//------------------------------//
// Chapter 17: The lost blanket 
// Story: Fallout: Equestria. We're no Heroes 
// by otherunicorn 
//------------------------------//

Chapter 17: The lost blanket
"How am I meant to sleep now?"

Little Demi. My precious little Demi.

She was the one thing on my mind. She had been missing for too long, and I was powerless to do anything about it. The pain of having my right ear, and the skin and flesh of half of my face detached, and folded back over my head like a gruesome wig was not enough to stop me continuing my search, but Shadow had more than enough wounds to tend to without me making mine worse, or so he said. I had taken a mere two steps away from him when my vision went fuzzy and my legs went weak. I had just enough time to settle to the floor before I was paralyzed.

"Sorry, Anne, but I mean it," Shadow said. "Stay put and rest, until I get a chance to heal you. You are down to bare metal on your head."

It wasn't like I had any choice, as his anaesthetic spell had put me down for the count. I was still alert enough to listen to what was going on though.

"Lee, is that mare still alive?" Shadow asked.

"Yes, Violet is still alive. I've given her a dose of healing potion, but she doesn't look very good. Lots of bites and a concussion." Lee responded.

"Does she have any bullet wounds?" Saffron interrupted.

"Not that I can see," Lee responded. I heard a few clicking sounds. "Empty clip. Yup, she's our shooter."

"Lee, how injured are you?" Shadow asked

"Nothing much. A bump on the head. A few bruises. I've already taken a healing potion," she replied.

"Great. Please go back to Stable Four and fetch my father and mother, hell, my brother too, and anyone who can help carry these girls, and tell them to bring medical supplies,” Shadow requested. "It should take you less time to do that than it will for me to heal Lana, and there are four or five others that need attention."

Lee didn't even wait to reply. I heard her galloping down the subway. She was going fast, so she must have been running on the sleeper-free strip between the up and down lines. Hopefully she wouldn't trip in the low light.

"Shadow, what do you want me to do?" Saffron asked.

"I'm going to levitate your mare to a cleaner patch of floor, over there under that service lamp. Once we are there I want you to be my assistant. Keep your headlamp on her wounds while I work, monitor her, talk to her. Your voice could be the one thing that keeps her in this world."

I lay there listening to Shadow instructing Saffron for what seemed to be hours before I heard other ponies coming. They were moving at a brisk trot, so I guessed they were the unicorn healers, and maybe Ruby and Gadget. I listened to a brief discussion about wounds and the most appropriate pony to heal them, then the unicorns each took a victim to treat. Moments later I was levitated by Cirrus, and carried to a relatively clean and well lit spot. She began poking at my injuries when she noticed that despite my paralysis, I was alert, and watching her. A flash from her horn was....





...oh. It felt like I was lying on a mattress again, and that could only mean that I was down on Level Eight of Stable Four. My life was beginning to feel like a game of snakes and ladders. How many times had my attempts at getting out of this accursed place ended up exactly here, with me sleeping, wrapped in Demi's wing. Except that this time there was no wing. There was no Demi. I opened my left eye, as my right was restrained. Yes, I was back in the Stable Four headquarters. I rose, finding my leg armor was still attached. I guess they hadn't worked out to remove it. Certain pressing needs needed to be attended to first so I walked out to the back passages, and to the fillies room, both to relieve myself, and to use the mirror there.

My reflection revealed that my head was half cocooned in bandage, as was my midriff. Fortunately Saffron's kick had not done any more than rip half of the skin off my head, but the bullets from Violet's submachine gun had contributed to the damage in that area too, as well as putting the holes in my midriff. I was lucky they had not penetrated the protective structures within. My self inspection over, and with my bladder no longer foremost in my thoughts, I returned to the mattress strewn room to see what had become of the others. Demi surely must have been found now. Perhaps she too had been wounded, and had been placed on a different mattress.

