She fell to the ground on her back, yelping as the door suddenly bulged outward with a sharp bang, the monster on the other end screaming furiously for its lost prey. Before long, it gave up, and she heard it run away, potentially searching for another way around. Chances were it already knew another way around, which encouraged Cotton to get back onto her hooves.

As it turned out, she was in more danger than she first considered because apparently those things could revive themselves. Cotton wasn’t sure how much longer she could deal with this. She just wanted to see her friend again.

Cotton focused on her task and examined her new environment. She was in another waiting room that was long but short in width, a hall on the left and right and a door at the far end that’s white coating had faded. The floors were dusty and the air was dry, moss and dead plants smothering the walls, and apparatuses and chairs lined the perimeter of the room.

“How damn big is this place?” Cotton said to herself, going forward to try the door. The sounds of far-off screeches echoing through the outside halls kept Cotton alert, her own hoofsteps startling her until she reached the door.

This door had a knob, and on the wall next to it, a keypad was attached, a small glowing red LED above the rows of numbers below it. She figured that the door would be locked, but tried opening it anyway. Her prediction was correct.

Her eyes went back to they keypad. Typing in a random set of four numbers, the red LED flashed a few times along with a quiet beeping noise. She put her hoof on the doorknob and tried it again. She would have shocked herself if that had worked.

Cotton turned, talking to herself. “Okay, so I have to find a four digit code somewhere in this place. They should have had it written down, right?”

Her eyes darted between the two halls, judging which one to go down first, before stopping on the one to her right. “Might as well…” she said, before walking toward the hall and following it. Having a voice of guidance, although being her own provided a sense of comfort, however it was no match against the heavy fear of the lurking danger all around her.

The hall opened up into an emergency room, a row of stretcher carts between dull green curtains that were either torn or drooping. At the far end of the room was a desk with telephones and documents, and Cotton approached it, wondering if the code had been written on a paper or letter somewhere. Stepping behind the desk, she shifted through the papers and folders, knocking pens and pencils in the process which were of no use to her. After that, she opened the drawers, merely finding old medical records that she doubted somepony wrote an important door code on.

After looking through the rest of what the desk had to offer, she sighed at the waste of time and turned to leave the room. Before leaving though, her eyes went to the row of stretcher carts, and she realized that midway down the row, the blanket on one of the carts was raised, a shape from underneath pushing the sheets outward.

She began walking through the room, passing by carts with rolled up blankets or torn sheets, some carts just plain out destroyed and collapsed to the ground. Reaching the cart she had spotted, she set a hoof on the raised blanket and pulled it back. She recoiled suddenly.

Underneath the covers was just a skull, but it startled her even so. Cotton exhaled at her own stupidity, before seeing that on the mattress next to the skull was a matchbook. It was open wide, allowing her to see the three matches inside. That was not much for a source of light, but even so, that was still light, and so she took the matchbook in her teeth. She would only use them when she really needed them.

She turned and left the room, heading toward the hall just across from the emergency room, before a sound above her stopped her in her tracks. From within the ceiling, the muffled groans and cries of one of the creatures rang out as well as the knocking and thumping of metal. Cotton stayed silent until the sound became inaudible, and continued forth toward the hallway in front of her. She didn’t know what the creature was doing, but she was pretty sure it knew where she was, and was already on its way to tracking her location.

Her steps sped to a trot as she entered the second hallway and went through the open door at the end. Inside this room was an operating table at the center along with some sort of machine above it, and counters and dirty sinks along the walls. She took a quick gander at the counter tops and saw nothing that would help her, and moved on toward the opening on the far wall into another room.

Large, iron generators filled the room with wires and cables that connected certain devices to others. Pipes ran along the ceiling like circuits, intertwining with each other and going down into the floor or into the wall. On several of the generators was a yellow caution sign, but with the amount of time these had been sitting here, Cotton was pretty sure she could ignore them.

She stepped past a few of the generators, and came across one with a note that had been taped to a pipe that ran along the side of it. Cotton went toward it quickly and read what was written on it.

These generators power the west section of the lower floor. If you are to redirect electricity to the east section, make sure it’s for a good reason. This will also activate the keypad door in the waiting room outside, so in case you’re stuck or there’s some sort of emergency, use the code below to get by.

Cotton galloped out of the generator room and out the door in the operating room, turning into the waiting room and stopping in front of the locked door with the keypad. She then typed the code she had seen on the paper, and once she did, the keypad beeped. The red LED flickered briefly before turning green, and the door emitted a satisfying click.

Trying the door knob again, it turned cleanly without any complications. She pushed it open, noticing that the door was heavy, and had to push hard before the door would open all the way. She stepped into the room in front of her.

The door closed behind her, and she found afterward that the keypad in this room was broken, and a tug on the doorknob proved it to be locked, which concluded that she wouldn’t be going back that way. Not that she wanted to.

The room she was in now was large and round, with multiple wooden boxes that reached up to her neck. Rusty pipes ran along the ceiling with valves attached to some, while the ceiling itself was infested with cracks and holes. It looked as though the ceiling would cave inward at any moment and dirt would start rushing into the room.

The pipes on the ceiling met up at the center and trailed toward the right into a corridor, which Cotton was inclined to go toward instead of waiting around in a room that looked as though it was about to fall apart.

As she approached the hallway, she heard something resonating from inside the corridor. It sounded like… scraping… against some sort of surface—like a rock being dragged against a dirt floor. Cotton stopped, her hooves planted in place. As the scratching continued, the hair on the back of her neck rose.

Slowly and hesitantly, she took a step toward the hallway. The forefront thought on her mind was that one of those things was waiting for her in there. Her other thoughts reassured her by suggesting that it was merely some animal or insect crawling around, but deep down she was almost certain that that assumption couldn’t be farther from the truth.

But the hallway in front of her was the only way she could go, so Cotton forced her legs to carry her forward against their objections. She accelerated to a snail’s pace, and couldn’t dare herself to go any faster, which she was fairly comfortable with for the time being.

The sound disappeared. Cotton slowed, stressing over what that could mean—whether whatever was in the corridor was gone, or if she was being led into a false sense of security. Regardless of which, she wasn’t entirely eager on entering.

A loud crash came from within the hall, followed by pieces of wood being expelled out into the round room. The shade on the walls in the hall suddenly became a bright purple, and a long stretch of the same light lapped across the floor in front of her.

Cotton began reversing, her ears folding and heart beating. The all too familiar screech that came after was all she needed to know that one of the creatures had found her again.

She spun her head, scanning every corner of the room searching for somewhere—anywhere to hide, but she quickly realized that her options were very limited. The room only had a few boxes, and some shelves which would have been a good place to hide had she only had more time.

Without a second thought, she crouched behind the box next to her. Anything that would give her even the slightest chance of survival was better than staying where the creature would see her instantly.

Luckily, she had done so just in time, as she spotted one of the creature’s legs peek out from within the hall.

Cotton bowed her head to make sure she was completely hidden behind the box. She heard the creature’s groans, and the crying of its joints like an old and broken machine. A round spot of light shot across the wall from left to right as she heard the thing make its way toward the center of the room.

Its footsteps paused for a moment. When she saw the round light on the wall shoot toward the other end of the room, Cotton leaned her head, daring a look at the creature. Its head faced the shelves and boxes at the other end of the room, but what she noticed to be rather peculiar was the way its ears were constantly moving, folding and opening in a repeated cycle.

The creature’s head jerked slightly, and Cotton observed something else. A deep red gash spanned across both of its eyes, which were reduced to small piles of mush inside their sockets.

Cotton shifted back behind the box before the creature could spot her. It was the same creature that she had managed to attack. She then considered the condition of its eyes, and the movement of its ears. Did that mean it couldn’t see? Cotton had no interest in testing that hypothesis, but she strongly believed that to be the case.

She now needed to think of a plan, and fast. Her only way out of the room was the corridor the creature had come from, and if it couldn’t see, then as long as she didn’t make a sound, she could wait for it to leave with less of a risk of being found.

The thing began walking again. It entered Cotton’s peripheral, and she watched as it bumped into one of the boxes. It growled curiously, its head angling as it lifted a foreleg and touched it. It growled again, angrily this time, and in a sudden unexpected movement, it launched the box at the wall. The box exploded into wooden planks and dust, which were then deflected in Cotton’s direction. Her skin stung from the piercing of sharp nails and rugged ends of planks, and Cotton clenched her teeth to keep any sounds from leaving her throat.

The creature began pawing around the area where the box had once been. Cotton breathed an inward sigh of relief, but then realized that the stinging in her foreleg was still present. She looked downward, and saw that one of the nails had stuck itself in her skin, a thin trail of crimson below it discoloring her fur. She thought about taking it out but had second thoughts when she considered the pain and the risk of her making noise.

Her heart jumped to her throat as she raised her head. The creature was facing her direction. Cotton remained completely still, refusing to even breathe as it stared her down. And then it began to move, approaching her position.

Cotton’s mind raced, attempting to devise any sort of solution, but the knowledge that she would be found if she didn’t do anything made her thought process a jumbled mess. Her eyes darted in their sockets, searching for anything that would help her, before her eyes stopped on the planks next to her. An idea sprang to mind.

As the light around her grew brighter, she placed both of her hooves on one of the wooden planks as slowly as possible. Her mind was pressuring her to go faster, but she fought the urge. Without a sound, she had managed to get the piece of wood in her grip. She then lifted it carefully off the ground, making sure that it didn’t cause the other planks on the ground to budge, and prepared to throw it.

Once she stared upward, a blinding purple light glared back. The creature was directly in front of her, and it took every ounce of her being not to scream in terror. She could literally feel its deathly cold breath on her face as its pulped eyes cast a menacing gaze squarely at her.

The creature began circling around the box, and Cotton wasted no time in tossing the plank in her hooves toward the hall. The moment it touched the floor, the monster’s head spun with a shriek, before its whole body turned and walked towards where the sound had been.

Cotton was a little worried by the fact that the plank hadn’t quite made it to the hall, but if she was lucky, the creature would fall for the distraction and leave the room. As she waited and watched, alleviation filled her nerves at the sight of the creature staring into the hall and beginning to exit the room.

The creature’s foot collided with the plank Cotton had thrown. It barked, grumbling deeply before lifting its front leg and grabbing the piece of wood. Its head then began tilting as though it were analyzing it. If Cotton were to vocalize her thoughts, she could be screaming for the creature to keep going and not stop where it was.

The thing then dropped the plank, and after it hit the ground the creature let out a growl that quickly graduated to a roar before it turned around and stormed back into the room. Cotton ducked back behind the box, angrily mouthing a curse at her failed plan. She had to think of something else.

She could now confirm that the creature was blind, and was using its hearing to navigate, which led her to take into account her other option: sneaking past the creature and out of the room. She knew that idea was practically suicide, but after judging her situation, she realized that may have been her only option.

The problem was that if she were too loud with her steps, she was dead for sure. There were too many risks for her to go right away. She needed to create some sort of diversion so she could sneak without being heard.

That’s when she looked up at the pipes on the ceiling. Gas pipes. As old as they were, there might have been a chance that there was still flammable gas inside.

While the creature paced across the room in search for her, Cotton, with the same amount of delicacy, picked up another wooden plank from the ground. She was doubtful that this would work, but she had to try at least.

Arching her arm back, she hurled the plank toward one of the pipes at the center of the room. The reaction from the creature was immediate. With a furious howl, it jumped up and swung its disfigured leg at the system of pipes on the ceiling, one of the pipes breaking clean off with the screeching sound of tearing metal. It smashed against the ground, bending heavily from the powerful impact before going still.

Meanwhile, Cotton had taken that opportunity to make a beeline for the hall, but as soon as the sound of the pipe was gone, she paused. Though, when she turned her head in the direction of the creature, she saw that its interest was focused above it, where a quiet, but distinct hissing sound could be heard coming from the destroyed assemblage of pipes on the ceiling.

Her plan had worked. Now, all she needed to do was leave the room and light up one of the matches to cause a fire that would hopefully knock the creature out so Cotton would have enough time to put distance between it and her.

Cotton gradually made her way toward the hall, trying to make as little noise as possible while also checking behind her after random intervals. Finally, she entered the hallway, and Cotton quickened her pace, the broken door at the end of the hall slowly but surely getting closer.

Without looking back, Cotton started running toward the destroyed door, and galloped over the threshold. Rocketing through the room she had entered, she aimed for the closed door directly in front of her.

She heard the creature gaining on her, and slammed her hooves against the handle of the door, sending it flying open, which ended up revealing the pony on the other side.

“Stand back!” Cotton shouted at Spectrum, who recoiled with a shocked expression. Then, in a rapid succession of actions, she spat out the matchbook in her mouth, catching it in her hoof, tearing out one of the matches with her teeth before swiping it against the striker on the front of the matchbook and tossing the ignited match forward.

She had just enough time to see a blazing fire engulf the creature on the other side before she shut the door. The sides of the door were suddenly lit up by a bright orange color, and an agonized cry came from the other side of the door, before the light dimmed and all was silent.

Cotton’s chest puffed out and sunk, her eyes locked on the door while Spectrum stood to the side, looking at her friend with concern and shock, breathing at a similar rate.

“C-Cotton…” she stuttered out, approaching her friend. “Are… are you okay?”

The cyan filly’s ear twitched upon hearing Spectrum’s voice, and she turned her head, allowing Spectrum to see the full extent of her condition.

Cotton’s mane was drenched and dripping sweat. Tears stained the fur below her eyes, and thin tracks of blood streaked under splinters, scrapes decorating the skin of her legs. She looked like she had been to Tartarus and back. No words came to Spectrum’s tongue. She couldn’t think of anything to say.

Silence surrounded the two fillies standing in shock at the sight of each other and of what they had witnessed prior to reuniting. With an expression that appeared as though she were trying to determine whether Spectrum was actually there or not, Cotton began approaching the pegasus filly with short steps. Spectrum watched as her friend came closer until the space between them was tiny, and then the two fillies threw their forelegs around each other, embracing tightly.

“Thank Celestia you’re okay!” Cotton said, hugging the life out of Spectrum before letting her go. Spectrum’s mask of bravery had completely fallen, and faced with Cotton was an expression that read pure fear.

“What the hell are those things…?” Spectrum stuttered out, words laced with horror.

“I don’t know,” Cotton said between exhausted gasps. “But we have to get out of her.”

“No shit, but how?! Our way out of this place is sealed shut, we’re trapped here.”

“T-there has to be another way out of here somewhere, like an emergency exit or something, right?”

