Jacob hurried into the open door just behind Harley, carrying the still-unconscious pony in his arms. Despite being much closer to her size than he had been before, he had little enough trouble lifting her weight. How crazy will it be to actually be that small? The drive hadn’t changed him that he knew, though sometimes he woke up in the morning with a horrible impression that the world had grown even bigger during his sleep. At least compared to his friends, that change seemed to be in his imagination.
Past the first door was a hallway of cheap apartments, though he didn’t actually hear sounds from within. “Shouldn’t we run or something?”
Harley didn’t whisper back, nor did she speed up. “These are all empty. Patron of ours bought the whole building. I think last I checked he’s using it as some kind of tax write off—some trick about letting the place go derelict or something.”
“So we’re hiding one kind of secret behind another?”
She grinned at him with pointed teeth. “That’s the best kind. Plus, I called the crew the last place we got gas. They’re okay, and they’re expecting us.”
Harley reached the stairs, then started to climb. He followed, through a building that clearly hadn’t been cleaned in a very long time. It was hard to keep up, and as they reached the second floor Danni nudged him on the shoulder.
“You want some help with her?”
“No.” His grip tightened a little, pulling her warmth just a little closer to his chest. Not knowing what better to do, Jacob was carrying her like a cat. “I got her.”
They hadn’t told Eric and Danni about what they suspected about her. Harley had taken a few good photos of the device with a “not stolen” camera, then slipped it under a truck heading the other way. Just in case.
The second floor looked as abandoned as the first, with questionable stains and bits of trash. The third and fourth were similar, only a few lights still flickering to give the hallway any illumination at all.
The top floor was no different, save Jacob could hear just a little more noise coming from somewhere. Music?
Harley waited patiently for him to catch his breath at the top of the stairs. “If we needed to, we could house a hundred ponies in this building without a problem. There are places like this in every one of your big cities I’ve ever been to. Though… mostly they’re empty, waiting for ponies to need them.”
“Must be expensive.” Eric easily caught up with a group restricted to Jacob’s slow pace. Wisely, he didn’t complain either.
“Expensive he says.” Harley laughed. “Kids, your society assigns arbitrary value to colored rocks. You think we had to beg and steal?” She laughed bitterly. “Nor will we. Even if the world caves in around us, we’ll die rich. Whatever that’s worth.”
“That’s good.” Danielle kept pace just behind Jacob, her eyes constantly scanning the building around them. As though on the alert for an attack. “Shame you didn’t do what everybody else does and just buy the country.”
Harley shrugged. “A few more years and the brilliant strategic minds ponies have leading them might have figured that out.”
Harley stopped in the middle of the hall, at one door among many. There were mysterious stains on the bottom half of the door, and a spray-painted gang sign covering much of the top. Harley ignored the handle, and instead started to hum loudly and out of tune.
Jacob winced at the butchery of such a familiar melody. “That isn’t how that goes!”
“He’s right,” Eric said. “The cats outside my family’s barn sounded closer.”
Harley grunted, folding her arms. “Damn ponies and their damn musical locks,” she glanced over her shoulder at Jacob. “You’re practically there, you do it.”
“Uh…” He knew the melody—he was fairly certain any fan of the show would’ve. “I can’t sing either.”
Their guide only rolled her eyes. “Horseapples you can’t. You watched the damn propaganda, didn’t you?”
He sighed, then hummed “Winter Wrap-up” as she had apparently been trying to do. Jacob had no ear for music, and couldn’t have carried a tune with a bucket. Yet he found the notes came exactly, and he fell into time without even realizing it. He grinned in surprise, and even started to sway a little.
Something clicked, and several mechanical sounds rattled from behind the door. Jacob felt a hand on his shoulder. “We get it. You can stop.”
He blushed. “Sorry. I don’t know what…”
“Yeah.” Harley glanced sidelong at him. “What did I tell you?”
Despite its veneer of crumbling wood, the door actually proved to be quarter-inch steel, mounted onto some hydraulic mechanism via a large swiveling lock. “Hey, we’re here!” she called into the room, then stepped back. “You all get acquainted, alright? I’ll go ditch the van, then be back.”
