> Flash
>  by AnOrdinaryWriter
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Some Secrets...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The two fillies stood on the dirt path outside the town borders, staring at the once-thriving wasteland.

The earth pony with the rose and white mane and cyan coat spoke first. “We couldn’t have come sooner? You know, when the sun was out and it wasn’t pitch black outside?”

“I didn’t know it would take this long to get here,” the pegasus with the purple coat responded with a scratchy voice, running a hoof through her red and yellow mane, stripes of blue and green in between. “Besides, the place isn’t completely dark, and we’ve got flash.”

“The flash on that camera isn’t exactly enough to make our pictures look much better,” the cyan pony said, pointing to the average sized digital camera hanging from around her friend’s neck.

“Our teacher’s an easy grader, we have nothing to worry about,” the purple filly responded.

“That’s not exactly what worries me.”

“Huh?” the purple filly inquired, turning to face her friend. “What’s up then?”

The earth pony looked downward, almost nervously. “I dunno. It looks kinda creepy, don’t you think?”

“Ah, you’re scared.”

“Am not! I was just… pointing something out.”

“Don’t worry Cotton Candy,” the pegasus said, wrapping a foreleg around her friend’s neck, much to the earth pony’s displeasure. “Your old pal Spectrum Blaze is here to comfort you.”

“Got it,” Cotton grunted.

“Through the highs and the lows, through the trials and—”

Cotton quickly squirmed out from under Spectrum’s grip. “Point taken. Thanks.”

“No biggie,” Spectrum Blaze said with a grin, starting down the path and toward the town. “Come on, Cotton. We won’t get anything done if we just stand here.”

“Coming, coming.”

The two fillies walked together down the path, dirt and gravel being audibly crushed beneath their hooves. The air surrounding them was silent, save a couple crickets chirping in search of a mating partner. The moon loomed overhead, large and pale, casting a faint light on the ground below the duo.

“You know I was just thinking,” Cotton began, “we could have done this project somewhere that wasn’t miles away from home.”

“Yeah, it’s not like you told me that over a thousand times already,” Spectrum mumbled to herself.

“But of course you’re my partner so we have to go the extra mile.”

“If you’re complaining so much, why’d you partner up with me?”

“Because you’re my only friend in that class.”

“That would be your own fault. Besides, I go the extra mile because I like to be adventurous. This town is abandoned, and no one’s been here in the last twenty or so years.”

Cotton didn’t say anything.

“Oh, and you agreed to this.”

“Yeah, ‘cause knowing you, you would have kept bugging me about this until I finally agreed to come along, and if I didn’t you would have found a different partner. And unlike me, everpony in that class likes you.”

“What can I say? This mane of mine must be really attractive.”

Cotton rolled her eyes.

“Honestly though, our classmates don’t not like you, you just don’t talk to them. You’d probably have a lot more friends if you got out of your comfort zone a little more.”

“Just what I needed. A lecture from a moron.”

Spectrum stopped in her tracks. “Woah, check this place out!”

Cotton took her eyes off her friend and was too captured by the sight before them.

The old town truly was a wasteland. Houses lay collapsed into a pile of rotten wood and straw, emitting a foul stench that made both ponies cringe. Dust particles and moisture hung airborne and drifted past idly, intensifying the already strong feeling of eeriness.

The two ponies walked forward, glancing at the fallen homes on either side of the cobblestone road below them while each step of theirs echoed across the quiet landscape. It was like a warzone. Heaps of rubble and debris everywhere, trash littered and strewn about, blades of grass poking through the cracks in the road. Neither of the fillies could picture there having once been a town here. It was bizarre, and especially fascinating.

“This place is like a junkyard,” Spectrum commented.

“I know,” Cotton concurred. “What happened to this town? Whatever it used to be, there’s barely anything left of it.”

Spectrum’s eyes remained memorized by the scene as she talked. “Besides folklore, there’s not a lot of history on this place.”

Cotton turned her head. “Really?”

“Yeah. Oh right, I probably should have mentioned, we’re sort of trespassing. We’re not exactly supposed to be here.”

“Wait.” Cotton’s brow furrowed. “Why are we doing our photography project here then?!”

Spectrum held up a hoof. “Relax, we’ll just tell our teacher we went to Hollow Shades. That place is pretty much run down at this point, she won’t tell the difference.”

“Still though…”

“I was curious. And don’t pretend you aren’t either. Besides, no one’ll know we came here, and we don’t have to tell Miss Dahlia where we went. We’re good.”

“Fine,” Cotton sighed. “You were saying?”

“Huh?”

“About the history and old folklore…”

“Right, right. ‘Kay so there isn’t a lot of history on this town, but I think the last thing on record was some sort of war that took place between this town and some other ancient beings.”

The duo came to a stop after crossing over a bridge and reaching large circular space where what they assumed used to be a tall building was now destroyed. The structure—which couldn’t even really be called a structure—was just a few supports that had managed to remain standing holding up patches of insulation, allowing a view of the inside which wasn’t much different than what the two fillies had already seen of this town. The roof, meanwhile, appeared to have fallen off the side and dug itself into the ground next to the decimated building.

“Is that all there is on this town?” Cotton inquired of her pegasus friend.

Spectrum nodded. “I’ve taken a look at most of the recent books on Equestrian history, and they all seem to be the same: a chapter detailing Ponyville’s foundation, its social and economic progression and a single sentence dedicated to its downfall.”

“Maybe the authors are trying to hide something?”

“What would there be to hide?”

“I suppose we’re going to find out.”

They proceeded toward the crumbling building, scanning it from top to bottom.

“Hang on,” Spectrum said, stepping back before using the tips of her wings to lift the camera around her neck. Lining up the shot as perfectly as she could, she took the picture, a flash of light briefly illuminating the decrepit building. Cotton approached her friend and stood next to her to view the shot.

“It’s not that bad, see?” the purple pegasus remarked, demonstrating the image on the screen of the building, lit up better than the two of them had expected. “One picture taken, four more to go.”

“That’s pretty good. Do you know what this building is?” Cotton questioned.

Spectrum switched the camera off and let it rest on her chest, folding her wings back against her sides. “Town hall, one of Ponyville’s main attractions.” She pointed a hoof toward a stone bridge to their right. “And I think that way are a few more cool buildings. Let’s go there next.”

“Alright, I’m following you.”

The two friends trekked across the bridge Spectrum had gestured to, and continued down the path ahead. Once again, broken down houses lay on either side of the road and an odor of moist rot stung their senses.

At one point, the two reached a fountain statue stained in rust and cracked in multiple areas. Spectrum stopped to take a picture.

“I’m surprised this statue is still standing,”

“Somepony might have cast a spell on it to slow its corrosion,” Cotton noted.

Spectrum chuckled. “Nerd.”

“Look who’s talking, history geek,” Cotton shot back with a sassy expression.

In that moment, a black figure shot past their peripherals. Both ponies turned in unison.

“What was that…?” Cotton whispered shakily.

“I-I don’t know…” Spectrum replied in a similar tone. Cautiously, she began taking small steps forward.

“What are you doing?!” Cotton hissed, keeping her voice faint. The purple pegasus didn’t respond, approaching where she saw the shape disappear. She drew closer to one of the destroyed houses, a few of the foundations still standing. Her heart rate quickened, eyes darting in her sockets as she searched for whatever they had seen.

The shape suddenly appeared in Spectrum’s line of sight, causing her to jump with a high-pitched yelp.

“Spectrum!” Cotton Candy shouted, running toward her friend, who had fallen back onto her rump. “What happened?!”

“Hoo!”

Both ponies’ gazes shot upward in alarm, only to spot an owl with an orange beak perched on the support of the old cottage.

Spectrum stared at the animal in shock, her face quickly growing red in anger. “Oh come on!” she exclaimed, picking up a tiny stone and hurling it toward the owl. The owl’s wings shot outward and it took off from the support beam, flying off into the night sky as the stone impacted the wooden foundation and fell to the ground.

“Spectrum, are you okay?” Cotton asked concernedly.

The pegasus filly stood from the ground, brushing off whatever gravel had gotten stuck in her fur. “I’m fine. Stupid owl!”

Cotton grinned maniacally. “You were pretty scared, huh?”

Spectrum shot a glare at her friend. “Shut up.”

This only made the cyan filly laugh with glee. “You should have seen the look on your face—oh and that scream. Priceless!”

“Hey, you were scared too, shut your mouth!” the multicolor maned pegasus growled, an obvious rose hue on both cheeks.

“Come on, Spectrum,” Cotton insisted.

“Ugh, fine. I was a little scared. Happy?”

“Couldn’t be happier.” Spectrum grunted. “Aw, don’t worry, Spectrum, I don’t think any less of you.”

Spectrum rolled her eyes. “Come on, let’s go.”

“’Kay.”

The two ventured toward a left turn. At one point, Spectrum had asked Cotton Candy to take a picture of her standing in front of a house that was still partially standing with exposed insulation and decayed walls covered in creepers.

“What for?” Cotton said, taking the camera from Spectrum’s hoof.

“Just for a friend. Hurry up.”

Cotton raised the camera, catching Spectrum and the house in frame, and took the picture. A brief flash and the camera rendered the result.

Spectrum took the camera from Cotton’s extended hoof and examined the picture. “Sick, thanks. I look badass in this one.” As the pegasus stared at the image, her expression began growing uneasy. “Um… huh, weird...”

“What is it?” Cotton asked.

Spectrum blinked, and then strapped the camera back over her neck. “Probably nothing.”

The comment confused Cotton, but she did not question it, merely shrugging it off and continuing alongside her pegasus friend.

“Woah, what the hell?” Spectrum said, speeding to a gallop.

“Hey, wait up!” Cotton called out, rushing to catch up with the purple filly. The two ran over another bridge and up a dirt hill, passing by a particularly creepy looking forest with vines strung from one tree to another and ragged branches that gave the trees the appearance of large beasts of the night.

Eventually the two came to a stop, and Cotton now saw in its entirety what had put Spectrum in a state of bewilderment.

A hospital building stood large and tall over them, a structure similar to that of an old mansion with two chimneys protruding from its brick roof and a billboard on the front displaying a white plus sign with four hearts between its corners. That was not what caught Spectrum’s attention though.

The building was in almost perfect condition.

The outside walls bore barely a single crack or spot of worn paint. As a matter of fact, the building looked brand new, as if it had been built only a couple days prior to the fillies’ arrival. The only differences were perhaps a few tears, resulting in the exposure of insulation or a couple cracked windows but other than that, the building contrasted heavily with the rest of the town.

The two fillies simply stood, awestruck at what they were seeing.

“No way…” the pegasus uttered. “How? The Ponyville General Hospital was constructed only a couple years after Ponyville was founded. It should be run to the ground like the rest of Ponyville right now.”

Cotton and Spectrum began walking toward the building, but instead of heading for the front doors, Cotton strayed off toward one of the outside walls.

“What are you doing?” Spectrum asked.

“Hang on.” Cotton lifted a hoof and pressed it against the wall while her friend watched in confusion.

“There’s a magic current running through the building. That’s what’s keeping it standing.”

Spectrum lifted an eyebrow. “How do you know that?”

“If something has a magic current going through it, you’ll feel a vibration,” Cotton explained. “It’s not necessarily the building vibrating; it’s the reaction of magic against your fur.”

The purple filly stood with a blank expression.

“Advanced Sorcery class. You learn about that stuff in the first term.”

“Oh… well, why would somepony cast a spell on the hospital?”

Cotton looked down in thought. “Well this particular spell judging by the condition of the hospital would be a preserving spell, which could be used just for the purpose of slowing deterioration, or as protection from something.”

Spectrum’s eyes widened. “Like a war…”

The purple pegasus suddenly jumped in front of Cotton, making her recoil slightly. “We have to check out what’s inside!”

“Wait, what?!” Cotton Candy shouted.

“Think about it. The last thing recorded in Ponyville’s history was a war, and this hospital is the only thing standing in the entire town. Maybe we can find answers to what happened here!”

“Uh, excuse me, we’re not reporters, we’re photographers,” Cotton retorted.

“Aw come on, where’s your exploration spirit?”

“Where’s… your common sense spirit?” Cotton cringed at her own failure of a comeback. “Look, let’s just take a picture of the hospital, snap a random pic of something else and get out of here.”

Spectrum sighed. “Fine, then.”

Relief coursed through Cotton’s veins.

“You stay out here, and I’ll go in and check the place out.”

That relief was short lived.

“Spectrum, don’t do this to me, please,” Cotton pleaded.

“What’s the harm in being alone for, what, the next twenty minutes? I’m going inside,” Spectrum disputed, before turning her back on Cotton and walking toward the front doors of the hospital.

Cotton watched Spectrum disappear through the entrance of the building and exhaled. It was fine, she thought to herself. She could just wait out here for her to come back, and then they could leave.

Somewhere in the night, an owl hooted. Cotton jumped, looking back, and was faced with the sight of the menacing forest surrounding the hospital and heavy mist obscuring anything past it. Her defence of self-reassurance fell, and nervousness built up in the back of her mind.

“Maannn…” she whined, and then dashed toward the front doors after her friend.

***

Spectrum turned her head when she heard the sound of the front doors bursting open, and spotted her cyan friend making her way toward her.

“Hey, you decided to join me after all!” Spectrum said buoyantly.

Cotton sported a glare aimed directly at her friend. “Whatever, let’s just take a look around and then get out.”

Spectrum grinned. “Quick look around, then we dip. It’s a plan.”

With a roll of her eyes, Cotton joined Spectrum by her side, and the two walked down the short hallway following the main entrance, ending up at a lobby room with rows of seats on the left side of the room and a reception counter at the far end.

“Okay, this place looks a whole lot better on the outside than it does inside,” Spectrum observed, referring to the missing areas of drywall and cobwebs throughout the room, and bits of concrete and white dust dispersed across the floor.

“The spell on this building doesn’t work as well on large structures, so it’s likely only taking effect on the outside and not so much on the interior.” Cotton’s explanation did not sound as upbeat this time.

“Huh, interesting. You know, I’ll give it to you, you’re pretty damn smart when it comes to certain topics.”

“Thanks…” the earth pony said gruffly, her expression unchanging.

Spectrum swung a foreleg around Cotton’s shoulder. “Come on, lighten up. This is fun.”

Cotton grunted, pulling her friend’s leg off of her. “Sure, whatever. Let’s just do what you wanna do already.”

Spectrum sighed. “Look. I’ll buy you a slice of pizza for lunch tomorrow. Cool?”

Cotton looked up at Spectrum. “Two. And ice cream.”

“Deal. Forgive me?”

“No.”

“’Course you do,” Spectrum teased, ruffling her friend’s mane. Cotton sighed, unable to help but smile at her friend’s attitude.

Spectrum began walking through lobby room with Cotton following behind, both fillies’ eyes sweeping across the decor. At the left side of the room was an opening into another room, so Spectrum started toward it, stepping over broken and missing tiles in the process.

The next room they entered was large and tall, and didn’t fare much better than the lobby room. The strange part was that the long tables that would have made it a cafeteria were either up against the wall, or blocking the windows, giving the place more the appearance of a shelter.

“This is so weird…” Spectrum said. “Its like these ponies were preparing for some sort of apocalypse.”

Cotton looked at Spectrum. “You did just say there was a war here.”

“True. Hang on, let me take a picture.”

As Spectrum positioned herself to get the right angle for her photo, Cotton left her friend’s side to explore the room a little. The entire room was practically empty space aside from the tables, fragments of shattered dishes and bits of concrete on the floor like the previous room. On the right side of the room, a counter sat against the wall holding coffee machines, napkin dispensers and creams. She moved on, understandably not in the mood for thirty year old coffee.

As she patrolled the room, a slightly large dark stain at the far corner of the room caught her attention, striking her as odd. She stepped toward it to better make out what it was, and as she inspected it, a thought crept into the back of her mind.

Is that… dried blood?

“Done.” Spectrum’s voice briefly startled Cotton, but she relaxed when she realized where the voice had come from, and turned to see Spectrum approaching her. “Three down, one more to go. Come on.”

Cotton obeyed, and the two proceeded toward the door in the room. Turning the handle, Spectrum swung the door forward, and watched as it opened into a long dark hallway.

Cotton gulped. “That’s not creepy at all…”

“Yup.” Spectrum said back with a slight hint of nervousness, unbeknownst to Cotton. “Let’s go.”

Cotton took a deep breath, and the two began walking. Ahead of them were several doors on either side of the hallway, a few chairs resting against the wall beside each door. From overhead, light strips hung off the drop ceiling swinging leisurely, and thick cobwebs strung from the tiles to door frames. Parts of the floor had even fallen away in some spots, leaving sizable enough holes that the little ponies weren’t all too keen on finding out the consequences of stepping in one.

Spectrum stepped in front of one of the the wooden doors, thin strips of its surface peeling off. Inside, a hospital bed, IV, heart rate monitor and sink were spread out in the manner of a typical patient room. Going to the next door along and opening it, she found the same type of layout inside.

“Just medical rooms,” Spectrum remarked, turning out of the room where she found Cotton opening a set of double doors on the opposite side of the hall. “Hey, what’d you find?”

“Check it out for yourself,” Cotton said, stepping into the room she found. Curiously, Spectrum headed toward the room her friend had just entered and went inside.

The room was huge and dome-shaped, rows of wooden seats around the circumference, forming a ring that surrounded a small space at the center of the room, where a chandelier appeared to have fallen and shattered, shards of glass scattered across the floor.

“Damn,” Spectrum said, expressing her astonishment. “This place has seen better days.” She climbed the stairs next to her up to the seats. Cotton, who was following behind her noticed that stains similar to the one she had seen in the cafeteria were also splattered across the seats.

Spectrum also noticed this. “What is that? Blood?”

Cotton nodded. “I think.”

“I’m no expert but I know for a fact they definitely wouldn’t put patients here.”

Cotton thought for a second. “Maybe they were keeping injured ponies here temporarily. If they were preparing the hospital for a war, they probably needed to move everypony into the building.” she stared at the dried blood splotches on the seats. “I don't really want to think about what happened to them.”

Spectrum pondered on this in fascination. Could the situation really have been that bad? And if so, how many of these ponies had died…? Spectrum found herself shuddering at the thought.

“You gonna take a picture of the room?” Cotton asked.

After a brief period of thought, Spectrum shook her head. “Nah. Let's check out the rest of the place.” She descended back down the stairs and out of the room. Cotton, after one last glance at the stained seats, followed suit.

Setting off down the hall from where they left off, the two followed it to a right turn where another hallway, although considerably shorter stood in front of them. On the left hand side, two more halls, one closer to them and one farther along connected to the one in which the fillies currently stood. Cotton and Spectrum went toward the nearest one but stopped once they saw the blockage of rubble and stray wires hanging from the ceiling, preventing any possibility of getting through.

“Well that’s not an option,” Cotton stated. Spectrum nodded in agreement before the two fillies went to inspect the second hall. This one stretched toward a closed door at the end, held two doors on either side and opened into an upward staircase around the corner. Spectrum quickly checked the right turn at the end of the hallway they were currently in, which led to a long corridor with doors against the wall and a pair of double doors at the very end.

“That I think just leads back to the lobby,” Spectrum said, and joined Cotton’s side in front of the hallway with the staircase. “So I guess this is our only option.”

The entire middle section of the staircase was missing, besides a few steps at the top and bottom and pieces of wood jutting outward from the sides of the resulting hole. Spectrum took a few tentative steps forward and peered over the edge of the gap. The hole appeared to lead into a hallway on the lower floor, but there was enough space between the stairs and the lower floor that falling through would likely result in a broken leg or at least a sprained hoof.

Spectrum headed toward the other two doors and opened them both. “Patient room… patient room…” She finally tried the knob on the door at the end of the hall, but after a few tugs, it didn’t budge. With a sigh, she concluded: “and locked.”

“I guess we just have to go back now, there’s nothing left to explore,” Cotton said, pretending to be disappointed.

“No…” Spectrum said, and walked toward the broken staircase again. She surveyed the distance between the bottom of the staircase and the top. “We can jump this.”

“Are you stupid?” Cotton half shouted. She knew her friend could be daring—it was one of her main qualities—but this was just plain out deadly.

“It’s not a far jump. Watch.” Spectrum took a couple steps back. She then sprinted toward the gap and leaped with her tiny legs. Deploying her wings, she flapped furiously, which did not help much getting her to the other side, but got her far enough that she could grab onto the top steps with her forelegs, her hind legs dangling above the gaping hole in the staircase.

“Spectrum, holy fuck!” Cotton yelled in disbelief, watching as Spectrum swung back and forth attempting to lift herself up.

“Calm down. See, I’m okay,” Spectrum said, grunting as she hoisted herself upward with the help of her buzzing wings and rolled onto the floor at the top of the stairs. Cotton stood mute as the purple pegasus stood and turned to her friend. “Your turn now.”

“No way!” Cotton refused, backing away from the steps.

“It’s a simple jump, come on, I’ll catch you,” Spectrum said, holding out her hoof.

Cotton looked from her friend’s hoof to the wide hole in the stairs, back up at Spectrum. “This is dangerous. You barely made it yourself. Besides, what if you miss?”

“I won’t miss, I promise.”

Cotton took one last look at the broken staircase, and then reluctantly took a step back before charging forward toward the steps and leaping through the air. She looked downward at the hallway below, which appeared to stretch slightly farther away as she sailed mid-air. In the next moment, she felt her hoof seized by a tight grip and looked up to see Spectrum holding onto her hoof, face contorted as she strained to pull up Cotton’s weight. She managed despite the great efforts and lifted Cotton up beside her.

“Wow, I’m surprised you managed that,” Cotton said, rather impressed.

Spectrum grinned, panting. “Hey, told you I don’t break promises. I said I’d catch you, and lo and behold, I did.”

“Alright, I’ll give you that one. That was pretty good.”

“Pretty good? I believe the word you’re looking for is amazing. Incredible. No, I got it. Legendary!”

“Amazing. That’s all you’re getting.”

The two shared a laugh before climbing the next set of stairs ahead of them.

Upon reaching the top of the stairs, the fillies had entered a straight hall with a room visible at the end. Next to them was a door coated in a faded white paint. Spectrum went to inspect it, trying the handle, but it protested against her attempt to turn it. After a couple more fruitless tugs, she concluded she wasn’t getting through.

“Door’s stuck. Forward it is then.” The two turned and proceeded down the hallway. Along the way, a sign hung on the wall that read, ‘Radiology Department.’ In front of them was a small waiting room with chairs on one end, an open door straight across from them and a hall to the left.

The hall had almost everything they had predicted: a couple of rooms with X-ray devices on the ceiling and a dead end with a locked wooden door. Declaring the area uninteresting, they backtracked and went through the open door in the waiting room, entering another short hall.

Just ahead was a pair of cracked windows, thin streaks of blue light streaming through into the hall. The two looked through the windows, and were provided a view of the entire town, from the broken-down houses to the creepy looking forest on the outskirts of the town. Spectrum even pointed out a clock tower that had fallen onto its side and crashed into a house.

“Think this would make a good photo?” Cotton asked, turning her head to the purple filly.

“Maybe. Let’s find out,” Spectrum replied, raising her camera.

The sound of a distant crash made Spectrum stop what she was doing.

The two slowly turned their heads toward the source of the noise. Spectrum was the first to comment on it. “The hell…”

“I dunno,” Cotton muttered in response.

Pondering nervously over what could have caused the strange noise, the two fillies slowly approached the right turn in front of them and peeked into the next hallway down. Yet another short corridor led to a door at the end that was, for whatever reason, boarded up, and branched off into another hall halfway down.

As they traveled down the hall, another noise resonated through the place, startling Cotton and fueling Spectrum’s curiosity.

“That sounded like it came from a lower floor,” Spectrum pointed out, resuming forward.

Cotton stayed put, an anxious expression on her face. “Wait, I have a bad feeling about this.”

Spectrum looked back. “Something probably just fell. Don't worry about it.”

Cotton lowered her head nervously before following Spectrum.

The hall halfway down didn’t have a conspicuous end from where they were standing, but hindering their ability to forge ahead down the hall was a gap in the floor, wide like the last one but that seemed to go an even longer way down.

Spectrum was confident. “Another leap of faith?”

Cotton looked at the hole doubtfully. “I don't know. This doesn't exactly look as safe. This is a much bigger drop and the tiles on the other side look loose.”

After racking her brain for an idea, a light bulb shone above Spectrum’s head. “The wooden planks on that door we saw. Think we could use those?”

Cotton stepped backward to view the boards blocking the door at the end of the previous hall. Turning her gaze back toward the hole in the floor, she formulated an answer.

“The planks on the door are too small, and we probably couldn’t get them off.” It was then that she noticed the longer planks resting on the ground next to the door. She pointed to them. “Those, maybe we could use.”

“Oh, nice. I didn’t even notice those before.” Spectrum ran toward the planks. “They’re definitely long enough. I’ll bring a couple over.” Setting one foreleg on the ground, she used her other hoof to scoop two planks into her grip before standing, holding them under her leg. She carried them back to the hole and set them down.

Carefully, the two of them grabbed a plank and gradually slid the other ends over the gap. Little by little, they inched the boards further forward until they touched the other side.

“That worked pretty well actually,” Spectrum said, moving the planks a little closer to each other to make sure the planks wouldn’t budge as they walked across. “Let’s go one at a time so the planks don’t break.”

“Alright.” With that said, Spectrum was the first to cross. The boards creaked slightly, bending somewhat under Spectrum’s weight, but the wood boards held, and the pegasus reached the other side with no problems.

