, Faith tried to ruffle it a little looser, but could in no way budge her wing. It was like several robes of chainmail was draped across her wingspan: she knew the limb was there, and could feel it, (as well as everything the doctor was doing) but the weight which clung to it, and indeed her whole body was like an invisible, artificial press.

The grey mare handled her adrenaline quite well. She could feel her own heart thumping away in her chest; it unknowingly pulsed the chemical intoxication around its heavy host, driving her deeper into a fully conscious trance to the point where even the girl's eyelids were too heavy to keep open.

Faith fell into a world of sound and touch. She heard the clatter of surgical equipment being jostled, the sensation of a cold pen of sorts being run around the base of her wing. She anticipated with dread what he thought was coming: not wanting to submit to the idea even following the unicorn's concrete insanity. But that's when the sawing began.

Faith's eyes peeled hotly open as a grating pain burned at her back and shot into her head. She screamed - internally. It helped none. The pain felt quadrupled with the disability to move or even cry out in anguish. She squeaked and mumbled as her uncooperative lungs tensed up with the rest of her body. Tears trickled from her eyes and soaked the one cheek resting on the sarcastically-placed pillow.

Her mouth grew wet with the outrageous desire to screech, but she could only groan and mumble at most.

Distress, panic, and the horrendous torture behind her made Faith throw up. She spared half a nano-second's thought towards the positive notion that her face was pointed slightly to the side and down as the minimal bile dribbled from her lips and ran over the side of the stretcher.

The morbid sensation in her wing suddenly grew ridiculous as Blue Bolt began to hack at the stone-hard bone of the pegasus' wing. Mercifully, this paramount level of anguish only lasted a brief moment until her brain overloaded, and she slipped into a cold, uncomfortable, dreamless unconscious.

...

...There was humming nearby... It sounded familliar...

...It was a nursery rhyme. But it was unclear exactly as to which.

Faith, the pegasus, creaked her right eye open a few millimetres before shutting it again; a headache having formed at some point; barging its way to the front of her brain. In her short, unclear reconnaissance, Faith noted a shape moving relatively close - but it was unknown and impossible to confirm with such a short peek.

Taking a moment to gather strength needed to open just one eye enough to see, the pegasus spotted Blue Bolt sitting on his haunches, his back towards her. He appeared to be doing something to Cantor, and taking note the tuneful humming, macabre as it may have sounded to anyone else, the unicorn was taking great pleasure from whatever it was.

Forgetting the ropes cutting deeply into her flesh, Faith attempted to wriggle free. However any kind of movement felt raw and intensely uncomfortable after being bound so tightly for... however long she was out...

Despite being bound to the bed, the mare discovered, with whatever glee could be scraped together at this time, that she once again had control over all of he body parts. And not burdened with the squeeze of rope around her belly, she knew her wings were free.

But following a few testing flaps, she felt an uncanny absence, and with sickening remembrance, recalled what had been happening a few moments before she passed out. She peered over her left shoulder with hesitation, and grimaced at the bandaged stump where her left wing used to be. It wasn't horrific: in fact, skill had been used in the application of the slightly bloodied bandages. However, being a pegasus, Faith had always relished in the option of aviation, and now that gift was gone forever, it brought a tear to her eye. But that was all.

"...You... Son of a bitch..." The grounded mare seethed weakly. Blue Bolt didn't seem to notice, and continued with whatever he had tasked himself now.

Faith had no choice but to wait it out and try to recuperate some of her faculties. Hunger grated at her insides, and thirst wasn't far behind. The bullet wound in her lower stomach had proven to be non-fatal, but it swelled with an unpleasant ache with every breath. She was alive. Flightless, trapped, but alive. If things became ugly, there was always the option to talk her way out of further harm. And, if the need came, she was a mare... That would have to be an advantage...

After what felt like a long time, Blue Bolt gave a soft chuckle and stood up. He paused for a moment, staring at his work before turning with a trot and making his way back towards where Faith was still lying on the bed, a miniature pair of scissors, some thick twine, and that gruesome scalpel all clutched between his teeth.

Faith had her eyes trained on the unicorn, but when he passed the threshold of her vision and went out of sight, she looked back to Cantor. She found her missing wing: it had been stitched back onto the alicorn's own stump. Faith was sick. Or she would have been, if there were anything at all to throw up. Her throat burned with bile, and she found herself screwing her eyes shut.

"You're mad." She whimpered with an underlying venom. "You're evil, you psycho!" The blonde mare cried, eyes still sealed.

There was silence. Spare from the blood pumping loudly in her ears, Faith heard no response. She didn't know what else to say, but surprisingly, the unicorn did eventually come up with a response.

"He is beautiful, isn't he...?" Blue asked dreamily. Faith opened her eyes, and found the doctor perched on his haunches just beside the bed.

"Wh-... what!?" Faith replied, dumbfounded.

"I mean the alicorn in him." He affirmed. "Such a majestic, powerful creature. Truly, I am honoured to have served beside him." Said Blue Bolt, smiling warmly at the freshly bandaged stallion. Faith could only stare, mesmerised by the large part of her own body crudely patched onto her friend. "We must do whatever it takes to preserve this astonishing life form. If I could give my own life to bring him strength, I surely would."

The golden-eyed mare shook her head. "You're fucking mental." She responded sourly. "He's just a guy: and I know for a fact he would have been opposed... to cutting my FUCKING WING OFF!" She screamed, riled, filled with the urge to pound her hooves into the crazed unicorn.

Then Blue stood up. He took a second glance at the sleeping alicorn before turning to confront Faith. "I apologise for any stress you may have experienced." He said quietly.

"Strees!?" Exclaimed the pegasus with rage.

"Indeed." Came Blue Bolt's humourless tone. "But it was for the greater good!" He continued with renewed enthusiasm, grinning to himself. "Cantor is a god among us! When he realises that his followers care enough to sacrifice their own flesh, blood and bone for him, he will deliver us to a higher power!" The deranged stallion raved, becoming increasingly animated. "Surely you can understand the importance of such a sacrifice."

Once again, Faith shook her head in disbelief. "What the hell is wrong with you...?" She asked, bewildered. "You actually believe this shit?"

At this, the blue pony's expression darkened. "You would do well to watch how you speak." He said dangerously. "I shall not have somepony like you jeopardise my place in the universe." He scowled down at Faith, who suddenly felt as defenceless as she was. "Do not speak with such vulgar language when we are in the presence of glory."

After several breaths of confidence, the tied mare merely grumbled her response. "Go... fuck yourself."

Blue Bolt seemed to flinch upon hearing this - as if the words were physically painful to hear. He regained composure quickly, though, and when he spoke next, did so with an eerie gentleness. "No matter..." He sighed, taking another glance over at Cantor. "He is not awake yet. Your profanities have gone unheard..." He wandered off out of sight again. Faith tried to follow him, but found moving her head difficult.

He returned baring that insidious blade. "Come here..." He said with a sigh, as if attending to a laborious task he had been putting off for a long while. He grabbed a hoofful of Faith's mane, pressing her head into the pillow. The scalpel made its way towards her muzzle, and she was quick to clamp her teeth closed.

Faith shook her head in protest, afraid to even plea "No!" in the fear that the metallic article would be in her mouth and shredding her tongue in an instant.

