Two nearly comatose security ponies stood, slump-shouldered and dull-eyed, at one of Stable Two's busiest hallway intersections. It was 3 A.M., and the Stable was asleep. Only the quiet rattle of air through loose pipes and the whir of distant machines disturbed the silence. That, and the soft whistling of Lemonwood's breathing.

“Don't fall asleep,” Evening Breeze said. He prodded his companion.

Lemonwood snorted and shook her head. “I'm not.”

“We've got three hours left.”

“I know.”

“You were snoring.”

“Nuh uh. I was just breathing loud.”

Breeze sighed and turned his gaze back down the corridor. It was long enough, and dim enough, that it stretched off into darkness. It was like looking into a horizontal abyss. Some younger security officers couldn't handle night shifts in the main thoroughfare, but Evening Breeze and Lemonwood were seasoned. Half of their postings were after hours, when there was nothing to do but gaze off into nothing.

Lemonwood started snoring again.

He nudged her again. “I can't keep covering for you. If Valour catches you napping on the cam footage one more time—”

“I'm just breathing loud!” she blurted, blinking hard. Her front legs wobbled.

Evening Breeze glared up at the ceiling. “Put on some music or something,” he said.

“That's not allowed.”

“Neither is falling asleep. One of those will get you a reprimand, the other might get you demoted.”

“I'm not even sleepy.”

“Put on some music.”

“Fine.” Lemonwood fiddled with the device on her foreleg, passed through a few menus, and finally spun a dial.

A mare's voice, Velvet Remedy's, underscored by prerecorded music and a hint of static, blasted out of Lemonwood's PipBuck. Every syllable crashed and bounced off the metal walls, floor and ceiling.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Evening hissed, and swatted his partner's shoulder. “Put an earpiece in before you wake everypony in the Stable!”

As Lemonwood rolled her eyes and fiddled with her PipBuck, and as Evening Breeze looked around fervently at every closed door, praying that none of them would open, the quiet clatter of hoofsteps rose beside them.

Slow, careful, and dainty, Velvet Remedy crossed behind the two security officers, walked across the hallway, and disappeared around the corner. The sound of Velvet's hoofsteps faded just as the recording of her voice finally fell silent.

“Luna help us,” Evening moaned into his hoof. “I can't believe I'm still working this post.”

Lemonwood hummed. “Yeah, me neither.”

“I hate you.”

“Mmhmm.” She nodded her head to the music. “Ahhh. Gotta love Velvet Remedy.”

Evening Breeze ground his teeth and turned resolutely back to the endless hallway, ears pricked and eyes wide.

A minute passed. Lemonwood let out a whistling snore.

Breeze had a feeling the next three hours would be long ones.

The room containing Stable Two's massive, cog-shaped door wasn't really used for anything. The door never opened, after all, and the awkward arrangement of dusty terminals, inscrutable mechanisms, and haphazard metal catwalks made the room impractical for most other uses. Evening Breeze had only been there once before, when the engineers were conducting their decennial systems check—which didn't include testing the actual door, of course.

That night, however, they were stationed directly in front of the massive steel slab. Just the two of them, alone in a weird room at the ass end of the Stable.

“This is dumb,” Evening Breeze said.

“You're dumb,” Lemonwood snapped back. When news about Velvet Remedy's escape to the surface reached the department heads, Security Chief Valour hadn't been thrilled. For Evening Breeze, that meant a somber meeting and a strike against his good record. Given Lemon's already spotty record, she'd probably gotten much worse.

Her favourite performer abandoning the Stable probably wasn't easing her nerves either.

“I can't believe nopony else was available,” he muttered.

“Everypony hates this shift. Even I hate this shift.” Lemonwood scowled. “Fuck, that's probably why Valour wanted me here. This is my punishment. Two graveyard shifts in a row.”

Evening Breeze kicked idly at a metal cylinder built into the wall that was presumably a very important piece of the machinery around them. “Stable Two's first major breach ever happened yesterday, under our watch, and they put us back on the same shift the next day?”

“You're dumb,” Lemonwood repeated. “I told you, they're just fucking with us. Nopony can figure out how she opened the door in the first place. Even if somepony else wanted to leave, they wouldn't be able to.”

“We don't know that. Maybe she told somepony.”

Lemonwood rolled her eyes and said, “Not everypony's as terrible at their jobs as we are, and—”

Evening Breeze raised an indignant hoof. “Hey! I'm not—”

“Yes, you are,” she said. “And since we're here, that means that either Valour and the Overmare know exactly how Velvet opened the door and who she talked to before she left, or they've changed the password or something. Nothing else makes sense.”

Evening Breeze was quiet for a moment. “Maybe… maybe they are also terrible at their jobs?”

The sound of faint hoofsteps came from beyond the room's entrance. Lemonwood stood at attention.

“Think about it,” Evening continued. “The Overmare's supposed to be the only one who can open the door, right? If a random singer found out, she must have gotten it from the Overmare.”

