I felt like I was staring at a time capsule.

The door leading deeper into the installation stood before me, spotless and free of rust. Dust covered the surface, or at least what hadn’t been splashed when the water came pouring down the hallway. The panel next to it hummed with energy, covered in flashing lights, clear and perfect. This place hadn’t been touched since the Silence began nearly two hundred winters ago.

“So, what?” I said, turning to Ace, who was impatiently waiting for Gauge and SCaR to get the door open. “There’s like turrets and drones and shit defending these places?”

She nodded back at me. “That’s the usual layout. Automated defenses programmed to fire on anything not carrying an identification badge. Since the door’s still got power, I’d reckon they still got power, too. Check every corner, high and low, before you start down a hallway. Otherwise, you’ll be shot up damn good.” Then, looking at my rifle, she pointed a wingtip to a switch at the base. “That’s one of them BR14s, ain’t it? It’s got an AP setting on it. Some tiny enchantments that make anti-armor rounds unnecessary. Shitty rate of fire’s the tradeoff, but killing turrets and drones is more important. Ain’t like we gonna find any security forces down here.”

“You never know,” I said, finding the switch and setting it to ‘AP.’ “I wouldn’t put anything past a place like this. Maybe there’s a whole bunch of ponies living inside, waiting out the apocalypse. Like a bunker or a vault or something.”

Nova snorted. “That’s stupid. You can’t get something like that to work for that long. Even if you recycled all the waste produced, you’d still run a deficit unless you kept your population under incredibly strict control, and even then it might not be enough. Food stockpiles and hydroponics farms will carry you for a while, but eventually you’ll be consuming your food and water and energy faster than you can produce it.” She paused, and then her wingtip twitched as she raised her hoof. “Like, if you think of this as a closed system—”

I held up my hoof. “Yes, uh, thanks, Nova, but I’m gonna stop you there before you start getting into that fancy math shit that I don’t understand at all.”

Ace sighed in relief behind me. “I hate math. All I need’s basic stuff, like counting.”

I grinned at her. “Finally, somepony who hates math as much as I do! Where have you been all my life?”

Nova pouted and stomped a hoof. “So mean!”

Chuckling, I patted her on the shoulder. “It’s okay, Nov, at least Gauge appreciates it… I think.” I looked at him expectantly. “Well?”

Gauge pretended like he was trying to avoid the conversation. Clearing his throat, he pushed a button on the panel as SCaR unplugged itself from it. “Hey, look, door’s open.”

Nova frowned at her coltfriend. “Gauge!”

“What?” he asked, smiling at her. “I was just a greaser, I didn’t do all that much math.”

Ace coughed into her hoof and pushed past us toward the door as it slowly hissed open. “Right, let’s just save all the friendly talk for after we clean this place out, okay? In case you forgot, we ain’t got much time.” She pointed back over her shoulder at the exit door. “They’re gonna be blasting or cutting through that in a few minutes. I ain’t fixing to be cut down when they do.”

“Right.” I trained my rifle on the door, and Ace did the same at my side. “Nova, Gauge, just stay behind us. If you see anything, call it out. I don’t wanna get shot in the ass today.”

They nodded and fell in behind us, and we all went quiet as we waited for the door to open. It parted lengthwise down the middle, and the two halves slowly retracted into the walls on ancient hydraulics. Lights flickered on inside, one after another, and soon the entire room was lit up. When nothing moved or shot at us, Ace flicked her ear and slowly walked inside, her rifle braced between her wings. At least I was happy to see that her drunken swagger was fading away now that we were finally inside the facility.

Swallowing, I moved with her, peeking to the left as she went to the right. Our hooves made little splashes in the water draining out of the hallway and into the big room, and once I checked my corner, I slowly scanned the rest of the room, my rifle following my eyes. It looked like a big reception area, with a huge counter that ran along the left wall of the room, making an L shape when it hit the far corner before ending abruptly next to a door. Several old computer frames lined the counter, covered in dust, all dark and dead. There were a few benches for sitting along the right wall, but everything else was bare, from the grated metal floors to the solid steel walls and the concrete and steel roof supported by exposed trusses. But one thing stood out to me, painted in flaking black letters at the far end of the room:

“Manatronics?” I thought aloud. “What does that even mean?”

“Advanced mana batteries research, probably,” Nova said, stepping further into the room, her eyes trained on the painted words like they were holy text. “There’s two kinds of mana in the world: that which our bodies make, and what’s just ambiently floating in the air. Since the great wizards of old discovered it, ponies have been trying to harness the latter into basically infinite energy. It looks like the Synarchy was no different.”

