//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2: Broken Seals 
// Story: Fallout Equestria: Renewal 
// by ElbowDeepInAHorse 
//------------------------------//

Aurora felt the weight of guilt around her neck as surely as if she had been wearing a yoke. She passed through the racket of the workbenches and stepped onto the lift without daring to look anyone in the eyes, afraid that they might see in them what she couldn’t say out loud. That this was her fault.
The Stable had been handed a death sentence the instant its generator had been turned on over two hundred years ago. The magical talisman that kept it spinning had been designed to fail. For several months it had slowly, imperceptibly slowed the mammoth rotors while masking its work with fictitious readouts. Whether they were supposed to notice this earlier was anyone’s guess, but the earsplitting resonance of the generator hall had been the giveaway that raised the alarm. Overmare Delphi’s override code had given them access to the damning evidence that made it clear Stable-Tec was not the benevolent savior they all believed.
Her neck ached.
The lift released her midway up the Stable in the Hydroponics wing. The central corridor on this level was empty save for a brown courier pony pushing a blue bin filled with packages. As they passed each other he offered a quick nod, his eyes on her hips. He didn’t notice her bristling at him as he continued on his way.
Aurora slowed to read the worn plaques fitted to the thick frame of each door, denoting one or more of the staple crops that had been ferried underground by her ancestors before they shut out the world. She came to a stop outside a door simply labeled PERMACULTURE 19. She took a steadying breath and pressed the door switch. The metal slab hissed into the ceiling, opening into a lush garden. She stepped inside and drank in the humid air.
It carried the rich odor of damp soil and fertilizer. Rows and rows of tomato plants hung lazily in white fiberglass trellises, rooted in troughs of loamy dirt that stretched from center walkway all the way to the walls of the garden space. Nonslip rubber walkways divided each row of plants, allowing workers to walk between the lush stalks to log and monitor the growth of each plant. The tomatoes were vibrant green, barely larger than a grape. In the next couple of weeks they would be fat, red and ready to be harvested for the Stable.
Aurora looked left and right as she walked past the thick walls of vines and leaves, trying not to think of how many harvests this garden had left.
She found him at the rear of the garden, halfway down a row of ripening plants with a trowel pinched between his teeth and a heavy canvas bag laying open at his side. The speckled gray pony dipped the trowel into the soil and turned it over in a practiced motion that didn’t disturb the plant while allowing him to access the darker soil below. 
Dusky Pinfeathers was thinner than the last time she’d visited. Older. She saw lines around his eyes she didn’t recognize from before. A different kind of sadness squeezed her chest.
Her father heard her arrival and glanced at her as she walked between rows of greenery toward him. He set the trowel down on the rubberized walkway, fresh dirt pattering into the grooves cut into the material, and dipped his nose into the canvas bag. He emerged with a short plastic tube pinched delicately between his front teeth.
“Hi Dad,” Aurora said quietly.
Dusky set the vial on the floor in front of him. It wobbled briefly then settled upright.
“Hey there, Fixer,” he said, using the nickname her mother had given her. He offered a fatigued smile before turning to the shallow hole he’d dug. “It’s been a while. How’re things at the Bottom?”
Aurora heard the implication and shifted one leg in front of the other. The real question he was asking was Why did it take you five years to come visit? She’d had plenty of time to contemplate that as the months stacked between them. Sledge keeps putting me on double-shifts. Flux needs me on-call in case there’s trouble. My schedule never matches up with yours. 
It was almost convincing, but she knew a lie when she heard one and she couldn’t fool herself. I volunteer for overtime. Flux rarely needs me to answer questions anymore. I begged Sledge to let me work first shift so I didn’t have time to see you.
And at the core of it: You didn’t come to Mom’s funeral.
She watched her father do the work he’d always done, ever since he first brought her to the gardens as a filly. She remembered him showing her how to hold a sample tube between the primary feathers of her wings while pouring in soft clumps of black dirt with her hoof. He took great pride in his family’s unusual dexterity and would constantly remind her, to the point of great annoyance in her later youth, that there was a time when pegasi flew.
Aurora looked at the leather guards that now held his wings to his sides. He’d never worn them as long as she could remember and yet there they were. A silent confession that he, like every pegasus in the confines of Stable 10, had given in to the reality that their wings were a burden. She subtly flexed the weakened muscles that strung her wings to her shoulders. More and more she found herself putting hers on. They always felt too tight.
Her father had stopped working and was looking up at her, waiting.
“Things are busy,” she said, embarrassed she’d drifted off. “Sledge has me on the generator now. First shift, in case Flux has any more problems.”
Her father nodded and retrieved a dropper of clear liquid from his bag. He squeezed it into the tube where a sprinkle of black soil sat at the bottom, placed there while her mind had wandered. The liquid turned a faint pink. Healthy soil.
“She might learn more quickly if she didn’t rely on you so much to fix her mistakes,” he said.
Aurora looked at the floor, torn between defending Flux from her lie at the risk of opening up a line of conversation she felt too ashamed to visit. She changed the topic.
“When did you start wearing wing guards?”
Her father winced a smile and lifted his wings up in their guards, bringing them halfway up before they began to tremble. He settled them back against his sides and looked at her with a little shrug. 
“Arthritis. It’s easier to wear the guards. And this way I don’t have to take a pill every morning.” He looked at her. “If I have to be honest, I’m more surprised to see you wearing yours.”
Aurora smirked and mimicked his shrug. Dusky tipped his head to the floor next to him, inviting her to sit. She dropped to her haunches and realized how much she’d missed him. The nostalgia and guilt coiled together in a lump that lodged itself in her throat. It snuck up on her like a sucker-punch. She swallowed hard and mustered up a weak, “Yeah.”
Dusky set the sample in his bag and took a deep breath. Exhaled. He stared through the rows of trellises and the vines that climbed them, his mind elsewhere. 	Aurora could feel him working up the courage to ask her why. Why the fifteen minute walk to their home was too much for her. Why she had reached out only once, and then not at all. She hadn’t come up here to open that wound. To pick at the stitches before the skin had a chance to knit itself shut. She felt keenly aware of her own breathing and how strained it sounded in her father’s silence.
Her father tilted toward her and smiled. “Still not wearing your coveralls?”
Aurora coughed out a laugh that nearly turned into a sob. She looked up at the ceiling and shook her head, laughing while wiping the tears that had spilled onto her cheeks. Her father chuckled and bumped her shoulder the same way he had done when she was a filly, letting her know she’d be alright.
