The streets were dark and damp. Water- -or some reeking brown fluid akin to water- -flowed over the cracked pavement on either side, carrying plastic debris along with it as it flowed to somewhere unseen and deeper within the city. Mist was rising from the streets, but rather than obscure the dim and flickering neon that lined the street it seemed to amplify it, drawing it into strange shapes.

Lilium walked quietly through the silent street, eyeing the shrouded individuals who walked by quietly on their way to unseen and unknown things. Morgana walked beside her. She no longer had a physical body; they had both been destroyed. Instead, she existed as a projection. She was a concentrated incursion into Lilium’s consciousness; a cartoonlike image of the pony she had appeared as in the virtual world, rendered to appear as though she were walking down the same real-world street as Lilium.

At first they were silent. Then Morgana spoke. “Lilium…”

“Fuck you,” said Morgana, not caring if she looked as though she were insane to anyone around her. “Don’t you dare talk to me.”

“This isn’t the time to act like a child.”

“A child- -do you have any idea what you did?! You left her! Roxanne, you just left her there!”

“Do you think I don’t know that?”

Lilium stopped walking and turned toward the image. “It’s just like what you did to poor Valla- -but she loved you! I should know! I could feel it! It’s still in there. She trusted you! Celestia knows why. And you turned your back on her. And you made me do the same.” Lilium shivered. “I didn’t give you permission to do that to me. You- -I feel dirty. I don’t know why. But you didn’t have the right to do that. I could have saved her- -”

“No, you couldn’t have.”

“Yes I could! I was supposed to protect her! We- -we were going to go across the country together!” Lilium was crying, although her body could produce no tears. “We- -we were going to see the Pacific Ocean- -”

“You were going to protect her. With what? A Librarian body? Or do you have a gun I don’t know about? I had a damn Blossomforth body and couldn’t do jack shit. O’Toole screwed us and I had to save who I could.”

“You mean yourself. That’s it, isn’t it? You just wanted to get out alive. If you could have left me- -”

“Do you think making that decision was easy?!” snapped Morgana, suddenly shouting. “In case it’s not fucking apparent, I loved Roxanne too! But I have a responsibility to keep you safe too! I didn’t have a choice!”

Lilium frowned for a long moment. “You’re oddly good at making that kind of decision, aren’t you? Who to leave and who to keep.”

“It’s because I’ve gotten used to making it. Forth.”

Forth appeared from the mist, taking Lilium by surprise. Despite sharing the same body,Morgana seemed to be able to detect her while Lilium could not.

“Yes, Ms. Morgana?”

“How’s our perimeter?”

“Clear. We were not followed.”

“And Elrod?”

Forth lifted Elrod’s head. “She’s asking how you are,” she said.

Elrod spoke, although without his body his voice was strange and distorted, like someone who was severely winded combined with a strange clicking sound. “I’m alive,” he said.

“Can you regenerate?”

“She wants to know if you can regenerate.”

“No. At least not right now. I’m too low on mass.”

Forth set him between her wings and retracted her body back into its normal pony form. She walked alongside Lilium and Morgana’s projection.

“What now?” asked Lilium at last.

“We don’t have much of a choice. Goddamn it, they were ahead of me the whole time…”

“I don’t understand.”

“She even tried to warn me. Garry Jones. ‘Jonsey’ Jones. I should have seen that.”

“Is that someone we know?” asked Forth.

“No,” said Lilium. She squinted, recalling a distant memory within her internal database. “That’s the name of a character from a Stephen King book. Dreamcatcher. He was trapped in his own mind by an alien consciousness.”

“I should have got that. Goddamn it! I’m a Twilight Sparkle for Celestia’s sake, and I didn’t even see it!”

“I don’t understand how THAT is what your concerned about.”

“Because they were THERE! In O’Toole’s mind. Her whole program was hacked. Damn it, she could have been that way the whole time.”

“Hacked? By whom?”

“Who the hell do you think?”

Lilium’s eyes grew wide. “The Cult of Humanity. They- -they made her do that to us?”

“More than that. They were watching through her. That’s why they were always one step ahead. That’s why she got the tickets. Led us to the plant. Because they were planning it all from the start.”

“But why?” asked Forth. “It seems like an awful lot of work.”

“I don’t know why. But I know what they were trying to do.”

“They were trying to force us to follow the coordinates,” said Lilium.

Morgana nodded. “By leaving us no other option.”

“Then…are we going to go?”

“What else can we do? If you can think of something, I’m all ears. But the whole city is after us now, I’m out two bodies, Elrod’s decapitated, and we don’t have a hideout.”

“And you’ve lost Roxanne and Valla.”

“And maybe Moonlight and Jadeglow for all I know. And I might lose more before we’re done. This next part is going to be…unpleasant. Because they’ve cornered me. All I’ve got left is to meet them.”

“The coordinates are forth the Depths,” said Forth. “My new body is very good. But the Depths are very dangerous. I think I might have been there, but I don’t know how I got out. I can’t navigate them. It would be too dangerous.”

“And I don’t expect you to. We’ll need a guide.”

“We have no money.”

“I know. And if I had a body I’d bet the whole thing that they’ve frozen my accounts too. But I have a plan. I know someone who I think can help.”

“Is that why we’re down here? On Level C?”

Morgana nodded. “Yeah.”

They stopped. Lilium found herself standing on a crooked, sloping road through a narrow alley surrounded on either side by hastily-constructed but ancient-looking resblocks. They had arrived at a large door.

“Lilium. Project me.”

Lilium did as she was told, converting Morgana’s mental image into a holographic one. The resolution dropped substantially, but in her cartoon-like state her render quality was reasonable.

“Hey!” said Elrod, his head still perched between Forth’s wings. “I can see you now!”

“Forth?”

“Yes, Ms. Morgana.” Forth approached the large, rusting door, and tapped on it hard with her hoof. It opened almost immediately, as if the person on the other side was waiting for them- -or had smelled them coming. A large, tusked face leaned forward from the room on the far side.

“Hoig,” said Morgana. “I know who took your daughter. And I know where we can find them.”