Chapter 1
Redemption Is A Harsh Mistress
It’s hard to ignore the second hand of a ticking alarm clock. It’s even harder if said alarm clock is wired to a bundle of dynamite. If you are locked in a secret basement with said alarm clock and its accompanying bundle of dynamite then that second hand really gets your attention.
I had eight minutes left.
This was not how I imagined becoming one of the good guys would turn out.
“Fred, I’m so very sorry,” I told my companion. That I wasn’t going to die all alone was not a comfort. Fred didn’t deserve this.
“You got nothing to be sorry about, Missy,” the old mule said. “You didn’t lock us down here.”
“I’m pretty sure getting your client killed is bad customer service.”
Fred scratched his head thoughtfully. “I don’t know. I’ve read a lot about management, and nobody ever came right out and said, ‘Do not get the customer killed.’”
“It should go without saying. Besides, I don’t think I’m the target audience for those management books.” I think Fred was disappointed that I didn’t laugh at his quip. That he chuckled at mine just made me more depressed.
My name is Merry Fairweather, and what brought me to this dirty basement in the worst part of Manehattan was a search for redemption.
I had seven minutes to find it.
I used to be the sidekick of a super villain. That is, I was the producer for Grand Chef Blitzen Éclair’s cooking contest. I helped the Grand Chef cheat. If there was a way to sabotage a competitor I found it, then I arranged it. I didn’t just help him win, I saw to it that every pastry chef he faced was crushed. Ponies were scarred for life, just to satisfy Blitzen’s ego. I’d like to say this was a waste of my talents, but that would be a lie. It turned out this was exactly the work I for which I had a talent. I’m very good at being bad.
I only started to wake up when one of my dirty tricks led to a fire and almost got several children killed. Even then I carried on. What can I say, I was in love with that monster. I was deluded enough to think he was just an arrogant jerk. I didn’t see that he was criminally insane.
You may have heard about the Grand Chef’s break down. It was in all the papers. He flipped out in front of a standing room only audience and tried the beat his last challenger to death. She was middle school filly. I can’t put into words how glad I am they stopped Blitzen in time.
I escaped this disgrace by having been thrown out of the building an hour before. I had a change of heart, and Blitzen did not take it well. He hurled me through a rack of sauce pans. My right flank still aches on damp days. Such is the price of redemption.
I wish I could be there when they finally let the Blitzen out of the loony bin. We should have a long talk. But that isn’t going to happen.
Six minutes.
Fred gave me a nudge. “Don’t waste what little time you have left on guilt, Missy.”
“Sure, Fred. I’ll think about something else.” I hoped that lie was comforting.
I met Fred the night my career ended. He was out on the street homeless. Fred had started with one cart he pulled himself, and turned that into one of Equestria’s biggest shipping companies. His no-account brother-in-law, Morton, had framed him for mismanagement and expense account abuse, and stole company. Then Morton turned his sister against Fred, and he lost his family as well.
At the time I thought, if the good guys can’t do anything to help him, maybe a bad guy could. Fred became my first client.
A midnight visit to Morton’s office yielded a set of black ledgers. Some simple forensic accounting gave me all the evidence I needed, but since this was illegally obtained I still had to find the goods. Luckily, I knew how to do that.
Five minutes.
The door opened. Before I could gallop up the stairs somepony was tossed inside, and the door slammed shut again. I caught a skinny pegasus as he tumbled down the stairs like a rag doll.
“Scooter! You stupid kid, you were supposed to run for help!” Not that he could hear me. At least he was still breathing.
I heard laughter from the far side of the door. Morton called out, “I brung you your knight in shining armor. Too bad you picked a scrawny boy with a glass jaw to rescue you.”
I charged up the stairs and began to pound on the door. “Don’t you say that about him, he tried! How about you pick on somepony your own size? Like, maybe you open the door and let the outraged mare at you?!”
There was more laughter. “No thanks, Lady. I like you right where you are.” Morton’s hoof steps began to recede.
“Hey! Come back! Don’t you want to gloat some more? Maybe tell me your clever plan? You still have…” I glanced at the alarm clock. “…a few more minutes.”
Morton just laughed some more and trotted away.