She sniffed and cleared her throat, happy for the release of all the tension she’d dragged in with her. She looked down at the lighter traces of gray fur that highlighted her chest and underbelly with another laugh. 
I’m living my life the way it was intended: naked as the goddesses and twice as pretty, her mother would say much to the chagrin of anyone brave enough to comment on her refusal to don the standard Stable attire. Young Aurora soaked up her mother’s confidence like a dry sponge, but the pressure of fitting in ensured her coveralls hugged her shoulders whenever she left the compartment. It was only after her mother died that Aurora realized that life was short. Too short to waste it tiptoeing around another pony’s squeamishness.
Aurora put them on for her mother’s funeral. When she emerged from her compartment the day her bereavement hours expired, the coveralls stayed on the hook.





Nimbus Pinfeathers died when Aurora was twenty-three years old. Nimbus had been a repair pony, spending most of her time in Mechanical except for the time she went on-call for repairs around the Stable. On one such call she was assigned a work order that took her up to Hydroponics to fix an irrigation leak. The leak, as it turned, was caused by a dapple gray stallion who had sliced open a buried drip hose with a trowel while showing off to his coworkers. 
They struck up a conversation while she ripped out the old hose and installed a new one. It was the shortest repair she’d had in months and she took advantage of the extra time. Dusky eventually admitted to being the culprit behind the damage and Nimbus had goaded him into demonstrating just how he’d managed it. He’d picked up his trowel with his primary feathers, something she’d never seen a pegasus do, and flicked it down at the dirt with a gust of wind that tousled her mane. 
The trowel speared the dirt up to its handle. Water immediately gushing up from the dirt around it.
Dusky’s face turned several shades of pink. Nimbus asked him to dinner.
She gave birth to a foal two years later.
Nimbus stayed home to raise Aurora while Dusky continued honing his speciality in the gardens. School taught Nimbus about her history and their future. Her parents taught her to think for herself, the value of knowledge and her responsibility to share that knowledge so the next generation had the chance to do the same. When Aurora was old enough to choose a profession, she followed her mother to Mechanical. 
Nimbus never knew about the clot in her wing. Chances were it had lurked there for years, the blood in her disused wings diverting to other veins ready to accept the load without much complaint. It loosened bit by bit until it simply let go, drifting toward her heart while she slept. 
Dusky woke up alone and Aurora’s world came crashing down around her.





 

Aurora rubbed her hoof against the bare fur of her foreleg and leaned into her father’s shoulder. He smelled like rich soil, fertilizer and so many other things that reminded her of a world that had ended with the death of her mother.
“I wore it for her funeral,” Aurora said quietly.
He shifted and wrapped his arm around her, rubbing her shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to go alone.”
She choked, the tears falling freely now. Her voice wavered. “It’s okay...”
Her father cleared his throat and squeeze her against him, a gesture that stopped her from continuing while keeping him composed. 
“It wasn’t okay.” He said roughly. Aurora’s throat hitched as she wept against him. “It was selfish. You both deserved better from me.”
Aurora shook her head. “She always told us to forgive each other for the stupid mistakes so we could be strong for the big ones.”
The leaves blurred with the dark soil, but she didn’t wipe them away. She’d needed this. Her father needed this too. She stared at the soil every pony was buried in when their time came. Bodies nourished by the earth returned to the earth to provide for the next generation, the same as it had been before the Stables. It was the reason why her father refused to be transferred from this garden. Nimbus had been buried here like so many others. Aurora felt some comfort knowing some good had come from her death.
Her father lifted his wing out of its guard and spread his feathers across her back like he’d done whenever she needed comfort as a filly. She accepted it and closed her eyes, mourning alongside her father like she’d wanted to five years ago. The tears came steadily and, as time passed, they slowed and finally stopped. They stared into the garden until their faces were merely damp. Her father’s wing returned to its guard but his arm stayed on her shoulder.
“I’m happy you came to see me, Fixer,” he said.
Aurora wanted to smile at that, but it wilted on her face as soon as it arrived. She looked at the floor, past it, down to the Bottom where the seams that held the Stable together were beginning to tear. Where the immortal generator was fighting against an unwavering magical force that was dragging it to a slow, fatal halt.
She imagined the lights in the Stable slowly flickering out, corridor by corridor, compartment by compartment. The sound of the air recyclers whispering and then silent. The entire Stable thrown onto batteries that would only sustain them for a few days. Just enough time for fear to erupt into panic. For violence to spread like a fire that would devour everything it touched.
“Aurora? What’s wrong?”
She blinked.
Her father’s arm was on her shoulder. Tomato plants waved their leaves in the light breeze of the recyclers. She was safe. Her father was safe. She pressed her cheek into his shoulder.
The talisman inflicted itself upon generator.
She took a breath. “Dad, do you remember Sledge?”
He nodded ruefully. “Everyone remembers Sledge.”
A smirked touched her cheek. “He’s a good pony, Dad. If something... if the Stable ever has any trouble, I want you to find him.”
Her father removed his arm and frowned at her. “What kind of trouble?”
Her ears flattened at the sudden concern in his voice. She steadied herself, committed now. “I can’t say. It might be nothing. It might be… everything,” she hadn’t intended to sound cryptic, but there was no avoiding it. She met his eyes and saw the pain she was causing him. 
“Mom always said that the strongest bridges are built on trust. I need you to trust me, Dad.” Aurora got to her feet. Her father did the same as if it would help him better understand her. “If something bad happens, find Sledge as fast as you can. He’ll tell you where to find me.”
Her father looked at the garden around him as if trying to see the threat Aurora was warning him about. When he looked back to her, his daughter’s expression had an intensity that he didn’t recognize yet fit her all the same. He’d almost forgotten that she’d grown up. Now she was trying to protect him from something.
“Does the overmare know?” he asked simply.
“Yes,” she answered.
“How will I know?”
“It’ll be pretty obvious.”
Her father nodded, his eyes wandering as he pieced together why his daughter had finally come up to visit him. Then he saw it. He saw Nimbus, and he knew there was nothing he could say to stop her.
“Aurora.” He searched her eyes. “Are you saying goodbye?”
Her voice caught in her throat. She’d never seen her father this vulnerable before. Standing among the vines, working alone save for his one visitor, she realized how alone he must feel. He didn’t look like the pony that she once thought knew everything. Like the superhero she’d once thought of him as. She saw a regular pony whose flaws and insecurities made him mortal. 
She was leaving him alone. The last bit of his family carried away from him.
Aurora choked on the last word. “I hope not.”