Lemonwood ignored him. She took a step forward. “Hey! Who's there? Don't you know what time it is?”

Evening paused. “Is somepony there?”

“Yeah. Hoofsteps.”

After a long moment of silence, a small, unremarkable unicorn filly stepped into the doorway. Heavy saddlebags hung from her sides, her eyes were wide, and her mouth turned in an awkward grin. She opened her mouth.

Evening Breeze cleared his throat, interrupting her. “Whatever you think you're about to do, forget it. Turn around and go back to your quarters, and things will be back to normal before you know it.”

The grin slipped from her face, and her eyes hardened. It was more than a little intimidating, even on such a tiny pony. Her horn glowed, but she didn't seem to be doing anything with it.

“Hey,” Lemonwood said, taking a step forward, “aren't you the filly who let our Velvet get lost outside?” Her voice was tight and angry.

Oh. Shit. Evening Breeze moved up beside his partner and advanced. If they actually stopped Velvet Remedy's accomplice, maybe they could—

The mare's horn glowed brighter.

Something very hard and very heavy slammed against his head from behind, and the room suddenly reorientated such that he was lying face-down. Everything became very far away.

Beside him, Lemonwood let out a low moan. Breeze had taken the brunt of the blow, but the locker was heavy enough that she still felt like pieces of her skull were missing.

Evening Breeze's last thoughts before dropping into unconsciousness were that he probably wouldn't be a security officer anymore. Not after this embarrassment.

Lemonwood's last thoughts were that being a security officer was a raw deal. A swanky uniform and extra rations were not worth being smacked around with storage lockers.

They were both right, in a sense.

Stable Two was a hard place to keep clean. The slow trickle of treated air that was pumped in from the surface did nothing to expunge centuries of accumulated dust and grime, and, more distressingly, it did absolutely nothing for the smell.

The Stable's custodial crew were overworked and underappreciated, so they were thrilled to supplement their ranks with two new recruits, who they of course saddled with mops and brooms and set to work during the quietest, most convenient time of day. Namely, the middle of the night.

“This is absolutely your fault,” Lemonwood growled past the duster handle in her mouth.

Evening Breeze just sighed and trudged past her, dragging his mop behind him. His new custodian uniform was loose around his gut and shoulders, and with every step he felt the urge to curl up in a ball and hide within the excess fabric. How had things fallen apart so badly, so quickly?

Lemonwood flicked her duster into the air, raising a thick cloud of dust. “I can't believe I lost my shitty job with its shitty hours and immediately got one that's even worse with the exact same hours! What kind of messed up game is Valour playing with us?”

“I'm just glad they let us stay in the Stable at all,” Evening said. He dunked his mop into a bucket and swirled it around. Was that even how he was supposed to do it? He'd never mopped a floor before. Clearly, Lemonwood was in a similar boat. She slapped her duster against a pipe a few times, ran it along the wall, and shook it vigorously over the floor.

They were probably doing more harm than good.

Down the hallway, a door slid open and an overhead light clicked on above it. Two stallions stepped out. They headed away from Lemonwood and Evening Breeze, toward the Stable's exit.

Breeze stared after them, still as a statue, the mop still hanging from his mouth.

Behind him, Lemon snorted. “Another one, huh? I'm so surprised.”

“Three shifts in a row?” Evening Breeze said in a small voice. “How is this happening?”

Lemonwood stepped up and patted his shoulder with a hoof. “Hey, it's all right. Remember, we aren't security anymore. We don't have to do a Luna-damned thing.”

The couple rounded a corner and disappeared from sight. Evening let out a long breath. “You're right. F-fuck it.” He bit down on the mop handle and jerked it out of the bucket, spraying a wide arc of water across the floor.

They worked in silent solidarity for a while. Lemonwood fantasized about how unimpressed their new supervisor was going to be come morning, when he saw the fruits of their labour. Evening Breeze tried to guess who the next dozen or so self-made exiles were going to be, starting with the artists. He wasn't far off the money, as it turned out.

Distant lights at the end of the hallway turned on again, and both former officers looked up. A single pony made his way toward them, activating more lights with every few strides. Soon he was close enough for them to see his face.

It was a security pony, one of their old coworkers. Deadbolt.

“Hey guys!” he said cheerfully. He waved. “How's it going?”

Lemonwood said, “Not great.”

“Pretty terrible, actually,” Evening agreed.

“No kidding,” said Deadbolt. “I can't believe they reallocated you 'cause of one mistake.”

Evening cleared his throat. “They probably count it as two. We were on duty when Velvet left.”

“Oh. Wow.” Deadbolt blinked a few times, clearly reassessing them. “Anyway, could I ask you guys for a quick favour?”

Evening Breeze nodded. “Of course! Always happy to help a fellow officer.”

“Kill me,” Lemonwood grumbled.

“Great!” Deadbolt said. He held up his PipBuck. “Do you still have the encryption key for the section doors? The file's corrupted on mine or something, and I need it to finish my patrol.”