Regardless, Blue bolt tried prying the mare's jaws open with the blade. The cold metal slicing at her teeth was not a pleasant experience for the terrified girl. She tried to pull her head away, but couldn't even move under the stallion's weight.

The surgical knife suddenly struck a sensitive spot, and Faith bleated in pain. It was unexpected, and only lasted a second. But that was all it took...

Still trying to force his way into the pegasus' mouth, Blue Bolt reacted slowly to her scream, and plunged the scalpel into her mouth. The blade pierced the back of her left cheek and cleaved the pillow her head was resting on.

It didn't hurt nearly as much as the tooth, but regardless, being stabbed in the cheek was far from pleasant, and Faith yelped another time. This was all Blue Bolt needed to jam the tip of his hoof into Faith's mouth, keeping it locked open.

With a victorious, terrorising smile, the unocorn stallion decreed, "There we go..." As he re-located his scalpel and started teasing it across the back of Faith's tongue. She screamed in frustrated panic, but found that only pushed her tongue further onto the blade. Nevertheless, Faith opened her lungs and howled.

"CRACK!"

There was an explosion, accompanying a jolt from Blue Bolt, making him slip and gouge a hefty chunk from the mare's blood-soaked tongue.

The sound was so startling, that Faith found enough fascination to tone down her pained cries. The doctor didn't make a sound, but instead, just remained hunched over Faith, frozen momentarily before he stumbled and fell to the side. Eyes wide open.

A thin trail of smoke dribbled upwards from the hot tip of Cantor's shotgun, and the alicorn's cold amber eyes followed the unicorn's form as he slumped to the floor beneath Faith's bed and stayed there, chest rising and falling very slowly.

"Sorry, Blue Bolt... You didn't make the cut..." Sighed Cantor as he let his shotgun-equipped foreleg fall to the floor.

Faith looked on, stunned, her mouth dribbling blood. "Holy shit." She stated in a breath. Her bloodied lips curved into a weak smile. "Nice timing."

The pegasus tried not to look at her old wing as it flopped down Cantor's side when he stood and made his way over to her.

"Oh," Said Cantor in quiet surprise as he realised his busted rear leg only hurt a fraction than it did before. The great talon that had punctured him was gone, but there was still a large hole in its place. He thought that if he looked, he would be able to see right through to the other side, but he shied from the idea.

"Oh, my god..." He spoke with sympathy as he drifted his eyes across Faith's abused body, feeling especially stricken over her lost wing. He knew how she felt.

He got to untying the mare, starting with the ropes around her hooves under the bed.

With an elderly groan, Cantor lowered himself onto his back and slid under Faith's bed, tugging at the rope which had been tightened horrendously, to the extent where he was sawing through the thick fibres with a scalpel he had found on the lower section of a tools trolley beside the bed.

There was silence as he worked, but Cantor thought he had to say something. "...Uh..." He began gently. "I'm... really sorry, Faith..." He said with a sigh, only imagining the gruesome things the unicorn could have done to her.

A long pause came after the statement, but Faith replied. "It's okay... I suppose I'm just going to get used to being an earth pony now..."

With a thoughtful frown, Cantor responded. "Me too..." He heard Faith sigh.

"I guess it's harder for you." She replied, exhaustion on her breath. "All that magic and stuff... Still..." A grin crept over her words, and Cantor could predict what was coming. "At least you've got one horn left."

"Brilliant." Cantor replied dryly, smiling nonetheless.

"That son of a bitch Blue Bolt." Faith began spitefully. "He's absolutely fucking insane. Can you believe someone would actually cut- Oh, shit! Cantor!"

There was little time to respond. Cantor peered towards a pressure that had formed upon his right hind leg, and saw the maddened turquoise eyes of Blue Bolt staring him down.

In a moment, Blue Bolt yanked Cantor from beneath the bed, nearly dislocating the alicorn's other leg after fixing the first. in this instance, Cantor discovered that the older stallion was very strong: much stronger than he knew he was.

Blue loomed over Cantor, grinning like a mad pony as he tried, and succeeded in intimidating the younger stallion.

Cantor was frozen for a second, but found reassurance in the blade he still held in his hoof. He swung it 'round in an attempt to stab the unicorn in his deranged face, but Blue Bolt caught it.

"No, no..." Blue softy spoke as he held cantor's hoof away from his face, crushing the reddish-white hoof until Cantor dropped the scalpel. It landed on the floor with a metallic slap. Cantor didn't bother trying to get it back: Blue Bolt had him pinned.

Instead, the alicorn opted for persuasion - the only choice... "What the hell, Blue...?" He asked, disgusted. "You cut off Faith's wing and stitch it onto where mine was. Did you even think that would work!?"

Blue Bolt shrugged. "It's not important."

"What!?" Both Cantor and Faith cried in unison.

"I need to make your body whole so that your mind and soul can begin to grow again." He became ecstatic. "We can transcend into greatness together! All of us!" He said with an enthralled grin.

"What the hell does that mean!?" Cantor argued back. "You're absolutely crazy! I don't want all this 'transcend into greatness' crap. I just want to go home!"

"No..." Blue Bolt insisted gruffly as he straddled Cantor's chest and pinned his forelegs to the floor beside his head. "You are a god who walks among us. It is your responsibility, your duty! To lead us into the great harmony of paradise!"

"I'm trying to get us home!" Argued Cantor in outrageous frustration. "Are you so far fucking gone that you don't know that!? You think I'm keeping us here!?"

"No, Cantor, not here - not 'home'." Blue responded. "Life means nothing. We are only here for a short time and then we die. You cannot expect me to believe that there is nothing after death: that we all just rot underground and stare with absent eyes into the abyss forever?"

Cantor shook his head. "I don't know, Blue... None of us do. All we have to go on is our beliefs, and honestly, you can bellive whatever you want to, but when that faith starts to hurt ponies, that's when there's a problem." The unicorn seemed to recoil slightly at this, face growing with bewilderment - or what could be confused as such...

"You..." He said shakily, increasing his grip on the alicorn. "You're an impostor..." He added, voice rapidly flooding with rage.

"Blue Bolt, no!" Cried Cantor in panic.

"I'll kill you. You don't have the right to bear a god's face." Blue bolt replaced his hooves from Cantor's and positioned them around his neck. He started to crush Cantor's throat, spurring the alicorn to thrash beneath him, swiping at his head, pushing against his torso in a desperate attempt to get him off. But Blue was too heavy, and Cantor was already loosing strength.

"Stop..." Cantor choked. "P- please..." Blackness was creeping into the corners of his vision, and slowly pulsed into the middle until almost everything was hidden behind the impossibly black veil. He was weak now, surprised at how quickly this method of killing was. He tried to dislodge Blue Bolt's hooves from his neck, but they were an iron valve blocking his air.

Cantor trembled as his hooves drifted do the floor in submission. Sounds became muffled, but he was sure he heard Faith let out a battle cry.

There was a thud, accompanied by a long, painful growl from Blue Bolt. Air rushed back into Cantor's lung as he gasped, choking with every rushed breath.

He weakly peered over to where Blue Bolt had fallen, and saw Faith straddling his chest, pounding her hooves repeatedly into his face with horrible malice, thick smatterings of blood flying up and caking her face as she screamed and pounded at the stallion.

