Fallout: Equestria, Project Horizons

Chapter 48: Inferno

Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons
By Somber
Chapter 48: Inferno

"Listen up! Smoke is spreading all across Equestria. But don't worry, I've received a letter from the Princess informing me that it is not coming from a fire."

"Okay. Xanthe, give me a timetable," I said; the flames were spreading from the burning rocket, and the central space was beginning to fill with thick black smoke. The heat of the blue radiation fires was quickly becoming eclipsed by the heat of the more ordinary-looking but no less dangerous orange flames from the zebra fuel. Still, on the bright side, the warhead coming to rest below the medical level, leaning against the far wall, meant that the route up was clear... assuming that we had time. After a brief but far too long moment of silence, I looked over at the zebra staring down in horror at the spectacle below us. "Xanthe! How long do we have?"
She blinked and then turned to me, chewing her lip. "There're four fuel pods. As the lowest heats up, the fuel that isn't on fire will boil and eventually breach the pod above it, spreading the fire even more and accelerating--"
I swatted her flank with my singed tail. "I need a number. Minutes? Hours? What?" We were backing away from the heat and smoke that began to swirl in through the smashed out window.
"Half an hour? An hour at most," Xanthe whimpered. "If we had more time and Cerberus were intact, we might have severed the warhead and removed it, but..."
"Yeah. That plan is out the window," I said. Between the smooze and those flaming ghouls, I really wasn't bothered by the idea of Hightower being gone soon. Particularly since, if we could get in, the smooze could get out. Still, "Meatlocker needs to be warned that their neighbor is about to go boom. Can you get Cerberus flying again and out through that hole? Without getting blasted?" I asked, pointing at the gaping breach two stories above us with my stump. Of all our fliers, Cerberus was the only one we could really spare to warn Meatlocker.
"I... don't know? His levitation system should already be functional enough, but depending on the targeting talismans in the turrets they might let him go, or they could disintegrate him," she said, and bit her lip again. Then she jerked her head up with a smile. "I'll examine one of the sentries and see if they have an intact IFF unit!" She turned and raced away from the window and down the hall.
"You have five minutes!" I yelled after her, then coughed at the acrid smoke that was filling the air. I suspected that death by balefire blast could be preempted by the far more mundane peril of smoke inhalation. I turned and looked up at Stygius, Psychoshy, and Silver Spoon. "Go back to Rampage. Get the RadAway bottled up however you can, and make sure those supplies you scavenged are passed around." I closed my eyes asked Lacunae, "Any ideas on dealing with all this smoke?" Just because I was connected to the Goddess now didn't mean I had to use all those freaky alicorn powers.
"Wet cloths tied around our muzzles should help. Respirators would be better," she replied immediately.
"We don't have any respirators, so tie wet cloths over your muzzles!" I shouted at the pair of fliers as they flew back towards the radiology storage, then coughed again myself. I looked up at the power-armored griffin and shouted, "Carrion! See if you can find a way up to the armory! Lacunae, take Snips and see if you can get my sword," I said, looking sternly at the portly unicorn... ghoul... thing... Lacunae looked at me oddly but then trotted back to Radiology.
When everypony was away doing something, I collapsed, clutching my chest and tearing up from the pain. Whatever curse Snips had put on me, the sensation was spreading. I could feel the chewing feeling halfway along my ribs and up my throat. Everything hurt. The ebb and surge of pain grew heavier with every breath. I had to fight it. He hadn't been able to end his curse, so now my only hope was that there was something Snips's partner could do to help me.
I could only spare a minute to address the pain; it wasn't an injury I was going to regenerate or damage that could be magically repaired. I just had to get the rest of them to safety.
Carrion appeared out of the smoke, the clouds swirling around him as his milky eyes narrowed on me doubled over. "There's a way up to the seventh level, if we do some climbing. There are more flaming ones, and this is not nearly as effective using spark batteries," he said as he held up the beam gun that Xanthe had created. A half dozen spark batteries were wired up around the perimeter near the handles.
I did everything I could to straighten up and smile. "Good job. We'll get out of this yet." He just stared at me, and I felt new sweat popping to my brow. "What?"
"Oh, if only you were a griffin," he muttered as he looked skyward. "I would have given my left paw for a commander like you."
I blinked in shock. "Um... thanks?" I replied, then peered up at where the smoke was being blown out the hole in the prison wall, then back at him. "Were you a soldier before...?" I balked, not sure how rude it was to point out he'd died. The question seemed to annoy him a little, but not for the reasons I thought.
"I am a soldier. All griffins are soldiers. From the youngest chick to the oldest harpy, we're all soldiers. We strive for assertiveness, certainty, and martial skill and hold ourselves to our honor and our Contracts," he said coolly as he looked in the direction of the bomb, though now there was so much smoke that all that could be seen was a murky blue glow. It seemed to cut the radiation a little, at least.
"Sorry, I don't know much about griffins," I said; talking helped keep my mind off the curse inside me. "Just that you... fought for us during the war?" I vaguely remembered a few references in 99's history lessons to the 'marginal effect of griffin mercenaries' during the war, but I was leery of trusting anything academic from 99.
"We fought for both sides. We fought to protect neutral parties. Fought for whoever owned our Contracts. The only people we never fought were our own kind."
"You keep talking about these Contract things. Can you tell me about it?" I asked with a baffled smile.
He shrugged. "It's not a thing ponies understand. Our Contract is a reflection of who we are and what we will and won't do. For a griffin to claim what they will and won't do, and then do just that, justifies our existence. I won't kill young, nor will I lie. No order, no threat, no bribe will make me do so. To do otherwise would violate my Contract. Once, whole rookeries were bound by common Contracts that defined them. There was even a griffin who once tried to get all of griffinkind to adopt a common clause in our Contracts putting griffin interests first... but unfortunately Gilda failed, and none know what became of her."
"So how did Ahuizotl get your Contract?" I asked, and received a scowl in response. "If I can ask..."
"Commanders do not ask. They order others to tell them what they wish to know." It sounded like griffins were creeping up on zebras for weirdest species ever. "I pledged my Contract to the holder for as long as I lived, first to a family of scavengers who hid my young during the war with the Enclave. The father was an honorable earth pony, but when he died, my Contract passed to his son. He drove off my family and used me as a weapon, forcing me to kill any who attacked him due to his unreasonable and obnoxious demands. I would have happily killed him, or allowed them to... if it would not violate my Contract.
"He discovered an empty stable far to the south and set about looting it, but the fool ignored the signs of radiation. When he passed out, I carried him from the stable, but the radiation was already terminal and we both became ghouls. In Meatlocker, he sold my Contract to the bartender to pay his tab. I've been Shifty's servant ever since."
My ears perked. "Shifty? I thought you worked for Ahuizotl."
He just shrugged. "They're one and the same. He thought that 'Ahuizotl' was far more impressive-sounding."