Evening Breeze was already scrolling through files on his own PipBuck. “I've definitely still got it. Had to use it a couple times tonight, so it should be near the top…” He shuffled closer and gestured. “Here, get your data cable out.”

“Gay,” Lemonwood said in a deadpan.

Everyone continued to ignore her.

“You know,” Evening said as he tapped a few buttons, “we thought you two were going to the surface or something when you first went by.”

“Hah!” Deadbolt laughed, maybe a little too hard. “That'd be rich. Three escapes in three nights.”

“That's what I said!”

Both PipBucks beeped, and Deadbolt disconnected the cable. “You're a life-saver, Breeze. I'm sure you'll be back on the team before you know it.”

“I hope so.” He saluted. “Enjoy your shift!”

“You too.” Deadbolt turned and cantered back down the hallway. He seemed a little rushed.

Lemonwood glanced between Evening Breeze and the departing stallion. “I can't believe you're still such an ass-kisser.”

“Forgive me if I actually want my job back some day.”

Lemonwood rolled her eyes.

They returned to their tasks, one of them trying much harder than the other, but ultimately making the same progress, or lack thereof. The floor got much wetter, no matter how much Evening dragged his mop across it. He emptied four more buckets, but nothing seemed to be working. Meanwhile, Lemonwood worked on spreading what dust she could find as evenly as possible, until every surface, nook, and cranny was coated in a nearly perfect layer. It was a delicate process that involved a lot of flailing and patting motions.

Indeed, the two were somehow even worse at cleaning than they were at their previous job.

It wasn't until near the end of their shift, just after 5 A.M., that they were escorted by security to the Overmare's office, and questioned about one Deadbolt, and his partner, Twinkletaps. What they'd talked about, and which files Evening had transferred, and why they had not only failed to stop two more ponies from leaving the Stable, but actively helped them this time.

Many hurtful words were flung across the table in both directions.

At least by the end of the interrogation, they were given the good news that they wouldn't have to clean hallways anymore.

Well, not exactly.

The majority of Stable Two was buried nearly fifty yards below ground. Even the exit led to a narrow, twisting tunnel that wound up through the earth and emerged in a basement. Lemonwood and Evening Breeze were much, much lower than that.

The two disgraced public servants sat, back to back, in a cramped maintenance corridor. The deepest reaches of the Stable weren't well lit, they weren't air conditioned, and they weren't spacious. Even Stable technicians and engineers only ventured down this far when absolutely necessary, and they worked as fast as possible until they could leave. Lemon and Evening would be there all day.

Decades prior, small, rarely-used sections of the maintenance levels were sealed and abandoned to reduce the Stable's power consumption. And for decades, nopony had given those condemned sections a second thought. Now, as Stable Two entered its two-hundredth year, supplies and materials were starting to run thin, including basic things like screws, extra piping, and electrical tape, and less basic things, like circuit boards and backup terminals. Unsealing and salvaging these sections was apparently one of the current Overmare's biggest pet projects.

And now she had the perfect expendables to dump it on.

“At least it's a day shift,” Evening Breeze said. He looked down at his lunch. The sandwich was cold, and the lettuce was already wilting, and he was pretty sure there was some engine grease on the crust.

Lemonwood stared down the long corridor, at the door she could just barely make out. It led to a staircase that wound up, up, and up, all the way to the Stable's atrium. Food, company, light, and air. “It doesn't feel like day,” she croaked. She'd gotten a few lungfuls of dust from their first steps into the abandoned rooms, and her throat was still burning.

Evening took a tentative bite of his sandwich, swallowed, and gagged. He tossed the rest of it aside.

“You can't just leave that there.”

“Watch me.” He stood and dusted crumbs off his sleeves. “Come on, let's get started. It can't be worse than sitting around in the dark.”

“I'll have you know that sitting around in the dark is one of my favourite pastimes,” Lemonwood shot back, but she also stood up and faced the pitch-black portal into Stable Two's past, and their immediate future.

With a click, Evening's PipBuck light turned on, and he held his leg up high. Just another hallway, albeit one with fewer pipes than the rest of the maintenance levels.

“Remind me why you wanted to start with this one?”

“It's the deepest. Nowhere to go but up, right?”

Lemonwood winced. “Sure thing, let's start with the most haunted one first. Brilliant as always, Breeze.” She activated her own PipBuck lamp and stepped inside. The temperature immediately dropped a degree or two, and the damp air tickled her lungs. “Eugh. You know, deepest probably also means wettest, right? If we're up to our shoulders in groundwater by the end of this—”

“You're welcome to pick a different door, but we'll have to do this one eventually.”

“We could get lucky and die first,” Lemonwood muttered. At least the floor seemed dry so far. They carried on, Lemon in the lead.

“They could have at least sent a unicorn with us. How are we supposed to see anything down here with just our lamps?”