Cantor managed to crawl over to the mare, who was now plunging both her forehooves down and screaming in adrenaline-fuelled terror. He wrapped his forelegs around the distraught mare and pulled her away.

"No!" She screamed and struggled against Cantor. "Stop! Get off me!" She cried.

Cantor tried to get her to face him, but she was thrashing violently to escape his embrace.

"Hey!" Cantor called out, keeping his face out of range of Faith's swinging hooves. "Hey! Hey, it's me!" He said with haste.

Faith's frenzy seemed to deflate as rational thought flooded back to regain control of her body. She escaped Cantor's hold, but simply stood to the side in shocked horror, staring with gruesome conviction at the motionless blue unicorn. A quickly spreading lake of blood was gathering beneath the pony, and Cantor struggled to his hooves in time to stay clear of it.

"..Oh, no..." Faith breathed, looking sick. Her lip trembled and she fell to her knees. "What have I done...?" Tears streaked her cheeks, mixing with the large splatters of blood and dragging the life fluid along like thin red rivers.

"It's alright-" Cantor began to say hastily, trotting over to Faith and pulling her into a tight embrace. He could feel she was trembling. "It was either us or him." He added.

She took a while to reply, and when she did, her voice seemed vacant. "I killed a pony." She said in a whimper. "I murdered him..."

In response, Cantor took Faith by the shoulders and held her up. "Listen," He said sharply, looking Faith in her reddened eyes. "Killing to survive and murder are completely different." Faith's eyes wandered and she began to groan with self-loathing. "Look at me!" Cantor snapped with a snarl, shaking Faith's body with a re-aligning jolt. "You saved my life, Faith - and not for the first time today. Be proud of that."

"B- but..." She stammered, peering across to the messy scene. "I've never killed anyone before." She explained with an ill whine. "I... feel sick." Shortly after finishing, she leaned over and spat a small amount of burning, foul-smelling liquid onto the floor, followed by a session of choking.

"That's good." Cantor replied after she was fit to listen again. "It shouldn't be an enjoyable thing to kill someone." He said, looking slightly anxious for a moment. "...I'm just glad you did: I'd be dead right now if it weren't for you." He smiled. "At least I still have my sanity...just..." He added quietly.

Faith gave an exhausted sigh. She had stopped crying now, although her cheeks were still wet with cold tears. "I'm so tired." She openly stated, a headache having crept up on her; one that was now squeezing her brain in a vice.

"Me, too." Cantor confided with rusty eyes. "But we can't stop: we need to be on guard if any of those monsters show up."

"Can we take it in turns?" Asked Faith weirily.

"What?"

"Sleeping."

Cantor paused for a minute before replying. "...I don't wanna rest until we're safely on our way home." He said with direction. Faith yawned in response. "...Oh, fine." Cantor eventually said, a little begrudged, and helped Faith onto one of the operating beds scattered around the room - quite far away from the one she had been previously tied to, which was now forever stained with her slowly darkening blood.

"I'll wake you up in about-"

"An hour." Faith finished for Cantor, who was caught a little off-guard by the comment.

"Half an hour." The alicorn responded bluntly. "I'm tired as well, and don't much fancy sleeping here at all."

Faith grumbled mockingly. "Beggars can't be choosers..." She stated with a grin, trying to hide the previous experience away in the same dark place as everything else in this world. As soon as her head hit the pillow (albeit thin) and her body relaxed, Faith was gone.

Cantor took a position on the floor by the side of Faith's bed, resting his back against the cool metal supports and resting his head on the side of the mattress.

After a long while, and once he had gotten his breath back no thanks to his injured lung, Cantor cleared his throat, which hurt. "I'm gonna just have a look around: see if I can find anything useful." There was no response from the pegasus. Cantor climbed to his hooves. "I won't go far: don't worry." He explained, looking at the slowly breathing grey form. "...Faith?" He said after a while, to which he was greeted once again with silence.

Peeking over Faith's shoulder, it became clear that she was asleep - and had been for some time. Cantor affirmed that she deserved it - after everything she'd been through today. Not that he was far better off...

He meandered about the room for an extensive moment, occasionally picking up tools from benches he passed, examining them, and setting them back down. He didn't particularly know what he desired to find, but hoped that these aimless travels would bear some kind of lead to what was sure to be a deeper level of this dark Hell.

He paced through the labyrinth of haphazardly abandoned beds and made his way over to the railings beside the wide clearing: a proposed hallway alongside the mess of dirty stretchers. He hopped up, placing his forehooves onto the top of the cylindrical railing. The brushed steel surface felt smooth and cool, but had not been untouched by the repercussive devastation throughout the rest of the facility, and it felt wet - almost 'slimy' to the touch.

Cantor turned his head over his right shoulder. He had hoped to, but could not see Faith, although there were no clear signs of trouble. His gaze drifted down to a dark lump on the edge of the cleared pathway. The grimly decapitated body of the manically insane unicorn lie there on its back, his blood having long since stopped gushing and was now just a repulsive red ocean sticking Blue Bolt to the floor like a macabre glue.

Cantor turned away with an upset moan.

Peering over the guard rail, he clocked a steep slope heading down into darkness where strong lights cast a powerful comet's tail of light across the tarnished iron floor. As expected, one of the lights further down was flickering harshly. Cantor's eye was drawn to the unintended strobe, and that's when he saw it.

A great mechanical shape loomed up at the end of the massive metal trench, spilling light onto the walkway beside it. Exhaust casings on the back glowed a ready blue, and were fed by many brightly coloured wires and blinking lights.

"..." Cantor stared, mouth agape in astonishment. "...Holy shit." He said weakly.

He turned with a beaming grin, tears in his eyes, towards Faith to call out. He took an excited breath, but held it when he noticed something was off... Blue Bolt's body was gone.

"Oh, no..." Whimpered Cantor as he realised that one of those creatures must have made its way upstairs. He rolled over and rested his back against the wet railing, scanning the deep, thick darkness, realizing with grief that hundreds of the things could be behind the curtain of shadow covering the distant beds.

The alicorn's heart failed to twitch for a few seconds when he caught sight of a pony standing upright on its hind legs, realising with horror, that in fact, there were no black monsters in the vast room with him: just Blue Bolt, and his pulverised face.

With revulsion, Cantor mouthed "What the hell...?", his hooves anchored to the floor in petrification. A female scream tore the silence, and was then suddenly cut short. With a panicked wheeze, Cantor snapped his head to the sound. "Faith!?" He cried out, trying to stare through the darkness toward the chilling cry.

There was only silence, and the all-too familiar pulse of blood in his ears. Cantor grievously turned to see the mutilated unicorn standing no more than one foot from him, simply staring with non-existent eyes. The place where his head should have been was a wreck of bloody matter and pulp, jagged bones and teeth like tombstones jutting from the horrendous mess.

Cantor woke with a frail gasp. He went to scramble backwards, but only succeeded in pushing the stretcher he was already leaning against back a few inches.

He laid there, panting and dripping with sweat. With reluctance, he checked on the place where Blue Bolt had been put down, and with an unwelcomely happy relief, saw that he was indeed, still dead.

There was a while to reflect on what had happened as he let his breath gradually return to normal. Did the nightmare really carry some truth? If so, Cantor thought, then there might just be a slim possibility that going home was an option.

