Stable 56 and Life Therein
I was once a normal pony like you'd expect. Hopes, dreams, the whole deal. Most ponies who lived their lives in a Stable never knew what the outside is like, others leave and find out. I found out the hard way. Stable 56... Does it really matter? The numbers blur themselves out even in my dreams but I'll tell you as best as I can.
As a young filly, I had a few friends that gradually left as they got their cutiemarks and moved on to their Stable-assigned tasks. It took me years before giving up on it. Can you imagine, a fully-grown mare with a blank flank, I was a complete laughingstock. Passing ponies would give me vacant smiles, seemingly more out of social obligation to smile at the poor drudge than anything. The shame was visible in my parent's faces when we talked, the Overmare looked me up and down like she was taking in a circus oddity. I'd been given a default janitorial job, nopony needed a cutiemark to scrub floors. The position did little to help me find that elusive cutiemark. Not that I'd want a cutiemark in mopping but it'd be better than nothing.
Another day, another... well, another day. I got out of bed, taking a moment to check my Pipbuck, at least it was Friday, not that I had weekends off. Working nearly every day took a heavy toll on me, every day just blurred together and I never knew what day it was unless I checked my Pipbuck. I checked the closet for my jumpsuit, the light blue fabric felt nice in my hooves and the scent of lavender was very faintly noticeable if I put my nose directly to the garment. It was just a momentary relief from the inevitable day I knew would be ahead of me. The jumpsuit hugged me in all the wrong ways, it seemed as if some seamstress had it out for me. Heading out of my little stall, I ran into a friend from when I was younger. The mare stood out brightly against the gray halls, with a brightly colored dress of red against blue fur. She was an artist, a treasure to the Stable and beloved by all. (In hindsight, she was actually a pretty mean pony unless you could help her.)
"Evening, Brush. How are ya?" I gave her a wave and a smile as she passed by, to no response. Not even a glance in my direction. It was as if I were a ghost, I was taken aback by the disregard she'd shown. It couldn't be that I was a janitor that she'd ignored me then, perhaps the fault was my own. I wracked my brain trying to remember if I'd done anything to slight or wrong her to no effect. As I walked down to the bottom level of the Stable I put the interaction behind me, there were countless reasons for her to have been rude like that and it wasn't really me to hold a grudge. Level 6 of the Stable was undoubtedly the scariest, lights often went out as water pooled everywhere, shorting the circuits, and corroding everything. The senior janitors had assigned me this floor because none of them wanted to do it. I descended the maintenance stairwell slowly, each flight I came down became darker and more empty until I reached the doorway for Level 6.
A sign reading 'Level 6' sat next to the door, but the characters on the sign had aged and become rusted, now it read 'lc el o'. A single fluorescent light hung to the side, flickering slightly as the long pole of a light bulb teetered on its last legs. The door was moderately clean on this side, but I dreaded opening it, the opposite side of the door had rust along the tracks and produced the most horrible grinding noise as it slid open. I cringed as I pressed the button. The two halves of the door slid apart, the right one getting stuck in an almost-closed position. I needed to get an engineer down here to fix the door, but I never got any reply to my requests. I had a feeling my mail to the Overmare printed directly into a garbage can. Level 6 greeted me with its signature creepy hallway. An exact copy of the other levels, only this one was empty and darker. Where Level 1 had warm lighting placed in even intervals down the center of the hall, Level 6 had long fluorescent bars down the sides, many of which were either dead or dying. Between each light, the hall got significantly darker. My hooves trudged along the worn floors, a much darker shade of gray from the dirt and grime I could never seem to get out. I could scrub it with the strongest cleaner until I was dizzy and accomplish nothing. The halls in Level 6 were cramped, or at least felt like it, and around each corner seemed to lurk any nightmare I could ever come up with. The only noises to be heard down in Level 6 was that of the ambient hum of the generators that powered the entire facility and the water systems gurgling. Not a single pony was down here but me, it got pretty lonely.
My thoughts of the scary halls were interrupted as I felt my hooves go cold. Looking down revealed a massive puddle had formed and filled the hallway. "Oh. Well isn't this wonderful?" I asked to nopony in particular. The janitorial closet was further down, around a corner to the right, I'd have so much mopping to do today, the puddle kept going as I walked, the entire hall was filled with a nice layer a cold water across the floor that splashed up onto my jumpsuit and soaked through my coat. I glared down at my reflection in the water, a blank flanked failure glared up at me. Probably upset that I was just as bad as her. As I opened the door to the janitorial closet, the water slowly crawled around the seal of the door and into the dry room. I grabbed the mop and bucket as quickly as I could to defend my bit of dry land from the flood. The mop floated in the magenta cloud of my magic as I looked at my Pipbuck, hoping for something good to be on the radio.
