Chapter 6
For the second time in her life, Lemon Hearts, aka Special Agent Golden Hearts to a select few, felt like she had hit rock bottom.
The first time had been when she'd gotten her head stuck in an Erlenmeyer flask during a lab in grade school, and to this day, anypony that had borne witness to that little incident would almost always bring it up for a moment of humor at her expense.
The second time was when she woke up in a dark, stinking jail cell, in the lower bunk of an old, bare-bones bunk bed with a foreleg handcuffed to the frame.
As memories of what happened after Moondancer’s spell backfired began to surface, Lemon Hearts began to wish that she could re-live her embarrassing flask incident, if only to get her friends back.
“Her friends”, she thought forlornly, if she could truly call them that anymore.
Ponies that she trusted in, depended on, kept secrets for, and had been lying too ever since they graduated from Celestia’s school for Gifted Unicorns.
Closing her eyes again, Lemon Hearts rested her head against the cool metal of the bedframe, trying to hold back tears as she recalled her last words to Minuette before the Flashbang went off.
She had wanted to tell her friends the truth for so long, but it was forbidden for operatives to reveal their identities except in an emergency.
Of course, when one finds themselves in a life-threatening situation, it is usually far too late to say all that needs to be said.
A single tear slipped down her fuzzy yellow cheek.
It hadn’t been easy all those years.
After the flak incident, Lemonhearts had not only been determined to show everypony that she wasn’t clumsy, but that she could be the most careful and concise pony there ever was.
Twilight Sparkle may have been Celestia’s top student that year, but the Princess of the Sun saw great potential in each and every one of her students.
Lemonhearts had been thrilled when she became an official organizer for royal events like the Gala and therefore other big events around Canterlot due to her reputation.
Then one day, Celestia drew her aside and explained the real reason why Lemonhearts had been chosen as the official organizer.
All throughout Equestria, Ponies from every race and trot of life were leading double lives.
In the past, both Celestia and Luna had been questioned more than once about the small size of their Royal Guard, and Celestia’s response had always been something along the lines of “well we’re Alicorns, we can handle ourselves”. Luna had been more open to bolstering the numbers, particularly in the night guard, but even she had to admit that, between Celestia and herself, as well as the Elements of Harmony incarnate, there wasn’t much of a point.
After being laid low by Discord, Chrysalis, and most recently Tirek however, Both Princesses had admitted that greater security measures might be in order.
Thus, The Civilian Operations Agency or COA was born.
Ordinary Ponies, leading seemingly ordinary lives and receiving paychecks from a supposedly civil service oriented agency.
Ponies ready to answer the call should the Princesses, Twilight and her Ponyville friends, or the Royal Guard were otherwise inconvenienced.
In other words, as her fellow agent; Bonbon aka Sweetie Drops had put it, they were the last resort.
Regardless of their status, Members of the COA were trained hard, knowing that they could be called into action at any moment, to deal with any situation under the sun.
Well, most situations.
Being sucked through a portal in a book, getting knocked out, and waking up in jail without any idea of how, why, and where could be considered stretching things a bit.
“Good thing I’m used to getting out of tight situations….”, Lemon Hearts thought before grimacing at the potential flask pun.
Drying her eyes on her foreleg, Lemon Hearts took stock of the situation with newfound determination as her training began to kick in.
If she was going to make things right with her friends or escape this jail cell, crying wasn’t going to help.
Across from the bunk bed, the barred cell door opened onto a dimly lit hallway with another jail cell opposite hers.
In terms of the cell itself, calling it sparse would have been generous.
Besides the rickety bunk bed, there was nothing else in the room except for a pile of newspapers in the far corner and a few scribbles of graffiti on the walls.
In the faint dawn light that filtered through the small barred window above the bunk bed, she could make out a string of tally marks covering the wall closest to her face.
There were just over 24 little groups of 5, over 4 months’ worth of little scratches on the cold, concrete wall.
Lemon Hearts had no intention of hanging around for nearly as long, though it crossed her mind that she had no idea whether this was the morning after she’d been knocked out, or if she had slept through an entire day and night.
As she checked herself over, she almost laughed with joy.
Aside from being a little sore from her rough landing after falling off the crate and sleeping on the pitifully thin mattress, she was fit as ever.
What had made her so happy however was that her captors, whoever they were, had neglected to suppress her magic.
Firing up her horn, Lemon Hearts jiggled the cuffs that held her with glee.
No magical suppression spell, not even a crude magical suppression ring.
She would be out of this cell in moments.
While she was no locksmith, unlocking the simple lock on the cuffs was something that all magical COA operatives were trained to handle, and after a few minutes of teasing the tumblers around, the cuffs popped opened with a soft clink.