“The Overmare's probably hoping we die down here too.”

The hallway ended at another sealed door. Evening shuffled past his partner and withdrew a cutting torch. It was effectively a low-powered energy lance, and it made short work of the welded steel. The high-pitched whine of magical plasma against the horrible rattle of low-quality steel was music to Lemonwood's ears. Awful, brain-piercing music.

Then something tapped Lemonwood on the shoulder, she screamed, and years of security training kicked in immediately. She hit the ground like a sack of bricks.

“Lemon?” Evening said, and turned to peer down at the sprawl of limbs behind him. “Are you…” he glanced up, at the pony standing in the middle of the corridor. “Uh…”

It was a unicorn, and a mare, probably, but in the murky light that was all he could tell for sure. A pair of saddlebags rested on her back.

Evening retreated, his rump bumping against the closed door. “Who the fuck are you?” His voice only jittered a little.

The unicorn ducked her head. “Oh, sorry,” she said, apologetic but not nervous in the slightest. “I don't come down here often and now I think I'm lost.”

“Ya think?” Lemonwood said, and struggled back to her hooves. “This isn't even a real maintenance tunnel.” She lifted her leg, and the combined glare of two PipBucks was just enough to shed light on the mare's identity.

Evening blinked. “Palette? What are you doing down here?”

The painter shrugged. “I told you, I'm lost.”

“No, what are you doing down here at all? It's not like the Overmare's commissioning murals on the maintenance level.”

“Yeah,” Lemonwood said. “Why aren't you sneaking out of the Stable or something?”

“Excuse me?” Palette took a step back. “Why would you say something like that?”

Evening nodded. “Yeah, she was top of my list. Velvet and Twinkletaps are gone, so that only leaves a hoofful of artists left.”

Palette glanced between them, a scowl deepening on her face. “I'm standing right here!”

Lemonwood rolled her eyes. “We know. We're ignoring you.”

“Why?”

“Cause I haven't talked to anypony in four days who wasn't either trying to leave the Stable or yelling at me for letting somepony leave the Stable!”

Evening said, “What about me?”

“Fuck off.”

“Right, sorry.”

Palette cocked her head and glanced between the two earth ponies. She shifted her weight, bit her lip, and finally said, “Okay, I have a confession. I'm not lost, and I am trying to leave the Stable.” She stepped forward and lifted her own PipBuck up. A low-resolution map of the Stable flickered over the dim screen. “I think there's a secret exit down here.”

A moment passed in absolute silence.

“You guys aren't, um, undercover security or something, are you?”

Lemonwood's head turned at a glacial pace, and her dumbfounded gaze met Evening Breeze's own.

She cracked first. “Pfffffttt, heh, hah,” she gasped, her lungs suddenly empty.

“Hah! Haha hahahaha!”

“Tch, hah, heh.”

“Fffft, hah. Undercover.”

“Undercover security! Can you, phffft, imagine?”

“Ooof, fuck everything,” Evening said as he struggled for air. “Yeah, we're undercover security. That's why we're wading through cobwebs in the Stable's rectum.”

“The Overmare just trusts us so much, she couldn't decide which top-secret exit we should guard!”

Palette's nose wrinkled. “This is getting weird. If you're not security, can I just…” She shuffled forward a few steps. “Just slip on by and be out of your manes?”

Evening cleared his throat and straightened. He was just broad enough to take up most of the hallway when he wanted to. “Uh, hold on.” He glanced at Lemonwood and raised an eyebrow.

“What?” she asked.

He nodded to Palette, then raised both eyebrows.

“I don't understand you.”

Evening ground his teeth. He raised a hoof, jabbed it in Palette's direction, then pumped both shoulders in an exaggerated shrug.

Lemonwood turned to Palette. “Do you have any clue what he wants?”

Palette's ears twitched, and she opened her mouth.

“I'm asking, 'what should we do?'” Evening Breeze finally growled.

“Oh!” Lemonwood said, nodding and smiling. “See, I thought you were asking something way dirtier than that.” She turned and regarded Palette, brow pinched and eyes narrowed. “I mean, I guess we take her to Valour, right?” She didn't sound very sure.

“Please don't,” said Palette.

Evening nodded slowly. “They can't be mad at us for doing our job.” He let out a long, slow sigh.

“Well, technically,” Lemonwood said, and licked her lips. “Technically, that's not our job anymore, remember? Two demotions in a row.”

“Good point, good point. Two new jobs in two days. It's starting to get hard to keep track of. And who could blame us?”

“The Overmare could.”

“Mmm. Mhm,” Evening hummed in agreement.

Palette wasn't exactly placated. She retreated a few more steps. Her horn glowed platinum blue.

“Don't!” Evening and Lemon shouted together, already ducking and covering their heads with their hooves. They glanced backward to find not a single storage locker in sight.

“We won't tell anypony,” Lemonwood said quickly. “Not even if the Overmare asks us directly.”

