Gears whirred. An electromechanical telephone exchange hummed with the half-caught sounds of a hundred different conversations. Relays tapped in and out, jumping from line-to-line until – with a final clunk of something sliding into place – the dial tone came to life, purring like a cat bathing itself in the summer sun.

However, it didn't help that Doughnut Joe didn't pick up until at least the eleventh ring.

“Who the fuck is this?”

“Twilight.”

“Ah, Twilight. My favourite little freak,” Joe chuckled down the line. In the background could be heard the usual accompaniment of bar noises. The clinking of cider mugs, the coarse and harsh laughter of drunks. Somewhere a time-bell for a boxing match began to ring, the sound distorted as if it were being fed from a television or a radio set. “It’s a bit early in the year, isn't it? I don’t think I've got the sewing kit on me right now. One second, let me ask Caramel.”

“Joe-” Twilight began, before she was cut off by the boom of Joe’s voice.

“CARAMEL?”

“WHAT?!” came the aggravated reply, the response made even harsher by the spit of static it produced when it was translated down the phone line.  

“DO WE HAVE THE SEWING KIT? TWILIGHT’S CALLING!”

“IT’S A BIT EARLY IN THE YEAR, ISN'T IT?”

“THAT’S WHAT I SAID!”

“Joe, seriously! I'm not calling about that!” Twilight half-yelled into the phone, glancing warily behind her.

She was currently hidden in a semi-secluded back room of the Sugar Cube Corner bakery, one hoof cupped around the speaking end of the telephone. Behind her, through the open doorway that led out to the bakery proper, Mrs Cake, co-owner and operator of the establishment, watched her with a mixture of confusion and mild curiosity.

The Cakes had been only too happy to let one of their more regular customers use their phone, but Twilight knew that she had to be careful on what she said. The Cakes were lovely ponies, but she couldn't trust anyone at the moment – for all she knew the agents of the Celestial Levels could be watching her right now.

On the other end of the phone, Twilight’s interruption had gone unheeded.

“YEAH, WE'VE GOT THE SEWING KIT! BUT WE’RE ALL OUTTA ANTI-SCEPTICS!” Caramel was shouting, his voice barely recognizable over the spitting static of the connection and the rowdy shouts of drunk patrons as the boxing match’s time-bell rang out again.

“I THOUGHT I SENT YOU TO GET MORE THREE DAYS AGO?!”

“BULLSHIT! YOU TOLD ME YOU WERE GOING TO DO IT!”

“LET’S NOT GET INTO THIS RIGHT NOW! I'M SURE TWILIGHT CAN BRING SOME FROM THE MORGUE.” Twilight face-hoofed as Joe returned his attention to the call “Yeah, we got the kit. But the problem is that we've run out of anti-sceptic formula. We can do this if you want, but you’ll have to bring some from the morgue.”

“JOE!” Twilight hurled down the phone, capturing the stallion’s attention “Will you just listen to me?”

“Ok, Twilight, I'm listening. Just keep a lid on it, ok?”

Twilight sighed, her hoof cupped at the bottom of the phone coming up to massage the bridge of her muzzle “Joe, I'm not calling about the surgery. It’s the other matter.” Twilight glanced behind her again, relieved to note that Mrs Cake had gone back to kneading dough with her husband, and that the mare was not listening in on her conversation. “I've been found out, they’re looking for me.”

As quick as that, Joe was all business.

“Do you know, or do you think you know?” Joe didn't need to tell her there was a big difference. On a matter as shaky as her heritage, there was no margin for error.

“I know for certain, something… happened today, down at the morgue.”

“Where are you calling from now?”

“Sugar Cube Corner.”

“Right. Twilight, listen very carefully to me,” Joe said, his voice calm in the way only a pony who had a fair amount of expertise in shady dealings down a phone could be. “This is big shit, and I know you’re not the kind of filly to go jumping at shadows unless you've got a reason to. Don’t bother going home; chances are they've already got the place under surveillance if they’re really looking for you. Do you think you can make it down to the bar without being followed?”

“I think I can.”

“Good, I’ll send a message to one of my extraction agents. Everything should be ready by the time you get here.”

“Thanks, Joe.”

“No problem. Just remember, it’s important that you stay vigilant and alert, but you’ve also got to look calm and relaxed, too.”

“Wow, Joe,” Twilight dead-panned “Sounds like a real easy trick to pull off.”

“You used to be pretty good at this, Twilight. Just get back into the groove of things, it shouldn't be too difficult. Oh, and Twilight? One more thing.”

“What?”

“Be a dear and buy me one of those sugar-frosted cupcakes they sell down there, I haven’t had a decent Sugar Cube Corner cupcake in ages.” And with that, Doughnut Joe hung up the phone.

Twilight stood there, the phone receiver still pressed to her ear, before sighing and returning it to its wall-mounted holster. She felt struck by the feeling that she had just put into motion something that would be impossible for anypony to stop. Joe was a mountain, an avalanche waiting to happen. It took the tiniest nudge to get him rolling, but once he had started he couldn’t stop. The only option left open to him was to gain momentum, rumbling and roaring towards some cataclysmic, landscape-altering event.

Things were about to get interesting to say the least.

“Thanks for that, Mrs Cake,” she said as she returned through the door and back into the bakery. As she passed by the counter she laid a few bits down and levitated a sugar frosted cupcake over to herself from one of the display baskets.

“Cheer up, dear,” the mare replied, smiling warmly at her as Twilight slipped her saddle bags back on and opened the door to the bakery. “I'm not sure what your problem is, but I'm sure it’ll sort itself out in time, you’ll see.”

Twilight smiled weakly at the mare and stepped out, closing the door behind her with the faint tinkle of a bell.

“What an odd girl,” Mrs Cake mused to herself. Her husband only grunted in response, his hooves kneading the dough beneath them with furious energy.

≤ΘΘΘ≥

The bus came to a rolling halt whilst on the slot, pausing just long enough for Twilight to hop off before the doors squeaked shut again and the vehicle returned to the flow of traffic. Taking a moment to get her bearings, Twilight adjusted her saddlebags, sighing slightly as the weight redistributed itself.

The saddlebags had been in her possession since she had first arrived in Neon Heights. Originally, they had been part of her infiltration gear, but since she’d gained employment at the morgue they’d served a much more mundane purpose as her day to day carry bags.

The bags themselves were made out of black cloth, scuffed and faded towards the edges where wear and tear had done their work. Situated in the centre of the strap that ran across her back was an embroidered label that read Dr T. Sparkle. Both of the bags were secured by golden clasps and they both opened like a concertina, disclosing an assortment of padded pockets and receptacles she frequently used to carry medicine or paper work.

Twilight looked further back up the street and adjusted her spectacles, her modified eyes negating any restrictions their tint would have imposed on her vision. Fifth was a bad neighbourhood, even by the standards of Cheapside, the area of Neon Heights closest to the boundary with Geartown. Further up the spiral, social conditions continued to improve until you hit the centre of the zone, where the zone was at its most stable, and the who’s who of the Neon Heights socialite class could be found.

Joe’s Doughnuts, as Doughnut Joe’s establishment was imaginatively dubbed, was an easy place to miss. It was located at the end of a blind alley that terminated in the rising black wall of Canterlot’s underlying fabric, a jet black cliff of Megastructure that rose up and up into the heavens until it was promptly jogged back to form the next ledge.

