//------------------------------//
// Chapter 22 
// Story: Fallout Equestria: Old World Dreams 
// by KDarkwater 
//------------------------------//

Brand new guns, in spotless condition.  Fresh, real bullets and not the crap that got made by some of the smarter little merchant factions in the Union’s turf.  They could take old, beat up guns, and fix them up to be almost brand new, with new springs, pins, triggers, barrels, whatever other parts a gun had.  They could even build custom hardware like Sling’s sick 9mm pistol, or Elly’s spruced up M&A pistol that made it hard for him to decide which one he might want for himself.

And as far as Sling’s rifle went…well, nobody he knew of could make a gun stock like that out of…whatever kind of plastic that it was made of, or make the damn thing backwards.  The machinery, the materials they’d need to even make the stock, the knowhow…it simply didn’t exist anymore.  Not in the wasteland.

So of course the baby’s theory made much more sense when he thought about those things.  Who else but an undiscovered Stable from the Before would even have that kind of tech and knowledge?  And the ability to teach that knowledge well enough that they could make brand-new guns and ammo like the Old World two centuries later?

Yeah, whoever Rico said she and her “outfit” worked for, she was lying her ass off to keep something that important a secret, and he couldn’t even be mad at her for it.  Not when Elly’s other theory about the slavers and Sling’s PipBuck was scaring everybody.  It scared them so much, in fact, that the Runners were willing to completely ignore their boss and just do their own thing once they got right to the edge of Witherc—

“Bored,” Elly’s voice droned aloud suddenly, slapping her book shut and setting it down on the wagon bed they were currently riding in.

  A single glance at the book’s cover—Daring Do and the Sapphire Statue—told him how serious she was about her bland statement.  As important as the mystery Stable was, it kinda took a backseat to the reality of a bored filly who had no problem with finding ways to amuse herself at others’ expense.  “…oh crap, Mom, Sling, she’s actually bored with her Daring Do books.  Shut her up.”

“She’s only read the thing what…thirty times in the last two weeks?” Sling murmured quietly from her corner of the wagon bed…wedged right in beside Mom, too, who was only half-awake and seemed to be soaking in Sling’s warmth like a drug.  Like, they were practically melting into each other, weird.  Maybe she finally gave in to Mom’s constant flirting?  “Or the second and third books, gah, what are they called—”

“Bored,” Elly droned again, louder and more insistently as she stared blankly out at the world around her.  “Need.  Something. Different.  To do.”

“Once we get in the city you’ll be too busy walking and watching for threats to care that you were bored for the four hour ride to get there,” Rally countered next, her own eyes focused on her right cyberleg as she had the cover plates pulled off and was messing around with the wires and stuff in it.  “And don’t you dare sing that song about bottles on a wall or whatever it was you tortured us with last time.”

Rally didn’t see the death glare he threw at the back of her head, which was probably a good thing.  For such a smart girl you can be really, really stupid sometimes!  “Oh god no, you just gave her an i—”

“I-deeee-aaaaa!” Elly’s voice sang in a much more lively pitch as her body shot upright, though still sitting on her haunches.  “We could sing like, campfire songs and stuff—”

“NO!!” he heard his voice shout back almost in sync with Rally’s fearful cry of the same word and Julaya’s more forceful command. Guess even the zebra’s patience had limits.

“…Sapphire Shores? I think I know like, one or two—”

“If you’re going to insist on singing the rest of the way, make good use of it and get some practice on those old operatics I made you learn when you were…oh, wow, six, or seven?” Sling’s voice cut in innocently, yet deviously, not even looking up from the mysterious pages of her spellbook.  “How about that quick tempo patter song?  The hard one that makes your tongue twist like a pretzel in the first stanza alone?”

Elly’s face, previously alight with joy at the “fun” idea Rally had mistakenly give her, turned into a disbelieving look of shock and frustration, even staring at her mom with a gaping jaw that made him wish he could take a picture of it.  “W-what?! Gods no, not that one, I hate that song!  Anything but that!”

Elly’s panicked screeching was enough to stir his mom awake from her listless rest, and her half-lidded eyes struggled to focus on anything in particular as her head rubbed up against Sling’s shoulder and came to rest on the side of it.  “….you made her learn to sing?”

An evil twinkle in Sling’s eye was the only sign of the mare’s guilty pleasure at Elly’s misfortune.  “She used to have this terrible stuttering problem when she was younger.  The stable docs said she’d grow out of it, but she kept getting picked on in class for it and I was tired of being told to stop being an irresponsible, overreacting mare-child and let the school do its job.  So I plucked this old book of opera plays out of my personal library collection and had her start learning the songs after school, three times a week until she was nine when she’d memorized them, and the stuttering went away.  Now she just has that little quirk of stumbling over words once in a while.”

“Hunh,” Mom said softly into Sling’s neck.  “I had wondered about that, it seemed so odd for Elly to be able to think the way she does and yet struggle to say longer words now and then….”

Elly just groaned and flopped back down to the floor, trying to cover her face with her forelegs.  Like that was going to help her hide from anybody.  “Why, mooooom?  Why did you just tell everybody that, whhhhyyyyyy?”

“Maybe it’s payback for all those screaming fits you threw at me yesterday when I finally broke down and told you about every aspect of foal bearing and conception.”

Four heads snapped up, instantly locking onto the scarred stable mare, wondering when or how this Sling Shot could have been replaced with an identical doppleganger.  It was something Mom had been bugging her to do, and he’d heard that Rally was ganging up on her with Mom about it too, but he was of the opinion that neither of them were ready to have that “talk” and nobody figured she’d ever get the guts to actually do it and they’d have to do it themselves.

Not that anybody cared what his opinion was, except maybe Elly….

“…oh, shit, that’s what all that racket was,” Kite breathed in a stunned tone when it became clear that Sling was not jesting or kidding around.

Elly just screamed wordlessly a little more, and dug a wool blanket out of her bags and threw it over herself to try and hide more. Now things were just going to be even more awkward around her.

“You told me to,” Sling said flatly, her eyes still locked onto her spellbook as a page flipped over.  “You and Rally cornered me when I was down, maybe half an hour after I came out of my coma, and wore me down and finally made me cave even though I didn’t think she was ready for it.  Guess what?  She kinda wasn’t….neither was I, come to think of it.  But it’s done, just like you wanted, and afterward she even managed to figure out that you were subtly flirting with me all this time and I had to have another talk with her about how two mares might go about having a romantic and…intimate relationship even though I have no idea how that might actually work out if we go that far.  Maybe you or Julie can fill in the blanks on that one.”

That muffled scream from Elly’s blanket, which might have been amusing any other day, was starting to sound just a little too uncomfortable for him—

“All right all right fine I’ll sing something from that play but not that one just stop making things so awkward and weird and everything and grrrraaaaaah!” the baby finally screeched in coherent speech.

Sling’s demented, quiet laughter rumbled from her throat like a cat’s purr.  “Okay then, the sky pirate queen, I think that’s the one you know better than griffon tar?  Maybe try it at a patter song tempo, might help you with the evil song that we will not name.”

Elly’s head popped out of the blanket, and then her body began to sit upright again as she wrapped it tightly around herself and shook her mane out of her face before pulling the blanket over the top of her head, leaving only her face exposed to the world.  “…oh, that one.  Ugh, fine, but if I have to sing it fast I’m doing it my way.  It’s easier and I like my version better…pirates are overrated.”

“Yet my first request makes you stumble and cry.”

“That’s the hardest one of all, of course it makes me stumble!  It’s so fast—”

“Um,” Rally’s voice broke in nervously.  “Maybe let the rest of us know what the hell you’re talking about?  Patter song? Griffon somethings?”

Elly’s eyes blinked hard several times, like she honestly hadn’t expected Rally to not know what she was talking about.  “…Hilda and Mulligan?  Really famous opera play writers?  Wrote like, a dozen or so opera plays together a hundred and twenty years before Luna’s return…guh, nevermind, forgot the wasteland doesn’t have a lot of schools and stuff…”

“It was hell teaching Blue reading and writing, to say nothing of basic math,” Mom grumbled, though it sounded like she lamented the lack of schools rather than having to do the teaching herself.  “…then again, your school apparently had issues teaching you basic pony anatomy and reproduction, so—”

“Shut up or I’ll sing all the way down to the last bottle,” Elly threatened with a low voice.

Mom shut up.

“Maybe that would actually be better, I’m kinda scared to hear her trying to sing anything else,” he heard himself protesting.

Elly’s mouth huffed her displeasure at him in a sharp hiss. “I can actually do these pretty good when I want to.  I even taught a Mister Handy ‘bot to sing one.  I’ll bet you your next granola bar that you’ll agree with me when I’m done, too.”

“Ha!  Easiest bet ever, my ears still cringe from your serenade of beer bottles on the wall! Go for it, ya light-butt baby, I like those bars and getting to snarf one of yours will be the most delicious ‘told you so’!”

Elly’s response was to suck in a few breaths of air, clear her throat…

…and blow everyone away.

“Ohhh, I know the joy of pegasi, for in big blue skies with wings I fly, away from the troubles of those below, never to bow to those so low—”

His jaw dropped from his skull.  This wasn’t the high-pitched squealing of a hundred bottles of beer on the wall that he hated.  Sure, she still had that high pitch voice of a little girl, but this wasn’t screeching or screaming.  She was…

…she was singing.  Well, he was forced to admit to himself, if no one else.  Despite the high girly voice she was stuck with until she got older, she made it work.

“—and yet from those whose lands I scorn, do I learn the ways of hoof and horn, to steer my heart to the song it sings, to live and die a pony queen—”

  He could feel the wagon slow to a complete stop, and when he dared to look up past the top of the wagon, he could see Rico’s charcoal body twisting around from her perch in the driver’s seat and looking into the wagon’s canopy with a look of either amazement or disbelief—

“Foooor I am the pony queen, hurrah hurrah for the pony queen—”

  He heard a soft tap at the wagon’s open end, and a quick glance showed that Ada had propped her head and forelimbs up inside to see where that singing was coming from, and she looked just as stunned as Rico, and Mom, and Rally, Julaya, and probably himself….

…but Sling’s reaction was more of a contented, happy smile as she just laid there and listened.

“—and it is, it is a glorious thiiiiing, to beeee the poooooony queeeeen!”

“Celestia’s solar plexus, you know Hilda and Mulligan?!” Rico’s voice squealed delightfully the instant Elly stopped singing, and he got to laugh at her misfortune when she shrieked and jumped out of her blanket and up like, three feet and came crashing back down onto the wagon bed on her side—

“Oooooowwww, why does everybody keep doing that to meeee—”

Ada’s cackling laughter only lasted a little longer than his, but then, he’d seen her jump like that more than once and while it never got old, it wasn’t quite as funny as it used to be.  “No, seriously, that was pretty cool!  The singing, not the “jump like terrified cat” thing.  Why didn’t you do that back at the barracks when everybody coulda heard it?”

“’Cause then I’d be hounded by everybody asking me to keep singing stuff and I only do it for fun.”

“Or when I tell you to as a very unorthodox form of speech therapy,” Sling amended next.

“Or when you’re really bored and nobody wants to talk to you,” he added, just because he could.

“Or just because,” Rally said last, barely taking her eyes off of her cyberleg.  She was using some sort of arcane tech tool on it, the tip of it had this rapidly pulsing purple light and the cylindrical body had all sorts of buttons along the sides. He had no idea what was it or what it was doing, besides flashing that purple tip and making a soft, constant humming noise.

Elly’s eyes rolled back, growing rather annoyed with everybody, and she pulled that blanket back over herself and curled up into a ball like one of her dogs.  “Fiiiiiiiine, I’ll be super quiet and bored and invisible.  Buncha killjoys…”

“Awwww, I wanted to hear griffon tar,” Rico moaned sadly, and her ears even wilted and folded down.  “And…everything else, actually.”

“I’d rather hear more about your Stable,” Sling countered, a pitched question that he’d suspected she’d ask at some point.  But not in front of everybody else.

“What Stable?”

“The one that can make guns like the ones you sold us, and with the equipment, knowledge, and materials to make a backwards rifle with a plastic stock and folding grip integrated into a quick-detach barrel. The one that would actually be more valuable to the Union than mine, and which would entice them to just break their treaty with the Runners and roll in wholesale to get to it if they ever found out about it and where it was at.”

He expected Rico to either keep denying it, or get downright hostile about being pressed on the existence of a secret Stable, so naturally she did the exact opposite and stayed calm and friendly.  “Which is why I trust you and yours to keep quiet about it. There’s too much at risk to let anyone beyond the Runners know about it.  Word may get out in the spring once the Runners start roaming across the wastes with their new gear regardless, but the longer we can put that off the better.”

“…wait, that’s it?” he asked out loud, his brain not quite accepting that Rico was just going to roll along with them having guessed her big secret so quickly.  “No arguments, no “get the eff outta my wagon”, just…we’re right?”

“I already knew Sling would likely figure it out just from the guns and ammo we sold you guys,” Rico replied, her ears straightening up once more.  “As she has so eloquently pointed out, the technology needed to make the bullpup rifles alone doesn’t exist in any of the factories that still have any working machinery left in them.  And to the best of my knowledge, only two other towns outside Withercha in the whole prairie can make ammunition to pre-war standards, and one of them is out of action at the moment.  Gunpowder can be surprisingly complex to make and there’s several different kinds of it to boot.”

“Science, chemistry, engineering,” Sling rattled off, finally putting her book down and turning her eyes onto Rico.  “You don’t have just a Stable, you have a nearly self-sufficient underground civilization.”

“In that respect, you are entirely correct.  But in order to make use of our manufacturing capabilities, we had to eventually step out into the surface world for materials we ran out of roughly twelve years ago.  There’s quite a bit of history involved in our exposure to the surface, but it’s enough to say that we encountered the Runners very early on and made a deal with them to get what we needed without exposing us any further than we had to.  We make trade runs to some of the communities that have sprung up in the ruined towns around the Runners’ base, but none of them know where we come from.  Withercha makes us nervous, though.”

“Between the Pythons and all the other factions you mentioned the other day, I can almost see why.  So why risk yourselves trying to crack open an abandoned Ministry facility?”

“I’m personally hoping for technology or blueprints that might help us get our MEW manufacturing online,” Rico answered freely. “But any intact tech that one can salvage from a Ministry is well worth the risk, whatever that salvage may be. Ironshod Firearms was practically a government contractor, so there’s a possibility that we can find a way to get their Withercha plant open in there.  The Scrappers will want that very badly.  That’s our hoof in the door to getting the city back on track and out of the Pythons’ control.  Folks that might otherwise turn the lot of you in to the snakes for a few meals are going to have second thoughts once word gets out that you’re helping them.”

That sounded like a pretty good deal, on the surface, but when he thought about it for a couple of seconds he could see at least two problems that would come along with it, and his mouth was airing them out before he could tell it to keep shut and not get him involved.  “And when that happens the Pythons will know we’re in the city and start looking for us themselves anyway.  And they’ll start with the first place people say they saw us in.”

He could hear the wagon’s floorboards creaking all around him, like some of the girls were sitting up in shock that he would actually say something like that and not Elly for once.  But Sling didn’t seem all that fazed by it.  If anything, it only seemed to spark an idea or two of her own. “…this Ministry facility you want to break into,” she said in a half-whisper.  “Does it have defenses?  Security shutters, blast doors, gun turrets, things like that?”