Climbing slowly from the bed, she laid the cuffs on the edge and trotted carefully over to the cell door, wincing at each clop from her hooves on the concrete floor.
The door lock was more complex than the cuffs, but that wasn’t an issue.
She peered left and right down the hallway, looking for the rack of keys that seemed to always be within reach of escapist shenanigans.
There wasn’t a key in sight.
Like her cell, the hallway was frustratingly bare. A torch burned weakly at either end of the hall and an empty chair sat next to the railing of a stairwell.
“Ok”, Lemon Hearts thought, her resolve undiminished. “Just a minor setback, “I’ll just wait for somepony to come and-“.
Something yawned and rolled over in the top bunk, shifting the rickety frame.
With a jarring clang that rang through the silent building, the cuffs slid off the lower bunk, hitting the metal frame like a bell as they swung back and forth.
She froze, eyes closed in a painful wince as the sound carried.
There were heavy steps from the stairwell. “Wish granted”, She thought with no small amount of irony.
She wasn’t alone in the cell, but meeting her bunkmate could wait. She quickly returned to the bed and picked up the cuffs in her magic.
Adjusting them to look like they were closed, Lemon Hearts pretended to sleep, closed her eyes to mere slivers, and waited.
-
Otis Hale gave a weary yawn as he hauled himself up the stairs.
After returning from the airdrop retrieval, he’d drawn the short straw for “dawn patrol” guard duty.
This meant that after a fitful two hours of sleep, he had to get up, check the perimeter defenses, and check in on the prisoners.
The smelly, stuffy interior of the prison, however, made checking the perimeter in the cool morning air actually a bit of a respite.
As for checking on the prisoners, currently, there were only 2, and one of them was of great personal interest to Otis:
The bright yellow Unicorn they found the night before, and thanks to his insistence, which they had brought back to base.
As he reached the cell, he peered through the gloom between the bars.
The unicorn lay sleeping on the bunk where he and Gunther had deposited her, her side rising and falling slightly with each breath.
Otis watched her for a moment, his tired brain running through the same litany of questions he had no answer for.
“What is she, some strange mutation or a true bonafide Unicorn?”
“Where did she come from?”
“Why is she so colorful?”
He shook his head. “Short of her walking up and telling us herself, we’ll likely never know”.
“Imagine that, a talking Unicorn” Otis thought to himself with a chuckle as he shifted his gaze to the top bunk where a dark, rumpled figure lay with his back to the wall. “That’d really be something”.
“What do you think?” Otis said, addressing the still figure on the top bunk, “Think your new cellmate’s the real deal”?
Fishing around in his pocket, he pulled out an old grape juice box, a carrot, and a squashed, moldy ham and cheese sandwich in saran wrap and set them on the floor inside the bars.
The silent, supposedly sleeping prisoner made no response, and Otis hadn’t really expected a reply.
The man on the top bunk had been a “guest” of the Beret Gang for months now, and the only reason they kept him alive was that the Boss had some kind of beef with him.
It wouldn’t have surprised Otis at all if the cell’s human occupant thought the Unicorn on the bunk beneath him was just some kind of stir crazy hallucination.
To be fair, Otis still wasn’t entirely sure himself.
Turning away, he shuffled over to the lone chair next to the stairwell and sat down, the keys for the cell doors jangling on his belt.
The Boss had been happy about their haul from the airdrop, but the loss of Atchison and Haddix meant they were down 2 able bodies.
Everyone was going to have put in some extra effort until they could find some new, desperate survivors willing to ditch their morals and join the cause.
Just like Otis and the others, the Boss had been thrown for a loop when they showed him the Unicorn, though his bafflement quickly turned to amusement when he announced that since Otis had found her, Otis would care for her.
That had got everyone laughing when he turned to the others and said, “My parents would’ve never gotten me a pony, and yet here I am being such a nice guy!”
“People out there may think I’m a monster, but never let it be said I don’t take care of my boys!”
Otis groaned as he leaned back and closed his eyes. He was never gonna live that one down.
The guys still saw him as a kid, and now that he was the resident caretaker for their Unicorn “guest”, he doubted the guys would ever see him as anything else, a kid with potential, yes, but a kid nonetheless.
Maybe it was because some of the things that the Boss and the men like Jason Malarkey and Travis Jackson did really shook Otis.
Survivor camps raided and the occupants massacred if they put up any resistance.
Forcing young men and women at gunpoint to either join the Gang or fulfill more personal demands.
Things that, despite his best efforts to drown out the screams and cries, still made his subconscious writhe in discomfort as he helped them do it, and all the while telling himself that at the end of the day, it was either him or them.
When the Beret Gang found him, Otis had been on the run.
Having crossed Confederation Bridge in search of safety like so many others, he’d become trapped when the Army destroyed the bridge in a last-ditch attempt to stop the hordes coming from the mainland.