Cantor pulled himself up in a series of grunts. (Clearly, it seemed, the dream had forgotten at least some of his physical strains.) He limped across to the railing, not focusing on Blue Bolt's corpse, but instead on the fact that his pierced leg was somewhat working again. It was probable that the crazed unicorn had done something to repair it during his unconcious absence.

Peering down the vast stretch of old metal, he noticed the flickering light near the far end. It was, indeed a little less severely damaged as depicted, but nonetheless, the spotlight was broken. Cantor set his gaze even further into the enormous hangar-like room, and with a great chuckle, spied the huge cyan thrusters of the promised resolve.

"Faith!" Cantor cried with glee, finding galloping with a bum leg a rather comical experience. Faith's amputated wing hung lifeless by his side, pushed slightly by the breeze he was making. "Faith!" He cried again as he drew closer, prompting the mare to sit up with a startled yelp.

"What!?" She replied with panic, not picking up on the thrill in the stallion's voice, raising her rifle and scanning the room, aware that she had little chance of hitting anything having been woken up not five seconds ago. She lowered her gun and rubbed her tired eyes. Already, she was feeling more alert from the sleep: like the air was clearer and a veil of encumberment had been lifted from her face.

She looked up to see Cantor gradually slowing in front of her. Catching the glimpse of her old wing stitched on to the alicorn's side made her cringe and look away. Fortunately, Cantor was already there to distract her.

"Guess what?" He proposed, foalish expression demanding a photograph.

Faith shrugged and scratched behind her ears. "I dunno..." She answered a little detached. "You've found a ship that can get us back home?" She closed her eyes and yawned loudly, and when she finished, Cantor's expression had sunken a little.

"Oh, damn, I wanted to be the one to say that." He replied, slightly disappointed.

Faith gave a challenging stare. "You fuckin' with me?" She asked sceptically, but an undeniable canal of hope flared in her mind.

Cantor nodded happily. "It's just down there." He said, nodding towards the craft.

With a benevolent sigh, but still rather curious, Faith hopped down from the bed. She didn't even need to get to the railing before she saw the spaceship's large engines. She let far too much of a feminine squeal pas her lips before correcting herself. "Oh, shit." She said in a gasp. "No fuckin' way..."

"Looks like it can fly." Cantor stated with a smirk. He laughed and added, "Unlike us."

The comment initiated an unwanted silence, and Faith turned to look at Cantor with mutual pity.

Cantor caught the look and realised the gravity of what he had said. "Oh," He responded with a soft reverence. "I'm sorry, I... I didn't think-"

"It's fine." Faith stated abruptly, waving a hoof. "At least we're in this shit together."

Cantor nodded, but kept silent, still feeling bad for his remark.

Faith sighed a brief and dispelling sigh, rocking on her knees impatiently. "Well," She started, curving her back and stretching. "We ain't gonna get anything done standing here and talking about it."

"Right." Cantor said with another firm nod, falling back to reality following the moment of elation. "Lets go, then."

The pair began to make their way along the clearing of beds, at ease, but still mindful of shadows. There was little progress made before that ill-favoured voice rang once again in Cantor's head, startling him to a halt.

"Are you going to leave me here?" It asked, echoing slightly in the darkness of the stallion's subconscious before fading to horrible silence.

"Huh?" Cantor said, stopping and looking back.

Faith turned to meet the alicorn's stare. "What's up?" She asked coolly.

A shrill sound began to gnaw at the back of Cantor's mind as an odd force tugged his curiosity back to Blue Bolt's cold body. As he began to take steps back towards the beds, the shrill ringing grew louder, as if something emmiting the noise was drawing closer.

"What are you doing?" Faith call after the stallion, taking a few leaping steps forward before halting and watching as the scene played.

"It's alright," Cantor murmured half-heartedly, intrigued beyond reason by the strange sensation pulling him over to where the dead unicorn lay.

Without care for the corpse, Cantor unbuckled the straps on the saddlebags around its stiff underbelly. Pulling the leather cases away, Cantor dumped them onto the nearest bed. In doing so, he had rolled the dead body over onto its side with a sick squelch, causing a little more blood to trickle from the severed arteries in his neck. But the alicorn didn't much care any more, and focused moreso on getting the saddlebags open, convinced that the source of this now deafening, shrill white noise was inside, and that there would be some way to silence it before it drove him mad.

It was inside the first one he tried: a soft purple glow coming from deep within the bag's depths. It took a long while's careful digging around in the used surgical needles to find the source, and in the time, Faith had wandered over out of curiosity.

Cantor's brow furrowed with integument as he brushed aside a loose roll of bandages and saw a small stone, about the size of a plum radiating the purple violet light. The disembodied whine stopped, allowing the stallion's ears to echo the noise for a few seconds as he examined the glowing rock. He reached to take it out, but as soon an he touched it, a terrible sensation tugged at every blood-caked hair on his body. He pulled his hoof away after having felt as though ten buckets of icy water had been dumped onto him at once. Once again, the alicorn was breathless.

"And what's in here?" Questioned Faith, staring into the saddlebag apprehensively following the stallion's reflex reaction. Upon spying the pretty little stone, She reached in to grab it, but was held back by Cantor's hoof.

"Don't." He warned with a gasp, guiding the mare's hoof out from inside.

Faith looked scorned, if indeed a little worried, too. "Why?" She asked carefully. "What is that?"

Not entirely getting his breath back, Cantor braced for another wash of the horrible burning, itching feeling, and pulled the stone from the saddlebag, letting go as soon as he could and watching the misshapen rock roll a few times until coming to a stop on the dusty bed sheets.

Faith looked at Cantor quizzically, then turned back to the stone lying on the old sheets. "What's up with that?" She asked with a smile. "It looks pretty cool; the way it's glowing like that." Her amusement quickly accomodated a questionable frown. "Where would he find something like this?" She asked without expecting an answer, glancing over her shoulder, peeking very briefly at 'his' body.

Cantor stared intensely at the stone with chilled eyes. "It's the Peripharous Crystal..." He coldly stated. "It's what powered our ship."

"What!?" Faith responded with surprise. "That's the crystal!?"

She looked to Cantor, who merely shrugged and said, "Guess so. I remember seeing it once before behind some really thick glass, but... yeah, I thought it was bigger than this." He lowered his head and examined the object. The stone itself wasn't providing the light, but posing as a sort of solid light bulb for an intensely bright swirling point in the centre. Most of the surface was shiny - not quite polished, but it seemed naturally smooth. Opposite to the rounded spherical bottom, the top rose at two points, forming a valley in between, one mountain significantly higher than the other and opaque with white minerals.

"How the hell'd he get it?" Faith shot another question, slightly startling Cantor out of his transfixed stare at the rock. "Like, wasn't it supposed to be magically sealed away in an impenetrable box only Celestia could open?"

"I don't know that the Princess' spell would hold very well this far away." Cantor responded, still gazing curiously at the Peripharous Crystal.

"Well she can control the sun." Stated Faith.

Cantor cocked his head. "I think we're a bit further away than the sun." He said with an ugly smile. "Celestia's spell, if it was weaker, must've broken when we crashed."

"At a hundreds of miles an hour into the surface of the planet." She blandly said to Cantor with an equally lackluster face.

