“We've gotta go down there.”

She didn’t have to look up from the cable in her feathers to know five sets of eyes were regarding her with expressions ranging from confusion to grim understanding.

This was it, she realized. This was the end of their journey. The dusty, speckled blister at the bottom of the valley, the dome of Stable 1, was the destination she hadn’t known she’d been working to reach.

A Stable abandoned by its residents and left inexplicably intact by the Enclave. Why they hadn't stripped out its generator didn’t matter. There was power there. Real, genuine electricity still thrumming through its ancient wires like the nervous system of a pony in a coma that spanned generations. All that untapped potential stemming from the dutiful churn of a talisman buried deep within what Briar unaffectionately dubbed The Boiler.

It was down there. She could feel it.

“I’m not sure you want to do that.” Briar’s gentle chuckle jarred her from her thoughts. “It’s hot enough down there to burn the scales off a dragon.”

He had no idea. The tired smile playing across his lips, his casual concern for how she might respond to heat that he had already braved at least once. He wasn’t thinking about talismans or generators. And why would he? Why would he or Meridian be concerned with an old Stable’s centuries-old organs when all they needed was a decade or two of its blood? They didn’t need to understand the heart in order to tap a vein.

And now she stood above it knowing she had to tear out its beating heart.

She swallowed, staring at the burden held in her wings. “I can handle a little heat.”

While Briar regarded her with polite skepticism, Roach stepped beside her and leaned toward her ear. The look of reticent warning was unmistakable even in his strange, opaque eyes.

“Aurora,” he said, his voice hard. “We should talk about this first.”

It startled her to hear that finely contained emotion directed toward her. He wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t angry either. Not yet, anyway.

She turned, looking past Briar to where Ginger stood near the ledge they’d gathered at. She wore the same uneasy frown that told Aurora the two of them had done the same calculus and come to the same conclusion.

Three ponies in exchange for hundreds. It was cruel math.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she said, hating how each word landed like a lump of concrete.

“Sounds like there’s plenty,” Julip murmured.

Anger rose in her chest like magma. “Mind your own business.”

“Hey.” Roach thumped his hoof against her leg just hard enough to make her jump. “Bring it down a notch.”

She shot him a disbelieving glare. “You know what she’s trying to do. All she wants is…”

“The two of you,” Roach growled, steamrolling the end of her sentence before she could finish it, “have been bickering since you both left the Stable. It’s unproductive, so stop it.”

His eyes flicked back to where Julip stood primed to leverage Aurora's admonishment for information. “You too.”

Aurora looked between him and Julip, then to a visibly concerned Briar. At the mouth of the cave, Meridian stood halfway through the netting with similar misgivings. She could tell by the lines forming on her brow that they were burning through the last of their welcome like a lit fuse.

She licked her lips and took a breath to steady her nerves, but they didn’t seem ready to settle. Julip had keyed into her reaction to the buried cable like a missile diving toward a heat signature. The mare wasn’t just here to help her, that much was obvious. Ever since she weaseled her way into their group she’d been listening, undoubtedly gathering information for this Minister Primrose she seemed to fear and revere in equal measure. Now she wasn’t just eavesdropping, she was actively poking at her to see what fell out.

“Aurora.” Ginger appeared beside her, startling her enough to make both of them flinch. Though she tried to smile it off, Aurora couldn’t help but feel trapped between her and Roach. It was like they were trying to squeeze her into submission. “We can’t. Not from this place.”

Ginger’s appeal stung like a betrayal, and Aurora grimaced at the cable laying motionless in its trench. “That Stable is dead. Mine isn’t. Ponies are depending on me to do this.”

“We’ll find another way.”

There was no reassurance in Ginger’s voice. Merely a statement of fact. Aurora watched her, waiting for her to qualify her decision with something that might give room for compromise.

Ginger stared back at her, those ocean blue eyes now hard as sea ice. There was an unspoken warning behind them as if to say she was fast approaching a line that Ginger would not follow her across. One that would remain between them if Aurora chose to step over it alone.

It was that realization that slapped the fight out of her. She looked at Briar, then turned to where Meridian monitored them from the mouth of their cave. Beans peered out from between her mother’s legs, her wings wet from the bowls she’d left mid wash to see what the adults were arguing over.

Aurora sat down on the stones and breathed a quiet curse. How desperate was she that she’d been willing to entertain the idea of stealing a family’s means of survival? Willing, if only briefly, to ask the mare who encouraged her to fly to be the one to rip the talisman out of its generator? For a fleeting moment Aurora wished for things to be as simple as they’d been when she first knew Stable 10’s salvation lay beyond its walls. Back when she thought a saddlebag full of apples and a seven day walk through a dead wasteland was all that stood between her and her goal.

Staring down at her Pip-Buck, she caught a glimpse of Ginger in the screen’s reflection. A week ago, a setback like this might have moved her to tears. Now she only felt numb. Funny how quick those nerves could be dulled.

On the other side of the trench, Briar cleared his throat. “Call me paranoid, but I get the feeling there’s something the four of you are trying really hard not to say. What are the chances I could convince you to drop the vagueisms and share with the rest of the class?”

Aurora glanced at him, then past him to where Julip lingered along the cliffside. The Enclave mare shrugged indifference as if she could care less what details she chose to share. Aurora wasn’t about to spoon-feed her whatever it was she was hoping to hear.

“We’re looking for an important piece of equipment.” She sucked on the corner of her lip, choosing her words carefully. “It allows the generators that power the Stables to operate, and the one we have at Stable 10 has started to break down. We were hoping to find a replacement at Stable-Tec HQ but…”

“But you think there’s one down there,” Briar finished, opening a wing in the direction of the speckled dome below.

The heat of shame crawled up her neck and warmed her ears as she saw understanding dawn in Briar’s eyes. But rather than lash out or dare her to try, he just nodded thoughtfully at the cable lying between them.

Meridian crossed her front hooves and leaned against the solid rock of the cave entrance. “I’ve heard rumors that some Stables have machines in them that can make anything a pony wants.”

“Fabricators,” Aurora supplied, recognizing the question she was hinting at. “We have some of our own, but with restrictions built in.”

“They don’t want you modifying your generator,” Briar guessed.

It was a better excuse than they don’t want us fabricating our own talismans. She decided to go with it. “More or less. The generator is meant to last the lifetime of the Stable as long as there are ponies around to maintain it. Nobody expected it to start failing.”

“And that’s what you were all arguing about just now. Whether or not you should take this piece you need from the Stable down there and leave me and my family without power to run our pump.”

She hesitated. “Yeah.”

Briar blew out a breath and looked to Meridian. Something unspoken passed between them and a moment later he was nudging scoops of dirt back onto the exposed cable, burying it.

“Well, one thing’s for sure. We’re not going to let you cut off our water.”

“Which we’ve already agreed not to do,” Ginger quickly added.

He nodded his head toward her. “Good. That being said, I don’t understand why any of you are so worked up. I already told you that the Boiler’s completely dark except for one level and Merry and I are pretty sure it’s not drawing power off the old generator.”

Aurora hadn’t forgotten, but Briar was anything but an electrician. If Stable 1 was anything like Stable 10 it would have a hundred miles of cable running through it for every pony it was designed to house. Those wires weren't pulling electricity from thin air. Briar and Meridian were missing something.

She tried her best not to sound like she was trying to resurrect her earlier threat. “But what if you’re wrong?”

“About what? The generator down there still working?”

She nodded.

Briar nudged the last scraps of dirt onto the cable and wiped a few grey stones over the top for good measure. He chuckled, not taking his eyes off the ground as he considered her hypothetical. She could tell by the way he was smiling that he was giving it as much serious thought as if she’d asked him what he would do if he found a million caps.

He looked over to his wife and daughter and shrugged. “Then I guess I’d ask if you had room for three more in that Stable of yours.”

She didn’t need to think about it. “I could make that happen.”

At first Briar chuckled again, his eyes scanning the rough edges of the cave his fake-raider friends helped carve out for them. But the silence stretched and when the punchline he was waiting for didn’t come, his wistful smile faded and he narrowed his eyes at her.

“Don’t joke about something like that,” he warned.

When her expression didn’t change, he swallowed. “You’re being serious.”

She nodded again. “Meridian would be the only earth pony in the Stable, and once the door’s closed I don't think Sledge would let it open again. But there are plenty of foals Beans’ age to play with, and it's safe. It would be better than living all alone out here.”

If Briar heard the last bit, he made no indication. His attention was turned to where Beans waited beneath her mother, distracted by the slow rolling clouds above.

“She would never be able to fly down there. Not enough room,” Aurora said.

He swallowed. “It wouldn’t make a difference. She can’t fly out here either.”

She winced at that. Since leaving home a week ago she’d taken to the sky a good half dozen times with two of those flights spanning hours in the air without pause. She hadn’t understood at the time that each ascent risked an encounter with the Enclave. Up until today she’d never thought to look for their formations skirting through the clouds above. Now, presumably with Julip assigned to protect her, a chance run-in with the Enclave was little to no threat compared to what Briar or Beans might face in the same situation.

Broken as it was, it felt like she was cheating a system everyone else had no choice but to follow. The least she could do is give someone else that luxury.

“Give me a few minutes to talk to Merry.” Briar looked hopefully toward her, drawing an arched brow from her. “Wait here. Please.”

He was on his hooves and hurrying toward the cave before she could answer. He practically dragged Meridian back behind the netting where a whispered explanation ensued.

Aurora stared after them and hoped Sledge wouldn’t put up too much of a fight. From the corner of her eye she noticed Julip sitting down in the space Briar had occupied in front of her. She tried to ignore her, but Julip hadn’t come over for the quiet company.

“You can’t let them in the Stable.”

“It isn’t up to you.”

“It isn’t up to either of us.” Julip shifted uneasily on her haunches. “Meridian’s an earth pony. Even if Briar were a pureblood, their kid isn’t. They’ll contaminate the genepool.”

Beside her, Ginger muttered something unintelligible. Aurora had to work to keep her voice to a whisper. “Contaminate the genepool? Do you even hear yourself when you talk?”

Julip squinted off toward the distant mountains. “It’s true.”

She shook her head. “I don’t care. Ten is my home. We’re not debating this.”

“I'm not trying to--”

Roach stood, cutting her off. “Julip, stop.”

She rounded on him and for a moment it looked like she was preparing to lay into him too. He stared back at her, his expression placid while he waited for her to push the issue. The moment faded and, reluctantly, Julip dismissed both of them with a lazy flap of her wings.

Several minutes passed before the netting parted from the cave wall and Briar held it open for his wife. Clenched between her teeth was Roach’s shotgun, the buckles of its bindings clinking like a wind chime as it dangled from its straps. Aurora instinctively looked to Briar for her rifle but she wrinkled her nose when she realized he wasn’t carrying it. Beneath his wing instead hung a familiar curve of heavy iron, its blade still missing. At the entrance of the cave, Aurora could see Beans’ wide hazel eyes peeking out from behind the netting, watching as her father offered Aurora her pirate sword.

