The prison was in ruins. Their attack team fled as the earthquake started, retreating into the doorway as thick acrylic shells exploded open of their own accord. Sunset blocked the doorway, intercepting shrapnel in a transparent barrier that seemed to cost her little effort or concentration.
"What happened?" Harley stared on in shock, wand wrapped tightly in her hand. "How did four earth ponies do that?"
Sunset watched not with joy, but satisfaction at least. "We're underground, in their domain. Somepony got clever. This will greatly simplify things for us." The floor was covered in a transparent ocean of broken acrylic, flowing and bunching up towards the bottom. "I will make the gate. The rest of you pass the message along that the strong should help the weak. These conditions are… deplorable." She looked at Elise, who never met her eyes. "We'll settle this debt, but not today."
She lowered her shield, walking back into the prison. Glass scattered from around her as though driven by an invisible wind, the ground going clear as she made it to the blank, stone inner wall. "Harlequin, watch my back. The rest of you, get out there and help. If I need you, I'll call."
They did. Jacob was grateful for his height now, because the sea of glass would've been much harder to navigate so low to the ground. Elise didn't seem to have too much trouble, but she was also an earth pony, easily capable of jumping between or kicking aside the pieces too big for her to clear. Jacob didn't need to be told to know he shouldn't let her out of his sight. There was no better time for her to escape back to her old masters than now.
Elise didn't try to run. Instead they approached ponies as they emerged from their cages, sometimes helping the weak climb down from upper cells, sometimes only talking. "Help everypony out!" he always said. "If you see somepony too weak, carry them. Make your way back to the front, but don't run or bunch up. Nopony will be left behind."
"I don't know how we're going to get out." Agent Avery walked with small steps, her tail drooping and her eyes always on the floor. "We already knew some of the infected could… apparently defy the laws of physics. But there are just about nine thousand con—" A pause, as she looked around. "Ponies down here. Even the… the burned one… even she can't take that many, right?"
"I don't know," Jacob answered, honestly. "I think she would have brought more help if she thought she needed more. In Equestria the princesses can make the sun rise in the morning, so I wouldn't put it past her to get these ponies out." The crowd of ponies grew thick on the ground, many crying with relief and talking together and chatting excitedly about the imminent escape. They didn't stampede down to the exit, for which Jacob was grateful. Though it would be the most adorable way to die.
By the time they were halfway up, the message he had given had already been passed along, and there was no need to keep giving it. "You think it's strange?" he asked, hoping their conversation would be lost in the crowd. "That they're so calm?"
"No," Elise said. "We haven't given them the nourishment to be energetic. They're fed just barely enough to stay alive, and any who try to break out even once are kept drugged."
"Damn." He could see it too, though he hadn't wanted to earlier. See the way so many of these ponies looked sickly and shriveled. Fur was missing in mottled patches, and the smell. It was all he could do to keep from vomiting at that alone. Food and water these ponies may've had, but clearly showers had been considered superfluous. "Didn't you say you were from the FBI? Aren't you supposed to be protecting us?"
"We are." She glanced briefly back, at the little symbol on her flank. It looked familiar, though it was greatly simplified from any government insignia he knew of. "I thought we were. I still think keeping the infection from spreading to the general population is the right move. I just don't think we've been doing it the right way."
"We were doing it the right way," Jacob muttered. "Without killing anyone or locking them in boxes. The worst thing we ever did was let ponies run away from their problems to Equestria, instead of sticking behind to help each other."
"I'm… still not convinced that place exists," Elise said. "Not that there isn't a doorway that things come through, that's obviously real. But… couldn't it be somewhere closer?" She lowered her voice, forcing him to stoop to hear her over the excited ponies thronging through the room. "Our intelligence indicates the infection comes from Earth. One woman, 1983. There's a casefile I would show you if…" She shook her head. "I doubt they'd be too happy to see me in headquarters now. Point is, are you sure this 'Equestria' is real? There are easier ways to explain this than getting other worlds involved."
Was he? He had seen things come through the mirror all right, but he hadn't gone through himself. "The ponies have never lied to me," he eventually said. "They didn't volunteer everything they know, but that's not the same thing. They've been explicit about Equestria. Harley, the one who saved me originally, spoke about it like it was real. The things the others said always agreed, even if they interpreted it a little different. I may not know where it is, or maybe even what… but I'm sure it's real. If I didn't still have my sister out here somewhere, I probably would've run away. Before…" He shook his head. "Doesn't matter now. That's not gonna happen. I doubt the portal could've survived what your friends did to Unity."
Elise looked ashamed again, and well she should. But she didn't get to respond, because a little explosion sounded from the front of the room. Jacob jolted upright, spinning around on his feet. "We better investigate."
"Okay!"
"Clear a path!" Jacob ran close to the wall, taking huge strides that carried him over a few ponies at once. They heard him and obeyed, moving away from the wall, though the space was so thick with them now that some ponies couldn't even get out of the cells, and were bunching up in the lowest row as the entire floor was covered with them. Elise kept up with him, though how she managed not to drop far behind with the ground so thick with obstacles and her body so new he couldn't even guess.
