Fallout Equestria: Murky Number Seven

Chapter 21:

Just Downstairs

* * *

“One simple survival instinct. If you smell rotten mint...gallop away as fast as you can and do not look back. Do not stop and do not try to hide. Just gallop. Gallop...and pray.”

To be working with my 'master' on a mission from Red Eye, or to be on a journey pointed out by a hyperactive pink pony from the past?

Well, Pinkie's one...I dunno really. It didn't hit me as hard as anypony might have thought it would. That sort of stuff messes with your head if you think about it too hard. A pony seeing the future, leaving messages in precisely the right places that she needed to and all. Maybe I took it a little at face value, but given it wasn't actively trying to hurt me, could you blame me for taking the chance?

Yeah, that's true. But there's a difference between having a plan and knowing it's the right one, y'know? Glimmer and I figured out a plan that gave us a bit of hope, but Pinkie's message helped give me the confidence I needed to really try again.

“You do have a beautiful smile. Glimmerlight wasn't wrong when she said that.”

Heh...I, ah, thanks. Hehe! Well, um, I guess what I mean is that I was free to concentrate on other things without worrying about whether we were heading to the right place. Now that I was with Protégé, I had a mission. To get my friends.

Yes, he did. The first thought in my mind was pretty simple. If my friends were in the metro, I could get them there, and we could make a break for it that very day! We could get Sunny, use the safer inner tunnels as a hideaway, look for Unity and start thinking about how to get the foals out! Starshine seemed to know a way, but that was the real problem. Protégé was with me. He wouldn't allow that, and he had direct orders that went against our wishes. There was a confrontation coming if I didn't find some new thing that would allow us to leave. Well...

Well, I just guess I hadn't quite given up on him coming with us. He was a better pony inside than I had thought. He understood slavery the way I did. Yet, we had different objectives, different mindsets, different inspirations. How could all that come to a head? In the end, it was never going to be as simple as us just slipping away then and there. There were obstacles in front of us, still. Ones that would take a bit more effort to get around.

Sorry, I know. It’s just that this was when it started to accelerate. The moment when I felt my life speed up and start careening forward in ways I hadn't known since that first day in the Pit. We were about to learn about what this 'way out' exactly consisted of. The remnants of the past would be a lot clearer in how they tied together in this race for information, one that Protégé wanted to win and one that mattered to us just as much. We had to share in his quest while all the time hoping that in the end we wouldn't have to fight him.

* * *

Protégé and I sought to find, release, and steal away my friends from under Shackles' nose to bring them into the fold and beat him in the race for Aurora's secrets. Really, I just wanted them back and safe without thinking much about what would come after. The trouble was, I held a key to this little quest succeeding, and I wasn't sure if I should use it or not.

I had retreated to Protégé's attic above his logistics hub office while he took care of business prior to our departure. Having even a little space to myself helped me to think. That, and it gave me time to add to my vast drawing upon the ground. Details sprang into life from the much larger canvas. Just being able to doodle and let thoughts wander helped me think so much better.

I could get us into the metro without being seen. I knew a way. It was the same one that I'd exited through before, the one that the ghouls below had told me about. A safe and sneaky way in that would work for sure.

Unfortunately, it was also the same one we were to use to eventually escape. I'd have to reveal a portion of our hoof and a potential vulnerability to Protégé if I wanted to use it. Could I risk it? Was it worth that risk? Perhaps I could try and act like I'd just spotted it in the distance. Not that I imagined I could fool Protégé for long. He seemed to have a knack for knowing when I was lying.

A sharp rap on the door in the empty office below perked up my ears and pulled me from my pondering. Charcoal in mouth, I raised my head up and looked at the stairs heading downward when the knocking came again. Protégé wasn't in; but it had to be someone for him.

I sat and wondered if I should open it or not, before eventually sighing and getting up to trot downstairs. The knocking on the door came again and then once more quickly afterward even when I pressed my ear against it. I couldn't see anypony through the warped glass, but they could have just been standing off to the side.

Biting my lip, I reached out to unlock it. Pulling the door back slightly, I peeked through and stood ready to leap back.

Jolting my head back a little and wincing as the high-pitched voice squeaked right into my ears, I looked down to find Chirpy Sum standing upright and grinning wildly with that big, floppy hat of his right before me. He looked rather impossibly happy.

“Uh-huh!” He nodded rapidly. “Is Mister Protégé here? I want to see if he'll check my work before I go back home to the Hotel! I like getting him to check them, he always leaves really cool and tidy corrections and examples that are so fun to-”

“He's, um...” I interrupted him before he really got going. “He's not here right now.”

Gathering my surprised thoughts, I glanced around before turning a more serious face to Chirpy and motioning him into the room.

“Sshh!” I held my hoof to my mouth desperately, as though pleading him to just be quiet for a second! “It has to be a...a secret! Yes, a real secret! Come on.”

Chirpy's eyebrows rose before he put on a downright conspiratorial grin and over-exaggerated a sneaky look around before creeping inside. Rolling my eyes, I shut the door behind us and turned.

“I can keep real good secrets, Mister Murky! Please, is my mom out there? I like Daddy Red Eye, and Mister Protégé is really cool and all, but I do want to see her...”

His big round eyes widened out as he looked up to me. I felt distinctly unqualified to handle this level of childlike endearment and wishful thinking. Biting my lip and rubbing my head, I sat down and tried to explain things.

“She is!? Can we go to see her? Can she come visit? Aww, I can't wait to see her again and show her my cutie mark!”

The pang of sadness I felt from merely seeing him and hearing about 'Daddy Red Eye' only doubled as he proudly showed off a mark of four symbols Protégé had explained before in our lesson. Coral had missed her own son gaining his cutie mark.

“See? One for adding, one for subtracting, and then one's for multiplying and-”

I had to look away briefly to take a breath as he went on a ramble about how he’d gotten it in a lesson where he’d told the teacher they were wrong.

“Chirpy...” I coughed, covering the urge to sniffle at the thought of just how broken Coral’s family had become to miss so much. “Coral, your mom. She's here but, um, see it's not easy. You know she's a slave, right?”

“Mister Protégé says a lot of things, Chirpy.” I regretted realizing this myself. “Your mom isn't as safe as they say, but she is coming. We're all coming. You're going home, Chirpy. This is all going to be over. We're going to get you back to her, and then we're all going to take you back home where you belong!”

He stopped his talking, for once, as he opened his mouth wide and let those eyes expand with quivering pupils. “H-home?”

I willed him not to cry or react loudly, but the young foal just looked confused and uncertain, scuffing his little hooves on the glossed wooden floor.

“I...I am home, but like my second home and I like two cos it's higher than one and-and-but I can...wow! Will it be like, a real adventure or something? They told me coming here would be an adventure, but then I had to stay in that hotel for months and months! I like it, but I wanna go out there again but they say they can't let me, and they-”

“You will, Chirpy.” I couldn't help but find his interest somewhat endearing. “It'll be a big adventure with, um, lots of running and hiding and exploring.”

“Awesome! Lilac and Starshine both said that they had an adventure to go on and told me that my mom might be there! Now I can have one too! Can we go now?”

Chirpy galloped forward, making me yelp as he launched himself at me and thumped his two front hooves onto my chest. Fighting back the rancid cough as my lungs complained at the impact, I found his face looking right up at me, mouth held open, ready for the answer he wanted. At the very least, he wanted to go. That was one big thing out of the way.

“Sorry, Chirpy. We need to get your mother first...and a few other friends of mine. You stay with Lilac and Starshine. They'll be the ones who get in contact with us. Okay?”

“Yes, sir, Mister Murky, sir! Wasteland Adventurer Chirpy Sum is on the job! I'm gonna make a big cape to wear and stay warm like the ones Mom used to sew for me! Like my hat!”

He fidgeted with the huge, floppy wool hat. It seemed a habit of his to have to push the big drooping thing back up again, like it had been sewn for somepony twice his size. He rushed off and leapt onto Protégé's chair, holding a hoof up and spinning to address, presumably, the walls.

“I'm gonna go swishing out of here on an adventure! Gonna see things with my mom and catch up, and then I'm gonna bring her back to show her the cool things Daddy Red Eye taught me to do once we get allowed to work in the big places in Fillydelphia! I can't wait! You can come too, Mister Murky, I like you! You're really cool!”

“Mister Murky, what's wrong? What's wrong? Did you forget something? You look-”

“I'm all right, Chirpy!” I moved away. Gritting my teeth, I tried to push away the thoughts that had landed harsh upon my heart. While she wasn’t here, I found myself wishing for her, ‘Coral Eve, I'm so so so sorry. I don't know how you're going to cope…’

Coral's son wandered across, hopping up with his hooves on my shoulder in curiosity to why I wasn't really looking back.

“Your mom loves you, Chirpy. More than anything else. Just...just remember that above everything, okay?”

I turned and pulled him a little close, hoping to myself that Coral Eve would have the strength in her long-enduring body and mind to handle how her son had changed.

“Good boy.” Coral had spoke like that before, just copy her Murky! “Now you should, um, go, I think? You're safer in the hotel. Don't stop for anything, okay?”

“You, um, don't need to call me sir, Chirpy, and I'm a bit young for 'Mister' yet I think.”

My ears perked up as he tried a few different titles in his politeness. Outside, I heard a familiar voice. Protégé was in the warehouse. I heard hooves on the gantry.

“Okay, you should go, right now! Don't speak of this to anypony else, okay? Your mother will be with you. She won't stop till she finds you.”

I took him to the door, letting him gallop out in front of me even as Protégé could be seen approaching the end of the catwalk about twenty feet away.

“Good, good. I'll try and get a message to you all soon. Protégé and I just have to go get a few friends and your mom. She's alright. She's a strong mare, and I know she'll be fine.”

“Wasteland Adventurer Chirpy Sum rogers that and is on his way! I do hope to see her again!”

He skipped on the spot, turned, and galloped flat out the door, running right into Protégé. My heart skipped a beat as I saw him much closer than I'd thought. He threw me a curious glance that set me sweating with worry as to what he'd perhaps heard at the end there.

“HI MISTAH PROTÉGÉ! I wanted to meet you! I was just talking to your number one assistant Murky when I was coming to see you!”

“Good afternoon, Chirpy. You do seem in a rush. Are you late in getting back?”

Protégé stepped aside to let the rushing colt past. “Good for you. Well, I do hope it's for a better Equestria.”

Chirpy stopped briefly, hooves pacing on the spot as he clearly wracked his mind for something.

“It's, uh, yeah it's a quest for the best Sparkle-Cola in the world! It's being held by the evil King, um...um, Stinky! He's bad!”

I couldn't help but slap my hoof to my forehead, but Protégé didn't let it faze him as he lifted the colt's work in his magic and allowed Chirpy to go tearing out of the warehouse to meet his escort guards.

“Um, y-yeah?” I didn't know what to really say as Protégé bid me to follow him down the catwalk, apparently having just been coming to fetch me.

“Very impressionable. Open-minded. This way a second, Murk. We just need to get supplies. Was Chirpy doing well?”

I followed close behind, feeling excitement rise. We were going to go on the rescue now! Our own little adventure! For real. Heh, maybe Chirpy wasn't the only one who could get worked up. At the very least, Protégé didn't seem to have heard anything I didn't want him to.

    “Yes, he tends to be.”

    Without warning, Protégé spun and grabbed me by the collar, pulling me off balance before forcibly pushing me against the shelves. Crying out in shock, I almost lashed out until I saw the fierce look in his eyes, one just visible below the eyepiece.

“So, 'I do hope to see her again?' I don't know how much you told him, but let me get one thing straight right here and right now with you.”

His voice was harsh, spiky, and tinged with aggressive passion. Lowering his eyes, he leaned closer.

