Dave shivered in cold morning air. It was barely past 5 a.m. and the bus wouldn't turn up for another half an hour, yet Dave always preferred being early to having even a ghost of chance of being late.
His thoughts returned to contract. It was lucrative, but came with a lot of strings attached. Never once in his life Dave had to sign stacks of NDAs this thick.
On the other hand, getting rid of the debt his engineering degree has put him in, and being paid VERY handsomely on top of that - it was quite the opportunity.
Dave yawned and habitually checked his watch for the umpteenth time.
By this time other folks started showing up at the bus stop. Most of them were freshly graduated engineers, but there were some people in military uniform and a bunch of formally-dressed old-timers that Dave couldn't place. His mind's wandering was suddenly interrupted by booming voice.
"Is that Dave Smith or my eyes are playing tricks on me?"
The sound of a familiar voice made Dave turn on heels and focus on tall muscular man making his way through to him.
"Boris! You rascal, you also got the offer?"
"You betcha I did!" Boris flung his hands up in cheering gesture, expressive as ever.
He then swung wide in a deliberately slow and exaggerated wind-up for their trademark over-the-top fist-bump. Dave reciprocated, lightly tapping his knuckles on a fist that was almost the size of his head.
Boris yanked his enormous hand away and shook it, while grimacing and blowing on the knuckles as if to soothe immense pain. His characteristic sense of humor hasn't changed one bit.
"Damn, it is good to see you again, man!"
"Likewise, my friend, likewise."
With Boris in the same boat, the day instantly got better.
The two chatted away, catching up on events since graduation.
"So it's just us? I was wondering if Jim made it here someho-"
HONK!
Bus driver was clearly running out of patience waiting for last two passengers to board.
"Crap, we better get on the bus!"
Endless, lifeless and completely featureless landscape of desert slowly drifted by in the window.
All of a sudden Boris looked around the bus with sly expression and motioned for Dave to pull off his headphones and lean in.
"I did some digging. This place we've landed job at - it has something to do with High Energy Physics," he whispered.
"Oh so these-" Dave motioned his head to suits on back seat "-eggheads must be nuclear physicists then."
"Yep! So, it draws insane amount of electricity off the state grid, AND it has several dedicated power plants. It's also guarded better than Fort Knox, but you already know that. What do you think it is?"
"Hmm, I bet it's some sort of new-generation particle accelerator or something. I'm not a physics expert."
Dave narrowed his eyes and stared into the ceiling intently before continuing.
"But then again - why'd they need greenhorn gunsmiths like us? I don't get it."
Boris shrugged "Beats me, man. I guess we gotta wait and see..."
Numerous checkpoints and one detection dog sniff-down later, bus has finally creaked to a complete stop having reached it's destination. By now sun was high and beating down mercilessly.
Uniformed men hurried everyone out of the bus and into the pleasantly cool building.
After dropping off luggage onto named carts, everyone flocked after the impeccably dressed but otherwise unremarkable company representative leading them on through the building.
Soon they found themselves in the large room with rows of seats, projector and dimmed lights.
Dave covered his face in desperation.
"Oh no, not another one of these briefings."
"What is it?" Boris whispered in surprised tone.
"Bigwig in a suit that's three years worth of my salary plus projector plus first day in company?.. Put two and two and two together, Boris!"
"Hmmmm, oh, I can see where this is going..."
"Yes, exactly, zero practical info and a lot of corporate speak for the classic 'we care for you, now work more for less' hogwash!"
Dave sighed heavily.
Hubbub in dark room was interrupted by representative tapping his glass of water with pen.
Dave winced in anticipation.
After making sure he's got everyone's attention, representative inhaled deeply but before he could even make a sound the door creaked open and short man in labcoat and a clipboard leaned in.
"I'm terribly sorry; We need to borrow someone with mechanical engineering background for a bit; It's kind of urgent!"
Dave jumped onto his feet and walked to labcoat at a brisk pace.
"MSME, Background in firearm industry, let's not waste time!" He shot out and turned to representative "If that's OK with you, of course."
Representative stared at Dave with slight disbelief at the insolence for a few seconds and then finally exhaled with a strange gutteral sound that Dave couldn't help but liken to the sound of a deflating balloon.
"OK, sure."
That was only confirmation Dave needed, so he slipped out of dark room before representative could change his mind.
Guy in the labcoat introduced himself as the lead assistant Mark, and immediately cut to the chase.
"So there's this mechanical issue on minus eighth floor, it crops up all the time, but entirety of maintenance crew came down with some sort of stomach bug. Today, of all the days!"
They entered the elevator and Mark hurriedly pressed the -8 button.
"We run preliminary tests today, and it's imperative that all of the doors work fine, if the test fails, the higher ups are going to have my head on the platter, and this is considering that we're running ahead of schedule by..."