Ace set the butt of her rifle down at her hoof and hummed to herself. “Infinite energy? Think they ever got it to work?”

“Power’s on,” Gauge said with a shrug. “Either they have really good generators to keep this place operational for two hundred years with no staff, or they figured it out.”

“Maybe we’ll find out,” I said, slowly walking over toward the door. “I just hope the code’s in here.”

“It should be,” Gauge said, and SCaR whirred its agreement. “Remember that list of installations we saw when we first got the code? One of them was ‘BGX37’. This has to be it.”

I just blinked at him. “You remembered that?”

“I had slave drivers slamming my face into their computers for days before you and the Sentinels took me out of there,” Gauge said. Wincing, he rubbed his forehead. “I think they literally beat it into my brain.”

Rubbing a hoof behind my neck, I swallowed and started walking toward the door. “Yeah, well, that’s over now,” I said, looking up at it. “Don’t have to worry about that anymore.” I raised my hoof to the switch next to the door, but before I pressed it, I readied my rifle and made sure that Ace did the same. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Ace said, nodding back at me. She reared up on her hind legs and balanced her rifle with her forelegs and wings, aiming right at the center of the door, and only swaying slightly. Nova and Gauge moved off to the side, behind the counter where they couldn’t be shot at, and with a deep breath, I pressed the button.

The door hissed and slid open, and an alarm immediately began to blare. It sounded like the entire mountain was screaming at us. Ace pressed her ears flat against her head, and as I looked through the door, I saw a pair of turrets pop out of the ceiling of a long hallway about halfway down. Ace and I immediately began shooting before they could train their sights on us, and I noticed that my rifle shook a lot more and fired a lot slower on its AP setting. But it spat out glowing rounds that streaked right through the armored casing of the turret on the left, and four or five shots was enough to make it spark and jam. Meanwhile, Ace shot hers in a weak spot or something, because the armored casing around it shattered and the entire gun and ammo belt popped out of its mount in the ceiling.

When nothing else moved down the hallway, Ace lowered her rifle. “Old trick I learned back with the Runners,” she said, pointing to the turret she’d shot down. “Ain’t the strongest welding at their roots, provided you can punch through the armor. Good for scraps and bullets.” She pointed with her rifle down the hall. “Let’s get moving, ain’t no time to waste.”

She led the way and I followed her, gesturing for Nova and Gauge to hang a safe distance back. The hallway felt like it was unnecessarily long, but it was putting us more and more under the center of the mountain. It also had a slight decline to it, and I could imagine the millions of tons of stone and water sitting above us as we descended into the dark secrets of Equestria’s past. I was just glad I wasn’t claustrophobic, though I heard Gauge whispering soothing things to Nova behind me. Most pegasi don’t really like caves and that sort of thing, and even Ace, experienced as she was, looked pretty twitchy as the air grew heavier and heavier.

There were a lot of doors along the hallway, but we walked past all of them. Our sights were firmly set on the massive door at the end, labeled with a dimly-lit sign that read ‘CENTRAL LABS / REACTOR’. If there was anywhere that this code piece would have gone to, it had to be there, right? But before we could get to it, a forcefield materialized in the middle of the hallway and several heavy turrets emerged on the other side.

I raised my rifle to shoot, but Ace quickly swatted it aside and shook her head. “Ain’t nothing gonna get through that shield,” she said, frowning at the shimmering light in front of us. “We’re gonna have to shut down the security systems.”

“Easier said than done, I imagine,” I said, and the outlaw nodded. Sighing, I spun around and looked at the eight doors that we’d walked past just to get here. “So, which one is it? Think there’s a map somewhere?”

Ace opened her mouth, but a synthetic mare’s voice began to shout at us. “Alarm!” It blared, “Critical Reactor Malfunction! This facility is on lockdown until further notice! All personnel, report to your labs and await further instructions! This lockdown will remain in effect until your commanding officer reestablishes communication with the Ivory City! Alarm!...”

While it droned on and on, I just looked at Ace. “So, uh, how the fuck are we gonna get past this?”

“We need to find the control room,” she said. “From there, we should be able to shut the system down. Maybe even get rid of these damn turrets and shit while we’re at it, though I ain’t never been one all that good with computers.”

Nova’s ears perked up. “I can do that!” she exclaimed. “If these computers are running the same system as the ones back in Blackwash, then it’ll be a piece of cake!”

“That’s a relief,” Ace said, flickering a smile at Nova. Then, pursing her lips, she looked at the doors around us. “Now then, we just gotta figure out where the fuck to go…”

“Well, uh, where’s a command center more likely to be held?” I asked her. “You’ve run through installations like this before, right? Maybe it’s got a similar layout?”