Propped up on one side of the establishment was a three-story-tall derelict that had once been a fairly successful taxi company, until a raid by local law-enforcement had exposed the entire company as an equine trafficking operation. On the other side was an electrical appliance store that had closed for the night, though it was pretty safe to assume that every item it had for sale had been acquired by dubious means.

Twilight knocked thrice on the door in rapid succession. After a moment it opened a fraction of an inch, just wide enough for somepony inside to stare out at her. Warm yellow light spilled out of the gap, accompanied by a thick cloud of trapped cigarette smoke.

“Yeah?” asked the pony behind the door, a stallion by the sounds of it.

“I'm here to see Joe.”

“You’re Candy?” The single eye that peered out through the crack looked her up and down. “You’re a bit thin for a lap dancer, ain't ya?” Twilight simply rolled her eyes.

“I'm the Cutter.”

That got a response. The stallion behind the door looked her up and down again before pushing the door wide open for her, respectfully holding it open as she stepped inside. “Sorry, Miss,” he said as she stepped through into the choking atmosphere of the bar. “Didn't realise you were one of Joe’s acquaintances, I didn't mean any disrespect.” The stallion closed the door behind her, securing the dead-bolt lock and pointing over to the bar. “Caramel should know where he’s at.”

Nodding her thanks, Twilight made her way through the press of ponies to the bar that ran down one side of the room. The main room of Joe’s Doughnuts was long and narrow, the ceiling low overhead. The air was filled with cigarette smoke, the humidity instantly fogging up her glasses, and the rowdy shouts of patrons as they gathered round an old television that was mounted in a small nook on the wall, seemingly all of them yelling at the top of their lungs at the two stallions on the screen as they traded blow for blow.

Twilight slid off her saddlebags and hopped up onto a stool by the bar, her tail batting away at the face of an inebriated stallion as he attempted a pick up line that wouldn't have worked even if she were drunk out of her mind. The drunk, upon realising that his attempt had failed, muttered something to himself and promptly passed out, his head impacting with a meaty thud onto the surface of the bar.

“Well, well. Seems like the Cutter’s decided to grace us with her presence,” came the voice of a stallion from behind the bar, Twilight’s head turning to find the source. Trotting up to her from behind the bar was none other than Caramel, co-owner of Joe’s Doughnuts.

When he reached her, the stallion reared up on his hind legs, empty cider tankard in one hoof and a cleaning rag in the other. Caramels build could only be described as scrawny, no matter which way you looked at him. Rake thin, his hooves were entwined with cryptic tattoos that looked like they had been inked in with a piece of rusty metal and a bottle of low grade transmission fluid.

His mane was thick and unruly, a tangled mass of brown that fell well down his back from his current standing position. Around the base of his neck was a near-invisible scar where, Twilight could only assume, he’d survived being garrotted. There must have been some lasting damage to his larynx though, as his voice permanently had a slight growling edge to it; as if he were constantly ready to rip out the throat of any pony who so much as looked at him sideways.

“So, it’s that time of the year again, is it?” Caramel growled as he finished polishing the tankard, carefully setting it down on the workspace behind the bar next to the cider taps. “Shit must be getting bad if you’re visiting us again so soon. When was the last time you visited – June, June Prime? I know it definitely wasn't that long ago, to be sure.”

“August Minor,” Twilight replied, keeping her voice down as she scanned the low hall, her eyes settling for a few moments on each occupant before moving on again. “And that’s not why I'm here.”

Caramel simply shrugged, reaching under the bar with a hoof to grab a bottle. “Oh well. You know you’re always welcome to drop by, right?” Caramel pulled out the bottle. Within was a thick brown liquid that had the same consistency as congealed blood. “The usual?”

“No ice.”

Caramel pulled out the stopper with a pop and grabbed a shot glass, pouring out a generous measure of laced cocoa. “Doughnut?”

“I'm trying to watch my figure.”

“So, how’s life been treating you?” he asked as he pushed the drink forward, the contents within sloshing about lazily. “I heard you were still working down at the morgue. Have you cut open anything interesting recently?”

“This and that.”

“Nothing... specific?”

Twilight paused. Could Caramel know? Joe had always told her that the secret regarding her... unorthodox nature was something that was well kept between the two of them. He wouldn’t tell Caramel, surely?

“No, not really.”

The stallion behind the bar seemed to deflate slightly, his face falling as he sighed and reached for another glass. “Really? Oh, well that’s a pity.”

“And why’s that, Caramel?”

“Got a cousin of mine who works in the Department of Public Hygiene, and he told me that the other night he got taken out on an extermination job. There have been rumours of mutants down by the boundary, so I've heard. Creatures that used to be ponies like you or me until being so close to the boundary twisted their insides up, you know, like the way that glowing waste stuff in movies turns ponies into freaks.”

“And your point being?”

“Well he told me that he’d shot one, and that the Conversion Bureau came along and sealed off the whole area.”

“I'm pretty sure that mutants turning up near the boundary would have been in the papers, Caramel,” Twilight replied dryly, taking a sip of her industrial strength cocoa and wincing as she felt fiery rivulets scorch the inside of her throat. “It probably would have made front page news. But as far as I can remember, I haven’t read any articles about zone mutants recently.”  

“Yeah, I told him the exact same thing. But he said that a bunch of these shady types in suits showed up and made off with the corpse. He hasn't heard anything about it since.” the stallion shrugged, returning the bottle of cocoa to its place under the bar. “I was just thinking that since you work in a morgue that there was a chance that they brought it to you.”

“Sorry, Caramel. I'm afraid I haven’t cut open any mutants recently.”

The stallion chuckled to himself, reaching for the empty glass in front of the inebriated stallion sitting next to Twilight, who was now snoring quietly. “Never mind. Still though, has work been keeping you busy?"

"As long as ponies keep dying, Caramel, my job is never finished."

Caramel chuckled at that, a grin of black humour crossing his muzzle. "You know, me and Joe could always use someone who’s a steady hoof with a blade. Somepony who knows their way around the anatomy, so to speak.” Caramel favoured her with a devious grin. “What to cut, what not to cut. Stuff like that, if you catch my drift. What kinda injuries you can live with for a few hours and what you can’t.”

Twilight simply shook her head. “Something tells me that you and Joe know plenty of ponies with those kinds of skills already.”

“Maybe we do, maybe we don’t. But Joe isn't as good as he used to be, the damage is getting worse. As for me, my problem is I like to make them squeal, you know? I go too far too fast.” the stallion shrugged, as if he expected some sympathy for being overzealous in his interrogation techniques. “All I'm saying is that there’s room in the enterprise for someone with your level of restraint. Trust me when I tell you, and I know I can speak for Joe on this matter, that there’s potential employment in this business for you.”

Caramel lifted up the now clean tankard to the dim light, spinning it as he searched for any blemishes he might have missed. Content with the job, he set it down by its companion. “I know ponies as high up as the Cyber Polities who’d pay good money for a pony with your skills to help them with their... inconveniences.”  

“If I took on a job like that I’d be no better than Joe in a month.”

“True, but at least you’d be set for life. Just remember, if work ever dries up at the morgue, you know where to find us.”

“I don’t think that’ll be happening any time soon.”

“You've got a point there, with it being a morgue and all.”    