“The facility itself has multiple buildings, all gated from the rest of the city by a concrete wall and razor wire on top,” Rico replied.  “The front office building is the only one immediately accessible via the front gate, but it’s patrolled by Gutsy-model military ‘bots.  They don’t shoot on sight, but they don’t give more than one warning to leave before they terminate trespassers, and there’s a few turrets on overwatch along the wall.  Normally we just go past the facility grounds and avoid it.  So long as you don’t appear to be approaching the front gate they just ignore you, but taking a few steps in their direction will trigger a spot-check for ID.  We’ve only gotten inside once, and only because we happened to notice that the Gutsy ‘bots were encountering a run-time error that had them all gathering in the central courtyard, we counted fourteen in all.  Took a bit of time to fix the controller mainframe in the administration wing and get them back in service, but it also gave us a chance to see what parts of the facility we could access or what we needed to get into them.”

“You need more than a PipBuck,” Sling leveled back calmly. “Otherwise you would have used your own to get in once you found a way past the robots.”

“That’s going to be the tricky part,” Rico said with a dour face.  “We need yours because we purposefully leave ours behind when we come up to the surface, so that they can’t be used to trace a route back home if we’re killed and our bodies looted.  The facility divided its security into three levels—yellow, blue, and red.  Red is the highest level, and yellow is the lowest. R&D wing requires a red pass card, and there’s a blue-level security wing with a broken card reader. Fortunately, the reader is mounted onto the wall rather than inside it, so with a little creative jury-rigging a PipBuck can jack into it.  The reader for the R&D wing still works, but it’s embedded into a steel wall and we don’t have the tools to cut into the wall, so we need to search the security wing for a pass card.  According to the few terminals we could access in the administration offices, a few ponies from the R&D wing were sent to the security wing to provide some technical assistance for the quartermaster a short time before the megaspells dropped.  There were two communiques from the security wing afterward but they weren’t very informative, just asking around to see what was going on.  The only thing we know for sure is that the facility’s back-up spark generators didn’t kick on when the city’s power grid failed, something went wrong in the R&D wing, and by the time the survivors in administration were able to figure out how to turn the back-up generators on manually most of the facility’s staff had died from unspecified causes.  The five that were left agreed on a murder-suicide pact to end their suffering early.  One volunteer killed his co-workers, then turned his gun on himself.  The place has been patrolled and protected by the automated security systems ever since.”

“…that’s messed up,” he grumbled aloud, though he didn’t sound nearly as bothered by it as he felt.  “I thought the old world was supposed to be civilized.”

“There’s no such thing,” the angry stable pony grunted, as he expected.  “How are we going to get onto the facility grounds without the ‘bots stopping us or shooting at us?”

“We found a few yellow-level cards during our first search,” Rico answered, even going so far as to produce one such item for Sling’s inspection.  Didn’t look all that special, just a clear plastic card with a yellow stripe on one end and some writing etched into the center of the card.  “Enough for five folks.  We’ll need to compose our search party accordingly, no telling what manner of skills or expertise we’ll need if we can get into the higher security wings. For our plan to even work, you and Misty Veil have to go.  Misty knows how to jack your PipBuck into the security wing and open it.  She can also guide you through the administration and office wings.”

“Some firepower would be a good idea,” Ada suggested quickly.  “One if you must, but I recommend no less than two.  I can’t go because I’m providing overwatch for the caravan.”

“You just want to play with your new sniper rifle, admit it,” Sling cackled lightly.  “Can you spare Leon?  I think the two of us can handle whatever trouble might be inside.”

“Sure, I need to break in the new sharpshooter anyway, serve as his spotter so I can see how he fares outside the training course. Leo knows enough combat first aid to keep somebody alive long enough to get them to someone better at it.  Maybe take Rally or Kite with you too?  More tech knowledge may come in handy, if Rico’s crew found working terminals in just the few sections they could search there’s bound to be more in the higher-level sections with better security.  Can’t afford to tie Misty down with all the work. And there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to get anyone back here to Kite if somebody gets hurt in there.”

“If Misty can jack a PipBuck into a security door and force it open, she should be able to handle anything else we may need in there,” Sling answered quickly, purposefully ignoring the defeated look coming over Rally’s face as she spoke.  “Kite and I also have an agreement where only one of us goes out on these little group forays while we’re with you guys, so she’s staying here.  We’ll make do with what first aid skills we have.”

“I will go,” Julaya’s voice crept from the corner in which she’d been nesting for much of the trip so far.  “You still owe me a rifle, crazy stable pony.  Perhaps you can find me one in there.”

“…maybe a shotgun would suit you better,” Sling countered, though he didn’t hear her rejecting the zebra’s offer either. “Still requires aiming skill, but if you’re accurate one or two shots on an unarmored target will usually be enough, if you can stomach the weight of the ammo itself.”

“When you find one of equal value to the rifle, perhaps we will talk.”

“Ooo, that reminds me, I got yours ready yesterday, I’ll give it to you in a few,” Rico chirped suddenly, as if the conversation had just sparked the thought in her brain—

“For Luna’s sake how many damn guns do you need?!” Mom burst out angrily.  “You got four pistols and a rifle—”

“Three pistols,” Sling replied calmly, as if Mom had not even blown up at her.  “Gave the motorized .223 pistol to Rally, she can probably do a better job of keeping it in good shape than anyone else here and it’ll give her a close range anti-armor option that’s a lot handier than that laser rifle that’s almost too big for her.”

Oh, damn, she’s serious, his freshly alerted mind gasped when he spied that sick motorized revolver lying among Rally’s stuff, along with all of its speedloaders, a few boxes of ammo, the repair kit she kept for the gun and even a tech manual that told her how it worked and how to maintain it.  It turned out that the gun could be a lot of work, and probably more than he wanted to deal with.  But Rally?  It’d probably be a game to her…

And Sling just…gave it to her?  What was he, chopped liver or something?  The girls were getting all the good stuff…then again, he wasn’t comfortable with a .357, and definitely not a gun as heavy as that Ironshod revolver of Rally’s.  So Sling was probably not sure what kind of gun he would want…

“And the shotgun’s for you, by the way,” Sling’s voice continued.  “Rico demoed it for me Friday and the recoil is not nearly as hard as you’d think, she’s done something with the barrel and stock that’s almost magic by itself. 21-inch barrel, good rifle-style sights, eight-shot magazine tube, and I’m giving you all my shotgun shells in addition to the case of fifty Rico threw in with the gun.  Much more firepower than a nine-mil, and 12-gauge shells aren’t too hard to come by.  Shouldn’t have trouble keeping it fed, but if your target’s armored you’ll need to aim for any unprotected part of the body you can get at.”

Mom’s fiery wrath diminished into a subdued droll. “….oh.”

“As for you, Blue,” Sling went on, and he actually perked up a bit when he heard her words being directed at him (and he swore he could somehow feel her words too).  “You’ve yet to make up your mind on which of the two nine-mil models you want to carry.  You were pretty good with both of them, so it would be more a matter of personal taste here. And no, you can’t have mine.  I like it too much.”

Fair enough, I wouldn’t give it up if it were mine either.  “…kinda tough to choose, really.  They both go bang and hit where I aim if I shoot right…”

“The Maretta’s got a safety on it, if that gives you any peace of mind.  The Rig Mayer doesn’t, but as long as you leave the hammer alone it’s got a heavy trigger pull for the first shot, just like a revolver.  And I notice you like to grab hold of the back end of the slide and rip it back when you reload with a fresh mag.  If you do that on a Maretta you’re likely to flip the safety on.  For that tendency of yours alone I would suggest the Mayer nine, and get used to using the frame lever to lower the hammer when you stop shooting.  I know you got annoyed with the grip screws coming loose when you shot it Saturday, but I set them back in with a minor locking spell that should keep them in place.”

He almost felt annoyed that Sling was steering him away from the Maretta—he figured it would be the next best thing to her sick custom pistol and he’d get a better feel for whether or not he might want one for himself someday.  But she knew a lot more about this stuff than just about everyone else outside the Runners or Rico, and aside from those stupid screws she didn’t have anything truly bad to say about the gun she was suggesting to him.  Still—

“I’ll take one,” Rally announced loudly, probably to be sure she was heard over this beeping noise her pulsing tool was making. “Draw, aim, shoot, no safety to flick off, just like my .357.  Learning a mag release is no harder than a cylinder release in a fight, really.”

“That safety on the other one does give me peace of mind,” he admitted next.  “And I find it easier to hit the levers on the side ‘cause they’re bigger.  I can practice my telekinesis and make it so I pull the slide from behind instead of over it.  Might be good if Mom and I can toss mags at each other in a fight if one of us runs out too.”

“…there is that,” Sling relented, and her magic procured the pistol in question from his mother’s saddlebags and set it down in front of him, along with a gun belt and a few magazines and two boxes of odd-looking hollowpoints before doing the same for Rally.  Usually they were just that, a bullet with a hollow core and open tip, but here the tip had a few light cuts in it, like they were meant to segment the bullet into six equal petals when it opened up, and the top of the bullet, when viewed from the side, kind of reminded him of a castle tower or something. And it had this odd bronze coloring to it…

“Rico’s hollowpoints are supposed to be much better at expanding and not fragmenting or sheering off on one side like the ones we usually come across in the wastes,” Sling explained before he could even think to ask.  “…not sure how I feel about needing something like that.”

“Save sentiments for people who deserve them,” he blurted.  “…like us?”

“Still one short for your search party, and we’re burning time, we’re at the edge of the city,” Rico pressed with a slightly stronger tone.

“We’ll go with just four,” Sling said without even looking back, keeping most of her visual focus on him and the gun and ammo before him as she began to load the magazines.  “If something comes up and we need outside help you can send someone in with the fifth card so they don’t have to fight with the automated security.”

“Now you’re sounding like a smart girl,” Rally snarked from his left, and still messing around with her leg.  What was wrong with the damn thing?  “Take it a step further, see if you can mess with the facility’s mainframe, could be the only key you need for the whole place. ‘Bots, doors, everything.”

Ada’s head cocked to her left a bit, as if thinking it over briefly.  “I had a brief thought about flying my ass in to do some sneaky spy stuff with the computers until I realized I have no idea how to even turn the damn things on.  So that’s out, unless you wanna come with me.”

“I would need to look at the computer’s OS bef—” Sling started to say, before Rally cut in—

“Standard operating system for the majority of Ministry computer networks is based on a Stable-Tec design, likely to simplify training for new employees and for ease of inter-Ministry communication and data sharing,” she rattled off mindlessly without being asked her opinion, though most of her attention seemed to still be focused on her metal leg and whatever the hell she was doing with that pulsing tech tool.  “So whatever backdoor program or debug code you’re thinking of will probably work, but forget the “fly in from the sky” part, the turrets have a 360-degree turn radius and can track a griffon out to three hundred yards, and when it comes to aerial threats they shoot to kill on sight without warning. I know that because I’ve seen the MEW turrets dust several griffon mercs once, trying to come in at it from straight above the facility grounds.  One second, these small griffon shapes are diving in, and the next they lit up like light bulbs from the turret fire.  Rained ash for about three minutes as the wind dispersed the remains.  I have no idea where the sensor array for their targeting system is or how it’s able to get such a wide view of the skies around it.”

“…so it seems that walking up to the front door and waving a few plastic cards in the air actually is the way to go,” Sling finally admitted in defeat, her head lightly dropping onto the wagon bed.  “Story of my life…”

“Ahhh, finally,” Rally sighed heavily in relief when her pulsing arcanotech tool or something stopped pulsing in purple flashes.  A green diode light on the back end of the “grip”, as she called it, began blinking green at about the same time, so that probably had something to do with whatever she’d been aiming to do. “Was starting to think the tuner was bad.”

“Happen often?” Sling inquired, and he couldn’t help but feel a tinge of jealousy.  Figures she’d get along better with Rally than with him.

Then again, it wasn’t like he was making an effort to be sociable himself…

“When it does, it’s usually a sign that I need a new leg,” the teen answered with slight spite, either at her metal leg or at the trouble she’d gone to to fix whatever it was that needed fixing.  “Union doesn’t usually do cyberlimbs on kids, so they weren’t sure it would even take.  Adults have a stable and known range of magical energy and output that they can work with, but a kid can be all over the spectrum and back again before they’re all grown up.  It’s not just my nervous system they were grafting this crap to, it’s my body’s inherent magic.”

He thought he saw Sling mouth a silent F-bomb when nobody was looking (except him, but she probably didn’t care anyway).  “…it’s going to be hell getting you back there when it comes time.  I’m a little too popular with the Union and the slavers.”

“It’s not a big deal right now,” Rally brushed off, turning her tool off and replacing the plates of her metal leg with a few telekinetic touches.  “The time to be worried is when I have to re-tune the mana regulators and pathways twice a day instead of every two weeks.”

He managed to avoid the cute little blurb about a wooden peg leg being a lot less work, and opted to just stay silent and ignored…

…which lasted for about three seconds before Rico’s head popped back in and delivered news as grim as her appearance.  “All right, gear up, we’re going into town.”




--------------------------------------




As with Trotpeka, Sling found herself somewhat…conflicted by the sight of Withercha.

As the second of the prairie’s two “Sister Cities”, Withercha got a later start in life than its elder city, though in the end it ended up being physically larger than Trotpeka.  In terms of development, Withercha was much more affected by the war and its ever-expanding need for more of everything—weapons, munitions, new technologies, medical supplies, armored barding, fuel, food…the list could go on for pages.  It lacked the magnificent skyscrapers and corporate offices of Trotpeka, but it boasted an industrial capacity unmatched in the whole prairie.  Its neighborhoods were smaller, but most families could live within minutes of a school and a medical clinic for routine health care needs. And within the industrial sector sat several factories wholly dedicated to arms and munitions production, including the griffon-owned and operated Phoenix Rising firm and its subsidiary steel foundry, Oak Tree Manufacturing.

Life after the war was not kind to pony-made things, particularly cities.  The few skyscraper towers the town had were practically gutted out, with only a few floors still keeping part of their outer walls—those that had fallen apart wound up blocking entire roads and intersections, if not outright flattening the city block they sat in.  Much of the infrastructure that they passed by suffered a similar fate, though enough intact buildings remained in some blocks to allow a small population to live and survive there, in whatever way they could.  Trading, scavenging, pillaging, and such.

Rico did not want to deal with any of that.  She simply drove her caravan around the left edge of the city and came into it from the northwest.  The way things were in Withercha right now, she’d been half-afraid the streets would be crawling with raiders, street gangs, or isolated groups of wastelanders looking for anything of value that could be traded for food (or take it from those they thought they could win against).  She wanted close to a dozen souls armed to the teeth casually walking alongside the caravan to discourage any spurious decisions to raid her two wagons.  Sling personally didn’t see how anyone would be stupid enough to try and attack a caravan guarded by Runners.  She wasn’t really even thinking about potential ambushes, even in the outskirts of a ruined city filled with desperate, hungry souls ready to murder for a single meal.

All she could think about right then was how empty and cold she felt without Kite’s body snuggled up against her.  It took a great deal of willpower to not abandon her “post” at the rear of the caravan and just jump back into the wagon and lay back down.

Julaya, the perceptive bitch that she was, never seemed to miss an opportunity to tease her prey when it came to her.  “So much for “single and straight”, stable pony.”

How did I know she was going to say that?!  “You almost sound jealous, stripes.”

“Intrigued, actually,” Julie laughed softly, purposefully ignoring the insult.  “What changed your mind?”

“Who changed my mind,” she corrected quickly.  “…which would be you, really.  That little chat after your…exotic routine in that bar…you were happier about life than me, and I had everything I needed in my stable.  Maybe I got tired of waiting to see if things would get better and just started trying to actually live.”

“…and your first act in this new outlook on life is to find a lover in a friend?”

“She confuses me,” she admitted in a fit of exasperation. “I think of her as a friend, but I don’t feel like she is.  I…I think she might be something more.  Even now all I want to do is jump into that wagon and snuggle up to her, when I should be watching for people who might want to take a potshot or five at us.”