Lana was easy to locate, because Saffron was holding her. He had shed his armor, and was seated, Lana cradled in his orange-yellow forelegs. Her face, like mine, was heavily bandaged, as were the worst of her other wounds. She was quietly talking with Saffron, and he appeared to be relaxed. Hopefully that meant she was well on her way to recovery. Violet and Chicory were on the same mattress again, both also sporting some bandages. They were chatting with each other. Great. The three had survived. I wondered if they would be as eager to go exploring when we went out again.

"Saffron, Lana," I acknowledged them as I approached. "How are you doing?"

"I'll be right in a few days," Lana responded. "Thank you for getting Shadow to help me. He tells me there won't even be any scarring."

"I am glad to hear that," I said, relieved. "Do you know where Demi is?"

"Sorry, Anne," Saffron replied. "We looked about, but we couldn't see her. Some of the others cleaned up some of the radroach remains, and couldn't find any sign of her body amongst them, so we don't know where she went."

"And is anyone still looking?" I asked, feeling concerned.

Violet answered from behind me. "We figured she must have gone up the subway further on her own. Considering our injuries, we decided to postpone looking. She'll probably come back when she's ready. That is if she isn't pissed off at you for blowing us up."

I snorted. "Coming from the mare that shot me in the first place, that is.... Stuff it. There's no point handing out blame because we are probably all as guilty as each other."

"Um... yeah," Violet agreed, sheepishly.

"Sorry Anne, we can have another look later," Saffron suggested. "Don't forget that most of the exploration team is lying in here full of holes, so who would we send? Lee and I had a look before, but even we need sleep. In the meantime, I suggest you go back to your mattress and rest, before the medicos come over and put you back to sleep."

"I will in a moment," I responded, plans about doing anything but that forming in my mind. "There's something I need from my battle saddle."

I could see the saddle was sitting on a shelf over near Gadget's pile of salvage, not too far from the exit to the room, my barding draped across it. Both appeared to have been cleaned. Excellent. It was time for me to start sneaking, or being sneaky, as required, and doing that while being watched called for some skill. Rushing over there right now would be the first mistake.

"How are you Chicory?" I asked.

"A little sore, but I can live with it," she replied.

"Will you be exploring with us in the future, or has this put you off the idea?" I inquired.

"The only way the robots stopped me was by breaking me. The bugs didn't break me," she stated.

"I'm glad to hear that. Rest up!"

With that said, I looked around for Lee. She was nowhere to be seen. Stuff it. I'd go look for Demi myself. And I was going right now. I walked over to the shelf with my battle saddle and barding on it, asked Gadget to thank whoever cleaned them up, assuming it wasn't her, and casually dropped them on my back, not bothering to get into the barding, or secure the saddle.

"I'm going to see if I can find Lee," I said to no one in particular, and walked out of the room. No one stopped me, or even called out to me, so I continued, acknowledging the occasional pony I met, as I headed down stairs to Level Nine, and worked my way through the passages to the elevator. It was empty, so I slipped inside, and set it for express travel to Level One, courtesy of a little magic preventing the call switches on the other levels from having any effect until my destination was reached. While in the privacy of the elevator, I slipped into my barding and fitted the battle saddle. A quick check of the compartments showed me it had not been restocked. While that was inconvenient, I was also glad to see that the others were respecting my privacy and not going through my items when I wasn't around. There were still some healing potions in it, and Demi should have some of her own too, if I needed them to treat her. I had to find her first though.

With a ping, the elevator doors opened, and I went into full sneak mode, exiting it, ducking around the pony who stopped to see who had just come out without them seeing me. I took advantage of when they put their head into the elevator to check, zipping up the corridor and into the vestibule. I quickly moved into the recessed section of floor, and slipped along the wall nearest to the guard, effectively out of their field of view, then sneaked out through the main door and into the mostly dark tunnel beyond. The mares had set up a few lamps since we had first come up here, but there were more than enough shadows for me to hide in.