"-and gentlebucks, thanks for tuning in again. It's your host, Disco Stargleam, welcoming you back for some good beats to get you ready for the weekend!" the radio host laughed, he sounded so disingenuous. A few mechanical sounds came from my Pipbuck before some generic rock music came on. Disco really needed to get some more music, I'd heard this one way too many times before. With little more than a shrug, I got to work cleaning up the water as the same old song belted itself from my Pipbuck.
Mop to water, water to bucket, bucket to drain. Over and over, until the halls were dry again. Three hours passed and now my clock told me it was nearing 10 pm. I tried not to think about it, but I knew ponies upstairs were having fun, it was Friday night. The only good thing about being on Level 6 was nopony could hear me scream, which I did a lot. Feeling a great emotion well up in my chest, I pounded the unforgiving laminate flooring with my hooves. I hated this job, I hated his Stable, I hated my coworkers, I hated the Overmare, and I hated the mare in the mirror more than anything in the world. Mopping up filthy water in a dark, empty prison while the other ponies had fun and friends. How could this be my life and how come nopony wanted to be my friend? Why wouldn't they talk to me?!
Further screaming and bawling on the floor brought me no help or any answers. Only itchy, dry eyes and a sore throat. I don't know why I even cried anymore, it's not like somepony would magically hear and come be my friend. Now that I'd worn myself out, the night's work would only be harder. I did a half-assed job, sloppily cleaning up the floors and changing out one or two lights if the bulbs fit. Since there wasn't any equipment delegated to Level 6, I gave the floors here a weak buffing with a rag, but no amount of work would ever clean these floors that nopony would ever look at. I'd never taken to exploring much on this floor, since it was just too creepy, but tonight I'd rushed and had two hours to myself down here. So I checked every door I could find, many were locked by maintenance personnel which had obviously not been down here in months or even years. Of the few rooms I was able to access, I ended up finding very little that I hadn't encountered before. My janitorial badge didn't open many doors. I did find an old terminal sitting in what appeared to be a small office that hadn't been used in nearly a decade but was left perfectly preserved.
Like stepping into a time capsule, I looked at some of the dated items. An old desk fan sat still next to a calendar left sitting on... September 4th, 17 years ago. I pulled a newer chair into the office and pushed the ancient desk chair to the side. Nothing against those chairs that spin, but I prefer my seats to be new and able to hold the weight of a pony. I took a look at the terminal, whoever used it left the password on a sticky note that had long since lost the sticky and fallen to the keyboard. I booted it up and typed in the password. 22LoveNote00.
I checked around the main menus on the terminal, checking for anything of interest. I did find an old game was plugged into the terminal. Booting it up, I was immediately entranced by the flashing lights. I had no idea that these computers could have games on them! It was even the kind of tape I could stick into my Pipbuck! I loaded the game and stared in amazement as a little pony appeared inside of a big maze, a few experimental key presses revealed that the arrow keys could control the direction the little green pony ran in. It looked like she was collecting dots or something. Then I ran her into a ghost. The game proved to be incredibly challenging, earning me several 'Game Over' screens before i managed to collect all the dots and get to the next maze.
I checked my Pipbuck, 2am. My shift was over, but I could look around more in this terminal, which got me to the Stable's internal mailing system. There were a few unopened emails from 17 years ago addressed to a pony named Love Note. I opened up the first one, titled 'Mare beneath the Moonlight'. Some unnamed address had sent pages of written smut to Love Note about a mare who'd met with some dashing stallion one night in a strange, fantasy garden. I have to admit, it was a good read so far and painted a very detailed picture. I saved that file to my Pipbuck for later reading. The next email was from the previous Overmare titled 'Stop'.
'Love Note, you need to stop this right now. Your stories are getting ponies curious about the outside and if I hear one more reference to your smut I'm going to snap. Your job is to write for the record keeping, not to produce trash novels. I'm giving you one last chance to just stop circulating this.'
It had remained unopened for 17 years, meaning Love Note was gone from her office before being able to read it. The most recent email, from only a year ago, had no title. I opened it up and read.