"Did Ahuizotl have dealings with zebras?" I demanded.
"I protect the holder of my Contract. That includes his secrets," he said with sullen resignation.
I wanted to demand that he tell me the truth, but guessed it was futile. He'd died of radiation poisoning saving the life of a pony he hated to avoid breaking his Contract. Then I blinked as an idea came to me. If this worked... "Tell me he didn't have dealings with zebras." The griffin blinked and scowled sharply. Then he knit his brows as if processing my response. I hoped that 'killing me to protect his secrets' wasn't in the Contract. Then Carrion looked right at me and simply smiled.
Yes! Maybe brain tumors had made me smarter. "Go help the others," I said as I looked down the hall that Xanthe had taken, then began to limp along it as quickly as I could.
Tulip had died outside the Mortuary, her skull crushed with a single overwhelming blow. The Remnant had gotten their tipoff from a ghoul that turned out to be the owner of that bar. And Xanthe had known about Meatlocker; had she simply heard of its location, or had she been there before? The thought of the Remnant being able to get soldiers inside and kill ponies like Velvet and Windclop...
I found the zebra half-buried in the shell of one of the sentries. She said something zebraish and pulled her head out with a gadget in her mouth. Then her eyes widened and she dropped the device as I stepped forward, rising onto my rear legs to close the last few feet and grabbing the collar of her suit, tugging her almost onto her hindhoof tips. "Maiden!" she wailed, and the suit flickered and she disappeared. I tightened my grip on it, my eyes locked on the shimmer where I knew her head was.
"Xanthe," I kept my voice low and even as I gave her the shootiest look I could. "You haven't told me everything you should have. Tell me now: is the Remnant in Meatlocker?" She cried out, and I felt invisible hooves beat on my chest. "Tell me the truth!"
She appeared in a flash, her eyes wide and streaked with tears. "The truth is you have cursed me!" she wailed as I stared into her eyes. "You are going to destroy my people! You are the Maiden of the Stars! Nightmare Moon! The champion of the deepest darkness! And if I do not oppose you... my home, my people, are doomed!"
I slowly relaxed my grip and sat down, running my hand over my face. Not this shit again... "Xanthe... I am not Nightmare Moon. I... saw... the real Nightmare Moon in a memory once. That's not me."
The zebra rubbed her throat and kept her eyes low. "How do you know you are not?" Then she looked at me with the first hard gaze I'd seen from her. "The Maiden is born of heartache and sorrow, and I know you suffer. She butchers all who oppose her. I saw what you did in Yellow River. She sows destruction for the entire world. That monster you slew was indestructible, and yet you destroyed it."
I slumped. "Xanthe, I got lucky." Something in me was drawing tight, a single raw nerve growing sharper and sharper. "That's all it is. That's all it's ever been."
"Luck? Luck that you die but return to life? Luck that you overcome all adversity?" The zebra scoffed. "Luck that you stumble across the secrets of ages past?"
"It's just stupid, fucking, luck!" I screamed at her, and she curled up in a ball. But I couldn't stop. I was like a canister of explosive gas with a hole punched in the side as I shouted, "Luck that I got out of 99! Luck that I survived! Luck that I found friends who would help me! I don't have any kind of dark, magical power! Hell, I'm damned lucky I can summon a wisp of light! And just because I've survived, don't think it's been easy. Don't think that I haven't paid for surviving when others died. But that's all there is to it. I am not Nightmare Moon! I am not the Maiden of the Stars! I am not special and I am not going to put up with it any longer!" I screamed down at her.
"You sure about that?" Psychoshy asked behind me, and I turned and saw all of the others staring in shock. "'Cause I saw what you did in Hippocratic, and Rampage has been trying to convince me you really are some fucking paragon and not the scariest fucking mare I could ever imagine."
"Don't give me that..." I began, but she flew out in front of the others and pressed her face right into mine.
"Don't you blow me off, Blackjack!" she snapped, her eyes narrowed. "Because you are scary. There's not a single one of us that isn't afraid of you on some damned level. You're a fucking cyborg mutant death mare who could probably kill every single one of us if she wanted to. You talk to shit that isn't there, know things no fucking pony should ever know, and you keep going on. Why the fuck shouldn't she think of you as Nightmare Moon? Why the fuck shouldn't everyone?"
"Because I'm trying to do good!" I countered, twisting around to face her. "I'm trying to make the world better."
"Glad to hear it. That still doesn't make you any less damn scary. Because all it would take is you changing your mind, and the rest of us are dead! Maybe you think the world would be better without Psychoshy. What are my chances of stopping you if you really wanted to kill me? She thinks you're the devil. I'd say you're two steps away. And anypony who's seen you fight would agree with me." She stared right into my eyes, so taut that she seemed ready to snap. There was anger in those eyes, sure.
But there was also fear...
I looked behind her at my companions, at the concern, wariness, and worry in their eyes. I felt the pain tightening up inside me. I seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. No. I was a good pony. I might not have known what my virtue was, but I was a good pony. I tried! I tried, damn it.
And I heard a voice from within me, strange and cold. A mare whispering softly in my ear, a mare who'd once offered tricks for a hoofful of bits. It doesn't matter how good you are; to some ponies, you'll always be a monster. I looked at Rampage, and six ponies looked back at me through one set of eyes. It doesn't matter how awesome you are; other ponies will tear you down if they can. I swallowed, my gaze moving to Snips and seeing the cool understanding in his luminescent stare, and that cold whisper changed to an angry mare's suspicious mutter. It's hard to smile smile smile when all everypony does is lie lie lie...
That whirring within me grew sharper, the scream of Enervation growing clearer. I'd tried to give them all I could. What more did they want from me? It doesn't matter what you try to give; they'll never really appreciate it. Silver Spoon looked at me with her hurt eyes, hurt that I wasn't the friend she'd sought for so long. Of course you always hurt the ones you care about. The more you care, the more they hurt. Funny, why was Psychoshy snickering in my ears? Their lips were moving, but I couldn't hear them over those damned screams and whispers. Go on, Blackjack. Tell yourself you're okay. Maybe this time you'll believe it...
I fell to my knees and clenched my eyes shut. It felt like the world was slipping away. I could hear Nightmare Moon's cold laugh as she rose to power. As she gave in, as she felt such joy. It had been so long since I'd been happy. So long...
Then a mare's voice said softly, Come on, Blackjack, you're smarter than that.
Slowly I raised my eyes and looked at Lacunae, the alicorn smiling ever so slightly. You know what the difference is. You just have to remember. When you do something wrong, what do you have to do?
