//------------------------------//
// Chapter 12: Solace 
// Story: Fallout Equestria: Renewal 
// by ElbowDeepInAHorse 
//------------------------------//


 


 

June 27th, 1075
So we’re here, all moved in. Well, the boxes are moved in. The moving company didn’t hang around to help unpack, so mom and I are spending the day putting things close to where they had been in the old house. Easier said than done.
I’m not sure I would call this place a house. In my head I had pictured a big mansion with a butler like on TV, but this definitely isn’t that. It’s more… cottage-y than that. It kinda reminds me of dad’s cabin out east but without the fireplace, and with actual thatch on top of the roof like they used to have when mom was a filly. There’s a real roof beneath it, thank Celestia, or my allergies would be going nuts right now. I guess trends really do follow 30 year cycles. At least the walls aren’t purple.
We’re two blocks away from the castle and only a few houses away from the edge of the city, so we get our choice of tons of shade or tons of sunlight depending on the time of day. I haven’t had a chance to check out the view yet but from what I could see on the way up the mountain, it’s gorgeous. The farms are so small up here, like postage stamps all lined up. Mom’s not so excited about how high up we are. She hates heights with a passion, even though there are pegasi monitoring the edge in case someone falls. Apparently that’s been happening a lot more often.
Mom wants me to wrap it up. We’re going to meet the neighbors for tea (seriously, TEA) and then afterward she wants to show me her office at the Ministry of Peace. Okay she’s giving me the look. Gotta go!
 
 

	




	 


	 

