It’s as if the floor’s dropped out from under me. As Link’s eyes widen and Apple Bloom’s face goes dark with shock before lighting up with infectious elation, a warm, prickly sensation of weightlessness floats through my stomach. It’s a feeling I recognize from a dozen Christmas mornings, from the first time I ever saw my cutie mark emblazoned on my flank.
“You mean we can leave?” I ask, hardly daring to give voice to the thought.
At first, Applejack evades answering me, and my heart drops so fast it’s almost nauseating. “I ain’t makin’ any guarantees,” she says. “There’s a lotta things that could still go wrong, and I’ve got no way’a tellin’ ya now how many of ‘em are likely to go right. But the fact that y’all are here now means there’s a way for ponies from the surface to get down to the city in the first place. And if there’s a way into Harmony, then I reckon there’s gotta be a way back out too.”
Normally, my conscience would take an opportunity like this to remind me once again how much of a jerk I’ve been during the last few minutes, but right now even that can’t manage to distract me. All the little demons of confusion, fury, and embarrassment that were playing keep-away with my sanity a minute ago are gone now, replaced by a single, all-consuming goal: there’s a way out of this place. I can get out of here. I can go home.
“What do we need to do?” I ask.
“First things first, we gotta find ourselves a bathysphere,” says Applejack, “but that ain’t as simple as just walkin’ into the lot and pickin’ one out in our favorite color. We’ve always had a couple big problems with the bathyspheres down here. Ryder always had total control over where they were programmed to go and whether they even ran at all. She told us that the ones back up to the surface was just out of commission at first, but once the war broke out, word got around that she’d shut ‘em all down entirely. Stuck some kinda genetic lock on the system that made her the only one who could use ‘em. Till you two dropped in, we couldn’t even get one started up, let alone movin’ anywhere.
“But seein’ as y’all have dropped in, it looks like we finally caught a break there. There’s still the trouble of gettin’ us a bathysphere that’ll suit our needs, though. There’s a few different models of bathysphere down here, and any one of ‘em could technically make it up to the surface in one piece. Only one kind is built so it can be steered off on its own, though, and huntin’ one down is like tryin’ ta find a cherry pit in a barrel’a apples.”
I bite my lip and manage to keep a groan from leaking out of my throat, but Applejack seems to realize she’s killing the moment anyway. “Luckily, there’s some good news there too,” she quickly continues. “I went snoopin’ around a bit last night, and I found one that’s just about brand spankin’ new down in Pluto’s Keep. All it needs is a few replacement parts, and somepony to man the rudder.”
Now a clearer picture of the situation is forming in my head, along with a seed of an idea that quickly begins to take root. “So once we have the parts, we can fix the bathysphere and ride it all the way back to Equestria?”
“That’s the idea,” Applejack confirms. “We should have enough MOON in storage to keep ‘er puttin’ along till we hit the shore, but Apple Bloom an’ I’ll need to head out into the city to scavenge up the parts. Shouldn’t take us more’n a day or so.”
I nod my understanding and set my jaw. That seed just sprouted into a full-grown oak tree. “I want to help.”
Just as I expected, it doesn’t take Applejack to realize I’m not talking about holding the tool box once they get back tomorrow. “That ain’t a good idea, sugarcube,” she says firmly, in a tone that makes it clear she doesn’t know who she’s trying to reason with. “There’s a lot more wrong with this place than you know even now, and none of it’s anything you should have to deal with.”
“I could say the same for you,” I shoot back, and I know she gets the message again because she looks down at her mechanical leg at the same time I do. “I’m going with you.”
“You ain’t under any obligation to do this, Ruby.”
“And you weren’t under any obligation to send Chestnut down to rescue us.” That message hits the hardest of all. “But you did it anyway, because you were that determined to keep us safe. So if you think I’m gonna just sit around here and watch you risk your lives for me again, you’ve got another thing coming.”
To be completely honest, that isn’t really why I’m so desperate to tag along. Knowing that I owe Applejack my life certainly plays into it, but much more than that, I just can’t stand the thought of waiting patiently back at the ranch while somepony else solves my problems for me. Now that the end of this ordeal is finally in sight, I know I can push through it on my own. I need to push through this on my own. And if stretching the truth about how much that need factors into this decision is what it takes to get me out of this compound and out of this city, then I think my sense of integrity can take one quick shot in the flank. Mostly because it’s working like a charm.
“You’re gonna need equipment,” Applejack says, her voice hard and her gaze leveled on me with the weight of a boulder. “And you need to look me in the eye and tell me you know what you’re gettin’ into. Because lemme tell you somethin’: I know for a fact that you don’t, because there’s no way in Hades you possibly could. I’ve seen things in this city you can’t begin to imagine, things you wouldn’t wish even on the ponies you saw doin’ ‘em, so don’t presume to think puffin’ your chest out like it’s bulletproof is gonna get you anywhere with me. Look at me and answer me honest, and I’ll make my own decision about whether I think I oughta take you for your word.”
I run my tongue over my lips and swallow hard, resisting the urge to shiver. On second thought, maybe that charm wasn’t as effective as I thought. Applejack’s a more worthy opponent than I’d expected, but it’s going to take more than that to knock my mind off this one track. Even thinking about what I’m doing scares me straight down to my core, but come hay fever or high water, I am not sitting this one out.
“I know what choice I’m making,” I tell Applejack. “And that’s the honest truth.”
For a good twenty seconds, Applejack stays completely still, studying me with the eye of someone well-trained at rooting out things other ponies wouldn’t want her to find. The sigh she finally lets out afterwards, though, doesn’t sound disdainful at all. If anything, it sounds almost pleased.
