It took us two more days to reach Bluewater Gorge on hoof. There were so many mountains and passes that we had to navigate, and I was really wishing that I was a pegasus. That Yeoman and his team could make this flight from here to Hole on a somewhat regular basis wasn’t fair at all.

And speaking of Yeoman and the others, we actually saw them once. They started out as a faint dark line to the north, but as the minutes passed, it slowly became larger and more distinct. Within an hour, ten pegasi passed overhead in a wedge formation, just high enough that I couldn’t really make out who was who. But I knew that Yeoman was at the head; where else would Reclaimer’s top asshole be?

Thankfully, they weren’t able to see us through all the trees, and once they were out of sight, we pressed on again. I was getting exhausted from all the hiking, but knowing that Yeoman was in the mountains again put some energy back into my legs. We were in a race against time, and even though Ace knew exactly where we needed to go, I knew it was only a matter of time before Yeoman’s party found what they were looking for.

We stopped briefly on the shoulder of a mountain to recoup our strength. Nova took out some rations and passed them around, and Ace flew off to a waterfall to refill our canteens. While Gauge made sure everything was taken care of and talked with Nova, I sat a little bit away on a cliffside and just admired the scenery.

It was a hell of a view. These mountains must’ve been older than the range that I grew up in, because they were a lot less rugged and a lot more rounded. Many of them had tree coverage all the way to their blunt peaks, and it looked like the range just stretched on forever to the east and west. If I traced the range along to the east and north, I could see where it began to decline and flatten out before suddenly spiking again into the jagged Dragonsteeth mountains that made up the south wall of the valley. The north wall was lost in a haze of clouds, otherwise I would’ve looked to see if Blackwash was visible from here. How neat would that be to think that we could’ve seen this much of Auris from our mountaintop and not known about all the ponies on the surface?

I turned back to the constant roar of the waterfalls. There were so many of them in the Spines. I counted eight that I could see from where I was sitting, and I knew that there were more. Sure, most of them were pretty small, but they all added together to provide a soothing background noise. I could only imagine that the one hiding the installation had to be bigger than these, and that there had to be more of them as well if Yeoman was having trouble finding the installation after two weeks.

I stood up to go back to Nova and Gauge, but suddenly a sharp pain tore through my skull, and I fell to my knees. Red haze filled my vision and my legs twitched and spasmed on their own; it was like I was fighting with myself for control of my body. No, I realized, not with myself. I guess the first roots were being planted and the disease was figuring out how to pilot its new host.

“Ember?” It was Gauge’s voice, but strangely muffled. I saw striped limbs gallop over to me and sit me down again so I wouldn’t accidentally fall off the cliff. My head snapped up of its own accord, and when I looked at Gauge’s worried face, I felt an overwhelming sense of hunger and hollowness in my stomach. I started salivating really badly, and I had to swallow a few times to stop myself from drooling on my coat.

But, little by little, the haze cleared away, and my senses returned to me. I realized that my heart was pounding and my whole body was shaking. I felt horribly sick, and I actually spun away from Gauge and Nova and hurled off the side of the mountain. I’m glad that they couldn’t really see it, because there was a little bit of red and black in there that was definitely not normal. But once I finally got my stomach under control, I gradually stopped shivering, and I felt almost back to normal.

Trembling, I sat up again and scratched at the perpetual itch inside of my neck. Gauge and Nova watched me, shocked and concerned. Eventually, it was Nova who swallowed hard and placed a hoof on my shoulder. “Ember? Are… are you alright?” Stars, she looked so scared, and I didn’t even know why.

“I… I-I’m f-fine,” I said, grimacing at the taste of blood and bile in my mouth. “I’ll make it to the gorge. Don’t worry.”

“You sounded like one of them,” Gauge said. He bit his lip and sat down in front of me. “You made this noise… this wailing noise for a second.” When I continued to stare at him, he slightly angled his head. “Don’t you remember?”

I didn’t, and it’d just happened. I swallowed again, and then, holding my right foreleg out, I unwrapped the bandage.

Nova gasped and Gauge cursed when they saw the bite marks, now swollen and red. What looked like scabs were a little too brown and crusty to be natural, and they flaked off if rubbed. After a few seconds, I put my leg back down and wrapped it up again. “I’m not giving up,” I told them, trying to harden my voice as much as I could.

Gauge swallowed hard. “Is there…?”

I shook my head. “Not that anypony knows about. But maybe this installation will have something. It has to have something.” I carefully stood up, but my legs didn’t feel like they were going to fail me, at least. “I’m not going to die to this stupid mushroom.”