She slipped out into the hallway, dodging swiftly past him. “Oh, and don’t leave the door open! I’ve got that damn song on my phone if I can’t get it.”
There was a short entry hall, maybe five feet, which opened into a much larger space just beyond. At a glance it looked like the housing bays in Unity, with rows of smaller bedrooms surrounding a central kitchen and recreation area, with common bathrooms for the sexes on either side.
The space was much larger than it had seemed—though it apparently had no windows, it was brightly lit from skylights above and filled with growing things. What he had taken for music from outside was actually coming from a little circle of couches, where three people were playing Super Smash Bros. on a widescreen TV.
“Hey!” Danielle called, waving a vague hand towards them. “Ya’ll just gonna keep playing?”
Jacob ignored her, making his way to the first empty-looking bedroom and depositing the pony within. “You’re gonna have to wake up sooner or later,” he whispered.
She didn’t wake up, and he shut the door quietly behind him, just in time to get a good look at this particular group of Harley’s “rescues.”
They were about as intact as their own group, which might have been less impressive if they hadn’t been around magic for so much longer.
The tallest and most human of the group was a young woman with batlike wings and big, dark eyes. She also seemed the most casual, looming over the other two. Beside her was an earth pony stallion with a coat of electric yellow and a mane of smattered blues.
Though Jacob would’ve wished his own condition on no one, he couldn’t hide his relief that the last of their number was another freak. A pegasus girl, though she was even shorter than he was and seemed to have hooves instead of feet, and ankles that seemed to bend backwards. That looks like it hurts. She didn’t have a coat yet anywhere else, wearing human clothes instead, but her hair was soft pink and her eyes were as freakishly big as his own, and she had a tail too.
Months ago, he would’ve been disgusted by such gross mutations, perhaps mixed in with a hearty dose of pity. Now, though… he couldn’t imagine a prettier girl for all the power of his imagination. Jacob found himself looking at the floor as he made his way over to the center of the room, to stand beside Danielle and Eric.
“I’m Jackie,” said the tallest, human-est of their group. “If any’a you wake me up before noon, I’ll force feed you the bugs I catch for dinner, so help me God.” She relaxed. “My little sister here is Katie, corrupter of souls.”
“Hey!” She shoved Jackie hard, though there was very little anger in it. “Ignore her, she’s just mad I taught her to fly.”
“I’m Stalwart,” the stallion added, his voice level. “It’s good you made it okay.”
“I thought you were all like us,” Eric blurted. “Why do you have a pony name?”
Stalwart shrugged. Jacob saw his cutie mark then, a pair of iron cross beams in a rusting, solid ‘x’. “I don’t get that person back. Holding on is only lying to myself.”
They introduced themselves quickly, along with a brief explanation about the pony they had stuffed away into one of the bedrooms.
“What the hell happened?” Jackie eventually asked, when they were finished with the basics. “We heard that somebody brought Unity down, but…
“It seemed too awful to believe,” Katie added. “Who would shoot down a flying sky castle? Why would you even want to?”
“We probably know less than you do.” Jacob sighed. “We were inside for most of the attack. Sounded like really modern fighter jets and bombers, though.
“Well, we can wait until Harley gets back to go over everything,” Danni said. “Now that… I’d nominate her for leader if we wanted to vote.”
There were quiet mutters from both sides, and no disagreement to be heard.
“Where is she, anyway?” Jackie asked.
“Getting rid of the van,” Jacob said. “She never let us come with her whenever she was doing something like that.”
Jackie nodded knowingly, then gestured to a table with a few laptops and large piles of paper on it. “Harley has some strong opinions about ponies and stealth. I could barely get her to take me, and I’ve got these badass wings.”
Katie stopped halfway between the table and the kitchen. “Are any of you hungry? We’ve got snacks and stuff.”
“Yeah,” Jacob answered without thinking. The others nodded too.
“Cool. I’m guessing just one vegetarian? The rest of you look like you’re probably still normal.”
“Wait, hold on.” Jacob raised an eyebrow. “You have meat here? In a pony safehouse?”