“Good enough,” she says, and I’m so busy patting myself on the back that I almost miss what she says next. “Then Link’s going with you.”
And now I’m so busy letting my jaw drop to the floor that I almost forget to make it form a response. “What?”
“You heard me,” says Applejack with what can’t really be a smirk on her face. “You might have your head set right to do this, but that don’t mean your body’s gonna keep up. You need backup. I made the mistake’a sending a pony out alone once this week already. I ain’t about to do it again.” Stars above, now she’s definitely smirking. “And besides all that, he was about two seconds from buttin’ in and volunteerin’ anyway. All I did was cut him off.”
I whip my head around towards Link, who judging by the look on his face sure as hay wasn’t expecting Applejack to jump to that conclusion. But even as I watch him, the corners of his mouth tighten into the grin of a colt caught stealing from the cookie jar, and he gives a conciliatory shrug of agreement.
“Beats being the only one stuck back here,” he says, and the look he shoots towards me is so cool and nonchalant that it makes my stomach spin even after I turn away. So that’s that. We’re going out together. I had one chance for some time alone to get my thoughts in order, and I’m about to waste it making sure Trigger-Happy Tim over here doesn’t start shooting holes in anything that’s likely to spring a leak. And I’m too caught off guard by how dramatically my best-laid plans just went to Hades in a handbasket to do anything about it. The moment to act is going to pass, and I’m going to sit here with my lips glued shut and my eyes burning a hole in whoever’s head I can stand to look at.
“Well, glad that’s settled, then,” Applejack remarks, slapping her hooves against the table before jumping up from her seat. “Since you two’re earnin’ your participation ribbons now, I don’t see any reason why I should put this ol’ leg’a mine through any more stress today. I’ll stay back here with Cider an’ give y’all as much guidance as I can over the radio, and in the meantime, y’all three best get yourselves ready to ship out. Apple Bloom, you wanna take Ruby down to Slinky’s and fit her out with some travelin’ gear?”
“Can do, big sis,” Apple Bloom replies, shooting me another wink as another icicle worms its way through my heart. Who in Equestria is Slinky? And why is a pony who seemingly lives in the compound without ever showing his face our to-go gal for whatever Applejack means by “travelin’ gear”?
“And as for you, Link,” Applejack goes on, “I reckoned I might show ya a thing or two ‘bout that pistol you picked up yesterday. I don’t expect you to be an expert—or to even use it, for that matter—but the least I’d hope for is that you don’t put any rounds in anything you ain’t aimin’ for.”
“Yeah,” Link agrees, turning ever so slightly towards me as he speaks. “Wouldn’t want that.”
Horseapples, I think that one was a iceberg.
Link keeps his eyes on me until I leave the room, and the chill that crawls through my belly because of it will probably stick around for most of the day that follows. At first he was just annoying, and then for a brief time he seemed psychotic, but now he just seems cold, as if nothing that’s going on around him has even penetrated into his brain yet. How am I supposed to go wandering around a deserted city with somepony like that? And how does Applejack not see how stupidly dangerous it is to give somepony like that a weapon?
“So. Link seems nice,” Apple Bloom comments as we pass by Apple Cider’s room and head down a flight of narrow metal stairs. “Cute too.”
“Oh, yeah, totally,” I reply after a bit, with all the candor and good cheer of a hungry windigo. Judging by the cockeyed look of silent curiosity Apple Bloom gives me, I figure she picked up on the sarcasm.
“Suit yourself,” she finally chuckles as we round the corner at the bottom. A few turns later, she comes to a stop outside a pair of rusty double-doors rimmed with faded neon lights, set between two empty display windows with no glass in their frames and below a block-lettered sign that reads “SLINKY’S SURPLUS & SUNDRIES”.
“Guess Slinky’s not much for housekeeping,” I think out loud. Apple Bloom gives me an odd look for a second, then with no warning whatsoever bursts out laughing.
“Aw, hayseed, Slinky ain’t down there,” she explains once she’s wiped her eyes clear. “This here’s just one’a his old franchises. This whole place used to be part of the Farmer’s Market ‘fore the war broke out, so we just set up a perimeter around a few’a the abandoned shops and called it home. Heck, ol’ Slink’s probably been dead five or six years now.”
Apple Bloom pushes open the door and flicks on a switch inside, bathing the dust-coated interior in hazy yellow light. “Good thing, too,” she adds as she starts picking her way through the debris to another door in the back. “Crazy bastard did more shoutin’ than a minotaur with a toothache. Don’t tell Applejack I called him that, though. She still gets kinda dodgy ‘bout swearin’ sometimes.”
Inside my head, relief is going west at one hundred and twelve miles per hour, and residual fear is going east at about a hundred and forty-three. It takes them about two seconds to meet in a fiery explosion of confusion, and I do my best to shake away the wreckage as I follow Apple Bloom into the store. “So what are we doing here, then?” I ask as I pick my way around the piles of junk cluttering the floor, towards something I can’t see through Apple Bloom’s swishing tail. I hear keys jingling for a moment, and then Apple Bloom steps back from what turns out to be another door and mashes a button on a panel nearby.
“Just borrowin’ a few necessities,” she says as the door slides open. Given what I see on the other side, that’s hardly what I would’ve called it.
The sign on the front said “SURPLUS”, and it wasn’t kidding: the store’s back room is really more of a back warehouse. A full dozen rows of corrugated metal scaffolds fill the massive interior, each one twenty feet tall and stuffed with every kind of knickknack and doodad I can think of, along with a good majority of the ones I can’t. If I were to imagine my own personal version of heaven, all this place would need to match it perfectly is a coffee machine and a couple rolls of paper towels to wipe up the drool spilling out of my mouth.
