Deep breaths, Orphic, deep breaths... I repeated my mantra over and over, mostly to no avail. Those dreadful raiders had left a few minutes earlier, and I was still trying to catch my breath. Breathing deeply was no problem...it just isn't very calming when one is doing it so quickly he's like to pass out from hyperventilating. Now that the immediate danger had passed, and my mind was beginning to form rational thoughts again, the first that came to mind was, inevitably, a self-deprecating reminder; 'This is what you get for never lifting a hoof earlier'. Before yesterday, a strenuous workout for me was carrying a heavy pile of books, or walking across the village to find somepony to question so I could fill out a ledger. The terrifying beginning of light-headedness and my breath only slightly starting to even itself out as I glanced over to see Callie calmly and deliberately breathing, only added insult to injury.

A return to a state of nature, to spending days fleeing hunters just as my distant ancestors who adopted the prey-animal biology I carry today did, wasn't a prospect I enjoyed facing for the rest of my likely short and brutal life. The thought that this is what I would be doing from now on loomed up in front of me, threatening to send my tenuous calm spiraling back into a fit. I sorted that somewhere in my mind other than the forefront, and it joined the rest of the things that were going to break through like an overflowing river bursting an old world dam, as soon as we had the chance to stop and rest too easily. I let my muzzle sink into my forehooves, and would have sighed if I had the breath control to do so. I can't take this much running.

Callie ended up giving the both of us a few more minutes to rest before we moved on. She clearly didn't need it as much, even if galloping for our lives took some toll on her, but I wasn't in any position to put on false bravado at the time, so the break was appreciated. We started with the room we were in already; some sort of reception area with a large circular desk in the center, holding a few rusted and broken terminals on top.

Unsurprisingly, the rest of the room was in a similar state of disrepair. A layer of dust nearly an inch thick covered nearly every surface, and made each breath, now that I was no longer taking them in out of chase-induced fear, tickle the throat in precisely that unpleasant way that makes one want to cough without actually causing them to. Even taking a step toward the dust kicked up clouds of it, probably mixed with rust and decrepit dust of paint peeled off the walls and ceiling. Knowing what they used to make paint probably wouldn't have made me feel any better.

...Nor did the realization that I was complaining about dust when I'd just barely escaped with my life and so man others hadn't. It'd already started then, and there wouldn't be a way to keep pushing it somewhere else. Simply, unequivocally, every soul I'd known save one, who was now under the desk crawling around in the dirt looking for an old tin of food or some such, was dead. Why should she bother? Why should I? The inevitability came down like a hammer blow. From now on every time I wanted to crawl out of the pit with some small victory, I'd fall back down and remember why I should have stayed down. I should have been home the other day, when they came for everypony else. She stood, putting her front hooves up on the warped desktop, looked at me, and spoke roughly. “What are doing, daydreaming? Go look around.”

“Why?”

Caliber's ears twitched, and she leaned forward very slightly, as if hoping I'd repeat myself and make more sense the second time around. “What?”

“Why, why should we bother?”

“I don't know about you, but I enjoy eating,” she said gruffly.

“It's not funny, this is a serious question!” I shouted back.

There was a metal clang, her shoving something aside and standing. “No, it's not funny. I'm trying to keep us alive and you're giving up.”

My first instinct was to disagree. I almost did, even getting as far as opening my mouth, but the words didn't come out as my train of thought distracted me. Was she even wrong? If any circumstances ever called for losing hope, these would be them. How could I even be asked to do otherwise? Everything the both of us new was gone now, ponies and our home. Just the other remained, and how long would either of us even have that much.

If anything had changed, personally, it was my idea of safety. Everything about the wasteland being a horrible place felt so far away. So distant from my own life. We were all so out of the way that we honestly believed we'd be safe. At least I did...

A hoof shaking me brought me out of the thoughtstream. “Can't have you shutting down like this. I'm not slowing down for you to get us killed.”

I brought up a hoof to sweep hers off my chest, irritably, but her foreleg was unyielding. It only had the effect of reminding me how weak I was, angering me more. I gave up and backed away a step or two. “I didn't ask you to!”