'Ruby Inkwell, you'll find this sooner or later. If you don't then I'm afraid there isn't much I can do to help you. There are big things ahead planned for you and you'll need to follow these instructions exactly if you want to make it out of this alive.'
An email, sent to an unused terminal, addressed to me? Unfortunately, the email contained nothing else but a reply box. I closed the email and went through some of the older ones. Many of them were fan letters from ponies all talking about whatever this Love Note had written. Several others had drafts of stories Love Note had sent to editors. Others, from an unnamed pony with which Love Note shared her drafts, also held sweet nothings sent between the two. I was a only a little jealous reading over Love Note's love notes. One email, sitting down at the bottom of the inbox dated only 16 years ago, caught my attention with an interesting title, 'Leaving for good'.
'Love Note, thanks for all the time you've given me, but it's time for me to sign out. Things have gotten bad in Ponyville and I'm afraid we may have to abandon the settlement if these raider attacks continue. I won't be able to access this terminal anymore and I'm not sure we'll be able to speak again.'
I checked the entire thread, it was a long conversation between the two. Love Note sent a heated reply.
'I understand you need to do what you need to do, but I really can't bear the thought of never hearing from you again. If you're leaving Ponyville, I want to come with. I know we've never met, but I want to get out of this prison and finally see you.'
'I'll see what I can do, but I don't know if I can do much from out here.'
There was a week-long gap between the next reply, the pony on the outside, who I still hadn't found a name for sent another email.
'I think I found the access code for the Stable door, but the situation out here has gotten worse. It's GGGala12. I'm going to be waiting right outside, but we need to get out of this town before the day is over.'
Nothing else. The end of the thread gave me an interesting bit of information. Maybe the code actually worked, I didn't know anypony named Love Note or even heard of a Love Note until I'd opened these emails. I wondered what became of Love Note. Had she really left Stable 56? It made me wonder what world lay beyond the sealed doorway. It had to be something better than the world contained within Stable 56. The clock read 4am, I headed back to my stall to get some sleep. Tomorrow would bring me another night shift cleaning floors down here. As I stepped out of Love Note's office, I noticed the water pooling up on the floor again, dripping down from the pipes along the ceiling. I almost grabbed my mop again but decided it wasn't my problem. I went back up the maintenance stairway to the empty 4am halls of Level 3 and went back to my stall for a lukewarm bath, food, and bedtime.
With the little ambient hum of the generators and the quite buzz of the lights, my hoofsteps sounded like thunderous explosions on the floor. The little stall door opened with a chime that rung like an alarm in the silent halls, revealing the comfortable 10x10 room I'd called home ever since I left my parents' home to live on my own. The thunderous hoofsteps stopped when I transferred from the laminate-covered metal to the soft rug I'd found on Level 6 and brought up with me on a similar late night. The carpeted floor was significantly warmer, or at least not hard and cold, to walk on and covered most of my room. A long pole hung next to my bed and the laundry basket where I deposited my jumpsuit, tomorrow's jumpsuit hung on the pole, followed by several other matching garments. My shower stall was cut off from the rest of the room by a metal sliding door, it wasn't really supposed to be used for baths, but if I placed a metal plate over the drain I could relax in a few inches of warm water. I did exactly that, setting my Pipbuck on the edge of the makeshift tub to read over some of the literature (I use the term loosely here.) I'd taken from Love Note's terminal.
Most ponies couldn't take off their Pipbucks, but I'd stolen a few diagrams from the technicians here, and found out how the lock was shaped. Using magic, I could feel around inside the tumbler of the lock and play with the pins. It required the finest telekinesis I could muster, but it was worth it to have this level of precision in the spell that everypony knew. Not really a big accomplishment, but I needed the tiny victory to get me through the days.
After a bit of fiddling, the Pipbuck popped off and I was able to have both hooves free while I read about the two ponies meeting in a veritable garden in the wasteland. Then it clicked, Love Note must've based this on her relationship with that pony from the emails. I wasn't sure how to feel about it, on one hoof it was weird knowing the backstory from it, but on the other, it was pretty good writing and kept a good balance between lewd and what felt like genuine romance. Regardless, I kept the files and limited myself to a single chapter.
After an all too relaxing bath with a story, I grabbed an apple to have before bed. Yes, I know it's bad to be eating right before bed, but I was starving and going to sleep on an empty belly is very difficult. I climbed into bed, the older box spring mattress crying out as I set my weight on it. I really needed a new mattress, and yet the Overmare seemed to miss my requests. I laid face down, with a pillow held in my forelegs to rest my chin on, any other position would hurt my back by the morning, but at least that pesky loose spring had fallen out of the bottom of the mattress and would no longer be around to stab my belly while I slept.