Spectrum looked down, shaking her head. “Maybe, but I must have gone through over a hundred corridors to get here, the chances of us finding another exit in a place this huge are slim to none!”

“We have to try, otherwise we’re dead meat. If we avoid those things long enough, we’ll find a way out. We have to.”

Spectrum turned her front in the other direction and paced. “These things have been down here for thirty years. The princesses have been keeping something this dangerous secret from everypony and just left it here!”

Cotton watched with her ears folded as her friend ranted, consumed by a mixture of anger and panic as she let out everything built up inside her. Spectrum then fell silent, breathing shakily with her head pointed at the ground. After a long minute, she looked back up into Cotton’s eyes. “I really thought you were dead. I was worried sick about you, and I don’t know what I would have done if you had been killed.”

“I… I thought you were dead, too,” Cotton admitted. “But we’re together again, and it’s gonna stay that way. We’ll get out of here. I’m sure of it.”

Spectrum sighed. “I hope you’re right about that. I don’t want to lose—”

A long thin arm suddenly emerged from the center of the door beside them. Cotton and Spectrum jumped in fear as the arm retracted, the clawed hand at the end digging into the metallic surface of the door, before it was ripped entirely off of its hinges. The creature on the other side flung the door behind it, and turned to the pair of scared fillies. Its skin glowed like magma, flames crawling along its limbs and face and sparks rising from its body like burning firewood.

They spun around completely before running as fast as they could, ignoring the ferocious cry of rage from the monstrosity chasing them. Their legs pounded at the ground, driving them to high speeds as they remained on the lookout for any way to escape their incoming demise.

Another door rose from the darkness up ahead, and when the two reached it, they flung it open before stepping into the room and shutting it behind them.

Spectrum positioned herself against the door as a screech echoed from the other side. “Quick! Find something to block the door with!” The door vibrated as the sound of damaged wood could be heard.

Cotton, under pressure, looked everywhere for something she could put in front of the door. Her eyes stopped on one of the shelves, before she realized that its condition was too poor. She would need something to slow it down so they would have time to escape. Her eyes skimmed across a desk and a wooden box before landing on a wide metal cabinet next to the door.

Jumping behind the cabinet, she put her front hooves on it and pushed. It didn’t budge at first, so she stepped forward and put her shoulder against it. It took all of her efforts to get it to even budge.

“Hurry!” Spectrum cried out, yelping once a set of claws poked through the door, narrowly missing her head.

“I… can’t… move this thing,” Cotton responded, her face red as she gave all she had into moving the cabinet. Spectrum saw her struggle and left the door’s side, joining Cotton and began pushing it as well. The doubled effort allowed the cabinet to accelerate in speed.

Once the cabinet sat in front of the door, the two immediately began looking for a way out.

“It’s a fucking dead end!” Spectrum screamed, face pale at the realization that the room had no other doors out of the room.

Cotton was not so fast to declare the same thing. She pointed a hoof forward at a ventilation hatch on the wall. “There!”

Spectrum looked where Cotton pointed, and bolted toward the hatch, but it was out of her reach. She was too small. “It’s too high up!”

“Help me move this!” Cotton ordered after running toward the shelf beside the vent and placing her hooves against it. Spectrum complied, grabbing the other side and pulling while Cotton pushed.

Once the shelf was in line with the hatch, Cotton began climbing toward the top until she was level with the hatch. Then, she turned around so she faced the opposite direction—allowing her to see that the door had been weakened substantially—before lifting herself onto her forelegs and bucking her hind legs toward the hatch. A bang, and the hatch sunk inward. Another buck. The screws bent out of place. A final buck, and the hatch finally gave, bending inward like crumpled paper and falling to the ground.

A loud crash caused Cotton to turn her head back. A cloud of dust expanded from behind the metal cabinet, where the door was now reduced to demolished bits and pieces on the floor.

Cotton leaped from the shelf and into the ventilation shaft, but in doing so, the push from the jump caused the shelf to lean off balance. It tilted over Spectrum’s head, and she jumped out of the way before the shelf hit the floor.

Rotating in the tight space of the ventilation shaft, dread washed over Cotton. Spectrum was stuck in the room, and the creature had easily knocked the metal cabinet across the room, its target locked on the pegasus. She had to do something.

“Grab my hoof!” Cotton said, hanging a foreleg over the edge of the ventilation shaft. Spectrum faced Cotton, and then jumped, reaching her hoof toward Cotton’s as the creature behind her immediately began charging forward to claim its victim.

Cotton successfully grabbed Spectrum’s hoof, and grunted as she lifted her weight up into the ventilation shaft. Adrenaline aided her in huge amounts, and Spectrum was able to grab onto the edge and pull herself up while Cotton pulled.

The creature in the room surged forward, reaching out with a clawed hoof, and in the next second, Spectrum cried out in pain. In a panicked movement, Cotton yanked Spectrum’s whole body inside of the ventilation shaft.

A pair of claws dug into the sides of the ventilation shaft as the creature screamed in rage, reaching inside and attempting to grab one of the two fillies. Its attempts were in vain however, as it thankfully could not fit inside. With one last howl, it galloped out of the room and disappeared into the hallway.

“Spectrum, we gotta…” Cotton trailed off when she saw the raw expression of agony on Spectrum’s face, tears leaking from her eyes as she whimpered aloud. It scared Cotton more than what had scared her thus far. “Spectrum…?”

Cotton did as she was told, crawling through the claustrophobic passage, a layer of dust accumulating on her fur. Spectrum meanwhile dragged her body across the metal surface with her forelegs and a hind leg while her other hind leg remained limp. Cotton became aware of this, fretting endlessly over what was wrong with Spectrum. With every move the pegasus made, sudden grunts slipped from her lips, which in turn caused Cotton to wince. She didn’t know what had happened, but just by her behavior, she could discern it was bad. Really bad.

The two fillies continued to maneuver through the dry space until they reached the end, where another hatch blocked their path forward. Cotton curled her legs so she could position her hind legs toward the hatch, and bucked forward. It popped off easily, falling to the ground inside the room, and Cotton inched herself forward so her legs dangled from the edge of the ventilation shaft, before dropping inside the room.

Spectrum pulled herself forward, and rolled so her hind legs went first. Her movements were awkward as she moved to a sitting position, before letting herself fall from the vent. However, instead of landing similarly to how Cotton did, once her hooves touched the ground, she let out another cry of pain, collapsing to the ground with heavy, ragged gasps.

Cotton was at Spectrum’s side in an instant. “Spectrum, what’s wrong?!” It wasn’t until her eyes moved slightly to the left that all color left her face, her breath stopping cold.

On Spectrum’s right hind leg, slash marks sliced deep into her skin, blood spurting out of the wounds and pooling on the ground below.

The temperature of the room changed, and all other concerns faded into black. Cotton’s hooves began to shake, watching the stream of blood flowing from her leg. There was so much of it... too much…

“…no no no no no…” She didn’t know what to do. Cuts and scrapes, she was familiar with, but this… the blood wouldn’t stop coming. Cotton felt sick, like she was about to pass out, and Spectrum’s pained breaths resonating in the background weren’t of any help.

Cotton ran through what she already knew. With any wound, to stop the bleeding, pressure needed to be applied. Her trembling hooves went forward and pressed down on the gaping wounds. Spectrum’s body convulsed as a cry tore from her throat, and Cotton quickly removed her now bloody hooves.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she apologized hysterically, guilt tearing through her heart.

“I know, I’m sorry...” Cotton was on the verge of breaking down. The blood kept coming, and with every passing second, the stress she felt became more intense. Her hooves alone weren’t enough to stop the bleeding. She needed something else, or else her friend would bleed out in front of her.

Cotton looked up. At the center of the room was a surgical bed. Despite its poor condition, it would be comfortable enough for Spectrum. She looked back down at the injured filly, and as gently as possible, slid a foreleg underneath her hind legs. She groaned, and Cotton worried, not wanting to put her in more pain than she needed to. Slipping her other foreleg under Spectrum’s back, she stared into the pegasus filly’s eyes. “I’m going to lift you up, okay?”

Without waiting for a response, Cotton hoisted Spectrum off the tiled floor. She heard a loud grunt, and another pang of guilt gripped her. Carrying Spectrum to the bed was for the better, she knew, but she still hated causing her pain like that.

A warm sensation developed on Cotton’s foreleg as she walked forward on her hind legs, carrying Spectrum in her forelegs like a young foal toward the bed. With the same delicacy as before, she deposited Spectrum’s back against the bed, laying her head on the pillow, before setting her hind legs down. Cotton’s foreleg was smeared with blood. The wound on Spectrum’s leg had not calmed one bit, but being on a bed had at least relaxed the injured filly.

Spectrum had her eyes screwed shut, and after a few strained breaths, she opened them. Tears leaked from her eyes, but the expression on her face showed that she was fighting herself not to show that she was in pain, even though it was already plainly obvious.

“I’m going to find something to stop the bleeding,” Cotton said, and began searching the various shelves in the room for something—anything she could use to keep Spectrum from losing too much blood. She hated leaving her friend’s side whilst in the condition she was in, but it was out of the question that she needed to do something and fast.

“Hey, Cotton,” Spectrum said, strain present in her faint voice. “Were in a hospital, which means there’s gotta be some leftover bandages somewhere.”

Cotton heard her, but hadn’t focused on what she had said as much as the sound of her voice. Quiet, and exhausted. Had she already bled that much…? Cotton’s movements accelerated. Bandages. Surely a room had some if she was lucky enough that they weren’t all gone. If she just searched in the right places…

A hunch directed Cotton toward a set of drawers at the corner of the room. She opened the bottom one. Nothing. She opened the middle drawer. Tools and other useless crap. Finally she opened the top drawer.

“Thank you!” Cotton exclaimed aloud, grabbing the first aid kit inside the drawer and rushing back to Spectrum.

Setting it down on the bed next to Spectrum, she popped the cover open. Inside the kit, items such as bandages, tape and tubes of medical cream were stored inside. Her hooves dug inside the kit, grabbing the bandages from inside and dropping them on the bed.

Cotton sorted through the different packs. She had dealt with smaller injuries before, but how was she supposed to bandage something like this? Picking up one of the packs, she read what was displayed on the front. ‘Sterile Gauze.’ Okay, that was familiar. She opened it and removed the thick roll of bandages inside.

Spectrum noticed the expression on Cotton’s face, and forced her best attempt at a chuckle. “Guess we’re lucky this didn’t happen anywhere else, huh?”

It was as though Cotton hadn’t heard her, but in reality, she couldn’t understand how Spectrum could be so calm in a situation like this. She unrolled a small section of the gauze and held it over Spectrum’s leg, which she saw was shaking, as was the rest of her body, each breath in and out of hers shuddering. Then, she brought the gauze down onto her skin.

The second the bandage made contact with the wound, it was soaked through with blood. Her hooves trembled violently again, and Cotton whimpered as she was overwhelmed by panic.

“Cotton,” Spectrum said. Cotton ignored her. “Cotton, hey, look at me.” That time, her head rose. Glistening tears rolled down her cheeks, light sobs shaking her body. “You don’t have to worry so much. Just calm down, okay?”

With all her built up emotions, Cotton had officially broken down, fresh moisture flowing from her eyes. “Spectrum, this is serious, you could die!”

Spectrum laughed. “You always know the right thing to say.” Cotton was dumbfounded. Her friend was bleeding to death, and she was laughing about it. “Some stupid little cut isn’t going to kill me, Cotton.” She put a hoof on Cotton’s foreleg. “I’m going to be okay. I promise.”

Cotton knew Spectrum was saying this just to make her feel better, but even so, her dumb way of doing it was working. Her eyes fell back onto the wound, and she set to continue where she left off. Wrapping the bandage across, she lifted her injured leg slightly so she could pass the gauze underneath and complete a full circle around it. She then wrapped more layers around Spectrum’s leg. Blood soaked through them, and although that made her nervous, she was considerably calmer than she was before.

“Stop crying, Cotton,” Spectrum said in a soft, consoling voice. “You’re getting your tears in the wound.”

After adding more layers of gauze, she set her hooves on top of the bandages and pushed down. Spectrum’s eyes clamped shut. “Are you okay?”

Cotton looked doubtful. “This might slow the bleeding, but even still, you need a doctor. The only way I can imagine that bled as much as it did is if you have a torn artery.”

“I don’t think we’re gonna get a doctor anytime soon,” Spectrum said matter-of-factly. “But the bandages should be fine for now.”

“Yeah, for now. But if an infection gets in there, it’s going to be a bigger problem than the bleeding.” She looked down at the bandages. “Anything I do now might only be a temporary fix, which is what I’m more afraid about right now.”

Cotton looked up at Spectrum, locking eyes with her. “I was scared you were going to.”

Spectrum’s face became sincere. “Thank you. Really. I’d be dead if you hadn’t done anything, and you’re literally saving my life right now. Thank you.”

Cotton’s eyes dropped slightly in thought over what Spectrum said. “If you hadn’t calmed me down, I probably would have been useless.”

“We wouldn’t even be in this situation in the first place if I hadn’t had the idea to explore this place. I guess this is my punishment, huh?”

“Don’t say something like that, Spectrum. That’s not funny.” Cotton couldn’t actually tell from Spectrum’s tone if that was a joke or not. She saw Spectrum’s head sink slightly. “Besides, you were right. I was curious about this place just like you were, so this is my fault, too.”

“I pressured you into coming with me,” Spectrum said. “I know I’m stubborn, but that’s not something a friend should do.”

“And I know you’re stubborn, but I could have tried harder to stop you. Stop insisting that this is all your fault, because it isn’t. I’m as much to blame for this as you are.”

Spectrum sighed. “You’re talking as if I got us in trouble with our parents. Cotton, if you get killed down here, that’s my fault. I put you in danger that could cost you your life. Whether or not you were also curious, it was my idea, and you followed me here.”

Cotton tried to think of a different approach to get through to her. “Even if what you’re saying was true, it’s not like you knew these creatures were down here.”

“Okay, then. You didn’t know, neither of us knew. You can’t blame yourself for something that you couldn’t have possibly predicted, so please stop being so hard on yourself. What matters now is that we’re together, and we’re going to get out of this together.”

Spectrum’s mouth opened, but then closed again. She likely had another counter-argument, but was taking time to ponder over what Cotton had said. The silence that pursued Cotton’s statement was lengthy, and the earth pony glanced back down at the gauze to see how well the applied pressure was working. Blood was still soaking through but not as badly as before.