Confused, Aurora held out her wing to take the length of iron. Her feathers slipped neatly through its handle.

“We’re going to take you up on your offer.”

Aurora frowned at her new weapon. "Uh huh. With conditions, apparently."

Briar blanched a little as Roach accepted his weapon. “In a sense, yes. If we’re going into the Boiler, you’re going to need something you can use in close quarters. A long rifle would only be a liability.”

Aurora stared at the heavy bar in her wing. “This is a stick.”

“Pirate sword!” Beans shouted from the net.

She looked up at Meridian and gestured at the ungainly weapon strapped over her shoulder. “You’re wearing a cannon.”

“I’m staying behind to watch Beans,” she said. “And your rifle. You get it back when I get my husband back.”

Aurora gawked at Meridian but the mare stared back at her as if to say she was willing to listen to what was so unfair about the arrangement.

Next to her, Roach had already set about securing the straps of his shotgun around his foreleg. For a creature without wings or safe use of his horn, he made short work of fastening his weapon with his mouth. Watching him gave her time to think. She looked at the bar in her wing and frowned.

“Are we expecting a fight?”

Briar held open his other wing and produced a mean looking rust-stained revolver. “The Boiler always puts up a fight.”

“Attention all residents, this is your overstallion. Please be aware that in fifteen minutes the following levels will rotate into their scheduled six-hour power holiday. Residential levels one, three, five…”

Rainbow Dash tuned Sledge out as he droned through the list of unlucky residents set to have their power restricted. Even though she wasn’t listening to the words, she heard the underlying murmur of exhaustion in his voice and couldn’t help but sympathize. It was a long time since she had to shoulder a burden like that, but she still felt the bruises it left behind.

The wooden chair squeaked beneath her as she paused to stretch her legs. Her knees let out a rippling pop that would have made Gilda and her noisy knuckles jealous. The relief that came with the release was always temporary and she would have to stretch again soon, but for now she felt almost normal.

Aurora’s terminal glowed in front of her, its little fans whirring away as it waited for Rainbow to make a choice.

Line after line of green text glowed at her with infinite patience. The files that defined Stable 10’s first decade after the bombs fell shimmered on the screen like a gargantuan haystack, and here she sat trying to find the needle. Opal’s suggestion to start with the files whose names had been changed turned out to be little help. It was like reading another pony’s chicken scratch without having any idea what it was about.

She scanned the rows with half-lidded eyes.

Name, format, size, date modified, access.

Name, format, size, date modified, access.

If Spitfire had been trying to hide something, her method of misdirection was potently effective. Rainbow didn’t know what her expected lifespan was nowadays, but it didn’t matter. This job she signed up for was going to bore her to death.

On a whim, she tagged a couple files that looked promising and sent them up to Opal’s team for decryption. Promising in this respect boiled down to files that didn’t sound mind-numbing enough to be fatal. She wasn’t expecting to find a listing titled “AllMyDirtySecretsMwahaha.”

A subtle click and sudden dimness in her compartment signaled the beginning of the power holiday. The bank of recessed fluorescents above her had gone completely dark, leaving only the dim yellow glow of an emergency light beside Millie’s speaker to illuminate the space. Were it not for the abrupt glare of the terminal by contrast, she might have enjoyed the change in ambiance.

What felt like hours passed with nothing to do but browse Spitfire’s old files. A glance at the terminal’s clock informed her little over a half-hour had gone by, adding to the slow torture. As she rubbed her eyes, trying to force them to focus, the terminal chimed. She squinted past the ridge of her hoof at the notification that flashedvon the screen. Opal had sent back the files she’d marked for decrypting, and both of them were ready to view. Rainbow didn’t realize she’d be getting these sent back to her once they were done, but then again it only made sense to have Spitfire’s only living acquaintance look them over.

She opened the first attachment and was immediately underwhelmed. An appointment reminder Spitfire had set aside for herself. Annual physical. Rainbow doubted they made speculums in her size. The mental dig gave her a good chuckle as she closed the file and opened the next. Something about the Stable economy. A beige stallion appeared on the terminal with a short stack of papers laid out in front of him. Without preamble he launched into a plodding monotone presentation of the health of the Stable’s internal revenue which Rainbow promptly muted before she could pull out what was left of her mane.

Two more duds to throw onto a growing pile of other duds. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she didn’t have to stare at Spitfire’s bitchy smirk in every other file. Unsurprisingly she’d slotted into the role of overmare with just as much confidence and ease as she did Rainbow’s job as ministry mare. Spitfire thrived on leadership. A more forgiving pony might admit she was actually pretty good at it, too.

Every time Opal sent back a cracked file was another glimpse into what Rainbow began to see as Spitfire’s second life. A photo of her giving an award to a resident in her office. A shaky video of her eating lunch in a tiny break room with a group of starstruck pegasi. She had streaks of grey in her mane and the first signs of crow’s feet in that one. Rainbow was so focused on Spitfire’s face that she nearly didn’t notice the charcoal grey stallion grinning beside her.

“Thunderlane,” she whispered.

The thought hadn’t occurred to her that he might sign up for a Stable. He’d always been such a claustrophobe, even after Spitfire hired him into her ministry. But in the video he looked comfortable as a cat. She had an urge to reach back in time and congratulate her former wingmate for finally overcoming his fear, but then she remembered how distant he became toward the end and the temptation evaporated.

By the time deputy Chaser brought her dinner, Rainbow had already conceded the fact that she likely wouldn’t be as much help as Sledge and Opal hoped. The mare whose compartment she now occupied was ultimately the best bet Stable 10 had. Rainbow was happy to help - anything beat sitting in an empty tunnel waiting for Blue to take over - but as she unwrapped the tinfoil from the baked potato on her tray she felt relegated to the familiar territory of being moral support while other ponies did the heavy lifting.

Unsurprisingly, Chaser didn’t stick around long and Rainbow found herself left alone with her dinner and her work. With a plastic fork held in her only wing, working the keyboard with her hoof became an irritating chore. Still, the food was good and the accompanying packet of butter almost passed for the real thing. By the time another file caught her eye she’d begun tearing off bits of potato skin to nibble on, something she used to give Applejack endless grief for before finally trying it out herself and finding it to be surprisingly edible.

The file that drew her attention was simply named HappyAnniversary. For the entire time Rainbow knew Spitfire, the mare had never shown any interest in hitching her wagon to anything beside her career. She was the type of mare who bought candy on Hearts and Hooves day not because it was intended for someone but because it was on sale. Curious, Rainbow flagged the file and sent it up to Opal.

A little over an hour later, as Rainbow’s full belly was luring her toward a nap, the terminal chimed.

She queued up the video and this time she found the frame centered tightly on Spitfire’s face. Rainbow reflexively leaned away. She was sitting in what Rainbow assumed was the overmare’s office. Gaudy wood paneling filled the space behind her with the familiar sight of Equestria’s flag hung across it. She had dressed herself in the same black suit and tie she’d worn to the funerals of so many pegasi who were lost during the first weeks of the war. Now, instead of wearing the rank and insignia of the Wonderbolts, the corner of each white collar was adorned with a simple brass “10.”

As Spitfire spoke, it struck Rainbow how weary she sounded. She hadn’t just aged visibly. It was in her voice, too. A slight feathering of her words that belied a subdued calmness that she was never known for. Rainbow did the math in her head. She would have been in her early sixties by then. Nearly old enough to retire.

“Hello, Stable 10.” She stared straight into a lens that must have been mounted in her terminal. “Ten years ago today, our homes, our families and life as we knew it came under attack. The zebras of Vhanna could not fathom a world in which they were not the victors and, rather than feel the sting of total defeat, they chose to burn it all away. Today is a day to remember those whose lives were taken from us as well as appreciate the ponies whose ingenuity allowed precious few of us to survive.

“Some of you were too young to remember the evacuations and that is why Remembrance Day exists. To remind future generations th…”

She pecked the keyboard and Spitfire lurched into a frenzied series of twitches and jerks. She wasn’t going to suffer through an entire speech. After a few seconds she resumed the playback.

“...darkest nights, but that’s exactly when we pegasi pull togeth…”

Nope. She spun the tape forward.

“...estria lives in each and every one of…”

She rolled her eyes and let the rest of the video play in fast forward. When it reached the end, Spitfire’s face disappeared and was abruptly replaced by a sunset photo of Canterlot Mountain with the capital city frozen in silhouette. Rainbow leaned back in her chair and stared at the shot of Canterlot for a long while. It felt like only days had passed since she woke up in her own bed to the warm scent of cinnamon waffles coming from the hallway. Another habit she’d picked up from Applejack, though not officially as healthy as potato skins.

Two hundred and twenty years. Every time she thought about it, it sounded like a bad joke. And then she remembered glimpses from the tunnel and knew it was real.

She closed the video and stared blankly at the files taken from Spitfire’s partition. An idle feather played on the arrow keys, cycling sideways through the column headers and flipping the sort of each column up and down. It didn’t accomplish anything except alleviate her dread of sending up another nugget of Spitfire’s carefree life within the Stable. Even in death she managed to get one last jab in. Ten years of her cultivating her legacy, all for Rainbow’s entertainment.

Ten years. Rainbow began toggling the date column back and forth, watching the 1077 flip to 1087 and vice versa. October 31st, 1077. The days the bombs fell. October 31st, 1087, the day Spitfire hid… what?

What dirt was so bad that Spitfire had gone through pains to seal away a decade of random data?

“Wait…”

She gave the list a mistrustful frown and bent her head toward the ceiling. “Hey, Millie.”

“How may I assist you, minister?”

“Call Opal.”

“One moment, please.”

As the airy static of a line waiting to be connected filled the compartment, Rainbow lifted her remaining wing and peered through the gaps between the old feathers. She reminded herself of a half-plucked chicken.

The static let out a pop and Opal’s voice came over the speaker. “Didja find somethin’?”

“Might have.” She folded her wing and wrinkled her nose at the ceiling. “Ever wonder why Spitfire encrypted those files in the first place?”

A pause. “Dearie, that’s what we’re all trying to figure out.”

“I know, I know. But why lock them? Why not delete them?”

“Oh, well that’s an easy one.” Opal chuckled. “Y’can’t! Whole point’ve the Stables is to be time capsules, and not just the ponies neither. No point in preserving our history if some fool can go in and delete the bits they don’t like.”

Rainbow frowned at that. “Okay… but then how was Spitfire able to change the names on some of these files?”

Another pause. “I don’t follow.”

“Are the original names saved somewhere?”

“Ah.” In the background, Rainbow could hear the tinkle of a spoon against a mug. She glanced at the time and wondered whether Opal was planning on pulling a coffee-fueled all-nighter or curling up with a cup of cocoa. “I see where you’re going. Small changes, sure, those are allowed. Millie gives residents just enough leeway to fix typos or rename files.”