Dusky snatched up his daughter and squeezed. She buried her face in the crook of his neck but forced down the urge to sob. The visceral pull to break down in her father’s arms and take refuge in the safety there. To hand the burden of leaving the Stable to the pony who had already sacrificed so much and waited so long to see her. It would be easy and even almost feel right, and she would regret it until the morning she woke up and the lights didn’t turn on.
She broke the embrace and sniffed. “Dad, I’m going to fix this.”
“You’ve been known to do that from time to time,” he said, a sorrowful smile playing on his muzzle. “Promise me you’ll be safe.”
“I’ll try,” she promised.
He nodded, accepting the truth of it. “That’s why you’re my Fixer. Best get to it.”
Aurora hesitated for a moment, their eyes meeting one last time, and she turned away. She didn’t trust herself to speak. She trusted herself less to look back. She walked through the garden that her father had grown, fed by the body of her mother and which would feed ponies unaware of the dark months ahead.



	 
Aurora stood in her compartment running through her mental checklist for the third time. She had spent the afternoon gathering supplies and rehearsing her proposal to Overmare Delphi. They needed a new talisman or a unicorn with expert knowledge of a 220-year-old magical manufacturing process. She wasn’t holding her breath on the unicorn. That left the talisman. 
Nobody knew how many Stables were still due for construction the day the balefire fell. The final day of Equestria was described as an attack that came without warning, which suggested to Aurora that Stable-Tec likely hadn’t finished building all of its Stables. That meant storage depots for construction material and, even more likely, ignition talismans that hadn’t made their trips underground. Stable-Tec HQ was the logical first destination to look. She only needed to convince the overmare to open the Stable and let her walk out.
“Goddesses watch over me,” she muttered.
Stable-Tec HQ was several hundred miles east in the heart of Fillydelphia, one of the many coastal cities to see sickly green mushroom clouds that marked the end of the world. The map on her Pip-Buck displayed the small mountain Stable 10 had been built underneath along with a web of roads and highways snaking toward Fillydelphia. She zoomed out so both points on the map were visible on opposite margins. She had no reference for that scale of travel.
The portable Pip-Buck clamped to her foreleg had steadfastly outlived every pony who had owned it dating back to the first days of the Stable. Many of its components had been replaced and replaced again, but the resilient little device soldiered on. It’s green-on-black screen shimmered cheerily at her as she told it to recheck her numbers.
Her saddlebags sat on the grease-stains in her bedsheets, the bulging leather suspicious but unavoidable. Her Pip-Buck estimated it would take close to a week to make the five-hundred mile journey on hoof, drawing a line that followed the majority of a road labeled EQ HIGHWAY 51. Given the map was 220 years out of date, she doubled that estimate to two weeks. The apples and water she’d stuffed into the left bag would last maybe five days. Hopefully enough time to establish whether there was edible food or water outside the Stable.
She shifted the saddlebags off her bed and over her hips, obscuring her cutiemark and eliciting a muffled clatter from the tools and medicine she’d stowed in the other bag. Her Pip-Buck chirped as it detected her saddlebags, updating the inventory screen accordingly. She scrolled down the list until she was certain she hadn’t forgotten anything, ticking through the medical supplies that had cost her over three months worth of bits to pay for. The nurse’s assistant at the Infirmary most likely flagged her account, for all the good it would do.
Nearly satisfied with her preparations, she opened the door to the corridor and walked to the lifts. Her hoof pecked the button marking the top level of the Stable. She had one last item to check off of her list before she spoke to the overmare. The doors to the lift slid shut and the floor bucked gently as she rose closer to the surface.





 

The Atrium was the largest open space of the Stable, second only to Mechanical. Rather than a flat ceiling, the Atrium boasted high walls on either side of a common gathering space. They lifted the roof high enough to fit a second level in the same space. Ponies born before the war might have thought it looked uncannily similar to the shopping malls that had been growing in popularity at the time, save for the lack of skylights. Steel buttresses framed the walls in regular intervals like the ribs of a gigantic beast. The spaces between them were occupied by a variety of small shops, restaurants and more than a few recreational areas around which ponies and foals gathered to blow off steam and enjoy themselves. The Stable designers had wanted its first residents to have a place to come that would be familiar. A taste of home. 
A pair of security ponies wearing protective barding loitered along the railing of the second floor walkway, the door to the deputy station standing open behind them. They chatted between each other as their eyes lazily scanned the crowd knowing that the hours between shifts would be their best chance at getting away from the boredom of paperwork.
Seated high in the center of the Atrium’s far wall hung the medallion window of the overmare’s office. From time to time the overmare could be seen looking through it at the ponies milling about in the commons. 
Down on the the Atrium floor, one could only see the rich mahogany crown molding and painted ceiling. Some of the preserved maps and posters that framed the walls were visible from the shops on the second level, but nothing more. There was something to be said about sitting in the literal highest office. 
Aurora sat inside a small restaurant on the first level and poked a spoon into a steaming cup of onion soup. The Brass Bit had been a favorite of hers since her parents first took her here years ago. It was the only restaurant in the Atrium that stuck to its original pre-war menu with a stubbornness that rivaled Aurora’s own. It was also one of the few eateries that could quickly wipe out a week’s pay for any pegasus that didn’t pay attention to the bill. For the first time, Aurora didn’t have to worry about the bits.
The imitation cheese stuck to her spoon like a tent. She pressed it beneath the soup and brought a pool of flavorful broth to her mouth, indulging in the small luxury. Delicious flavors exploded in her mouth and she hummed in approval. Her wings bristled involuntarily in their imitation leather guards as she tucked into her bowl, savoring each sip.
“Good soup?”
She nodded and swallowed, looking up at the slim buckskin mare standing next to her table. A small notepad stuck halfway out of the server pony’s pocket, the scrawl of Aurora’s order visible at the top. The name tag stitched into her overalls read Caramel Delight. The name fit. 
“Great soup,” Aurora answered around a mouthful. 
Caramel wore an amused smile and surveyed the small dining room. Business would pick up during the shift change but for now things were quiet. Only two other tables so far, a family of three and a young couple, and both were just starting into their main dishes. Plenty of time to squeeze in some small talk before they needed refills. She tapped Aurora’s saddlebags with a hoof. “Do they make you carry that much all the time?”
Aurora felt a bolt of worry shoot up her spine and fought down a powerful urge to grab her bags. She shrugged as calmly as she could manage and nodded in answer, spooning out a melted strand of not-cheese while the server moved away from her bags. Her body relaxed with the warmth of her meal. After swallowing she said, “My supervisor can be a slave driver sometimes.”