“Don’t apologize,” Cotton said, before wearing a genuine smile. “Actually, if it makes you feel any better, apology accepted.”

It was Spectrum’s turn to smile, before she laid her head on the bed and focused on the ceiling.

For the next five minutes, Cotton had her hooves pressed firmly on the bandages while Spectrum rested, flinching every now and then when Cotton made a movement that caused some pain. At one point, Cotton had quickly wrapped more gauze around Spectrum’s leg because the blood had completely soaked through, but she was noticing a huge difference between the before and after the bandages were applied.

Cotton gradually reduced the pressure applied on the bandages from her hooves. From what she could see, she had managed to stop the bleeding. Sighing in relief, she responded. “It's a lot better than before.”

Releasing her hooves completely from the bandages, she found that her hooves were completely stained with a mix of dried and fresh blood. “Uh…”

“Oh, just get over here,” Spectrum demanded, sitting up on the bed. Cotton then walked forward and together, they embraced. The coldness of Spectrum’s skin stood out to Cotton, but she didn’t care at that moment. The earlier fear of losing Spectrum made her grip tightly, as though it was the last time they would ever see each other. Holding her friend like this made all her fears seep away into nothingness, and despite the coldness of Spectrum’s body, she felt warm inside. She wasn’t sure if she ever wanted to let go.

The hug lasted for what seemed like forever, before they finally released each other. Spectrum then giggled. “Damn, you almost squeezed the life out of me.”

“I just… I was so scared, and I still am.” Cotton’s smile faded. “I’m just worried about you, and I keep thinking about what would have happened if things had gone differently.”

In place of Spectrum’s smile was now a confident smirk. “Well stop thinking about that. I promise I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”

One of the doors in the room pulsed, a mist of dust expanding around the door while the sound of a loud impact and the screech of one of the creatures pierced the air.

The two fillies stared in alarm, and Spectrum pulled herself into a sitting position. “We gotta go!”

“Good idea!” Spectrum said before sliding off the bed and onto the ground. However, the moment she had, she grunted in pain and her hind legs gave beneath her.

Another blow rang through the room. Cotton quickly crouched down and held out a hoof, which Spectrum accepted, pulling herself from the ground.

“Here, put your leg around my shoulder,” Cotton instructed, and Spectrum complied while Cotton slipped her own leg under Spectrum’s shoulder.

Once she proceeded to examine the room, she realized she would have to make a very difficult decision. The room had two doors: the one being broken down by the monster and one on the opposite side of the room. Spectrum was in no condition to run, and if they were to go toward the door, the creature would certainly break it down and spot them before they could leave the room. That left the option of hiding, but that also posed its share of risks: if the creature had spotted them, there was no chance of getting away. The chance of survival for both options weighed equally, and after the door had suffered another blow from the creature, Cotton made her decision.

She made her way around the bed, all the while supporting Spectrum, who was trying her best not to put any weight on her injured leg. Just as the door was destroyed, the fillies crouched behind the bed out of sight.

A beam of purple light shot above them and brightened the room, drifting from left to right like a beacon. Cotton held her breath and glanced at Spectrum. She was biting her lip gently, keeping herself from muttering any sounds as a result of the pain in her leg. That made Cotton nervous, and she hoped that she wouldn’t accidentally get the creature’s attention.

The purple light moved, and the creature growled before taking steps forward. As it did, a tiny glimmer of light speckled at the other end of the room by the counters. Cotton focused her attention on the glimmer. Its source was a mirror, reflecting her and Spectrum, as well as the creature behind them. Its head twitched as it prowled in search for them, walking slowly toward the bed. It was also not the same creature as the one Cotton had burned with the explosion of fire.

That was bad news. It had sight and hearing to its advantage, which meant that their only hope was if the creature left the room.

Cotton kept her eyes on the mirror, watching every move that the creature made. If they didn’t want to be spotted, they had to be as quiet and stealthy as possible.

The creature began advancing toward the right of the bed, and Cotton gestured for Spectrum to move. With a worried expression, Spectrum got onto her hooves, remaining low to the ground as she did, and crawled toward the end of the bed.

As Cotton followed, Spectrum suddenly paused and ground her teeth hard. She had accidentally brought her injured leg down on the ground, and the spot of blood on her bandages started to expand. Cotton’s heart dropped, internally begging Spectrum not to make sound. With a sharp intake of air, drowned out by the steps of the creature, the pegasus held back a whine and moved along the rest of the way. Once the purple shone at the bed, Cotton was out of sight at the last second, beside Spectrum.

Cotton was already assessing Spectrum’s bandages. The crimson blotch still grew, but before she could try anything to fix it, Spectrum mouthed, “I’m fine.”

Against the objection from the concern for her friend, Cotton directed her attention to the purple light. She unfortunately could not see the mirror from here, nor were there any reflective surfaces in front of her. She would need to look back while the creature wasn’t looking to assure she wouldn’t be seen.

However, what happened next made that unnecessary. The purple light disappeared from the wall, and with a grumble of frustration, the creature galloped back out of the room.

Cotton peeked from behind the bed to confirm the creature had left. “It’s gone.” She then turned to Spectrum, who was examining the bandages on her leg. The red spot was still growing, and although it had slowed, Cotton’s worry hadn’t diminished. “We need to do something about that.”

Cotton opposed. “Spectrum, it’s starting to bleed again. Who knows what you just did to it.”

“It’ll be fine. I understand you’re worried about me, but we have to focus on getting out of here. We won’t help ourselves if I end up slowing us down.”

Cotton shut her eyes, strongly against what Spectrum was saying, and sighed from the prospect of Spectrum’s wound getting any worse than it was. But while it frustrated her, she knew that Spectrum was presently the voice of reason. Cotton gave Spectrum a defeated nod, and the pegasus filly smiled sympathetically in the hope that that would comfort the filly. It worked, but only slightly

Checking one more time to see that nothing had entered the room, the duo left from their hiding spot and, with quiet steps, made their way toward the closed door. They deemed the other exit dangerous since the creature had entered and left through there, and the possibility of running into one or more of them was not worth the risk. Reaching the door, Spectrum twisted the knob, and pulled it open only slightly before poking her head into the hallway on the other side. A second later, she pulled it open a few more degrees before nodding at Cotton, and they ventured onward.

This hallway stretched in two directions, one way was absorbed entirely by a dark mist, while the other led to a turn, a set of pipes along the wall similar to those Cotton had seen earlier.

“Let’s follow the pipes,” Cotton said. “They helped me navigate earlier.”

Cotton couldn’t help but keep her eyes on Spectrum. The pegasus filly hobbled on three legs, dragging her injured leg limply along the ground. Every now and then, her eyes squinted and she voiced a small grunt, and each time it gave Cotton a scare. She knew she should have been focused on the task at hoof, but regardless, Spectrum was still the primary focus on her mind.

They turned, following the trail of pipes, which guided them through a heavy darkness, where more skeletons lay against the wall in piles or largely intact save a missing leg or separation between the ribcage and hind legs. The pipes then ended, and the fillies now stood before a metal door, which was heavily dented and riddled with claw marks large enough to create a tiny hole, where a cylinder of light streamed through.

Spectrum limped forward to try the door handle, but looked back when she felt a hoof touch her shoulder. Cotton had taken hold of her, and by the look on the face, it wasn’t a mystery why. She exhaled silently, and Cotton’s expression quickly took on guilt.

Spectrum looked down momentarily, settling on a decision she didn’t want to make, before looking at Cotton. “If you’re really that worried about me, then I’ll be more careful.” She stepped aside. “Here, you do it.”

“Thank you,” Cotton said, the weight on her chest lightening, before grabbing the handle and pulling it.

“It’s locked,” Cotton said, giving the handle a few more ineffective tugs.

“Try looking through the hole in the door,” Spectrum suggested. Cotton did as she was told, bending down and putting her good eye against it.

The first things she noticed were the flipped chairs and tables on the other side. Her eye then traced around the entire room, starting at the middle of the room, where a warped and twisted metal door lay on the ground ripped entirely from its hinges, before moving downward, where a dust-coated equine skeleton was separated into two halves. The more she studied the room, the more it was starting to look familiar. And then it clicked.

“Remember the room where the door slammed shut on us? It’s on the other side of this door. And from what I can see, the door that slammed shut was broken down.” She removed her eye from the hole. “That’s our ticket out of this place.”

The hope filling Spectrum’s eyes was visible. “Then we have to find a way to get this door open. You think you can kick it open?”

Spectrum thought for a moment. “Okay, you’re right.” She then took a look at the lock. “Well there has to be a key somewhere for this door, right? Unless we can find something to pick it with...”

“I came across a coat earlier that had paperclips in one of the pockets. I used them to unlock one of the doors the way you showed me to get away from one of the creatures. I lost them on the way to you though.”

Spectrum inwardly smiled. I told her that trick would come in handy when she least expected.

Cotton continued. “But maybe we could find another box of paperclips lying around somewhere, or something that would help us with this.”

“Good idea, but hang on. I wanna do something first…” Spectrum then grabbed the camera that was still hanging from her neck, sat on the ground and brought the lens close up to the lock. “Just in case we find the key, I’m gonna take a picture of the lock so we can see if they match.” She snapped the photo, and with a flash of light, the camera displayed the image on the screen.

Shutting off the camera, Spectrum let the camera fall against her chest. “’Kay, let’s go.”

Not knowing what was behind each corner was what scared them the most, and with the place crawling with those creatures, they had to be extra cautious. Once they backtracked to the end of the hall, Cotton tilted her head into the next corridor before signaling Spectrum to follow.

To Cotton, it had already seemed like forever since she had seen sunlight. If she could guess, they had only been inside the hospital for less than two hours, but it seemed like days. Months even. Maybe that’s what fear so intense did to you, Cotton thought. And with the constant stress of evading a gruesome death from bloodthirsty monsters and Spectrum’s condition requiring urgent care, Cotton realized just how desperate she was just to be outside again, and out of this place.

Passing by the open door to the surgical room they had left earlier, Cotton led Spectrum onward toward another maze of musty, slim hallways in the hopes that one of them would lead them to the solution to their problem.

Cotton quickly came to a standstill as the end of the hallway glowed an ever brightening purple.

“Back up!” Cotton whispered and Spectrum took cover behind the door beside them, followed by Cotton.

Crouched, Cotton watched the purple light, using it with the intention of knowing where the creature was. Presently, the light was faint, so Cotton could tell it was still distant. However, a second later, the light disappeared, and a rush of footsteps trailed in the opposite direction. Cotton stuck her head out into the hallway before ruling out the chance of confronting it.

They left their hiding spot before continuing down the hallway and into the maze of corridors ahead. It was impossible to tell where they would find keys in this place. Something to pick the lock with maybe, but even still, last time was nothing more than an unreal strike of luck.

The thought strung to the question of how this place was so huge. Cotton began to doubt that most of this was part of the hospital itself, but rather a completely different area of the town like a shelter, or concealed underground catacombs. The idea that Ponyville needed a hospital with a basement this large didn’t make sense to her. Her assumption of a tunnel having been built between the hospital and this subterranean area of Ponyville seemed more ideal.

Her thought process then brought up the smell. The horrible smell of age old rotting meat and death that had planted a dark feeling in Cotton’s stomach since entering the basement. Her sudden awareness of the scent reminded her of the war Spectrum had told her about, and the photo of those injured ponies hiding for their lives, and the number of skeletons lying in the room with the gems.

It made her feel helpless, thinking about the residents of the town left to a gruesome fate underground, desperately trying to stay alive during a life-threatening conflict and in the end, falling prey to their last attempt at a solution. She imagined herself in a situation like that; powerless and vulnerable, bearing the knowledge that your inevitable doom is a matter of time away, and it wasn’t long before Cotton couldn’t stand to imagine it any longer.

The death of an entire population, because they didn’t have the means to protect themselves. The fact brewed a grim cocktail of emotions deep within her, leaving her with a sickly feeling similar to drinking spoiled milk in the morning. Cotton wondered if that was why the princesses kept the events in Ponyville out of the media. Word of such a failure would certainly cause much tension within the country and, without a doubt, have many ponies questioning their safety in Equestria.

Like pieces of a puzzle joined together and finally resembling the picture on the box, the dots connected themselves in Cotton’s head, but instead of the feeling of accomplishment after long hours of work, the big picture only filled her with a cold and hollow despair.

The voice snapped her out of her train of thought, and her eyes darted toward Spectrum. Seeing the source of the voice caused her to relax.

Soon enough, the pair ended up before an entrance into another hallway, leaving them with a left-or-right decision.

Spectrum cast her gaze in both directions, briefly analyzing each. “Which way?”

After a brief analysis of her own, Cotton was left with the same question. Both ways appeared the same: a few doors and an abyss of black cutting off the rest. The hard part of the decision lay at the fact that those monsters might have been waiting for them down one of the halls.

As they went, Cotton was mentally recording every turn they took and every direction they went in. All the halls looked the same, which would end up being a nightmare when they had to backtrack, so she kept note of any details she could.

The hallway they had entered was short and ended at a doorway, the door it once held stationary on the floor in front of them.

They found as they went into the next room that they could not make out a single detail through the sheer darkness flooding their surroundings.

Spectrum lifted the camera hanging from her neck and snapped a photo of the room. In the brief moment that the intense blackness gave way to the bright light of the camera’s flash, they had seen that the room was completely empty besides debris piled together against the far wall and broken shelves that were in no condition for storage purposes.

To the left was another hallway, and with careful manoeuvring, they made their way toward it before Spectrum raised her camera again.

The next hallway was blocked off by a large stone boulder with ceiling wires draped alongside. After an overview of the picture in the camera’s settings, they found a tiny space between the boulder and the wall just big enough for them to crawl through into the other half of the hallway.

“Okay,” Cotton said, swallowing. “I’ll go first. Take pictures as I go.”

Spectrum voiced her compliance and readied the camera, the complete lack of visibility causing her to fumble with it slightly.

After the first flash of light from the camera, Cotton stepped forward, holding a hoof straight in front of her. Once it came in contact with the bolder, she shifted to the left where the gap was, running her hoof along the bolder until she found it. With the help of another flash of light, she positioned herself on her hind legs and began to shimmy through the gap, successfully reaching the other side.

“I’m through. Send me the camera and we’ll do the same thing,” Cotton instructed.

“Alright, I’m gonna slide it over to you,” Spectrum said, taking the camera’s neck strap off. From Cotton’s perspective, she could only see the very faint light of the camera’s screen moving downward, before being thrust in her direction along with a quiet scraping sound and coming to a stop by her hooves.