“Besides, I'm not looking for any alternative employment at the moment.” Twilight smiled, giggling slightly before finishing the rest of her drink. Alcohol had no effect on an alicorn's physiology, but the taste wasn't so bad and the drink helped her to blend in with the rest of tonight’s patrons, and as far as she could tell, no one seemed to be paying any particular attention to the skinny mare at the bar talking to the scrawny stallion behind it.

“I see.” Caramel looked left and right before leaning across the bar, his voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “So what’s your deal? You in trouble or something?”

“To the best of my knowledge, Caramel, I've never been out of it.”

Caramel rolled his eyes. “I'm talking about something other than whatever shit brought you into Joe’s sphere of influence.” Caramel fixed her with his blue eyes, one eyebrow lowered in a half-frown. “Which, by the way, I've never seen fit to pry about, just as I've never seen fit to pry into whatever it is you and Joe get up to when you go into the back-room with that sewing kit. Nope, Momma taught me to not go sticking my muzzle in other pony’s business.”  

“That’s good,” Twilight told him with a sweet smile, her voice taking on an innocent tone. “But I'm assuming that there’s no need to start now, is there?” Caramel was a part of Joe’s organisation – a big part if her suspicions were correct. But to the best of her knowledge – of which she had a considerable amount – the stallion had no idea about the truth of her identity. As far as she knew, Joe had never told another living soul anything of what he knew.

Caramel’s features darkened for a moment before he began to chuckle, starting as a low, guttural rasping before slowly rising to a just as animalistic crescendo. “Nope, Twilight, I guess there isn't.” The stallion leaned back and got back on all fours, taking one of the tankards he’d polished and bringing it up to one of the cider taps, pouring himself a large glass of the golden liquid. “After all, we've all got our own dirty little secrets to keep, don’t we?” He winked at her before chuckling again. “Joe’s round the back, in his usual haunt,” he told her, raising the tankard to his lips and proceeding to down his drink.

Twilight hopped off her stool and slipped her saddlebags back on. But as she reached for some bits to pay for her drink, Caramel raised a hoof. “No need, it’s on the house. Least I could do, with you coming to visit and all.”

Joe’s haunt, as Caramel had so eloquently put it, was a small alcove set back from the bar by an arch so low that Twilight had to stoop her head slightly to pass through. The tiny enclave was just about big enough to fit a table and the chairs around it, leaving little room for anything else. This lack of space, combined with its narrow entrance, gave the nook a claustrophobic sense of entrapment to it.

Today the stallion was nursing a cigarette, a half-empty shot glass containing his usual dosage of laced cocoa, and, as was in accordance to his usual custom, was sitting alone. There was something about the unicorn’s demeanour, some subtle, hard-to-articulate expression and posture that seemed to naturally repel other ponies.

He was a big stallion, the complete opposite of his business partner Caramel; the stained white uniform he wore barely fitting his bulky frame. His beige coat complimented his chocolate brown mane, through which the thick mass of his stubby horn stuck up. A pair of intelligent green eyes watched Twilight as she approached, noting in only a few moments every tell-tale feature he could.

“I was starting to think I’d imagined that phone call,” Joe said, his voice a deep, threatening rumble that sounded suspiciously like that of a dragon. He blinked and then twitched. “Traffic in Cheapside’s a bitch, ain't it?”

“I made it here in one piece.”

“True, now take a seat. At least look like you’re going to be in my presence for more than five seconds.”

Twilight eased into the seat opposite the bottled-up force that was Doughnut Joe, depositing her saddlebags on the floor next to her. “Thanks for agreeing to see me,” she said, feeling slightly more relaxed now that she was around company that she could trust. Joe took a drag on his cigarette, the orange glowing tip the only bright object in the dim illumination of Joe’s little hidey-hole. His hoof shook terribly as he lowered the cigarette to the ash tray, as if somepony had stuck a hook in it and was jerking it on an invisible string.

“Given the nature of what we’re about to deal with, I took the liberty of calling Rainbow Dash in advance. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Who’s Rainbow Dash?”

“She’s one of my extraction specialists, a good one, too. You’ll like her, trust me on that one.”

Twilight blinked in confusion. “Extraction? Who said anything about extraction?”

“I did,” Joe stated in a matter-of-fact voice, taking another shaking puff on his cigarette. “And we’re doing it, no buts. All the pieces are already falling into place, nothing to do now but sit back and let the current take you.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Twilight said, raising her hooves slightly. “Joe, aren't we jumping the gun a little here?”

“You told me enough of what was going on during our little telephone conversation. Joining up the dots is one of my specialities, Twilight. I thought you knew that? I joined up the dots where you were concerned, didn't I?”

“That’s because it was your job back then,” Twilight said, still a little befuddled by the speed at which things had advanced. One moment she was just coming to talk Joe about going into hiding some place, and now she was waiting for an extraction specialist to come and pick her up. “That was back before you hung up the badge and quite the force.”

“Eeyup, sure was,” Joe said in a nostalgic tone, downing what was left of his drink in one go. “Sometimes I think quitting the force was the worst mistake I ever made. That and not turning you in, of course.”

“Do you want to know what happened, or not?” Twilight snapped irritably. Without waiting for an answer, she told him about the alicorn and the conversation she had shared with it during its own autopsy. “It said its name was Shining Armour. Do you have any idea who that is?”

Not surprisingly, Joe shook his head “Sorry, Twilight. I'm a bit out of date with my knowledge when it comes to the who’s who of the Celestial Levels.”

“Well, after that I gave it the Morphax-55. Look, I know you told me not to, but on the way over I took the bus past my apartment. I know you told me I shouldn't go back home, but I didn't slow down or anything.”

Joe gave her an emotionless look before taking another drag on his cigarette. “Told you not to do that, Cutter.”

“Nopony saw me. I don’t think even an agent from the Celestial Levels could have spotted me when I went past.”

“We can only hope. Did you see anything suspicious when you went past? Anything that shouldn't have been there?”

“The only thing I saw was a van from the Boundary Commission that was badly disguised as a van from the Department of Public Hygiene. But, given the nature of the situation I'm in, I'm assuming it has nothing to do with me.”

“Right now I wouldn't make assumptions on just about anything. But that business with the van, it’s not just Mayor Mare’s administration getting twitchy. Word on the street is that the Tectologists up in the Levels are detecting twitches in the Mire, signs of some serious instability. Admins up and down Canterlot have been hoarding pharmaceuticals for weeks now.”

“There have been some serious shortages in the morgue; deliveries keep getting later and later,” Twilight admitted, her mind imaging the morgue’s dwindling inventory with its empty, dust covered shelves. “But I just thought that was to do with issues in the supply chain, or that something had gone wrong with production.”

“Nothing’s wrong with either of them, according to my contacts. Besides, all you have to do is just look at the pattern that this trouble is causing. These shortages and delays, your morgue isn't the only one with those kinds of problems, Twilight. This is too coordinated to simply be a scare, too deliberate. Word is that even the Celestial Levels are bracing themselves for a storm, and if the alicorns have something to fear, then we’re all fucked.”

Joe took a final drag and stubbed out his cigarette, his horn igniting with an aethereal glow as he magically pulled a cigarette packet from a pocket in his uniform and lit it, placing the item on his lips. “When you get past all the scare-mongering that’s going on, the message is simple. There’s a big shift coming, a realignment so major that it could hurt the alicorns just as badly as it could hurt us.” Joe shrugged and gave Twilight a smile that was somewhere between pitying and sympathetic. “Hate to break it to you, Twilight. But it sounds to me that with the alicorns bracing themselves and all, somepony up in the Levels has decided you’re a loose end that needs to be cut.”