“I know, right?” She sounded longing. “There’s this awesome barbeque place that does amazing ribs just down the street. I can still remember how sweet they are…”
“Then why’d you stop?” Food was such a trivial question, particularly with the severity of their situation. Yet in the months he had been in Unity, Tofu and bean burgers were the closest he had ever had to meat. His first taste of it recently had been the jerky Harley frequently stole for them.
“Because it tastes like death?” She sounded confused. “How can you still eat it?”
He shrugged. “Guess my tastes haven’t changed.”
“Lucky bastard.” She turned, flicking a bright pink tail as she went. “Alright, make that no vegetarians. Got it.”
A few minutes later and they were all gathered around the table, with stuffed sub sandwiches and cold soda. It was a nice change after the endless junk-food to feel fresh lettuce and tomato crunching in his mouth, and drink something that was actually cold.
They chatted quietly while they waited for Harley to come back, about the safehouse and how long they had lived here. Jacob learned there was a gym downstairs, and a garden on the roof shaded by high walls. He learned Jackie had made quite a name for herself selling the emergency stock of gemstones to the city’s underground, taking less than half the worth of the stones in exchange for friendship and protection.
Katie sat beside him, and Jacob found himself focusing on her, fascinated by the bizarre way her body fused pony and human anatomy. Of course, he also had to not look like he was staring. “So how long have you guys been into this whole… mess?”
She shrugged her wings. “Oh, maybe… nine months? That sounds about right. Guess you’re newer?”
“About three.”
She coughed, nearly dropping her drink. “You must have broken way more rules than we did.”
“Just one spell,” he muttered, mostly to himself. “I don’t know if there was a rule about it. Probably not.”
That was when Harley walked in. “Glad you all are getting along,” she said, taking the last empty chair at the two tables they had pulled together. “Given the portal to Equestria might be destroyed, we might become some very good friends.”
“Now that she’s back,” Danni didn’t wait for anyone else to speak, clearing her throat. “Could you guys please explain anything you’ve learned since Unity went down? Do you have, like, radios or whatever?”
“Yes…” Jackie flipped open the lid of an expensive-looking laptop covered with tacky pony stickers. “There are sixty-three safe houses on the network. Let me update ours for you guys…” Jackie typed for a second, glancing at each of them.
“Harlequin, Danielle Hicks, Eric Lowe, Jacob Blackwell, and… a pony?”
“Allie Langford,” Jacob offered, without even having to think.
“Right.” She typed for another few moments. “We’ve seen a surge in the last six days.” She turned the screen around, a meaningless pile of numbers from this distance, but they did look like they were getting bigger. “Five hundred and twenty ponies listed. About double what it was before whatever happened at Unity.”
“So there were some survivors!” Eric beamed. “Beyond the ones who got to Equestria, some ponies escaped!”
“I would expect so.” Harley fumbled with some of the papers on the table, flipping through the manilla folders one at a time as though she were only half-interested in what they contained. “There was a princess in that castle. A few dozen out of that damn academy. The bigger the name, the more ponies they could get out.” She looked over at Jackie. “Has Sunset returned? Who’s in command of the safehouses? What are their orders?”
She shook her head slowly. “We’ve got messages from some of the other safehouses, apparently ponies are coming back from Unity pretty shaken up.”
“You would be if you saw it.” Jacob’s voice was flat. “A lot of people died in one place.”
“A lot of ponies,” Jackie corrected. “Let’s not forget what they stole from us. Not just our safety, but our bodies too.”
“Whatever.” Jacob leaned forward—he didn’t have much choice, since like Katie he was on his knees in the chair instead of his butt. It might’ve made him feel like a kid, but at least he could see over the edge. “What matters is what we do about it.”
Harley met his eyes, and he nodded. “We may have information about the attack that no other ponies do. When somepony eventually takes command, they will probably value the information we can learn.”
“Learn from what?” the earth pony asked, looking between them. “Did you catch videos from your cameras or something?”
“No,” Jacob answered. It felt like the right thing to do, since he was the one who had saved her life. “We caught a mole.”