“Then it is a good thing I am watching for the both of us, because we can all see that lovesick puppy look on your face.  Do you really want her in your life as something more, or do you still feel guilty for how you did not value her when you thought her dead?”

She almost turned and smacked the zebra in the face for that, but in the back of her mind she couldn’t deny that a part of her had begun to ask that very question.  “…god, if you and Kite can see that when I don’t want to admit it, maybe I don’t need to be doing this…”

“It is a difficult thing to judge,” Julie consoled her. “To lose a friend to death, and then have them return to you…it would confuse anyone who suffered from the grief. There may yet be genuine affection for her, but it would be best to take it slowly.  Do not jump into heated passions so quickly.”

“And here I thought you’d want to take a run at me yourself.”

“She is important to you,” the zebra returned with a more serious tone than before.  “Not just emotionally, but…mentally, I should say?  She will know best how to work with your conflicting emotions and desires.  And if you should find a soulmate in her in the process, all the better.  You grieved when you thought her lost forever, and the fates have given you a second chance to discover if this is something you truly want.  I will not get in the way of that.  There will be no competition for your affections.”

We’ll see how that actually turns out, Sling doubted silently.  “I should hope so.  The last thing my journey into the wasteland needs is some stupid love triangle shit that just bogs everything down in pointless drama.”

“Very true,” Julie cackled lightly as one of her forehooves stroked at her chin in absent thought.  “You are bogged down enough with all of your guns.  Do you really need so many now that you have met Rico and acquired new ones?”

Oh hell, not you too!  “She just threw the .357 at me, I’m still not sure what to do with it,” she shot back defensively, letting a touch of telekenisis off to brush against the holstered Ironshod .357 on her left side, and then swiped it out for a short look and a check of its cylinder.  Fully loaded, all .357s, naturally…

Even as she raised the gun up to peer down its sights she found herself wishing she could make up her mind about it.  She missed that 10mm, mostly for the capacity and ease of reloading.  And if this thing jammed on her, it’d take a couple of hours to fix it…

“Yet you were so eager to get a rifle.  Now that you have one, it does not suit you?”

“It suits me perfectly, it’s a matter of resources,” she continued, absently touching the adjustable rear sight to make sure it wouldn’t budge from the contact, and it didn’t.  “Once we leave Rico’s company we’re back to scavenging or trading for whatever we can get, and we’re already facing a massive problem with all the nine-mils Kite bought for everybody.  With trade virtually shut down in Withercha we need to be able to make use of any ammo we come across, and we don’t have a lot of calibers to choose from right now. Nines, .38s and .357s, maybe some .223 and 5.56, and then that shotgun and the two MEWs we can’t count on finding a lot of spark batteries for.  And Kite still wants a .45 Auto, the stubborn mare…”

“She has a good teacher!” Julaya laughed joyfully. “And I am miffed that you acquired a gun for her when you still owe me one.”

With her slight curiosity on her .357 sated, she put it away and focused on the road ahead.  The broken, crumbled ruins of several buildings had spilled out onto the equally broken street, forcing the caravan to move forward in a zig-zagging pattern as they maneuvered around the debris.  “Would you do anything with it if I got you one?”

When Julie didn’t answer right away, she felt a small measure of pride rushing through her bloodstream.  “…nnnnnnooooow that you have me thinking about it, the answer appears to be…nooooo?”

“Then why want one?  To make up for the caps you spent getting the one I broke?”

“I…would often keep one or two for partners or lovers, if they had a good affinity for the things,” the zebra admitted sheepishly. “As both a measure of protection, and a gift to cement me into their good graces and such.”

Her desire to replace the broken carbine was suddenly much less powerful than it had been earlier.  “Oh, is that what you were doing when you lent me that thing? Buttering me up so you could get into bed with me later?”

For the first time since they met in Rough Port, Julaya’s voice and demeanor lost their steady confidence and it was all the zebra could do to speak in coherent, non-stammering speech.  “N-now wait a minute, I did not mean it like that, I was…we were not in a good situation with armored mercenaries hunting us I thought the rifle might be of use to you I was not trying to woo you or seduce you or entice you into a playful romp with me or oh gods this is not working is it—”

A soft turn of her head left brought her the most amusing sight she’d see all day—a once confident, carefree zebra rapidly melting into a nervous, shirking mare-child who’d just been caught raiding the cookie jar. The lowered ears, the submissive, teeth-flashing Smile of Apology she’d seen on Light Tail’s face more than once back in the stable, the way her body seemed to be leaning backward slightly…she stared at this sight for perhaps a few seconds longer than she should have, and then burst out in mocking laughter.  “Welcome to the other side of your shenanigans, you lust-crazed vampire!”

Julie seemed to take the jab as a personal challenge, and in roughly three heart beats she regained her confident, powerful stride. “I am not a vampire!  I drink water and Sparkle-Cola and a little tiny can of crazy now and then!”

“Skip the can of crazy today and get your mind on the job,” Leon’s voice bellowed from the head of the rear wagon in the caravan as it came to a stop roughly a block away from their final destination.  “We’re up.”

Julie muttered something unkind in a language she didn’t understand, and probably didn’t want to, the way Leon’s brow narrowed darkly when his ears picked up her words.

She’d never seen a Ministry facility before, not in person, anyway.  She’d seen plenty of photographs of them in the many, many reference and history books in the stable’s library.  Most of them were just single buildings, but some were multi-structure camps in their own right, and this particular Ministry of Arcane Science facility was almost on par with a military outpost in terms of physical security.  True to Rico’s word, it had a concrete wall enclosing the entire facility grounds, complete with strings of rusted razor wire along the top, though time and nature had cut a few gaps here and there. The concrete wall itself was in remarkably good shape, aside from some cracks in the outward facing portion, and bulged columns within the wall marked the hardened towers containing the hydraulics, wiring, ammo feed belts, and power cords for the automated ballistic and MEW turrets that crowned them.  A part of her wondered how these turrets were even maintained over the last two centuries with nopony to see to it.  A suite of specialized repair ‘bots?

“Ominous and mysterious,” Julaya muttered, mostly to herself.  “So! How does my mane look?”

Sling resisted the urge to roll her eyes back into her head as she turned to face her again.  “Really?  We’re about to risk death by a half-dozen armed, live gun turrets and you want my opinion on your hair?”

“If I am going to die in a storm of angry bullets, I would like to look nice.”

She let her gaze focus on Julaya more intently than she usually allowed, and almost regretted it immediately.  There was that damn, mildly pleasant smile of friendliness again that made those ice blue eyes of hers slightly mesmerizing, and that silvery mane of hers had been the recipient of very recent and careful attention. It had been somewhat unkempt the whole time she’d known her, but today it looked like it had actually been washed down and brushed, and she had to admit that the treatment had improved the silvery tone greatly.  The back of the mane had been bundled up and coiled into a short ponytail, and the top half of her mane had been pulled and split into several bangs hanging off to the sides, so as not to obstruct her vision, though she couldn’t help but notice a very long, thin braided section dangling about like a loose shoe string. “I…can’t believe I’m just now noticing it…that…actually looks pretty good…”

“Isn’t it?” Julaya echoed back teasingly.  “This was Kite’s attempt at an apology for her initial uncouth treatment of me…when she got the courage to ask if I would allow it yesterday.  She would like to spruce up that rather mundane braided ponytail of yours, but is not sure how to ask.”

Sling felt a sharp, but brief twitch of jealousy in her chest that made no sense to her.  She didn’t want a new look for herself in the first place, and it shouldn’t have mattered that Kite was trying to do something nice for a zebra with an admittedly disreputable past (robbery and murder of caravans associated with slavers, primarily).  “So she just got you to ask for her by proxy.”

Julie’s mouth opened, a soft gasp of air escaping as she began to speak, and then caught herself as she absorbed the words spoken to her and realized the truth.  “….that sneaky little co—”

Leon’s body leapt off of the second wagon and landed onto the broken street with a hard thud, putting an end to their short moment of peaceful banter.  “So who’s ready to tempt fate?”

“Relax,” a pale blue unicorn mare droned back dryly, her equally pale gray-white mane and tail barely moved by the light breeze beginning to pass through the street.  “These yellow cards got us out of the facility once we got the controller mainframe back in working order.  ‘Bots might give you a little lip until you flash it, and then they’ll scan the card and decide you belong there and just float away, muttering to themselves in binary or something.  I’ve put them on neck chains so you can just wear them, no need to go waving it around.”

The mare’s horn began to flow with an eerie (but cool-looking) mist-like aura of magic as she floated out the yellow-striped plastic cards out to each of them, and Sling quickly realized that this was probably Misty Veil.  “For all the talk Rico made of you, she never bothered to actually introduce you in person, Misty.”

The mare confirmed her guess with a short rasp of her tongue at her boss’s expense.  “Probably because she was too busy gushing and oogling over your big gun to think about it.  I hope you’re not nearly as bad as she is with rare guns or this trip might be like being caught in an oversized air shaft with radroaches.”

Flashes of Stable 115 zipped across her vision—red light-bathed halls, strobed by the yellow flash of gunfire and a distant klaxon alarm—that she was able to dispel with a light shake of her head.  “That’s worse than you’d think.”

Misty took the slight hint hidden in her tone and skipped any further commentary she might have had.  “Everybody got their gear set?  Guns, ammo, healing potions, tools and such?”

“Good here,” Leon’s voice rumbled, his arms slinging his new backwards rifle across his back before putting his favored .45 SMG across his chest.  His 12.7mm pistol was kept in a cross-draw holster on his left side, and his traveling pack was likely set aside in the wagon in favor of a smaller-sized gear bag attached to his camouflaged armored barding, and equipment and ammo pouches along the sides and chest.  The speckled desert pattern wasn’t a particularly good fit for a city environment, but concealment wasn’t the priority for this excursion so it didn’t much matter.

“I am fine,” Julie answered next, though how she could be considered ready when the most she packed was that katana and a small saddlebag was beyond her.

“Ready,” she said quickly, pulling the yellow card up closer to her neck.  The weight of her own gear was barely noticeable—her rifle was slung across her chest and her three pistols scattered across her left and right sides in three separate holsters.  Her new armored stable suit was a little thicker than she was used to, and the ballistic armor panels attached to her sides, back, and chest were fairly stiff, but they didn’t impede her mobility and integrated with her traveling saddle and its myriad of holsters and gear attachment points very well (minus the saddle bags, which she was forced to leave behind lest they cover the side armor panels).  The darker blue color of the suit even matched her coat color better.  Without the saddlebags to hold most of her gear, she had to resort to using several pouches to hold her spare magazines and speedloaders, and a single medkit pouch on her back, just behind the armored panel, held two healing stims and a roll of gauze wrap, antibiotic ointment, and a pack of bandage dressing pads.  Oddly, it seemed as though the armor had been slightly enchanted to either lessen the weight of things attached to it, or boosted her own strength to allow her to carry the gear for extended periods of time without getting tired out.  She’d have to ask about it later.  The cooling enchantments were definitely working, though, she was still as comfortable and refreshed as she was when she’d first put it on.

Misty, for her part, was armed somewhat lightly—an M&A 9mm on her right side, and her own bullpup rifle with a short 16-inch barrel and a simple reflex sight on top.  Most of her gear was dedicated to her expected workload—a web gear vest loaded with various tools and arcane tech parts and what looked like some sort of portable diagnostic machine roughly the size of a book inside a large pouch attached to her left side.  “I’ll take point, the ‘bots should recognize me from the last time I was here.  Just keep those cards out where they can see them and they shouldn’t murder you…even the zebra.”

“…wait, ‘even’?  You mean they kill zebras outright otherwise?”

“They’re not friendly to zebras, really,” Misty replied, already turning towards the facility down the street and moving into a light trot.  “’Bots have no sense of linear existence.  Their chronometers might register two centuries of time passing, but to them it’s just a data point in their memory banks and most of them think the war with the zebras is still on.  They weren’t meant to run for months at a time without a memory refresh, let alone two centuries.  The simpler robots actually fared better than the early Handy models, which were designed to mimic a sentient creature as closely as possible.  I’ve seen some Handy ‘bots that were downright psychotic. Handy ‘bots assigned to a Ministry facility got upgraded programming that seems to have held up better, but it’s rare that we come across a robot that isn’t glitched in the memory banks in some way.  Just keep those cards visible and don’t pay them any attention, and they should think you’re part of the facility staff and leave you alone.”

Sling felt a rush of air wash over her, and Julaya’s body was almost pressing into her personal space in the next instant. “Very visible, yes, good idea!” Julie quipped with an exaggerated cheerfulness.  “Mayhaps if I appear to be good buddy to a pony they will not shoot me, yes?!”

“They might have some morality protocols to spout at you for such an…interesting relationship, but it might work,” Misty cackled lightly.  “…y’know, if you really wanna see if they’ll flip their circuit breakers, just kiss her or grope her or something, see what happens.”

Sling jumped away from Julaya’s side almost as quickly as the zebra had appeared at hers.  “Oh hell no, I’d rather fight my way through them than put up with that—”

Julie was a quick, agile jumper—it seemed almost effortless for her to simply jump towards her target and end up right next to her again as though she’d never left.  “But if we fight, you will use up bullets and risk injury or death and Kite will be very upset with me for letting you come to harm!  I promise I am a very good kisser—”

Sling jumped away again, past Leon’s body and going into a faster trot than Misty to try and put distance between her and the increasingly desperate zebra trying to avoid a grisly death at her expense.  “You just said you would leave me and Kite alone!”

“I do not wish to accomplish that by dying, crazy stable pony!” Julie yelled back, surprising her again with how quickly she could catch up to her prey, she was practically at the tip of her tail in just three seconds. “The little tail of light would be very sad at that—”

Misty’s laughter hounded her as Julaya caught up to her. “And to think some people pay for this kind of entertainment!”

Sling didn’t pay much attention to how quickly she was getting ahead of Leon and Misty, and it almost proved fatal.  She’d hardly been running for ten seconds when she found herself thirty yards away from the facility’s concrete wall and its ruined gate, and she started skidding to a halt as the gun turrets came to life and oriented their weaponry towards her.  At roughly the same time, a pair of olive drab-colored Handy ‘bots floated out into the street from behind the wall, each of them pointing a neon-green colored MEW focusing diode at her and raising a second arm fitted with what appeared to be a long, thick blade sharpened to a mirror sheen polish—

“STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM!” one of the ‘bots screamed out, its synthesized tone somehow conveying an ancient, primal force into her soul.  Its voice lacked the admittedly classy Trottingham accent, and sounded much closer to a normal Equestrian dialect.  It also bore what looked like a stack of three yellow chevrons on the front of its chassis, with a small, purple star-like symbol underneath that on closer inspection looked remarkably similar to Twilight Sparkle’s cutie mark—

—Julaya’s body crashed to a halt by crashing into her backside, sending the both of them tumbling over until they were splayed out on the asphalt and at the complete mercy of this robotic sergeant and its lack of humor—

—the second ‘bot chimed in its displeasure at the ruckus, and she cursed the designers who thought to give every single robot in a production model line the exact same voice.  “WHAT’S THIS, NOW?!  A SPY AND A ZEBRA SYMPATHIZER?!  THERE’S ONLY ONE WAY TO DEAL WITH STRIPE LOVERS, SERGEANT!”

Oh shit shit shit shit SHIT—

“W-w-wait wait wait wait we’re cleared to be here we’re cleared!!” Sling screeched in a panic, frantically pulling on hers and Julaya’s security pass cards and presenting them to the robots preparing to murder them. “She’s a defector, she’s a nice zebra! Aren’t you, Julie?!”

“Nice nice very nice please don’t kill us horribly!” Julaya agreed in an equally frantic and panicked tone, even forgetting her distaste for contractions for a moment.