Cotton was next up, placing her hooves on the wooden boards. She watched with unease as the planks bent significantly more than they had when Spectrum had crossed, but proceeded nonetheless. One leg in front of the other, she crossed slowly but surely. Each step triggered a sound from the boards beneath her, and she had to breathe to calm herself down.

She was halfway across now. Some of her fear diminished and she moved on with less nerves.

Snap!

The boards broke in half, the lack of any support leaving Cotton to drop downward. Her scream filled the corridors, limbs flailing as she tumbled toward the bottom floor.

“Cotton!” Spectrum cried, falling to her belly and extending her hoof over the hole to no avail.

Wind tore through Cotton’s mane, pulling it upward as she fell. Cotton reached out her hooves blindly in an attempt to grab onto something. And by luck, she did. The wind disappeared and her body stopped abruptly, hind legs hanging as she held for dear life onto a piece of wood jutting out of the inside of the hole.

She gasped loudly, hearing the echoing voice of Spectrum demanding loudly if she was alright. But before she could shout back, the board she held onto broke off, and she was falling again.

A pair of walls then surrounded her, and in the next moment, her back struck a hard surface. Pain shot up and down her spine and Cotton groaned loudly, rolling on the ground and clutching her back with both hooves.

“Fuck, Cotton! Cotton, a-are you good?” Spectrum screamed down desperately.

“Do I look like I’m fucking good to you?!” Cotton shouted back, followed by more whines.

Spectrum anxiously scratched the back of her head with a hoof. “I-I mean like is anything broken, can you stand?”

“I—urgh, I don’t know…” Cotton lay there on the ground for another minute, leaving Spectrum breathing heavily, a spectator to her friend in pain. Eventually though, Cotton set her front hooves on the ground and attempted to push herself upward. Needles of pain bit at her back, causing her to grit her teeth, but she managed to place herself on all four hooves, unsteadily, but successfully.

Cotton took a minute to collect her bearings, and examined her surroundings. Behind her, a wall supported a dusty and worn door that was partially torn, leaving a small view of the other side. Cotton turned her head the other way, and saw that the hallway she was in lead into a thick blackness that began only a couple inches away from her.

And oh god, that smell…

“Gimme an update, what’s going on?” she heard Spectrum say from above.

Cotton angled her head upward. “I don’t know, it’s completely dark down here—I can’t see a thing! Can you somehow fly down here?”

The pegasus glanced back at her wings. “My wings can still barely carry me. I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’ll have to find another way down.”

“You’re going to leave me here?!”

“I have to if I want to get down there.” Spectrum reached at the back of her neck, pulling off the strap of her camera and holding it above the hole. “Here catch this!”

Once the pegasus let go of the camera, Cotton pushed herself onto her hind legs, reaching out her hooves. The camera drew closer before landed flawlessly in her hooves.

“Just use the flash on it. I’ll try to find a staircase or something. See you soon.”

“Wait, Spectrum—!” But Spectrum had already gotten up and left.

Cotton breathed timidly, and turned toward the inky blackness in front of her, which taunted her almost. It was in this case she wished she could be as fearless as Spectrum.

She swung the camera strap over her neck. “Okay, you can do this. It’ll be fine.” She began taking steps forward, allowing herself to be submerged in the darkness of the downstairs hall.

Pressing the power button, the sound of the camera booting to life sounded, and the screen displayed total darkness. She then pressed the silver button on the top of the camera.

Click-click.

The camera’s flash blared twice for a quarter of a second and disappeared, bathing the walls in a bright white light before disappearing. However, it was enough time for Cotton to see a left turn in front of her. Cotton let the camera hang from her neck and pressed a hoof against the closest wall to help guide herself.

Her hooves clacked gently on the floor as she walked. The darkness shrouded her entire body, and the atmosphere down here was thick. It unnerved her to the point where she could hear the sound of her heart thumping in her ears. The putrid smell especially did not help at all.

Her hoof left the wall and Cotton stopped where she was. Raising her camera again, she pressed the silver button.

Click-click.

The light of the camera once again fought away the darkness for a mere quarter of a second before darkness wrapped itself around her once more. Two doors were on either side of the pair of walls in front of her. Cotton inched forward along the wall closest to her until she felt her hoof come into contact with the first door. She brushed her hoof along the surface of the door until she felt the door handle, then she twisted it and pushed it forward. She heard the whining of the hinges as it swung open and she raised her camera again.

Click-click.

A bed with lights overhead, machines beside it to measure heart rate and pump medicine into a pony’s body, and scrubs hanging off the wall. She turned around and walked straight forward from the room she just checked. Her hoof collided with the door, and she fumbled around until she found the handle, and pushed the door open.

Click-click.

The same thing was in this room.

She stepped out and proceeded down the hall.

Click-click.

Ahead of her was an intersection leading four ways. She had also sighted a sign on the wall next to her, but because of the darkness, she couldn’t see it now. Sitting down on the ground, she pressed a button on the front of the camera, and the screen presented the image she had just taken.

The hallway was just as she observed, only now she could read what the sign said.

‘Surgical Units’

Switching the camera back to picture mode, she got up and moved forward. In front of her, she remembered there being a door. She decided to try that first, walking in a straight line until her outstretched hoof touched the door. She tried the handle.

Locked.

“Damn,” she whispered before returning to the center of the intersection. She once again took the camera in her hoof.

Click-click.

One way was connected to a hallway with two doors and a left turn.

Click-click.

Cotton frowned in interest once she took a photo of the last path in the four-way cross.

A short downward staircase sat before a barred door at the bottom. Cotton went back into her camera to view the picture, and her eyes had not been playing tricks on her. In fact, not only was there a barred door.

It was padlocked.

The filly found this rather strange, principally due to the disparity between the door and the rest of what they had seen. But the most obvious of all: why would the ponies who were here previously need to padlock the door? It would seem unnecessary… right?

According to Spectrum, there had been a war here, but if a defense spell had been placed on the building to stop whatever was attacking the town, Cotton cast doubt upon how much more a padlock was going to do to stop the forces of all-powerful ancient beings. There was a chance that the padlock was used as a precautionary measure, but considering the implausibility of that idea, she couldn’t help but wonder the reason behind it. It definitely didn’t belong in the environment of a hospital. The only explanation she could formulate was that there was something else they were trying to keep out, or maybe keep from escaping.

Only, what could that have been…?

Cotton heard a sudden low boom behind her. Drawing in a sharp breath, her body spun around in the direction of the origin of the noise. Her heart accelerated, breathing irregular as she haltingly raised the camera around her neck.

Click-click.

Nothing there…

Apprehensively, Cotton stood in place for a short period of time before working up the courage to press forth.

“It’s fine,” she whispered to herself. “It might just be Spectrum.”

Hoof against the wall, she walked until she felt the hallway turn. She then raised the camera.

Click-click.

Ahead was a rounded hallway, but next to the wall was a set of three chairs, newspaper clippings sitting on one of them.

Curiosity piqued, Cotton went to pick up the newspaper clippings. She took her camera, lined it up as well as she could with the newspaper clippings in the darkness, and took a photo. She flipped the page, and then took a picture of that, and did the same with the next page. Next, she set the pieces of paper down, and then sat on one of the seats. Cotton winced, as this caused a faint spike of pain in her back, but she relaxed in the seat and the pain disappeared. Finally, she went to view the photos on the camera and flipped back until she was on the first page.


PONYVILLE’S FASHIONISTA FOUND DEAD


On the morning of the 12th of Thursday, Rarity, a pony well known for owning the clothing shop “Carousel Boutique” and bearing one of the elements of harmony was found dead in her home. The murder was discovered when her younger sister had come down for breakfast, and saw her body lying in the main room. Forensics have reported that her death was caused by a blow of dark magic to the brain which, with input from Princess Celestia, consisted of a spell available only in the royal archives, and no evidence had been left behind as to who the culprit was.

  The tragic news hit hard with family and other citizens alike. “I loved her so much. She had such a good spirit and a bright future ahead of her,” the mother of the victim stated during an interview while crying. “I don’t understand how somepony could do that to my precious baby.” Other citizens commented on this as well. “She helped save the town so many times. Without her, we probably wouldn’t be here. I can’t believe somepony would kill her like that,” said one pony who wished not to have his name revealed in the paper. The other element bearers refused the interview, obviously too grief stricken to do so.

  The question now remains of what will become of the town due to this unfortunate event. There is no doubt this has caused much heartache, but with this has come an addition of apprehension due to the increased vulnerability of the town and the signs of a ruthless killer on the loose.

Cotton switched to the second page, but all they contained were advertisements and stories of events in other countries. Both sides of the second newspaper clipping had this as well.

The filly thought on what she had just read. There was a murder in this town? Could that have had something to do with the town being abandoned? Spectrum had said there was a war in this town. Was it possible that the murder and the war were somehow related?

What surprised her most though was how Ponyville truly was a fully populated town once. Which meant that the ponies here had likely died or gone missing. And if they went missing, what happened to them?

Then Cotton recalled what she had seen earlier. That padlocked door… what was in there?

Another low boom sounded in front of her. Her heart skipped a beat as she slowly stood from the chair. Quickly, she turned the camera to picture mode and held it in front of her. She then falteringly lifted a hoof to the silver button and pressed it.

Click-click.

A silhouette lit up in front of Cotton. The filly screamed.

“Hey, Cotton, calm down, it’s just me!”

Cotton stopped screaming when she heard the familiar voice of her best friend.

“Fuck, Spectrum, you scared me!” Cotton complained angrily.

“You scared me too. And hang on; let me get us some light so we don’t accidentally kiss each other or something.” Cotton then heard a repetitive light scraping sound, followed by an annoyed grunt, and then a sudden emanation of light that painted the walls around her a golden colour and at last made her friend visible.

“That was fast. How’d you get down here,” Cotton asked.

“There’s a staircase at the end of this hall, I found it pretty quickly. It also leads to every floor in the building, so we can get out through there. Oh, and I also found this.” Spectrum lifted the lighter in her hoof slightly, causing the tiny flame to wobble. “It was in one of the hospital rooms upstairs. Not a bad find, eh?”

“That’s an amazing find, thank you,” Cotton acclaimed. “I really didn’t like not seeing in this place.”

“Hey, what are those?” Spectrum asked, picking up the newspaper clippings on the chair behind them. Lighter in front of her eyes, she began reading the first page. As her eyes repeated the pattern of gliding from left to right, her eyelids rose higher and higher, and her eyes passed across each word faster. “This explains so much…”

“What do you mean, what is it?” Cotton asked inquisitively.

Spectrum set down the newspapers, holding the lighter between herself and Cotton. “’Kay, so you know how this town used to be one of the most popular places in all of Equestria, right?” Cotton nodded to show she was following. “Well, not only was it popular, it was even home to royalty.”

“Really?”

“Yup. You know Princess Twilight Sparkle?”

“I’ve heard of the name. Not sure who she is, though.”

“Well she was actually a pretty big deal back when this town was still standing. She was supposedly born in the old town Canterlot, and as a child she was Princess Celestia’s protégé. Afterward, she sent her to this town to continue her schooling and about a year later, she ascended to regal status. They called her the princess of friendship.”

“Princess of friendship?” Cotton inquired, finding the term humorous.

“Or so the history books say,” Spectrum continued. “Anyways, she also had five friends, and all together, they represented the elements of harmony, Equestria’s most powerful weapon at the time.

“There was only one problem with that though: without all six of them combined, the elements wouldn’t work. Even if just one of the six friends was missing, they would be useless.

“So here’s my guess. If there really was a war, with all the elements combined, the attackers likely would have been defeated before there could even be a war. So something or someone must have killed one of the element bearers so they couldn’t use the elements of harmony against them.

“Since this town was abandoned, nopony has heard from Twilight Sparkle or any of her friends, and nopony knows if the war was won, only that nopony has been around to tell the tale and this town was suddenly off limits to anypony.”

Cotton looked puzzled. “Princess Celestia and Luna are still here today though. Wouldn’t they have said something?”

“Maybe… unless they’re trying to hide something from us. Like for example, there was no news of this apparent war released anywhere. No pictures or anything like that, and even though Princess Twilight went missing along with her friends, there was no funeral for them or anything like that. Not to mention, I think some reporters even tried to get answers from the princesses a couple years after the whole incident and they refused an interview. They might have even kicked them out, I don’t remember that part.”

The lighter’s flame shifted, casting a shadow over Spectrum’s eyes and muzzle, as well as causing the silhouette on the wall behind her to move. “That’s not all though. There have been rumors that something else went on during the war. Something involving sick experiments on the ponies of this town, which might explain why Princess Celestia and Luna wanted to keep the war as confidential as possible.”

Cotton took time to think on what Spectrum had said. Could it have been true? Were the rulers of Equestria really trying to hide something from their subjects? The pieces of information Spectrum gave her branched off toward new questions in Cotton’s head but she had no answers to them, leaving her in a state of confusion.

If there really was a war, especially if one of the princesses had gone missing, it should have been nationwide news. What happened here that was so bad that the princesses feel the need to hide this from their subjects?

Unless the rumors Spectrum had mentioned were correct…

“Yo, Cotton,” Spectrum said, staring at Cotton with a concerned frown. “You alright?”

Cotton was snapped out of her thoughts. “Yeah, sorry. Just thinking.”

“…Oh, alright then. Well, since we’re here, maybe we could explore this bottom floor, and—”

“Woah, wait a minute!” Cotton interrupted. “You want to keep looking around in this place after I probably almost died?!”

“Yeah, but Cotton, think about it,” Spectrum contended. “Something bad happened here—something the princesses don’t want anypony knowing about. But this could be our chance to expose it.”

Cotton had a counterargument prepared. “But have you thought about how maybe the reason why they kept it secret is because they don’t want anypony to mess with whatever might be here? What if we suddenly unleash something that ends up destroying everything and everypony in the entire kingdom?”

“First of all, that sounds ridiculous,” Spectrum began, “and second, if there really was something that dangerous here, don’t you think the princesses would have dealt with it by now?”

Cotton was not so quick with a retort this time, and she could not think of one before Spectrum added to her argument. “Cotton, the untold story of this town’s history thirty years overdue could be sitting just inches away from us inside this very building. Do you really want to pass this opportunity?”

The bright cyan filly’s eyes sunk in contemplation. She had already hurt herself and could have even caused lasting damage if she hadn’t been lucky. But while her common sense was telling her to leave ASAP, she couldn’t deny that her friend’s argument was slightly appealing. Eventually, she came to a decision.

She hated curiosity.

“Fine, you win,” Cotton declared.

“I always do,” Spectrum said with a complacent grin, bumping her friend in the shoulder. “So hey, since we were on the topic of exploring, did you find anything interesting while you were looking for me?”

Cotton’s earlier find rushed back into her mind, her desire to leave subsiding a bit. “There was a locked door that I found, but it was barred and padlocked, completely out of place with everything else in the building.”

“For real?” The tips of Spectrum’s ears waggled excitedly.

Cotton told Spectrum to follow her, before going straight down where she had come, the pegasus following behind her in anticipation. They rounded the corner and approached the staircase at the other end of the hallway they were in, where Spectrum could now see the barred door for herself.

“It looks like a jail door,” Spectrum observed. “Why would you need that in a hospital?”

“My thoughts exactly,” Cotton responded, descending the staircase alongside Spectrum.

Now with a light source, Cotton could properly examine the lock. It was small, and heavily rusted. It appeared as though one simple bash could completely obliterate it.

“Should we break it with something?” Spectrum asked, mimicking Cotton’s thoughts.

“My thoughts exactly,” Cotton repeated with a smile.

Spectrum giggled. “There’s your spirit. You wanted to leave at first, and look at you now.”

“Oh, I still want to leave, but… well, curiosity is winning me over.”

The two laughed, and then began their search for an object to break the lock. The search ended rather quickly.

“There,” Cotton said, running up the stairs and standing next to a bright red fire extinguisher hanging from a bracket on the wall.

Spectrum grinned. “That’s perfect. Good find.”

Cotton grabbed the fire extinguisher by the lower handle and lifted it off the bracket with ease as though she were lifting a feather, impressing her friend. She then walked down the stairs, carrying it by her side with Spectrum watching behind her.

Standing on her hind legs to hold the fire extinguisher with both hooves, she brought it back, aiming the bottom toward the discolored padlock, before heaving it forward. The resulting impact created a sharp bang that cut through the air and echoed for a lengthy period of time through the dark and dank hallways.

The body of the lock was now heavily damaged, bent almost completely inward, although the shackle still held on strongly. With one more forceful bash—followed by yet another deafening noise, the lock fell to the ground, broken bits clinking against the ground. 

“Nice!” Spectrum exclaimed as Cotton was setting the fire extinguisher on the ground.

Cotton placed her hoof on the door and pushed. While it was stuck at first, a simple knock of her shoulder caused the barred door to swing open with the ear-stinging creak of rust. The two friends stared at each other momentarily before going into the hallway before them.

Walking forward, they passed by growths of moss building on the walls and creeping from between the cracked tiles on the ground. Above, the ceiling bulged in spots, thin columns of moonlight spilling through cracks in the drywall which lit up the hallways considerably more, dismissing the need for the lighter.

Most notably, the smell was even worse. A scent that Cotton and Spectrum couldn’t think of any description for it other than rotten eggs mixed with fecal matter. It only got worse as they proceeded toward the corner at the end of the hallway

A door with vines crawling all along the surface stood beside them when they turned, the sign above it reading ‘Supply Room’. Spectrum got up close to the door before grabbing hold of the doorknob and tugging on it. The door opened slightly, restricted by the greenery barricading it.

“This’ll definitely open. Here, help me out with this.” Cotton nodded and placed her hooves on the door, supporting herself with a hind leg on the frame and pulling in unison with Spectrum. The vines began to give and as they did, the door opened further slowly before bursting open, knocking the two fillies onto the ground.

Getting up, they entered the room, which was small and rectangular, a ventilation hatch on the wall at the other end of the room and a long row of metal shelves against the wall. However, what stuck out for them was that the shelves were almost completely empty. Other than a few tools and some medical equipment, it was all empty space.

Spectrum patrolled the room, inspecting everything inside. “Shouldn’t there be like emergency supplies and equipment in here?”

“That’s what I’m thinking, unless they moved it all.” Cotton implied, eyes moving up in down in their sockets scanning one of the empty rows of shelves, a few boxes on some and the rest empty space.

At the end of that row was a cabinet. She stepped in front of it, opening each drawer. Most of what was inside were just documents and records—things of no interest to Cotton. But when she opened the top drawer, she found two instant photos inside, lying on top of a stack of binders.

The first thing that crossed her mind was how behind the times these items were. Then she reviewed the photos themselves and was struck with a second thought.

They really were keeping ponies here…

The photo showed a low quality image of a row of ponies, adult and young, sitting on a wooden bench. All of them were wounded in some way: a scorched foreleg or a bloody shoulder. It saddened Cotton to see the condition the ponies were in, especially heartbroken at the parents caressing their sobbing children. It made her sick to her stomach, and opted to set the picture aside to look at the next one. Her heart then skipped a beat.

This one was blurred and dark, yet she could make out the shape of a pony… at least, she thought it was a pony, but something was off about it. Its limbs were unbelievably skinny, and a glowing pinkish light beamed from its chest—if that was the chest, the contents of the image were too smudged to tell. But it appeared as though the shape was running toward the camera, almost as though the photographer was being attacked…

Cotton then noticed that there was a sticky note on the back. She flipped the image and read it.


06/23/2016



Test subject #3 = failed.


Twenty-third of June, two thousand and sixteen. That was almost exactly thirty years ago.

There was so much Cotton couldn’t wrap her head around. Third test subject failed… what did that mean? What was that thing in the photo?

“Ohhh my god, Cotton…”

The earth pony spun her head. “What? What is it?” Remembering she still had the camera around her neck, she snapped two photos of the strange pictures before setting them on top of the cabinet and walking out from behind the row toward her friend’s voice. Cotton found her standing still, staring forward at a tight space between a shelf and the wall.

“There, look.” Spectrum extended a hoof toward the tight corner, and Cotton turned, only to see a literal pony’s skeleton sprawled across the ground, its skull cracked as well as its ribs and one of its forelegs. On the floor below it was a large dark brown stain with similar spots dotted on the wall like paint flung onto a blank canvas.

“Shit…” was all Cotton could think to say in response to what they were seeing.

Spectrum, for the first time in a while, looked somewhat uneasy and uncomfortable. “I’ve never seen a real skeleton in front of me before…” She turned to Cotton. “Well, uh… you’re the science nerd, so you know like… forensics and stuff?”

Cotton’s eyes remained fixed on the skeleton, not fazed by the part-insult thrown at her. “I mean, I guess, but I’m not an expert.”

“Well, what do you think happened to him—her… whoever this was?”

Cotton advanced slightly toward the skeleton. “The ribs and forelimb bones are broken, and something clearly bashed this pony’s head hard enough to cave the skull. But judging by the dried blood, my assumption is that either there was some sort of accident, or…”

“Or somepony killed him…” Spectrum speculated.

Cotton’s eyes trailed toward the photos she had left on the cabinet. “Or something…”

After she said that, some form of a shrill cry reverberated across the halls outside.

The two fillies spun at the sound. “Okay, what the fuck was that…?” Spectrum said, fully expressing her shock. Cotton did not respond, trying to understand what she had just heard.

The scream was not one of anything she had ever heard of before. She had only ever heard something like it in horror movies she had watched in the past, but she couldn’t possibly imagine what it could have come from. It had an unearthly and nightmarish quality to it—like a pony’s scream except… ghoulish and supernatural.

“If that’s another owl, I swear to god,” Spectrum whispered.

“That definitely wasn’t an owl. An owl wouldn’t screech that loud,” Cotton informed with an equal amount of nervousness.

The two listened out carefully, not hearing any signs of movement. Then, they slowly walked toward the storage room door. Spectrum peeked out tentatively, looking left and right for any perceptible danger. Seeing nothing of the sort, she beckoned Cotton out of the room with her.

Neither of them had noticed something move behind the ventilation hatch in the storage room.

Spectrum faced the direction opposite from where they had come and started down the unexplored part of the hallway.

“Oh great, we’re going toward the noise. Great idea,” Cotton complained.

Spectrum looked at Cotton. “That noise could have just been some ceiling support breaking or something. Stop worrying.”

“That’s beside the point!” Cotton argued. “This is what happens in horror movies. Some character hears a strange noise, they go toward it, and then some monster comes out and kills them.”

“Well it’s good this isn’t a horror movie then. Besides, what could possibly be down here that could kill us that has had enough food to keep itself alive for over a quarter-century?”

“Maybe some supernatural monster Equestria’s never heard of that doesn’t need food. Or maybe it’s not even a monster, maybe the whole building is suddenly going to collapse on top of us.”

Spectrum ran a hoof down her face. “Cotton, you are really annoying sometimes.”

The conversation lasted a little longer with arguments shot at each other back and forth, but conclusively, they ended up walking forward, turning along with the hallway. More vines strung downward from the ceiling, and dirt stains were smeared on the walls and floor along with thin cobwebs packed along ceiling beams—some which hung down level with the fillies’ heads.

They came face to face with an iron door that stood at the end of the hall, but what they found peculiar about it was how the center of the door was caved inward. Neither of them commented on it however, and Spectrum twisted the door handle, the lack of resistance proving it to be unlocked, and swung it open.

The next room ahead appeared to be another lobby room similar to the one upstairs but with a closed door on the right hand side of the room and an introduction to another hallway opposite from the two fillies. Only this time, chairs were flipped over and a table was on its side, showing evidence of something bashing into it repeatedly.

At the far corner of the room was yet another skeleton. Except the upper limb and lower limb were separate, severed at the mid point of the spine, and the ribs and skull were completely shattered. A large dark stain was once again splattered across the ground below it.

“What the hell…?” Spectrum muttered with a dumbfounded frown before stepping past the skeleton and trying the closed door. It was locked, but this one was also caved in. Enough, as a matter of fact, that a hole had been punctured through the iron surface.

Spectrum crouched down so her eyes were level with the hole, and pressed an eye against it. Meanwhile, Cotton watched patiently, albeit curiously.

The pegasus filly remained in that position. Wondering what was taking her so long, Cotton’s patience began dwindling.

“Woah, hang on… I see something moving over there—”

A sudden ear-splitting bang pierced the air behind them, provoking a twist of the head from both fillies. A couple of seconds later, the door they had come from swung shut with a resounding slam.

Spectrum’s eyes shot open to their full extents as she jumped onto all four legs and dashed toward the door. Placing both hooves on the handle, she attempted to twist it, but to her horror, it wouldn’t budge. Something on the other side had locked it.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” Spectrum screamed, tugging at the door handle in desperation, hoping for it to give way and have just been another stupid little scare. After a few more tugs however, that did not turn out to be the case. Even so, she called Cotton over for assistance, but that made as much difference as if it had been five ponies pulling on it. In the end, the door remained in place, locking Cotton and Spectrum in the downstairs section of the hospital.

Cotton thought this to be the appropriate time to allow the fear in the back of her mind to invade her thought process. “M-maybe… maybe it’s just stuck from the other side; we get it open, right…?”

“The door opened into the room,” Spectrum said, her voice raised. “Someone closed the door, that’s the only explanation.”

“Maybe… I dunno, it could have been a breeze, or—”

“Yes Cotton, a breeze shut and locked the door!”

“I’m sorry, okay? I’m just freaking out—I don’t use common sense when I’m like this!”