She grabbed the camera and raised it in front of her. Her heart skipped in worry.

“Yeah, but the camera’s almost dead,” she replied, watching the battery icon on the top right corner of the screen flash red.

“Shit, forgot to keep track of that…” Spectrum said. “The battery thing is flashing red right?”

“The camera usually lasts another twenty or so minutes after that happens. We’ll just try not to use it whenever we can.”

“Okay, let’s do this quickly then.” Raising the camera, she snapped a photo. After the very momentary period where she could see her surroundings and Spectrum on the other side of the boulder, the darkness once again ate away any existing light, and Cotton began to hear the sound of movement from Spectrum’s attempts to properly position herself in order to avoid worsening her injury. She took another photo and saw Spectrum sliding her body along the ground while dragging her bad hind leg along the floor.

“Grab my hoof, I’ll pull you the rest of the way,” Cotton said, reaching out into the dark. She would have used the camera to make the process easier, but she didn’t want to raise the chances of the camera being unavailable when they really needed it.

After waving her hoof around, both their hooves met, and then Cotton gently pulled Spectrum in her direction. There was the sound of friction between skin and stone before she let go of Spectrum’s hoof. She heard Spectrum begin to stand from the floor.

“Thanks,” the pegasus almost grunted out, struggling with balancing herself on three legs. “Let’s keep going.”

The duo walking forward once more, the need to take another picture was needless, as Cotton had taken note of what was ahead from the camera flashes they had used to help each other through the gap. If her memory served her correctly, there was a line-up of two doors to the left and after that, a door at the end of the hall.

Cotton ran her hoof across the left wall, and when it hit the frame of the first door, she searched for the handle and gave it a tug once she found it. It didn’t budge. She moved on to the next door and followed the same procedure. The second door was not locked, and opened with a squeak. Raising the camera again, Cotton took a picture with a slight jolt of nervousness. As if she didn’t have enough worries, the use of the camera was now another item on the list of stress-inducers.

Cotton, with the little time that she had, viewed the room, only to see that, like the last room, there was absolutely nothing inside except for piles of rubble on the floor. Odd. These parts of the underground hallways must not have been used, she thought. She didn’t know why, and to be frank, she didn’t care much either. So she moved past, glancing back to make sure Spectrum was okay.

The door at the end of the hall was declared locked after a couple of hard tugs. Cotton sighed in defeat. “Door’s locked, and this is a dead end. Let’s backtrack and see what’s down the other way.”

“Hang on,” Spectrum said quickly as Cotton was turning around. “I saw a vent next to the door. It might lead to the other side.”

Cotton turned back around. “Really?” She walked back to the door. “Where?”

“It was to the right, and it wasn’t covered either, so you could climb through and see if you can open the door from the other side.”

Taking a step to the right, Cotton stood on her hind legs and gradually ran her hoof along the wall to feel for the vent Spectrum was talking about. She could just barely see the wall due to her eyes adjusting to the dark, which was little help with trying to find the vent. The only information she could distinguish was that the vent must have been higher up, so she began hopping on two legs until she eventually felt an edge of the section of the wall that led into the ventilation shaft.

“It’s here, I found it,” Cotton notified. “But it’s too high up, I’m not gonna be able to get a proper grip to lift myself inside.”

“Not a good idea,” Cotton replied, her response immediate. “If we can find something to stand on I’d rather do that.”

“Oh, right.” Spectrum began brainstorming for ideas on what they could use, and came up with something not too long after. “The boulders in that empty room, maybe you can use one of them to stand on.”

Cotton was on board with the idea without a second thought. “Nice thinking!” She turned back around, walking in the general direction of the empty room. With the same process of feeling along the wall for the door frame, she found the room and entered. Then, pulling out the camera—once again feeling uncomfortable as she did so—she turned on the camera and went into the settings to view the picture she had taken of the empty room.

Boulders and debris of all sizes lay across the floor, but her goal was to choose something that wouldn’t be too heavy to roll and just big enough to provide the leverage she needed to get herself in the ventilation shaft. A boulder just a few inches in front of the door seemed to fit that description, so she turned the camera off before stretching a hoof into the darkness ahead and walking forward. Her hoof hit the boulder, and from there she set both front hooves on it and tugged it toward her. As expected, the boulder was difficult to budge, and took much of her strength, but it rolled, and that’s what mattered.

Soon enough, she got it past the door and into the hallway. She was gasping heavily, already physically drained from the effort. With a few more pushes, aligning the boulder as best she could with the vent, she finally got the boulder to its destination.

Cotton placed her front hooves on top of the boulder and pushed her hind legs off the ground before posing them on the boulder as well. From that height, she could see the ventilation shaft with how much her eyes had adjusted to the dark at this point, and determined that it was now for sure within her reach. Standing on her hind legs, she placed her front legs inside the vent, and leapt off the boulder, pulling herself up while bracing her bottom hooves on the wall and performing a running motion against it, making entering the ventilation shaft easier.

“I’m in,” Cotton said, moving in a few inches further to assure that she wouldn’t fall out.

“Nice job,” Spectrum said back. “Now just follow it until you reach the other side.”

“Got it.” She began to crawl. The tightness of the space allowed her to see where she was going without the requirement of her camera. However, the reason for said tightness also made her slightly uneasy. The top of the vent was bent downward, showing clear signs that it was undergoing a lot of stress. It appeared as though the slightest influence would cause it to come down entirely and crush her.

This new concern pressured Cotton to crawl faster. The exit couldn’t have been far, so as long as she could reach it and get out fast, she would be fine.

The farther she went, the more cramped the vent seemed to get. At the same time, though, she was starting to see a tiny bit of light near the end of the duct, and there, she could make out a vent cover that would lead into the hallway below her. Glad to know that the exit wasn’t far away, she calmed, but continued at the same pace to reach it as soon as possible.

Cotton’s ears were pierced by the sudden sound of metal ripping and screws being forced out of place, and as this happened, the earth pony fell an inch, the surface below her having bent into a concave shape.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” She didn’t feel any pain, so she likely didn’t have an injury of her own to worry about.

It was then that a brisk drumming of footsteps could be heard echoing through the hall.

“Shh!” Cotton interrupted, devoting all her focus on the steps. Since her ears had picked up the noise, it had not stopped, and kept rising in volume. Then she heard the screeches: the last of the hints to let her know that she was in deep trouble.

Cotton tried to crawl backward, but her curved position was making that a difficult task. As she pushed herself back the way she came, the sound of damage screamed from all around her once again, and she dropped another inch.

She felt her blood run cold when the sound of the creature’s galloping slowed to a stop right below her. She was making too much noise, but the ventilation shaft was too weak and couldn’t support the weight she was putting on it. Any movement she made was giving off her location.

A set of claws speared through the side of the vent just above her head. Cotton screamed, backing away from them as the claws slid back out.

“Cotton, what’s going on?!” she heard Spectrum scream. She wanted to shout back for Spectrum to shut her mouth, but in her current predicament, doing so meant a higher risk of death. However, Spectrum had not diverted the creature’s attention, as the set of claws pierced straight through the bottom of the air vent directly in front of her. As this happened, the whole unit slanted, causing Cotton to drop once again and roll onto her side.

The claws then gripped the metal they had cleaved through and tore. Cotton heard only the shrill sound of destruction as her body became airborne and her stomach jumped into her throat. Not long after that, her body struck the ground hard, pain coursing through her head and back.

Resisting the urge to grunt from the pain, Cotton looked to her front and back, and realized that the creature had separated the section of the air vent she was in, and it had fallen to the ground. Through the end in front of her, she could see a long hallway, partially illuminated by a purple light. Behind her, she could see the locked door, and in front of it, four bony legs, their skin brown and flaking.

Cotton froze, and refrained completely from budging, breath on pause. One of the legs left the ground, and she heard the sound of more damage being dealt to the duct. Scraps of broken metal pelted the ground on either side of the broken vent she hid in. The creature roared. Cotton remained still.

A pained grunt sounded on the other side of the locked door, and the blood drained from Cotton’s face.

The legs began to shift, advancing in the direction of the locked door. Then, the creature sped up, charging toward the door and ramming the side of its body into it. A chunk of the door broke off and fell to the floor.

Cotton breathed heavily as she looked for something she could throw to distract the creature. Her eyes instantly went to the pieces of metal around her, but before she could grab one of them, the creature gave the door one last slam, and it collapsed to the ground in pieces.

Blood frozen, Cotton spun her head back, seeing the broken door and the creature projecting its artificial light down the corridor ahead.

Confusion was stirred into her panic. Had she hid? And if so, where was she? Whatever the case, Cotton stayed in the broken vent, hoping that her friend was somewhere safe.

The creature stood in the doorway for a few more seconds, sniffing the air. It produced a noise akin to gagging, as though choking on food that went down the wrong tube. Then, it turned a half circle and galloped down the way it came. Cotton had just enough time to watch the purple light disappear behind a corner before darkness dominated again.

“Is it gone…?” Spectrum whispered from somewhere past the now destroyed locked door.

Cotton breathed a sigh of relief. She was okay. “I think so.” Cotton pulled herself out of the broken vent and stood from the ground. Her fur was stiff from dust, and she swatted some of it off her forelegs, which resulted in a coughing fit when it entered her lungs.

When Cotton looked up again, she just barely saw Spectrum step out cautiously from the empty room.

“I’d recognize if it’s bleeding, and I don’t feel anything. I’m fine.”

Cotton exhaled. “Okay. Then we should keep going, quickly. The sooner we find something to open that door, the better.”

With their eyes adjusted to the darkness and the very tiny bit of light in this corridor as opposed to the previous one, they could make out details such as the bits of foliage growing on the ceiling, hanging downward just above their heads, and the cracked stone walls and crumbled floor similar to unpaved city roads. They walked forward to the end of the hallway, following it to a right turn and after that, ending up at a four-way cross, yet again leaving them with the decision of which way to choose.

Thanks to Spectrum, coming to a decision didn’t take long. “Hey, look on the wall over there.” She lifted a hoof, pointing at a rotten, wooden arrow in the corridor straight across from them, hanging by only one nail and therefore causing the sign to point at the ground. Cotton and Spectrum approached the corridor to read what was displayed on it.

“Locker rooms,” Cotton reread aloud. “The doctors who used to be here should have had keys to every door in the place. If we’re lucky, maybe we can find a set of keys that was never moved.”

The locker rooms were their best bet of finding something useful. Cotton was sure of it. Even if it wasn’t the keys themselves, the last time she came across a lab coat, she had found the box of paperclips which ended up saving her life, and there were bound to be lab coats in the locker rooms. It just came down to whether one of those coats held what they needed to escape.

“Wait, stop moving,” Spectrum said in a hushed tone, and Cotton did as she was told. The pegasus then raised her ears, concentrating only on hearing as her eyes looked in no particular direction. Curious, Cotton listened out, and then she heard something. It was barely audible, but the sound was there, and after looking around to pinpoint its direction, she found herself staring at the open door not too far in front of them.

“Let’s go, but slowly,” Spectrum said. The two fillies walked quietly toward the open door and into the room ahead. The room appeared somewhat large and open. Cupboards were arranged on the wall and crumpled papers littered the ground along with tiny bits of glass and dust.

The noise they had picked up had also gotten much louder. Cotton took a tiny step forward and peeked from behind the door, and that’s when she saw the source of the noise. At the far end corner of the room, one of the creatures stood, silent and stationary, facing the wall and casting a brilliant purple on its stone surface. However, she right away identified it as the blind creature when she saw the gash across its eyes and the dark red color of its skin.

Cotton stepped back and faced her friend, speaking in a whisper. “There’s another one in there.”

“The one I burned in the explosion earlier. I attacked it at one point and managed to blind it. I was trapped in a room with it after that and it couldn’t see me.” Cotton stuck her head back into the room to look for the way into the locker room, and found an open door at the other end of the room in the corner opposite from the creature. She turned back. “There’s a door over there. If we’re quiet enough, we can get there without being noticed.”

“…Alright, I’ll take your word for it.” Spectrum said tensely. “And I suppose it’s our only option.”

Cotton grinned slyly, despite the seriousness of the situation. “You’re pretty scared, huh?”

Spectrum rolled her eyes. “Most scared I’ve ever been in my life.” She breathed in until her lungs could no longer be filled, and released it all. “Let’s get this over with.”

With a nod, Cotton turned back around, and they stepped into the room, crouched low to the ground to silence their hoofsteps as much as possible. Cotton fixated her eyes on the blind creature. It had not moved from its spot, standing as though waiting for something. This confused Cotton, but it was not her main concern right now. As long as they reached the locker room, Cotton didn’t care.

They had already gone one fourth of the way toward the door without encountering any issues. What worried her right now was if Spectrum’s leg would cause any problems. Spectrum moved very slowly, dragging her injured leg as lightly as she could as to not cause any loud noise. Even so, the friction was still causing a slight scraping sound.

She looked at the creature again. It still had not moved, remaining immobile with the exception of the occasional twitch of its head and the guttural drone escaping its throat. Even though the creature didn’t pose any immediate threat in that moment, Cotton still found it unnerving how it just stood, almost as though it knew they were there and was waiting for an opportunity to make a move.

Step after step brought them closer to the door. Nervousness welled in Cotton’s stomach as they were getting much nearer to the creature as well. They were halfway through the room at this point. It wouldn’t be much longer now before they reached the door.

Cotton felt her front hoof hit something. Her eyes were drawn downward to the sound of light impacts on the ground, and saw a rock rolling along the floor before hitting one of the metallic counters between them and the door.

Cotton and Spectrum froze in unison, staring as the creature in the corner grumbled, its head twitching again, except this time more forcefully, emitting a cringe worthy crack. After producing another guttural noise, it focused back on the corner as though it hadn’t heard anything.

Resuming their onward crawl toward the other end of the room, Cotton made sure to scan the ground in front of her as to not accidentally cause a noise like she had just done. If the creature found out where they were, they were done for. One more mistake from now on was unquestionable death.

Three quarters through the room. Almost there. The creature still stood in the corner, budging ever so slightly at irregular intervals. Just a few more steps…

As the door was only a few meters away, the creature was almost just as close. The sounds—similar to the low, quiet rumble of a machine—coming from within its body were much louder and clearer, causing both Cotton and Spectrum’s bodies to vibrate. Only a couple more steps now…

The entrance into the locker room was right in front of them. One after another, both fillies crossed over the threshold of the door, having successfully reached the room.