The robots’ primary “eye” extended outward, with the visual sensor lens focusing and zeroing in on the offered security pass cards and seemingly scouring it for any signs of imperfections, and after a few tense, terrifying seconds, the eye retreated backward and re-adjusted its sensor lenses.  “HUMPH. IT SEEMS YOU DO INDEED POSSESS BASIC SECURITY CLEARANCE FOR THIS FACILITY.  CURIOUS.”

Atop the wall, the automated turrets lost their target lock on her frail, fleshy body, and returned to a neutral position pointing outwards towards the city just as Leon and Misty caught up to them.

“Oh, wow, I wasn’t actually sure they’d let Julaya live,” Misty chimed absently as she trotted past them, holding up her own pass card for the robots’ pleasure as she strolled by.  “Hell of a way to test their reaction, but it worked.  Congrats, I guess.”

“I’d pay you a hundred caps to do that again, that was funny,” Leon chuckled, following in Misty’s lead and moving on with a quick flash of his card to the ‘bots.  Surprisingly, the ‘bots paid him almost no mind once they glanced his card despite the fact that he was a griffon.

With a fresh shot of anger flowing into her, she stood back up on four steady legs and gave the armed Handy ‘bots the meanest, most furious stare she was capable of.  “Satisfied now?”

“HARDLY,” the sergeant ‘bot bellowed back, unmoved by her visible anger.  “YOUR…’FRIEND’, MAY HAVE A SECURITY PASS, BUT THERE’S GONNA BE A RECTAL-LEVEL INVESTIGATION INTO THE BOTH OF YOU.  WHAT KIND OF ZEBRA WOULD HAVE ANY BUSINESS WITH TWILIGHT SPARKLE’S MINISTRY OF ARCANE SCIENCES?”

She couldn’t explain why, but a pall of horror came over her when the ‘bot asked that question, and before she could even begin to come up with a cover story to get her past these robots she felt Julie’s forehooves grab hold of her head, forcefully bring her close, and drew her into a deep kiss that turned her shocked cry into a pleasurable gasp within two seconds.  She was fairly certain Julie drew the kissing out for a full fifteen seconds just for the fun of it, and she thought she could hear one of the robots feebly attempt to break them out of such a public display of “affection”, but she honestly wasn’t focused on that.

And the worst part of it, was that when Julie finished and let go of her with a comical “MWAH”, she couldn’t make up her mind whether she enjoyed it or not.

“That kind of zebra,” Julie explained to the pair of robots floating before them with a smack of her lips.  “Affection can be a powerful magic all its own.  And she tastes like…blueberry?  Why do all my favorite ponies taste like fruit when I kiss you?”

“…SERGEANT, DON’T THE ZEBRAS KILL ANY OF THEIR OWN THEY CATCH FRATERNIZING WITH THEIR ENEMIES LIKE THAT?” the second ‘bot queried his “superior”.

“WHO KNOWS WHAT THOSE SAVAGES DO TO EACH OTHER OVER THERE,” the sergeant ‘bot grumbled derisively.  “UGH, FINE, YOU’RE BOTH CLEARED FOR ENTRY, BUT ANY FURTHER DISPLAYS OF….AFFECTION IN SUCH A PUBLIC MANNER WILL BE SUBJECT TO DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS TO BE DECIDED BY DIRECTOR DARK TIMES. NOW GET INSIDE BEFORE I CHANGE MY SUBROUTINES AND BLAST YOU ANYWAY.”

At that, both ‘bots lowered their weapon arms and returned to their previous patrol duties, but not without a last comment that piqued her interest as they floated around the corner and disappeared—

“—REAT, NOW THERE’S TWO STRIPES WORKING HERE—”

Her tongue flicked about inside her jaw, trying to work out the sensations she’d been bombarded with as she quickly jogged through the broken gate and into the lobby of the main administration building.  She thought it very strange that a robot—even one designed to mimic sentient behavior as much as possible—would even make pointless idle comments out loud to itself like that…and that it apparently remembered enough of the facility’s former staff to know their species, if not their physical appearance…

Her musings were briefly interrupted when Julaya sauntered up to her right side, still smacking her lips as if savoring the aftertaste of the kiss.  “Why do some of you pony folk taste like fruit when you kiss?”

She made a small leap, just enough to get her some leverage on her target, and her right forehoof rose up and slapped Julie’s left ear before she could stop herself from doing it…but in hindsight, she realized she would have done it willingly anyway.  “What the hell was that?!  You said you weren’t going to get between me and Kite and then you just go and….and…..what the eff?!  You know she probably saw that clear as daylight!”

“….it got us past the robots coming to kill us, yes?” the zebra replied, rubbing at her slapped ear but otherwise showing only a slight hint of pain.  “…though I will admit minor ulterior reasons were at play too, yes, perhaps I should not have done that…”

“No shit!  And you’re going to say as much to Kite when we get back!”

“…may I go back and compel the robots to kill me instead?”

“No!”

“I’d hate that, you’ve been far too entertaining so far,” Misty’s voice interrupted, jolting both of them mid-step with her sudden presence in the lobby.  “But you need to quit it.  I’m being serious here, we might have been able to hack the controller mainframe and disable the robots’ access to the personnel files, but if they see two supposed co-workers arguing and fighting they may start glitching and there’s no telling what part of their programming they’ll access to “de-escalate” your little slap fights.  I’m honestly surprised they aren’t going haywire right now.”

With that minor, stinging rebuke, the misty-maned pony managed to put a stop to every frustrated thought flying through her head. She wasn’t any less miffed with Julie, but it would have to wait.

“…I’ll strangle her later.”

“Then let’s get moving,” Misty said with a crisp tone, snapping about and heading past the reception desk and towards an open doorway. Piles of broken glass shards were shoved up against the wall nearby.  “The main exit on the other side is behind a collapsed hallway, so we’ll have to take a detour through the left side offices and get out through a fire exit.  If you know a light spell, use it, this building lost its connection to the facility’s spark generator.”

Finally relieved to have something besides zebras and kisses to focus on, Sling brought her rifle up to eye level and focused her magic on the forward folding grip, which she currently had folded up under the barrel.  Her light spell seeped into the hardened polymer grip and projected itself out of the bottom, forming a perfect, bright white cone of light that illuminated the way forward far better than a traditional battery-powered flashlight—

Misty’s tone changed almost instantly when the white beam of light swept across the wall in front of her.  “Oh hell, that’s a good use of a light spell.  Right on your weapon, lets you see what’s in front of you before you shoot it.”

“The downside is that your weapon will potentially be pointed at something you don’t intend to shoot when the light illuminates your target,” Sling countered her enthusiasm with her usual glass-half-empty outlook, following Misty and Leon through the doorway after applying a second light spell to Leo’s .45 SMG.  “How long to the exit?”

“Not very long.  This isn’t a very big building, it was most likely just a personnel resources department.  Payroll, logistics, shit like that.  The real work was done in the R&D labs.  But this place is a little big.  It’s basically a walled-in city block, far too many buildings for just MoAS research.  I’m betting this place might have actually been a joint-Ministry research facility under the MoAS’s administration.”

“Wait, you mean like the Ministry of War or Morale? A combined ministry facility would be one of the most inviting targets the zebras could hit.”

“Might be why the northern half of Withercha got turned into a balefire crater,” Misty confirmed grimly.  “The “city” that stands now is only about half the size of the real thing.  If we’d gone north another mile and a half you would have seen it.  Nothing but rubble and twisted metal, and the radiation at the crater’s center is still dead-right-there lethal.  We’re safe enough where we are, but I wouldn’t go too much further north if I were you.  With some Rad X and Radaway, you could probably survive a short journey into the Broken Zone, as we call it.  Or you might get lucky and find an intact RBC suit.  Regardless, go more than two miles into the zone, and you’re better off blowing your own brains out before the rad sickness gets you.  You’d need a Steel Ranger power armor suit to be completely safe from it, and have a strong-ass scrubber spell ready when you cross back into the safe zone.”

“Great pep talk,” Leon grunted, his weapon light sweeping over the left side of the hall.  Nothing unusual, beyond the broken doors and offices that looked like children had been playing around in them.  Stuff everywhere.  “You must be a riot at birthday parties.”

“Everyone’s a comedian today,” Misty groaned in reply.

“Perhaps because tomorrow we may be dead,” Julaya suggested with an unusually unsettled tone.  “I do not have good feelings about this place.”

“A lot of people probably died here when the megaspells started flying—”

Sling’s eyes swept to her right, following her rifle’s strobing light, and while her light spell showed much the same state of disrepair as Leon’s, she noticed something stand out when she came upon the fifth office down the hall.

Holes in the wall next to the door, and in a somewhat uniform pattern.  Some were higher up than others, but they almost looked like part of a…

…a gun fight?

“Those almost look like bullet holes,” her voice commented softly.  “How many skeletal remains did you find the last time you were here, Misty?”

“Not many,” came the surprising answer.  “We’d find one or two here and there in this building, mostly in these offices, a few more in the courtyard, and about a dozen in the administration wing.  Found one at the mid-point of the eastern stairs even.  Odd thing was, the bones were scattered.”

For a facility that’s supposedly had almost no unwelcome visitors in over two centuries, that would be odd.  “Did the robots move them?”

“We’ve only seen them on the perimeter or in the courtyard. As for the skeletons, it was mostly a concentrated scattering.  Most of the skeleton would be in one spot, with some leg bones strewn around it.  Some ribs were broken off too.  A few skulls had bullet holes in them, and there’d be a broken, rusted out pistol nearby, but their leg bones were still separated from the body.  Same thing with the administration wing in the central courtyard.  Our best guess is that some of the surviving staff may have turned cannibal in order to survive and murdered others for sustenance, or consumed the bodies of those who committed suicide rather than die of radiation poisoning or dehydration. I’d rather not dive much deeper into it. As it is, I expect to find the majority of them in the security wing.”

Her interest in the violent history of this place vanished almost immediately, her stomach churning at the mental images threatening to force themselves out.  “…soooo let’s talk about how you plan to slice into said security wing.”

She turned her attention away from the wall and focused on the path ahead of her as Misty obliged her question.  “It’s not that hard.  The terminal and card reader that control access to the wing have a secondary interface that a Mark IV PipBuck can jack into and open manually, but since we don’t have one I’ll need to pull the cover plate off your PipBuck so I can hot-wire it into the card reader and a small, portable terminal I have with me.”

A…a what now?  “Wait, a what?  Computers are too big to haul around.”

“It’s not a computer, it’s more of a diagnostic tool. I’ll be using it to jury-rig the PipBuck and try to slice the door open by making the security system think it’s getting signals from a Mark IV.  Your PipBuck is a 300A series, so it’s a bit basic and doesn’t have the advanced features found in later models, but the damn things run forever with almost no maintenance.  If you had a Mark IV model with its own diagnostic software and jack plug, I wouldn’t need to do this.”

So this is how the Union would make use of my PipBuck if they got it…I wouldn’t know how this thing would communicate with the 115’s gate console if El-Tee’s right about the PipBuck being a key to the door.  “I’m not familiar with that model, these 300As were all my stable had.”

“Not surprising.  Stable-Tec was always a little bit weird with the program.  The two stable ruins we were able to search had different model PipBucks themselves.  Your little theory about some of the stables in the prairie enacting extra security layers concerning outside intrusion would help that make a little more sense.  Hard to hack a Stable door from the outside when you’re not even sure what type of PipBuck the door console would be configured for.  I’ve no doubt the Union tried this trick with your Stable time and time again, to no effect, or you wouldn’t be here right now.”

At the end of the hallway the corridor split off to the right, and even with the limited light offered by her enchanted weapon grip she could see the other end of the hallway was little more than a pile of broken wood, steel, old drywall and ceiling material, and what looked like the contents of an office from the floor above.  One end of a metal desk was poking out from the debris, and several bookshelves lay scattered and split apart atop the pile of rubble.  Scores of ruined, unreadable books were strewn about the rubble and hallway.

“…shit, that wasn’t there the last time I was here,” Misty cursed aloud, turning her gaze about the hallway and settling for what looked like a short hallway halfway down that led to a side fire exit. “We’ll have to take this fire exit to the side instead.  If we can get access to the security and R&D wing we’ll probably want to take as much as our wagons can haul off, we may not get another chance at this.”

“Perhaps the collapsing building is a sign to turn back,” Julaya spoke up, again lacking a good deal of the confidence she normally exuded.  “I loot the ruins of the old world as much as any soul, but I do not believe this place should be touched.”

“Not like you to be spooked by dark hallways,” Leon grunted.

“It is not the darkness here that bothers me.  I do not like this place, it feels wrong.  We should leave.”

“Then go back to the caravan if you feel that strongly about it,” Misty dismissed her fears.  “I—”

“No, Julie doesn’t get spooked often, but when she does, it’s worth considering,” Leon cut her off, coming to a stop to look back at her and the zebra.  “Might be worth looking around here first, see if there’s any clues we can pick up on.”

I might have a clue, Sling thought with trepidation.  But it wasn’t a clue she could act on yet.  “Let’s just get that stupid door open.  We’re not gonna learn anything here, any terminals in here are long dead.”

“Shouldn’t take long,” Misty promised, turning into that short hallway and hastening her way to the fire exit.  “The longest part will be setting everything up.  Just keep those pass cards visible.  I don’t know how often the ‘bots take a stroll through the courtyard, and the wasteland likes to screw you over right when you don’t need the trouble.”

“Thought that was just life in general,” Sling mumbled snidely, welcoming the rush of air and overcast light spilling into the hall as Misty sprang out of the fire exit.

Julie’s voice crept up behind her with an ominous, lingering hint of doom that she began to find difficult to ignore.  “I fear what we find here will make you wish for your old ills.”

What Sling found, at first glance, was about what she expected to find.  The courtyard of the facility was massive, perhaps comparable to the size of an entire stadium or coliseum.  Even from the side alley of the personnel resources building, she had no trouble identifying the main R&D wing, for it still bore the mark of the Arcane Sciences ministry over its front entrance and every window on all of its four floors looked to have been sealed off by security shutters from the inside.  Off on the left side of the courtyard was a second structure with a similar construction pattern, four floors tall and seemingly covered in marble.  A line of withered, dead shrubs and bushes formed a perimeter around both structures, and an equally-deceased clove of tree trunks formed the centerpiece of the courtyard, with park benches and a few tables encircling it.  A few chairs could be found scattered about and tipped over, along with a lone tree trunk that had fallen over.  And in stark contrast to the stately pale, homely appearance of the other two structures, the black night, metal outer walls of the security wing seemed determined to remind all who saw it that danger still lurked in the world beyond.  She also noted that it had been built without any windows of any kind.  Above its massive blast door serving as its primary entrance, an intact signboard (amazing!) bore the words “PRIMARY TESTING LAB AND SECURITY”.

Roughly a minute into the trek across the courtyard, as they passed by the cluster of dead trees, Sling absently lifted the fallen trunk off of the ground rather than just bound over like Misty had, and discovered that it had been lying on what looked like a sheet metal signboard that had fallen over and was still in one piece.  The dead tree’s weight was tossed aside like a rag, crashing into a couple of tables and breaking them apart in an explosion of wood chunks, and she hurriedly hoisted the signboard up and began brushing off two centuries of dust, grime, and dirt—

“…Rain Song Memorial Joint Research & Development Center?” she read aloud as her eyes scanned over the faded, but readable font on the sign’s front facing.  “…Ministry of Arcane Sciences, Ministry of Wartime Technologies, and Ministry of Peace…head administrator Dark Times, Assistant Director…Zulana?”

“Zulana?” Leon’s voice repeated as he passed by her, his eyes scouring the northern building.  “Sounds like a zebra name.”