Caramel snorted and pulled out a chair for herself, “Only sometimes, I hope.”
Aurora watched the attractive mare sit, her soup briefly forgotten. She tipped a head at the cozy decor of The Brass Bit, deciding a conversation would go well with a meal. “How long have you been working here?”
Caramel shrugged, an answer in itself. “Ever since I could. How about you? Where do you work?”
“Mechanical,” she said and paused, remembering her saddlebags. “Mostly. When the boss doesn’t have me running work orders.”
The server pony smiled and perked her eyebrow, “What’s wrong with running orders?”
It took longer than Aurora would have cared to admit to catch the joke. She laughed and bowed her head, her white mane nearly grazing her soup. She held her hoof out, “Aurora.”
“Caramel,” the buckskin mare answered, shaking her hoof. “So what do you do when you’re not working?”
Aurora took another sip and tick-tocked her head from side to side as she tried to think of an interesting answer. There really wasn’t one. Her work was her life and she was one of the few ponies in Mechanical who willingly threw themselves into it. Her downtime was spent sleeping, eating and answering the calls of nature. She hadn’t even bothered to decorate her compartment like most ponies did. 
“I guess I spend a lot of time thinking,” she said.
Caramel brought her elbows to the table and set her chin atop of her crossed hooves. There was an edge of playfulness in her voice bordering on flirtation. “What kind of things do you like to think about?”
Aurora opened her mouth to answer, and closed it. She felt the heat rise to her face as she looked at her bowl hoping to find an answer there. A lick of steam rose from the broth. No. Bad soup. 
From the other side of the Atrium, a yearling squealed with excitement as he galloped into an arcade. His mother trotted behind calling for him to walk not run. Aurora turned to watch along with the other ponies in the restaurant, happy for an excuse to stall for time. A dozen other ponies in the Atrium watched as well with amusement, including a familiar mountain masquerading as a stallion and the older rosepetal mare that was accompanying him toward the second level stairwell.
What was Sledge doing up here?
“Foals, right?” Caramel said.
Aurora nodded, watching her mentor follow Delphi up the steps to the second level and into the overmare’s office.
“Yeah…” she said. Maybe they were working on a solution after all. “Yeah,” she repeated, turning back to the table, “I’ve used impact drivers that were quieter.”
Caramel made a face. It was subtle, but it was there. “I mean, they’re not that bad. You can honestly say you’ve never thought about signing up for the lottery?”
Aurora flushed. The lottery was the best method Stable-Tec had devised to keep population growth under control. At the beginning of every month a lucky couple would be selected from the pool of pegasi who had registered. The winning couple was awarded a week of paid vacation during which they were allowed the opportunity to conceive a foal. For couples who couldn’t take the traditional route to parenthood, surrogate mares and in vitro fertilization were available. Couples whose names weren’t pulled for the month’s lottery wished the lucky winners the best of luck while quietly rooting against them, hoping to see the open slot added to the next month’s lottery where their chances of winning were slightly better. 
Aurora didn’t know the first thing about foals beyond they were incredibly noisy, had enough energy to short-circuit the generator and through means unknown to her were able to make every surface they came into contact with sticky. Foals terrified her. The only ones she could tolerate were the ones who she could give back to their parents.
“I haven’t given it much thought,” she said.
Caramel offered a shrug that said fair enough and checked over her shoulder at the two tables behind her. She looked back at Aurora and indicated the other customers. “Empty glasses. I should get back to it,” she sighed and stood up. “You know, my shift ends in a few hours and you seem pretty nice. Maybe we could pick this up again over dinner?”
Where were you a week ago? Aurora couldn’t decide if she was the unluckiest pegasus in Stable 10 or if spending every waking hour hiding in Mechanical was finally coming around to bite her in the ass. She was pretty sure it was the latter. As she fumbled to string together the right way to say no without sounding like an idiot, the Stable public announcement system chimed twice. The murmurs in the Atrium fell silent. An announcement from the overmare.
Both pegasi looked up in the rough direction of the nearest speaker. Aurora felt her heart beginning to hammer against her ribs. Sledge had found something. A file or a schematic that detailed an alternate solution. Why else would he have come all the way up from Mechanical with the overmare except to coach her through the technical details so she could explain them to the average layperson. Relief washed over her while a nagging voice urged her to listen first. She swallowed and raised her ears toward the ceiling.
“Good afternoon, Stable 10. I apologize for interrupting your day but I have important news and I promise to be brief.” Overmare Delphi’s voice filled the Atrium and every corner of the Stable. Until this morning, Aurora didn’t know Delphi’s mannerisms very well but she thought she heard a note of sorrow in her voice. “Due in part to personal developments, I have decided that my role as your overmare must come to an end.”
Aurora tried to match the surprise of the ponies around her. One of the ponies seated at the back of the restaurant gasped. Voices buzzed excitedly in the Atrium, threatening to drown out the overmare. Yet Delphi was well-versed in the art of public speaking and anticipated the rising chatter in the Stable. She raised her voice just slightly, commanding silence without having to ask for anything.
“For me to claim ownership of this office until I grow frail would be a disservice to every pegasus in this Stable,” she said, tapping her hoof three times against her desk for punctuation. “Stable 10 is not a monarchy, nor shall it ever be. We are a community first and foremost. We are the legacy of the pegasi who survived the end and we will continue on as we have for generations. That is why I am stepping down as overmare effective immediately. In keeping with tradition I am appointing our Head of Mechanical, Sledge, as interim overstallion until such time that Stable 10 selects a new overmare or stallion. I don’t doubt that many ponies who know Sledge may feel uncertain about his new role, but I can assure you that he has spent no small amount of time trying to convince me to change my mind. Humility makes for the best leadership, in my opinion.”
The overmare’s voice dimmed a little as she turned away from the microphone, “Sledge, I know a good heart when I see one. You have that and more. I only ask that you keep the profanity to a minimum while you hold this office.”
Aurora heard a deep chuckle from the speakers that was echoed by several ponies in the Atrium. 
“Serving this Stable has been the highlight of my life, however I believe the moment one feels ill-equipped to lead is the right moment to allow a stronger mind to step forward. I’d like everyone to join me in welcoming Sledge as Interim Overstallion of Stable 10.” Delphi tapped her hoof politely against the desk, and soon the Atrium echoed with applause as hooves thundered against the floor. Aurora tapped her own against the table, careful not to upset her bowl. When the din eventually drew down to a dull roar, Delphi returned to the microphone. “The floor is yours, Overstallion.”