"Wasn't my fault." Cantor replied with a defensive frown.

"Tsk." Faith mumbled satirically. "You were driving."

At the response, Cantor just huffed a sigh and opened up his saddlebag, now mainly full of spent shotgun shells and spare painkillers. (Celestia knew he needed them) Cutting a jagged-edged hole in the thin fabric of the bed sheet, Cantor wrapped the Peripharous Crystal up in the sheet and dropped it into his left-side sack with his mouth. All the while, Faith watched from the sideline.

After a while, "Why do you think Blue Bolt took it?" Faith asked with mild, impartial eyes. "That crystal, I mean. What the hell would he want with it?"

Cantor needn't search for his answer. "I remember what happened when I first met the guy." He began with a slightly spiteful but reverent tone. "He wanted one of my feathers, which I gave to him. But then he wanted to scrape some of that magical residue off my horn. He got really insistent about it: I think he had mental problems before all this."

"Think so. I remember that, too." Faith said, expression falling to that of engrossed concern. "Why didn't you let him? Does it hurt?"

"Not really." Answered the alicorn, shaking his head. "The only pony who's ever touched it is my girlfriend." Faith (inevitably) snickered. Cantor cocked a smile himself. "Haven't you grown out of this?" He asked with banter.

"Have you?"

"No."

"Well alright, then." Faith said with an air of conclusion, the sterile expression only lasting a moment before she gave a slight gasp. "Shit," She began sharply. "When we all woke up after crashing, Blue Bolt was gone." Cantor, still warmly smiling slightly, followed with a slow nod. "He must've taken that stone and wandered off thinking we were all dead."

Cantor found himself nodding along in agreement, but yet another frown of thought found a home upon his brow. "Yeah, but he was a doctor. He would have known if we were alive or not."

With a weighted sigh, Faith stated, "Yeah, well it's odd. But it's not like it matters now, anyway. And all this thinking's bringing my headache back."

"Okay." Cantor agreed with a firm nod, buckling the strap of his saddlebag back down. "Let's press on."

The transparent acrylic door slid up with a somewhat 'healthier' hydraulic hiss: quiet, efficient, and fast. The room beyond was dominated by an extreme centre console which held numerous blinking lights of all manner of colours. Pale lights shone down from the low ceiling, bathing the concrete floor and the bare iron walls an unhealthy yellow. An old body of one of the bipedal creatures that used to run this place was still sitting where it had died in the swivel chair behind the enormous horseshoe-shape of computers and switchboards.

On the opposite side of the room, an identical plastic door was observed. It was closed, but through the blue-tinted window that took up the majority of the hatch, one could assume it lead out onto some kind of launch platform where the shuttle could be accessed.

Faith and Cantor traversed into the room, trying and failing to block out the smell of the body decaying tragically slowly. They held their breaths the best they could, but the putrid smell stained their nostrils.

Cantor neared the door on the opposite wall. Instinctively turning to Faith as he was about to open it, he realised she wasn't there. Looking around the room, he spotted the grey pegasus standing at the round bank of consoles, slowly wheeling the dead creature from the room in the hopes that it would take its smell with it. Thankfully, after shutting the first plastic door, it was discovered that much of the choking odour was gone, however it had tainted the room, and the walls leaked the stench.

Faith, in her haste to get away from the corpse, had unknowingly left the many-wheeled chair facing the clear door, and now the long dead person was sat slumped, staring emptily at the two ponies with his dark, sunken eyes.

She shivered and turned away from the haunting ghoul with a sigh. "Sorry," She started. "I just didn't like looking at that."

Cantor turned slowly to face the lone body draped across the chair staring back into the room with a vacant and ghostly gaze. "And that's much better." He stated, feeling his hairs bristle slightly.

Faith was silent as she looked around the room, musing at the many coloured buttons laid out on the centre console as she strode up to it. "At least the smell's gone." She said with optimism. When out of seemingly nowhere, the young mare winced and tripped, falling onto her front knees as she screwed her eyes shut.

"Oh, shit." Cantor said, startled, rushing as best he could over to her as she struggled to stand. She had quickly recovered, but seemed to be shaking in her knees as he reached her. After making concerned eye contact, "You alright?" He asked.

"It's this..." Faith explained without having to think about it, limping over to the wall and sliding down it onto her flank, exposing her belly, and the large bullet wound from earlier, which had now bruised horribly, surrounding the initial hole with a grim black halo.

"Damn..." Cantor whispered - the word only meaning to materialise as thought.

Faith just looked away, feeling more pain than just in her missing wing and penetrated stomach. "I um..." She began darkly. "I don't think I'm gonna make the trip back, Cantor."

The stallion recoiled immediately. "Don't be stupid!" He spat with a scowl. "I've been shot like eight times, and I'm still kicking." He frowned deeper at Faith. "And don't think for a second I'm leaving you here. Whether you get back alive or dead, you're getting home."

Faith could only chuckle in response. "Alright..." She said after a moment. "I suppose in the end, we all end up the same, anyway. Just some of us get there faster than others." She pulled herself to her hooves with the help of Cantor, using him as a support until she could comfortably hold herself again. The pain in her lower belly was extreme now, and she knew as well as Cantor hated to admit he did, that there was something seriously internally wrong, and it was wearing the pegasus down fast.

She rooted around in her saddlebag for a few moments, uncovering single bullets and a feeble roll of bandages. There were no more syringes of painkillers, and their absence made Faith just want to collapse again. With depleted eyes, she looked up from her bag to Cantor, who was holding up a shot of morphine. She glanced from the needle to Cantor, who was staring sorrowfully back.

"The last one." He affirmed solemnly. "You need it more than I do."

Silence fell as Faith took the shot with anything but haste, uncapping the sanitising cap and dropping it to the floor. Her face turned sour as she felt beneath herself, wincing slightly as she felt a good spot to inject, all the while trying not to break eye contact with Cantor.

She finished and removed the needle, tossing it to the corner of the room, still staring into the alicorn's amber eyes. There was a timid dripping sound as blood collected and fell from Faith's underbelly onto the floor in tiny droplets.

A special silence fell over the two ponies, and before either of them could even register, they were in each other's mouths. Both standing on hind legs, eyes shut, Cantor and faith's forelegs were wrapped around their shoulders as they kissed to an almost violent extent. Cantor pulled the pegasus in with force, and Faith squeezed back even moreso.

Their hooves ran down each other's backs as they felt the new scars. Cantor's fur was matted with blood that flaked off easily beneath Faith's own red-stained hoof.

Faith felt smooth - completely unlike her nature at the most tranquil of times: like her muscles were made of chocolate that melted and swirled as the stallion's hot breath filled her.

Cantor was loosing himself. He was becoming excited, and thought to knock the strong mare over and press his stomach to hers, and go all the way.

But as his hooves fell lower and lower down Faith's back, the voice he had been hearing surfaced once more. There were no words. Only a macabre chuckle as Cantor's eyes opened and his movements became slow and reversed.

He pulled away from Faith, who he gently nudged to step back too, staring at her misguided gold eyes for a moment before slinking away to the other side of the room.

Another silence choked the room. Different: dark, like a poison cloud settling between the two.

Eventually, it was Faith who took a step forward. "Cantor?" She softly spoke, holding a foreleg up loosely.