Spectrum lowered her head and then shook it. “No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be screaming at you. It’s just… fuck, did somepony follow us here? You know what, that would explain the creepy shit we’ve been hearing.” She faced the door again and knocked on it several times with force. “Hey, is this your idea of a joke? Violet, is that you out there? Just open the damn door—I can hear you moving out there!”

Spectrum remained next to the door while Cotton watched her restlessly. Eventually, Spectrum punched the door with a hoof, wandering toward the other side of the room.

Cotton wasn’t sure what the logical thing to say in this situation was, but in the state she was in now, she began spouting the first things that came to mind. “So we’re stuck in here?”

Spectrum waved a hoof in the air in annoyance. “Door won’t open, so yeah, I guess so.”

The cyan earth pony began pacing. “W-well what then? What if we don’t find a way out? What if we’re like… stuck here for good?”

“Okay, yeah, I get it.”

“Nopony knows where we are, we’re locked in a place we don’t even know and who knows what’s going to happen to us.”

“Cotton, you not helping the situation by complaining, just shut up for two seconds!” Spectrum said harshly, glaring at Cotton as she spoke.

An awkward and deafening silence quickly filled the room. Spectrum’s scowl had trailed downward while Cotton remained stationary, wondering whether she should apologize, but ending up saying nothing.

At one point, Spectrum shook her head and sighed. “Come on, let’s see if there’s a way out down here or something to get the door open.” She entered the hallway across from the now locked iron door, and Cotton followed shyly, aware of the tension that currently existed between them two.

The hallway extended for what seemed like miles toward a distant grey mist with doors on either side. Just to the right, a huge hole with jagged edges was carved into the wall, clearly having broken down previously, along with piles of brick and concrete chunks lying around it. The hole led into another hallway on the other side, similar to the one they were in, only dirtier.

“Maybe check and see if there’s something on the other side?” Spectrum suggested in a monotone voice. Cotton didn’t reply, although complied and attempted to step over the piles of debris. While not completely in the other hallway, she peeked her head into it, her eyes gazing into the deep black fog toward which the hallway stretched.

Cotton’s ears fell slightly in fear. “It looks kinda shady over there; I think we should just—”

“COTTON, LOOK OUT!!”

The earth pony spun in confusion and saw from the top of her vision that a huge boulder was falling from above, aimed directly for her head.

With a yelp, she dived into the other hallway, falling onto her stomach as she heard the impact of the boulder against the tiled ground.

Quickly rolling over onto her haunches, she saw that the boulder that had almost crushed her was currently positioned between both hallways. She breathed heavily, realizing truly how close she had come to death or serious damage.

“Cotton, are you alright?” Spectrum asked worryingly from the other side of the boulder.

“Yeah, I’m fine. That was too close…” Cotton replied, coughing afterward from the expulsion of dust seeping into her lungs. She stood, walking up to the boulder whilst waving away the dust in the air. “Where did it even come from?”

Spectrum looked around before her eyes locked onto a spot on the ceiling. “There.” Cotton followed Spectrum’s gaze and saw a missing tile in the ceiling, beyond which was a tube of dirt and rocks that ended shortly in darkness. “I have no idea what caused a rock that big to fall from up there.” Her eyes fell back to the boulder. “Wait, Cotton, how are you going to get back over?”

That had not even been considered by Cotton until it was mentioned, and as she examined her situation properly, she realized that after the boulder had hit the ground, it had rolled slightly, cutting off the space to squeeze through the sides of the hole and leaving a limited space between the boulder and the top of the hole.

Racking her brain for ideas, Cotton proposed the obvious first instinct in this type of scenario. “Try moving it. I’ll pull, you push.”

“Roger that.” Spectrum placed her front hooves on the boulder while Cotton moved toward the side a gripped it as well.

“Three… two… one!” Cotton pulled with all her might while Spectrum put all her strength into her side of the boulder, pushing off the ground with her hind legs and flapping her wings to increase the force she was applying to it.

However, with all this strength combined, they had only managed to budge the boulder no more than an inch before they surrendered to fatigue, the boulder returning to its original spot.

“My gosh, that’s heavy,” Spectrum said, panting. “Maybe I pull and you can try bucking it since your legs are stronger.”

They recovered from their exhaustion and tried Spectrum’s idea. The result no different, leaving both of them breathing heavily again, and Cotton with aching hind legs.

“Okay, that didn’t work,” Spectrum spoke between breaths. “Do you think you can climb over?”

Cotton looked at the tiny space doubtfully. “I don’t know, it looks pretty tight.”

“Well, we won’t know unless we try. Besides, there is some space and with your size, you could probably fit—”

The ear-splitting sound of metal tearing suddenly shot through Cotton’s eardrums, her heart jumping into her throat as she watched Spectrum’s head twist in the direction of the lobby room they had walked out of earlier. No sooner had that sound pierced the air than the exact same scream they had heard earlier sounded from the same place.

Cotton stared at Spectrum frightfully for reassurance. However the pegasus filly’s gaze never left the lobby room. In fact, as she stared, her face began to pale, her ears flattening gradually and her eyes diluting into pinpricks.

“W-what… what is it?” Cotton stammered out, troubled by her friend’s expression and that she couldn’t see what Spectrum was seeing. The multicolor mane filly just continued to stare, her breathing getting heavier and heavier.

Cotton heard the screech again, and as she did, Spectrum suddenly whirled around and sprinted in the opposite direction, out of Cotton’s line of sight.

“Spectrum, where are you going?!” Cotton screamed, before she heard the sound of rumbling. In that moment, a torrent of dirt and rocks burst from the missing tile in the ceiling.

Cotton jumped back, spotting a long shadow suddenly spread across the ground in the opposite hallway for a split second, before the avalanche of dirt and stones filled the hallway, completely sealing off all the parts of the hole in the wall the boulder that had fallen previously hadn’t blocked.

“Spectrum!” Cotton cried out for a last time. The rumbling sound disappeared, leaving Cotton in the dark and silence, separated from Spectrum for the second time.

Cotton’s mind was a whirlwind of thoughts. What had happened to Spectrum? Was she okay? What had scared her so much for her to run off and leave Cotton behind?

The cyan filly stared into the darkness of the hallway.

But most importantly, how was she going to get out of here and back to Spectrum…?

Cotton first tried clearing the blockage. She had managed to get a few small boulders out of the way but her strength was no match for the bigger ones and she therefore came to the conclusion that clearing the cave in with her bare hooves wasn’t going to work. Therefore, her second plan of action came into play: start walking and hope for the best.

With a gulp, her facial features portraying a clear lack in confidence, she started walking down the hallway. The area quickly began to darken, prompting Cotton to grab for her camera. However, she noticed that her hoof was not coming into contact with said camera, and when she looked downward, she realized why.

The camera was no longer with her.

Her heart dropped. She assumed that she had dropped the camera when she was jumping out of the way of that falling boulder, and cursed silently. She would now have to proceed into the empty, dark hallway without a light source.

Brilliant.

Cotton attempted to set aside her nerves, breathing in and out to calm her beating heart, and carried on down the long corridor. As she had predicted, the hallway darkened even further, even as she reached the turn in the hallway where this process continued.

Though, as she was taking another turn, she spotted that at the end of the corridor was a working fluorescent lamp on the ceiling which, albeit flickering, still shocked Cotton with its working condition. There shouldn’t have been any electricity running down here. This raised the question of whether this place had its own working generator, and how if so.

Ahead of the lamp was another turn where another flickering lamp rested on the ceiling. Following that was practically a labyrinth of left and right turns. At some points, she would come to crosses in the corridors but blockages of rubble would close her options to only one path. She would also come across doors which were all locked and IV’s on their sides wrapped in the growth on the walls.

Cotton began losing confidence. Every turn and hallway she went down didn’t seem to lead her any closer to her goal of finding her friend. She called out Spectrum’s name frequently as she walked, but each time she hadn’t received an answer other than the mocking silence of the empty halls, her confidence had been belittled even more.

She began to see gas pipes coming out of the walls, a reassuring difference from the recurring pattern of vines, broken floor tiles and dirt-stained walls. On a hunch that they would lead her closer to an exit or someplace that would help her guide herself, she followed them, taking turns where they turned and hoping she would end up somewhere at least slightly familiar.

Soon, to Cotton’s disappointment, the number of lit lamps she came across became less common, dimming her surroundings to a faint brightness with the aid of some cracks in the wall that made way for outside light to pass in. It was also in this area that she began to see a repetitive theme of scratch marks and holes in the walls which Cotton wasn’t sure how to feel about.

When she passed across a left turn, she spotted yet another downward staircase which, although considerably shorter than the previous one, still made Cotton averse to the idea of descending further into the earth. All she wanted right now was just to reunite with Spectrum and get the hell out of the hospital.

As Cotton stood contemplating whether or not she should go downward, her ears twitched as a sound crept into them. She turned around and faced the general direction of the sound, finding herself staring into a hallway opposite from the staircase which Cotton could not see far into due to the mist in the building.

The sound was quiet, but audible. It sounded like the footsteps of something moving in the hallway, but she couldn’t see what it was. Her eyes remained fixed on the hallway as if waiting for something to jump out at her. She could feel tension rising in her chest as the sounds became slightly louder, but the thought that it could have been Spectrum kept her from running right away.

A sudden screech emanated from the hallway, echoing in Cotton’s direction.

With a whimper, Cotton turned tail, bolting down the stairs. She didn’t know what that was, but she was definitely not going to wait around to find out.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, she ran forward blindly. Whatever she had heard, she was not sure if it was dangerous, and if it was, whether it was giving chase or not. She was just focused on getting out of that area, so much so that she barely even acknowledged the appearance of pony skeletons in the hallway.

Soon, after many twists and turns, she slowed to a trot, gasping for air. She turned around, checking to see if anything was still following her, and judged that she was free from danger.

She turned back around, her pace slowing even more so she could catch her breath, and continued onward. However, as she did, she noticed that a short way away, the hallway split into two different directions, one straight forward and the other, a right turn that led into a brighter hallway. It was no question which one piqued her interest.

She followed the right turn, and saw that at the end was a large, brightly lit room. Cotton had no clue what she would find in there, but the fact that she had stumbled upon something other than run-down dirty hallways was enough for her.

She approached the room, which revealed itself more and more as she went. She could see the source of light being a fluorescent strip light hanging from a couple of wires on the ceiling, but as her eyes traced the details of the rest of the room, they began to widen further with each passing second.

To the left of the room, a set of rusty iron bars were lined up vertically and close together from one end of the room to the other with a doorway in the middle but the door itself lying in front of it as though it had been bashed off its hinges. It was a prison cell obviously—a big one at that, but what one was doing down here in a hospital was beyond Cotton. Against the wall to Cotton’s right, a long bench sat, rotten and stained in dark red spots, and multiple cabinets were set up against each wall.

None of those were what shocked Cotton however.

Skeletons… what had to have been over a hundred of them lay scattered across the room, practically covering the entire floor. She couldn’t believe it. The amount of skeletons there were… the amount of ponies that had died down here, either starved to death or killed, their last moments lived in pain, or grief, inside some hospital room underground.

Cotton shivered heavily, but not from the coolness of the place. She began walking forward, trying her best to avoid stepping on bones, cringing when she heard a snap or a crunch. She then stopped in front of the bench, and the sight of it caused her to remember back to the photo she had seen in the storage room. This was the same bench as in the picture, except ruined of course. She then thought about the adults and fillies in the picture, and glanced down at the skeletons on the ground.

She shivered again.

She shook her head, attempting to push those thoughts toward the back of her mind and decided to check one of the cabinets. Opening it up, she found bottles of water and dated, mouldy food rations, as well as medical kits and other supplies for tending to wounds and other health related stuff. This confused Cotton. If they had food and water to keep them alive, then what killed these ponies?

After Cotton checked a few other cabinets, finding the same things inside, she proceeded toward the short hall on the other side of the room, which opened into another smaller and squarer room than the last.

At the dead center of the room was a metal table, but what Cotton found strange was the soot black color staining the entire surface of it. But not soon after, she spotted something that interested her even more:

The pink star-shaped jewel peeking out from behind the back leg of the table.

Cotton frowned in curiosity, circling around the table to inspect it, when she found five more jewels laying beside it, each a different shape and color. A pink butterfly, a blue balloon, a red lightning bolt, a purple diamond and finally, an orange one shaped like an apple. Only, instead of glimmering like regular gems, they appeared to be dark in color and carried barely any sparkle.

Marveled by her find, Cotton sat on her haunches and reached for the star shaped one, rotating it in her hooves as her eyes took in the sight of it.

“What are these things…?” she whispered to herself as she reached for the lightning bolt-shaped one.

Suddenly, the two gems in her hooves began to glow and vibrate, as did the other four on the ground, the star-shaped one glowing much brighter than the rest. In fear, Cotton threw the jewels away and crawled backward. The light emitted from the jewels began to fade, and as they did, the lights above flickered momentarily before returning to their original state.

Cotton stood carefully, unsure of what the gems would do, and instead headed toward the smaller table at the side of the room which held a piece of paper. She picked it up and began to read.

06/21/2016

Our third attempt to bind the element of harmony to another bearer has failed, and we’re becoming increasingly uncertain if we will be able to succeed in repairing the connection between them. As things stand, Tirek and his companions are pushing further into the town. The princesses and the pillars are doing what they can to keep them back but they are failing slowly but surely. I am not sure for how much longer we will be able to keep up our current efforts and if the experiments continue to fail as they have thus far, I’m afraid we will have to resort to extreme sacrifices.

The pony’s here are not faring much better. Most are hurt and require medical attention, also clearly devastated by their losses. Luckily, we have managed to transport a majority of the town’s population into the basement, and furthermore, the elements have sensed the danger and we have been able to use them to protect the hospital from attacks.

As far as I’m concerned, we’re safe here for now. But due to the last three failed attempts at finding a new bearer for the element of generosity, the number of willing patients is dwindling, and if we cannot bind the element to somepony soon, I’m afraid—

The writing mysteriously ended there.

Cotton was trying to wrap her head around this new information. So there were experiments going on down here, and there was a war in the town. That much was officially confirmed.

What she found weird though was the mention of a third failed experiment. She remembered how the second picture in the storage room was labeled the same thing and on the front was a photograph of that equine-shaped… thing.

There was so much that she still didn’t understand, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to understand. Everything seemed to point toward something twisted and dark that she would regret messing with, and so Cotton, with the aim of leaving, began to turn around.

Only to have her interest caught by the gems again.

She walked up to them for a second time, looking at each individually. It was safe to assume these were the elements of harmony. Cotton wouldn’t deny that she was indeed fascinated by them. These gems, according to Spectrum, were the most powerful weapon in the world at one point in time, and they were just lying here in front of her.

As she got closer, the star-shaped element began to glow again, as did the rest of them, but this time, something was different. She could have sworn she had heard some sort of voice…

You have to leave!

Cotton gasped lightly. It was quiet, but she definitely heard a voice that time. Her eyes shot towards every corner of the room, only to land back on the elements again. The voice didn’t seem physical; it almost seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. She reached a doubtful hoof toward the star-shaped gem, taking it in her hoof. Almost instantly, she felt the powerful energy radiating from it.

There’s something dangerous down here!

There it was again…

The gem began to glow more intensely as the voice spoke. It sounded feminine and even somewhat soothing, but the speaker sounded fearful and agitated. Was it coming from the element…?

She held the element up closer. “W-who are you…?” she whispered in an attempt to communicate with the voice.

Get out of here, quickly!

In that moment, the gem in her hoof shone a blinding white light before generating an electric spark that flashed through the air. Cotton dropped it immediately, stepping back as the gem landed on the floor with the others, rattling slightly before going still and darkening back to its original lifeless color like the other elements.

After that, the lights above went out, plunging the room into darkness.

Cotton stepped away from the elements quickly before running out of the room, across the skeleton-covered floor—now uncaring of the bones and skulls she stepped on, and back out into the hallway.

She stopped running once she reached the intersection from earlier, looking back into the room in fear of what had just happened. A fresh coat of perplexity painted the inside of her mind as she opted to start going down the unexplored hall with the goal to make her distance from the brightly lit room.

The whole way, Cotton thought about the voice she had heard. Whether it was coming from the elements or somewhere else was a complete mystery, but it sounded like it was trying to warn her of something. Though, she wasn’t sure what, and frankly that didn’t matter to her right now. All that mattered was that she was done with this place. She just wanted to find Spectrum and leave. She had seen enough crazy stuff for today.

She kept walking until the hallway turned again, and she followed it. That’s where she stopped for the umpteenth time that day.

She could see a far off silhouette within the mist and darkness of the hallway. A silhouette that appeared like a pony, except longer and larger, and looked to be facing the wall.

Cotton kept her gaze focused on the silhouette. It was unmoving as far as she could see, but as she took a few steps forward, a purple light became visible, shining from the center of the shape.

“Spectrum…?” she lightly called out. The shape didn’t respond, just remained immobile. Cotton could feel sweat breaking out on her brow, but against her body protesting for her to turn back she took yet another few steps forward.

A bad feeling sprouted from within her stomach. Her eyes didn’t move from the silhouette, watching for any signs of movement. Something about it wasn’t right. It could have been her eyes playing tricks on her or something along those lines, but those ideas didn’t make her any less afraid.

She took another few steps forward.

The silhouette moved. Whatever its focus was on was on before had clearly lost its interest, as it had turned to face Cotton’s direction.

“S-Spectrum… is that you?” she said more silently, taking another step forward.

The door beside her burst off its hinges.

Cotton screamed, recoiling as she was showered by wooden planks and sparks. As she backed up, her eyes contracted in sheer terror, watching the long and skinny creature that walked out into the hallway on four legs, the bright purple light at its chest blinding her. The large creature’s head suddenly snapped in Cotton’s direction.

It screeched.

Cotton turned and ran. She didn’t care where, as long as it was away. Adrenaline flooded her veins, pushing her legs to move faster, propelling her down the hall at high speeds. She heard the creature bellow again before giving chase, its steps thumping through Cotton’s body.

She didn’t dare looked back, only forced herself to sprint faster. Wind whipped at her mane due to the velocity at which she ran, but her fight-or-flight response made the strain unnoticeable. All she felt was the determination to stay alive and escape that creature, which translated into yet another increase in her speed.

Her hooves began to scramble once she reached a turn, almost causing her to trip and fall, but she remained on her hooves and continued running. The monster chasing her roared again as she heard the sharp ring of a collision, and the thumping on the ground stopped. Only for a moment however, as a few seconds later, they had started up again, this time faster and accompanied by angrier shrieks.

Reaching an open door in the hallway, Cotton rushed inside and threw the door closed behind her with a foreleg, all the while refusing to stop running. She had no time to study the room she had entered, only enough to spot a filing cabinet, screech to a halt behind it and crouched to the ground.

Cotton was panting by the time she stopped running, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her heart hammered at her ribcage faster than it ever had in her life. She tried to compose herself, but she was quickly failing that task once the creature outside had begun to bash against the room’s door.

Each blow against the door made Cotton jump. Once she realized that she was making noise, she immediately put a hoof in her mouth to silence it. All the while, she was scared for her life. Whatever that thing was out there, it was trying to kill her, possibly in the worst way imaginable. She didn’t want that to happen to her. She didn’t want to die, not this way.

Strike after strike caused the ground below Cotton to rumble, until the door finally succumbed to the constant abuse, breaking apart and falling to the ground in a pile of destroyed wood.

A blood-curdling roar filled the air before Cotton heard the creature begin its patrol. Its breathing was rough and ragged, like that of an old stallion, and the creaking and cracking of its joints each time it moved made Cotton tremble violently.

Hoof in mouth, she silenced her shaky breathing to the best of her ability, made uncomfortable by the demand of oxygen from her respiratory system. Her eyes then went to the round spot of purple light on the wall next to her, which moved after each creak of the creature’s limbs. She watched it intently, hoping that whatever that thing was would not walk over and see her.

The purple light on the wall disappeared. After that, the sound of metal being scratched entered her right ear, followed by a deep grumble. From behind her hiding place, Cotton suddenly saw a cabinet fly across the room before hitting the wall on the far side of the room and dropping to the ground.

The creature drew in a deep breath. The light on the wall appeared again, and the creature’s footsteps got louder.

Stay still, don’t make a sound... Stay still, don’t make a sound…

The footsteps continued. The light became brighter.

Stay still don’t make a sound, stay still don’t make a sound!

And then she saw it.

The creature emerged from behind the cabinet. It was a horrid abomination—something out of somepony’s wildest nightmare. Its skin, dark tan with bits of color missing like peeled drywall, looked stretched beyond its limits—most noticeably at the ribs, which protruded further than the hungriest pony, and spine, which bulged outward to the point of forming a hump on its back that ranged from the neck down to the pelvis.

As Cotton stared at it with shrunken eyes, only one thought surfaced past the rest:

What the hell is it…?

It sucked in another breath through its sharp, fang-like teeth which pierced through its top and bottom lips. Its body lurched, the purple light embodied in its chest glaring in Cotton’s direction, inciting her to squint.

Thankfully, the creature had not seen her, and had faced away to search the wooden boxes and drawers on the other side of the room.

Cotton remained at her spot on the ground, quivering in panic. She wasn’t sure whether to run or to stay in place. If she stayed where she was the creature would certainly turn around and spot her, but if she ran, the creature would once again give chase and likely catch her, which left her with little to no options at her disposal.

The creature hissed, poking at the wooden boxes much like a curious cat, except not so much curious as pissed off. Cotton pondered her situation. Could she be able to sneak out of the room while the creature was distracted over there…? She doubted it heavily, but decided it was worth a shot if she didn’t want to be brutally murdered.

However, she didn’t even make it to standing up before her tail brushed softly against the cabinet beside her.

She heard a snarl and looked up to see the creature slanting its head, ceasing its prior action. Its ears twitched, and its head slowly began to turn in Cotton’s direction.

She backed up, pressing her back flat against the wall as if that would hide her anymore than she was already hidden, and cowered. That was it. In a mere second, she had accepted death, and images of her family and friends flashed through her mind in a nanosecond.

Click-click.

With an audible snap, the creature’s head twisted toward the room’s exit, a resounding screech erupting from its mouth before it galloped out of Cotton’s line of sight. She heard its footsteps grow fainter and fainter, along with screams that became more and more distant. Then, silence fell.

Cotton removed her hoof from her mouth and instantly fell into a fit of gasps and hyperventilation. While relief flooded her system, her inability to process how close she had just been to death left her in a state of shock.

She couldn’t wrap her head around what that creature was. A tsunami of thoughts flowed through her mind to the point of bursting, like where it had come from, or what it was doing down here. What scared her, though, were not the questions themselves, but the lack of answers to them, and the only thing she did know for a fact:

That creature was roaming the basement, with the intent to kill.

She simply sat there breathing heavily for another minute before finding the courage to inch out of her hiding place. Gazing in the direction of the room’s exit, the creature was nowhere to be seen. She was safe.

With shaky breaths, the cyan filly stood up from the ground, still hyper from adrenaline, and fearfully made her way toward the now broken door. While her surroundings appeared safe, she was still apprehensive that that creature was still close, and slowed her walk to gradual steps, not wanting to make too much noise.

She stepped silently over the broken pieces of the door the creature had destroyed, and poked her head into the hallway. First she looked left and right, spotting only darkness both ways. Next, she listened carefully for any noises that would signify danger, and with no indication of one, she finally left the room entirely.

The hallways felt significantly colder than they had before, goosebumps trailing all along Cotton’s fur.  That thing could have been anywhere, but the question of where was the concerning part. 

Cotton reflected on her encounter with the creature. There was a noise out in the halls that caused the creature to leave, and if she was not mistaken, that was the sound of Spectrum’s camera. Was she nearby? Cotton wanted to call out her name, but if the creature was also nearby, she didn’t want to draw its attention to her location.

If she recalled, the noise that had distracted the creature had come from the direction where she had been chased. This meant that if she were to go that way, she risked running into that thing again, but if she were to go back, she would wind up nowhere. That left her with only one choice.

Cotton cursed, facing where she had come running from and backtracked stealthily as she was once again submerged in the darkness.

She reached the cross in the hallway, coming across a large spot in the wall where the wall sank inward, the stone within forming a web of cracks as a result of a powerful impact.

Cotton was not sure which way to go this time.  She couldn’t hear anything that signified that something was after her, but she had a strange feeling that was a bad omen. She sent a wary stare down the right hallway, before directing it forward. Both ways held a deep sea of darkness, and she wanted to avoid the left hallway where the creature had come from in case it had gone back.

After a quick peek over her shoulder, she began walking into the hallway in front of her.

She stopped abruptly when a purple light appeared at the end of the hall.

Her blood ran cold as she backed up and turned into the right hallway, but now standing not far away was another one of them, focused precisely on her and ready to give chase…

Which it did not a second later.

Cotton took her cue and galloped in the opposite direction, her ears falling victim to the thunderous cacophony of roars behind her. The walls, ceiling and floor around her were suddenly shaded in a bright purple, aside from the stretched out shadow on the ground in front of her, mimicking her every movement.

Her only aim now was to create as much distance between her and those things as possible. Daring a look behind her, she saw that the creatures were gaining on her. Fast.

Doubling her efforts, her legs moved faster, and she reached the door that had been broken down earlier. Skidding against the floor, she darted into the room, which was small and filled with coats and crates piled on top of each other. Thinking fast, she set her hooves on a pile of crates next to the doorway and tipped it, the stack falling over and crashing in a heap in front of the doorway.