“That already sounds like trouble,” she amended, carefully setting the sign down and rejoining the others.  “For a zebra to get any manner of work in one of the ministries, let alone a joint research facility of three of them, they would have to b—”

“They would be marked for death,” Julaya answered gravely. “This zebra…would likely only have been safe from harm within these walls.  It would be akin to a prison, really.”

“Now I really want to crack this place wide open!” Misty proclaimed gleefully, now practically racing towards the security wing as she began pulling out the tools and equipment she would need for her work. “Those three ministries practically reshaped Equestria into a technological powerhouse in less than a decade! Putting all that kind of tech research and knowhow in one place like this, there’s no telling what they cooked up in here!  C’mon, Slowpoke Sling, the day ain’t getting any younger!”

“So it’s Slowpoke now,” Sling groaned, though her pace stayed the same.  “…still, better off than Kite.  Rally must be driving everybody insane having to sit so close to this place and not get to go inside it…”


--------------------------------------


“I spy with my not-so-little eye, something that starts with B—”

“Brick,” BJ droned in reply almost immediately.

“Nnnnooope, try again.”

“Brahmin.”

“Way too obvious, and way wrong.  One more shot.”

“Bullet.”

Light Tail promptly balled up the rag she’d been cleaning the surface of her 9mm with and threw it at the colt’s head. “It was you, fool!”

The flat-faced colt didn’t even flinch as the cloth rag bounced off the side of his skull.  “’You’ doesn’t start with B, filly.”

Elly’s voice broke into a short, hard laugh.  “Okay, I walked into that one.  Your turn.”

BJ’s head swiveled around for a few seconds before he spoke.  “I spy with my great big eyes, something that starts with G.”

“Greatly annoyed mom?”

True to Elly’s guess, Kite was sitting in the back of the wagon bed, her deadpan, unamused glare promising swift vengeance upon the children for their poor joke at her expense.  They’d been at this game for over ten minutes, and they were loud about it.

“…good try, but not it.  Guess again.”

“Granola bar?  The one you owe me for that song?”

“It’s not even in sight, doofus.  Last chance.”

“Griffon?”

“Damn, you struck out.  It was that broken gate way out at that old ministry place.”

“Hunh, didn’t even think of that one.  All right then, I spy with my not-so-little eye, something that starts wiiiiiiith…P!”

“…oh crap, this is gonna suck.  Ummm…pistol?”

“Nuh uh.  Two guesses left!”

“Uhhh…oh crap oh crap uhhhh…feck, this is not fun…oh! Paper!  I see some of it billowing around down the street.”

“That was my first choice before I changed it, sooo, no. One more try.”

“Pencil?  The one Raina’s drawing stuff with right now instead of watching for raiders or Pythons?”

“…oh, crap, yeah, you got it.  Hey Raina, what’re you doin’?!  The bad ponies are out there!”

The distant, art-talented griffon managed to shout back loudly enough that the streets ringed with the faint echo of her words. “I’m drawin’ out maps of the place, don’t mind me and go back to playing hard-to-get with your little boyfriend—”

“WHAT?!?!” Elly screeched back, her little hooves stampeding across the road as she charged at her object of ire.  “He is not my raaaaaaaggggghhh Max, Mona, BITE HER—"

“What th—OWW OH SHIT THEY REALLY DO ANYTHING SHE SAYS SHIT SHIT SHIT—"

Rally had grown tired of their loud, little game of “I Spy” less than a minute into it, but now it was looking like a better alternative than the filly siccing her dogs on people who pushed the wrong button.  “…I liked it better when Elly was just super quiet and bored and invisible.”

Kite’s head slowly dropped and face-planted into the wagon bed as BJ’s maniacal laughter sounded out into the streets alongside the angry barks of two husky pups chasing a terrified griffon up and down the road.  “And I thought you’d be the one driving me mad this close to a high-tech treasure vault…”



--------------------------------------



Up until now, she’d been rather ambivalent about her PipBuck being torn open and worked on while it was still attached to her leg, but now that Misty had pulled the faceplate off and was in the process of wiring it to her portable diagnostic tool (and in turn connecting the tool to the exposed wiring of the security wing’s access panel), she was starting to get apprehensive about it.  The only things she really used it for heavily was to keep her enchanted saddlebags organized and to keep an out for nearby threats.  On occasion she had need of its mapping function, but the thing had erased its copy of the pre-war map of the prairie and had been recreating a more accurate and up-to-date map ever since she got out of the stable.  The SATS spell module, she couldn’t recall having used more than a couple of times, she preferred using her own shooting skill over a targeting spell.  But the thought of losing it forever to an errant mistake had her slightly terrified, and she didn’t understand why.

“Yoooooou have done this before, right?” she asked Misty’s left ear, watching as the other mare’s magic began pecking away at her tool’s keypad, turning a couple of dials, and flipping a switch or three seemingly at random.  The small, green monochrome screen on the tool appeared to be showing a set of frequency waves, or something, and she was apparently trying to get the left wave to match the one on the right.

“Not with a PipBuck,” was the answer she’d been afraid of. “Not entirely sure it’ll work, but it’s all we got.  Seems to be working fairly well so far, at least.  Just gotta watch for a power spike.  The front office building we passed through lost its connection to the facility’s power grid, but the rest of the place seems to be hooked up just fine. But two centuries is a long time to be running with minimal maintenance.  We’ll doubtless run into sections with no power, and we won’t be able to restore the power line connections.”

Her apprehension concerning her PipBuck transformed into a deep-rooted worry for her own survival.  “…and this…power spike?  If one shoots through, what will happen?”

The bored tone that answered did nothing for her nerves. “My little terminal will be fried. Depending on the amount of energy that spikes through, the surge could conceivably make its way to your PipBuck and fry it too.  Or make it explode.  Or overwhelm the insulation in the brace and fry you along with it.  Hope for the best.”

“…please don’t fry me.”

“Shut up and I won’t make it happen on purpose.”

With a tiny whimper of fear, she bit her tongue down and held off on any further speaking of any kind, and watched as Misty fiddled with her tool.  A couple of times she cursed and quickly made an adjustment to whatever it was that she was doing, which did not make her feel any safer about the process.

But just like she said, getting past the door turned out to be quicker than getting ready for the job itself, for within a couple of minutes the pale yellow plastic button on the dangling face plate of the access panel turned off, and the green button quickly came to life in vibrant color, and Misty’s hoof tapped the button without hesitation—

--with a loud, guttural screech of metal, the blast door began to retract into the wall on ancient pistons and gears, and Misty’s throat began giggling with the glee of a ten-year-old filly as she hastily disconnected her terminal from the PipBuck and began re-attaching its faceplate.  “Hehehehe!  See?  Nothing to worry about!  Now let’s get in there and scope the place out!  I’m so hyped up I could jump up right into the clouds!”

Peering past the mare’s head and into the open doorway of the security wing, the faint—but working—overhead lights painted a much different scenario than one of simple search and retrieval.

In fact, it was already starting to look like the zebra might have had the right idea.  She never consciously decided on it, but somehow the bright green crystal sights of her 9mm were up and searching for a suitable target almost immediately.

Even Leon didn’t like what he saw, and his .45 SMG was zipping up to his shoulder to take aim into the doorway out of impulse, but he held off on actually shooting.  “…oh, shit…”

“Oh shit, wh—” Misty began to ask, turning her head to see what had everyone shell-shocked and pointing their weapons into the building, and then she stopped talking entirely.

A pile of pony bones lay just beyond the blast door, scattered about the entire floor of the lobby and across the reception desk, but that wasn’t what had their attention.

It was the three seemingly intact, if dead-looking bodies mixed in with the bones.

Sling moved her left foreleg, felt the loose faceplate of her PipBuck rattling, and quietly poked Misty in the side with her right leg. “Finish putting it together, please.”

Misty wordlessly complied with her request, even tapping and pulling at the PipBuck when she was done to make sure it was secured tightly, and then backstepped out of her way—

—Sling’s body slinked forward on four steady, smooth legs, her pistol always pointed at the body closest to her as Leon’s footsteps fell in behind her.  Passing through the doorway almost felt like she was crossing over into another world, but much of her focus was on the body slumped up against the desk, as if taking a long, deep sleep.  And what she saw was almost completely and utterly wrong even by wasteland standards.

The body’s shredded, tattered lab coat exposed enough of the pony wearing it for her to tell that it had been a stallion in life, and the flesh beneath the coat was…well, in some places it had been ripped away by what looked like bites, and dried blood caked the wounds and the hair of his coat.  His left hind leg was missing its hoof, and the strips of flesh and leg bone sticking out of the wound sickened her.

And if the body’s condition was to be believed, he’d not been dead long enough for rigor mortis to set in.  When she poked the hind leg with the barrel of her pistol, the flesh sank under its pressure as though it were still alive.  She thought it an isolated incident, but when she poked the thigh, then his ribcage, and then his hindquarters with the same result, she was certain of it.

And she was certain it was also impossible.

“Fucking hell,” Leon’s voice wondered in disbelief. “I thought this place hadn’t seen a living soul in two centuries, and the lobby’s got three fresh dead bodies in it.”

“M-maybe they’re ghouls?” Misty suggested, but even she didn’t sound all that convinced of her own thoughts.

The mere mention of the word “ghoul” was more than enough to kill any interest she had in exploring further…but it was far too late for that now.  “The ghouls I saw in Trotpeka looked a lot worse this, actually, all torn up and shit. Except that their wounds and blood and…ugh, viscera, didn’t look so fresh.”

“Misty, whatever it is you and Rico are looking for, it had better be worth the trouble,” Leon’s voice growled angrily. “From here on, this is a combat zone. Nobody ventures off alone.  Sling, since you got the PipBuck that can pick up active threats, you get to take point.”

“Yes, great idea, make the jumpy pony with an automatic weapon the first one to find trouble,” Julie snarked wryly.  “Nothing terrible could possibly happen.”

Sling wasn’t listening.  Her brain was struggling to maintain any sense of calm as she ran through her available munitions.  Five thirty-round magazines on her rifle, not including the one loaded in it at the moment. Six spare magazines for her 9mm, plus the 15+1 rounds in the gun itself.  Her six speedloaders for Grayhawk (and Grayhawk itself) were loaded with .44 Mag rounds, with twenty-four mana burst .44s piled up in a storage pouch on her right side.  The .357 Ironshod and its six speedloaders were all loaded with .357s.  And then there was that survival knife she kept strapped on her right side…

She kept the 9mm out.  The green arcane gem sights glowed so brightly they were almost light bulbs themselves, and 9mm ammo was everywhere, or at least it had been whenever she’d gone shopping for bullets.  She wasn’t sure that would hold true in Withercha, but at the very least this facility’s security team would have kept some in stock in their armory. She just hoped the ammo cans had been spell-sealed.

She trekked through the scattered bones with the care one would take traversing shattered glass, barely taking note of the three dozen-plus bullet holes scattered across the walls…and the twenty or so holes in the ceiling above.  The lobby door into the security wing proper was pockmarked with a few dings, and its glass window had been cracked into a spiderweb pattern by two stray rounds, obscuring the corridor beyond.  But a gingerly touch on the hoof-shaped door handle pushed the door open with ease, and she was pleased by the sight of some sight of lighting in the hall ahead, if not the state of the hall itself.  The ceiling appeared to be composed of drywall panels, several of which had not aged well and had fallen apart onto the floor.  Sections of the corridor walls had been heavily damaged by gunfire and what appeared to be explosions, and still bore aged, black stains and smears of blood in some places.  Wooden doors leading into various rooms were riddled with yet more bullet holes, and some of the interior message posters had been partially torn or obscured with old blood, rendering them unreadable.  Among them, however, she recognized the silhouette of a pony in Steel Ranger power armor cresting a heavily-fortified hilltop, with the words “ENLIST TODAY!” at the top of the poster.

And there were just as many bones scattered about here as there’d been in the lobby.  She saw a few old guns lying on the floor, near blackened, dried blood splotches—mostly M&A 9mms, and a couple of .45 Auto pistols that she discarded almost immediately once she picked them and found that the hammers had been locked back for so long that all spring tension in the mainspring had vanished, allowing them to move freely without resistance.  The guns and spent casings only had small bits of rust and corrosion on their surfaces, suggesting that this place was still well sealed against outside moisture despite the two centuries of time since its construction.

“Shitballs, this must have been a hell of a fight,” Leon’s voice cursed behind her, his heavy footfalls coming to a stop off to her left as she eased up into an intersection in the corridor.  “Anybody find a map of this place yet?  Even just a layout of fire exits would have the basic floor plan laid out.”

“I…I think I might have found it,” Misty croaked fearfully, and when Sling looked back behind her she saw the unicorn staring at something that had been nailed to the wall.  Covered in dried blood and almost unreadable, and above was a small nameplate that read “EMERGENCY EXIT LOCATIONS”.  Judging by the state of the halls, no one had managed to make use of any of them…

“Or perhaps you could follow these large white arrows on the walls that point you to where you wish to be, if you would look up,” Julaya added, brushing past her briefly to tap said signage with the tip of her katana before sheathing it.

“I…was more focused on the carnage,” Sling was forced to admit with embarrassment, having no memory or recollection of having seen the arrows on the upper portions of the walls despite walking by them and taking in everything she could.  Sure enough, the arrows helpfully pointed out the way to various sections or points of interest.  The test lab was a good start.  “We’ll start with that lab, check out anything that looks interesting along the way. And don’t bother searching out exits, whatever happened here, nobody was able to get out.  They were likely locked in.”

“Scary thought,” Leo murmured from the rear of the group as she trotted forward in the direction the arrow indicated.  “I’ll pull rear security, don’t get too far ahead.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll be bumping into Misty’s ass quite a lot at the speed I plan on moving at,” she assured him, her eyes scanning over each door they passed by for anything beyond that might hold her interest.  So far, just a couple of offices and storage closets.

“So many wrong ways to take that statement.”

“Oh gods the mental images STOPPIT—”

“I was wrong,” Julaya bemoaned.  “I am wishing for my old ills.”

“I’m wishing for a—”

Sling’s words halted mid-sentence as she reached a T-section at the end of the hall, turning left as the white arrow on the wall directed, and spied an open door forty yards down on the right from which a faint green-tinted glow emanated—

“--….aaaaaaaasign that may lead to a clue, I hope,” she finished, now laser focused on the room to the point that she only paid a cursory glance at the large open conference room directly to her left, and thus did not note anything more than the fact that there were several large sprays of dried blood on the wall and doorway.

“A terminal?” Misty guessed correctly, as when Sling made it to her destination and quickly swept herself inside, she found a fairly messy office with lots of file folders and papers scattered about the floor. The terminal itself sat on a fairly sturdy oak desk, and a single bullet hole on the wall behind the desk, helped make sense of the worn double-action revolver on the floor.  She couldn’t find any signs of a pony’s skeleton, though…

“A working one,” Sling answered sadly.  The desk still held an intact photo frame, the picture inside showing a light purple earth mare and a white-coated unicorn mare, their cutie marks hidden from the camera’s angle, and with two little colts and a filly in front of them, blue, red, and green coats….

Misty seemed to know almost immediately what had dampened her spirits.  “…diving into these old ruins isn’t always so fun, when you find things like this. It’s easy to forget that bones you’re constantly stepping over were once ponies just like us, with their own families and lives that got ruined when the world ended, because so much of who and what they were are gone, and so little evidence is left that they ever existed at all.”

This wasn’t the unicorn jumping like a little girl to go crawling about the hallways five minutes ago.  “You forget often, it seems.”

“Often enough that it’s good to be reminded of it,” Misty said softly, her magic taking hold of the picture frame and secreting it into her saddlebags.  “One of our unofficial rules is to try and document as much as we can about those from the old world when there’s a chance we can actually I.D. them.  Crack that terminal, I’ll poke around the desk drawers. I’ll try not to crowd you.”