Author's Note
Thanks for giving this a read, I really appreciate the consideration. Obviously none of this is anywhere near final and if anyone has some ideas or edits you think I should make I'd love to hear it.
Additionally the cover art will be updating as the story progresses, it's not going to stay a sketch so you don't need to worry.
Morning, another beauti- No, it was another day started in the late afternoon by the electronic buzz of my alarm clock. Somehow, I rolled onto my side during the night and felt a terrible pain all the way up my neck. Saturday, Level 6 needed to be drained again as well as further cleaning. There were several bulbs from yesterday to get rid of so they could be recycled and maybe an engineer would fix the Level 6 maintenance access door. On second thought, maybe the door could stay broken, the last thing I wanted was anypony to find my little hideaway in Love Note's office. My very own little mare cave complete with a really cool computer game and a nice desk full of files and papers I'd yet to explore. But something popped up, I remembered the email from yesterday, the one addressed to me from an unknown sender. It really ate at me, wondering how somepony knew I'd be down there, maybe it was from one of the senior janitors who knew I'd go snooping around. It didn't seem like anypony else even knew I was down there, much less that I even existed. But the fact that Love Note made contact with a pony from outside meant that the terminal connected, or at least used to be connected, to a terminal on the outside. But how would a pony from outside of Stable 56 know about me being down there?
I ate another apple for breakfast and got dressed, wrapping the Pipbuck around my foreleg again and locking it in place with a click. Another day, time to make sure Level 6 didn't rust and collapse the entire Stable. It did seem oddly important, but maybe I was just over hyping my job and Level 6 was just needed to look good to keep me busy. Today I was excited to go down though, I had more of Love Note's stuff to look through and maybe even a reply to send. Today just really felt like it was looking up for me despite the usual work. I stepped out into the halls of Level 3, there were several ponies walking around going about their business. I went past them all and made my way to the maintenance stairwell, descending a few more floors to get to my post.
The Level 6 maintenance stairwell door opened with a grind as it did every time I went through, revealing the unnerving corridors of Level 6. The water pooled throughout the halls, reflecting the overhanging lights. It would've been pretty if the floor was naturally this shiny and not just flooded. I walked through the puddles, my hooves splashing water up my legs and soaking the jumpsuit. There didn't seem to be a way to go through the water without getting the jumpsuit wet, through the months I've been a janitor I tried almost every stride to keep my barding dry and none of it worked. I resigned myself to the horrible fate of having my hooves kind of wet for the next few hours as I grabbed my mop and bucket to dump all this water down a drain.
Once I'd filled the bucket with the cloudy, grayish water I rolled the bucket to the drain. The drain was part of a small tub in the janitor's closet where I could leave my mop to dry out. I stared down the drain through the little grating and into the darkness, wondering if this water went back into our filtration systems which would leak back into Level 6. If that was true, I faced the fact that my work only served to create more work and that this was almost entirely pointless. I had a feeling I could just not do any of this cleaning and nopony would notice, but what would happen if Level 6 continuously flooded like this and I left it alone? I imagined the entire Stable filling with water all because I- My extended horror sequence came to a screeching halt, that was stupid and I was stupid for thinking of it.
Three hours. It took me a little more than three hours to clean up the entire floor. Once it was dry, I began to go look for Love Note's office, the winding halls of Level 6 looking eerily similar without the occasional hung picture or decoration to note certain areas. A left, a right, up the short staircase, and I sat at the door to Love Note's office, the door shut just as I'd left it. I opened it up and was greeted by the warm interior decorations of her office. A wooden desk, a bookcase behind it, a dusty plastic fern set next to a lamp on the corner of the desk. Next to the door sat a wooden chair with green cushioning. Although it was just painted to look like wood, it gave a better feel than the usual aluminum chairs. I walked around the desk, the floor in the office was a scratchy, short carpet that went all the way to the walls like it had been cut out specifically for this room. There wasn't much carpeting in the Stable and the fact that I had one was a luxurious find that not many ponies were afforded.