“Millie does?”

“I figured you’da known that.” Opal sipped at whatever she was drinking and made a satisfied noise. “S’pose you don’t, though, since you're askin'. Not like there’s much to it. Part of Millie’s directive is to preserve data for future generations. That way if, Celestia forbid, a Stable collapses we have a clear understanding of what caused it.”

Rainbow nodded. Maybe Millie wasn’t totally useless. “But she has a threshold for which changes are allowed.”

“You’d be surprised how many ponies misspell their own name.”

“But if I wanted to, I could make small edits over time. A lot of them. Enough to corrupt a file?”

Opal was silent for what felt like minutes. “Given enough time, I suppose you could. Maybe you keep that hypothetical to yourself, though.”

“Will do.” She turned her eyes back down to the terminal. “But that brings us back to my first question. Why did she risk encrypting all these files when she could have just picked them apart a little each day? Why not destroy whatever it was she wanted forgotten? It wasn't like she had a shortage of time to do it in.”

“Hmm.” Another sip, followed by a soft click of ceramic being set onto a table. “I suppose if we were to split hairs, Overmare Spitfire wasn’t the one to seal that partition. Doubt she even knew deleting it wouldn't be allowed. Woulda been her head of I.T. who did it.”

Rainbow hummed. “So Spitfire tells them to destroy ten years’ worth of historical record…”

“...and they slap a padlock on and hide it where one of their successors might trip over it. Which I did.”

“Could’ve been an oversight,” she suggested.

Opal laughed. “Not this mare. In two centuries this Stable hasn’t produced a mind like hers. If she did disobey Spitfire, she did it because she wanted to.”

Rainbow let out an impressed whistle. “Shame I never got to meet her.”

“Well, you did meet her husband.”

She sat up and stared at Millie’s speaker. “Got a name?”

Opal was already clicking away at a keyboard. “Pretty sure I remember… ah, there she is. Delta Vee. Her husband was…”

“Jet Stream.”

“That’s the one. Starchaser turned missile manufacturer, toward the end.”

She nodded at the ceiling. “Twilight’s idea, but yeah. Jet had a reputation for being headstrong. Wouldn't surprise me if his wife was the same way."

A silence lingered between them before Opal finally spoke. “I think you’re onto something, Dash.”

She leaned forward and stared at the terminal. Somewhere in that haystack was the needle she was looking for, and this Delta Vee might just be her metal detector.

“So do I.”

Preparing for their descent into the Boiler wasn't nearly as painless as Ginger expected. Being the defacto guide for the expedition, Briar was in the enviable position of determining what they would be allowed to bring with them and what would be left behind for when they returned. Since most of their belongings had already been abandoned to the centaurs, sorting out what remained of their collective kit was more of an exercise in humility than anything else.

Ginger tried not to take the stallion’s reaction to their two surviving sets of bags personally. Were she in his position and four poorly-equipped ponies fell into her lap looking for help, she probably would have regarded their meager supplies with the same amount of pity.

He held up Julip’s flask with a dubious eye. “Dare I ask?”

“Rebound,” Ginger supplied, ignoring the irritated look Julip shot her. “We had to do some night travelling.”

Briar made a face and returned it to Julip’s bag. Considering he was offering to take them down to a dead Stable while his wife and foal stayed behind, she couldn’t blame him for wanting to verify they weren’t concealing more weapons than the ones Meridian has confiscated.

As the others waited at the mouth of the cave for Briar to finish, Ginger found herself wandering toward the section of track that her shield had nearly to slag. The rails had cooled by now but the blackened rust remained like a fresh tattoo, not unlike the fading stripe she knew was still visible around the base of her horn. On a whim she gathered her magic and formed a melon-sized bubble around an untouched bit of rail. A few layers of rust crumbled under the shield’s gentle grip, but when she dispelled the bubble and set her hoof on the metal it was hardly warm.

Stepping back onto the stones, she couldn’t help but worry about what Roach had suggested back at the slaver camp. That Autumn’s stimpacks might not have “fixed” her magic so much as filled up a sort of reservoir that unicorns had, and that every spell she cast let a little more magic drain out. He had no real proof or even a working hypothesis to explain it, but the possibility of finding herself once again struggling to hold aloft a small crate of scrap leather or draining herself just trying to light a few crystals at night put her in an impossible position of wanting to experiment with her new magic without losing it.

“You’re going to Freckle Hill without me?!”

Beans’ reedy little voice teased a smirk out of her as she turned to pace back up the tracks. The little filly didn’t try to disguise the fact that she wanted to come with and she sulked as Briar explained that leaving the cave this close to nightfall was too dangerous for her. Judging by the tone of his voice, this wasn’t his first time tamping down this particular complaint.

She peered down the valley at the shallow mound they would be heading for. Sure enough, the little white markings along its top did look something like freckles. At this distance she couldn’t quite tell what they were. Protruding stones, most likely. They reminded her of the speckled mushroom caps some of the traders in Junction City sold in the fall.

Lighting her horn again, she picked up a sharp sliver of limestone and wondered what her neighbors back in Junction City might have said when they learned their local Rarity fanatic had dehorned Autumn Song. It would take some time for the freed slaves to spread rumors that far west, but the thought of her neighbors knowing she'd accidentally managed teleportation made her a little giddy. Smiling to herself, she poured a little more magic into her horn and stopped pacing so she could concentrate on the limestone.

It took some effort. A lot of effort. Remembering how the spell felt during a burst of instinctual will wasn’t an easy thing, but the act itself had left an indelible mark on her. It was like knowing how to flex a muscle to trigger a cramp without quite understanding why the cramp happened. All at once her horn flashed and the stone vanished with an audible pop, only to reappear a split second later a few steps ahead of her. It fell out of the air as if gravity only just remembered it was there and pinged noisily off the rail.

“Having fun?”

Ginger jerked in surprise as Aurora stepped beside her, eyes on the freshly teleported stone. She swatted her tail at Aurora, catching her along the saddlebags. “Not nearly as much as you have sneaking up on me.”

“Wasn’t long ago you were teaching me to keep my guard up. Oh, how the tables have turned.”

Ginger rolled her eyes but allowed her companion to give her a peck on the cheek all the same. Hopefully she would think of better lines once they were safe within the walls of her Stable. She leaned into Aurora’s shoulder, smiling at the thought. “I take it we’re ready to go?”

“Briar thinks it’s safe enough that we can glide down, but he’s going to carry Roach since Julip thinks her belly's too raw to deal with his chitin.”

She nodded back to where Roach, Julip and Briar were gathering along the cliffside. To Roach’s visible discomfort, Julip had taken the liberty of giving Briar some last-minute tips on how best to hook his legs around the changeling during the flight down. Ginger and Roach’s eyes went wide for different reasons as Julip tapped a wing against the crux of his hip.

“I thought the Enclave hated changelings,” Aurora observed.

“They do, but she has orders to play nice. I suppose it doesn't preclude her from torturing us in other ways.” She turned and started walking toward the others with Aurora following at her side. As they approached, she interrupted whatever Julip thought she was trying to do to Roach with a slightly raised voice. “Shall we head down, then?”

Ginger feathered just enough disapproval into her tone that Julip’s ears dipped back in response. Julip adjusted the old mailbag around her neck and casually wove her way between the two stallions as if she hadn’t noticed, stopping on Roach’s other side and well out of Ginger's line of sight. The urge to punt the smug little mare off the cliff again was immense.

If Briar noticed the tug of tension between them, he didn’t show it. “Ready when you are. Remember, stay low to the ground and head straight for the Boiler. Single file, no detours.”

Ginger and the others nodded understanding and set about the blushworthy yet necessary preparations for departure. While climbing down the steep slope and picking their way across the valley on hoof wasn’t impossible, the Enclave’s recent patrol took the slow and steady option off the table. They would need to be quick and with three sets of wings between them the choice was simple.

That didn’t stop the bolt of electricity from shooting through Ginger's chest as Aurora climbed onto her back and unsteadily hooked one hind leg inside her hip. She cleared her throat gently as she widened her stance a little to keep the two of them from toppling. To her left, Roach stared straight ahead with a pinched expression. Briar at least had the decorum to mount him from the side and avoid any unspoken implications that came with a more ergonomic approach, but his considerations were seemingly lost on the changeling that now bore him on his back.

Before anyone had a chance to say anything they might regret, Briar opened his wings to their full expanse and threw them to the ground. Dragged upward in his grip, Roach’s cracked hooves lifted off the stones and slid into the open air. A silent gasp slipped from Ginger’s lips as Aurora’s legs tightened around her and the two of them hoisted into the air after them on a gust of feathers.

As Briar nosed into a steep dive, Ginger tried to brace herself as she felt Aurora do the same. Her world lurched forward and for a brief moment a part of her was convinced they would all be scattered across the stony cliffs. Adrenaline soaked through every inch of her as boulders the size of carriages blurred beneath her hooves. Her heart pounded so hard that she was afraid Aurora might feel it through her grip. As the wind buffeted their ears, Ginger decided that she would probably never get used to being flown around like this. And still, she thought to herself, there was a thrill to it that she didn’t think she could ever give up. Terrifying or not, she was starting to love this.

Aurora gripped her harder as she followed Briar out of their dive, following the pitch of the terrain as the craggy mountainside eased into a smoother slope that leveled out over the wider valley floor. Her belly warmed Ginger’s back like a comfortable blanket that soothed her fears enough to let her enjoy the scenery. Down here the mountains towered on all sides like immovable giants, but rather than looming over them with the promise of danger as they had in the flatlands outside of Kiln they felt almost like protectors. A phalanx of impossibly large guardians whose duty it was to keep out the myriad dangers birthed by the wasteland. She could understand why Briar and Meridian chose this place to hide their daughter from the Enclave.

She stole a glance behind them where Julip cut through the air alone, holding her injured wing rigid with visible discomfort. They met eyes for a moment before Ginger set her jaw and turned her attention forward. A worry for the back burner, but still one to monitor.

They whipped over a cluster of blistered molerats who squealed and dove for their holes. Ahead of them, the dome grew large and the white “freckles” that Beans had been able to identify from a distance of more than a mile resolved into individual shapes. A lifetime in the wasteland trained Ginger’s eyes to recognize the sunbleached remains for what they were, and as they slowed their approach to land she could tell something was very wrong with them.

The dome itself was easily fifty yards from end to end and as they followed its curve to the eastern side, Ginger could feel Aurora’s chin touching her ear as she too noticed the clusters of bones protruding from its surface.

Under normal circumstances, finding the remains of ponies in the wasteland wasn’t unusual. They were everywhere, really. It wasn’t like there was anyone available to clean up the bodies after the bombs fell.

Skeletons weren’t a particularly shocking find after an apocalypse, but once in a while a pony might come upon one that told an interesting story. These skeletons most definitely had something to say.