Lost, afraid, and desperate, Otis realized that the only way he or anyone was going to survive this mess was if they banded together and were willing to make tough choices.
He figured that at some point, however, people would draw a line and at the very least, basic human decency would prevail.
When he shared this sentiment with Sergeant Atchison however, the Serge had grinned and ruffled his hair before replying. “See”? “This is why we call you a kid, you’re too naïve for your own good”!
Now Atchison was dead, his shrapnel mutilated corpse buried hastily by the roadside near Fenwood Farm, and Otis wondered as he began to drift off that if being a kid meant that you remembered your human side, maybe it wasn’t so bad to be a kid after all.
-
Back in the cell, Lemon Hearts dropped her sleeping façade and cracked open an eyelid with a confused smile.
She’d seen the keys on Otis’s belt and now that he was sitting just meters away, once he fell asleep, the keys would as be good as hers.
What had her confused was that in the dim light, she couldn’t tell exactly what her captor was.
He, she judged the guard must be a male from the tone of voice as he spoke, looked like a Minotaur.
However, the proportions weren’t right and parts of the guard’s body had seemed almost cuboid in shape.
Whatever the case, Lemon Hearts decided, the first step towards finding out the where’s, why’s, and how’s was to get out of jail.
“Where in Equestria did that portal send us”? Lemon Hearts wondered as she filled away her captor’s strange anatomy for later investigation.
“When Minuette and I arrived, Moondancer and Twinkleshine where nowhere to be seen, are they nearby, did they end up somewhere else entirely”?
At this point, it dawned on her that she might not even be in Equestria anymore, but in some other kingdom entirely.
“Relationships between Equestria and the Minotaurs are at an all-time high though.”, She thought. “So why would my guard be a Minotaur?
She felt her stomach twinge uneasily. Had her secret identity been discovered somehow?
Had some enemy of Equestria placed a portal spell in that odd little book as a way to trap her?
“Is this all my fault”? She thought bitterly, tears threatening to return as the realization took hold.
“Some agent I turned out to be, I couldn’t even see the danger I put my friends in by simply being around them.”
Suddenly, the rickety bunk bed shuddered as Lemon Heart’s unknown cellmate stirred above her and a pair of lanky legs swung over the side.
She watched in tense fascination, ready to spring into action at the first sign of danger.
The dangling legs were followed by the rest of the body as her cellmate jumped from the top bunk and landed on the concrete with silent, cat-like grace.
Well, her cellmate certainly wasn’t a Minotaur.
Lemon Heart’s watched as her cellmate padded silently over to the door, bent over to pick up the food Otis had left and then froze as he turned back to the bunk and saw her.
The Creature standing before her had the same basic biped shape as a Minotaur, but any similarity ended there.
He, Lemon Hearts guessed it was a male by the rather dashing mustache he sported, was skinny with malnourishment and fatigue.
In fact, the mustache seemed to the only part of this creature that received any care.
He had a serious case of bed head with his short, dirty blonde hair mashed down on one side and sticking up on the other.
The rest of his body, at least the exposed parts she could see, was practically hairless
The Creature wore a rumpled dark gray uniform, a pair of faded patches that read JTF2 adorning each shoulder.
As she met his grayish blue eyes, however, she saw a strength that his body did not convey.
After several moments of awkward silence, the Creature blinked once and then slowly turned so he sank to the ground with his back to the concrete wall.
“I’ve finally lost it”! He whispered to himself with a slightly cultured accent.
“There’s a Unicorn in my cell”! He continued in hushed tones as he turned to look at Lemon Hearts again.
The Creature chuckled quietly and shook his head as he tried and failed to come to terms with the apparent loss of his sanity.
“Hello there”! He said with a sudden grin as he addressed her.
Lemon Hearts, still on alert, reacted instinctively to the greeting with a cautious one of her own as her brain tried desperately to come up with a plan.
“Um…hi…”?
The Creature’s grin got wider. “It can talk to”!?
“Tell me, how deep did my subconscious have to dig to find you?”
Lemon Hearts cocked an eyebrow in confusion before she realized that now was as good a time as any to start getting her questions answered.
“Uh, I don’t think you had to dig at all, because I’m quite real, and I'm a she, not an It.” She answered in a soft voice to avoid alerting their guard, “but what, if I may ask, are you?”
The creature looked baffled for a moment, scratching his head before replying.
“Huh, you don’t know who I am?”
“Then again” he mumbled to himself, “I wasn’t aware that there was a little yellow and blue Unicorn somewhere in my head so, go figure.”
His smile returned and he held out a blocky hand for Lemon Hearts to shake.
“Charles Xavier, former Canadian Special Operations, Joint Task Force 2, and you Miss?”
