A Balance of Deceit

Prism backed away from the changeling, expecting a sudden attack. But instead of lunging for him like it did when he first met one of them, it simply stood in front of the tunnel leading further into the hive. Prism couldn't escape back the way he came, and so the only way out would be the very entrance the changeling was blocking. Was this even the same changeling as the one he saw by the streetlamp? He'd read about a theory that changelings had 'hive minds' and could share information with each other. It probably knew him either way.

"How did a pony get down here?" it hissed. Prism guessed it wasn't looking for an answer, because it bolted forwards, taking him by surprise, and bit his hind leg as he tried to get out the way. He headbutted it instinctively with his horn, and it reeled back, breaking apart.  As fast as he could, he limped towards the tunnel entrance, trying to escape the creature. The last thing he could see was it reforming as he turned a corner.

Even when it had bitten him, he could barely feel it, as if it was just thin air biting into him. But when he hit it with his horn, he could feel something more solid, squishy. He looked down. There was still the issue of the mysterious extra shadow, which hadn't gone away since he noticed it in the pod-room. It mirrored his actions nearly perfectly, but he could tell it was fake because it fell where light should've made contact - a shadow where there shouldn't have been a shadow.

He tried to put pressure on his wound with magic as he limped through the network of tunnels. The bleeding wasn't as bad as it was, and was no longer dripping onto the ground, but it would've been easy to get grime and infection on his wound down in the tunnels. The last thing he wanted in the wound was the odd luminous slime that seemed to be everywhere, which nicely disguised the sound of his hoofsteps. It looked organic, but he had no idea what its properties were, if it was toxic or completely harmless. He decided to keep moving.

Every tunnel looked the same. He just kept wandering the underground network. He found several dead ends, large open spaces, and what looked to be completely useless tunnels in general. He didn't once see another changeling, and the one back in the pod-room was at the back of his mind. Every now and again he'd come across a row of trapdoors, but they were locked tight. Each one was labelled uniquely, but it wasn't in Equestrian.

As he wandered the tunnels he was definite that they were purposeful, but what they were for, he hadn't a clue. What he read in the book described a changeling nest very differently, like a beehive, not a labyrinth of caverns and doors, absent of a single living thing but himself.

He stopped to rest in a large, open space. His leg wasn't bleeding, but it didn't look good - he would be wise to get it looked at. He imagined trying to make up an excuse for checking in. "Where did you get this wound?" somepony would ask, "Oh, it was just my pet crocodile." he'd reply. It would probably work, too. Not that he knew anypony with a pet crocodile.

He leaned on a large elevated stone plateau at the center of the cavern and looked around. The room was surprisingly clean of the slime he constantly encountered, and it seemed very grand. He felt something jab into his back, pushing him off the stone structure. He got up and looked over the table. There was no changeling. A rectangular growth jutted from the plateau he was sure didn't exist a few seconds ago.

Something creaked, and he ducked behind the plateau, which he now decided looked a lot more like a stone table, after some observation. Slowly peeking his head up, he kept his ears down and watched as a solid metal door opened in one of the tunnels. Something was opening it! He hid behind the table again and breathed. Maybe it would just go past him, and then he could follow it.

He couldn't resist another peek, and found not a dark shadowy creature, but a mare carrying a basket in her mouth.

More doors were opening. The mare with the basket trotted towards the table, but Prism didn't see what she was doing as he was busy making himself as small and as stuck to the table as he could. He found another crevice under the table and he squeezed into it, hoping to hide himself in the shadow of the table.

"You know I can very well see you, unicorn." A feminine voice spoke from the other side of the table. He shuddered. They figured him out already?

"Don't call me a unicorn," came a different voice quickly, not far away from his hiding place.

"I know, I know. I'm just used to it."

"So, have we come to talk about the new tunnel system under the east highway, or the pony that might be wandering these halls as we speak?"

"I wouldn't worry about the pony. He'll starve eventually. The ponies never figure out the tunnels, poor things. The feeding ones really don't last very long."

"He might come across exit 1/5 accidentally. I knew we should have removed that old thing and replaced it."

"Don't sweat it, I'm here to talk about the tunnel system, anyways."

"The entire hive is there to fix it because a worker somehow forgot the stairway combination, despite the fact that it's literally written on every sign in the systems, and blew the entire tunnel with misplaced circuitry."

"I assure you, it was a malfunction!"

"Well, maybe your workers should fix their stuff!"

"Look, I came here to talk about the exit mechanism you came up with, because it was just as much the flaws you forgot as the code my worker forgot that destroyed the tunnel and almost alerted the ponies!" The other voice was silent.

"I warned you about the code, the powder, the shifting staircase, but you didn't listen, and now it's come back to bite us in the flank! Do we really need to include the five keys in every sign?" she said something Prism couldn't understand, and reminded him more of a guttural screech than a sentence.

"How dare you! Blame me for this? Speak that tongue? This meeting is over!"

Prism could almost hear his own shallow breathing in the silence. Then there were hoofsteps. The creaking of doors, and silence.

He stepped out from under the table and stretched his legs. Ponies were not designed for rolling up into tight spaces like that. He wasn't entirely sure what had just happened, but he had clues.

There was a way out somewhere, 'exit 1/5'. The conversation he'd overheard had been quite vague, but perhaps if he could get out he could put all this behind him and get to safety. The doors the ponies had come through were again, locked shut. He still had his saddlebags with him, although in the fall some of his items had been damaged and bent. His map was looking worse for wear, but he could still use it.

