Fluttershy's blood runs cold at the sight of the pony at the end of the hallway, standing underneath an unsteady light. He is tall and frail, like skin sucked on to shriveled bones, his head is hanging limp on the side and he is swaying in his spot. His apron dirty with dark blotches, and his black pits for eyes look right at her as he holds his hoof out to her.

“Make us whole again,” whispers the stallion, his voice in her ear.

Fluttershy's legs lock, and the stallion and drops his hoof and sulks out of sight, leaving “RUN” in full view once more in the weak light. After he is out of sight, Fluttershy draws her energy cutter and watches the wall, waiting for something, anything, to come around the corner. But nothing comes.

It is all silence, save for the faint hum and crackles of electricity, and heart beats thumping in her ears.

Nearly a minute passes before Fluttershy finds the courage to move. She takes a deep breath and pushes the button on the side of her helmet, and with a series of clicks and whirs her head is completely and snugly encased in the helmet. This time there is no warning message about her mane, but it is still informing her that her tail is too big for the sleeve, as well as a reminder that there is a breach on her front hoof sleeve. Her heavy breathing is amplified in the enclosed space with some unwanted heat from her breath, and on the outside of her helmet six little lights flash on at once, and takes a step forward.

And then another.

And another.

And another.

Soon she is making her way down the hall at a quick pace. She has no idea when the trolley will be back or when it will leave the new section, and she still has to find Zephyr as well as the rest of the group.

As Fluttershy trots down the hall she passes more bullet holes, scratches and shrapnel, as well as hieroglyphs made of a mix of circles, curves and straight lines either scratched into the wall or painted on with blood or actual paint. But as of now Fluttershy has no interest in trying to decipher the odd symbols. In fact, just being near them leaves her fur rising and her spine tingling.

When Fluttershy reaches the RUN at the end of the hall she rounds the corner and finds a locked door, which she uses her master key band to unlock. The door's red circle changes to blue, the center twists and the door splits open, revealing a poster on the wall of a family of smiling earth ponies sitting on a checkered blanket with food around them. But their smiles and the pleasant sunny day picnic are tainted by a spider web crack on its plexi-glass exterior and a hole in the head of the foal, which has blood splattered all over it and the blood pools to the bottom where it changes to a streak that goes down the hallway.

Fluttershy traces the blood with her light and finds it stops in front of one of the locked doors (marked D-101), so she keeps herself pressed against the wall as she travels down the hallway, carefully stepping over bullet casings, clothes and bits of flesh and bone, as well as passing more of the odd hieroglyphs. The hallway lights cast a dim orange hue on the locked doors and metal walls, and the red lights remind her of eyes of a predator trailing their next meal.

Fluttershy rounds a corner and finds more locked rooms lining a pitch black hallway. Their red lights reflect off of the doors across from them, bathing them and scattered clothing and open luggage cases in a red hue. Fluttershy takes a step back and looks down the other direction and sees the same thing, but the trolley is in the first direction she looked so she holsters her cutter and gallops down the hall, grinding her teeth as thin streams of tears scratch her face and dig into the burns under her bandage. Her bitten hoof and wounded shoulders throb and feel like they are about to rip open, and she skids to a halt when she hears a mare's bloodcurdling scream and a cackling coming from one of the locked rooms.

Her head snaps left to right, the light from her helmet shining on the damaged walls and bloodied floor. The scream and maniac laughter returns and a series of bangs and thuds travel through the dark, prompting Fluttershy to take a step back while clumsily drawing her energy cutter with her hoof.

“GET BACK!” screams a stallion. “STAY BACK!”

The stallion's voice is suddenly cut off with loud buzz, followed by a wet gurgling sound and the mare's cries are abruptly silenced soon after by the same buzz.

Fluttershy stands in the middle of the hallway, sweeping her weapon side to side and her one eye straining to see what is lurking in the dark.

Then one of the doors flashes blue and slides open, and Fluttershy's eye widens. A stallion stumbles out, pressing his hoof against a gash across his chest that has soaked his blue and yellow banded jumpsuit in blood. His eyes are bulging, blood dribbles in thick globs from his open mouth, and his wheezes are wet and weak. Then he collapses on the floor, twitches and stops moving.

Fluttershy stares at the stallion, shaking and watching in silence as the blood spreads across the floor.

A moment later Fluttershy reluctantly goes forward, keeping close to the wall and aims her weapon at the open door. The light shows the thick trail of blood left behind by the stallion, and inside the room are a pair of beds pushed together. The sheets are strewn across the floor, and the only light in the room besides what Fluttershy has are a series of lit candles with their waxes melted on to metal dressers and shelves. Dots and splashes of blood cover a walls, floor and ceiling, and in the small kitchen a table is kicked over with scattered food and metal dishes on the floor, with a circular saw blade lodged into the fridge. Next to the fridge is a headless mare laying in a thick pool of blood and her head has rolled to the other side of the room.