She turned on her rear hooves and went back to a filing cabinet. There wasn't any need to say what we were both thinking, as she tugged at the top drawer, opening it with a metallic crunching of rust against rust. I didn't ask her to slow down for me, no... but it was that, or leave me to die. We both knew the stakes, and which one of us was meant to be out here. Caliber moved down to the next drawer, apparently seeing nothing in the first. This one stuck, even after being pulled on. Grunting in frustration, she eventually slammed a hoof into it with uncharacteristic expression. The drawer relented then, barely held together as it was.

Her face going from slightly contorted back to neutral might as well have been a smile on somepony else. Cautiously, I ventured a quiet, “What did you find?”

Scooping something out of the metal box with a hoof, she held up a small glass bottle filled with a red liquid. “Healing potion.”

“That's good news. Hopefully we won't need to use it,” I joked weakly.

“Mmhmm,” I got in response, as she put the bottle into one of her saddlebags, then checked her PipBuck to verify. She stopped then and gave me a significant look. I thought it was significant anyway, or maybe that's maybe my mind playing tricks from remembering what she asked right afterward. “You ready to keep going?”

It took a few moments of pause before I could give her a nod.

With the reception area searched, we'd moved on along the only path available to us, a doorway to the left, leading to a series of offices. With nothing else to do, and her assurances that there were no killer robots in the vicinity, we decided to look through them one-by-one. Maybe I should have been keeping quiet, but talking to relieve my nervousness was better than staying silent and making the threat of being torn apart by soulless automatons seem that much more real.

"One large school of thought held that one would always have some alternative interpretation of one's mark and by extension, their special talent. However, their detractors accused them of wishful thinking." Callie for her part didn't look thrilled by my history on the philosophy of cutie-marks, but she was probably just looking out as always. This subject was absolutely fascinating, so that must have been it.

Without a change in expression to judge by, I continued on, "And thus we see how it applies to the raiders. For example, what is a pony with the cutie mark of a skull with a knife through the eye socket supposed to do with his or her life? Become the wasteland's premier eye surgeon?"

That got a response, as she stopped in her tracks and looked at me with a hoof help up. "Are you saying they aren't responsible? Because I'd say they should just not be fucking raiders."

"Well I'm not taking all of the ethical culpability from the, but it isn't quite that simple. What about the foals?"

"Foals? You think they have children and raise them?"

"That would be ridiculous, no. However, some must give into...carnal urges I suppose-"

"Shit, Orphic, carnal urges? Who talks like that?"

Continuing without the interruption, "Regardless: some raider mares must get pregnant and at least occasionally raise their children. What of them? Should they be blamed for the life they were raised into?"

"Why the fuck are you trying so hard to defend them?"

"I simply thought it was an interesting ethical quandary..." I said dejectedly. How can we live out here and not examine the implications of the things going on?

Callie snorted, and kicked the box open, starting to rifle through it. "Yeah, well I have enough bullshit on my mind without your quandaries."

It was silent for a while after that, save for the noises from somewhere else. The sounds of creaking and grinding metal had never stopped, but they seemed to be getting slowly louder now. Whether that meant they were getting closer, I couldn't tell, but hoped not. It was probably just my imagination, worried and intent on making me feel never safe.

The room contained nothing of value, it seemed. A few pieces of twisted scrap metal, and clipboards and mugs, strangely untouched by the entropic force of two hundred years of radiation and decay. I wondered whether I could find the spell used to treat them. Now that would be something worth recovering. A real step towards civilization.

"Nothing here, Orphic. Let's go," she said while standing back up to her hooves. A low buckling sound came from overhead, and my perked up as I shifted over towards the nearest wall, staring up. The ceiling gave no sign of giving way after a few moments.

"...Callie?"

"Nothing on EFS. The building's old. That's it," she answered in a neutral tone after making an effort of sweeping her eyes back and forth over the surrounding walls.