Nova sniffled, and Gauge put a leg around her shoulders. “How long do you have?” she whispered.

“Three or four days. Then I go into a coma. When I wake up…” I shuddered and closed my eyes. “I’m one of them. I asked Ace to end it before then.”

Silence, but I felt more irritated than anything. I’d cried over my impending demise with Ace two days ago. I didn’t want to do it again. And I was determined that I’d find a cure in the installation. There just had to be something there. I wasn’t going to give up until I’d searched everything.

And then Nova burst. “D-Damn it, Ember, why didn’t you tell us?!” she screeched, her voice swiftly climbing into hysteria. “Why didn’t you tell us that you’re dying?!”

I looked away, unable to meet her eyes. “If I am gonna die, I didn’t want my last days to be like… like this.”

After a long moment, Gauge spoke up. “You’re not going to die,” he said, and when I looked at him, he nodded at me. “That installation has to have something to save you. It has to. And we’ll find it, and you’ll use it, and you’ll be cured.” Then an uneasy smirk crept onto his muzzle. “Just don’t gnaw on my legs until we find it, okay?”

I bitterly chuckled. “You want a kiss?” I asked him. He smiled and shook his head, holding up a hoof like he was going to try to keep me away.

Wings fluttered overhead, and Ace landed behind us. Dumping a bunch of water skins on the ground, she looked over at us. When she saw Nova’s tears, her eyes snapped to me. “You tell ‘em?”

I sighed and nodded.

Ace dipped her head once, then pointed to the water skins. “Then we ain’t got time to waste. We need to get there before it’s too late. I think y’all can appreciate the pace I been setting these past few days now.”

She quickly trotted back to where she’d set her bags and slung them across her back in one smooth motion, checking that everything was secure and loaded. I started after her, but before I did, I helped Nova stand up, then wrapped her in a hug. She stiffened at first, but then she relaxed as I nuzzled her neck.

“I’m gonna be fine,” I told her. “I’m not gonna become one of them.”

“I-I know,” she said, sniffling. “I’m just so scared for you, Em.” She leaned back and looked me in the eyes, almost nose to nose with me. “I just feel so helpless, so… so useless!”

“You’re doing more than enough just being here with me,” I told her, patting her shoulder. “You and Gauge both are the reason I’m determined to beat this thing.” I looked over to where Ace was (not-so) patiently waiting and smiled at Nova. “Now let’s get moving before I lose any more of my brain to this thing, okay?”

She shakily nodded, and when I stepped away from her, Gauge moved in to fill my place. I walked away from the two of them and grabbed my gear, and once I had everything strapped down, I turned to Ace. “How much farther?”

“I give it no more than five miles from here,” she said. “All we gotta do is crest this here mountain ridge and the gorge is on the other side.”

“So an easy hike, right?”

I should’ve known what I was asking for as soon as I said it. Ace just shook her head. “RPR has a camp in the gorge as well. I think they’ve winnowed everything down to this area. Ain’t sure if they found the door yet, but they’re looking in the right spot.”

“So what are we gonna do?” I asked her. I was trying to think of some ideas myself, but I’m pretty fucking awful at planning.

“Wait for nightfall and slip into the camp. We should be able to get to the door without much problem. Then we just gotta pop the door open, scoot on inside, and seal her up again.” She winked at me. “Easy as pie.”

I just frowned at her. “You know it sure as shit isn’t gonna be that easy.”

She just shrugged. “Don’t mean I can’t be optimistic. Now if you don’t mind me…” Her wingtip slipped into a bag at her side and she pulled out a half-empty bottle of whiskey. Popping the cork off, she raised the thing to her lips and took a few gulps before tucking it away again. “I’m gonna do some recon. Just follow the ridge and you’ll be at the top of the gorge in no time at all. Just don’t go down towards the camp, and I’ll come find you when I’m done.”

And with that, she spread her powerful wings and launched into the sky, quickly gaining altitude and nearly disappearing from sight.

I watched her go, then, shaking my head, popped a cigarette out of my bags and stuck it between my lips. I really didn’t understand that mare. I was starting to get the feeling there was a lot more to this ‘outlaw’ than she really let on. What I’d seen between her and Nova, and then my own conversation with her afterwards, led me to believe that she had a soft spot… and a pretty big one, too.

It was kind of cute in a way. I thought about telling her that next time I saw her. I’m sure that’d ruffle her feathers a bit.

Nova and Gauge came over and grabbed their things, and once they were ready, I turned to them and flicked my good ear over my shoulder in the direction of the ridge. “Well? Ready?”