“You really couldn’t find the right parts for the bathysphere in here?” I ask.
“Believe me, I looked,” Apple Bloom grumbles as she closes the door behind us. “Go figure, huh? As far as regular survival supplies goes, though, this ol’ dump hasn’t let me down yet.” She pauses for a moment to get her bearings, then starts off down the fourth aisle from the left. “Come on, let’s get ya decked out.”
I follow Apple Bloom at a distance, so enraptured by the contents of the shelves we pass that it’s a challenge to even keep her in sight. Once, I nearly lose of track of her entirely when I stumble right past the turn I missed her taking. I figure it’d be a good idea to close the gap a bit after that.
“So does anypony else use this place?” I ask once I’ve caught up and matched Apple Bloom’s pace.
“Nope. Nopony here but us gearheads.” Apple Bloom seems to anticipate my eyebrows shooting up, and meets the gesture with a cheeky grin of her own. “It wasn’t that hard to piece together,” she says with a nod towards my flank. “Been a while since I saw one’a those that matched my own.”
For the first time since I met her, I finally bother to take a good look at Apple Bloom’s flank. Sure enough, a silver socket wrench laid over a bright red apple shines behind her hips. “That showed up about a year after we first came down here,” she says. “Never even realized I liked tinkerin’ till then. Guess that’s what I get for all those years I spent tryin’ to force it to come early.”
My head’s completely clear now, and so is the part of my heart that’d been steadily sinking this whole time. I’ll see her “been a while” and raise her a “never in my whole entire life”.
“You’re an inventor too?” I ask with as level a voice as I can manage.
“Amateur mechanic’s probably a better way to say it, but yeah,” she replies. “Mostly, I just fix stuff that ain’t supposed to be broke, but I get creative every now and again. You get a good look at Applejack’s leg yet?”
Well, there goes that attempt to keep from geeking out. “You built that?”
“Sure did,” Apple Bloom says, and thankfully she just takes the change in my voice’s pitch as a reason to swell with pride. “I modeled it after those ones all the Big Daddies have. Couldn’t quite fit the cannon in, but the rest of it all works like a charm. I rigged up the voice locks on the front door, too. Those actually weren’t all that complicated. Once I got my hooves on a few voice recorders and switched the right wires around, it was clear skies and smooth sailin’ from there.” Apple Bloom shrugs, and suddenly seems to realize how loud she’d been talking. “It ain’t much to brag about, I guess,” she mumbles as a blush starts to tinge her cheeks.
I want to argue back that anypony who thinks inventing a voice-activated lock ain’t much to brag about is certifiably insane, but pulling the proper words together proves more difficult than I expected. While I’m occupied with that, Apple Bloom bears left and yanks out three rectangular wooden crates aligned in a row, giving a quick glance back at me before turning her attention to the middle one.
“All right, back to business,” she says, craning her neck to look around the sides and back of the box. “This city’s always been dependent on magical technology and the war didn’t do nothin’ to change that, so unless you want to end up with me havin’ to make you a metal leg too, to get through it you’re gonna need the right gear. So first things first, we need to find you one’a these.”
She holds her right foreleg up and waves it around, drawing my eyes towards the worn black bracer strapped to it. “Mercury Mechanics Multi-Tool Utility Bracer,” she calls it, punctuating the name with a small “aha” as she finds the seam in the crate’s lid and pries it off with the same screwdriver she used to hotwire the turret back near the plaza. “They used to be standard-issue for anypony workin’ down in Maintenance, but in light’a the war and all, they’ve, um… been on strike for a while. What’s your dominant side?”
Apple Bloom doesn’t look up from inside the crate, but I guess the silence that follows her question tells her clearly enough that I don’t have a clue what she’s talking about. “If you were gonna kick me in the teeth right now, which forehoof would you use?” she clarifies.
“Uh… the right one?”
Apple Bloom lifts out a plastic-wrapped lump from inside the crate with her telekinesis and clops her hoof against the top of the left-most crate. “Put ‘er there,” she commands, and once I cautiously obey she unwraps the lump to reveal an oak-brown bracer that smells like new upholstery and doesn’t have so much as a scuff mark on it. Without a moment’s thought, she slips it over her hoof and around my ankle. “These things were first commissioned when the city was still under construction, so they’re designed to work for ponies without active magic,” she goes on to explain as she makes sure the device is fitted snugly. “Unfortunately, that means that the only simple way you can manage this many tools at once is through a direct neuromagical link with the machine. And the quickest way to get that link rigged up is straight through the bloodstream.”
She pulls both ends of the bracer tight, and suddenly my throat feels awfully dry. “And by that you mean…”
“This is probably gonna hurt,” Apple Bloom says casually. Before I even have a chance for my eyes to go wide, she leans hard against my knee and presses a tiny button right at the top of the bracer, and the vicious stabbing pain that shoots through my leg once she does is enough to obliterate any thought I had of entering a well-reasoned argument for why this could probably wait till later. Instead, I just shout out my objection through gritted teeth, shivering as my forehoof goes numb and a cold sweat breaks out over my entire body.
Just as quickly as the agonizing sensation came, though, it disappears without a trace, leaving behind a dull, throbbing ache and an almost dizzying feeling of clarity, as if I’ve just become aware of a new function I never knew my body had. Apple Bloom takes her hooves off me and sits back on her haunches to watch as I lift my foreleg and stare at the bracer, the one that now inexplicably feels as if it’s just as much a part of me as the hoof it’s strapped to. Curious about what that means, I look it over and consider each part of it as thoroughly as I can. The instant my mind focuses on the cylindrical arrangement of tubes that forms the most visible part of its anatomy, the one situated at the back of my hoof shudders, and a shiny sliver monkey wrench springs out of it. Once another concentrated thought directs it back into its sheath, a giddy chill runs down my spine.