A pause, a fumbling of hooves on the stem of a microphone that popped in protest. Then a sonorous voice rolled from the speakers. “Thank you, Delphi.”
He spoke with a practiced ease that told Aurora he’d probably been practicing his lines at the same time that she’d been gathering supplies. “Thank you, Stable 10. As interim overstallion, I’d like to assure everyone listening that I’ll be doing everything within my power to give this job to somebody else as soon as possible so I can get back down to Mechanical.”
Polite laughter rolled through the Atrium.
“Special elections are to be held in one year. Candidates can make themselves known in the usual way and will be expected to follow the Stable laws defining acceptable use of resources, public spaces and terminals. I am exempting myself from participation and there is nothing any of you can say to change my mind.” Sledge said.
He continued. “However, while I hold this office I do have one announcement to make that I think many of you may feel is overdue. Beginning this week, we will be scheduling rolling power holidays to allow the repair ponies in Mechanical time to upgrade the Stable’s aging electrical infrastructure. For those of you who are not already aware, the Fabrication wing experienced a blackout this morning that has had repercussions throughout the Stable. We’re long overdue for an overhaul and I trust that everybody will cooperate with Mechanical as repairs are made. Heads of each wing will receive dates for scheduled brownouts from Mechanical within the next few days.”
Aurora’s heart dropped like a stone as she understood the subtext.
They didn’t have a solution. They were stalling the inevitable.
She pressed her hooves against her eyelids. “It’s not going to work,” she muttered.
Sledge continued into a prepared speech about accountability and sharing the load before he thanked everyone and promised to do right by them. He signed off to a smattering of applause from the Atrium, many ponies less enthused about the prospect of power outages on the horizon. 
Aurora hadn’t listened closely by the end of his speech. Sledge was the new overstallion. Possibly the last overstallion given the generator would likely begin to fail well before the end of his one-year term. At least the power holidays had been a clever idea.
A muffled pop echoed from the Atrium.
The closer the generator slid toward failure, the less reliable the power would become. The power holidays would mask the generator’s brownouts with scheduled ones. They would buy Sledge more time to find a solution from within before the Stable realized the true horror of what was staring them in the face. It wasn’t a permanent solution but it would delay the panic long enough to…
A scream pierced the Atrium, followed by a second. Aurora was shaken out of her brooding and spun around to the sound of raised voices and the sight of ponies staring up toward the medallion window.
She stepped out of The Brass Bit and followed the eyes of dozens of mares, stallions and foals. They stared toward the medallion window, eyes fixated on the spray of blood that drizzled down the ornate mahogany crown molding. The two security ponies who loitered on the railing earlier were at the door to the overmare’s office, fishing for their keycards to override the lock. Many more ponies had already begun rushing the stairs with the inevitable mixture of real concern and clawing curiosity, gathering behind the two security ponies in a thickening crowd.
Aurora wriggled through the straps of her saddlebags and dashed into the crowd, her mission all but forgotten in the chaos. She needed to know if Sledge was okay. Or if he’d done something catastrophic. She hauled herself up the stairs to the second landing and pressed her way through the solidifying crowd. The door to the overmare’s office stood barely five meters ahead of her when the security ponies bypassed the lock. 
The front of the crowd surged forward a few feet before several new screams caused the wave to collapse backward, threatening to crush her and several others in the pinch. She felt her rear leg slip on someone’s tail and the sudden loss of balance coupled with the threat of being trampled by the panicking mob kicked instinct to the front of her brain. She reared and swept both wings out of their leather guards, hurling them into the air and then hard toward the floor.
Aurora lifted a scant foot into the air and she clamored onto the back of the pony ahead of her, wings flapping out of sync and striking several pegasi over their necks and backs. She panicked, her thinking brain shoving instinct away from the controls when it realized she was doing something dangerous and untested. Her wings pinned themselves back to her sides and she fell. Her full weight crashed over the heads of the ponies at the front of the gathering, throwing several into floor. A stallion pulled himself out from under her and pelted her with a litany of profanity. She picked herself up and stood at the threshold to the overmare’s office, the verbal lashing lost to her as the full scope of what had happened lay before her.
The two security ponies trying to secure the scene were overwhelmed. The older of the two spoke frantically into a black radio clipped to his shoulder, using codes that she didn’t understand and staring wide-eyed through the crowd that boiled outside the door. The younger of the two faced the corner of the office, his stomach not yet decided on whether it was finished contributing to the hardwood floor.
Aurora didn’t register them. She didn’t hear anything. Her eyes were fixed on the fan of blood and matter that had already begun tracing ugly red lines down the sky blue wallpaper and over a framed painting of Cloudsdale. She followed the stain as the lines it drew crossed and thickened on their way to the floor, pointing to the place the pink mare had come to rest. The tip of a long weapon rested against her chest, the force of the shot kicking it out of her hooves and shoving the butt into the legroom under her desk. Her final expression burned into Aurora’s mind. The physics of the gunshot had done cruel things to Overmare Delphi.
Aurora felt bile rise into her throat and she looked sharply away, willing herself back in control. When the urge passed she looked at the red stallion standing over Delphi’s body, his mouth hanging slightly open as if he’d been stopped mid-sentence and didn’t understand that the conversation was over. The front of Sledge’s blue overalls were misted pink. His face glistened with it.
She took a step forward and the older security pony moved in front of her, saying something she didn’t acknowledge. 
“Sledge, are you alright?” 
The words felt like a punchline to a bad joke as soon as she spoke them, but they brought Sledge back to reality. He blinked several times, his eyelids sticky with blood already beginning to thicken, and saw Aurora at the door. His lips shaped out silent words as he looked through her, around the office and then back to her place in the doorway as if he’d forgotten something important and was retracing his steps back to the answer.
“I tried to stop her,” Sledge spoke barely loud enough for her to hear over the crowd behind her. He looked at his hooves and squeezed his eyes shut, focusing on the words. “She said she’s sorry. She said there’s nothing we can do… because they wanted to know if we could survive it. But the experiment changed. I don’t know what that means, but…” Sledge swallowed. He looked at her as if only just recognizing her. “Pinfeathers? When did you…”
“Move back!” several voices yelled from the Atrium. Four security ponies were shoving their way into the crowd and turning to press it back from the overmare’s office. Aurora ducked past the security pony standing in her way before she could be dragged back into the Atrium with the rest. “All of you move back, now!”
