The humming and clanking of the elevator drowns out Fluttershy's wince as she tenderly unzips her medical suit and peels it away from her bleeding shoulder. Strings of blood stretch and snap on the blood soaked, formerly white suit, and a dark red gash runs right down the middle with lighter red blood oozing out with every beat of her heart. Fluttershy shakily removes a can of medical of medical and awkwardly sprays it against the wound, making a sloppy mess of white that quickly turns to pink from mixing with the blood and turns into a semi-solid state. The searing pain weakens her grip, causing her to drop the can, and she bangs her head against the elevator wall, tears flowing past her shut eyes. There she remains, silent and trembling with only the sounds of the elevator to keep her company. A moment later she reaches into her saddle and pulls out her quick stitch kit.

To the untrained eye it looks like a staple gun, but for someone with Fluttershy's training she knows that the small silver block device is pain in a shiny package. And she also knows that it is going to absolutely suck doing it on herself with one hoof, but it must be done.

Fluttershy positions the quick stitch kit's pincer against the tip of her wound, rests her chin against it to stabilize it, and takes a moment to collect some courage before using her good hoof to pull the trigger.

SNAP!

The pincer snaps in and out of her skin, leaving a thin wire to tightly hold the edges of her wound together, and Fluttershy yelps and drops the device. She breathes heavily from her nose and rests her head against the wall, eyes closed and face soaked in tears and sweat.

A few seconds later, she takes a deep breath and repositions the device.

SNAP!

She almost drops it again. Her hoof is almost trembling too much to hold anything again and she can barely see from the tears in her eyes.

SNAP!

Fluttershy grinds her teeth, takes another deep breath and-

SNAP!

She leans over, chest heaving and sweat dripping off her muzzle and she is using all of her strength to keep the device against her shoulder.

She takes another deep breath, presses her back against the wall, takes a few more deep breaths, and then-

SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!

Fluttershy cries painfully, drops the device and falls sideways to the floor with her good hoof pressed against her shoulder. She can feel the bumps of her flesh and the tiny metal strings holding them together. Hot air is expelled though her nose and her pink mane covers part of her face as she stares at the blood splattered door and the yellow lights that run up it. Thankfully the pieces of the monster have stopped twitching, but when the elevator jerks to a stop it leaves Fluttershy sick, and the pleasant ding that comes with the doors sliding open sounds horribly misplaced when it leads to a dim room.

She really does not want to leave the elevator, but when she sees a sign reading “Transit” above the door at the far end being illuminated by a failing light she reluctantly stands, zips up her suit and limps out.

The room's walls are covered by pipes, and a small set of stairs leads to a raised level with a guard rail and a work bench that is surprisingly brightly lit. But the door at the end of the room has a red circle in its center, and next to it is an exposed glowing gem and a circuit board.

Fluttershy swallows and winces as she goes up the stairs, stopping cold when she sees an earth pony in a gray maintenance jumpsuit laying in a pool of blood, his hoof clutching a slash on his gut. His eyes are closed and near his body is a rectangular device with a mouth trigger and a thin front with a gentle blue glow. There is also a small circular device with a hoof strap just a bit farther from the rectangular one.

Fluttershy gulps and approaches the body, and when she checks his pulse she slowly pulls her hoof away and slumps against the railing. She stares at the body for a little while longer, noticing the numerous small claw marks that have slashed his skin and torn his uniform, as well as a quick bandage over a wound on his hoof. She briefly wonders if he knew Zephyr, but pushes that thought back as quickly as it came. Maintenance ponies are always dirty, and Zephyr didn't like getting dirty, unlike Fluttershy, who didn't mind getting dirty if it meant helping others or some animals. Like the animals at the sanctuary she used to volunteer for back home before joining the Medical Corp. Now she is longing to be home with her parents that hadn't spoken a word to her since she left for the Corp, with Zephyr who drifted away from her when she refused to let him stay at her place, away from whatever nightmare took over this ship.

She needs to get him off the ship.

They need to start over.

They need to be a family again.

With those thoughts, Fluttershy looks over her shoulder and sees a tarp covering a pile of some kind, so she goes towards it and carefully pulls it off, revealing a stack of small crates with “Batteries” stamped on them. She then carries the tarp to the body and covers him, and then she grabs the circular device and straps it to her hoof. In the device's center is a speaker, and beneath it is a square, a triangle, two set of double triangles facing opposite directions. Fluttershy takes one last look around before she pushes the small triangle, and instantly a wheezing voice of a stallion flows from the speaker.

“Diamond Dust managed to kill some of those things,” says the voice weakly in the recording. “We have to cut them to pieces... I got a few of them... But one got me good and I don't have any more medical supplies... To whoever finds this... Shoot for the limbs... Bleed them out... It is the only way...”