“Yeah, let’s get moving,” Nova said, though I noticed that she wrinkled her nose some at the smell of my cigarette. Gauge’s comment on what she thought about my breath came back to me, and I slid the cigarette to the far side of my mouth and started walking. I mean, with all the shit I’d been through at this point, could she really blame me that I’d picked up a nasty habit? At this point, it was looking a lot more likely that I’d die from the wailer parasite instead of lung cancer.

But that didn’t matter right now. All that mattered was getting over this ridge and making it to the gorge. And only once we got there could I really start worrying about the installation and averting my impending demise.

So we set off once again, though much more somber and quiet than the previous two days of hiking had been.

“Didn’t you say there was only a small team of them?”

I frowned down my muzzle at the camp far below us. “That’s only what I heard, Gauge. I didn’t think that they had a more fucking permanent crew here.”

We’d found a sheltered spot on the ridgeline to wait for Ace to come back, and our curiosity had gotten the better of us. Now me, Nova, and Gauge were all lying on our stomachs, side by side, peering over the rocks. Down below us was Yeoman’s camp, and it was a fuckload bigger than I thought it was going to be. They’d used up almost every available inch of space on the riverbank and the shoreline of a large lake at the bottom of the gorge. Everything was covered with tents and supply crates, and there was some sort of machinery that I couldn’t make sense of. It looked old, though, so it had to be some Synarchy tech that they were repurposing for their hunt. What it did, though, I couldn’t figure out.

“How many ponies are down there?” Gauge asked me.

“No fucking clue.” I looked over his shoulders at Nova, who was lying on his other side. “You’ve got sharp pegasus eyes, Nov. What do you see?”

“Not as much as I would if I had binoculars,” she grumbled. Squinting, she leaned forward to get a better view of the camp. “Ten tents big enough to hold four ponies each, lots of sensor equipment, and a whole lot of guns. The camp’s really empty though. Wonder where they are?”

“Where else?” I asked her. “Probably out looking for the installation.” I pointed to a team of three that was wandering around some rocks near the lake. “There’s a few. The rest must be taking a look elsewhere.”

“There’s certainly a lot of ‘elsewhere’ to look,” Gauge said. He was right; Bluewater Gorge had a fuckload of waterfalls. The gorge itself was probably ten miles long with an oblong lake that ran its length, connected to a river that went somewhere to the south. And all up and down the gorge, dozens of waterfalls, some tiny and some huge, spewed water into the lake below. There were so many snow-capped mountains around and huge stormfronts building up to the west that it wasn’t difficult to figure out where all the water came from to even keep all these waterfalls going.

“I’m really fucking glad Ace is with us,” I said. “Otherwise we’d be as lost as Yeoman’s crew down there. There’s simply too much shit to check and go digging through.”

I looked up to see a beige figure slowly circling down to us, and I nudged Gauge to alert him so Ace’s arrival wouldn’t spook him or Nova. We drew back from the ledge and went back to where we’d set our shit down and simply waited for Ace to get to us. Finally, flaring her wings, the outlaw came to a cantering stop and immediately took several large gulps of water. Wiping her lips, she sat down across from us. “It’s too fucking hot to be flying today. Mountain air ain’t even helping none.”

I saw Nova look on at Ace’s wings with a sense of longing, and the stump by her shoulder twitched. I don’t think the heat would’ve bothered her any if it meant she could return to the sky.

I was having my own problems with the heat, what with having a black coat and everything, so I took a long drink as well. When I was finished, and when Ace had finally stopped panting, I sat up a little. “So? News?”

“RPR scouts are all over the damn gorge,” she grumbled. “Got a couple of pegasi searching from above, too. Good thing I was higher than them; their eyes were too glued to the ground to notice me flying around.”

“And the installation?”

She tossed her head back, getting the sweaty curtain to rest comfortably around the right side of her face. “They ain’t found it yet, but they’re getting close. Saw a patrol snooping around the waterfall next to it. Another day and we’d have been too late. Just gotta hope they don’t stumble across it between now and night.”

“And if they do?” Gauge asked.

“We ain’t gonna worry about that none,” Ace said, waving her hoof. “We’ll just have to think of something at worst.”

Groaning, I stretched my sore leg out some more. It almost felt like it was back to normal. “So what now?”

“We wait,” Ace said. “It’s too dangerous to move while there’s still daylight out. We use nightfall to sneak up on the door and get her open real quick before we’re noticed. From there it’s just dealing with whatever security’s inside.”

“Any idea on what we should expect?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “Anything, really. Probably drones and turrets. I ain’t expecting much else out here. Supposing I had a better idea of what this installation did in the first place, I’d be able to figure out a thing or two about what we’re up against.”