“You have your own little wishes and dreams, and I'd be a fool to think Coral Eve would ever agree to help you without wanting her son to come with her. I'm content to let you and your friends seek a better life, and so help me that's something I'm half tempted to let go under my nose without raising a problem. But this...”

He leaned right into my face, eyes locking to mine with a protective anger I'd never seen.

“If you ever endanger any of these foals, I won't hesitate to put a stop to this, understand? You can run around and do what you feel you need to, but keep them out of it, or you'll find me a much less allowing master, Murk! They are the core of what shall save this world. Do not make this tougher by reminding them of a past they have already left!”

“Like leaving his mother?” I tried to pull his hooves off, but he let go of his own accord and dropped me back down. His glare was no less fierce as he invaded my personal space to keep me on the back hoof.

“We all make sacrifices, Murk. Coral can work for her freedom and join us to see him again if she wants; the choice is there! I will not let you put any of those foals in danger, Murk! Is that very clear?”

His hoof slammed into the shelf beside my head on the last word. I'd never seen him like this. I felt awkward, robbed of any argument momentum by shock at him treating me like this.

“Yes...master” I muttered the word, moving my eyes away from his own stern gaze. I was screaming at myself to be defiant, to just stay quiet or say it with anger, but the truth was his sudden harshness had shocked me deeply.

“I give you a great amount of freedom, Murk.” He trotted toward the warehouse exit. “But do not cross me on that which I truly believe. Stay away from those foals. Now come on. We have work to do, and I'm sure you don't want to wait any longer.”

Picking myself up, I placed a shaking hoof to my throat. The pressure had irritated it, leading me to hunch over and cough horribly. Shivering, I took a glug from my quarter-full canteen of RadAway and brought myself back up to see Red Eye's prodigy moving away to the exit.

Taking a few breaths to clear the shock and calm my nerves, I began to follow, staying a good bit farther behind him than I ever normally would.

* * *

I'm not sure why I told him about the way down. Perhaps I was driven by thoughts of saving my friends by using every method I could just to make that happen. I had always been a little short-sighted, after all.

Now, I sat at the bottom of the hole, having rappelled down on my grapple line past the drifting dust and growing darkness of the metro. Red light beamed through the distant hole above me as I struggled to get the saddle off me. I'd considered acting like I'd just spotted it, but Protégé was too smart for that. In the end, I'd just admitted that I'd found it while looking for a hiding spot. That seemed to have done the trick.

Wedging the mouthpiece's lever to retract the wire in, the battle saddle whirled out of my grasp and pulled itself back up without me, allowing Protégé to strap it around himself for his own descent. Glancing up as it disappeared, I squinted from the light and instead turned to the dark.

    I'd known I'd have to come back here at least once; back to this underground nightmare. Last time had shown the reality of a world where Shackles had full control, and now I'd have to enter it again. The images of a mare with a distended stomach full of pus or a stallion lacking much of his skin from some unknown punishment kept forcing their unwelcome horrors into my mind. My friends had only been here a day or two now, and I doubted they would be badly hurt yet, but the thought still assailed me.

    The service door out onto the inner metro line's tracks lay slightly ajar from where I'd been unable to close it last time. Beyond it, I could hear the slow clink of pickaxes and murmurs of ponies wafting down the tunnel itself.

With a thump, Protégé landed behind me, staggering to the side as he untangled himself from the wire.

“I dread to think what drew you down here last time,” he muttered, trying his best to get the small saddle buckles undone..

“I just wanted somewhere really far away from anypony who would hurt me. I didn't realise that he was down here.” It didn't take long to help him out of the battle saddle. Nor to put the saddle back on and adjust the straps to my size again. Thank Blunderbuck for his forethought of adjustable sizes!

Protégé advanced to the door, slowly slipping his eyepiece off to hide its blinking red light. We hadn't exchanged many words since the confrontation at the logistics hub. He had been professional, curt, and polite, but there was still tension in the air. He knew my intentions to some extent, and they didn't sit well with him, yet he needed my help and my friends if he was going to achieve his aims as well. I almost wished for the days when we both knew where we stood on things.

“To the left. I-I think it's about two hundred metres down the metro line. We'll start to see them if they are still in the same work teams.”

Together, we crept out into the thick darkness, with myself taking the lead; after all, I could see and hear better than he did, and knew the way. Slowly, sticking to the sides of the arced tunnel, I began to advance. The metro was always distinct to look at. Smooth stone over metal track with old, surprisingly elaborate lights hanging from the ceiling, and fuse boxes littering carved out inlays in the rock. All mass produced and 'modern' by Equestrian standards, of course, but surrounding an architecture too grand to be wartime. If I squinted, I could see lights sometimes in the distance. Two hundred metres really wasn't very far at all for that to travel.

It was a question that had bothered me for a while. An extra gun could have been handy. Turning back to Protégé, I saw him look distinctly unsure.

“Ragini isn't in the best of minds right now. As I said before, her loss of flight hasn't put her in a good mood. You saw what she did in the FunBarn, Murk. Frankly, I am unsure of her stability right now, and this expedition requires a subtler touch.”

He looked as though he were about to say something else. Hearing a shout of a slaver around the far off corner, I stopped for a second and decided to push my luck.

“Her contract is to Master Red Eye, and he has told her to report to me. How she would interpret this, I am...unsure. Despite what my Master has told me. I don't like uncertain things when dealing in this type of work. Keep moving, Murk.”

I nodded quickly, taking the hint that he wasn't happy to pause down here. Stepping over the rails, I shifted closer to the inner wall of the long curving corner and hugged closely in its shadows. A sharp scream sounded after the snap of a whip. I heard chains moving, drills whining, and the rumble of something on the rails.

Cautiously, slowly, with nerve wracking care, I led us behind a small outcrop of supplies, tools, and fabric to gain sight of it all.

Stepping out, shrouded in darkness, we now stood before a part of the mining operation I had once seen before. I took a heavy, strained breath before turning to Protégé.

“You're a slave too; well here's what you've forgotten. This is what Fillydelphia is to many of us.”

Clustered around a changing lane between a service lane and the inner metro, we saw the lines of ponies chained together in eternal labour. We saw those lying upon the rock floor trying in vain to rest between shifts at their very workplace. We saw the huge forms of Shackles' personal slavers ruthlessly beating them awake to continue. We even saw the empty look in their eyes and the paleness of skin below fallen hair, mangy and coated with blood, sweat, and infected fluids. In the corner lay a morbid pile of ponies being loaded onto a low rail wagon while among them were ghouls lacking pieces of themselves. Worked to the very bone of their immortal lives in an all too horrifyingly literal sense. Their lack of needs abused to the full.

Like before, I saw the shift patterns coming in and out with an almost orchestrated routine. I could see ponies wobbling on legs with very little body fat left at all. Many were blindfolded, set only to do the task and not even look around.

There were so many. So many shapes that barely resembled ponies any more thrust into the hellish end of their lives to be nothing more than organic tools for a master whose presence was more symbolic than physical in their minds. A legion being forced to think the way I once had.

Shackles' own brand of slavery. Control for the sake of control. Only his own wishes mattering in the end with no care to the cost.

I could never have possibly described the look to be seen upon my companion's face. Protégé simply stood and gaped, his eyes focussed on a wide arc of the ghastly sight. Hundreds of ponies were being driven to death in service of a goal they likely did not even know or understand, and I saw him have to fight to accept it.

His mouth fell open to try and speak many times as he witnessed one pony simply fall, twitch, and then lie still, his body giving out. Just another forgotten soul not even recorded as a statistic to history.

“This is what happens to ponies in Fillydelphia! This is what happens every day behind closed doors that ponies like you no longer see!” I turned to him. If only I could make him really see here that what he wanted was a lost cause! “This is where he sent Sunny! Where he sent my friends! Where he wanted me!”

Protégé took more than a moment to try and compose himself, shaking with what I hoped was anger. He struck the wall with a hoof.

“There were always going to be acceptable losses in having some slavers here and...and...”

A hoof went to his face, resting between his eyes. I wasn't sure if I saw it wipe something or just slide away. His body shivered, and I couldn't be sure if I saw anger or fear in his eyes. He turned to me

His voice was cold. I knew he was looking past me at those slaves. I could see his hoof gently rubbing his sides where I knew laash scars like my own lay beneath those clothes. I wish I knew what to say to finally get through to him.

In a way, I pitied him. I saw only a pony in the same place as I was once, just with a shinier collar. Or eyepiece.

I heard the slow, steady march of hooves coming this way. Perking up, I hurried over to the tools we had hidden behind and pulled some of the fabrics free. Seeing my haste, Protégé tore his eyes away and joined me as we hid ourselves.

“Bloody right. I told 'em to keep it to twelve hour shifts with two small breaks, but that stupid bugger’s had 'em working all last night to try and get the big guy to grin!”

The slavers leading the shift were heading down the tunnel we'd come from! Had they expanded their operations again? Were my friends part of some new line of slaves? The thought of them being marched into the mouth of those doors to the metro station behind us, into Shackles’ personal den, was beyond thought. Many times I'd been imagining what horrors really lay beyond that barrier only a few hundred metres further in.

The slaves trooped past, as much pulled by one another as they were by the slavers. If anypony fell, they were simply dragged. Twice I saw them being drawn over the rails as their legs failed them. I couldn't resist peeking out; if only I could have seen my friends, this would have been easy! Yet down here, ponies of all colours were horribly hard to tell apart. The filthy rags, stained injuries, and boils turned them into a group too terrified to do anything other than obey.

However, as they passed, I did recognise one pony. Or to be more precise, one ghoul.

I whispered for Protégé to stay where he was and dared to sneak out. Keeping low, I shifted along the lines of miners further into the junction. Slaves wandered past me; each time I simply huddled into the lines of workers to try and hide from slavers. I could see him up ahead. Baton Round was sluggishly chipping away at the concrete, trying to break through the reinforced walls in their hunt for Ministry Station. As I neared, I saw Nurse Bedlay Broom behind him, her blind face not even looking in a particular direction as she scraped the rubble into the middle of the tunnel for disposal.

Before, they had been falling apart, but here I saw a lethargy like no other. Baton Round's flimsy muzzle was visibly swaying on each impact of his pick. His body looked loose and drooped, like what remained of him was close to slipping right off. I became very glad that I hadn't eaten much lately, for once.

“Baton!” I whispered near to him, but the ghoul just kept digging. “Baton!”

Bedlay Broom looked around, her one remaining ear perked up. Clearly in her blindness, other senses had taken over.

He heard her voice. Twitching and blinking, he turned to her and then to me. With a quick check to see that the guards were not looking, Baton Round slowly shifted to face me and drew Bedlay Broom closer.

“I am...I am not sure I...” He staggered and dropped to all four knees. I heard the distinctive click of bones slipping out of place. A small glow of magic across his body from the nurse seemed to help him regain the strength to speak.

“We are failing, Murky Number Seven. The shifts are increasing. What do you need?”

Before I could speak, a slaver further back let loose an air horn into the cramped tunnels. I screamed and covered my ears.

“Shift's up! You lot get back to Shackles' den for food! Ghouls? Get in your fucking hole to regenerate!”

The movement shifted up slowly around me. Slaves began to move in sluggish and clearly predetermined lines. The fluid of blood and other unthinkable things was left behind at the rock face as the new ones came in to pick up the tools. I fell in with the ghouls as they headed back to the store room, then waved at Protégé to join us.

“Baton, some of the friends we need to make our escape happen are down here. I need to know if you've seen them!”

“Maybe...maybe Nurse Splint has, they had her on the way in yesterday. But so many...oh so many, so young too to look like they do. They...they've been moved to-arrrgggh...”

