//------------------------------//
// Hostile 
// Story: Fallout Equestria: Skyward 
// by romantis 
//------------------------------//



Spiral finally returned. Two more Rangers joined us as we exited the factory - they seemed surprised to see Spiral, but didn't make a fuss. No effort was made to surround us or take any of our things. It took me longer than it should've to realise that it was a message, in a way: we could try to run, but they would shoot us; we could try to fight, but we had nothing that could hurt them. Spiral and I hung back, far enough that we could talk quietly without them hearing. The Rangers talked amongst themselves, only occasionally glancing back to check that we were still following. I suspected that, even if we got a head start running, their suits' augmentations would let them completely outpace us.

"I didn't know you," Spiral said eventually. The evening was drawing in, but it seemed like the Rangers planned to travel until we reached the city. I couldn't remember ever walking for so long in my life. I felt sick. "Sorry. Like, it's not that I didn't trust you, I just... thought you didn't need to know. I didn't think they'd be looking,"

"What did you do?" I asked, and she shot me a look which made me wish I'd worded the question differently.

"I left. Stole some supplies..." She gestured to her saddlebags, the shotgun she'd strapped to her back. "Like, they have so many guns. More than you've ever seen in your life, like..."

When Porridge had started counting down... I'd given her up without even thinking about it.

She continued. "I had... a friend on guard rotation, like, and I thought I could get past her. But uh... she tried to stop me, and like, I ended up disabling her armour. It's easy if you can get close, like, you can disconnect the..." She trailed off, then found her place again. "But I got out, and I didn't think they'd come after me."

I'd almost died back there. It hadn't mattered, anyway, in the end. And, like, I hadn't known what was going on. Still didn't.

"Are you even listening?"

I looked at her. "Huh? Yeah. Sorry." I had been.

That was that, though. She didn't carry on.

The first droplet of rain hit my face a while later, and I raised the hood of my coat. Soon we were walking in a downpour.

I broke the silence. "All that effort getting water, only for it to fall from the sky half an hour later." I glanced at Spiral, and she smiled a little.

"Can't count on it. Just how it goes." She shivered slightly, and I noted that her cloak wasn't waterproof - though its hood was keeping the worst of the rain out of her face.

"...You okay?" I ventured.

Her smile turned into a grin of disbelief, she exhaled a laugh, and she looked up at the clouds, eyes closed. "...Fuck, no." She let the rain run down her face for a few seconds, before looking back down. "They're gonna kill me, y'know? You got that, right? Like, he might do it here, when nopony's looking, or there'll be a- a court-martial, like he said. And like, it's not like he hasn't done it before. And like, like, the worst part is that I know them. Don't recognise them, not when they're wearing the armour, but I fucking grew up with them."

"What happened? Why are they-"

She shrugged, and stayed silent for several steps. "Dunno. It was a slow thing, when I was a filly. Like... I think... I don't know, like. Um." It took her a while to find the right words, with more than a few false starts. We drifted further back, but the Rangers still paid no mind. I wondered if they wanted us to run. "I made a lot of enemies, like, early on. Like, the Rangers take in a lot of fillies and colts, the talented ones, like, from all over. And as they get older, they send the ones they don't like back out. But like, I was one of the ones born into it - my parents were Knights, both of them. And I think- I think I just, like, thought I was better than them. So I fucked it up."

There was rain in her eyes, so she reached up a hoof to wipe them. Then, after a couple of steps, she did it again with the other hoof. "So uh. Like. My parents... yeah. And fucking Porridge got promoted, like, and he never liked them and he fucking hates me." She gave me a long look. "I don't know why I thought I could ever be a Scribe, poring over echoes of the world that made this one." That line sounded rehearsed, almost. "Didn't want to be like my... And like, I fucking hate all this. Things were nice once, and we fucked it up." Her hood moved when she turned her head, looking away at the horizon, and I couldn't see her face any more.

"They weren't so nice," I said.

"Fuck off, dude." She turned back to me, and I was startled by just how much her expression was twisted. "Fuck. Fuck, you're like everything else that got left. Just shit."

We had the attention of a couple of the Rangers ahead, now. Spiral seemed to notice, and whatever else she wanted to say died in her throat. She looked down and quickened her step.