By now I realized I was just being stupid. I was probably suffering from the after effects of the anaesthetic spell, low blood levels, or just having my brain rattled. Unlike the previous times I woke after a near death encounter this time I had not had the two days sleep! I must have missed my feather blanket. Anyway, once I had successfully sneaked out of Level Eight, I could have simply walked around as I did on any other day with no fear of getting nabbed by a doctor. Nonetheless, I kept sneaking. Why not? It was good practice.

I was soon in the subway tunnel, approaching the barricade from the defended side. Ruby was there, casually leaning against the metal, looking away from me, along the subway. One of the mares I didn't really know was with her, and they were chatting about mundane things. So I wouldn't scare them, I stopped sneaking, allowing them to hear my hoofsteps as I approached.

"Hi girls," I greeted them as they looked in my direction. "You haven't seen Lee have you? Or Demi?"

"Lee's further down the subway looking for Demi at the moment," Ruby answered. "You going looking too?"

"Yup, seeing as how it was me that lost her in the first place," I responded. "Wish me luck."

"Good luck!" the two mares chorused as I walked past. I was glad to hear Lee was actually out looking for Demi. Saffron's attitude and comments had almost sounded like he didn't care about her. I had to admit that from all the ponies I knew, I probably cared the most for Demi, and I really didn't know if I would leave a wounded Demi to go help Saffron find Lana if she was missing. I'd like to think that I would, but love can be a funny thing, and I did love Demi, even if it was more the love of a parent for her child than anything romantic. Heck, we even slept together, even if there was no sex involved. Maybe everypony else really was just battered and tired and in need of a good vacation. Being a machine driven by a pony brain, I could never really feel the physical fatigue they did. All I had to go on were very old memories from my childhood. I should cut them some slack, I concluded.

Now that I was alone out here where it was a little more dangerous, sneaking was a good idea, so I merged myself with the shadows, and quietly headed back along the subway towards where the radroach event had occurred. My coat being dull shades of brown usually worked to my advantage. I'd hate to try sneaking with coat colors like Pineapple's! A glance at the E.F.S. showed me that there were two ponies behind me, the girls at the barricade, and no other life to be seen. No problems. That Lee was not showing up on my display merely indicated that she was beyond the range of my eyes or ears to detect, and as one eye and one ear were bandaged, that range was reduced from what it usually was. To say how the E.F.S. system worked wasn't magic was quite wrong, as indeed it was magic, but not many ponies seemed to understand how that magic worked. The Eyes Forward Sparkle spell hooked into the user's brain, gathering data that they noticed, both at conscious and subconscious levels, and cross referenced them with how that user determined threats. For example, if my ears were detecting the gurgles of Zombies ahead, and my eyes could pick up hints of movement, a corresponding red bar would be placed on my display. Conversely, if my subconscious did not feel at all threatened by somepony I could hear or see, an amber bar would be placed on my display instead. The display color could be set to a user's preference too, and I had tried green, blue and white over the years, but I always returned to using the pleasant amber glow.

And thinking of amber bars, one flickered into existence ahead of me, so either Lee was just ahead or I'd just found a friendly ghoul pony. I continued to sneak along in the shadows until I could make out the approaching figure. It was walking on its hind legs, so I had just discovered one of Lee's human aliens or Lee herself. I stepped out of the shadows and continued towards her, calling out a greeting as I did.

"Oh, Anne," she responded, dropping onto four hooves and trotting over. I guess she wasn't confident about out running in her bipedal mode. "It's good to see you are up and about after such a comparatively short time."

"It seems I can't sleep for two days without my feather blanket, and as no one else seemed to be looking for her, I thought I'd come up here myself. I'm glad to see you up here," I said.

"Unfortunately, I didn't find where the kid has got to. I thought she was coming along great. I wonder if something triggered her old ways, and she's gone to ground," Lee commented.

"I don't think she would have. I sincerely hope not. I really do think she is being genuine with us. Did you find any clues at all?" I asked.

