Chapter 1: Steel Driving Mare

“Chem! Chem!” A voice echoed from the bulkhead, “Chem! You in there!”

The voice was all too familiar, a kind tone made harsh and raspy from throat damage, “Yeah! Hold on, got to-” as I talked, the temperature gauge on the large, yellow-painted, machine I was working with had started to spike, “Shit! Shit! Shit! Unclamp the coolant valve!” even before I finished shouting, the sound of a pony throwing open panels echoed from beyond the bulkhead, I quickly slammed the service panel on the machine shut and dove for the exit before I was either incinerated or frozen, and a more morbid part of my mind contemplated diving for the overheating machine, preferring a fiery death to the slow and cold one. As the machine started to turn a glowing red, a sudden chill entered the air, right as I managed to slam the bulkhead open.

Still trying to get to my hooves after slamming into the far wall, I heard the door close shut behind me and saw a large dark-silvery-grey stallion shut the bulkhead with all the grace and ease of an outdated diesel train barreling through a concrete wall… Not that I had ever seen such a thing, the only train in this place was the Central Line, and that was mounted in such a way that even a thaumic engine explosion couldn’t derail it. I had nearly caused such a thing!

With a sigh I let myself fall to the ground, grunting a bit when I felt a loose bolt against my side, “Celestia damn… My dad’s going to kill me,” I lied there as the stallion tried to put the service panel back into place, but his violent opening had left the metal bent and buckled. I simply stared at him as he tried to bend the panel back into shape, but failed. And it was at that moment the lights, enchanted quartz crystals in the ceiling and walls, cut out. I raised my head, and horn, and cast a dim golden-yellow light throughout the room.

My horn felt a little strange, a little tinny, as if I was attempting to cast a spell that wasn’t possible to cast, and the chills going through my body from my brief exposure to the magical coolant didn’t fully go away, though they were fading to nearly nothing. “Scratch that… The Liquidators will kill me.”

This comment got a look from the stallion, the Liquidators were not something ponies usually joked about. “W-What’s wrong,” he said.

“I got exposed to a little bit of the coolant-gas…”

“Petrochem… A little bit of exposure isn’t going to hurt, I’ve gotten a fair share of radiant thaumic energy exposure and I’m still fine.”

“Still… I don’t feel right.”

“Well then, we’ll go see Caustic. Do you need any help getting up?”

“No thanks, Boron,” I said, clambering up to my hooves. “We need to get back home,” I pumped a bit more power into my horn and golden light shone down the hallway. Everything inside the habitable zone was made from steel, kept together with big, scary-looking, bolts, and had rusted around the edges, but somehow, most likely through some kind of enchantment, the metal didn’t completely rust, leaving everything an orangish grey.

Marching through the corridors, despite their familiarity, was, quite frankly, creepy. Without power and only the glow of my horn, it was a little difficult to navigate, as pictograms, easy to recognize in the crystal-lights, were difficult to interpret in the hornlight, not helped by either myself or Boron’s unfamiliarity with this section of the City. The hallway was a little easier to navigate when following notable landmarks, the pipes in the ceiling were always a good indicator of where you were, and long hours of exploring the edges of the Habitable Zones, much to the dismay of my parents, had given me a good sense of direction. But I was still nowhere near as good at this kind of thing as Boron.

“Hey, Boron,” I said, he turned to look at me, “Why are you down here anyway?”

“Looking for you, there’s been a bit of a problem back at the Hub, some small mechanical failure,” He gave a little chuckle, “I shouldn’t have bothered you, if I didn’t you wouldn’t have slagged the engine.”

“If you hadn’t been there to dump coolant into the room, then there wouldn’t have been anything left of me to find, and we would have a lot more problems than just power failure right now… Thank you.”

“I-I’m just concerned about the power failure,” Aww, he was blushing… Too bad he’s a stallion, and way too old for me… “We’ll need to find another engine and reroute it to the Hub before the crops die and life-support systems fail.”