Facing the rest of the room, her mind was working in overdrive trying to determine her next course of action. She immediately started running toward the door at the other end of the room, and as she ran, she noticed a support pole with a jagged end lying on the ground. With a foreleg, she snatched it off the floor, and with her other foreleg, she gripped the handle on the door and pushed it open.

She heard the creatures screeching behind her, and with a sudden crash, wooden bits and pieces flew in her direction, some piercing her skin but going unnoticed due to the adrenaline in her blood. She continued running, kicking the door closed with a hind leg and continuing down the corridor she was now in.

She already heard one of the creature’s attempts to break down the door. The hallway turned left and she followed it. Greeted with another door which looked more solid and stiff than the rest in the hospital, she paused to try the handle.

It wouldn’t budge.

“No, no no no, fuck, FUCK!” Cotton shouted, slamming down on the handle again and again to no avail. The continuous beats against the door down the hall behind her paired with the shrieks of the monsters made her heart beat ever harder as she fruitlessly begged for the handle to submit to her attempts of turning it.

And then she heard the door break.

Cotton froze. The creature at the end of the hall screeched again, and Cotton crouched down to the ground against the wall.

Thump… thump… thump…

Its steps rattled her body harder than her own fear. She knew she had to think of something but she didn’t know what to do. The door behind her was locked and by the time any plan of hers were to have worked, the creature would have turned the corner and saw her.

Thump… thump… thump…

Cotton’s eyes then fell to the pole in her hoof. That would be the only way out of this situation. She would have to attack that thing if she wanted any chance of getting out of this situation alive.

Any deep breath that Cotton took stuttered quickly. She had to be brave. It was a hard task, considering her scenario, but she knew that if she gave up now, she would certainly die. The thought of Spectrum came into her mind. For her own sake, she needed to be as brave as her friend right now.

Remaining next to the wall, the filly approached where the hall turned as quietly as she could manage, remaining on the tips of her hooves whilst firmly gripping her weapon with a foreleg. Stopping just before entering the hall the creature was in, she waited, listening carefully for the creature’s steps.

Thump… thump… …

The rumble of its steps was mysteriously discontinued. She could hear it breathing slowly and viciously, the dripping of saliva tapping the ground. Why was it just waiting around? Was it looking at something? Tension welled up within her system as she waited for another movement.

The monstrosity hissed, taking sharp breaths at random, but as far as Cotton could tell, it was standing in place all the while. She heard another cry, but this one was farther away. That might have been the second creature that had chased her, but she couldn’t be sure. Her concern now was on the creature she was prepared to attack.

…

…

Thump…

…

Thump… thump…

…

Thump… thump… thump, thump thump THUMP THUMP

Letting her instincts take over, she rose to her hind legs, gripping the pole with both forelegs, before bringing it back and swinging it with all the force she could muster.

As she swung her weapon like a baseball bat, the pole suddenly stopped, and a cry cut through the air loud enough to cause ringing in the filly’s ears. At the same time, a wave of pain shot through her foreleg, making Cotton grunt loudly. She had hit it.

The creature’s screech gradually became weaker before its voice went silent, and the pole slipped from her hooves, disappearing behind the wall. Finally, the resounding sound of flesh colliding against the ground was the last to occur before silence took back its place in the cold, misty air.

She fell onto all four shaking legs, and stepped forward to view the result of what she had done.

The creature lay on its back, static, the irregular end of the pole sticking through its head deep enough to penetrate its brain. The purple light in its chest had disappeared.

Cotton still stared at it skeptically. Did she kill it? The damage was clear in front of her, but this being a supernatural creature she had never seen before, she couldn’t be sure.

She went closer to investigate, meanwhile sustaining a cautious approach. It seemed to be dead. It wasn’t breathing and it made no sounds. She then turned her head towards the room past the door the monster had destroyed and saw that the other creature was not in there. She assumed it had lost interest in her and had gone a separate way.

Plopping onto her haunches, back pressed against the wall, Cotton breathed heavily. She couldn’t believe she had just killed that thing. She could have very well died, but she somehow managed to beat it. She was still alive, and Cotton couldn’t have been luckier.

She then thought about Spectrum again. Where was she? Was she okay? Surely she was still looking for her, but then again, one of the creatures might have gotten her. It was by sheer miracle that Cotton had made it out of that scenario alive, but whether Spectrum was having the same luck worried her. For all she knew, she could have been hurt, or even... she shook her head. She didn’t want to think about that.

She wondered how many creatures were down here. She had seen two so far, unless those weren’t the same as the first one she had encountered. She examined the one in front of her again. Its skin seemed a deeper brown color than the bright tan of the first. However many there were, she would have been happy to avoid them until she could regroup with Spectrum and get out of the hospital.

Breathing slower now, Cotton pressed a hoof to her forehead. She had a headache. Her fur was matted with sweat and she was thirsty. She was supposed to be on the way back home right now, but instead she was stuck underground inside the home of a bunch of supernatural monsters hell-bent on killing her.

She couldn’t wait to tell her parents about this one.

Cotton stood up from the ground. She wished she could sit back down but she had to carry on. Walking toward the crate-filled room, which was now a mess of broken boxes and pieces of wooden planks scattered across the floor, she proceeded through the room to get back into the hallway.

As she walked however, she stepped over one of the white coats on the ground, and looked down to see something peeking out of the front pocket. She stopped, reaching to pick up whatever it was, and discovered it to be a small box of paperclips. She set it in her mouth, deciding it might be useful later.

Ready to leave, she raised her head toward the doorway leading into the hallway…

Just in time to see a round purple light spread across the wall outside.

“God fucking damnit…” Cotton whispered in frustration and dread, backing up back into the hallway with the dead creature. She reversed all the way to the locked door, watching as the purple light in the hall grew brighter before the creature came into view. She prayed it would just keep going and not turn into the room, but instead of doing the former or the latter, the creature simply stopped at the doorway and didn’t move.

Cotton took a breath. She did a run-through of the positives and negatives of her situation. For positives, the creature wasn’t moving and hadn’t seen her yet, so she was safe for the time being. Negatives, there was no way out of here, and the creature could start walking in her direction and she would be screwed.

She considered that her best bet would be to wait until the creature outside left, and then she could resume her quest of finding an exit.

Out of the corner of her eye, a purple light flashed.

Cotton’s eyes shot downward, landing on the creature she had killed. As she stared at its corpse, a purple light flickered again at its chest before shining with a glaring brightness, prompting Cotton to squint.

A low growl escaped its mouth.

All color left her face as she backed up until her rump hit the wall. The creature’s limbs started to twitch abnormally with audible creaks as more sounds came from its mouth. What was going on? She had killed it!

As the creature’s movements became more frantic, Cotton ran back toward the locked door, once again pulling on the handle as though it would magically give and allow her through. Through the box of paperclips in her mouth, she screamed, pleading for it to open, and as she did, the tiny box inside her mouth fell and hit the floor.

An idea sparked in her mind. She quickly sat down, grabbed the box and opened it. Sure enough, it was filled to the brim with paperclips.

She had seen Spectrum do this. All she had to do was match it. She set the box on the floor and took a paperclip, unfolding it so one end stuck out straight. She then bent it so the end of the unfolded paperclip formed small curls. This was hard to do with her hooves, and as such, it slipped from them multiple times.

The growls from the creature on the ground grew more intense, and she saw its head lift from the ground. She also began hearing screeches from the one in the other room.

“Come on, come on…” she repeated as she took another paperclip, unfolded one end and bent it in half with her teeth. She then inserted that paperclip into the lock by the bent end before grabbing the other one and bringing it to the lock. Placing it above the other paperclip, she fumbled around with it, trying to get it passed the pins within the mechanism.

The creature rolled onto its front before placing its forelegs on the ground and pushing itself up, now towering over the little filly. Cotton looked backward, and watched as the creature’s head twisted in her direction, and a distorted screech came from its mouth.

Cotton hyperventilated, shaking the paperclip to get it inside the lock, and at last it slipped inward. She wasted no time in turning the lock, which emitted a clear click before she yanked on the handle, pulling the door open wide. Thump after thump quaked the ground as she stepped through the doorway, watching as the creature jumped forward to grab her. Before it could, she yanked the door shut.
> ...Are Best Left Forgotten
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

She fell to the ground on her back, yelping as the door suddenly bulged outward with a sharp bang, the monster on the other end screaming furiously for its lost prey. Before long, it gave up, and she heard it run away, potentially searching for another way around. Chances were it already knew another way around, which encouraged Cotton to get back onto her hooves.

As it turned out, she was in more danger than she first considered because apparently those things could revive themselves. Cotton wasn’t sure how much longer she could deal with this. She just wanted to see her friend again.

Cotton focused on her task and examined her new environment. She was in another waiting room that was long but short in width, a hall on the left and right and a door at the far end that’s white coating had faded. The floors were dusty and the air was dry, moss and dead plants smothering the walls, and apparatuses and chairs lined the perimeter of the room.

“How damn big is this place?” Cotton said to herself, going forward to try the door. The sounds of far-off screeches echoing through the outside halls kept Cotton alert, her own hoofsteps startling her until she reached the door.

This door had a knob, and on the wall next to it, a keypad was attached, a small glowing red LED above the rows of numbers below it. She figured that the door would be locked, but tried opening it anyway. Her prediction was correct.

Her eyes went back to they keypad. Typing in a random set of four numbers, the red LED flashed a few times along with a quiet beeping noise. She put her hoof on the doorknob and tried it again. She would have shocked herself if that had worked.

Cotton turned, talking to herself. “Okay, so I have to find a four digit code somewhere in this place. They should have had it written down, right?”

Her eyes darted between the two halls, judging which one to go down first, before stopping on the one to her right. “Might as well…” she said, before walking toward the hall and following it. Having a voice of guidance, although being her own provided a sense of comfort, however it was no match against the heavy fear of the lurking danger all around her.

The hall opened up into an emergency room, a row of stretcher carts between dull green curtains that were either torn or drooping. At the far end of the room was a desk with telephones and documents, and Cotton approached it, wondering if the code had been written on a paper or letter somewhere. Stepping behind the desk, she shifted through the papers and folders, knocking pens and pencils in the process which were of no use to her. After that, she opened the drawers, merely finding old medical records that she doubted somepony wrote an important door code on.

After looking through the rest of what the desk had to offer, she sighed at the waste of time and turned to leave the room. Before leaving though, her eyes went to the row of stretcher carts, and she realized that midway down the row, the blanket on one of the carts was raised, a shape from underneath pushing the sheets outward.

She began walking through the room, passing by carts with rolled up blankets or torn sheets, some carts just plain out destroyed and collapsed to the ground. Reaching the cart she had spotted, she set a hoof on the raised blanket and pulled it back. She recoiled suddenly.

Underneath the covers was just a skull, but it startled her even so. Cotton exhaled at her own stupidity, before seeing that on the mattress next to the skull was a matchbook. It was open wide, allowing her to see the three matches inside. That was not much for a source of light, but even so, that was still light, and so she took the matchbook in her teeth. She would only use them when she really needed them.

She turned and left the room, heading toward the hall just across from the emergency room, before a sound above her stopped her in her tracks. From within the ceiling, the muffled groans and cries of one of the creatures rang out as well as the knocking and thumping of metal. Cotton stayed silent until the sound became inaudible, and continued forth toward the hallway in front of her. She didn’t know what the creature was doing, but she was pretty sure it knew where she was, and was already on its way to tracking her location.

Her steps sped to a trot as she entered the second hallway and went through the open door at the end. Inside this room was an operating table at the center along with some sort of machine above it, and counters and dirty sinks along the walls. She took a quick gander at the counter tops and saw nothing that would help her, and moved on toward the opening on the far wall into another room.

Large, iron generators filled the room with wires and cables that connected certain devices to others. Pipes ran along the ceiling like circuits, intertwining with each other and going down into the floor or into the wall. On several of the generators was a yellow caution sign, but with the amount of time these had been sitting here, Cotton was pretty sure she could ignore them.

She stepped past a few of the generators, and came across one with a note that had been taped to a pipe that ran along the side of it. Cotton went toward it quickly and read what was written on it.


Read this!!!



These generators power the west section of the lower floor. If you are to redirect electricity to the east section, make sure it’s for a good reason. This will also activate the keypad door in the waiting room outside, so in case you’re stuck or there’s some sort of emergency, use the code below to get by.



5034


Score.

Cotton galloped out of the generator room and out the door in the operating room, turning into the waiting room and stopping in front of the locked door with the keypad. She then typed the code she had seen on the paper, and once she did, the keypad beeped. The red LED flickered briefly before turning green, and the door emitted a satisfying click.

Trying the door knob again, it turned cleanly without any complications. She pushed it open, noticing that the door was heavy, and had to push hard before the door would open all the way. She stepped into the room in front of her.

The door closed behind her, and she found afterward that the keypad in this room was broken, and a tug on the doorknob proved it to be locked, which concluded that she wouldn’t be going back that way. Not that she wanted to.

The room she was in now was large and round, with multiple wooden boxes that reached up to her neck. Rusty pipes ran along the ceiling with valves attached to some, while the ceiling itself was infested with cracks and holes. It looked as though the ceiling would cave inward at any moment and dirt would start rushing into the room.

The pipes on the ceiling met up at the center and trailed toward the right into a corridor, which Cotton was inclined to go toward instead of waiting around in a room that looked as though it was about to fall apart.

As she approached the hallway, she heard something resonating from inside the corridor. It sounded like… scraping… against some sort of surface—like a rock being dragged against a dirt floor. Cotton stopped, her hooves planted in place. As the scratching continued, the hair on the back of her neck rose.

Slowly and hesitantly, she took a step toward the hallway. The forefront thought on her mind was that one of those things was waiting for her in there. Her other thoughts reassured her by suggesting that it was merely some animal or insect crawling around, but deep down she was almost certain that that assumption couldn’t be farther from the truth.

But the hallway in front of her was the only way she could go, so Cotton forced her legs to carry her forward against their objections. She accelerated to a snail’s pace, and couldn’t dare herself to go any faster, which she was fairly comfortable with for the time being.

The sound disappeared. Cotton slowed, stressing over what that could mean—whether whatever was in the corridor was gone, or if she was being led into a false sense of security. Regardless of which, she wasn’t entirely eager on entering.

A loud crash came from within the hall, followed by pieces of wood being expelled out into the round room. The shade on the walls in the hall suddenly became a bright purple, and a long stretch of the same light lapped across the floor in front of her.

Cotton began reversing, her ears folding and heart beating. The all too familiar screech that came after was all she needed to know that one of the creatures had found her again.

She spun her head, scanning every corner of the room searching for somewhere—anywhere to hide, but she quickly realized that her options were very limited. The room only had a few boxes, and some shelves which would have been a good place to hide had she only had more time.

Without a second thought, she crouched behind the box next to her. Anything that would give her even the slightest chance of survival was better than staying where the creature would see her instantly.

Luckily, she had done so just in time, as she spotted one of the creature’s legs peek out from within the hall.

Cotton bowed her head to make sure she was completely hidden behind the box. She heard the creature’s groans, and the crying of its joints like an old and broken machine. A round spot of light shot across the wall from left to right as she heard the thing make its way toward the center of the room.

Its footsteps paused for a moment. When she saw the round light on the wall shoot toward the other end of the room, Cotton leaned her head, daring a look at the creature. Its head faced the shelves and boxes at the other end of the room, but what she noticed to be rather peculiar was the way its ears were constantly moving, folding and opening in a repeated cycle.

The creature’s head jerked slightly, and Cotton observed something else. A deep red gash spanned across both of its eyes, which were reduced to small piles of mush inside their sockets.

Cotton shifted back behind the box before the creature could spot her. It was the same creature that she had managed to attack. She then considered the condition of its eyes, and the movement of its ears. Did that mean it couldn’t see? Cotton had no interest in testing that hypothesis, but she strongly believed that to be the case.

She now needed to think of a plan, and fast. Her only way out of the room was the corridor the creature had come from, and if it couldn’t see, then as long as she didn’t make a sound, she could wait for it to leave with less of a risk of being found.

The thing began walking again. It entered Cotton’s peripheral, and she watched as it bumped into one of the boxes. It growled curiously, its head angling as it lifted a foreleg and touched it. It growled again, angrily this time, and in a sudden unexpected movement, it launched the box at the wall. The box exploded into wooden planks and dust, which were then deflected in Cotton’s direction. Her skin stung from the piercing of sharp nails and rugged ends of planks, and Cotton clenched her teeth to keep any sounds from leaving her throat.

The creature began pawing around the area where the box had once been. Cotton breathed an inward sigh of relief, but then realized that the stinging in her foreleg was still present. She looked downward, and saw that one of the nails had stuck itself in her skin, a thin trail of crimson below it discoloring her fur. She thought about taking it out but had second thoughts when she considered the pain and the risk of her making noise.

The ground below her was suddenly illuminated in purple light.

Her heart jumped to her throat as she raised her head. The creature was facing her direction. Cotton remained completely still, refusing to even breathe as it stared her down. And then it began to move, approaching her position.

Cotton’s mind raced, attempting to devise any sort of solution, but the knowledge that she would be found if she didn’t do anything made her thought process a jumbled mess. Her eyes darted in their sockets, searching for anything that would help her, before her eyes stopped on the planks next to her. An idea sprang to mind.

As the light around her grew brighter, she placed both of her hooves on one of the wooden planks as slowly as possible. Her mind was pressuring her to go faster, but she fought the urge. Without a sound, she had managed to get the piece of wood in her grip. She then lifted it carefully off the ground, making sure that it didn’t cause the other planks on the ground to budge, and prepared to throw it.

Once she stared upward, a blinding purple light glared back. The creature was directly in front of her, and it took every ounce of her being not to scream in terror. She could literally feel its deathly cold breath on her face as its pulped eyes cast a menacing gaze squarely at her.

The creature began circling around the box, and Cotton wasted no time in tossing the plank in her hooves toward the hall. The moment it touched the floor, the monster’s head spun with a shriek, before its whole body turned and walked towards where the sound had been.

Cotton was a little worried by the fact that the plank hadn’t quite made it to the hall, but if she was lucky, the creature would fall for the distraction and leave the room. As she waited and watched, alleviation filled her nerves at the sight of the creature staring into the hall and beginning to exit the room.

The creature’s foot collided with the plank Cotton had thrown. It barked, grumbling deeply before lifting its front leg and grabbing the piece of wood. Its head then began tilting as though it were analyzing it. If Cotton were to vocalize her thoughts, she could be screaming for the creature to keep going and not stop where it was.

The thing then dropped the plank, and after it hit the ground the creature let out a growl that quickly graduated to a roar before it turned around and stormed back into the room. Cotton ducked back behind the box, angrily mouthing a curse at her failed plan. She had to think of something else.

She could now confirm that the creature was blind, and was using its hearing to navigate, which led her to take into account her other option: sneaking past the creature and out of the room. She knew that idea was practically suicide, but after judging her situation, she realized that may have been her only option.

The problem was that if she were too loud with her steps, she was dead for sure. There were too many risks for her to go right away. She needed to create some sort of diversion so she could sneak without being heard.

That’s when she looked up at the pipes on the ceiling. Gas pipes. As old as they were, there might have been a chance that there was still flammable gas inside.

While the creature paced across the room in search for her, Cotton, with the same amount of delicacy, picked up another wooden plank from the ground. She was doubtful that this would work, but she had to try at least.

Arching her arm back, she hurled the plank toward one of the pipes at the center of the room. The reaction from the creature was immediate. With a furious howl, it jumped up and swung its disfigured leg at the system of pipes on the ceiling, one of the pipes breaking clean off with the screeching sound of tearing metal. It smashed against the ground, bending heavily from the powerful impact before going still.

Meanwhile, Cotton had taken that opportunity to make a beeline for the hall, but as soon as the sound of the pipe was gone, she paused. Though, when she turned her head in the direction of the creature, she saw that its interest was focused above it, where a quiet, but distinct hissing sound could be heard coming from the destroyed assemblage of pipes on the ceiling.

Her plan had worked. Now, all she needed to do was leave the room and light up one of the matches to cause a fire that would hopefully knock the creature out so Cotton would have enough time to put distance between it and her.

Cotton gradually made her way toward the hall, trying to make as little noise as possible while also checking behind her after random intervals. Finally, she entered the hallway, and Cotton quickened her pace, the broken door at the end of the hall slowly but surely getting closer.

The creature screeched loudly behind her.

Without looking back, Cotton started running toward the destroyed door, and galloped over the threshold. Rocketing through the room she had entered, she aimed for the closed door directly in front of her.

She heard the creature gaining on her, and slammed her hooves against the handle of the door, sending it flying open, which ended up revealing the pony on the other side.

“Cotton?!”

“Stand back!” Cotton shouted at Spectrum, who recoiled with a shocked expression. Then, in a rapid succession of actions, she spat out the matchbook in her mouth, catching it in her hoof, tearing out one of the matches with her teeth before swiping it against the striker on the front of the matchbook and tossing the ignited match forward.

She had just enough time to see a blazing fire engulf the creature on the other side before she shut the door. The sides of the door were suddenly lit up by a bright orange color, and an agonized cry came from the other side of the door, before the light dimmed and all was silent.

Cotton’s chest puffed out and sunk, her eyes locked on the door while Spectrum stood to the side, looking at her friend with concern and shock, breathing at a similar rate.

“C-Cotton…” she stuttered out, approaching her friend. “Are… are you okay?”

The cyan filly’s ear twitched upon hearing Spectrum’s voice, and she turned her head, allowing Spectrum to see the full extent of her condition.

Cotton’s mane was drenched and dripping sweat. Tears stained the fur below her eyes, and thin tracks of blood streaked under splinters, scrapes decorating the skin of her legs. She looked like she had been to Tartarus and back. No words came to Spectrum’s tongue. She couldn’t think of anything to say.

Silence surrounded the two fillies standing in shock at the sight of each other and of what they had witnessed prior to reuniting. With an expression that appeared as though she were trying to determine whether Spectrum was actually there or not, Cotton began approaching the pegasus filly with short steps. Spectrum watched as her friend came closer until the space between them was tiny, and then the two fillies threw their forelegs around each other, embracing tightly.

“Thank Celestia you’re okay!” Cotton said, hugging the life out of Spectrum before letting her go. Spectrum’s mask of bravery had completely fallen, and faced with Cotton was an expression that read pure fear.

“What the hell are those things…?” Spectrum stuttered out, words laced with horror.

“I don’t know,” Cotton said between exhausted gasps. “But we have to get out of her.”

“No shit, but how?! Our way out of this place is sealed shut, we’re trapped here.”

“T-there has to be another way out of here somewhere, like an emergency exit or something, right?”

Spectrum looked down, shaking her head. “Maybe, but I must have gone through over a hundred corridors to get here, the chances of us finding another exit in a place this huge are slim to none!”

“We have to try, otherwise we’re dead meat. If we avoid those things long enough, we’ll find a way out. We have to.”

Spectrum turned her front in the other direction and paced. “These things have been down here for thirty years. The princesses have been keeping something this dangerous secret from everypony and just left it here!”

Cotton watched with her ears folded as her friend ranted, consumed by a mixture of anger and panic as she let out everything built up inside her. Spectrum then fell silent, breathing shakily with her head pointed at the ground. After a long minute, she looked back up into Cotton’s eyes. “I really thought you were dead. I was worried sick about you, and I don’t know what I would have done if you had been killed.”

“I… I thought you were dead, too,” Cotton admitted. “But we’re together again, and it’s gonna stay that way. We’ll get out of here. I’m sure of it.”

Spectrum sighed. “I hope you’re right about that. I don’t want to lose—”

A long thin arm suddenly emerged from the center of the door beside them. Cotton and Spectrum jumped in fear as the arm retracted, the clawed hand at the end digging into the metallic surface of the door, before it was ripped entirely off of its hinges. The creature on the other side flung the door behind it, and turned to the pair of scared fillies. Its skin glowed like magma, flames crawling along its limbs and face and sparks rising from its body like burning firewood. 

“WE SHOULD GO NOW!!” Spectrum screamed.

“GOOD IDEA!”

They spun around completely before running as fast as they could, ignoring the ferocious cry of rage from the monstrosity chasing them. Their legs pounded at the ground, driving them to high speeds as they remained on the lookout for any way to escape their incoming demise.

Another door rose from the darkness up ahead, and when the two reached it, they flung it open before stepping into the room and shutting it behind them.

Spectrum positioned herself against the door as a screech echoed from the other side. “Quick! Find something to block the door with!” The door vibrated as the sound of damaged wood could be heard.

Cotton, under pressure, looked everywhere for something she could put in front of the door. Her eyes stopped on one of the shelves, before she realized that its condition was too poor. She would need something to slow it down so they would have time to escape. Her eyes skimmed across a desk and a wooden box before landing on a wide metal cabinet next to the door.

Jumping behind the cabinet, she put her front hooves on it and pushed. It didn’t budge at first, so she stepped forward and put her shoulder against it. It took all of her efforts to get it to even budge.

“Hurry!” Spectrum cried out, yelping once a set of claws poked through the door, narrowly missing her head.

“I… can’t… move this thing,” Cotton responded, her face red as she gave all she had into moving the cabinet. Spectrum saw her struggle and left the door’s side, joining Cotton and began pushing it as well. The doubled effort allowed the cabinet to accelerate in speed.

Once the cabinet sat in front of the door, the two immediately began looking for a way out.

“It’s a fucking dead end!” Spectrum screamed, face pale at the realization that the room had no other doors out of the room.