Twilight paused for a few moments to digest this information in her mind, every cell processing the implications of what Joe had said and how it could affect her. Eventually, her mind came up with a response. “Given what Shining Armour told me today in the morgue, something tells me that they've got something a little more extreme than tidying up in mind”.

“What, you mean those buried memories of yours? Doesn't it strike you as a bit of a coincidence that after all this time the alicorns have finally decided to get at the information about the infiltration process that’s in your head, just as they’re preparing for a zone shift? Call me a sceptic, but I'd call that a bit of a long shot.”

“Well, for all we know there really is something in my head that could make all the difference. After all, neither of us know what my previous life was like, so it can’t be beyond the realm of possibility can it?”

Joe nodded in agreement. “Did the alicorn tell you how long you had to lay low for?”

“Not really. He said that something was about to change up in the Celestial Levels, that some kind of coup was being prepared. I'm guessing that if it works I can return, and if it doesn't, well... it was always dangerous for me to be here and for anyone who tries to help me.”

“This coup that the alicorn mentioned. Are we talking about something imminent, or something that’s going down in a couple of years or so? Remember that alicorns are immortal after all, their version of soon might be a little bit different from ours.”

Twilight shrugged apathetically, knowing full well that what Joe said was right. “You’re right; it could be months away for all we know, years even. But however long it takes for civility to be restored in the Levels, that’s how long I need to be away for."

"Did this Shining Armour tell you anything else about the coup? Any names or dates?"

Twilight shook her head. "I'm afraid not, all he gave me was a name.

"And that is?"

"Lord Sombra; the Usurper."

"Damn," Joe muttered, his hoof twitching violently, involuntarily tapping against the table. "Sounds to me like you could be getting involved with some real nasty fucks, Cutter."

"From what Shining Armour told me, this isn't just about me saving my own neck. If I’m valuable enough to someone up in the Levels that they would sacrifice one of their own to come warn me, than for all we know I could be the key to saving Canterlot from the alicorns.”

“Look who’s jumping the gun now.” Joe gave her a half-smile, the cigarette tip illuminating half of his face, exacerbating the bags under his eyes. “But still. All jokes aside, how do we know we can trust the motives of the ponies who came to warn you? For all we know this could all be part of some sort of elaborate trap.”

“They gave me a weapon, Joe. I don’t think they would have done that if they hadn’t had my best interests in mind.”

“This weapon which you still haven’t shown me.”

“I’ve got it with me.” Twilight leaned back in her chair, hooves crossed. “You mentioned an extraction specialist. That’s new news to me, Joe. Whenever we talked about this it was always you who were get me out of Canterlot, not one of your cronies.”

Joe gave her a bland look, smoking snorting from his nostrils as he took a drag on his cigarette. “This may have escaped your notice, Twilight, but I’m getting a little frayed at the edges recently. Morphax-55 doesn’t do anything for me anymore, not unless I dial up the dosage, and it’s already pretty high.”

“Looks to me as if you’ve dialled it up as high as it can go without killing yourself.” Twilight said, shaking her head. It was true, the decline in the state of Joe’s nervous system since the last time they had met was much worse then she’d anticipated.

Joe accepted the pathologist’s diagnosis with a powerful, twitch-like shrug, reaching up with a hoof to scratch at his temple. “The damage’s taken its toll. I can’t go any deeper than Geartown; much less survive beyond the border of Canterlot. I’ll be able to take you as far as the Midtown train station, but after that you’ll be in Dash’s hooves. Sure, she’s got her quirks, but she’s a damn fine operator with nearly two dozen successful extractions under her belt.”

“Out of how many attempts?”

Joe snorted; smoke belching from his nostrils like he was some sort of demon. “Come on, Twilight, You’re getting twitchy again. What matters the most is that she can get the job done and that she’s ready to go. Now then, are you going to show me this weapon that the alicorn gave you?”

Twilight looked back over her shoulder. Through the cramped archway the bar was still as lively as ever, but it seemed as though everyone was engrossed in their own debauchery. “Are you sure it’s safe here?”

“Provided that whatever the alicorn gave you doesn’t explode, then yes.”

Twilight leaned down and grabbed her saddlebags, hoisting them up onto the table. “I suppose that if the alicorn was sent to kill me, he would have had ample time to do so at the morgue,” she told Joe as she sprung one of the golden clasps that held the bags shut. “But he didn’t. It’s not much, but that’s what my theory of their support is based on.”

“We’ll roll with it for now.”

The final clasp came undone; Twilight pulled the bag open and stuck a hoof in, digging for something. Shortly afterwards her hoof emerged gripping a heavy bandaged object, the linen it was wrapped in stained with some sort of sticky fluid, evoking the image of a severed hoof wrapped in bandages.

Twilight laid the linen down on the table and slowly unwrapped the sticky material, moving with slow, deliberate movements to ensure that she didn’t damage any of the contents within. The final strip came loose, revealing twelve smaller packages, each wrapped in their own bundle of cloth. “This is how it came out of him,” Twilight explained as she bundled up the sticky linen. “In pieces.”

“What do you mean out of him?”

“Each of these pieces had been surgically implanted into alicorn. I noticed the bruises the procedure left behind as soon as I unwrapped him on the plinth. Surgery must have been the only way to get the weapon down here. If anything that was obviously advanced technology had been found on his body, the clean-up crew would have boxed it up and sent it to the Conversion Bureau before I even had a chance to look at it.”

“Well, at least it proves that the alicorns were serious about getting a weapon to you. Going so far as to surgically implant a weapon into one of their own shows that this was more than just an afterthought” Joe's hoof gently prodded one of the parcels, his features grimacing slightly as a string of the alicorn’s bodily fluid stuck to his hoof when he pulled it away. “There’s only one problem though. This is celestial technology from the Levels, and this is Neon Heights. Why would they go through all that effort to send down a weapon that can’t function within our zone?”

“I don’t think the alicorns would have gone to such extreme measures if they knew that sending this was nothing but a futile gesture.” Twilight began to gently unwrap the pieces one by one, wiping off any spare residue before setting them down on the table with the cloth underneath them. The bandages had been a pristine white before, but now it had stained a sickly yellow and pink discolouration. None of the components were any bigger than Twilight’s hoof, and, despite her best efforts, each was still covered in a thin film of blood and slime.

Joe eyed up the pieces with an inquisitive eye, one hoof tapping on the table rhythmically, as he was prone to do when thinking. “Are you sure you didn’t miss anything?”

“I’m sure. Shining Armour told me exactly where to cut and how many pieces I’d find.” Twilight made a sweeping gesture over the pieces. “This is all we have to work with.”

Joe, grimacing slightly as he touched the alicorn artefact, picked up one of the pieces and wiped off the residue with a piece of cloth, holding the part up to his eye with a trembling hoof. Like the other pieces, it was made out of a hard, matte-silver metal.

“I didn’t know what I was expecting, but I thought it would be... heavier.”

“Everything the alicorns make is light” Twilight told him “They’re very good at it.”

“Tell me, Twilight. How long did it take you to say them instead of we?”