"Alas, no. I walked about a mile up the line, and found very little at all, apart from two more of those dead-end maintenance tunnels, and another station that had been deliberately sealed off from the surface," she related.

"Deliberately sealed?" That didn't sound good.

"I'm guessing they sealed the line off from general use when the war started, keeping it just for military freight movements, and Stable-Tec related traffic. If they left the stations open to the public, they could have swarmed down here and caused all sorts of grief for those who were officially meant to go into the stables," Lee surmised, "and that could have messed up their precious experiments."

"What about Stable Five? Did you find it? It should have been near the location of the fight with the radroaches... Oh don't tell me it was the vent you blew up with your gauss rifle..."

"No, it's not in the vent. And I didn't blow it up either. The vent's still there," Lee said. "As for Stable Five, I found it easy enough. It's on the right side, like Stable Four, with its own little station. It's also open and fairly dark inside. I stuck my head through the door and called, but didn't get a reply, so I was heading back to Stable Four to get some backup before I went any further into there. There are probably zombies inside it."

"Ugg. Poor Demi. I hope she hasn't tangled with them. I can't think of a more horrible way to die than to be eaten alive."

"She may have taken refuge in there somewhere, and be trapped," Lee suggested.

"Let's hope so. Shall we go look?"

"No one else is coming?" Lee asked.

"No. I'm under doctors orders to take bed-rest, so I had to sneak out," I admitted. "I don't think I'm meant to be out here before these bandages come off!"

"They forget we are cyborgs," Lee commented. "Shall we go?"

"Yes, let's," I agreed. Together we started back up the subway in the direction from which she had just come. This version of Lee had no problem with accepting she was a cyborg, even if the rest of her world didn't match. "Oh, that's right, you were a cyborg in your other life, too, weren't you?"

"Strange that, isn't it. There are too many coincidences, between your Lee and me, aren't there?" Lee said. "Hopefully we can find some answers when we get to this Stable Lab Zero Four of yours, though I do have to admit, if it means your mother's personality taking over at the loss of mine, I won't be too happy about it. I may not be pleased about being a pony, but I don't want to die!"

"Damn, I'd never really thought about that," I admitted. "Now I feel like a selfish prick."

"The ideal outcome would be that we find my original body, and that I can get out of your mother's head."

"And how would you do that?"

"Good question. I wonder how much of me has been lost. If there are two of us in this head, we both must have sacrificed something in order to fit. Did your Stable Doctors somehow manage to graft some of my brain onto your mothers? Did they install my entire brain in her torso, so that she in fact has two separate brains? How the hell did they get their hands... hooves... on my brain to start with? I don't know. Of course there is your pet theory too, and as much as I don't like the idea, it is possible that you are right, and I am simply insane," Lee admitted.

"You are certainly very clever, and open to ideas," I admitted. If this second personality of Lee's was fabricated and implanted, whoever had done it was both smart and imaginative. The alternative was that all those stories of star-metal, stars helping Nightmare Moon to escape, and so on, may in fact be based on reality, and that was a scary thought. "Hopefully we will find answers at Stable Lab Four..." I had a sudden thought, something that hadn't even crossed my mind before now. "Lee? You aren't a changeling pretending to be my mother are you?"

"I'm not pretending to be your mother, am I?" she answered.

"Hmm. You got me there," I admitted. "Oh well, I had to ask."

"Have you ever seen one of these changelings?"

"I have no idea, them being changelings and all," I responded.

Lee laughed. "Changelings were part of fantasy lore where I came from. I guess it's true of here too."

"Maybe, maybe not."

"It is hard to prove something that cannot be seen or demonstrated, isn't it? Take you for example. You don't really believe that humans exist, or that I could be one of them, do you? The only hints to their existence that you have seen, you have rejected as the ramblings of a mad mare," Lee commented.

"This conversation is getting rather philosophical, isn't it?" I responded.

"It served its purpose?" Lee giggled.

"Eh?"

"It kept us amused during an otherwise boring walk down a derelict subway. There's Stable Five."