Evening nodded. “You can trust us. After all, there isn't really anywhere left for her to demote us to.” He gestured down to his unlabeled Stable barding and lack of badge and ornamentation. “See, this isn't even a real position.”

Palette stopped, peered, and considered. “So you're not security, and you're not maintenance…” She looked around, at the dark, abandoned hallway, and back, at the door they'd unsealed minutes ago. “What is your job?” she asked.

Evening Breeze and Lemonwood exchanged a look.

“You say you've got a map of this place?”

“And a horn to light the way?”

They leaned in together. “Mind if we share?”

They kicked in the door together, which all in all was probably overkill, since the hinges weren't much more than ash once Evening's plasma cutter was applied. Still, it felt like an important team building moment.

Dust poured into the air, rendering the light from Palette's horn useless.

Evening Breeze and Lemonwood proceeded forward anyway.

Seconds inside the doorway, there was a loud thwack. “Fuck!” Lemonwood cursed, and hopped backward on three legs. “Oh piss, that sucks.”

“Banged your shin?”

“Yeah, of course I did.” She cursed a few more times and flexed her leg. She settled some weight on it and winced. “Yup, that's a bruise for sure.”

Palette trotted up beside them. The dust began to settle, and the light spell filled the room. Large tanks lined the walls, and small pools of water gathered in the grooves around them. Pipes ran along the walls and across the ceiling. They looked down, at a pipe that jutted off the wall, cracked and corroded, directly in front of the door. It was split in half, forming a circular mouth of sharp, filthy metal, like a snake waiting for prey.

Lemonwood glanced down at her sore, unpunctured leg and took a few steps back.

“Maybe wait until we can see next time,” Palette suggested.

“I like that idea,” Lemonwood agreed shakily.

The walls of piping ran toward the far end of the room. They all slanted slightly downward.

Evening turned to Palette. “So, according to your map, how far does this tunnel go?”

“Hard to say.” She lifted her leg and tapped the screen to turn on the backlight. “It's kind of a maze down here.” Palette offered the screen to them. Indeed, rooms and passages intersected, doubled back, sloped up and down, forming at least three different floors stacked atop one another. Nestled toward the outside edge of the map was a small marker. Outside.

Evening winced, and Lemon groaned aloud. “We're so fucked,” she muttered, and walked forward into the room.

“Okay, how about you concentrate on keeping us in the right direction, and we'll keep our eyes peeled for tetanus syringes,” Evening said to Palette. “Maybe we'll get lucky and make it there sometime this week.”

Palette nodded and squinted hard at her PipBuck. “At least if it does take us that long, there's no way security will find us.”

“Find our corpses, you mean,” Lemonwood said from across the room. She peered into the next room. “Looks like we're going down.”

Evening rolled his eyes. Palette shivered.

The door at the far end of the room led to another hallway, although, true to Lemon's words, it sloped downward at a steep angle. They all felt the stress in their lower legs as they descended.

“Looks like this passage curves right, then…” The sound of hooves on steel floor pounded through the narrow hallway. “Uh, that's probably not… hmm.”

“What?” Evening Breeze asked.

“Oh, um, nothing.”

Lemonwood and Evening Breeze both drew up short.

“Okay, it's not nothing. It looks like we need to go up. Straight up.”

“How far up?” Lemon said.

Palette's muzzle scrunched. “Hard to say. Too far, I think.”

They followed the hallway's bend and hit a dead end. Not a room, just a flat, featureless metal wall. As one, their gazes ran upward.

Lemonwood snickered. “Fuck off.”

There was a small, square opening in the ceiling, nearly ten feet above their heads. A perfectly black hole into the sky. A few hours in the future, Palette might look back on that image and consider it poetic.

“Yeah, I don't think—” Evening started.

Palette glared at her PipBuck, then at the narrow opening in the ceiling, then at the floor. Her gaze landed on the two former security officers, and her expression lifted. She looked back up at the open panel appraisingly.

“I bet there's a ladder in there. Or something. It wouldn't be on the map like this otherwise.”

“Unless it's supposed to be a secret backup exit, so only an official, organized, well-supplied group can get through,” Lemonwood argued. “You know, with groups of unicorns to levitate ponies, or folding ladders. Maybe a friggin' lamp to see shit better.”

Palette stepped forward and aimed her horn at the ceiling. It's omnidirectional glow narrowed slightly, and cast long, soft shadows up the vertical shaft. “Looks like a ladder to me,” she said. Indeed, the faint silhouettes of ladder rungs, bolted to one wall, were unmistakable.

Evening sighed. “That's great, but ladders aren't very helpful when they're ten feet above your head.”

Palette looked over both of her companions again, sizing them up. “Boost me,” she said.

“Uh, maybe you didn't notice, but we're not any taller than you,” Lemonwood said, gesturing between herself and Evening Breeze. “You wouldn't make it even if we threw you.”

“Unless you have some fancy unicorn trick we don't know about,” Breeze said, doubtfully.