Now in a safer area, a portion of Cotton’s stress faded. She focused on the room. Rows of beige lockers stood against the wall extending from one end of the room to the other. On the opposite wall, shelves were arranged in a similar order—not counting the one or two toppled over on the ground—and clothes stained through with dirt lay either neatly folded or on the floor in a pile. Across the middle of the room, several benches were posted, where medical scrubs lay as well.

“I’ll check the clothes to see if there are any keys in those,” Spectrum said in the quietest possible whisper she could manage. “You check the lockers, but don’t make too much noise.”

“On it,” Cotton replied. Quietly, both fillies went to their stations in search of the keys. What worried Cotton was whether the keys were even here or not. Whatever hope she had that they were she held onto desperately. They had taken way too big a risk for that to have been for nothing.

As Spectrum was already working on thoroughly searching each set of clothes, throwing them aside irritatingly when she found nothing inside, Cotton had gone to the lockers, setting her hoof on the first one. As she expected, an attempt to open the locker locker caused a perceptible creaking. She swore under her breath, hearing the ruffling of clothes behind her cease momentarily. Luckily, from what they could hear, the creature outside wasn’t affected, so they resumed where they left off.

Cotton gently and ever so slowly inched the locker open, and while it still caused some noise, she determined that it was inevitable. She just had to keep the amount of noise she made to as minimum as possible.

Once the locker was opened far enough, she looked inside. It was completely empty. She stepped over to the next locker and followed the same process, opening the locker as gently as she could. The creaking of the hinges made her cringe with worry, as she didn’t want to accidentally catch the creature’s attention.

The second locker consisted of folded clothes, which she checked thoroughly, only to wind up disappointed by the fact that there was nothing inside. She moved onto the third, opening it only to find the same thing.

The two fillies continued with their developed patterns—Spectrum throwing aside medical scrubs one after another when she found either nothing or something useless and Cotton opening locker after locker, her panic rising gradually as she failed to find anything helpful.

Two minutes in, Cotton had opened over half the lockers and was nearing the end of the row with not even an ounce of luck, and the lack of a report from Spectrum didn’t help alleviate the rising fear in her stomach. If they found nothing in here, the likelihood that they would come across another chance at escaping, let alone survive long enough to come across that chance was too slim to consider a possibility.

Only a few more lockers remained, and there was still no good news. Cotton heard a faint curse behind her, and looked back to see that Spectrum had searched the last shelf, and was resorting to watching Cotton search the final lockers with a look of anxious desperation in her eyes.

She opened the next locker, finding nothing inside. Two more lockers remained, and her hope had now been whittled thin. She moved to the second to last locker, still holding on tightly to whatever hope remained.

Opening the locker like all the others previously, she was once again met with the sight of folded medical scrubs and nothing more. Her teeth, which she hadn’t realized were clenched together tightly, ground tighter, but still, she searched through the clothing to find anything they could use.

As she searched the pockets of one of the scrubs, her hoof came in contact with a cool, metal object, which then produced a clinking sound. She paused, her doubt disintegrating and allowing hope to retake dominance in her mind. She gripped the metal object, sliding it out of the pocket, and when it came to view, Cotton could hardly believe her eyes.

The tiny metal ring she pulled out held a thick row of rusted keys of different shapes and sizes. Cotton stared at them, blinking as though making sure they were actually there. When she was convinced that the keys in front of her were real, a feeling of pure happiness washed over her, relief flooding her whole body.

“Yes,” Cotton whispered, her lips forming a smile as a film of joyful tears coated her eyes. They could leave! They could finally go home!

Spectrum approached her to see what she had found, and shared a similar reaction. “Keys… Cotton, we might actually be able to get out of this place!”

Cotton grabbed the keys from the locker, careful not to make too much noise with them as Spectrum walked up to see them closer up. “Pull up the picture I took earlier of the door lock.”

Gripping the ring of keys with her teeth, Cotton turned on the camera and did as her friend said, displaying the picture of the lock.

Spectrum took the keys from Cotton began looking through all of them, comparing their sizes to the picture of the lock. It hadn’t occurred to Cotton through the immense relief she felt on the possibility of escaping that these might not have even been the right keys. A bit of her earlier fear returned, but she remained confident. The key to the door had to be one of them. Surely.

“Most of these keys besides a few look like they would fit the lock,” Spectrum informed. “I suppose we just have to hope that the right key is in here, and if not, we could use these to find a different way out.”

As she finished her sentence, the screen of the camera blinked out, and the red LED on the top of the camera faded.

“Shit…” Cotton said with sudden concern, pressed the power button on the camera multiple times, each time followed by no response. “Camera’s dead. We gotta make do without it now.”

“All we have to do is make it back to the door,” Spectrum said, putting the keys in her wing and enclosing them tightly to assure they wouldn’t make any noise on the way back. “Most of the way we came wasn’t completely dark, so as long as we remembered the way we came it shouldn’t matter.”

Cotton swallowed, hoping her friend was right. Whether or not any of the keys she had found would actually open the door was now their new issue. Navigating near complete darkness while searching blindly for a way out would be a near impossible task, paired with the fact that the monsters out there were roaming the place.

She countered her doubt with self-reassurance. The ponies who worked her must have had keys to all the doors in the building. One of them has to be the right one.

She let the now useless camera hang from her neck and faced the doorway through which they came. “Alright. Back through the room we go.”

Cotton gave Spectrum a wary look. “Don’t jinx it when we’ve come this far.”

“Agreed.” With their conversation concluded, Cotton and Spectrum began toward the door, and crossed back over the threshold.

Cotton turned her head to the right. The creature still had not moved a single centimeter, staring at the stone wall as if hypnotized. As long as it stayed there, they would be okay.

Walking quietly as they had done before, the two fillies began to progress their way back through the room. They both knew that no mistake from here on out could be made, and while that put a great load of stress on both ponies, the confidence that their way out may have been just a few more obstacles away weighed equal on the scale.

Their confidence grew with each step toward the door. Already a considerable distance back through the room, it seemed as though they would make it back to the other side without encountering any issues.

Spectrum suddenly lost her balance, causing her to put weight on her injured leg. Grunting in pain, she lost her grip on the keys, which slipped through the feathers of her wings and dropped to the floor, the impact producing a clear jingle that penetrated the silence.

The creature in the corner growled. Spectrum had steadied herself, but was biting her lip to not alert the creature to their position again. Cotton was at Spectrum’s side with a worried expression, a whole new wave of fear washing over her. On one hoof, she was concerned for her friend and what she may have just done to her leg, but on another, they were now in grave danger since there was no doubt in her mind the creature heard that.

Cotton’s face fell as her and Spectrum were bathed in a purple spotlight. She looked at Spectrum, and saw her giving her a look that’s translation to words couldn’t be clearer. Don’t move a single fucking muscle.

The creature walked toward the two fillies, breathing deeply as though sucking air through gritted teeth. As it continued to advance toward them, it became increasingly evident that it would not stop approaching. It knew they were here, and if they didn’t do something quickly, they were dead.

Cotton’s mind began to look for solutions. One sprang to mind right away. Distraction.

Twisting her head left and right, she looked for something she could throw. She crossed off using the keys immediately, as throwing them posed a risk of not getting them back. Beside her feet, she found a stone that would do fine instead.

The creature wasn’t too close yet, but the time limit she had to cause a distraction wasn’t something to be ignored. Carefully, she lifted the rock off the ground and launched it at a lamp by the door to the locker room. The lamp shattered on collision, raining glass shards onto the floor below.

With a low-pitched groan, the creature turned its head toward the pile of glass behind it. However, contrary to the previous times Cotton had distracted the creature, it didn’t go and investigate the noise right away. In fact, it appeared as though it was contemplating whether to fall for the distraction or not.

Follow the sound… come on, follow the sound, Cotton repeated inside her head.

The creature growled again, its ears flicking upward. It then stared back in the direction of the two fillies as though attentively analyzing a confusing puzzle.

It was quickly growing evident that the distraction had not worked, and their suspicion was proved once the creature resumed its walk in their direction. Cotton mouthed a curse. They needed a new plan.

Digging deep into her thoughts, she attempted to formulate a way to direct the creature away from them. While it was still a fair distance away, it wouldn’t take long before it found them if they just stood where they were.

She began by dissecting the situation. Since the creature had managed to learn from their earlier distractions, it was obvious now that they would no longer work. Sneaking toward the door now would risk them losing the keys and picking up the keys would cause too much noise.

That left their options narrowed down to the only solution that might have had any probability of success at all.

The idea was extremely risky, and Cotton didn’t like it one bit, but it was the only idea she could think of that had a chance of working. Doing this meant that one of them had to move stealthily to another part of the room, draw the creature to their location so the other could pick up the keys and leave the room, and then make her way out of the room herself. Spectrum’s condition immediately crossed her off as being a candidate for the job, so it was settled.

Unfortunately, there was no way for her to communicate the plan with Spectrum without wasting time, and coming up with it already allowed the creature to get dangerously close to them, so she had to follow through with it in hopes that she understood in time.

Fearfully, but with determination, Cotton moved slowly toward the corner of the room opposite from the exit with slow, soft steps. Spectrum watched as she did so with a nervous expression, and nodded. She had the same idea.

The creature was almost right next to Spectrum, sniffing the air and searching the surrounding area for the two fillies. Seeing this made Cotton back up quicker toward the corner. If it found Spectrum, it was game over for both of them.

As the creature patrolled, pawing through the air, one of its claws came in contact with the keys. Snarling, it tilted its head downward at the resulting metallic clatter. The creature stayed like that for a few moments. Then, it lifted its head again, its black sockets now fixed directly on Spectrum.

Cotton reached the corner of the room and, without wasting any time, shouted, “Hey!”

The creature shrieked loudly, its head spinning in Cotton’s direction with an audible snap. It began walking in a slow straight line toward Cotton, hissing venomously. Cotton’s heart beat rapidly, and she had to keep herself from hyperventilating from stress. Carefully, she moved to the left as the creature approached her with an angry air. Thankfully, the creature’s growls and steps masked her own, so they went unheard.

Spectrum, still in the same place, was watching as the creature got closer to her friend, her ears falling in stress, but a brief gesture from Cotton to the keys on the ground reminded her of their task. She stretched a wing down to the keys, gingerly slipped the thin tip of her wing through the ring, and gradually started to lift. The keys scraped the ground lightly and clinked together as they were being lifted, but to Spectrum’s relief, the creature either didn’t hear, or chose not to focus on it. Once the keys were off the ground, Spectrum opened her other wing and slowly placed the keys against its feathers. Finally, with a matching delicateness, she closed her wings around the keys until they were safely encased within.

Cotton stopped moving and stood completely still as the creature drew nearer until it was directly beside her, standing above at almost twice her size. She ignored the pain from her lungs for a greater supply of oxygen, not daring to breathe louder than she was. The colossal monstrosity beside her stopped moving, raising its ears tall and turning its head from left to right like a security camera.

Out the corner of her eye, Cotton could see Spectrum making her way toward the door out of the room. She looked back at the creature. It pointed its head in all directions, aimlessly attempting to find out where the source of the voice it had heard had gone.

It clacked its teeth together as though with impatience, before taking a step toward Cotton. The filly backed up as it then proceeded to raise one of its claws upward and swing through the air, narrowly missing her. Her heart jumped, and she recoiled, almost bringing her hoof down too hard. It then went silent again, returning to its security camera-like behavior.

At that point, Spectrum had reached the door and was now back in the hallway, worry in her eyes for her friend. Cotton took another step backward when suddenly the creature swung its claws through the air again, this time grazing Cotton across the cheek, eliciting a yelp of pain in reaction.

The creature screeched, having found its target. Cotton didn’t waste a single second, turning toward the door and sprinting for her life. No sooner had she done so, than the intense tremor of the creature surging toward her shook her body from beneath her hooves. From the right of her vision, she could see a long decayed foreleg swinging toward her, and she instinctively ducked her head as it flew over her head, missing her.

Galloping as fast as she could push herself, she extended a hoof out to the door handle, and tugged with adrenaline-induced strength. Before the creature could reach her, the door had been closed halfway, which resulted in the creature slamming into it, pushing it the rest of the way shut.

Cotton was knocked back onto the floor, and as she got up, the creature had already begun bashing the door down with shrill howls.

“This isn’t up for debate!” she exclaimed. “I’ll be right behind you, go!”

With a strong unwillingness to do so, Cotton complied and ran down the hallway as the constant blows against the door behind them resonated through the air. When she looked back, she saw that Spectrum was indeed following, but the struggle of running the way she was showed from the awkwardness of the way she moved.

Cotton directed her gaze forward again. She saw the sign on the wall indicating the direction of the locker rooms. From here, they just had to go straight forward. Cotton’s confidence grew back. They were almost out. It was just a little longer now before they could leave this place, they couldn’t screw up now.

She passed by the four-way cross in the hallway, making a beeline for the left turn at the end. Her concern for Spectrum still jabbed at the back of her mind. It appeared that Spectrum, although falling shortly behind, was doing well considering her condition, so she tried to dismiss her worry and focus on leaving.

Cotton’s head spun. Her friend was whimpering on the ground at the center of the four-way cross with both hooves on her leg, the bandage around it soaked through with blood. In that instant, Cotton dug her hooves into the ground, and she screeched to a complete stop.

Spectrum’s body, as well as the ground around her, was illuminated in a purple light that originated from the hallway beside her. From the same hallway, a shriek rang out, filling Cotton with the deepest sense of dread she had ever felt in her life.

“No…” Cotton ran, racing down the hallway toward her friend as heavy footsteps grew in volume, and the purple light around Spectrum shone brighter. Spectrum was watching the hallway, right away scrambling to get off the floor, only for a sharp pain to cause her to fall back down again.

No, no, no, no! Heart racing, Cotton ran faster, putting whatever energy she had into accelerating her speed. All other concerns and thoughts she had evaporated, the only thing on her mind saving her friend. She poured more into her legs, propelling her at speeds she had never reached before. Spectrum couldn’t die here, she had to save her! Another screech pierced her ears, even louder now. The footsteps were closer. The light was brighter.

In the next moment, time seemed to slow. Spectrum’s eyes went to Cotton, who continued to launch herself forward at top speed with the sole purpose of rescuing her friend from a fatal demise. A flash of acceptance crossed the expression of frantic panic that had been on Spectrum’s face, and after that, she stared at Cotton with an unmistakably apologetic look.

A huge blur of brown and purple whizzed down the cross in front of Cotton before disappearing into the hallway ahead. There was the crunch of flesh as Cotton careened forward, tripping on her own hooves and losing her balance, tumbling to the floor in a frantic mess. She lifted her head, met with the sight of crimson droplets falling to the ground in front of her, and in the creature’s wake, Spectrum was gone.