Hundreds of them lay buried at varying depths in the surrounding soil and even more were held fast by the dusty concrete of the dome itself. Thin patches of grass grew through the ribs of ponies whose lower halves were hidden beneath the dirt. A hip bone and two hind legs lay in a heap on the southern edge as if the pony they belonged to saw fit to swan dive into the dome but only made it partway. Ginger frowned as more and more strange half-burials slid below them, their jaws bent open with silenced screams.

As questions grew in her mind, Briar’s wings flared open to cut his speed. Roach’s hooves settled into the dusty soil and Briar, apparently aware now of the unintended effect he was having on the changeling, quickly slid off his back and took an apologetic step to the side.

Aurora and Ginger set down close enough that the two stallions had to shield their eyes from the dust they kicked up, and as if to continue the chain of punishment, Julip’s landing forced all four of them to do it again. The wind carried the dust away and the five of them settled on their hooves, their collective attention naturally turning to the stark feature cut deep into the soil before them.

A long concrete ramp sliced into the dome like a keyhole, ending at an imposing, rust-scabbed door at the bottom. There were no signs on the weathered walls to indicate what the dome was for or who was allowed inside. No painted warnings to ward off vandals or intruders, just a wide ramp and an unmarked square blast door.

And the bones.

Ginger’s lips pulled away from her teeth in revulsion.

Just like they had through the top of the dome, the skeletal remains of dozens of ponies erupted from the solid concrete walls of the ramp as if it were once no firmer than water. Leathery strips of tendons and gristle clung to enough of them that the shapes of their protruding bodies had been preserved. Others had decayed so badly that anything that wasn’t held in place by their concrete tombs had dropped off and tumbled into the rough heap of remains at the bottom.

Briar was the only one among them who looked unphased. Considering how often he must have come and gone from this place over the years, she supposed it was fair for him to be desensitized to… whatever this was.

“Scavs call it the Unicorn Bloom,” he said, jarring them from their silence.

Beside her, Aurora swallowed, her eyes searching the dead for understanding. “They’re in the walls.”

He nodded. “They’re harmless. Just be careful where you step and try not to disturb them. If the Enclave thinks this place was recently scavenged they’ll start scouting the valley more often.”

He stepped off the dirt and onto the ramp, his hooves echoing off the concrete enclosure as he led the descent. Gradually, the rest of them followed. Her curiosity unsated, Aurora spoke again.

“How did this happen?”

Briar stepped around a skull partially submerged in the ground, its single eye socket staring blindly toward the door. He gestured toward the skull’s horn, then at the other skulls surrounding them, each bearing a horn of its own. “Answer’s in the name, isn’t it?”

Unicorn Bloom. Ginger grimaced as understanding dawned on her. They were all unicorns.

“They tried to teleport out.”

“Emphasis on tried. Best anyone can tell, the unicorns got cold hooves and decided the underground life wasn’t for them. Probably couldn’t get the door open so they went with Plan B and tried to magic their way out.” He sidestepped a partial skeleton sunken up to its femurs and grimaced. “Apparently it’s not as easy as it looks.”

She was silent the rest of the way down the ramp, remembering the story Gallow had told about the magician from the south who had by unknown means acquired the same magic Ginger now possessed and, by sheer accident, miscalculated a spell and fatally teleported himself halfway through a stage wall. The bones that surrounded them belonged to unicorns who had met a similarly gruesome end. She could only imagine the panic they had felt once they realized their mistake and how it must have felt to die knowing their bodies were ruined beyond any hope of repair.

Aurora must have seen her shudder. The gentle weight of feathers draping behind her shoulders offered some unspoken and much needed comfort.

While the slab of rusting steel looming ahead certainly qualified as massive, compared to the hulking numbered cogs that sealed the Stables dotting Equestria, it was hardly impressive. A pony with a high enough jump might even be able to slap the socketed track it rolled across.

“I don’t know,” Roach murmured as they came to a stop in front of it. The cracks along his muzzle bent into doubtful wrinkles. “It doesn’t look like any Stable I’ve ever seen.”

Ginger had to agree. Aside from its subterranean nature, there were no obvious signs suggesting it belonged to Stable-Tec. Briar’s original assumption that it was some sort of missile control outpost seemed closer to reality.

Aurora, for her part, was undaunted. A quick check of her Pip-Buck only strengthened her conviction. “It’s a Stable.”

She spoke with the firmness of a mare unwilling to budge on what she believed to be undeniable fact. There was a defensive bristle in her voice that hadn’t been there earlier, as if Roach’s mere suggestion might cause the strange facility to become something different. Ginger suddenly wished she had a wing of her own with which to sooth Aurora’s nerves.

Briar made a noncommittal noise, unwilling to insert himself into what-ifs, and trotted over to the seam where the door nearly met the concrete wall. Its leading edge stood ajar by a good ten inches, beyond which stood an impenetrable wall of black. He blew out a long breath and, without hesitating, squeezed through the narrow gap and into the darkness. Seconds later a brown wing appeared, gesturing toward the ground. “Don’t step on the dirt in the corner. Cable’s underneath.”

With so many bodies protruding from the concrete, none of them had taken the time to look at the sediment blown against the walls by decades of valley wind. Sure enough, the dirt leaning against the southern wall drew a thick line from the gap in the door all the way up the ramp. Brair's commandeered power cable hid under the debris where only dumb luck might coax an Enclave soldier to notice it. Ginger couldn’t help but appreciate the simplicity of the camouflage.

Hoof after hoof danced carefully around the deliberately placed soil as Roach and then Aurora squeezed through the gap. Ginger hesitated at the door as she saw the the track it rolled across. The urge to take a deep breath before pushing through pulled at her chest, but she resisted and emptied her lungs before stepping forward.

The door was easily two feet of solid steel. Friction tried to halt her progress as her ribs ground against either side of the opening, and as she slowed she could feel the claws of panic creeping into her throat. All it would take was one errant spark, one wire to come alive and the door could roll shut with her caught in the bite. Possibly. Maybe. Admittedly, she didn’t understand much about how these machines worked to know for sure, but the fear became so real that she contemplated backing out before she got well and truly stuck. Before she could, she felt two hooves plant themselves firmly against her rear.

“Excuse m-”

“Shit or get off the pot,” Julip interrupted, and shoved her forward.

Her hoof caught on the edge of something she couldn’t see and the momentum of Julip’s push sent her sprawling into the darkness, landing hard on her shoulder.

Hooves pounded past her over what sounded like metal grating and Ginger pushed herself up to see Aurora’s silhouette in the dim light of the doorway, inches away from a genuinely startled Julip who had only begun to cross the threshold. Aurora’s low, furious whispers echoed into gibberish off unseen walls as she threatened the Enclave mare with what could only be murder or at the very least grevious bodily harm. Whatever it was, it had every ingredient needed to devolve into a scene.

“Aurora, I’m okay,” she said, getting to her hooves. “I tripped.”

Aurora’s feathers shuddered, her eyes glued on the mare in the threshold. “She shoved you.”

“I had to or she was going to get herself wedged in like I’m about to if you don’t move out of my fucking way.” Julip didn’t wait for her to oblige and wriggled her shoulders through the gap, pushing the feathers of her injured wing into Aurora’s face to get her to back up. “Goddesses, you barely know each other and you’re already like a rabid dog with her. Which one of you has a light? I can’t see shit in here.”

A sharp click from Briar’s direction gave birth to a sallow yellow beam that turned to Julip and settled on her face. The old silver flashlight didn’t budge in his wings, nor did the stony expression caught in the glow behind it. Several long seconds passed in silence as Julip realized all eyes were on her.

“What?” she asked.

“I’m trying to work out why my eight-year-old has more sense than the twenty-eight-year-old I’m looking at right now.” He flicked the light down to the grated metal floor, confirming Ginger’s suspicions, but she blinked surprise at what his light had landed on.

Barely a yard from where she’d landed a large section of grating had been pulled away, below which lay a tangle of thickly insulated pipes and the exposed bolt of a valve missing its handle. A fall into that gap almost guaranteed some ugly injuries.

Julip stared at the missing panel and swallowed. “I… didn’t know that was there.”

“Now you do.” He shook his head and swung his light around the room they now stood in, letting the four of them see the strange array of plumbing that rose out of the floor and across the ceiling in neat, evenly spaced rows. Nozzles studded the blackened pipes every few feet. Ginger followed the sweep of Briar’s light back down the opposite wall and through the grating where she noticed more nozzles pointing up toward them.

She lifted her hoof and held it in front of her face. Something dark smeared it in roughly the same pattern as the grating they stood on. Soot.

“This place is dangerous. I know two of you are Stable ponies but I assumed you would all come to the same conclusion when we arrived.” The light found Julip again, forcing her to squint. “You can either try to be more careful, or you can wait here until we’re done. Your choice.”

Ginger expected her to respond with a quick little barb and push Briar into a full-blown lecture, but to her surprise the mare licked her lips and nodded at her own hooves. “No, yeah. Sorry. I’ll be careful.”

It was enough to satisfy Briar. He took a breath, puffed it out and by means only a seasoned father possessed he offered Julip a small, forgiving smile that signified the end of the topic and the beginning of the one they’d flown down for. He waggled his light at the floor around them, highlighting the other spots where grating had been removed or had rusted through. “I hope I’m not the only one who brought a light.”

In the blackened room, Ginger could see Aurora lift her Pip-Buck and toggle something she couldn’t identify. Suddenly the room was awash in the dim green light from its screen. It was startling how quickly the walls seemed to gobble up the glow.

It reminded her of the plastic stick-on stars her sister used to have on her bedroom ceiling and how some of them would still glow a little when they held a flashlight against them. The cardboard box they came in was so worn that the corners only stayed together with the help of several layers of yellowed tape, but the instructions on the side had somehow survived. The manufacturer promised that the stars worked best with a standard light spell, but it didn’t explain how to cast it.

She briefly considered throwing a little bit of magic around just to see if she might stumble into something that worked, but then she remembered the Unicorn Bloom outside and decided against it. Instead, she conjured the same simple spell she used to distract the foals back at the slave camp. A tickle of pride warmed her cheeks as an amorphous sphere of magic popped into existence in front of her, giving off a faint amber glow.

With three different shades of light coloring an empty black room that actively resisted their colors, they traced Briar’s steps toward a smaller door on the opposite wall.

“They went a little overboard with the decontamination chamber,” Aurora observed.

Ginger let her light drift behind her, giving Julip and Roach something to see by. She remembered the decontamination chamber back at Stable 6 in Blinder’s Bluff. “I don’t think that’s what this is.”

Aurora gave her a curious look and noticed the black smear that covered her right shoulder from when she fell. Her face grew concerned. “What is that?”

“Soot,” Briar supplied. He stopped at the smaller door and dragged a feather across its surface. An oily black substance clung to its vanes. “Those old showerheads weren’t made to spray any water I’d drink.”

Aurora stared up at the heavy-duty nozzle with a mixture of disbelief and mistrust. “It’s an incinerator.”

