She did not dream. One moment she was sprawled on the granite floor of the atrium, the next she smelled axle grease. Octavia blinked her eyes open and looked about. She lay atop a soft, but old, mattress on a hard concrete floor. The AFV sat nearby, next to a derelict lorry that looked to have been recently stripped for parts. At the far end of the room was a large metal garage door. This looked like some kind of shipping and receiving area, perhaps a loading bay in the hotel's better days. It was certainly on the ground floor. The upper levels must have been destabilized by the dragon's conjuring and the music. On the other side of the room, she saw injured Operatives laid out on similar mattresses. They all looked comfortable enough, and their medi-gel and bandages appeared fresh. A clunk drew her attention back to the AFV, where a gryphon seemed to be fiddling with something. Bandages covered large portions of his body, but he was still moving. As soon as she tried to sit up, he noticed and motioned for her to lay back down. After another clunk, the gryphon wiped some grease off his claws and plodded over to her side.

"You're awake. How about that." He glanced over her blanket-covered form, tail flicking from side to side. "How are you feeling?"

"Status green," she replied, trying to get out of the makeshift bed. "I should-"

"Whoa, easy there. Easy." The gryphon held out a claw to stop her. "If anyone's earned some downtime, it's you."

Octavia slumped back and tugged at the soft blanket. It must have come from the hotel's stockpiles. She wondered if it had suffered use by the cultists in some act of debauchery, then decided she was better off not knowing. "I... I am tired."

"Why don't you just relax a second? Get your bearings." He tapped his claws together and looked away. A worried frown appeared on his beak. "Uh... can you tell me your name?"

The grey mare raised an eyebrow. Her stomach grumbled, hungry for more fuel. She felt calm and sensed no danger nearby, but the gryphon seemed nervous. "Rollins? What is wrong?" When a worried grimace appeared on his face, she rolled her eyes. "No, no, I know. Rollins is your name. Mine is Octavia." He heaved a sigh of relief and grinned. This confused her even more. "What is going on? You have that expression upon your face, the one you only get when you are nervous or excited. And... why are you calm all of a sudden? I thought you would be terrified that ARGUS might come down on us at any moment." She sat upright again and glanced about, noting the cracks in the walls. "That dragon did raise quite a ruckus, and made a mess of the building. Somepony must have reported something."

A wry smirk crossed his beak as he sat back on his haunches. "Well, I would be... if I didn't have sterling evidence that ARGUS is using some rather nasty drugs to aid in the creation of those shambling pale vampire-freaks we've been having trouble with lately."

Octavia blinked hard. She opened her mouth, then closed it with a smile and motioned with a hoof for him to continue. Paperwork, analysis, and communications were some of his stronger points. She had occasionally seen him around the Manehattan branch before her... well, before that night. Never for long, often a few weeks between sightings, always moving quickly, and usually carrying a package or documents. In retrospect, it made sense that he was clearing low-level tasks and transporting sensitive material for The Lady. He often did such things, flying all across Equestria on a moment's notice to take care of the smallest detail. Manehattan had been very important to The Organization. The Lady seemed to trust him implicitly, but given his upbringing that was not surprising. The gray mare settled back to listen.

"The cultists were growing some really weird stuff here, and selling it to shady buyers. After your little performance in the atrium, the ones who survived were more than willing to talk." He grinned and flexed his wings, then let out a ghastly groan and slumped down to the floor. "Ouch... uh... some of the Operatives had knocked out a few other cultists in the hallways too. I'm not the only one who knows a little less-than-lethal. We interrogated them in separate groups, and I cross-referenced what they had to say. Once you discard the standard nutball ranting and add in the remains of the plants in the atrium, roof greenhouses, and other grow-labs they have in the building, a picture starts to form." He straightened his spine a little and rubbed at one of his bandages. It had been applied very skillfully. "I took what I know about recent ARGUS movements in the city, plus a bit of detective work through the cult leader's documents. Her guards gave us a little trouble at first, but they broke easy. Especially after they saw what you did to that one guy."

Octavia's cheeks reddened slightly. "Ah... which one?"

"The one you left cuffed to the bathtub faucet with the soaked towel still tied around his neck." A sly grin twisted one side of Rollins' beak. Octavia nervously tapped her front hooves together. "Anyway, when you add it all together, the evidence adds up to a firm supply chain through underworld contacts that leads straight to this city's ARGUS base. Given what we know about the bleachies, it's a mighty suspicious set of circumstances. Most of those compounds don't have any innocent applications."

"How long have I been unconscious?" she asked. All that must have taken quite a bit of time. Her injury felt much better, now she had occasion to think about it. In fact, once she glanced under the sheets at the bandage, it seemed she was completely healed.