“SPECTRUM!!” she screamed with an agonized cry that tore through her throat and echoed down the long and dark empty halls. Her eyes were glued to the spot where Spectrum had been as though she had not fully processed what had just happened. As the seconds passed, and the realization of what had happened dawned on her, a bone-chilling iciness crawled its way through her gut, her body trembling in a petrified shock that gripped her like a vice.

Cotton pushed her body off the floor, a nauseous feeling swishing around in her stomach, and stumbled to the corner behind which the creature had disappeared, staring into the hallway it had gone into.

The door down the hall fell apart with a crash, the pieces of broken wood submerged in the resulting mist of dust. Cotton’s stare flicked over to the sound, and from the dust particles, the blind creature emerged, letting out a roar of fury as it picked up speed and began to bullet down the hallway toward Cotton. The filly flattened her body as much as she could against the wall beside her as the creature shot at full speed in her direction, before running past her to the end of the hall, where it turned left at a sharp angle and left her line of sight.

Whole body shaking in terror, Cotton stood back in front of the hall behind the corner from which the faint sounds of high-pitched howls projected. Her head was a whirlwind of emotions—disbelief, horror, anguish—while a flood of thoughts battled for dominance, all together acting as fuel to the panic she already felt.

She can’t be dead, she thought. Not just like that. She had to have survived. She had to have! Her brain was a mess of thoughts as she began to follow the hallway. Drops of blood on the floor and wall beside her left a trail ahead, the more she saw deepening the sense of nausea in her stomach. Her heart battered unremittingly at her chest, the mere act of breathing a strenuous task.

The hall felt longer as she wandered forward. Grating screams continued to resonate from the end of the hall, but her own safety had fallen to the bottom of her priorities and she continued forward, begging fate for her friend to still be alive.

Not far ahead, a tiny object could be seen on the ground next to a spatter of blood. Cotton approached it and picked it off the floor to examine it, and her heart only fell further. It was a purple, discolored feather. She nodded her head in denial, resuming down the hallway and picking up speed until she accelerated to a trot. More feathers like the one she had found lay in a similar trail to the spots of blood on the floor leading to the end of the hall.

Cotton turned right into the next hall in time to catch a glimpse of a purple light along with the long, shadowed figure in front of it disappearing behind a corner at the opposite end of the considerably long corridor. In front of her, more blood streaked along the ground up until the halfway point of the hall. Her legs continued to carry her forward, her walk matching that of an exhausted pony as she followed the blood trail, her horror growing more and more.

The drops of blood began to turn into splatters, and splatters quickly graduated into long, thick smears. Cotton shuddered heavily when her front hoof came in contact with one of the crimson blotches, warm and sticky. It was all fresh, Cotton knew, and it was for that reason that she actively refused the idea that her friend had been killed.

For what might have been the umpteenth time, Cotton called out Spectrum’s name, praying for an answer that the logical side of her thought process knew wouldn’t come. Every second that passed was another weight of pressure on her back from the knowledge that her friend was somewhere seriously hurt, or worse.

As she walked, she passed by open doors on her right, empty rooms the size of broom closets on the other side. Near the end of the row of doors, the trail of blood curved into one of the rooms as though the source of the blood was carelessly dragged inside.

Cotton subconsciously shook her head again, approaching the door where the pool of blood led, unprepared to see what was in the room but nevertheless pushing forward. Her imagination formulated images of what she would see inside, most of which she blocked out from her mind, incapable to even think about them. Wishing that she wouldn’t find the one thing she was dreading to see, Cotton stepped over the curved red trail, and looked inside the room.

The entire floor of the tiny, cramped room was coated entirely with fresh blood, collectively forming a sparkling scarlet pool, and at the center of it was Spectrum. She lay on the ground, completely motionless, her whole body mangled and battered, limbs bent to the point of being broken. Large gashes on the side of her body spilled a copious amount of blood into the already large stain on the ground, and her eyes stared ahead blankly at nothing, mouth hanging open where a tiny stream of blood escaped and made its way down to her chin.

Everything was now quieter. Standing in the doorway, completely frozen, Cotton’s eyes remained fixed on the body in front of her. The whole world around her began to crumble piece by piece as she stared, her mind incapable of processing what was before her. She blinked, desperate for the body to disappear when she opened her eyes, only for the body to remain in place. She blinked again. And again. She shut her eyes, screwing them tightly closed and shaking her head vigorously, and when she opened her eyes, the body was still there.

The last supports of her world collapsed, and everything shattered around her. Tears stung her eyes, spilling at a large rate and matting her cheeks with moisture, her legs giving way as she fell to the ground.

“No…” she muttered in between sobs, dragging herself over to Spectrum’s corpse. “Please, no! Spectrum!” She placed both hooves on her chest. Her body was freezing. Hysterically, she pressed her hooves down on Spectrum’s chest and pushed hard, before releasing the pressure and pushing again. “Don’t do this to me, Spectrum… please! Please wake up!!”

She continued applying compressions to Spectrum’s chest, throwing her whole body’s weight into each push, only for her attempts to wind up ineffective. “Don’t leave me, please…” The pushes against her chest got weaker with each one, until the crushing reality that her friend was gone hit her full force, and Cotton gave up. She sprawled herself over her friend’s lifeless corpse, holding it close to her as she cried into the fur, violent and loud sobs wracking her whole body.

It all felt like a bad dream. One she would wake up from in a couple seconds, panting and sweating in her bed at home, before rushing to find Spectrum and hugging the life out of her, thankful that she was still alive. But this was all very real. Her friend was dead, and the pain of that hurt harder than any physical pain she had ever experienced, as though a huge chunk of her had been ripped away.

Memories rushed through her head from the early years of their friendship, her mind flashing back to grade school, when Cotton would be picked on by other fillies and colts for being the odd one out, and Spectrum would stand up to them for her, thus spawning their unlikely friendship. Her memories then flashed to the darker points in her life, when Spectrum remained persistently at her side, doing everything in her power to cheer her up, before flashing to Spectrum’s guidance through the worsening of her anxiety problems. She then recalled all the times they would spend time together, talking, and laughing, and playing. Spectrum had been such a huge part of her life; somepony that made her happy and cared about her.

The fur on Spectrum’s body was wet from Cotton’s tears as she buried her face into her deceased friend’s skin, wishing that her friend could suddenly come back to life okay and well. She gripped Spectrum’s body tighter, not wanting to accept the fact that her friend was no longer, and muttered one last feeble plead.

She lay there weeping, hugging her dead friend for five minutes and letting out sob after sob laced through with sorrow and grief. As the minutes passed, her weeps became weaker, until she mourned Spectrum’s death in silence, her body now quivering mildly over Spectrum’s immobile state.

Her awareness of the present situation started coming back to her. She was still in danger. She had to get out of this place.

Releasing her hold on Spectrum’s body, Cotton sat up, whole body drenched in the corpse’s blood. Her head turned to Spectrum’s right wing, seeing that it was still rolled up against the side of her body. Cotton’s hooves went to the wing, and she unfurled it. Once it flapped open flat on the ground, the keys within were revealed. For a moment, she stared at it as though unsure whether or not to take them, before grabbing them in a hoof.

Her eyes went back to Spectrum, a few more tears leaking from them and leaving tracks of moisture down the sides of her face. “Thank you, Spectrum,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry…”

She did not want to leave her friend behind, hating herself for simply standing from the floor and stepping away from the body. However, if she wanted to make it out alive, she had to leave her. Part of her wanted to just stay with her dead friend, even if it meant starving to death, but she knew that Spectrum would have wanted her to get out alive.

Putting the keys in her mouth, she regretfully stepped out of the room and back into the hallway, glancing once more at Spectrum’s blood soaked and broken body.

A reverberating roar to her left prompted her to turn her head instantly to the source of it. At the end of the hall where one of the creatures had been briefly, another one stood there, staring her down with the malicious intent to end her.

Cotton took off in the other direction as fast as she possibly could. The creature immediately began galloping after her, its longer legs propelling it slightly faster than the filly’s top speed. The door. She just had to make it there, and then leave this celestiaforsaken hospital.

She followed the blood trail, taking a sharp turn ahead back to the four-way cross in the hall, where she once again turned left, speeding to the end of the hall with every little bit of energy in her body. Her heart pounded, lungs burning for more oxygen to compensate for the work she was putting her body through, but her sheer will to survive caused her to pay no attention to it.

Behind her, the creature was catching up quickly, its physical form giving it a much larger advantage than Cotton’s tiny legs, but even so, she remained a considerable distance away. However, if she didn’t do something to slow the creature down, that distance would close, as was starting to happening.

Cotton turned again, spotting the destroyed vent. With these hallways mapped out in her head, she remembered what was coming up. The deafening sounds of the creature’s pursuit were growing in volume, and her legs would not go any faster than they already were, so she did everything to maintain her current speed in hopes that she would reach it before the creature reached her.

Her surroundings turned pitch black once she bolted through the pile of broken metal sheets that were once part of the vent above and through the open door leading to the next hall. This only happened for a moment though, as in the next second, the hallway was brightly lit in a violet shade. Because of this, she could see the blockage in the hall that was quickly approaching.

The ground below her vibrated, and the sounds of the creature were now close enough that she could hear the distinct details of the creature’s guttural screams and dry, jagged breaths as it chased after her like a tiger during its hunt. It was directly behind her. She only had a little farther to go, but if she couldn’t get there in time, she would be killed.

The large boulder at the midpoint of the hall got closer and closer, as did the creature behind her. The shade of purple on the ground and walls were getting brighter and brighter, until she was sure that the gap between her and the monstrosity was no larger than a meter.

With one last strong push, she mustered all the strength in her legs and dove through the space between the wall and the boulder. She hit the ground stomach first, sliding forward as the ear-splitting bang of the creature crashing into the boulder entered her ears. She turned her head, watching the creature crumple to the ground flailing in agony. Without a second to spare, she dragged herself the rest of the way to the other side of the boulder before lying there on her haunches, a panting, sweaty mess.

The creature on the other side got up off the ground and, with a loud shriek, threw its body against the blockage, again and again in incessant attempts to get to Cotton. She heard slam after persistent slam, and it was on the eighth slam that the boulder budged, nearly falling over but then righting itself up in the same position as before. It hit Cotton that the boulder was not going to hold the creature back, and she quickly pushed herself to her feet to begin running again. She was so unbelievably tired, her body severely overworked at this point, but she couldn’t let that stop her. She had to keep moving.

She reached the end of the hall, entering the large and empty dark room, consulting the mental map in her mind. There was a doorway to the right. She ran through the room, and found the door into the next hallway. There was only a limited amount of time before the creature would break through the blockage, so she needed to be agile.

She analyzed the hallway and determined her next course of action. At the nearest left, she turned, refusing to stop running all the while, ending up in the lengthy corridor with the open door she recognized that led to the room where she had patched up Spectrum’s leg. After the right turn at the very end of this hall was the door. She was so close now.

When she was halfway through the hall, she heard a loud, echoed collision and then, no sooner than that, a scramble of heavy footsteps. The creature had broken through. She didn’t have much time.

Cotton pivoted at the right turn, the door now in her line of sight. Relief broke out within her, and she rushed to the end of the hall, bringing herself to a halt in front of the door.

Spitting out the keys into her hooves, she came to a quick, horrifying realization: she had no idea which key was the right one. Each one had to be tried until one of them fit the keyhole.

As the currently distant footsteps resounded through her environment, Cotton had gotten to work, grabbing one of the keys on the ring of plenty others, and slipping it through the keyhole. It only went part way before it was met with resistance. She slid it back out and took another key, trying the same thing, but receiving the same result.

Cotton agitatedly burned through key after key as the footsteps and deep screeches grew louder, met with moments of relief when the key would enter all the way, only for it to disappear when the key would resist her attempt to rotate it in the lock. The pattern continued, Cotton grabbing another key and inserting it, only for it to stop part way. Her stress grew as her earlier concern of whether or not any of these keys actually fit the lock returned, and as the footsteps amplified, her movements became more frenzied, occasionally unable to fit a key into the lock due to her hooves shaking.

None of the keys were working so far, and Cotton had almost tried all of them. With each one that didn’t work, Cotton’s heart fell further and further, and the loudness of the creature after her was a consistent reminder that time was running out.

The hall brightened, and Cotton’s blood ran cold from the recognition of what that meant. With only a few more keys remaining, Cotton grabbed a random one and prayed. She stuck it into the lock, and when it went inside all the way, she twisted. This time, there was no resistance, and the key turned all the way, a clicking noise audible. No sooner had Cotton heard it, than she released her hold on the keys, hooves rushing to the door handle and yanking it down. The door opened, and she entered the lobby room on the other side, pulling the door shut with just enough time to see the creature bolting at top speed toward her.

The instant she had shut the door, she leapt to the side, which proved to be a good call as the metal door suddenly shot off its hinges and flew nearly to the other end of the room. Unfortunately, she was too late, as the surface of the door impacted her left hind leg, causing her to cry in pain as she landed on the ground. The creature, skidding into the room, thankfully hadn’t heard the cry due to the high scratching noise of the metal door against the stone ground, knocking into the flipped tables throughout the room as well.

Cotton remained still on the floor, the creature breathing with the sound of a snake’s rattle whilst casting its line of sight across the room. Her leg throbbed with unimaginable pain, and when she lowered her head to examine it, she saw that her leg was not only heavily bruised, but also bent at a slightly odd angle.

It took much of her strength not to whine from the pain, tears leaking from her eyes as she gritted her teeth. She looked back up to see the creature beginning to search every corner of the room. There was no doubt that the creature would find her if she just stayed there. Next to Cotton was a flipped table, tall enough to provide cover until the creature left, but once she tried to crawl over to the table, an explosion of pain rocketed through her leg, and she was unable to hold back a groan.

The creatures head rotated until its eyes were locked on Cotton, and then a deep growl emanated from its mouth.

Cotton set her front hooves on the ground and lifted herself off the ground, only to fall back down when needles of pain stabbed through her leg. The creature stepped toward her, gnarling as though reveling in the fact that it had the filly right where it wanted her.

With no other options, Cotton lugged herself back with her forelegs to get as far away from the creature as possible. It advanced toward her, taking its time like it was toying with her.