A slow and quiet cry of pain came from him as we moved into the supply cupboard and he dropped to the ground. Behind me, Protégé and the blind nurse Bedlay shifted in. I recognised the smaller figure of Windtail Breeze behind them. Nurse Splint was ahead of us. The four ghouls were all on their last legs. Most of them in here were, and all dropped to the floor on wobbling hooves.

* * *

It took a few minutes for the nurses to give aid to their ghoul comrades. Protégé and I sat unsettled together near the door, as the ghouls around us carried out their self 'maintenance.' They took it in turns to bathe under a small pipe, the one I had been reminded last time was highly radioactive.

“My apologies, little Murky Number Seven. They have worked us hard since last time. We can recover here, but every shift brings us closer. We lost three more last night and two last week fell to the feral while on the line. Old friends from the Fillydelphia Post Office. We had to watch the slavers put them out of their misery after they launched at one of the slaves unfortunately chained to them.”

“We're losing friends fast. Ever since they discovered that station, we've had to do more. Dig more. Find more.”

Protégé narrowed his eyes. “If they found this 'Ministry Station,' why do you still mine here?”

“Materials? Rebar? Old rooms? Who knows?” Windtail spoke quietly in his higher pitched voice. “Everything we mine gets taken off. Somepony once said to fill a gap. Must have been a big gap. Remember that old sinkhole?”

I shared a glance with Protégé. I didn't know how much experience he had with ghouls, but these ones were prone to nostalgia as much as I was prone to tears.

This wasn't good. Shackles and Grindstone had Ministry Station. They were one piece ahead of us now. We had to get my friends and beat them to whatever that mountain held now! Whatever it was that connected them...

“They took the slaves there, the new ones,” Baton Round spoke out suddenly, “I remember now, they said 'all the new ones.' The new ones, yes. If your friends got in recently, they went there.”

“Then we would have to enter through Shackles' own hidden den to get there then? Or through their mineworks?” Protégé leaned forward.

“Oh...” Nurse Splint looked up. The gruesome sight of four white ribs below her chest made me have to look above her head to not feel my stomach tgurn. “That wouldn't be easy.The guards there...they don't even let their own kind through, and no shifts ever came out in the days since they found it. You need to go through their very holdings, through the doors in that station down the line. The ones you passed before, little one.”

So we would have to go into Shackles' own place. It seemed inevitable. It seemed impossible, was more like it.

“We can't do that.” I looked to Protégé. “They know us too well now. I...I saw it from the outside. It's crammed with his slavers and supporters! Whatever's in there, it'll be like a slaver's paradise or-”

“Don't let your imagination go, Murk.” Protégé chided sternly. “However, you may be right. We cannot break in through a single fortified entrance and sneak ponies out. Not to mention Brimstone.”

That got our attention. We trotted over, but Nurse Split placed a hoof on Baton's shoulder.

“Nurse, I...” He paused and coughed violently. Foul-coloured blood splattered before him. “I cannot but let them decide. There is another way. A way that helped them find where Ministry Station was recently. Farther back the way you came, they broke into new tunnels five days ago. I thought it nothing but hearsay.”

A shivering hoof clutched at his throat as he hacked and coughed again, worse than any I had ever done. Behind him, the ghouls lay out soundlessly. They were dying. Some I could see would likely never move again after today.

A chill ran through the air. I saw it among the ghouls but more so than anypony on Protégé. He visibly stiffened up.

“Master Red Eye cut off access to there. It was a place nopony could make safe. There were things-”

“They did not care. They sent in teams of slaves. It seemed to be working, they said that whatever had once been in the outer metro had died out. They even got a powered train down there to move and search. They said that it had been cut off on either end, away from the greater ring around the city, by collapsing tunnels. So they judged that it was safe.”

“They moved in and they found Ministry Station. A back entrance, a way that should not have been there. Something that didn't make sense. They sent more slaves in to start connecting it up to these tunnels more easily. They said it was safe.”

“It wasn't. We heard the screams echoing down through the outer metro into the inner. Their radios went wild with shrieks and cries about something...a...a smell or sounds. Grindstone ordered them to close up the tunnel. He just left them in there! Sealed them in with whatever it was, to prevent it getting out.”

“Yes. We moved freely in there for at least a day before anything emerged from the depths. So, if you must do it? A couple of small ponies might be able to-”

“No!” Nurse Splint pushed in. “Dozens died down there, Baton! The outer metro is not for ponies to ever walk within again! They never even got to see what it was, they just got the same warning that we all used to know before Red Eye! That if you smell mint on the wind, you die!”

They broke into argument. Protégé and I merely looked at each other. I could see he was shaking, just as I was. A decision lay here. We had a way to save my friends, but it involved going to the deepest, darkest, and most dangerous place in the entirety of Fillydelphia.

The words seemed impossible, but I still forced myself to turn and said them to Baton Round.

For all our arguing today, I felt Protégé's hoof on my shoulder, to try and calm me.

* * *

It wasn't easy to leave them behind. I could see how bad Baton Round's health was getting, alongside all of Weathervane's other old friends. He had trotted us out as far as his chain would allow, pointing down the tunnel and directing us back the way we'd came, to follow the slaves that had passed us.

Watching the ghouls shuffling away, grunting in pain and seeping from horrid injuries, I could only resolve to ensure we would come back for them. For their sake. For Weathervane's sake. He needed somepony he really knew to help him stay away from 'the feral,' as they called it, as much as they needed him to save their rapidly failing lives.

“We'll get them, Murk. Don't worry.” Protégé trotted beside me in the quiet tunnels with a stern face. “They've survived however many years, they will survive another few days until we can cleanse this place.”

I sighed. “How can we do that? This is such a big operation and Shackles has a lot of influ...influa...”

“Influence. Yes, he does. Hopefully, I can raise enough support of my own to at least warrant an investigation through Grizzly, or even Stern if we're lucky. It will take time, however. Time we do not have right now if they have already located Ministry Station. At the very least, after today, we shall know where it is as well.”

The knowledge of where I'd have to go to find the next step of our escape was hardly sitting well with me.

The tunnels around us stretched on, lit only by occasionally flickering gemlights that still did their duty after all these years, casting a pale white haze over the uneven concrete and rusted metal below us. Occasionally, wind would blow down the tunnel, drawn into motion by the fires the slavers lit for warmth. Feeling my mane blow lightly felt surreal so far beneath the ground, although Protégé told me that trains would once have also done this. Welded doors lined the sides occasionally, and we even had to pick our way around one abandoned train still sitting on the tracks. I dared not step inside it. A train this far from a station must have been abandoned for a reason.

Protégé glanced in through the loose passenger door, however. The sad look on his face spoke all that needed be said as he gently closed it over once again.

It became obvious we weren't discussing the subject of our destination. We both knew where we were going, yet he began to look back from ahead. I'd been falling behind, making tiny trots as though to prolong the time for arrival.

He waited for me. When we started trotting again, it was at my pace. I saw him checking his revolver a half a dozen times. I kept flicking my saddle's mouthpiece in and out.

We had been told to watch for the red signal lights still running and turn into the service tunnel there. It took a good ten minutes of slow and careful trotting over the uneven rails to spot the little blinking light up ahead. We must have been catching up on that group ahead of us from before, for I could hear low voices drifting out of the black fog further down the main metro line itself. Thankfully, we had reached our turn long before we’d go where they did. Go into the service tunnel, look for the maintenance room on the left hand side, and in there we'd find a stairway to the outer metro.

The service line was hardly as clear as the inner metro itself. The roof had partially cracked and dropped chunks of rock and rebar all around it, leading to a very cautious advance through it. Multiple times, I trotted right into a poking point of metal or banged my knee on a rock despite my pretty good sight in the dark. It became a game of tentatively pushing a hoof forward, feeling around, and then finally stepping. Puddles of foul water below us set my PipBuck clicking, and the ground became uneven in a torn part of the underground system. I wondered if we were below the crater, where the balefire’s enormous forces had cracked the metro’s tunnels apart completely.

“I think we should perhaps risk some light, Murk. This will take us all day. Your PipBuck?”

Looking down, I played around with it till I found the button for the light. Glimmerlight's repair work had done well. It responded after the first push this time, even if the bulb itself was still weak and inconsistent. One way or the other, it gave us something to see the floor by. Having some light helped me feel safer. Really, the inner metro was beginning to feel like a haven. Images of ghastly beasts and unthinkable creatures shrieking from the darkness and dragging me away underground played through my mind again and again.

After a moment, in an excuse to stop again, I turned down the PipBuck volume. Sundial's messages could be set off at this depth, and a sudden beeping was the last thing we needed. Mistakes couldn't be made. Not now.

“Have you noticed where we're going, Murk?” His dark coat was almost invisible in the tunnel. I could only barely see Protégé looking up at the ceiling.

“I mean above us. This is heading back in the direction toward the neighbourhood of the Ministry of Arcane Science. I suppose that's only logical, likely why they started hunting down here in the first place.”

“Not impossible. The Ministry turns up secrets every other month. There may be some form of hidden entrance inside or near to the Ministry that's difficult to find or activate from the surface. Maybe in a random house's cellar, or some secret elevator command.”

“The thought that something so unnatural and abandoned was always just below us; it made me sleep restlessly after I did my research into it. I...I’ve had nightmares of being trapped in the outer metro.”

Protégé walked near the wall, tracing the coloured lines that led to each door and around various arcane boxes containing the systems that no doubt powered the rails. Hearing him open up like this, I saw the same sort of look I'd only seen once before, as he'd tried to comfort me during Barb’s sick game, something that felt so long ago now.

Yet, suddenly, I didn't want to turn and say what I saw. It took a few attempts until I finally pointed.

Four entranceways lay ahead of us atop a raised stone platform that arced around the larger tunnel section. Short metal steps led up to them from either side. Climbing carefully, alert for any rusted steps ready to snap below us, we came to stand in front of the entrances.

The maintenance door was obvious amongst them. Protégé pointed out the word on a sign, but I could see the toolkit symbol. The others, it seemed, were sotrage for replacement track links and electrical components. Yet the maintenance access was lying open with a paper sign crudely nailed onto it. Trotting up, Protégé tore it off with his magic and read aloud.

“Lower levels quarantined by order of Master Grindstone. Do not descend stairs or remove barricade. Death awaits.”

We glanced at once another for a few seconds, before he gently let the sign fall into the train tracks behind us and warily stepped inside.

Behind the door lay an already stripped bare repair bay. Only a few steel tables and spare tracks and track pins lay against the walls, while every drawer, cupboard, and container had been looted clean by the slavers and now lay open and empty. On the walls, I saw posters and charts displaying measurements of nuts, wrenches and various safety regulations bearing the mark of the Ministry of Wartime Technology.

Before us, however, we could see the stairwell leading down. It had been blocked off by numerous barrels clustered together on the landing, and planks of wood nailed across the doorway out of the bay. The layout was clear, this was as much to try and stop us from going down, as it was to try and stop anything coming up.

That alone was unsettling enough, it was heightened by a square section of balsa wood nailed to the blockade, bearing a painting of a screaming pony across it, circled and crossed in red paint. A warning from somepony who couldn't write meant for those that couldn't read. They didn't want to risk anyone going down by accident.

Putting his hooves around the rotten wood, Protégé pulled near the nails and prised a few of them apart. The sign came off easily, clearing the way into the blocked stairwell. Stepping through, I found a long drop where an elevator had had once gone. The stairs surrounded the empty pit, winding around the cage that blocked anyone falling down where the elevator had once moved. Below us, I could see the shimmer of a puddle and little else as it fell into the depths. We were going deeper underground.

