The blue sun was directly overhead by the time we finally started moving again, but we weren’t too concerned about that now. We had new weapons and Ace was with us, so we’d be able to take down any RPR ponies that managed to catch up to us. And after the hell that we went through at the foundry, I think we were all looking forward to leaving it behind for good.

I really don’t know how I was even awake at this point, but I knew I’d need to sleep eventually. I needed the rest before we continued on through rougher terrain. The mountains rose out of the hills to the south like jagged and shattered teeth, imposing titans that we’d have to climb on hoof. I wasn’t looking forward to that at all. Couldn’t Equestria decide to build their installations someplace other than in mountain ranges?

After some goodbyes (mostly between me and the two Ruin Runners) we set off to the south. Ace flew regular circles above us, just keeping an eye on our surroundings, and SCaR confidently whirred near every bush or copse of trees that Ace couldn’t see into from up above. I could tell why the little drone was so excited at least; Gauge had found the modules to upgrade SCaR to a true combat model, and now he was armed with a pair of submachine guns for close range engagements. Which I was thrilled about, really. If we happened to get into a firefight, Gauge could have SCaR deliver precise gunfire from unexpected angles. After all, who would even notice a tiny little drone buzzing around in the chaos of bullets flying everywhere?

It must’ve been about an hour into our hike to the south when I heard a loud boom behind us, and a shockwave nearly knocked us all over. Spinning around, my jaw suddenly dropped when I saw a huge plume of fire erupting over the foundry. Gauge, Nova, and I just stared at it in mute shock, even as Ace calmly circled down to us.

She landed next to me, and after a second to look over the explosion, she nudged my side. “We ain’t got time to waste looking at the pretty lights. We should keep moving.”

“What the fuck is that?!” I asked, completely at a loss to explain just why the foundry blew up. I hoped that Mawari and Denawa were clear of the blast.

Ace just shrugged. “An explosion?”

I knew right away that she was involved in whatever had just happened. Spinning to face her, I jammed a hoof into her chest. “What did you do?”

She frowned at me and smacked my foreleg away with a wing. “Damage control.”

“You call blowing up a huge foundry and shit damage control?!”

“You really want ponies running around Auris with all the shit in there?” She sat down and crossed her forelegs. “You could equip a small army with everything we found. Plus, there was orbital bombardment shells. It’d only take one of those in the right place to blow up Hole or destroy Celestia Dam or whatever. If bad ponies got their hooves on them, hundreds of innocents could die. And I ain’t fixing to have that on my mind when the Ivory City buys them or steals them and blows up Thatch with them.”

I would’ve said something back, but I was completely at a loss for what to say. How could I argue with that logic? Maybe she was right. But even if she was right, and even if she wanted to do the right thing, all I could see this as was another example of how this mare didn’t care about collateral damage. If this was how she thought she was helping Auris, then I didn’t want to know how many dead ponies were left in her wake.

Flicking her tail, Ace stood up again and spread her wings. “Let’s get moving. That’s gonna be a big shining beacon to any RPR scouts nearby. It ain’t gonna be long before they track us here.”

And just like that, she flapped her wings and took off again, climbing higher and higher until she was just a silhouette in the sky.

“That mare’s a psychopath.”

I looked at Gauge as he frowned at the ground. “That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose,” I said. I raised my eyes to Ace way up above us, still flying circles, just like she had been since we started moving again. “I can’t figure out what her deal is. Does she want to be an outlaw or a hero? She spent a lot of time trying to convince me that it’s the latter, but she certainly acts a lot more like a bandit than anything.”

“Actions speak louder than words…”

A cool breeze brushed over my coat, and I tried to shake what sweat I could off of it. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky, and the bright blue sun was going to roast me alive at this rate. Plus, I was starting to feel really exhausted; a nap would be awesome. There was a cluster of trees up ahead that’d make a good place to stop and rest before we started the first leg of our trek through the mountains, and I knew that the rest would do all of us good before we worked on that.

“Hey, SCaR, go tell Ace that we’re going to stop under those trees,” I said to the drone. It chirped at me and set off, puttering higher into the air, and I angled away from the caravan path we’d been following and toward the trees. I didn’t know how SCaR was going to tell Ace that, but I figured that she’d see what we were up to once the drone started beeping at her.