The whimpering filly kept backing up until a hard surface suddenly hit her back, and she found herself tucked in the corner of the room as each step of the creature’s disturbingly stretched legs brought it closer and closer to her. She shrunk, ears folding as her eyes were stung by the increasingly bright light projected from the creature’s chest, rendering the creature as a threatening, enlarging shadow.

This was it. She was trapped in a corner defenceless and vulnerable, about to be torn to shreds. Cowering, shrunken to the floor powerless toward her incoming fate, she realized this was how she would die. A few more seconds at most, a painful demise, and then she would be no longer. She was going to die.

Up until now, she had always thought that she would have her whole life ahead of her; that she would grow up to be successful, have a family of her own, and die peacefully. Everything had been playing out so well, but in the end it had all led up to losing her best friend and then waiting in anguish as her own death loomed closer. Only an hour ago, she was laughing happily along with her closest friend, and the outcome of that was a few more seconds of life and then a gruesome end once those seconds were up.

She wasn’t ready to die. She still had so much left to experience. So much left to accomplish. And yet, here she was, about to be killed by the creature in front of her in a place she would likely never be found, without even the chance to have one last conversation with her family, just to say goodbye.

The creature stopped in front of Cotton, gazing down at the helpless filly, and raised a claw. With all the built up emotions and despair inside of her, Cotton did the only thing she could do, and screamed.

From behind the doorway Cotton had just come through, another one of the creatures galloped into the room. Mid-swing, the creature about to end Cotton’s life paused and looked back with a bewildered growl.

Cotton, who had both hooves covering her eyes, noticed quickly that her death had been delayed. Uncovering her eyes, she saw claws right above her head, suspended there as though time had stopped before they could pierce through her. The creature the claws belonged to had now directed its attention to the other creature that had entered the room, and by the flesh wound across its ruined eyes, she quickly identified it as the blind creature.

With a loud screech, the blind creature suddenly lurched forward toward the creature that had come close to killing Cotton. Summoning all her strength to her forelegs, she hauled herself out of the way as the blind creature tumbled head first into the other creature, and they both crashed onto the ground where Cotton had once been, legs tangled like flies in a spider’s web.

Cotton continued to crawl back as the two creatures stood from the ground, the blind one twisting its head around in confusion as though dazed. The other stood from the ground with a loud squeal and launched itself at the blind creature, tackling it back to the ground. The blind creature clawed wildly at its attacker before landing a powerful kick to its chest, sending it flying back into the wall behind it, the result of the impact leaving a noticeable crack in the stone.

Quickly, both of them were in a violent brawl. While they were distracted fighting each other, Cotton had managed to balance herself on three legs, leaving the injured one limp, and began to run as fast as her condition would allow out of the room through the doorway beside her.

Everything else was now shadowed by her determination to leave. She hobbled down the dark hall, the sounds of the monsters in the lobby room battling and screeching. The hall turned right, as did she, passing by the door infested with vines, and then the hall turned again. She followed it, all that was ahead familiar to her.

From the dark, the barred door came into view. The door that, had Spectrum and her never opened, would have prevented all the tragedies and horrors she had experienced in the last hour. Not slowing for a second, she passed through the doorway, jumping over the broken padlock on the ground that had once kept the door firmly shut…

The echoes of the creatures were now minimal, but even though it seemed as though the danger was gone, Cotton would not dare to take any risks, and for that reason, ran at a consistent pace up the stairs and back into the bottom floor of the hospital, surrounded once again by clean walls and a nearly perfect ceiling and floor as though the place hadn’t been left abandoned for long at all.

She sped into the four-way cross. From there though, she didn’t know where to go. Her recollection from when she was last here passed through her mind like a film reel on rewind. Right was a locked door. Left led back to the hole through which she fell and a locked door.

“There’s a staircase at the end of this hall, I found it pretty quickly. It also leads to every floor in the building, so we can get out through there.”

Cotton went straight. With her eyes largely adjusted to the darkness, she could only barely see, but enough to notice what was coming up. At the end of the hall, she took a sharp left. The newspapers still sat on the chairs along the wall. Darting by them, she rounded the concave turn, and on the left hand side of the corridor, a staircase came into view, leading upward.

She sped up the stairs, skipping multiple steps with each gallop despite her limp and ascending toward the upper floors. On her right was a rusty white door with a small, narrowed window above the handle followed by more stairs that led upward. She aimed for the door, grabbing the handle and pulling it downward. Expecting it to be locked, she was caught off guard by the fact that it opened cleanly, and she slid into the hall on the other side.

The door gradually rotated shut before clicking closed. Cotton’s eyes scanned every inch of the new hallway she was in. Her brain worked twice as quick, pinpointing her location in the hospital based on the hallway she had entered—the hole-riddled floor, ceiling with missing tiles, the chairs left randomly astray throughout the hall, and the double doors at the end of the hall to her left—and before long, she figured out where she was. This was the corridor on one side of the dome-shaped room. On the other side was the one that led to the cafeteria, which meant that to the left was the lobby room, and from there…

The filly ran left, the pair of double doors approaching from the end of the hall. The exit was only meters away now. In only a few seconds would she be out of this terrible place, free from the horrors this town had been hiding from the rest of Equestria for decades.

Reaching the doors, she threw them open, and then galloped into the lobby room, her eyes shooting instantly to the short hall that led to the main entrance doors. They were right there. Freedom lay on the other side. She rushed across the room, her destination; a sight she never thought she would see again but inches away.

Cool air touched her skin, the faint draft of night time air sweeping through her fur. Gracing her eyes was the sight of the starry sky, dotted with stars as far as the eye could see and with it, a crescent moon at the center of it all. The melodic ambience of heavy rain thundering all around her alongside the pelts of rain drops hitting trees and nearby leaves. In front of her, just past the flat hilltop on which the hospital rested was the vast landscape of the rundown town of Ponyville—the first thing she had seen since coming here. It felt like years since she had been in an outdoor environment.

Her whole body was drenched within an instant. Cold rainwater dripped from her mane and fur, which were pressed against her skin, making her shiver heavily. Even now, free from the building behind her, she continued to run, down the slippery, muddy hill where they had come from.

A bolt of lightning blared above her, touching the tip of one of the trees of the forest beside her and causing it to catch fire. Large branches fell down around Cotton. She swerved out of the way, avoiding most of them, but when a rather sizeable branch knocked her off her feet, her hind leg burned, and an intense heat flooded into the top and bottom parts of her leg. However, her reaction was no more than a wince and quiet whimper as she pushed herself off the sticky, muddy ground and pressed on.

She descended the path, soon surrounded again by the long since destroyed houses and strong scent of mildew. Her memory of every direction Spectrum and her had taken was precise, and as she limped speedily down the wet, deserted streets, she found herself back at the circular space with the tall building that’s top part was embedded into the ground.

Another bolt of lightning struck, the black night sky substituted with a bright white like the flash of a camera. The demolished houses on either side of Cotton fell behind one after another, and before long, the path she had taken into Ponyville emerged from the sheets of rain in her midst.

The sky was pierced by the far-off echo of a sharp, distorted screech from somewhere within the torrential downpour surrounding her. A spike of adrenaline in her system encouraged her to carry on faster toward the path. Her injured leg hurt with a terrible pain, but she paid it no heed, and in fact hardly noticed it.

Her hooves touched the gravel of the path, leading outside the town borders. She gasped for air at a rate which, were she not running at such a rapid speed, would have caused her to faint from hyperventilation in the bat of an eye. Another bolt of lightning struck, and a bright orange smudge formed against the deep mist of rain somewhere above.

She had to get as far away from the town as possible. She didn’t care where she went, as long as she was far away. Her legs carried her aimlessly forward, her only hints at where she was going indicated by the bolts of lightning providing a view, if extremely hazy, of the area around her.

Crackles of electricity roared from the beyond, the pellets of rainwater showering down on Cotton fierce and unrelenting. Each landing of her hooves on the ground caused a squelch, spraying water in all directions. Her body was freezing. Her leg hurt. She needed to get away.

A jagged line of bright blue electricity cut through the unforgiving mist. She was running over a hill now, a vast horizon of empty landscape as far as the eye could see.

The gravel path ended, the rest grown over by weeds and long grass that had not been tended to for years. There was no doubt she had made distance between her and the town. But there was no telling how much danger she was still in. Her body shivered. The pain in her leg was unbearable.

She ran for minutes. Minutes stretched into hours. The rain pounded down on the earth, the taps of water droplets on her skin beginning to sting. Another bolt of lightning. The blur of fire glowed within the fog. Except something was off. As opposed to an orange color, this one was white. And there was not one, but two, side by side. As she ran, the space between the two white lights expanded, as did the size of the lights.

A sound entered her ears. It sounded like thunder, but thunder didn’t go on for this long. It was almost like the whir of a machine. It was cold. There was pain. The white lights increased in size. Were they coming closer? There was danger. She needed to get away.

From the growing white lights came the deafening noise of an expulsion of steam. The mechanical whir became louder. Cotton panicked momentarily. Was it the creatures? Were they after her? No… the light they produced was purple. The mechanical dissonance changed, and now there came the shrill groan of gears and development of rust, followed by more steam.

She squinted, the two lights now glaring in her eyes. They began to slow, and from the edge of the mist and rain falling from the heavens, a large, slowly moving structure came into view. She drifted in its direction as it came to a stop, the mechanical screeching quieting to a low hum.

A large, metallic shape formed itself in Cotton’s field of vision, and the closer she got, the clearer the long and enormous steam train became. The chimney at the front of the train blew out a gust of transparent steam that blended in with the already heavy mist in the atmosphere. Then, the wheels began to move, the groan of gears yet to be oiled filling the air once again.

The train accelerated slowly. Cotton sped up until she was directly beside it, and aimed for the carriage not far in front of her. While the train was in the process of matching Cotton’s speed, she had managed to gain enough momentum to catch up with the carriage, and spotted an area to grip on the side. She jumped up high and reached a foreleg. Her hoof came just slightly short.

The train was accelerating quickly now, moving faster than Cotton. With all her mustered strength, she leapt upward again, this time able to grab onto the side of the carriage. She used her good hind leg to support herself against the side while hoisting herself up with her forelegs. Lifting her hind leg over the edge and with one last strong pull, her body went over the side and fell onto the moist, hardwood floor on the inside of the carriage.

The train was now done accelerating and moved along the tracks at a constant speed, taking Cotton farther away from the town until the danger was most certainly far behind. She was safe. She was finally safe.

Lying there on her side on the ground, rainwater battering against her, Cotton reflected on the horrors she had survived. Everything hit her full force, like a sack of bricks. She was alive.

Cotton curled into a ball, and the dam holding back all her emotions burst. She cried. She wailed. Her shrill screams of misery and relief filled the air, matching the volume of the cracking thunder permeating the air. All the emotions and stress from the last hour was being released in that moment, and for the longest time, she cried harder than she ever had in her life.

As the train continued to carry her away from the abandoned town of Ponyville, and the storm around her raged on, her cries became weaker. Her eyes shut and her body relaxed, only periodically shook by a sob as the embrace of sleep pulled her in. The last thing she heard before the blackness had taken her was the distant shouts of concern from a deep voice, and then the world was silent…

For the longest time, everything around her was void. There was no sensation in her limbs or body.

The first things she noticed right away coming out of her dreamless slumber was that it was no longer cold. In fact, she felt… comfortable. Something soft was pressing against her back, and a smooth, silky material draped over her front.

She then found that the pain in her hind leg was completely gone, a minor compression in its place. It still felt awkward, but it was better than before. A lot better.

The scent of rot had disappeared. Taking in a shaky breath through her nose, clean, rich air filled her lungs, satisfyingly fresh. A warm breeze brushed across the fur on the right side of her face, where it also felt as though something was plastered onto her skin, and from all around originated the soothing draft of a nice day outdoors.

The moment she cracked an eyelid open, a blinding white light assaulted her vision. She screwed her eyes shut again, unprepared for the sudden attack of light, and then ever so slowly inched her eyes open. She couldn’t see a thing because of how bright it was, and she scrunched her eyes hard. Though, after a little while, the brightness was fading, and the different elements of her new environment materialized.

Cotton stared up at a white, polished drop ceiling. Her head tilted downward. She was in a square room comprised of white walls and a closed beige door in the corner. She also lay on a bed that bore a matching color other than the sheets over top of her which were light blue and in a stripe pattern. Stethoscopes hung off the wall above her, as well as other devices for checking a pony’s ears and temperature and empty chairs sat lined up against the wall to her right.

Next to her checking the heart rate monitor beside the bed was an earth pony mare with a pink coat and cherry red mane done in braids, dressed in a white uniform. Her attention was drawn to the bed by the creaking, and when she saw that Cotton was no longer dormant, momentary surprise passed over her face before being replaced by a comforting smile.

“Well good morning,” she spoke, her voice gentle and kind on par with her expression. “How are you feeling?”

Cotton didn’t say anything. She had never seen this mare before, and was still bewildered at the sudden change in her location. In her mind, she worked out what exactly was going on. While she hadn’t a clue how she had gotten here, the room’s décor gave her an idea where the here was. The medical tools, the heart rate monitor, the color of the room, the mare with the white clothes… She was in some sort of hospital.

The beeping of the heart rate monitor rapidly increased and Cotton whimpered agitatedly, sitting upright in the bed. The mare’s smile gave way to concern, taken aback by the abrupt change in behavior.

“Hey, it’s alright,” The mare said, resting a hoof on Cotton’s shoulder and right away feeling the vibrations of her body. “Calm down, you’re safe. Everything is fine.”

A cold sweat had broken out onto her brow, the adrenaline rush of a panic attack causing her to breathe heavily. Her legs were fidgety with the urging feeling to carry her away from this place, eyes pinpricks that bounced from corner to corner in their sockets. Though, as the mare tried to soothe her with reassuring words, her tone of voice almost hypnotic, the filly’s hysterical fit died down. She was significantly calmer, although still sat up as though alert of a serious nearby threat.

“Its okay, nothing in here will hurt you. There’s no need to worry,” the pink mare consoled, her smile returning. “My name is Tender Heart. I’m one of the nurses here. I’m only here to ask a few questions, so just lie back down and relax, I don’t bite.”

Cotton physically composed herself, sinking back down into the covers slightly into a slouched position, though her heartbeat still remained somewhat high, indicated by the beeping of the heart rate monitor. She still had no idea where she was, and a large part of her was convinced that danger was lurking, but the nurse provided a sense of safety, allowing some of her worries to subside. Unless this sense of security was false, and she was being led to believe everything was fine…

“Perfect,” the nurse said, straightening the covers on Cotton’s bed. “Now please try to answer these questions as best as you can, alright?”