The terminal greeted me with its beautiful CRT glow as I booted it up and signed in with Love Note's password, I'd have to find a way to change it to something I could remember so I wasn't relying on the decade old scrap of paper but I wasn't the most computer-savvy mare. I sat down at the chair I'd brought over yesterday, leaving the older office chair to collect even more dust in the corner. While the Pac-Mare holotape was tempting, I scrolled past it and looked at the inbox. There was the email with my name in it, seemingly staring me down through the screen, begging me to look at the text again.
I scrolled down the inbox and opened it again, staring at the small block of text with my name sitting at the top of it. How could somepony know I was here? I scrolled down to the bottom of the email and stared at the reply box. The blinking cursor sat at the top left corner of the box, waiting for me to articulate a response. It seemed to be teasing me with each blink, each passing second that went by where I didn't know how to respond to the email.
'Who is this?'
I went to the send button and fired off my message into the nebulous abyss that made up the Stable's terminal messaging system. I sat in silence at the terminal for a good few minutes, wondering if I'd get a reply to the year-old message. I wasn't sure what I was thinking, but I waited on the hopes that there was a pony to receive my email. Chances are that I would never get a reply and nothing would come of it, so I backed out of the email menus and got up. Love Note's desk had a few drawers with dusty files and older ballpoint pens that had dried up years ago. I found a few notebooks with short stories scribbled down across some of the pages, I pulled out the notebooks and gave them a quick look, flipping through the pages pretty quickly. A few drawings of strange landscapes were worth me stopping to appreciate. What struck me was the backgrounds of all of them, no walls or ceilings. Obviously the outside world wouldn't look like the inside of a Stable, but I never tried to imagine what it would look like.
While I was checking the bookshelf out, I found a few titles that I distinctly remember hearing were banned. Among them was a book I'd never seen before, titled 'The Wasteland Survival Guide'. Unlike the other books, this one was fresh and had almost no dust on it, like it was placed there recently. I quickly turned my head to look back at the doorway, feeling like I was being watched. My obstructed view over the top of the desk revealed no such spy. Opening the Survival Guide, I laid the large document out on the desk and looked at the table of contents as I did with just about any book I read. Unfortunately for me, the book was incomplete and I only had a few chapters along with a note saying to bring the book by New Appleoosa if I wanted to get the latest revision. The book gave me a strange feeling of fear reading about a terrifying surface world full of evil ponies, evil monsters, and generally evil everything.
Ding! The terminal chimes, pulling my attention away from a diagram on making a mine that fires bottlecap shrapnel. I look up from the terrifying book, and see the main menu of Love Note's terminal lit up. 'Emails(1)', only a few minutes after I'd sent the reply.
'Who I am isn't important, what matters is my plan. You're a very important part of it, but I can't have you staying in the Stable for much longer.'
I stared at the text for what felt like an eternity, questioning the validity of this message. I had the code for the door, if it still worked, but was I really considering leaving? I looked down at the keyboard, should I even reply? I could ignore this and go back to my life, or I could continue along this path. Something about it felt strange as my horn lit up, pushing on the keys as I punched out a reply. I felt as if there was some crazy energy within me that pulled me towards this sudden diversion from the fate I'd been given. Although I didn't want to, it felt as if I couldn't control myself.
'I already have the access code to the Stable door. What more is there?'
I pressed enter and quickly turned away from the terminal, looking desperately for anything to occupy my time. I didn't like this one bit and I just wanted to go back to my comfortable little life of mopping. I wasn't anything like those ponies in the old Daring Do books, just the idea of going out both scared and excited me. Afraid to go, afraid to stay, this is exactly why I never found my talent. I'm an indecisive coward who's afraid of change. I stood up and dug around more in Love Note's office, pushing the Wasteland Survival Guide into my jumpsuit's side pocket. I was scavenging around in some of her files when I came across a photo frame set slightly askew. It was a lovely painting of a lake framed on the right side by trees and ponies enjoying themselves by the shore. I've never seen anything like this, Love Note's book described an open world but I experienced trouble imagining it fully. But this, this was a painting. There were none in the Stable besides what our treasured painters made. But even then, they had no idea what a view like this would be. I realized I was getting a very exclusive look. I righted the tilted painting, removing it from the wall to brush the dust off of the frame and bring some beauty back to the piece of art.
