One-Way Track

“Changeling.” The word was spat out like a curse, maybe it was. My ears fell flat against my head as I crouched down, trying to lock eyes with the yellow mare. But her face was obscured by shadows and the backlight of the engine flames.

It was a familiar scene, with a familiar fear. I had lived through it a dozen times, and like always, every instinct screamed for me to flee. The adrenaline that surged through my body made my legs and wings shiver ever so slightly. But this time there would be no frantic chase, no flying away to a dark and forgotten corner of the world until it was safe enough to go home.

I was sure that I could take her in a fight, but a broken body couldn’t drive a train. And getting stuck out here would cost time, time that neither Yuri nor I had. I needed to be clever, not quick and strong.

“Yes, I am.” I felt no small relieve when I managed to keep my voice steady. Acting without the comfort of a disguise was… unsettling, but not impossible. I straightened my back as I looked where I guessed that her eyes were. “You’re welcome.”

The train driver started to sputter in disbelief, the very notion that she would ever have to be grateful to a changeling was probably too foreign to have ever entered her mind.

“She’s right, mom!” The young filly sprung up behind her mother with stars struck eyes under a puff of her dark mane. “They scared away the monsters! Didja see it mom!?” I smiled warmly at the young pony, either the euphoria of still being alive was clouding her judgment, or she was simply too young to understand our respective roles in the world. Either way, she was playing into my plans perfectly.

“You always said that changelings were mean cowards, but she saved us instead of the guards.” The tiny pony rushed past her mother until she was close enough to do a small bow in front of me. “Thank you, Miss Diamond Dust.”

“Silver Spring, don’t-” I interrupted the mother’s speech by giving her daughter a small pat on the head. Terror was spreading through her body as she followed my hoof like it was a saw blade that barely missed her daughter. There was her weakness, obvious in hindsight. My smile turned genuine as I realized that I had won. She loved her daughter, and would betray everything she stood for to protect her.

“You shouldn’t forget my partner back there,” I pointed a hoof at the human, who had visibly relaxed when he saw that there would be no more fighting. Not of the physical kind anyway. “I couldn’t have done it without him.”

The filly gulped as she looked at the biped. “But he’s so big and scary,” she wrinkled her nose as she looked at the human. “And he smells, ugh.”

I let out a genuine laugh at that, seeing the train driver shrink in fear of her daughter. I had pushed her nerves enough; it was time to move in for the final blow. “Oh, I know, honey. But he’s just been too busy saving little ponies like you and your mother to take a bath.” She smiled in adoration as I bopped her nose. “So be a good little girl and go thank him while your mother and I have a little chat.”

As the filly walked to the surprised human to bury it under a million questions I turned around. With a small leap that was assisted by my wings I was next to the yellow mare, before she could recoil or scream I wrapped a foreleg around her and embraced her just a bit too tight for comfort. She shuddered as the hard chitin touched her mane.

“Be quiet.” I hissed into her ears, making sure that she could see my fangs being reflected by the fire.

“Please, she’s all that I have left,” the mare begged with a broken voice. I tightened my embrace more, making her squeak in pain for a second.

“Are you deaf? I told you to be quiet. Can you follow that simple order?” I slowly loosened my grip as she nodded. “That’s great. Now let me make a few things clear. Do you remember what happened back at the station? When the ‘big and scary’ guy put a neat little hole in the station ceiling?” The mare shuddered again as I leaned closer and put my other foreleg right in front of her face. “If you don’t do what I say, your precious little spawn will look a lot more like me.” I deliberately and slowly moved my foreleg so that she could get a good close look at the mud and old blood that was stuck in the holes in my leg. “Now, look into my eyes and say that you understand me.”

“I u-understand.” She blurted the words out as her eyes stopped avoiding mine. Her pupils were barely more than pinpricks and her eyes were glistening with unshed tears.

“Good, now show me how to drive this train and everything will be alright.”

“Y-you… I can’t j-just show you how to- It takes months to learn how to became a train driver!”

“Well, then it’s a good thing that I only need to drive it for a few kilometers instead of the rest of my life, isn’t it?” I uncoiled myself from her as I gave her a little push towards the controls. “Spare me the exact details of refueling water and safety regulations and just tell me how to drive. I’m sure that you’ll figure out what I need to know, I hope for your daughter’s sake that you’ll do.” I glanced over at the little filly that was wrestling with my prey for its backpack.