"You're right," I said as the twisting in my chest slowly eased. "You're right... I can be pretty damned scary. And I know that I shouldn't get angry for... what Xanthe thinks of me. I guess I do match this Maiden pretty well." I turned and looked back at Xanthe. "I'm sorry..." Then my eyes returned to Psychoshy, and I gave an exhausted smile. "The difference is that I try and do better. I know I'm a fuckup... but I haven't given up. I know I can be a better pony... and I try to be. I don't always make it. And some day, I might stop, and if I do I trust that a better pony like Lacunae, or Rampage, or Stygius, or you will put an end to me. Until then, though, I'm not Nightmare Moon. I never will be."
There was an awkward moment; Psychoshy trotted over to Stygius, both of them looking back at me with a worried frown. "One of the ghouls is our agent," Xanthe murmured, so softly that for a second I thought I'd imagined it. "He feeds us intelligence and passes messages on for a steep price. He has for years." The zebra glanced up and sniffed, begging in a whimper, "Please don't kill my people, Maiden."
I sighed and reached out, paused, and patted her head. "I don't want to kill anyone, Xanthe. Not if I can help it." Then I looked at my stump. "And right now, I'm not looking like I'm going to kill much of anypony. Nurse Graves died helping us; I just want to make sure Meatlocker is safe. But a ghoul named Tulip had her head crushed, and I'm pretty sure it was a zebra who did it." She pressed her lips together, and I added, "I'm not saying that 'cause I hate zebras, Xanthe. I just don't want people who help me to get hurt."
Xanthe licked her lips and looked at the IFF gadget. "I can... I can include a message. If there is one of Caesar's Hooves hidden in Meatlocker, they'll be somewhere near the Mortuary. A locked storeroom, perhaps." She glanced at Carrion, then dropped her gaze a little. "I just... wanted to protect my people..."
"Me too," I said, rising to my hooves again. "Work quick. We need to get going."
But getting going would take a minute or two. While most of the RadAway in the storeroom had been lost, there were still tablets of Buck, Fixer, and Rad-X intact, as well as bottles of water. We all chowed down on the chalky tablets, Rampage passed out water bottles filled with her recycled RadAway, and we each took a drink or two. It'd been 'energized' with Flux, which probably meant taint. As Xanthe bowed out of the room to work on Cerberus, I swirled the bottle of orangey fluid with my magic. "Are you sure it's safe to add that Flux stuff? Don't want anypony growing eye tentacle penises, now."
"Flux is good shit, Pink," Rampage retorted. "Always added a drop or two to my Dash to turn it into Rainboom. Great shit! Got you so high even earth ponies could fly." Then her grin melted into an angry scowl. "And when they ended up in the ER, they looked like they'd fallen from flight, too." She rolled her eyes and snorted. "Hey, not everypony can handle the Dash."
Xanthe returned with Cerberus in tow. I glanced at the zebra and then at the robot. "You understand your mission?"
The robot sighed. "Return to Meatlocker, tell all those pansy ghouls about the bomb, and warn them about a zebra infiltrator. Hoo... rah..." he muttered sullenly. "Retreating when there's still hundreds of acceptable targets is just sickening!"
"Buck up, Soldier. There'll be other ghouls to disintegrate," I said, earning a surprised and slightly troubled look from Silver Spoon. "Remember, straight there."
"Yes, ma'am. Let it never be said the Equestrian Mechanized Corps failed to execute orders!" he announced, and gave a sort of salutelike gesture with his remaining claw. Lacunae and Snips walked over, the blue unicorn holding my sword in his magic as far away from himself as possible as if the blade were diseased and reeking. I slipped it into its sheath with a smile and thanked him.
With that, we started our climb, first up through the shattered windows and onto the narrow sloping ledge of metal that ran around the interior, and then up to the crumbled rubble around the breach in the prison wall. Those of us not capable of flight were assisted by those who were. The three of us with magic flung blazing clumps of detritus down into the inferno below as the air grew thicker and visibility shortened. I kept waiting for something to spring out at us... another flaming ghoul, or maybe the Warden would send his robots again... but for once our only opponents were time and gravity. Finally, we came to the hole punched through the cells and exterior wall. I looked at the inch-thick steel armor plating on the exterior wall as we moved up close to the hole. Hot air blew out around us, carrying a plume of smoke out like a chimney.
"How do we know this IFF is going to work?" I yelled over the howling air. Rain was pouring down outside; it looked like late afternoon. Had we really only been in Hightower a few hours? Felt like weeks.
"If he flies out there and explodes, we know it didn't work," Carrion replied. Xanthe looked up from where she made a few checks on the gadget she'd taped to the robot's side and gave a shrug.
"All right then. Hoo-rah!" the robot shouted as he floated out the hole. "For Equestriaaaaaa!" he roared, dropping like a rock. I gaped and leaned out the hole as I watched him fall. Lacunae looked out above me, and a purple glow surrounded the robot, slowing his descent slowed as he leveled out. He floated over the heads of the glowing ghouls below and headed for the wall before I finally lost sight of him in the rain and smoke.
Hopefully he'd pull if off... and then I put him out of my mind as Lacunae and Psychoshy lifted me up through the broken floor to the high security floor right beneath the armory. The gray smoke was darkening, but the radiation was still damned high, despite the smoke. Wait... the radiation was actually climbing!
Then I stopped wondering why as I saw blue flames slowly approaching. "Flamer!" I warned as the swirling smoke parted to reveal a flaming pony squeezing out of a breached cell. Vigilance came up as I stood in the gap and sighted along the barrel, planting shots as precisely as I could. The flaming ghoul let out a scream and charged, my bullets half-vaporizing before striking its skull. The 12.7mm rounds were substantial enough to slow it down, but beyond that...
Then Carrion flew up the hole behind me, and a line of green lanced out and began to chew through the ghoul. Xanthe was placed beside me, firing her sidearm wildly into its torso as I kept my shots on its head. Finally, silver arrows streaked through the smoke and sank into the flaming monster's head. It collapsed in on itself, disappearing in a heap of green dust.
Carrion stopped firing, the beam gun smoking in his claws. "Conductor's melted!" Xanthe shouted, reaching into one of her packs for a gray block of metal, tossing it atop her head, then kicking a smoking chunk of off the bottom of the jury-rigged gun. As the block came down, she slammed it home into the gap, and the gun gave an ominous hum once again.
Then from the cell beside her came a scream and a billowing, crackling ball of green fire as the glowing ghouls within launched a blast of radioactive magic at us. Carrion swooped around, caught Xanthe in one forearm, and whirled. His wings spread wide and blocked the barrage. Lacunae and I moved around him and slipped into S.A.T.S. almost as one. These ghouls weren't the fiery variety, and bullets made their heads explode into fountains of radioactive gore and bone. Carrion's wings were both disintegrating and regenerating from the radioactive blasts as the AM rifle boomed next to me.
Four down. About four hundred to go between here and the armory door. Between the bar walls of each cell were stretches of concrete wall just barely wide enough for a single pony to take cover in. "Lacunae! Can you shield us?" I thought at her.