Cotton was not so fast to declare the same thing. She pointed a hoof forward at a ventilation hatch on the wall. “There!”

Spectrum looked where Cotton pointed, and bolted toward the hatch, but it was out of her reach. She was too small. “It’s too high up!”

The screeches got louder.

“Help me move this!” Cotton ordered after running toward the shelf beside the vent and placing her hooves against it. Spectrum complied, grabbing the other side and pulling while Cotton pushed.

The banging became more intense.

Once the shelf was in line with the hatch, Cotton began climbing toward the top until she was level with the hatch. Then, she turned around so she faced the opposite direction—allowing her to see that the door had been weakened substantially—before lifting herself onto her forelegs and bucking her hind legs toward the hatch. A bang, and the hatch sunk inward. Another buck. The screws bent out of place. A final buck, and the hatch finally gave, bending inward like crumpled paper and falling to the ground.

A loud crash caused Cotton to turn her head back. A cloud of dust expanded from behind the metal cabinet, where the door was now reduced to demolished bits and pieces on the floor.

Cotton leaped from the shelf and into the ventilation shaft, but in doing so, the push from the jump caused the shelf to lean off balance. It tilted over Spectrum’s head, and she jumped out of the way before the shelf hit the floor.

Rotating in the tight space of the ventilation shaft, dread washed over Cotton. Spectrum was stuck in the room, and the creature had easily knocked the metal cabinet across the room, its target locked on the pegasus. She had to do something.

“Grab my hoof!” Cotton said, hanging a foreleg over the edge of the ventilation shaft. Spectrum faced Cotton, and then jumped, reaching her hoof toward Cotton’s as the creature behind her immediately began charging forward to claim its victim.

Cotton successfully grabbed Spectrum’s hoof, and grunted as she lifted her weight up into the ventilation shaft. Adrenaline aided her in huge amounts, and Spectrum was able to grab onto the edge and pull herself up while Cotton pulled.

The creature in the room surged forward, reaching out with a clawed hoof, and in the next second, Spectrum cried out in pain. In a panicked movement, Cotton yanked Spectrum’s whole body inside of the ventilation shaft.

A pair of claws dug into the sides of the ventilation shaft as the creature screamed in rage, reaching inside and attempting to grab one of the two fillies. Its attempts were in vain however, as it thankfully could not fit inside. With one last howl, it galloped out of the room and disappeared into the hallway.

“Spectrum, we gotta…” Cotton trailed off when she saw the raw expression of agony on Spectrum’s face, tears leaking from her eyes as she whimpered aloud. It scared Cotton more than what had scared her thus far. “Spectrum…?”

“Go,” Spectrum said between moans, her voice cracking.

Cotton did as she was told, crawling through the claustrophobic passage, a layer of dust accumulating on her fur. Spectrum meanwhile dragged her body across the metal surface with her forelegs and a hind leg while her other hind leg remained limp. Cotton became aware of this, fretting endlessly over what was wrong with Spectrum. With every move the pegasus made, sudden grunts slipped from her lips, which in turn caused Cotton to wince. She didn’t know what had happened, but just by her behavior, she could discern it was bad. Really bad.

The two fillies continued to maneuver through the dry space until they reached the end, where another hatch blocked their path forward. Cotton curled her legs so she could position her hind legs toward the hatch, and bucked forward. It popped off easily, falling to the ground inside the room, and Cotton inched herself forward so her legs dangled from the edge of the ventilation shaft, before dropping inside the room.

Spectrum pulled herself forward, and rolled so her hind legs went first. Her movements were awkward as she moved to a sitting position, before letting herself fall from the vent. However, instead of landing similarly to how Cotton did, once her hooves touched the ground, she let out another cry of pain, collapsing to the ground with heavy, ragged gasps.

Cotton was at Spectrum’s side in an instant. “Spectrum, what’s wrong?!” It wasn’t until her eyes moved slightly to the left that all color left her face, her breath stopping cold.

On Spectrum’s right hind leg, slash marks sliced deep into her skin, blood spurting out of the wounds and pooling on the ground below.

The temperature of the room changed, and all other concerns faded into black. Cotton’s hooves began to shake, watching the stream of blood flowing from her leg. There was so much of it... too much…

“…no no no no no…” She didn’t know what to do. Cuts and scrapes, she was familiar with, but this… the blood wouldn’t stop coming. Cotton felt sick, like she was about to pass out, and Spectrum’s pained breaths resonating in the background weren’t of any help.

Cotton ran through what she already knew. With any wound, to stop the bleeding, pressure needed to be applied. Her trembling hooves went forward and pressed down on the gaping wounds. Spectrum’s body convulsed as a cry tore from her throat, and Cotton quickly removed her now bloody hooves.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she apologized hysterically, guilt tearing through her heart.

Spectrum writhed against the floor. “It hurts so bad…!”

“I know, I’m sorry...” Cotton was on the verge of breaking down. The blood kept coming, and with every passing second, the stress she felt became more intense. Her hooves alone weren’t enough to stop the bleeding. She needed something else, or else her friend would bleed out in front of her.

Cotton looked up. At the center of the room was a surgical bed. Despite its poor condition, it would be comfortable enough for Spectrum. She looked back down at the injured filly, and as gently as possible, slid a foreleg underneath her hind legs. She groaned, and Cotton worried, not wanting to put her in more pain than she needed to. Slipping her other foreleg under Spectrum’s back, she stared into the pegasus filly’s eyes. “I’m going to lift you up, okay?”

Without waiting for a response, Cotton hoisted Spectrum off the tiled floor. She heard a loud grunt, and another pang of guilt gripped her. Carrying Spectrum to the bed was for the better, she knew, but she still hated causing her pain like that.

A warm sensation developed on Cotton’s foreleg as she walked forward on her hind legs, carrying Spectrum in her forelegs like a young foal toward the bed. With the same delicacy as before, she deposited Spectrum’s back against the bed, laying her head on the pillow, before setting her hind legs down. Cotton’s foreleg was smeared with blood. The wound on Spectrum’s leg had not calmed one bit, but being on a bed had at least relaxed the injured filly.

Spectrum had her eyes screwed shut, and after a few strained breaths, she opened them. Tears leaked from her eyes, but the expression on her face showed that she was fighting herself not to show that she was in pain, even though it was already plainly obvious.

“I’m going to find something to stop the bleeding,” Cotton said, and began searching the various shelves in the room for something—anything she could use to keep Spectrum from losing too much blood. She hated leaving her friend’s side whilst in the condition she was in, but it was out of the question that she needed to do something and fast.

“Hey, Cotton,” Spectrum said, strain present in her faint voice. “Were in a hospital, which means there’s gotta be some leftover bandages somewhere.”

Cotton heard her, but hadn’t focused on what she had said as much as the sound of her voice. Quiet, and exhausted. Had she already bled that much…? Cotton’s movements accelerated. Bandages. Surely a room had some if she was lucky enough that they weren’t all gone. If she just searched in the right places…

A hunch directed Cotton toward a set of drawers at the corner of the room. She opened the bottom one. Nothing. She opened the middle drawer. Tools and other useless crap. Finally she opened the top drawer.

“Thank you!” Cotton exclaimed aloud, grabbing the first aid kit inside the drawer and rushing back to Spectrum.

Setting it down on the bed next to Spectrum, she popped the cover open. Inside the kit, items such as bandages, tape and tubes of medical cream were stored inside. Her hooves dug inside the kit, grabbing the bandages from inside and dropping them on the bed.

Cotton sorted through the different packs. She had dealt with smaller injuries before, but how was she supposed to bandage something like this? Picking up one of the packs, she read what was displayed on the front. ‘Sterile Gauze.’ Okay, that was familiar. She opened it and removed the thick roll of bandages inside.

Spectrum noticed the expression on Cotton’s face, and forced her best attempt at a chuckle. “Guess we’re lucky this didn’t happen anywhere else, huh?”

It was as though Cotton hadn’t heard her, but in reality, she couldn’t understand how Spectrum could be so calm in a situation like this. She unrolled a small section of the gauze and held it over Spectrum’s leg, which she saw was shaking, as was the rest of her body, each breath in and out of hers shuddering. Then, she brought the gauze down onto her skin.

The second the bandage made contact with the wound, it was soaked through with blood. Her hooves trembled violently again, and Cotton whimpered as she was overwhelmed by panic.

“Cotton,” Spectrum said. Cotton ignored her. “Cotton, hey, look at me.” That time, her head rose. Glistening tears rolled down her cheeks, light sobs shaking her body. “You don’t have to worry so much. Just calm down, okay?”

With all her built up emotions, Cotton had officially broken down, fresh moisture flowing from her eyes. “Spectrum, this is serious, you could die!”

Spectrum laughed. “You always know the right thing to say.” Cotton was dumbfounded. Her friend was bleeding to death, and she was laughing about it. “Some stupid little cut isn’t going to kill me, Cotton.” She put a hoof on Cotton’s foreleg. “I’m going to be okay. I promise.”

Cotton knew Spectrum was saying this just to make her feel better, but even so, her dumb way of doing it was working. Her eyes fell back onto the wound, and she set to continue where she left off. Wrapping the bandage across, she lifted her injured leg slightly so she could pass the gauze underneath and complete a full circle around it. She then wrapped more layers around Spectrum’s leg. Blood soaked through them, and although that made her nervous, she was considerably calmer than she was before.

“Stop crying, Cotton,” Spectrum said in a soft, consoling voice. “You’re getting your tears in the wound.”

Cotton, despite herself, laughed at that. “Asshole.”

After adding more layers of gauze, she set her hooves on top of the bandages and pushed down. Spectrum’s eyes clamped shut. “Are you okay?”

“Just hurts a little. You’re doing good.”

Cotton looked doubtful. “This might slow the bleeding, but even still, you need a doctor. The only way I can imagine that bled as much as it did is if you have a torn artery.”

“I don’t think we’re gonna get a doctor anytime soon,” Spectrum said matter-of-factly. “But the bandages should be fine for now.”

“Yeah, for now. But if an infection gets in there, it’s going to be a bigger problem than the bleeding.” She looked down at the bandages. “Anything I do now might only be a temporary fix, which is what I’m more afraid about right now.”

“But if it weren’t for you, I probably would have bled to death.”

Cotton looked up at Spectrum, locking eyes with her. “I was scared you were going to.”

Spectrum’s face became sincere. “Thank you. Really. I’d be dead if you hadn’t done anything, and you’re literally saving my life right now. Thank you.”

Cotton’s eyes dropped slightly in thought over what Spectrum said. “If you hadn’t calmed me down, I probably would have been useless.”

“We wouldn’t even be in this situation in the first place if I hadn’t had the idea to explore this place. I guess this is my punishment, huh?”

“Don’t say something like that, Spectrum. That’s not funny.” Cotton couldn’t actually tell from Spectrum’s tone if that was a joke or not. She saw Spectrum’s head sink slightly.  “Besides, you were right. I was curious about this place just like you were, so this is my fault, too.”

“I pressured you into coming with me,” Spectrum said. “I know I’m stubborn, but that’s not something a friend should do.”

“And I know you’re stubborn, but I could have tried harder to stop you. Stop insisting that this is all your fault, because it isn’t. I’m as much to blame for this as you are.”

Spectrum sighed. “You’re talking as if I got us in trouble with our parents. Cotton, if you get killed down here, that’s my fault. I put you in danger that could cost you your life. Whether or not you were also curious, it was my idea, and you followed me here.”

Cotton tried to think of a different approach to get through to her. “Even if what you’re saying was true, it’s not like you knew these creatures were down here.”

“What difference does it make?”

“If you had known, would you have still gone inside?”

“No, obviously.”

“Okay, then. You didn’t know, neither of us knew. You can’t blame yourself for something that you couldn’t have possibly predicted, so please stop being so hard on yourself. What matters now is that we’re together, and we’re going to get out of this together.”

Spectrum’s mouth opened, but then closed again. She likely had another counter-argument, but was taking time to ponder over what Cotton had said. The silence that pursued Cotton’s statement was lengthy, and the earth pony glanced back down at the gauze to see how well the applied pressure was working. Blood was still soaking through but not as badly as before.

“Thanks,” Spectrum said. “and… sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Cotton said, before wearing a genuine smile. “Actually, if it makes you feel any better, apology accepted.”

It was Spectrum’s turn to smile, before she laid her head on the bed and focused on the ceiling.

For the next five minutes, Cotton had her hooves pressed firmly on the bandages while Spectrum rested, flinching every now and then when Cotton made a movement that caused some pain. At one point, Cotton had quickly wrapped more gauze around Spectrum’s leg because the blood had completely soaked through, but she was noticing a huge difference between the before and after the bandages were applied.

“How badly is it bleeding?” Spectrum asked, raising her head from the bed.

Cotton gradually reduced the pressure applied on the bandages from her hooves. From what she could see, she had managed to stop the bleeding. Sighing in relief, she responded. “It's a lot better than before.”

“Enough to give us time for a hug?”

Releasing her hooves completely from the bandages, she found that her hooves were completely stained with a mix of dried and fresh blood. “Uh…”

“Oh, just get over here,” Spectrum demanded, sitting up on the bed. Cotton then walked forward and together, they embraced. The coldness of Spectrum’s skin stood out to Cotton, but she didn’t care at that moment. The earlier fear of losing Spectrum made her grip tightly, as though it was the last time they would ever see each other. Holding her friend like this made all her fears seep away into nothingness, and despite the coldness of Spectrum’s body, she felt warm inside. She wasn’t sure if she ever wanted to let go.

The hug lasted for what seemed like forever, before they finally released each other. Spectrum then giggled. “Damn, you almost squeezed the life out of me.”

“I just… I was so scared, and I still am.” Cotton’s smile faded. “I’m just worried about you, and I keep thinking about what would have happened if things had gone differently.”

In place of Spectrum’s smile was now a confident smirk. “Well stop thinking about that. I promise I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”

One of the doors in the room pulsed, a mist of dust expanding around the door while the sound of a loud impact and the screech of one of the creatures pierced the air.

The two fillies stared in alarm, and Spectrum pulled herself into a sitting position. “We gotta go!”

Cotton turned. “Wait, you need to rest!”

Spectrum simply stared at Cotton.

“…later.”

“Good idea!” Spectrum said before sliding off the bed and onto the ground. However, the moment she had, she grunted in pain and her hind legs gave beneath her.

Another blow rang through the room. Cotton quickly crouched down and held out a hoof, which Spectrum accepted, pulling herself from the ground.

“Here, put your leg around my shoulder,” Cotton instructed, and Spectrum complied while Cotton slipped her own leg under Spectrum’s shoulder.

Once she proceeded to examine the room, she realized she would have to make a very difficult decision. The room had two doors: the one being broken down by the monster and one on the opposite side of the room. Spectrum was in no condition to run, and if they were to go toward the door, the creature would certainly break it down and spot them before they could leave the room. That left the option of hiding, but that also posed its share of risks: if the creature had spotted them, there was no chance of getting away. The chance of survival for both options weighed equally, and after the door had suffered another blow from the creature, Cotton made her decision.

She made her way around the bed, all the while supporting Spectrum, who was trying her best not to put any weight on her injured leg. Just as the door was destroyed, the fillies crouched behind the bed out of sight.

A beam of purple light shot above them and brightened the room, drifting from left to right like a beacon. Cotton held her breath and glanced at Spectrum. She was biting her lip gently, keeping herself from muttering any sounds as a result of the pain in her leg. That made Cotton nervous, and she hoped that she wouldn’t accidentally get the creature’s attention.

The purple light moved, and the creature growled before taking steps forward. As it did, a tiny glimmer of light speckled at the other end of the room by the counters. Cotton focused her attention on the glimmer. Its source was a mirror, reflecting her and Spectrum, as well as the creature behind them. Its head twitched as it prowled in search for them, walking slowly toward the bed. It was also not the same creature as the one Cotton had burned with the explosion of fire.

That was bad news. It had sight and hearing to its advantage, which meant that their only hope was if the creature left the room.

Cotton kept her eyes on the mirror, watching every move that the creature made. If they didn’t want to be spotted, they had to be as quiet and stealthy as possible.

The creature began advancing toward the right of the bed, and Cotton gestured for Spectrum to move. With a worried expression, Spectrum got onto her hooves, remaining low to the ground as she did, and crawled toward the end of the bed.

As Cotton followed, Spectrum suddenly paused and ground her teeth hard. She had accidentally brought her injured leg down on the ground, and the spot of blood on her bandages started to expand. Cotton’s heart dropped, internally begging Spectrum not to make sound. With a sharp intake of air, drowned out by the steps of the creature, the pegasus held back a whine and moved along the rest of the way. Once the purple shone at the bed, Cotton was out of sight at the last second, beside Spectrum.

Cotton was already assessing Spectrum’s bandages. The crimson blotch still grew, but before she could try anything to fix it, Spectrum mouthed, “I’m fine.”

Against the objection from the concern for her friend, Cotton directed her attention to the purple light. She unfortunately could not see the mirror from here, nor were there any reflective surfaces in front of her. She would need to look back while the creature wasn’t looking to assure she wouldn’t be seen.

However, what happened next made that unnecessary. The purple light disappeared from the wall, and with a grumble of frustration, the creature galloped back out of the room.

Cotton peeked from behind the bed to confirm the creature had left. “It’s gone.” She then turned to Spectrum, who was examining the bandages on her leg. The red spot was still growing, and although it had slowed, Cotton’s worry hadn’t diminished. “We need to do something about that.”

“There isn’t time, we have to find a way out,” Spectrum said firmly.

Cotton opposed. “Spectrum, it’s starting to bleed again. Who knows what you just did to it.”

“It’ll be fine. I understand you’re worried about me, but we have to focus on getting out of here. We won’t help ourselves if I end up slowing us down.”

Cotton shut her eyes, strongly against what Spectrum was saying, and sighed from the prospect of Spectrum’s wound getting any worse than it was. But while it frustrated her, she knew that Spectrum was presently the voice of reason. Cotton gave Spectrum a defeated nod, and the pegasus filly smiled sympathetically in the hope that that would comfort the filly. It worked, but only slightly

Checking one more time to see that nothing had entered the room, the duo left from their hiding spot and, with quiet steps, made their way toward the closed door. They deemed the other exit dangerous since the creature had entered and left through there, and the possibility of running into one or more of them was not worth the risk. Reaching the door, Spectrum twisted the knob, and pulled it open only slightly before poking her head into the hallway on the other side. A second later, she pulled it open a few more degrees before nodding at Cotton, and they ventured onward.

This hallway stretched in two directions, one way was absorbed entirely by a dark mist, while the other led to a turn, a set of pipes along the wall similar to those Cotton had seen earlier.

“Let’s follow the pipes,” Cotton said. “They helped me navigate earlier.”

“Okay…” Spectrum replied, and they began walking.

Cotton couldn’t help but keep her eyes on Spectrum. The pegasus filly hobbled on three legs, dragging her injured leg limply along the ground. Every now and then, her eyes squinted and she voiced a small grunt, and each time it gave Cotton a scare. She knew she should have been focused on the task at hoof, but regardless, Spectrum was still the primary focus on her mind.

They turned, following the trail of pipes, which guided them through a heavy darkness, where more skeletons lay against the wall in piles or largely intact save a missing leg or separation between the ribcage and hind legs. The pipes then ended, and the fillies now stood before a metal door, which was heavily dented and riddled with claw marks large enough to create a tiny hole, where a cylinder of light streamed through.

Spectrum limped forward to try the door handle, but looked back when she felt a hoof touch her shoulder. Cotton had taken hold of her, and by the look on the face, it wasn’t a mystery why. She exhaled silently, and Cotton’s expression quickly took on guilt.

“Sorry…” she said, putting her hoof back on the ground.

Spectrum looked down momentarily, settling on a decision she didn’t want to make, before looking at Cotton. “If you’re really that worried about me, then I’ll be more careful.” She stepped aside. “Here, you do it.”

“Thank you,” Cotton said, the weight on her chest lightening, before grabbing the handle and pulling it.

“It’s locked,” Cotton said, giving the handle a few more ineffective tugs.

“Try looking through the hole in the door,” Spectrum suggested. Cotton did as she was told, bending down and putting her good eye against it.

The first things she noticed were the flipped chairs and tables on the other side. Her eye then traced around the entire room, starting at the middle of the room, where a warped and twisted metal door lay on the ground ripped entirely from its hinges, before moving downward, where a dust-coated equine skeleton was separated into two halves. The more she studied the room, the more it was starting to look familiar. And then it clicked.

“That’s the room we were in before!” Cotton exclaimed in excitement.

Spectrum’s interest was immediate. “What do you mean?”

“Remember the room where the door slammed shut on us? It’s on the other side of this door. And from what I can see, the door that slammed shut was broken down.” She removed her eye from the hole. “That’s our ticket out of this place.”

The hope filling Spectrum’s eyes was visible. “Then we have to find a way to get this door open. You think you can kick it open?”

Cotton was hesitant at the idea. “That would make a lot of noise.”

Spectrum thought for a moment. “Okay, you’re right.” She then took a look at the lock. “Well there has to be a key somewhere for this door, right? Unless we can find something to pick it with...”

“I came across a coat earlier that had paperclips in one of the pockets. I used them to unlock one of the doors the way you showed me to get away from one of the creatures. I lost them on the way to you though.”

Spectrum inwardly smiled. I told her that trick would come in handy when she least expected.

Cotton continued. “But maybe we could find another box of paperclips lying around somewhere, or something that would help us with this.”

“Good idea, but hang on. I wanna do something first…” Spectrum then grabbed the camera that was still hanging from her neck, sat on the ground and brought the lens close up to the lock. “Just in case we find the key, I’m gonna take a picture of the lock so we can see if they match.” She snapped the photo, and with a flash of light, the camera displayed the image on the screen.

Shutting off the camera, Spectrum let the camera fall against her chest. “’Kay, let’s go.”

Not knowing what was behind each corner was what scared them the most, and with the place crawling with those creatures, they had to be extra cautious. Once they backtracked to the end of the hall, Cotton tilted her head into the next corridor before signaling Spectrum to follow.

To Cotton, it had already seemed like forever since she had seen sunlight. If she could guess, they had only been inside the hospital for less than two hours, but it seemed like days. Months even. Maybe that’s what fear so intense did to you, Cotton thought. And with the constant stress of evading a gruesome death from bloodthirsty monsters and Spectrum’s condition requiring urgent care, Cotton realized just how desperate she was just to be outside again, and out of this place.

That door was the way out. They had to get it open. They had to.

Passing by the open door to the surgical room they had left earlier, Cotton led Spectrum onward toward another maze of musty, slim hallways in the hopes that one of them would lead them to the solution to their problem.

Cotton quickly came to a standstill as the end of the hallway glowed an ever brightening purple.

“Back up!” Cotton whispered and Spectrum took cover behind the door beside them, followed by Cotton.

Crouched, Cotton watched the purple light, using it with the intention of knowing where the creature was. Presently, the light was faint, so Cotton could tell it was still distant. However, a second later, the light disappeared, and a rush of footsteps trailed in the opposite direction. Cotton stuck her head out into the hallway before ruling out the chance of confronting it.

“It’s safe,” Cotton affirmed. “Let’s go.”

They left their hiding spot before continuing down the hallway and into the maze of corridors ahead. It was impossible to tell where they would find keys in this place. Something to pick the lock with maybe, but even still, last time was nothing more than an unreal strike of luck.

The thought strung to the question of how this place was so huge. Cotton began to doubt that most of this was part of the hospital itself, but rather a completely different area of the town like a shelter, or concealed underground catacombs. The idea that Ponyville needed a hospital with a basement this large didn’t make sense to her. Her assumption of a tunnel having been built between the hospital and this subterranean area of Ponyville seemed more ideal.

Her thought process then brought up the smell. The horrible smell of age old rotting meat and death that had planted a dark feeling in Cotton’s stomach since entering the basement. Her sudden awareness of the scent reminded her of the war Spectrum had told her about, and the photo of those injured ponies hiding for their lives, and the number of skeletons lying in the room with the gems.

It made her feel helpless, thinking about the residents of the town left to a gruesome fate underground, desperately trying to stay alive during a life-threatening conflict and in the end, falling prey to their last attempt at a solution. She imagined herself in a situation like that; powerless and vulnerable, bearing the knowledge that your inevitable doom is a matter of time away, and it wasn’t long before Cotton couldn’t stand to imagine it any longer.

The death of an entire population, because they didn’t have the means to protect themselves. The fact brewed a grim cocktail of emotions deep within her, leaving her with a sickly feeling similar to drinking spoiled milk in the morning. Cotton wondered if that was why the princesses kept the events in Ponyville out of the media. Word of such a failure would certainly cause much tension within the country and, without a doubt, have many ponies questioning their safety in Equestria.

Like pieces of a puzzle joined together and finally resembling the picture on the box, the dots connected themselves in Cotton’s head, but instead of the feeling of accomplishment after long hours of work, the big picture only filled her with a cold and hollow despair.

“Cotton?”

The voice snapped her out of her train of thought, and her eyes darted toward Spectrum. Seeing the source of the voice caused her to relax.

“Are you okay?” Spectrum asked with a confused face.

Cotton stared back at the path ahead. “Just thinking about stuff.”

Soon enough, the pair ended up before an entrance into another hallway, leaving them with a left-or-right decision.

Spectrum cast her gaze in both directions, briefly analyzing each. “Which way?”

After a brief analysis of her own, Cotton was left with the same question. Both ways appeared the same: a few doors and an abyss of black cutting off the rest. The hard part of the decision lay at the fact that those monsters might have been waiting for them down one of the halls.