Behind the painting sat a safe mounted in the wall, hidden behind the painting. Of course, this Love Note had something to hide, something I'll probably want. My horn lit up as thin telekinetic fingers prodded at the keyhole, counting up the columns in the tumbler. 8 pins, this was a good lock. I gave the pins a furious jiggling as I tried to rotate the whole piece to no effect. Unfortunately this was a good lock, one that would require much more focus. I stuck a single telekinetic force into the keyhole, pushing up the deepest pin just a tiny bit. The tiniest movement, focusing entirely on the pin until it bumped into the opposite pin. Now to hold this pin in place while I did the other seven. With a grunt of frustration I rattled the lock's innards violently, yanking on the entire safe while twisting the tumbler. To my relief and satisfaction, the random hitting on the pins either landed them perfectly or broke the tumbler, either way the safe popped open with a beautiful click.
Empty. It was fucking empty, just a single letter left in the safe to the Overmare from Love Note. I opened it up, holding the thin paper gingerly in my magical grasp. The paper was yellowed from age but spared the thick dust coating that everything else in the office suffered from.
'Steel Steppes, for our Overmare you certainly are a dimwitted mare. By the time you read this, if you ever discover my little base of operations, I will be long gone from this monumental dumpster you call a Stable. There's nothing here for you, as I've covered my tracks as to where I'll be headed when I leave. But I will congratulate you on finding my hidden office down here, good job. I may not be able to convince ponies to escape this Stable, but I can get myself out and free. I hope you rot down here, you warden in all but title. I bet it just makes you seethe at how I played you like a fiddle, a marionette trapped in a show of MY creation! By the time you'd gotten wise to it, I already had my escape set in motion and there was nothing you would be able to do. Consider this a final farewell from me.'
I set the letter down, wondering what happened twenty years ago in this Stable. Who was Steel Steppes and why did she seem like a villainous mare? I know Love Note wanted out to met that pony she traded stories with, but was Steel trying to track or find out Love Note? That wouldn't be hard since the Stable wasn't exactly massive, or was Love Note really this mare's name? I realized there may be more to this situation than I knew. My mind lit up with thoughts of some grand conspiracy and a pony under some pseudonym fighting the good fight to free ponies from the control of the evil Overmare.
Ding! The terminal sounded off, interrupting my thoughts again. I went back over to the dusty terminal and checked the email again. The email lit up again, filling the black screen with bright green text as it had before. Still, the mysterious messenger refused to share their name. An empty reply box sits at the bottom of the message, waiting for me to reply.
'Your instructions are to be followed exactly. I can't stress how exactly you need to follow them. If you have the access code, open the Stable door at 3:07am. Not a minute earlier or later. Do you understand?'
I checked my Pipbuck, it read out 2:42am. Was this supposed to happen tonight? I stared at the screen and typed out a 'Yes. But what happens next?'. My heart was racing, the blood throbbing in my ears. I really didn't like the feeling of this plan.
'Enter the code and run. Do not allow the door to open with you still in the room. Once you've entered the code, wait a few seconds to make sure the robotic arm starts up. The moment it starts moving you need to come back here. Lock the doors to the maintenance stairwell behind you as you come back but do not waste a single second. Lock up the access stairwell to Level 6, come back to this office. Do not open any of the doors you've locked under any circumstances. Then check back with me for your next step.'
2:47am, it was now or never. I got up and left Love Note's office with the code ringing in my head, GGGala12. I hurried up the stairs, making sure my keys were with me, they jingled on my hip as I sped up to Level 1. Saturday night, there was a rave going on up here. The large atrium was used on weekend for partying by Disco. The hallway around the atrium connected to a flight of stairs up to a long hall. As I went down the hall towards the room that housed the Stable door, the pounding music from the atrium quieted down.
Around the large gear-shaped door was rocky outcroppings as the steel walls transitioned to stone cave walls. The room had a distinct lack of guards keeping me out, I checked my Pipbuck yet again, 3:06am, I needed to hurry. I looked around, to the right was a raised platform with a computer console. I climbed the steps as the clock changed to 3:07, I hastily typed on the console, 'GGGala12'. After a moment of silence, the terminal chimed and an alarm went off, nearly scaring me out of my jumpsuit. I watched as the dusty hydraulic arm came to life, sliding over and reaching for the large gear, when suddenly I remembered the instructions I was given. Out of morbid curiosity, I waited. I wanted nothing more than to see what was beyond the door.
"Haha! We've got company!" I heard a voice cackle as the gear slowly rolled to the side, "Wake the fuck up!" it called out again. I sprinted down the steps and down the hallway as a volley of birdshot flew down the hallway, bouncing around the steel walls and a few pellets colliding with my flank and back. "Aw come back! I didn't mean ta miss ya!" the pony laughed.