Two of the security ponies marched into the office and surveyed the scene while the other two stood guard outside. One of them aimed a hoof at Sledge and Aurora and addressed the two stallions who had arrived first, “Escort the overstallion to the deputy station. Who’s she?”
Aurora froze. The older security pony she’d snuck by began to speak but Sledge, finally coming back to his senses, spoke over him. “She’s a friend.”
The security pony didn’t seem to care. He looked back at the older pony at the door. “Chaser, take them to the deputy station. Stratus, Windsong, start documenting everything in the room. And one of you close that door before somebody out there finds a camera.”
Chaser escorted them outside and led them across the short stretch of the second landing to the deputy station. Aurora caught a glimpse of Caramel Delight standing at the fringes of the crowd that had been pushed down to the Atrium commons. She followed Sledge in silence and ducked into the sparsely decorated deputy station.
The deputy station was a simple affair and notably smaller than what Aurora had expected. Six holding cells lined the right half of the room, little more than walls made from intersecting bars with simple mechanical locks welded onto rolling doors. They were rarely needed except for the odd case of drunkenness, and even then it was easier to confine intoxicated ponies to their compartment.
The left side of the small station amounted to a compact office area where security ponies could fill out reports while monitoring anyone who might be passing time in a cell. The workspace boasted four green painted metal desks butted up front-to-front in pairs. Further back, a bank of lockers stood against the wall for the deputies who needed one.
Aurora’s attention was focused on the locked door at the far end of the deputy station. A card reader sat underneath an aging metal plaque. Simple black letters spelled out the word ANTECHAMBER. Her mouth went dry. The antechamber for the Stable Door.
Chaser offered Sledge a rag from a locker, presumably his own. Sledge accepted it and rested his haunches on the floor, dabbing the rag at the red spatter on his overalls. 
Chase cleared his throat. “For your face, Overstallion.”
Sledge worked hard not to show a reaction, only nodding as he pressed the rag into his face patch by patch.
Aurora slipped her saddlebags off next to one of the cells and sat. Ten minutes ago she’d been sitting at a table tasting what might very well have been her last home-cooked meal and enjoying the flirtation of a distinctly attractive mare. Now she rested the back of her head against the cool bars of an empty drunk tank while the new overstallion of Stable 10 wiped the blood of the former out of his coat. The broken talisman was surprisingly effective at throwing her entire world on its head.
Aurora waited for the grief to hit her, but it didn’t come. She felt numb. This must be what shock felt like. Sledge was clearly in the same way.
She loosened the flap on her saddlebag and nudged it open, removing a ripe red apple with her teeth. Sledge watched her impassively as she set it down and pulled out another, transferring it to her hoof and offering it to him. He set down his rag and caught it gently between his hooves. 
Aurora looked over at Chaser who had resigned himself to standing guard near the door, watching them. “Want one?” she asked. He shook his head and found something else to look at.
They ate, punctuating the silence with the sound of crunching fruit. She tried to think of something to say that might comfort him but everything that came to mind sounded like a recycled platitude. She wasn’t good at this. It didn’t help that Sledge’s face was a placid mask of non-emotion. He just stared, eating, the stained rag at his hooves forgotten. His half-lidded eyes staring at the pile of shining apples peeking out from her open saddlebag.
Her heart started beating faster. His eyes turned to her like cold boulders. 
He knew.
Sledge finished the apple, core and all, and sighed as he stood.
“I thought I told you no,” he stated.
From the door, Chaser glanced in their direction.
Aurora rolled her half-eaten apple between her hooves, watching the bites appear and disappear from view. “I never agreed to that.”
Sledge’s tail flicked the metal desk hard enough to elicit a hollow ring and to make Aurora flinch. He strode toward her saddlebags and stared down at the small hill of apples she’d collected. He shook his head once in disgust and tore open the flap to the second bag.
Aurora’s tail wrapped slowly around her feet as Sledge glared down at the canvas roll of tools she’d taken from Mechanical, shifting it aside to see a second toolbox hiding underneath. His shock flared into anger.
“You stole from me?” he asked incredulously. The raw note of betrayal made the world shrink around her.
“I might need them,” she said quietly.
“You might need them,” Sledge muttered, his hoof shoving the tool roll away and lifting the lid of the toolbox. Metal jangled harshly as he stirred through it, biting off the list of the first items he saw, “You might need a pipe wrench. A socket set. Chisels? How much epoxy do you think it takes to survive the apocalypse, Pinfeathers? Do you think there’s enough here to keep the radiation from melting your skin off or would you like to go down and take a few more?”
She turned the apple as she said, “Nobody knows what’s out there.”
Sledge’s leg whipped out of her saddlebag and slapped the apple out of her hooves. Her canvas roll flew out of the bag and struck the cell bars in the same motion, spilling an assortment of steel tools across the floor. The security pony at the door spoke to his radio, keeping well away from the confrontation.
His voice boomed in her ears. “That includes you, Aurora! You don’t know what’s out there! You don’t know what you’ll expose the Stable to by leaving!”
Aurora got to her hooves and jabbed one in Sledge’s chest. “Then tell me how you fix this, Sledge! Tell me your plan is more than just power holidays and horseshit!”
Sledge said nothing.
“I am one pony,” she pressed. “There are hundreds here. Hundreds of perfectly capable ponies that can think of a better solution, if there is one. But it doesn’t make sense to gamble everything on an idea we don’t have yet. If there’s a chance that I can find another talisman out there, I have to try.”
“And what if you die out there, Aurora? What do you think that will do to your fa-”
She cracked him across the muzzle with her hoof. Tears stung the corners of her eyes. “Don’t.”
He stared at her, shamefaced.
The station door slid open and Stratus entered, clearly irritated to be pulled away from the overmare’s office. Chaser started to speak to him but Sledge caught Stratus with an expression that made it very clear he wasn’t needed. Stratus shot Chaser a withering glare and strode back through the door.
Sledge fixed Aurora with menace in his eyes. “The answer is no.”
“That’s not your…” she cut herself off, Sledge’s stony expression daring her to tell him what his job was now. “You know I’m right,” she finished.
Sledge craned his head up toward the ceiling, listening to the dull crackle in his neck. He closed his eyes and turned away from Aurora, his voice resigned. “I need you to tell me you’ll drop this.”
Aurora narrowed her eyes at him. “Not until you suggest something better.”
He didn’t move. For several seconds neither of them spoke. Neither willing to give ground. A minute passed. Then another.
When Sledge finally spoke, he addressed Chaser. “Deputy, I’d like to place charges of theft against Aurora Pinfeathers. Please show her to a cell.”