Sling didn’t even notice the other mare rummaging through the desk as she pecked away at the keyboard, mindlessly hacking the password out of the system through the debug program within a minute and filling the monochrome green screen with what looked like numerous work log entries, most of them corrupted.

Well, except for the last three months of the war…

…nothing on her E.F.S. yet, so she could probably spare a few minutes…

She scrolled through the logs until she hit one that looked promising, roughly two weeks before the war ended, and brought it to life:

“The facility’s primary project got green-lit for limited production status today! Dark Times announced the government’s approval for a selective deployment on the frontlines at a conference meeting in the R&D wing two hours ago, based on the performance of the prototypes during the previous trial runs.  The only catch is that it’ll take some time to set up the production lines at an approved contractor, and exactly who that will be is still up in the air. Phoenix Arms has a pretty big hoofprint in the prairie, and there’s a half dozen other companies across Withercha and Trotpeka involved in advanced weapons and technology research that are clamoring to get a government contract.  Even Ironshod Firearms is looking to bid on the contract, but from what we can tell the plant they built in the city is primarily a repair center for civilian-owned arms.  They have manufacturing capability for pistols and some long arms, but nothing on the scale needed for the Alicorn’s Star and it’s ammunition.  Reps from Ironshod and Phoenix are scheduled to make personal visits to the facility to get a first-hoof look at the weapon. That’s going to be a swell day.

  Maybe I could put in for some time off, keep my distance from that ass-kissing fest.  I’m paid to build and test prototypes, not get sucked up to by corporate sluts, and there’s plenty of souls on the project with far more knowledge about it than me who would love to get blown by those greasy slimeballs.”

“Ugh,” she cringed aloud, her tongue sticking out in disgust at the mental images forcing themselves to life in her mind.  “Still, think I found something for you and Rico. Some weapon project they called Alicorn’s Star…”

“The name alone already tells me what it could be,” Misty groaned as her forelegs pulled the bottom left drawer out and started pawing through its files.  “From what we know about the MoAS, a number of its top-secret projects involved alicorns. We think they were either trying to duplicate the powers of the Princess Sisters, or trying to figure out how a normal pony might become an alicorn themselves.  Potions and magical alchemical concoctions would be one way to do it, but it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume they might try to develop a conventional weapon that would do the same thing.  We think that’s how MEW technology came about, but we’re not sure.  Most of the leads we’ve found in the past led nowhere, and the few that did lead to something…well, there was a reason a great deal of it never made it to field testing.”

“This might be an exception.  It says here that reps from the Phoenix Arms and Ironshod plants were scheduled to make a visit and see the project up close, make bids for a limited production run for deployment on the war front.  Rico has mentioned that the Ironshod plant was locked up with no way in, and these entries are dated pretty close to the megaspell event. Maybe this rep guy was here the day the world died…and if he was, anything he brought with him will probably be lying around somewhere.  Maybe even a way to get access to the plant.”

“A lot of ‘ifs’ in there…but the payoff will be worth the trouble.”

“I’m more interested in this Alicorn’s Star,” Sling mumbled as she tapped down to the next journal entry:

“Some being of chaos or madness must be loose in the world.  Ironshod and Phoenix are now joined by five other firms for next week’s private tour and conference on the Alicorn’s Star Project.  The Maretta Group, Mare & Alicorn Manufacturing, the company that makes those weird-ass backward SA-7 rifles for the all-griffon 5th Sky Legion unit out of Fort Wiley, and two civilian-oriented companies that make mostly shotguns and bolt-action rifles and whose names escape me even though it’s part of my job to know this shit because they send us pre-production samples of their arms for analysis and potential approval for government service.  That’s seven sets of execs and production managers roaming about a combined Ministry facility with the second-highest security clearance requirements in the Prairie.

  Needless to say, my request for time off last week was denied.  There’s simply too many “guests” for a single research team to handle, and Dark Times wants this project to succeed at any cost, it could put us on the map and in Twilight Sparkle’s vision if it works. DT doesn’t have a family to disappoint at her house, or relatives that will miss her absence from a family gathering, so working overtime doesn’t bother her.  There’s some quiet rumors going around that she and Assistant Director Zulana might be banging each other in their offices, or at home, or…wherever, I guess.

  I was going to visit my sister and her kids out by Grainsland, but that’s not gonna happen now.  And those little rascals were looking forward to it, if Green Day’s letter was even half truthful about their heightened rambunctious antics.  For a barren mare like me, that’s the closest thing to a family I’ll ever know short of adoption.

  At least I’ll only have the displeasure of disappointing them by letter. She’s the one that’s gonna have to tell them the bad news in person.”

“Could be more than just a top-secret project here,” she forced herself to say calmly, purposefully putting off any tingling feelings of regret for the soul who’d typed this entry.  “Apparently they also evaluated finalized samples of guns that hadn’t been put into production for possible government use.  That might actually be fun to sort through.”

“At least we’ll only have to deal with your lust-crazed shenanigans when we find them,” Leon’s voice taunted from the hallway, filling her cheeks with inexplicable shame.

“Nothing in here,” Misty announced immediately afterward, shutting the desk drawer and squeezing around behind her to get to the other side of the desk.  “Anything in that computer that might help us narrow down search zones for access keys or whatnot?”

“Still looking,” she hissed lightly, moving on down to another log entry dated roughly a week later:

“I don’t believe it.  Personnel Resources re-granted my leave request the other day.  No idea why, but I’m booking it out of town like, RTFN! If I’m lucky I’ll catch Green Day and her kids before they leave for their little mystery trip tomorrow.  I was supposed to go with them until my time off was canceled, so I have no idea if she can fit me in last-minute, but I’m gonna try.

  I pity the poor soul that’s taking my place for the “Executives Day” tour tomorrow, though.  Suits and managers from seven arms manufacturers looking to bid for a potentially lucrative production contract will not be a pretty sight.  The Alicorn’s Star and a small quantity of ammunition will be moved to the primary testing lab tomorrow morning, before the corporates arrive, and the security department is definitely not letting anyone in their roster take a day off for that.

  Because I know of about five other ponies here who know more about the Alicorn’s Star than I do, I’m giving them temporary access to my office terminal in case they need the passcode for the lab and they’ll likely have just gotten notice that they’ll be taking my place at the very last minute.  It’s hell getting Maple or Red in PR to get off their lazy ass to get network accounts established for anyone here, let alone e-mail privileges.  Took them four months to get around to getting mine set up, but they’re quick as hell to wipe an account from the face of Equestria the moment somebody gets termed and thrown out the door. Figure that one out.  Anyways, the passcode for the primary testing lab for tomorrow’s exhibition day is 74656.

  Grainsland, here I come!”

“Got a code, 74656, primary testing lab,” she announced loudly, to make sure everyone heard it, though the journal entry also gave her another mystery.  If the bullet hole in the wall wasn’t made by the pony in the journal….then who did?

“Good enough, let’s get moving—” Leon commanded—

Odd, looks like three more entries.  “No, wait, there’s more here I want to look over first,” she resisted, already loading the next entry onto the screen.  “There’s three final entries that can’t be from the pony this office belonged to, it may have some clues about what happened here.”

“Then read quickly, Julie’s getting jumpy and that’s never a good sign.”

“As Blue Moon has been so graciously granted last-minute leave (and I have no idea how many people you slept with to make it happen, you glorious SLUT), I, Even Tide, out of five possible candidates in total, have been entrusted with temporary access to her office and terminal in order to log the events of today’s demonstration and overview of the Alicorn’s Star for later archival and review.  So thank you, Blue Moon, for being a pal and being willing to spread your legs for every stallion and mare in Personnel Resources so that you could take a few days off on the most important project this facility has ever presented to the Equestrian Armed Forces.  Truly, thank you, because when you get back I’m going to want a turn or four with you in bed to make up for this bullshit.  I know you like mares just as much as stallions, so don’t give me that “just curious” excuse.

  As for my “work” portion of this entry, the execs are scheduled to arrive within the hour, and I need to get to the lab and verify that the Alicorn’s Star and its ammunition are ready for the test-fire demo later today once the suits finish the main overview and briefing on the project in the R&D wing. Maybe snag one of the tablet prototypes for some “testing” of my own, could really help ease the organizational workload.  A portable slate-style computer, light as a book…yeah, that could work.  Get something out of this last-minute job detail I got hit with.

  P.S., Blue Moon, I mean it, you and I are going to go at it like bunnies. You OWE me for this, and I WILL collect.

  ADDENDUM [TIMESTAMP CORRUPTED]:  Oh gods, it’s happening.  The megaspells, they’re everywhere.  There’s reports of explosions all the way past Serenity.  The facility was locked down the second the spells starting flying. Dark Times said to stay calm, that she was going to try to contact Fort Wiley or the Maripony facility.  Zulana’s still somewhere in R&D, no one’s heard from her or anyone from there in a while, but she can go straight to hell, she’s a striper, she probably had a hoof in all this.

  Security’s having a hell of a time keeping everyone from bum-rushing the main gate.  If DT doesn’t have answers for everypony soon, though, they may want to get out of here themselves.  She’d better have answers.  She’d better. If people are going nuts in here, I don’t want to imagine the chaos going on in the city itself.”

“Damn, nothing, maybe the next one,” she mouthed softly, bringing up said entry, even as a single red hash mark began flickering to life, at the far left end of her compass bar.  “Heads up, got a mark, to my left.  Weird though, it’s just…fading in and out, like a light…”

“Misty, you had better not have screwed up that PipBuck,” Leon growled angrily, but he stayed where he was and didn’t turn in the direction of the threat she’d just pointed out.

Blue Moon’s second entry, unfortunately, had her wishing for just a screwed-up PipBuck at the end:

“It wasn’t just megaspells.  Something exploded north of us within a half-hour of the first launch, and there was this big rush of air and force and…and something.  I could feel my horn tingling for hours afterward, maybe some sort of magical backlash from whatever hit the city.  Maybe it was one of those balefire bombs we were hearing rumors of. If it was, it must have malfunctioned in some way for the blast to not wipe Withercha out completely.  As it is, I don’t think anyone at the blast point even physically exist anymore.

  And then everything here just…it’s horrible.  It’s hard to describe in text, let alone speak it.  I think it started in the R&D wing. For a while all the wings were locked down, nobody could get out, and most of the facility’s staff were in the other three wings.  It was just fifteen security ponies and some of us lowly researchers here.  We tried communicating through the facility’s inter-comm system, but after a couple of successful contacts and requests for status updates there was nothing.  We thought maybe the backlash from the bomb might have damaged some of our systems—we’d lost main power within the first twenty minutes, and most of the back-up generators weren’t kicking on, so we were down to the one hard-wired into the security wing.

  The first we knew of the internal lockdown for our wing ending was when our…our former co-workers showed up, most of them from the R&D wing.  They looked dead, and some of them had died pretty hard.  Some were missing hooves, or ears, a few had organs showing through their wounds or part of their guts hanging out, but they were clearly dead and STILL MOVING.  It wasn’t until they attacked one of the security ponies and tore him apart, alive, that we finally realized we weren’t dreaming and having nightmares, these are real things happening and we have to kill them.

  Only, we can’t.  It doesn’t matter how many times you shoot them, or where, their wounds just regenerate and close and they get right back up and come at you again.  We were able to hole up in a conference room, across the hall, for a bit, and that’s when we found out that their bites are lethal. We don’t know what it is, some kind of magical infection or curse or whatever, but if you’re bit…you’re dead. Best we can tell, it takes a couple of hours, three tops, but it’ll kill you.  And then you’ll come back as one of them.  Three security ponies and two researchers turned on us in that room, and it’s a miracle that we even got away from them without getting hurt when the hallways are crawling with even more of them.

  We gotta get out.  Now. We talked about it in the conference room, before Dizzy and Violet and all the others turned, and I need to meet up with whoever’s left in the armory on the other end of the wing so we can gear up and try.  We’re gonna try to break the lockdown that’s keeping the main gate shut, all the fire exits here are sealed up and so are the three other emergency exits in the facility’s defensive wall.  The security chief is still alive, he thinks he can override the lockdown with one of the slates from the testing lab.  I was on my way to fetch one and just dropped by here to update this journal log, in case somepony else comes along in the future and needs to know what they’re dealing with.  Once I meet back up with them, we’re going for it.

  Of all the things I was taught I might deal with in a megaspell event, nobody ever told me I’d be dealing with sundamned ZOMPONIES of all things.  Story of my life.”

Memories of old horror novels she’d read as a teenager began flickering to life in her head, and she didn’t like a single bit of it. “….oh, shit,” Sling’s brain sputtered. “Um, maybe we should leave, like, right now.  Something did go wrong here and we aren’t prepared for it.”

Even as she hurried on and brought up Blue Moon’s last entry, she could see that one flickering rad hash being joined by several more, scattered across the EFS’s compass bar—

“What kind of something?” Leon shouted back from the hallway.

I’m going to sound crazy saying it—

  “Something we can’t kill.  This terminal is going on about zomponies running around and killing and eating people alive, and that it started after the balefire bomb went off in the megaspell event.  And we’ve got several contacts now, all around us—”

“Zomponies?  Damn stable folk freak out at the worst times, that’s it, we’re beelining it to the test lab, no more screwing around—”

The last entry was heavy in emotionally draining content:

“It’s over. I’m crying like a little girl and it’s over.

  We couldn’t break through.  Chief was killed just short of the front door of the personnel resources wing.  Some of them were hiding in one of the side offices, and they just dragged him in and…and killed him.  Whole hallway swarmed with them right about the same time.  I’m pretty sure some of us got separated in that chaos, I could hear gunshots from a conference room across from where the chief was killed.  The few of us that got out, tried to get into the administration wing, we haven’t seen anybody come in or out since the megaspells started flying, but main power’s still out and so are most of the back-up gennys so the door was completely inoperable and all the window shutters were activated for some reason. We came back here hoping to find some explosives to blast our way through the defense wall.  Ran into more of them, and we got separated.  I hid here.  Heard some short shooting binges for about an hour, and then nothing.

  I don’t know how long I can hide here until they find me, and I don’t want to know.  I don’t wanna die that like.  I got a couple of bullets left, and I only need one.

  I cussed Blue Moon’s name for getting to go on vacation earlier at the last minute.  Now I’m glad she at least got to die with family, which is all she really cared about aside from her work and getting laid.  My family…I don’t know.  And I won’t kid myself, they’re probably dead.  I wish I could have seen their faces one more time.  Just one…

  My name was Even Tide.  I died at thirty-five years old, and had a husband named Alleyway, a little eleven-year old filly named Zesty Wind, and a ten-year-old colt named Dreamy Song.  And Blue Moon and I…we had a thing going. Alley knew and didn’t care, even got in on it now and then, I think he liked her as much as I did.  I don’t think Moon wanted it to be long-term, but I’d been thinking about it a while.  I might have asked her, if things had turned out differently.  And now it’s all gone.

  Whoever finds this…don’t let this die.  This may be the only proof left that I ever existed.

  Good-bye.”

It took a sharp tap to her right shoulder to bring her back to the soul-crushing reality she lived in, and she was not even aware that she’d plugged her PipBuck’s data-jack into the terminal until Misty’s unique, mist-like magical aura was yanking it out and coiling it back into its storage compartment for her.  “Hey, wake up, we’re leaving!  You can catch forty winks later!”