I sighed as soon as I was under the shade of the leaves, and I flopped onto the grass. Finally, I didn’t feel like I was being cooked alive in an oven. I simply lay on my side, panting, as Gauge and Nova trotted over as well. They both sat down under the tree, side by side, and visibly relaxed now that they were out of the sun. Gauge pulled out a water skin from his bags, and after letting Nova take the first drink, he tossed it to me. I took two big gulps before floating it back to him, and he finished it off and stuffed it back inside.

Fluttering wings heralded Ace’s arrival, and she landed a few feet away from the rest of us. She looked us over for a second and her expression turned sour. “We should really keep pushing on,” she said. “The longer we stay here, the more time the RPR will have to catch up to us.”

“They really won’t have a hard time catching up to our fucking corpses if we die of heat stroke and exhaustion,” I grumbled back at her. “Besides, don’t we have to go over those mountains to get to Bluewater Gorge? There’s no way we’re going to survive that hike without at least a little rest.”

Ace’s eyes momentarily widened in surprise. “Bluewater Gorge? How did you know that’s where I was going? I didn’t say nothing about that.”

I blinked, and I realized that I’d never told her that I wanted to go to the gorge next after what I’d heard from Mawari and Denawa. “Wait, so…” I stopped and sat up. “Okay, maybe we should just let each other know what we’re all after, here. If we’re gonna travel together any longer, then we should be honest with each other.”

“Agreed,” Ace said, suddenly looking at the three of us with a lot more suspicion than before.

Gauge looked at me. “Are you sure that’s a good idea, Em?”

“It’s better than blindly stumbling after each other without even knowing why,” I retorted. Then, turning to Ace, I raised an eyebrow. “Well? What about it, outlaw?”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “You first.”

“Alright, fine, be that way.” Shaking my head, I sighed. “I’m a sergeant with the Sentinels from the north. After we took Celestia Dam from the Crimson and killed Carrion they sent me south to go looking for pieces of a code.”

Ace’s ears perked. “What kind of code?”

“We don’t know,” I said. “Our hometown heard it first, and then it sent pieces to hidden installations on the rest of the planet. Our home got one. Celestia Dam got one. We don’t know where the other five went. But all we do know is that this Reclaimer pony must’ve gotten a piece too, because suddenly he had the Crimson destroy our home for our piece, and now his right hoof fuckwit is searching Auris for the others. We’re trying to find the pieces before Reclaimer gets all of them, because apparently he’s really bad news, and if he gets them all, then Auris is probably fucked.”

“Auris is certainly fucked if he gets them,” Ace said, and I cocked my head a little bit. Sighing, she sat down under the shade of the tree with us. “I grew up in Thatch. It’s a big city near the Ivory City. Reclaimer hates us, and we hate him. We refuse to kneel to him, and we’ve been fighting him for years. We’re the biggest roadblock between him and the rest of this shitty planet. If that monster gets this code, whatever it is, I’m afraid of what it’ll mean for all of us.”

“Apparently it’ll ‘awaken the Azimuth’ or something,” I said, shrugging. “But anyways, we think there’s a piece in Bluewater Gorge. Those zebras, Denawa and Mawari, said that there’s a hidden installation there that nopony’s ever found. I also know that Yeoman and ponies from Hole are searching that area for something, so they’re likely looking for the installation, too. We just have to find it before they do so we can get the code piece and get out of there as fast as possible.”

Ace started smiling, and at first, I didn’t know why. “That ain’t gonna be hard,” she said. “The whole reason I was planning on taking you three to the gorge is because I happen to know where an installation is.”

I blinked. “Wait, really? You do?”

“Mmhmm.” She nodded. “Stumbled across it five or six months ago while I was in the area running from a bounty team. Big huge door in the rock underneath the base of a waterfall, halfway submerged in the water. I thought I’d be able to use it to escape the bounty hunters, but there weren’t no way in, best I could tell. I went looking all over the damn thing but I didn’t find a way to open it.” She shook her head. “Had to fight my way out of that one. Took two bullets to the stomach and jumped into the river out of desperation. Woke up later that night draped over some rocks and spent the next four days crawling back to civilization.”

Stars, I couldn’t even imagine what that must’ve been like, assuming it was true. I guess it was a good thing for all of us that she survived that whole ordeal. “But if you couldn’t find a way inside, then what are we supposed to do when we get there?” I asked, sharing a concerned look with Nova and Gauge.

“There was a panel behind a rock a little bit away from the door,” she said. “It didn’t have no buttons or nothing on it, just a standard B/O port.” Her eyes flitted over to SCaR, and I saw Gauge gasp with realization out of the corner of my eye. “The same kind of port that your little drone there can access.”