The blood drained from her face. “What?”
“You stole equipment from Mechanical,” he said flatly. “And you need time to get your head straight.”
Chaser was already standing at the cell nearest the Atrium doorway, the deputy’s face unreadable as he tugged a ring of keys from his breast pocket with his teeth. The old lock clacked and he slid the door open, giving her the opportunity to comply peacefully.
She stared incredulously at Sledge, waiting for him to give her another option. To change his mind. He turned slightly to watch her from the corner of his eye but said nothing.
Her hoof bumped a screwdriver Sledge had knocked out her saddlebags. She kicked it toward him, clattering against his rear leg as she walked toward the open cell. “Control what you can control, right?” 
“That isn’t what this is,” he said flatly, but the words had cut him. He averted his eyes and walked toward the station door.
Aurora stepped into the cell and turned to watch him go. The heavy bars rolled inches from her muzzle but she didn’t take her eyes off Sledge. The cell door clanged shut like a broken bell. The station door slid closed behind Sledge with a whisper.
Chaser turned the lock and put the keys back in his uniform. With nothing left to do and seeing that she wasn’t intent to move from where she stood, he began picking up the tools Sledge had scattered and dropped them one by one into her saddlebags. She watched him lug them away from the cells and set them next to his desk before pulling out the chair to sit and boot up his terminal.
Aurora lay down on the hard concrete floor and watched Chaser begin filling out a report with her name on the header. Her muzzle crinkled and she looked away, doing the only thing she could do.
She waited. 





 

Security ponies filtered in and out of the deputy station, the proximity to the overmare’s office turning the small room into a hub of evening activity. Some wore emotion on their sleeves, fear and adrenaline coloring their chattering gossip like a toy wound too tightly. Others simply packed it all away and quietly did their jobs with robotic efficiency. None of them spoke to Aurora, but a few had nodded to her with something like sympathy while the rest ignored her outright. A pony stole a quick glance at her bare hip as he passed by, the overmare’s bloodstained rifle under his wing. He leaned the rifle against the lockers and told the pegasi at the desks to get it cataloged, none of whom looked up from their heaps of paperwork. Aurora began to doze.
A pegasus brought up coffee from one of the Atrium eateries. The scent alone pulled Aurora from her sleep, but only briefly. When she opened her eyes again the station was empty save for a security pony she didn’t recognize who silently pecked at the keyboard of his terminal. The lavender mare didn’t acknowledge her when she stood and stretched, her open wings bristling the bars of the cell. Aurora looked at the clock hanging over the two pairs of desks. Three fifty-five in the morning. In five minutes the timer to her compartment would begin drawing the lights on. She tucked her wings away and walked a few circles around her cell to get her blood flowing. 
The lavender mare’s ear spun toward the ticking of hooves on concrete. Her typing slowed, then stuttered as the distraction burrowed into her sleep-deprived brain. Finally she stopped typing altogether and pushed away from the desk, her ears pinned back as she went to the Atrium door.
“I’m going down for coffee. I’ll bring you a cup and some clothes if you get that out of your system by the time I’m back,” the mare said, her eyes carefully averted as she walked by. She didn’t wait for an answer as the door slipped open and she stepped outside, locking it behind her.
Aurora hadn’t been listening. She’d stopped in the middle of her circuit, her eyes on the short L-shaped nub of a hex wrench laying in the shadow of the cell bench. It was one of the tools that Sledge had inadvertently scattered from her saddlebag. She looked at the cell door behind her. At the ancient mechanical lock.
Aurora launched herself onto the hook of steel and clattered to the door. She reached through the bars, shoved the long end of the hex key into the keyhole and wriggled it around until she found leverage. She brought her wing to her mouth, bit down on a long primary feather and yanked hard. The pain was powerful and brief. A spot of blood stained the end of the hollow shaft. She used her free hoof to negotiate it into the lock and aggressively raked the pins, feeling the feather travel more smoothly with each pass. The resistance from the hex wrench vanished with a click and the lock turned.
She slid through the door, her heart hammering her chest. How long did it take to get coffee? Five, ten minutes? Not enough time. She ran to where Chaser had set her saddlebags next to the desks and dug through the disorganized contents in a frenzy. She retrieved a pry bar and a stubby set of cable cutters and hurried to the Atrium door. 
The ID scanner was a part of a larger removable panel secured into a fitted recess in the door frame. She didn’t have time to make the work pretty. She slammed the pry bar under the panel, wriggled a corner of metal away until the tool had enough grip to strip the threads of the screw holding the panel in place. She repeated the step for two more until the panel swung away on the remaining screw, scarred and misshapen. Aurora pushed aside the rat’s nest of dusty cables and wires until she saw what she was looking for. The fat black hydraulic line that did the physical work of lifting the door. She set the blades of the cable cutters around the inch-thick line and backed herself into the recess of the Atrium door, the cutter handle snugged against the wall of the wiring compartment. She hooked the pry bar around the far handle of the cutters, ensuring that no part of her legs were exposed to the air in front of the compartment, and yanked the cutter handles together.
The hose went off like a gunshot. Aurora stumbled backward while the cutters spun away down the row of cells. The air was immediately thick with pungent hydraulic fluid that coated the walls and pooled out of the wiring compartment. Her mind began drawing comparisons between the overmare’s office but she shoved them away. Aurora got to her hooves and carefully avoided the cone of fluid that had slicked the floor. She retrieved the cable cutters and dropped them into her saddlebags along with the pry bar.
Once she’d secured the flaps, she wriggled her saddlebags over her hips and rushed to the door marked ANTECHAMBER. She examined the card reader. Brute-forcing her way through was too risky. One broken lead on a circuit board and the door wouldn’t open for anybody. She’d need a card.
She trotted to the cluster of desks and began searching. As she slammed an empty metal drawer shut, a chirp emitted from the Atrium door and a puff of air and brackish fluid sputtered from the severed hydraulic hose. A muffled voice said something on the other side and the door chirped again without opening. Aurora ignored the security mare’s hastening attempts to open the door as she whipped open drawers filled with blank forms, nubs of pencils, half-eaten oat bars and unrecorded holotapes.
The security mare heard the racket through the door and pounded a hoof against it. Aurora closed the last drawer and turned to the row of lockers. She yanked each door open and searched the security ponies’ belongings, scattering them to the floor in heaps. In the last locker, the one Chaser had retrieved a rag from earlier, she spotted a laminated rectangle with his name printed at the top sticking out from the pocket of a clean set of overalls.