Lemon Hearts balked at his words, any confusion as to why Charles thought she should know him wiped away as the second part of his introduction registered.
“Did he just say Special Operations?”
She’d never heard of Canadians, nor seen a creature like Charles Xavier before, but if these Canadians had an agency similar to Equestria’s COA, and both of their nations shared a common enemy in their captor….
“To Tartarus with it”! She decided. “I need to find out what’s going on, and if that means taking risks then so be it”.
Slowly removing the cuffs again with her magic, an act which made Charles's grin even wider, Lemon Hearts reached out, unsure of how to meet Charles’s blocky hand with her hoof.
In the end, she didn’t have to worry as Charles took her hoof in his hand and gave it a shake.
“Special Agent Golden Hearts of Equestria’s Civilian Operations Agency”, she said with a bit of an awkward smile at his strange greeting, “Pleased to meet a fellow operative!”
Charles’s gave a small chuckle under his breath, “Equestria?”, “Civilian Operations Agency?” Where was his stir crazy mind pulling these named from?
His grin faltered slightly however as he felt her hoof.
He hadn’t been quite sure what would happen when he touched the Unicorn, but he wasn’t quite prepared to feel the physical texture and weight of what was undoubtedly a real hoof.
Letting go, Charles slowly sat back against the cold, hard wall of the cell and examined his hand before looking up at Golden Hearts.
She stared back, a mix of wary concern and confusion written across her features.
“Um, no offense but, I’ve never seen a creature like you before.” , Lemon Hearts began again, “What are you?”
Charles’s smile had all but disappeared by this point. In its place, incredulous confusion and disbelief played across the man’s face.
“You’re real!?” He breathed.
Charles continued to stare at Lemon Hearts for several more seconds before realizing that the now very real Unicorn sitting before him had asked a question.
“Oh…ah…I’m a human…” He replied in wonder, the surrealism of the situation still weighing heavily on his mind.
“Pleased to meet you too Miss....Golden Hearts was it?”
“Yes…although….” Lemon Hearts hesitated.
There were many strange creatures that inhabited both Equestria and the lands beyond. She’d never heard of humans.
“What if this is some new, undiscovered race?” “What if they are planning to invade”? “What if…”
“No!” Lemon Hearts thought angrily. “No more secrets!”, “Charles is my only ally here, and we need to trust one another if we are going to escape”.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“My real name is Lemon Hearts.”
“Huh,” Charles said as his eyes roved over her and took in her colors. “It’s a fitting name, I like it.”
She gave him a small smile of gratitude as Charles began to unwrap the sandwich.
“So,” He asked. “Equestria huh?”, “Where on Earth is that?”
Now Lemon Hearts found her fears of being somewhere truly foreign retuning. Who hadn’t heard of Equestria?
Then again she realized, she’d never heard of Humans before either.
A terrible thought occurred to her.
“Could the portal have sent us to another world?”
Now that the thought was there, it quickly took root and began to stifle all her other thoughts in a growing wave of fear.
“Stay calm…” She told herself, “Remember your training and keep your cool."
“It’s south of Yakyakistan and north of the Badlands, ruled by their Majesties, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna…”
Charles looked both amused and bewildered.
“Yakyakistan!?” he chuckled as he took a bite of the old sandwich and grimaced. “Is that like a country for only Yaks or something”?
“There are a number of countries ending in Stan” he continued, but Yakyakistan is not one of them.
“And Princesses?”, “There weren’t that many monarchies left before everything went pear-shaped and I don’t recall either of those two., or a nation of pastel unicorns for that matter.”
Lemon Hearts felt her heart sink, the last shreds of hope for her being anywhere close to home where being torn away one by one.
“So where are we then?” she said in reluctant defeat.
Charles pulled a particularly moldy piece of bread from the sandwich and tossed it away before looking up at the distraught Lemon Hearts.
“You really have no idea?”
She shook her head slowly. “No, all I remember from last night or maybe the night before is falling from a portal in the sky with my friend Minuette”.
‘We landed in a wheat field, and then there was some kind of flash grenade.
“I tried to save Minuette but I got knocked out when the flash blinded me and I fell.”
Lemon Hearts could feel her throat getting tight with emotion and the hot tears pricking at the edge of her vision.
“Now I’m in a jail cell talking to you, and I have no Idea whether my friends are ok, where the portal sent us, what’s going on, or why!”
She closed her eyes and tried to compose herself, giving a small chuckle as she did so.
“Look at me, about to bawl like a filly!”, “and I call myself an agent!”
Drying her eyes again, Lemon Heart looked up and found Charles offering her the Carrot that Otis had left at the cell door.
She took it in her magic with a smile and bit off the end with a small crunch, savoring the little taste it had as she realized how hungry she was.
“Thanks.” She mumbled through the mouthful.