“It’s inbuilt cerebral camouflage. But just because I don’t associate myself with them doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten what I am.” Twilight pulled out a fresh sheet of linen from her saddlebags and set about giving the pieces a proper clean up, wiping away the slimy residue coating each segment of the weapon. All the while, Joe watched the proceedings with growing interest, as if he were studying the opening moves of a high-stakes card game and not his friend cleaning up alien goo. One by one, Twilight cleaned up the parts and set them back on the table, the pieces so light that they barely made a sound as they were put down.

“So... anything particularly jumping out at you?” Joe asked once the cleaning had been finished.

Twilight sat back on her chair, staring at the pieces in confusion. “I honestly have no idea where to start.” Twilight sifted through the parts, picking up each in turn and examining it with a critical eye. The alicorn had given her detailed instructions on what to do with the weapon, but with all the jargon he had used Twilight was still as hopelessly lost as if she hadn’t been given any instructions at all. “Joe, you wouldn’t by any chance know what a fusion module looks like would you?”

“Sorry, Twilight. I dropped engineering back in college.”

“You went to college?”

“Shut up, Twilight.” Joe stared at the pieces for a moment longer, before he jabbed a hoof forward at four of them. “Just a guess on my part, but it looks like those pieces slot together to form some kind of ring.”

Twilight picked up two of the pieces, examining them. Joes guess could have been right; from the looks of the pieces they would have formed a semicircle if joined together correctly. Twilight slid the two pieces together and felt a tiny, microscopic click as they locked together.

That was far too precise to be an accident.

“Good call Joe; we’re a sixth of the way there.”

“Anything started ticking in that head of yours?”

Twilight said nothing. Taking the two other brackets, she joined them together to form another semicircle and then joined the two pieces together. Again she felt that tiny click. She tried pulling the pieces apart, but they were solidly fixed together. She couldn’t even spot a visible joint line; it was as if the segments had fused seamlessly together the moment they had been joined.

Twilight held up the complete ring and then slid it over her hoof. It fitted perfectly, as if the measurements had been made specifically for her. Glancing over at the other pieces, she saw an elongated pipe, a helical double spiral running down its entire left side. Another piece, a thick, featureless cylinder, had a single hole on one end that looked roughly wide enough to accommodate the pipe. She picked it up and slotted the pipe into the hole, again feeling that click as the two pieces engaged.

From what she could make out, she was holding some kind of focussing device. However, when she pressed it to the ring, the two pieces didn’t match each other- she was still missing something.

“Wild stab in the dark here, Twilight. But something tells me that we’ve got a gun here.”

“I’m not fond of guns.”

“I am,” said a new voice. “Especially when they’re nice and shiny. So Joe, I’m guessing this is the new package, right?”

Twilight turned away from her little model kit as a mare trotted through the arch of the alcove and into the nook. She was short enough that she didn’t need to duck when she passed through the arch. Her coat was a cyan blue, the same shade as the sky on a fine summer’s day. Her eyes, a bright magenta colour, seemed to sparkle with some kind of hidden mischief.

However, her mane was her most prominent feature by far. Like Caramel’s, it was thick and unruly. But what really set it apart was its colouration, as it was banded by six streaks of vibrant colour: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple, in that order. She was clad in a heavy olive green coat that was several sizes too big for her, a pair of wings emerging from two holes in the back. If Twilight had to guess her age she would have put the pegasus somewhere between fifteen and twenty.

“Ah, Rainbow Dash, I see you’ve finally arrived.” Joe gestured to Twilight. “I’d like you to meet Dr Twilight Sparkle, a personal friend of mine. She is, as you correctly guessed, the package you’ll be smuggling. I was just reassuring Miss Sparkle on what a fine job you were going to do of getting her out of Canterlot.”

“I hope you told her that this isn’t going to be some kinda joyride.”

“I’m under no illusions,” Twilight said.

“Looking at three hard days to get you out, if everything goes as planned. Which, of course, it mostly won’t. Three days of roughing it up. I’m talking about sleeping in the dirt and getting less rest than you’ve ever had in your whole life, and a shit-ton of anxiety as well. Of course, once the easy parts over all we have to do is find Joe’s contacts and hope that they’re still willing to take you to Manehattan.”

“Oh, don’t forget the danger as well.” Joe added. “Cutter here’s ticked off some powerful ponies up in the Levels. They’ve got deep-penetration agents in Neon Heights and they’ll be looking to intercept our friend here before she skips town.”

“Haha, deep-penetration.” Dash chuckled to herself, a foalish grin in place.

“Dash!” Joe scolded. “Please, you’re in the company of polite society!” Joe shook his head as he rolled his eyes, turning his attention back to Twilight. “Dash here is one of the quickest extraction specialists in the business, even if she does have the sense of humour of a foal. She once got a guy all the way from Circuit City down to Ponyville in two days flat.”

“Yep, that’s me,” Dash said, examining her hoof with a smug smile. “Rainbow Dash, the fastest pegasus ever.” the mare’s expression then became noticeably more serious. “Still though, you didn’t say anything about alicorns on the phone, Joe. You said that it was local heat I’d have to deal with. In my mind there’s a big difference between the Neon Heights police force and deep-penetration agents from the–,” the mare suddenly grinned widely and began to giggle loudly to herself. “Oh man, I can’t believe that! deep-penetration!” she said in a mock impression of Joe’s deep voice. However, when she noticed the unimpressed look on Joe’s face she soon calmed down. “Yeah, all serious now. It’s not the same thing, Joe.”

“One day I’m going to lose my patience when it comes to you and your jokes,” Joe said, twitching slightly as he stared the pegasus dead in the eye. “Anyway, you’re not saying a little thing like a bunch of alicorns is gonna scare you off the job, are you?”

“Fuck no!” Dash said, stamping a hoof. “I’m not scared of a bunch of alicorns. They can bring all they’ve got; I could still kick their flanks!”        

“What I figured. The bonus is Cutter here’s come into a little inheritance from a friend of hers.” Joe gestured to the pieces. “Only problem is... we have no idea how to put it all together.”

Dash stared at the gore stained puzzle on the table, her muzzle scrunching up slightly as she caught a whiff of the smell. “This is the weapon you two were talking about?”

“It’s alicorn technology. Just a little something to give Twilight the edge, so that she can make it out of town with her coat intact.”

“Looks like something Winnoa sicked up.”  

“Dash!” Joe chided.

“What? It does!”

Joe twitched.

“Well, whatever it looks like, you don’t want to know where it came from, trust me on that.” Joe reached up and ran a hoof through his mane, magically pulling out another cigarette. “So, any new insights yet, Cutter?”

Twilight stared at the as-yet-unassembled weapon. For a moment, the parts remained a puzzle that was impossible to reconcile. Then, with a shudder of intuitive understanding, it all made sense. That piece over there combined with another element to form a kind of aperture she could slot the focussing array into. The rest of the pieces joined together into some kind of retracting deployment assembly, which would attach the focusing array to the ring around her hoof. Combining the pieces, she attached the focusing array, and then slid the deployment assembly into place.

As the anticipated click arrived, the weapon suddenly came alive around her hoof.

A tracery of luminous blue lines branched out across the surface of the weapon, meshing together into a kind of spider web as if the weapon were validating its own operational integrity. The change was so sudden that Twilight nearly flung the gun across the room in fright, squeaking as the weapon flared into life.

“Well... looks like I was right on that one,” Joe stated.

“Yeah,” Twilight said in a shaking voice, hesitantly twisting her hoof to watch as the lines flickered across the surface of the weapon. “Sure looks that way.”