"It could be structurally unsound! It could collapse on us at this rate!" It's true yes, the ponies of Old-World Equestria engineered everything with the assumption that it would need to stand up to an attack by Zebras at any moment, but I wasn't sure I could trust their work would be expected to last centuries!

She gave me a flat look with, dark wasteland-brown eyes. "Rather take your chances outside?"

"Touché. But...what about the robots?"

Now, her face took on a tiny note of smugness. "I thought you didn't listen to stories about the wasteland?"

"Quiet. I've started. There could very well be robots left over, that's what this factory produced during the War after all."

"I've been watching for them, but nothing yet,” she answered. That much at least I could be assured of. She'd never been the sort to let her guard down unnecessarily, always watching out for the next sign of hostility. High Caliber was sadly unusual that way. Of the hoofful of ponies in the village's makeshift militia, she was one of a very small few who'd taken it nearly so seriously. The others would wander in a lazy patrol most days, knowing nothing was likely to ever be out of the ordinary. There were even occasional grumbles that there was no need for dedicated guards in such a small community, and that those who chose the job weren't pulling their weight. Though, that accusation was leveled at myself on occasion as well, though never to my face. Whereas her gun was practically shining, and meticulously maintained, the others were fine with carrying rusty ones that were visibly pieced together from scrap and held in place with duct tape. It served perfectly well for the occasional bout with wildlife, but against intelligent and violent raiders... well, the events spoke for themselves. A nagging thought at the back of my mind wondered whether harsher discipline and training might have made a difference, but I sent it away. It was an awful thought, to blame the dead for what happened. Regardless, one of the mares treated the task with unwavering sobriety, and if I were in a grateful mood at the time, I would have thanked my lucky stars my friend was the one I'd been with that day.

Of course, that's not the sort of thing one just says out loud. I kept it to myself, not appreciating that a part of me thought I was being unfair, and knowing she wouldn't openly return the sentiment regardless. We continued down one of the longer hallways, sadly not differentiated from the others except that most of the doors were blocked by rubble where the ceiling above had collapsed . Stepping our way carefully over the piles of stone and old plaster, progress was slow, and more than once I nearly slipped and cut one of my legs on jagged bits of stone. If I had known I would be thrust out into the wasteland the morning before... well, I likely would have dressed in the same pre-war clothing. It's not as if I owned anything resembling armor... a fact I was likely going to regret at this rate.

My right ear twitched just then, hearing a faint, mechanical whirr from up ahead, too far to see in the gloomy hallway. I didn't even get to worry if it was a robot before two hind hooves slammed into my chest with an audible thud, knocking me down and into a recessed doorway. My back legs buckling at the impact, I fell backwards and slammed my back into the wall. I sat there moaning at the terrible pain, as my assailant leapt into the alcove with me, the spot where she'd been standing against the hallway erupting with chips and dust in a hail of gunfire. “Owww...” I rubbed a hoof on my back, sticking close against the wall. The gunshots were concerning of course, but I had to make sure my back wasn't broken.

“Alternative would have hurt a lot worse,” she replied without looking over. Too busy unslinging her rifle, and checking that the safety was off. See, I recalled that step, I wasn't entirely hopeless. The satisfaction was cut short by a wince as I shifted into a sitting position. Caliber sat with her back against the wall, apparently unconcerned that it was still under a barrage of lead, or at least not showing any concern. She moved her gun around the corner and fired blindly, a few metal-on-metal pings rewarding us with the knowledge she'd hit something.

That something possibly being a robot that might not care very much about being shot! I tried to sit up more, but couldn’t move from the small space for fear of being shot. “W-what is it?!”

“Turret,” she snapped back, not looking to bother wasting focus on the distraction. A moment later, there was a halt in the shooting, and without wasting a split-second of her window of opportunity, she leaned out enough to see and became perfectly still. Her trigger hoof moved, firing three short bursts at the turret in mechanical succession, without even moving when the machine starting again and grazed her between her second and third shots. After the third burst, a small explosion sounded, and along with the cessation of eardrum-shattering gunfire, let us know the threat was over.