“It’s alright”, Charles replied. “If your Civilian Operation Agency is anything like JTF2 was, then we both know a bit about being thrown in the deep end”.
“When you feel out of your depth, a little encouragement, whether it be comfort food or kind words can go a long way.”
Lemon Heats smiled and nodded in agreement as she took another bite and swallowed. “Let’s start by finding our way back to shallow waters then shall we?”
Charles grinned and then grimaced again at the rancid sandwich.
“Sounds like a plan.” He said as he gave up and tossed the moldy remains into the corner.
“Ok, so first question Charles.” began Lemon Hearts, “where are we?”
“Well, we’re in a jail cell on the second floor of O-Leary Prison, on the prison’s namesake island”.
“Beyond that”, Charles continued, “We are in a little bay surrounded on three sides by Prince Edward Island or PEI”.
“Even further out is the Canadian mainland is to the west, and the Atlantic Ocean is to our east”.
None of the names sounded familiar to Lemon Hearts, and with a heavy heart, she accepted the reality that she, and likely her friends wherever they were, had been sent by the portal to a completely different world.
“Alright”, she said as she finished the carrot with another satisfying crunch. “I know where I am, but what about when?”
“Well I heard Malarkey and his boys bring you in last night, or maybe it was early this morning,” Charles said, pulling the little straw from the back of the juice box and discarding the wrapper.
“I woke up when they brought you to the cell, but I was so tired that I pretty much fell right back to sleep, hence my surprise at seeing you now.”
“Well that answers how long I’ve been here; it’s only been a few hours.” Lemon Hearts thought with a bit of relief. “But who’s Malarkey, is that our guard?”
“Nah, that’s just some kid named Otis,” Charles said as he leaned forward and looked through the bars to check that the guard in question was now asleep.
“The gang picked him up a few months back, and I’ve been in here longer than he’s been with them.”
“We’re prisoners of a Gang?”, Lemon Hearts asked with concern.
“Oh right”, Charles said, facepalming before trailing off. “You’re completely new here and when they brought you in, you were unconscious…”
“Wait, besides the wheat field last night, the inside of this cell, and what I’ve told you thus far, you know nothing else about the human world or the state it’s currently in?”
Lemon Hearts shook her head and Charles sighed.
“Well, I suppose it’s best to start from the beginning, but it’s going to take a while, it’s quite the tale.”
Lemon Hearts looked up as the rising sun’s rays streamed through the small, barred window and lit up the cell.
Even if they got the keys, Charles had said they were on an island.
There would be no escaping in broad daylight. Their captors would be waking up soon if they weren’t already.
Even Otis, still snoozing in his chair down the hall after an early rise, would wake up eventually and then there was no telling what would happen.
She needed to find out all that she could.
Charles took a sip of grape juice as Lemon Hearts got as comfortable as she could on the thin mattress.
“Tell me a story.” She said with a resigned smile.
-
“Six months ago”, Charles began. “Life as we humans knew it was turned on its head.”
“I was a sniper, and a member of Canada’s Joint Task Force Two, aka JTF Two, an elite special operations force of the Canadian Military.”
“Sniper?” Lemon Hearts asked.
“You know, a sniper rifle…?” Charles replied.
It seemed like an eternity ago, but Lemon Hearts suddenly recalled the memory of a page she had read in the Unturned Survival Guide.
It had mentioned something about rifles, but after all that had happened since then, she couldn’t recall more than a few images.
She shook her head. “Equestria doesn’t have rifles, but I do remember reading about them.”
Charles cocked an eyebrow and took another sip of juice as Lemon Hearts gestured for him to continue.
“I know it’s confusing, but finish your story, and then I’ll tell you mine.”
Charles shrugged and carried on.
“Anyway, I served in Afghanistan in the War on Terror, and then again in the Iraqi Civil War.”
“During my second deployment, a fellow comrade of mine made history with the longest confirmed kill, dropping a hostile from over two miles away.”
“We were the best of the best.”
“But after what happened six months ago…” Charles trailed off.
Lemon Hearts listened intently, biting back questions about countries and conflicts she’d never heard of before and wondered where Charles was going with the story.
“He’d been an elite soldier, so what happened six months ago that landed him in jail, and why does he keep referring to JTF2 in the past tense?” She wondered.
“I don’t know exactly how it all went down”, He continued. “In fact, what I'm about to tell you is just based on rumors."
"But regardless, no one was prepared for what happened next.”
“It started with a huge, multinational corporation called Big J.”, I’m guessing you’ve never heard of them either?”
Lemon Hearts shook her head.
“Well, I guess that proves you’re from another world”, he said with a soft chuckle. “Big J was so big, they were set to rival ole Mickey Dee’s”.
“They had their tentacles in practically every industry from oil to farming, but fast food was their big money maker.”