Just then, we heard a distant boom, and the installation shook. Dirt and dust fell from the ceiling, dusting us all. Nova and Gauge looked to me, and I in turn looked to Ace. Chewing on her lip, the outlaw motioned for me to stay put. Spreading her wings, she flew up the hallway, pausing at the door before turning around and gliding back down.

“They’re trying to blast through the door,” she said. “Equestrian steel’s stronger than that, but it ain’t gonna hold forever. They’ll have that door open sooner or later.”

“So we need to get moving,” I said, and Ace nodded. Frowning, I just walked to the nearest door and opened it with the press of a button. It hissed on its hydraulics and retracted, and the lights inside the next room flickered on. It looked like a series of labs connected to each other with glass walls dividing them. Ancient equipment I couldn’t make any sense of lay dormant and still, untouched for two hundred years. And above all this, there was a curious lack of skeletons or remains or anything, really. It was like everypony had just up and left two centuries ago, never to return.

Ace peered in over my shoulder and shook her head. “Non-critical labs,” she said. “That’s probably what most of these rooms are. Stuff that ain’t too dangerous or secret, they’d do out here. They’d save the important stuff for that.” She pointed to the forcefield with a wing, with the two heavy turrets still just staring at us from the other side. They were even ticking by on little motors, swiveling to watch Gauge pace back and forth in front of the forcefield.

“What about this one?” Nova asked, pointing to one of the two doors closest to the forcefield. “It’s got a keypad in the wall next to it.”

Ace and I trotted over, and sure enough, there was a little keypad set inside of the wall, right next to the doorframe. Nova’d pried open the panel that had once covered it, and I saw why we missed it the first time; it looked exactly like the wall, and it fit flush with it, too. But now that we had a good idea which door we needed to open, we had a new problem to solve.

“What the fuck’s the passcode?” I asked, staring at it. I didn’t even know how many numbers it would be, or what would happen if we just put something in randomly. But that didn’t seem like something I’d want to fuck with.

“I bet an office around here has it,” Ace said, looking over the doors. She trotted over to the first and one by one opened them, peeking inside before shutting them. She uncovered a few labs and a janitor’s closet, and I could tell she was starting to get impatient as she flicked through them. Finally, she opened one that led down a short hallway with a few doors on either side. “This has to be it. Let’s go.”

She set off down the hall, me following her and keeping my rifle trained on everything. She slowly advanced, opening one door after another, but when she got halfway down the hall, another alarm blared and the door we entered slammed shut behind us, almost crushing Gauge in two. But luckily he managed to jump through, and that left the four of us in this short hallway as the synthetic voice started talking again.

“Non-Authorized personnel detected in the administrative wing. Please lay down your weapons and surrender to the authorities. Lethal countermeasures are on standby. You have thirty seconds to comply.”

Then I heard this buzzing noise coming from the walls, or more specifically, small hatches built into the walls. The voice began counting down, slowly and ominously, and my heart started to pick up. “Ace, what the fuck do we do?” I asked her, bouncing my rifle from hatch to hatch but unsure of where to put it.

“We need to get a door open and get out of here,” she said, looking around. She immediately rushed over to one of the doors and tried to open it, but it refused to budge.

“Twenty seconds…”

“The vents!” Gauge shouted, pointing to a large grate built into the wall above his head. “Maybe one of us can go through and open a door on the other side! They need to circulate air throughout this entire place, they have to connect.”

“I’ll do it!” Nova exclaimed, placing her hooves on the wall. “I’m just small enough to fit!”

“Ten seconds…”

“Do it,” I said, swallowing hard. I didn’t know what was going to come out of those hatches but I didn’t want to know. “Give her a boost!”

“SCaR! The bolts!” he shouted as he crouched down under the vent. The drone buzzed and flew up to the corners of the vent, and with quick and accurate bursts from its probe, it turned the bolts holding the corners into molten slag. I quickly reached out with my magic and tore the thing off of the wall, and with a boost from Gauge, Nova squeezed into the vent, her remaining wing fluttering uselessly at her side for a moment before she started crawling around, SCaR following her into the cramped space.

And then at that moment, the hatches on the wall flew open and at least a dozen drones poured into the room. They looked like combat models, smaller and more agile than SCaR, each one equipped with a single barrel and probably no more than twenty shots. But they immediately swarmed on us. And while Ace tried firing at them, I immediately closed my eyes and put a shield around the three of us.