“The outer metro is significantly lower in places than the inner, Murk. This could be a trek. So...ready?”

Biting my lip, I tentatively stepped around the crudely stacked barrels, following him onto the stairs. I couldn't believe I was going this way. They were down there. The outer metro was a death zone. Someplace ponies didn't go.

Protégé hesitated, before shifting another barrel to the side and reaching the first landing.

“Master Red Eye faced down this place before. I...I'm just trying to think that perhaps I can steel myself as he did. Now, come on. Let's get this over with, before we both lose our nerve.”

All the same, even as I shook terribly and began to travel down after him, I could see that he wasn't as calm as his own words.

Flight after flight, around the rusting cage elevator, we travelled down into the damp and dark void below us. I strained my ears, but all I heard were the drips or sounds of slavers passing by the maintenance room above us.

My PipBuck light illuminated stained walls rotting with soft weeds. About half way down, I felt the stairs change from stone to a thin metal with punctured holes in them, reminding me all too uncomfortably of the hazy thoughts from when I'd dreamed in a coma not a couple of days ago. Cages and metal stairs.

Every second, I expected to hear something unnatural. To feel a chill on my spine. Protégé even put his eyepiece back on, activating his E.F.S; he wasn’t taking chances.

Eventually, reaching the bottom, we found what truly sealed the over metro. A colossal metal door stood before us.

“An old fire door, to contain any metro incidents from reaching the other tunnel. This would hold anything in or out.”

My eyes had found the blinking control panel to the side. Holding my PipBuck near for him, Protégé toyed with the controls. It was all I could do to not beg him out of opening it.

It really began to hit home. A real and true fear that made my gut twist, my stomach feel empty and set my hooves pacing. We were going to some place that had monsters known for killing hundreds of ponies, and no one had ever seen them. How could he expect me to do this?

Looking at his face, I saw that I was not alone. We were both scared. Sighing, I turned back and looked up.

“Rotten mint. If we smell rotten mint, we simply gallop back the way we came. Don't hesitate. Don't stare in fear. Just...just run. Don't look back.”

“I d-don't want to do this, P-Protégé...” The thought of me admitting this when I had to help my friends made me feel wretched.

“Neither do I, Murk. These tunnels...we sealed them for a reason. Even Master Red Eye d-doesn't talk of what really happened.”

“Are you sure? We could hide in the slave lines! We could bribe somepony! Or wait for them to come out?”

My voice raised in pitch each time. I put both my hooves on his shoulder, as though pleading.

Protégé simply shook his head. I knew he was right. I'd seen how stringent Shackles' nest was, and we had no idea what lay beyond. I heard him take a quick breath, pushing his courage to do it.

He hoofed a large blue button, having to push hard until the rusted device actually depressed. For a few seconds, nothing seemed to happen. Until a deafening whine of hydraulics filled the room, followed by the groan of metal being torn from its rusted stasis. To our right, a red light began flashing and spinning, casting its dual spotlights all around the bottom of the stairwell and playing havoc with my night-vision.

I could see the door before us begin to lift. Thick and heavy, it slowly rose up, giving us a view of our destination, of the outer metro.

Before my eyes could even adjust, other senses felt the difference immediately. A slight breeze carried a crude, milky damp that washed through my nostrils. A strange warmth followed it, sticky and humid, trapped underground with no outlet to cool down. It reminded me of the Stable, yet with a rough, earthy tinge to it instead of the oil and metal. A sweet scent that burned my nostrils.

The moment the door raised up, something lunged out of it. I screamed. I even heard Protégé yell as we both fell back. I saw a revolver drawn and scrambled to turn in the wet ground. A crackling, boney noise fell around us with movement all along the bottom of the door.

I was already going for the stairs, my wings flaring out in shock. I heard Protégé move quickly behind me.

Protégé stood sweating below, breathless and coming down from the adrenaline spike. He was looking toward the door.

Below it, I saw the remains of ponies. Skeletal, bearing still-decomposing flesh, they had fallen against the door, left behind when Grindstone had sealed it. There were at least a dozen of them, torn bodies that had been lying in a heap against the gate. They’d finally gotten through it as soon as it had opened.

I had to hold my stomach and turn away when I realised that it was only parts of them, more-so when the sickly sweet smell hit my nostrils. The farther in I saw from my PipBuck’s weak light casting into the outer metro, the more I saw body parts simply strewn around. One face still bore a scream upon it, a mask of terror and agony. There was no rhyme or reason, no repeated patterns of death. Some had been torn apart from the chest outward. Others limb from limb. Some were intact with their necks bent at unnatural angles. Some had no significant pieces left to recognise them at all.

Enough. I couldn't look. Holding my eyes shut, I had to let Protégé lead me past them. I could hear my heart racing, feel the sweat dripping down over my closed eyelids. I didn't want to be here. I really didn't want to be here! Please, please, please let me just pass without incident! Tell me they'd gone away, that these ponies had killed whatever it was!

Coming to the bottom of the stairs, I had to gently help my wings to rest against my side again. Their newly strengthening muscles twinged after having sprung open in shock.

“They were locked in.” Protégé's voice held no anger, simply a horrified realisation.

Stepping inside, I had to check that the door wasn't going to close behind us as I got my first look at the tunnels of the outer metro myself.

It could not have been more distinct from the inner ones we had just been in. Instead of the smooth concrete, it was made of brickwork and sandstone. The outer metro tunnel was rectangular instead of curved, other than the arch along the roof. Up there, I could see tangled power lines where trains must have once connected to get their energy from. Below us there was little other than thicker metal rails and inconsistently sized wooden blocks for a train to run on, not the same powered ones we had seen before upstairs.

“This place is old, even by wartime Equestrian standards.” Protégé shifted along the small platform and glanced down the lines either way. “I'd heard the outer metro was different, like a maze, but I hadn't realised it was like this. Remarkable it even stayed intact in the balefire impact. Look, are those mosaics up there?”

This hardly felt important to talk about, but I knew he was trying to distract himself. I could see the cracks in the strange, almost ornate patterns in the roof, and missing bricks that now clustered in piles on the rails or to either side. Moss actually grew down here, turning the ground into a sticky mush while the air held a faint, still mist. Even as I walked, it felt wrong to be wandering through air so still that my own movements sent a ripple effect through the trails I could see floating above me.

It felt all too otherworldly. Like someplace where evils beyond my imagination could lurk.

Snapped to attention by his words, I turned to find Protégé. The slaver had trotted down the platform to gaze into the tunnel. We'd been told to go left, take no side tunnels, and that we'd know the area when we saw it. Trying to avoid moving near to the smeared remains of those who had been trapped here, I couldn't help but notice how the line of bodies went all the way to where Protégé was. Around the rusted mesh wire holding defunct generators, I saw him trot toward a lump in the darkness.

“The ghoul said they'd mounted a cart down here. I think we may have found it.”

I moved closer and saw what he meant. Upon the tracks, just where the dead ponies had come from, was a small wagon with a crudely wired engine and pistons to let it move on the tracks. Three seats faced us with another three on the opposite end. A little area for supplies was mounted between the seats.

“Looks like it just stalled and cut out. It still works. I don't know about you Murk, but I would much rather to have something that can get us back here fast if we have to. At least we know the door is open.”

“B-but noise...” I bit my lip, advancing around the rails rather than continue walking through the decaying remains all the way to the cart. “It might bring them!”

“They were working here for days before it happened, Murk. I...I think that it should be fine. Listen, we're both injured and only just properly healing now. I don't think either of us can claim to be the fastest galloping ponies around. If anything happens, we need a way out. This almost worked for them.”

“Almost.” I looked back at the door, afraid it might close on its own. “B-but...okay.”

I began to climb up onto the powered rail-wagon, taking his hoof as he pulled me into a seat. He breathed out slowly, playing his hooves over the levered controls until he found a large key.

Twisting it, I heard a dull squirting warble of the engine mounted just behind us. Cutting out, spluttering, it died. He tried again, then again. Finally, with a roar that sounded shockingly loud in the quiet tunnels, it caught and surged into being. Before us, two huge lamps illuminated the tunnels ahead of us with their hanging weeds and uneven muddy ground around stained brickwork. Farther than twenty feet, the darkness simply ate the light.

I was taking long breaths. Through the lingering mist, even the sway of underground vegetation or a puff of warm air felt like some sort of ghost. I heard Protégé curse quietly as he played with the levers, eventually finding one that released tension and set the rail-wagon rolling slightly forward. Then, with a grinding squeal, it began to pick up speed.

“Here we go.” He pushed the lever forward with a hoof after resting his revolver right beside him. Carefully, slowly, we began to accelerate, and I saw the metro's brick walls shift past us a little faster. Giant pillars holding up the arches above them swooped by as we rounded the corner and passed out of the station.

Gripping the seat, I simply held Unity's Littlepip statuette close to my chest and tried my best to not whimper too loudly.

* * *

Shivering, I had to force my eyes open from curling up in the seat. Protégé's voice was strained, tense, and reflecting the same anxious nature I could see on his face as he kept the speed controlled over the ramps and unstable rails of the ancient tunnels.

Biting my lip, I looked up and around. These ghostly tunnels were flying by a little faster than I'd expected. Little rushes of air blew over us every time we passed a set of pillars; them being placed at odd intervals with no consistent pattern. Our passing disturbed the strange underground fog that had gathered in here, making it part and twist behind us in small spirals. Casting my eyes around, I saw our rail-wagon pushing its way through vegetation and passing under dripping water from partially collapsed sections of roof. With Protégé driving, I had to watch our sides and presumably, our rear.

“Do you see anything?” For Protégé, this was a rather stupid question, like he just wanted to hear communication. I somewhat felt the same.

“N-no.” Behind us, the tunnels curved away and were lost to the dull yellow gemlights that barely lit our way. “It's like it's dead.”

I wasn't sure if I believed myself. Every so often, I'd hear faint noises in the distance. Rocks cracking, wood creaking...all too often like something alive moving down one of the many side tunnels.

“Pray it stays this way.” Protégé simply muttered, before scowling as the rail-wagon jarred and bounced over a broken junction. The engine cut out, sending us drifting forward on momentum. After a horrifying few seconds of silence, it spluttered to life again.

I was just watching the side tunnels instead. Each one gave way to thick darkness. Some were as thin as alleyways, hiding the unsettling orange lights of repair rooms or old generator clusters. We passed a construction area made of rotting wood that barely held up an unfinished piece of brickwork refurbishment. I whimpered when I saw long-dead bones huddled together in the corner, surrounded by empty food packets.

“Oh for the love of-!” The engine cut out again, this time long enough that the wagon rolled to a halt on a flat stretch. The lamps died, leaving us isolated in the flickering green glow of my PipBuck.

“It's just stalled out.” He gunned the engine once, then again. Each time, it died.

I felt my hooves shaking. Keeping the light away from my eyes, I peered into the darkness. Without proper light, the underground mist flowed and twisted in the black like moving shapes in the distance. My ears twitched, hearing distant sounds. Creaks and rumbles. Drips and brief sounds like a kind of 'whup whup whup' in the far off tunnels. The heat down here was making my mane stick to me, so clammy and uncomfortably close. I couldn't even hear the sounds of industry above us, we were so deep now.

My ears twitched in the thick air. I could hear so much in such a silent place. Little drips or pebbles falling. The vibration of the passing rail-wagon had been making things fall from the roof.

Everything went deathly silent. He was breathing hard, his revolver pointing to the left...then the right. I saw his eye glance more intently at his headpiece.

He turned, gunning it once more as I stared in the direction we had looked. Groans of moving air in the tunnels came from either side. Behind us and to the left, I heard a pop, like something wet and sticky bursting.