"No," Cantor replied sharply. "Just, stop..." He said with desperation, very much out of breath. Faith remained silent, but she didn't have to wait long for the drained stallion to speak again. And when he did, his demeanour had changed, as if a sudden an unprovoked clearance stormed his mind. He sounded as if every star in the sky had turned against him... "We're not going home, are we...?" Faith searched, but couldn't find a comment, although she was doubtful that she could say anything to change the tone of conversation at this moment.

Cantor quietly let out a soft chuckle. "It's this thing again." He said smiling, looking away from the pegasus. "'Can't loose hope', that was the theme, wasn't it? I even followed it myself for a while, but..." He choked a little, then turned to face the corner so Faith couldn't see the tears begin to fall down his cheeks. Regardless, he failed to let his voice falter under the weight of this horrible situation. "...But I just don't know any more."

"But the ship," Faith started, glancing over to the somewhat small box-shaped vessel that could be seen through the impressive glass wall running the length of the front of the room.

"Forget this ship." Cantor replied bitterly, waving a hoof in its general direction. "How could I even begin to imagine I know the controls? There's no way I could fly it!" He cried in a fury. "I don't know what Celestia wanted out of this, but if it's a broken relationship and a kid without a father, she's succeeded."

"For fuck sake," Faith snapped back from the other side of the room, scuffing her anger onto the floor with her hoof. "What makes you think this is only about you?"

"I never said that." The alicorn retorted with slightly lesser temper than the mare.

"Yeah, well I certainly haven't heard you stressing over anyone else's family while we were here." Cantor fell quiet. Although he could recall confiding with Flitter some time ago, he couldn't name one pony who he'd approached personally for this particular dispute. "So many ponies have died tonight, Cantor." Faith continued with an appropriate tone of reverence. "Mothers, fathers, daughters and sons alike have all died here. It's not your fault; ain't no one's fault. It wasn't solely your job to protect them."

Faith strode several paces toward Cantor, but still maintained a moderate distance between the two. She continued to speak, pausing with dark emphasis on every word. "The world. Doesn't. Revolve. Around you." She growled in a voice laced with aversion.

Cantor found he had to take a moment's pause to think about this: clearly, there was more than one way to put one's self across as pretentious. However, it was unclear as to whether melancholic self-pity was any better than shameless self-promotion. In the end, he couldn't find the words to respond, and just sighed in defeat.

Faith echoed the depleted sigh a moment later, and made up the distance between herself and Cantor. "I'm not scared of dying, Cantor." She stated softly. "I just don't want ponies I care about to push blame anywhere if anything happens to me." She sounded content, but her eyes still glistened with tears regardless.

Cantor sighed once again as he shook his head heavily. "I'm so sorry, Faith." He said, sounding exhausted even in his words. "I just wish this could have gone better..."

"Hey," The mare started cheerfully, attempting to lift this beyond-dismal atmosphere despite what had been said. "lets not do this again."

"What?" Cantor replied. "Get all down and sombre? You think it's possible to drop this subject just like that?"

Faith answered with a nod. "Yeah. Instead, you wanna finish what we started?" She raised her eyebrows suggestively, though it seemed Cantor didn't catch on to what she meant until she made a slow, exaggerated lick in the air.

Cantor smiled. Despite his usual nature, it was a shock to see him do so at a time like this. "I don't think so." He said with a smirk, drawing himself up to the bank of consoles in the centre of the room after a small blinking light had caught his eye some time ago.

Without hesitation, Cantor pressed the button directly below the light. It was a rubbery type of button, and didn't feel particularly precise, hence why nothing happened when he pressed it. Cantor tried again, this time, using the tip of his hoof to work the soft material around until he felt something inside the controls 'click'.

The light stopped its blinking, and a screen to the far left wall to where the ponies were standing flickered into an electronic black. In the centre of the monitor was a small circle spinning, a succession of numbers counting up flickered beneath it. The number reached '99', then abruptly cut to a video recording.

The camera must have been lying on the floor. Either that, or the bipedal creatures dashing about had learned to walk on walls. The scene stayed like this for several seconds. People dressed in white lab coats unbuttoning them as they paced quickly around were seen. Two other upright creatures attired in tight black, solid-looking armour stood guard by the only door in shot, cradling a heavy piece of similarly coloured metal boasting a glowing yellow tip.

There was a rumbling sound emitting from unseen speakers that gradually became louder, as did the intensity of the camera's trembling canon with the deep noise. The camera tilted and fell, and was then hoisted into the air.

Cantor and Faith slowly strolled over to stand some way back from the screen as the images danced. Yelling from the hidden speakers sounded distant, but it was clear that the raised voice belonged to someone shouting orders rather than screaming in an untidy panic.

The pegasus turned to her alicorn friend. "They love leaving messages for us to find, don't they?"

Cantor didn't respond, but subtly agreed with the mare in a slight nod.

The camera's built-in microphone was making ghastly scraping noises as the creature holding it fumbled to set it down straight. Eventually, the screen was filled by a chest wearing a torn and stained lab coat unbuttoned over a grey-blue shirt and red tie loosely done up below the broken top button. The microphone stopped popping and scraping as the creature stepped back and pulled up a chair so his features were clear on the recording.

It was another male. His eyes were red from prolonged fatigue and there was a wound near his left ear that was sending streaks of red down his cheek and into the unshaven hair upon his chin. His mouth was open and his rapid breathing was being picked up by the microphone as his chest quickly rose and fell.

"Deputy chief researcher Nathan Dawkins." He stated with a breathless, but rough voice.

Cantor noted to Faith, "Good name." With briefly distracted enthusiasm.

The creature in the recording shook his head fretfully. "It's all gone to shit." He stated, obviously scared. "Project Sin was the worst mistake in the history of our species." He ran his three-fingered hand across his face, brushing his hair to the side as he reached his forehead. "This will be my last recording; the last recording of the station. So..." He looked at the camera, eyes of a man who knew his mortality not unlike an old friend. "So if anyone finds this, know that we did our best... but for the worst possible cause." He finished with a growl, then the video cut harshly to a new location.

Chilled to see the same room that they were standing in upon the screen in front of them, the ponies cast comparative glances around the room, noting the glass window running the length of the wall beyond the bank of flared lights. But not for long: only a dozen seconds' heavy breathing lapsed from the speakers before speech started again.

"They're perfect; just what we wanted..." Came the hushed voice of Nathan Dawkins as the camera was turned back around and placed upon the top of the round consoles to face him. He looked to be in a far worse state than before: his lab coat was gone and his right short sleeve on his blue shirt was eviscerated and the arm beneath was heavily wrapped in bandages that still didn't stop the blood making its point beneath. Some of his teeth were missing as he did the same heavy breathing into the camera as before, and dried blood was thickly caked over his chin, smearing the dentals he had left a marbled crimson-yellow.

As Dawkins caught his breath, sounds of horrific screaming rang in the distance, making the researcher look up with terrorized eyes for a moment before staring back into the camera lens. "I put the Pulse Shield up." He stated heavily as his eyes watered and he rubbed his face harshly, like a great calamity was enjoying piling the weight slowly onto his back. "No one can ever leave or enter this place alive without whatever craft they may be travelling in being pulled to the surface." This notion sent chills throughout the pair of onlooking equines' bodies, and they took a step closer to each other. "Except for Christian Mills, the Chief Researcher. Her emergency ship is the only one that can bypass the forcefield. She says that she and I can leave together. I told her we should bring as many as we could, but all she did in response was look at the floor like that wasn't possible. I- I didn't understand, but her orders are final. Whether it's an engineer apprentice or myself, Christian's word goes... I'll prep the shuttle for launch, but I... Oh, God..."