Dave could not help but doze off under unyielding onslaught of largely unnecessary internal politics trivia, so when after a long elevator ride elevator doors finally opened with a beep and a click he jumped a little.
"...And this why you don't take peyote before visiting a water park! Oh, we seem to have arrived."
Wasting no time, Mark practically dragged Dave out of elevator and through set of twisty corridors before stopping in front of large metal shutters.
"This is the place," Mark swiped the security card and set of metal shutters opened with surprising speed.
He continued "So, long story short, you need to repair a door, just go forward and turn at the first left, you can't possibly miss it!"
Mark waved in the direction of new opening.
"Just go, sorry I can't show you in person, I got to report to superiors like THIS NOW!" He threw before vanishing into some doorway.
Mark pushed on but could not help but complain to himself.
"On nice. Now I get to do some janitor's job. Door repair, pffff! I can see my education is really paying for itself!"
After rounding the corner of featureless white concrete he exited into a tall passageway. Some sort of giant pipe was running along the passageway on the ceiling.
Dave looked around and finally spotted the door in question leading to next section of passageway.
"Well, at least Mark could have mentioned that door in question was a huge honkin' hydraulic blast door!"
Said door was half-shut and wedged firmly in visibly dented tool chest.
Dave ducked under door and crawled into the next section of passageway, hoping for tool chest to hold lest he be guillotined by door in half.
On the inside there were tell-tale signs of repair work in progress: ladder, opened access hatches on the wall, torn out floor tiles and finally a toolbox sitting squarely in the middle of this mess.
"OK, maybe it's a bit more advanced than some janitor's job."
Dave cracked a smile "But then again, I can easily imagine all janitors having PhDs in this place."
Finally some actual work was laid in front of him, and he took to it eagerly.
Mark pushed open the door to control room.
"Hey, Mr. Henderson, I've got good news, today's test will be on time!"
Man in central chair did not even bother to rotate to face Mark.
"Of course it will. We accounted for that darn door staying open and started the whole shebang several minutes ago."
"B-b-but I got a technician to go take care of it!.. He's in there right now..."
"You did WHAT!?"
Mark made an attempt to hide behind his clipboard.
Dave crawled out of maintenance hatch and carefully descended shaky ladder.
"Let's see if it works now," he muttered to himself, pressing the "open" button on blast door control panel.
Blast door started sliding up.
"Good, now - close Sesame!"
He gave mangled tool chest a punt, moving it out of door's way and pressed "close" button.
Door obediently slid down without a hitch.
"Looks like I'm done here. Heck, that was pretty quick, I might want to chill here a bit to skip this corporate nonsense. Can't imagine how Boris deals with this cra-"
Without any warning the lights went down. After a second in complete silence, low-power red lights kicked in.
"Uh-oh..."
Suddenly everything started shaking.
"OK. Remain calm," Dave said to himself. "No reason to panic yet; After all, blast door's inner guts are right here, and I've got tools."
As if on cue, with the particularly nasty shake, toolbox careened over the edge and fell down from ladder before bouncing into opened floor tile and plunging into depths below.
"OK. NOW I'm in trouble!"
Dave closed his eyes.
"Inhale. Exhale. Let's review options - what useful tools I got on my person?"
He started going over the pockets.
"Caliper - no, calculator - no, 6 inch knife - can potentially cut the hydraulics but let's not resort to that just yet, Phone-"
The shaking suddenly started gaining in amplitude.
"SCREW IT!"
Dave whipped out phone. He just had to dial Boris, and he'd come tear the door apart. They didn't call him Boris "Crazy Russian" Besnov for nothing. Even though he didn't like the nickname, the description was startlingly accurate.
He held phone with his shoulder and flipped open the knife. Long and slender, very stiletto-like, it was hard to operate it in mechanical guts of the door.
"Boris! I'm locked out in minus eighth level behind a five-inch thick hydraulic blast door, and everything is shaking like it's coming apart, GET HELP AND GET ME OUTTA HERE!!"
Incomprehensible swearing in Russian followed by "HOLD ON" signaled that his plea for help reached it's destination and help was on it's way.
Meanwhile knife finally found the proper tube and punctured it, painting everything around in pressured mineral oil.
Dave retracted the knife from alcove and wiped sweat off his forehead.
"And I thought I'm athletic! I'm sweating like pig in sauna!"
"Wait... it kind of IS hot in here..."
Engineer looked around and then finally lifted up his head.
"...Is that pipe up there supposed to be red-hot?"
One of assistants looked back at Mr. Henderson and just silently shook her head.
Henderson did not need explanation - system went over point of no return; they'll have to wait until it runs full cycle. Trying to cut power right now would be surefire death sentence to everyone in the building.