Honestly, Palette was a little offended by that.

“I was imagining more of a pony pyramid.”

Lemonwood narrowed her eyes. “With you on top, obviously?”

“That's usually how I prefer it.”

“Didn't need to know that,” Lemon said, but she glanced upward, then at Evening, following her reasoning. “But fine. It might work.”

Evening Breeze sighed, and his shoulders slumped. “I'm going to be on the bottom, aren't I?”

“Oh yeah, just like always.”

It wasn't exactly elegant. Evening Breeze nearly toppled over sideways when Lemonwood climbed onto his back, then Palette pointed out that they weren't quite underneath the hole. His legs nearly buckled as he repositioned, and then Lemonwood slipped and had to dance in place to keep her balance. At least, that was her excuse.

Palette planted her fore hooves on Evening's rump, shakily dragged a hind leg up, and then jumped, draping herself over Lemonwood's back.

“F-fuck,” Evening whimpered. His legs shook, and the whole tower shook with him.

Lemonwood ground a hoof into his shoulders. “Stand still, idiot. We're nearly there.”

“Ow,” he breathed.

“Much better.”

Finally—or much too quickly, if you asked Lemonwood—Palette gathered her hooves beneath her and stretched up, grasping the first rung tightly.

“Got it?” Lemon asked.

“Yeah, I…” Palette strained, heaved, and utterly failed to reach the next rung. “Another inch or two, please.”

“Please?” Evening gasped. “Now she says please?”

“Okay, I'm going to jump. Push off my back or something,” Lemonwood said, bending her knees and bracing her hooves on Evening Breeze's spine.

Palette tightened her grip on the rung and spaced her hind legs on Lemon's back. “Ready!”

“I did nothing to deserve this,” Evening muttered, just to himself.

“One, two, three!” Lemonwood kicked off the unfortunate pony below and popped a good two feet upward. A half-second later, the weight left her back in turn.

Evening and Lemonwood crashed to the ground in a pile of limbs, manes, and tails. Of course, Lemon landed mostly on top of her partner. He didn't even make a sound.

A second later, when no third pony joined their pathetic puddle of painful pony parts, Lemonwood gathered herself and rolled over. “Palette?”

“I'm almost at the top!” she called. “You two okay?”

“A little bruised,” Lemonwood answered. “Although Breeze seems fine.”

Again, not a peep. Lemon hoped he wasn't actually dead.

“Okay, I think I can—”

There was the sound of scraping metal, and something lanced downward toward them, hard and fast and solid. Lemonwood rolled out of the way in the blink of an eye to the sound of a steel ladder smashing against a steel floor. She leapt to her hooves and spun around.

Evening Breeze was just as motionless as before, albeit now he had a solid metal rail on either side of his head. The bottom rung rested a few precious centimeters over his muzzle. He sighed. “And here I was hoping for a swift death.”

“Oops, sorry!” Palette called down. “I didn't think it would just drop like that!”

“Don't worry, we're good,” Lemon replied, already starting her ascent. “Come on, Evening. I wanna get there before our shift ends.”

They gathered around a sealed door. After hours of navigating the lower levels, they knew the procedure pretty well. Evening Breeze withdrew his plasma cutter, and Lemonwood and Palette looked down at Palette's PipBuck.

“We're close,” Lemonwood noted.

“Yup. This is the last room. I think.”

Burning metal and magical resonance filled the space, drowning out almost every other sensation.

“It's hard to believe I'm actually about to leave the Stable,” Palette said.

Lemonwood nodded. “Hard to believe I'm actually about to complete a shift without something horrible happening.”

Evening Breeze wrenched the plasma cutter out of the door and switched it off. “Aren't you both being a little premature? This is probably the part where Palette's secret password doesn't work, or the Overmare herself is there waiting for us.”

Palette shivered. “Ugh, don't say that. Can you imagine?”

“Yes,” both Lemonwood and Evening Breeze replied.

“Guh.”

Evening pushed the door open, and Palette angled her magic light inside.

They gasped.

“Kinda looks like a bathroom,” said Evening Breeze, breaking the silence.

“Pretty sure it is a bathroom,” Lemonwood said. She walked over to one side of the room, where a series of evenly spaced pipes emerged from the floor and jutted into the room. They were all haphazardly capped off, and there were grout marks around them in small circles. She tapped a pipe with a hoof. “Toilets.”

The room was ringed with more collections of dead-end pipes, some at sink-height, some in the floor. On the far end of the room, there was an alcove that presumably used to be for showering. Aside from the bony spurs of ancient plumbing, the room was bare and empty.

Palette frowned. “Stable Two's emergency exit is in a decommissioned bathroom? That's so… unromantic.”

“I mean, if they wanted to keep people from looking around too closely, a run-down stallion's bathroom is the way to go.”

“How can you tell it's a stallion's bathroom?” Evening asked.

“Because it's disgusting. I don't think a mare's bathroom could get this gross even after decades of neglect.”