The steel tanks looked in many ways like a dead giant’s hooves sticking out of the ground. A quartet of stout cylinders once used to store thousands of gallons of coolant now stood empty, waiting to be made useful again. Beyond those tanks lay a sweeping sea of mirrors and the fence that penned the solar plant.
One of two guards, bedecked in F&F Mercantile colors, nudged Ginger away from him as they escorted her toward the tanks. She’d begun to lurch again and gasped at the gentle shove, staggering between them as she recovered. Neither of the stallions said anything. If she’d chosen to pay closer attention to them, she would have seen they were making a concerted effort not to acknowledge her. She was a ghost to them. It took a force of will just to straighten her gait. Burying her shame was much more difficult.
Ginger had only been halfway through her RadAway treatment when Trotter ambushed her, and she wasn’t quite sure if the coppery taste on her tongue was the leftovers of Roach’s radiation or her own blood. She supposed it was a bit of both. The sharp throbbing coming from her ribs told her that at least one of them was broken, maybe more, and thanks to Trotter’s hormone-fueled tantrum her forelegs were a mess of bruises that forced her to favor her left step. She tried not to let it drag her too close to her guard a second time. 
Her odds of surviving had dropped precipitously ever since she met the pegasus from Stable 10. Aurora was a nice enough mare. A little naive, she thought, when it came to the reality of life in the wasteland but not the sort to freeze up and cower like some ponies would. Aurora had a spark of something that Ginger couldn’t quite put her hoof on. Roach had seen it too and no doubt it was why he’d chosen to follow her, but Ginger wasn’t sure what that it was. If any other pony had caused her to lose her business and gotten her face plastered on the bounty boards, she would have thrown them head-first into the nearest raider camp and watched from a comfortable distance.
And yet Aurora wasn’t any other pony. Ginger wouldn’t deny that she was attractive, much in the same way that flames attracted moths. It never ended well for the moth. Now that she was here, among the dead machines of this forgotten place, she worried that she’d already fluttered into the fire.
They entered the morning shadow of the tanks and a chill settled into Ginger’s coat. Her guards led her to a makeshift door that had been cut into the bulkhead of the nearest tank, bound shut by a length of rusted chain and an old padlock. The stallion who pushed her stepped ahead of them and quietly fought a key into the padlock. It fought back, refusing to turn until he banged it against the side of the tank. Embarrassment creased his eyes as he pulled the chain free and opened the door.
She was ushered through the doorway into the hollow belly of the container with little more than a quick shove. Her guards followed her inside, one posting next to the open door behind them while the other stepped past her toward a squat wooden chair at the center of the cylinder. Heavy leather straps hung limp from its arms and legs. Four track marks on the dusty floor led to a red tool chest waiting near the chair.
The septic odor of the container threatened to overwhelm her. Narrow cages barely large enough for a single pony ringed the tank’s inner wall like a pie sliced too many times. Dented buckets sat at the rear of each cage, their purpose already clear to Ginger’s nose. A damp layer of dirt had been spread into one of the cages where a bucket had been spilled, waiting to be shoveled outside. Dangling from a cable that snaked through a hole cut into the container’s roof glowed a single, bright bulb, lending a yellow pallor to this dark corner of the world.
Each cage stood empty, their residents recently vacated. The guard gestured to the chair and Ginger understood that this tank had been emptied for her.
“Sit down,” he said.
Ginger looked at the guard, an earth pony with a dull coat the color of sand, and hesitated. She considered running, even putting together the steps in her head. Grab the chair with her magic. Strike the stallion in the chin with the backrest. Turn around. Throw the remains of the chair into the pony behind her. Take the key from the strap around his neck and open the door. Use her magic to deform the door behind her, trapping them inside long enough to facilitate an escape.
There was only one problem. Trotter’s suppression ring, planted firmly around the base of her horn which sent her magic recoiling into her skull like a hammer blow. When he was too busy tormenting the stallions pulling the wagon, she’d tried to hook the ring against the uneven planks to jar it loose. It hadn’t budged, confirming her worries that Trotter had put a self-locking suppression ring on her. Hundreds of tiny, backwards-facing steel teeth lined the ring’s inner band. Getting one on was simple work. Pull it the other way and the teeth would bite deep into the living bone. 
She weighed the odds of fighting the stallions with her bare hooves and quickly discarded the idea. They were going to put her in that chair one way or the other. If an opportunity to escape was going to present itself, it would be more likely to appear if she wasn’t seen as a threat.
The chair creaked as she sat down. Suddenly conscious of the exposed mark on her left hip, she swept her tail around it while the guard secured her limbs to the old wood.
The dusty stallion worked efficiently with his teeth. Ginger always found herself surprised by how earth ponies made due with what little they’d been given. He jerked each belt tight enough to hurt a little, earning a wince each time. Then he stood up and took her horn in the crook of his foreleg and gave the underside of the ring a hard tap with his other hoof. Satisfied it was secure, he let her go.
The tool cabinet squeaked on old castors as the stallion pushed it near her chair. The second guard looked on expressionlessly. From the cabinet came a bag of clear liquid with an IV port dangling from the bottom, and the unmistakably chunky syringe of a stimpack.
Ginger watched with growing suspicion as the earth pony assembled the IV line. She narrowed her eyes at the bag of solution. “What’s in that?”
The guard glanced at her before tearing open a yellowed bag containing the needle assembly. “Something to hydrate you. Water, mostly. I don’t know what else.”
She creased the corner of her lip with mistrust, but it wasn’t as if she had a choice at this point. She doubted it was poison. If Autumn Song wanted her to die from an injection, she wouldn’t have wasted the resources setting this up. She winced as the needle pricked through the skin of her foreleg and sank through a bruise. The liquid that slipped through the line was crystal clear. Medical grade. She watched as a small fortune worth of sterile water slipped beneath her skin.
She was so captivated by it that she didn’t see the stallion pick up the stimpack in his teeth and position it near her thigh. With a flick of his neck and a bright hiss of pressurized gas, the stimpack dumped its contents into her femoral vein.
Ginger tensed at the burst of pain, but the relief she felt afterward was immediate. She made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a groan. All the aches of the last few days, especially the ones Trotter had inflicted on her, began to melt away. The stabbing pain in her ribs dulled to a deep throb, then to a shallow soreness that she could breathe around. Her body was knitting itself back together. She tilted her head back and soaked it in.
After several seconds she opened her eyes and looked toward the tool cabinet, feeling oddly compelled to thank the guard that had only just strapped her to the chair. But he was gone. The cabinet sat alone, one of its drawers slightly ajar. In it she could see a long row of unused stimpacks.
The padlock rattled and Ginger looked to see both guards at the door, neither concerned with her. The lock clicked and the door creaked open.
“Excuse me?” she asked. The sandy stallion glanced at her as he walked through the door, but he remained silent. She watched with growing worry as it closed shut, leaving her alone in the empty container.
Ginger stared after them, baffled. She looked down at the needle in her foreleg, then spotted the emptied stimpack lying on the ground near her right hoof. What was the point of it all? Even after her best weeks at the shop, she wouldn’t have raised enough caps to pay for this kind of medicine. And it was medicine. Proper medicine from the days when it could be synthesized, imbued with healing magic and distilled to perfection instead of cobbled together with the scraps left over from the war. The haze of illness and confusion had begun to evaporate and she felt healthier. Why give her such a precious gift if they believed she was Cider’s murderer?
Confusion gave way to a deep, gnawing dread.
What if they learned she hadn’t killed Cider and this was Autumn Song’s way of gaining her trust? Scrub away any evidence of Trotter’s beating, clean her up and dangle carrots in front of her until she gave up the name of Cider’s true killer. She came close to entertaining the idea - to take the easy way out and give them Aurora’s name - but shame scattered the thought before it could solidify into something she couldn’t take back. Aurora might not be family, but over the last several days she’d become the second of two ponies she could truly call a friend.
Giving up Aurora wouldn’t just end that friendship. Ginger had few doubts that it would be tantamount to killing her. If Aurora died, her Stable died. What kind of life would she have if she had to live it knowing it came at the price of hundreds of innocent lives? No. Whatever Autumn might try, she would endure it. At the very least, it might make up for some of her own sins.
She tried and failed several times to find a comfortable position to sit. The straps around her limbs didn’t give her many options beyond shifting her weight whenever the muscles in her sides complained. It was a strange sensation to feel rejuvenation and back pain marching in lockstep. She tried to gauge the passage of time, but the only measurable change in the tank was the gradual rise of the air’s temperature. Likely it was midday by now, she thought, and the tank’s metal skin was soaking up the meager sunlight in earnest.
The chain on the other side of the door rattled and Ginger’s ears perked up. The door cracked open, then steadily scraped across the floor. A pale yellow mare in a neatly fitted suit jacket stepped through the doorway. From her hip hung a heavy steel revolver in a simple holster. Autumn Song’s face was a mask of disinterest, but there was an intensity in her eyes that betrayed the calm facade.
Ginger could do little else but watch as the door lit with an emerald glow and clapped shut behind her, ringing the tank like a gargantuan bell. As the last reverberation drew silent, the mare began a slow walk around Ginger’s chair. She said nothing as she completed the circuit. The only sound were the slow, calculated circle of hoofbeats.
She stopped at the tool cabinet and peered down at the drawer of high quality stimpacks. Just a flicker of a frown, as if she were making a mental note. Then her eyes shot up to meet Ginger’s.
“Do you feel refreshed, Miss Dressage?” There was a potency in her voice that made room for only one answer.
“Y-yes,” Ginger nodded. “I actually wanted to thank you. The efficacy of your med-”
The drawer slammed shut, making her jump. Autumn moved her attention to the IV bag laying atop the cabinet. Her eyes traced the line to Ginger’s foreleg. “When we first started this company, my brother and I, we hired discount mercenaries to clear out trouble spots along the new trade routes. One of them was a small hospital in a suburb of Manehattan.”
Autumn’s horn glowed and Ginger felt a gentle sting as the needle in her fore leg lifted out and away. It trailed the length of tubing as it coiled around the half-used bag. Autumn spoke as casually as if she were making small talk during morning chores.
“A raider clan had occupied the building for decades. Most travelers knew to avoid it but inevitably some would get too close, and the raiders would descend on them like vultures to pick them clean. We went through three teams of mercenaries before the hospital was safe. As it turned out, the basement level had flooded after the war and the raiders never bothered to drain it.” She pulled open the drawer, lifted out a silver stimpack and slid it shut. 
“Cider was the one who found the shipping manifest on one of the locked terminals. He was always good with computers. I didn’t think it was worth buying pumps over, but he was insistent. We could have filled a moat with all the water that had to be drained. Something about the water table being high near the coast. It just kept seeping back in. It took two weeks but it was worth it. With the end of the world on the horizon, someone in the hospital was prudent enough to order a replenishment from the Ministry of Peace. The delivery was still sealed, sitting inside the freight elevator, shielded from whatever was in those bombs that ruined Equestria’s magic. Cider had that smug look on his face for a full month. He never missed an opportunity to remind me he’d been right…”
Her voice faltered and she grimaced, turning away to hide the unwanted emotion playing across her face. The stimpack found its way to the tool cabinet and Ginger watched as Autumn approached the soil-lined pen. A portion of the gate glowed green and it creaked shut.
Ginger had to work to keep her breathing steady. She could see brass glinting from the cylinder of Autumn’s revolver.
“Why did you kill him?”
Ginger took a slow breath. “He… attacked a friend of mine.”
Autumn turned around, the businesslike mask back in place. “Did he rape her?” She said the word as casually as if she’d offered Ginger a drink of water.
Ginger hesitated before saying, “He didn’t get that far.”
“Why did you care?”
The question carried no anger. Just curiosity. Ginger didn’t know how to answer.
Autumn approached her chair. “I asked you a question.”
“I… I don’t-”
“You were a slaver,” she interrupted. “One of the Dressages out of New Canterlot, if my sources are accurate.”
The words fell into her stomach like lumps of ice. 
A pleasant smile crept across Autumn’s lips. “And they are accurate. I’ve done enough business with your family to verify all of it. So what I want to know…” Autumn leaned forward until Ginger could detect the sour scent of mourning on her breath. “…is why you had the audacity to kill my brother when you’ve done so much worse.”
She lingered there, a scant inch from Ginger’s nose, her ears pinned back and her eyes rimmed red from recent tears. Ginger felt an inexplicable need to keep her chin low as she leaned away, as if Autumn were some unnamed predator ready to take a bite out of her neck.
This wasn’t going the way Ginger thought it would. Her heart was beating so hard that she could feel it in her temples. “I left home over ten years ago. The things that they do - that I’ve done - still haunt me. But I-”
“Have you killed one?”
Ginger blinked. “What?”
Autumn took a step back. “A slave. Have you killed a slave?”
She dropped her eyes to the floor and stared at Autumn’s immaculate hooves. Memories she’d spent years burying drew dangerously close to the surface. Her voice was barely a whisper. “Yes.”
“Why?” Autumn pressed.
She was cutting deeper than she needed to. Ginger bit down the flash of hatred that threatened to spill into her mouth. “He tried to escape.”
“Ah,” Autumn said. “Why, I wonder.”
It was another question. “He had nothing left to lose.”
“From what I remember of your family, stallions always have something to lose.”
“He was already gelded,” she said miserably.
“Ah, that’s right,” Autumn chided. “Your father started that trend, didn’t he? It’s amazing how quickly it caught on. One snip and the fight goes out of them. The ones I’ve seen come through here seem almost happy to obey.”
Ginger said nothing. Her teeth chattered as she fought down the dark memories of adulthood.
“Did you know Cider sent a report to me on the day he died?” Her smile pressed into a hard line. Her jaws working to keep it from turning into something more violent. Ginger nodded. He had told Aurora as much in the midst of his attack. That he’d blacklisted her. Autumn lowered her head so Ginger had no choice to meet her eyes. “It wasn’t long, but something stuck out that I didn’t appreciate reading. He said that you threatened to geld him. He also said that you came dangerously close to making good on that threat.”
Ginger broke eye contact and stared into her lap.
“Old habits die hard, don’t they?” Autumn shook her head and exhaled through her nose. “My brother was no saint. He used to be better, but he was never a good pony. He was a violent drunk who had a reputation for sticking his dick where it wasn’t wanted. But this?” She gestured to the ring of slave pens surrounding them. “Cider didn’t approve of this. For all his crimes, he drew a line in the sand when it came to working with the slavers. Something about ponies like you turned even his stomach.”
Ginger looked at the pens. “Then why do you have them?”
Autumn offered a mild shrug. “F&F Mercantile has a standing offer to slavers that need to dump excess stock. The cost of a pony’s bill of sale is applied to their indenture, which they pay back as an employee of our… my company.”
Ginger was well aware of the indenture model, including the fees and interest that would keep a pony working long after their initial debt was paid. Depending on the terms of indenture, it was slavery just spelled with different letters. “How noble.”
The mask shattered.
Autumn’s horn flared to life and something shattered against Ginger’s temple.
“This from the mare who drowned my brother in a latrine!”
Ginger blinked hard and opened her eyes wide to push through the disorientation. The room had turned on its side and something warm was dribbling under her eye and across the bridge of her muzzle. A crumpled stimpack spun deliriously on the steel floor, its cherry-tinted medicine tainted with something darker.
The room took on a sudden emerald hue and turned right side up. The feet of the chair banged against the steel floor hard enough for it to echo for several long seconds.
“You should be thanking me,” Autumn said, her voice shaking with anger. Ginger looked up to see the mare’s revolver out of its holster and hovering in front of its owner. The cylinder clicked open and proceeded to spit out three rounds. Autumn gave it a hard spin and slapped it back into the frame. “I’m giving you a chance that you didn’t give Cider.”
Ginger’s eyes widened as the revolver swiveled toward her.
“Open your mouth.”
No, no, no…
Autumn was out of patience. Ginger managed a half scream of protest as her magic wrapped around her teeth and yanked her jaw open. The revolver dove through the gap like a rodent retreating into a dark corner. The taste of metal, spent gunpowder something worse stained her tongue.
Ginger lashed out with her magic but the ring drove it back into her skull like a dull knife.
Autumn pulled the trigger. 
The hammer slammed forward.
Click. 
The silence was deafening. Ginger began shaking. She couldn’t stop. She was distantly aware that she was crying. Tears streaked around the corners of her muzzle but the sobs, wherever they had gone, didn’t come. 
She hadn’t been ready to die. Oh, goddesses, she hadn’t been ready.
Autumn made a disgusted noise and holstered the pistol. “I wouldn’t get too excited. That was your last chance at an easy death.”
Ginger didn’t understand. She looked at Autumn’s hip where the revolver hung once again, the next shot primed to kill but clearly no longer intended for her.
The pale mare approached the tool cabinet and plucked a fresh stimpack from the lower drawer. Instead of clubbing her over the head with it like before, she swung the needle deep into the center of the chain and collar that branded Ginger’s hip. The actuator fired and the cool sensation of Cider’s once-in-a-lifetime discovery flooded into her bloodstream once again.
But Ginger was too distracted by the baleful twist of Autumn’s face to savor the effects of the prewar medicine.
Autumn’s smile returned, but her eyes were hard as iron. “Cider and I decided to keep these as a safety net in case business went south. An investment in the future, as mom used to say. I think you’re going to need them more than we did.”
Shock and confusion conspired to keep Ginger’s lips shut. She watched as Autumn discarded the IV equipment onto the floor and set one stimpack after another atop the red cabinet. A dozen in total. Twelve syringes, each one worth a fortune, each one containing spells that no unicorn had been able to cast after the bombs shredded the delicate fabric of Equestrian magic.
“Here’s how this is going to work. I have enough chems here to keep you alive for a very, very long time. During that time, you are going to hurt in ways you can’t imagine. I’m going to keep hurting you until you tell me to stop. Then you get a bullet and this all goes away.” Autumn lit her horn. “Do you understand the rules?”
Ginger shook her head frantically. Don’t, she thought. Please don’t.
She felt a gentle pressure slithering through the skin of her left hind leg. A gasp escaped her throat and she looked down in time to see the last motes of emerald light sinking beneath the muscle.
Autumn watched Ginger tense up as her magic probed, searched for and eventually solidified around the dense bone below her knee.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Autumn narrowed her eyes. “Let’s begin.”
Her leg deformed and she screamed as bone cracked like firewood.