The drones started firing, hammering the shield from all sides as they angrily buzzed around it. Each one would fire off its burst and then quickly disappear into the walls again, only to be replaced by a fresh drone to add to the swarm. My skull pounded with every bullet strike against my shield, and I started gasping as I tried and tried to keep it up. I didn’t know how much longer I could do this; shields were never my strong suit, and I could feel blackout creeping in on me. It’d only be a matter of time before I dropped the shield and the drones killed me, or the shield ate my life force and killed me. Either way, I would end up dead, and Ace and Gauge would go down with me.

I heard hydraulics hiss through my dimming senses, and hooves on my shoulder and chest pulled me backwards. I staggered along with them, just trying to keep my shield up, until finally the immense drain on my magic stopped. I hesitated a second, but eventually I couldn’t keep the spell going any longer, and I dropped it. Gasping and wheezing, my eyes fluttered open to see my friends standing over me, concerned looks on their faces as a bright manalight shined down on them from above.

“Take your time,” Ace said, patting my forehead. “Let your mana get back to you. Ain’t no good trying to run around on empty.”

I couldn’t even respond to her, so I just closed my eyes and kept panting. Eventually, my heart slowed down and I finally felt like I was getting some air in my lungs, so I sat up and rubbed my head. Only then could I feel the blood dribbling down my muzzle from my nostrils, and I wiped it away with a sniffle.

“We’re all in one piece?” I asked, looking around. None of my friends looked hurt, though Nova’s white coat and feathers were stained black with grease and grime from her crawl through the vent. In front of me, the door was shut, though I could still hear a lot of angry buzzing on the other side, and just above it to the left was an open vent with the grate lying on the floor. Grunting, I slowly managed to stand, and looked around to see a lot of tables and desks with dividers between them. Old computers covered in dust and rotting paper mulch that might once have been books decorated most of the shelves, and the chairs here were either overturned or set away from their desks. I guess the ponies who worked here had left in a hurry a long time ago.

There were more doors at the back of the room, though they weren’t hydraulics at all; they were just plain metal doors. Ace was already snooping around one of them, and after poking her head through, she waved us over. “They just connect the offices together. Won’t have to go out in the swarms again.”

“Good,” I said, cracking my neck. “I don’t think I’ve got another shield like that in me.”

“I didn’t know you even had a shield like that in you to begin with,” Gauge said, lightly hitting my shoulder. “You saved us all from getting shot up out there.”

I just shrugged. “I certainly wasn’t going to try shooting all of them. There were too many.” Then, swallowing, I started off after Ace. “But we should probably find what we’re looking for fast. We’ve got Yeoman trying to get in and drones looking to gun us to pieces. I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to.”

I half expected to hear another explosion shake the facility as soon as I said that; it’d certainly fit with how things seemed to be going for now. But all was quiet and still, save for the buzzing of the drones on the other side. I was surprised that they didn’t go through the open vent between the hallway and this room, but maybe their programming didn’t allow for it. Still, I wasn’t going to take any chances. “Gauge, can you and Nova get that vent closed up? I don’t want to risk the security system suddenly getting smart and sending those buzzy fuckers in after us.”

“On it.” The two of them made for the open vent and picked up the grate lying on the ground, the corners still glowing faintly from SCaR’s little welding probe thing. Meanwhile, I followed Ace through the doors, and we carefully moved into the next room.

“Now if I were a code to an Equestrian installation’s security center…” I muttered, snooping around the desks in the room. “Where would I be?”

Ace just looked at me funny and shook her head. “It’d probably be written down somewhere important,” she said, poking through the cubicles in the room. Once again I noticed that everything was just… empty. A far cry from the foundry where there were bodies and remains everywhere. What had happened to the ponies that worked here? Did they get out? I was half expecting wailers to come charging out of the woodwork, but there wasn’t so much as a bloodstain anywhere.

“Here,” Ace said, taking my attention away from some broken etch glass on one of the desks. She stood in front of what must’ve been a supervisor’s office, since it was sort of set into the wall and separated from the general office space by big glass windows. Even the glass was still intact, and when she tried the handle, it refused to budge.

I shrugged and raised my rifle. “Guess we go around,” I said, smashing the butt of the gun through the glass. Ace winced as it shattered onto the floor, and we both jumped as an alarm blasted.

“Intruder alert! Unauthorized entrance at Dr. Electric Surge’s office! Security personnel, respond immediately!” Ace and I immediately whipped our rifles to the corners of the room as turrets burst out of the ceiling tiles and began firing. There were four turrets, too many for us to take standing, so Ace tackled me backwards into the office where we at least had some cover.

Bullets pinged off of the metal half-wall as we huddled up against it. “You just had to,” Ace spat at me. She tried peeking over the wall to get a shot at the turrets, but several bullets ripped through the fringe of her mane, shaving black hair off of her head. Cursing, she pointed at me. “You’re a unicorn! Blind fire or something!”