The sun was almost starting to set, and I was soaked and freezing and miserable and a tiny, hateful part of me was wishing that I'd stayed behind.

Shit.

The word stuck to me.

I trailed behind. Twice, I threw up at the side of the road. Just bile and half-digested carrots and water. I needed to eat something, but I couldn't stomach opening another can. The rain rinsed away any traces from my lips.

As we walked down that long, straight road, I closed my eyes and wished with all my being that I was somewhere else.

We passed the first ruin when only a sliver of Celestia's light remained. A house, it had been. Two of the walls were collapsed, and you could see both floors inside. Like a cross-section. Everything degradable had degraded.

Before long there were more houses. Much the same, at first, but the deeper into the city outskirts we ventured, the more confident they seemed to become. They packed closer together, stood taller, the effects of entropy were less pronounced. Soon we passed the first apartment block.

I recognised it all. Oh, sure, I'd never lingered in these parts, but it was still so familiar all the same. I'd been here, what... a couple of months ago? There had been ponies everywhere.

The streetlights all bowed. On some streets, things had barely changed, the effect looked closer to twenty years than two hundred. On those streets, the lights still worked, and it was as if... as if a great, shadowy monster had swept through, stealing everyone away in the night. The avenues and side streets were rarely lit, and when I glanced down them I thought I saw movement. Like it was still out there, waiting for the last of the lamplight to die so it could take the rest of us.

Some moments, nothing seemed real.

Others... it was a quiet, creeping panic that came over me. Every armoured footstep on tarmac echoed, but that was nothing compared to the beating in my chest. I wanted to collapse, but if I did they'd just leave me behind.

We walked openly in the street. There was no cover, only the occasional vehicle stopped in the road. At the edges of the light cast by a lamp ahead a tin bowl rested on the pavement. By it, in an alcove between two buildings, protected from the elements, was a skeleton. Curled up, huddled around itself, falling apart.

Little details like that were enough to drive home the reality of the situation, to dispel the hope in the back of my mind that things could just go back to the way they were.

There was something else in the back of my mind, and slowly it inched its way to the front. 

You're not trying hard enough.

No, I wasn't, but that wasn't what was bothering me right then.

I was missing something, I felt sure of it. There was a gap. I'd woken up in that room at Site Two, but clearly some plan had gone awry. The place had collapsed. I'd broken my way out. The room opposite...

Something else...

Why did they pick you?

Pendulum had hundreds of employees. More, maybe - it was clear that I hadn't known the extent of their operations. Oh, and sure, I hadn't seen the full extent of Site Two.

But hundreds of ponies. For all their resources, there was no way that Pendulum could run a- a suspension facility at that scale. No way. Certainly not for two hundred years. Had that even been their plan? Or had my suspension ended late?

Based on the size of those rooms, the facility would've needed to have been orders of magnitude bigger than what I'd seen. I had no idea what kind of energy was required to keep a pony in suspended animation for so long, but it couldn't have been trivial. And of course, the more ponies you kidnap and bury, the higher the chance that somepony finds out what you're doing. No, they must have had some sort of selection process.

If the place was so big, then what were the chances of me being put in that room at the end of the hallway on the top floor? Wait, no, that didn't matter - because if I hadn't woken up in that room, I might not have woken up at all. Or perhaps they had woken up, only to suffocate and starve beneath the rubble. Or perhaps they were still alive, awake or not.

I'd have to go back. Sooner rather than later.

But before then... I'd have to prove that they made the right choice - whoever it was that'd decided that I needed to live past the end of the world.

"Spiral..." I caught up to her, and she looked back at me. "I'm sorry. We're going to get out of this. Don't know how, but..."

She rolled her eyes. "Minute they let their guard down, we're gone," she murmured. "Only they've got EFS, so they'll know if we leave the range of their radar."

"EFS?" The acronym was familiar.

"Eyes-Forward Sparkle. It's built into their helmets - PipBucks have it too. It marks, like, allies and hostiles. Yellow and red."

"How?"

"Like, just a whole bunch of spells."

"Yeah, but how does it know if we're hostile or not?"

"Fuck, dude, I don't know. And like, I've read enough about it. It's just complicated magic. I don't think anypony knows exactly how it works any more. Maybe they didn't really know then."