“And that’s probably going to be my job…” I sighed. Power failure was up there with disease as one of the bigger problems with life in the Hub, above it was thaumic contamination and below was Water Purification. I just hoped that my punishment for nearly detonating a highly unstable and critical thaumic engine wasn’t going to be too bad.

I followed Boron’s directions and we started to get closer to familiar territory, going down a few flights of stairs and following the metal plates that were bolted to the wall, arrows and other strange symbols had once been painted on them, but those had been painted over with a little yellow disk symbol, and after half an hour of trotting through the dark, it pointed us to large bulkhead door… Much larger than the height of the average mare, standing at nine meters tall, with a control panel on the right-hoof side, these doors were fairly common and marked internal divisions in the structure of the City. This particular door had been painted over with a large yellow symbol, it’s origin was unclear, but this large spiked-disk had served as the emblem of our home for centuries.

“Celestia damn it!” I shouted, uselessly tapping my hooves against the control panel, “The power’s dead in this section too!”.

Boron approached the door and gave a sharp knock with his hoof, “It’s Boron and Petrochemical, there’s been a power failure and we got locked out.”

The voice on the other side, a younger stallion, replied, “This is Photon Ray, you will need to wait, a chemical generator is being brought up to supply emergency power, ETA one hour.

Boron gave a sigh. “It’s dangerous outside the Hub, sure, it isn’t like we’re trapped outside the Habitable Zone, but we need to get inside, there’s a damaged thaumic engine, and for all we know it could be spewing hazardous energies throughout the City!”

His tone shifted to one of worry, and despite not seeing the colt’s face, it was clear he recognized the danger, “We brought up the generator earlier but the fuel is being kept in a secure location due to its flammability… I wish we could get it here sooner, but those are the rules, hazardous materials in large quantities can only be handled by official Liquidators.”

At this, I suddenly jumped to my hooves, “Is there a slot in the door! Any way for me to pass something to you.”

“T-There isn’t, these things are air-tight and thaumically shielded.”

I sat back down… The one time I can use my special talent, and a Celestia damn door prevents me. A slight weariness passed over me and I acted upon it, taking the chance to curl into a ball inside the protection of my maintenance barding, the lead plates on my sides, underside, and breast were hardly comfortable, but this wasn’t the first time I fell asleep in it. I closed my eyes, waited what felt like an eternity, and-

There was a loud screech of metal grinding against metal and the loud whir of a chemical engine, something I hadn’t heard in a decade. Through sleepy eyes, I saw the shadows of ponies, silhouetted by the bright light pouring in from the airlock.

“Door’s open…” Boron said dismissively.

“Yeah, I got that,” I said bitterly, shaking to clear my vision, and holding my hooves to my ears. The screeching died down and my eyes adjusted to the sudden light. The airlock was the same as when I passed through it earlier, except off to one side was a large contraption I had only seen once before, a series of half-rusted tanks, some boxy, some cylindrical, connected with rubber tubes and metal piping, that was spewing an acrid black smoke, and making a loud whir.

The airlock itself was a large cylinder, nine meters tall and nine meters wide, going back a good eighteen meters, forming a geometrically standard cylinder, there were controls mounted to the walls, with panels removed allowing cables to snake out from the walls to the boxy machine, said machine was flanked by two ponies.

I had only ever heard of them, and had never seen one before, at least not in their full barding, I'm sure I've seen one when not in uniform… They handled hazardous chemicals and machinery and were crucial to the survival of the Hub and all the ponies who lived in the City. They reported only to themselves and the leader of the Hub, the Minister, enforcing the laws when required, although, usually law enforcement was the job of every citizen of the Hub. Whenever some mutant abomination crawled its way out of the Uninhabitable Zone, they were the ones sent to deal with it. Wearing heavy golden-yellow trenchcoats that nearly matched my own fur, clearly plated with lead and thaumic dampeners, with heavy-looking lead helmets and boxy devices strapped to their sides, with backpacks instead of the standard saddlebags, a crescent-shape was engraved into their helmets and backpacks.

