Harmony

by Aquaman

Farmer's Market - Part 4

Light blooms in the center of my vision, sending a dull twinge through my skull. I haven’t opened my eyes yet, but the bright light streaming down from the lamps overhead is enough to drag me back into consciousness again. I roll my shoulders and try to move my legs. They all follow each command I give them, albeit with more than a few complaints in the form of teeth-gritting soreness. On some level, that’s comforting: it means I’m still alive. On a very close other level, it’s terrifying: it means I’m still alive and alone inside of Mercury Mechanics.

The next two sensations to hit me come almost simultaneously. The first one is familiar: a cold feeling of wetness soaking into my stomach that sends a tingle down my spine every time I move. I’m lying in a puddle of seawater, the last remnants of the wave that sent me hurtling back in here. The second feeling is one I know too, but from a place much warmer and cozier than the one I’m inside right now. It’s a voice, loud and feminine, long departed from concern and chugging along towards full-blown panic.

“Ruby! Ruby, Link, please, if you can hear me, say something!” I hear Apple Bloom shout. She was with us before, wasn’t she? And now she’s gone. Swept off by the opposing twin of the wave that threw us back in here. The funny thing is that she’s probably not even a hundred yards away, but with the bridge we would’ve crossed together now lying in pieces at the bottom of an ocean trench, she might as well be on the other side of the planet.

Ignoring as best I can the needles stabbing into the bridge of my nose, I crack my eyelids open and squint at the source of the noise: my little beat-up radio lying in the same puddle I’m spread-eagled and slack-jawed in. The force of the tunnel collapse was enough to tear it free of its strap and toss it back into the lobby, and yet it’s still working like a charm. Those things really are durable.

I roll my shoulders again, this time enough to prop myself up onto my knees. As Apple Bloom continues to beg for a response, I pull myself through the water and over to the radio, little ripples of water washing over it and petering out at the edges of the puddle. My energy spent from even that simple task, I roll out of the water and onto my back again, grabbing the radio with both hooves so I can clutch it to my chest without too much effort.

“I’m here,” I say into it once I’ve pressed down the button on the side. “Alive. Hearing you.”

Apple Bloom swears, then lets out a shaking sigh. “Stars above, don’t scare me like that again,” she finally says once she’s done hyperventilating. “Are y’all in one piece?”

I let my hoof off the button for a second and turn my head to the side. Behind a wall of overturned and waterlogged chairs, Link is just now rolling onto his hooves, his eyes half-lidded and his legs wobbling from the effort. “I think,” I tell Apple Bloom once he gives me a salutatory nod.

“Well, that’s some good news,” Apple Bloom says after a pause that goes just a moment too long. I grit my teeth, and let my head roll back to face the ceiling again. She doesn’t need to tell me the bad news in this situation.

“Can Applejack still hear us?” I ask.

Her response is so quick, the first part of her sentence is cut off when I can’t release the talk button fast enough. “–ight here, sugarcube,” Applejack says. “I can hear you just fine.”

“Can you see us, though?” I don’t know what a chunk of zeppelin bashing through a walkway could do to the camera system she’s depending on to guide us, but my best guess about it is that it can’t be anything good.

“Lost a few feeds here and there, but the lobby’s still comin’ in clear. Landsake, though, what in tarnation happened out there?”

I don’t want to be the one to tell her, and judging by her tone of voice, neither does Apple Bloom. “Tunnel collapsed,” she says quietly. “Got hit by somethin’ that fell off the roof. I’m all right over in the Market, but Link and Ruby... they’re still over in Mercury.”

Apple Bloom’s next few words hit me like icicles to the chest. She sounds like she’s on the verge of tears. “This is all my fault,” she whimpers. “I-I told ‘em I’d take care of ‘em, and then I just ran ahead and let us get separated and n-now they’re...”

She trails off just in time for Applejack to harshly cut in over her. “Apple Bloom, hush. You didn’t do nothin’ wrong, you hear me? If anything, it’s my fault for not warnin’ y’all ‘bout that Big Daddy sooner. What with Link’s radio off and you and Ruby too close to get your attention, I just...”

Applejack sighs—the thumping burst of static sounds almost like a brick bouncing off the receiver—but when she comes back on, she’s smoothed her voice back out into a firm, authoritative tone. “We all made mistakes, and now we gotta pull on our big girl boots and deal with the consequences. You’re gonna be fine. You’re all gonna be fine.”

Forgive me if my glasses are a little less rose-tinted, I almost snap back, but just barely I manage to hold my tongue. That doesn’t mean it’s not true, though. Link and I are alone in the deep blue yonder of a city populated entirely by murderous psychopaths, with a waterlogged map we can’t read and two guns we don’t know to shoot. And more to the point, it’s worth mentioning again that our one and only way out of this building just got cleaved in half by a twenty-foot hunk of the first Equestrian-made zeppelin to ever blow up in the middle of uncharted waters. But hey, what could hurt about looking on the bright side?