"I... it's very hard to focus. I think the talisman is wearing off. I should be able to protect myself, but we must hurry!" Alicorns and ghouls might be empowered by radiation, but Enervation was another matter.
"Right!" I shouted, not able to see more than ten feet in the smoke. "Move quick! Call out if you see a flaming one. Move!" And I hobbled out in the lead, diving across in front of the cells and barely missed by the radioactive blasts of the glowing ghouls within. Some held as many as half a dozen stuck behind the barred doors. Cell by cell I jumped and rolled, half the time landing on my face as my body kept using my stump like it was a full leg. Once I fell short, and a flaming one thankfully still trapped almost cooked me before I could get clear. Stygius shadowflashed right into the middle of the cell and kicked the beast in the head as a distraction, reappearing back with us as it turned in response.
Worse than the flames and blasts were the screams for help, though. In more than one cell I saw glowing ghouls among their feral brethren and begging to be let out. I just couldn't think of a way we could open the fused steel doors and extract them safely. I wanted to give them a chance. I needed to...
But sometimes we don't get what we want or need...
"Keep moving!" Rampage shouted, shoving me away from a pleading ghoul who thought I was a prison guard, just in time to keep the ghoul's cellmates from blasting me. Damn it, even if I wanted to help, there was no way I could let two dozen half-crazy ghouls escape intact for every one sane one!
We reached the corner, and a turret popped down and started to strafe us. The bullets must have made a lucky hit, because Lacunae screamed as a half dozen rounds punched through her weakened shield and ripped right through her left foreleg at the knee. The mare dropped, and Silver Spoon grabbed a rag from the floor and immediately tried to stem the bleeding. I dodged into the path of the bullets, raising my foreleg to protect my face. I could take a few rounds of machinegun fire; at least, I hoped I could. I took aim and blasted the chattering turret. Rampage raced to the corner, drawing the fire from me, and sprang off the concrete wall, crashing right through the ceiling turret. Then she turned and grinned back at me.
Then she disappeared in a sheet of blue fire. She didn't even get a chance to scream as she curled up like a lump of charcoal.
The flaming one walked slowly through the smoke towards us, inhaling another breath to blast me. Then Carrion was there, moving around the corner with the beam gun in his claws. The beam streaked through the smoky air and collided with the ghoul's head in a shower of blue-green sparks. It didn't, however, stop the second plume of radioactive fire from washing over us. Carrion flew up, intercepting the majority of the flames with his power armor as he kept the beam on target. I would have given him a medal if I could. The beam gun sparked and died even as the flaming ghoul crumbled.
"Oh please tell me I can fix it! Please! Please!" the zebra fretted as she looked it over. Carrion, his feathers blackened and fur smoking, just looked slightly indignant as she fussed beside him.
"Well?" I asked as I beat out the flames. She gave me a stricken look that told me we'd better not run into another free flaming one. "Nevermind! Psycho! Stygius! Get Rampage." Then I turned and knelt. To my amazement and relief, Lacunae's leg was already regenerating before my eyes. "I... ah..." I looked at her severed leg with the PipBuck attached. "That's not going to regenerate into a new Lacunae, is it?"
"Of course not," she said as she levitated the cuff and pulled her leg out of the PipBuck. "I am going to miss S.A.T.S., though." Then she passed the device to me and tossed the foreleg away. "You'd better hold onto it."
"Ugh, she's heavy!" the pegasus mare protested, but she and Stygius managed to heave the charred mare up between them.
"Deal with it," I replied as we made our way along to the middle of the next face and two more turrets. Lacunae, Carrion, and I blasted them with a barrage of gunfire that made short work of them. Then we were at the armory doors.
Yeah, I could see why Snips thought we'd need a balefire egg. These doors were so tough that they hadn't melted or warped like most of the metal on this level. There wasn't a terminal or a lock to pick, either. I started to wheeze... damn this smoke! "How does it open?"
"Only from the inside! And there're no windows in the armory," Snips yelled back over the fires below. "That's why I brought the egg!" The charcoal lump cracked and Rampage shook herself hard, shedding the crumbly black shell.
"Am I still grown up?" she asked, inspecting the scorched armor still fused to charred chunks of hide. "Aw, Hammersmith is gonna kill me."
"That I'd like to see," Psychoshy countered.
I beat my hoof against the door several times, slumping in futility. "Blackjack..." Lacunae said softly in my mind. I looked up at her and saw her staring down into the smoke. Three burning forms advanced from behind us, flickering through the acrid black clouds. I smacked my gray-etched steel hand against the wall again, then stared at it a second. Would that... could it work?
"Clear that cell," I said, shouting as I pointed at the next one down. Fortunately, all the ghouls inside were feral glowing ones. Lacunae and Carrion weathered their barrage of radioactive fire, but I noticed that once or twice the radioactive blasts actually got through Lacunae's weakened shield. When her talisman died, how long would she last? Or would our minds start jumping like between normal alicorns till we fell apart?
Regardless, ten seconds later, the cell was empty. "Open that door," I said as I looked back along the row. The flaming ones were still taking their time. Maybe they didn't know we were here, or maybe they knew there was nowhere left for us to go. Rampage and Carrion smashed the door, busting it open as Xanthe sat on the floor with the beam gun in her hooves, swapping out capacitors, spark batteries, and who knew what to try to get it to work.
"What are you doing, Tiara?" Silver Spoon asked as she fidgeted, looking at the mindless ghouls in the cells in horror. The fused but apparently weakened metal finally gave way as Carrion pulled the door off and tossed it aside. I ran past the still dimly glowing ghoul corpses and right to the back of the cell and the metal toilet. The concrete above the toilet had been defaced by dozens of names. "Oh... ah... I guess when you got to go..." the earth pony muttered as she looked away at once.
The bowl was empty, the contents long ago evaporated, and I shouted down into the metal basin. "Hey! Hey you! You worthless piece of slime! You ignorant, disgusting blob!" Rampage rushed up beside me, looking on in confusion. I glared down and banged the toilet, shouting.
She looked at me like I'd lost my mind, then blinked, grinned, and joined me in insulting the drain. "You're nothing but an unstable short chain molecule!" Huh?
"You foul, obnoxious muck!" I yelled, giving the mare a confused look. Of all the ponies in her, Octopus was the one shouting insults? Really?
"You have a weak electrochemical bond!" she bellowed down into the bowl. Yes, really.
"I have seen some disgusting crud in my time, but you take the cake!" I roared down the toilet, and Rampage shook me. "You're nothing but--" Another shake. "You're just--"
"Blackjack! Look!" she said in a voice that was definitely not the doctor, pointing her blackened hoofclaw at a pair of names scratched in the middle of the rest.
'Doof', and immediately below that, 'Deus'.
This was his cell. This tiny eight by six space, that held four ponies... this was where he ended up. Where he'd gone from mere criminal rapist to a monster. Twist's wide, pink eyes stared at me in horror.
