//------------------------------//
// The Prison 
// Story: One Night Later 
// by ChangelingNumber4 
//------------------------------//

	I crack open my eyes. Light.
With my dry tongue panting and hanging out of my mouth, I look around my surroundings, and all that I can see is light, everywhere, filling every crack. At first I’m panicked, not sure what’s going on. Then I remember: I’m in that bucking room still. I think back to how long I’ve been in this cucumber state. So if I’ve been waiting this many hours….then I’ve been in here for two straight days. I wasn’t going to last much longer in this state.
I feebly get out of bed, but the air feels so cold; I’m tempted to climb back into bed and just wait. But I have a feeling that if I get back into bed, I won’t come out again until long after rigor mortis has set in. I shudder at the thought.
I look around the room again. My dozens of searches so far hadn’t yielded any results, so there was no reason for me to expect there to be anything different. I meander my way over to the door. Still tall. Still thick. Still cutting off any hope I had of escape. I sigh, and turn to walk back to my bed, when I notice a new glint on the floor: something shiny.
I trot over excitedly, but try not to let my hopes get too high. After all, it could just be a random scratch on the floor, or a piece of (shiny) dust, or a drop of water…WATER! Sweet Celestia! This could be it!
As I get closer, I see that it isn’t a drop of water at all; it’s a dot of what appears to be silvery metallic liquid. As I puzzle over it, I notice a fraction of movement from the dot.
“AAAAAHHHHH!!!” I scream, as I jump back in shock. There’s no way it could possibly be alive, and no way it could move, and is it moving again…!?
Oh, it is definitely moving this time, beginning to inch along the floor at a slow but steady pace towards me. Wherever it goes, it leaves behind an incredibly small trail of silver goo, almost like a silvery mud. I climb onto my bed to escape the slow-moving terror, but curiosity got the better of me, and I peer down to investigate.
Upon a closer look, I realize that it isn’t a dot of liquid at all, but a small blob of a silvery carapace. The shiny metallic coat is nothing but an outer layer, and I assume that there are some sorts of legs underneath, similar to a horseshoe crab. I begin to chuckle at my own terror; how in Equestria could I be afraid of a little crabby…uh…thingee-ma-bobber?
As I step down from the bed, it seems to notice me and get excited, hopping up and down and running in little circles. What a bizarre creature, I think to myself. As I approach, however, it scurries off to wherever it came from. I don’t watch it go. I have much more important things to think about than a strange little animal. I have to focus on escape. 
Having been distracted earlier, I now examine the door with a newfound interest. Maybe the reason I wasn’t able to open the door because I wasn’t thinking along the right lines. Maybe this sort of door required a switch or button for opening, unlike most doors, which use brute force. 
I ponder on this for a moment. A switch…what do I know about switches….I know they can be pressed, but that’s just about it. With a sigh, I turn away from the door. If I’m doomed to die in this room, so be it.
I saunter on over to the bed, ready to finally give up. As I pull up the sheets and get cozy for the last time, I close my eyes, and wait for the light to come.
It doesn’t come.
Instead, I get what sound like a cannon shot right outside my room, followed by an earsplitting loudspeaker repeating, “INTRUDER ALERT. INTRUDER ALERT. PLEASE STAY CALM. IF THE INTRUDER TRIES TO APPROACH YOU—” The speaker goes dead as I hear another explosion.
I jump out of bed and rush towards the door. The sounds of explosions are deafening; I hear a volley of gunshots, followed by a round of screams as the bullets find their mark. I don’t know what to do, so I hide under the bed, hoping the intruders don’t venture into my room.
No such luck. From my under-the-bed vantage point, I see it all. I hear the intruders placing some sort of object on the door, and giving a countdown to the explosion. I am not even fazed; there is no way that a mere bomb could harm my ever-strong chrome door. Despite my assumptions, I am sorely mistaken when the door flies inward, smoking and smoldering.
More importantly, however, I now had my room occupied by three very burly unicorn stallions, each with a rifle hovering in the air above them. More interesting than their guns, however, are their faces.
Each one of them seems to have some sort of mechanism attached to their body. The closest one to me, a white stallion with a military manecut, seems to have a mechanical foreleg. It simply can’t be possible, and yet somehow…it must be.
I stopped admiring the metallic leg when I heard one of the stallions cursing under his breath. “What the…she’s not here! They must have already given her the procedure!” he says, clearly annoyed. Whoever this guy was, he certainly seemed to be in charge. “We have to rescue her before it’s too late! To the operating room!”  
With a simple nod from the two others, the trio begins to leave. As they are exiting, I see the leader look back into the room one last time, before saying, quietly, “I just hope it hasn’t happened to her yet,” before joining the others in the charge down the hallway. I lay under my bed for many more minutes, afraid to move an inch, still staring where the mechanical leg had been, and all the while thinking about what the stallions had said. 
Procedure? Operating room? What?!?
I shake my head, and resolve to never ask what “the procedure” was. Looking around the room one last time, I feel no remorse as a head out the door and leave my prison behind.
Now in the corridor, I am amazed by the level of sophistication around me. The walls shined with the bright chrome of my door, yet there is no apparent source of light. The walkway beams with gleaming silver, and the ceiling looks as though it has never seen a blemish in all its days. In wonder, I continue trotting down the hallway.
As I turn the corner to find an exit from my prison, I notice a dark stallion with his back to me. Judging from his body language and cocked shotgun, I’d say he was not one of my rescuers. As I watch, another pony, this one brown, comes out of a doorway with a presumably loaded assault rifle. “Have you found her yet?” asks the black one.