Palette made the mistake of peering into a nearby corner. Her upper lip twitched involuntarily. “I've never wanted to get out of the Stable more than I do at this exact second. Come on, help me look.”

“Aaaaaand this is starting to feel like a demotion again,” Evening Breeze muttered as he brought his face close to the mouldy pipes. “If I end up with old piss on my muzzle—”

“It'll be no different from any other Thursday night for you,” Lemonwood snapped back. “Shut up and find the door.”

Evening stopped in his tracks and frowned. “Are… are you saying that I… drink old piss? Or—”

“It's just a burn, stop reading so much into it.”

“Sorry.”

He went back to examining the walls.

It was hard to look for secret panels or hidden switches with only the soft light from Palette's horn, but they all did their best. Of course, the pony with the head-mounted lamp was the one to finally find something.

“Guys, I think I found something.”

They hurried over.

Palette was standing at the entrance to the shower room, her hooves inches from the grate that served as its floor. The slits were narrow, but they could dimly see a tunnel a few feet beneath it, leading off into even more darkness.

Lemonwood shook her head and turned around. “Oh no, I'm not going down there. You know what ponies do in the shower.”

Evening sighed, and said, “It's always all sex jokes and weird insults with you, then when it's time to crawl through some crusty jizz you turn into a prude.”

Palette made a strange sound at the back of her throat. “I'm starting to think that you two aren't coherent individuals. You're some kind of dual headed personality disorder.”

Lemon turned back around with a small grin. “Maybe you've gone crazy down here, and we're both warring aspects of your personality trying to keep you alive.”

“No, that's not it.” She turned her attention to the grate. Her magic tugged at its edges. “C'mon, help me lift this.”

Evening shook his head and started forward. “It's bolted down. I'll just cut through it.”

A few quick swipes of the plasma cutter and a sharp kick, and the grate crashed down into the passage below. “Ladies first,” he said.

Lemonwood sneered. “Eat my ass.”

She jumped down. Palette followed. Evening Breeze took up the rear.

The tunnel was barely wide and tall enough for an adult pony to walk upright, and it went on for what seemed like miles but was probably only a few dozen yards.

“Door,” Palette said, at last. The party ground to a halt.

“A Stable door?” Evening said, relief in his voice.

“We're inside a Stable, dummy. Every door's a Stable door.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, and yes,” said Palette. “It's a big cog thing. Well, not big. It's a mini-Stable door.”

“Can you open it?”

“Let me check.” She groped around until she found a small terminal screen. With a quick flurry of telekinetic key presses, there was a hiss of compressed air, and the door rolled open.

They all stepped back wordlessly. Lemonwood and Evening Breeze peered around Palette's sides, and the unicorn raised her head and illuminated the beyond.

At the lowest point in the Stable, beneath thousands of tons of earth and metal, in the plumbing of an old bathroom drain, the three ponies drank in their first look of the world outside. Palette nearly whimpered in excitement. Both former security ponies squinted, as if afraid the sheer otherness of whatever they saw might overwhelm them.

“Stairs,” Lemonwood said. “Those are stairs.”

Palette hiccuped out a laugh. “Not just stairs!” She boldly cantered forward, up the first flight of stairs and onto the landing. She braced herself, then turned around and peered up the next flight. “Uh… Not just stairs!” She trotted up, around the bend and out of sight.

Evening Breeze and Lemonwood stepped into the stairwell. There was no gap between the flights, just dust and concrete: the kind of stairs you could run up, back and forth, without any clue when you'd reach the top.

“Anything?” Evening Breeze called.

Palette's voice replied, muffled and distant. She must have already climbed several flights. “I'm… keep going! Password… see-em-see three-bee-eff-eff!”

Lemon and Evening exchanged a look. They waited. The sound of Palette's hoofsteps faded. They turned on their PipBuck lamps in the absence of her horn light.

Five minutes later, Evening Breeze muttered, “Welp, she's gone.”

“Yeah. Kinda rude, honestly.”

“And what was that thing she yelled? See my see?”

Lemonwood started forward, toward the base of the steps, while Evening took a step back, toward the miniature Stable door. His rump hit steel.

He let out a sharp whinny, and whirled on the offending surface. His veins froze over. “Uh, Lemon, I think…” He turned, and Lemonwood was already out of sight up the stairs.

“Door closed behind us, right?” she called.

“Y-yes. Somehow we didn't even—”

“Notice, right. Too distracted by the stairs.” She trotted back into view, shoulders slumped. “I feel like we should have at least seen this one coming.”

“Shit. Shit. We're going to end up outside, aren't we? Fuck, we already are outside.” He kicked at the door with a vicious hind leg. The clank thundered through the tiny concrete stairwell.

Lemonwood barely mustered a shrug. “Again, should have seen it coming. We've gone with the flow ever since this stuff started, and the flow is obviously headed up there. I guess we're going to die.” She snorted. “Okay, I actually did call that one.”