Squinting my eyes, I saw there was a door right there, falling apart from time. The sounds were coming from there. From within the haze behind that rotted door. I kept hearing things, little noises I couldn't identify, before-

I yelped as a sudden noise broke through the air. The engine flared back to life, and light washed over the tunnels. Falling back in the seat, I saw a foul mess near the door, stained yellow like pus. It glistened and seemed to creep up the walls and door from inside. Some sort of spreading, mutated fungus that had overwhelmed the entire room.

The rail-wagon began to move along, clicking and clacking its way over the uneven tracks.

“Murk, try to pace your breathing.” Protégé looked away briefly from the tunnel at me.

I hadn't even noticed that I was hyperventilating and gripping the seat tightly. “I...I...trying...”

We passed a full crossing, one side entirely collapsed and sunken with earth and the other leading to a concrete dead end where a platform narrowed into a caged area. Benches and lockers lay within that were so rusted they had begun to disintegrate. There was a safe there, but any wish to stop and loot was far from my mind.

“My E.F.S. Usually it picks up masses of signatures from things like radroaches and tox-slugs when I'm underground. But it's got absolutely nothing. It's like anything in here has just...gone. We've tried all sorts of infestation control, and it's never worked. But here...”

We passed beneath a gaping hole where huge fans lay inactive, the sound of a large passage making a strange groaning hum from our speed.

My teeth were grinding rather uncomfortably, but I couldn't help it. Climbing into the back of the rail-wagon, I kept trying to peer as deeply as I could into those passageways while hunkered down beneath its raised sides.

With a sudden clank that jarred us both, the style of the tracks seemed to change. We passed under an elaborate arch, Celestia and Luna engraved into either side, and suddenly the area overhead was smothered with thick cobwebs that stretched for metres in every direction. The green light of my PipBuck turned to a sickly yellow as it hit them, giving the small area I could light tunnel a pus-like colour. We saw shreds of rotting flesh by the wayside. At a guess, it was those that hadn't gotten on the wagon in time during the evacuation.

I squeaked slightly, perhaps not even heard by Protégé. But looking down at my PipBuck, I held it close to me and kept the volume low. I didn't need anything being heard by Protégé by accident that I didn't want him knowing...

“I don't have long. They've left me somewhere while they check something. They've brought me underground to some huge chamber just behind somepony's cellar and locked me in while they went deeper. They've been right beneath us all this time! The zebras have been right here!”

So they had taken him to the metro first. That just about confirmed right off the mark that Aurora was involved with them. I kept looking around as we passed away from the cobwebs into the darkness once again. Even the interest of Sundial wasn't enough to quell my fear. We began passing through an open area filled with wooden beams and old storage pallets piled high with bricks and a thousand dark places to hide.

“A-apparently, I've to work on something for them. They asked me what kind of terminal I used so they could get one for me. They have something for us to do, some job they need Wartime workers who know arcane things to help with. Oh, Pinkie...please help me get out of this when I know enough. If I could go now and just tell her where they are, I would! I-wait. I think they're coming back. It's some sort of elevator that goes down below the city! I can hear it coming up!”

A shriek from mismatching rails sent sparks flying off the wall, illuminating stone carvings of the sun and moon that had been warped and corrupted by moss and lichen. Protégé pulled back the speed, but going downhill, I could still feel the rush of air pick up. We were going faster!

“I just keep feeling like I'm out of my depth. I don't know why I'm here, even though I...well, do. I'm not the pony for this. They've got others in here with me. They look like refugees. I don't know any of them. I just have to keep reminding myself who I'm doing this for!”

Barely able to listen, I grabbed the holds of the wagon and held tight! Lights in the labyrinthian side tunnels flashed by faster as we rode around a corner. I could have sworn I saw something dash by ahead of us in the lamps under the mist! Ahead, I saw flickering red and orange lights spearing through the fog.

“They're coming now. To take me down. Sky, Dad...Mom. Whatever happens now, I love you all, okay? I have to stop before they hear me. Whoever finds this, I hope you can understand why I did what I did. I-”

An exotic tone cut through the speaker as though from further away. The fog swirled all around, becoming thicker and cut with heavy particles of dust that hung in the air. I jolted forward as Protégé hit the brakes, the lights ahead beaming harshly into our eyes before the rail-wagon slammed to a halt on the end of the line with a juddering snap. I flew forward into the front seats with a yelp.

Protégé snapped up his revolver, staggering to his hooves as he pointed it all around above me. I could hear groans and distant pattering sounds. Somewhere, a pipe gurgled. Every noise sounded alive, the heat having staved off suddenly to a dull, lukewarm ambience. I heard Protégé leap off onto the soggy floor.

“Let's go Murk. We're here. I don't want to hang around here any longer than we have to. This place is not natural...”

Creeping up, I poked my head above. The brickwork was patchy and stained with a dark red. It led to a massive hole in the wall. Mining tools scattered the floor where they had been left. Some bore black marks on their blades, the same as that on the bricks. As I stepped off the wagon, the ground sank beneath my hooves for a few inches, and I dared not look down too closely to see why.

Through the hole, carved into the remnants of some archive room, we could see that somepony had knocked clean through the wall into something else entirely. In here, there were massive rows of filing cabinets and haphazardly stacked boxes. All of them, and most of the floor, were covered in rotted paper. The architecture changed slightly in here. Once past the cut rock leading into this document room, I could see the glint of metal and polished tiles alongside smooth walls that had once clearly been a bright white. No longer.

Protégé led the way in, his revolver whipping from side to side rapidly. Ancient papers were strewn by more rotting bodies lay all around. Grindstone hadn't just left a team down here. He'd created a massacre to contain the threat.

Slowly, both of us hesitating and glancing at one another nervously, we shifted onward into the hole, passing into whatever this place was that Shackles' teams had found.

As I moved, I heard somepony else shifting and almost freaked on the spot before noticing it was my PipBuck. Sundial, with his PipBuck still active, was being marched into the lift. I heard the cries of ponies echoing, as he entered into the same place as this two hundred years before.

* * *

Protégé went first, stepping in with his revolver raised and E.F.S active. The hole itself was a good six feet deep, a thick wall that had been mined through to reach this place. The presence of metal linings and mesh wire perhaps hinted they'd spotted it through an air duct that once stood here.

What we had found was a connecting underground corridor. It bore the same brickwork as the outer metro, still clearly of the same era. Yet the light fittings and flooring seemed newer, more wartime in their design. Protégé looked down and trotted in a circle as he looked at it. I cast my light for him to see. Mouldy tiles ran along the edges with a laminated centre. Other than two hundred years of disuse, it would have been seemed pristine. Clean. Clinical.

“The doors are prefabs, Murk. Somepony refitted this place from what it once was. The outer metro has many old constructs within it where ponies once did engineering work or held storage areas.”

My hooves made little tapping sounds on the floor, which was different from the more common, satisfying 'clack' of stone that I'd become used to. Even those tiny sounds seemed to carry for a long way. Dirt had trailed all the way in and inactive lanterns hung on either side, but this place seemed frighteningly basic and secluded. The gloom went off into the distance, revealing the prefab doors Protégé mentioned. Almost a half dozen in a line along this corridor ended with double doors bearing cracked glass.

“He said it's through this place that you get to Ministry Station, right?” I kept my voice low, my head as well. Every few seconds I checked behind me.

Gently, we stuck to one side and crept further toward the double doors. Each one of the prefabs we passed was jammed shut, bearing huge metal padlocks over bars that blocked them off.

Suddenly, I heard something. Every muscle in my body stiffened painfully as I heard the definite sound of movement behind us. I dared not speak. I simply spun around fast enough to attract Protégé's attention. Gasping, he backed off and pointed the muzzle of his weapon at the hole.

The sound kept going. Earth and metal being rung upon. Then I began to hear something Protégé had mentioned a long time ago. I heard a distant beep. I swallowed only to find my throat dry...something was out in the tunnels we'd come through. I glanced to Protégé and found him sweating profusely, his mouth open a little.

Looking closely, I saw his eyes wide in terror. There was a tiny, deeper red dot on his eyepiece shivering wildly from side to side.

We held still for a few moments. Slowly, he began to back off, his hoof nudging me to back away from the hole as well. Dust fell from it, disturbed by our passing. The opposite route down this new place was filled only with hazy yellow dust swirls hanging in the air. My eyes ached to let loose tears in stark terror.

Beside me, I heard Protégé sniff the air every few seconds, just to check. I heard it again, a little far off bleep like an alarm clock, echoing down the tunnels.

“It's gone. But whatever it was, to be so far away and move that fast from side to side, it must be-”

“D-don't...” I had to stop him. My imagination didn't need anything more to work with. I wanted to run away, run and hide, get back to the inner metro. Yet, now that I knew it was out there, I didn't know what to do. And that thought was the worst of all.

“We shouldn't be here, Murk. We might have gotten lucky. Let's get farther inside, maybe they're just in the tunnels.”

Sounding calmer than I, he turned to the double doors and gently eased one of them aside. They creaked, turning on rusted hinges, and I couldn't help but keep watching behind.

Daring to turn and quickly move through after him, we found ourselves in a much larger room. Basic metal benches lined the entirely tiled floor that led up to a canteen at the far end. It seemed normal, other than that the kitchen was protected with mesh wire, only bearing a hole for food to be passed out.

We moved in, stepping over discarded metallic trays and shattered bowls. Both were stained green from where food had once rotted away. Straws and plastic cups lay near them. I tried to ignore the shattered skeletons near the door, yet Protégé wandered nearer them and lifted a riot shotgun in his magic.

“Empty. Loose casings on the floor. They fought here. These sorts of weapons were given to security guards more often than anypony else.”

“What does that mean?” I didn't turn to him, instead looking up at the massive banner still hung above the area with smiling ponies beside white-clad employees handing them hay and flower sandwiches.

“It means something down here needed guarding. I've never read about anywhere like this in any of my books on Fillydelphian history. Some sort of prison the Ministries kept hidden away?”

I knew the Ministry of Morale was known for that, yet I couldn't bring myself to believe it. Pinkie would have mentioned it, wouldn't she?

We continued on, shifting toward the larger doors that lay ajar out of this place. On the wall beside them, I could see dark stains alongside impacts from buckshot cracking the old bricks. Despite being away from the tunnels, this was still the outer metro. All this new place had done was put new age materials inside old tunnels. Try as it might, it couldn't hide the grim sickness and dull green moss growing everywhere.

The door was heavy, leading to us both pushing it open at once. To my surprise, there was a dull light through here, like the next room was still lit.

Yet, trotting through, we found something far deeper than what I had expected down here.

We were standing on the upper level of a plaza, similar in shape to the one in the Mall, if smaller and more crowded. Our level was like a rectangle around a large open-plan hole in the middle. It was dimly illuminated from barely active gem lights in the ceiling that flickered and cut out every few seconds. Dark and mouldy tiles clicked beneath our hooves, while tangled wires were strung over the gap at the centre.

“What in Equestria...” I breathed in disbelief as I stepped over to the edge of the hole to look down.

This was a haunting place, as dark and gothic as it was sterile by design, with enormous columns that rose past us into arches on the tall ceiling. I could see three floors below us through the great balcony-ringed hole. Rows of doors littered every level. Each one bore a small viewport in it, surrounded by rubber sealings and sliding locks. Down there, amongst the mist, there lay a shattered ground level, similar to the ancient designs in the metro. A giant clock face had been dashed upon the floor below, fallen from a broken mural on the wall, and was now surrounded by a cluster of skeletons and piles of metal beds and chairs in the centre of the room. Other remains lay upon the floors above as they ringed around the great rectangular hole.

“This is no quick refit. This is something older.” Protégé breathed lightly, before whipping around. “Back! Into that room, there!”