And then I smelled sulfur...
"Back! Get back!" I yelled, the toilet suddenly shrieking. Then the bilious blue sludge erupted out and began to pour across the floor. I staggered back out of the cell, falling on my rump. Rampage bit my mane and dragged me out as the smooze began to form into a slimepony. Back on the walkway, the three flaming ponies were nearly upon us.
"Lacunae! Snips! Throw!" I screamed as I scooped up blue smooze with my magic and flung it at the three flaming ponies. The monsters made no effort to dodge; why should they? Bullets melted before they were struck. Then a rain of glowing, hissing sludge began to rain down upon them, and the three let out screams of pain and fury. The blue slime hissed and blackened as it came in contact with their flaming hides, but it also extinguished their flames a bit. We fell back, step by step, and the three flaming ones charged. "Slow them down!" I yelled. Psychoshy and Stygius darted in overhead, smashing hooves against the darker patches and knocking them back. The pool of smooze slipped around their blazing hooves, and the three now screamed in panic as they tried to back out of it. Then one fell into the acidic sludge, and it grabbed at its fellows and pulled them down as well.
The smooze flooded over them, boiling and blackening and letting out a noxious reek that made me gag. The ghouls struggled, raising melting heads as the entire concoction cooked into a blackened tarlike mud. Even the smooze seemed to find the three a little too spicy for its taste, the blue sludge disappearing back into the corroded toilet. The smoking mess left behind was so destructive that it was eating into the concrete floor.
Wait... if it was strong enough to do that... "Smear it on the door!" I yelled, scooping it up with my magic and painting the tarlike mix across the armored entrance. It began to hiss, pop, and steam. Everypony else stepped back as our magic worked, trying to apply as much to the door as we could; the sticky mung had already eaten halfway through the floor. The face of the door crumbled away in a sheet of smoking rust, and we added another layer. Rampage bravely scooped it up with flat slabs of flaked-off steel. The tar ate through the floor and began to drip down to the next level, and we hurried to use as much of it as we could. Too bad it was too hazardous to take with us; the infernal mix ate through everything, even Sparkle-Cola bottles.
Finally, the hoof-sized locking drum in the middle just fell right out, leaving a hole a pony could peek through. Stygius peeked and shadowflashed inside. A minute later there was a loud thunk, then another, and the door opened a crack. It took all our magic and Carrion's power armor to get the door open enough to squeeze through, and even so, Carrion had to remove his armor, wiggle his way through the gap, pull the armor through piece by piece, and put it back on. Still, we made it.
Lacunae, however, couldn't.
There was simply no way for the alicorn to pass through the gap. She could fit her head and neck in, but no matter how much we shoved the heavy, armored door, the gap simply wasn't wide enough for her body. She screwed her face up and tried to teleport, but the prison's magic barrier was still in effect. Whatever Stygius did to get around it, the alicorn couldn't replicate the feat. She met my eyes and gave a sad smile. "Shall we just skip the argument about you not leaving me behind?"
"I'm not leaving you down here to die," I said immediately, and she chuckled and shook her head.
"I thought not. Take this," she said as she passed her AM gun through the gap. "Simple physics is sometimes our greatest enemy." I settled it across my shoulders as she looked me in the eye. "Keep going. Find a way up to the attic and out." She looked back down towards the hole and said before I could argue, "By myself, I might be able to reach the roof before the turrets take me down."
"Lacunae, there's got to be another way," I said as I tried to adjust the gun's massive weight.
"There isn't. Now go. I'll see you on the roof." And then she turned away, spread her wings, and flew silently off into the smoke.
"Lacunae!" I shouted after her. The further away she went, the greater the interference became between us. I couldn't hear her voice, or she was trying to keep it from me.
"Blackjack," Rampage said as she nudged me, but I closed my eyes, trying to maintain the connection with Lacunae. The Enervation interference was horrible; she kept coming in and out of focus like a badly tuned radio. The exertion made my head throb.
"One second. I want to make sure she gets out okay..." I said through grit teeth as I concentrated. Images came in bursts. I saw her winging her way down to the largest puddle of blue flame, nearly standing inside it as she soaked up as much radiation as she could. Then her standing on the cusp of the hole. Then the alicorn took flight, swooping her way higher and higher along the face of the prison. Red beams sprayed from the turrets at her, and her shield flickered and flashed as she pumped her wings, the Hoofington rain around her glinting crimson and white. Then she soared up and landed on the edge. She'd made it! She was safe! I let out a held breath...
Then there was a flash of red, then darkness and the scream of Enervation. I suddenly found myself incapable of breathing as I stood there.
"Lacunae?" I thought at her. "Lacunae?" I said aloud as I tried to push my brain to hers. Nothing but the Enervation static. "Lacunae!" I screamed as loud as I could.
Nothing.
Gone.
She couldn't be gone. She couldn't be. I thought at her again and again, frantically, tears running down my face as I struggled to make my pathetic magic somehow make contact with the mare. "Please! Please please please... no..." I groaned as I clenched my eyes shut. It was like Mom dying, only this time I was able to appreciate it so much more.
"Blackjack!" Rampage shouted, and I came to in time to hear the grind of wheels and the crackle of robotic voices babbling their nonsense of halting and authorizing lethal force. My eyes popped open as I spotted the intact sentry at the top of the stairs, pointing its gatling beam gun and missile launcher down at me and the rest of my friends.
The AM rifle floated up beside me; I'd never handled a gun this big or heavy before, but frankly at this moment I didn't give a shit about simple physics. I pulled the scope to my eye, slipped into S.A.T.S., and queued two shots at the pristine missile pod. The two rounds ripped into the armored siding, and a moment later the missile within exploded, knocking the sentry to the side and throwing the spray of beam fire wide. I advanced up the stairs at a steady walk, tears in my eyes.
She'd been a goddess. She'd been a friend! And this place had taken her from me! All for my stupid obsession! I blasted again and again as I walked up the steps, the rifle punching holes in its chest. Finally its head exploded in a shower of sparks just as I reached the top of the steps. There was another security door, but this one had a terminal, and two more turrets. I should have used the sentry for cover, but right then I really didn't give a shit. Let them shoot me. Hurting was infinitely better than the feelings that arose from the thought that my friend was gone. The scream of Enervation matched the throb in my chest and the tears in my eyes as I blasted back at the turrets.
"Shit! She's berserk!" I heard Rampage say distantly.
"No, she's not," Xanthe replied as I walked forward, closing the distance and blasting slowly and deliberately.
"Well, why don't you shoot her in the head? It works wonders for you," Psychoshy retorted.
I hurt like hell, but it didn't matter. I'd plough a way out for all of them to get out alive, together. No matter how full of holes I was, I'd... Rampage tackled me and drove me to the ground, taking the shots meant for me. Carrion jumped atop the scrapped sentry as his miniguns purred and several seconds later the turrets were scrapped.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Rampage demanded as she flipped me on my back.