“What I said earlier still stands though. That’s celestial technology; chances are it won’t even function down here.”

“If it does then we’re all–” Dash began.

The gun spoke.

“Thank you for reassembling me. Please be advised that I am programmed to form a singular blood-lock with the individual now holding me. If you wish for the singular blood-lock to be formed with a different individual, then he or she must handle me within the next thirty seconds.” The voice was hard and metallic, a slight feminine edge to it. “Please be advised that a blood-lock may only be assigned once to a single individual. I am now initiating a thirty second countdown. You will be alerted once the blood-lock has been established.”

“Guess that’s you, Twilight,” Joe said to the mare, her face visibly pale. He had a sly smirk on his face, as if he was enjoying every moment of the proceedings.

“Maybe I should have it,” Dash said, frowning slightly at the weapon. “After all, I’m the one who’s going to be doing all the damage.”

Twilight held her hoof at a distance, even though half of her mind was screaming at her to drop the weapon and hand it to Rainbow Dash. “There’s... intelligence in this thing, I can feel it,” she said “That shouldn’t be possible, machines can’t think down here!”

Joe shrugged. “Things do have a tendency to keep working for a while after they’ve crossed in a new zone.”

“Not when they’ve been taken apart, sewed into an alicorn, and then put back together they don’t.”

“Sewed into a what now?!” Dash exclaimed, her nose scrunching up in disgust as she took a half-step back.

“I’ll tell you later.”

“Well... fine, whatever. Just give me the gun.”

“Nope. Sorry Dash, but that’s Cutter’s toy now.” Joe looked to Dash and gave her an expression that just dared her to contradict him.

“Blood-lock has now been established, thank you for your patience,” the machine spoke. “Please be advised. Ambient conditions are such that my operation effectiveness in energy discharge mode is eighty three percent and falling.”

There was an awkward silence. “What?” Joe asked.

“Based on the theory that current zone conditions will remain stable, I will become inoperable in energy discharge mode in approximately five hours and twenty two minutes, with an error margin of plus or minus eight minutes. Functionality will become severely compromised in three hours and forty five minutes.”

“It’s already beginning to fail,” Twilight said, slipping the weapon off and turning it over in her hooves.

“Five hours, that’s not a whole lot of time.” Joe turned to Dash. “What time do you make it?”

Dash pulled back on a sleeve of her coat to expose a silver watch and raised a foreleg to examine it. “I got nine on the dot, last outbound train for Geartown leaves at ten fifteen.”

“Still doable then.”

“Haha, doable.”

“Dash!”

“Sorry. But in all seriousness, yes. We have to leave now though.”

“Slow down!” Twilight exclaimed, feeling like she was stuck in a rapid current that was accelerating faster and faster. “I came here to discuss the possibility of leaving Canterlot, that’s all. I thought we’d be making preparations for tomorrow or the day after, not leaving right now!”

“Things just went up a notch,” Joe told her, giving her a look that showed he thought it should have been obvious “Besides, that alicorn told you not to hang around. For all we know the Celestial Level’s agents could try and make a grab for you tonight, let alone wait for tomorrow.”

“I don’t know Dash. How can I trust that she’s any good?” Twilight glanced over to Rainbow Dash. “No offense.”

“None taken.”

“Dash works for me, which should be all the recommendation you need.” Joe looked over expectantly at Rainbow Dash. “I trust you came prepared?"

Dash made a face. “Shit, I forgot.”

“Dash!”

Dash smiled before rearing on her hind legs and pulling her coat open. Stitched to the insides of the coat were an array of armaments and equipment, each item assigned to its own little pouch. There was a sub-machine gun, a revolver, an automatic, a pistol, some kind of miniature crossbow type device, and an assortment of blades, some for throwing and some for close combat.

There were also bullets, magazines, powder boxes, and an apothecary’s wet dream of colour coded vials and stoppered bottles.

“I didn’t forget,” Dash said with a grin.

“Told you she was good,” Joe said with a smile, pushing his chair back and standing up to his full, considerable height “And now, Cutter. It’s time to let you in on a little operational secret of mine. I trust that it has occurred to you how foalish it would be for a stallion in my position to let himself get trapped in a room as small as this?”

“Now that you mention it... ”

Joe produced a ring of cast iron keys from the pocket of his uniform and then bucked the section of panelled wall behind him, the bang it produced echoing around the tiny alcove. For a few moments nothing happened, and Twilight was about to say how stupid Joe’s action was when a seemingly secure section of the wall opened inwards with a creek.

“What’s that?” Twilight asked, staring at the wall of inky blackness beyond the small partition.

“Exactly what it looks like, of course, a secret tunnel.” Joe handed the keys over to Dash, who promptly stowed them away in a pocket of her jacket. “You go on ahead; I’ll bring up the rear.”

“I bet you will!”

“Dash!”

Dash grinned; Joe made a threatening growl at the back of his throat. Hoping to prevent a fight and diffuse the situation, Twilight spoke up before Joe vented his frustration. “Joe, you don’t need to come with us. I’m sure Dash will help me out just fine.”

“I don’t doubt that she will,” Joe said, glaring balefully at the pegasus mare before relenting. Twilight sighed inwardly. Crisis averted. “But I still promised I’d take you as far as the train station, and I keep my promises.” Joe seemed to direct that last part at Dash, who just grinned all the more.

Dash pushed the section of panelling inward, turning the small hole into a gaping maw, the darkness beyond swallowing her up as she stepped through. Twilight, pausing long enough to slip her saddlebags back on and check that the alicorn gun was secure around her hoof, quickly followed after her into a narrow tunnel, the ceiling clearing her horn by only a few inches.

Ahead of her, Dash had pulled out a small electric torch from somewhere, and in the small beam of light it produced Twilight could see another door blocking their passage.

This one was a thick plate of metal that look strong enough to stop a train dead in its tracks, or at least a very determined safe cracker. Dash took the jangling ring of keys and pushed one hard into the lock, grunting with effort as with an audible clang the door opened. She pushed the door open, a heavy draught of thick, humid air blowing out of the passage beyond to smack Twilight in the face.

“Where does this tunnel lead to?” Twilight asked, squinting in the faint light of Dash’s electric torch.

“Out.”

Behind them, Joe pushed the first door closed until there was only a tiny beam of light, only an inch or so wide, to indicate where the entrance was located. When he stepped through the second door, he produced another set of keys from somewhere on his person and locked the door. The sounds of the bar, which had been only muffled before, were now completely silenced as the metal plate swung shut, its internal mechanisms grinding as the lock was slid back into place. All that could be heard now was the faint sounds of their breathing.

They advanced into the darkness, the thin beam of Dash’s torch their only protection against the encroaching shadows.

Twilight reached out with a hoof and brushed the black, marble-like surface of the Megastructure that surrounded them; it was ice cold. She had heard rumours of tunnels such as these, from her colleagues at the morgue and even in the newspapers she picked up on the way home from work. They all talked about tunnels cutting through the fabric of Canterlot, their entrances hidden away in forgotten buildings or covered by refuse in the dirtiest back alleys. It was so dark that even the enhanced vision that her Post-Equine eyes offered her did little to improve the situation.

The tunnels, she could only presume, must had been bored at an earlier stage in Canterlot’s history, back in a time when the zones were aligned in a different order and advanced mining machinery such as plasma lances could function this far down the spiral. But that could have been centuries, possibly even millennia ago. Nothing even remotely like that could function within the boundaries of Neon Heights today, and local machinery couldn't so much as scratch the surface of the Megastructure, let alone bore a tunnel.