	





The bowl of mirrors was astonishing.
Aurora wheeled above the power plant in wide arcs, careful not to descend low enough where she might be seen. Most of the ponies she’d met so far rarely even looked up past the horizon, but her luck had been awful as of late. She stayed high enough that she could blot out a good half of the plant with her outstretched wing. The ponies patrolling the outer fence appeared as small as the milling scraps she sometimes tracked into her compartment before bed. She was safe for now.
She lifted her chin to let the wind pull a clump of grease and dirt caked mane from her eye. Another perk of finally getting the knack of flying: she couldn’t smell herself. When was the last time she showered? At least a couple days before she left the Stable. Maybe longer. 
She blinked as the plant began to drift away on her left. She chastised herself and banked until she was on the approach again. It was so easy to get distracted.
A requirement of her apprenticeship in Mechanical was the completion of a stack of books on practical application. Just like the books she read during her schooling, there was a heavy emphasis on Equestrian history. In order to move forward, we must understand where we came from. Overmare Delphi’s mantra was like scripture in Stable 10, much like it had been when it came from all the previous ponies to carry that mantle. The intention was to keep the population in a constant state of readiness should the order come down to open the door. In reality, it turned every pony into an unwitting trivia buff. Practical application only worked when you had something to apply it to.
Aurora recognized the JetStream Solar Plant from one of the power management books Sledge required before a pony could step anywhere near the Stable’s generator. The picture of the plant had been yellowed and faded, resembling something closer to a sunflower. Up here, solar collectors drifted under her like a shimmering oasis of silver. She surprised herself by remembering the basic concepts behind how the plant worked. During the day, the mirrors would track the arc of the sun and focus sunlight on the pillar standing in the center of the facility. Water would be pumped into the tower where concentrated sunlight would flash it to a boil, and the resulting steam would be fed into a turbine. Once electricity was happily coursing through the grid, the steam would be pushed through cooling stations where it would condense back to water, be pumped into holding tanks and eventually directed back into the system.
No magic talismans. No coal. No oil. Just sunlight.
Aurora glanced up at the smothering cloud layer above and frowned.
She considered setting down outside one of the four gates and try to sweet-talk her way in, but the last time she tried that she landed herself in the care of some unhappy Steel Rangers. There was also the very real possibility that the ponies working for F&F Mercantile might have a shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy in place, and working her way into the facility from the outer fence would give them the best chance at putting that policy to good practice.
She eyed the clusters of tanks and outbuildings that surrounded the plant’s central tower. If Ginger was being held anywhere, it was somewhere down there.
Tipping her center of gravity forward, she began to descend. The silver sea began to dissolve into distinctly individual mirrors. They cartwheeled beneath her as she bled off excess speed, sweeping the circumference of the array as she drew level with the top of the central spire. She braced herself as she saw several ponies below break into a run toward their stations while others stopped to stare.
She buried the growing urge to fly away, forcing herself to make another lap over the mirrors in hopes that someone below would send word that the pegasus flying overhead was unarmed. From what she could see, most of the ponies below were unarmed as well. Only the ones manning the gates carried weapons, and thus far none of them were trying to use her for target practice. She didn’t know why, but she’d expected a small army.
Rather than press her luck with a third lap, she skimmed against the breeze and banked toward the facility’s center. Mirrors blurred by the hundreds beneath her hooves while the tower rose up to meet her. She took a steadying breath and swept her wings forward, slowing her approach. A few ponies in blue and white painted armor had begun to gather near a squat structure encompassing the base of the tower. With little other option, she threaded the gap beneath a gantry clustered with old pipes and banked toward what was either going to be a welcoming party or a firing line.
Get in. Get Ginger. Get out, she reminded herself. As she touched down on the dusty concrete she hastily added, and don’t piss off the earth pony with the weird guns.
A group of four ponies waited for her outside the unremarkable door of an unremarkable concrete building. The apparent leader of the posse, a charcoal earth stallion, wore a pair of machine guns mounted to a strange contraption that wrapped the barrel of his chest. Two lengths of rigid conduit fed out from the tops of either rifle and linked below his chin. Atop that linkage rested a bite trigger.
The stallion regarded her with polite mistrust. “Good afternoon, ma’am.”
His tone was completely at odds with the menacing weapons leveled, intentionally or not, at her chest. To her surprise, he noticed her concern and subtly pivoted a few degrees so they aimed more or less past her left shoulder.
If working as shift leader for her Stable had taught her anything, it was how to recognize an opportunity to ingratiate herself with another department’s staff. She tried to match the politely neutral tone in the stallion’s voice while ignoring the silent scrutiny of the three ponies behind him.
“Good afternoon,” she parroted back. “I need to speak with Autumn Song. It’s urgent.”
A frown crept down the stallion’s lips. Something on the other side of the complex caught his eye for the barest second. “Miss Song isn’t available at the moment. If I’m being honest, I don’t think she was expecting you for another two months.”
Aurora blinked. That was unexpected. How did Autumn even know who she…
Oh shit, she thought. Oh shit shit shit…
His frown deepened as she tensed up. The stallion had eyes like a hawk, which might explain why he was wearing the nudist’s equivalent of Latch’s shoulder cannons on his back. She’d placed her hoof on a landmine without knowing it. Now she had to figure out how to step back without setting it off.
If he thought she was someone else, there was only one someone else she could be. It was Blinder’s Bluff all over again. 
"I don’t know anything about that,” she said noncommittally. “I came to talk to Autumn about a friend of mine here. There’s been a mistake and-”
The stallion cut her off with a wave of his hoof. “Your friend isn’t here. If you want to wait for Miss Song in the lobby you’re welcome to do so, but I can assure you she’ll tell you the same thing.”
She watched the stallion for a moment. She’d been in enough brawls back home to tell when someone’s posture was set to move, and this stallion was positioned to swing his shoulders toward her. But he was restraining himself because he thought she was someone else. Someone from the Enclave.
She was stuck. 
The stallion worked his jaw as if he were getting ready to say something, but a unicorn mare standing near the butt of his rifle took a step forward. “I can go get her, Buck.”
Buck stared at Aurora for a few tense seconds before sighing, and nodded to his counterpart. “Alright. Just make sure to knock first.” He looked at Aurora and tipped his chin toward the building’s bland door. “You’re welcome to wait inside.”
Aurora watched the unicorn peel away from the group and start walking away. It took a force of will she didn’t know she had not to follow the mare, but she could predict what would happen if she did. Buck wore a trump card over his back. Thus far he’d been courteous enough not to play it.
The mare slipped out of sight behind the corner of the building.
“Ma’am, I need you to step inside. We’re expecting deliveries today and Miss Song prefers to avoid any questions about taking sides.”
Buck was holding the door open as a pony might do for an honored guest or, in his case, an unexpected emissary of the Enclave. She noticed the other two members of the welcome wagon had already begun moving back to their posts, happy to leave Buck to handle this problem now that Autumn was being summoned. She didn’t notice the subtle wrinkling of his nose as she walked past him and into the lobby.
“Your people really know how to blend in with the dustwings,” he commented. “Word to the wise, you might want to dial it back a little.”
Aurora swallowed the litany of responses that tried crawling out of her throat and settled for the smoldering glare she normally reserved for Sledge.
Buck wasn’t phased by it. Much. “Just… don’t sit on the couch if you can avoid it. Quincy’s not having a great day.”
She shot Buck a parting look as he stepped back outside, leaving her to wait in the abruptly stylish lobby on her own.
For a short time, Aurora felt like she’d walked back into her Stable. No desiccated wood planks. No salvaged walls propped up with baling wire or rusted nails. The furniture, the decor, even the lighting seemed immaculate compared to everything she’d seen of Equestria so far. She could even smell the familiar antiseptic scent of Abraxo in the air. She wandered toward one of the twin white couches and pressed down on its plush leather armrest. Only when the material stretched could she see the webwork of cracks that had been repaired and sealed over, but at a distance it all looked brand new.
On the other side of the lobby sat a long glass-topped receptionist’s desk. The top half of a Robronco terminal peeked over the lip of the otherwise spotless surface. A few feet to the right of the desk, a genuine wooden door hung open. Inside, she could hear a scrub brush at work.
Curiosity and a more than a little impatience drew her toward the open office. As she neared the doorway, she found a slender white stallion bent kneeling on the office carpet. She assumed this was Quincy judging by the pink stain he was trying to work out of the carpet. His short-trimmed tail flicked irritation toward her as he bore his weight down on the brush.
She tapped on the door frame. “Hello?”
Quincy jumped as if he’d touched a live wire and spun around to attention, his rear hooves throwing a spray of pinkish suds from the stained carpet that spattered one of the many maps hanging from the office walls. “Miss Song! I’m so sorry but this stain is… oh!”
Several varieties of surprise played over his face in rapid succession as his wide eyes went from Aurora’s face, to her wings and finally to the grime that had tinted her white mane something closer to a shade of dirt. For his part, Quincy didn’t show his revulsion too prominently. He cleared his throat and stepped toward Aurora until she backed away so he could shut the office door behind him.
“Miss Song is currently unavailable at the moment.” He adjusted his bow tie and stepped behind his desk, hopping into a chair that brought him level with the glass surface. His blue eyes flitted up to her and settled on her wings, where they remained for several long seconds. “Important matters, I assume?”
She nodded once and offered a curt smile as her answer. Impatience was already starting to crawl up the back of her neck and she could tell this Quincy was itching for a conversation. She shuffled her wings and began walking back toward the couches.
“Is this about finding solace?”