I reach down to pull the radio closer, and the surge of pain in my shoulders brings tears to my eyes. Everything. The answer to that question is everything.

“Is there another way out of this building that doesn’t involve swimming?” I ask against my better judgement. Thankfully, at least this answer doesn’t sting as much as all the others I’ve heard since I came to.

“There are maintenance corridors that go along the ocean bed back to the Farmer’s Market,” Applejack says. “They weren’t meant for pedestrians so there aren’t that many cameras down there, but it’s still a pretty straight shot out. You’ll just have to go down through Mercury and... and a few other places in the Market. I should be able to steer ya out over the radio.”

Oh. How nice. Two more good things. And one awkward pause that seems to be hiding something Applejack doesn’t want to tell me about, and I really don’t want to hear about right now. Guess I’ll just sit here and stew on that while Apple Bloom assures me that it won’t really be a problem.

“It won’t really be a problem,” Apple Bloom assures me. “Only thing wrong with that area is that we never officially went in to clear it out, and those maintenance tunnels weren’t ever all that crowded to begin with. Considerin’ what the lobby was like, there’s a good chance it’ll be near empty down under it too. I’ll try to loop around and meet you halfway, in any case.”

To be honest, that at least actually does make me feel a little better. Having to cover half the distance back home with just Link by my side—who, speak of the devil, has finally made his way over to sit next to me in front of the radio—wasn’t my first choice for how I wanted to spend today, but it’s better than going the whole way like that.

“So the plan is that we find a way down to the maintenance tunnel, follow it out of the building into some other place in the market, meet Apple Bloom, and skip on back home in time for dinner?” I ask.

“Said it a heck of a lot better than I would’ve, sugarcube,” Applejack replies with a chuckle. “If you’re still in the Mercury lobby, there should be a stairwell off through a hallway in the back someplace. That’ll take you straight down to the–”

Applejack’s voice cuts out, and a little corner of my chest goes cold. The hitch in her sentence wasn’t gradual like she’d just lost her train of thought. It was abrupt, like an unseen predator had snuck up on her and clapped its hoof over her mouth. “What in the...” she mutters a moment later, only a few syllables making their way through the radio before words fail her once again.

“What’s wrong?” Apple Bloom asks before I get the chance to.

“Something’s wrong with the feeds,” Applejack says slowly, like she can’t even believe what she’s saying. “Energy levels are spikin’ like something’s overloadin’ the... y’all get downstairs and find the breaker room now, or the whole system’s gonna go up in–”

Before Applejack can shout the word, her voice is blown away by its real-life counterpart. Flames blossom and balloon out from the ceiling lights overhead, bursting the bulbs and spraying out white-hot sparks that fizzle out in the puddles left over from the tunnel collapse. I throw up a forehoof to shield my eyes, and for a terrifying moment afterwards I wonder if I waited too long to do it: when I open my eyes again, I can’t even see my hoof as I lower it back down to the floor. Once I pick up on the distant glow of the city proper filtering in through the lobby windows, though, I’m able to get ahold of myself again.

I’m not blind. The lights just went out. Again. Just like the last time it happened, it seems obvious that whatever just shorted them out was deliberate. Remembering the audiotape I found in the warehouse where I got my bracer only makes me more sure. Somepony wants us to be stuck down here, and they don’t want us to see them coming when they sneak in to snuff us out. And if this particular strategy of attack is anything to go by, I think I might have a pretty good idea who that is.

As if on cue, my radio crackles to life with an abnormally loud burst of static, and the voice that wafts out of isn’t Applejack or Apple Bloom. It’s somepony else entirely, the first one I expected to hear and the last one I ever hoped I would hear again.

“I have created this city in my own image,” Onyx Ryder says, projecting her speech like she’s speaking in a public forum and making an example of us to the gathered crowd. “From faded cloth, I have sewn beauty. From bedrock and steel, I have built a legacy. But you... the invaders, the parasprites of the surface world. What have you done? What great truths have you uncovered, what wonders have your mortal hooves wrought?”

Link’s pistol is drawn, the soft green light from his horn throwing a shimmering gleam over its finish. I’ve checked to make sure the safety on my bracer is off too, but so far nothing has crawled out of the walls or burst out of the ceiling with teeth bared and guns blazing. There’s nothing else in the room with us at all, just dark, roiling shadows and the self-righteous voice of a madmare with no choir left to preach to.