She blinked and let out a breath, visibly coming out of the targeting spell-induced fugue. When I came to Pipbucks, that much was a sell-point I was aware of, from her demonstrations and an old Stable-Tec pamphlet I'd once found, that advertised the feature. Now that the danger was passed, I stood on wobbly legs, leaning against the wall to help me up, and peeked out at what was shooting at us. “Ow!” I lifted my foreleg where it'd caught a light kick from my friend. “What?”

“Did I say it was safe?” She accompanied the surely-rhetorical question with a look I was beginning to associate with the emotion of Why do you have to make keeping you alive so hard?, and I sat back down contrite, my ears falling. She hadn't said, and for all I knew there could have been two. It was... unpleasant to think that at this rate, I might likely die from some very casual, very stupid mistake. Not to mention embarrassing for somepony used to being the smartest around, now being scolded, rightfully.

High Caliber sighed, a small sound, but obviously intentional and pointed. It means more coming from somepony one knows isn't prone to making gestures of disappointment like that, and was enough to add insult to injury. Disappointment always has hurt more than anger. She didn't say anything else on that topic, but instead put a hoof to her right shoulder gingerly and muttered. “Damn...”

I perked up, curious. “What's the matter?”

“Grazed,” was the laconic reply.

Worried now, I moved closer and concentrated on forming a spark of magical energy at the tip of my horn. It was a simple light spell, effortless to manage, and the light came on a moment later, shining like a lantern in the small space. Where she'd indicated, I looked and saw the truth of it myself. One of the bullets had passed in between two plates of armor separating her upper foreleg and shoulder, and blood seeped slowly but surely out of the wound. I had absolutely no medical training, but sense enough to know not to take chances with something like this. “You need a potion.”

She lifted her left hoof and tapped a button on her PipBuck, turning one of the dials, then shook her head. “I only have the one. We can't waste them on every cut and scrape-”

“-No, listen,” I interrupted, raising a hoof. I could endure the withering glare for this. “If we don't use it for this, then what? What if it gets infected, hmm? We both know-” my damnable voice cracked slightly on the word, “-how difficult it is to find medicine for that.”

Callie stared for a moment, but relented, moving a hoof to unbuckle her saddlebags. Her voice was soft when she spoke. “Fine. Sorry.”

We were both sorry that it had to be brought up, but there was no use dwelling on it then and there. I gave her the potion, which she drank without further argument. Not long after, we continued, salvaging some bullets from the turret, but finding nothing of significant value in the surrounding rooms... an unfortunate trend here.

A few more of the rooms were the same, in having practically nothing of value to them. After working our wall down the hallway though, one of the office doors we found was locked. The nameplate had long since fallen and turned to dust, but the rotting wooden door stubbornly refused to do likewise, and no matter how I turned the knob, it wouldn't budge.

"Done yet?" Caliber intoned from behind me. I sighed and backed away, exaggeratedly waving my foreleg in welcome for her to try.

"It's locked, or stuck maybe. It won't open." She didn't even try to handle, glancing at it before she turned around and bucked the door. It cracked and shifted visibly, throwing out clouds of dark brown and orange dust, but stayed closed. I opened my mouth to say 'I told you so,' but halfway through the thought she dug her forehooves in and kicked out again with her back ones. With a small crash the door flew open, now with the addition of a few hoof-sized dents.

She hardly even looked back, but there's no way I didn't notice that ghost of smirk. I must have loosened the door a little. Inside the office was dark, and Callie went in first, turning on the Pipbuck light so she had some light to see by. A second after she entered I heard scuffling hooves and a quiet, "...shit...You might wanna wait out there."

Well, of course there's no way that wasn't going to pique my curiosity, so I followed her in anyway. She really needn't be so overprote-"AHHH!"

I hit the ground and already started crawling-no, dragging-myself out out the room and away from that! A skeleton in tattered pre-war clothes swung from the ceiling. From in the room somewhere I hardly heard the obligatory "I told you to wait."