She numbly followed Misty out of the room, back into the hall, and her 9mm pistol was out and searching for targets before she realized she’d had it out—

Julie was muttering something in a language she couldn’t understand, aside from the fact that it didn’t sound like Equestrian or the zebra language.  Something along the lines of…puke guy?  Or something? Whatever it was, the tone she was saying it in was…alarming.  She sounded almost terrified—

—and with good reason, she decided when she took a look at the object of the zebra’s fear herself.  A lone pony-shaped figure, at the end of the hall and turning the corner, stumbling along in a staggered trot, and a deathly, raspy moan as the head turned to face them—

—or what was left of it.  The left eye was gone, and a part of the skin on the left cheek as well, exposing red muscle tissue underneath—

“Still think I’m talking crazy, Leo?” she snarled over the green gem sights of her 9mm as she brought it up, settled on the thing’s skull, and she touched the trigger back an instant later—

—her enchanted horn ring flared to life and muffled the sound of the shot, and the next one, and she had the brief satisfaction of seeing both rounds knock the thing’s head about a little…

…and then, a growing, fleeting terror as the thing’s head simply rolled back into place, and went right back to stalking towards them.

Two bullets in the brain and it was still moving.

“What the…” she thought she heard Leon muttering in disbelief before she re-sighted the gun on the thing’s head—

Two more shots rang out, and when it stopped and staggered about in place, she went and fired another two rounds, and it finally slumped over onto its side with a final, dying groan…

Behind her, Leon was letting loose with short bursts from his .45 SMG, the heavy, concussive beat of the shots bouncing off of the walls, and more of those low moans began to ring out from the direction of his gunfire—

“Shit!” he swore loudly, even as he began touching off aimed, single shots.  “Maybe you’re not crazy today!”

She’d just started to zero in on a second, shambling foe emerging from around that far-off corner and squeezed off a shot to the side of its head, but aside from jolting it slightly, the creature didn’t even seem fazed—

“I wish I was,” she answered fearfully.  9mm wasn’t cutting it, not if they were taking head shots and acting like she’d just thrown a rock at them—

—she switched sidearms, going to her .357, and tried again—

—the booming report was rewarded with a much more dramatic effect, she swore she could see bits of flesh and blood flying out the other side of her target as it dropped to the floor—

“Try that fifty-cal pistol or your rifle!  You too Misty—”

“We should run,” Julie broke in suddenly, her eyes fixated on Sling’s kills as Misty’s rifle began letting off short bursts behind her.  “Find a way out, or find shelter in here if we must.  If we stay and fight we will die.”

Leon’s rifle barked a couple of times, and the faint sound of a heavy weight thumping the floor could be heard shortly after. “Hell yeah, that’s better.  Maybe bullet velocity counts for something after all—”

—Sling was about to fire on a third target, this one ambling into sight from a room in the other hallway, past that T-section, when she finally noticed that the flickering red hash marks denoting her first two kills had yet to go away…

“…oh gods, no, don’t tell me—”

The wasteland gods seemed to be waiting for her to say exactly that, for no sooner had she uttered her begging prayers than her first kill began to stir, its legs moving to push it upright with a loud, hungry groan—

“What?  Tell you what?” Misty’s voice screamed over her rifle fire.

“Not even headshots put them down for long!  We need to leave!  To hell with anything we could find in here!”

“May not get to, hall’s filling up with the damned things!” Leon shouted amidst a string of shots from his rifle.  “Misty, how’s it look to our right?!  That’s the way to the test lab, if these stupid wall signs aren’t leading us astray!”

“Got a few!” she answered shakily, and frustration began to seep into her tone.  “D-dammit I can’t hit shit all worked up like this, how do you guys do this for a living?!”

“Practice!” Sling shouted, feeling her body spin about and rush up to dislodge Misty from her position.  If the hall she was covering was the path of least resistance, they needed it cleared quickly—

—she barely took notice of Leon’s standing upright on his hind legs, firing down his kill zone with careful, precise shots, she’d seen griffon Runners do it enough that it no longer surprised her—

—she amended her slightly optimistic opinion of Misty’s predicament.  Apparently her definition of “a few” was not as conservative as most.  Sling counted no less than ten walking dead ponies emerging from darkened rooms along the hall, their milky white eyes somehow sensing them as they all turned towards the first fresh meals they’d likely seen in two centuries.

“Dammit, your definition of “few” needs work—”

—her .357’s sights bounced from one head to the next as she fired, filling the hall with a bright yellow flash with every shot.  She had to reload at least once, but made great progress otherwise in felling her ten targets in about as many seconds with one more round to spare in case one decided it was done playing dead—

“Hallway clear—”

—Leon’s blasting came to a stop as she sprinted down the hall, and she kept her eyes focused more on what was around her than on the flickering hash marks on her EFS as it was hard to tell which ones belonged to downed targets or ones she’d yet to run into.  She also found it hard to focus on the top of the hallway walls, searching for signs that might point them either towards the primary entry/exit point of the security wing or the test lab they’d originally sought out—

—at a four-way intersection in the hall, three separate arrows pointed out three significantly different destinations.  Ahead was apparently the cafeteria and break room, and to the right was…munitions development?  And a couple of analytics labs?  And left…left proudly pointed out “Test Lab #1”…

“Left!” she shouted out to the others, turning into the left hall just as Leon and Misty started shooting again—

“What the hell, can we even kill these things—”

Leon’s remarks had her scowling at the gods.  9mm wasn’t good enough, a .357 could slow them down with a headshot, but not for long, and she was not about to use up rifle rounds she might not be able to replace…the same could be said for .44 Mag, but at least she had roughly 300 of those back at the wagon…

So the .357 went back in its holster, and Grayhawk came out just as another one of them began stumbling out what looked like a restroom, missing strips of skin and flesh along its forelegs and forward torso. Nasty place to meet one’s end…

Grayhawk’s red front gem sight settled on its chest as it turned towards her, and the chest-thumping gunshot that filled the hall left her with a nostalgic longing for mana-burst rounds when she found the effect of a regular .44 Mag somewhat lacking by comparison.  It didn’t create an explosion of blood and gore from an exit wound, though it did clearly still track cleanly through the dead pony-thing and drop it to the floor with a tired, gasping noise somewhere between a sigh and a moan.

But at least it went down without a headshot. Strange, but it worked.  At least with a .44.

The hall didn’t stretch very far, maybe forty yards at most before splitting into another T-section, with an adjacent hall stretching to the right, this one still marking “TEST LAB #1” as being further on that direction.  With all the turns they’d already taken just to get this far, she was starting to see why the initial survivors got separated from each other so easily when these things starting roaming the place.

But at least this turn would be the last.  At the end of the hall, a large sign above a steel blast door at the end of the corridor proudly proclaimed the space beyond to be “TEST LAB #1”.  She wasn’t sure what any of the other nine doors along the hall were for, but she didn’t care.  Once they were in that test lab, they could just close the door and keep those things out indefinitely, start working on a plan for getting out without having to worry about being chomped on—

“Goal!  Don’t stop, keep mo—”

She passed the third door in the hall when it happened—the door slapped open, the culprit revealing itself as a mangled, ear-less zompony rearing up to tackle her to the ground, and she barely managed to dodge its lunge and put a .44 Mag through the side of its torso—

—but her leaping dodge put her in the path of door number four, on the other side of the hall, which also promptly opened at the will of the zompony in the room beyond so that it could stumble out on three good legs and what looked like a broken right hind leg and multiple torn strips of flesh dangling from its body and forelegs—

—this one, she shot in the face, at a distance of maybe seven yards, and this time she was rewarded with a small spray of various bits of flesh and bone out of the back of its head, alongside a troubling phenomenon of a faint, ethereal blue shape of a pony’s body briefly floating away from the fallen corpse—

—she was able to discern only a brief look of confusion upon this faint glowing pony-thing’s face before the ethereal form began distort and stretch out into the air, as though it were being sucked up into an invisible vacuum—

—Julie’s body crashed into her and began pulling her along the floor as the zebra raced for the test lab, and Sling nearly lost her grip on Grayhawk in her startled reaction.  “W-what just happened—”

“The door!” Julaya screamed frantically, having reached the test lab’s locked door in the time it took Sling to scream out her expletive-laced question.  “Open the door, do not kill another one of these things!  None of you!!”

Leon’s gunfire drew closer as he slowly made his way down the hall.  “Wait, did Sling actually kill one of these things with that .44?!”

“Do not kill them!” Julie shrieked back.  “Just get us to safety—”

A quick burst of magic upon the door’s security console immediately brought its monochrome green screen to life, and she barely made the thought to type in the door code on the number pad when a shrill, terrified scream rolled down the hall at her—

—hydraulic-driven pistons pulled the blast door up as she spun around, trading Grayhawk for her bullpup rifle and bringing its iron sights up in search of a target.  The scream had come from Misty, who had lost control of her rifle when a pair of zomponies lunged into her, and she was trying frantically to fight them off with her forelegs and jamming her M&A 9mm into an open maw for a direct brain shot—

—Sling’s first shot from her rifle hit a straggling zompony lumbering towards the crowd of twenty collecting near Misty’s position, stunning it in place for a moment, and a follow-up shot tagged another one directly on top of its head as it began lowering itself down to snack on her hind legs—

—Leon blasted one of Misty’s attackers with a string of aimed shots at its head and torso, though when it rolled over on its side it merely acted as though it had decided to take a short nap—

—Misty’s pistol fired, illuminating the inside of the zompony’s mouth for an instantly before it began to sag and collapse on top of her, and she shoved it aside before it could pin her to the floor—

—but as she tried to scramble to her hooves and run down the hall to join up with them, the zompony that Sling had shot sprang to life and managed to grab hold of Misty’s hind legs, and with a speed that defied its undead state of existence it sank its teeth into her hindquarters and began tearing at it—

—Sling traded off guns again, going back to the 9mm she’d started this running gun fight with, and started blasting into the zompony’s skull—

—each and every shot landed almost squarely in the side of its skull, and though it relented its assault and slumped back to the floor, Sling retched inside when she saw the bloody chunk of torn flesh and coat on Misty’s left hindquarter.

But the injured mare still managed to limp her way into the group’s safety, and Leon scooped her up onto his shoulder and carried her into the test lab with Sling practically at the tip of his tail.  The instant she was past the door, she turned about and engaged the security console on the inside, resealing the door and even re-locking it to add a little extra security.  She didn’t think they could have broken through or forced it open, but until five minutes ago she’d never even entertained the thought that she’d be seeing an actual zompony groaning hungrily in her general direction either.  She wasn’t going to discount anything as impossible today.

Especially not when she considered that one of them had bit Misty, Julaya was urging them all to not kill the horrible mutants coming to eat them alive, and that after killing one with a .44 JHP to the head she saw what she would describe as a “ghost” appearing to take physical form for a moment before being sucked away into sun knows where…

A tug in her gut told her to go and grill Julie over her insistence that these monsters not be slain, and turned around and followed the small blood trail through the initial decon chamber until it led her into the test lab itself, just beyond a small room that contained a pair of intact hazmat suits and a pair of lockers along the walls.  The word “lab” had her thinking of wooden tables with several sets of glass flasks, beakers, and vials in sturdy oak vial racks, maybe some high-tech optical microscopes and centrifuges or even some thermal cyclers. In an R&D facility wing meant for weapons development and testing, the word apparently meant “high-tech” armory that made Stable 115’s armory and firing range look like a poorly-maintained repair garage.  An open-window room immediately to her left was revealed almost immediately to be an office, replete with a small bookshelf filled to the very last inch of available space with reference binders and textbooks, a lounge sofa accompanied by a coffee table, a main mahogany desk at the far corner of the office with two chairs directly opposite of it, and even what appeared to be a fully functional and intact terminal.  The firing range for the test lab was very clean, with six lanes that stretched out to fifty yards and with complete electronic controls for sending and recalling targets or even setting how high or low they were relative to the shooter and the range’s backstop.  Aside from the firing range itself, the “lab” itself was split into several large rooms on her right, each one clearly labeled with their contents ranging from “Pistol Storage” to “Rifle Storage” and “Ammunition Storage”, and even a room labeled “Computer Tech Lab”.  A fifth room was labeled “Project Tech Lab” and pegged as the likely location of the Alicorn’s Star.

Her first order of business was to zero in directly on Leon and Misty as the griffon was throwing the unicorn pony onto a table in the center of the room and stripping her of her gear and armored barding in order to get a clear picture of whether or not she had any other unseen wounds besides the bite mark—

“NNnnnnaaaaaaaagggdammit it bit me in the ass!” Misty cried into her right foreleg as she bit into it to stifle her screams of pain.  “Oh gods tell me everything’s still intact back there please please please—”

“Everything’s right where it should be,” Leon assured her with a quick look at her hindquarters and the space between them before he went back to work dabbling her bite wound with iodine from a bottle dropper he’d fished out of his first aid pouch.  “Damn but did it bite you good, almost tore a chunk of your butt off, hold still—”

Leon’s talons moved to press the torn flesh back in place while simultaneously preparing a healing stim injection, causing Misty to scream wordlessly into her leg as she braced for great pain, and that was all that Sling could stomach seeing.  Satisfied, at least, that Misty wasn’t going to die in five minutes, she decided her time was better spent finding Julie and finding out exactly what was freaking her out besides the fact that the dead were up and walking despite being roughly two centuries past their original date of expiration.

The zebra wasn’t far.  She seemed to prefer to sit at the back of the main lab, near a couple of circular conference tables, with her back turned to them and her ears wilted and flattened as if disheartened.  That only cemented her suspicions.

“Something you want to tell the rest of us?” she said to the zebra’s back, loudly. Leon and Misty weren’t so far that the conversation couldn’t be heard, and she wanted them to hear this.  Misty was short on time as it was, if that ancient soul’s journal entry was at all accurate about how long it took a bite to kill. “Like why you’re begging us not to kill them when they’re trying to devour us alive?”

Misty’s muffled shrieking grew louder, which could only mean that Leon’s healing stim was being jabbed into her wound, and Julie waited until the suffering pony’s cries quieted down before she spoke. “…if you kill them, their soul is consumed by something far worse.”

A…wait, that…that thing, was…a pony’s soul?  As in we actually have one?  “Maybe you should start a little further back.  Let’s try…oh, maybe, what the hell happened to the people here?!”

“Lay off Sling!” Leon roared over Misty’s pained squeals.  “Like she’d know anything about that!”

“I would not know specifics, but I could guess at a great deal of it,” was Julaya’s somber, deflated reply.  “Did the glowing box say anything related to a megaspell?”

“Only that they were ending the world,” Sling said tersely.  “The poor soul writing her last words in it thought a balefire bomb went off inside the city.  Said she could feel a tingling sensation in her horn for hours and thought it might be some form of magical backlash from the blast.  Why would that be important?”

Julaya’s voice muttered something, likely a string of curses and foul words, in another language before she answered in plain Equestrian.  “I can only guess.  I do not dare to assume you have any knowledge of zebra magic.  But what I have seen is…unsettling.”

“…zebra magic?  Really?”

“Yes, really,” Julaya finally said, her tongue growing sharper as she turned about to face the room with a look of fear and horror.  “You unicorns are not the sole species gifted with talents in the arcane.  Earth ponies, pegasi, griffons, minotaurs, zebras and more, we are all creatures of innate magics within ourselves.  My tribe did not practice a great deal of our ancestral ways, but I strived to learn what I could, and I learned well.  What I have seen here may be a dark, very forbidden form of the blackest magic known to my kind.”

Parts and bits of information began to come together within her mind.  “…Zulana.”

“…if not her, then another zebra who may have snuck in without being detected, but I find that extremely unlikely,” Julaya concurred quietly.  “The magic I believe to be at work here is an ancient and foul practice, one forbidden by all but the cruelest of caesars of the zebra lands, and the knowledge was all but lost when the war ended.  The ritual in question is…necromantic in nature.  It is performed on a rune circle inscribed into the ground, with ten points in the outer circle and a ring in the center in which the caster stands and performs the incantations to trigger the rune’s effects once ten victims are placed in the outer circle.  The ritual itself kills them and channels their magic and soul into the rune, which then casts the spell upon the corpses and the caster.  If done correctly, the caster of the spell essentially gains control of the bodies of the dead by binding the souls of their victims to them.  So long as the caster lives, these walking dead serve as their thralls, and in turn the caster can gain great knowledge from their souls.”