“Do not mistake me for a fool. I know why you’re here. You’ve come for my treasures, to peck out my eyes and flitter away from my blinded corpse with a few trinkets and baubles to line your nest. You seek fame, fortune...” Ryder pauses, then draws out the next word as if it’s venom dripping from her tongue. “Profit.”

This isn’t the same mare we heard in the plaza. Every sentence sprays from the radio like a hurricane, each syllable like another freezing spray of seafoam trickling down the back of my neck. She doesn’t just want us gone. She wants something far worse than that.

“You will find nothing,” she seethes. “This city is mine, and I’ll watch it burn before I see it desecrated by your filthy, scrabbling talons. You hear me, little birdies? Onyx Ryder offers you nothing but ashes!”

Her final threat sounds more like a vengeful scream, but with the situation being what it is, I’m not concerned with screaming and panicking as much as I am trying to figure out what the hay is going on. The last time this happened, Ryder couldn’t wait to send a hundred hungry splicers down to tear us limb from limb. Now, even after the radio goes quiet for good, not even so much as a spider scurries out of the shadows. Is she trying to scare us? Warn us? Are we just the newest playthings of a complete raving psychopath?

I point a clueless look towards Link, and he mirrors my expression right back. Whatever Ryder’s game is, she doesn’t have all her pieces in the right position yet. Which means our best option right now is to trot down into the maintenance tunnels and probably push them into place for her.

On second thought, maybe a bit of screaming and panicking would do me some good here.

“You get any of that, Applejack?” Link says. His words are a bit tentative, just as mine would be if I were speaking into a radio I wasn’t sure would even work anymore, but it turns out there’s no need for him to be cautious. Applejack answers him right away, and sounds like she’d rather tell him anything but what he’s hoping to hear.

“I got it, all right,” she mutters. “Wish I could say it’s just like her to be all bark and no bite, but she’s been crazy like a fox for years. I don’t know what she’s got planned for you, but I’d sure as hayfire love to never have to find out.”

“What was she talking about?” I ask. My heart’s still winding down from the wide variety of pulse rates it just browsed through, so it takes me a moment to catch my breath before I can keep going. “We didn’t do anything to her. We’re not even supposed to be down here in the first place! What did we do wrong?”

“It ain’t what you’ve done, it’s what she thinks you’re gonna do. Ryder’s as paranoid as they come, and since the day this place went up she’s figured somepony up on the surface was fixin’ to hunt it down and ruin her perfect little utopia’a freedom and progress. And to think she’s talkin’ about you peckin’ her eyes out when she’s too blind to even...”

Applejack grunts and cuts herself off. I swear I can almost hear her head shake on the other end of the line. “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “Don’t worry about Ryder. What you need to worry about is meetin’ up with Apple Bloom and gettin’ back here. ‘Til then, just move fast and watch each other’s backs, sugarcube.”

Right. As if that’s going to be enough to tide me over until we’re back in the compound sipping apple juice in front of a roaring fire. “What about the other guy?” I ask. “There was another pony who fought with Ryder last time, a... a stallion. What about him?”

I let off the button and listen closely. Applejack says nothing.

“What’s his name... Daybreak! You talked about him before, didn’t you? What’s he got against Ryder? What’s he gonna do?”

The silence stretches on so long that I begin to wonder whether Applejack and I are even still connected. I’m a few seconds away from giving up and consigning myself to wandering around forever in a pitch-black ghost town when she finally replies.

“Wherever Ryder goes, he follows,” she says quietly, “and whenever Ryder hunts, he gobbles up the scraps. If he wanted you dead, he’d have left you alone in the lobby, so whether he thinks you can help him or just wants to get under Ryder’s skin, he ain’t likely to leave you be now.”

“Is he as bad as Ryder?”

She pauses again. The faint static between us sounds like storm waves rolling over hard-packed sand. I wait and I wait, and my heart pounds in my chest.

“No,” she finally tells me. “He’s worse.”

Applejack clams up and leaves me a chance to ask what she means by that, but I’m stopped in my tracks by an overbearing sense that there wouldn’t be any point. No matter what she could tell us about Ryder or Daybreak now, it wouldn’t do much good other than letting us know the exact details of how deeply we’re screwed. And it wouldn’t change anything about the fact that I’m still stuck out here with freshly cracked glasses and my braid dripping down the back of my neck, and nothing but a hoof-mounted gun and a battered old radio between me and the same fate I just barely avoided a few moments ago.

Link’s up on his hooves now, stumbling and splashing towards me through the dusky shadows the dim outside light can’t penetrate, but I can’t tell whether that he’s just disoriented or more seriously hurt.