Aurora spun an ear toward Quincy and frowned. The way he’d spoken sounded… off. Really off. She stopped and turned to face the stallion who had a look on his face like he’d just been caught stealing cookies from the cookie jar. She stared at him with as neutral an expression as she could manage, the same way her mother had done when she needed to weasel the truth out of her daughter. Silence could be a powerful tool when applied correctly.
Quincy opened his mouth, closed it, then finally broke the quiet. “I’m just curious, is all. The last few pegasi to visit us kept talking about ‘finding solace.’ I don’t mean any offense, but it sounded uncharacteristically… noble. I was hoping you could tell me what they meant by it.”
Aurora couldn’t help but agree with the receptionist-slash-janitor. Given the secondhand accounts she’d gotten of the Enclave, it sounded more than a little strange that they were looking for some sort kind of inner peace. Proof, at least, that you couldn’t judge a book by its cover.
“Sounds like you should have asked them instead of me. I’m just here to find a friend.”
Quincy’s eyebrows fell. “A friend?”
“Yeah.” She noticed the unsubtle change in his body language and could tell he was starting to clam up. He knew something. She narrowed her eyes as she approached Quincy’s desk. “She would have been brought here today. Little shorter than me, coffee coat with a reddish-orange mane? Goes by the name Ginger?”
“Oh.” Suddenly, he was very interested in something on his terminal screen. “I don’t recall meeting her.”
“She didn’t have an appointment,” Aurora said. Her hooves clacked against the top of the desk, scuffing the glass. Her tone darkened as she leaned into his personal space. “She had a bounty.”
Quincy stared up at her, suddenly afraid. “Oh, her. I’m not sure I’m supposed to-”
Something about the air changed. A gentle pressure against her chest pulled her back from the desk until her hooves touched back down to the floor. Then it was gone. Confused, Aurora shot the earth pony an accusing look but saw the relief in his eyes as he stared over her shoulder.
She turned around to see a tall yellow mare standing at the front of the lobby. The door clicked shut behind her just as the emerald aura faded from around her horn. She smiled primly as she spoke past Aurora, but she couldn’t hide the concern in her eyes. “Quincy, is everything alright?”
He did a poor job of lying. “Y-yes ma’am. Everything is fine.”
Her smile stretched a little too long, and she was breathing just a little too hard. She looked like she ran all the way here. She probably had.
“That’s wonderful to hear.” She turned her attention to Aurora. “You’ll have to forgive me if we’ve met before but I don’t think I know your name, miss…”
“Pinfeathers,” she said. This was her, she thought. Cider’s vengeful sister, standing here in the flesh.
Autumn approached her and extended her hoof. “Autumn Song, but I assume you already knew that.”
She looked at the mare’s hoof for several dubious seconds before wrapping the tip of her wing around it. She forced a smile as Autumn shook it.
Autumn’s eyes widened a little. “That’s a strong wing, Miss Pinfeathers.”
Small talk. Aurora hated small talk, but Autumn had the wide eyes of someone who was trying hard to make a good first impression. She could see the assumption on Autumn’s face plain as day. Enclave. More of the damned Enclave. “It runs in the family,” she said.
“Clean genes since the beginning,” Autumn chuckled knowingly. She took back her hoof and glanced at her receptionist. “Have you finished cleaning, Quincy?”
Quincy began to answer before understanding that it had been less of a question and more of a polite invitation for him to be somewhere else. He dropped down from his chair and trotted back to the office. His hooves squished in the wet carpet as he closed the door behind him.
Autumn shrugged an apology. “He can be a little nosey.”
Aurora offered a sympathetic smile. “Stallions,” she said.
It was an disposable comment on Aurora’s part, but something about it tickled a genuine laugh out of Autumn. Her laughter had an unsurprisingly musical quality to it that was difficult not to enjoy. “You have no idea how much I needed that,” she grinned. “The last few days have been a trial.”
Aurora hid the jolt of discomfort behind a nervous smile. “Sorry to hear that.”
She waved her off. “Don’t be. It is what it is. I’m just relieved that it’ll be over soon. Speaking of which, a member of my security team pulled me away from something rather important to meet you here. Believe me when I say that I’m honored to offer the Enclave my services but I wasn’t expecting another check-in for at least another month or two.”
More subtext. What are you doing here?
Aurora hesitated. Part of her wanted to run with the lie that these ponies wanted to believe. Use the presumed authority of the Enclave to demand Ginger’s release. Then she thought better of it. Ironshod had made it crystal clear that the Enclave were happy to hunt and kill pegasi for the simple crime of being born beneath the clouds, and thanks to the chance run-in with one of their spritebots at the Red Delicious she was now undoubtedly on their radar. 
She was already in a hole. Best to stop digging before she couldn’t get out.
“I’m here because you’ve detained a friend of mine. I want her back.” 
To her surprise, she saw the briefest flicker of fear in Autumn’s eyes. “Oh,” the unicorn said, her voice suddenly guarded. “Well… I’m not sure detained is accurate.”
Something wasn’t right. She’d imagined this conversation a hundred different ways on the flight in, but this wasn’t what she’d expected. Ginger’s bounty was public knowledge. She’d expected Autumn to at least defend the decision instead of slinking away from it like a filly caught stealing sweets. Aurora decided to push the advantage while she still had it. “Kidnapped would be a better word for it. I don’t really care about the terminology. I need to see her. Now.”
Autumn nodded, not out of acknowledgement as much as she was clearly stalling for time as the gears in her head spun at double speed. She bit her lower lip for a few moments before returning to the present. “It’s hard down here,” she finally said. “On the ground, I mean. You have to understand that.”
Aurora tried not to look as bewildered as she suddenly felt. She gestured to the door outside with a wing. “I understand,” she lied. “I still need to see her.”
Autumn nodded and led her out of the lobby, back into the grainy midday light. Buck stood outside the door. He had likely been there the entire time, though he made no indication he’d heard anything. Aurora tried not to look down the barrels of his rifles as she walked through their sights.
She followed Autumn to the opposite side of the main building where a row of dock doors sunned themselves in the meager sunlight. Several lay collapsed in rusting heaps over the lips of the raised floor. The remaining few that still hung on their cables bore the faded JetStream Solar logo across their midsections. Crumpled against the furthest door, a large transport carriage sagged over deflated tires.
Autumn led her up a short stairway next to the docks and into the shallow garage space. A broken down version of the forklifts pegasi currently drove in the belly of her Stable sat snug against the far wall, a thick cable snaking out from a bank of ruptured batteries and into a charging port in the wall. Metal racking lined any wall space that hadn’t been claimed by doors or equipment, their shelves stripped bare by scavengers.
Autumn’s horn flashed, swinging open a far door that pivoted away from a dimly lit stairwell. The air smelled damp as they descended, an odor Aurora always kept her nose open for when she inspected the spaces between walls and floors back home. Too much humidity bred mold, and discovering mold meant days wearing stifling respirators and trying to keep bleach-tainted sweat from seeping under her goggles. She tried not to look too hard for what she could smell was already there.
Three circuits around the railing brought them to the bottom of the stairs where a locked gray door waited. An emergency light glowed dimly above it, feeding off the same power source that illuminated Quincy’s lobby. Aurora wondered about that.
Autumn stopped short of opening the door, her ears low with indecision. It was all Aurora could do to stop herself from shoving past her and yanking it open herself. Judging by the black card scanner mounted into the wall next to the handle, that wasn’t going to be a successful strategy.
“I just…” she said, but stopped herself. She gave her head an irritated shake and lifted an ID badge from the breast pocket of her jacket. The face on the ID was discolored and the laminate had begun to peel apart, but there was still enough detail for Aurora to spot the grinning face of a teal stallion in a JetStream branded polo. Autumn swiped the long-dead worker’s card and the deadbolt snapped out of the lock. The door groaned toward her on hinges misaligned by the years.
Autumn took the handle with her magic and stopped the door before it could open fully, the emerald light of her horn casting the stairwell in a sickly glow. Aurora felt heat flare in her chest at being held up. “I’m not looking for solace,” she said. Seeing the irritated look on Aurora’s face, she elaborated. “I promise you I’m not. I wouldn’t know what to do with it if I found it. I only wanted-”
Aurora wrapped her wing around the door and yanked it open. Whatever Autumn’s confession was, whatever lies she wanted to tell could wait. Ginger couldn’t. The unicorn yielded the door as she shoved past and into the dimly lit room.
It had once been plant’s electrical maintenance space. Emergency lights studded the crown of the walls, giving the room a hazy yellow glow. Black rubberized mats lined every foot of a space measuring larger than the Quincy’s lobby. Floor to ceiling breaker cabinets stood shoulder to shoulder down the nearest wall while thick electrical conduit snaked out of the tops of each unit, creating a strange web of parallel lines and right angles that made sense only to the ponies that had maintained them.
A wire mesh security cage stood in the far corner of the room that enveloped a trio of dark server towers. Locked inside the cage with the servers lay a sullen green pegasus mare. A terminal sat on the ground in the corner, its screen glowing with unfinished work.
The pegasus lifted her head toward the sound of their hooves, her eyes knitting together over a swollen black eye. Her good eye narrowed at the sight of them and then she was on her hooves, shoulders low as if ready to defend an attack.
Aurora stopped a few steps beyond the door, dismay playing over her face at the sight of the caged pony. The wrong pony. Her heart dropped from her chest.
“Who the fuck are you?” the pegasus demanded.
Where the fuck is Ginger, Aurora thought.
Autumn strode to a stop alongside Aurora, slipping into an air of authority with a natural ease. It was almost believable. “She will be taking you back to your people, provided I have your assurance that your time here will be regarded as a misunderstanding.”
The caged pegasus laughed derisively. “A misunderstanding? Bitch, open this door and I’ll be happy to misunderstand my hooves up your ass. You should count yourself lucky that I haven’t kicked these computers into scrap metal while you were gone.”
Autumn’s smile grew brittle. “I wouldn’t advise that.”
The mare stepped toward the mesh until her nose was pressing against it. “If you think your new friend is going to make me play nice, think again. Open this door and I’ll kill both of you.” She regarded Aurora with her good eye. The anger on her face was primal. “Especially you, dustwing.”