“Let’s… try right I guess,” Cotton proposed, and began walking.

As they went, Cotton was mentally recording every turn they took and every direction they went in. All the halls looked the same, which would end up being a nightmare when they had to backtrack, so she kept note of any details she could.

The hallway they had entered was short and ended at a doorway, the door it once held stationary on the floor in front of them.

Five doors total, all locked except for this one.

They found as they went into the next room that they could not make out a single detail through the sheer darkness flooding their surroundings.

Spectrum lifted the camera hanging from her neck and snapped a photo of the room. In the brief moment that the intense blackness gave way to the bright light of the camera’s flash, they had seen that the room was completely empty besides debris piled together against the far wall and broken shelves that were in no condition for storage purposes.

To the left was another hallway, and with careful manoeuvring, they made their way toward it before Spectrum raised her camera again.

Click-click.

The next hallway was blocked off by a large stone boulder with ceiling wires draped alongside. After an overview of the picture in the camera’s settings, they found a tiny space between the boulder and the wall just big enough for them to crawl through into the other half of the hallway.

“Okay,” Cotton said, swallowing. “I’ll go first. Take pictures as I go.”

Spectrum voiced her compliance and readied the camera, the complete lack of visibility causing her to fumble with it slightly.

After the first flash of light from the camera, Cotton stepped forward, holding a hoof straight in front of her. Once it came in contact with the bolder, she shifted to the left where the gap was, running her hoof along the bolder until she found it. With the help of another flash of light, she positioned herself on her hind legs and began to shimmy through the gap, successfully reaching the other side.

“I’m through. Send me the camera and we’ll do the same thing,” Cotton instructed.

“Alright, I’m gonna slide it over to you,” Spectrum said, taking the camera’s neck strap off. From Cotton’s perspective, she could only see the very faint light of the camera’s screen moving downward, before being thrust in her direction along with a quiet scraping sound and coming to a stop by her hooves.

She grabbed the camera and raised it in front of her. Her heart skipped in worry.

“Got it?” Spectrum asked.

“Yeah, but the camera’s almost dead,” she replied, watching the battery icon on the top right corner of the screen flash red.

“Shit, forgot to keep track of that…” Spectrum said. “The battery thing is flashing red right?”

“Yeah.”

“The camera usually lasts another twenty or so minutes after that happens. We’ll just try not to use it whenever we can.”

“Okay, let’s do this quickly then.” Raising the camera, she snapped a photo. After the very momentary period where she could see her surroundings and Spectrum on the other side of the boulder, the darkness once again ate away any existing light, and Cotton began to hear the sound of movement from Spectrum’s attempts to properly position herself in order to avoid worsening her injury. She took another photo and saw Spectrum sliding her body along the ground while dragging her bad hind leg along the floor.

“Grab my hoof, I’ll pull you the rest of the way,” Cotton said, reaching out into the dark. She would have used the camera to make the process easier, but she didn’t want to raise the chances of the camera being unavailable when they really needed it.

After waving her hoof around, both their hooves met, and then Cotton gently pulled Spectrum in her direction. There was the sound of friction between skin and stone before she let go of Spectrum’s hoof. She heard Spectrum begin to stand from the floor.

“Thanks,” the pegasus almost grunted out, struggling with balancing herself on three legs. “Let’s keep going.”

The duo walking forward once more, the need to take another picture was needless, as Cotton had taken note of what was ahead from the camera flashes they had used to help each other through the gap. If her memory served her correctly, there was a line-up of two doors to the left and after that, a door at the end of the hall.

Cotton ran her hoof across the left wall, and when it hit the frame of the first door, she searched for the handle and gave it a tug once she found it. It didn’t budge. She moved on to the next door and followed the same procedure. The second door was not locked, and opened with a squeak. Raising the camera again, Cotton took a picture with a slight jolt of nervousness. As if she didn’t have enough worries, the use of the camera was now another item on the list of stress-inducers.

Cotton, with the little time that she had, viewed the room, only to see that, like the last room, there was absolutely nothing inside except for piles of rubble on the floor. Odd. These parts of the underground hallways must not have been used, she thought. She didn’t know why, and to be frank, she didn’t care much either. So she moved past, glancing back to make sure Spectrum was okay.

The door at the end of the hall was declared locked after a couple of hard tugs. Cotton sighed in defeat. “Door’s locked, and this is a dead end. Let’s backtrack and see what’s down the other way.”

“Hang on,” Spectrum said quickly as Cotton was turning around. “I saw a vent next to the door. It might lead to the other side.”

Cotton turned back around. “Really?” She walked back to the door. “Where?”

“It was to the right, and it wasn’t covered either, so you could climb through and see if you can open the door from the other side.”

Taking a step to the right, Cotton stood on her hind legs and gradually ran her hoof along the wall to feel for the vent Spectrum was talking about. She could just barely see the wall due to her eyes adjusting to the dark, which was little help with trying to find the vent. The only information she could distinguish was that the vent must have been higher up, so she began hopping on two legs until she eventually felt an edge of the section of the wall that led into the ventilation shaft.

“It’s here, I found it,” Cotton notified. “But it’s too high up, I’m not gonna be able to get a proper grip to lift myself inside.”

“Maybe I could give you a boost,” Spectrum suggested.

“Not a good idea,” Cotton replied, her response immediate. “If we can find something to stand on I’d rather do that.”

“Oh, right.” Spectrum began brainstorming for ideas on what they could use, and came up with something not too long after. “The boulders in that empty room, maybe you can use one of them to stand on.”

Cotton was on board with the idea without a second thought. “Nice thinking!” She turned back around, walking in the general direction of the empty room. With the same process of feeling along the wall for the door frame, she found the room and entered. Then, pulling out the camera—once again feeling uncomfortable as she did so—she turned on the camera and went into the settings to view the picture she had taken of the empty room.

Boulders and debris of all sizes lay across the floor, but her goal was to choose something that wouldn’t be too heavy to roll and just big enough to provide the leverage she needed to get herself in the ventilation shaft. A boulder just a few inches in front of the door seemed to fit that description, so she turned the camera off before stretching a hoof into the darkness ahead and walking forward. Her hoof hit the boulder, and from there she set both front hooves on it and tugged it toward her. As expected, the boulder was difficult to budge, and took much of her strength, but it rolled, and that’s what mattered.

Soon enough, she got it past the door and into the hallway. She was gasping heavily, already physically drained from the effort. With a few more pushes, aligning the boulder as best she could with the vent, she finally got the boulder to its destination.

Cotton placed her front hooves on top of the boulder and pushed her hind legs off the ground before posing them on the boulder as well. From that height, she could see the ventilation shaft with how much her eyes had adjusted to the dark at this point, and determined that it was now for sure within her reach. Standing on her hind legs, she placed her front legs inside the vent, and leapt off the boulder, pulling herself up while bracing her bottom hooves on the wall and performing a running motion against it, making entering the ventilation shaft easier.

“I’m in,” Cotton said, moving in a few inches further to assure that she wouldn’t fall out.

“Nice job,” Spectrum said back. “Now just follow it until you reach the other side.”

“Got it.” She began to crawl. The tightness of the space allowed her to see where she was going without the requirement of her camera. However, the reason for said tightness also made her slightly uneasy. The top of the vent was bent downward, showing clear signs that it was undergoing a lot of stress. It appeared as though the slightest influence would cause it to come down entirely and crush her.

This new concern pressured Cotton to crawl faster. The exit couldn’t have been far, so as long as she could reach it and get out fast, she would be fine.

The farther she went, the more cramped the vent seemed to get. At the same time, though, she was starting to see a tiny bit of light near the end of the duct, and there, she could make out a vent cover that would lead into the hallway below her. Glad to know that the exit wasn’t far away, she calmed, but continued at the same pace to reach it as soon as possible.

Cotton’s ears were pierced by the sudden sound of metal ripping and screws being forced out of place, and as this happened, the earth pony fell an inch, the surface below her having bent into a concave shape.

“Are you okay?” Spectrum called from outside the vent.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” She didn’t feel any pain, so she likely didn’t have an injury of her own to worry about.

“What was that?”

“Something with the vent, but I can’t see what…”

It was then that a brisk drumming of footsteps could be heard echoing through the hall.

“What is—”

“Shh!” Cotton interrupted, devoting all her focus on the steps. Since her ears had picked up the noise, it had not stopped, and kept rising in volume. Then she heard the screeches: the last of the hints to let her know that she was in deep trouble.

Cotton tried to crawl backward, but her curved position was making that a difficult task. As she pushed herself back the way she came, the sound of damage screamed from all around her once again, and she dropped another inch.

She felt her blood run cold when the sound of the creature’s galloping slowed to a stop right below her. She was making too much noise, but the ventilation shaft was too weak and couldn’t support the weight she was putting on it. Any movement she made was giving off her location.

A set of claws speared through the side of the vent just above her head. Cotton screamed, backing away from them as the claws slid back out.

“Cotton, what’s going on?!” she heard Spectrum scream. She wanted to shout back for Spectrum to shut her mouth, but in her current predicament, doing so meant a higher risk of death. However, Spectrum had not diverted the creature’s attention, as the set of claws pierced straight through the bottom of the air vent directly in front of her. As this happened, the whole unit slanted, causing Cotton to drop once again and roll onto her side.

The claws then gripped the metal they had cleaved through and tore. Cotton heard only the shrill sound of destruction as her body became airborne and her stomach jumped into her throat. Not long after that, her body struck the ground hard, pain coursing through her head and back.

Resisting the urge to grunt from the pain, Cotton looked to her front and back, and realized that the creature had separated the section of the air vent she was in, and it had fallen to the ground. Through the end in front of her, she could see a long hallway, partially illuminated by a purple light. Behind her, she could see the locked door, and in front of it, four bony legs, their skin brown and flaking.

Cotton froze, and refrained completely from budging, breath on pause. One of the legs left the ground, and she heard the sound of more damage being dealt to the duct. Scraps of broken metal pelted the ground on either side of the broken vent she hid in. The creature roared. Cotton remained still.

A pained grunt sounded on the other side of the locked door, and the blood drained from Cotton’s face.

The legs began to shift, advancing in the direction of the locked door. Then, the creature sped up, charging toward the door and ramming the side of its body into it. A chunk of the door broke off and fell to the floor.

Cotton breathed heavily as she looked for something she could throw to distract the creature. Her eyes instantly went to the pieces of metal around her, but before she could grab one of them, the creature gave the door one last slam, and it collapsed to the ground in pieces.

Blood frozen, Cotton spun her head back, seeing the broken door and the creature projecting its artificial light down the corridor ahead.

But no Spectrum.

Confusion was stirred into her panic. Had she hid? And if so, where was she? Whatever the case, Cotton stayed in the broken vent, hoping that her friend was somewhere safe.

The creature stood in the doorway for a few more seconds, sniffing the air. It produced a noise akin to gagging, as though choking on food that went down the wrong tube. Then, it turned a half circle and galloped down the way it came. Cotton had just enough time to watch the purple light disappear behind a corner before darkness dominated again.

“Is it gone…?” Spectrum whispered from somewhere past the now destroyed locked door.

Cotton breathed a sigh of relief. She was okay. “I think so.” Cotton pulled herself out of the broken vent and stood from the ground. Her fur was stiff from dust, and she swatted some of it off her forelegs, which resulted in a coughing fit when it entered her lungs.

When Cotton looked up again, she just barely saw Spectrum step out cautiously from the empty room.

“Are you okay?” Cotton asked, recalling Spectrum’s earlier grunt of pain.

“Yeah. It hurts, but I don’t think it’s bleeding again.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“I’d recognize if it’s bleeding, and I don’t feel anything. I’m fine.”

Cotton exhaled. “Okay. Then we should keep going, quickly. The sooner we find something to open that door, the better.”

With their eyes adjusted to the darkness and the very tiny bit of light in this corridor as opposed to the previous one, they could make out details such as the bits of foliage growing on the ceiling, hanging downward just above their heads, and the cracked stone walls and crumbled floor similar to unpaved city roads. They walked forward to the end of the hallway, following it to a right turn and after that, ending up at a four-way cross, yet again leaving them with the decision of which way to choose.

Thanks to Spectrum, coming to a decision didn’t take long. “Hey, look on the wall over there.” She lifted a hoof, pointing at a rotten, wooden arrow in the corridor straight across from them, hanging by only one nail and therefore causing the sign to point at the ground. Cotton and Spectrum approached the corridor to read what was displayed on it.

At the end of the hall beside the two fillies, one of them was watching.

Cotton went up to the sign and straightened it to read what was written.

‘Locker Rooms’

“Locker rooms,” Cotton reread aloud. “The doctors who used to be here should have had keys to every door in the place. If we’re lucky, maybe we can find a set of keys that was never moved.”

“You think so?” Spectrum said.

“It’s worth checking out,” Cotton replied, starting down the hall.

The locker rooms were their best bet of finding something useful. Cotton was sure of it. Even if it wasn’t the keys themselves, the last time she came across a lab coat, she had found the box of paperclips which ended up saving her life, and there were bound to be lab coats in the locker rooms. It just came down to whether one of those coats held what they needed to escape.

“Wait, stop moving,” Spectrum said in a hushed tone, and Cotton did as she was told. The pegasus then raised her ears, concentrating only on hearing as her eyes looked in no particular direction. Curious, Cotton listened out, and then she heard something. It was barely audible, but the sound was there, and after looking around to pinpoint its direction, she found herself staring at the open door not too far in front of them.

“Let’s go, but slowly,” Spectrum said. The two fillies walked quietly toward the open door and into the room ahead. The room appeared somewhat large and open. Cupboards were arranged on the wall and crumpled papers littered the ground along with tiny bits of glass and dust.

The noise they had picked up had also gotten much louder. Cotton took a tiny step forward and peeked from behind the door, and that’s when she saw the source of the noise. At the far end corner of the room, one of the creatures stood, silent and stationary, facing the wall and casting a brilliant purple on its stone surface. However, she right away identified it as the blind creature when she saw the gash across its eyes and the dark red color of its skin.

Cotton stepped back and faced her friend, speaking in a whisper. “There’s another one in there.”

“Shit…” Spectrum complained, gritting her teeth.

“But, I think we can sneak past it. It’s the blind one.”

“Blind one?”

“The one I burned in the explosion earlier. I attacked it at one point and managed to blind it. I was trapped in a room with it after that and it couldn’t see me.” Cotton stuck her head back into the room to look for the way into the locker room, and found an open door at the other end of the room in the corner opposite from the creature. She turned back. “There’s a door over there. If we’re quiet enough, we can get there without being noticed.”

“…Alright, I’ll take your word for it.” Spectrum said tensely. “And I suppose it’s our only option.”

Cotton grinned slyly, despite the seriousness of the situation. “You’re pretty scared, huh?”

Spectrum rolled her eyes. “Most scared I’ve ever been in my life.” She breathed in until her lungs could no longer be filled, and released it all. “Let’s get this over with.”

With a nod, Cotton turned back around, and they stepped into the room, crouched low to the ground to silence their hoofsteps as much as possible. Cotton fixated her eyes on the blind creature. It had not moved from its spot, standing as though waiting for something. This confused Cotton, but it was not her main concern right now. As long as they reached the locker room, Cotton didn’t care.

They had already gone one fourth of the way toward the door without encountering any issues. What worried her right now was if Spectrum’s leg would cause any problems. Spectrum moved very slowly, dragging her injured leg as lightly as she could as to not cause any loud noise. Even so, the friction was still causing a slight scraping sound.

She looked at the creature again. It still had not moved, remaining immobile with the exception of the occasional twitch of its head and the guttural drone escaping its throat. Even though the creature didn’t pose any immediate threat in that moment, Cotton still found it unnerving how it just stood, almost as though it knew they were there and was waiting for an opportunity to make a move.

Step after step brought them closer to the door. Nervousness welled in Cotton’s stomach as they were getting much nearer to the creature as well. They were halfway through the room at this point. It wouldn’t be much longer now before they reached the door. 

Cotton felt her front hoof hit something. Her eyes were drawn downward to the sound of light impacts on the ground, and saw a rock rolling along the floor before hitting one of the metallic counters between them and the door.

Cotton and Spectrum froze in unison, staring as the creature in the corner grumbled, its head twitching again, except this time more forcefully, emitting a cringe worthy crack. After producing another guttural noise, it focused back on the corner as though it hadn’t heard anything.

Too close…

Resuming their onward crawl toward the other end of the room, Cotton made sure to scan the ground in front of her as to not accidentally cause a noise like she had just done. If the creature found out where they were, they were done for. One more mistake from now on was unquestionable death.

Three quarters through the room. Almost there. The creature still stood in the corner, budging ever so slightly at irregular intervals. Just a few more steps…

As the door was only a few meters away, the creature was almost just as close. The sounds—similar to the low, quiet rumble of a machine—coming from within its body were much louder and clearer, causing both Cotton and Spectrum’s bodies to vibrate. Only a couple more steps now…

The entrance into the locker room was right in front of them. One after another, both fillies crossed over the threshold of the door, having successfully reached the room.

Now in a safer area, a portion of Cotton’s stress faded. She focused on the room. Rows of beige lockers stood against the wall extending from one end of the room to the other. On the opposite wall, shelves were arranged in a similar order—not counting the one or two toppled over on the ground—and clothes stained through with dirt lay either neatly folded or on the floor in a pile. Across the middle of the room, several benches were posted, where medical scrubs lay as well.

“I’ll check the clothes to see if there are any keys in those,” Spectrum said in the quietest possible whisper she could manage. “You check the lockers, but don’t make too much noise.”

“On it,” Cotton replied. Quietly, both fillies went to their stations in search of the keys. What worried Cotton was whether the keys were even here or not. Whatever hope she had that they were she held onto desperately. They had taken way too big a risk for that to have been for nothing.

As Spectrum was already working on thoroughly searching each set of clothes, throwing them aside irritatingly when she found nothing inside, Cotton had gone to the lockers, setting her hoof on the first one. As she expected, an attempt to open the locker locker caused a perceptible creaking. She swore under her breath, hearing the ruffling of clothes behind her cease momentarily. Luckily, from what they could hear, the creature outside wasn’t affected, so they resumed where they left off.

Cotton gently and ever so slowly inched the locker open, and while it still caused some noise, she determined that it was inevitable. She just had to keep the amount of noise she made to as minimum as possible.

Once the locker was opened far enough, she looked inside. It was completely empty. She stepped over to the next locker and followed the same process, opening the locker as gently as she could. The creaking of the hinges made her cringe with worry, as she didn’t want to accidentally catch the creature’s attention.

The second locker consisted of folded clothes, which she checked thoroughly, only to wind up disappointed by the fact that there was nothing inside. She moved onto the third, opening it only to find the same thing.

The two fillies continued with their developed patterns—Spectrum throwing aside medical scrubs one after another when she found either nothing or something useless and Cotton opening locker after locker, her panic rising gradually as she failed to find anything helpful.

Two minutes in, Cotton had opened over half the lockers and was nearing the end of the row with not even an ounce of luck, and the lack of a report from Spectrum didn’t help alleviate the rising fear in her stomach. If they found nothing in here, the likelihood that they would come across another chance at escaping, let alone survive long enough to come across that chance was too slim to consider a possibility.

Only a few more lockers remained, and there was still no good news. Cotton heard a faint curse behind her, and looked back to see that Spectrum had searched the last shelf, and was resorting to watching Cotton search the final lockers with a look of anxious desperation in her eyes.

She opened the next locker, finding nothing inside. Two more lockers remained, and her hope had now been whittled thin. She moved to the second to last locker, still holding on tightly to whatever hope remained.

Opening the locker like all the others previously, she was once again met with the sight of folded medical scrubs and nothing more. Her teeth, which she hadn’t realized were clenched together tightly, ground tighter, but still, she searched through the clothing to find anything they could use.

As she searched the pockets of one of the scrubs, her hoof came in contact with a cool, metal object, which then produced a clinking sound. She paused, her doubt disintegrating and allowing hope to retake dominance in her mind. She gripped the metal object, sliding it out of the pocket, and when it came to view, Cotton could hardly believe her eyes.

The tiny metal ring she pulled out held a thick row of rusted keys of different shapes and sizes. Cotton stared at them, blinking as though making sure they were actually there. When she was convinced that the keys in front of her were real, a feeling of pure happiness washed over her, relief flooding her whole body.

“Yes,” Cotton whispered, her lips forming a smile as a film of joyful tears coated her eyes. They could leave! They could finally go home!

Spectrum approached her to see what she had found, and shared a similar reaction. “Keys… Cotton, we might actually be able to get out of this place!”

Cotton grabbed the keys from the locker, careful not to make too much noise with them as Spectrum walked up to see them closer up. “Pull up the picture I took earlier of the door lock.”

Gripping the ring of keys with her teeth, Cotton turned on the camera and did as her friend said, displaying the picture of the lock.

Spectrum took the keys from Cotton began looking through all of them, comparing their sizes to the picture of the lock. It hadn’t occurred to Cotton through the immense relief she felt on the possibility of escaping that these might not have even been the right keys. A bit of her earlier fear returned, but she remained confident. The key to the door had to be one of them. Surely.

“Most of these keys besides a few look like they would fit the lock,” Spectrum informed. “I suppose we just have to hope that the right key is in here, and if not, we could use these to find a different way out.”

As she finished her sentence, the screen of the camera blinked out, and the red LED on the top of the camera faded.

“Shit…” Cotton said with sudden concern, pressed the power button on the camera multiple times, each time followed by no response.  “Camera’s dead. We gotta make do without it now.”

“All we have to do is make it back to the door,” Spectrum said, putting the keys in her wing and enclosing them tightly to assure they wouldn’t make any noise on the way back. “Most of the way we came wasn’t completely dark, so as long as we remembered the way we came it shouldn’t matter.”

Cotton swallowed, hoping her friend was right. Whether or not any of the keys she had found would actually open the door was now their new issue. Navigating near complete darkness while searching blindly for a way out would be a near impossible task, paired with the fact that the monsters out there were roaming the place.

She countered her doubt with self-reassurance. The ponies who worked her must have had keys to all the doors in the building. One of them has to be the right one.

She let the now useless camera hang from her neck and faced the doorway through which they came. “Alright. Back through the room we go.”

“We’ve had some good luck; we just have to pray it continues.”

Cotton gave Spectrum a wary look. “Don’t jinx it when we’ve come this far.”

“Fair point. Let’s just focus on finally leaving this shithole.”

“Agreed.” With their conversation concluded, Cotton and Spectrum began toward the door, and crossed back over the threshold.

Cotton turned her head to the right. The creature still had not moved a single centimeter, staring at the stone wall as if hypnotized. As long as it stayed there, they would be okay.

Walking quietly as they had done before, the two fillies began to progress their way back through the room. They both knew that no mistake from here on out could be made, and while that put a great load of stress on both ponies, the confidence that their way out may have been just a few more obstacles away weighed equal on the scale.

Their confidence grew with each step toward the door. Already a considerable distance back through the room, it seemed as though they would make it back to the other side without encountering any issues.

Spectrum suddenly lost her balance, causing her to put weight on her injured leg. Grunting in pain, she lost her grip on the keys, which slipped through the feathers of her wings and dropped to the floor, the impact producing a clear jingle that penetrated the silence.

The creature in the corner growled. Spectrum had steadied herself, but was biting her lip to not alert the creature to their position again. Cotton was at Spectrum’s side with a worried expression, a whole new wave of fear washing over her. On one hoof, she was concerned for her friend and what she may have just done to her leg, but on another, they were now in grave danger since there was no doubt in her mind the creature heard that.

Then it finally moved from its position.

Cotton’s face fell as her and Spectrum were bathed in a purple spotlight. She looked at Spectrum, and saw her giving her a look that’s translation to words couldn’t be clearer. Don’t move a single fucking muscle.

The creature walked toward the two fillies, breathing deeply as though sucking air through gritted teeth. As it continued to advance toward them, it became increasingly evident that it would not stop approaching. It knew they were here, and if they didn’t do something quickly, they were dead.

Cotton’s mind began to look for solutions. One sprang to mind right away. Distraction.

Twisting her head left and right, she looked for something she could throw. She crossed off using the keys immediately, as throwing them posed a risk of not getting them back. Beside her feet, she found a stone that would do fine instead.

The creature wasn’t too close yet, but the time limit she had to cause a distraction wasn’t something to be ignored. Carefully, she lifted the rock off the ground and launched it at a lamp by the door to the locker room. The lamp shattered on collision, raining glass shards onto the floor below.

With a low-pitched groan, the creature turned its head toward the pile of glass behind it. However, contrary to the previous times Cotton had distracted the creature, it didn’t go and investigate the noise right away. In fact, it appeared as though it was contemplating whether to fall for the distraction or not.

Follow the sound… come on, follow the sound, Cotton repeated inside her head.

The creature growled again, its ears flicking upward. It then stared back in the direction of the two fillies as though attentively analyzing a confusing puzzle.

It was quickly growing evident that the distraction had not worked, and their suspicion was proved once the creature resumed its walk in their direction. Cotton mouthed a curse. They needed a new plan.

Digging deep into her thoughts, she attempted to formulate a way to direct the creature away from them. While it was still a fair distance away, it wouldn’t take long before it found them if they just stood where they were.

She began by dissecting the situation. Since the creature had managed to learn from their earlier distractions, it was obvious now that they would no longer work. Sneaking toward the door now would risk them losing the keys and picking up the keys would cause too much noise.

That left their options narrowed down to the only solution that might have had any probability of success at all.