He started by turning the map over marking a red circle in the center of it, proceeding to draw lines coming out from all sides(the hallways), and at random, picked a path to continue on, mapping the tunnels as he went. There was a strange circular tunnel he found, that looped around and around, which confused him and caused him to draw lines going all over the map, till he scribbled it out and replaced it with a roundabout.

The tunnels were huge, he concluded. He'd only begun to explore one wing of it and the gridlike tunnels continued on for what seemed to be endlessly. The network could be as large as half of the island! After deciding that to continue in the direction he was going was pointless, he turned around and returned to the original room where the meeting had occurred. He'd never noticed earlier, but the stone table he'd hidden under was now covered in rectangles that jutted out at different sizes and shapes. Pathways going between them all. It was like a three-dimensional map. Of what? He had no clue.

Because of the lack of slime, four magic lanterns were strung across the room. Prism held up the map in front of a lantern to observe what he'd mapped. Annoyingly, parts of the original Manehattan map on the other side was shining through, causing the two to overlap. He didn't notice it at first, as he thought it was simply glare on the paper creating a second version of the map(an anti-aliasing effect)... except one was much tidier and coloured. He looked between the two near-identical maps and realised.

The tunnels had the exact same layout as the Manehattan streets! Chances were, every tunnel he explored was underneath a road. The only explanation for the doors was that they led to buildings on the surface. This meant the changelings likely had control over... half of Manehattan? He turned the map around and looked around the buildings and labels. Somewhere here there had to be a clue of where 'exit 1/5' was supposed to be.

He'd figured out where he was, underneath an intersection. He also knew that the two changelings who had met lived in the Fallen Star hotel and the other lived in a store called 'Equestria's Biggest Hats'. He circled them. The information could be useful. Looking at the two signs next to the doors, he thought he might be able to decipher the script... but he had no idea how to do that. The symbols looked erratic and absolutely nothing like their english counterparts. Only the five letters they both had in common, and upon inspection, in common with every other sign in the tunnels. A blooming flower, a pair of birds, a star, a grey circle, and a sun. He recorded them on his ever messier map.

If I were a life-sucking colony of shadow monsters wanting to take over all of Equestria starting from Manehattan, where would I place my most important exits? he thought to himself. It seemed like such an easy question at first, but harder he thought about it the further away the answer seemed.

The pit connecting the Post Office Depot to the underground system wasn't natural, but he doubted that he changelings created it. No, it had been there much longer. If the changelings wanted to leave, they could easily use their trapdoors... Except older buildings were still outfitted with changeling detectors on all entrances and exits, ones that were never removed. Important buildings like the Lunar Library, or the Government Buildings, which the changelings would need direct access to enter. It was a stretch, but it seemed likely. It wouldn't have been hard for them to tunnel up into them considering they hadn't already been detected, and there were no detectors inside of the building(changelings were not known to dig tunnels, and lived mainly in the sewers, though the tunnel system was much further down than the sewer system). The name had to be a clue though, what could 1/5 mean?

He looked back at the map defiantly. Circles, dots, diagrams and lines covered it, possible exits, meanings. But it was simple, he thought. His eyes fell on the Third Lunar Library. It sat on 15th of the 1st Boulevard and 34th on 5th Lane, the intersection of the two. One of his suspects was sitting on the intersection between 1 and 5. In fact, he wasn't far away from where its underground counterpart lay.

He trotted down the tunnel, what he presumed ran below 1st Boulevard through the center of the city. It was huge. There weren't many trapdoors, and there was more of that slime lining the walls. He ignored the hunger pangs that hit him as he approached the intersection. At first glance, it looked like any other part of the tunnel system. A rock wall. With a little bit of slime. But as he searched it with his eyes he could see the faint mark of a stone cut. He pushed it. It didn't give way, but he got a dissatisfying squelch from the slime.

If he was going to get out, he didn't mind getting his hooves dirtier. He broke the slime up with his hooves and peeled it off. This time when he pushed it with his magic, it shifted backwards, slid down, and revealed a staircase. How convenient! After walking in, he noted that were only five steps. The staircase was a meter high and ended in mid-air. Yes, convenient. He walked up it, expecting something to happen. He was hoping it would magically extend, but it was incredibly anticlimactic. It should have been simple! He would find the exit, and he should just be able to use it to get to the surface. He sat on the stairs, frustrated. It was hopeless, he was in the wrong place. He got up to leave, but he was too late, because the stone door automatically slid back into place. He couldn't move it. It was just him and the staircase.

"I'm not going to die here, I made it this far," he whispered to himself. "Not a hundred meters underground, in a broken staircase shaft," he said, louder. If he could only get out, warn everypony. They wouldn't listen to him though, would they? He'd sound crazy. An ancient race of evil shapshifters planning to overthrow Equestria? He hit the wall with his hoof, as if it was going to do anything.

To his surprise, it did. A piece of stone slid out of the wall. Another piece of the staircase. But it was on the opposite side of the other piece. Were there two staircases? As soon as it stopped, the walls lit up and the rest of the two staircases slid out and slotted into place. They connected together over thin pieces of interlocking metal, and formed a double helix. The entire mechanism seemed ridiculously impractical. One staircase was dark blue, and one bright orange. After a moment of hesitation, he started by going up the blue staircase, picking a direction at random.

"I'll be out of here soon enough. Can't wait to get some fresh air."