"Yeah." I sighed. "Sounds about right."

When she next spoke, she did so more quietly, and it sounded like she'd been turning the words over in her head. "Hey, like, I'm sorry I snapped at you earlier. I think you mean well, but like... this is hard for me, and you got on my nerves. And like..." Whatever she'd been about to say was lost in an amplified burst of laughter from the Rangers ahead. We both startled and looked, and I think we were both thinking that it was somehow directed at us. But they didn't seem to be looking our way.

"They think they're so untouchable," Spiral said, darkly. "Fuck, there's this voice telling me that I don't want to hurt them. But like... I might, like... ignore it. Is that bad?"

In my head, I heard that scream again. Felt that horn break.

"Um. I think-" I made my answer into a question "-I think you're better than them, aren't you?" 

"I don't know."

"...Well, I do."

She sighed. "You've never killed anypony, have you?"

"No," I replied, basically on reflex. "I mean... well... I sort of did?"

"The raider."

I kicked a stone. It skittered ahead across the tarmac. One of the Rangers ahead glanced over their shoulder briefly at the noise, so when I caught up to where the stone had stopped I didn't kick it again. "I tried to kill her. And then I messed it up, but then she died anyway. And if I got in that situation again... I wouldn't try."

"It gets easier."

"I don't want it to get easier!" I tried to keep my voice down.

"No, that's what I'm saying," she said, and I heard the frustration in her voice. "Like... I've..." She trailed off.

After waiting a while to see if she was going to finish the thought, I continued. "Even now, I'm looking back, and all of that- that anger and shame I felt? I don't even know if I feel it any more. It's like it happened to somepony else, only it didn't. And even then I can't tell how much of it was just because I was running away when it happened."

"...I can't really blame you, for running."

"...But you do, don't you?" I looked at her, only for her to avoid my gaze. "I do. I have justifications, sure, but in that moment? I- I was just scared, and I thought leaving you to them would give me time to get away."

Spiral wrinkled her nose. "You didn't know me."

"No, I didn't, but if I'd gotten away - would I even know what happened to you? What would I have done? Like, maybe I would've made it to the factory, but you can bet one of those scorpions would've gotten me. I haven't seen anypony else out here. How sad would that have been? To have- to have died like that, alone, without ever finding out what happened to me? To everypony?"

"I... think..." Spiral paused. "If you had done something, like, I don't think either of us would still be alive. And, the way things went, we're both still here. So it's fine."

I thought about that for a long moment, conscious that she was watching me. "Yeah," I said, eventually, but I didn't really feel like much better.

"I got myself into that whole mess, y'know?" she told me. "I'd been wandering a while, like. Longest I went without a roof over my head. I ran across this house, and there was this earth pony there. We almost got in a fight, I guess. Like, I don't know how long she lived there, but she was growing actual plants. And she said I could stay, but only for a few days, because these raiders were going to come and take her produce. I got it in my head that I could help her, like, set an ambush."

She stopped there, and although I could tell how the story ended, I prompted her anyway. "It didn't work?"

She shook her head, looking down at herself. "This used to be her cloak."

"I'm sorry," I said. Then, after a little thought, I said, "I don't really think that sounds like it was your fault, though. You didn't... kill her."

"I killed them, though. That was how the whole thing started. I couldn't imagine that she'd be happy with a life like that. Like, when I left the Rangers, it was because I wasn't happy. But it was wrong of me to make that decision for her, or to push her into making that decision, if that makes sense?"

"Yeah, I guess," I replied.

She slowed her step for a moment, and levitated something out her saddlebags. The lightning gun. "I shouldn't have this," she said. Glancing forward to check we weren't being watched, she passed it across to my bags.

"It might work against their armour," I realised aloud. "If we can get some cells..."

"Yep. Like, they didn't bother searching us, but depending on what happens... anyway, it's yours, you found it."

"Depending on what happens, you might need it."

"Well, if I really need it, you have it, don't you?"

"...Yeah. Okay."

We reached an intersection, and I hesitated on the sidewalk. Spiral stepped out without looking, following the Rangers' lead. I took a few quick steps to catch up. "Where are we going?" The streets ahead were unlit, it seemed.