I looked up at Rampage and swallowed. "Lacunae's gone." Everything hurt, in part because I'd just been torn into by three rapid fire enemies. A few seconds more and I wouldn't have been hurting anymore. "She died because of me."
Rampage looked down at me, and the corner of her mouth curled as she said, "Yes, she did. Even I never murdered my best friends..." And then she shuddered and staggered off me. "Shut the fuck up, you monster," she hissed, grabbing the side of her head. "But why? She knows the truth already. Her friend is dead... died because of her..." she said with a leer as she looked back at me. "Shut up!" she shouted, tearing off her helmet and then slamming her forehead against the wall. "I'm sick of you... you vile..." smack, "vicious..." smack, 'thing!' Crack.
She slumped, collapsing on her side as I slowly rose and started to hobble closer. The striped pony panted as she looked up at me. "I think I'm losing my mind, Blackjack. I think... I think..." Suddenly she hung her head. "I deserve to die. Please..." She cursed in Zebra and smashed her head again against the wall with another crunch. "Silence!" Then she laughed again, high and harsh, "Oh, we are so fucked! We are so fucking fucked!" Finally there was one last crunch and she slid to the ground. All of us stared at her as she lay there, and I put my blood-speckled stump on her shoulder. "You have to be strong, Blackjack. Please..."
It's not all about you, Blackjack. I forced a smile and patted her shoulder. "Hey. Don't worry. I just went a little crazy too." That enervating scream was getting annoying, like a hoof scraping a chalkboard. "We'll get through this, Rampage. We'll get through it."
"Rampage. There is no Rampage. No Arloste. I'm just a half dozen ponies squished together in one jar." She wiped the blood off her face with a hoof as her body healed itself. Slowly she turned and walked to the door ahead. Xanthe kept her eyes low as she trotted to the keys and started typing, every now and then looking over at me in worry.
The loss of Lacunae was a huge bloody hole inside me, but Rampage had gotten me to bottle it up for now. When I got out... then I could grieve. Suddenly, the floor shook as there was an incredible boom somewhere below us. One pod down, three to go. Assuming, of course, that the warhead didn't decide to go off before the last pod did. I trotted to Snips, lowering my head to look him in the eyes, then gestured for him to step behind the sentry.
When we were out of sight, I said in a low voice, "Tell me everything about that talisman inside Rampage. Specifically."
He sighed and looked back at the door. "There's not much to tell. We were more focused on getting it to work than on how it actually worked. It's a regeneration talisman. It has a magical template and it restores the pony it's imprinted on. The idea was that it would contain the soul of the last pony it was imprinted on. Removing a soul from a pony in its entirety was fatal, but what if the soul was still contained within the pony? That's the idea."
"And you put it in Razorwire first?"
"We put it in a half dozen ponies first... terminally ill or injured ponies... but they were too close to death for the talisman to work. Oh, there might have been some slight imprinting, but it didn't do what Rarity intended." He coughed and looked aside. "The Warden offered an alternative... we didn't know he meant to kill Razorwire. Please, believe me, we wouldn't have ever taken that step. The talisman almost worked, though... but she still died. Then the Angel of Death was captured..." And he shivered.
"That was one you killed."
"I didn't! And I never would." He shuddered as he shook his head hard. "I don't know what happened. I just know that when Snails and I came to the lab in the morning... Rarity... and the Angel..." He shook his head again, as if trying to physically rattle the memory from his mind. "When we got here, the Angel was dead. Rarity said that the Angel would never hurt anypony ever again, and then she insisted that we put the talisman in somepony who deserved it. The detective who captured the Angel was grievously wounded before her partner rescued her."
Softheart. "But the talisman drove her insane, didn't it?" I pressed.
"Maybe..." Snips said softly, looking away from me. "The haunting effect of soul jars wasn't understood then... still isn't, really. A soul jar is more than just an indestructible object. They want things. Feel things. Hate. Love. The detective was already under a lot of stress, and if we hadn't gotten the haunting fully blended out by then... it could have been the haunting effect that pushed her over the edge."
"What happened next?"
"That's when we lost it the first time," Snips said, licking his lips and giving me a sheepish smile.
"Right. And... how exactly do you lose a soul jar healing talisman?" My incredulous question drew a mirthless smile.
"Funny, that's exactly what Rarity said. But the detective... well... after she was splattered by the train, her body went to the Ministry of Peace. And they found the talisman, saw it was perfectly undamaged... and... eh... somepony recycled it on the black market." He licked his lips and looked away. "We spent six months looking for it. We have no idea how many ponies it might have been put inside; healing talismans like that were generally reserved for very important ponies. But eventually it was found when a patient it was inside... wouldn't die."
So there could still be souls hidden away inside Rampage. Ponies who received the illegal talisman, then grew increasingly unstable until they died, their souls trapped in the talisman. It was like a Silverstar Sporting Supplies that you stuck inside your chest. "Wouldn't die... how?" I asked, fearing the answer.
"There was a commercial sky carriage en route to Canterlot when a bomb went off -- prematurely, it's suspected. There were only a hoofful of survivors, mostly the pegasus team pulling it who could undo their harnesses. But there was one pony trapped inside the burning wreckage who was screaming... for hours. Rarity heard about it and immediately went personally to the scene of the crash.
"We'd been doing more research while the talisman was being looked for and had learned of the possibility that zebras are immune to telepathic magics through studies done in the M.A.S. Some mind control megaspell they were contemplating to end the war that never went anywhere. We'd been hypothesizing that that could help stabilize the talisman, and Rarity was so happy about getting it back... the very same day as the accident, we conducted an inspection to make sure that the talisman hadn't significantly changed since we last saw it, and then Rarity sent it off to be implanted into one of the Proditor."
"Shujaa..." I said as I looked back at him.
"...You'd probably know that better than us. Anyway, Rarity changed her mind the very next day, to our surprise... but by then the operation had been completed and the zebra was heading back into the field. We considered retrieving it, but decided that that would be more trouble that it was worth; if it still didn't work, we'd get it back when she died."
"But then you lost it again," I said as I looked back at him. The unicorn gave me an uneasy look. "Somehow it got from Shujaa into Twist... and then Twist died..." That turned his features grim as his glowing eyes dropped.
"It may be that the megaspell magic, combined with the souls trapped within, had an unanticipated side effect that created the pony called Rampage. A combination of good and bad in a single gestalt individual. A pony with no soul of her own but containing the souls of almost a dozen different ponies." Snips shook his head. "There's really no way to tell."
"And Rarity wanted this?" I hissed.
"Rarity wanted her friends safe," Snips countered. "She'd have done anything for them. The project she had us working on after she stopped the development of the phoenix talisman was still for them."
"And what was that?" I asked, dreading the answer.