“They had joints popping up all across the globe from Seattle to Moscow”.
“So what happened?” Lemon Hearts asked.
“Well like all global enterprises, Big J was always on the lookout for ways to cut costs and boost consumption.”
“That sounds familiar.” Lemon Hearts replied with an ironic smile as she recalled a certain Super-Cider-Squeezy 6000 incident.
Charles grinned as he offered the rest of the juice box to Lemon Hearts. “Some things never change, no matter what universe you’re from.”
“Anyways, Big J decided to cut a deal with another big corporation called Scorpion Seven Bio Solutions, a shady organization that wasn’t afraid to get their hands dirty because they had government backing in both the United States and Canada.”
“Big J asked Scorpion to develop a number of genetically modified or GMO crops that would not only grow faster and bear more fruit but could addict those who ate them to the taste.”
Lemon Heart’s eyes widened. “That must have taken some serious magic.”
“No magic”, Charles replied, “Just a very comprehensive understanding of biology.”
A funny look crossed the man’s face.
“That glowy thing you did with your horn earlier, when you levitated the cuffs and I assume when you unlocked them beforehand….that was magic?”
“Yeah?”, Lemonhearts said slowly, “What, is there no magic in the human world?”
“Afraid not, well not like that, human magic is based on illusions and mind tricks, we can’t make stuff levitate without magnets or hidden strings.”
‘Like you said though, You’ll tell me your story next.”, Charles finished as he tried to put aside the concept of actual magic on top of an actual Unicorn so he could continue his story, “.
“So this Scorpion Seven Bio Solutions group?”, Lemon Hearts prompted. “What happened to the products they were developing for Big J?”
“And what does a former Special Ops soldier like you have to do with food?”
Charles gave a loaded sigh; “I come in during the aftermath.”
“I said that Scorpion Seven was a shady corporation right?”
Lemon Hearts nodded.
“Well, they weren’t just working on Big J’s GMO food. They had a contract with both the American and Canadian military for weapons development, and they had several contracts with various pharmaceutical companies as well for the development of new medicines.”
“All these products needed testing, and in the case of the medicines and GMO’s, they needed to be tested on living organisms.”
Lemon Hearts felt a little twinge of fear. “What kind of organisms?”
Charles gave a bitter chuckle, “Humans.”
“Scorpion Seven was already under investigation for unethical practices, and when the Canadian government finally caught wind of what was happening right under their noses, they cut all ties with Scorpion.”
“There used to be a facility right here on PEI, but when the government told them to take a hike, Scorpion razed the lab to the ground and built a farm over it, all in an effort to hide what they were up to.”
“The Americans were too invested in whatever weapons project Scorpion was working on in Seattle for them to completely cut them off.”
“But when one of Scorpion’s scientists grew a conscience and leaked some information about Big J’s involvement in testing these new products to the press, the government froze Big J’s assets and American Special Forces descended on the labs in Seattle”.
“And the Americans?”, Lemon Hearts asked, her unease growing, “What did they find in the labs?”
Charles looked up at her.
“They found an abomination beyond words...”
“They had started a zombie apocalypse.”
Lemon Hearts wasn’t sure she’d heard Charles correctly and blinked several times in confusion.
“They did what!?” Lemon Heart’s exclaimed before remembering the guard Otis outside the cell and covering her mouth with her hooves.
“Scorpion Seven created a formula for Big J that when consumed, did indeed make the test subject addicted, but to human flesh rather than burgers and fries.” Charles summarized.
“And Big J had been using its millions of customers as unwitting test subjects…
He shrugged. "Or who knows, I could be completely wrong and it's all thanks to some weird, glowing rock from outer space.”
Lemon Hearts felt a sinking feeling in her gut.
She still had no clue where Minuette was, or any of her friends for that matter, and now she was being told that the outside world was infested with zombies?
“Zombies?”, She said, more to herself than Charles. “Of all things…”
“Out of anywhere that portal magic is capable of sending a pony; it had to be a universe with zombies…”
A sudden, terrible thought occurred to her.
By separating herself from Minuette, she could have effectively signed Minuette's death sentence.
Lemon Hearts may have been a prisoner, but at least there wasn’t anything trying to eat her.
Only Celestia knew what the other mares were facing out there, if they were even still alive.
Charles watched as Lemon Hearts seemed to deflate and a look of dejection came across her face.
He recognized that look.
He’d seen it countless times since the zombie plague began to spread across the globe, on the faces of parents, spouses, and children as their world collapsed and their loved ones became monsters.
He needed to distract her.
“I lost a lot of friends too, but there’s always hope.” He piped up suddenly; causing Lemon Hearts to look up sharply.
“I know it sounds awfully idealistic”, Charles began.