We shifted quickly as he pulled one of the iron doors open. Diving inside, I felt the ground soften with a warm dampness. Protégé backed in, his weapon pointed through the crack in the door. He'd seen something on E.F.S further off. I couldn't help but creep nearer, focussing my ears and peering out. I listened for beeping.

I yelped in fright. That had been right beside me! I felt Protégé clamp his hoof over my mouth to keep me quiet.

It was my PipBuck! I wrestled with the volume switch, how had it turned back up? Convincing him to let me go, I held it closer to me in the darkness of this tiny room we hid in.

He cut out. In the distance, I heard something fall and clatter upon a tiled floor. Then I heard a door slammed shut. Whimpering, I turned away, back to my PipBuck as Sundial returned.

“S-sorry, they were near. I'm down here now, trying to record what I see, l-like Pinkie asked. This is incredible. Incredible and terrifying. They've got a whole operation down here in some sort of station! There's bucks and mares I knew from work who went missing here! Every so often I see troops of ponies like refugees. But they look more like slaves. They don't look happy...”

“Every room I go by, they've got some sort of odd tool inside with a few workers. Zebras sometimes pass with these weird weapons to keep an eye out, way more than could normally sneak in. Are they planning an underground invasion? They've told me to work on the same things I helped design in the Ministry, to make miniaturised spark batteries like I did for the armour. I don't know why.”

“Murk, we have to move soon. We can't stay here. The signal's gone.” Protégé didn't turn around when he spoke. I saw him push the door open a little and had to fight the temptation to tell him not to.

“But I did see something. Those refugees, they're taking them somewhere else! Somewhere deeper. One look through the door, I saw it looked like some sort of prison, they even had guards. I swear I saw somepony too. I don't believe my eyes but I'm-I'm sure it was her.”

“She was directing things, talking to zebras and looking over what we're doing here. I know it's her. I saw the pony who leads the Ministry of Arcane Science in Fillydelphia. Aurora Star is a traitor.”

I'd known it, but somehow hearing it in his voice made it all seem much more real. Aurora Star had betrayed ponykind to work for the zebras. She had turned against them, working against Equestria from beneath the very city she’d sworn to Twilight Sparkle herself she would defend.

Protégé pushed the door fully open. Shaking, I followed him only to see him look back into it.

This place, it isn't a prison.” I saw him bite his lip. “It's an asylum.”

Quickly, he moved around, looking over the lip of the rails surrounding the gap between floors.

I nodded, before cringing and whining under my breath when another creaking slam came from somewhere above us. I heard something moving on creaking floorboards.

    “Protégé. Why didn't you see this one? It sounds closer...”

    “I don't know. I don't know. Let's go. Right now. Just hope it's a wayward ghoul or...or something. We need to find the way through. Stay quiet. Don't speak.”

He trotted, then cantered, and clearly had to stop himself galloping from nerves to get through this nightmarish place. We headed around the balcony, passing each of the barred asylum rooms as we went. Some lay open like the one we'd hid in and held nothing but festering wool leaking from the padded walls, or the remains of broken chains and dark stains.

We found some stairs and hopped down the gap in them. Picks lay nearby. Somepony had started destroying this stairwell but had gotten caught before they could finish. Coming to the next floor, and pushing open the heavy wooden and glass windowed doors, we saw that this one straightened out at the end. It had a much larger 'common' area underneath where we had been on the floor above, that stretched back into the wall. Passing quickly alongside the guard rail into the hole again, we moved toward it. In theory, a common room might have a route to the main way in, right? As we moved cautious, I kept seeing shadows moving in here, in the hole to the next floor, or within abandoned inmate rooms. They sprang and stuttered with the inconsistent light of my PipBuck.

Protégé pointed to a sign. I didn’t know for what, as it held a word I was in no mindset to struggle to read right now, but the little picture of a pony running toward a door beside it gave me a clue. This place was, according to Sundial, lower than the Ministry Station, so any emergency exit had to be toward the level the station was on. Right? Did that make sense? I hoped so. The increasing sense that this place had realized that its territory had been breached by two wandering ponies grew with every metre we moved into it. I didn't dare think about how far we had to gallop if we needed to flee back to the rail-wagon.

Then I heard it again. A distant beeping. Feeling about ready to just curl up and cry, I tapped Protégé's shoulder to get him to look around. Judging by the angle of his head, it was above us again. The noise got louder. A locked door was struck so hard that even Protégé heard it. Then it was hit again...and again.

We both staggered back and huddled against the wall as an unearthly shriek pierced the air in the asylum. Long, high-pitched, and only growing louder and higher, it echoed down the hallways from wherever it was. I heard a shattering of metal, as whatever door had dared bar its way broke down. I felt my cheeks become wet. I even saw Protégé look frozen in terror. Something was in here, and it was very real. I felt him pull my hoof, dragging me onward. At a canter, we kept moving.

Repeating the mantra again and again to make me feel safer, I stuck to the rules. We didn't smell anything, so it wasn't near. Sound just echoed here a lot. It wasn't near us! It couldn't be!

Passing into the common area, overgrown plants in pots wrapped around the benches they had clung to and almost tripped me. My PipBuck began clicking to warn of radiation. Tugging on Protégé's clothing, I pulled him away from where it was. Had something got caught in radiation down here? How could Balefire reach so deep?

Avoiding the radiation took us closer to the larger rooms where I guessed staff might have once resided, at the far side of this level. Only, something caught my eye. Wires and thick cables snaked into it, and I could see the faded light of a terminal. The cables looked too new for this old place.

New things looking out of place were what we were looking for down here in the first place.

“In here,” I whispered into his ear before creeping forward to poke my head inside.

There were terminals all right. A whole bank of them connected to the cables were placed on a crude desk. Yet what lay before them is what had caught my eyes. In this area of all places, I saw something I recognised from long ago. A huge machine that dominated the room. A pony could sit in it, with straps that held them tight and a headset hanging on a half-torn cable above it.

After a second, I realised something. It was two machines, two machines I had seen in two separate places connected.

Aurora Star's memory machine for ponies who didn't have magic seemed to have been combined with the device that had created spell orbs in the Stable. Two kinds of research had been connected down here. A machine that showed you memories combined with a machine that created orbs you could learn from. Was this to...no, this was beyond my mind to guess. This was something for Glimmerlight to figure out.

“The fact that this strapped its users in pretty harshly worries me, Murk.” Protégé shifted the leather straps with a hoof. “You only do that if it creates spasms-”

“Or if somepony didn't want to do it.” I finished for him, a hoof gently caressing one of my own wings. Still unused to them, they had remained frozen to my side since we entered this place.

Trotting back, he made it very clear that we weren't pausing to go terminal file hunting. Yet even as we passed outside, I saw more rooms next to the chamber. They contained surgery beds, stained with oddly-coloured liquids and ranks of unidentifiable bottles near them. Lamps craned over each one, while loose buckles hung from either side. Suddenly, the groaning of the decrepit structure was all too eerily similar to what my imagination saw this place sounding like while in operation. Ponies had not been treated well here.

Across the common area lay various open windows. Cracked, and in some places, shattered, they looked in on a third chamber bearing banks of similar machines. Memory machines, all linked to one glowing orb at the top. Locked in its own little cage, there was no way we could access it, and I highly doubted Protégé would want to use it. Now was no time for memory orbs.

“Memory technology?” Protégé peered closer. “Why would you force somepony to watch a memory? Some sort of torture? Interrogation?”

“Or to show them something?” I added, before realising that that is pretty much the purpose of memory orbs anyway. I cast one more look into the room before turning to leave.

I did see one thing. Lying on the ground was a pack bearing the mark of Red Eye. Reaching over, I pulled it up and found it to contain little more than an audio tape. Ensuring the volume was low, I plugged it into my PipBuck as we trotted on.

“They told me it was safe! They told me there were no monsters in the old metro! They lied to me! They lied! They're all dying out there now! Can you hear me? Do you read? Do...do you hear me!?”

“There was something downstairs! We were sent to turn the power back on, but it was down there! This smell, a horrible smell! Can you hear me!? Get out if you smell it! GET OUT! GET OUT BEFORE THEY COME! PLEASE HELP ME! HELP! HELP ME, SOMEONE!”

I had to turn the volume down again as he shrieked. Protégé glanced around quickly, revolver creeping up again. The buck in the recording let his yelling fall to a defeated whimper.

In the distance, I heard something. A banging of doors followed by some sort of frantic movement and mad shrieks. Something knew where he was. It was coming.

“I can smell it. Oh no, I can smell it again! The rotten stench! Death! They're here! They’re h- NO I DON'T WANT THEM TO BE HERE, GO AWAY! SOMEPONY GET ME OUT OF HERE! NO!”

He dropped the device. The microphone crackled from the fall and the dent on the side suddenly made sense. He wailed, rushing off in the distance, his galloping quickly fading from the recording. In the time after he had fled, the sound of movement only increased in volume, getting closer, and closer, and louder!

The horrid sound of something approaching stayed in my ears as I showed him the recorder.

Behind us, a tremendous slam of metal echoed across the entire balconied section of the asylum.

We both turned, a cold sweat forming on me as I saw dust explode from one of the locked and sealed doors. It struck again, throwing up more pebbles and fragments of brick. Dulled, yet high-pitched, a great, unearthly shriek of bile and rage keened out from behind it. The noise made my legs go weak. I fell. My entire body felt frozen up as I heard it.

Huge thumps, rends, and slams sent the heavy door buckling in its slot! A gurgling howl, desperate and repeating, roared up from behind it.

“It-it doesn't show on E.F.S...” I heard Protégé, his revolver shaking even in his magic as it raised. “Why can’t I see it!?”

The door bent inward as the seal broke. The frame fell off, leaving only the hinges to hold it back.

There was a tiny hole at the top of the door that now let the smell seep into the room and burn my nostrils.

He grabbed me, threw me ahead of him, and then took off. I couldn't do anything but scream until my throat gave out and sprint after him. The world around me became a blur. My eyes watered. My heart slammed against my ribcage with every single smash of the door behind us. The shrieking became a cry of desperation and infernal rage, as though it sensed us getting away from it. An unnatural ambience, like a low moan, began coming from every corridor and air vent that grew until it filled my ears with its deathly, haunting sound.

Protégé rounded a corner, easily overtaking me. I hoped he knew where we were! I saw open doors!

I felt exhausted, my injuries coming up as I exerted myself. Concern for my own lack of speed made me doubt myself. We ran through banks of broken doors. Every room held its own obstacles to climb, jump or crawl around. I at some point leapt over several beds crammed into an old fitness room. Behind us, I heard that worst of sounds.

There was no delay. No great scream from whatever it was. I simply heard something push the door aside and tear off after us. I felt my wings shivering, moving instinctively to try and speed me up. Protégé hit a door ahead of us, rebounded from its padlock, and fumbled with his revolver to aim it and blast the lock off. The first shot missed entirely, the second skiffed it. I heard him curse in a way that hardly befitted him before the third sheared the lock off. We ran through. Ahead, I saw a glint of green, the same symbol for the exit!

Both of us almost fell down the stairs, slamming into the wall of the landing before rebounding off to launch down the next flight. Behind us, the sound of something tearing past beds, upturning them, and screeching with lust and a desperate want and need to catch us. The stairs we went down led to another twisting series of wards. I was completely lost. I didn't remember where we'd turned, and I barely got a sense of where we were.