He buried his bulbous head in his hands, trembling viciously as if he were freezing to death. "Everyone's gonna be dead in hours." He continued, mortal fear in his tone. "These... these creatures; we call them 'The Immitis'. They were a military-funded project: the task we were set was to create a relentless biological killing machine for the war with the Meliorites. We were stationed here a little over ten years ago, but the real progress has only occurred in the last few months." A cold expression washed over his face as he lifted his head and formed a smirk. "Progress..." He said with a small chuckle. "That's as good a word as any..." He continued dully following a weak shrug.

The man darted his attention to some place behind the camera as a feint, haunting scream poured quietly from the speakers, followed by a muffled succession of gunfire. "We spliced the DNA of hundreds of likely animals together to create them, but only one combination of two reptiles could sustain itself for more than a few minutes after birth. We thought it was a fluke: a biological anomaly, but after repeating the process, we bread the same results, again, and again... We made those monsters!" He slammed is hands onto the console, producing a rapid, panicked 'bleeping' on the board.

Looking down slowly, his eyes cast into shadow, Dawkins lazily pressed several switches, and the sound stopped. He sighed with an absent sense of hope. "We began injecting compounds of various amino acids containing desirable variations into the embryos of the hybrid creatures: hardening their skin, sharpening their teeth, giving them better vision, and so on... We kept going until we had a breeding pair, then we tore them apart: tried to find out how to control them: tame them. You can't condition them like you would a dog - we lost a fair few volunteers finding that out..." He once again rubbed his large head, as if there was a terrible headache torturing his mind. "In the end, we started to dream the impossible, and began trying to inject them with a compound that would let us control them with telepathy. It was madness, and some of the researchers walked out on the project when mind-control came into the mix..."

Dawkins looked all around him, appearing to check for anyone who might be listening in. It was clear that no one was there, but the two ponies watching knew better than any of their kind that this place would make the hardest pony even just a little paranoid. "We created a drug that made the Immitis warm to us: un-hostile to anyone who showed their face. Put a mask on, and they would tear you to pieces before you could take it off again. Unfortunately, the drug mutated, and whenever we made eye-contact with them, they would go mad trying to get at us." His eyes seemed to stare off into an endless nothing as he recalled vivid images from his past. "I remember watching one shatter its bones to pieces; throwing itself against the test-chamber window trying to get at me when I took a glance. It had to be destroyed..."

Following that last word, the bloodied researcher seemed to return to the room in a new consciousness, staring once again into the camera with his large, pleading eyes. "I'm sending this message out on the emergency broadcaster, and leaving it as a recording in this room..." Those huge eyes, wet with tears, grew apologetic, and, in a word, scared. "If you are watching this video from this very room I sit in now, I'm... so sorry, but there is no possibility of escape for you now. I have Christian's ship prepped for launch - I'm looking at it now." He explained, peering over the top of the camera. "I'm going to wait here for her. We've moved the entire tower's medical deck up to this floor, but we couldn't get any supplies from the IC lab: there's... there's something in there. We don't know what it is, but it's..." He held two fingers to his lips as he turned pale. "...It's eating people..."

In a final act of farewell, Dawkins blinked, sending two wet streaks down his face as he reached for the camera. "Oh, God," He started with divine terror, "May our children forgive us..."

The recording shut off with a hiss.

Cantor and Faith stood at what was presumably the cockpit of the spacecraft. Cantor looked up. 'Lady Christian Mills' was embroidered into the plush overhead interior. It was as if a large pillow of pale cream had been stretched out over the ceiling, puckering inwards at measured intervals where it connected to the bodywork. Clearly, this ship had been sculpted with luxury in mind.

"Sick." Faith spat, looking at the comfortable pilot seat, the fabric a mild yellow and as cushioned as a bed. "People were dying horribly down here and this bitch wanted to not only leave them behind, but escape in comfort!"

"Easy..." Cantor replied softly. "This was just her ship: it's the only one that can make it past the forcefield without having its mechanics destroyed like ours." He stepped closer to the commanding console. Gripping what was quite clearly the steering wheel firmly. "Also, she could never have known that, and to put it scientifically," He turned to the pegasus and frowned. "Shit was going to go down."

Faith turned her gaze downward with a slight grimace while Cantor scoured the controls.

"We've got an air supply, water, what I think is food," Cantor started, staring along the underside of a petite but button-heavy control console. "Now all we need is to find the ignition, and..." He sighed, "A sense of direction."

As he was talking and fiddling beneath the controls, the pegasus continued to meander around the furniture, peeking into several cubby-holes before settling on the pink surfaced pilot chair. She found trouble in defining how these people must've sat; having to arch her back uncomfortably to get any kind of stability.

It seemed as though a particular moment had been passing as Faith settled as best she could, and it was allowed full passage to leave before the grey mare decided to speak. "There's only one bed." She stated, any emotion if any at all in her voice incredibly hard to read. Cantor's movements slowed as he stopped to listen. Faith didn't wait for a reply before continuing. "I've already looked: there isn't any other sleeping quarters." She added with more obvious amusement.

Cantor smiled in response to the new-found banter. "Not this again..." He said with a smirk, continuing to look for something, but this time looking a little less hard.

Faith chuckled. As it drew on, it began to sound forced. But then she stopped, and spoke with sobriety. "Um, Cantor...?" She started, re-settling that awkward fog within the room. "Ab... About back there,"

Cantor huffed a sigh, hoping it would show his exhaustion over a lingering feeling of guilt. "Oh, shit, yeah..." He said quickly, only attempting to look party over his shoulder. "Sorry about that: just you were the only-"

"No," Faith interjected, sounding not at all aggressive, but firm enough to make the alicorn stop and look around. She appeared bashful, eyes shifting to the floor then back up for a second before speaking. "I should apologise to you." She said with sincerity. "I don't know why, I just... feel like it's my fault." She explained with a sigh.

Cantor didn't know what to say, however knew that if he did, he shouldn't voice it. He let Faith continue in a reserved state of concern.

"I was aware that you had a marefriend, but I didn't even relent. I even thought about her when we were kissing." Faith explained, appearing more ashamed with each word.

Cantor waited for a few seconds before speaking. "...Wh- what, in like a... lesbian way...?" He said neutrally. He knew it would sound stupid, but was hopeful it would lift the conversation into lighter air.

Faith laughed. She tried to hide a smirk at first, but couldn't help but chuckle loudly. "And see that, is why I like you so much." She affirmed with teary eyes - from laughter or otherwise. "You can shrug-off something crushing and serious, and then follow it up with a joke."

"I try." The alicorn replied with a shrug. He knew he wasn't funny. Well, most of the time, anyway...

Faith sighed through a small smile. "I want to just put this behind me: act like it never happened, or at least didn't matter..."