SCaR buzzed and chirped twice, hovering a little bit closer to Gauge. The zebra glanced at his drone, then back at Ace. “But what makes you think that SCaR will even be able to get that door opened? It probably has a password or something that it needs to be opened.”

“Your drone’s military, though, ain’t it?” Ace asked.

Gauge nodded. “Yeah, cobbled together from a few drones we had lying around at Blackwash, but yeah.”

“Then it can open the door.” Crossing her forelegs, she looked over her shoulder at the mountains to the south. “All military drones have a common database full of emergency codes for operating equipment in case shit goes bad and they’re needed to perform tasks. Installations have their own set of codes, but if your home and this place were chatting each other up, then they’re part of the same system. That means that they likely have the same emergency codes. If that installation is in emergency lock down, and I’m willing to bet that it is, then that door should be opened by an emergency override passcode that your drone probably has on it.”

“Huh.” I looked at SCaR, then at the mountains behind Ace. “Well, I mean, even if that doesn’t work, there has to be a way in, right? There’s always some work around.”

“If it’s inside of a mountain, there would have to be some sort of ventilation,” Nova said. “Probably big units, too, to move air in and out. We can always look for those.”

“Hopefully it ain’t gonna come to that,” Ace said, raising a hoof. “I know with your drone, we’ll be able to get in the front way. I’d stake my life on it.”

“We may have to,” Gauge said. “Remember, Yeoman and the RPR were looking out in the mountains too. If we don’t find a way inside fast, they might catch us, and then we’ll just have led them to the installation.”

“If they haven’t found it already,” I grumbled. “It always feels like that fucker’s one step ahead of us. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve got a camp right in front of the fucking door, just trying to get inside.”

Ace chewed on her lip; I guess that wasn’t something she’d considered before. “We’ll just have to be careful. Though with four of us, we can probably either slip in unnoticed or clean the place out in the middle of the night.”

Well, more like three of us, I supposed. I still didn’t really trust Nova with a gun, though she might have to learn fast. Given that she was grounded, as awful as it was to think about, she’d need to learn how to fight or do something to help us out. Gauge at least had SCaR, and SCaR could now help in a firefight, but I didn’t want to have to distract myself with keeping Nova safe now that she couldn’t just fly to safety whenever fighting started.

Ace and I broke out of our thoughts when we heard Nova make a squeaky yawn. Our attention turned to her as she rubbed her muzzle with the crest of her wing, and blinking, she cocked her head at us. “What? I’m tired. It’s… been a really long night.”

I nodded, feeling the leaden weights hanging off of my eyelashes too. Just keeping my eyes open was becoming an almost impossible task. “Yeah, sleep sounds really great about now. Should we draw for first watch?”

“I’ll handle it,” Ace said. “I was able to get some sleep last night. Weren’t much, but some. Besides,” she said, pulling a tin out of her bags and shaking it some, rattling whatever was inside, “I’ve got caffeine pills for this. One of these and I’ll be alert for four hours. Don’t worry yourselves none.”

Well, if that meant I could get to sleep faster, I was all for it. “Cool,” I said, pulling out my bedroll and laying it flat on the grass next to the tree. It was way too warm outside to get under my blankets anyway, but I could definitely use the padding on my back. It was pretty sore from getting slammed into the desk by that one wailer. “Wake me if you need anything; I know how to handle a gun the best out of these three.”

Ace nodded and took her bags off, setting them on the ground and making a backrest to lean against while she watched the sky from the cover of the tree. “We should be good. I ain’t expecting to see anything here other than some rock runners or maybe an adventurous shrike. Y’all should go get your rest.”

I yawned and laid my head down on my crossed forelegs. “Sounds like a plan to me,” I muttered. And with the smell of the grasses in my nose, I slowly drifted off to sleep.

I don’t know what it is about sleeping after a horrible ordeal, but it’s great. I only got a few hours of sleep under that tree, but I felt so much better when I woke up. Well, mostly. My head felt like it was going to split in two, and my neck itched all along my spinal column. I tried scratching it a few times, but it wasn’t any use. It felt like the itch was coming from inside of my spine.

The stars only knew what that meant. I just hoped they were wrong.

Groaning, I raised my head and looked around. The sun was just starting to go to the west, so it was still the early afternoon, and the birds were chattering away above me. Gauge was still passed out at my left, but surprisingly Nova wasn’t with him. When I looked to my right, however, I saw her and Ace sitting side by side, away from the tree.