The audio abruptly ends, and Fluttershy looks at the rectangular device, now realizing that it is a gem powered energy cutter that maintenance use to cut materials, mainly metal. It is a great tool, but also extremely dangerous. She has fixed plenty of injuries from such devices to know that they can easily cut through flesh and bone, so she picks it up and goes to the workbench, finds more gem batteries and puts them in her medical bag, plus a toolbox, which she also hooks to her saddle. She has to make some quick rearranging of her medical bags to make room for the tool box, and with the added weight it briefly brings her knees to buckle, but everything is secure and that is what is important. With all that done, she grabs her weapon and slowly creeps her way to the door, using every bit of willpower she has to go back in the elevator and look for Zephyr by herself.

BANGBANGBANG!

The banging startles Fluttershy, and when the banging returns she aims her weapon at the locked door, trembling and whimpering.

“Help! Somepony help!” cries a mare on the other side.

Without thinking, Fluttershy rushes towards the door and tries to open it, but the Unauthorized message flashes over the red circle.

“Somepony, please help!”

Fluttershy looks at the exposed circuits, takes a deep breath, aims, and fires. The weapon jerks in her mouth hard and a burst of red slices through the circuits and gem, creating a display of red, green and yellow sparks, and the door's lock flashes blue before sliding open to reveal an earth pony mare covered in grime, blood and tears and wearing a tattered jumpsuit. She rushes forward, but is only halfway in the doorway when a bony scythe digs into her side and throws her against the pipes on the hallway wall, denting them and splashing them with blood.

“NO!” cries Fluttershy, dropping her weapon.

The mare collapses, twitching and gasping for air, and another creature like the one from earlier stabs her in the chest, silencing her for good. Fluttershy's eyes widen and the beast does a double take at her before it rushes inside, screaming and flailing its scythe appendages.

Fluttershy dodges the swings, trying to ignore the throbbing in her stitched wound, and attempts to grab her weapon. The creature turns sharply and takes a swing at her before she can get it, though, and she screams and backpedals, falling over a create resulting in the back of her head slamming against the metal floor. Her ears ring, her eyes roll, and she barely sees the creature coming at her in time to grab a small crate and hold it in front of her like a shield.

The scythe is brought down hard and fast, and Fluttershy's hoofs buckle under the impact with a flash of hot pain going through her injured shoulder. The crate shatters, showering her with gem batteries that beat against her face, and with adrenaline flooding through her veins she manages to scramble away from the creature and dive for her weapon. She successfully grabs it with her hoofs, turns on her back and fires right as it leaps charges her.

The red beam slices off one of the scythe limbs, causing the creature to reel back and shriek in pain as blood sprays all over the wall, floor and itself. And Fluttershy fires another shot, this one takes off the other scythe, and with gritted teeth and fire hot tears in her eyes she unloads everything she has into the creature.

Red beam after red beam rips through its flesh, flinging chunks of meat and streams of blood everywhere, with sparks flying off the walls from where the beams hit. The creature stumbles back with each shot, blood gushing from its wounds, and by the time it collapses it is a heap of mangled flesh with its limbs, face and chest destroyed, and Fluttershy's heart is racing and her lungs and eyes are burning. She keeps pulling the trigger despite the empty clicks coming from it, and when it registers that the beast is dead and her weapon is empty, Fluttershy flops flat on her back and covers her face, shaking and whimpering.

Nearly a minute later she drops her hoofs and looks at the corpse of the mare in the hallway, her lifeless wide eyes looking back at Fluttershy. It is sickening to see such a sight, and she has seen plenty of corpses from her training to recovering bodies after an accident or a fight, but she has never gotten used to it. And she has never seen anybody die in front of her either until today. However, the more she stares at the mare, seeing how she died alone and terrified, the more she thinks about Zephyr. He is alone. He is terrified. But she will not let him die alone. He is somewhere on this ship and Fluttershy will not rest until she finds him and brings him home.

With this desire, Fluttershy goes towards the pile of batteries, slips a fresh one into her weapon and stuffs the rest into every bit of space she can in her saddle bags and steps into the hallway. When she is by the corpse she takes one last look before walking away as fast as her sore body will allow, fighting back the tears.

As she walks down the hallway, the pipes hiss and shake, and the lights flicker on and off, making the shadows dance against the walls. She passes through another door that is thankfully unlocked and after doing a quick sweep of the area she cautiously enters. Once she enters the lights flash on with a hum and soothing music plays over the speakers. The sudden activity halts Futtershy, but after another scan she continues forward.

The room is long with wide windows, and its interior has tipped over luggage carts, a smashed vending cart with expired ingredients everywhere and on the wall is a screen displaying a message: Please Remain Calm.

Fluttershy glances at the message, looks down the length of the room to see another door waiting to be opened, and finally she looks out one of the windows to see Rainbow Dash's group on a platform across a chasm with a rail network. The group is looking at her, too, so she looks left to right, and then up, and once she is confident that she is alone she activates her communicator, bringing Rainbow Dash's face to project in front of her.