Aurora hesitated. She looked at Autumn only to find the unicorn staring back at her, brow furrowed with sudden mistrust. Light danced along the swirl of her horn. 
Autumn took two steps away, far enough that Aurora could see the empty holster around her thigh. “Dustwing?” she asked.
Her wings tensed, lifting slowly from her sides. “Woah, hey, I never-”
The pistol slid through her mane into the ridge of her neck, stopping the words on her tongue. When Autumn spoke, her voice was stringent with the clipped tone of someone accustomed to deception but who never grew to appreciate being on the receiving end. “Miss Julip, I was under the impression that my guest represents the Enclave. She told me she intends to free you.”
Julip snorted. “That’s gotta be embarrassing for you. Enclave don’t recruit muds, and we have more eyes on this place than you do. You want to let me go? Crack this can open and I’ll go. But I ain’t gonna be seen leaving with her.”
The pegasus didn’t even flinch as she threw away her chance at escape. Her eyes burned with unfiltered hate as she stared at Aurora. Autumn’s eyes flashed toward her too. Suddenly, Aurora felt very outnumbered and the pistol against her neck felt very cold.
“I don’t think you’ll be leaving any time soon, Miss Julip. You still have important work to do.”
She snorted and formed her feathers into a gesture Aurora suspected she was the only other pony in the room to recognize. “I’m working, but not for you. Enclave’s going to purify this place of your taint once they work out where I went. Whatever deal you have with the uppers is void. I’m just sticking around to make sure you don’t get your hooves on those coordinates.”
Her eyes flicked from Autumn to Aurora.
“Do it,” Julip jeered. “Bang. One less fleck of shit in our skies.”
Anger climbed Aurora’s throat. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Julip ignored her, laughter trickling out from the mesh. “Song, did you really think she was one of ours? Oh Celestia, that is rich! She’s a mud crusher just like you, you ignorant cun-”
The barrel of Autumn’s revolver didn’t leave Aurora’s head even as green light enveloped the caged mare’s left wing and folded it in half like paper, turning Julip’s last syllable into an unintelligible scream. 
The Enclave mare scrambled to the far side of the cage and her wails quickly devolved into profane gibbering that Autumn flatly ignored. Her attention was still on Aurora. The gun still pressed to the back of her head.
She had to raise her voice just to be heard over the noises coming from the cage. “Explain, Miss Pinfeathers.”
“Explain what?” Aurora shot back. “She’s not the pony I’m here for! I came for Ginger!”
The words echoed against the hollow room, mingling with Julip’s promises to kill them both in a startlingly creative list of ways. Autumn was struck dumb by the admission but the pressure of her revolver never left Aurora’s neck. Her lip raised away from her teeth by the barest inch.
“The slaver,” Autumn said. “Your friend is the mare who killed my brother.”
Aurora blinked several times, trying to put the two statements together like a round peg going into a square hole. “She’s not a slaver. She owns a tailoring shop in Junction City where we met. And she didn’t kill Cider. I did.”
Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “You...”
Aurora nodded as a lump rose in her throat. The revolver dug into her skin and it occurred to her that this hole in the ground would serve as her grave. Witnessed by a deranged Enclave pegasus she didn’t know and far from the home and the ponies whose lives she’d hoped to save. Bitter regret sank into her stomach as understanding hit her. She failed. Maybe Stable 10 would send out someone else and maybe they would even succeed where she hadn’t, but her story was ending. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for it to come.
“...are lying.”
The revolver lifted away. Startled, Aurora opened her eyes and stared at Autumn in the dim light. “I’m not,” she said thickly. “I killed Cider. Ginger had nothing to do with it.”
The pale mare shook her head. “No, you didn’t. My brother failed at many things in life, but he was an excellent magic user. He’d sooner grow a second head than let himself die the way he did at the hooves of a pegasus.”
The dismissal stung. 
She could still feel the rumble of thunder in her chest. Hear her Pip-Buck’s staccato chatter after each flash of lightning. Her throat ached with the memory of the crushing pressure of his magic around her neck. The bricks pressing against her back as Cider’s magic held her there, his attention guiding his hoof down her belly and turning himself into a problem that she had no choice but to fix. She could hear the wet crunch of her Pip-Buck connecting with his mouth, his jaw, his skull until the life spilled out of him into the dirt.
Aurora stared at Autumn as the memories washed over her.
Cider’s sister stared back as if she were a problem that she also knew how to fix. “Let’s discuss this somewhere more private.” Behind her, the door swept open into the stairwell with a peel of metal.
“No,” Aurora said slowly. “Let Ginger go, first.”
Autumn’s eyes hardened. “Don’t test me, Miss Pinfeathers. I’m happy to feed your corpse to the deathclaws right alongside your friend’s, if that’s what you want.”
She rooted herself where she stood, facing Autumn with her hooves planted wide. She wasn’t going anywhere. Not until Ginger was freed. Not until she’d taken her place. 
Then her vision went emerald, and she felt herself lifting off the floor. 
“Now,” Autumn snapped.
Aurora swiveled toward the open door and slid toward it like a piece of luggage on a carousel. She opened her mouth to protest but felt Autumn’s magic coalesce around her jaw, slamming her teeth shut with a hard click that she felt in her skull. 
Behind them, Julip erupted with pained laughter, her voice dripping with glee.
“So that’s why you’re so pissy, huh?” she called out. “Big brother took a dirt nap?”
Aurora could swear the aura around her just grew warmer. She strained against it but it didn’t budge as she drifted over the threshold.
“So what does that make you, Song? Sole proprietor of your little empire? Queen of the nation that never was? How long do mud ponies wear black after a funeral, anyway?” Julip was digging her hooves in deep now, clearly probing for a reaction. Trying hard. Aurora could feel her anger bleeding into her magic. Whatever Julip was aiming to accomplish, it was working. “You two were close, right? Does that make you his widow, or...?”
Aurora jerked to a halt above the stairs. The emerald aura shimmered with heat.
Seeing she was getting somewhere, Julip doubled down. “Oh yes, the Enclave knows all about your little dalliances with Big Brother. The footage alone is something of a legend among the archivists.” She laughed. “I have to say, though, it’s not surprising. Some of the old records suggest Flim and Flam warmed each other’s bed from time to time, and the apple never falls far from the tree. I wonder what you’ll do now that you don’t have your brother to warm yours?”
Was Julip trying to get herself killed? Aurora began to list slightly to the right. The pressure holding her in the air was loosening. She grit her teeth and forced her neck to bend, the magic relenting until she managed to get an eye on Autumn. The pale mare had turned to face Julip. She was furious.
“And how has your bed been these last few weeks?” Autumn answered. “Cold? A little darker than you’re used to? I’ll tell you what, Miss Julip. If by tomorrow you don’t deliver solace to me, I’ll deliver a few of my best stallions to you. Does that sound agreeable to you? Is that the closeness you so clearly yearn for?”
Julip stiffened. “Don’t.”
The list was devolving into a lazy roll. Aurora strained her wings forward and tried to grip her feathers around the railing, but it hung just beyond her reach. She needed to get out of here. To regroup and think of something else. The sound of Julip’s wing crackling in half still scraped at her ears.
“Oh, it’s no trouble,” Autumn said, stepping toward the cage and pulling the railing away from Aurora’s wings as she drifted backward with her. “And frankly it’s been so long since Buck has made time for himself, I don’t see why I couldn’t give him the night off. I can only imagine how appreciative he would be.”
Aurora held the door frame between her wings, feeling the sleeve of magic peeling away from her as Autumn slid toward Julip’s cage.
“Just kill me,” Julip whispered. Then, louder, “Just fucking kill me!”
This time, Autumn laughed. “And you’re weak. Next time, ask nicely. Don’t think you can goad me into it.”
Hooves slammed against the mesh. “Then do it! I’m dead anyway so just fucking do it!”
Aurora felt her wings slip free.
Autumn smiled. “Find solace, then you can-”
A gust of wind billowed into the musty room, hurling centuries of dust into the air. Autumn wheeled around in time to see Aurora touch down on the upper landing and kick off up the next flight of stairs.
“Fuck!” she snapped and quickly gave chase.
Aurora’s heart pounded as she half-flew, half galloped up the stairs. Her wings slapped the wall and railing as she hurled herself upward. She cursed herself as Autumn’s hooves echoed against the stairs below. A green glow snatched at her wing as it drifted over the railing but she jerked it away before it could solidify enough to snare her. 
This was a mistake. Coming here without a weapon, without a plan, had been an awful mistake. She’d hoped to be able to reason with Autumn. To explain what had happened and pray for whatever passed for mercy in this barren wasteland so that Ginger could go free. Instead, she fucked it all up. Again. This wasn’t her home. This wasn’t what she was good at. Why did she keep thinking she had any control over what happened out here?
Diving out of the stairwell and into the garage, she slammed the door shut with a sweep of her wing and bolted across the loading zone toward the nearest open dock doors leading outside. Her legs ached. Once she was airborne she could regroup and come up with a plan. Once she was-
The door behind her exploded open, throwing a shower of sparks as it skittered across the rough cement floor. The world went emerald and lurched sideways as Autumn swept her up and threw her like a brick. She crashed into the rusted panels of a surviving garage door, punching a hole through the rotted metal and sending a hail of shrapnel into the concrete with her. The sky and ground tumbled until she rolled into the rotted chassis of the ancient carriage.
Aurora lay there for several seconds, too stunned to do anything else but groan as her body checked off a fresh list of new pains. She rolled onto her stomach with a wince and looked back at her hind leg which burned like someone had jammed a hot poker into it. The pink skin that covered the bite from her first encounter with a ghoul had torn open and bled freely. She tried to stand, slowly at first and then more quickly as what was left of the garage door shrieked and peeled away from its mounts, announcing Autumn’s arrival. Her legs, however, refused to work with her. Confused, she toppled like a newborn foal. Her head throbbed where it had cracked against the carriage and the sky above spun like a drunken top.
Then it went green, and she knew she was caught.
There she was. The pale mare in her rumpled jacket and tousled red and white mane that threatened to spill loose from the green ribbon that once held it tight behind her ears. A candy stripe curl hung between her eyes as she looked down at Aurora, her face twisted with anger.