“Yeah it does, Captain Cliché.” Lemon Hearts interjected with a small snort of amusement and a smirk.
Charles smiled. “It’s working.” he thought.
She finished the juice box and set it down at the foot of the bunk with her magic.
“I know what you’re up too by the way.”
Charles was taken aback for a second before regaining his composure.
“Up to, whatever do you mean?”
“You’re trying to distract me from the situation at hand” She replied. “We may be from different universes, but it would seem that the training required to be a special anything for the government requires a number of the same skills.”
“Ponies panic rather easily and COA operatives are trained extensively in mitigating the panic of others as well as dealing with their own.”
Lemon Hearts took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh.
“I’m not doing a very good job though.” She said with a small, sad smile.
Charles returned the smile and scratched his head. “It happens to the best of us.”
Regaining her composure, and bolstered by Charles’s kind gesture, she asked the final question.
“Why?”
“If your world is swarming with zombies, why would our captors lock us up?”
“Wouldn’t a soldier be more useful actually serving?”
Charles leaned back against the wall and stretched out his legs before answering.
“I wouldn’t serve the Beret Gang, that’s the name of our captors, in a million years.”
“The leader of the Beret Gang is a man by the name of Mason Lowitz, a former JTF2 operative.”
“And at one time, I would have called him a friend…”
“Mason and I were deployed to PEI when the outbreak reached Canada.”
“Our mission was to help the local army garrison establish the island as a safe zone.”
“But at the time, few knew the true extent to which the outbreak had spread, and most, including myself, had no idea it was caused by a formula in Big J’s food.”
“I would find that out in the days following the Army’s destruction of Confederation Bridge from officers and government officials, all of us trapped on the island and with the situation deteriorating by the hour.
“Anyways, Mason and I were being sent all across the island to secure various locations by what was left of the chain of command on orders that became less and less frequent.”
“Thanks to the two Big J establishments on PEI, the zombies were already inside the supposed safe zones and people that had eaten the affected food turned within a matter of hours, sometimes right in the middle of other survivors.”
“Then there was an airliner, it must have been on autopilot when its crew turned and the plane crashed on the final approach to Belfast”.
“When firefighters and police, already stretched thin by outbreaks popping up all over the place, raced to the burning wreckage to try and help the survivors, they were met with zombies wreathed in flames.”
“With the runway blocked, and a massive outbreak at the harbor in Alberton, all potential escape routes where sealed.”
“We, along with the remainder of PEI’s living population and several thousand refugees were trapped with the undead.”
Lemon Hearts leaned forward slightly in suspense.
“As the situation worsened and we stopped receiving orders altogether, Mason and I tried to do all we could to help the remaining survivors.”
“However, after some thugs robbed the group we were with, something in Mason snapped.”
“We’d heard about the armed groups roving the island that were preying on survivors, and every time one of the civilians in our group did something unsafe or slowed us down, Mason would joke that we would be better off with one of the roving bands.”
“After the raid, however, he decided that if we couldn’t beat the bandit’s we would join them.”
“Though”, Charles said with a sigh. “He was too far gone and took it one step further”.
“Mason gathered the few like-minded men and women from our group; a few of them soldiers, most of them just rough and tumble civilians who were fed up with being prey, and attacked this very prison.”
“At first it seemed like we were facing a bunch of ex-cons, but after breaching the defenses and fighting our way inside, we found the families.”
“There were women and children, civilians that had fled to the safety of the prison island and offered their services to the convicts in return for protection.”
“Yes, the convicts had attacked us, but they had done it to support those in their care.”
Charles rubbed his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut as painful memories began to surface.
“None of that mattered to Mason.”
“He slaughtered the convicts, and then he went after the civilians…”
Lemon Hearts eyes widened first with fear and then narrowed with disbelief and anger as, after a long pause, Charles told her about that fateful night.”
-
5 months prior.
Harsh laughter and screams of pain and terror filled the night air above O Leary Prison.
“Please!” A man shouted. “We weren’t the ones who attacked y-!”
A burst of gunfire drowned him out, and a child began to wail.
One of the guard towers was ablaze, flames devouring its wooden frame and casting a sickly glow over the prison courtyard.
The bodies of dozens of the prison’s ex-con defenders were strewn about the blood-soaked lawn, some beginning to twitch and growl as they re-animated.
However, a pair of militia troops patrolling the grounds quickly put an end to any new zombie with a round through the skull.
Inside the prison, the heavy steel door that had once barricaded the entrance had been blasted off its hinges.
Standing atop the fallen door, clad in full black Spec Ops gear with his face hidden behind a gas mask, and looking for all the world like the grim reaper himself, was Mason Lowitz
Though one couldn’t see it behind the mask, he wore a malicious grin of satisfaction as he watched his militia troops storm the building, tearing through supplies, beating men with their rifle butts, and dragging women and children from their beds.