I tried to do just that, picking up my rifle and shooting into the corners of the room. I heard one turret pop and crack after several shots, but I couldn’t see where the others were. I ejected my mag without any more luck and slotted a new one in.

Then I heard more gunfire coming back from the way we came. My blood turned to ice; did turrets pop up in that room, too? Nova and Gauge were practically defenseless! I tensed my legs, ready to whip up a meagre shield and run over to check on them, but then I noticed that there were only two turrets shooting at me. The other gun kept firing, and I saw SCaR putter past my line of sight toward the turrets that were practically above and alongside us, keeping us pinned down. His probe flashed several times, and one by one, the turrets stopped firing.

Ace and I poked our heads out of cover and SCaR flew down to us. The drone chirped and warbled before retracting its probe, and I saw that the gun attachments Gauge had put on it were stained with soot. Gauge came trotting in a moment later, and he let out a sigh of relief when he saw we were both okay. “I heard the turrets, and when they kept shooting I worried.” He patted SCaR on the top of its frame, and the drone whistled at him. “SCaR shot at one of the turrets from the doorway, but they didn’t react to him at all, so I had him go in and take apart the other two without wasting bullets. He can’t punch through them easily.”

“Huh. That’s useful,” I said, wincing as I plucked some glass shards out of my coat. Then I yelped as Ace slapped me across the back of the head.

“Dumb bitch,” she growled, brushing herself off. “Don’t go breaking shit in places like this. You ain’t been with the Ruin Runners like me, so just let me lead the way, alright? These places are full of nasty surprises, and I don’t need you setting them off all willy nilly.”

“Well, we’re alive,” I said with a shrug. I turned back to Gauge and SCaR, and even Nova, who had her head poking through the doorway. “Is that grate covered up?”

“Kind of,” Nova said with a shrug. “The drones can’t get in, though they’re still buzzing like mad out there.”

Shrugging, I stepped over the shattered glass into this ‘Dr. Electric Surge’s’ office. “That’ll have to do. Keep an eye on it while we poke around here.” I walked over to the computer on the desk, and to my surprise, its screen lit up when I sat in front of it. After a second, I chuckled. “Actually, think you could take a look at this? It’s computer shit, and I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Coming!” Nova sang from the other room, and a moment later, she gracefully hopped the divide into the office, carefully avoiding the shattered glass jutting out of the frame. I slid out of the seat, letting her take it, while Ace and Gauge wandered around the desk.

“Maybe I should help,” Ace insisted, peering over Nova’s shoulder at the holographic screen. “I been around these kinds of computers before, I know—”

“Wow! This thing still works perfectly!” Nova exclaimed, pushing things around on the screen with her hoof. “All of their mail is still on here, too!” A few quick taps of her hooves and a flick of her feathers made the screen change into who knew what. “There’s even design files, a few communiques, spreadsheets and a ton of raw data…”

Ace kind of threw her wings up in surrender. “Okay, yeah, you seem like you got it. I’ll just… go salvage some of the turrets.” She fluttered through the shattered window and trotted off to the corner, momentarily disappearing from sight.

“Yeah, Ace is right, I think I’ll just let you do that,” I said, stepping away from the desk. I mean, I was barely literate, much less computer literate; me trying to navigate a computer would be a disaster. At least Nova knew what she was doing. In the meanwhile, I started snooping around the doctor’s possessions.

The first thing I grabbed was a photo, remarkably well preserved in some kind of crystal frame. In it, an older pair of unicorns stood by a younger mare’s shoulders, each with a foreleg resting across her back. The older stallion was a faded blue with a random white shock at the front of this mane, and the mare who I assumed was his wife was white with an electric yellow mane, though that mane was quickly adopting the color of her coat. The younger mare between them, who looked maybe a few winters older than me, was a brilliant electric blue that reminded me of my mother, and her mane was split into zigzagging blue and white patterns layered one atop the other, with the hair at her scalp a deep blue, and the hair at its ends pure white. Sapphire blue eyes completed the beaming mare’s face, and she held a diploma against her chest. I assumed she was Dr. Surge, though how old she’d been when she got this office, I couldn’t tell.

But I was more interested in the background, anyway. Tall buildings of steel rose behind the family, almost entirely at odds with the vibrant grasses and stone building they stood near. Other ponies walked down a sidewalk on the right, heads down and moving with meaning, and in the very back of the picture I saw the barrel and front end of an Equestrian tank sitting on the street corner. Overhead, four ringbirds flew in formation away from the photographer, and above them, the ghostly shape of some enormous ship loomed. I didn’t know what it was, only that it was huge. I could only assume that it was a warship of some kind.