Cotton kept her mouth shut, half of her mindset still untrusting of this new environment and screaming at her to escape through the nearest exit. Nevertheless, Cotton swallowed, and then nodded in compliance.

It took her a moment to answer as though she was processing the question “U-um…” her voice came out coarse and dry. “C-Cotton Candy.” Her throat was killing her. It felt like the entire inside of her throat was blistered.

“I…” her mind was hazy. Digging through the fog in her memories, the first things she recalled distinctly was the cold, and the pain. It was wet and raining, and there was the harsh screaming of grinding gears and steam. “I was on a train… and I was running from… something…” She looked at the nurse. “W-where am I?”

The nurse sat beside Cotton, explaining. “You’re in a hospital in Manehattan. Somepony found you unconscious and bruised on a train with a broken leg and took you to the nearest hospital.”

Broken leg… she turned her head to inspect her hind leg which was sticking out from beneath the covers. It was wrapped in a splint, slightly elevated on a fat pillow.

Her memories became slightly more vivid. It was a door that had fractured her leg while she was running away from…

Everything came back to her. Ponyville. The hospital. The basement. Her and Spectrum had gone down there to explore, and then they were attacked.

A familiar sense of grief sprouted in her stomach, heart aching with woeful pain as the whole of her situation truly sunk in. Her best friend was gone forever, and she would never see or talk to her again.

“Cotton. What’s wrong?” the nurse asked when a tear streaked from Cotton’s eye down her cheek, and she convulsed with faint sobs.

“…Spectrum…” Cotton stuttered out, voice cracking as more moisture spilled from her widened eyes, and she stared down at her bed sheet weeping silently.

The nurse put her hoof on Cotton’s shoulder again. “What’s the matter, sweetie?” The trembling filly didn’t respond, mumbling words under her breath that were incomprehensible to the nurse whilst still lightly crying. “Your parents are in the waiting room, would you feel better if they were here?”

Cotton’s ears perked up, head facing the nurse as though she were snapped out of a reverie. “M-my parents…?”

“Do you want me to go get them?” Cotton nodded without thought, eyes gleaming from the tears in them. “Okay. Don’t worry, I’ll be right back—it won’t take long.” The nurse got up from the bed and stepped out of the room, her steps fading until they could no longer be heard.

She was now alone in the room with only the outdoor noises and the rhythmic beeping of the heart rate monitor. Anxiety began taking root inside her, an uncomfortable feeling passed across her skin as the hairs on the back of her neck stood. She was lying there, defenceless and vulnerable to any threats that may have been nearby.

The room seemed to shrink around her. Breathing shaky, pearls of sweat travelling down her face, Cotton’s head twisted restlessly from left to right like a broken machine. Creeping in from the back of her mind was the suspicious feeling that she wasn’t safe here. Something was after her; she needed to leave as soon as possible.

Cotton heard steps clacking on the floor outside the room. Cotton’s gaze fell on the open door where the nurse had left. The beeping increased, and she pushed herself back up in her bed. One of them was here. They had found her, and they were going to kill her.

The hoofsteps got louder, and Cotton pushed herself back as far as she could, breaths coming in gasps. There was one out there, she was sure of it. She tried to move, but her motor nerves wouldn’t respond to her demands.

A dark, stretched shadow spread across the tiled floor in the hallway outside. Seized by fear, Cotton tried to scream for help, but all she produced was a mere croak. Her eyes were trained on the shadow as it got larger, shaping into the spitting image of the creatures that had tried to end her life before. Her heart raced faster, trickles of fluid tickling her face, and she listened in horror as the creature’s steps were almost right outside the room, her death closing in slowly but surely.

A light cry left her as a white mare with a tied back fuchsia mane and white uniform came into view, passing in front of the room before disappearing behind the door frame. Cotton sighed deeply, eyes shutting in relief as the beeping of the monitor beside her slowed slightly. Her worry of a threat still remained, but the fact that it was just another nurse outside the room put her at ease.

While the current set of footsteps outside was disappearing, more were coming within earshot. However this time, there were more than one, and along with them were voices. One of them, she distinguished as the nurse’s, but Cotton’s ears rose when she recognized the other two, and immediately moisture accumulated in her eyes.

In the doorway, the nurse returned, entering the room and followed closely by two more ponies. One was a well-built earth pony stallion with a brown coat and black mane, and the other was a unicorn mare with an orange coat and yellow mane. Upon seeing these two ponies, a wave of emotions flowed over her, and the barrier holding them all back fell.

“M-mom, dad…” Cotton cried fully, tears flowing freely from her eyes after seeing her parents in front of her for the first time in what felt like forever.

“Sweetie…!” the mare said, she and the stallion walking up to the bed wearing expressions of shock and confusion. The orange mare stepped next to Cotton, glancing at her injured hind leg and the bandages on her face and various other parts of her body completely bewildered by what had happened to her daughter. She was abruptly taken by surprise once the filly threw herself at her mother, a pair of legs wrapping themselves around her neck and squeezing tightly. Cotton buried her muzzle into her mother’s shoulder and didn’t hold back, bawling into the warm patch of fur with loud, heavy sobs.

In her confused state, Cotton’s mother stood there immobile as though not quite sure what to do, before comforting the filly with her own hug. “Hey, it’s okay. Your father and I are here.” The brown stallion—Cotton’s father went to caress the filly as well as Cotton wet her mother’s fur with her tears. In the warm embrace of her parents, Cotton’s anxiety faded completely, a flurry of emotions—relief, happiness, and warmth filling her entire being. She was home.

Cotton’s muffled crying continued, and as her parents continued to comfort her, her father asked the main question that was on both of their minds. “Cotton, what happened?”

“S-she’s dead,” Cotton wailed, voice broken up by sobs. “Spectrum’s d-dead.”

“Those t-things… they killed her. She—she just…” she trailed off, unable to continue as she hugged her parents tighter, shaking uncontrollably.

“We don’t know yet,” the nurse replied, proceeding to explain. “She was brought in yesterday in bad shape by somepony who found her on the carriage of a train, but that’s the extent of the details. We fixed her up as best as we could and contacted you right after.”

It took a while for the orange mare to process the information she was told. She looked back down at her daughter again, watching as she held onto her as though for dear life and just cried, like she had been through a horribly traumatizing experience. Sharing a look with her husband, she continued to brush Cotton’s pink and white mane with her hoof, clueless as to what had happened to her daughter, but knowing only that she needed consolation.

Cotton settled down after a few more minutes, still visibly distraught but more composed than earlier. She lifted her head from her mother’s shoulder, eyes reddened and watery, and sat still with her head low.

“Hey, sweetie?” Cotton’s mother said. “I need you to tell me what happened. Did somepony hurt you?”

“What happened then?” There was no answer from the filly this time. Cotton had her attention directed to the bed sheets again, quaking subtly in agitation. “Cotton? I need you to talk to me, how did this happen to you?”

“My apologies, miss,” the nurse interjected, “but I believe it would be best to let her rest for now. She isn’t in any state to talk about what happened.”

Cotton’s mother wanted to retort, bothered by not knowing what or who had hurt her daughter like this, but then she sighed and nodded in accord. She turned back to Cotton, running a hoof through her mane. “Whatever happened, you don’t have to worry. You’re safe here. Everything’s going to be okay.”

The sound of the caring, reassuring voice of Cotton’s mother and the presence of her parents put her at ease, and for the next few moments, the room was silent as her parents held her again, their affection making her worries faded into dust.

“I’m terribly sorry to cut this short, but it’s very important that Cotton gets a lot of rest right now, so I’m going to have to ask you two to come back another time,” the nurse informed.

Cotton’s parents, although disappointed that they couldn’t stay longer, wore understanding looks. The brown stallion knelt down to Cotton’s level. “Get a good rest, Cotton. We’ll be back really soon.”

Cotton’s looked up suddenly with a pleading face. “Please don’t leave…”

“Your parents will be allowed to visit you tomorrow,” the nurse said in order to hearten the filly. “they’ll be back before you know it.”

Cotton wanted her parents to stay so badly, wishing for the feeling of assurance from her parents being at her company to last, but the nurse’s words that her parents would return tomorrow made her feel better about it.

“We love you too, sweetie,” her mom said as her and the stallion went to leave. “We’ll see you tomorrow. Take it easy.” And with that, they left the room.

The nurse looked at Cotton. “Alright, I’m just going to check a few more things, and then I’ll be out of your hair so you can get a good sleep.”

Cotton hadn’t heard the nurse. With the absence of her parents, her anxiety began to creep back in. The breeze touching her foreleg caught her attention again, and she found herself staring at the open window against the wall next to the bed. Her breath caught in her throat. Something could easily get through and attack her. It wasn’t safe.

Noticing the filly’s agitation, the nurse stopped what she was doing. “What’s the matter?”

Although puzzled, the nurse stepped toward the window, rotating the handle until the screen closed shut. The breeze was gone, ridding of some of the tension in her gut.

Loud voices started coming from the hallway outside, prompting the nurse to turn her head towards the door. Cotton’s own stare shifted to the hallway in curiosity as she made out the conversation that was taking place.

“Hey, excuse me, ma’am, you’re not allowed back here.” said a deep, gravelly voice.

“You don’t understand, I need to talk to her, its urgent!” The next voice was feminine and raspy, and sounded strangely familiar, as though it belonged to somepony she knew.

“You can not see a patient unless you have checked in and confirmed a visit with them.”

“Ma’am, do not use that tone of voice or we will escort you out of here. You can not see her at the moment, you must leave.”

“If it turns out she did go to Ponyville and went in that hospital, its gonna be a huge ass fucking problem for all of Equestria—I need to know she didn’t go there, now LET ME THROUGH!”

“For the last time, you can not see her currently, now please turn around and—ARG!”

Cotton heard the impact of somepony hitting the ground, and then other voices came in, shouting words she couldn’t discern. The shuffle of some sort of fight came next, more bodies collapsing to the floor in succession along with shouts of pain. Ponies in white uniforms ran down the hallway, and as the fight continued, the raspy voice began to grunt loudly, its owner assumedly being outmatched.

“LET… ME… GO!!” the feminine voice screamed, like a mental patient caught trying to escape. The nurse trotted to the door and looked into the hallway, gasping at what she saw. The struggling kept on for another minute as Cotton was left to imagine what was going on out there. Before long, though, the voices in the hallway grew further, until a door shut, and a lull took the place of the racket outside.

Cotton sat upright, contributing to the stillness that hung overhead. She hadn’t been thinking so much about the fight that took place, but of the words the raspy-voiced mare spoke. How had she known about her going to Ponyville, or even about the hospital?

Questions swirled around in her mind, but what disturbed her the most was not only how desperate the mare was to talk to her, but that she had been willing to cause a fight in order to get to her. Whoever that mare was knew something about what had happened at that town, and her reaction to finding out what she had done caused a strange feeling to develop inside of Cotton. A horrible feeling that the horrors had in fact not ended with her escape from the town, and that her and Spectrum going to Ponyville made her responsible for something much worse than she realized.

“By Celestia, what in the world was that all about?” the nurse said to herself, walking back into the room and giving Cotton a warm smile. “Don’t worry yourself too much over that. After all, you have a good long rest ahead of you, and the last thing you need is something to fret over.”

Cotton nodded, but still felt uneasy after what she had heard. She kept replaying the mare’s words in her mind, attempting to dissect them and pull away a different conclusion, but the only conclusions she could reach were equally horrifying.

“Oh, before I leave you be, I have something for you.” The nurse went up to the drawers next to Cotton’s bed and pulled open the top one before reaching inside and pulling out a scratched up camera with a strap attached. “The pony who brought you in told us you had this with you. It’s fully charged, so I’ll leave it here for you when you wake up tomorrow.” She placed it on top of the drawers, and then headed back to the door. “I’ll be back in the morning, alright?”

“Sweet dreams, hun.” The nurse stepped out of the room and closed the door, leaving Cotton alone. The filly looked over at the camera the nurse left, and then reached over to grab it. It was wet and dented all over, but powered on with no issue when she pressed the button on the side of the camera.

She pressed a second button, and on the screen, rows of photos that had been taken previously were displayed. Using the arrows next to the screen, she navigated across the rows of photos and selected one from the bunch.

The camera loaded a picture of Cotton and Spectrum during Hearths Warming, digging into their presents excitedly, eager to discover what was inside. The tears returned, the sight of her and Spectrum together making her miss the pegasus even more. She scrolled further and loaded a photo of her and Spectrum holding sundae’s while Spectrum held the camera to take the picture. Chuckling sadly, she scrolled further to a picture of Spectrum with a playful grin pinning Cotton to the ground, her face red with laughter whilst being tickle-tortured. With each picture she selected, she was sent further down a rollercoaster of emotions, crying softly with the occasional giggle as she viewed the memories of her and her closest friend, wishing more than ever that she could spend one last moment with her.

The screen then displayed the first image her and Spectrum had taken at Ponyville of the destroyed town hall. She pressed the arrow a couple more times, ending up on the image that Spectrum had asked her to take of her in front of a broken-down house. As Cotton examined the picture, she took notice of the outline of some sort of shape inside the house, and when she looked closer, she identified it as the skeletal remains of a corpse.

She flipped through the next few photos in line—the one of the cafeteria, and the photos Cotton had taken of the basement after she fell to find her way around—and then stopped on one particular one.

For a reason that Cotton couldn’t wrap her head around, the unsettling feeling inside of her intensified. But as she stared at the picture, a detail stood out. Between the door’s iron bars was a white glow that generated a small, diagonal lens flare. Cotton pulled up the options tab and zoomed in on the glow. The barred door now took up more of the image, and the glow began to take shape, but not enough to make out what it was.

She zoomed in further and looked again. This time, she could distinguish what looked to be a face. Except, the face was deformed, and from its mouth, sharp teeth almost like fangs stuck out. The face’s glowing eyes was staring directly at the camera…

Cotton freaked out, shutting the camera off and dropping it on the bed sheets. Her recollection of the creatures in the hospital came back to her, and she shuddered.

Filling her lungs with air and releasing it, she took the camera and placed it back on the drawers, before sinking into the covers on the bed. She hadn’t noticed up until now how tired she was. Moving into a comfortable position on the silky mattress, Cotton rested her head on the pillow, and closed her eyes, the numerous thoughts rushing about in her mind gradually melting away until sleep came to her.

Cotton was woken in the dark to a high-pitched screech outside the room’s window, piercing through the silence of the night.

Flash

by AnOrdinaryWriter

...Are Best Left Forgotten