That poor technician is as good as dead now in that deathtrap below. It was either that or creating second Chernobyl, but this time with more exotic matter.
Henderson slumped down in chair in resignation.
Several levels above supremely angry Boris sped down the corridor, clad with power tools and even several shaped charges he "borrowed" from the construction crew.
Now he couldn't find the only damn elevator that could go to level minus eight. Or was it minus seven?
Rattling off another series of elaborate swears in Russian, he looked around. With every second passing he was only getting angrier - both at himself for forgetting important detail and at whoever designed the damn place.
Finally he saw a flash of lab coat down the corridor and sped towards it, power tools swinging around him on belts like a swarm of angry bees.
"YOU! I BET YOU KNOW WHERE THE ELEVATOR TO LEVEL MINUS EIGHT IS!"
For Dave it went from bad to worse: Not only pipe was yellow-hot now, bolts of electricity started jumping from it to walls.
"That definitely can't be good!"
Meanwhile amount of smoke in the passageway was steadily increasing, slowly turning it all to haze.
Dave could swear that in the center of the passageway the smoke was getting denser and denser.
It was really hard to look at. It felt like each eye saw it's own picture and brain refused to put it together into comprehensive image.
He covered his mouth and moved closer to center, waving his free hand to dispel dense smoke.
Dave suddenly found himself standing elsewhere. After looking around, blinking a few times and rubbing his eyes in sheer disbelief, he could conclude only one thing:
He was in fact standing in some sort of forest or possibly jungle.
"No way. I must be hallucinating. Was it smoke? The lack of air?"
Dave could feel his heart racing; He needed to get a grip.
"Stop; This is counterproductive. Let's work off assumption that everything is real. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale."
Air felt fresh, unlike a minute ago.
Dave pulled out phone with intention to call up some help - any help - but was greeted with "No signal".
"Great, just great!" he punched air in frustration.
On the other hand, he had an idea on how to check if all of it was real or not. A little thing that Jim taught him among other tricks to fight off recurring nightmares.
Dave quickly opened contact list and read first three contacts: Archie, Boris Besnov, Dad.
Then he focused on surrounding trees, on their details and shape, before opening contact list again. It still read the same.
"So this is not a dream. I don't even know if it's good or ba-"
His out-loud pondering was cut short by loud growling. The phone has hit the mud, but Dave was more concerned with making out what was hiding behind the foliage the sound came from.
Whatever it was, it was rather big, looked menacingly wolf-like and had freakish glowing eyes. Dave opened his knife with one fluid motion.
Not only the sight of polished steel did not scare the creature off, two more shadows appeared from the sides.
"OK, Plan B: LEG IT!"
Dave ran, avoiding branches, rocks and roots sticking out, while trying to hold knife at the most safe angle possible.
"So apparently I decided to skip running with scissors and started running with knives from get-go. What's next? Nitroglycerin?"
Why is it the life-threatening moments like these when the silliest thoughts come to mind?
Henderson was the first to find Boris, who just sat on the tool chest, hands crossed.
The power tools were strewn about, some with signs of recent use. Shaped charges were piled up in the corner.
"Ah, finally someone came down here. Maybe you'll be able to explain this-" Boris nodded in the direction of the door, which had numerous pock-marks and a square hole cut in it.
Henderson cautiously approached the hole and peeked inside the room carefully.
After scanning room, Henderson summed up, "There's nothing here!"
"Precisely." Boris stood up and now loomed above Henderson. "Where's Dave?"
The sun was setting. Two mares walked down the road from Sweep Apple Acres to Ponyville.
Twilight Sparkle held a freshly baked apple pie on her back and chatted with Applejack nonchalantly.
"Poor Spike was working himself to the bone last night, so I decided to get him a little treat for his efforts."
Applejack just smiled.
"You don't think I'm spoiling him, do yo-"
All of a sudden Applejack interrupted Twilight in rather straightforward hoof-to-mouth manner.
"Shhh! You hear that?"
Twilight turned hear head and strained her hearing. Were those screams for help? They surely sounded distressed.
"It sounds like they're coming from-" Applejack gasped "-the Everfree forest!"
Dropping apple pie then and there, both mares went into gallop.
Nearing the edge of Everfree forest they spotted the source of screams.
Some strange creature was hanging on the edge of a cliff, swinging what looked like an overgrown dagger or, perhaps, a tiny sword, trying to fend off three Timberwolves at once.
It looked strange but it was clear that it was in dire situation and pleading for help.
Not that Twilight needed any prompting.
The telltale magic glow enveloped weird creature just as it started losing grip on the edge.
"I've got you!" Twilight rang out.
And then the creature fell down like a rock.