“I started you off with a standard all-purpose one,” Apple Bloom tells me, though I can hardly even bear to listen for how in love I am with my miraculous new toy. “’Sides that wrench, it’s also got a flathead screwdriver, pliers, a clamp, a pair’a scissors, and two blades: one serrated, one sharp. Plus if you feed a MOON hypo into that part there, the strip at the top also works like a flashlight.”
“And I can control all of these just by thinking about them?” I ask, doing my best not to giggle and flail my forelegs around like a little foal.
“That’s a fact,” Apple Bloom giggles as I spin the tubes around and select the one with the scissors in it. “You could at least try to act excited.”
“Stop mocking me,” I mumble back. “This is amazing.”
“Well, I’m sure glad to hear that,” Apple Bloom says, nudging me over as she pries open the box in front of me. “’Cause we ain’t done just yet.”
That remark’s finally enough to pull my eyes away from the bracer again. “What do you mean?” I ask as she pulls another shrink-wrapped package out from the crate.
“Utility bracers are good for gettin’ through sticky situations,” she tells me, “but if you wanna survive in this city, you’re gonna need to be able to get out of them too.”
For the first time that day, I remember that Apple Bloom has a second bracer on her other forehoof. “Meaning…”
“Meaning if you want me to let you more than ten paces outside this compound,” Apple Bloom says, “you’re gonna need a gun.”
Another chill runs down my spine, through this one’s accompanied by butterflies with much sharper wings. She wants to give me a gun? I don’t need a gun. Link’s the one with the gun. Link’s the one who shoved me aside and killed that mare and gave me a look cold as frozen steel, like I was just as much a fragile heap of meat and bones as she was. But I don’t resist as Apple Bloom slips the unwrapped bracer onto my left foreleg, and I don’t cry out when another dozen needles prick my skin and send another tendril of extrasensory feeling up into my brain. I can get through this. I know I can. I just have to keep it with me. That’s all I have to do. Just keep it with me, and let Apple Bloom and Link do all the dirty work. I can’t overreact like this. I can’t jeopardize my chances of getting out of this place and helping to find those parts.
I can’t be having second thoughts right now.
“And there we go,” Apple Bloom says triumphantly, letting go of my leg and forcing me to hold up the significantly heavier weaponized bracer on my own. “It might look and feel a little different than the other one, but basically they both work the same way. When you want to shoot, just flick the safety off there—” She points to a tiny switch on the side of the bracer that’d be hard to accidentally hit on anything but easy to reach with my teeth. “—and then just point and think to fire. You get eight shots in each chain there, and to save ya some time, I went ahead and gave ya a semi-automatic one. That means that as soon as you fire, that cylinder’ll spin around and load up a new round without you havin’ to do anything, at least till all those chambers are empty. After that, just yank the empty chain off and replace it with a fresh one. The ammo chambers and firing mechanism are magic-based and magnetized, so all ya gotta do is get a reload close to it, and it’ll snap into place all on its own. Extra ammo’s in that third crate there.”
Apple Bloom chews on her lip and thinks for a moment, then breaks out into a grin and shrugs. “And that’s about it, I s’pose. Anything else I can do ya for?
I was keeping it together with everything she was saying up until now, but this last question is somehow worse than all the others. I can’t answer it honestly, because honestly I’m biting my tongue in half trying not to scream like a banshee and tear these bracers off with my bare teeth. I can’t lie either, because Apple Bloom is still smiling at me with big trusting eyes as orange as sherbet ice cream, and I can’t force my head up long enough to look at them, let alone watch them melt into disappointment and doubt. So I stare at my forelegs and swallow back the lump in my throat, and try to pretend that it’s really just oddly warm in here, that the sweat I feel beading around my temples isn’t really that noticeable.
“Are there any glasses in here?” I ask, cringing at the sound of my scratchy, cracking voice echoing through the warehouse.
“What, like, eyeglasses?” Apple Bloom trails off, her forehoof lodged thoughtfully behind her head. “Uh… think so. Probably in the back someplace. Follow me again for a second?”
Once I trot back down the corridor and meet Apple Bloom back at the front of the warehouse, she leads me a few rows past the door in the opposite direction and into an aisle even more packed than the first one. At the far corner of the shelf on the right, Apple Bloom finds a big plastic chest with a cartoonish black pair of eyeglasses stamped on its front and pulls it out, swinging open the lid to reveal its contents neatly organized inside.
“Geez, I almost forgot we had these. Probably shoulda taken inventory sometime within the last two years,” she mutters a bit wryly. “Any case, I know none of us’ve ever messed with ‘em, so I reckon they’re still sorted out left to right by strength here.”
“Thanks,” I say quietly.
“Pleasure’s mine. You know, I’m kinda surprised I never needed glasses myself, what with all the time I’ve spent bent over a workbench. Can’t imagine goin’ without ‘em this long if I did need ‘em, though. Then again, I guess you didn’t have much of a choice, huh? Stars, I remember when Sweetie Belle first got hers, she wouldn’t wear ‘em for a week ‘cause she thought they made her look silly. Bumped into half the walls in Harmony ‘fore she finally let up. She used to be so stubborn… course, it ain’t like you know what I’m talking about. I mean, you’ve probably never even met Sweetie Be—”
I was hoping that Apple Bloom would be distracted enough by her story not to notice which pair of glasses I took, but I’ve never been all that good at being subtle. As soon as I slide them onto my face—a big pair with thick brown rims, taken from the very top left corner of the box—I can feel her eyes on me, her focus sharpened to a point that’s aimed right at me. I curl my lips up between my teeth and try very hard to look casual, but I already know she’s seen right through me. Seen right through the glasses that barely change my vision at all, that might as well have plain crystal in place of the lenses.