It would have taken lifetimes to dig this far manually.

“You never told me about these tunnels,” Twilight called over her shoulder to Joe, who only made a sort of mocking snort in reply.

“That’s kinda the whole point of a secret, Cutter. You keep it to yourself.”

“I didn’t think you and I had any, Joe. Given what you know about me. Now I’m starting to wonder what else I don’t know about.”

“Joe’s a business-stallion by nature,” Dash said, butting into their conversation. “He might have made you think that you and he had a special relationship, that you were more than just a close customer, but in the end you’re nothing more than just another one of his clients. Isn’t she, Joe?”

“Cutter’s way more than a client, Dash.”

“I bet she is!”

“Dash!

“Sorry. But seriously, what’s up with that nickname?”

“Cutter is Joe’s idea of wit,” Twilight said, stooping slightly to prevent her horn from scraping rather painfully against the roof. “I work as a pathologist in the morgue, I cut things open, so he thought it made a good joke. The positive side of it is that he doesn’t have to use my real name in public, but I would really prefer it if you could call me Twilight.”

“If Cutter is good enough for Joe, than it sure as hell is good enough for me.”

“Thanks. Is it going to be like this all the way to... where was it again?”

“Manehattan, that’s where I’m taking you.”

“I’ve heard of it before.”

“Manehattan’s on one of the semaphore lines” Joe said, easily keeping pace despite his large bulk in the confines of the tunnel. “Way, way out west. Don’t worry, Cutter, we’ll keep in touch.”

“So is Dash coming with me the whole way?”

“Piss off!” the mare said indignantly.  

“Dash!” came Joe’s expected reprisal.

“Sorry,” Dash muttered, looking back at Twilight. “Nah, I’m only taking you to the borders of the Everfree, right up to the Abstraction. After that you’ll hook up with a bunch of traders and they’ll take you the rest of the way. Mind you though, keep an eye out for the Skulls and Diamond Dogs.”

"Skulls, Diamond Dogs, and the what now?"

"Nothing you need to worry about, Cutter."

“So these traders, they’re ponies I can trust?”

“They’ll see you right. But once you reach Manehattan you’re on your own, have to find your own lodgings and employment. Though, with you being a medicine mare, I don’t think that’ll be a problem for you.”

“Just so long as it isn't the employment Caramel had in mind for me.”

“He does get carried away with the whole torturing business, yes,” Joe admitted from the back. “But you’ve still got to admire a stallion who enjoys his work.”

“By the way,” Dash cut back in. “what’re you going to do if they've already got the pathologist job covered?”

“I've got medical training,” Twilight explained, patting her saddlebags. “I can give a diagnosis, prescribe drugs, and perform basic surgical procedures.”

“That’s good,” Dash said with a smile. “Plenty of disease out there to treat, provided it doesn't get you first. I saw this one guy who got bitten by this tiny little insect, the next day his tongue had burst open and the larvae had eaten his cheek!” the pegasus made a chortling sound.

“Well aren’t you just a ray of Celestia’s sunshine? I can see that these next three days are just going to fly by.”

“Thank you! I’ll be here all week!”

“Haha, don’t let her get under your coat, Twilight.” Joe chuckled. “She’s an acquired taste to be sure, but she’ll grow on you. Dash likes you really, I can tell. She’s just keeping her distance, making sure she doesn’t get too closely acquainted with the package.”

“Well, that might have something to do with how most of them tend to never show up again,” Dash added. “I don’t think I’ll ever really see Doctor Sparkle again after this.”

“Joe seems to think I’ll make a comeback.”

“Of course I do,” Joe called from the rear. “No doubt about it.”

“That’s because Joe’s an optimist,” Dash said scathingly “Always did tell him it was his biggest flaw and that he shouldn’t keep getting his hopes up. Especially in a business like his.” But there must have been that flicker of curiosity there, some realisation that Twilight was more than just another client, because a few moments later she spoke again. “So, how’d you get roped up in Joe’s business? You another of Joe's insurance scheme participants?”

“It’s not a protection racket!” Joe called out indignantly. “I don’t do protection rackets, there’s no finesse, no class!”

“But you’re not above setting your enemies on fire.”

“That’s a completely different matter altogether and you know it, Rainbow Dash!”

Twilight stooped even lower, her mind filled with the odd sensation that the tunnel was getting tighter the further they delved into the depths of Canterlot. “How far are we going? This tunnel seems to be going on forever.”

“We’re going as far as we need to go,” Dash told her, her torch flickering slightly. “There’s the boundary line, we must be cutting close to one of the lower divisions. Come on, you two, we need to keep up the pace or we’ll miss the train. Joe, you holding up back there?”

“I'm fine,” Joe called.

But Joe clearly wasn't’t fine. From the way his breathing had started to become laboured, and how his voice had begun to weaken, Twilight could tell that his body was reaching the limits of how close it could carry him to the boundary.

The tunnel began to slowly bend to the right, the gradient beginning to drop ever so slightly. Twilight suddenly became conscious of an open shaft to their left, warm, dank air gusting from it which signalled that somewhere it was connected to the surface. She had the sensation that they were an incredible distance into the fabric of Canterlot, and she could sense the weight of the ancient Megastructure above her, resentful of the intrusion of the tunnels and wanting nothing more than to come crashing down and seal them up for an eternity.

For all the dangers that were waiting for her in Neon Heights, Twilight was very keen to leave this place soon.

“I’ve heard about these tunnels before, but I always thought they were just another urban myth, like the zone mutants and giant rats in the sewer lines.”

“Oh, the rats are real enough, believe me on that,” Joe said grimly, a hard edge in his voice inferring that he had seen such creatures with his own eyes “As for the mutants, well... Queen Chrysalis doesn't like visitors very much.”

“So the rumours are true, all of them?”

“Been using these tunnels since I was a filly,” Dash said up front, tapping her torch as the beam fluttered again. “I’ve been deep too, real deep. Down to where it’s so dark that nothing seems to give any light. But in all that time, I’ve never seen anything I couldn’t explain. Been scared shitless a few times, but apart from that... ” Dash fell silent, as if she had revealed a little too much of herself by admitting she had been frightened before.

“We’ve all been spooked, Dash. There isn’t any shame in that,” Joe said softly, his breath audibly heaving. “These tunnels aren’t exactly a secret, mind. Back before I quit the force, I’d been down here with a few of suspects for interrogation. We’d use the tunnels to intimidate them, scare them into talking. It helped to spread a few stories, get ponies afraid to come down here to keep the tunnels clean.”

“Stories?” Twilight asked.

“Bad stuff goes on down here, stuff that they wouldn't even put in horror films,” Dash said, just as her torch shut off and plunged them into darkness.

"Shit!"

"Dash!"

"I'm working on it, Joe!"

The blackness seemed to have a weight behind it, something that made the absence of light itself palpable. “You can get lost down here without even realising it, happened to me a few times. Plus you can bump into ponies you don’t really want to bump into, which would be Joe on a good day,” Dash continued, a metallic rattling sound indicating that she was fiddling with the torch.

“And on a bad day?”

“They didn’t call Snowflake the Wing Ripper for nothing. But still, for the most part, all the stories you’ve heard about these tunnels are just a steaming pile of manticore shit.”