“It was a critical installation in the Synarchy’s eyes,” Nova said. “Otherwise the code piece wouldn’t have been sent here. Whatever they did, it was important enough to be one of six Blackwash contacted.”

I glanced at Ace, who seemed to be thinking that over. “Foreboding, isn’t it?”

“It’s something,” she muttered. “Usually, there’s lists of installations lying around at comms outposts. That’s what the Ruin Runners use to coordinate; you just gotta find them first. But this installation ain’t been on any chart I’ve seen, and I ran with them for a long while. Only found it myself by accident.”

I wonder what happened to Blackwash, then, because we didn’t have a list of neighboring installations, as far as I was aware. And you’d think that the outpost that handles interstellar communication with the homeworld would know where shit is. That seems like the kind of thing you’d leave on a piece of that etch glass I kept finding everywhere. Though I’ll be damned if somepony didn’t think a big pane of that would make a great window.

Groaning, I lied back down and looked up at the sun. “Well, it’s midday right now, so we’ve got a long time to wait. Stars, I hate fucking doing everything at night. That’s when all the bad shit’s out and about.”

“Better bad shit than bullets,” Gauge said. “One’s easier to dodge than the other.”

“Yeah, whatever.” I laid my head down on my forelegs. “I’m just sick of being fucking bored. It’s like all the bad shit happens at once, and then there’s days and days of boring nothing.”

Ace chuckled and pulled out her booze again. “Believe you me, when you been wandering Auris as long as I have, you really appreciate the boring days like this.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “As long as you have? Girl, you look like you’re around my age.”

“How old are you?” she asked me. “Twenty winters? Nineteen?”

“Twenty,” I said, picking my head up again now that there was an actual conversation happening. “You?”

“Twenty-three,” she said. “Been wandering Auris most of it, too. The Runners adopted me when my ma died. I was only five winters at the time. Stuck with them until fifteen, and then we... parted ways. Been on my own since then.” I spotted her wince, and she looked aside, rubbing her foreleg. “Well, not from the start. Weren’t quite so alone for the first three or four years.”

Nova reached across the open rock to touch Ace’s hoof. “I’m so sorry.”

The outlaw swallowed hard and pulled her hoof away from Nova’s. “That’s an old wound. Scarred over and shit. Ponies die, and Auris is good as shit at killing them.” I saw her eyes drift longingly to her bottle, and sighing, she put her lips around the mouth and tilted her head back. She eventually pulled the bottle away with a grunt and grimaced, then corked it and returned it to her stash. “S-So, y’all know how to play cards? Appleloosa hold’em? Gotta find some way to pass the time.”

Gauge and I glanced at each other, Ace’s obviously desperate attempt to change the subject only making things more awkward. “Yeah, sure, I guess,” I said. “I learned how to play growing up.”

“To be fair, it was either play cards or be really, really bored,” Gauge said, chuckling. “There wasn’t much to do when you live on a mountain.”

“That I can imagine,” Ace said, digging into her bags and pulling out a worn and bent deck of cards. She put the deck between her wingtips and shuffled them together blindingly fast—I had to kind of wonder just how much cards this mare had played in her life to shuffle a deck that quickly. It didn’t take her all of ten seconds before she had everything shuffled and put the deck in front of me to cut. “Y’all ready to lose?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” Setting the deck back in front of her, I sat up. “Just deal, card shark.”

I glared at the small pile of bullets sitting across from me. That glare only deepened when a beige hoof swept them all up.

“I’m not playing cards with you ever again,” I grumbled, watching about fifty rounds disappear into Ace’s bullet purse. I flicked my cards at her in disgust, sticking my tongue out at the three of a kind that’d failed me.

“You ain’t gotta be a sore loser,” Ace said, smirking at me as she collected the cards back into the deck. “Just patient.”

“Yeah, well, fuck being patient,” I said, standing up. I grunted and cracked my neck; we’d gotten so carried away playing cards that I hadn’t moved in a while. Gauge and Nova were sitting off to the side, overlooking the gorge, having lost all their bullets some time ago. I’d clung onto mine for as long as I could, but I couldn’t figure out Ace’s play style. She liked to play really conservatively, but then all of a sudden she’d become very aggressive, and I couldn’t tell if she had junk or was hoping I’d call a bluff. In the end, I simply called too many, and there wasn’t much I could do as my bullets started dwindling.