“You all right too?” I ask him, looking more at his chest than all the way up to his eyes. Finally, he steps into a more well-lit area, and I can see him clearly. His mane and saddlebags are dripping wet and streaked with grime and scratches, but there’s no blood staining his coat or clouding the puddle beneath him. He stops once he’s back on relatively dry ground next to me, and takes a moment to catch his breath before answering.

“I’ll live,” he says. His gaze drifts from me over to something in the corner of the room, and I follow suit in spite of knowing I’ll regret it. For the most part, the tidal wave that just smashed through the Mercury lobby didn’t do much in the way of lasting damage. A few chairs and tables were upended and bits of glass and rubble are scattered here and there, but other than that the floor looks more or less normal.

It’s the walls, rather, that show the true extent of what just happened. Crumbling dents and scratches mar the once pristine moldings, and thin crimson ropes drip down from patches of the splicer’s blood, washed away in some places by the water that just crashed over them. The splicer himself, meanwhile, is lying dead against the wall—at least, there’s a pile of mangled feathers and flesh over there that I assume used to be him—right next to a metal blast door that’s now blocking off what used to be the way out of here.

That explains why we’re not all paddling around in twenty feet of water, I guess. Smart design for a place like this. If only they could’ve put the same amount of thought into the spindly little walkways keeping them all connected. And if only marveling at the ingenuity of Harmony’s engineering staff was enough to keep my head from spinning so badly that I almost want to throw up just to get the images all around me out of my mind.

“Some day, huh?” Link says quietly.

I try to keep from looking over towards the splicer again, and end up looking straight into Link’s weary eyes. “Some day,” I agree.

The silence that follows stretches out for almost half a minute, long enough that I know we’re going to end up dragging it along with us whenever we do get out of here. Judging by his shuffling hooves, Link seems to feel the same way.

“We should get moving,” he eventually says. “If that Big Daddy’s still in the building, I’d rather us sneak up on it than the other way around.

His suggestion is predictable, but he has a point all the same. If the Big Daddy and his Little Sister aren’t in the lobby anymore, that wave didn’t do anything to slow them down. On the other hoof, maybe this could work to our advantage. That big beast probably knows this area a lot better than we do, and he’s bound to leave a trail of chaos and mayhem behind him. So long as we keep close on his tail, he might just lead us right back out to the Market again, and take care of any splicers along the way to boot.

“Let’s go, then,” I say, and although Link eyes me for a few more seconds with his lips pressed against his teeth, whatever he’s repressing the urge to tell me never comes out. We find the hallway Applejack mentioned and start sloshing towards it together. When we’re halfway there, Link peels off towards the security station under the balcony, where he pokes through the debris littering the floor for a bit before grabbing some lumpy black thing and stuffing it inside his bag.

He closes the short gap between us without looking at me, and he doesn’t say a word even though he must know I was watching him the whole way. So I don’t speak either. Instead, I just follow close behind him as he edges around me and heads down the hallway, wondering what he’s thinking and whether any of it has to do with me.

It takes us half a minute to reach the stairwell down to the maintenance tunnels. The whole way over, the tail end of the rubber hosing for the bathysphere bounces back and forth in front of my nose.

As we stop at the foot of the stairs, both our radios ask simultaneously if we’ve moved out yet. Applejack’s voice echoes half a dozen times in the cramped, pitch-black space, and I have to swallow hard before I can will myself to respond.

“We’re at the stairs,” I report back, squinting into the inky darkness that the feeble light from the lobby has no hope of penetrating.

“And?”

“Well, it’s...” Really dark and scary, I almost add, but I hold back at the last second. I’m not going to make this any easier on Applejack or Apple Bloom if I go around acting like I’m afraid of my own shadow. For the time being, especially with Link right beside me, I just need to suck it up and be brave. “The power’s still out. Any chance you can get us some lights?”

“Not from where I’m sittin’, no. Wish I had better news for ya, but if the lights are gone in the stairwell, that means emergency power’s cooked too. I told Apple Bloom to see if she can’t unring a few bells and get the system back up, but till then your best bet is to poke around for a MOON vial or two and test out that light on your utility bracer.”

Link lights his horn up and cranes his neck forward, and the first landing of the stairwell just barely comes into view. It’s not a lot to work with and both of us know it, but I’m halfway through convincing myself that it’ll be enough when the radio buzzes again. In a spurt of optimism, I figure it’s Apple Bloom checking in with us from someplace out in the Market. Like every other time I let optimism dictate my thoughts in this city, I’m dead wrong.

“Well, isn’t this quite the pre-dic-a-ment,” another stomach-sinkingly familiar voice drawls, each syllable practically quivering with glee. “Don’t you worry ‘bout a thing now, sweetcheeks. Handycolt Daybreak is on the job.”