"A while. But you've been running hard these past two weeks, and that spear-hit wasn't the only nasty wound you've taken recently." He reached into a pouch, produced a small capsule, and dry-swallowed it. "You... uh... you went cold for a little while. I think the spear sliced your heart." The gryphon closed his beak and looked away again. "I've seen you go cold before to regenerate, but..." But he had seen too many friends die, and she still seemed so very mortal whenever he looked at her. "I'm... whenever that happens to you, I'm always worried you won't come back as yourself." The unspoken or that you won't come back at all hung in the air. Rollins coughed. Anyone with unveiled eyes could tell that the leech was a paranormal entity, a real monster. Octavia was just a mare with well-honed skills and a body that could take a beating. "An... anyway, your heart restarted on its own a little bit later, and you've been comatose but healing fine since then. I gave orders not to wake you, because you needed the rest."

"What about you? You look like you could use some rest yourself."

Rollins shrugged, which caused him to wince again. "Um... yeah. The drugs match traces found by Bon Hadescream science teams in the remains of past 'bleachies'. So," he held up a claw and began ticking off items on his talons. "We have drugs that are found in the dead monsters, and a former hotel full of cultists amoral enough to use some freaky magic to grow said drugs. Add in the supply chain running through the more arcane-leaning of this city's criminal element, and you have more than enough to warrant an investigation."

"Then... would it not be in ARGUS' best interests to storm in here and silence us?"

"It would." Rollins smirked again. "If I hadn't handed all this off to a third party. Y'know, to ensure that there's no bad blood biasing the findings."

Octavia smiled. "The Educarchy."

"Bingo. ARGUS will be too busy blustering those pyromaniacs' inquiries to bother with a bunch of worn-out Operatives in a crumbling building. Plus, if they did come storming in here to kill us, it'd just prove their guilt in the Educarchy's books." He rolled his eyes. "We'd be martyrs. Hooray."

She let out a long sigh, shifted atop the mattress, and felt a weight slide off her mind. "Well done, Rollins. But... now that I think about it, that doesn't seem to fit the pattern." Octavia tapped her chin with a hoof. "When Vinyl and I were ambushed while clearing that Elderati Council meeting, the one who spoke through the radio did not sound like an ARGUS leader at all."

"Good catch." His head bobbed. "Right now, I don't care. This evidence gets ARGUS off our backs and makes them somepony else's problem." He tapped a small messenger bag. "I kept duplicates. The Lady Bon Hadescream can pore over them when we get back to Central. Right now, I'm happy to be alive." The gryphon winced again, and rubbed one of his bandages.

"And we are, thanks to your quick thinking." She looked over at the other injured ponies. Most lay still, but a few shifted restlessly in pain-addled sleep. Several Operatives had likely died on this mission as well, in addition to all those lost in the explosion. It felt almost as if that had been years ago, what with the strange way stress stretched the mind's perception of time. Octavia did not dismiss their deaths, especially since she remembered her own hopeless fight against a vampire on that night in the Concertorium, but... but she had ensured their sacrifices were not in vain. That was all she could do.

He shrugged. "I just shuffle paperwork. You're the one who defeated an ancient dragon." After a yawn, he shook himself. Too many hours without sleep and too much thinking was messing him up. It was reassuring to have Octavia awake again. She was somepony he could count on, somepony worth putting up with the leech for. "You even outdid my first special ops team." Not that he or any of the other kids had known they would be on a "special op" when they set out on that doomed mission, but this hotel was supposed to be a simple breach-and-clear too. It was a fortunate thing indeed that Carpathian dragon bones were hard to come by. He had recovered them from the center of the pit, and safely stored them in only the finest burlap sacks available for transport back to headquarters. He would have preferred hazmat containers, but that wasn't gonna happen. Telling the Educarchy about them was also out of the question. They would rightly have demanded possession of the bones, since the Bon Hadescream forces were nowhere near strong enough to properly protect them given the amount of damage they could do. However, today's ally was tomorrow's competitor at a government budget meeting, and those bones would make a nice line-item.

The dragon's remains had burned hot against his gloved claws. They were older than old, the remains of a creature that had lived in a bygone, brutal era and ascended. Such artifacts were temptations, promising the world to any unwary enough to trust them. They were not meant for the sane, and the runes etched into the ancient bones would probably have shattered his mind if he had stared at them. Rollins had been careful to allow nopony else near the bones. He had heard the faint whispers as he wrapped them in burlap and stowed them safely. For how many years had he studied all manner of arcane things at Pendulum? Surely he was wise enough to control the dragon, to use such power for good. Though he said he loved Equestria and revered Celestia, did he not secretly long to conquer them as all gryphons should? Silly little kitten, playing the meek courier instead of seizing the throne he deserves. Such thoughts had entered him, swirled about, and passed through. Where they passed, only oblivion remained. Below the oblivion, beneath the sands of his mind, his claws had worked steadily until all the bones were wrapped and stowed. Above the oblivion, carried on the winds of his mind, the mantras beaten into him at Pendulum had preserved his sense of self. When the work was complete, the sky and sand had met, filling the void where the foreign thoughts had passed. To say he was immune would be inaccurate. It was simply very, very difficult to indoctrinate one who had already accepted a thorough washing of the brain in the shadow of the Spire.