“Where do you think you’re going? Did you really think you could just waltz into my home, my place of business, tell me that you killed my brother and just… run away? No, my little friend. You don’t get to leave. Not anymore.”
Aurora tried to move but Autumn held her down like a lead blanket. She allowed her to escape once. It wouldn’t happen a second time.
“I just want to…” Aurora bit down as Autumn pressed her head down. “Please, just let her go.”
Autumn’s muzzle wrinkled with distaste. “Why?” she demanded. “So you can take her place? So my brother’s murderer can walk free? Do you even realize what you’re asking? What kind of message that would send?”
“Ginger didn’t kill him!”
Autumn bent her neck until her muzzle grazed Aurora’s ear. “It. Doesn’t. MATTER!”
The words echoed off the side of the building. Buck and two others appeared around the far corner, drawn toward the noise. Autumn shot an irritated look toward them that they couldn’t see, then lowered her voice as she turned her attention back to Aurora. “Do you know how hard it was to build this company? How many ponies died in order to make just a few of the roads safe to travel again? We did that. Cider and I. And right as we were on the verge of finding… right when we were in a position to make the world safe again, your noble little friend killed him. Or maybe it was you. It doesn’t fucking matter.”
She stepped back and wrenched Aurora off the ground, ignoring her cry of pain as she spun her so she could look her in the eye. “What matters is that Ginger Dressage needs to be made an example of so that nobody gets the idea to come down here and fuck with my work. Her death is necessary, Aurora. Much like yours.”
Aurora was oddly thankful for the paralyzing magic keeping her pinned to the air. Without it, Autumn would have seen her trembling. “You don’t have to do this.”
Autumn smiled pitifully. “I disagree. But before that happens, let’s pay your friend a visit. I’m interested to see which one of you dies first."
The horrendous pressure around her jaw returned, sending shots of pain down her neck. As Autumn turned toward the approaching guard ponies, she broke into a trot. Aurora suffered the nauseating motion of being carried as if she were little more than a tool bag. Her magic pressed against her like a pool of wet cement, allowing barely enough room for her to breathe let alone move. It was as close to suffocating as she could get without enduring the real thing.
Buck and his entourage slowed as Autumn drew nearer, their wide eyes set on the pegasus being held in the air. The charcoal stallion’s voice was carefully neutral as he asked, “Ma’am, is everything alright?”
Autumn waved him off as she passed by. “I have it under control. Miss Julip identified our new guest as a dustwing.”
Buck turned to follow her, his rifles bobbing as he kept pace. “She’s not Enclave?”
“She was happy to let us think she was, but no. She’s ground-born.” They turned the corner of the building and into the shadow of its central tower. “You’ll be spending the night below with Miss Julip. I want you to find out how she could tell that our pegasus friend was a fake, and give her ample encouragement to find solace before I speak to her again.”
“Spending the night?”
Autumn sighed. “Talk to her, interrogate her, fuck her, I don’t care which. Just figure it out. Oh, bring another chair and some straps to Tank 4.”
Buck nodded and peeled away with his entourage toward the main building rather than ask questions he didn’t want answers to. Autumn continued on toward a quartet of cooling tanks on the facility’s periphery, humming contently as she walked.
Aurora could only watch as the massive tanks rose above her. The domed tops drifted out of her field of vision and she found herself facing a worn and rusted metal wall. A sand colored earth stallion posted next to the makeshift door saw them approach and set to work removing the padlock. He pulled the door open toward himself in time for Autumn to nod her thanks and push her cargo through the door, following close behind. The door slammed shut behind them with a sonorous boom.
Ginger looked up from her chair with terrified eyes. They widened with dawning horror as she recognized the mare clutched in Autumn’s magic.
“Aurora?” she croaked. Her voice, torn ragged from screaming, sounded like it belonged to somebody else. “No, no, no… why are you here? You shouldn’t be here!”
The old padlock and chain rattled on the other side of the door. Autumn flung Aurora onto the ground and stared impassively as the pegasus scrambled across the rust and spatters of drying blood to the unicorn she’d come for.
Aurora threw her hooves around Ginger’s neck, her wings swinging around the chair like a coat of feathers tightly enough to lift the back legs of the chair off the ground. Beneath the drape of her wings she could make out the misshapen knots of swollen flesh. The layers of blood caked around her mouth, neck and down her chest. Fresh injuries mingling with recently healed ones. Beneath her, Ginger shook like a beaten animal.
Aurora struggled to keep her voice level. “What did she do to you?” Her eyes panned across the narrow cages that ringed the outer wall. They stopped at the bright red tool cabinet and the neat line of empty syringes laying atop the lid. She looked down to see at least half as many full stimpacks waiting in the bottom drawer.
Ginger leaned against her straps to press her head into the crook of Aurora’s neck. “Please,” she said, her voice hitching with a miserable sob. “Please, leave.”
She rested her cheek against Ginger’s head. Her mane was a tangled mop of sweat and filth, and the strange ring that clamped around her horn radiated an unnatural warmth. “That’s not going to happen,” she whispered.
“I don’t want you to see.” Ginger lifted her head, allowing the tears to flow freely now. Her eyes rippled like the sea whose color they shared.
Aurora grimaced and drew her wings together even tighter. “Too late for that. I didn’t fly all the way here just to leave without you.”
Ginger looked up. “You flew?”
Her face flushed with pride. “Yeah.”
The smile that spread across Ginger’s face was genuine and sad. She blinked several times, clearing the wetness from her eyes, and her expression changed into something else. “Then fly to Baltimare. Find your ignition talisman and go home.”
Aurora opened her mouth, but the words weren’t there to be spoken. Autumn chuckled mirthlessly as her magic peeled her wings back from Ginger and pulled the two mares apart. Aurora’s eyes pleaded with Ginger as the gap between them widened.
“A slaver and a pegasus,” Autumn chided. Her smile widened at the sight of Ginger’s dismay and Aurora’s growing frustration. Her magic swarmed around Aurora’s hooves, fixing her to the floor as tight as any weld. She smiled knowingly at Ginger. “You haven’t told her, have you?”
Ginger tensed against her straps.
“Go ahead.” Autumn sat down next to Aurora, her horn thrumming with green fire looking for something to burn, and threw a hoof around her shoulder. Aurora tried to recoil but her hooves remained firmly in place. “Or would you like me to? We have time.”
“Not here,” Ginger said.
“Yes here,” Autumn said, the humor draining from her voice. “Or else she’s going to spend her last hours wondering where that mark came from.”
Aurora’s eyes sank like an anchor toward Ginger’s hip, formerly a blank coat, now brandished with something that hadn’t been there before. A chain and a heavy collar. She couldn’t stop herself from looking up at Ginger, searching her eyes for understanding.
“I thought you said you never got a mark,” Aurora said.
Ginger stared hard at the floor. “I…” she stopped, a parade of emotions playing over her face. “I didn’t get my mark. I got this one instead.”
“A slaver’s mark,” Autumn clarified, her sour breath wrinkling Aurora’s nose. “They all get the same one, eventually. Isn’t that how it works?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
Ginger didn’t lift her eyes from the floor. “When what.”
“When did you get yours?”
Aurora flattened her ears and looked at the cages around them. She didn’t want to hear this. Not now. Not here, of all places.
“Would you like me to guess?” Autumn asked.
Ginger’s eyes flicked angrily toward the mare. “No, darling. I wouldn’t.”
Autumn’s horn flared and Aurora was immediately aware of the weight doubling down on her hooves. It felt as if she were trying to drive her legs straight through the steel and into the dirt below. When she looked up she saw that Autumn was approaching Ginger with all the intent of a furious mother.
She dug her hoof under Ginger’s chin and pulled it up until she met her eyes. “Don’t darling me. The ponies that your family breeds are far from generous. You’re not her.”
Ginger’s eyes boiled with anger. “I didn’t choose my family!”
“Pity you!” Autumn laughed. She paced a circle around Ginger’s chair, sliding her tail beneath the unicorn’s chin as she passed. “Born into safety, wanting for nothing? What a hard life you live. It must have been terribly difficult putting a collar on your first slave. Did your pristine little hooves get dirty when it happened? Is that what inspired you to leave it all behind in the hopes that you might spend your days sewing your way to redemption?”
Aurora watched Ginger freeze. Her anger doused by shame. Ginger met her gaze briefly enough for her to see the tears returning in force.
“Oh, look at that,” Autumn purred. “That’s exactly when it happened, isn’t it?”
Ginger tried to turn away but Autumn’s magic latched onto her chin, forcing her to watch her captor circle into view. “That’s when you got your mark.” She stopped short of a full revolution, leaving just enough room for Aurora to watch. “When it appeared, were you happy?”
Ginger hesitated, then nodded silently. Tears fell quietly into her lap.
“Do you think the pony you collared was happy?”
“Stop it,” Aurora warned.
Autumn looked at her dismissively. “Then stop me.”
She lifted her wings and threw them to the floor, throwing a cloud of old dust behind her. The bindings around her hooves didn’t register it at all. 
She stared the pale mare down, daring her to loosen her grip.
Autumn watched the dust curl against the far wall with amusement. “Not many places to fly in here, little bird.”
“Let go of my hooves and I’ll take you on a tour, bitch.”
Autumn blinked, then inhaled slowly. She turned to Ginger and exhaled. A mote of magic drifted into the tool chest and lifted out a stimpack, its ruddy fluid burbling inside the gleaming steel casing. “Aurora, do you know how these work?”
She slid the syringe up to Aurora’s nose and let it hang there a moment, the tip of its needle tracing a narrow line up the bridge of her muzzle. Then it drifted away, back to Autumn. All three pair of eyes were fixed on the syringe. “Medicine, to be sure. I don’t pretend to know all of the compounds, but some of them still occur naturally despite what the war did to the soil. But the stimpacks we make today are lacking. They’re wonderful painkillers and work well enough to close a shallow wound, but they’re barely more than pisswater compared to what ponies used to have.”
A metallic jangling echoed off the tank walls. Aurora frowned and looked back at the door, thinking the padlock was being undone, but the noise wasn’t coming from there. She turned around and realized Ginger was trembling against her straps, the buckles clattering while her eyes splayed open at the sight of the needle. Eight empty needles glinted atop the tool cabinet like exhibits in a trial.
Aurora’s hackles stood on end.
“Before the bombs fell,” Autumn continued, staring bitterly at the syringe. “Before balefire almost burned all magic from the world, unicorns used to be able to cast beautiful spells. We could do more than just… touch. We could create. We could bend reality with a thought. The old unicorns wove spells into everything before the end. Even their medicine.”