"I'm in!" Xanthe cried from the door. I looked at him, then sighed. Answers about that for later. "Now where to?"
He walked slowly towards the door, speaking to everypony. "We need to find the security center. It was on the far side of the armory. Look for a room with lots of terminals and monitors. We'll also need the guard captain's pass card. It's a wafer of blue sapphire. It should be fairly indestructible, given all the enchantments on it. With that we can access the security system. Also, keep your eyes open for the vent access to get up to the Warden's level."
I sighed and took cover by the side of the door -- I still had a lot more regenerating to do -- and nodded to Xanthe. The zebra hit a key, and then there was a grind as the door slowly began to open, a klaxon warning every ghoul in the place that we were here. But I slowly poked my head inside and didn't see anything, flaming or otherwise. There was a stairway up that was marked 'Supermax' and then smaller doors. I frowned slightly, feeling a touch apprehensive at how clean the armory looked.
Of course, as soon as we stepped in, another turret dropped and began to spray rounds at us. Instead of taking it, I took cover like a sensible pony and let Carrion step out and blast it with his miniguns. A few seconds later, the turret was scrapped and Carrion had another dozen dings to his power armor. I went to a door beside a large window of ballistic glass and went to work on the lock. Fortunately, I got lucky and managed to pick it without too much difficulty.
I pushed the door open; the room on the other side was filled with a haze of smoke, and was it just me, or was it getting really hot in here? Most of us started sweating from the balmy air as I peeked through. I jerked my head back as the sentry rolled slowly past. Then I spotted another sentry in the corner and hissed softly in frustration. The armory robots had been spared exposure to the flames and were in brand new condition, unlike the sentries below.
Xanthe was at my side and tapped her chest a moment. Then she shimmered, her suit hushing as she all but vanished. The sentry slowly patrolled past again, and I saw a tiny door in its back open up. Then the machine buzzed and called out, "Error! Error! Combat inhibitor offline! Entering combat now!" I cursed and got ready to open fire, but the robot wasn't turning to face me, it was turning to the other sentry.
"Warning! Warning! Hostile detected!" the other robot blurted. Their missile pods opened simultaneously, and I jerked back as explosions filled the room. A half dozen blasts later, the sentry bot in the corner was still standing, but its armor was smoking and blackened. Rampage darted into the room, ducked under another missile, and smashed both her forehooves through its chest plate. The robot crackled pitifully as she smashed it repeatedly and yanked out wires with her teeth. Finally it collapsed in a heap.
Xanthe appeared; her striped mane was scorched, but she was otherwise unharmed. She gaped at the scrapped robots, and I nudged her with my muzzle. "Not bad for a cursed zebra," I teased, and the ghost of a smile settled on her lips as she blushed.
These were holding cells, but the locks in this section were actually pretty easy to pick. The half dozen cells were empty save for piles of bones. Clipboards dangled from pegs besides the doors, and one caught my eye, or rather the name on it did: 'Doof, assault, week isolation' had to be repeated twenty times on the page. I flipped back through the crispy papers. Half the names on the list for this cell were Doof. The interior barely had enough room for me; I couldn't imagine how tight the bulky stallion would have found it.
I took a step inside and looked at the walls. Aside from a light in the ceiling and a bucket in the corner, there wasn't much in here, but every inch was covered in crude sketches. One whole wall had been devoted to Macintosh's Marauders. I tried to guess who each pony was, but his talent clearly hadn't been art. I thought that one of the small ones was Echo, but I could only scratch my head and wonder about who the other little one was. Only they had a little sad face drawn on them. Sadder still, there was only one large pony in the picture. On another wall were lists of names categorized as 'Trouble', 'Okay', and 'CUNTS'. I noticed Razorwire's scratched-out name under that last one along with some others.
I flipped back through the pages on the clipboard, and there he was, again and again. From the dates on the clipboard, Doof spent half his life in this box and the other in the only slightly-less-cramped cell below. For three years. The last dozen names at the bottom of the uppermost sheet had dates scattered over a year. Most of the entries in general were for fighting, but in the last year there was the ominous addition of 'rape' on the list as well, but oddly only in the last year or so. All the entries before that were for fighting.
"What's so fascinating?" Rampage asked behind me.
"Nothing," I said quickly, tossing the clipboard into the cell and closing the door behind me. Twist definitely didn't need to see that! "Come on. Let's go. Gotta get out of here soon." Then I was going to sit in Star House and cry for a week for Lacunae. And I wasn't going to move an inch till Rampage and I were better, no matter how I climbed the walls. My impulsiveness and fear had driven me from my friends and endangered others.
Rampage gave the door behind me a look, then eyed me suspiciously. I gulped. Then a pair of doors at the end of the row of cells popped open and a sentry buzzed, "Alert! Alert! Intruders detected!" I could have kissed that hunk of metal; saved by the killer robot!
Thirty seconds later, the sentry was scrapped by our focused firepower and the holding cell was left behind. I hurried forward into the next section, one that seemed to be mostly barracks. Twenty bunk beds lay in two rows of ten. I saw the bathrooms and kitchens, but I didn't want to get anywhere near plumbing at the moment. The floor was getting really warm, and the air grew more and more hazy as the smoke found ways to penetrate into the armory. I hurried through without stopping, continuing through break rooms, briefing rooms, and then to a formidable door marked 'Gun Vault'. I took one look at the lock and despaired. Maybe I'd find a key somewhere...
I left a part of my heart back with that room as we continued on... well, I would have if I had a heart. Eh, figurative language was beyond me. Then I frowned as I heard the sounds of fighting and shouting in the next room. As carefully as I could, I limped forward with Xanthe to the next set of double doors and pushed them open enough to peek through. The room beyond was the largest yet, some sort of big open mustering room like the atrium back in 99, only not as tall.
And it was full of ghouls in tattered guard uniforms who fought each other with batons. Bullet casings were scattered all over the place, along with discarded firearms. Every ghoul was screaming, glowing with radiation, beating each other to a pulp and then regenerating. Screams of "Traitors!" croaked from some throats, but who was a traitor to whom was never really clear.
Graves had spent almost two centuries taking inventory. Had these guards really been fighting that long? Worse, on the far side, I saw a door marked 'Security Command'.
So, how to get past dozens of ghouls who were eternally fighting to the death? Unfortunately, even as I thought that, two of them immediately charged me with feral screams. "Get the others," I shouted to Xanthe as they closed the distance and I drew Vigilance and my sword. The blade intercepted one, halting its advance as it thrashed on the glowing edge, and I pivoted to the left to keep the other ghoul on the far side of its companion. Then I blew its brains out the back of its head with three rapid fire shots. As the ghoul dropped, I swapped my aim and planted four more rounds in the head of another.