Briar gripped the door’s handle in his feathers and shoved it down with a hard grunt and a shriek of complaining metal. Wiping the soot off on his flanks, he tucked his wings and shoved the door open with his hooves. “Bingo.”

Aurora let Ginger file through first, deliberately putting herself between her and Julip. “What’s the point in having an incinerator right behind the Stable door?”

“A trap for intruders, probably,” Roach suggested.

Ginger’s hooves passed beyond the door and clicked against smooth concrete, but it was the heat that swirled on the other side that caught her attention. She wrinkled her nose in the uncomfortably humid air and made an accompanying noise to let the others know it wasn’t pleasant over here.

“That was our theory too, at first.”

Briar stepped across a narrow room lined with bars on one side and desks on the other. The jail cells were empty save for a few meager pieces of rusting furniture and a single, motionless form that lay curled in the far corner. The nameless pony wore a faded brown shirt and a simple gun belt around its hip. A ring of keys lay on the floor next him, each one methodically snapped in half. Beside that, the mangled pieces of a plastic keycard.

“Whoever he was, he did everything he could to keep the others here from leaving. Merry and I are pretty sure that’s what the incinerator is for, too.”

Ginger blinked at the dead guard, then looked at the door they’d come through. Flaking black and yellow stripes lined its edges. With soot coating every surface, she hadn’t noticed the small window mounted into the door. But on this side the glass caught their lights like a dark mirror.

“They wanted to keep them inside?”

Briar shrugged. “That’s my guess, anyway. Not like there’s anyone left to ask.”

The quiet security office felt claustrophobic with just five ponies milling around inside of it, and the suggestion that a place like this might have been built to keep ponies from leaving only added to the knot forming in Ginger’s gut. She stayed close to Aurora as Briar opened a desk drawer and began stacking parts to something Aurora called a pump jack atop a layer of moldy red folders.

“One second,” he said, gesturing to the next door. It was a flat slab of steel with no visible means of opening it besides a dark keypad mounted to the wall beside it. “It’s a heavy son of a bitch. Thankfully once the Enclave clears one of these places out, they don’t usually come back to check the desks for pencils. Good place to stash tools.”

As they waited for him to assemble the jack, Ginger followed Aurora toward the sealed door. Even in the half light she could see the confusion and anger in her face. Eventually, she spoke.

“I don’t get it. Why an incinerator? Why build a Stable if nobody’s allowed to leave?”

The silence that answered her made it clear nobody knew the answer. Unsatisfied, she turned around and pressed the issue.

“We’re told from the day we’re born that we’re the seeds of the future. That… that when enough time has passed, the Stables will open and we’ll be the ones to give Equestria a second chance at life.” Her face twisted as she struggled to make sense of it. “If Stable 1 was failing they should have opened the doors, not…”

She looked at the body of the pony who had locked himself in the cell and destroyed any chance the ponies trapped inside might have had to escape. Ginger followed her gaze to the incinerator door and the shattered remains of the keypad on this side of the door. There was no handle here for anyone to turn. Just smooth, uncaring steel.

Aurora fumbled for words before settling to repeat herself. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Whatever happened here,” Briar said, the assembled jack tucked under his wing below a rusty crowbar, “it happened a long, long time ago. The ponies who built these places were of the same generation that built the bombs. None of ‘em were in the business of doing things that made sense. Best to move forward and try not to trip over too many of their bones along the way.”

Ginger could tell it wasn’t the answer Aurora wanted to hear, but the defeat in her eyes let her know she’d given up asking for now. They made room for Briar to set up his tools at the door and waited as he pried the long end of the crowbar between the floor and the nonfunctional door. With nothing else to do but watch, Aurora opted to take hold of the bar and lever the door far enough up its tracks for Briar to slide the jack underneath. When she set it back down the jack let out a sturdy clank beneath the load, and Briar promptly went to work on the ratchet one pump of the handle at a time.

Despite her gloom, Aurora’s lip twitched up as the gap beneath the door widened. “I bet deputy Chaser wishes he had one of these when I…” She paused and glanced back to where Julip waited near the dead deputy’s cell. “When we broke out.”

“No, that’s fine,” Julip said. “Just take all the credit.”

As much as she disliked the mare, Ginger had to admit she was quick on her hooves when it came to keeping her identity under wraps. The Enclave did nothing if not churn out excellent liars. With the help of Julip’s patchwork, Aurora’s accidental truth sailed well over Briar’s head.

“Oh yeah?” He grunted, giving the jack lever another push. The door clanked up another inch. “How’d you do that?”

Ginger tried not to smile too much as Aurora puffed up a little, eager to brag. “I picked the lock and used bolt cutters to sever the security door's hydraulics. The deputy on shift got stuck out in the Atrium and went ballistic. I never ran so fast in my life.”

He let out an impressed whistle and looked at Julip. “And you?”

Four sets of eyes turned to the Enclave mare who offered a shrug in response. “I was too busy trying not to piss myself. Aurora’s the one who knew which things to break and in what order.”

That earned a chuckle from the stallion. He stopped and leaned on the lever long enough to catch his breath and pointed a soot-streaked feather between her and Aurora. “And you two decided the best thing you could do to help your Stable was to break out of it. I imagine something like that takes a lot of trust.”

Ginger watched Aurora put on a sheepish smile, shrugging a shoulder at Julip. “I mean, we’ve known each other since we were foals. It's what best friends do.”

Julip didn’t miss a beat, her own expression becoming brittle as she looked to Ginger with what looked like actual jealousy. “I wouldn’t say best friends, but sure.”

It felt like they were tumbling down a molerat hole with every new layer they added to their story, and Ginger could sense herself being sucked into playing a double role she wasn’t entirely up for. Damned if they weren’t good at convincing Briar that they were besties from Stable 10, but this whole thing was beginning to generate its own momentum. One more minute of this and she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to tell truth from fiction.

Taking advantage of the awkward position Julip had thrust her into, she cleared her throat and gave Briar a pleading smile. “Maybe I can offer some help with that door. It’s starting to feel like an oven in here.”

He snorted and motioned to the jack as if to say, “By all means.” She hurried toward him, pulling herself out of Julip and Aurora’s absurd crossfire, and refocused her magic on the haggard lever. With a portion of the bar surrounded in copper light and Briar’s wings gripping the rest, they worked in unison to extend the door as far as the jack would safely allow.

As the vertical bar clanked up into its final notch, Ginger was breathing hard. She couldn’t help but grin a little as she caught her breath. She’d assumed her magic would make the work effortless in the way Twilight Sparkle made it look in the old holotapes, but her pounding heart and aching head argued otherwise. Supermare, she was not.

Panting, she stepped back from the bar and tried not to look too disappointed at the fruit of their labor. She’d expected the jack to lift the door all the way to the top of the frame. What greeted her was a two foot gap. Maybe three, if she was being generous.

Briar clapped a wing against her shoulder, grinning over to where Aurora stood. “She’s a tough one. Might want to hang onto her.”

She glanced back at Aurora and flushed when she saw the look on her face. All she’d done was work a lever for a minute or two but the grin Aurora donned made her feel like she’d rewired some complicated machine on her own. For a brief moment she remembered what it was like to be a filly and hear a grown-up tell her good job. She frowned slightly, but it grew less slight as she remembered the stallion who she looked up to for that praise. Her father had always been eager to spur her and her sister on with his love, but those memories would be forever soiled by the things he did. The things he made her do.

Jovial as his intentions had been, Ginger shrugged out from under his wing and turned to the door. The moment was soured, now. She began to crouch, intent on pushing forward before anyone could ask what was wrong.

As she sent her magic through to light the next room, Briar’s wing quickly dropped in front of her.

“Ap-bup-bup,” he chattered. When she looked up at him, his expression was apologetic. “Gotta warn you, there are bodies on the other side.”

She lifted a hoof to push his wing away, impatience creeping into her voice. “I’ve seen bodies before, dear. We passed several dozen on the way in.”

His wing stiffened, resisting her attempt to move it. His jaw stuck out a little as he clarified. “We all have, but… there’s a lot of them, and they're not skeletal. The heat and humidity made them into a mess.”

She recognized the seriousness in his face and understood he wasn’t trying to patronize her. She let go of his wing and nodded. “Okay.”

“Just… be ready for it. Merry wasn’t.”

He hesitated a moment longer before returning his feathers to his side. Ginger stared into the blackness beneath the door and realized there was an odor being pulled through, faintly sweet but tainted with the unmistakable scent of rot. They were close, wherever they were. She decided if she was going to have to crawl through, it might be better to do so without the benefit of sight this time. One sense was enough.

She shuffled forward, mindful of the steel slab looming above her neck like a guillotine no one had bothered to sharpen. One leg stretched forward and another pushed against the cement behind, one after the other, until she was laying on the ground beyond the threshold. Carefully, she stood and channeled her borrowed magic into a simple sphere in front of her.

It glowed with gentle amber light that pulled shapes out from the shadows. Mounds of what appeared to be discarded clothing lay heaped against the walls on either side of her, spilling out into a vast and dark space ahead until both sides became one homogenous sea of rotting laundry far beyond the range of her light.

Then her brain caught up with her eyes and she saw their faces. Hundreds of them, piled over and crushed beneath dozens upon dozens. Corpses stacked in a frenetic and failed attempt to batter their way through the door she just came through, their faces permanently twisted with fear, panic and rage. What she assumed was clothing were layers of flesh and muscle sloughed off and spilling into the bodies deeper in either pile. The combination of stifling heat and suffocating humidity had turned the corpses at the very bottom into a undignified mass of wet, anonymous gristle.

This wasn’t death the way she knew it. This wasn’t a rotten body discarded along the highway or a curious, sanitized sideshow of bones to speculate over. This was something else. Something she didn’t have the words to describe. Briar had tried to warn her, but what else could he have said?

She closed her eyes and took a slow breath to calm herself, but the lingering scent of slow-cooked death invaded her nostrils like a disease. Her stomach lurched. Through the gap in the door, Aurora asked her something she didn’t have the luxury of parsing. Even with her eyes shut she could see dead surrounding her, made unrecognizable by time, biology, and simple gravity. She gagged again and knew she was going to be sick.

Her mother’s quiet voice whispered in the back of her head.

Not here. Here we respect the dead.

An old memory from her first time visiting the family mausoleum when she was little. A lesson meant to teach her the difference between the ponies of New Canterlot and the scavengers of the untamed wasteland beyond. Back when she was too naive to understand that the wasteland was everywhere and that even the wealthy were willing to plunder the dead.

And yet her mother was right. She couldn't do it here. She hurried forward through the narrow channel cut between the mounds, aided by the dim light of her magic as she tried in vain to ignore the squelching and squeaking of her hooves across the wet concrete. Sheer force of will drove her forward, her focus so intent on getting beyond them that she barely noticed the plastic chairs she was knocking her way through. An overturned cafeteria table came and went unnoticed. The flimsy furniture bounced painfully off her forelegs and skittered into the growing void around her.