I gave the yellow mare a few seconds to calm down enough to stop shaking. Right before she started her explanation I interrupted her one last time. “Oh, and one more thing. I don’t want to hear any rumors about a changeling and a strange creature walking around in Equestria. If I hear them I will know that they came from you, and you’ll be sorry. And don’t you think for a second that if the guards grab me and put me in a dungeon that it will be over for you. My Sisters know I’m out here, and if I suddenly disappear, they will know that it was because of you. If that happens, we’ll hunt you. That sympathetic teacher? That adorable foal from across the street? That brave and valiant guard? One of them will be a changeling, and they will drag you and your child away into the night. Just thought that you should know that.”

The mare stood still for a few moments, looking at the ground with closed eyes. Eventually she started explaining what every lever, gauge and rope did. Her somber voice quietly droned on, only to be interrupted by me when I wanted to know more about something or had to ask her to repeat herself over the sounds of the train.

I looked back at the human and the gray filly for a moment. They were having a “conversation” that mostly consisted of the small creature staring intensely at the few possession that human had spread out in front of him, while the tall creature spoke in whispered tones. More likely talking to itself than to its audience. Sometimes it’s almost hypnotic voice would erupt in a shared laughter with the young mare.

I should have been angry. Did it not know what was at stake? Did it not care for the future of my Sisters and Brothers? Or its own race for that matter? But I knew that it cared, almost as much as I did. Some nights it was all that we talked about.

It- no, he- was so similar sometimes, that it almost frightened me. Still, he was different. How did he, so far away from his Hive that the distance could not be measured, still smile to beings that he couldn’t even talk to? It was foolish, dangerous even.

I focused my attention back on the train driver. It didn’t matter, he would learn, and I would be there to guide him.

I sighed deeply as I removed my hand from the revolver, letting the tension seep out of my body along with my held in breath. Dozor and the yellow horse had looked like they were going to rip out each other’s throats. She had said that changelings and these mutated horses weren’t on the best of terms, but even the fascists and the Reds were downright friendly towards one another compared to those two.

Somehow though, the small grey horse had managed to defuse the entire situation with a few words and a smile. I didn’t want to think about what would have happened if another warning shot had proven to be ineffective.

Walking back to some soft looking planks I sat down, thinking that I would look one final time through my inventory before I could drift away to dreamland. The miniature diplomat had other plans for me, however.

Popping up from behind the backpack she planted her hoofs on the front flap and began talking in her musical language to me. Looking with all the serious conviction that only a small child could muster she repeated herself when no answer came from me, the barrage of words leaving her mouth like bullets from a machinegun.

She was… asking questions? I wanted to ask Dozor to help me out, but she was apparently buddying up with her former enemy.

“Sorry, I don’t speak your language.” It was strange how one of the most self defeating sentences was also the only one that always got the message across. The child scowled as this new dilemma presented itself to her.

She repeated her little barrage of questions again, only this time slower and more deliberate. I didn’t know whether I should laugh or cry that both humans and, apparently, other species always thought that that would somehow work.

The child however was more practical than I had anticipated. She had decided that if I couldn’t speak her language I also couldn’t rat her out.

Before I could act she stuck her head in the backpack and began rummaging around my only worldly possessions, hoping to find who knows what in it. “Hey! Stop that you brat!” She didn’t stop at all, she only responded in a singsong way. Somehow, deep in my heart, I knew that she was using my own words against me. ’I can’t understand you.’

Finally taking action I grabbed the backpack and lifted it up in the air. The little horse screamed in surprise as she fell out, barely preventing falling on the hard wooden floor by clinging to a back strap.

I moved the backpack with her still hanging from it, bringing her face close to what I hoped was a very intimidating scowl. All she could give me was a sheepish grin. “I swear, if anything is broken or missing I’ll-“ The backpack tilted just a tiny bit over, unleashing a small rain of handgun ammo on the grey mutant’s poor head.

We stood there, well, one of us sort off hung, in shocked silence as a dozen or so bullets rolled around the train. They rang like little bells in the rocky rhythm of the vehicles movement as we just stared at each other. The fragile moment seemed to last a small eternity as time stretched on, both of us not willing to break it.

The small mutant suddenly brought her hoof to her head, scratching wildly until another three bullets fell out of her mane. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t prevent a small laugh from escaping. The tiny culprit started to giggle too, probably glad that I wasn’t going to eat her whole.

“Yeah, you’re still going to clean that up.” I picked up one of the bullets from the small horse’s mane and placed it back in the bag, pointing at her until she got the idea. Her giggling quickly went quiet as her smiling turned into a grumpy pout.