She dipped the syringe toward Ginger’s hind leg, grazing her coffee tinted coat. Ginger began muttering the same word over and over again. No.
Aurora pulled against Autumn’s magic until her joints popped. “What is wrong with you? Stop!”
Autumn turned her head slowly toward the pegasus and smiled. “You’re right.”
She lifted the syringe away and set it onto the cabinet with the empties. Ginger swallowed hard, trying and failing to calm herself. Aurora watched Autumn step away from the chair and stroll toward one of the empty cages over Ginger’s right shoulder. The benevolent look on her face was anything but reassuring.
She opened the door with her hoof, smiled, and swung it shut with a bang that made both mares jump. “It’s a shame,” she said wistfully. “The spells in those serums survived the end of the era that birthed them. Survived two centuries at the bottom of a crumbling hospital, under ten feet of irradiated water. It’s a miracle they’re still viable, let alone work as well as they do. Using one without a good reason would be unthinkable.”
Autumn turned the lock on the empty cage and looked across the tank to Aurora, a pleasant smile lifting one of her cheeks as she stepped toward the pegasus. “So let’s give ourselves a reason.”
The aura around her horn pulsed brighter and Aurora’s eyes caught the green light that bloomed around both of Ginger’s forelegs. Ginger was breathing hard as the light didn’t quite dim, but sank beneath her skin like water into a dry sponge. It slithered below muscle and tendon and coalesced around bones that had been broken and healed on a cruel loop. Ginger was becoming frantic. She threw her weight against the straps, causing the chair to screech across the steel.
Aurora screamed for her to stop but the words bounced off the walls, blurring into a cacophony of gibberish. Hard as Ginger struggled, her forelegs remained perfectly still as if bolted to some invisible wall.
Autumn flicked her head.
The bones in Ginger’s legs cracked like twin gunshots. The bound unicorn lowered her head and screamed.
Aurora tried to wrench herself away from the sight of Ginger’s suddenly misshapen legs. Skin bulged where it shouldn’t. A sob rose in her throat as Ginger shook violently, her body railing against the outrage of being subjected to forces it was never designed to endure. And then, mercifully, she lost consciousness. Her chin thumped against her chest like a puppet without strings. 
A thin wisp of smoke flowed from the ring clutching her horn, its polished metal dulled by heat that had already begun to dissipate.
“And thus,” Autumn happily announced, “we have our reason.”
She wanted her rifle. She wanted to press the muzzle against Autumn’s heart and pull the trigger. She wanted to kill her.
Her voice shook. “How many times?”
Autumn looked at her, bemused. She crossed between her and Ginger and retrieved the syringe from before. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“How many times did you do that to her.”
Guided by Autumn’s magic, the needle sank into Ginger’s destroyed foreleg and deployed with a puff of compressed air. “You’re a big girl,” she chided, setting the ninth empty syringe atop the cabinet with the others. “Count.”
She did. Her heart sank.
Autumn lifted a tenth syringe from the open drawer and turned back to Ginger’s unconscious body, aiming to mend her other leg. Her rear hoof thumped the corner of the cabinet, earning a wince as she stepped away. The empties wobbled.
Aurora watched as the ninth syringe, the inspiration for Autumn’s segue to torture, tipped and fell. Had the needle not struck the floor first, it would have shattered and made an unremarkable mess. But it didn’t. The tip of the needle gouged the steel floor, deformed, and bent like a spring. The syringe spun like a top behind Autumn’s hoof before slowing enough to decide on a path to roll. There was only one decision it could make. Years of hoof traffic in and out of the tank had warped the floor like a pouting lip toward the door.
Toward Aurora.
She stiffened as the bulky syringe rolled toward her and thumped to a stop against her hoof.
Autumn sighed irritably and looked over her shoulder to see where the empty had gotten to. Then she looked left, toward Aurora, whose wing was bent backwards in a pitcher’s stance. The syringe glinted between her feathers. Her eyes widened with realization.
This.
This was a problem Aurora could fix.
Using Autumn’s bindings for leverage, she whipped her wing forward and released her grip. The stimpack whistled across the gap and exploded against Autumn’s muzzle, driving shattered glass and crumpled metal across the length of her face. Her magic vanished. Aurora threw her wings back hard and sailed into the unicorn, driving the air from her lungs as they sailed past Ginger toward the wall. Chain link cages crashed apart as they tumbled through one of the partitions. The two mares slammed hard against the tank’s outer hull. It toned like a struck bell.
Dazed and scared, Autumn tried to get her bearings as Aurora dragged her to the ground and straddled her waist. She struck her hooves into the unicorn like twin pistons, striking wherever she could land a blow and putting every bit of muscle behind them. They added up quickly, one after the other, with Aurora screaming like something fresh out of Tartarus. Autumn tried to lift her hooves around her head but they were quickly pinned down by two powerful wings fueled by unrelenting rage.
Aurora’s hooves collected blood like penance. A flicker of green light tried to coagulate around the butt of Autumn’s pistol and scattered just as quickly under the brawling pegasus.
All of the pretense, all of the ego came down all at once. Aurora saw the animal panic in Autumn’s eyes as her horn pulsed and went dark, unable to focus on her magic. Only able to think about surviving.
Overwhelmed, Autumn screamed.
This time someone answered.
Aurora’s head shot around at the sound of yelling outside the door. The padlock clattered loudly against the latch as the earth pony outside fumbled to get it open. He hadn’t been armed, but Buck and his cannons wouldn’t be far away.
Emerald light gripped her wings. Aurora spun around and stomped her hooves into Autumn’s chest hard enough to send her skull rebounding against the steel floor. Her horn doused and she curled around her sternum like a slug dipped in salt.
“Stay down,” she warned, and crawled over the crumpled fencing to where Ginger was strapped. Something hard banged against the door several times. The padlock. The earth pony was panicking. Good. Aurora dug her feathers into the buckle around Ginger’s healing foreleg and yanked at the strap, jerking it loose.
Ginger hissed inwardly and opened her eyes. “Stop, please,” she moaned.
Aurora looked up at her and let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “Hold on, I’m getting you out of here.” She bent down and bit the buckle around her other foreleg and pulled.
Ginger went rigid. “Stop!” she cried. “Stopstopstop!”
She didn’t listen. Her eyes misted over with frustration as she pulled the strap away. “I can’t. Just a few more and then-”
“Aurora, GET OUT!”
She recoiled like she’d been slapped. Another voice had joined the frustrated attempt to breach the door. Buck’s.
Ginger strained to focus on Aurora’s. Her eyes were awash with tears. “I can’t walk, Aurora. Just leave.”
“I can carry you.”
“Not through that door. They’ll kill you too.”
Aurora stamped her hoof, her voice choked. “Fine! I don’t care!” She wiped her face against her wing and started on the next strap. Something banged into the door. Then a second time. Hooves. Something was wrong with the lock and they were trying to kick down the door. The tank shuddered from the assault.
Her feathers slipped off the buckle, slick from her tears. She spat a curse frantically worked her feathers back under the loop.
“Aurora…” Ginger said. “Aurora, listen to me! How many pegasi live in Stable 10?”
She stopped.
“How many?”
She grit her teeth. “Nine hundred and eighty six.”
Ginger reached out with her damaged foreleg and set her hoof against Aurora’s cheek. “How many are in this chair?”
Aurora’s vision flooded. Her throat pinched shut. “Don’t…”
“How many.”
She tried to swallow but something got in the way. 
“One,” she said.
Ginger pressed her lips into a tight smile. “Do the math, darling. I’m not worth that much.”
Aurora looked over her shoulder at the deforming door. Light spilled through the gaps between the frame. “You taught me to fly,” she pleaded. It was childish and she knew it, but this wasn’t an argument she wanted to lose.
Ginger’s voice shook. “I wish I could be there to see it, Aurora, but you need to leave.”
She could hear someone calling through the gap for Autumn, asking if she was alright while Buck pounded against the door. “Ginger I’m not-”
“Go!”
She stumbled backward, the straps and the arguing and hope forgotten.
Ginger stared at her, adding, “Please.”
“Okay.” She scrubbed her face harshly against her feathers. “Okay, but I’m coming back. Just don’t…” Her voice hitched. She grimaced and turned to face the door. “Just hold on a little bit longer. I’ll come back.”
It felt like one of the lies a mother told her foals. Maybe after dinner. How about for your birthday? I’ll come back. She had every intention on making good on her promise, even though she knew Ginger would be dead long before she made it back to Blinder’s Bluff.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen...”
Boom.
The frame buckled.
“This is all my fault...”
Boom.
A hinge broke its weld.
She looked at Ginger one last time.
Boom.
“Please stay alive.”
Boom.
Metal shrieked.
Her wings flicked downward and slung her forward like a rocket toward the falling door. She twisted her feathers inward, pivoting her hind legs forward and planted them squarely against Buck’s dark chest, his eyes wide with shock. His cannons belched a single salvo through the roof of the tank as the bite trigger under his chin shattered beneath her hooves. Shouts rose from the half dozen ponies gathered around the door and she kicked off, launching herself vertical.
She flapped hard, propelling herself up, over and onto the roof of Tank 4. Gunfire crackled behind her as she scrabbled across the weather-worn dome, chased by an angry swarm of bullets. She was agonizingly aware that Ginger was directly beneath her, still half tied to her chair, listening to her run away. The gunfire cut off and Buck’s voice barked orders for anyone with a weapon to pursue. Aurora whispered an apology as she kicked off the far side of the tank and lifted into the air.
The staccato pop-pop-pop-pop of submachine guns resumed chattering one by one as she rose back into view. A stream of bullets snapped by her ear close enough to scare her into a dive. Streamers of lead traced lines around her as she descended over the sea of mirrors, the wide crescents of silver and glass flashing beneath her like manic strobe lights. She banked hard to the left just as a row of mirrors ahead of her spat a scattered line of powdered glass into the air.
She shot over the perimeter fence and pulled into a hard ascent that threatened to bend her wings backwards. She wobbled, nearly losing control. A well-placed round clipped a primary feather in half and she resisted the urge to watch it fall away. As she climbed, the swarm of bullets thinned. Then she couldn’t detect them at all. Far below, the chatter of gunfire became sporadic.
One by one the guns fell silent until there was nothing left to hear but the wind.
The mirrors, the tower and Ginger slipped away behind her, leaving her alone to water a sky that refused to rain. 