Even as her stomach fought to empty itself, she noticed that there were no longer any walls in view. No low ceiling. Just a rat’s nest of overturned chairs and the inky black ahead.

Then, a railing.

She came to a sliding halt against the old steel and it clanged in the empty dark like a forgotten bell, music to accompany her as she vomited over the side. Her vision swam as she heaved again, her body determined to purge itself of any memory of what she’d just waded through to get here. It was a nice gesture, but she could already sense those impressions hardening irrevocably in her mind.

Worried shouts bounced off unseen surfaces. She scraped the roof of her mouth with her tongue and spat the sour muck over the railing.

“I’m alright,” she murmured, staring bleakly into the empty black below.

As she wiped the film of tears out of her eyes, she noticed the warm draft rising up from the void as if she were dangling above a blast furnace. Despite her nauseated contribution, the air that wafted up around her chin and through her mane didn’t carry any noticeable odor. The air was stale and smelled vaguely of hot metal, like a kettle left on the fire until the water boiled away.

While hooves clattered over the floor behind her and more than a few noises of shocked disgust were uttered, Ginger urged a little more magic to flow into the amber blob floating beside her until it glowed with a diffuse firelight.

The blackness below her shrank away and a yawning, impossible chasm opened beneath her.

May 10th, 1076

“A cylinder?”

Spitfire watched in silence as Scootaloo wiped the edge of her dominant hoof over a fresh tin of honey-yellow wax on the corner of her desk, a tactile enhancing product usually reserved for earth ponies who got tired of licking their hooves every time they wanted to turn a page. Scootaloo was too focused on the blueprints laid out across her desk to see the disdain flicker in Spitfire's eyes. She dragged the first sheet aside to examine the next, peering at the expertly drafted lines with a dubious frown.

Stepping back from the desk, Spitfire seated herself in one of the two plush mahogany chairs behind her. It sighed under her weight and she pretended to occupy herself by admiring the absolutely gaudy shrine Scootaloo had made for herself at the heart of Stable-Tec HQ.

Her office was so cluttered with bits, baubles and meaningless accolades that stepping into it had felt like walking into an old mare’s attic. Photos from various stages of her life seemed to hang in what little space had been left over by the myriad pennants, knick-knacks and even a foal’s blue scooter. One such photo featured an ecstatic Scootaloo in her twenties standing in front of a rusted out warehouse that would eventually become the first headquarters of the then-named Stable Incorporated. None of them, including Scootaloo, could have foreseen that the little home security startup would go from installing motion sensors to designing self-sustaining shelters meant to outlast the end of the world.

Scootaloo mumbled something incoherent as she traced a hoof down the center of the blueprint, pulled the page aside and shook her head at the matching set of lines beneath.

“Why is this shaft here?” she asked, tapping the center of the page with a hoof in a way that only drew attention to her diminutive, hardly functional wings. “It’s wasted space.”

Spitfire craned her chin forward with mock-surprise, as if she hadn’t expected her to mark that particular detail for scrutiny. “That’s the central stairwell.”

She watched Scootaloo react with what a polite pony might call concern. In reality, the president and CEO of Stable-Tec looked back at her with a flabbergasted expression a professor might wear after opening a student’s dissertation only to find a drawing of a banana.

She was fully aware that she’d missed the crux of Scootaloo’s question. That was the point, after all. As powerful as Scootaloo was within the civilian sector, among the echelons of government she was nothing. A contracted worker, at best. Someone who did not need to know why someone like Spitfire would come all the way to Fillydelphia just to breathe her air any more than a fish needed to know why the worm dangled in the middle of its pond.

To her credit, Scootaloo was doing an outstanding job at tip-hoofing around what she really wanted to say.

“As far as I can tell, it’s the only stairwell noted in your design.”

It’s a deliberate inefficiency, and you’re not stupid enough to have missed it. Where are the elevators?

Spitfire briefly glanced at the dutifully silent mare seated in the chair beside her before turning back to Scootaloo and nodding. “Yes it is.”

Scootaloo stared at her, chewing the inside of her lip for several seconds before turning back to the blueprint. “Okay… so then you’re aware that this design doesn’t begin to meet basic fire safety codes.”

“Neither does the Pillar, but that doesn’t stop me from going into work every day.”

The frown on Scootaloo’s face became defensive. “The Pillar was cleared for construction by the Equestrian government and has dozens of carefully vetted safety procedures in place for…”

“Miss Scootaloo,” she said, raising her voice just enough to quiet the magenta maned mare. “We are the Equestrian government, and all we’re asking for is your cooperation in this. You and your company won’t be liable should certain aspects of engineering come up short.”

Scootaloo leaned back in her chair hard enough for the hinge to peel. She spread her hooves, indicating the blueprints with a flick of her eyes. “One stairwell for an entire Stable isn’t an engineering shortcoming, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. You're asking for residents to be tramples. What if there's an emergency? And why is it so deep? You’ve got a hundred plus floors here sandwiched together like waffles and ran an empty core through the center and the only thing keeping a pony from falling to their death if one railing.”

Spitfire nodded for what felt like an appropriate amount of time, then looked to the mare seated to her left. Primrose was as she had been the moment the two of them first seated themselves; polite, pleasant, and most importantly during this first glimpse into Spitfire’s world, silent. It heartened her to know she could be trusted to follow simple instructions.

“Ms. Primrose, take note of Scootaloo’s concerns and remind me to bring them up with the design team tomorrow. I don’t see any reason why we can’t make a few compromises.”

Primrose didn’t miss a beat and bent over the arm of her chair to retrieve a thin leather satchel from the carpet. Within seconds her pen was scratching slender, looping notes across a pad of paper.

Scootaloo watched her liaison write, the heat in her eyes cooling a few wary degrees. “This isn’t something a few quick tweaks will fix.” She pushed the blueprints a scant inch away, a subtle yet telling gesture that, coupled with her shift in tone, Spitfire immediately disliked. “You’re asking me to upturn the next year of Stable-Tec’s production schedule because… why? Because Celestia had a change of heart and is taking my work seriously?”

Spitfire straightened a little, feeling the hairs along her mane bristle. For a civilian owner of a glorified construction company, she seemed to have an idea in her head that she had the right to question the directives of a ministry. More than that, even if Spitfire hadn’t led into this meeting with some minor mistruths about Celestia’s sudden interest in Stable-Tec, questioning a princess wasn't something ponies dared do within earshot of their government. That wasn’t how this game was played.

“Not just Celestia,” she said. “Your government as a whole is looking to you for your cooperation. You’re one of the few civilians to set eyes on balefire technology and we trust that you understand the significance of that invitation. Your organization is a little closer to the fringes in terms of what the future may require, but Stable-Tec is the epitome of a good insurance plan. If balefire ever falls into the wrong hooves, we'd like Equestria to be covered."

She let the words linger in the air until Scootaloo finally gave in and played her part.

“Stable-Tec is aware of the danger balefire presents,” she said.

Spitfire smiled, nodding as she leaned forward and pulled the blueprints off the desk. Paper rustled between her feathers as she rolled the wide sheets into a narrow tube. “Which is why we trust you to know that these plans only represent one of the ten shelters…”

“Stables.”

Her smile tightened. “...Stables we’re asking for. It's an unorthodox design, yes, but the remaining nine would go forward unchanged.”

Scootaloo watched her retrieve the hardened cylinder from the floor and slide the blueprints inside. “I will admit, I appreciate knowing my government has faith in what we’re trying to do here. That being said, maybe you can help me understand why they don’t seem to trust me enough to tell me what they actually want with my Stables.”

Spitfire laid the tube across her lap. “I don’t understand what you mean. These ten would be reserved for grateful members of your government and their families in the event the disaster you had the foresight to predict comes to pass. It's a simple safeguard meant to preserve continuity of power.”

“I’d appreciate it if you stopped trying to flatter me into silence.” Scootaloo leaned forward and tapped the edge of her hoof against the spot on her desk the blueprints recently occupied. “Try to remember, I designed the Pillar your office is in. One thousand four hundred ponies. That’s the maximum capacity for that complex. Each one of these Stables is rated for two thousand, with an ideal population density at one. Even if you’re planning on housing every cousin of every intern that has ever thought of working in a ministry, you still wouldn’t fill all ten Stables.”

She jabbed the same hoof at Spitfire’s lap, a gesture that trampled every common rule of decency and sent a spark up her spine. “That Pillar on steroids your people designed? That’s ten Stables’ worth of space alone. It’s not enough for you to say you need our Stables. Now you’re asking my company to build you a functional city for free.”

This wasn’t how the game was played, at all. She could feel her leverage slipping. “Naturally, Stable-Tec would be compensated for materials and labor…”

Scootaloo cut her off. “At wholesale. Zero profit. You’re not seeing the point. Once the general public finds out about the Balefire Bomb, they’re going to put two and two together and start thinking how long it’ll be until the zebras have it. I’m not excited by the idea of having to tell that first wave of scared ponies that all the first tickets were bought up by their noble government.”

“Scootaloo, our offer implies that we would be willing to handle any and all PR issues.”

“Again, not the point. The point is no matter how you think you can handle it, I’ll have a mob outside my building with pitchforks and torches accusing me of putting the ponies who built the bomb ahead of the ponies it has every potential to harm.” There was a heat in her voice she was working hard to hold back, like a mare trying to talk herself down from starting a brawl all while aching to throw the first punch.

She waited a beat, composed herself, and started again. “Look. I’m genuinely happy that the government is finally willing to give worst case scenario preparation serious thought, but you’re asking me to reserve a year of construction scheduling for something you’re not willing to fully explain. I didn’t make this company what it is to protect the ministries. I did it to ensure regular ponies had a chance to survive mistakes beyond their control.”

The implication came so close to the line without crossing it that Spitfire’s lip twitched with open irritation. “Careful,” she murmured.

“I haven’t said anything that isn’t true. Stable-Tec’s official answer to your offer is no. Our facilities aren’t for sale.”

Spitfire’s smile hardened as she imagined herself climbing over the desk and clamping her wings around that poor excuse for a pegasus’s little orange throat until she heard something break. It was a tempting thought, but one that would quickly unravel everything. Her jaw flexed as she clenched her teeth, waiting for the sudden flare of rage to die down to a tolerable simmer.

She turned to Primrose who, surprisingly, seemed to show no particular emotion at all. Maybe it was because she was here as an observer that she could maintain her composure so easily. Benefit of being the new girl, she supposed. As her liaison, Primrose’s only responsibility in this moment was to understand the facts. She didn’t have to burden herself with the shame of having them backfire.

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that I wasn’t able to adequately convey the importance of this visit.” She slung the strap of the tube over her shoulder and stood, gesturing with a feather for Primrose to do the same as she continued with the hollow pleasantries. “I’ll touch base with some folks in Canterlot and contact you next week, if that’s alright.”