She snatched out the badge and hesitated, her eyes stopping on the barrel of a long rifle leaned up against the side of the locker wall. Firearms were restricted in the Stable - carried only by security ponies and, apparently, the overmare. Her eyes traced the polished walnut stock, clearly cared dearly by all of its owners. The only wood that existed in the Stable had been brought in before the door sealed shut, and most of it had been broken or sanded into worthlessness over the centuries. The bolt-action rifle had belonged to one of the first residents, and it was anyone’s guess to how old it had been when it arrived. A thick leather strap dangled from a brass mount in the forestock and slung down to its twin under the rifle butt. The weapon was a beautifully maintained heirloom of simple design. 
The only guns Aurora had experience with fired nails. This was a weapon that, despite the beautiful craftsmanship, dealt in death. The rifle’s muzzle was still marred with the browning spatter of its most recent use. Her heart clutched at the sight of Delphi’s blood. She hadn’t known the overmare closely. Yesterday morning had been the first time Aurora had gotten to speak with her, and even that had been brief. She didn’t pretend to understand Delphi’s mind. Looking at the evidence left behind from the overmare’s last living act, she didn’t think she ever could.
Her body would be planted in the gardens. The rifle, along with the rest of her possessions, would ultimately be fed into the recyclers to be broken into their constituent parts and turned into something new that could benefit the Stable. In a way, it was a form of mourning. To Aurora, it felt like forgetting.
She picked up the rifle and slung the strap over her neck. Her Pip-Buck chirped. The glowing screen displayed her updated inventory with a listing for the antique firearm: Desperate Times.
Aurora frowned at the name. She hadn’t entered it. Was it registered somewhere?
The pounding of hooves on the Atrium door had graduated to the whine of tools. The security mare had found help. Aurora needed to hurry. She swiped Chaser’s ID through the reader and the antechamber door chirped twice, sliding above her.
She stepped into a short hallway closed off by a second door. Three tubular arches fitted with spray nozzles framed the hall. She recognized the decontamination showers and flinched in preparation to be doused. A sensor pinged softly and the archways remained silent. The door ahead of her slid open and she stepped through.
Her eyes grew large at the sight of the antechamber.
It was like she’d walked into the belly of a mechanical monster. With the brightly lit rooms and corridors of the Stable behind her, she stared into the dim half-light of the chamber at the edge of her world. The smooth cement had been replaced with diamond-textured steel grating beneath which lurked an immense capillary system of pipes, cables and vents. The smooth metal panels that she grown to expect along the walls and ceiling were gone, revealing the steel girders that rose from the floor and stretched across the ceiling in symmetrical lines. Bulbs in wire cages set between the wide spaced girders were the only sources of light. They cast more shadows than they scared off. 
At the center of the far wall stood the great circular blast door of Stable 10. Nine massive cogs studded the circumference of the the gear-shaped door, a design that had inspired safety in the minds of millions of ponies centuries before. Huge titanium rods built into the gear’s frame, each easily the width of her torso, speared the great blast door and pinned it into place. A complex series of mechanisms build into the face of the door gripped notches in the pins, lending it the stability required to withstand the titanic stresses of a balefire strike.
A grooved hole had been machined deep into the center of the door. It suggested some kind of massive key. She looked up and spotted it. It looked like the mother of all power drills suspended from a mechanical arm, tucked partially into the antechamber ceiling. The parallel grooves of the drill bit coupled perfectly with the grooves carved into the surface of the blast door. She’d found her key.
A portion of the floor sank toward the bottom of the immense gear, the top of the ramp was guarded by an empty chest-height kiosk that had acted as a checkpoint for the first residents. Aurora eyed a console built into the kiosk. Her hooves echoed off the metal grating as she approached it.
The flat control board of the console was painted industrial yellow. Blemishes of rust had begun to peel the paint way around the edges but the controls were intact. A cluster of control knobs rested at the bottom of the board while a large red button dominated the center of the console, protected by a locked plastic case. An orange light built into the button sat dark, waiting. 
She looked at a familiar socket recessed into the left side. Faded black letters scrawled the words PIP-BUCK REMOTE LINK. Aurora turned her Pip-Buck over and tugged the short cable from its housing. 
She paused and looked up, scanning the corners of the chamber ceiling until she saw the small black dome of a camera. Chances were slim that anyone was watching the live feed, but she was willing to gamble that wouldn’t be true for long.
“I don’t want to go,” she said to the camera. “But if I don’t somebody else might and by then it could be too late. Sledge, if you’re seeing this, I forgive you. If there’s a way to fix this you’ll find it. I hope you beat me to it. And Dad… I love you.”
Aurora seated her Pip-Buck cable into the console. The screen flickered, scrolling through lines of updates for which her vision was too watery to read. She squeezed her eyes shut, clearing the film of tears, and focused on the task before her.
The lines stuttered by more slowly, ending with a brief notification that her Mechanical credentials had been accepted. The screen vanished and reappeared, displaying a short list of maintenance options. At the bottom of the list read two words: TEST CYCLE.
Desperate Times swayed from its leather strap. Now or never.
She tapped the option and the chamber awoke.
Diagnostic data filled her Pip-Buck so quickly that she had to look away. Klaxons reverberated against the walls while orange lights bloomed and rotated on either side of the door, turning the antechamber into a disorienting carnival of moving shadows and noise. 
The massive armature in the center of the chamber descended from the ceiling and slid on heavily greased rails toward the gear-shaped blast door. It slowed to allow the coupler to align itself with the grooves in the door. Aurora flattened her ears as the tip mated the socket, steel shrieking against steel. A deep boom shook the floor when the coupler made final contact. Then the massive key began to spin.
For a split second she imagined the tip of the coupler as a gigantic drill bit that was trying to bore straight through to the other side of the door. It might have scared her if she wasn’t already terrified. The mechanisms that shackled the titanium pins in place released and the pins began to back out of the door. The coupler wound down as the pins crossed the threshold that separated the blast door from the skin of the Stable.
The chamber thundered as the entire structure of the blast door jerked as if something on the other side had struck it. The armature began to back away by inches and, incredibly, the entire door heaved away from the walls with it. Aurora watched as foot after foot of shining steel slid out of the wall. Suddenly the other side of the great gear slid into view and a widening ring of blackness replaced the space behind it.
It took her several seconds to understand what she was looking at. As the armature rolled the blast door to the left along a cogged track in the floor, Aurora stared into the void and felt electric fear snake up her spine. The pitch black hole stared back into her home like the pupil of a colossal predator. 
Stable 10 stood open for the first time in 220 years.