He wrapped around and around, passing more and more agitated ponies. "Stay back!" he called to them as he went. They seemed to be speeding up the closer to the bottom he got, though he couldn't say what was motivating them. It wasn't like there was anywhere for them to go.
The further down he went, the less stale the air seemed to become. A breeze seemed to go with him, though it hadn't been there before.
They reached the bottom. Directly opposite from where the cells started, a new doorway had appeared, at least twenty feet across. His eyes fuzzed as he tried to look through it, as plain concrete melted into tropical sand. The sound of waves and the harsh light of sun overwhelmed the nearby emergency lights, accompanied with the occasional squawk of a gull.
The apparent doorway stung to see—the way it passed through such a thin wall, and the sky blended with a wall of rough stone. His horn burned again, and his stomach turned, but he managed not to fall over.
That was good, since ponies were pouring through the doorway like water from a broken dam. The flow seemed to be getting faster and faster by the moment, though the ponies were too weak to run. He was grateful for the fresh air, as it gave some relief from the smell.
Sunset stood between the doorway and the new barrier, glowing wings spread in defiance to… someone. "You have no right to these ponies!" she shouted, loud enough that dust trickled from cracks in the walls and ceilings. "They are Equestrian citizens. As Equestria's Regent, I—"
"Am a fool." Jacob stepped to the side to get a look at the speaker. A thick-looking woman, with mottled red hair and pockmarked skin. "You give away your freedom to fate, and what does it get you? The 'privilege' of more service." He couldn't have guessed at an age, except that she looked like a pancake left to cook too long. The voice didn't quite match the face, high and musical, though it was a discordant sort of music.
The woman spoke with a mouth of strange, half-rotten teeth, and though she wore unmarked military-style fatigues, they were hidden by a black robe and an exaggerated crescent around her neck.
She gestured. Sunset's shield came into blinding life again, overwhelming the light of the distant island with sunlight searing like July. Even so she flinched, and the force of the gesture drove her back a few feet. She drooped a little in her flight after that, panting from the effort. "See what your service earned you? Loyalty to impotent rulers gave you an illusion of strength."
"I don't know who you are," Sunset grunted, through gritted teeth. "But do that again, and I'll show you how my ponies felt when yours burned Unity."
"I'm the warden," she cackled. "The real one, not the overinflated windbag who thinks he is." Her eyes turned dark as she watched the current of ponies filing out. Jacob was tempted to join them, but instead he joined Harley, squeezing her hand in silent greeting. Two of their earth ponies stood behind Sunset's barrier, though there was no sign of Danni or the other mostly-human one. Probably still helping with the prison-break.
Harley squeezed back, though she broke away. She seemed to be edging her way to the wall, near the point where Sunset's shield was weakest.
The woman couldn't be Sunset's own height, though she was probably several times her width. She raised a hand again, this time pointing towards the doorway. "If you don't tell them to stop, I'll turn them all to slugs."
Sunset laughed, though the sound was forced. "There are thousands of us, Warden. I dare you to threaten my ponies again."
The “warden” ground her teeth together in frustration. "There are stronger masters than yours, princess." She said the word like a slur, spitting to one side. "Masters who don't fear the Imperial Art. You don't frighten me."
Bang! The report of gunfire jabbed into his eardrums, causing him to jerk away from Sunset towards the other wall.
The strange woman froze, her arm still raised in some mystical gesture. A crater had appeared in her forehead, oozing blood. Bang bang! Harley fired two more shots as unerringly as the first, a snubnose 44 clutched in both hands. "You scared of being dead?" Harley emptied the other three cylinders into the corpse, firing from just behind where Sunset's shield ended.
"Where the hell—" Jacob muttered, still shivering from the gore. "You had a gun?"
"Well duh." She flicked out the cylinder with practiced grace, dumping spent rounds at her feet even as she slid a quickloader in with the other hand, tossing that aside when it was empty too. "Sunset already blasted her with magic, and that did jack shit." She grinned. "But why would a wizardly type account for bullets when only her side uses 'em?"
Sunset ignored them, turning to face the ponies. She raised her voice, calling up into the ruined prison. "Please move as quick as you can without trampling one another! We have a way out down here, but it won't last. We need to get out as quickly as possible."
"Uh…" Jacob reached up, tugging on one of Sunset's pant-legs. "I think it's still moving!"
It was. The mound that had been a woman had started to melt and writhe, losing some of its concreteness and letting the uniform deflate. It was like rot, though accelerated to such speed that Jacob felt his stomach turn again.
Sunset glared down at the space the woman had been as an ocean of tar swelled into the hallway behind, as though preparing to roll over them all. "For Unity!"
The tunnel turned into an oven. Jacob looked away, shielding his eyes from the light and stumbling away from the magic. He felt his clothes get a little looser even as the little hairs on his arms seemed to char right off. He would probably have lost his eyebrows too, if he hadn't made it to the doorway by then.
When the heat finally died down, the passage had a floor of half-melted lava and the walls glinted like glass, but there was no sign of the body or the creature.
The flames settled from around Sunset's hair as she landed, breathing heavily and with the glow totally gone from her. Yet in place of the magic there was something else: satisfaction. "That's for the way you treated my ponies," she said. "Let's see your master get your atoms out of stone."