I fumble with my radio and try to mash the button quick enough to say something back, but he either doesn’t respond or can’t hear me in the first place. Given how much both he and Ryder seem to enjoy butting in on our conversations when we least expect it, maybe their radios are designed that way. In any case, by the time I realize I’m not going to get an answer about what Daybreak is doing, there’s no need to ask for one. A deep, rumbling buzz charges up inside the walls of the building, and then strips of what look like foggy white glass begin to glow along the walls and underneath the stairs. The main lamps overhead are still dark, but the new lighting is more than enough to make the trip down the stairs a much less spine-tingling experience.

“That’s a bit more cozy, don’tcha think?” Daybreak proudly proclaims. “No, no, don’t thank me. Just bein’ a friend to those in need. Y’all run along now.”

The radio goes quiet, and its last command is repeated back to us by the stairwell. Sharing another look with Link feels like it wouldn’t end well, so I settle for staring at the ceiling and fantasizing about the wonderful world of the surface where nobody knew who I was and I didn’t care if they did. At the very least, that seems like a much better option than keying on the radio again and asking Applejack if she heard that too. Somehow, I get the sense she wouldn’t be in much of a mood for sarcasm at the moment.

“Just get downstairs, sugarcube,” she says after a long stretch of intentionally not-awkward silence. “Give a shout if you need directions.”

Link reacts to Applejack’s command first, so he takes the lead going down through Mercury’s lower levels. The stairs are rough and made of concrete, so the clatter of my hooves against the stone still rings out loudly even though I keep trying to muffle my steps. Still, as creepy and unexpected as their source of power was, the soft, shadow-dispersing glow of the emergency lights does wonders for calming me down. Before I know it, we’ve descended four stories—a lot more than I thought there’d be room for underneath the lobby—and emerged into a grungy, windowless tunnel that twists out of sight twenty feet off to the left.

Dim skylights (oceanlights?) spaced at even intervals along the apex of the rounded ceiling give a little more help to the emergency strips near the floor, but other than that the creaking metal tube is empty. There’s still no hint of danger down here, but my pulse speeds up all the same. We must be miles deep by now, sandwiched between the ocean floor right below us and probably billions of gallons of water overhead. If this tunnel collapses, there won’t be any blast door to keep us high and dry.

Link spends a few moments peering down the corridor, then nods for me to follow him and heads off. The speed of his pace gnaws at my gut, but only for a second or two. Applejack only told us to call her on the radio if we needed directions, and it’s not like we’re in any danger of getting lost in a tunnel that only goes one way. Besides, I’ve probably been hard enough on Link already, especially since he had the wherewithal to grab the tubing before we left the lobby. If I want to smooth things out a bit between us, I could start by giving him the benefit of the doubt once or twice. There’s no reason to freak out right now, and deep down I know it.

Of course, it becomes a lot harder to remind myself of that once Daybreak’s voice starts oozing out of our radios again, creamy as melting butter and tinged with a salespony’s false good cheer.

“Mighty sorry ‘bout all the fuss back there,” he says languidly. “Used to be Miss Ryder was a genuine Dream Valley peach, but the times... well, they gone ahead and changed. Course, I can’t say I’m entirely innocent in that partic-alur state’a affairs, but I ain’t one to tell old war stories whilst I’m still in the business’a drummin’ up new ones. Any case, I don’t reckon that concerns you too much. What I do reckon is that you’re fixin’ to get outta here quick as you can. And I also reckon that with the right amount’a persuasion, I might just be inspired to... now, how would Miss Ryder say it? Facilitate that outcome.”

My legs peter down from a canter to a walk, and then all the way into a dead stop. Link sidles back next to me at about the same pace, his eyes locked on his radio just as mine are on my own. Suffice it to say: we’re listening.

“The terms of this arrangement are simple,” Daybreak continues, picking up right where he left off after a brief and surely intentional pause. “Matter’a fact, sweetcheeks, you’ve already done your part all by yourself. All’s I require of ya is a gentlepony’s agreement to follow through on it. That ain’t so difficult, is it?”

I want to shake my head, but hold off on the urge for two reasons. First of all, I’d feel kind of silly answering a voice floating out of a radio like that, but more importantly, something about this conversation seems the tiniest bit off to me. What does he mean, we’ve already done our part? Which one of us is he even talking to?

My first question is answered as soon as he starts talking again. Unfortunately for me, he also answers my second one at the same time.