"Quiet!" Is all I managed to eloquently attempt in reply. Of course, shaking and terrified, it likely didn't come out coherently, or sound very intimidating if it had. Obviously, I had seen death before, or rather, its aftermath. Elder ponies had passed peacefully, and my own father had as well, though not quite so easily as from old age...I shuddered to think of that time again now, or my more recent brush with lives ended in front of me. I didn't particularly care at the time whether she'd warned me! Two centuries old or not, the point is I'd seen far more corpses than I ever needed to for the rest of my days already!

The thought sounded defiant and rang with conviction for only a moment, before the hollow echo became apparent. Like words chosen carefully to hurt someone who'd wronged you, it was satisfying for a moment before it sunk in. ...Everypony I'd known was gone, all but her, and this was to be the rest of my life now, wasn't it? Scrounging around in buildings that would have been condemned in a better time, crying like a foal at the inevitable corpses strewn about. Sinking down, I laid my head on my tired forelegs, too worn out to even scold myself for my embarrassing display. I hardly paid any mind to the rattling and dragging sounds behind me.

When I broke from my thoughts in a few moments, I noticed she'd left the small office and was standing over me. Towering, not through a menacing demeanor but through a sheer difference in size and build. Even as foals, the difference was easy enough to see, she was built for strength and labor, me for sitting inside and reading books. In those days any game of ours involving an element of physicality put her at a distinct advantage, which may have influenced why I spent more time indoors as well. Part of her build could be chalked up to being an earth pony. A legacy of a time so long ago it's difficult for even what passes for a historian in the post-apocalypse to comprehend, far, far more distant in time to the ponies during the War, than we were to them. A time when working the fields was the sole domain of earth ponies, before machines and industry began to replace the labor of hooves. With that said, I'd always admit that even if she were a unicorn, I'd still be slim in comparison.

When I looked up at her face, she'd just finished saying something...which I had missed entirely. "Um...pardon?"

Shifting very slightly, her expression changed from restrained care to restrained care tinged with slight annoyance. The sort of facial movement that said without words, 'I'm tryin' real hard to be nice here, don't make it harder on me.' In what way, she did clarify with words, though a typically laconic string of them. "I moved it."

There was no need to ask what she meant. The terrifying pile of dusty bones had to be moved for the sake of my fragile disposition it seemed. “That was utterly unnecessary,” I said with a small 'hmph'.

She just shook her head slightly and turned to walk back into the room. We both knew it wasn't true. Me cowering out in the hallway with the dirt and the crumbling plaster was proof enough of that. Contrite, I lifted myself to my hooves and slowly walked into the room. Little more had survived here than anywhere else. The ceiling had a hole leading up to the next floor, though neither of us had any way to get up there. The room was mostly taken up by a wooden desk, which itself was covered almost fully by a boxy, machine that I recognized as another personal terminal. Callie could have at that. Besides that, a very long-dead pot for a plant, and a few cracked frames that had fallen to the floor, the room was sparse. Besides the bones piled in a corner behind me.

I tried to keep my eyes forward, despite being drawn to look at the unceremoniously-treated remains. If I looked too much and too far, I'd begin seeing them as my own. No, those thoughts couldn't be allowed to come up again. Staring at a spot on the wall in front of me only barely let me resist the pull of the bones, but thankfully the clacking of hooves on a keyboard provided a distraction.

She was way ahead of me, already sitting at the terminal and tapping away, no doubt trying to get past whatever security that poor pony had protecting his workspace. That practically summed up my understanding of the process though. I was never any good at electronics in general, and found myself disinterested in any machinery more complicated than a watch or a toaster, Pre-War artifacts or not. Sure, I'd rather they be preserved for that if nothing else, and the information inside them was certainly valuable, but when it came to accessing it...well, give me a good book any day.

Callie, on the other hoof, somehow excelled at this solitary class of intellectual pursuit.

“You might want to look.”