Fluttershy steps back, yelping and jumping when her back hoof brushes against something on the floor. She shines her light on it and sees that it is a vent grate, and she quickly snaps her weapon directly up and sees a black pit in the ceiling where the vent is.

Fluttershy quickly backs away from the vent until she hits the bed, causing it to scrape against the floor. The sound carries down the dead hallway which brings her to cringe and fold her ears back. She also locks herself in place and forces herself to stop breathing so she can listen to anything.

“Heeheehee~” giggles a mare faintly.

Fluttershy snaps her weapon to the vent, but sees nothing. Still, it is enough for her to back away from the vent, taking a moment to look over her shoulder in case anything is coming from behind her. Thankfully it is clear, and it remains clear when she enters the hallways, having to step over the dead stallion while doing so, but she does step in the blood, which leads to a trail of prints when she goes down the hallway again.

The trip down the rest of the hallway is uneventful after that, with the only sound being the humming of lights and a faint scraping and thuds in the ceiling. Fluttershy looks at the ceiling, specifically at a vent, and waits.

Nothing.

She takes a step closer.

Nothing.

She takes a few more slow steps and keeps against the wall while aiming her cutter at the vent.

Still Nothing.

Fluttershy watches the vent for a few more seconds before she holsters her cutter and gallops down the hall. She rounds a corner and sees a passage without any doors and no lights over head. The only light is at the far end in an open area and a large sign above the entrance, reading:

<<<Transit Station
Elevators>>>
Sec D Mess Hall>>>
^^^Sec D 201-2100
^^^Sec D Supervisor Office
^^^Sec D Extracurricular Activities Hall

CLA-CLANG!

Fluttershy yelps and jumps into the wall, heart thumping and hoof shaking as she draws her cutter and she aims it at the corner where she just came from. A loud screech echoes in the hall and bolting around the corner, flailing its giant claws and its mouth wide open comes a Necormorph.

Fluttershy screams and shoots it, taking off its head, but all it does it make it stumble, so she shoots its legs and one of its arms, bringing it to fall to the ground, twitching and pumping blood everywhere. Then a vent that Fluttershy did not notice breaks off and another Necromorph leaps out, followed by two more. They rush her and she unloads her cutter on them, brightening the hall with the flashes of her cutter's discharge and sending limbs and chunks of partially cooked meat twirling in the air. After killing those three rather quickly a flood of overlapping screams, shrieks and screeches come from down the other end of the hall.

Shadows stretch and snap across the light in the open area, and a couple of seconds later a swarm of Necromorphs rush into view, pushing and slashing at each other to get through the door, and like a pipe being freed from a clog when one passes they all burst forward. All screaming and flailing their weaponized limbs, and Fluttershy pales and fumbles with putting in a new battery for her cutter.

She gets the new battery in right as the Necromorphs are on her, and she fires blindly into the crowd. There is no time to think or aim, there is only shooting.

The cutter's beams slice through the rotten flesh of the Necromorphs, and the weapon's discharge clashes with their hungry and pained growls and screams. Everything becomes a blur of darkness, flashes of light, brown muscle and blood. She keeps shooting until a force knocks her off her hoofs, sending her crashing into the floor, and while on her back a Necromorph leaps on top of her. Its skin rips as its jaw stretches wide, covering her visor with spit and speckles of blood, and Fluttershy shoots it in the chest with her Stasis. The force pushes it off in a state of slowness, and Fluttershy kicks it towards the group of Necromorphs. They push and slice it out of the way and Fluttershy takes advantage of the distraction to scramble to her hoofs and grabs the closest weapon. A disembodied scythe limb. It during this that a message plays in her ear.

“Artificial Telekinesis Module activated.”

The newest band on her hoof glows, as well as the band on her head, and scythe claw in her grip is covered in a blue orb. Fluttershy does not even think when she throws it at the nearest Necromorph, but with the added power of the ATM it launches like a harpoon and impales it through the chest. It does not kill the creature, but it does make it stumble back and it gives her time to grab her cutter and shoot off a few more rounds into what is left of the crowd. The Necromorph in the Stasis is already in pieces on the floor, the other Necromorphs drop with chunks of their bodies blown off, and the last Necromorph standing still has the claw in its chest with a huge puddle of blood underneath its feet. It stares at her, wobbling in its spot, she stares back, panting and aiming her cutter at it, and it takes one step before it crumbles and stops moving. To be safe, Fluttershy uses the last shot on her battery to obliterate its head, and then she quickly reloads and hobbles forward, stepping over the carpet of mutilated Necromorphs and grimacing when her hoofs splash in the puddles of their blood.