 


 







 


June 28th, 1075
Nobody told me the ministries were all in the same building! I always pictured them lined up on a big promenade, one for each of the Elements, but they’re all in one huge crystal building buried in Canterlot Mountain! Fluttershy called the front of it a pant-theon but that’s just for show. It has these six huge pillars, which I guess represent the ministry mares, but it just kinda looked like a rainbow to me. The real ministry is under all that rock and snow! The Ministry of Image is at the very top and the Ministry of Arcane Sciences is way down at the bottom. Nobody’s allowed down there, not even mom or Fluttershy.
The Ministry of Peace, where mom works now, is kind of in the middle. Being underground, even when we’re really high up, gives me the creeps if I think about it too much. Fluttershy says that it’s the safest place in Equestria but wouldn’t say against what. I know zebras are superstitious, but mom always said that’s because their gods live up in the stars. Why would they be afraid to go underground?
Mom’s office isn’t very big, but it’s right down the hall from Fluttershy’s. I’m really starting to like her. Fluttershy, I mean. She’s always so nice. I guess that’s why her element is Kindness. Mom showed me a map of Equestria and it’s way, way more detailed than the ones we have at school. Vhanna looks so small compared to us, and the ocean is so huge. I told her that it looks like it takes more effort to hate each other than it would to just pretend neither of us were there. She said I wasn’t wrong.
 
 
June 30th, 1075
There’s no public school in Canterlot, apparently. Just private ones. Today was my first day and the ponies there were nice, but I think they were faking it. It’s better than the weird stares I got in Ponyville, and way better than dealing with Sagebrush. But it feels weird. It’s like they’re trying too hard.
 
 
July 2nd, 1075
Rainbow Dash was on TV today. Is it weird that she’s the only one of the six that still wears her Element? I think it’s weird. She said that the Ministry or Awesome (weird name) was going to be working with JetStream Aerospace on developing a new source of electricity that would make coal and oil obsolete. She’s going to announce exactly what that is next week, but everyone’s already talking about it. Mom is pretty sure they’re taking another crack at solar power, and she’s probably right. JSA has been pushing solar since the start of the war, so it sort of makes sense. Fluttershy’s the only ministry mare besides Rainbow that will openly support it, but the other ministries won’t touch anything that doesn’t have a “strategic military value.”
I still like listening to all the theories floating around at school. Ms. Heartstrings had us write down our three best guesses in my Contemporary History class. The best one by far was “perpetual magic machine.” Ms. Heartstrings got nervous about that one, which was a bad idea. Now everyone’s thinking about it!