“You only have yourself to blame.” Opening up the back pack I started to pick out the few items that were still in there. The horse’s eyes grew in size as she eyed the strange devices that I laid out on the floor.

I didn’t really understand why I started to talk about them. It was probably more for my sake than hers, but I liked to imagine that she somehow got the general gist of my story. I went through the various items: the Geiger counter, my mask, the universal charger. Every one of them must have looked like strange alien treasures to the mutant, artifacts from a long forgotten time. I remembered doing the same thing when I saw a Stalker’s armor for the first time.

But they could only hold the attention of a small child for so long before she got restless again. She motioned to the bag again, seeing that there was still more inside. Looking again for something interesting, I smiled as I saw the strange doll that I had found, it looked similar to the mutant in front of me, but it had wings. Maybe it was their variation of an angel? I scoffed, ’First they make towns, and now they have religions and culture. Tomorrow they’ll have guns and factories, and the day after that they’ll blow up the world themselves. All grown up, just like us.’

I frowned as I gave the excited child the doll, the mutant squeaked as she hugged the small thing. I chided myself for my thoughts, that was neither fair towards these creatures, nor my own people.

I cringed as I took out one last item: the bloodied arm band with the dark “C” on it. That man, I had almost already forgotten about him. But what was a Nazi even doing way out here? And why had he been alone? Even though the monsters that had chased us had been fierce, if they had encountered a platoon of those fascists there would have been more traces of a fight.

The more I looked at that hateful symbol, the more my heart started to feel like it was being encased in ice. The uncomfortable truth of that arm band stared me right in the face. If I was going to get everyone in the metro here, would that include them? And what about the Reds, could I just leave those behind? Would I even get to make that choice?

I closed my eyes as I crumpled up the arm band, tossing it back in my back pack. ’Everything will be different once we get here. No more Reds, no more Nazis, no more Hansa.’ I sat down on the ground, staring at the dead trees that rushed past the train. ’Yeah, I’ll just walk into their station and say “Hey, give up all your power and follow me, I know a way to a magical land where we all can sit in a circle and sing songs together under the sun”. I would just get laughed at if I was lucky.’

I sighed at the bitter thought, but really, what choice did I have? I couldn’t turn down this chance; I just had to believe that it would somehow work out. No matter how much that arm band told me that things would be no different.

A prodding against my knee made me look up, the small horse was smiling at me as she waited for me to continue talking, or just showing her more shiny gadgets. I felt a hundred years as I looked into those young eyes.

“That’s enough for today,” I said as I turned around and lay down on the floor. The small mutant kept poking my shoulder for a few minutes, growing more frustrated with how I suddenly ignored her, but I just kept quiet, I was too tired to deal with the world.

Eventually she just murmured something angry and started to pick up bullets again, spitting them out in my bag. Finally I closed my eyes and felt myself slowly drifting off under the lullaby of train tracks and the roaring fire.

The sound of boots on concrete echoed throughout the tunnel. I had been running through a sea of darkness for days now, sprinting towards where I needed to be. The only thing was that I couldn’t quite recall where I was, or where I was going. All I knew was that it was very important that I got there. And that I was in a hurry.

“Yuri! Over here!” I immediately stopped in my tracks, nearly falling over my own feet.

“Sasha! Is that you?” The tiredness that had plagued me for so long that it almost seemed second nature melted away in excitement as I turned to the voice of my friend.

And there he was, standing in the small circle of light of his flashlight. He looked like he had been through hell, a bloodied face, ripped clothes, a broken nose and arm, and bruises that had all the colors of the rainbow.

“My friend!” His face broke into a smile as he ran towards me with seemingly no care for his injuries. “Where have you been? You should have been here days ago!” His voice was trembling as he hugged me with surprising strength. I cringed as I heard a nasty cracking sound coming from his arm.

“Watch out!” I carefully tried to pry my friend’s hands from me, but it was like I had been caught in a vise. That sickening sound of bones twisting and muscles tearing was heard again and I could feel his arms tightening around my waist to the point that it started to hurt. “Hey, stop it!”

“They’re all down here, Yuri, all of them. Some don’t even know.” Sasha started to sob woefully as he choked to life out of me. “You have to help me! I’ve been punished enough. Please just get me out of here, I can’t take it anymore!” I felt his hot tears soak through my shirt as he spouted the gibberish of a madman.