It wasn’t quite nighttime yet, but the sun had set a few minutes ago, so the western horizon was drowned in yellow and golden light while the deep purples and blues and greens of night slowly inched across the sky. It was just about time to move, and after sitting on top of this cliff and getting my ass handed to me by Ace and her card shark ways, I was itching to go. Plus, I was secretly hoping for a chance to try out my new BR14M. At least that’d be a silver lining if we got caught, right?

Ace stood up, and I noticed her swaying a little bit. But before I could say anything, she shook her head, took a deep breath, and took four or five seconds to just stare at the opposite stone wall of the gorge. When she started walking again, she kept her eyes sharp and her hooves mostly in a straight line, though I could tell by the way her wings twitched that she was making a conscious effort to keep them looking as natural as possible.

Fucking great. Our fucking guide was drunk, and we had a bunch of RPR ponies to sneak by. And she’d been bitching at me back in Hole that I was gonna get her killed!

Groaning, I smacked a hoof against my forehead. “You ready to go, Miss Whiskey?”

She glared at me and shuffled her wings. “I fight better after a drink,” she growled at me, flicking her feathers along her tail in what I’d learned from Nova was an insulting pegasus gesture. She took her rifle off of her back and checked it, then slung it back over her shoulders but left it expanded. “Now c’mon. We should get a move on if we wanna get down there while they’re eating dinner.”

She started off down a rocky trail, pointedly trotting ahead of us so I couldn’t argue with her. Groaning in frustration, I picked my shit up and slung it across my back, then waited for Gauge and Nova to make their way over to me. They stopped by my side, and we just watched Ace’s tail flick and disappear behind the rocks.

“She’s drunk…” Nova murmured.

“She’s an idiot,” Gauge said.

“She’s gonna get us fucking killed!” I exclaimed. “Even if her drunken shit doesn’t catch the RPR’s attention, what good is she going to be against turrets and drones?”

Gauge just shrugged. “I mean, we only need her to find the door…”

Nova slapped him with her wing. “Gauge!”

The zebra took a step back and held up a hoof. “Hey, I didn’t mean it like that! I’m just saying that so long as she gets us to the door, then who cares if she’s drunk. We can all handle ourselves, right?”

“Yeah, but can we handle her as well?” I asked him.

“Hopefully we won’t have to,” he said. “I’m not sure if you noticed, but I’m pretty sure she’s an alcoholic. She was sneaking drinks constantly during trip up here.”

I’d definitely noticed that. Whenever we sat around the campfire, it seemed like Ace had a bottle of whiskey between her feathers. She usually didn’t drink as much or for as long as she did while we were playing cards, though. I could only hope that she’d built up enough of a tolerance over the years to at least keep her aim steady and her wits about her while we were down there. I didn’t want to have to pull her ass out of the fire in case she fucked something up.

Nova just shook her head. “The poor thing…”

“Let’s just hope that ‘poor thing’ doesn’t fuck everything up,” I said, setting off after Ace. Gauge and Nova followed at my heels, and soon enough, we caught up to the outlaw as she worked her way down the side of the overlook.

“Took y’all long enough,” she grumbled as we caught up to her. Frowning, she opened her wings and fluttered around some boulders in the path. “Just pick your way across, they ain’t too dense.”

I led my friends as we carefully worked our way down the trail and between the boulders. On our left, the mountain towered up above us, while on the right, it just fell away in a steep drop to the lake below, maybe two hundred feet down. Thankfully, the path wasn’t too hard to navigate, just a bit rough, and the sharp and thorny bushes growing out of the rocks weren’t all that pleasant to deal with. After getting more than enough scratches in my coat for my liking, I just started incinerating the bushes one after another. Sure, it was a waste of mana, but it took only a trivial amount of energy to get the dry and scratchy things to blow away into ash.

We crossed over a tiny waterfall, the stream running off the cliffs just barely deep enough and wide enough to get my fetlocks wet. On the other side, an outcropping of rocks overlooked the lake about twenty feet down, and gave us a pretty good view of the waterfalls. I trotted up to Ace, who was resting in the crook of a few rocks, and tried to peer over her shoulder to see what she was looking at. “Well? Which one of those fucking hundred waterfalls is it?”

Ace jolted like I’d startled her, and after blinking a few times, she vigorously shook her head. “What? Oh, yeah. Sorry… thinking.” She pursed her lips, then pointed a shaky hoof at three waterfalls all joining together maybe a hundred yards away, creating a huge curtain of falling water. “There,” she said. “That’s the one.”

I nodded, taking note of the rocks and waterfalls that we’d have for cover on our approach. The sun wasn’t visible any longer in the gorge, and much of it was shrouded in shadow, but there was still plenty of light to see us by. We’d have to move quickly and quietly if we wanted to get to those waterfalls unnoticed.