“Not yet, but I have some orders from the queen. We’re to shoot to kill; the queen is really in a fret over this one filly,” replies the brown soldier.
“Eh, I always have more fun when we get to cripple ‘em. But whatever, if it’s what the queen says. We’ll find her.”
I quickly turn back around the corner.
Get a grip, Violet. Think logically, like you learned in school. 
Step 1: Analyze the Problem. Well, that’s easy. There are two stallions around the corner that were ordered to kill me. No biggie.
Step 2: List your Options. Option one could be walking up and trying to reason with them. I’m sure they’re perfectly nice people.
Yeah, right.
Option two would be attacking them. I have seen enough spypony movies to know what to do, but I doubt I would actually succeed. So that one’s out.
That leaves only option three left: run. I turn and gallop (quietly) in the opposite direction, and decide to find a way out of this futuristic maze. I cautiously approach the corner this time, only to find myself greeted by an empty hallway. As I go down the hallway, I notice door on the walls. Probably leading to rooms similar to mine. Where there ponies in there? Were they dying of thirst, as I had been? Or were the rooms abandoned, empty for years?
At the end of the hallway, I reach a fork, with one option going left and the other going right. There are no sort of signs or arrows to help me, so I basically end up choosing whichever one I feel like, which happens to be left at the moment. So I turn left, and peek around this corner.
Once again, I am rewarded with a hallway devoid of all ponies. As I trot down this corridor, I once again marvel at the doors. There seem to be a great deal of high security vaults here (wherever “here” is) for some reason. Once I reach the end of this hallway, another split decides to block my path. Concluding that left is still the correct path, I turn to the left.
All these hallways look the same, and suddenly I realize that I could get lost among these passageways very, very easily. Which is worse, to die alone in a solitary room, or to die alone endlessly wandering corridors?
I mentally scold myself; I shouldn’t be thinking these thoughts. After all, I will escape from this maze, and I will figure out what is going on here. And once the others hear stories of my bravery, well then maybe they’ll finally respect me, just a little.
Another split. Whoever designed this place sure wasn’t very creative.
Another split.
And another.
And another.
Eventually, I give up on logic, and just decide to go down whichever side I feel like. After wandering for what seems like hours, I finally begin to make some progress. I can smell smoke, and I can use my nose to find out where it’s coming from. After a good hour or so of searching, I have found the source of the smoke: it’s one of the rooms where the door has been blown in, presumably by explosives.
The door is on the inside of the room, which would mean that someone broke into the room, and not the other way around. Now what would you break into one of these rooms for? Finally, it dawns on me. There is only one thing that anyone in this dungeon of a building is looking for.
Me.
Once again in my former cell, I sit down. There really is no way out of this prison. Every turn just makes you end up where you just were. With a heavy heart, I decide to let fate run its course. If somepony comes and finds me, great. If not....well...let’s just say I wouldn’t have to worry about any old procedure anymore.
I lie down on my bed and close my eyes.
I imagine myself in a field, on a sunlit day. I savor the joy around me. Pumpkin Spice is having a picnic with me, all my schoolmates are running around, playing, and I enjoy the warm spring day. The sun is shining, birds are chirping, and there is the perfect feeling of bliss that encompasses me.
Just as I am getting used to this wonderful scene, it takes a turn for the worse. The sun is covered by clouds which seem to appear out of nowhere; the warming sunlight is dampened by freezing rain. Lightning strikes, and a nearby tree bursts into flames. I struggle to escape from the nightmare, but I can’t. I’m trapped within my own mind. 
I begin to panic, as everyone around devolves into chaos. Everypony is running around, screaming their heads off about “The Day of Turmoil”. I am confused, but I head towards the school building for shelter from the rain. On the way there, however, a random streak of lightning strikes the old structure, and its wooden walls are instantly burning with a mighty blaze.
Instead I try to take shelter within the summer school building, a small outpost separate from the normal school building. Fate seems to be against me, for as I approach, lightning once again cuts me off, in a fiery sign of a lightning strike, burning the building to ashes. I look to the sky, and for a brief moment, a see a flash of light, before my body is jolted with three thousands volts of electricity.
I sit up in the bed. The dream....it seemed so real. And yet, there was something special about the dream, something that I had never experienced before. There seemed to be a feeling in the background during the dream, but I can’t quite put my hoof on it. Maybe it was that--
I just notice my surroundings. Gone are the metallic chrome walls. Gone are the polished metallic floors. Gone is my prison cell, with bed and door. Instead, I awake to find myself in a completely new location.
I am instantly confused. I appear to be in some sort of doctor’s office, complete with syringes, bandages, and even the lollipops. The only features in the room are my cot and a lone chair, on the other side of the room. There is no one else in here, but there really isn’t much interesting about the room. While surprising at first, I eventually get used to the fact that I am now in a standard doctor’s office, similar to the one I went to back in Canterlot. 
This time around, I decide not to brave it outside, and wait for somepony to come and get me. The door is thankfully normal here, and there isn’t even a lock on it. Taking a closer look around the room, I look for any indicator of where I am. Unfortunately, all the supplies seem to be a generic brand. I sigh. I guess my questions will have to wait.
A couple of minutes later, I hear somepony trotting up to the door. I try to suppress my excitement; however, it has been days since I’ve had contact with another sane pony. 
As I stare expectantly at the door, expecting a nurse or doctor, instead I get a young colt. But I’d recognize him anywhere. The wings. The mane. The usual sneer as he says, “What’s up, dipwad?”
It’s Cometstrike.