“Find anything, Nov?” I asked, setting the picture back down. I doubted Surge’s personal life was going to help us out all that much.

“Not yet,” she said, her eyes skimming through messages as she flicked them to the corner of the screen. “But there is a whole bunch of interesting stuff.”

Me and Gauge glanced at each other. “Such as?”

“Well, first off, it looks like I was right,” Nova said. “They were trying to make a fuelless reactor that gets its energy from ambient mana. It looks like they had some success on smaller prototypes, and this facility was primarily built to house the full-scale version.” She frowned and tossed aside another message. “Dr. Surge was the head researcher for the project, but there’s no mention on whether it worked or not.”

“I wonder if the reactor is still intact,” Gauge said. It wasn’t difficult to recognize the excitement in his eyes—he was a born mechanic, after all. “This place could be a huge boon to Auris if it works. Just the ability to provide power to the planet would be amazing for civilization.”

“What little of it isn’t already a twisted, slaving mockery,” I bitterly remarked.

Nova shrugged. “They were going to turn it on at the beginning of January, but there’s nothing past that point. I guess the Silence finally hit them on the ninth.”

I blinked. “The ninth? That’s the exact same date that I found on a message between somepony and a secretary back at the foundry.”

“I guess we know the day that the world ended,” Gauge said. “For all the good that really does us.”

Nova nodded her agreement. “It’s a neat anecdote, but not one that’ll help us.” Her remaining wingtip pulled a message to the front. “But—here! This is what we’re looking for!” She enlarged the message, and I saw Ace stick her head around the corner. “Another one of the researchers asked her for the codes to the security station. They seemed like they were worried about what was happening back on Equus, and they didn’t trust the soldiers here. I… I think they were trying to turn the security systems on the garrison!”

Again, I could only blink at her. “They were—what?”

Ace chuckled at us—or at least, at me. “Welcome to the end of the fucking world, Ember. It ain’t pretty, and it sure as shit ain’t fair.” She stepped back into the office and walked up to us. “I seen my fair share of betrayal and backstabbing, and I stumbled across a lot of logs of the last days of Equestria.” Shaking her head, she pointed to the computer. “Everything went to shit around the beginning of January of that year, whenever it was. Ponies turning on each other, all sorts of nastiness. And this here? This is just a bunch of eggheads trying to pull the rug out from under the ponies with guns. Not a bad idea, given what was happening all across Auris at the time, but we ain’t got time to go into that.”

Nova nodded. “In any case, the number we’re looking for is ‘024114’. That’ll get us into the security wing.”

“But what about those drones?” Gauge asked. “Unless Em’s got another shield in her, and we find some way to open the door back out, they’ll just chew us to pieces.”

“Funny you should mention that.” Nova’s hooves and wingtip poked a few things on the screen, and I heard the clattering of a lot of metal things back the way we came. “This Surge pony had control over security in this wing of the installation, apparently. Given that she was the one in charge, that’s not all that surprising.” She thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Or maybe she set it up shortly before the Synarchy said bye-bye. They were planning on killing the garrison, going into lockdown.” Shuddering, she added, “Why were ponies from the past so lovely?”

“Not like the ponies of today are any better,” I muttered. Still, I checked my rifle and hopped out of the office. “But we should get going. They’ve been awfully fucking quiet at that door…”

“Agreed,” Ace said, following me out. She stopped and picked up a chain gun she’d stripped from one of the turrets and momentarily leaned it against the wall. “Figure this’ll be useful once they manage to get through. Can’t really shoot it without bracing it on some shit, but it’s better than nothing.”

I just looked at all the guns we had between all of us. “I think we’ve got a lot more than ‘nothing.’”

She shrugged. “Ain’t gonna hurt us none. Now c’mon, let’s go.”

We hurriedly retraced our steps, and when I pressed my good ear against the door out, I didn’t hear any more buzzing. I bit my lip and prepared a shield in case I’d need it, and at my nod, Ace opened the door. I flinched and nearly threw up a shield prematurely, but there wasn’t anything hovering on the other side. In fact, all the drones were lying lifeless on the floor, and the little ports they’d come from in the walls were all closed.

“Oh, thank the stars,” I muttered, stepping into the hallway. “I was afraid I was gonna get turned into fucking cheese. Good work, Nova.” The locked door at the end even opened at the touch of my magic; at least we weren’t trapped in this wing.