Just then, we saw a pegasus fly out from behind the waterfall and begin to make his way through the gorge to the other side. Ace stomped her hooves in frustration on the rocks and stood up, her wings snapping open and hitting me in the face. “Fucking cock shit!” she shouted, a little louder than I would’ve liked, but not loud enough to be noticed over the constant roar of waterfalls. “They found it! Them fuckers found it!” She pulled out her rifle and slammed it down into a crack between the two rocks.

Before she could do anything stupid, I grabbed the end of the rifle with my magic and pulled it away from the pegasus. “Stop it, you fucking idiot! The whole gorge is gonna hear that shot!”

“And that fucker’s flying back to tell them about the door!” she shouted back at me. “I ain’t gonna let them find it!” She tried to tug the rifle out of my magic, but I fought back. Growling, she spat at me. “Let go, you fucking bitch!”

I gritted my teeth and pulled back. “If you’d just stop and think about a solution that doesn’t involve fucking shooting everypony you don’t like, you’d see that you’re being a complete fucking shithead!”

She growled and leapt at me, but the moment her hooves left solid ground I shoved back on the rifle, sending her flying in the opposite direction. Her drunken wings weren’t good enough to stabilize her, and she went tumbling over the rocks, dropping her rifle as she did so. My heart jumped into my throat for a second as she disappeared over the edge toward the lake below, but a second later I barely heard a comforting splash over the roar of the waterfalls. At least it wasn’t a crack or a splat.

“Hold onto this,” I said, pressing Ace’s rifle against Nova’s chest, and then went galloping over to the rocks. I looked down to see Ace emerging from the shallow water, coughing and sputtering, and she stood up and stopped for a second to shake the water out of her mane and feathers. When she was done, she glared up at me, and I saw her wingtips fidget in unison; she still had her wing grip pistols, and I thought for a second she was going to use them on me. Instead, growling, she angrily stomped her hooves in the water and watched the pegasus fly away.

Chewing on my lip, I picked my way down the rocks and stopped on the shoreline, a safe distance away from the outlaw. “Look, I didn’t mean to send you flying and shit, but—”

She snapped her head toward me and bared her teeth. “Shut your shithole. Now we gotta move quick before they come back.” Her eyes looked me over, and she started stomping out of the water toward me. “Where the shit’s my gun?”

“Oh, uh, it’s up here!” Nova said from above, peering down at us from on top of the rocks. She looked at me. “Should I give it back to her now, or…?”

“Gimme my fucking gun,” Ace spat, her wings popping open and quickly getting her airborne. Nova flinched and held out the rifle, and Ace snatched it out of her hooves. Angling her wings downwards, she glided until she landed back on the shoreline, and she started looking over the weapon like it was a foal or something. Given her reaction just then, I’d say that she certainly treated it like one.

Satisfied that her rifle was still in one piece, she glanced aside at me. “We gotta go. Now. You remember which waterfalls it is, right?” When I nodded, she flapped her wings and hovered a few inches off of the ground. “Good. Gallop and don’t stop. Them pegasi will be back in a few minutes. Don’t get caught out in the open.”

I blinked. “Wait, what the fuck are you gonna—?!” But it was too late. With a few flaps of her wings, she was already streaking through the sky, racing for the waterfalls hiding the installation behind them. I swallowed hard and looked over my shoulder at Gauge and Nova, who were just starting to make their way down. “Uh, guys…”

The two of them stopped and looked up at Ace’s figure flying away from us. “Damn it,” Gauge cursed, and he stepped to the side to let Nova get past him so he could hurry her along down the slope. “I swear on the stars, this mare…”

Nova jumped the last five feet off of the rocks to the sand, wincing when she landed harder on her hooves than she thought she was going to. Gauge followed her down but didn’t jump from so high up, and after I made sure that the two of them were ready, we all set off at a gallop down the shoreline. Ahead of us, I saw Ace swoop down behind the waterfalls, and I immediately heard her rifle go to work from behind the cover of the water. I knew that Yeoman and his crew would be able to hear it as well, so I leaned into my run and tried to pour on a little more speed.

My hooves kicked up wet silt and sand as I galloped along the shoreline, and it made it a little hard to keep my balance, but soon the roar of the three waterfalls drowned out almost everything else. They didn’t look too big from far away, but as I got closer, I realized that they seemed taller and taller. They poured off of three sides of a cleft in the canyon wall, creating an almost solid wall of water that obscured the rock behind it. In fact, I had to hold my breath and lower my head as I galloped right at the edge of the waterfall closest to the wall, and I emerged on the other side almost completely drenched.