I laughed. "If I didn't miss my mother so much, I could get to really like you."





Stable five. What a hole! Actually, I guess all stables are holes, literally. Lee and I had come in through the partially open front door. As she had said, it was fairly dark in here, with light provided by the occasional stable light, and the glow from some panel indicators. Looking at it, I could not determine if the door had failed to close properly, or failed to open properly. Whichever the case, the mechanism that moved it had blown its guts out in a cloud of vaporized copper and carbon. It wasn't as big as the mechanism in Stable Four. The load must have been too great for the underrated part. The radiation meter in my Pipgirl remained silent indicating that while zombies had wandered through here on occasion, they had never made it a home for themselves here. None the less, I was sure we would find both zombies and radroaches; there had simply been too many of them in the subway for there not to be at least one or two strays down here.

I heard the telltale gurgle almost immediately, but there were no red bars to be seen on my E.F.S. Crouching, I carefully scanned the area. There was nothing, so I sneaked over to the small chamber to one side of the vestibule, and checked in there. Again nothing.

"What are you doing, Anne?" Lee asked.

"I can hear a zombie, but it isn't showing up on my E.F.S., and with my ear bandaged, I'm having trouble pinpointing where the sound is coming from," I explained.

Lee laughed.

"What's so funny?" I demanded.

"I'm glad I'm not the only one to fall for that. I made the same mistake the first time I came in. Your zombie is over in that corner," she laughed.

I crept over towards where she was indicating, unsure of what I would find, but quite certain I now had the right direction. I soon realized I was chasing a non existent enemy though, because there, at the lowest point of the very gently sloping floor was a drain grate. Tilting my unbandaged ear to it, I listened to the sounds emanating from it. Lee was right. I was so jumpy I was mistaking the sound of water within the drain for the gurgle of a zombie. I slowly stood to my full height.

"Well, if that doesn't take the cake," I muttered.

"Look at the good side of things. That is one zombie we don't have to kill. Shall we proceed?"

"Indeed."

Stable Five was in worse condition than Stable Four, its walls, ceiling and floor all heavily rusted. In some places they had corroded completely through, and a little ground water trickled out of the holes it had eroded through the once substantial metal plates. After some closer examination, specifically with my magic, I was able to determine that low grade steel had been used in the construction of this stable, as if it had been built to function for a shorter time than Stable Lab Four, or even Stable Four, a little further along the same subway. No matter how much I scanned the wiring, I was unable to detect any sign of power flowing. The emergency lamps, and the few glowing panels were running on the last dregs of power stored in their own back-up batteries. This stable was very dead. That also meant that any of the power operated doors that were closed were going to stay that way, and for that I was thankful. If they were closed, Demi could not have passed that way. There was a heavy manual door on each side of the vestibule, one labeled "Generators", the other "Utility". Both were locked, and the rust build-up suggested they had not been opened in many years, so I decided they were best left closed. Demi could not have passed through them.

After another look around the vestibule for clues, Lee and I continued into the stable itself. The top level proved to be quite boring, essentially consisting of the upper walkways of the atrium, a nurses station, a small store room, long since picked clean, and the Overmare's office, although we had no way of getting into it from this level, short of kicking through the walls, and while that may have been possible, there didn't seem to be much point in doing so. We followed the only other passage on the level. It soon doubled back, becoming a set of stairs down to the lower atrium. Here we found ourselves with six doors, two each side, and one at each end, one being the door through which we had just come. Checking my E.F.S. I again found we were alone down here. I walked to the first of the doors to my left, finding the door quite stuck in the closed position. Moving along a little, I was able to see that this storeroom still had some items in it. Bundles of plastic-wrapped shotgun shells were visible. Lee joined me, and we tried to force the door, to no avail.

"Come," Lee instructed, leading me away from the frustrating obstruction. Looking back, I noticed the room was actually labelled "Armory". When we reached the far wall, Lee turned, took her weapon control grip in her mouth, and unleashed a series of slugs from the gauss rifle at the door. On the fifth shot, she was rewarded with a larger bang, as the door blew out of its frame and collapsed.