As I ran, the voices became numerous and the hoofsteps mixed in with the pounding music from the rave. I was able to slip away and back to the maintenance stairwell as I heard gunshots going off in the atrium followed by panicked screaming. I floated my keys to the door and twisted them to the right, engaging the electronic locks. As I passed by the door to Level 2, I did the same. Down to Level 3, I hesitated, wondering if I had time to grab some stuff from my stall, I shook my head, those ponies had guns and I... I was locking up the maintenance stairwell and Level 6. As I descended, I locked myself into Level 6, sealing it off from the elevator systems and stairwells. I could hear gunshots above me in the halls I once wandered as a filly. As I entered Love Note's office, I locked that door as well and sat down at the desk with the email still sitting there.
'I did what you wanted, I opened the Stable door and locked up Level 6 and the maintenance stairwell. You didn't tell me crazy ponies were right outside! They came right in and started shooting!'
I could still hear the gunshots and screams above, desperately wanting to go up there and save them but knowing I wouldn't be able to do much of anything. Instead, I cowered in my little shell of safety at the bottom of this hellhole while everypony I knew was attacked. The terminal dings, demanding my attention again.
'I know, I couldn't tell you what was out there but you needed to open the door. Now you need to wait it out for a bit down here. Don't leave this office for now. Rest assured, I'm going to get you out of there.'
So all I needed to do was just sit tight? It seemed like it was going to be a bit too easy. I snooped around the office for food, wondering how long I'd need to be waiting here. Hopefully it wouldn't be much more than a few hours, I couldn't find anything to eat at all. I got back on the terminal and began to type out a response, the keys making a delightful little click as they were pressed down.
'How long do I need to wait here? I don't have any food.'
As I pressed the key to send out my message, the lights went dark and the terminal flickered out. Darkness, both visual and audible, the generators and the water pumps stopped. The quiet mechanical whirring that always accompanied me went silent, leaving only a ringing in my ears. Fantastic, the generators were just destroyed. I'm assuming they were destroyed and not just choosing the most inconvenient moment possible to die on their own. I sat there in the dark for long enough to hear the gunshots slowly fade out, replaced by my own pounding heart. In the time it took for the air conditioned room to warm up a bit, the backup generator finally kicked on and the lighting came back. I sat in the chair as the terminal booted itself up again and the green glow cascaded across the room. Stable-Tec's logo flashed across the screen, showing that little mare in the jumpsuit, the one that seemed to be on just about everything in the Stable. The terminal came back to its start menu quickly, waiting for its next task. Stable-Tec, built to last. I checked the emails again and saw that my message was sent successfully. I saw a response highlighted at the bottom of the email thread.
'You'll be down here for several days. Level 6 will remain safe for several days, long enough for you to enter the cavern beneath Stable 56 and make your way to the surface again.'
A cave system? I didn't know how to navigate a cave, and I'm assuming a cave would be pitch black, and I didn't have a way to bring lighting with me aside from a light spell. I couldn't hear much of anything now, the upper floors went silent as the lights flickered again but not affecting the terminal this time. I hastily looked around and listened carefully, stepping out of the office and coming closer to the general access stairwell for Level 6. I pressed my ear to the cold metal door, hearing a few ponies in the stairwell talking with each other fearfully.
"Hurry up and get the door open, Bolt." A female voice whispered, piercing the silence. "Stay quiet, I'm trying." another replied, a third chimed in, "We don't have all day, Bolt. Please."
I saw the lock's tumbler jiggling slightly, the locksmith on the other side struggling to turn it. For a moment I wondered if I should let them in against the wishes of the pony on the other side of the terminal. I knew what was going on out there, but was it really my right to keep them out? I stared at the lock jiggling when the voices chimed up again, "Please, Bolt, just open the door." to which he replied, "I-I'm trying." I backed up, quickly making my way back to Love Note's office as the lock audibly popped open, I locked the door to the office and peered through the small security hole. Looking through it allowed me to see in almost all directions up and down the hallway. I could see the resident engineer stallion and his marefriend being tailed by two of the ponies from the outside. I could instantly tell them apart by the armor, the yellowed eyes, the patchy fur, and the filthy, darkened coats. I sat down at the terminal, trying my best to ignore the noises from outside as I sent a message.
'Ponies have gotten into Level 6, the locksmith got them in and now crazy ponies with guns are down here! I'm locked in Love Note's office and they don't know I'm here yet.'