As she was speaking, Cantor rose weakly from the floor and put a hoof on the mare's shoulder. "Go on, then." He said openly. Faith begged an explanation with a frown. "Forgive." He continued with definition and fortitude. "Never forget." He held himself very close to Faith as he carried on. "Remember everyone you meet in your life. Remember every good thing about them. Remember all the quirks in their personality that made them special to you. Remember who you've loved, and remember why you loved them, and feel blessed to have ever had that emotion course through your blood."

He turned away with a short exhale, looking around the cockpit briefly before carrying on. "No one isn't special. And no one doesn't have the potential to be." He stopped, letting several breaths pass until he felt he could carry on. "I don't know why love can be so complicated, and God knows if we'll ever be able to figure it out... Regardless, we all have bad days, and this..." He said with a growing, but hollow and forsaken smile. "...This has been a real... royal fuck-up..."

The alicorn sighed once again, this time allowing a weak, unconvincing chuckle to join his breath. "I'm not just talking about what happened in that control room. That was just a blip on the scale of shit we've seen today... We've killed ponies, lost friends. We've seen... little more than foals brutally murdered by the mistake of a dead civilisation.... But then again, that's all it comes down to, isn't it? Mistakes? Some of the worst disasters in history have gotten their pioneers the mortal blame for when their good ideas went wrong."

He lowered his voice to the extent where Faith found she had to try hard to focus on what was being said, realising the next words spoken sunk deeper than before.

"What happened a few minutes ago was a mistake. It was... nothing."

Faith fell into silence for a long while, though Cantor seemed immortally patient in expectation of a response. He didn't move, just stared with those terrifying, awesome amber eyes. After what felt like decades, Faith took a breath, and spoke.

"Do you love me?" She asked quietly, timidly.

"...Yes."

With watering eyes, "More than a friend?"

"...Yes. But I have to choose. And I choose Twilight." Cantor responded, voice heavy with emotional burden.

Faith's expression softened, and her head fell in defeat. She knew with utmost certainty that this was the last time she and Cantor could be that close - this close... This intimate. There was absolutely no way she could steal his heart away after this point. The feeling was crushing, but strangely, was like an immense weight - almost like a responsibility had just been lifted.

Cantor looked at the mare with sorrowful eyes. "I'm sorry." He whispered. And that was all he said. Upon contemplation, he quickly pulled Faith into a tight hug, feeling her cold, wet tears on his shoulder. "I don't know if we'll ever be able to go home." He said with apology. "...I just wanted you to know how I felt."

The embrace continued until Cantor's aching back legs forbade him any more upright balance. He let go, and sat down.

Faith broke far away, too, deciding to stare for a long while out of the curved front window until she had calmed down from the composed stress.

Cantor sat and caught his breath, not a fan of the silence. He eventually found the strength to stand, and stood before the centre console admiring the large twist-switch and key that would start the engines. A far more genuine smile grew across his face as he spoke.

"Where I live, we've got a fireplace." He began, blushing as Faith turned to listen. "When me and Twilight first got together, we did a lot of... stuff together." He continued with a smirk, rousing a knowing look from Faith; one eyebrow raised in a combination of amusement and embarrassment for the alicorn's sake. "One of my favourites was when I came in after a long day's paperwork- completely different to my usual job of messing about with the weather." His face reddened deeper as he recalled the moment. "I opened the door, and was instantly hit with a combination of warmth and the scent of rose. Now, having been outside in sub-zero temperatures, it was quite a pleasant experience. But what I saw next caught me off-guard."

Faith, still unsure why he was telling her this, and still quite deprived from the conversation beforehoof, twitched her head questioningly; holding high expectations for what was about to happen.

"I saw my Twilight laying on her back in front of the fireplace," Cantor continued. "She had her legs open facing this gorgeous roaring fire. She turned her head up and looked at me upside-down..." The alicorn laughed nervously, reconsidering whether it was a good idea to share this story. He reasoned that starting without finishing would be a rather large failure in his original intention for this tale.

"'Twilight,' I said, already locking the door behind me. I said, 'What are you doing?'"

"And then she said:" The flushed colt continued with his ever-growing (smile). "'Just warming up your dinner, sweetie.'"

Cantor shook his head and turned his gaze to the floor, feeling dirty. Faith chuckled herself. "I thought you'd like that one." He scratched the back of his head and sunk onto the passenger seat behind him. "It's one of my favourite things Twi said to me, and I can tell you, dinner was great."

Faith bore an embarrassed grimace and shook her head. "Do you regularly feel compelled to share your sex life."

"I do when I need to clear the tension." Cantor replied in a state of relief.

Faith shot an amused smirk Cantor's way. "You treat your sex life as a joke?"

"Yeah." Cantor grinned in response before his features fell into a mild frown. "Actually, so does Twilight..." He added, rousing a blissfully genuine laugh from Faith. "That was a joke, just so's you know." He added, reforming his smile for a second before it fell into legitimate absent concern. "I mean... I hope she doesn't..."

Faith let the amusement in the room fall to an energetic simmer before eliciting a sedative exhale. "Right," She started airily at the end of her breath. "Are we gonna do this thing?" She asked, eyeing the control board.

Cantor already had his hoof over the the large red circle embedded into the console. He pushed, twisted, then pulled the button from the brushed metal surface. A rumble of power shook the ship gently as a satisfying purr coursed through the engines.

Cantor raised one of his blood-caked eyebrows. "Sounds promising." He jested, shooting the grey pegasus a confiding smile. He squeezed past her, his vigour fuelled only by hopeful visions of returning back home. Maybe Twilight would even cook him a hot, 'welcome home' dinner.

He collapsed into the pilot's seat and slowly took hold of the wheel, caressing it gently. He shuffled himself comfortable and blew the air from his one working lung. He turned to Faith, eyes full of earnest. "Ready?" He asked, nodding towards the dulled silver key protruding from the console.

With a trusting nod, Faith placed her hoof over the key and returned the stallion's look. "As I'll ever be."

"Right..." Cantor began, needless to say a bit more than a little nervous. "Hit it."

Faith turned the key and braced for a surge of power to come and try to knock her off her hooves... But no such force came. She stumbled forward and had to shoot her forehooves out to stop herself from falling. An unwelcome sound of the engines powering down could be heard falling to a low-pitched hum before once again becoming shrill until the point of inaudibility - like it had rebooted.

Cantor turned sharply to Faith with dumbfounded eyes. "That didn't sound ri-"

His comment was interrupted by a smooth, dominant female voice resonating from a hauntingly ambiguous source. "On-board ignition system malfunction." She relayed with a tone so calm it was cruel. "A repair technician has been notified."

Cantor's face flashed furious frustration and he turned to Faith with dismayed eyes. "Oh, for fuc-" He began to curse at the ship, but it interjected once more.

"However, third-party launch sequence is possible from tower B flight control room. Access to the ignition sequence located on the flight traffic chief's centre console." The voice's tormentingly soft voice chilled both ponies into a knowing eye contact, realising what it was they had to decide. The shuttle's voice gave one final hurrah before silencing itself. "Thank you for flying with Chakushu Machines: producing quality fission engines since seventeen - seven-eighty-two." And to add insult to injury, "Have a nice day."

"Holy shit..." Faith breathed as if chilled below freezing throughout her body. She stared at Cantor with terror in her shrunken gold eyes. "One of us is going to have to stay behind and launch the ship."