“Fluttershy, you okay?” asks Rainbow Dash.

“Somepony just died in front of me...” says Fluttershy.

“That's happened a lot today, but we'll get through this.”

“I hope so. I also got a toolbox.”

“Good.” Rainbow Dash turns the camera to Applejack. “Your turn.”

Applejack leans forward. “I'm sorry this is happening to ya, Fluttershy, but its the only way to help all of us get off this thing.”

Fluttershy nods in understanding, even though she really wants to break off and find Zephyr first since his room is in the general area they are in. That alone should have some clues to where he is hiding.

“Now, from what me and Rarity could figure the transit has a fried circuit board,” says Applejack. “The circuit can be replaced by a spare in the Transit Maintenance Department.”

“Where is the Maintenance Department?” asks Fluttershy.

“Rarity said that it should be a couple of floors above ya and it'll be overlooking the trolleys.”

“Okay.”

“Call us back when you get there and stay safe.”

Fluttershy nods and the feed cuts out. After that, she takes a deep breath, goes to the door at the end of the room and after putting the cutter in her mouth she opens it. As soon as the door opens Fluttershy is greeted by an empty hallway with emergency lights on and a creature laying in the hallway in a pool of blood, its limbs severed and its head nowhere to be seen.

Fluttershy stares at it, her body stiff, and after a slow gulp she presses her body against the wall and slides past the destroyed corpse. She proceeds to slowly go down the ramp of the hallway. Her legs shake, the fur on her neck and spine rises with the tingles, and her wings flex all on their own. After reaching the bottom of the ramp she travels for another minute in silence, coming to an unlocked door that opens to a long spacious area.

Bands of light illuminate small areas of the wall, and the floor is littered with garbage, blood, broken bones and chunks of flesh. Such a sight makes Fluttershy gag and she briefly takes a steps back to cover her nose. She forces herself to go forward a moment later, and upon stepping into the large area she immediately looks up and sees darkness hiding the ceiling. She looks down one way and sees a destroyed barricade, further down are more makeshift barricades made of tables, crates, and desks, and off in the distance a pair of bright lights mark a ramp leading up to what Fluttershy hopes is the exit.

Fluttershy tensely walks down the bloody corridor, passing a limb here, a bone there, plus a few corpses of whatever those creatures are as well as various weapons, both military and makeshift. But there are no bodies of the crew or colonists, and the closer she goes towards the light, the louder a peculiar noise becomes. It is metallic in nature, but Fluttershy has never heard a noise like that before, which slows her steps to near stillness when she is by the light.

It is not just the noise that almost petrifies her, though. There is also a lot of blood, spent bullet casings and unaccompanied weapons as well as crates. With her next to the noise she sees that it is coming from a crimson splattered door at the top of the ramp; a door that keeps opening and shutting in rapid secession. Next to the ramp is a terminal with its keyboard dangling off, exposing its gem and circuits, and next to it is a metallic sleeve emitting a light blue glow. Lastly, on the ramp is a security pony is laying in a sea of red, his hind legs missing and his entrails dangling out the back.

Fluttershy backpedals and turns her head, dry heaving and using a crate for support; this leaves her throat burning from the stomach acid, and she has to take a deep breath to ease the pain. A few seconds later, she takes a deep breath and looks at the door.

The door snaps open and shut, open and shut, open and shut, open and shut, open and shut, and Fluttershy's eyes snap back and forth in an attempt to follow it and see if she can make it. From what she can see of the door and from the half body laying next to her she cannot. The door had become an automatic guillotine.

She looks around the general area to see if there is anything she can fly to, like an open door or a vent, but all there is is solid metal and flickering lights. She looks down, growling in a mix of fear and aggravation and tensely raises her hoof... Just so she can timidly tap the floor and pace in circles.

“It's okay, Fluttershy, you can figure this out. You can find a way through the evil door,” says Fluttershy.

She stops pacing, looks at one of the metal crates, then at the door, then at the crate again and forces herself to smile. It takes her a moment and a lot of muscles she didn't know she had, but she manages to push the crate up the ramp, and after taking a moment to catch her breath and recollect her strength, she gives it one final push into the doorway.

The door obliterates the crate, forcing Fluttershy to shield her face from the flying metal shards and contents, and when she lowers her hoof she glares at the door, which is still snapping ridiculously fast.

“Are. You. Kidding me!?” She stomps over to the broken terminal and tries pushing some buttons, but the dangling keyboard falls off and shatters, scattering the little letters all over the floor. “No! Daaaahhh-rn it!”

She stomps the flood and screams angrily, her voice carrying in the empty chamber, and after the scream she looks at the door again, contemplating on whether or not she should shoot the cutter at it. That is when she notices out of the corner of her eye that the corpse is wearing a strap with a light blue orb similar to the one Rainbow Dash has.