One of them would have to bait it.

The idea was extremely risky, and Cotton didn’t like it one bit, but it was the only idea she could think of that had a chance of working. Doing this meant that one of them had to move stealthily to another part of the room, draw the creature to their location so the other could pick up the keys and leave the room, and then make her way out of the room herself. Spectrum’s condition immediately crossed her off as being a candidate for the job, so it was settled.

Unfortunately, there was no way for her to communicate the plan with Spectrum without wasting time, and coming up with it already allowed the creature to get dangerously close to them, so she had to follow through with it in hopes that she understood in time.

Fearfully, but with determination, Cotton moved slowly toward the corner of the room opposite from the exit with slow, soft steps. Spectrum watched as she did so with a nervous expression, and nodded. She had the same idea.

The creature was almost right next to Spectrum, sniffing the air and searching the surrounding area for the two fillies. Seeing this made Cotton back up quicker toward the corner. If it found Spectrum, it was game over for both of them.

As the creature patrolled, pawing through the air, one of its claws came in contact with the keys. Snarling, it tilted its head downward at the resulting metallic clatter. The creature stayed like that for a few moments. Then, it lifted its head again, its black sockets now fixed directly on Spectrum.

Cotton reached the corner of the room and, without wasting any time, shouted, “Hey!”

The creature shrieked loudly, its head spinning in Cotton’s direction with an audible snap. It began walking in a slow straight line toward Cotton, hissing venomously. Cotton’s heart beat rapidly, and she had to keep herself from hyperventilating from stress. Carefully, she moved to the left as the creature approached her with an angry air. Thankfully, the creature’s growls and steps masked her own, so they went unheard.

Spectrum, still in the same place, was watching as the creature got closer to her friend, her ears falling in stress, but a brief gesture from Cotton to the keys on the ground reminded her of their task. She stretched a wing down to the keys, gingerly slipped the thin tip of her wing through the ring, and gradually started to lift. The keys scraped the ground lightly and clinked together as they were being lifted, but to Spectrum’s relief, the creature either didn’t hear, or chose not to focus on it. Once the keys were off the ground, Spectrum opened her other wing and slowly placed the keys against its feathers. Finally, with a matching delicateness, she closed her wings around the keys until they were safely encased within.

Cotton stopped moving and stood completely still as the creature drew nearer until it was directly beside her, standing above at almost twice her size. She ignored the pain from her lungs for a greater supply of oxygen, not daring to breathe louder than she was. The colossal monstrosity beside her stopped moving, raising its ears tall and turning its head from left to right like a security camera.

Out the corner of her eye, Cotton could see Spectrum making her way toward the door out of the room.  She looked back at the creature. It pointed its head in all directions, aimlessly attempting to find out where the source of the voice it had heard had gone.

It clacked its teeth together as though with impatience, before taking a step toward Cotton. The filly backed up as it then proceeded to raise one of its claws upward and swing through the air, narrowly missing her. Her heart jumped, and she recoiled, almost bringing her hoof down too hard. It then went silent again, returning to its security camera-like behavior.

At that point, Spectrum had reached the door and was now back in the hallway, worry in her eyes for her friend. Cotton took another step backward when suddenly the creature swung its claws through the air again, this time grazing Cotton across the cheek, eliciting a yelp of pain in reaction.

The creature screeched, having found its target. Cotton didn’t waste a single second, turning toward the door and sprinting for her life. No sooner had she done so, than the intense tremor of the creature surging toward her shook her body from beneath her hooves. From the right of her vision, she could see a long decayed foreleg swinging toward her, and she instinctively ducked her head as it flew over her head, missing her.

Galloping as fast as she could push herself, she extended a hoof out to the door handle, and tugged with adrenaline-induced strength. Before the creature could reach her, the door had been closed halfway, which resulted in the creature slamming into it, pushing it the rest of the way shut.

Cotton was knocked back onto the floor, and as she got up, the creature had already begun bashing the door down with shrill howls.

“We have to run!” Spectrum shouted, backing away from the door with dread.

“Spectrum, you can’t run in your—”

“This isn’t up for debate!” she exclaimed. “I’ll be right behind you, go!”

With a strong unwillingness to do so, Cotton complied and ran down the hallway as the constant blows against the door behind them resonated through the air. When she looked back, she saw that Spectrum was indeed following, but the struggle of running the way she was showed from the awkwardness of the way she moved.

Cotton directed her gaze forward again. She saw the sign on the wall indicating the direction of the locker rooms. From here, they just had to go straight forward. Cotton’s confidence grew back. They were almost out. It was just a little longer now before they could leave this place, they couldn’t screw up now.

She passed by the four-way cross in the hallway, making a beeline for the left turn at the end. Her concern for Spectrum still jabbed at the back of her mind. It appeared that Spectrum, although falling shortly behind, was doing well considering her condition, so she tried to dismiss her worry and focus on leaving.

Then, Spectrum screamed in pain.

Cotton’s head spun. Her friend was whimpering on the ground at the center of the four-way cross with both hooves on her leg, the bandage around it soaked through with blood. In that instant, Cotton dug her hooves into the ground, and she screeched to a complete stop.

“Shit, hang on Spectrum, I’m…”

Her eyes shrunk in sheer horror.

Spectrum’s body, as well as the ground around her, was illuminated in a purple light that originated from the hallway beside her. From the same hallway, a shriek rang out, filling Cotton with the deepest sense of dread she had ever felt in her life.

“No…” Cotton ran, racing down the hallway toward her friend as heavy footsteps grew in volume, and the purple light around Spectrum shone brighter. Spectrum was watching the hallway, right away scrambling to get off the floor, only for a sharp pain to cause her to fall back down again. 

No, no, no, no! Heart racing, Cotton ran faster, putting whatever energy she had into accelerating her speed. All other concerns and thoughts she had evaporated, the only thing on her mind saving her friend. She poured more into her legs, propelling her at speeds she had never reached before. Spectrum couldn’t die here, she had to save her! Another screech pierced her ears, even louder now. The footsteps were closer. The light was brighter.

In the next moment, time seemed to slow. Spectrum’s eyes went to Cotton, who continued to launch herself forward at top speed with the sole purpose of rescuing her friend from a fatal demise. A flash of acceptance crossed the expression of frantic panic that had been on Spectrum’s face, and after that, she stared at Cotton with an unmistakably apologetic look.

A huge blur of brown and purple whizzed down the cross in front of Cotton before disappearing into the hallway ahead. There was the crunch of flesh as Cotton careened forward, tripping on her own hooves and losing her balance, tumbling to the floor in a frantic mess. She lifted her head, met with the sight of crimson droplets falling to the ground in front of her, and in the creature’s wake, Spectrum was gone.

“SPECTRUM!!” she screamed with an agonized cry that tore through her throat and echoed down the long and dark empty halls. Her eyes were glued to the spot where Spectrum had been as though she had not fully processed what had just happened. As the seconds passed, and the realization of what had happened dawned on her, a bone-chilling iciness crawled its way through her gut, her body trembling in a petrified shock that gripped her like a vice.

Cotton pushed her body off the floor, a nauseous feeling swishing around in her stomach, and stumbled to the corner behind which the creature had disappeared, staring into the hallway it had gone into.

The door down the hall fell apart with a crash, the pieces of broken wood submerged in the resulting mist of dust. Cotton’s stare flicked over to the sound, and from the dust particles, the blind creature emerged, letting out a roar of fury as it picked up speed and began to bullet down the hallway toward Cotton. The filly flattened her body as much as she could against the wall beside her as the creature shot at full speed in her direction, before running past her to the end of the hall, where it turned left at a sharp angle and left her line of sight.

Whole body shaking in terror, Cotton stood back in front of the hall behind the corner from which the faint sounds of high-pitched howls projected. Her head was a whirlwind of emotions—disbelief, horror, anguish—while a flood of thoughts battled for dominance, all together acting as fuel to the panic she already felt.

She can’t be dead, she thought. Not just like that. She had to have survived. She had to have! Her brain was a mess of thoughts as she began to follow the hallway. Drops of blood on the floor and wall beside her left a trail ahead, the more she saw deepening the sense of nausea in her stomach. Her heart battered unremittingly at her chest, the mere act of breathing a strenuous task.

The hall felt longer as she wandered forward. Grating screams continued to resonate from the end of the hall, but her own safety had fallen to the bottom of her priorities and she continued forward, begging fate for her friend to still be alive.

Not far ahead, a tiny object could be seen on the ground next to a spatter of blood. Cotton approached it and picked it off the floor to examine it, and her heart only fell further. It was a purple, discolored feather. She nodded her head in denial, resuming down the hallway and picking up speed until she accelerated to a trot. More feathers like the one she had found lay in a similar trail to the spots of blood on the floor leading to the end of the hall.

She wasn’t dead… she had to be alive…

Cotton turned right into the next hall in time to catch a glimpse of a purple light along with the long, shadowed figure in front of it disappearing behind a corner at the opposite end of the considerably long corridor. In front of her, more blood streaked along the ground up until the halfway point of the hall. Her legs continued to carry her forward, her walk matching that of an exhausted pony as she followed the blood trail, her horror growing more and more.

The drops of blood began to turn into splatters, and splatters quickly graduated into long, thick smears. Cotton shuddered heavily when her front hoof came in contact with one of the crimson blotches, warm and sticky. It was all fresh, Cotton knew, and it was for that reason that she actively refused the idea that her friend had been killed.

For what might have been the umpteenth time, Cotton called out Spectrum’s name, praying for an answer that the logical side of her thought process knew wouldn’t come. Every second that passed was another weight of pressure on her back from the knowledge that her friend was somewhere seriously hurt, or worse.

As she walked, she passed by open doors on her right, empty rooms the size of broom closets on the other side. Near the end of the row of doors, the trail of blood curved into one of the rooms as though the source of the blood was carelessly dragged inside.

Cotton subconsciously shook her head again, approaching the door where the pool of blood led, unprepared to see what was in the room but nevertheless pushing forward. Her imagination formulated images of what she would see inside, most of which she blocked out from her mind, incapable to even think about them. Wishing that she wouldn’t find the one thing she was dreading to see, Cotton stepped over the curved red trail, and looked inside the room.

What she saw would be burned into her memory for the rest of her life.

The entire floor of the tiny, cramped room was coated entirely with fresh blood, collectively forming a sparkling scarlet pool, and at the center of it was Spectrum. She lay on the ground, completely motionless, her whole body mangled and battered, limbs bent to the point of being broken. Large gashes on the side of her body spilled a copious amount of blood into the already large stain on the ground, and her eyes stared ahead blankly at nothing, mouth hanging open where a tiny stream of blood escaped and made its way down to her chin.

Everything was now quieter. Standing in the doorway, completely frozen, Cotton’s eyes remained fixed on the body in front of her. The whole world around her began to crumble piece by piece as she stared, her mind incapable of processing what was before her. She blinked, desperate for the body to disappear when she opened her eyes, only for the body to remain in place. She blinked again. And again. She shut her eyes, screwing them tightly closed and shaking her head vigorously, and when she opened her eyes, the body was still there.

The body of her lifeless friend.

The last supports of her world collapsed, and everything shattered around her. Tears stung her eyes, spilling at a large rate and matting her cheeks with moisture, her legs giving way as she fell to the ground.

“No…” she muttered in between sobs, dragging herself over to Spectrum’s corpse. “Please, no! Spectrum!” She placed both hooves on her chest. Her body was freezing. Hysterically, she pressed her hooves down on Spectrum’s chest and pushed hard, before releasing the pressure and pushing again. “Don’t do this to me, Spectrum… please! Please wake up!!”

She continued applying compressions to Spectrum’s chest, throwing her whole body’s weight into each push, only for her attempts to wind up ineffective. “Don’t leave me, please…” The pushes against her chest got weaker with each one, until the crushing reality that her friend was gone hit her full force, and Cotton gave up. She sprawled herself over her friend’s lifeless corpse, holding it close to her as she cried into the fur, violent and loud sobs wracking her whole body.

It all felt like a bad dream. One she would wake up from in a couple seconds, panting and sweating in her bed at home, before rushing to find Spectrum and hugging the life out of her, thankful that she was still alive. But this was all very real. Her friend was dead, and the pain of that hurt harder than any physical pain she had ever experienced, as though a huge chunk of her had been ripped away.

Memories rushed through her head from the early years of their friendship, her mind flashing back to grade school, when Cotton would be picked on by other fillies and colts for being the odd one out, and Spectrum would stand up to them for her, thus spawning their unlikely friendship. Her memories then flashed to the darker points in her life, when Spectrum remained persistently at her side, doing everything in her power to cheer her up, before flashing to Spectrum’s guidance through the worsening of her anxiety problems. She then recalled all the times they would spend time together, talking, and laughing, and playing. Spectrum had been such a huge part of her life; somepony that made her happy and cared about her.

And now… she would never talk to Spectrum ever again.

The fur on Spectrum’s body was wet from Cotton’s tears as she buried her face into her deceased friend’s skin, wishing that her friend could suddenly come back to life okay and well. She gripped Spectrum’s body tighter, not wanting to accept the fact that her friend was no longer, and muttered one last feeble plead.

“Please… don’t… go…”

She lay there weeping, hugging her dead friend for five minutes and letting out sob after sob laced through with sorrow and grief. As the minutes passed, her weeps became weaker, until she mourned Spectrum’s death in silence, her body now quivering mildly over Spectrum’s immobile state.

Her awareness of the present situation started coming back to her. She was still in danger. She had to get out of this place.

Releasing her hold on Spectrum’s body, Cotton sat up, whole body drenched in the corpse’s blood. Her head turned to Spectrum’s right wing, seeing that it was still rolled up against the side of her body. Cotton’s hooves went to the wing, and she unfurled it. Once it flapped open flat on the ground, the keys within were revealed. For a moment, she stared at it as though unsure whether or not to take them, before grabbing them in a hoof.

Her eyes went back to Spectrum, a few more tears leaking from them and leaving tracks of moisture down the sides of her face. “Thank you, Spectrum,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry…”

She did not want to leave her friend behind, hating herself for simply standing from the floor and stepping away from the body. However, if she wanted to make it out alive, she had to leave her. Part of her wanted to just stay with her dead friend, even if it meant starving to death, but she knew that Spectrum would have wanted her to get out alive.

Putting the keys in her mouth, she regretfully stepped out of the room and back into the hallway, glancing once more at Spectrum’s blood soaked and broken body.

A reverberating roar to her left prompted her to turn her head instantly to the source of it. At the end of the hall where one of the creatures had been briefly, another one stood there, staring her down with the malicious intent to end her.

Cotton took off in the other direction as fast as she possibly could. The creature immediately began galloping after her, its longer legs propelling it slightly faster than the filly’s top speed. The door. She just had to make it there, and then leave this celestiaforsaken hospital.

She followed the blood trail, taking a sharp turn ahead back to the four-way cross in the hall, where she once again turned left, speeding to the end of the hall with every little bit of energy in her body. Her heart pounded, lungs burning for more oxygen to compensate for the work she was putting her body through, but her sheer will to survive caused her to pay no attention to it.

Behind her, the creature was catching up quickly, its physical form giving it a much larger advantage than Cotton’s tiny legs, but even so, she remained a considerable distance away. However, if she didn’t do something to slow the creature down, that distance would close, as was starting to happening.

Cotton turned again, spotting the destroyed vent. With these hallways mapped out in her head, she remembered what was coming up. The deafening sounds of the creature’s pursuit were growing in volume, and her legs would not go any faster than they already were, so she did everything to maintain her current speed in hopes that she would reach it before the creature reached her.

Her surroundings turned pitch black once she bolted through the pile of broken metal sheets that were once part of the vent above and through the open door leading to the next hall. This only happened for a moment though, as in the next second, the hallway was brightly lit in a violet shade. Because of this, she could see the blockage in the hall that was quickly approaching.

The ground below her vibrated, and the sounds of the creature were now close enough that she could hear the distinct details of the creature’s guttural screams and dry, jagged breaths as it chased after her like a tiger during its hunt. It was directly behind her. She only had a little farther to go, but if she couldn’t get there in time, she would be killed.

The large boulder at the midpoint of the hall got closer and closer, as did the creature behind her. The shade of purple on the ground and walls were getting brighter and brighter, until she was sure that the gap between her and the monstrosity was no larger than a meter.

With one last strong push, she mustered all the strength in her legs and dove through the space between the wall and the boulder. She hit the ground stomach first, sliding forward as the ear-splitting bang of the creature crashing into the boulder entered her ears. She turned her head, watching the creature crumple to the ground flailing in agony. Without a second to spare, she dragged herself the rest of the way to the other side of the boulder before lying there on her haunches, a panting, sweaty mess.

The creature on the other side got up off the ground and, with a loud shriek, threw its body against the blockage, again and again in incessant attempts to get to Cotton. She heard slam after persistent slam, and it was on the eighth slam that the boulder budged, nearly falling over but then righting itself up in the same position as before. It hit Cotton that the boulder was not going to hold the creature back, and she quickly pushed herself to her feet to begin running again. She was so unbelievably tired, her body severely overworked at this point, but she couldn’t let that stop her. She had to keep moving.

She reached the end of the hall, entering the large and empty dark room, consulting the mental map in her mind. There was a doorway to the right. She ran through the room, and found the door into the next hallway. There was only a limited amount of time before the creature would break through the blockage, so she needed to be agile.

She analyzed the hallway and determined her next course of action. At the nearest left, she turned, refusing to stop running all the while, ending up in the lengthy corridor with the open door she recognized that led to the room where she had patched up Spectrum’s leg. After the right turn at the very end of this hall was the door. She was so close now.

When she was halfway through the hall, she heard a loud, echoed collision and then, no sooner than that, a scramble of heavy footsteps. The creature had broken through. She didn’t have much time.

Cotton pivoted at the right turn, the door now in her line of sight. Relief broke out within her, and she rushed to the end of the hall, bringing herself to a halt in front of the door.

Spitting out the keys into her hooves, she came to a quick, horrifying realization: she had no idea which key was the right one. Each one had to be tried until one of them fit the keyhole.

As the currently distant footsteps resounded through her environment, Cotton had gotten to work, grabbing one of the keys on the ring of plenty others, and slipping it through the keyhole. It only went part way before it was met with resistance. She slid it back out and took another key, trying the same thing, but receiving the same result.

Cotton agitatedly burned through key after key as the footsteps and deep screeches grew louder, met with moments of relief when the key would enter all the way, only for it to disappear when the key would resist her attempt to rotate it in the lock. The pattern continued, Cotton grabbing another key and inserting it, only for it to stop part way. Her stress grew as her earlier concern of whether or not any of these keys actually fit the lock returned, and as the footsteps amplified, her movements became more frenzied, occasionally unable to fit a key into the lock due to her hooves shaking.

None of the keys were working so far, and Cotton had almost tried all of them. With each one that didn’t work, Cotton’s heart fell further and further, and the loudness of the creature after her was a consistent reminder that time was running out.

The hall brightened, and Cotton’s blood ran cold from the recognition of what that meant. With only a few more keys remaining, Cotton grabbed a random one and prayed. She stuck it into the lock, and when it went inside all the way, she twisted. This time, there was no resistance, and the key turned all the way, a clicking noise audible. No sooner had Cotton heard it, than she released her hold on the keys, hooves rushing to the door handle and yanking it down. The door opened, and she entered the lobby room on the other side, pulling the door shut with just enough time to see the creature bolting at top speed toward her.

The instant she had shut the door, she leapt to the side, which proved to be a good call as the metal door suddenly shot off its hinges and flew nearly to the other end of the room. Unfortunately, she was too late, as the surface of the door impacted her left hind leg, causing her to cry in pain as she landed on the ground. The creature, skidding into the room, thankfully hadn’t heard the cry due to the high scratching noise of the metal door against the stone ground, knocking into the flipped tables throughout the room as well.

Cotton remained still on the floor, the creature breathing with the sound of a snake’s rattle whilst casting its line of sight across the room. Her leg throbbed with unimaginable pain, and when she lowered her head to examine it, she saw that her leg was not only heavily bruised, but also bent at a slightly odd angle.

It took much of her strength not to whine from the pain, tears leaking from her eyes as she gritted her teeth. She looked back up to see the creature beginning to search every corner of the room. There was no doubt that the creature would find her if she just stayed there. Next to Cotton was a flipped table, tall enough to provide cover until the creature left, but once she tried to crawl over to the table, an explosion of pain rocketed through her leg, and she was unable to hold back a groan.

The creatures head rotated until its eyes were locked on Cotton, and then a deep growl emanated from its mouth.

Cotton set her front hooves on the ground and lifted herself off the ground, only to fall back down when needles of pain stabbed through her leg. The creature stepped toward her, gnarling as though reveling in the fact that it had the filly right where it wanted her.

With no other options, Cotton lugged herself back with her forelegs to get as far away from the creature as possible. It advanced toward her, taking its time like it was toying with her.

The whimpering filly kept backing up until a hard surface suddenly hit her back, and she found herself tucked in the corner of the room as each step of the creature’s disturbingly stretched legs brought it closer and closer to her. She shrunk, ears folding as her eyes were stung by the increasingly bright light projected from the creature’s chest, rendering the creature as a threatening, enlarging shadow.

This was it. She was trapped in a corner defenceless and vulnerable, about to be torn to shreds. Cowering, shrunken to the floor powerless toward her incoming fate, she realized this was how she would die. A few more seconds at most, a painful demise, and then she would be no longer. She was going to die.

Up until now, she had always thought that she would have her whole life ahead of her; that she would grow up to be successful, have a family of her own, and die peacefully. Everything had been playing out so well, but in the end it had all led up to losing her best friend and then waiting in anguish as her own death loomed closer. Only an hour ago, she was laughing happily along with her closest friend, and the outcome of that was a few more seconds of life and then a gruesome end once those seconds were up.

She wasn’t ready to die. She still had so much left to experience. So much left to accomplish. And yet, here she was, about to be killed by the creature in front of her in a place she would likely never be found, without even the chance to have one last conversation with her family, just to say goodbye.

The creature stopped in front of Cotton, gazing down at the helpless filly, and raised a claw. With all the built up emotions and despair inside of her, Cotton did the only thing she could do, and screamed.

From behind the doorway Cotton had just come through, another one of the creatures galloped into the room. Mid-swing, the creature about to end Cotton’s life paused and looked back with a bewildered growl.

Cotton, who had both hooves covering her eyes, noticed quickly that her death had been delayed. Uncovering her eyes, she saw claws right above her head, suspended there as though time had stopped before they could pierce through her. The creature the claws belonged to had now directed its attention to the other creature that had entered the room, and by the flesh wound across its ruined eyes, she quickly identified it as the blind creature.

With a loud screech, the blind creature suddenly lurched forward toward the creature that had come close to killing Cotton. Summoning all her strength to her forelegs, she hauled herself out of the way as the blind creature tumbled head first into the other creature, and they both crashed onto the ground where Cotton had once been, legs tangled like flies in a spider’s web.

Cotton continued to crawl back as the two creatures stood from the ground, the blind one twisting its head around in confusion as though dazed. The other stood from the ground with a loud squeal and launched itself at the blind creature, tackling it back to the ground. The blind creature clawed wildly at its attacker before landing a powerful kick to its chest, sending it flying back into the wall behind it, the result of the impact leaving a noticeable crack in the stone.

Quickly, both of them were in a violent brawl. While they were distracted fighting each other, Cotton had managed to balance herself on three legs, leaving the injured one limp, and began to run as fast as her condition would allow out of the room through the doorway beside her.

Everything else was now shadowed by her determination to leave. She hobbled down the dark hall, the sounds of the monsters in the lobby room battling and screeching. The hall turned right, as did she, passing by the door infested with vines, and then the hall turned again. She followed it, all that was ahead familiar to her.

From the dark, the barred door came into view. The door that, had Spectrum and her never opened, would have prevented all the tragedies and horrors she had experienced in the last hour. Not slowing for a second, she passed through the doorway, jumping over the broken padlock on the ground that had once kept the door firmly shut…

The echoes of the creatures were now minimal, but even though it seemed as though the danger was gone, Cotton would not dare to take any risks, and for that reason, ran at a consistent pace up the stairs and back into the bottom floor of the hospital, surrounded once again by clean walls and a nearly perfect ceiling and floor as though the place hadn’t been left abandoned for long at all.

She sped into the four-way cross. From there though, she didn’t know where to go. Her recollection from when she was last here passed through her mind like a film reel on rewind. Right was a locked door. Left led back to the hole through which she fell and a locked door.

An earlier conversation came back to her.

“There’s a staircase at the end of this hall, I found it pretty quickly. It also leads to every floor in the building, so we can get out through there.”

Cotton went straight. With her eyes largely adjusted to the darkness, she could only barely see, but enough to notice what was coming up. At the end of the hall, she took a sharp left. The newspapers still sat on the chairs along the wall. Darting by them, she rounded the concave turn, and on the left hand side of the corridor, a staircase came into view, leading upward.

She sped up the stairs, skipping multiple steps with each gallop despite her limp and ascending toward the upper floors. On her right was a rusty white door with a small, narrowed window above the handle followed by more stairs that led upward. She aimed for the door, grabbing the handle and pulling it downward. Expecting it to be locked, she was caught off guard by the fact that it opened cleanly, and she slid into the hall on the other side.