Nova beamed at my comment and trotted into the hallway after me. “See? I don’t need to know how to use a gun to be useful.” Then she must’ve glimpsed her naked side out of the corner of her eye, and she wilted like a flower in the scorching Auris sun. “Or have both my wings…”

Ace trotted up alongside her and wrapped her wing across Nova’s barrel. “You don’t need no stinking wings to be a pegasus. We got good eyes, good ears, we’re fast and nimble—and in your case, pretty darn small to squeeze into places them fatties can’t fit into.”

I rolled my eyes but let it slide—Ace was trying to help Nova, and I wasn’t going to make some comment about how big my ass was. Not now, at least.

Still… I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder and down at my tail. I certainly was a lot leaner than when I left Blackwash.

Gauge brushed against my shoulder as he made for the door. “Don’t worry, there’s still a lot down there left to love,” he whispered in my half-ear, then darted out of the way before I could hit him. He stuck his tongue out at me while I fumed, then slipped out the door back into the main hall. Ace and Nova went by as well, leaving me standing in the doorway while they went to the keypad at the security wing door. After a few seconds, it hissed as it slid open, and Gauge turned around to taunt me from the other side of the hall. “You coming, Em?”

I didn’t really say anything as I stomped over to him. He probably thought I was going to shove my rifle right up his ass, because he scampered away. That was probably a smart move for him, though to be honest, I didn’t know if I should’ve been pissed with him or not. I mean… nopony wanted to date a skeleton, right?

Ugh, okay, that’s enough about me and my body image. And even if those were the thoughts that crossed my mind at the time, I didn’t dwell on them. After all, though it’d been healing over the past few weeks, I was still raw over Zip’s death, and on top of that, it wasn’t like I’d seen anypony that caught my eye lately. And on top of that, the only pony in our little troop that wasn’t already taken was Ace, and I still didn’t know how I felt about her. Of course, there was always SCaR, but… well, that sort of speaks for itself.

I know what you’re thinking from that one time way back in the valley, and I’d like to reiterate that was one time. No. It never happened again.

I followed the three of them into the security wing, then realized that I should probably be in front with Ace. After slipping past Nova and Gauge, I got a good look around. There were several doors inset on the one wall, all of them open wide, their mechanisms broken. Ace and I peered into them first, and Nova and Gauge would each take a look as we passed. There was an armory (unfortunately stripped bare), a barracks of sorts (almost completely untouched; the beds were still made!), showers, and other stuff you’d find in living quarters. But this wing wasn’t as clean as the others; at the end of the hall, two turrets hung from the roof, and both had been severely damaged by gunfire.

“I guess they tried it, then,” I said, observing the bullet fragments and marks in the hallway, and even more around the wall near the turrets. “Surge and her group. They must’ve tried to take down the garrison.”

“Must’ve,” Gauge said, looking at the floor. “There’s ancient bloodstains on the grating, though it’s almost impossible to see. Either the ponies those turrets shot survived, or something took away the bodies afterwards.”

“There certainly ain’t no scientists around here,” Ace grumbled, stopping in front of a big door at the end of the hall. “Maybe it backfired on them.” She tried to open the door, but something had destroyed the switch next to it. I couldn’t figure out what made that damage, but whatever it was, it’d turned the whole thing into slag. “Fuck, we ain’t gonna get through this shit from the front.”

“I’m gonna assume that shooting it a bunch isn’t going to help,” I said, looking the thing over alongside her.

Ace rolled her eyes. “I ain’t even gonna bother commenting on that.”

The four of us stared at the door and the walls around it, searching for answers. We found them in a metal panel slightly protruding from the wall. The edge farthest from the door blended in perfectly with the surrounding wall, but the edge closest jutted out by about an inch and a half. Grating covered the gap, and when I held my hoof up to it, I could feel air limply moving along. I looked at Nova and shrugged. “Feel like climbing through more vents?”

Nova frowned. “If I have to,” she said, shaking out her wing. I just nodded to Gauge, and Gauge in turn whistled to SCaR and pointed to the bolts holding the panel in place. Between SCaR’s torch and my horn, we got the panel off of the wall in no time at all. Soon, a dark and dusty square tube yawned at us, barely big enough for Nova to squeeze through.

She placed her forehooves on the edge of the vent, but before she could hop in, Ace touched her shoulder. “If you can get the door open from that side, that’d be mighty fine. If not, see if you can shut down security. We need them turrets and that force field turned off if we’re gonna get to the labs.”

“Okay, I’ll see what I can do.” She bit her lip, then looked at Gauge. The two quickly kissed, and then Gauge pointed to the vent. “SCaR, get in there and pop open the bolts. Help Nova out.” The drone whistled and disappeared into the vent, and I saw a flash of light reflected in the aluminum as it set its torch to work. A second later, Nova hopped in after it, and began wriggling her way through the vent. She barely had any room to move her legs; there was no way any of us could squeeze through. I was glad to have her.