"Figured that would be the case," she said. "The door was little more than rust. Now let's get those bullets and shells."

"You are lucky you didn't blow up all the shells," I commented.

"We wouldn't have been any worse off, would we?" she responded, clearly not counting her expended shots in the equation.

As we entered the armory, I puzzled at just how many shells were in fact stacked in there. I stashed a dozen bundles of twelve gauge buckshot into my battle saddle, and helped Lee do the same, although Ruby now had her shotgun. There were plenty of ten millimeter bullets as well. They would do for the Stable Four mares. I moved to the closed gun cabinets. The first was locked, so I pushed my horn to the lock and used my metal shaping magic to sever all of the locking pins. The cabinet opened easily after that. Inside was a depressing sight though. Water was leaking through the back of the cabinet and all over the contents therein: a collection of rusting pipe that had been stacked in there with the same sort of care that would usually be afforded to guns. I grasped the first of the pipes with my magic, and wrenched it free of the shelf to which the rust had bonded it.

"This is a strange place to keep plumbing supplies," I commented to Lee.

She looked the rotting metal up and down. "It's a gun. A home made gun."

"What?" I levitated the pipe higher and could see the crude trigger mechanism and grip. "You're right. What a piece of crap. I wonder why they made these things."

A closer look in the cabinet revealed that all of the rusting pipe work within was in fact a collection of hand made weaponry, built to a common design, but with obvious build differences between each weapon. I moved onto the next gun cabinet, and cracked its lock. Again I was greeted by shelves of rusting pipe work, although this time scaled to take ten millimeter ammunition. The following cabinet had packs of energy cells, still wrapped in their original moisture-proof packages. The wonderful little gems went straight into Lee's battle saddle for her gauss gun.

"There aren't any energy weapons here," Lee stated.

She was right. The remaining cabinets were open and mostly empty, except for a few hoof crafted blades. On the shelves beyond them we found even more ammunition, but for different caliber weapons. We left that there for the moment. It wasn't as if anypony else was about to come in and steal it. Exiting the armory, we went into the next room along, this time its door conveniently open. Inside were an old lathe and milling machine, a drill press and assorted hoof tools. I picked up the first tool I found and examined it. It was a commercial product, but very poorly cast, and broken. I tossed it aside. The next tool was a hoofmade wrench, and of superior quality to the commercial one, but still not up to the standard of the tools I carried. It was also broken. Looking closer at the powered machine tools, I was starting to see a common theme. They were all of similar poor quality, and had been patched and modified many times.

Lee, who had been watching me, spoke. "We've only been down here for a few minutes, and I think we already know what this stable's experiment was. How would ponies manage with the poorest, mismatched, below standard materials and tools available, especially when they had to make everything they needed?"

"How do you explain the ammo?" I asked.

Lee reached into her battle saddle, and extracted a bundle of shotgun shells. She unwrapped them and looked at one of the shells closely, then tossed it to me to look at. "They are very nice hand loads. Perhaps Stable-Tec gave them the resources, and let them assemble their own." She rummaged in her battle saddle again, and extracted one of the energy cells. "This is a manufactured job though. It must have been deemed too hard to make by Stable-Tec, or they figured that without reasonable ammo, these ponies wouldn't even try to make energy weapons. And from what I can see, it appears they didn't."

"Oh, so this is an emulated behind-the-lines, or prisoner-of-war scenario, or a test of ingenuity, or something like that," I realized.

"Probably. Their guns can't have been particularly successful, thus were left behind when they abandoned the stable."

"What makes you say that?" I asked.

"They are still here, aren't they," Lee explained, "and we haven't found any evidence of the ponies themselves."

"So why leave the ammo? That could be sold."