But Apple Bloom says nothing. Her face smoothes out again a few moments, her trademark smile just as strong as ever. “Guess that’s that, then,” she says. “Now, I gotta skedaddle upstairs and round up a few things m’self, so in the meantime you can get to know that pistol a bit and poke around in here for anything else you think ya might need. Don’t feel bad about takin’ anything: none’a this was ours to begin with, and we ain’t gonna miss it once we’re high and dry on the surface. We’ll all meet back in the kitchen in about a half-hour or so. Sound good?”
Apple Bloom ducks around the corner once she sees me nod, and a few seconds later I hear a low, rumbling boom as the door closes behind her. The string tied up at the top of my spine snaps the second she’s gone, and I try to dip my head into my hoof until a hunk of rounded metal clunks against my skull. Then I remember what’s still bolted onto it.
I’m alone now, at least, so I have time to stop for a second and take stock of everything that’s happened. Except by the time I sit down and lean back against one of the shelves, the only things spinning through my mind are the two miracles of technomagical engineering weighing down my forehooves, and the already fading sense of extra control I feel like I have over these new parts of my body. I can certainly tell by looking at them that these weren’t cobbled together by a self-proclaimed amateur mechanic with nothing better to do. Each brace was factory-made and, judging by the number of them the Apple family seems to have collecting dust back here, mass-produced. Which means not only was this city torn apart and ruined by war, there was a time where hurting and killing other ponies was even encouraged.
Stars above, what the hay am I doing? What was I thinking, telling Applejack I wanted to go back out and help her dig up a bunch of spare parts in the most dangerous city in equine history? What was I thinking, telling myself I could handle this, that I was strong enough to dive headfirst into things that were bigger and more powerful than anything I could’ve imagined? The simplest answer is the right one: I wasn’t thinking. I was looking at Link—thinking about his crowbar knocking that mare away from me—and my heart acted before my mind could think to horsecollar it and drag it back into its hole. That’s another good question: why the hay couldn’t he just leave me alone? Why couldn’t he just hate me openly like I knew he did inside? Why did he have to keep being so frustrating, so innocent, so utterly impossible to figure out?
I don’t have an answer to any of those questions, but on the plus side, fuming to myself about them makes my stomach hurt a little bit less. Jumping to my hooves and setting a steady pace towards the door does too. I can’t begin to remember what aisle that third crate with all the extra ammo for my bracer was in, but that doesn’t bother me much. I’m not planning on using any of what I’ve already got.
I’m nearly back to the front of the warehouse again when I hear it: a shuffling thump, a distant clink of metal smacking against metal. I come to a halt, one hoof half-raised off the ground, and more noises drifts along between the shelves. Storage crates don’t move on their own. Somepony else is in here with me.
“Apple Bloom?” I call out. Nothing but silence answers me, and a chill runs up my spine as my stomach twinges with the prickling feeling of somepony’s eyes boring into the back of my neck. I put my forehoof down and slowly start to lean forward, only to hear a much heavier thump come from somewhere behind me. I turn around just in time to see a length of pipe clatter onto the floor, to see a shadowy figure perched on the very top of one of the shelves. It looks down at the wrench, then at the crate it’s standing behind, then straight into my eyes. Before I have time to so much as squeak, the shadow jerks back and dodges behind a nearby crate. A half-second later, the crate topples off its shelf and tumbles end over end all the way down to the ground, where it smashes apart with an ear-splitting crunch of wood against concrete.
I spend a good while heaving for breath and whipping my head around looking for the pony who just about made my heart stop, but it’s no use. By the time my ears stop ringing and the muscles in my neck start working again, he or she—or it—is already long gone. In fact, the only evidence they were ever here at all is in pieces about twenty yards in front of me. Were they trying to hit me with it? No, it was much too far away. But they couldn’t have just knocked a crate that big off the shelf by accident. Was it a distraction? A warning? A message?
I look a bit closer as the haze settles, and suddenly my last guess seems a lot more credible than I would’ve thought. Right in the middle of the box’s remains, surrounded by bits of hay and splintered hunks of plywood, lies a single dusty brown box. A personal voice recorder, just like the ones I saw in the bathysphere and the dock. What is that doing in here? And why would it be inside the one crate that pony up in the rafters inexplicably decided to knock down to somewhere within my reach?
The longer I stare at the recorder, the more my curiosity begins to overtake my fear that this whole thing is just a big, inconceivable trap. The battle isn’t an easy one, though; I still pause for nearly half a minute listening for the slightest breath of a sound before I tiptoe forward and pluck the recorder out from amid the destruction of its container, wiping the grime off its front with a forehoof before grabbing it in my teeth and galloping all the way out into the front of Slinky’s store. No matter what this thing is or why it was collecting dust in the back of a virtually abandoned warehouse, there’s no good reason to hang around the place I found it any longer than I have to. Especially when I don’t have a single clue where the pony who pointed it out to me ran off to.
I spit the recorder out on top of the cashier’s counter and set myself up on a stool so I can take a closer look at it. The machine is old, but clearly still functional—and clearly meant to be listened to. There’s a note taped onto it near the top, with an arrow pointing down towards one of the buttons on the bottom and the words “PLAY ME” written on it. Even still, something still holds me back from following that direction. It’s not really that I don’t know what I might hear, or that I think it might be something the Apples would rather keep hidden. Much more than that, I can’t shake the feeling that I haven’t escaped that shadowy thing at all, that it’s still watching me from somewhere nearby and waiting to see if I jump at the bait it’s planted. They might have even been the one who put the recorder in that crate to begin with.