Scootaloo remained seated. “My answer will be the same then as it is now, Spitfire. Maybe you should look elsewhere for this project of yours. I hear Pintolski out in Las Pegasus has feelers out for investors.”

Spitfire pretended not to hear that last part. Pintolski was a leech looking to make a quick bit off of Stable-Tec’s rising popularity by marketing what were essentially blast-proof phone booths minus the phone. His poured concrete “preservation shelters” had cropped up all around the popular tourist destinations in Las Pegasus in an attempt to cement his company’s name in the public mind. He was actually making some headway in that regard. So much so that one of his pop-up shelters had been allowed onto the testing grounds for the most recent balefire test a week earlier. All that remained after detonation were the melted rebar supports.

Pintolski's concrete turds were a lost cause, and Scootaloo knew it. It was as close to don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out as she could get without saying the words.

“Thank you,” Spitfire ground out. “We’ll be in touch.”

Scootaloo smiled and gestured toward the door.

This was a problem. No, this was a disaster. As she stepped around the plush chair and listened to the soft carpet whisper against her hooves, she realized that somewhere along the line she had grossly miscalculated how much influence she thought she wielded. Rainbow Dash had been easy because she had all but laid out the blackmail against herself on a gold platter. Treason was a lever that could lift mountains.

Scootaloo, however, had a record squeakier than an alicorn’s asshole. There was nothing on her. No convictions, no charges, not so much as a fine for littering. What she did have was a company and a goal, and Spitfire assumed it would be enough to come bearing a little honesty and an open checkbook.

She didn’t expect Scootaloo to actually care what she wanted the Stables for. She certainly didn’t think she would have the gall to decline the offer solely on the basis that it was her government writing the check.

This was going to require an overhaul of everything. She could feel it in her gut. Months of reworking timetables, sorting out who to approach and when. Just the effort of reaching for the doorknob and embarking on that long and frustrating process all over again was exhausting.

“I like you.”

Spitfire blinked and turned around. Primrose was still in her seat. Had she even gotten up? Her eyes were firmly fixed on Scootaloo now, the satchel she’d carried with her propped across her lap like an old mare’s purse.

Scootaloo looked equally perplexed. “That’s… nice, I suppose?”

“I like you a lot,” Primrose continued, undeterred. She lifted a pink feather into her baby blue mane and slowly pulled at one of her natural curls. It slipped free like a heavy ribbon, settling into the crook of her neck. “When I was little, a lot of foals would pretend they’d met the Cutie Mark Crusaders. All the blank flanks my age either wanted to meet you or just be you. Canterlot Elementary even had this program where the older ponies would help the younger ones try things that might help them get their cutie marks.”

“Mentors n’ Marks,” Scootaloo supplied, glancing at Primrose’s hip. “Is that how you got yours?”

Primrose followed her gaze to the rook on her flank and snorted. “Gods, no. I’d burn this thing off if it wouldn’t leave a scar. If I’m being honest, I used to hate the three of you. Running around selling foals onto some bullshit idea that they have to abide by an unknowable force that’ll someday give them a cutie mark? I don’t need some magical ass tattoo to tell me who I am.”

Spitfire blanched. This was a mistake. Celestia’s sun, this was all a mistake.

“Prim, we’re already done here. Come on.”

Scootaloo nodded. “I think it’s best you-”

“Shut up, please.” She didn’t raise her voice. She could have been commenting on the weather for all the force she put into those three words, yet a thick silence settled in like a fog. Primrose patted the sides of her satchel, making minor adjustments to how it sat across her legs. “I said I used to hate you. I like you now. Easy-peasy.”

Spitfire considered wrapping a wing around Prim’s leg and forcing her up from the chair, but there was something in the mare’s voice that stopped her. She wasn’t saying all this for a lack of self-control. The unassuming face, the polite silence, all of it was calculated.

Her plan was already shot to hell. Scootaloo was probably off the table, which meant Stable-Tec wasn’t in the picture, which meant months or years of laying new groundwork before she was ready to try something like this again. Whatever Primrose was doing, her plan was already sunk. A few more holes in the hull wouldn’t make a difference.

She let go of the doorknob and decided to watch.

“Do you want to know why I like you?” Primrose leaned forward like a filly with a juicy secret. Her satchel creaked. “It’s because you know exactly what you want, and you’ll fuck just about anyone to get it.”

Scootaloo stood. “You need to leave.”

She laughed. “Golly, you sure are tall! But sit down a minute. I’ll leave once I’m finished.”

Spitfire and Scootaloo frowned with varying levels of apprehension as Primrose dipped a wing into her satchel. From it she produced three bright red, unmarked folders. She set the satchel onto the carpet and began idly tapping the folders against her knee.

Tap. Tap.

“You're a mare in search of a legacy. Always were, I’m guessing. You’re intelligent enough to accept the fact that none of us live forever and on some level, all of us wish we could. Nobody wants to die and certainly nobody wants to die knowing they accomplished nothing worth remembering.”

Tap. Tap.

“And what better way to be remembered than to be known as a mare who dedicated herself to others?” She gestured to her right where the scooter hung from a set of padded hooks in the wall. Folded into neat squares and laid lovingly across its worn deck were three tiny red capes. A blue, homemade patch featuring the silhouette of a filly adorned each. “Whether that’s helping foals do something to define themselves or spearheading a company whose sole purpose is to give ponies peace of mind in these darkest days of our history, above all else you want to be remembered as a good pony.”

Scootaloo stared at her, mouth stuck halfway between a scoff and a laugh. She blinked, shook her head and turned to Spitfire. “Mind games? Really?”

Spitfire didn’t react. “Listen to what she has to say.”

The CEO of Stable-Tec licked her lips, understanding that neither of them were going to leave unless someone forced them to. Spitfire was well aware of the stone faced security personnel that roamed these headquarters and was not eager to be publicly dragged off the property. Still, this was starting to feel like a good bet. Her silence made it clear to Scootaloo that the ball was in her court.

The flinch that pulled at the corner of Scootaloo’s eye was barely perceptible, but it was there. She sat back down.

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be remembered well,” she said.

Tap.

Primrose grinned. “Oh, I agree! And it’s that two-faced, holier-than-thou schtick that I just love!”

Scootaloo narrowed her eyes.

“You’re so good at it, you almost had me convinced! I mean, you just sat there and poured your heart out about how you just couldn’t conceive of disappointing your fellow Equestrians by selling the first batch of bomb shelters to their mean old government.” Primrose grinned as if they were longtime colleagues sharing a drink. “I am genuinely jealous right now. You can say all that without cracking a smile even though you’re willing to capitalize on the very fear your company generates by just existing.”

“That’s not what-”

“What does a ticket to one of your Stables cost again? Twenty… no, that’s right, twenty-five thousand bits per head. You have the clankers to bankrupt whole families on the slimmest chance that your Stables will even be needed, and all while knowing the only reason Stable-Tec exists right now is because those same families already bankrolled your spending spree through a generous donation of their hard-earned tax money, courtesy of the same ministry you’re thinking about turning down right now. I mean, bravo. That’s the type of silver tongue I have wet dreams about.”

Before she could object, Primrose slipped a feather under the cover of the topmost folder enough to display the thin stack of papers inside. “So. Now that we’re not pretending to be ponies we aren’t, let’s dispense with the rest of the bullshit and get down to brass tacks. Like I said, I like you, so you’re going to be privy to a special amended offer. Are you ready to listen?”

Scootaloo shrugged her diminutive wings. “I don’t seem to have much choice.”

Primrose grinned at that. “Good girl. The offer’s simple. You, i.e. Stable-Tec, are going to build your first ten Stables on your current schedule with the exception of the one detailed in the blueprints we presented. That one will be built as described with no alterations prior to Spitfire’s expressed approval. In exchange, we, i.e. your royal government, will pay for all aspects of said construction and future maintenance. We will also provide Stable-Tec with complete funding for up to ninety additional Stables that will remain under your full control, including any assistance you may need with land acquisition, permitting and alterations to existing infrastructure.”

Scootaloo grew several shades paler. “Ninety… you’re joking.”

She turned to Spitfire. “She’s joking, right? She can’t authorize something like that. That’s hundreds of billions of bits. There's a war to fund.”

Spitfire said nothing, afraid if she did she would begin screaming gibberish. They’d come here asking for ten Stables but Primrose was evidently used to playing at tables with richer blinds. This made the money Rainbow siphoned to Jet Stream look like pocket change.

Primrose gave Scootaloo a knowing smile. “Who do you think mints those bits? This offer should allow us the ten facilities we’re asking for without interrupting Stable-Tec’s timetables for the public market. Everyone wins.”

“Ah.” Scootaloo nodded, her eyes drifting to the red folders dangling in Primrose’s wing. “And I assume if I say no a second time, those come into play.”

Primrose leaned back in her chair so that the front two legs lifted off the ground. Spitfire met her eyes and saw the conniving grin on her face.

“I told you she was smart.”

She’d said no such thing, but that wasn’t the point. Spitfire played her part and smiled back, and Primrose dropped the chair back to the carpet with a sturdy thud. The cotton candy mare tilted the folders up from her lap and picked idly at the corner.

“Since we’re being honest now, I don’t see the harm in telling you that I’ve only been with the MoA for a little over a month. But even though I’m a newbie, I already know what my favorite part of the Pillar is.”

Scootaloo motioned for her to hurry up. Primrose ignored it.

“It’s Millie. You’ve heard of her, right?” She wriggled her free wing menacincly in the air. “Powerful, free-thinking artificial intelligence nightmare scenario that ended up being Robronco Industries most underwhelming product since the hoofless coat trimmer? Your earth pony counterpart Applebloom works there, right?”

She owned the company, but Scootaloo wasn’t in the mood to split hairs. “Just get on with it.”

Primrose smiled. “Well, even if Millie did just turn out to be an overmarketed personal assistant, she is hooves down my favorite part of working in government. All I have to do is ask her a question and beep-boop-beep, she spits out the answer. She’s plugged into so many public and private databases that she’s practically an oracle to a pony with the right clearance. So here I am sitting at my desk thinking to myself, ‘Wait, I have a crazy amount of clearance. I wonder what kind of skeletons does the most selfless mare in Equestria have in her closet?’”

She waited. Scootaloo swallowed, eyes glued to the folders.

Primrose wiggled in her seat with a victorious little grin. “Exactly. See, that’s why I choose to take my skeletons on walks and let them shit in the front yard for the neighbors to see. I’ve got nothing to hide, which means I’ve got nothing to lose sleep over. You, on the other hoof…”

She peeked into the folder and nodded her explicit approval. “Gee fuckin’ whiz, Scoots. You’ve got a dark streak in you. I could see how something like this could be, well… damaging.”

If Scootaloo was still breathing, Spitfire couldn’t tell. The mare had gone completely still.

“Oh!” Primrose held out a placating hoof. “No-no-no! Don’t be mad! You’re not the only one to make mistakes. These other two aren’t even for you.”