Scooter had been my assistant. For some reason he would do anything for me. He had a custom coffee mug made that read, ‘Merry’s Right Hoof and Wing.’ He was very proud of that mug, though not as proud as I was. You can’t buy loyalty like Scooter’s. I’ll be darned if I know how I earned it.
I recruited Scooter because I knew a clerk at the Hall of Records who happened to be sweet on him. For the price of a night on the town for two, my treat, I got some alone time in the back room where the deeds were filed. I had the name of Morton’s shell company; the ridiculous ‘Moon Raker Enterprises’; and it didn’t take me long to connect that to this very warehouse.
That was all Scooter was supposed to do. But he took a leave of absence and began tagging along on my ‘big adventure.’ I couldn’t shake him.
He was waiting outside when I broke into the warehouse, with instructions to run to the cops at the first sign of trouble. I invited Fred to come in with me. I told myself he’d enjoy being there when I found the smoking gun that ruined Morton. The truth was I wanted an audience. I wanted someone to see I could be one of the good guys, I wanted a witness to my first triumph on the side of right. My need to preen a little got Fred into this mess.
It was easy to find the door to the secret basement. It was behind a bookshelf (as if Morton ever read a book). Everything I needed was in the basement. There were crates of goods, listed officially as ‘lost in shipment,’ waiting to be fenced. There was contraband, ready to be smuggled along with legitimate loads. Just one anonymous tip to the authorities and I was done. Mission accomplished.
I take it for granted that Scooter, as lookout, tried to warn us that Morton had come back to the warehouse. I just couldn’t hear him in the basement. What I did hear was the door slam, followed by the dead bolt sliding into place. There was the click of some kind of switch.
That awful alarm clock began ticking.
It was just my luck that Morton apparently had a super villain fixation. He’d actually wired his lair to self-destruct. Who does that?!
My career as one of the good guys hadn’t lasted a week. In three minutes it would be over.
“I meant what I said about wasting your time on guilt, Merry,” said Fred. “Don’t count all the things you done wrong without counting the things you done right.”
“I got you and Scooter here, Fred. What could I possibly have done that would count after that?”
“I was on the street without a friend in the world when you found me, Merry. I wouldn’t have lasted the winter, and I would have been all alone. At least now I get to die with a friend.”
“I’m happy that makes you feel better, Fred.”
“You gave me hope, Merry.”
“For five days.”
“Hey, Missy, it’s better than what I had.”
I rubbed my eyes vigorously. When I’d cleared the tears away I spied something on the far wall that gave me an idea.
“I may be able to give you another minute and a half of hope, Fred.” I fished a hair pin out of the brim of my hat.
“Lock’s on the wrong side of the door, Merry.”
“That’s not the lock I aim to pick.” I climbed to the top of a stack of crates. There, on the wall, was a heavy iron hatch.
“Is that a coal chute?”
“Yep,” I answered, going to work on the lock. In this neighborhood you needed a hatch like this to keep out unwanted visitors.
The lock was old and it needed oil. It took me longer than I expected to open. Fred had found some rope, and I tied it around Scooter. Together we muscled Scooter to the top of those crates (I hope we didn’t kill him in the process of saving him). Then Fred took the rope and shimmied up the chute. With him pulling and me pushing we had Scooter inside. But Fred was exhausted. Years of hard work had made him tough, but he wasn’t so young anymore. I could hear his labored breathing. We hadn’t gotten Scooter high enough up the chute to make room for me.
I could hear sirens, and imagined the first responders were coming at full gallop. Scooter had gotten word to somepony before coming back to rescue us after all. Not bad response time, not for this part of town. But not fast enough for me. I checked the alarm clock. I wasn’t going to get out in the five seconds we had left.
I thought the hatch might make an effective blast shield, but only if it was shut. So I shut it.
I couldn’t hear the sirens or Fred calling to me, and that was encouraging. There was a good, sound proof seal.
I wondered, did saving two lives still count towards redemption if you were the one who got them into the death trap? I doubted it.
This left me alone to make one last desperate play. In all the action novels you have to cut the red wire to defuse the bomb. It’s always the red wire, right?
I ran to the dynamite and bit through the red wire.
The alarm rang.