“Now, I won’t go namin’ any names, but if my canaries sang me the song I thought I heard, one’a you little birdies found yourself a certain personal voice recorder not too long ago. Talkin’ ‘bout sparks and diseases, and savin’ the city and such? See, the pony who made that is... rather, was, I’m sad to say, quite a dear friend’a mine once upon a time. It meant the world to him, tryin’ to rebuild this place and heal up the places Miss Ryder let burn away, but all that crusadin’ did one hayfire of a number on him after a while. He got desperate, started sendin’ out those tapes to anypony an’ everypony he thought could take up the mantle after he couldn’t bear to do it no more himself. And this time, that poor soul was you.”

I thread my lip between my teeth and bite down hard, trying to make the pain potent enough to chase away the tingling dread crawling down my spine. I can feel Link’s eyes on the side of my face, and another pair of eyes from somewhere far away, hovering over a microphone magically linked to the box hanging from my neck.

“Oh, don’t worry about doin’ anythin’ he said. Landsake, I bet just hearin’ all that nonsense scared the livin’ daylights outta ya. No, all I want you to do is, ‘f you’d be so kind, find a way to get that tape over to me. The pony who made it may’ve gone off the deep end, but somewhere in those tapes is some part’a him that ain’t all the way over yet. There’s things about this city that nopony but him could ever know, and speakin’ as its democratically appointed savior... well, I rightly feel it’s my responsibility to know ‘em too. So that’s the deal: you give me that tape, and I get a little bit closer to tuggin’ this little slice’a heaven out from under Miss Onyx Ryder’s heel. Heck, you don’t even have to go outta your way. I reckon you’re fixin’ to take one’a them bathyspheres from Pluto’s Keep outta here? Well, so long as you just drop that tape down there ‘fore you cast off, I’ll make sure one’a my boys picks it up. I’ll even clear the way down there for ya if you like. That sound agreeable? Can you do that for me, sugarcube?”

His questions must be rhetorical, because one way or another I can’t answer him. “G’wan and think about it if ya want to,” Daybreak offers, “but I can guarantee y’all ain’t got nothin’ ta fear from me. Just remember who your friends are down here... and don’t forget who’s tryin’ to be anything but. Y’all take care now.”

Daybreak’s last cryptic remark recedes down the empty hall, and I’m left clueless in its wake. Applejack doesn’t chime in with an opinion either, so the silence persists until Link’s eyes dart away from me for a split second, then flash back up once he sees that I’ve noticed his movement.

“You know what he was talking about?” he asks. And it’s so tempting to tell him, so seemingly easy to confess what I found in Slinky’s warehouse, that it comes as a complete shock when I lie anyway.

“No idea,” I say, and in case my own guilt wasn’t enough to set my cheeks ablaze, the crease in Link’s brow does the job beautifully all by itself. Just like Applejack, though, he keeps whatever his true thoughts are about the situation to himself.

“All right, then,” he mutters with a half-hearted shrug, nodding in the next moment for us to keep walking down the hallway. We round the corner in silence, him close to the inside wall and me looping around him with an awkward gap between us, like I’m anchored to his body by a taut, fraying string just barely keeping itself from snapping. Between the knot in my gut and the heat in my face, I feel like I’m about ready to go up in smoke.

This has to stop. I can’t keep brushing him off like this and pretending he’s not worth the time to talk to. I’ve got to stand tall and be open with him, no matter how scary it may seem, no matter how much my legs are quivering and my heart is fluttering like a manic-depressive moth even at the thought of initiating contact. In the last twenty-four hours, I’ve survived a zeppelin crash, met at least a half-dozen different ponies who’ve actively tried to kill me, and pretty much literally spit in the face of death. For Celestia’s sake, I should not be afraid of a normal freaking conversation with a normal freaking pony.

So that’s it, then. We’re going to round that next corner in the hallway, I’m going to turn towards Link, and I’m going to strike up a conversation. I have to get some practice with it somewhere, right? And beyond that, maybe it’d be easier to understand him if I just spoke to him like a civilized mare. Heck, even small talk would be a start. That seems logical. Simple, even.

Right. Simple. Talking is simple. I should do some talking. Talking to Link.

Yep.

Gonna talk now.

About small things.

That I’m having no trouble at all trying to desperately force into my head. We walk around the bend and a few more seconds tick by in a vacuum of sound, and then finally I can’t take it anymore.

“So,” I say as we duck around a crack in the ceiling that’s spitting up the briny deep all over the walls. “Nice weather we’re having.”

In my head, it makes perfect sense. All the paperbacks I read back home were chock full of witty banter between the heroes, and ironic comments about the weather always got at least a dry chuckle out of everyone involved. And there was water falling from the ceiling that looked like rain, so it was basically the same thing.

Link, judging by the look of thoroughly complete bafflement on his face, clearly feels otherwise. I put on the biggest grin I could and try to at least hold up my end of the bargain, and what I get is a bit too dry with not enough chuckle. So in the end, it sounds less like a laugh and more like the sound a foal would make while trying to cough up a carrot stick.