"Who knows what it was like when they emerged? Maybe there was no sign of any trade on the surface. Maybe they got as far as the bale fire crater and were turned into the zombies we are fighting now. Maybe they were eaten out there, so they never came back, and maybe, just maybe the armory door had jammed shut before they left, so they had no choice but to leave them behind." Lee suggested.

"If we were enthusiastic about finding out, we could try getting into the Overmare's office, but I guess it doesn't really matter. All I really care about is finding Demi. The wasteland can keep some of its secrets, especially as in this case there is no pony needing saving," I said.

"Unless the reason we can't see any sign of them is that they are trapped deeper inside," Lee commented.

"In which case they have already starved to death. This stable is incapable of supporting life," I stated.

"It is a real mess, isn't it? Let’s get back to looking for Demi then."

We crossed back over to the other side of the atrium, and went into the right most room. This one was labeled "Clinic", but apart from the empty hospital style trolley and a large desk, there was nothing of Stable-Tec origin left in the room. If someone told me the contents of this room had been carefully packed, and carried off when the stable was evacuated, I would believe them. Now it was as messy and degraded as the rest of what we had seen down here, having played host to the occasional wandering radroach and zombie. We left, entering the room beside it. It was a reasonable sized diner, extending back, and widening out behind the clinic. The built-in seats, tables and benches remained, but that was all. At the rear we found another door. That led to a kitchen, and pantry, again both stripped bare. The built in equipment was of the same poor quality we had seen elsewhere. Returning to the atrium, Lee and I headed through the remaining door, the one at the opposite end to where we had entered. To the left was a closed door. Over it, was a sign that read "Overmare". So the mysteries of this stable would remain mysteries. A short distance further along the corridor, it doubled back, going to a staircase leading down. Descending, we found ourselves at a T intersection.

"No elevators here," Lee observed. "Just stairs."

"Can you imagine the grief a low quality elevator would cause?" I asked, "It would be an experience not unlike our descent into Stable Four."

"I think there's more to it," Lee said pointing to the signs on the wall ahead. To the left were the male dormitory, and rest rooms, while the female ones were to the right. "This place isn't very big."

A few paces along down the corridor to the male dormitory, we found another set of stairs leading down. Its sign suggested there was another level of sleeping quarters below, dedicated to couples and families, but we didn't get far. On the third step down, I put my foot into water. I blamed my bandaged eye and the poor light for not being able to see it before then, but quite clearly, below this floor the stable was completely flooded. That determined, Lee and I searched the upper dormitory level. There were a total of ten rooms, five in each of the male and female sections, and each appeared large enough to sleep ten ponies. We went through each room, checking in and under beds, in lockers, or anywhere else that Demi may have crawled to get away from an attacker, or simply to hide, but of her we could find no evidence. We didn't even find the expected stray zombie or radroach.

"Well, this is a bust," Lee said. "I'd almost be inclined to think your explosion vaporized her, but..."

"Hell, don't say that!" I squeaked. "She has to be alive. She has to."

"There was no sign of her gun or anything," Lee commented, "which is why I said 'almost'. One thing is clear though, she isn't in here. I didn't see any trace of her down the subway either, Not even a hoof print in the muck and dust on the floor."

"Surely she can't have gone up into the vent the radroaches were falling from?" I pondered.

"I doubt it. She's too small to reach it."

"Dammit, let’s go check anyway. It seems she vanished at the scene of the explosion, so there has to be somewhere she could have gone. Did anyone check under the grates at the side of the tunnel, in the drainage channel?" I asked, thinking of the typical structure of many Equestrian underground tunnels.

"There are shallow channels along the edges of this tunnel, but no grates covering them," Lee commented.

"There must be some grates somewhere. If there are channels, there are drains. Let's get moving." With that, I began climbing the stairs out of the dormitory level. Lee fell in behind me, and we purposefully backtracked our way out of the tiny stable, and into the subway.

"Why do you care so much about Demi anyway? How long is it that you have known her? Two or three weeks now?" Lee asked.