She spread the folders like playing cards, indicating them in sequence. “Look. One for you, one for Applebloom, and one for Sweetie Belle. Even your fellow crusaders screwed up here and there. Some of them worse than you. And best of all? You have the chance to make sure none of it sees the light of day. Ever.”

With a gentle motion of her feathers, the folders slid together and dropped neatly into the satchel beside her chair, her eyes never leaving Scootaloo’s.

“All you have to say is yes.”

At the sound of Ginger rushing blindly into the darkness, Aurora found herself shoving past Briar and pulling herself through the gap. Roach shouted something, probably a reasonable alternative to throwing herself into whatever lay beyond the door, but she wasn’t listening.

The bodies, stacked like molten slag, reached toward the light of her Pip-Buck with limbs so decomposed that Aurora felt her throat open up. She managed to quash her stomach’s brief rebellion and wriggled the rest of the way through. Keeping her eyes on the dim beacon of amber magic further ahead, she tried not to think about the jellied fluids sticking to her hooves and hurried into what she assumed was the Atrium.

The green wash of her Pip-Buck swung back and forth across plastic chairs grouped around at least a dozen round tables, many of them toppled toward the hill of bodies behind her. The echo of Ginger spitting the sick from her mouth bounced off walls too distant to be seen even in their combined light. Her hooves slowed as she crossed the concrete, the diminishing urgency gradually winning the battle against her desire to put as much distance between her and the ruined corpses at the door.

She caught a glimpse of a cafeteria line beyond the tables to her left, and the hazy film of something unpleasant growing on the plastic sneeze guards. White plastic letters still hung onto the black marquee board behind the line, but instead of describing the rotted contents of the square metal tubs below them they had been summarily rearranged to spell a litany of strange slogans.

Aurora frowned and turned the glare of her Pip-Buck to the right. Empty poster frames clung to the gently curving wall, dusty shards of glass still clinging, the banners long since torn out. More graffiti graced those spaces, written in dark slashes of what she hoped was paint.

She reached Ginger at a railing overlooking what appeared to be an empty void. When she put her wing on her shoulder she could feel the cool dampness of sweat sink into her feathers.

“Are you okay?”

Ginger swallowed and shakily nodded. “I saw their faces, or what's left of them.”

Aurora squeezed, hoping to nudge her back into the now. “Let’s get you off this rail. Come on.”

She expected the metal to creak as Ginger took her hooves away and was oddly surprised when it shrugged her off without a sound. More than a week of walking from shelter to shelter across the wasteland had made her come to expect that everything left standing would be one strong sneeze from falling over. Even the Stable beneath Blinder’s Bluff had been so stripped down to the bolts that it seemed more reasonable to scrap rather than repair it.

If it weren’t for the sludgy remains of the residents the others were presently climbing through to reach them, she might have assumed Stable 1 had only just recently collapsed.

“Move, please.”

Aurora and Ginger looked back the way they came in time to see Julip hurrying stiffly toward them with one wing gesturing them out of the way. They moved and Julip promptly boarded the railing and heaved into the void below.

Following close behind, Roach and Briar appeared less disturbed about the slick mess that coated the first few inches of their legs. The four of them moved a few steps away from Julip to avoid the hot stink of half digested beef stew that threatened to rise back up on the sweltering updraft.

“Sorry,” Briar said, aiming his flashlight at Julip’s miserable face. She shot him a sour glare as her gut lurched again. “There’s no good way to warn anyone about them. If it’s any consolation, there’ll be less the further down we go.”

“They looked like they suffocated,” Roach rumbled.

Briar hooked a feather around the crux of Julip’s wing to keep her from leaning too far forward. “Maybe. Not sure it matters anymore. The Enclave had this place stripped down years before any of us took our first steps.”

“Assuming they even bothered,” Julip muttered.

Aurora took a sharp breath as Briar frowned at her.

“What makes you say that?”

With the exception of him, the three of them could see Julip’s throat bob as she swallowed. She pressed her lips into a thin line as she cobbled together an answer. With her injured wing, she gestured vaguely into the pit beyond the rail.

“That,” she said.

Briar followed her gaze and, to their relief, nodded understanding. “Ah. Good eye.”

Curiosity drew Aurora, Ginger and Roach to the very edge of the floor and they peered over the railing into the dark. At first there was nothing to see, only the absence of everything, as if the floor they stood on overlooked an endless underground canyon. Then the amber light beside Ginger grew brighter and soon a watery globule of her magic was swimming out over the void.

A massive pillar of smooth concrete loomed into the light like a lurking monster, the sheer size of it confusing Aurora’s perception of reality so badly that she couldn’t decide whether it was holding the roof of the Stable up or hanging from it like some gargantuan stalactite. As Ginger swept her magic across its cylindrical surface they were able to see at least a dozen walkways stretching over the gap between the pillar and the curving edges of the endlessly repeating floors below. They reminded Aurora of the spoked wheels she’d seen on the trader wagons, laid on their sides and stacked high.

An open doorway cut to accommodate one of the walkways gave her a clear view of the darkened stairwell within the pillar. Her eyes narrowed as several questions formed in her mind, but the stairs and the pillar containing them weren’t what Julip had motioned toward.

Down the central shaft of Stable 1, below a dizzying amount of darkened landings and well beyond the reach of their meager lights, the dim ring of a distant level flickered with a weak glow of its own.

Aurora’s heart leapt.

Briar hadn’t been lying. Some way, somehow electricity still flowed in Stable 1.

“That’s I.T.,” Briar said.

Ginger peered over the edge, her eyes wide. “How far down is it?”

“Thirty-four levels. Takes about an hour to get there.”

Roach craned his neck over the edge, mistrustful of the railing. “An hour. For a few dozen floors?”

“Don’t look at me, I didn’t design this place.” He gave Julip a tug and, surprisingly, she came away from the railing without complaint. “You’ll see what I mean when we’re on the stairs.”

They followed him along the railing, tracing the unbroken arc it drew around the circumference of the central stairwell until the rail terminated at a vertical wall of reinforced concrete. The wall bore a single placard that simply said NO RUNNING.

An empty doorframe stood in the center of the wall like an open wound. The double doors lay bent and discarded on the floor behind them, broken hinges still attached. Beyond the doorway, a simple walkway bridged the void to the stairwell.

Aurora felt her legs grow stiff at the prospect of stepping out onto the platform. “How far down to the generator?”

Briar took the first step onto the platform and paused to smirk at her. “Much, much farther.”

Scootaloo didn’t accompany them out of her office. They left her there, alone, staring down at her own reflection in the surface of her desk, trying to rectify the coming golden age of Stable-Tec with the weight of having done it solely to keep a secret safe resting on her conscience.

Their hooves clicked over pristine marble tiles as security led them out of the building's secure corporate wing and into the sunlit public lobby. Spitfire found her eyes pulled toward the tall, narrow windows that dominated the building’s western wall. The setting sun was just beginning to peek down through the glass, giving the vast lobby a golden glow that made everything feel a little richer. More defined.

Even Primrose, who practically pranced past the information desk a few paces ahead, seemed to glow a little.

She followed her past a large group of ponies waiting next to one of several information boards while their tour guide struggled to turn on a comically small Stable-Tec branded bullhorn. Voices echoed through the space like the constant hum of a great machine. In another hour the crowds and the voices would be gone, leaving behind the quiet whisper of a building gone to sleep.

Primrose pushed through the doors, turned, and trotted backwards with a theatrical twirl of her wing. Spitfire snorted, then pointed a feather of her own at one of the many cameras perched atop the parking lot light posts not far ahead. Primrose repeated the gesture at the nearest camera, no doubt to the confusion of whichever pony whose job it was to monitor them, and beat her wings toward the ground.

Spitfire followed suit and the sidewalk, Stable-Tec HQ and the metro area of Fillydelphia shrank away beneath them in a rush of cool evening wind. Rising into the open sky was like free therapy and Spitfire took a luxuriously deep breath as the chilled currents of air held her aloft. She exhaled with a low groan as the muscles in her shoulders stretched to their limits with a pleasant release of tension. Primrose fluttered on the breeze not far ahead of her, too far updraft to hear an old mare make old mare noises.

A few hard flaps and she was able to draw up alongside her unexpectedly skilled liaison. Primrose regarded her with an anticipatory grin. She already knew the question was coming, which made shouting it across the headwind feel a little redundant.

“What did you have on her?”

She could see Primrose chuckle, but the wind devoured the sound of it. “Nothing, but not for a lack of trying. Sweetie Belle had a few indecency charges in her late teens, but the other two? Clean.”

“But she looked petrified.”

“Figured she would be,” Primrose called back. She grimaced at the strength of the eastern wind and tacked her wing until it practically overlapped Spitfire’s, the difference in air pressure pressing their feathers together. “Goody-goodies like Scootaloo are always the same. Always trying to preserve the perfect record. She could’ve been thinking I found out she rode out a few hours on her roommate’s vibrator and would’ve shat diamonds at the thought of it going public. Probably not it, though. She has more teeth to be afraid of something petty like that.”

They passed into a small thermal and both instinctively beat their opposite wings to pick up altitude. As the edge of the bustling suburbs slid behind them and the eastern slopes of the Pleasant Hills presented themselves on the horizon, they leveled off and settled into a gentler glide.

Primrose continued like she hadn’t stopped. “My guess is she buried something damaging and assumed Millie somehow dug it back up. Doesn't really matter what it is, really. Red folders tend to make a pony fear the worst.”

Spitfire arched an eyebrow at her. “You’ve done this before?”

“Once or twice. How do you think I found out about this job in the first place?” She dropped her wing over Spitfire’s again with a friendly smirk. “Always keep a few ponies wondering what you have on them and someone will eventually start spilling beans to make you go away.”

“Who?”

“Gusty Gales down in Legal. Nice stallion, rotten lay. Gave me a case of the three-week pissburns back when we were in college and he was still worrying about popping the question to his current wife. So he technically owed me.”

She frowned. Gusty had never struck her as the type to sleep around. “If that’s true, I’m not sure I can afford to have him acting as one of our contacts within the ministry.”

Primrose shook her head dismissively. “Nah, keep him. Gusty might be in the family way, but he’d die for you.”

She chewed on that for a beat, wondering if she'd meant that literally. “You did pull a rabbit out of your hat back there. Maybe Gusty just knew you’d be a good fit. Still, though. Red folders?”

“Red folders.”

“I had to threaten Dash with treason.”

“Red. Folders.”

She stuck her tongue in her cheek and laughed to herself, shaking her head as Primrose grinned at her grudging approval. Something told Spitfire this might be the first time someone hadn’t slapped her on the hoof for playing dirty. New territory for both of them.

“I’ve created a monster,” she chuckled.

Primrose's grin touched her eyes. “Nah, I always was one. You’re just letting me spread my wings.”

Next Chapter: Chapter 26: Descent Estimated time remaining: 49 Hours, 21 Minutes