To: Oiled Gears, R&D
From: Profit Margins
CC: Nopony
Subj: Apple-bot

What the fuck are you doing down there? I just saw the memo from Legal; you still haven't changed that Sisters-damned robot's chassis? Let me make this absolutely clear: a senior MoT official has directly told us that while the Ministry Mare approves of the concept, we're not authorized to use her image. Do you even understand what you're doing? Don't give me that bullshit about your personal project either, it's a marketing gimmick and we both know it. Have it changed by Monday or I swear you're going upstairs and explaining to the boss why the government is suing us in the middle of a war!

I wanted the see the next entry, and clicked a few buttons tentatively. None of them did anything. “Um...”

With a small groan, she stopped looking through one of the desk drawers and deftly tapped a few keys, bringing up a new block of text, before going back to what she was doing. “...Thanks.”

To: Profit Margins
From: Oiled Gears, R&D
CC: Nopony
Subj: Apple-bot

I can absolutely assure you, that the EHDS is not, as you say a “marketing gimmick” or my “personal project”. I find both insinuations quite frankly insulting. Once the kinks are ironed out, the Ministry will be impressed enough to reconsider their stance, however in the face of your doubt, I will alter the appearance of the automaton after my work on the EHDS is complete. That will have to suffice for the Legal department.

Okay, even I would have a difficult time conveying that much pompousness through text. I tapped my hoof on the button that was supposed to go back... and nothing. Groaning I stood up, not about to fight with it again. “Well, I do wonder what that was all about.”

“You won't have to much longer,” she answered, looking at one of the frames on the wall.

“Hmm? And why's that?”

She tapped on the glass. “Look.”

I walked over to oblige, casting a simple light spell to make it easier to see. Apparently she'd found a map of the facility. A single one of the office was marked in red, and from that and the general location of it, far from the front entrance, I could surmise that it meant to show where we were at present. Which meant... my eyes followed the path out of the room to a nearby hallway a short walk away, which led to what was labeled as the factory's laboratories. That would be the best place, I had to agree, to find something of value. ...And answers to new questions.

Shortly after, we left to head straight there. Even being trapped there for the time being, I don't believe either of us wanted to spend too much more time than was necessary poking around. And from what the map seemed to say, the laboratories connected to a different section of the factory, which had a back entrance to the complex. Getting there would mean finding another way out, on the other side as the raiders. Just in case they hadn't given up yet.

Thankfully, no more of the robots accosted us on the short walk to the laboratory entrance. Though, along the way, we still moved slowly, and could hear scraping and clanking from nearby. The sounds would draw nearer at times, before dissipating, and so on. It was clear by that point that however many were left were probably aware of our skulking through the complex. That fact simply made our need to get through the laboratory and out to the back entrance more pressing. ...And hope nothing was in the way of that.

Despite the harrowing noises, we advanced through the hallways, leaving some doors that might have been still usable unexplored. Eventually the sounds faded again for a time, and the plaster walls gave way to tiles and what looked like time-eaten stone. The room we were in had a high ceiling, to serve as a vestibule between the offices and the research section. A collapsed desk sat off to one side, and across from it, on the opposite wall, was what looked like a bulky statue. Stepping closer to examine it, I saw that very little could be seen of the original metal, under a solid coat of rust. I was afraid that if I touched it, it might have collapsed entirely. Afraid, because despite the same decay that covered everything in the building, its significance was readily apparent. Though the plaque under the statue had eroded too much to be legible, the bulky, treaded shape was vaguely suggestive of an Equine form; enough to show that this was a very early Equestrian robot, or a faithful replica of one.

I let out a little gasp involuntarily, and started looking at it from different angles. How it worked wasn't of any particular interest to me, any more than any other machine, but it was a genuine artifact. It had to have been at least two centuries old. My companion stopped and waited without a word. Normally, despite her quiet nature I would expect her to ask me to stop wasting time...

…But there's a certain drive that comes with a special talent. I would not be able to blame Callie whatsoever, if we were to find an enormous gun somewhere, were she to express the feeling that she had an uncontrollable urge to use it. It's a cruel pony even today, especially today, that denies a pony access to what their cutie mark is telling them. So despite her no doubt growing impatience, and the feeling of her eyes watching me, I continued undisturbed in my examination.