After reaching the end of the hallway the change of dark to light hurts her eye for a second, but once the the quick session of pain ends she finds herself in a very clean part of the ship. The area is free of blood, free of any kind of damage, the lights are good and even a schedule board is displaying everything smoothly. From extracurricular classes, to meal times, hours of operations for the clinics and section administrators, and even a large bulletin at the bottom that reads: Captain Star Tracker's Birthday Party in Sec D Mess Hall. Bring presents!

Next to it is a picture of an earth pony stallion with an odd purplish-blue coat, blue eyes, freckles, and a golden mane. His smile is awkward and his white and gold banded captain's suit seems almost too big for him.

Just by looking at him Fluttershy feels a sense of pity, like witnessing a colt who is taking off more than he can chew just to impress someone. Or prove a point. And chances are he had a miserable end just like everyone else on board this forsaken ship.

With that thought, Fluttershy shakes her head sadly and goes towards the direction towards the transit station, which is down yet another hall.

“Of course,” mutters Fluttershy.

She goes towards the hallway, but when she passes through the doorway a static fills her ears, followed by a familiar voice burdened with tiredness and fear and a holographic projection of the audio waves of the message.

“Fluttershy, can you hear me?”

Fluttershy stops and her heart nearly leaps out of her throat from sheer joy and relief as her hoof snaps up to her helmet.

“Fluttershy, please answer me. I know you've never answered my calls before, but please... I need you.”

“Zephyr? Zephyr, I hear you! Where are you!?” asks Fluttershy.

“Why won't you answer?”

“No no! Zephyr, I-I'm here! I'm here! Please tell me where you are!”

“Am I that bad?”

The transmission and projection ends with white noise and a pop that brings in total silence.

“Zephyr?” Fluttershy tries to call back, but an error message appears. “Zephyr! Please answer me!”

More dead silence.

Fluttershy whines and paces in circles, then takes a deep breath and quickly calls Rainbow Dash as she hurries towards the transit station. At first there is nothing but static, but that changes a few seconds later when Rainbow Dash's face appears. Her colors are still bathed in a dim green hue and her eyes are still a mix of black and bright green from the night vision.

“Fluttershy, is that you? When did you get that helmet?” says Rainbow Dash.

“Rainbow, I got good news. Zephyr's alive! He sent out a signal, but he can't receive anything,” says Fluttershy. “But he's still alive and I can get him off of this ship if I can find him!”

“Fantastic, but I still haven't been able to get a hold of anypony else,” says Rainbow Dash sourly.

“Where are you?”

“I'm held up in the Medical Facility of Section E. I locked myself in the supervisor's office to separate me from those freaks. They can't get me in here.” Rainbow Dash cranes her neck to look at something off screen. “YOU HEAR ME, YOU FUCKS! YOU ARE NOT GETTING IN HERE!”

Rainbow Dash laughs and bangs her head against the wall, followed by her taking a long high pitched breath, drawing her pistol and tapping it against her temple.

“They're not going to get me,” says Rainbow Dash. “Oh no. They are not going to get me!”

The footage then cuts out and Fluttershy tries to call her back again, but slides to a halt when a vent grate crashes in front of the doorway to the transit station. The metallic crash sounds like thunder with its noise being carried throughout the area, and a couple of seconds later a pony drops into view. She lands awkwardly on the floor, giggling and kicking her legs in the air, and Fluttershy takes a step back, feeling a painful tingle run up her spine and a twitching in her legs.

The mare makes a cold, shrill cackle and rolls on her hoofs, swaying in her spot in the middle of the doorway, giving Fluttershy a good look at her. The mare has a yellow body, a long, rough gray mane and black bags underneath her unfocused dark blue eyes. She is wearing a torn blue jumpsuit with gray pads that is splattered in blood, and on the ground next to her is a circular device with black and yellow warning strips on its body, and strings of flesh clinging to its circular saw blade. The mare's mane flaps like old strings being spun around as she shakes her head, and then she comes to an abrupt stop and grins as she focuses on Fluttershy.

“My little pony, would you like to hear a song?” asks the mare. “Its perfect for space. The kids love it!”

Fluttershy gulps and takes a step back, and the mare's horn glows a sickly red and green.

“Twinkle, twinkle little star~ How I wonder what you are~” sings the mare as the weapon levitates to her chest. “Up above the world so high~ Like a diamond in the sky~”

The mare aims the saw at Fluttershy and turns it on. BZZT-BZZT!

“Twinkle, twinkle little star~ How I wonder what you are!”

Author's Notes:

She'll be fine.