We came to a crumbled section of roof, sheer rock jutting down. Squeezing, turning side on, I had to wriggle past the thin gap it left. I threw myself into it behind Protégé, kicking and pushing with my exposed hind section until I was just inching through. I felt Protégé pull me from the other side, the clamor near behind me! I couldn't see it! I was trapped and I couldn't see what was bearing down on me! I screamed as something slammed into me, until I realised it was Protégé's magic pulling me through. Something scrambled, fumbling at the wreckage I‘d just emerged from before turning and leaving, a sound like tearing on every motion, tinged with metallic tinkling.

Then the unthinkable. I heard a second howl join the first. It came from the corridors beyond us. Somewhere off to the right, a beeping sound picked up as I saw a flash of movement in the shadows outside of this room. We were far past it before I actually saw anything, but I heard the the frenzied screeching and that low, drawn-out moaning erupt from those deep corridors. The distance made me wonder just how huge this place was.

It tore into the room behind us, bringing a wave of nauseous smells in its wake. Protégé turned and slammed a filing cabinet down in front of the door we just passed, locking it in behind us. Peeled wallpapers of a peaceful Equestria lined the walls on either side, and maps of the area fallen upon the floor. The door behind us shattered, the wood and glass exploding like shrapnel.

Protégé led us through what I suddenly realised was a reception, yet Protégé turned away from it as though to run deeper in! I shouted to him, grabbed his hoof.

I just cried words wildly as I ran instead to the main doors, suddenly realising my guilt that I had just run ahead and not even helped him up. It was getting hard to see. I felt dizzy as I slammed into the heavier doors. Behind us, the creaking moan, beeps, and howls grew closer. The smell grew greater. I struck the doors again and again, but they wouldn't open. I cried to anything to save me, until Protégé pushed past and pulled a huge lever to the side. With a dull clank, the doors began to open just enough for us to squeeze through. I didn't even see what was on the other side before I ran into the wooden planks barricaded over the entrance. I heard his gun fire, and I squeezed through the shattered hole. Somewhere, somehow, I felt another lever on the other side and pulled it.

Turning back, I saw the entrance closed over like the ones on the inner metro. Signs of danger had been painted across it. Falling off the lever, I saw the doors begin to slam shut again. Through the tiny hole, I caught one final whiff of the smell before they came together. The last thing I saw was the doors to the reception blasting open as though Brimstone himself had charged them.

These metal doors were too thick to break. The creatures slammed into them and pounded hard. I heard their muffled, horrific sounds for minutes afterwards as we limped and clambered away. They made keening wails that cut deep into me. Each scream went on for half a minute or more. I hadn't even seen Protégé until we emerged into a dark tunnel.

Protégé fell against the wall, slumping. His ponytailed mane had come loose in the frantic chase, and I saw him lean over, his revolver and eyepiece falling to the ground as he put his head in his hooves.

As for myself, I simply found the nearest corner, curled up with my wings and hooves around me, and finally let it all out as the adrenaline painfully wore off.

* * *

We had shifted away from the door the moment we got our breath back. Neither of us wanted to be anywhere near the asylum right now, and it was all I could do to stop my imagination running rampant with replays of that minute of terror. I found myself preferring the silence and melancholy of Stable Ninety Three over what lay in the outer metro.

The path had led upwards along a gently tiled slope shaped almost like a large tube of smooth brickwork walls, almost pitch black but for our lights. It was, however, entirely silent.

At least, I thought it was. Every so often I could have sworn I heard something nearby. Just a whisper in the dark or a feeling as though we were nearing something. Like I could sense something deep down below. Shaking my head, I took a deep breath and a gulp of RadAway to ward off whatever I'd stepped in. Brimstone's birthday gift had made my life so much easier.

Ahead of me, however, I saw Protégé stop and stare for a second. He looked to the side briefly as though just at the wall, before shaking his head and moving on quickly. I could have sworn I heard him mutter 'nothing' under his breath. I trotted closer.

“I'm fine. Just...thought I heard someone there, felt something in the air.”

There was a brief pause to look at one another. He simply shook his head and kept moving.

I followed behind him. Yet even as we trotted, I kept looking behind or below me. Little sounds of air moving whispered through the air, yet I felt no draft.

Protégé seemed more than a little uncomfortable, shaking his head again as we turned a corner.

The great door ahead of us, the way out of those nightmare. It bore a massive bronze emblem of the Fillydelphia Metro.

It surprised me, really. This was a place I had been searching for. A place that could contain the key to escaping our bonds forever. I might have given more thought to what it might have looked like or even what I might find, but with my mind so preoccupied on simply wanting to see the outside world again, the very place I'd strove to find to make that happen held little imagery my head.

The large door before us slid open easily. Yet once Protégé had pushed it, there were no creaks or stiffness. It fell quietly aside.

Inside, it was not like my world. I had to squint as bright light flooded into the corridor. I heard Protégé mutter in disbelief and cover his eyes briefly. A white glare, clean and warm, filled Ministry Station. Peering past, I saw that there were fully functional lighting panels over white tiles; a smooth marble flooring dotted with polished metal patterns. There were clean walls, free of graffiti, stretching to either side along a platform studded with benches and backed by colourful murals upon the walls. They bore visages of the Ministry Mares, or green countrysides.

It was not unoccupied. Before us, once our eyes had adjusted to the metro platform's light and shining brilliance, we saw slaves working frantically around it. They polished the murals and swept the floor of any dust. One was repairing a vending machine near the back. If it hadn't been for their threadbare clothing and bony bodies, I might have never realised what they were.

Only, none of them seemed to care that we had just wandered in. I felt exposed as we trotted onto the clean flooring, but no slaves looked at us directly. They continued to murmur and go about their business so steadily that it took me a second to really realise what was different.

None bore any chains, they had no fresh injuries, and worked with a confidence and genuine effort instead of the dull and slow grind you would see on the surface or the inner metro.

Yet that smile...every one of them bore it. Almost identical, sharing the same expression and look. Some chatted idly as they worked.

Protégé wandered forward, finding them completely oblivious to his presence. The platform stretched ahead of us, with three low, rounded passageways on the left leading further into the station while the metro line lay over a lip on the right. The tunnels at either end had been closed off entirely or had never even been dug. It was just smooth stone blocking them off. No wonder it had taken so long to find this place.

“What in Equestria is this?” Protégé muttered as we moved further in, holding his head and wincing from the bright lights.

I didn't know, but I could feel the hairs on my neck rising and my heartbeat increasing. I had expected blood and whipping and slavers shouting and...

I could see it in their faces. They all wore the same expression. Their mouths were smiling, but their eyes were dead and lifeless.

A slave wandered past us, passing between Protégé and I, and I got a good look at that lifeless face. There was no spark there. He moved into one of the passageways and disappeared up a stone stairway.

Even as I glanced at those stairs after him, I heard the sounds of working going on above and below us; the soft tapping of hooves moving calmly in every direction. All seeking just to help what they could nicely and without any spoken worries. A yawning feeling that there was something different here. A new feeling that was wonde-

I stamped my hooves and shook my head, knocking my hoof off it a few times. No, this wasn't good. There was something wrong in here. I could feel it in the air, am ambience of stillness lacking the personality and colour of life.

“Protégé, what's going on?” I voiced the question I knew he couldn't answer, but I needed somepony to talk normally.

He was near two of the slaves, watching what they were doing quietly. Both were working on some wires behind a metal plate in the wall. One of them stretched a hoof to find a wire cutter, and Protégé lifted it to the struggling pony with his magic.

He blinked and turned back to me, as though surprised or even embarrassed I'd seen.

“I...just handing it...no, nothing. Nothing, I'm fine. This place is not what I expected. There's something very, very wrong here, Murk. These ponies, look at their eyes.”

Stepping closer, peering around the worker without her even acknowledging me, I saw what he meant.

Her eyes were fighting something. Small shivers in her hooves matched up to rapid blinks. She looked horrified, aghast, but only in her eyes. Only there, above that bright smile. I recoiled in confusion and fear.

Protégé lowered his head, taking a stoic look. “Let's get deeper in, find out just what Shackles is doing down here. I...I don't even know what to guess or where to begin.”

He certainly looked at a loss as he went the way the slave had gone. Those behind us simply continued their work without even noting our leave.

Yet, even as I went onto the steps, I heard something. A scratching, earthy sound of something moving quickly. Turning back, I saw nothing but could keep hearing it. The sound was coming from the metro line, behind the smooth stone that blocked off the tunnels.

Very faded, lessened by the thick stone, I heard something gurgling and beating against it. Dull thumps and wet cracks. Then I heard a creaking moan. Then another. A third. A fourth.

The stone that blocked up the tunnel trembled as a muffled shriek broke the calm silence. I felt Protégé stand ready to flee again as the beasts slammed again and again into that apparently thin wall of concrete keeping them out. Fragments of dust fell from above. Sickeningly wet slaps of something impacting against it rose higher.

Yet the slaves around us didn't pay any heed. Two of them were right beside the wall applying new layers of material to the tunnel to cover any of the small cracks I could see. They didn't even acknowledge what was right outside!

“Come on, let's get out of here. I don't want to be around if those things break through.”

He tugged at me a little while I stared. I could hear more impacts on the opposite end of the platform too. The sound was drawing them in. Even from behind me, a yawning sound of wind rushing through the tunnels caught my ears, yet I felt nothing upon my skin.

Suddenly, Ministry Station didn't feel very safe at all any more. But I wasn't sure what it was that truly scared me more. The physical threat laying siege to it or the unsettling atmosphere playing on my every sense that lay within.

* * *

It seemed Ministry Station was not simply occupied by mindless slaves. After little more than a few dozen metres into one of the half-circle shaped passageways, we had to duck behind an old ticket booth. I'd heard two ponies conversing more normally up ahead, laughing in rough voices.

We settled in behind the old chair where a ticket-pony might once had sat bored all day. Listening carefully, I heard the loose banter that unmistakably belonged to slavers.

“Same, the sooner we get that damn shift change back to the inner metro, the better. This place just freaks me the fuck out. Keep thinking it’ll do to me what it did to the ones Shackles broke in. You know Squib woke up screaming last night? Saying he heard somepony whispering in his ear in some zebra language or some shit.”

Protégé glanced back at me as though to check I'd heard the same. This place truly was unsettling to those staying here. What was wrong with it?

“You kidding? Fuck me...let's just check on those slaves on the platform and get the hell topside back to the den as fast as we can. They told us it would only go for the slaves.”

'It'? Had something changed them? I could feel a cold sweat of fear passing over me. I hated these things, the things you didn't understand or couldn't see. The effects of magic beyond what I could understand.

The slavers trotted quickly past, grumbling about Shackles keeping them down here so long. I gave them time to pass down the stairs we'd come up a few minutes before and took a peek out. The white tiles and colourful artworks covering the unblemished walls stretched out to a junction ahead. Nopony in sight. I could hear many more though, somewhere above, along with a deep throbbing in the air.

Only going for the slaves. What did that mean? We had to move on, I needed my friends out of here as soon as possible. I needed out of here as soon as possible!

Turning to look back into the booth, I saw him just sitting and staring behind us. With a start, I looked back...and saw nothing. I whispered his name again and shook his shoulder. Blinking, he made a little shake of his head and a little gasp.

He looked over at me, as though surprised to see me there. “Yes, yes. Sorry, I was j-just finding it strange that such a place exists. I'm fine. This place is just...incredible. If we could preserve this...”

“Maybe...” I just muttered to myself, not really caring much what anyone did to it so long as I was nowhere near it for the rest of my life. “It's clear, come on!”

This time, he followed and we crept further inside. The roof opened up, revealing the junction to be part of a larger network of tunnels down here. On one side, there lay a gigantic curved staircase of the same marble, while every exit from this junction bore a brass emblem above it. Likely leading to each of the platforms. I had seen this sort of style before, but witnessing the old Equestrian architecture properly lit and cleaned was as breathtaking as it was unsettlingly different in the dismal future we lived in. Amongst this light, I felt exposed, unable to hide.