I didn't know enough about robotics to judge when exactly this piece was from, but thankfully, I had an alternative to that. One of my simplest and most useful spells, and the one that earned me my cutie-mark. My horn glowed with a violet light, marshaling the focus and magical energy to produce the effect. The glow shifted to the lighter shade as it flowed from my horn to the antique machine and connected the two. A moment later, the thought came to my mind as a vague impression. Centuries. Another few moments brought another: Two hundred years. And a third again, Two hundred and five years. I looked back excitedly at the mare. “It's just as I surmised. It's from near the beginning of the war! This had to be one of the early experiments in Equestrian robotics.”

Raising an eyebrow, she answered with a simple, “Yeah?”

“Oh yes. If I had more time to analyze it, I could get down to the month...maybe more exactly. Composition, maybe even a few images...” If I had the time. Her expression gave the impression that I would stretch the limits of her patience were I to attempt it. And in her defense, there was some reason to believe the statue's descendants were violently opposed to our unintentional trespassing. “I suppose we should continue,” I admitted reluctantly.

She nods immediately. “Let's go,” the mare intones, gesturing toward the lab entrance past the foyer with her head. Without further hesitation, probably silently resenting the 'wasted' time, she began to creep there, staying near the wall. Not fully trying to move silently, but showing the same caution she had since the first turret. She tilted her head back to look at me from the side, if only to ensure I was coming along, and must have caught the wistful last look at the ancient work of art. I didn't hesitate any longer, walking after her.

Unexpectedly, she waited for me to come up alongside her, and as if grudgingly, started to speak. “Uh...so, what were robots before the war like?”

Little as it was, I was delighted to spend the next twenty minutes telling her every iota.

Disappointingly, the labs fared only very slightly better than the rest of what we'd seen so far. As much as, at this point, the biggest thing on my mind was leaving this place, it still might have been nice to find something of value. We'd walked past broken and bare laboratories, largely empty supply closets, and even one room on the outside that was labeled as some sort of "Terminal Mainframe", yet when we opened the door, only seemed to be a tangled forest of rust, adorned with wire thorns.

Eventually, we came to the central lab, and after Callie checked for anything uncouth with her Pipbuck, we opened the door to the long, rectangular, room. The ceiling was low, and the room stretched out with benches on either wall and in the middle of the space as well. At one point, this must have been extraordinarily impressive to the technically-minded. Both of us walked along the benches toward the other side, curiously leaning in to examine the things that hadn't simply been reduced to scrap over time. I saw some small tools, some of which were familiar, some sort of battery, and a glass... Nope! Backpedaling instantly, my rump bumped into the counter behind me. Whipping her head in my direction, Callie gave me a look with an unasked question, which I answered by meekly pointing a forehoof at the offending disturbing object.

She walked over and brought her muzzle near to look at the jar, bringing up the Pipbuck light. "... the fuck?" Inside, in a viscous, clear fluid, floated a disembodied equine brain, wires connecting the tissue to the bottom of the jar. I still had no desire to look after my first glance. "Why?"

I swallowed a lump in my throat and took a breath. "I have no idea. It's... sick."

She turned to look at me, though I wasn't facing her way. "Hey, you're not going to need a bag, are you?"

"No, I'm-" I paused to let a wave of nausea pass. "-I'm fine. Excuse me." Focusing on the other side of the room, I walked there, not thinking about the pony they got that brain from. No, not thinking about that, just focus on the wall, or the floor. The wall opposite the doors we entered through seemed to be a good place to distract myself. Most of that wall was taken up by a raised, circular, platform, which came up to about my knee, and above which was a technically pony-sized door. I write technically, because it seemed only barely tall enough and wide enough for a stallion of average height to pass through. Strangely as well, there didn't seem to be a handle of any kind, on that side at least.