"We- the Rangers have an outpost in Skyward. Run by a skeleton crew, as a staging ground for salvage expeditions. It's the old M.W.T. building."

"Oh! I know the place. I used to pass it on my way to work."

"That's so weird... Man, I don't think you've ever told me what you used to do."

"Yeah, I guess I don't usually talk about it. I... I used to work for Pendulum, testing-"

"-Pendulum?" Spiral interrupted.

"...Yeah?"

"So you could get into the building."

"What?" I didn't understand what she was asking.

"Pendulum Labs! It's got like, a biometric security system. Only registered employees can get in. Like, the last time we were here, we spent a whole afternoon trying to break into that place."

"And you want me to- oh. The 'custodians' thing. I get it."

"Seriously, Porridge would kill for five minutes in that building. So like, I bet he'd- he'd not kill in return for as many minutes as he wants."

A burst of machine gunfire ahead startled me. The group of Rangers ahead had rearranged themselves into a circle facing outwards, and were moving back in our direction. I had no way of seeing what they'd fired at.

"What's happening?" Spiral asked as they approached, shielding her eyes from the spotlights now pointed at us.

One of them beckoned for us to join the circle, and we did, but no reply was forthcoming. Instead, Porridge addressed one of his subordinates. "I thought this district was clear." His tone was sharp, but I didn't get the sense that he was concerned.

"We scoured the area last month. With the barricades, the remaining ghouls shouldn't be able to get close."

Ghouls. It took a second for me to place the word. Something Spiral had said, that I'd forgotten to ask about?

"Clearly the barricades have not worked as well as we thought they would. I suppose we've been drawing them in since we arrived. No matter." I caught movement in the darkness of an alleyway, or I thought I did. "Standard procedure applies, with the exception that not all present are wearing power armour."

"Ghouls?" I whispered to Spiral. She didn't seem at ease, exactly, but she hadn't been before. Perhaps this wasn't such a big deal.

"Shit, didn't I tell you-"

Suddenly, all the Rangers around us straightened and Spiral trailed off.

Porridge spoke again, lower than before. "Incompetence. They are animals, mindless animals, and yet we have failed to contain them. We need to keep moving, lest they surround us." There was movement in the shadows at the end of the street, in the direction we'd come. "Move!" Porridge ordered, and we did.

I saw Spiral's shotgun glowing as she levitated it beside her. The Rangers made no effort to stop her, and I wondered again just how much trouble we were in. If I recalled correctly, the M.W.T. building was only a few blocks away. It was dark enough that I still couldn't make out exactly what was chasing us when I glanced over my shoulder. Just movement. I glanced again, in the exact same moment that one of the Rangers turned their spotlight around.

Countless points of light reflected back, and in that moment I understood that "ghoul" had not been a helpful word in the slightest. No, it appeared that on top of everything we were living in a full-blown zombie apocalypse and nopony had thought to tell me.

The power armour thundered, and despite their extra weight the Rangers were pulling ahead of me and Spiral. I was falling even further behind. I could barely see where I was going. My legs and lungs burned, and a voice in my head thought that I'd hurt less if I stopped.

I didn't glance back again. I had all the information I needed. There was a whole herd of zombies behind us at what appeared to be full gallop, and they were closing the gap. If I could just teleport away...

Spiral was shouting something at the Rangers. I couldn't make out the words over the cacophony of hooves and the roar of blood in my ears.

The stench of them was like that of the room back at Site Two, only multiplied a hundredfold.

Something caught my tail. Instinctively I kicked back, but my legs tangled together and I fell and they were upon me.

Then I was blind, buried, suffocating, screaming, kicking, swinging my horn wildly to ward off the press of corpses. Hooves, horns, and teeth meant for chewing leaves scraped at me. One of the ghouls found purchase on my leg and clamped down with its mouth. Its teeth sank into me.

This was nothing like before, staring down that raider. There had been ambiguity there, my mind had reached out for answers and found them. But in that darkness? My mind reached out again and found nothing. I had no agency. I was going to die.

For a split second, everything was bathed in an orange light. A wave of scorching air rolled over me. I heard the roar of machine guns.

Sharp pain stabbed through me, and for the second time in as many days I felt like I was falling into a bottomless pit.