Then I was nearly knocked off my hooves as a pegasus guard dropped onto my back, hugged my neck, and started to chew into my throat. I stabbed with the sword, but it was hard trying to find something vital to chop into without cutting into myself. I felt blood start to spurt as I tried to buck, but it was a lot trickier to do that with only three legs! I heard shouts from behind me; I thought it was my friends. Hoped it was...
Then I heard the crunch of baton on skull over and over again. "Let go of her, Raindrops!" croaked a mare as she struggled to pull the feral off. Finally, all three of us went for a tumble, but the ghoul was knocked free from my back. I pressed my foreleg to the bloody hole under my chin, and then balked at the sight of two ghoul pegasus mares, one with blood on her mouth. I put the last three rounds in the magazine into the head of that one, panting for breath as I waited for the bleeding to stop.
"You with S.W.A.T.?" the remaining ghoul shouted over the din, pushing me back towards the wall and away from the fight.
S.W.A.T.? What the heck was... oh, my armor. Well, I knew one answer that would save me a lot of questions. "Sure. Name's Blackjack."
"Oh thank Celestia! It feels like we've been fighting forever," the ghoul said as she slumped. Her mane was a slightly clashing red and green, and her coat resembled spoiled milk. "My name is Blossomforth. I don't know what's going on. Some said the missile was part of some jailbreak. Others claimed we should evacuate to the Core. I haven't had a moment to think straight till you showed up."
It was just like with Silver Spoon. It seemed that ghouls had a tendency to get stuck on certain things from when they were alive. I'd better keep her in the fantasy, unless I wanted her to go feral. "What's the situation here?"
"Well, the alarms went off, and immediately we went into lockdown. Prisoners were rioting. There was no communication from the outside. Then that missile hit! Then Captain Sourcup said we were sticking tight, but others said we should evacuate. Then the captain pulled out his gun, and there were alarms going off and screaming and some ponies went crazy. Shots were fired, and then it was batons and hooves and fighting for our lives..." She trailed off, frowning with that look of something amiss she couldn't quite put her hoof on. "Who's doing all that screaming?"
"Don't worry about it," I said as I saw my friends run up. "Looks like the rest of my team is here. We're going to... arrest the Warden and evacuate as many ponies as we can." My ass was starting to get toasty sitting on the metal floor. "Don't worry about anything below us. It's... taken care of."
Silver Spoon sighed and said in a low murmur, "Blackjack, have you been lying to delusional ghouls again?" I smiled awkwardly and shrugged, and the gray ghoul sighed and covered her face with her hoof.
"Clear the room. Headshots. If they talk to you, try and save them," I said, and Psychoshy groaned. I fixed the yellow pegasus with an even look. "I mean it. Give them a chance. Say you're with the S.W.A.T. or whatever you have to. Otherwise, take them out." Blossomforth stared at me in shock, and I said with an apologetic smile, "Sorry. We don't have much time left. Call out to your co-workers if you can recognize them." I loaded a fresh magazine into Vigilance, then frowned and worked the slide several times before it chambered the round.
The work was brutal, but short. Rampage, Stygius, and Psychoshy were more than capable of separating the ferals into workable clumps. If they talked, I put them behind me where Snips and Silver Spoon calmed them down. Xanthe kept out of sight, though occasionally a feral dropped with bullets from nowhere. By the time we reached the other side, ten guards remained, watching as I put down the last one with the last three bullets in my gun.
"Special Weapons and Arcane Tactics doesn't mess around," Blossomforth murmured to a twitchy looking unicorn.
"I coulda been one of 'em," he replied nervously, looking at the corpses, then looked at her, squinted, and frowned. "You look like hell, Blossom." He shook his head. "I feel like hell... and who the hell is screaming like that?"
"We're going straight to Hoofington Memorial," I assured them. "There've been... side effects from the warhead."
"Going to be a trick, taking down the Warden with the prison under lockdown and on fire," Blossomforth said as she looked at me with a little smile.
"Well, I did pass this room with those two loveliest words 'Gun' and 'Vault' on the door," I said with a sublime smile. "Don't suppose any of you know where the key is?"
The pair looked at me, then over at security command.
Well, if my previous experiences were any kind of guide, the guard captain would be inside and be some sort of flaming apocalyptic demon of hell. I pushed open the door with my magic and slowly peered into to the office. There were two desks in front of dozens of terminals, all of them showing different parts of the prison. At least half showed only static, but others gave a great view of the fire blazing up around medical and sweeping towards the armory. I wondered how long that armored warhead would last before going boom.
No apocalyptic demon, though. Just a single pegasus skeleton in a guard's uniform slumped over the controls of a large security terminal with a dozen extra monitors and a pair of extra control panels connected to it. "Bones? Who leaves bones in the armory? What kind of sick joke is this?" the unicorn hissed nervously. He levitated the bones to the side and looked at the name tag. "Merriweather? But... I thought she was on vacation. Why would somepony dress up a bunch of bones in her uniform?"
"Just like I told you. Something bad's going on, Twitchy," Blossomforth said with a scowl. She pointed at a key in one of the panels attached to the terminal. "That's the captain's key! Why would the captain's key be here with no captain?"
"That's the key that needs to be turned to get out of here?" I asked Snips. The round unicorn nodded. I stepped up beside the body and noticed a few more details: a pistol between her hooves, a hole in the back of the cracked skull, and a grimy slip of paper. I worked it free and looked at the mouth-scrawled note. 'They have my girl. Sorry.'
Oh yeah. More 'Hoofington sucks dock' reminders.
"Something really bad is going on, isn't it?" Blossomforth said as she nervously chewed her lower lip.
"Yeah. That's par for the course." Snips was investigating a large panel in the corner with the label 'Airshaft #4 Access'. "Is that our way up?"
"Of course," he said as he put his shears in the corner of the panel. "We still have two fliers. One goes up, finds the security station upstairs, turns the key there, we turn the key down here, everypony but the other flier goes through the door. Then the other flier pops up the shaft and we all get out of here. Easy peasy." He frowned as he pried the panel open. I felt more beads of sweat on my brow; damn, it was hot in here! The whole building was turning into an oven.
Then I saw a tongue of smoke lick out around the edge of the panel. "Snips..." I warned as I eyed the metal. Now that I was paying more attention to it and not the drilling sensation throbbing in my body, I could hear a low roar.
"Come on... get...off!" And with one last heave the panel came off and popped free. I heard the sudden intake of air, like the largest flaming pony ever taking a breath, and then a plume of fire exploded out the gap. I tried to lunge, but misstepped and failed to knock him aside. The flame poured over his features like a flamer as he fell back, clutching his blackened face as he screamed. The ball of fire rolled over the ceiling like a hunting, living thing and spread out as it dissipated.
I rushed to his side beside Silver Spoon, the squat blue pony's face a blackened ruin. In the air shaft that was supposed to be taking us into the warden's office was a solid sheet of flame. "Well, think you're hot enough to make it up that?" Rampage asked the stunned Psychoshy.