I sat in stressful silence, waiting for the terminal to make its little noise when I got a reply. I listened in on the ponies outside, carefully looking through the hole. One of the rough ponies pointed a gun at Bolt as he walked up and down the halls, opening all of the doors and checking the rooms. The terminal dings quietly.
'Do what you must. You need to get out of Stable 56 alive. There is a terminal outside of Stable 56 with your next steps. Do not ignore them.'
I stared at the message, I was on my own. Any minute now Bolt would pop open that door and I'd be left to whatever fate I'd let into the Stable. I scrambled to look for a way out of the room, climbing up onto the desk and pushing at the ceiling and hoping desperately that I could just disappear into the little ventilation system. No such luck was granted to me, the vent was much too small to fit my body, I looked around the room anything, pulling the bookshelves aside to see if there was a hidden door, getting more desperate as I heard Bolt's hooves coming back up the hallway towards this office. I was never good under pressure, and this situation had a lot of it. I did all I could think to do, cowering beneath Love Note's desk with a letter opener as the door to the office opened up.
BANG! A gunshot rung out, blood spattered the back wall of the office followed by the thud of a pony hitting the ground. "Celestia! Bolt!" the mare shouted, her voice cracking as a bit of laughter could be heard past the ringing of my ears. "How could you?! We did what yo-" The mare was cut short by another gunshot followed by a thud. I really couldn't help but to shake like a leaf in my little hiding place, praying to a Celestia I hoped was listening that I wasn't next. Heavy hoofsteps traveled around the side of the desk, a slight jingle of metal with each fall of a hoof. If I hadn't gone to the bathroom earlier, I'm sure I would've wet myself then. Dark gray legs stepped into view, riddled with scars and matted fur. I was hit by the reek of unwashed pony that required a lot of focus not to gag myself on. He was wearing spiked horseshoes that jingled with each step, they were browned with old blood that had sat there long enough to dry.
"Uh, emails, some other shit. No controls." the stallions says, playing with the terminal and giving it a few smacks. Another stallion replied, "Come on, we gotta round up everypony, Jetset'll blow a damn fuse if we keep killin' 'em." the stallion at the desk clinked his hooves together on the keyboard, "Just tell her they tripped and fell on a bullet." The other stallion groaned, "That joke got old months ago." the one at the computer pulled the chair back, his head slowly dipping beneath the desk.
His eyes met mine, the yellow mixed with his bloodshot eyes to make a sickly orange. "Ello down there, love." he says, sneering me down. It felt as if his stare was pushing me further into my little shelter under the desk, as if it would make me sink away from his grasp. I panicked, I didn't have the heart to kill. That's not me, I'm a gentle mare. Flipping the letter opener around, I smashed the handle into the stallion's face with such force that he was pushed over onto his back and sprinted from my cover. I barely made it out from under the desk when the other stallion I'd completely forgotten about blew a hole in the desk, missing me by the hairs on my flank. Ducking back down, I waited for the volley of shots to stop, praying none of the projectiles made it through the desk to me. When the firing stopped, I quickly leapt up over the desk, grabbing the shotgun from the stallion's mouth and yanking it to towards the ground long enough to distract him and keep the idiot from noticing the bookshelf coming down onto him. I hastily made my way out of the office, stepping over the bodies of Bolt and his marefriend I never learned the name of.
The halls were empty in Level 6, but now they held an actual sense of danger to them. Around each corner where I used to be spooked by a flickering light, an evil pony could be waiting to put a bullet in my head or much worse. I shook uncontrollably as I made my way through the darkened halls, my heart raced and threatened to burst out of my chest, the main stairwell was alive with the rough sound of ponies coming down. I look down at my Pipbuck, staring into the little screen as it showed three red ticks in the compass slowly oscillating back and forth. I didn't put it together that ponies were descending the stairs until I saw an armored mare and two of her grunts trailing her around the final flight in time with the ticks.
I broke right, running down the hall towards the maintenance stairwell before I could be spotted. I quickly unlocked the door and slipped inside, I could hear the ponies talking quietly as they closed in on Love Note's office. "Huh... We got a fighter, boys. Keep an eye peeled." The armored mare says, laughing at the two stallions I knocked out. The marker on my Pipbuck flashes from [HIDDEN] to [CAUTION], letting me know that my presence was noticed by the ponies. I turn tail to sneak up to Level 1 of the secured stairwell before any of the ponies come to check through this door.