I rubbed some of the bleariness out of my eyes and squinted into the sunlight. Yeah, they were just sitting there, just… talking. They were too far away for me to hear what they were saying, but there they were. Nova was on the left and Ace on the right, and they were sitting close enough together that Ace’s feathers rubbed against the naked spot on Nova’s side that used to be covered by her wing.

For the longest time, I just watched the two of them talk. Occasionally I’d hear Nova laugh, so sweet and happy after all the shit she’d been through. Ace would smile at her, too, and one time she acted like she was going to lick Nova’s cheek, and Nova playfully fended her off, giggling all the while. Then they were quiet for a while, and I laid my head back down on my hooves, still a little too tired and too warm to be bothered to move.

After a few moments, they both stood up. I thought they were going to come back to the tree, but instead, Ace crouched down and spread her wings. Nova carefully climbed onto her back, looking a bit unsure, but once she was fully on, she wrapped her hooves around Ace’s neck and hung on. Fluttering her wings a few times, Ace took off, slowly gaining altitude with the added weight of her passenger on her back. I watched them for as long as I could through the leaves of the tree before they disappeared somewhere out of sight.

Smiling, I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep again.

I woke up when they landed again, maybe half an hour later. I hadn’t been napping all that heavily anyways; I didn’t want something to jump Gauge and me while Ace and Nova were off flying, even if we had SCaR to keep watch down here. When I heard hooves trampling grass and making their way towards us, I perked up my ears and opened my eyes.

Ace was pretty damn sweaty; her wings hung a little from her sides like they were too heavy to tuck away, and she sat down on the grass and started preening them. Nova was right next to her, a little dazed smile on her face, and she sat down next to Gauge. Seeing me awake, she nodded. “How was your nap?”

I yawned and rolled onto my side, stretching my three free legs as best as I could. “Fucking amazing,” I said. I cracked my neck a few times and started to stand up. At least I was getting good at doing that on only three legs.

Then Ace just kind of looked at me and tilted her head to the side. “You’re still in that thing? You should’ve been done with that by now.”

“Wait, seriously?” I looked down at the tattered sling, somehow still holding together after everything I’d been through. “It’s only been a few days!”

“I threw all the best shit I had on hoof into that wound when I patched you up,” Ace said. “I don’t want you being dead wait for too long, you know?”

I frowned and looked at the stained sling again, and slowly undid it. My leg initially screamed in protest when I tried to move it, but after gritting my teeth and pushing through the pain, I was able to get it straightened out and everything. It was sore as all fuck, but I could put weight on it and move it around. “Huh. Well I feel stupid now.”

“From what I’ve been gathering, that’s the usual for you, ain’t it?” Ace said, smirking at me.

“Shut up.” I looked over to Nova, who was settling in by Gauge’s side and getting ready for another nap. “I saw the two of you talking out there. Have a good flight?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah.” She sheepishly smiled. “It was… good. I mean, it’s not like I can really fly on my own now…”

I gave her a sympathetic smile and stretched my leg some more. “That’s good. You just catch a quick nap, alright? We’re probably going to want to get moving before too long.” Yawning, I shook my head. “I’ve already gotten enough sleep. I can take watch.”

“I’ll stay with you,” Ace said. When I turned to her, she just shrugged. “Caffeine pills. I got a bit left in me before I crash. Ain’t gonna sleep in the meanwhile.”

“Cool.” I had some things I wanted to talk to her about anyway. Walking away from the tree, I looked over my shoulder at her as I passed. “I’m gonna sit in the sun some. I can see things better from out there.” Nodding to Nova, I added, “Sleep well, Nov.”

Nova nodded back at me and laid her head down on Gauge’s side. Ace looked at me, frowned, and then stood up again, reluctantly following me away from the shade. I didn’t blame her—I didn’t even want to be out in the sun, not really—but I didn’t want to talk to her close to Nova and Gauge. I didn’t want them overhearing that I might be turning into a wailer. If I was gonna die soon, I didn’t want to spend my last days about it feeling bad because they were afraid and upset.

I sat down once I was far enough away from the tree and pulled out a cigarette. I was surprised the heat in the air alone didn’t light the thing, but I lit it with a spark regardless. Sticking it in my lips, I waited until Ace sat down next to me. She stuck her water skin to her lips and drained half of it before tucking it back in her bags. “I’m assuming that you ain’t actually interested in no sunlight,” she said, lying on her stomach and letting her wings hang loose on the ground.