I started to struggle harder in a futile attempt to free myself, but I might as well have tried to punch through a wall. My lungs started to burn for another gulp of the dirty metro air, but I could only gasp for a second before Sasha held me tighter and tighter.

The world shrank down to a dot as I felt something in my back shift with a crunch. I couldn’t think anymore, my whole world was reduced to a small dot of light.

Suddenly I fell to the ground. I greedily inhaled the damp air, not caring for the jolts of pain it sent through my back and chest. I crawled away to a wall of the tunnel as I waited for the world to stop spinning.

It took me maybe a moment, or maybe an hour before I realized that Sasha was struggling with another shape. Pressing myself up against the wall I managed to slowly stumble my away from the scene. Taking another painful moment to catch my breath, I stared anxiously at what had happened behind me.

At first I didn’t recognize that half chewed up form of Sergei. That strong man’s face had been broken, cracked open like an egg. But the worst part was his eyes. He seemed to somehow sense that I was staring at him, for he immediately shot a glance back. Those were not the calm and collected eyes of the veteran; these were eyes that belonged to a man that had been broken over and over again.

“Yuri,” the thing that was once Sergei spoke in a grunt as he smacked Sasha’s head against the floor. “She’s lying!” He punched that wretched thing once again, but to little effect, as my former friend didn’t even falter for a moment in his own attempts to crawl towards me. “But you have to follow her,” Sergei continued. “We have to get out of the metro, at any cost!” The man drew his knife, the blade shining like silver lightning in the tunnel as it struck my friend in the back.

The mortal wound seemed to finally snap Sasha back to reality as those terribly empty eyes, devoid of any laughter, focused on me. “Don’t leave me here, Yuri!” My legs started to shake as I took a step backwards. “You have to help me!”

To my eternal shame, I turned my back, leaning against the wall as I dragged myself away from that scene. “I-I’m sorry,” I muttered under my breath as I finally started to run. The screams for help rang out in the tunnel, not fading in strength no matter how fast I ran. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” I started to scream it like a mantra, louder and louder, trying to drone out that horrible noise behind me.

To my shock I saw more figures appearing in the weak beam of my flashlight. Like an underground forest of bones and starved flesh, each body a horrible tree. There were so many. I could never fight my way past them.

My heart sank as they started to shuffle towards me, slow, but as unstoppable as a wave. “No! Leave me alone!” My eyes darted left and right, desperate to find something, anything, that could let me escape. There! I saw a crack in the tunnel!

Babbling a few apologies I blindly pushed my way past a few of the mindless husks. I dove towards the tear in the tunnel, cramming myself in the tight space with all the fervor of a man with death right behind him.

With all my strength I pushed forward. My feet were slipping on the ground, my fingers were scraping against the rough wall of the broken cement, but I had to push onward. I didn’t care how my poor chest started to hurt in its futile efforts to expand in the tight space, I needed to get out of there. I almost stopped for a moment as I felt blood dripping into my eye, had I scraped my head open against the wall? It didn’t matter, I did my best to blink away the tears and dirt from my eye, I couldn’t have rubbed the blood out if I tried, the space was simply too small to move my arms in any angle.

Then it happened. What I had feared. I was stuck. No matter how I wringed my body or how I struggled, I couldn’t move an inch anymore. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for those things behind me. Their starved bodies slipped easily between the opening in the wall. I could already feel their arms tugging at me.

I gasped as I saw movement on the other side of the wall. “Hey! Is anyone out there? Help!” A small light erupted on the other side, but its color was not of any flashlight that I knew. “You there! You’ve got to help me!”

A dark shape came closer to the crack, but the light was positioned in such an awkward way that I could only see the outline of my potential rescuer.

“Dozor? Is that you?” The mutant seemed larger in every way somehow. A larger horn, larger wings, and generally taller. She even felt larger, she had an aura of strength that seemed too powerful to belong to any one creature.

“HeyI Dozor! Help me out! Please!” I felt a rush of warm breath on my outstretched hand as the shape came closer. I saw a dark hoof being carefully stretched out for a second, but it stopped before it was even halfway there. “Hey! I’m not joking! Stop messing around and help me!”

I screamed as a withered hand grabbed my head and pulled it back, scraping open my cheek against the wall. For a second, I couldn’t believe my ears, the sound of wings flying away filled the small crevice. “Don’t leave! Get back here!”