In retrospect, I really didn’t think this through.

Despite that—or quite possibly because of it—I keep talking anyway, determined not to let one little setback knock me off course. “Hey, look, about what happened back in the lobby, I...”

And once again, words fail me, though this time it’s for a completely different reason. I’m already deadset on telling Link how I feel about him shooting that splicer, but the truth I’m just now realizing is that I never really figured out how I feel about it in the first place. What am I supposed to tell him? That it’s okay, that it’s all in the past? Well, no, to be honest, it’s not okay, and the nauseating itch in my shoulder right where Link’s bullet hit the splicer is only making things worse on that side of the equation.

On the other side, though, a different kind of rationality is taking hold. It wasn’t right to kill that splicer just for being in our way, but would it have been any less wrong to risk one of us dying for his sake? And what about that mare back at the plaza? I’ve seen what kinds of monsters that SUN stuff turns ponies into, so I can’t pretend now that there was some way we could’ve reasoned with her. Is it right to kill somepony if they’re trying to kill you first? And am I really the crazy one for thinking that here, of all places, it’s not?

“What about it?” Link asks.

“Nothing,” I answer quickly. A short moment of gritting my teeth and cursing myself for dodging around an honest answer is all I can spare before I go on. “I just think we need to, uh... communicate a little better. I mean, we are pretty much alone back here, and I guess we kind of got off to a rocky start on the zep and all, sooo... I don’t know. Thought we could just... talk a bit.”

Link’s eyes twitch in my direction, but his head stays pointed at the next twist in the hallway. “About what?”

Splicers. Paranoia. Ryder. Social anxiety. Imminent death. Panic.

“Y’know, just... stuff.”

Link doesn’t seem inspired to take the initiative from there, so this time I play it safe with my opening line and fall back on another standard one I remember from my stories. “Where are you from?”

As he starts to turn towards me, I can tell I’m all but flipping cartwheels across his last nerve, but he composes himself at the last second. With the benefit of hindsight, I suppose I can’t blame him. It’s not like I’ve been a particularly simple nut to crack during the last few minutes.

“Fillydelphia,” he finally says, his tone gruff but not overtly hostile. Sounds like progress to me.

“Really? I’m from Rockton. ‘Bout twenty miles north of the city limits.” Link gives what I think is a nod, and says nothing.

“Big mining town?” I go on. “Been around since old Equestrian times? Still provides sixty-three percent of the ore for every factory south of Trottingham?”

“Never heard of it.”

Link looked like he was ready to chew a hole in his tongue a second ago, and now I know precisely how that felt. Just like him, though, I keep quiet about it, and with good reason. If he’s from Fillydelphia and managed to get a ticket on the Elysium, he’s probably just as loaded as anypony in the whole city. Heck, he might even be the heir to one of the big manufacturing corporations my family sells raw materials to. Of course he wouldn’t have a clue where a backwater grease spot like Rockton was.

He should, though, I can’t help but think, and that train of thought is a big reason why tone of my internal voice bleeds a little too much into my external one.

“Well, I’ve worked there my whole life,” I explain, my voice a perfect blend of “as if I care” and “so you sure as hay better”. “Brightshine Family Mining Company. I’m Ruby Brightshine. My family pretty much owns the town. My father pretty much built it, actually. Kept it together when the gem market crashed, grabbed a big chunk of the steel market once Manehattan started building up and got the working stallions back on their hooves. It’s a neat little place.”

Link nods again. His lips are pulled tight against his gums, and when he speaks, they barely part. That’s not necessarily bad. All I did was defend my hometown a little. We’re still doing fine.

“I suppose you’re an executive or something?” he asks. This whole time, he still hasn’t so much as looked at me. I have to bite down on my lip to keep a sarcastic response trapped behind my tongue.

“R and D,” I say. “I build things, and my brother makes money with them.”

Link laughs and gazes off at the ceiling. “And your parents burn it all from the top on brandy and cigars, right?” he asks, with a bitterness in his tone that I can only assume is directed at me.

Keep it together, I order myself. You knew this would be awkward. It’s very awkward right now. Just keep walking, stay calm, and be polite.

“My mother keeps the books,” I tell him.

“Just your dad, then?”

This time, it takes several seconds before I can get myself under control, and it’s only because I keep repeating in my head that he doesn’t know, that he couldn’t know, that I have no reason to expect he could possibly know. Maybe he’s had a bad time at home. Maybe he hates me. Maybe he doesn’t hate me, and he’s just really, really oblivious. This isn’t worth the trouble. He’s not worth the stress. I can be calm. I am calm.