There’s no doubt about it, then: the recording inside this thing was meant for me. Not just anypony, but me specifically. And I have no idea why, because there’s no logical reason that I, a nopony inventor from Rockton who didn’t even mean to come down here, should be the central piece in some crazy splicer’s incomprehensible scheme. But in the same moment I figure that out, I also realize something else: there’s no way in Equestria I’m ever going to drag myself away from this room without finding out exactly what this latest twist in this city’s complete and utter insanity is all about. I take a deep breath and bite my lip, then reach across the counter and press the button marked by the sign.
The recorder whirrs and clicks as the magical gel inside loosens up, and then after clearing their throat and heaving a deep sigh, a pony with a soft-spoken voice as clear and crisp as a morning breeze in autumn begins to speak. “A fire left unchecked can burn for hours, devouring and destroying everything it touches,” he says—I think it’s a stallion talking, but his voice is so delicate and charged with muted force that I can’t even be sure of that. “But in order to start one, all it takes is a single spark. For six years, this city has been seared and blackened in the name of progress and science, and for six years I did everything I could to protect it when it no longer had the means to protect itself.”
The voice sighs again. “But for all my effort, all my years of suffering and anguish, I had not enough breath to thin out the smoke, not enough water in the ocean the smother the flames. I failed, and Harmony nearly died because for it. Nearly… but not entirely. There is still life in this place, still potential for faith, and truth, and friendship, and love. But struggling to defend it will not ensure its survival. This place cannot be nursed back to health. The sickness must be purged through the same brute force by which it entered. Fire must be fought with fire in return. And all we need now, all I need now… is for somepony to provide that single little spark.”
The stallion pauses again, and when he starts up again his smooth, steady inflection has faded away, replaced by something that sounds a lot closer to the exhausted, desperate pony he was making himself out to be. “I know this seems… insane,” he admits. “You don’t know who I am, you don’t know why you’re here, and to be completely honest, I don’t entirely know why you’re here myself. But I do know this: your arrival in Harmony was no accident. This city cannot be saved by me alone, or by anypony else here. We’ve lived here too long, been too corrupted by that same disease we helped to create. But you, you… are different. You’re pure, untouched by the blackness that surrounds and ensnares all of us. In you, I see the light of the surface. In you, I see salvation.”
The last words the stallion spoke sink straight down from my ears into the pit of my stomach. The sound from the recorder now seems patchy and far away. “I’ll warn you now, this won’t be easy,” he says. “If you choose to do what I ask of you, the weight of this entire city will be on your shoulders, and there are plenty of ponies inside who will do anything and everything they can to stop you from lifting it. But even though I couldn’t do this on my own, that doesn’t mean you have to. I can’t communicate with you through normal means, but so long as you’re still in Harmony, I’ll keep an eye on you and make sure you know when you’re on the right track. Because salvation isn’t the only thing I see in you. I see passion. Principle. Sincerity. All the things we’ve forgotten how to feel, forgotten how to pass on to others in a way that benefits us all.”
The stallion chuckles, and I’m almost positive I’m going to be sick. “You are the best of us all, Ruby,” he tells me. “And should you find the courage and the strength necessary to rise above the sins of our past and prove it, I have no doubt that you will be the one to restore Harmony to what it once aspired to be.”
It takes a herculean effort to keep my breakfast where it belongs, but I manage to do it just in time to hear the recording end. “Good luck,” the stallion says, just before murmuring, “Celestia knows, you’re gonna need it.” The recorder whirrs again, then clunks to a stop. The silence that follows almost crushes me flat.
In a different situation, I might’ve stood there forever, thinking back over what I just heard and pondering what it all meant. Here, though, in this dilapidated old surplus shop, my decision is made in an instant.
“I can’t do this,” I whisper to the recorder. And it’s true. It’s been true this whole time, and the only thing keeping me from seeing it was my own stubborn pride. I thought I could just stroll through Harmony without a care in the world, without ever running into a single one of the psychopaths occupying every inch of every flooded, broken-up room. What in Equestria was I thinking? What in Equestria made me imagine I could handle this, that I was at all prepared for the lunacy that everypony in this place just accepted as normality? I’m not a fighter; I’ve never been in a fight in my life. I’m a mechanic, for pony’s sake. Everypony outside this compound would eat me alive without a second thought. And now after I find out one of them’s been watching me this whole time and thinks I’m the chosen one who’s going to save the whole stupid city, I’m supposed to be comfortable with skipping out straight into it?
Not anymore, I’m not. I need to find Applejack and tell her I changed my mind, tell her that I finally got wise and figured out what a stars-awful mess I was about to get myself into. Maybe she’ll understand, or maybe she’ll hate me for ditching the group and putting my own safety ahead of everypony else’s. Most likely, though, she’ll probably just think I’m a coward. And you know what? She’d be absolutely right, and as of right now, I’m okay with that. Because as far as I’m concerned, the only difference between cowards and heroes is that at the end of the day, cowards live longer.
The only problem is, I have no idea where she… no, wait, she’s upstairs with Link, showing him how to use his pistol. Oh, stars above, I didn’t even think about him. How am I supposed to explain this to him? He’s only going because I said I was. What’s he going to do when he hears I’m chickening out? There’s a way around this, there has to be. I’ll just poke my head in real quick and ask to speak to Applejack in private. Say it’s a “girl thing” or something. Do mares even do that down here?