“Couldn’t have put it more eloquently myself,” Joe added.

“And the Mad Machines?” Twilight asked, uncomfortable at the fact Dash hadn’t got the torch working again yet.

“You’ve been reading too many bedtime stories,” Dash said, a banging noise ringing out as she whacked the torch against the floor. Each time the light would flutter into existence for moments before the darkness snuffed it out yet again. “There aren’t any machines down here, Cutter, big or small. Just because these tunnels are real, doesn’t mean that the shit that ponies say fills them is real.” Dash whacked the torch one more time, the clang resounding down the passage as the light weakly switched back on.

“So... neither of you two have seen anything strange down here, in the entire time you’ve been using the tunnels?”

“Seen a few dead bodies,” Dash said nonchalantly, examining the torch before continuing onwards. “Seen a few things that could have been practically anything given the way they were cut up, but big, bad machines that wander the tunnels looking for souls? ‘Fraid not, Cutter. Canterlot’s just some big old dildo that they shoved into the ground thousands of years ago, nothing changes down here.”

“Dash!”

“Oh, come on Joe! Are you saying I can’t pull any jokes whilst I’m with the package?”

“Yes!”

“Fuck!”

“Have you ever been lost down here?” Twilight asked, trying to steer the conversation away from Dash’s rather immature sense of humour.

“Once or twice, especially when the package has been too busy yammering to let me think.”

“Hint taken.”

Dash didn’t seem to be finished though. “At least being lost is a problem that you can fix. If you cross a zone boundary down here, oh man is that a different story.”

"You’d hardly fail to notice if you’d crossed a zone boundary.”

“Yeah you’d notice, but normally you can feel them coming, or be able to cross back over if you wanted to. You think you know about the zones in Canterlot pretty well, Cutter. But all you really know is life on the ledges, out in the open. Down here in the depths it’s a different story. On the outside the zones are big enough to fit a whole city in them, but in here they just keep getting closer and closer together, all packed around the Eye of Faust, or the Mire, whichever name you wanna call it. Shit gets blurred together before it all jumbles together at the Eye, the boundaries get so close together that you can have zones only a few inches across. Makes things real hard to map, and has a tendency to kill anyone who gets in too close. That’s why my lights on the blink, the mechanism can sense that we’re getting close to making a transition.”

“Do we have to make any crossings?”

“Not until we leave the tunnel and get on the train, the line’ll take us all the way down to the border with Geartown. Of course that’s only if things are the same as they were last time, which they might not be. The Clock boys are already getting wound up about it–"

“Pun intended?”

“Yes, pun fucking intended! Anyways, they’re seriously getting worked up by it, and they’re not alone. It’s not just Neon Heights that’s seeing tremors. The rest of us in the business saw it coming way back, two or three years at the least. Serious movement in the mire, some big shift coming. You don’t need to be an alicorn with some fancy computer gizmo to know that some serious shit is going down. Faust ain’t happy, not by a long shot.” Without waiting for Twilight to state an opinion she added, “Blame the alicorns myself. Anything unexplainable, those Post-Equine motherfuckers are at the top of my shit list!”

“I see,” Twilight said, swallowing hard as she realised she was going to be spending the next three days with a xenophobe, not exactly ideal for a mare in her position. “And that theory is based on... what, exactly?”

“Alicorns fucking piss me off!”

“Brilliant.” Twilight muttered under her breath.

“Try to ignore her,” Joe called from the back; he was starting to lag. “Dash just isn’t a fan of the unexplainable.”

They walked on in silence, Twilight not wanting to press the matter for fear that Dash might start asking questions. Still though, Dash’s xenophobia told her one implicit thing, Joe had kept her secret mutual. Unless she was lying for reasons of her own, Dash had no idea about Twilight’s true nature.

From what she could tell about the limits of Dash’s tolerance, Twilight was keen to keep it that way.

“How close to the boundary will this tunnel take us?”

“About half a league of so, maybe a bit less,” Joe said from the back, really starting to fall behind now. “Can’t be much further out than that I would reckon.”

Twilight had a sense of the tunnel widening in all directions, and when she reached out with a hoof to touch the wall, she could only feel empty space. “Keep to the right,” Dash called back. “Shit gets a little tricky here.” Twilight gulped, she could make out nothing except the wavering spot generated by Dash’s torch. Implicitly, she realised they must be passing some huge shaft that sank further down into the depths of Canterlot.

In the darkness, she heard what sounded like the faint rustle of fabric. There was a sudden, intense burst of yellow light and a loud bang the seemed to echo and reverberate from every direction, its volume increased tenfold by the confines of the area. In the after-image the light had burned into her retina, Twilight saw Dash’s hoof gripping a revolver tightly, the barrel pointed downwards into the depths of the shaft.

Twilight steeled herself, her mind conjuring up the image that the three of them were about to be engulfed in a swarm of twisted, malignant creatures that lay hidden down here. But when Dash redirected the beam of her torch at her target, all that was there was a blackened carcass of a rat, a smoking hole in it.

There was a click as Dash put the safety catch back into place and the rustle of her coat as she stowed the gun away again.

“Nothing to see here, move along.”

“We must only be a few hundred spans from the exit,” Joe wheezed, his breathing heavier than ever. "Reckon I’d better... turn around now, or I’m just... gonna be slowing you down.” Joe nearly bent double, gasping. “Oh, sweet Celestia, I need a stiff drink.” He looked up to Twilight, his eyes showing he was in a fair degree of pain. “Twilight, you go ahead without me, Dash’ll take care of you for the rest of the way. Make sure you... send me a postcard when you get there... ok? Anonymous of course, don’t want you to get there and... cock it all up.”

In the gloom of the tunnel, the two unicorns shook hooves, Twilight gripping Joe tightly. “I’ll be sure to, and thanks for coming this far, Joe. I know it can’t have been easy for you.” Twilight paused, remembering something she’d meant to give to Joe earlier “Dash, shine the light over here,” she said, slipping off her saddlebags and pulling one open, revealing a motley collection of bottles and white packages. She removed one such package from a small pocket near the top and passed it to Joe. “Supplies have been down at the morgue recently, but I managed to spirit away some of the goods for you. It’s not much, but I’m afraid it’ll have to do you until I can find another source of antizonals.”

Joe gripped the Morphax-55 in his hoof like it was made out of pure gold. “Did you save some for yourself, Cutter? You’ve got a big journey ahead of you.”

“I’ve got enough, I can promise you that much.”

Joe paused for a moment and then handed back the package, his hoof visibly shaking as he did so. “Take them, something tells me you’re gonna need them a whole lot more than I am. I’m not going anywhere, but you are, so hold on to them and I’ll find myself another supplier.”

“I’m sure you’ll find someone. Knowing all of your contacts I’d be honestly surprised if you didn’t.” Twilight took back the antizonals and stowed them back in her saddlebags, secretly grateful that Joe had turned them down.

“Don’t you worry now, I’ve got my cigarettes if all else fails.”

“I’d hate to break up your sweet moment,” Dash called back to them. “But me and Cutter have a train to catch.”

“Go,” Joe said, gripping Twilight’s hoof firmly one last time before letting go. “And enjoy the scenery.”

Twilight nodded and turned away, but then Joe called out again. “Twilight?”

“Yes, Joe?”

“Where’s my cupcake?”

Next Chapter: III: We're coming. Estimated time remaining: 6 Hours, 8 Minutes