“He’s not around very much,” I say, deliberate force boosting up each syllable. I grit my teeth, I narrow my eyes, I give every fair warning I can with every part of my body that he’s straying into dangerous territory, but he just...

“What, he’s a gambler?”

Won’t...

“Drinker?”

“Stop!” I shout, a little bit louder than I meant to. Or maybe I did mean to be that way. Either way, it still doesn’t shut Link up.

“Well, what is he, then?” Link asks, throwing his forehoof up in the air hard enough to stop him dead in his tracks. “You’re the one who wanted to talk so damn bad, so talk! What is he, if he’s so great and powerful? What is your dad now?”

It’s a perfect shot, one that slips right between my ribs and straight through to my spine, and by the time I remember how calm I’m supposed to be, it’s already too late to keep the nerve center it pierced from spilling out all over him. “Right now, my dad’s dead,” I snap at him. “So thanks for bringing it up.”

I hear Link’s hooves stumble to a halt behind me as I walk past him. I keep my eyes forward, and my breathing as steady as I can. “I-I didn’t...” he tries to say.

“No, I know you didn’t,” I say over him. The end of the tunnel is tinged red. I want to hit something, and I can’t decide what. “Didn’t know, didn’t th...”

I glance back at Link for just a moment. He’s twenty feet back and staring at me with his jaw still popped open in mid-excuse. “It’s fine,” I say. “We should keep moving.”

Link shuts his mouth and runs his tongue over his lips, and I just barely hear him swear under his breath as he trots back up to my side. We make it around the next bend without a word spoken between us, and about a hundred yards away I can finally see the tunnel start to open up. We’re nearly out. I’m almost back to safety.

“My, uh... I never saw a lot of my parents,” Link says, his eyes wandering the walls all around us and never making their way back to me. “Businessponies, y’know. Places to be, huge production plants to run. It’s been in my family for years too, I think. I don’t know much about it, really.”

My eyes subconsciously drift back past his saddlebags to his flank, and I speak before I can think to wedge my hoof in between my teeth. “Which explains why you have a big metal chain for a cutie mark.”

Link’s lips part as his eyebrows twitch, and I press my hooves down extra hard into the floor so I’m not tempted to let one rise up and smack me in the face. I’ve regretted pretty much everything I’ve said since I started this conversation, so why should this time be any different?

“It’s... I-I just don’t go into the factories a lot,” he says without looking at me, stammering for a moment before clearing his throat and speaking a little more confidently. “My father owns a big conglomeration of metalworking plants, and I just help out around his office and, y’know, learn the tricks of the trade. I was actually on my way to a conference out on Kilio when the, uh...”

Link trails off, mumbles, “Yeah,” and doesn’t elaborate beyond that. Guess that means our little chat’s over. Fine by me. It means I get to stop reminding myself to be civil every time he opens his mouth, and cringing every time my own gets away from me anyway. Even now, as the room at the tunnel’s end begins to come into view, a white-hot ball of anger is rolling around in my stomach, its stinging heat directed at myself just as much as it is at everything around me.

It was his fault for saying all those things about Dad, one part of me thinks. It’s your fault for letting it get under your skin, says another. It doesn’t even freaking matter, the loudest portion of my brain shouts, because we’re out of the tunnel and we’re almost back to the compound, where I can find an empty room and scream my stupid head off until I feel like I can blend in with polite society again.

Shadowy metal gives way to gnarled wood paneling again, and one of the knots in my chest loosens up as we exit the tunnel and enter the antechamber outside it. “All right, we’re out,” I think out loud to Link, keying on the radio so Applejack can hear too. “Probably just a few more rooms to get through, and then we’ll be home-fr–”

“Get down!”

Before I can process the meaning of Link’s frantic hiss, he makes it abundantly clear by wrapping his leg around my neck and yanking me behind a low partition. On the other side of it is a courtyard half-covered by a raised deck built out of plywood, and even with my ears crushed up against his side, I can hear now what I should’ve heard before: voices, low and angry, just a few yards away from where we’re hidden.

Comments

[Evil_Spike]

Glad to see you're still working on this, Aqua. Really good chapter, gives Ruby a chance at being less of a 3rd wheel, as well as letting us in on a bit of backstory.

[coandco]

“We should get moving,” he eventually says. “If that Big Daddy’s still in the building, I’d rather us sneak up on it than the other way around.

You're missing an ending quote on this paragraph.

[Soge]

Nice chapter, but I still don't understand where all this animosity towards Link comes from...

[Nonagon]

Wooooooooooo

[WritingHoof]

You got your taste of plasmid blues. Nice story though I wonder how you are going to have Ruby meet with the other characters or keep with the original theme of the story. Choice was an important part of Bioshock. Anyways, I need to keep on reading.