“I wanted to talk where they couldn’t hear us,” I said, looking down at the bandage on my foreleg. It was spotted brown, and when I undid the bandage, the wound was still oozing blood even though it was half a day old. Sighing, I showed it to Ace and didn’t say anything.

Her eyes flitted over the bite marks in my leg. After a moment, her nostrils flared and she nudged my leg away with her wing. “Too much to assume that one of them zebras did that?”

“I wish,” I said, slowly wrapping the wound again with some fresh gauze. “I don’t know when I picked it up, but I was wrestling with wailers all night. One of them might’ve gotten lucky.”

“How’re you feeling?” she asked me, her voice suddenly a lot more tender. I turned to her, and I saw concern in her eyes. “Burning, itching, headaches?”

I took a deep breath and nodded. It felt like I was signing my own death sentence with that little motion. “Leg’s burning a little bit, my head feels like it’s about to explode, and my neck itches really bad. I’d say that I’d hope it’s nothing, but…”

Ace grimly nodded and looked away. Her eyes drifted over her shoulder and back to the tree, where Nova and Gauge laid side by side. “You tell them yet?”

I shook my head. “No, I haven’t.”

A tiny gust of wind provided a momentary respite from the heat. My eyes fell, staring at the swaying stalks of pink grass in front of my hooves, watching the little bugs crawl up and down. Another sore pang in my skull reminded me that I wasn’t alone in there anymore; I had a roommate now, one who was going to kill me in a few days. It was probably chewing up my brain right now. I shuddered and held myself in my forelegs, suddenly feeling cold despite the heat.

“You realize there ain’t a cure, right?”

“I didn’t think there was,” I murmured.

Moments drifted by like a few feathery seed pods caught in the wind. It felt so strange to be staring at the twilight of my life. It felt so wrong for it to be coming so soon. I either thought I’d never see it coming, losing my head to a bullet or something like that, or that it wouldn’t come for me for another few decades. Twenty winters felt like such a short time to be alive.

“What you want me to do for you?” Ace asked me, poking my shoulder with her nose. It was such a strange little action—I don’t know why I noticed it. It was like she wanted to nuzzle me but she couldn’t bring herself to. I appreciated it regardless.

“Well, first, we make it to the gorge,” I said, glancing at her. “I… I-I’m not going to give up just yet. This was something that the Synarchy had to have dealt with when they were still settling the planet, right? Maybe there’s something there that can help me.”

It was really my best shot; the rest of Auris didn’t have a cure, and the installation was the only place I knew about that we were close to that might have something that could save me. Sighing, I looked at my leg again and moved my hoof a bit. Funny how my limbs would no longer be my own in a week. “If not…”

I swallowed hard and managed to make eye contact with Ace. “When I go into the coma, just… just please put a bullet in my brain. Burn my body. I d-don’t want to become one of them…”

Feathers ruffled the hair on my coat as Ace draped her wing over my back. “I can do that,” she said, her voice soft and sensitive. “But you’re gonna have to tell your friends. They ain’t gonna understand if the outlaw shoots you while you’re down.”

“I know, it’s just… I don’t want to get them worked up and worrying about me,” I said. “They already worry enough about me. I’d feel so awful just to have them panicking about my impending zombification for a whole week before I go. Besides, maybe there’s a chance I can fix this before it’s too late?” Blinking, I sniffled away a tear. “I don’t want to die with them worrying about me. I just want to die happy with them. Is… i-i-is that so much?”

It felt like that one sniffle set off the gunpowder. My sniffles turned into sobs, and soon I was heaving and tearing at the grass with my hooves. Salty tears stung my eyes, and my whole body shuddered with each breath. “I don’t want to die!” I hissed, tears streaming down my face and along my muzzle. “It’s not fair! Not after all this! Not after all this shit!”

Ace tried to calm me down with her wing and her voice, but I blotted it all out. Instead, burying my face in her chest, I sobbed, “Why me?”

It was a question I couldn’t answer. I could only cry away the pain. I’m only glad that somepony was there to be with me as the reality of my death all but smacked me in the face.

And then, once the tears dried up and the hours passed, we once more set off like nothing had happened. It was all I could do to keep up a brave face and pretend nothing was wrong.

But the guilt ate me alive more than the fungus in my brain.