I shake my head and allow myself one second to growl at the empty room. I’m overthinking this. I just need to go up there and be honest. And so after taking a quick moment to make sure I didn’t forget to leave my crazy new friend’s love recording somewhere I’ll never have to see it again, that’s exactly what I set out to do. Unfortunately, on this particular jaunt through the bowels of Harmony, I have neither a radio nor breakfast to lead me where I want to go. I make it back to the stairs all right, but somewhere between there and the kitchen I take a wrong turn at Whiteoak, and everything pretty much falls apart after that. Being the daughter of a miner, you’d think I’d have a better sense of direction in tight spaces. Apparently, that was one of the many genes I didn’t grab in my trip through the pool.
I wander around for a good ten minutes, and I’m about to just turn around and try to retrace my steps when I see a faint glow shining on the wall in front of me. Around the corner, behind a door left just slightly ajar, a screen is flickering all by itself in an otherwise dark room, much smaller than the ones Ryder showed up on in the plaza but almost as bright despite its size. My mind turns to Applejack again, and makes the jump from there to something I never really thought about before now. She told me she could see me and Link even though all she had to talk to us through was that radio we got from Chestnut. Come to think of it, Ryder and Daybreak seemed to be able to see us in the plaza too. Is this how they could see all over the city like that? Maybe Applejack is already there now, waiting for us to leave. Maybe this would all be just as simple as I’d hoped.
I nose the door open quietly just in case she’s easily startled, but it turns out there’s no need. Aside from the banks of dormant video screens, the room is empty. The single screen in the corner, though, is still flickering with what looks like pulsating white snow, and even though Applejack is nowhere to be found, the question that got me in here in the first place is still begging for an answer. I poke around for a bit and find a whole panel of tiny switches lodged into the wall right across from the door, each one seeming to connect to one of the switches on the wall. One switch in the top right corner is already turned on, and after a moment or two of deliberation, I reach out and swipe my foreleg over the rest of them. They all click up with only a little resistance, and just a few seconds later, the whole room is flooded with light.
“You lookin’ for somethin’?”
Add to the list of things I can’t stand about this place: the tendency everyone in it has of creeping up behind me right when I least expect it. I cringe under the harsh yellow light of the lamp that just flared to life overhead, and turn around as slowly as I can to face Applejack, who’s standing in the doorway with one hoof still over the light switch I completely missed on my way in. “I-I-I’m sorry,” I start sputtering. “I shouldn’t be in here, I just-”
“Relax, sugarcube,” Applejack chuckles. “Just thought I heard somepony out here. Matter of fact, I’m glad it ended up bein’ you. I was meanin’ to talk to you ‘fore we left.”
Just say it, I tell myself. Don’t beat around the bush, just spit it out.
“Why is that?” I ask her.
Applejack shrugs, steps forward and smacks the static-filled screen with a forehoof. It buzzes in complaint for a bit, then snaps to an image of the giant door where Applejack and I first met face-to-face. “Figured you’d appreciate it,” she says. She doesn’t look at me, but my face flushes with heat all the same. Am I really that easy to read?
“Applejack, there’s something I need to tell you…”
“I know you’re scared, Ruby.”
Yep. Apparently, I am. “Aw, don’t feel bad about it, sugarcube,” Applejack adds once she turns around and sees the look on my face. “Heck, I’d be a sure sight more worried if you weren’t scared right now. When I see you lookin’ like that, your shoulders tight and your face all bunched up, that’s how I know you’re normal.” She chuckles again. “That you’re smarter than anypony else in this sunforsaken place.”
Despite my best efforts, the exact place I left the recorder I found in Slinky’s warehose comes back to me in a flash. At the same time, so does the sense of vertigo that was rolling through the whole time I was listening to it. “I want you to know somethin’, all right?” Applejack says. “I’ve met a lotta ponies down here. Made a lotta new friends out of ‘em too. And you know what? The kind of pony who’d do something like you did, who’d follow somepony to the ends of the earth just ‘cause they knew they needed a helpin’ hoof… you don’t find ponies like that every day.”
Applejack looks back at the video screens again. My eyes trace over the dozens of rooms visible through them, and Applejack’s eventually settles on an image of the theater where Link and I first heard her on the radio. “Chestnut was one’a those ponies,” she murmurs. “We’ve had a few stragglers come and go in here over the years, but he stayed the longest of all, and there were times I thought…”
Applejack sighs, a low, somber noise like one I’d expect to hear at a funeral held for a filly who died before she was grown. “That was a right brave thing you did earlier,” she tells me, and the passion in her voice when she says it digs into my chest like a paring knife. “And I don’t care if y’all go out there and bring back nothin’ but holes in your horseshoes. It’s enough to me that you and Link are willin’ to pull your grownup stockings on and do what needs to be done. Far as I’m concerned, y’all’ve already done right by me. And I reckon you’ve done right by Chestnut too.”
There’s no point even trying to speak up now. I couldn’t tell Applejack I wanted to stay behind if my subconscious were holding a blade to my throat. “I think Apple Bloom and Link are ready to head out over in the kitchen,” she says with a nod towards the door. “Go left outta here, then left again, then it’s the third door on the right. Don’t keep ‘em waitin’ on my account.”
I nod as best I can and turn towards the door, which by my estimate is about three and a half miles away. If I’m going to make it all the way out of here with my insides intact, I need a reason to stay put here long enough for the walls to stop spinning around me like the inside of a centrifuge. I only need to think about where I woke up this morning to remember one that’s been bouncing off the back of my mind all day.
“Can I ask you something, Applejack?”
