The gray mare sniffled again, unsure of what to do. A flood of red had annihilated her right eye, a true shame after the corrective surgery she'd had just that morning to fix it. As well, nothing but a dull agony remained of one of her wings. She couldn't even feel the other.

Squinting through the gloomy atmosphere at a barely illuminated sign on the wall, she gulped. The way things had been going, she wouldn't want to be anywhere near Transport Maintenance. And the other sign pointed towards the Nursery, the name for the section of the medical sector where the tank-bred fetuses where kept. She never wanted to go there again, once was more than enough for her lifetime, and that had been before today.

Shaking her head, she decided on the Transport Maintenance dock. The other way would only be worse.

Thinking over the day as she limped along, she wondered when it had gone wrong. She'd dropped off her daughter at her little one's friend's home. Her little muffin was homeschooled, so she needed time to be social with someone other than her mother.

Peering around a corner, she paused in her thoughts to contemplate the corridor ahead. It looked safe enough, but there were too many vents to let her feel safe. Biting her lip, she cantered slowly along, favoring her injured leg.

Still, she thought, her daughter had been with a friend, and was probably alright. But she needed to get back to her. She couldn't just leave her little muffin behind, even if she was safe. It wouldn't be right.

Her wounded leg accidentally slammed into a discarded suitcase, tripping the mare and forcing a cry of pain from her lungs. Cradling the damaged limb with her other forelimb, she inspected the damage as best she could through the tears. If her nose hadn't more or less died earlier from all the blood, it would have right then. Meat and fat hung in bloody strings around the jagged ends of the bone. At least, she thought to herself, it isn't any worse than before.

She continued to power on, ignoring her own pain. She limped with as much vigour as she could muster, meaning barely more than a shuffle. She’d gotten a glimpse of her RIG color, and even she knew what flashing red meant.

Please. Celestia, if you’re watching, let me see my daughter again, just once.

The gray mare’s quiet prayer may have reached the supposed goddess, but she wouldn’t know. Even the Chairmares of E-Gov couldn’t teleport between planets. But the thought that, maybe, she’d see her little girl again was enough to keep the mare from collapsing.

Ahead, a light was shining from around a corner.

In the dark confines of these corridors in the medical station, light meant safety, it meant a place she could rest, it meant that the power wasn’t out everywhere, just where she’d been. As she nearly ran (meaning sped up to a decent walk) to the light, she could feel her heart pound. She could hear her heart pound. Then, she turned the corner, and looked happily on the source of the light.

A hulking, gray figure, with two bulky, bladed arms, stood at the end of the hallway. One of its arms was caught in between the sections of a closed security door, and it was tugging futilely free itself. A small worklight sat on the ground next to it, the halogen bulb creating the illumination she had sought, the soft grip on the top still held onto by a dead hand.

The creature turned, seeing her with strange, electric-blue eyes, their eerie luminescence faint compared to the portable light next to the creature. With a grunt and a roar, it jerked free of the door, tearing its arm off at the shoulder, a gout of blood following. Almost immediately, it began twitching and quivering as the mare backed fearfully up against a wall.

Then, with a sickening sound like an exploding bag of ground meat, a new arm erupted from the creature’s empty socket, rapidly growing to the size needed to match the other.

The mare tried to scream, to say something, anything, but fear choked her. The thing moved fluidly, like some kind of hunting beast. The mare closed her eyes, and tried to imagine something happier to die with.

The creature roared again.

Author's Notes:

And now, things are set to 'Hardcore' for the players, limiting their already minor supplies in the future and preparing for the deaths of multiple of them.

Your votes counts, so please make them. In any non-intermission chapter, vote for your favorite character from that chapter and your least favorite. Your reasoning can be whatever you wish, but please vote one character Up, and another character Down.

And no, she's not a part of the group right now, so she has seen a hunter.