The door gradually rotated shut before clicking closed. Cotton’s eyes scanned every inch of the new hallway she was in. Her brain worked twice as quick, pinpointing her location in the hospital based on the hallway she had entered—the hole-riddled floor, ceiling with missing tiles, the chairs left randomly astray throughout the hall, and the double doors at the end of the hall to her left—and before long, she figured out where she was. This was the corridor on one side of the dome-shaped room. On the other side was the one that led to the cafeteria, which meant that to the left was the lobby room, and from there…

She could finally escape.

The filly ran left, the pair of double doors approaching from the end of the hall. The exit was only meters away now. In only a few seconds would she be out of this terrible place, free from the horrors this town had been hiding from the rest of Equestria for decades.

Reaching the doors, she threw them open, and then galloped into the lobby room, her eyes shooting instantly to the short hall that led to the main entrance doors. They were right there. Freedom lay on the other side. She rushed across the room, her destination; a sight she never thought she would see again but inches away.

In a swift motion, Cotton pushed the doors open.

Cool air touched her skin, the faint draft of night time air sweeping through her fur. Gracing her eyes was the sight of the starry sky, dotted with stars as far as the eye could see and with it, a crescent moon at the center of it all. The melodic ambience of heavy rain thundering all around her alongside the pelts of rain drops hitting trees and nearby leaves. In front of her, just past the flat hilltop on which the hospital rested was the vast landscape of the rundown town of Ponyville—the first thing she had seen since coming here. It felt like years since she had been in an outdoor environment.

She was out. She was out and alive.

Her whole body was drenched within an instant. Cold rainwater dripped from her mane and fur, which were pressed against her skin, making her shiver heavily. Even now, free from the building behind her, she continued to run, down the slippery, muddy hill where they had come from.

A bolt of lightning blared above her, touching the tip of one of the trees of the forest beside her and causing it to catch fire. Large branches fell down around Cotton. She swerved out of the way, avoiding most of them, but when a rather sizeable branch knocked her off her feet, her hind leg burned, and an intense heat flooded into the top and bottom parts of her leg. However, her reaction was no more than a wince and quiet whimper as she pushed herself off the sticky, muddy ground and pressed on.

She descended the path, soon surrounded again by the long since destroyed houses and strong scent of mildew. Her memory of every direction Spectrum and her had taken was precise, and as she limped speedily down the wet, deserted streets, she found herself back at the circular space with the tall building that’s top part was embedded into the ground.

Another bolt of lightning struck, the black night sky substituted with a bright white like the flash of a camera. The demolished houses on either side of Cotton fell behind one after another, and before long, the path she had taken into Ponyville emerged from the sheets of rain in her midst.

The sky was pierced by the far-off echo of a sharp, distorted screech from somewhere within the torrential downpour surrounding her. A spike of adrenaline in her system encouraged her to carry on faster toward the path. Her injured leg hurt with a terrible pain, but she paid it no heed, and in fact hardly noticed it.

Her hooves touched the gravel of the path, leading outside the town borders. She gasped for air at a rate which, were she not running at such a rapid speed, would have caused her to faint from hyperventilation in the bat of an eye. Another bolt of lightning struck, and a bright orange smudge formed against the deep mist of rain somewhere above.

She had to get as far away from the town as possible. She didn’t care where she went, as long as she was far away. Her legs carried her aimlessly forward, her only hints at where she was going indicated by the bolts of lightning providing a view, if extremely hazy, of the area around her.

Crackles of electricity roared from the beyond, the pellets of rainwater showering down on Cotton fierce and unrelenting. Each landing of her hooves on the ground caused a squelch, spraying water in all directions. Her body was freezing. Her leg hurt. She needed to get away.

A jagged line of bright blue electricity cut through the unforgiving mist. She was running over a hill now, a vast horizon of empty landscape as far as the eye could see.

Pain. Cold. She needed to get away.

The gravel path ended, the rest grown over by weeds and long grass that had not been tended to for years. There was no doubt she had made distance between her and the town. But there was no telling how much danger she was still in. Her body shivered. The pain in her leg was unbearable.

She needed to get away.

She ran for minutes. Minutes stretched into hours. The rain pounded down on the earth, the taps of water droplets on her skin beginning to sting. Another bolt of lightning. The blur of fire glowed within the fog. Except something was off. As opposed to an orange color, this one was white. And there was not one, but two, side by side. As she ran, the space between the two white lights expanded, as did the size of the lights.

A sound entered her ears. It sounded like thunder, but thunder didn’t go on for this long. It was almost like the whir of a machine. It was cold. There was pain. The white lights increased in size. Were they coming closer? There was danger. She needed to get away.

From the growing white lights came the deafening noise of an expulsion of steam. The mechanical whir became louder. Cotton panicked momentarily. Was it the creatures? Were they after her? No… the light they produced was purple. The mechanical dissonance changed, and now there came the shrill groan of gears and development of rust, followed by more steam.

She squinted, the two lights now glaring in her eyes. They began to slow, and from the edge of the mist and rain falling from the heavens, a large, slowly moving structure came into view. She drifted in its direction as it came to a stop, the mechanical screeching quieting to a low hum. 

A large, metallic shape formed itself in Cotton’s field of vision, and the closer she got, the clearer the long and enormous steam train became. The chimney at the front of the train blew out a gust of transparent steam that blended in with the already heavy mist in the atmosphere. Then, the wheels began to move, the groan of gears yet to be oiled filling the air once again.

The train accelerated slowly. Cotton sped up until she was directly beside it, and aimed for the carriage not far in front of her. While the train was in the process of matching Cotton’s speed, she had managed to gain enough momentum to catch up with the carriage, and spotted an area to grip on the side. She jumped up high and reached a foreleg. Her hoof came just slightly short.

The train was accelerating quickly now, moving faster than Cotton. With all her mustered strength, she leapt upward again, this time able to grab onto the side of the carriage. She used her good hind leg to support herself against the side while hoisting herself up with her forelegs. Lifting her hind leg over the edge and with one last strong pull, her body went over the side and fell onto the moist, hardwood floor on the inside of the carriage.

The train was now done accelerating and moved along the tracks at a constant speed, taking Cotton farther away from the town until the danger was most certainly far behind. She was safe. She was finally safe.

Lying there on her side on the ground, rainwater battering against her, Cotton reflected on the horrors she had survived. Everything hit her full force, like a sack of bricks. She was alive.

Spectrum… she was dead. Her best friend was dead.

Cotton curled into a ball, and the dam holding back all her emotions burst. She cried. She wailed. Her shrill screams of misery and relief filled the air, matching the volume of the cracking thunder permeating the air. All the emotions and stress from the last hour was being released in that moment, and for the longest time, she cried harder than she ever had in her life.

As the train continued to carry her away from the abandoned town of Ponyville, and the storm around her raged on, her cries became weaker. Her eyes shut and her body relaxed, only periodically shook by a sob as the embrace of sleep pulled her in. The last thing she heard before the blackness had taken her was the distant shouts of concern from a deep voice, and then the world was silent…

***

Nothing.  

Darkness and utter silence.

For the longest time, everything around her was void. There was no sensation in her limbs or body.

Then, she came to.

The first things she noticed right away coming out of her dreamless slumber was that it was no longer cold. In fact, she felt… comfortable. Something soft was pressing against her back, and a smooth, silky material draped over her front.

She then found that the pain in her hind leg was completely gone, a minor compression in its place. It still felt awkward, but it was better than before. A lot better. 

The scent of rot had disappeared. Taking in a shaky breath through her nose, clean, rich air filled her lungs, satisfyingly fresh. A warm breeze brushed across the fur on the right side of her face, where it also felt as though something was plastered onto her skin, and from all around originated the soothing draft of a nice day outdoors.

The moment she cracked an eyelid open, a blinding white light assaulted her vision. She screwed her eyes shut again, unprepared for the sudden attack of light, and then ever so slowly inched her eyes open. She couldn’t see a thing because of how bright it was, and she scrunched her eyes hard. Though, after a little while, the brightness was fading, and the different elements of her new environment materialized.

Cotton stared up at a white, polished drop ceiling. Her head tilted downward. She was in a square room comprised of white walls and a closed beige door in the corner. She also lay on a bed that bore a matching color other than the sheets over top of her which were light blue and in a stripe pattern. Stethoscopes hung off the wall above her, as well as other devices for checking a pony’s ears and temperature and empty chairs sat lined up against the wall to her right.

Next to her checking the heart rate monitor beside the bed was an earth pony mare with a pink coat and cherry red mane done in braids, dressed in a white uniform. Her attention was drawn to the bed by the creaking, and when she saw that Cotton was no longer dormant, momentary surprise passed over her face before being replaced by a comforting smile.

“Well good morning,” she spoke, her voice gentle and kind on par with her expression. “How are you feeling?”

Cotton didn’t say anything. She had never seen this mare before, and was still bewildered at the sudden change in her location. In her mind, she worked out what exactly was going on. While she hadn’t a clue how she had gotten here, the room’s décor gave her an idea where the here was. The medical tools, the heart rate monitor, the color of the room, the mare with the white clothes… She was in some sort of hospital.

Danger.

Need to get away!

The beeping of the heart rate monitor rapidly increased and Cotton whimpered agitatedly, sitting upright in the bed. The mare’s smile gave way to concern, taken aback by the abrupt change in behavior.

“Hey, it’s alright,” The mare said, resting a hoof on Cotton’s shoulder and right away feeling the vibrations of her body. “Calm down, you’re safe. Everything is fine.”

A cold sweat had broken out onto her brow, the adrenaline rush of a panic attack causing her to breathe heavily. Her legs were fidgety with the urging feeling to carry her away from this place, eyes pinpricks that bounced from corner to corner in their sockets. Though, as the mare tried to soothe her with reassuring words, her tone of voice almost hypnotic, the filly’s hysterical fit died down. She was significantly calmer, although still sat up as though alert of a serious nearby threat.

“Its okay, nothing in here will hurt you. There’s no need to worry,” the pink mare consoled, her smile returning. “My name is Tender Heart. I’m one of the nurses here. I’m only here to ask a few questions, so just lie back down and relax, I don’t bite.”

Cotton physically composed herself, sinking back down into the covers slightly into a slouched position, though her heartbeat still remained somewhat high, indicated by the beeping of the heart rate monitor. She still had no idea where she was, and a large part of her was convinced that danger was lurking, but the nurse provided a sense of safety, allowing some of her worries to subside. Unless this sense of security was false, and she was being led to believe everything was fine… 

“Perfect,” the nurse said, straightening the covers on Cotton’s bed. “Now please try to answer these questions as best as you can, alright?”

Cotton kept her mouth shut, half of her mindset still untrusting of this new environment and screaming at her to escape through the nearest exit. Nevertheless, Cotton swallowed, and then nodded in compliance.

“Alright. Can you please tell me your name?”

It took her a moment to answer as though she was processing the question “U-um…” her voice came out coarse and dry. “C-Cotton Candy.” Her throat was killing her. It felt like the entire inside of her throat was blistered.

“Okay, Cotton. What’s the last thing you remember before waking up?”

“I…” her mind was hazy. Digging through the fog in her memories, the first things she recalled distinctly was the cold, and the pain. It was wet and raining, and there was the harsh screaming of grinding gears and steam. “I was on a train… and I was running from… something…” She looked at the nurse. “W-where am I?”

The nurse sat beside Cotton, explaining. “You’re in a hospital in Manehattan. Somepony found you unconscious and bruised on a train with a broken leg and took you to the nearest hospital.”

Broken leg… she turned her head to inspect her hind leg which was sticking out from beneath the covers. It was wrapped in a splint, slightly elevated on a fat pillow. 

Her memories became slightly more vivid. It was a door that had fractured her leg while she was running away from…

…The creatures.

Everything came back to her. Ponyville. The hospital. The basement. Her and Spectrum had gone down there to explore, and then they were attacked.

Spectrum. She had been killed… she never made it out alive.

A familiar sense of grief sprouted in her stomach, heart aching with woeful pain as the whole of her situation truly sunk in. Her best friend was gone forever, and she would never see or talk to her again.

“Cotton. What’s wrong?” the nurse asked when a tear streaked from Cotton’s eye down her cheek, and she convulsed with faint sobs.

“…Spectrum…” Cotton stuttered out, voice cracking as more moisture spilled from her widened eyes, and she stared down at her bed sheet weeping silently.

The nurse put her hoof on Cotton’s shoulder again. “What’s the matter, sweetie?” The trembling filly didn’t respond, mumbling words under her breath that were incomprehensible to the nurse whilst still lightly crying. “Your parents are in the waiting room, would you feel better if they were here?”

Cotton’s ears perked up, head facing the nurse as though she were snapped out of a reverie. “M-my parents…?”

“Do you want me to go get them?” Cotton nodded without thought, eyes gleaming from the tears in them. “Okay. Don’t worry, I’ll be right back—it won’t take long.” The nurse got up from the bed and stepped out of the room, her steps fading until they could no longer be heard.

She was now alone in the room with only the outdoor noises and the rhythmic beeping of the heart rate monitor. Anxiety began taking root inside her, an uncomfortable feeling passed across her skin as the hairs on the back of her neck stood. She was lying there, defenceless and vulnerable to any threats that may have been nearby.

The room seemed to shrink around her. Breathing shaky, pearls of sweat travelling down her face, Cotton’s head twisted restlessly from left to right like a broken machine. Creeping in from the back of her mind was the suspicious feeling that she wasn’t safe here. Something was after her; she needed to leave as soon as possible.

Cotton heard steps clacking on the floor outside the room. Cotton’s gaze fell on the open door where the nurse had left. The beeping increased, and she pushed herself back up in her bed. One of them was here. They had found her, and they were going to kill her.

The hoofsteps got louder, and Cotton pushed herself back as far as she could, breaths coming in gasps. There was one out there, she was sure of it. She tried to move, but her motor nerves wouldn’t respond to her demands.

A dark, stretched shadow spread across the tiled floor in the hallway outside. Seized by fear, Cotton tried to scream for help, but all she produced was a mere croak. Her eyes were trained on the shadow as it got larger, shaping into the spitting image of the creatures that had tried to end her life before. Her heart raced faster, trickles of fluid tickling her face, and she listened in horror as the creature’s steps were almost right outside the room, her death closing in slowly but surely.

A light cry left her as a white mare with a tied back fuchsia mane and white uniform came into view, passing in front of the room before disappearing behind the door frame. Cotton sighed deeply, eyes shutting in relief as the beeping of the monitor beside her slowed slightly. Her worry of a threat still remained, but the fact that it was just another nurse outside the room put her at ease.

While the current set of footsteps outside was disappearing, more were coming within earshot. However this time, there were more than one, and along with them were voices. One of them, she distinguished as the nurse’s, but Cotton’s ears rose when she recognized the other two, and immediately moisture accumulated in her eyes.

In the doorway, the nurse returned, entering the room and followed closely by two more ponies. One was a well-built earth pony stallion with a brown coat and black mane, and the other was a unicorn mare with an orange coat and yellow mane. Upon seeing these two ponies, a wave of emotions flowed over her, and the barrier holding them all back fell.

“M-mom, dad…” Cotton cried fully, tears flowing freely from her eyes after seeing her parents in front of her for the first time in what felt like forever.

“Sweetie…!” the mare said, she and the stallion walking up to the bed wearing expressions of shock and confusion. The orange mare stepped next to Cotton, glancing at her injured hind leg and the bandages on her face and various other parts of her body completely bewildered by what had happened to her daughter. She was abruptly taken by surprise once the filly threw herself at her mother, a pair of legs wrapping themselves around her neck and squeezing tightly. Cotton buried her muzzle into her mother’s shoulder and didn’t hold back, bawling into the warm patch of fur with loud, heavy sobs.

In her confused state, Cotton’s mother stood there immobile as though not quite sure what to do, before comforting the filly with her own hug. “Hey, it’s okay. Your father and I are here.” The brown stallion—Cotton’s father went to caress the filly as well as Cotton wet her mother’s fur with her tears. In the warm embrace of her parents, Cotton’s anxiety faded completely, a flurry of emotions—relief, happiness, and warmth filling her entire being. She was home.

She was safe.

Cotton’s muffled crying continued, and as her parents continued to comfort her, her father asked the main question that was on both of their minds. “Cotton, what happened?”

“S-she’s dead,” Cotton wailed, voice broken up by sobs. “Spectrum’s d-dead.”

“What? What do you mean?” her father asked, not following Cotton’s words.

“Those t-things… they killed her. She—she just…” she trailed off, unable to continue as she hugged her parents tighter, shaking uncontrollably.

Cotton’s mother turned to the nurse. “Ma’am, what happened to her?”

“We don’t know yet,” the nurse replied, proceeding to explain. “She was brought in yesterday in bad shape by somepony who found her on the carriage of a train, but that’s the extent of the details. We fixed her up as best as we could and contacted you right after.”

It took a while for the orange mare to process the information she was told. She looked back down at her daughter again, watching as she held onto her as though for dear life and just cried, like she had been through a horribly traumatizing experience. Sharing a look with her husband, she continued to brush Cotton’s pink and white mane with her hoof, clueless as to what had happened to her daughter, but knowing only that she needed consolation.

Cotton settled down after a few more minutes, still visibly distraught but more composed than earlier. She lifted her head from her mother’s shoulder, eyes reddened and watery, and sat still with her head low.

“Hey, sweetie?” Cotton’s mother said. “I need you to tell me what happened. Did somepony hurt you?”

Cotton didn’t respond right away, inhaling brokenly, but then shook her head.

“What happened then?” There was no answer from the filly this time. Cotton had her attention directed to the bed sheets again, quaking subtly in agitation. “Cotton? I need you to talk to me, how did this happen to you?”

“My apologies, miss,” the nurse interjected, “but I believe it would be best to let her rest for now. She isn’t in any state to talk about what happened.”

Cotton’s mother wanted to retort, bothered by not knowing what or who had hurt her daughter like this, but then she sighed and nodded in accord. She turned back to Cotton, running a hoof through her mane. “Whatever happened, you don’t have to worry. You’re safe here. Everything’s going to be okay.”

The sound of the caring, reassuring voice of Cotton’s mother and the presence of her parents put her at ease, and for the next few moments, the room was silent as her parents held her again, their affection making her worries faded into dust.

“I’m terribly sorry to cut this short, but it’s very important that Cotton gets a lot of rest right now, so I’m going to have to ask you two to come back another time,” the nurse informed.

Cotton’s parents, although disappointed that they couldn’t stay longer, wore understanding looks. The brown stallion knelt down to Cotton’s level. “Get a good rest, Cotton. We’ll be back really soon.”

Cotton’s looked up suddenly with a pleading face. “Please don’t leave…”

“Your parents will be allowed to visit you tomorrow,” the nurse said in order to hearten the filly. “they’ll be back before you know it.”

Cotton wanted her parents to stay so badly, wishing for the feeling of assurance from her parents being at her company to last, but the nurse’s words that her parents would return tomorrow made her feel better about it.

“I love you, mom and dad,” she said.

“We love you too, sweetie,” her mom said as her and the stallion went to leave. “We’ll see you tomorrow. Take it easy.” And with that, they left the room.

The nurse looked at Cotton. “Alright, I’m just going to check a few more things, and then I’ll be out of your hair so you can get a good sleep.”

Cotton hadn’t heard the nurse. With the absence of her parents, her anxiety began to creep back in. The breeze touching her foreleg caught her attention again, and she found herself staring at the open window against the wall next to the bed. Her breath caught in her throat. Something could easily get through and attack her. It wasn’t safe.

Noticing the filly’s agitation, the nurse stopped what she was doing. “What’s the matter?”

“The window,” Cotton muttered. “Close it.”

“Are you sure? It helps get fresh air in, and it’s good for—”

“Please,” Cotton insisted more loudly. “I want it closed.”

Although puzzled, the nurse stepped toward the window, rotating the handle until the screen closed shut. The breeze was gone, ridding of some of the tension in her gut.

Loud voices started coming from the hallway outside, prompting the nurse to turn her head towards the door. Cotton’s own stare shifted to the hallway in curiosity as she made out the conversation that was taking place.

“Hey, excuse me, ma’am, you’re not allowed back here.” said a deep, gravelly voice.

“You don’t understand, I need to talk to her, its urgent!” The next voice was feminine and raspy, and sounded strangely familiar, as though it belonged to somepony she knew.

“You can not see a patient unless you have checked in and confirmed a visit with them.”

“Do you know who the fuck I am?”

“It doesn’t matter. You must still respect the guidelines.”

“Fuck the guidelines. I need to see Cotton now!”

Cotton’s eyelids shot up.

“Ma’am, do not use that tone of voice or we will escort you out of here. You can not see her at the moment, you must leave.”

“If it turns out she did go to Ponyville and went in that hospital, its gonna be a huge ass fucking problem for all of Equestria—I need to know she didn’t go there, now LET ME THROUGH!”

“For the last time, you can not see her currently, now please turn around and—ARG!”

Cotton heard the impact of somepony hitting the ground, and then other voices came in, shouting words she couldn’t discern. The shuffle of some sort of fight came next, more bodies collapsing to the floor in succession along with shouts of pain. Ponies in white uniforms ran down the hallway, and as the fight continued, the raspy voice began to grunt loudly, its owner assumedly being outmatched.

“LET… ME… GO!!” the feminine voice screamed, like a mental patient caught trying to escape. The nurse trotted to the door and looked into the hallway, gasping at what she saw. The struggling kept on for another minute as Cotton was left to imagine what was going on out there. Before long, though, the voices in the hallway grew further, until a door shut, and a lull took the place of the racket outside.

Cotton sat upright, contributing to the stillness that hung overhead. She hadn’t been thinking so much about the fight that took place, but of the words the raspy-voiced mare spoke. How had she known about her going to Ponyville, or even about the hospital?

What did she mean about it being a problem for all of Equestria?

Questions swirled around in her mind, but what disturbed her the most was not only how desperate the mare was to talk to her, but that she had been willing to cause a fight in order to get to her. Whoever that mare was knew something about what had happened at that town, and her reaction to finding out what she had done caused a strange feeling to develop inside of Cotton. A horrible feeling that the horrors had in fact not ended with her escape from the town, and that her and Spectrum going to Ponyville made her responsible for something much worse than she realized.

“By Celestia, what in the world was that all about?” the nurse said to herself, walking back into the room and giving Cotton a warm smile. “Don’t worry yourself too much over that. After all, you have a good long rest ahead of you, and the last thing you need is something to fret over.”

Cotton nodded, but still felt uneasy after what she had heard. She kept replaying the mare’s words in her mind, attempting to dissect them and pull away a different conclusion, but the only conclusions she could reach were equally horrifying.

“Oh, before I leave you be, I have something for you.” The nurse went up to the drawers next to Cotton’s bed and pulled open the top one before reaching inside and pulling out a scratched up camera with a strap attached. “The pony who brought you in told us you had this with you. It’s fully charged, so I’ll leave it here for you when you wake up tomorrow.” She placed it on top of the drawers, and then headed back to the door. “I’ll be back in the morning, alright?”

Cotton nodded again.

“Sweet dreams, hun.” The nurse stepped out of the room and closed the door, leaving Cotton alone. The filly looked over at the camera the nurse left, and then reached over to grab it. It was wet and dented all over, but powered on with no issue when she pressed the button on the side of the camera.

She pressed a second button, and on the screen, rows of photos that had been taken previously were displayed. Using the arrows next to the screen, she navigated across the rows of photos and selected one from the bunch.

The camera loaded a picture of Cotton and Spectrum during Hearths Warming, digging into their presents excitedly, eager to discover what was inside. The tears returned, the sight of her and Spectrum together making her miss the pegasus even more. She scrolled further and loaded a photo of her and Spectrum holding sundae’s while Spectrum held the camera to take the picture. Chuckling sadly, she scrolled further to a picture of Spectrum with a playful grin pinning Cotton to the ground, her face red with laughter whilst being tickle-tortured. With each picture she selected, she was sent further down a rollercoaster of emotions, crying softly with the occasional giggle as she viewed the memories of her and her closest friend, wishing more than ever that she could spend one last moment with her.

The screen then displayed the first image her and Spectrum had taken at Ponyville of the destroyed town hall. She pressed the arrow a couple more times, ending up on the image that Spectrum had asked her to take of her in front of a broken-down house. As Cotton examined the picture, she took notice of the outline of some sort of shape inside the house, and when she looked closer, she identified it as the skeletal remains of a corpse.

She flipped through the next few photos in line—the one of the cafeteria, and the photos Cotton had taken of the basement after she fell to find her way around—and then stopped on one particular one.

The padlocked door.

For a reason that Cotton couldn’t wrap her head around, the unsettling feeling inside of her intensified. But as she stared at the picture, a detail stood out. Between the door’s iron bars was a white glow that generated a small, diagonal lens flare. Cotton pulled up the options tab and zoomed in on the glow. The barred door now took up more of the image, and the glow began to take shape, but not enough to make out what it was.

She zoomed in further and looked again. This time, she could distinguish what looked to be a face. Except, the face was deformed, and from its mouth, sharp teeth almost like fangs stuck out. The face’s glowing eyes was staring directly at the camera…

Cotton freaked out, shutting the camera off and dropping it on the bed sheets. Her recollection of the creatures in the hospital came back to her, and she shuddered.

It’s over, she told herself. I’m safe.

Filling her lungs with air and releasing it, she took the camera and placed it back on the drawers, before sinking into the covers on the bed. She hadn’t noticed up until now how tired she was. Moving into a comfortable position on the silky mattress, Cotton rested her head on the pillow, and closed her eyes, the numerous thoughts rushing about in her mind gradually melting away until sleep came to her.

***

Cotton was woken in the dark to a high-pitched screech outside the room’s window, piercing through the silence of the night.