Opening my eyes I saw the shape up high, looking like a rising star before it stared back one more time as it abandoned me. I couldn’t even scream as I was pulled back into the tunnel.

With a groan I opened my eyes, slowly sitting up. I grunted as I stretched my pained back. Sleeping on a bed of coals turned out to be a bad idea, who knew?

’Morning,’ Dozor said without looking at me, her black hoofs flying over the dozen handles, slightly adjusting them and watching the gauges as their arrows bounced from right to left. ’Now that you’re finally up, how about you make yourself useful and start shoveling some coal?’

“Sure.” I rubbed the sleep from my eyes as I tried to calm down. My heart was beating like it was trying to jump out of my chest. What had I even dreamed about? The remnants of the nightmare were already evaporating from my memories like water on a hotplate.

It took me a while to realize how eerily quiet it was on the train. Scanning the small train I noticed two faces were missing. “Where are the others?”

’The ponies? I threw them out.’

“What!?” Dozor just shrugged her shoulders as she kept staring at the train controls, doing a remarkable good job at avoiding my gaze.

’It had to happen at some point. Rather sooner than later.’

My body turned cold as I looked again around the floor, hoping against hope to find the two hidden behind some coal pile as some sort of sick joke. They were nowhere to be found, of course. “How could you do that!?” I sputtered. “Who knows what’s out there!”

’Look, Yuri, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but ponies and changelings are enemies.’
Still refusing to look at me, she just stood there, calmly talking like she was discussing mushroom prices. ’Besides, you know how the driver treated you. She had her mind made up the first second she saw you. A monster, just like me. If we had taken her to Canterlot along with us, we would have been arrested and thrown in some old dungeon before we could even say a word. It’s better this way.’

“You abandoned an innocent mother and a child to the freezing cold and all the demons of this place and you try to say that it was for the best!?” I couldn’t keep my voice from shaking, honestly, I felt like throwing up.

’Oh come on, it’s not like I didn’t stop the train before I got rid of them. Besides, we passed plenty of villages on the way here while you were snoring. They’ll be fine.’

I started walking on unsteady legs towards my guide. “You don’t know that. You can’t know that.” Standing next to her I loudly smashed my fist against the steam engine. “We’re going back for them, right now.”

Finally Dozor’s eyes met mine. The crystal blue orbs settled on me as she scoffed. ’Did you forget why you are here? To save your people, right? ’

I nodded, not liking where this was going.

’If we go on some sort of wild-goose chase to find ponies that think we’re monsters, that probably don’t want to be found by us, that will get us arrested as soon as they have the chance. Do you really think that you will still have time or even the opportunity to help your people?’ Dozor turned back to the controls, grinding her teeth for a moment. ’I’m willing to do a whole lot more than inconveniencing a family to help my people, if you want to succeed in your mission, you’d be wise to do the same.’

She might as well have punched me in the gut. Everyone in my home station was counting on me, everyone in the metro was counting on me. Whether they realized it or not. What were the lives of two compared to those thousands of others? I couldn’t risk it, I didn’t dare to. Dozor was probably right in fact. Those two would walk to one of their towns and be alright. The thoughts left a bitter taste in my mouth as I turned away from the changeling and sat down next to my backpack. Is this what heroes did? The question was actually simpler: was this what a decent human being did? I buried my head in my hands as the dark thoughts plagued my mind like bats in a tunnel.

Dozor must have sensed something was wrong, or she simply knew enough about me to understand what was going on. ’You don’t have to like it.’
Even through the haze of guilt I could hear that her voice was softer than it usually was. Like she actually dared to feel sorry for what she did. ’We… are forced to do a lot of things to live in this world. Bad things, things that we don’t really want to do.’
She paused for a second as her hoofs wrestled with the controls again. ’But you’re never forced to like what you do, Yuri. Try not to beat yourself up too much. ’

I didn’t even bother to respond to that. Rumbling in my backpack I finally found that familiar metal cylinder again. Carefully screwing it open I watched the pristine bottle within, with the small universe of light that it made from the reflection of the engine fire. Instead of comfort it only made me home sick. I couldn’t bear looking at it longer than a few seconds.

Quickly putting it back to where it belonged I noticed that the small horse had kept her promise, every bullet was cleaned of the floor and jingling on the bottom of the pack. But I also noticed something missing, the doll. And just like that the image of a small grey horse with a small yellow mother struggling through the snow in a forest filled with hungry eyes filled my head. What was this place turning me into?

“Shit”, I muttered as I put the backpack down. What more could I do?