“…wait, wait, you mean these…these things, are actual zomponies?” Leon muttered in disbelief.

“…yes.”

“But then you also say that these zomponies serve as the caster’s thralls for as long as the caster lives, and it’s been nearly two centuries since Zulana’s time.  How could any of them still be active?”

“I cannot say for sure.  Perhaps Zulana’s ritual was performed when the balefire bomb exploded, and this…magical backlash Sling mentions affected it somehow.  In what way, I could not begin to fathom.  And if she still lives…we cannot kill any of her thralls.  To do so would allow her to absorb the soul entirely and empower herself with it.  She may, in fact, have discovered a way to extend her lifespan through the spell by siphoning off the souls of her thralls, replacing those she….”uses up”, with others from her horde, like switching out a battery.  If too many are killed, she may become unkillable herself.”

“Maybe you didn’t notice, but we only managed to kill one, and that was a headshot with a .44 hollowpoint at close range,” Sling countered.  “My 9mm took at least six shots to put one down for just a few seconds.  Even the rifles didn’t put them down for long, and they have the greatest energy per bullet.”

“That is the part that has me believing the magic at work may have been enhanced by the balefire bomb.  The spell imparts some …regenerative properties to the thralls to ensure they cannot die easily.  As the walking dead are quite slow it would be very disadvantageous to have minions that could be put down so swiftly and easily.  Only great physical trauma to the head or total decapitation can destroy them, but the firearms should not have been so ineffective with aim like yours. They could be greatly resistant to most bullets to the point of uselessness.  And that may not be the only thing about them that is enhanced.”

Sling’s stomach began to grow heavy.  “…the bites.”

“…it is how a thrall afflicts the living with the curse, yes,” Julaya said.  “Normally it would take a day, two at most—”

“W-w-wait, what curse?” Misty’s voice stammered fearfully. “W-what curse, what’s happening to me?”

“…the journal entries…mentioned that some of the survivors were bit,” Sling replied when Julie wasn’t forthcoming with the information. “Those that were bit, died…and then they came back…and it took a lot less than a day.  Two hours, three at the most.”

She knew it had been a mistake to tell her before she’d even spoken, but had their positions been reversed, Sling would have wanted to know regardless.  And Misty’s freakout went about as badly as she’d expected.

“…no, no no no no not like this not like this I don’t wanna die like this!” the misty-maned mare began blubbering—

“Mistake,” she whispered to herself, doing her best to tune out Misty’s cries and tears while Leon tried to calm her down (unsuccessfully). She instead busied herself with reloading her weapons.  She’d lost count of the shots fired from her rifle, but if she was right about her 9mm, she had maybe one or two rounds left i—

…fffuuuuuuuuaaaaagggh I’m a dumb ass! She shrieked mentally when she’d ejected the pistol’s magazine and stared at the lone round remaining in it—a copper-coated FMJ round nose bullet, likely a 124-gr military cartridge.  The FMJ 9mms would have been making rather inconsequential wounds in her targets akin to ice pick jabs, living or dead.  Little wonder it took so many headshots just to make them sit down for a couple of minutes.

Fortunately, it seemed she’d only managed to mistakenly take that one magazine, because the rest of her mags were loaded with Rico’s nickel-cased hollowpoints.  In her haste to get geared up for this little dumpster dive she’d likely forgotten to take the FMJs out of her gun from her last target practice session.  She couldn’t do much about her rifle, though, FMJs were all she could find or get in any great quantity.  But they seemed to be doing the job well enough for the moment.

“…maybe it was the hollowpoint in my .44 that killed that one thing,” she surmised out loud, once she’d heard Misty’s crying dwindling down to quiet sobs.  “Dumb ass that I am, I left my nine loaded with ball rounds and it took forever to even stun one for a minute.  A hollowpoint may work faster.”

“Might also kill them, since they’re meant to dump all their energy into the target instead of zipping through,” Leon countered calmly. “The rifles took them down with one or two shots, without killing them, but military 5.56 ammo was meant to punch through steel helmets when fired from an LMG and isn't really that great of a bullet.  We usually use .223s, and keep the military stuff for practice or shooting through leather barding.”

“Then let’s comb through the storage rooms here, see if there’s any ammo or weapons that might do better for us.  We’re not gonna last long if we go back out there with just what we brought in.”

“The hell with the guns, what about me?” Misty cried with a broken, hoarse voice.  “I don’t wanna die here, I told my kids this would be my last trip and I don’t want them to think I meant for it to be like this there’s gotta be something you can do!  Some counterspell, a healing potion, something—”

Sling’s grim outlook on Misty’s fate started to turn onto roads and pains she knew quite well.  It wasn’t much of a stretch for her to imagine how a parent might feel at the thought of leaving their children behind to live the rest of their lives without them, because it terrified her more than simply dying.  And she could only surmise one way of changing that for Misty with what little information she had.  “…the thralls live so long as the caster of the spell does, right?”

“…under normal circumstances, yes, but this is far from normal,” Julie answered hesitantly.  “I cannot say with any certainty what we are facing, only general assumptions.”

“But the one thing you’re reasonably sure of is that it’s likely Zulana’s work.”

“…that much, yes.  I know for certain that none in my tribe ever ventured into this city in the time since the Great War, and the ritual I describe was never taught.  I only learned of it from reading the few texts of our people’s magic that still survive.”

“Then that’s all I need,” Sling decided in a burst of hardened determination, turning towards the closest gun storage room she could find—the “PISTOLS” room, incidentally—and practically racing for the door.  “We find her, we kill her, and we kill the spell that’s empowering these dead corpses, and if we’re lucky, the curse that turns the living into one of them.  It’s the only chance Misty has.”

“I am more worried about those beyond the walls,” Julie whimpered hauntingly.  “If Zulana has been here for two centuries, she would have had more than enough time to learn and assume total control of this place’s security.  She could conceivably open the entire facility and allow her thralls to shuffle into the streets in search of more bodies to add to her undead horde, and there are quite a number of free souls within sight of this place.”

She thought she knew panic.  The kind that came with Light Tail’s very life being threatened and being right there to see it, but today she learned a different kind of panic and terror.  The terror of her entire world coming to an end in the most horrific way she could think of.  El-Tee, Kite, Rally, BJ….everyone she knew and cared about, sitting in one place as a small horde of horror novel monsters drew out of the shadows of a long-dead world hungering for their flesh and bone….

…and she couldn’t even guarantee that she could get herself out of this room in time to save herself, let alone anyone else….

When her gut fell into her bowels at a sudden epiphany hitting her right then, she thought she was about to lose it completely. “…oh shit, what if this is what she was planning for the last time Rico and Misty came here…”


--------------------------------------



She almost found it hilarious, and might have if not for the circumstances that came together to bring her the sight before her.

Elly, sitting on her haunches, her head down and her ears low, as though she’d offended a great and powerful god, sandwiched between two husky pups slightly larger than she was, in equally downcast postures and all three refusing to even look up at her.  To the trio’s right (or Kite’s left, depending on perspective), sat a supposedly adult female griffon, who towered over the filly and stood slightly taller than Kite herself, and yet had hunkered down into a submissive position and fixed her gaze upon the broken pavement beneath her as if it were her sole chance at survival.  Her lioness-half was marked here and there with the telltale sign of a dog’s bite mark, courtesy of the two mutts next to her who had eagerly carried out the wishes of their very favorite pony.  Her wings were hanging slightly loose from her sides, but were not in a position to allow for an immediate take-off.  Most of her gear, save for the rifle slung across her back, had been taken off and set aside some time prior so that she could focus on her map drawing, explaining how the pups were able to inflict any pain on her at all.

And she wanted nothing more than to terrify all four them into behaving like proper, responsible souls for the rest of their stay here.

“Light Tail, you know better than this,” she said sharply, fixing her angry gaze upon the filly in question.  She wasn’t the kid’s mother, but she was pretty sure Sling would be doing exactly this the moment she found out about it, and she figured that by doing so she might lessen Sling’s explosive outburst into a much quieter stinging rebuke and punishment.  Elly probably didn’t even realize that she was being done a great service here.  “Max and Mona are not toys to be played with, or weapons to be used.  They are living creatures who will eventually grow strong enough to kill people if they want to, at the rate and size they’re growing!  You do not just sic them on people who make you angry, you could seriously hurt someone, and end up with your dogs taken away from you or even put down! Do you want that?!”

Light Tail seemed to physically recoil at the mere mention that her pups might be killed for being misused in such a fashion, and the broken, half-sobbing voice that answered made Kite want to quit being the substitute parent right then and there.  “….n-no, no, nooo…”

Stay on the path, she told herself as she went on.  “Then don’t tell them to bite someone just because they’re teasing you or making you angry.  That is not the proper way to handle a dispute with another person and you know it. Act like it!”

Elly recoiled again, and just nodded wordlessly as she laid down and covered her head with her forelegs.  Max and Mona made no noises themselves, having been scolded and slapped lightly on the noses the moment Kite had caught up with them when they were chasing Raina about, and just simply followed Light Tail’s lead, though they first curled up around her, as if intending to shield her from the world by forming a tight ball of fuzz around her to discourage others from approaching.

It was a miracle that Elly didn’t smell like a dog half the time.

She thought she could see Raina breathing a little bit of relief out of the corner of her eye, and decided to burst that bubble sharply. “And you!!” she screamed, whipping about to turn her parent fury onto this grown child.  “Where do you get the idea that you can just go push a child’s buttons like that?!  She’d just gotten a crash course on the subject of sex and reproduction barely a day ago and you start teasing her about her friendship with my son?!  How did you think that would turn out?!”

Like Elly, Raina’s body shook slightly, as if physically struck by the words, and her wings rattled in place slightly and ruffled their feathers.  “…nnnnnnnoooot like…this?  I didn’t even know she was that clueless, it was just a joke…”

“A poor one!” she bellowed back into Raina’s face, and the griffon’s submissive, wide-smile look was seemingly windswept by the sheer volume and force of Kite’s words.  “That damn stable of hers turned the very subject of sex ed into such a taboo concept that she had no clue about anything related to it until yesterday, and I’ve met eight year olds that knew more than she did!  She is exceptionally confused and conflicted right now and you only make it worse poking “fun” at her over it!  Think before you speak!”

“…wait, really?” Raina squeaked curiously, her head tilting off to one side.  “This little precocious detective genius never managed to put 2 and 2 together at why boys and girls have different parts?”

Kite heard a sharp, cat-like hiss escape her throat as her right forehoof rose up to smack the stupid griffon across the head. “What did I just say—”

—Raina’s body shrank back down and sank into a submissive crouch when she realized that the mare in front of her was exceptionally serious about her impending violence.  “Shutting up shutting up—”

Somewhere behind her, BJ had been content to just sit there and laugh quietly at the spectacle playing out before him (though when she’d been laying into Elly over her transgressions he sounded more pained than amused).  His laughs and minor taunts, however, began to turn into concern and alarm as he finally spoke out.  “Whoa, what the hell happened to that guy…”

Since there were no guys directly in front of her, Kite took his words to mean that there was someone farther down the road attracting his attention and she snapped her gaze up to try and search out the object of her son’s interest, along with Raina and Light Tail—

“Wh-what happened to—” Elly wondered aloud, only for her voice to shift into a terrified shriek—

“—oooooooooooollleeeeee crapbaskets why do I hope that’s his thing hanging out under his belly and not his guts aaaaaaaaa—”

Even she had to admit that the sight of the shambling, drunken-like walk of the poor soul slowly stumbling up the road towards them was rather unsettling, and she’d seen her fair share of feral ghouls when she was helping her second master funnel slaves out of Union territory in Trotpeka during the Unification War.  She attributed her newfound unease and slightly shaking legs to the recent trauma of having literally been torn open and ripped apart by them and somehow still surviving it in enough of one piece to be put back together.  But even as she forced herself to study this slowly approaching ghoul, she noticed a few things that seemed slightly off.  The appendage of organ hanging out from his belly did indeed appear to be part of an intestine and not some other body part, though she had to use a pair of binoculars to be sure as it was still some distance out (how Elly could have seen it with just her own two eyes was actually quite impressive).  And through the binoculars, she could discern that it’s path was fairly irregular despite having all four legs intact and in decent order with no injuries.  She’d known some ghouls that could move quite fast, though most of the ferals encountered in Trotpeka’s river canal had accumulated enough leg injuries that they could only limp towards their prey. Many of them also had a good deal of their manes and tails missing, but this one sported a full mane and tail, but it lacked…color.  She’d never seen a ghoul with mostly grayish tones in its coat, mane, and tail, but this one did.  It did lack a cutie mark, like most ghouls—it was a rare thing to find one that had retained its cutie mark—

—it’s head rattled slightly, bits of organic material coming out of the back of its head, and it tumbled over and slumped into the ground in a forward posture, it’s rump sticking up into the air.  A moment later the echoing din of a distant gunshot rolled across the street and past her position, towards the MoAS facility at the end of the road, and silently thanked Ada and her shooting partner for being so damn good at shooting from extended distances.  “…yes, Elly, that appeared to be his innards and not his boy parts hanging out,” she assured the shaken filly, moving her binocs’ view towards the facility’s main gate and spying several more of the things making their way through the open gate and into the streets…

…without being harassed or fired on by the automated defense turrets, and when she looked up upon the walls she realized why.  It appeared as though Sling’s group had deactivated the security systems, as the turrets no longer had any active lights on them and made no attempt to even zero in on the strange creatures entering their sight zones.  “Oh, that was real damn smart of you, Sling—”

Another ghoul dropped to the ground, felled by Ada’s deadly aim, and she swung her binoculars across the wall, over to the corner at the far left of the facility an—

A small horde of about twenty more grayish-shaded ghouls was emerging from the side street between the facility’s defensive wall and a crumbling donut café, and they were angling towards the road leading up to Rico’s caravan—

—several shots from said caravan began sailing out at the offending ghouls, and within a couple of seconds the bullets reached their distant targets and began dropping them with solid hits to the head and torso. She moved her gaze away from the horde in the side street and went back towards the front g—

—she stopped and zipped back when she saw Ada’s first kill begin to force its forward body back upright, as though it had just awoken from a short rest, and it was shot again the instant it completed its task. As before, it dropped back down in a slump of limbs, and Kite watched it for thirty seconds, even as the gunfire from the caravan began to pick up in volume—

—at a mental count of thirty-thousand-and-one, her subject stirred to life again, and rolled back up to its hooves…and began its drunken journey once more.

She had never seen a ghoul—not even a highly-mutated glowing one—take two .30-caliber bullets to the head and get right back up as though it had merely been shoved to the ground.  And as she scanned about the facility’s perimeter, she saw that this behavior was not limited to this one ghoul.  So far as she could tell, from the front gate to the side street, every one of these gray-shaded ghouls that had been shot and felled were just getting right back up in under a minute.

Two terrifying, tear-inducing thoughts ran through her brain in the time it took her to count the number of ghouls spilling out into the streets.  Her first thoughts were of the ghouls that had nearly killed her, in horrible, horrible ways, and that BJ might end up seeing and hearing it done to her again if these things could not be killed quickly.  Her second thought was that Sling was still inside that facility from which these unkillable ghouls were coming from, and might have inadvertently released them into the world when she’d deactivated the security systems…and in all likelihood, might already be dead herself inside that living hell…

Raina's blunt assessment of their near future was rather succinct, if crudely worded.  "...we're so fucked."