At the bottom end of the junction, opposite the stairs, I saw a large metal door with welded plates holding it shut. I could only imagine why.

“Just...something out there. I swore I heard somepony trotting nearby, but all of the slaves are still.”

Clearly, Protégé was more spooked than I'd known. I just shook my head, cantering past quickly to the stairs. They had to lead to the main level of the station! I hopped up each of them in turn, trying to ignore how loudly my hooves seemed to echo in an area that no other sound echoed in turn. My head was hurting.

I reached the top and found the source of the noise. Wait...a noise? Why hadn't I heard all this below? The sounds of mass ponies moving around, of work going on, and others shouting or conversing everywhere! The sound flooded in, only realising it as I walked across some unseen barrier and left the silence of the tunnels below.

I came across the primary floor of Ministry Station itself. I had expected some shop outlets, ticket stations, and benches. I got them. They were all there.

What I had emerged from was but a small stairwell down to the platforms. Ahead of me lay a gigantic room, taller than it was wide! Great columns of white marble rose out of a mosaic patterned floor toward a curved and lavish roof. Archways decorated in brass vines surrounded the open floor, hiding the empty units where the shops or waiting rooms might have been in. A huge, round desk lay in the middle of the open floor, where tickets much once have been sold. The similar designs in the outer metro, and even in the asylum made it clear, this was made before the war had broken out.

It was filled with slaves. They moved in lines, hooves moving in sync with one another as they trailed or collected wires. Some hung from the ceiling, repairing the lighting panels that had shorted out. The floor was covered in Ministry workbenches that I'd once seen in Aurora's workshop and each bore another slave fixing all manners of talismans, spark technologies, and mechanical items. Others offered inane and dead conversations on basic observations as they swept alongside one another to get rid of the industrial burrs and fragments that fell to the floor.

I simply stood and gaped. Ministry Station, or whatever it had been called before the balefire, was a masterpiece of design hidden below the city. Only now it occurred to me, this was supposed to be the link between the inner and outer metros, a primary location for anypony who came to Fillydelphia. It was undoubtedly to be a crown of design, and it likely had been dropped and left unfinished the moment the war effort had taken its funds away. For all its grand nature, it held no equipment, nothing to set a metro station in motion.

Now it was nothing but a precious secret to those who had found it. Aurora Star's hidden research area where nopony would ever bother looking.

I felt my fleece grabbed and pulled back. A black hoof covered my mouth from the squeak I made in shock ,and I felt somepony hold me still.

Protégé! Confused, I shifted to look before the slaver trotted by while munching on an old packet of dried biscuits. Blinking, I began to see the familiar things I'd missed in my astonishment. Slavers wandered around them, checking on progress. There were no whips, chains, or canes. They simply watched quietly as the slaves did what they were supposed to, those empty smiles on their faces the entire time.

Yet every so often, I swore I saw one slave look up and around and gasp, before holding their head. Amongst so many moving at once, it stuck out. Within a minute, they would fall quiet, and drop back into their routine, where the smile would slowly creep back onto their face and they would pick up their conversation again.

Two slaves cantered past us, smiling and looking dead ahead as they talked without looking at one another. They talked just like the ones below, like they all had the same personality in different bodies.

There was something about this place. The slaves acted strange, but the slavers didn't! They said it only affected slaves but...why?

Something about the atmosphere in here...it had to be. My mind hurt from trying to think on it. Glimmer would know though, she'd have figured it out!

I saw her! Right ahead at the opposite end of the great underground hall, I saw her looking along a line of small magical talismans with a careful eye. Throwing a few into a pack, she rejoined two other unicorns and began to trot toward an exit. I didn't see her face, but that unmistakable pink mane shone bright amongst the jaded and dulled slaves who had been in this sterile place for longer!

Taking a quick look around, I scampered out of the stairwell we hid in and took cover beside a workbench. The slave working at it didn't seem to even notice my presence and kept working on her wires. I heard her whispering.

“Yes, masters. I'll do it, masters. It's for the best, masters. But I...no, no...you know best, masters.”

I saw him having stopped in the open, helping up another pony, and getting their fallen cargo back on their saddle. Smiling like I'd never seen him do, he patted the buck on the back as he reasserted the heavy load.

I just stared open-mouthed. Had the mint beasts really shaken him up that badly? All the same, his face hardened again and pointed ahead.

“If you go now, you could make that next workbench, the slaver's looking away. Go now!”

Almost wanting to shake my head, I hurried as quickly as I dared to get behind the slaver and heard Protégé creep behind me. The two of us pressed into the abandoned workbench, trying to stay out of sight of any slaver we saw.

This wasn't working. We were too conspicuous sneaking about. We needed to speed up. We needed to blend in. Looking up at the workbench, squinting as the lighting fixtures above flared into life with a joyless cheer from the slaves, I reached for the rags some ponies had left behind and threw one to Protégé. He took it without a word, clearly guessing the plan.

“You still remember how to, uh...” Oh, this was awkward. “You remember how to trot like a slave?”

He held onto the rags for a second, his hooves tightening around them. There was a faraway look in his eyes.

I wanted to call him out on the hypocrisy. That he had forgotten the suffering while still feeling bad for his own memories. To look at the inner metro mines and the waste of life, or to even see Fillydelphia above and callously talk of 'acceptable losses' while still daring to look sad.

Yet right now, seeing that look in his eyes, the one I knew I gave to a lot of ponies, I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

We pulled the rags on, waited for the next passing of slaves, and slowly slipped out to trot behind them with our heads level. They might have been falsely cheerful, but they still moved like slaves. Ordered, shivering, and clearly weak of body. It felt strange to feel like I had an experienced eye for slavery, but there was, even amongst their strange behaviour, something amiss.

They weren’t entirely mindless. Their bodies sometimes showed a reluctance, or a staggering like they would normally. Whatever was affecting them wasn’t a complete change. It seemed imperfect, like it came and went every so often in subtle ways. I wondered if they would stay like this if you took them out of here.

As we fell among them, I hardly needed any help to blend in, my body was still aching from the exertions earlier on my healing wounds, but it almost shocked me by how easily Protégé fell back into the routine. With his loose mane, lack of eyepiece, and that look on his face below the hood of the rags, he really did look every inch the born slave.

Rubbing my head, trying to get my ears to stop twitching and aching from the odd atmosphere down here, I tried to move as fast as I could. I could see Glimmer exiting ahead of me! She was talking to the mare beside her, probably flirting or something. I couldn't wait to see her again!

We came to the same passageway she went into. It was ringed with that same brass pattern and lined with carved wooden benches either side. She wandered in ahead of us, turning a corner farther down. We both sped up, now that we were out of sight, cantering after we left the main room.

I turned, hearing the main room again behind us filled with activity. I saw Protégé look oddly at me. But it had just been silent. Why had all the sound went for a few...

I felt my breathing increase. This wasn't right. Turning, I followed him as we pursued Glimmerlight. The corridor led to a larger room with plush couches and low tables. An empty space for a bar was across one side behind crystal clear-stained glass. Some sort of VIP lounge! She must have gone already, had they galloped?

I didn’t know. I had heard it! I looked closer, seeing the lines where a door had once existed before it had been filled in. Protégé trotted up to it, running a hoof along them.

The wall shook in, a guttural howl right behind it. The sound of bone cracking against a hard surface set the entire blocked door trembling. We both screamed, falling back across a coffee table to get away from it, the reason why they'd blocked it up becoming clear! Those things were even inside here! Trapped in pockets of sealed rooms!

The wall splintered, pieces of dust and pebbles falling from the joints. I saw small cracks form up the sides. That blockage was strong, but it wouldn't hold forever. Rapid, hoarse retches like something trying to throw up without any success emitted from behind the barrier.

Yet none of the slaves within earshot of it in the room we’d just left reacted!

I couldn't take it anymore. I galloped! I leapt over the couches, sprinting to the other side despite Protégé's protests and rounded the corner, away from the monster behind the door even while it shrieked and drew slavers running behind us. They started shouting, ordering slaves to patch it and block it up! I heard one cry 'They're trying again!' before we got out of there.

Away from the lounge, down a gentle slope, the corridor opened up. The walls turned to frames of large windows, empty of glass. They looked down on shallow depressions on either side, where I could see banks of terminals and various machines of magical technology all around the walls, their cables leading into rougher, more newly carved tunnels at the sides. Slaves tinkered over them or typed on the terminals with strange excitement on every movement other than their faces. Huge blueprints had been pinned to the walls, bearing arcane symbols and florid writing as much as they did hard print and diagrams. The zebras and Aurora had torn this entire part of the station apart to fit in a full laboratory!

“Woah...” Protégé breathed as he saw the torn walls and advanced machinery in various states of activity within. “They must have somehow smuggled entire generators down here to power this.”

“Or it's powered from something already here.” I muttered, remembering (and indeed still feeling in my skull) that same throbbing of power from somewhere deeper. Somewhere up ahead.

We slowed down, seeing the slavers below wandering amongst them. We were still close, only a few steps kept this corridor higher than the lab areas either side. Cables hung from the ceiling, all connected to memory machines and tables for ponies to lie on beside headsets. The thought of those same ones in the asylum came to me rather uncomfortably.

The raised walkway we were on continued right over it, meeting another one going horizontally across the room too, leaving four giant lab areas around it. Reaching the cross, I looked to either side. There she was again! Off to the right, about twenty feet past where the walkway ended and became a clean corridor again, Glimmer waited beside a huge metal door that had clearly been installed by Aurora's teams. It looked like the kind I’d seen in factories.

I was so close! I had to really fight to keep my trotting at a slave's pace with so many more slavers in this area. I felt dizzy from hope, and a pain in each leg like it were slowing me down and holding me back. My eyesight blurred as I felt the world around me spin a little. Voices from below mixed, sounding older, cleaner, more scared.

I could see slaves below all holding their heads, some sort of pressure in the air...

Staggering...I tripped. A sound of wind passed by again, throbbing in time with crackling sounds in the air. There were more voices here, somewhere, down amongst the slaves. A different language...

No...no! I willed myself to wake up, Glimmer was there! I wasn’t sure if I actually shouted to myself, ‘Wake up, Murky! Wake up and move on! You're almost there!’

Opening my eyes, not even realising I'd closed them, I began to move forward unsteadily, hearing the groans around me. Protégé had fallen too, like many slaves. The slavers looked unnerved and silent. I heard voices, but nopony was talking!

Then it passed, as suddenly as the pressure began. It left and normality snapped back.

I couldn't take this. I galloped forth, trying to catch up with her before that door opened. I felt more waves of pressure and more fuzziness in my head, but I pushed on. I heard Protégé stop behind me, gasping suddenly.

After too long, I reached Glimmerlight. She was looking at me, and I threw myself onto her.

The pony I'd grabbed turned to me, surprised at this little buck holding her. Her emotionless eyes above a dull smile raised an eyebrow.

I pawed at her even as I heard the door behind her open and the sound of a booming voice within cry out for them to go in. A familiar voice. One that snapped at my very soul. Somepony was tugging me, throwing his hooves around me to pull me desperately through a door to hide. My hooves flailed out, a hoof covered my mouth to stifle the plea.

Yet even before the door closed, red magic snapping it shut, I saw that colossal metal door slide away and Glimmerlight smile and walk inside past Chainlink Shackles himself without a care in the world.

Even as I struggled with Protégé, crying and wanting to shout out, I heard the gigantic door slam shut, and I fell back, hopeless, before collapsing into a curled little ball.

* * *

Fallout: Equestria - Murky Number Seven

by FuzzyVeeVee

Just Downstairs (Part 1)