They were quiet for a long moment. Evening Breeze lay down. Lemonwood squatted on a step halfway down the first flight of stairs. The sheer aimlessness in the room was overwhelming. Funny, since they'd never had so few avenues open to them. It was either up or nowhere.

Evening Breeze breathed in deeply, exhaled slowly, and relaxed. He stood up, stretched his joints, and smiled. With slow, dramatic strides, he approached the stairs.

He said, “You're right. Everything's pushing us out of the Stable, so maybe we should stop drifting with the flow and get out ahead of it.” He raised his muzzle skyward and closed his eyes. “How many ponies get an opportunity like this?”

“Lots, apparently,” Lemon remarked. “Like, five in the last week, or something. I'm losing track now.” She hadn't moved from her seat.

“My whole life, I just accepted that I'd never leave. That I'd live and die in Stable Two. But you know what? I don't think I want that anymore. I want to see what's out there. I want to be something more than a security officer, or even security chief! The world's just sitting up there, waiting for us to experience it!”

Lemonwood lifted her head, and half-rose to her hooves.

“You feel it too, right? Maybe this is where we belong. Not crawling through old bathrooms, not dusting common areas, not guarding empty hallways. We belong to—”

“Is that a control panel?” Lemon asked suddenly. She stared over his shoulder, at the sealed door.

“—to… huh?” Evening Breeze turned and followed her gaze. “Huh. Yeah, that's… that's the same as on the other side.”

They both stared at the little terminal in dumb silence, trying to figure out what to do with it.

“Palette was yelling the password, wasn't she?”

“Yes. She even said the word 'password.'”

“Should have put that together faster.”

“Yeah.”

Lemonwood walked up to the door and fumbled at the keypad. “What was it? CMC… three?”

“3BFF. I remember thinking that it was some kind of dumb acronym at the end.”

A few more pecks at the terminal, and the door hissed and swung open.

“Well,” Evening Breeze said. He looked into the familiar hallway on the other side.

“Uh huh. So all that stuff about our purpose or whatever?”

“Right. Never mind then.”

And they went back inside.

Things went back to normal pretty fast.

Nopony was able to figure out when or how Palette had left. As far as the rest of the Stable was aware, she just disappeared one night. They were used to artists disappearing by then, and compared to Velvet Remedy she wasn't popular enough to hold anypony's attention for long. Lemonwood and Evening didn't see any reason to illuminate them.

It took a few weeks for them to fully explore and document the decommissioned section of the Stable. The results were less than stellar. Most of the metal was either rusted or warped from years of unchecked water exposure. Once their work was checked over by respected, competent engineers and inventory clerks, the Overmare cancelled the project and turned her attention back toward the quotidian problems of Stable life.

Either nopony noticed or nopony cared that Lemon and Evening were never reassigned. They ate breakfast at the cafeteria like everypony else, and socialized in the common areas in the afternoon. They went back to their private quarters in the evenings and slept through the night. During the day, they wandered, sometimes together, sometimes alone.

“Do you ever miss being in security?” Evening Breeze asked one night as they left the cafeteria together. “You know, having some authority, some purpose.”

“Here we go again with your great sense of purpose. We live down here. We're going to die down here, just like everypony else. If you want some variety, go explore maintenance again. Sometimes new stuff breaks and it's almost like walking into a different place for once.”

He huffed. “Remind me why I still hang out with you?”

“You like friends?” she said, grinning.

“You are an asshole.”

They walked, passing sleepy-eyed ponies lurching toward their precious seven hours of sleep between days of dreary work.

“So you don't miss having a job at all?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes. “I kind of miss exploring the bottom levels, but we've already charted everything down there, so this is the next best thing.”

“The next best thing after exploring abandoned tunnels is doing nothing?”

“Yup!” Lemonwood stopped next to her bedroom door and tapped the control panel. “If you want your old job back so bad, go ask for it.” She ducked inside. The door closed.

Evening Breeze meandered down the hallway, turning corners randomly. He didn't miss his old job. He missed the job he used to pretend he had. Guarding things with real value from real interlopers. That was what security should be about. But Stable Two wasn't like that. The most exciting thing to happen in his lifetime was a few desperate romantics sneaking outside.

He arrived at his room, removed his barding as he crossed the floor, and flopped into bed.

As Evening drifted off to sleep, he imagined ponies in steel armor standing guard over precious and important things. Magic artifacts, maybe, or dangerous technology. Something bigger than Stable Two could deal with.

Two hallways over, Lemonwood pictured herself delving through treacherous ruins, dodging traps and foiling monsters in search of something rare and interesting.

They never considered using the secret exit and venturing outside. Why would they? What were the odds that there was some kind of highly organized faction up there, perfectly suited for both of them, thriving and desperate for new recruits. So they spun their wheels underground, as if waiting for that faction to come to them.

Author's Note

Thanks to Chaotic Dreams and NyxOS for pre-reading.