"She's considerate and kind, observant and intelligent. She's the daughter I can't have, the sister I never had, and at times, the mother I have lost. She makes me think about something other than myself. She gives me someone to care about other than myself. And she makes me smile."

Lee fell silent. Soon we had covered the distance back to the site of the battle with the radroaches. I swept the area with my Eyes Forward Sparkle, with the same results as last time. Even positioning myself in front of the vent opening, I was unable to detect anything. I had Lee boost me up, and even then it was difficult to reach. Exasperated, I cast a pushing spell, reflecting it off the floor below. That launched me through the opening, where I landed in an ungainly heap in the mess inside the vent tunnel. I lit my horn brightly, and cast the beam about, searching among the radroach corpses that remained, and the chunks of broken concrete. Nothing. I followed the vent as it led away from the subway tunnel, but found my way cut off by a heavy grill. The bars were too close for me or Demi to hope to squeeze past, but far enough apart to let the six-legged vermin through. They were cemented in place. Later I might come back and cut through the bars, to see if this was a possible exit, but it was clearly not the way Demi had gone. I returned to the vent mouth.

"Anything up there?" Lee asked.

"A grill is in the way, but it is worth removing and exploring up there if we can't find another way out, but it is clearly not where Demi went."

"It was a long shot anyway," Lee said. "If the blast somehow had thrown her from the opposite side of the subway station, up into there, she'd likely have been killed."

"Don't!" I squeaked again. "She can't be dead. She can't be!"

"You are going to have to face that she's gone sooner or later," Lee said. "I hate to sound cold hearted, but if she was around to be found, we would have found her by now."

And that was when I saw what had become of Demi. Directly across from the vent opening I was in, I could see a dark patch, darker than the shadowed area around it. I almost flew from the vent, landed awkwardly, and somersaulted, but somehow recovered. Within moments I was staring at the rusted grill set in the side of the drainage channel. A small strip of material had been caught by the jagged surface of the bars. I recognized it as having come from Demi's barding.

"She went through this grate," I stated, trying to see into the darkness beyond. All the light from my horn did was to cast hard shadows into the pipe beyond. It appeared to slope down at a fairly steep angle.

"Hmm, I didn't see that before, but I doubt she went through it. That grill looks to be rusted shut," Lee said.

I reached forward and gave it a kick with by armored foreleg, and the grate swung in with a screech, then slammed shut again.

"Oh," Lee said.

I pushed the grate back and tried to squeeze into the pipe beyond, but found I simply didn't fit. My battle saddle caught on the small opening. Damn it. I took a step back and began undoing the straps that held the saddle on.

"Are you sure you want to do that?" Lee asked. "I can't fit down there, so you will be crawling into the unknown without any guns or support. You will end up dead."

"I am already dead," I muttered, levitating my saddle off. "I'm a stupid robot housing the brain of a dead pony, aren't I? I'm a Celestia damned brain-bot with a pretty skin and three and a half sexy legs instead of a metal shell and tracks."

I rummaged through my battle saddle's compartments, transferring some essentials to the magical pouches on the Stable Four security barding. Some Rad-X, RadAway, Med-X and of course the all important healing potions. Some bottles of water and my reserves of food, untouched since we entered Stable Four, were transferred across too. I also found the small knife I carried. It was more of a tool than a weapon, but it would have to do.

"You really are going down that drain, aren't you? She may not be down there, and if she is, she may well have drowned," Lee suggested.

"And if she is alive, trapped, or injured, and praying for someone to come and help her, what then?" I asked, as I pushed the grill back and worked my way in. "I could not live with myself if I did nothing."

"You are so in love with that filly, aren't you?" Lee asked.

"Maybe I am," I admitted.

"Well, I wish you good luck, and goodbye," Lee said.

"Goodbye?" I queried as the grill slammed shut behind me. The concrete in the angled drain pipe was slick with moss, and I began to slide.

"We'll probably never see each other again!" Lee called as I slid away.

As my speed increased, I realized she was right.





Footnote: Maximum Level. Perk: none