It was a long time before we heard anything; the vent must’ve been longer than I thought. But finally, we heard the grate fall on the other side, and a second later, Nova’s hooves clopped on the grated floor. “Okay, I’m through!” she shouted back through the vents. “Stars, I think these vents run through the whole installation! There were a ton of other passages and stuff!”

“Hopefully we won’t have to have you go crawling all the way to the code,” I said.

Ace wasn’t feeling quite as cheery. “The computer in there work?” she shouted back, straight to business. I couldn’t blame her; we were wasting a lot of time as it was.

All was quiet for a few moments; I guess Nova was taking a look around. “What do you see?” I shouted back to her when she didn’t say anything fast enough for my attention span.

“A lot of big screens,” she said. “No bodies, though. Where is everypony?”

“A mystery for another time,” I said. “Can you find the controls?”

More silence, and then, “Yeah! Yeah, I think these are them!” Me, Ace, and Gauge just waited at the vent to see if there was anything more for her to say, and we all jumped when the lights suddenly shut off. Emergency lighting flickered on a second later, bathing us all in a red glow.

“What did you do?” I shouted into the vent.

“I shut off power to this wing,” Nova said. “It should shut off security, too. Are the turrets outside still ready to blast us to pieces?”

Ace flew back down the length of the hall and carefully poked her head around the corner. I saw her wings relax, and she turned around and waved to us. “Force field’s gone, and the turrets are dead.”

“They’re good, Nov!” I shouted into the vent, just in case she couldn’t hear Ace from in there.

“Awesome! Okay, I’m coming back!”

Gauge breathed a sigh of relief; I guess just being separated from his marefriend was worrying him, but I didn’t blame him. This place was a fucking deathtrap and a half waiting to happen. In the meanwhile, I heard a few deliberate gunshots from the main hallway. “What’re you doing out there?” I shouted to Ace, frowning at the doorway she’d disappeared through.

“Disabling security. Just in case,” she said. “Don’t trust these damn things to stay dead. I ain’t gonna get shot in the ass because this place got a backup backup generator.”

“Fair enough,” I said, and my ears perked as I heard Nova clambering through the vents. But Ace must’ve been prophetic or something, because a moment later, the lights came back on—and with them, a mare’s voice. Only, this voice didn’t sound like the synthetic alarm that we’d heard earlier.

“Who are you?!”

I blinked, Gauge flinched, and even Nova momentarily stopped crawling through the vent. Only SCaR acted like nothing had happened, buzzing out of the vent and hovering around Gauge’s head like usual. Swallowing, I raised my voice, unsure if the mare—whoever or whatever she was—could actually hear me. “Wait, are there ponies here? Where are you? Or am I just talking to a wall?”

Seconds ticked by, but no response. I felt a tingly chill crawl down my spine. Something was definitely not right about this place.

Then I heard an alarm blare, and the synthetic voice returned. “Alert! Contaminant detected in Security Wing Ventilation System! Initiating Purge!”

My blood ran cold. “Nova!” I screamed, sticking my head into the vent. I could see her wriggling her way through, so far down. “Get out of there!”

Gauge practically shoved me aside. “Nov!” he screamed in turn. “Nov, come on! Come on!”

“I’m trying!” Nova said, and I could see the panic in her eyes. But despite how much she thrashed and clambered, she hardly sped up her progress.

Then I felt it. The air began roaring through the vents, almost like a vacuum. And at the far end, I saw Nova jolt and slide backwards several inches as the wind tugged on her mane.

“Ember!” she screamed in desperation, and I managed to grab her with my telekinesis. I could feel the strain on my magic as the vacuum tried to suck her away. Putting my hooves on the frame of the vent, I tried to leverage my body into pulling her back, but that only goes so far with an intangible grip.

She kept sliding. Back, back, back into the darkness, and then her hindquarters violently twisted to the right. She cried out in pain, the tears on her cheeks sucked down the vent past her tail. Her hooves fought for purchase on the corner of the vent as it dragged her around it, and she looked at me with pleading, desperate eyes. “Ember, please, I don’t want to die!” she screamed at me—

My horn flared, already exhausted from the shield today that’d barely saved our lives. My concentration broke. The spell disappeared.

Nova disappeared around the corner before I could focus again. I heard her screaming, screaming, screaming… and then nothing.

The vacuum stopped. All was still, silent—dead.

Dead save for the synthetic voice on the speakers.

“Purge successful. Contaminants removed. Returning to normal operations.”