To either side of the platform were more benches, with the left-hoof one containing a still-active terminal. I raised a hoof off the floor, looking back. “Um...” Unfortunately, my friend was busy rummaging through a cabinet, and didn't hear me, or react. Well, how hard could it be? I poked a key with a hoof and was met by an angry-sounding beep. Immediately, I withdrew it, then leaned closer to the screen. The screen flickered, and I began to read, scanning through a list of lines containing strange symbols not recognizable as Equestrian writing. Only the last entry was legible, and I gingerly poked the large key that seemed to be right here. The screen changed, and suddenly new text appeared.

Oiled Gears, Head of R&D
Log #22

Unbelievable! Absolutely unbelievable. Those myopic corporate Luddites cut our budget, AGAIN. They cited 'misallocation of resources', but it's undeniably meant to be punitive. My vision is that every farm in Equestria has one of our Apple-Bots to help harvest and protect our food supply, and they constantly whinge about legal concerns and minor bugs.-

From behind me I heard the sound of glass suddenly shattering, and jumped nearly to my hooves, before looking behind me and seeing Caliber reaching a booted hoof into a case mounted to the wall, and retracting it upturned, with a vaguely apple-shaped object resting on top.

"Spark grenade,” High Caliber said in what she likely thought was an explanation. She seemed pleased with the find, so I offered a polite smile and nod before slowly turning back to the screen.

The Emergency Homestead Defense System is integral to the automation! Once every Equestrian farm has one, our food supply will be that much safer from stripe sabotage. Granted, its inability to currently distinguish a pony from a zebra is problematic, but entirely surmountable. Once that minor issue is corrected, The Ministry of Wartime Technology and Applejack herself will welcome the resemblance to her.

I tapped the key to go back, slightly pleased that this terminal thing wasn't too difficult after all, and looked for any more entries. I have to admit that reading the correspondences gave me some investment in the ponies who'd written them. Pre-war primary sources and dreadfully rare, and pleasant ponies or not, I wanted to know what happened to these ones. ... besides their obvious ultimate fates, of course.

To my disappointment, the log I'd just read was the final and only usable one visible. I supposed, sobered, that the dusty skeleton we'd found would be the only semblance of closure to this story that I would come across.

... something else was on the screen however, and noticing it took me from my sad reverie. I began to read the next few lines with a chill creeping up my neck, as my friend came over to look over my shoulder at the screen.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
EHDS_test: ENABLED
AB_status: UNKNOWN(ERROR#AB03)

AB03: ROBOT MISSING FROM STORAGE CASE.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

"We might have another predicament..."

“And it has no chance of harming a pony?” I asked again, just to be absolutely sure.

She snorted. “No. Again, no. It's the point of a spark grenade. It works on machines like robots and turrets, and nothing else.”

“Well, excuse me for being hesitant about you having something with the word 'grenade' in its name ready to toss at a moment's notice, indoors.” I cast a look askance at the roughly spherical object hanging from the front of her armored vest, with a blue stylized lightning-bolt painted on its side.

“You'll be glad I have it when we run into that thing they talked about in the lab.”

“Don't say it as if that's inevitable,” I chided nervously, looking over my shoulder back down the hallway. Since we'd left the lab, I'd had a knot in my stomach that was growing by the step toward our exit. I wasn't nearly as sure as I pretended to be, that our confrontation was anything but inevitable. We'd seen it missing from its spot, and of course, if there was one more thing that could go wrong today, it would be that. It didn't help my nerves that every few minutes she would duck into a side room and have us hide, in case any of the red marks only she could see happened to be near us. ...Apparently, Stable-Tec did not consider some indication of range to be a worthwhile investment.

At least after today, I would have a new subject for the occasional moments where I'd fantasize about what I would say to famous ponies during the war, given the chance. I'm still sure that everypony does that as well from time to time, despite their denials.

“It just about might be,” she commented, coming to a halt with her hoof lifted out to her side. I stopped behind it and got ready to respond, before she pointed forward to a closed set of double doors. Looking at her PipBuck, she confirmed, “Exit's on the other side of that room. Something is in there, and it's not friendly.”

"It could be somewhere else in the building, couldn't it? We would need some truly awful luck..."

And so, of course it had to be true.