Ace spun around and raised her gun at me, but quickly pulled it up and to the side when she recognized me and Nova and Gauge. Three dead bodies lay on the rocks around her, each one with a few bullet holes in their chests and backs. And behind her, down at the water level, was half of an enormous metal door. I could see the lower half through the shimmering waterline around it, frothy and foaming because of the waterfalls. The next piece of the code was just inside; we were so close.

“Took y’all long enough,” Ace grumbled, swaying as she trotted up to us. Turning to Gauge, she pointed to the door. “Just to the left, almost at the waterline. That there’s the panel behind a big, flat rock. We need it open before they get here in force.”

Gauge nodded and galloped up to the door, SCaR following along behind. He pried a fake stone open with his hooves, revealing a rusted metal panel, but amazingly, its lights flickered on as it opened. While he and SCaR started figuring out what they needed to do, Ace looked at me and Nova. “They’ll be gunning for that door—literally. We’ll have to fend them off.” She looked at Nova, who was chewing on her hooves. “You got a gun? Know how to fight?”

Nova rapidly shook her head. “N-No! I’ve tried shooting them before, I’m awful at it! I don’t know the first thing about how they work!”

My ear perked at shouting outside, and Ace glanced at the waterfall preventing us from seeing outside. I felt like we were trapped in a cage, just waiting for the shrikes to dive on us. Ace quickly pulled one of her SP-9s and tossed it to Nova, who barely managed to catch it in her hooves. “It’s wing grip, just stick it in your feathers and shoot. I don’t care if you don’t hit nothing, just keep shooting and keep them from getting comfortable!”

Nova slid the pistol between her primaries and pointed it at the waterfall. “Oh, stars, oh, stars, oh stars…” she muttered to herself, shaking as we waited for the attack. I wanted to hug her so badly, but there wasn’t any time. I picked up my BR14M and waded into the water to at least make myself look like a smaller target. There really wasn’t any cover to hide behind back here.

And then the first pegasi dove through the waterfall, hooves over their eyes to shield them from the water pouring off of the mountain. They were equipped with shoulder mounts and automatic rifles, and they had ballistic plating covering their chests. If they had a chance to line up shots and fire, we’d all be dead. But we didn’t give them that chance. As soon as they burst through the waterfall, the three of us started laying down fire. My new rifle chattered in my aura as I unleashed full-auto hell on them, and though a few of my bullets squashed on the ballistic plating, I managed to hit the fucker in the neck. He fell into the water with a limp splash of feathers, and the foamy white water began to turn red.

On my right, Ace dropped her target with a quick double tap to his chest and head, but on my left, Nova was only firing wildly at the remaining pegasus. The RPR pony swooped down to line her guns up with Nova, but a quick burst of fire from Ace and I cut her to ribbons before she could. She shrieked in pain as she slammed into the rocks, coming to a stop just in front of Nova, who yelped in surprise and jumped backwards. All it took was a quick shot from Ace’s rifle to kill the RPR mare, and I quickly checked the glowing number on the back of my rifle for my ammo count.

Just then, automatic weapons chattered and fired through the waterfall, and we all hit the ground, or in my case, the water. Bullets flew around us and slammed into rocks and water, and I saw a few slow as they entered the water before clunking against the rocks at the bottom. The barrage lasted all of three seconds, and when it was over, I realized that I needed to be shooting. I stood up, raising my rifle, but I was nearly too late.

Five pegasi burst through the waterfall, and they immediately began shooting without even checking to see what they were aiming at. I tried to use the split second they were blinded to my advantage, but I was so thrown off by their suppressing fire that I could only wildly fire my rifle in a spray up at them. I got one, and she flipped over backwards before hitting the water, but the rest quickly scattered and picked us out. Their automatics fired and I instinctively squatted down, but I stopped myself from going prone in the water. If I laid down, I’d be an even easier target, so I forced myself to stand and keep shooting despite the burst of bullets heading my way.

Ace’s powerful rifle cracked three times in rapid succession, almost completely destroying my ears as the report echoed in this tiny little cleft, but two pegasi fell immediately. I put my sights on another and fired, forcing him to dive away, but I managed to catch him in the side of the jaw and take him out with a scream. Spinning to my left, I sighted the last of the five, but before I could fire, his feathers just burst into flame. Panicking and with his wings on fire, the last pony didn’t even try shooting as he flailed, falling into the water below. Ace’s rifle thundered again as he disappeared beneath the water, and a plume of red rose to the surface before the waterfall quickly diluted it.