Applejack has already pulled out a chair from beneath the desk in front of the screens and settled herself down into it, but she still manages to twist around enough to look me in the eye. “Shoot.”
“It’s… it’s about Apple Cider.”
Applejack doesn’t move, so it’s possible I’m just imagining the tension that suddenly fills the room. It’s also possible that I’ve been a pegasus my whole life and just never noticed the feathers on my pillow each morning. “Are you… what I mean is, is she your, uh…”
“Is she my daughter?”
I force my lips shut and nod. Applejack lets her eyes fall shut and turns back towards the screens. “Stars, were it that simple…” I hear her mutter. When she turns back around again, the weariness in her voice makes her look about a thousand years old.
“We found her out lookin’ for supplies one day,” she says, her eyes never leaving mine for a single syllable. “She was a teeny little thing, not even old enough to crawl yet. No idea where her parents were, or are now. Back when the war was still on, it wasn’t that uncommon. Orphanages filled up like soup kitchens, all of them run by Pyrus. To the public, it was a gesture of goodwill, but anypony who knew anything about it knew they were really just looking for more bodies to make into Little Sisters to scavenge for SUN. More innocent lives to violate and destroy. ‘Course, I couldn’t let that happen to her, so me an’ Apple Bloom took ‘er in and… well, she started callin’ me Momma one day, and I never stopped her. Figured it was better than telling her the truth.”
Some part of me knows that something isn’t right with what Applejack just told me. At the same time, though, another part reminds me that I seem to be pushing her far enough as it is. “So Chestnut wasn’t her…”
“Not by blood, no. Celestia knows, he did the best he could.”
On the other hoof, I’ve never been all that well-versed in social graces. “Were you two, um… were you close?”
Applejack cocks her eyebrow, but in a way that lets me know that this is a question she doesn’t mind. “Not in the way you’re askin’,” she says. She waits for another few moments for me to ask another question that never materializes, then looks behind me again. “You should probably get goin’.”
“Yeah,” I agree. I’m still not satisfied even though she answered everything I asked her. “Hey, uh… thanks for everything. I mean, saving us and giving us food and… all that.”
I get one more genuine smile and an assurance that I shouldn’t have mentioned it out of her, and then I know for a fact that I’ve officially worn my welcome thin. I leave the room without a word, and make the trip back to the kitchen in two minutes flat. The whole way there, all I can think about is that bank of video screens I left Applejack sitting in front of, and the look in her eyes I saw reflected through them when I asked her if Apple Cider was her own foal.
“Well, speak’a the devil!” Apple Bloom shouts as I make my appearance in the breakfast hall. “I was just about to come lookin’ for ya. You find everything okay?”
“Mm-hmm,” I hum back at her. My head’s pointed in her direction, but my eyes are focused on Link, who’s been outfitted with a form-fitting pair of black saddlebags strapped together over his back and stomach. Once again, the look of indifference on his face alone is almost enough to make me see red, but I keep as much of it out of sight as I can. If he’s trying to get under my skin, the least I can do is not give the satisfaction of seeing that it’s working.
“All righty, then,” Apple Bloom goes on. “Hope ya got a chance to get some practice in with that pistol. AJ told me Link’s quite the crack shot with his. She ain’t never seen anybody pick up the craft so fast!”
Link’s gaze darts down to the bracers on my forehooves. Aside from a slight twitch in his eyebrows, his expression doesn’t change one bit. “Mm-hmm,” I hum again, my lips pressed even tighter together this time.
Either Apple Bloom’s gotten a lot better at ignoring the little intricacies of my and Link’s relationship or a lot worse at picking up on them, because she hardly wastes a moment before cheerfully announcing that it’s time to get this show on the road. Link and I follow behind her in perfect step, neither of us saying a word to her or especially to each other. What is he thinking now, I wonder? Can he see through me like the Apples all can? Can he see the terror in my lifeless eyes, the insecurity that keep tugging at my legs, begging them to stay still and not carry me closer to that big metal door that represents my last link to safety? Does he have any idea who I really am?
I don’t know. And that’s what bothers me the most. That’s what’s always bothered me about this place, I realize as we cross the threshold out into the orchard, and the compound’s front gate screeches shut behind us. I don’t know what we’re going to run into out here, how long it’ll take us to find those parts, whether we’ll even be able to find them at all. But more than that, I don’t know anything about the ponies who, as much as I hate to admit it, my life now depends on. I don’t know how Apple Bloom can seem so nonchalant about everything, where Apple Cider came from or why Applejack doesn’t want to talk about it. And most of all, I have absolutely no clue what kind of pony is walking beside me right now, staring straight ahead with his bags bouncing off his legs and a shiny silver pistol sticking out of a holster on his flank.
Is he a murderous psychopath let loose in a place where there’s no vestige of society left to hold him back, or is he just a desperate, miserable socialite doing whatever it takes to keep himself alive? If another splicer attacked us, would he put a bullet through their head without a single moment of regret? If I fell behind, would he leave me? If it were me in those situations and not him, would I do the same? I have no way of guessing. I have nothing to go by but a zeppelin crash and a dead mare in a white dress, and piercing green eyes as unreadable as a picture book soaked in ink. And now I’m stuck with him on what might as well be a suicide mission with a gun I can’t use and a point mare who think it’s all a big joke. Just waiting in the wings to see what new scene our lead actor is going to perform.
That, I think, is what I hate most of all. I don’t know who Link is, I don’t know how he thinks, and I don’t know how any of that would determine what he might do now that we’re out here. But it’s only a matter of time before I find out.
And if the rest of what’s happened to us since we got here is anything to go back, I have a feeling that time is going to come sooner than I think.