She stares at it.

And keeps staring.

And then she looks at the sleeve on the wall emitting the light blue glow.

Fluttershy goes towards the corpse and carefully unstraps the orb, and straps it above her audio device. There is a beep and the orb briefly glows brighter before a red bar appears below it and , and Fluttershy quickly sticks her hoof in the sleeve and waits. A couple of seconds pass and her hoof is washed over in a rush of cold mist that spills outside and floats into the air, and when she pulls it out she finds the bar is full and blue and the orb is bright. After that she aims her hoof at the door, thinks about firing the device, and a blue whispy ball flies out of the orb and hits the door, bringing it to a crawl.

“Yes!”

She leaps through the opening of the door and looks over her shoulder, watching in fascination as the door crawls through the motions. Though, once the blue fades it resumes its fast speed, and Fluttershy takes a deep breath and looks down both ends of the hallway. She decides to go right, first, but comes across a locked door with a dead pony in a gray maintenance jumpsuit slumped against it. His hoof has left a bloody streak just below the door's lock, and after a quick inspection she finds that on his hoof is a silver band with a gold key marking inside a white circle. She decides to put it on her other hoof and is about to leave for the other side, but stops herself.

She looks at the key symbol, and then at the locked door, and one quick mental debate later she presses her hoof against the lock. It flashes green and the door slides open. With the door opening, lights flicker on and Fluttershy is immediately met with confusion.

The room is bare, except for a single camera with a blinking red light aimed at a shrine surrounding a double helix made of dark metal. The shrine has spent candles, photos, and in front of it is a large vase.

Fluttershy cautiously walks further into the room and tips the vase to see folded paper stuffed inside. She also notices that the photos around the odd sculpture are of various ponies, griffins, goats, yaks and even a few changelings. There is also a podium near the shrine that has the same double helix stamped on it, and next to it is a locked box. She taps the box and scrunches her brow when she hears coins rattling inside.

“You in the room! You are not Drill Bit!” says a stallion over a speaker.

The sudden voice makes Fluttershy yelp and jump, and she looks for the source of the noise, quickly settling to looking at the camera.

“Yes, you. You are not Drill Bit. Who are you?” says the stallion.

“I-I'm Fluttershy... I'm looking for my brother,” says Fluttershy.

“Who is your brother?”

“Z-Zephyr... Zephyr Breeze.”

“Oh, I know him! He groomed me quite a bit. Nice guy. Kind of a dope.”

Fluttershy frowns. “You know him? Then you must know where he is.”

“Well I don't. I have been looking for survivors for a while, which is hard to do since the cameras are showing more Necromorphs than not. And I'm going to take a wild guess and say Drill Bit is no longer a survivor since you are wearing his master key band.”

Fluttershy looks at the new band on her hoof, ears drooping and feeling wet lump in her throat. Drill Bit had been so close to the sanctuary of this room when he died, and now she took his prized possession without even paying him respects.

“So, those things out there...” Fluttershy slowly looks at the camera. “They are Necromorphs?”

“Yes, I didn't pick the name, though. Lexicon did, but he got his head replaced, making you and your group of bad drivers the only survivors as far as I can tell.”

“You can see all of us? That means you have control of the cameras. You must be on the bridge! Can you-”

“Stop. I'm not on the bridge. I'm in the Section 0 Laboratory. I just had to do some creative rearranging and hacking to get the camera feeds to me, which was not easy, mind you.”

Fluttershy sulks. “Oh.”

“But you look like you can take care of yourself. If you can, oh, I don't know, help me get off this ship alive then I can pull some strings with some powerful contacts I have on Sparkle Station and give you a generous reward.”

“I'm not leaving this ship without my brother!”

“Fair enough. Do you have any clues of his whereabouts?”

“All I know is that he was staying in Section C, Room 60.”

“Ah, Section C. The pegasus section. Of course... I'll tell you what, I'll do what I can to find your brother in return for you helping me off this ship. I'm locked in the lab, but my eyes will be valuable.”

Fluttershy gasps and clamps her hoofs together as she flies up to the camera, smiling brightly.

“Really?” says Fluttershy. “You'll do that?”

“Of course! Us survivors got to stick together, after all. Now, go. I'm sure your friends stranded on the tracks are getting worried.”

The speaker shuts off, and Fluttershy gallops to the door, bu before she opens the door she skids to a halt and trots back to the camera.

“Um, excuse me, Mr. Camera pony, I didn't get your name,” says Fluttershy.

“You may call me Dr. Rock,” says the stallion. “And by the way, there's a Necromorph outside. Good luck.”

The speaker shuts off, and Fluttershy looks at the door, paling and taking a step back when she hears a shrieking and banging on the other side of the door.

“Oh dear.”