Nova stared at the gun in her wingtip in shock. “Did I do that?” she said, looking at the weapon like it was going to bite her.

“Yes you did!” Ace exclaimed, laughing. “Feels good, don’t it?”

“No!” Nova exclaimed, turning to Ace with an incredulous look on her face. “It really doesn’t! I just burned his feathers off! That’s horrible!”

“It’s better than losing your fucking pretty head,” Ace muttered to herself. Snarling over her shoulder, she looked at Gauge and SCaR. “Well? You two done yet? It ain’t no fucking picnic out here!”

“The bullets flying at us aren’t really helping, thanks!” Gauge shouted back. “We just need a few more minutes, SCaR’s trying to navigate old—!” There was an electronic ping, and ancient hydraulics began to hiss as ancient metal squealed in its frame. “…Or not! We got it!”

“Good!” Ace turned to me and quickly changed mags, compacting her rifle from a high powered marksmare rifle to something more snub-nosed and automatic at the press of a button. “Suppressing fire! Get that door time to open!”

I nodded and began firing blindly through the waterfall, just trying to cover a wide enough area to discourage any more pegasi from flying through it. I was really glad that this thing had a magazine size of forty-five instead of the thirty that my old BR12A had; I could keep firing for a lot longer before having to reload. At my left, Nova just sent frantic bursts of her SP-9 into the waterfall, but I wasn’t sure if they were even going through or if they were just fizzling against the surface.

“Out!” Ace shouted after several seconds of firing, and it was almost like that was the magic word. Two more pegasi flew in, and I managed to bring my rifle to bear on one, but suddenly Ace fired four more shots from her weapon and dropped the two immediately. Grinning, she raised her rifle as it automatically ejected an empty mag, then slammed it over the protruding end of one of the magazines at her shoulders. “Or not! Hah! Get fucked!”

“Ember!” Nova shouted at me, and I turned to her only to see her pointing behind us. “The door!”

I spun around in time to see the door open wide enough for us to go down. It led to a short hallway that ended with another door, and the water from the waterfalls began pouring down ancient and dry metal before smashing up against the far door. Lights flickered on in the hallway, and another panel at the end lit up, ready to receive commands.

“Come on!” Ace shouted, moving away from the wall and toward the door. “Now or never!”

I fired a few more bullets into the waterfall before my rifle automatically spat out the empty mag, then turned tail and ran toward the door. Ace darted in first, and I followed her, while Gauge and SCaR waited for Nova to hurry inside before they followed us. Some pegasi took the opportunity to dive through the waterfall, but Ace fired at them with her rifle, unimaginably loud in the small hallway. “The door!” she screamed between shots, and I lifted my rifle above her with my magic to help her keep the pegasi away from the door.

“SCaR!” Gauge shouted, pointing to the control panel in the hallway, and the drone immediately warbled and whirred off in that direction. Within seconds, the lights in the hallway flickered, and the door slowly began to close in front of us. Ace and I just fired and fired and fired until our magazines were empty, and in that little moment of calm, I saw a familiar face fly through the waterfall.

Half of a familiar face.

Yeoman looked right at me, and his eyes widened. He hovered in place for a moment, still as a statue as the doors slowly closed between me and him. Then he smiled, a sickening, disgusting thing where only half his face moved, and the bare muscle and skin on the other half didn’t even twitch.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding when the door finally, finally shut. A few bullets shattered uselessly against the heavy door from the other side, but they stopped after a few seconds. The four of us just stood silently in the knee deep water, catching our breath, before Ace just started laughing. Me and my friends stared at her like she was insane, and it took her a while before she finally calmed down.

“What’s so funny?” I asked her, holstering my rifle. Though it was fun to shoot, getting shot at wasn’t so much fun, and I was just glad that it was over.

Wiping a tear from her eye, Ace simply waved a wing at the door leading deeper into the base. “After all this time, all this fucking time, I finally done it. I’m finally inside. And to think that it ain’t been more than a week since I was shooting at surveyor camps and RPR caravans to scrape the bullets together to survive.”

Grinning, she trotted past us and put her hoof on the door, so perfectly preserved after all this time abandoned. “Whatever’s in here, it’s gonna make us rich. Fuck, it might even change the whole damn balance of power in the war against the City. And anything I can bring home to Thatch to help us go kick Reclaimer in the dick, I’m all for. Especially if this code thing you mentioned really is all that damn important like you make it out to be.”

Checking her rifle, she swapped a magazine of hollow points for a box of armor piercing rounds. Then, nodding to the door, she simply smiled and waited. “Let’s get this shit open before those RPR fuckers blast their way inside, how’s that sound?”