He strode forward, looking on with perverse excitement as some of his men cornered a young woman trying to defend herself with a golf club.
One of the men stepped forward and tried to disarm her.
She smashed the club down on his helmet, inflicting no damage but causing him to stumble back, accompanied by the jeers of his comrades.
As the woman swung the club around, daring them to try again, another group of Mason’s militia dragged a girl, kicking and screaming from one of the cells where she’d been hiding.
“No, let her go!” The woman shouted as she saw the girl, attempting to push past the encircling militiamen.
As she did, one of the militiamen took advantage of the woman’s distraction and slammed the butt of his rifle into her back.
She cried out in pain as Mason climbed the stairs to the prison’s second floor, whistling a merry tune as he did.
At the top of the stairs, Charles Xavier was waiting with an expression of appalled concern.
“Is the second floor secure?” Mason asked.
“What are you doing!?” Charles responded in disbelief. “Call the men off!”
“Is the second floor secure?” Mason asked again.
“Yes, it’s secure!” Charles spat back. “They’re all noncombatants!”
Mason gave a hollow laugh behind his mask and pushed past Charles. “Charles my friend, times have changed.”
“It’s them or us.”
“In this new age, wouldn’t you rather be near the top of the pecking order?”
Suddenly, there was a commotion from the stairs and the woman with the golf club emerged from the stairwell with the little girl in her arms and several militiamen in pursuit.
Mason turned around slowly and took off the mask, revealing his predatory grin beneath cold blue eyes.
“Quite the persistent one isn’t she, eh Charles?”
He began to advance on the pair and drew a military knife from his belt.
“It’s ones like her that really need to be taught who’s boss!”
“Stop!”, Charles commanded as he drew his sidearm, a nine-millimeter Avenger pistol, and placed himself between the woman and his former comrade.
“This has gone too far Mason; these people have done nothing to hurt us!”
As Charles stared him down, a bemused look came over Mason’s face.
After a pause of several seconds, he began to chuckle and then laugh.
It was a harsh, mocking, merciless laugh that caused Charles and the Civilians behind him to shudder slightly.
Mason put the knife back in its sheath.
“So it’s come to this now has it, still clinging to a state of mind and honor that died when this mess began?”
“The days of being the hero are over Charles.”, Mason’s voice took on a deadly edge as, unnoticed by Charles, one of the militiamen who had followed the woman raised his rifle and came up behind him.
“I suggest you step aside.” Mason said coldly as he drew his own sidearm, a Desert Falcon, and inspected it.”
Charles stood his ground and remained silent, the motto of JTF2, a motto that he’d sworn to uphold: Facta Non Verba (Deeds, Not Words), reverberating through his head.
“Huh, pity.”, Mason sighed and gestured to the Militiaman behind Charles with his pistol.
Charles realized what was about to happen and started to turn.
The woman shouted a warning, but it was to no avail.
The heavy butt of a Maplestrike assault rifle smashed into the back of his head and when he awoke, head throbbing, he found himself locked in a cell.
-
“And the rest”, Charles said as he looked up at Lemon Hearts, “is history.”
Silence fell over them as Lemon Hearts digested her companion’s story, a sea of emotions boiling within her.
Finally, she looked up at the former JTF2 operative and smiled.
“I like your motto, deeds not words was it?”
“Yeah”, Charles said with a sad smile, “a lot of good it did me”.
“You stood by your beliefs.” Lemon Hearts replied. “You let your actions speak louder than any of Mason’s words.”
“Mason may have won the battle, but he didn’t win the moral war.”
Charles sighed, drew his knees up to his chest, and rested a hand on his forehead.
“Mason was right about one thing.”
“The values of old probably have died out by now.”
“I can imagine that out there,” Charles gestured to the barred window, “with supplies dwindling and people getting more and more desperate, basic human compassion is probably in very short supply.”
Lemon Hearts felt another pang of fear for her friends, hoping against hope that wherever they were, that they were alright.
If she was ever going to escape in order to find them though, she would need Charles’s help.
Memories of the past and thoughts of an uncertain future clouded the man’s face.
She needed to distract him.
“Hey”, she piped up, “It's my turn to tell you a story!”
Charles looked up. “I guess so.”
He slowly began to smile. “Wait, I see what you did there!”
Lemon Hearts grinned.
“Like I said, we aren’t all that different you and I.”
As the sun rose higher in the sky, bathing PEI in it’s warm, late spring light, Lemon Hearts told Charles the story of how she came to be in the human world.
“It’s quite the tale.” She said.
“No worries” replied Charles with a smile as he got comfortable again.
“We have all day.”
Lemon Hearts took a moment to gather her thoughts and then dove in.
“So there was this book, called The Unturned Survival Guide…”