Octavia saw his speech slow as he began staring off into space. When she waved a hoof in front of his beak, his eyes lazily followed. She sighed quietly. The gryphon led by example, as he had been taught. Operatives, like that pegasus girl who had infiltrated with him, respected him not because of his rank or his connections, but because he never gave anything less than his best. She just wished that he would ease back on the throttle sometimes, or he was going to work himself into an early grave. Perhaps... perhaps that was what he wanted.

"Plus, you did it all without attracting the Thetas." Rollins rubbed his eyes and shivered again. The dragon's roar echoed through his mind, much the same as the one he had heard many years ago. He saw the lifeless green glow, heard the grind of metal against metal. They came, shrouded by the mists, unchanging, unrelenting, uncaring. Few in number, almighty in power. His eyes glazed over as he remembered the message that had crackled through the broken voxpack he had carried on his back, groaned in a language he should not have been able to comprehend, OBELISK, OBELISK, do not answer. Every word evenly spaced apart, every syllable ground out slowly and clearly in a screeching, hissing, howling metallic voice. Then came, Quebec, quebec, november, golf, golf, victor. Authentication hotel epsilon three. Unit says again... Four times the hissing voice had called to OBELISK, four times it had repeated the nonsensical phrases. His squadmates had heard only static. Data follows. Then came the noises. Words that had wobbled in his young mind mixed amidst warbling sounds that had made his skull ring. The rest of his squad thought that his improvised repairs were simply acting up. They were still focused on the army of cultists surrounding a fully-manifested dragon. Suddenly, blessedly, the noises had ceased. A second later, PAWTUCKET, out. Then they had emerged, seeming utterly alien when seen stalking across the swamp. Neat glowing ties, suits made of chrome, eyes hollow and dull, strange alligator-skinned cases clutched in their off-mandibles, hair only sparking wires, groaning Cease and Desist...

"The what?"

The gryphon blinked back to reality. He looked down at the gray mare, who was regarding him suspiciously. "Uh... you're not cleared for that."

She sighed, then reached up to pat an unbandaged part of his shoulder. "Rollins, you need to sleep. You are beginning to hallucinate again. I know that look in your eyes."

"Yeah, need to do that." He automatically reached for the small pouch again, then he checked himself and forced his claw back onto the floor. "Look... you saved the day. You came through, and did something only you were capable of. Because of you, a lot of ponies are gonna go to sleep tonight never knowing how close they came to death and worse." The gryphon took a deep breath, and smiled. "Nice performance, Octavia."

"Thank you, Rollins." She looked over at the other injured Operatives. One waved weakly, and she waved back. "I am grateful that The Organization accepted me."

"And Vinyl too!" cried out an all-too-familiar voice...

Author's Notes:

A bit of a surprise update here. I wanted to get this chapter out ahead of the weekend. Why? Because I have another chapter ready for this coming weekend, and I want to give this story arc a proper culmination before October is over. Getting this done took a good chunk out of my personal life, but given reader response so far, I felt y'all deserved it.

Well, of course Octavia survived, we all knew she would. But what is victory without great struggle? This story arc turned into something much larger and more dramatic than I ever expected, but I'm actually sort of proud of that. I'm not proud of how long it took to publish, though! I feel that the underlying design is solid and all the little pieces hold together very well, even though they were assembled over a course of several years. I know the wait can't possibly have been worth it, but I do thank all of you who stuck with this story all that time... and I'm also grateful to those readers who have newly discovered this tale!

I threw in a little nod to Fallout: New Vegas, in the form of Rollins' dialog at the beginning. Also, I hope that the explanations provided in this chapter do not seem like a literary hat-pull. I tried to foreshadow most of the evidence in earlier chapters, as well as the Educarchy's interest and the cultists' production of odd substances. The idea for this finale has been in my mind since almost the beginning of the story arc, only undergoing slight revisions over the years. Actually, most of this story is unchanged from how I originally envisioned it in my mind. The main changes when I type it up are corrective ones, to ensure that everything flows smoothly and all the events correlate. It's a pleasure to finally have it up for all of y'all to read, and I do hope you enjoy it.

Let me know what you thought of this chapter in the comments below, and if you know anyone else who might like to read this story this All Hallows' Eve, please pass it along!