A pony came up to us, a unicorn, bright red mane and white coat, wearing the standard utility barding that both I and Boron were wearing, he was very young, still a teenager, must have only recently been assigned his job, “I am Photon Ray, while the situation may be critical, protocol still requires me to verify your identities.”

Both I and Boron nodded, “Good,” the colt said, and levitated out numerous thin plates of metal, “You are Petrochemical, female, unicorn, age twenty-four, yellow coat and black mane…” I nodded to each, “Your Cutie Mark is a barrel of chemical fuel,” I nodded again and started pulling off the pants of my utility barding, revealing the mark of a steel drum tipped on its side, yellow liquid flowing from its top. The colt nodded and his horn lit up, bright red letters appearing across the metal sheet. I stared at him, impressed, so young yet able to write all that down, I could bearly write my own name.

“And you are Boron Alloy, male, earth-pony, age forty-seven, dark silver coat and dark brown mane, your Cutie Mark is of white crystals growing out of a metal plate…” Boron nodded. The colt pulled out an old and battered metal plate, the writing covering it was starting to fade, and after reading, he continued, this time in hushed tones, “Umm… It says here that you are blacklisted from service in the Liquidators… But you haven’t been banned from the Hub, so I suppose it’s fine if I let you in.” The colt quickly glanced over at the Liquidators in the corner, but they were still focused on the chemical engine.

Boron gave a nod and Photon returned it, he trotted over to the airlock controls and threw the lever. Suddenly the whine from the generator became an ear-splitting screech and the lights flickered violently, sparks flew from the exposed wiring, and cables lit to incandescence. There was another titanic screech of metal grinding against metal and the door behind us closed. There was a brief period of respite, then the grinding and roaring noise returned as the door to the Hub was opened.

A massive cylindrical tunnel, extending a few hundred of meters in either direction, the tunnel was fifty meters in diameter, and every twelve meters was a metal platform that extended from the walls and formed floors, with hundreds of scrap-metal buildings built atop the platforms. In the very center of the tunnel was a scaffolding held in place by steel beams that extended from the ceiling to the bottom floor and from either side of the tunnel’s walls, this scaffolding extended down the length of the tunnel, and atop it was a long, massive, rusted, machine that looked like a rectangular steel worm, with a head made from pipes, cylinders, tanks, and spheres… The Central line.

The very bottom of the tunnel was filled with an acidic liquid, strong enough to liquify a pony, and as such, no one had ever gone down there. The airlock opened up to the lowest floor, just a few meters above the acid pool. The walls were practically lined with hundreds of pipes, some three times the size of a pony, others were as thin as a foal’s hoof, but it created numerous perches for pegasi, and even some houses were built along the pipes. There were three thousand ponies in the Hub and despite the sheer size of the tunnel it sometimes felt rather crowded, already there were dozens of pegasi flying around the upper levels and scores of earth ponies and unicorns trotting around the platforms and scaffolding, no doubt worried about the missing power.

There was the distant humming of chemical generators, and a few spotlights were illuminating the tunnel, but for the most part, it had all been thrown into darkness. I turned to Boron, “I need to go check in with Cogwheel, then my parents.”

Boron nodded, “And I need to see Hydroxide, report everything that happened and what we should do about the power situation… Plus, Mercury Vapour will have my head if I’m late.” The two of us said our goodbyes and rushed off to our respective bosses, Boron rushing off to the nearest flight of stairs, and I staying on the bottom floor and looking for the workshop.

The workshop was built into the wall at the bottom floor and was much larger than many of the houses built down here, so it wasn’t hard to find… Another clue was the huge herd of ponies that had started to crowd the building. “Cogwheel!” One shouted.

“What’s going on with the power!”

“What will happen to the farms!”

“How long until you get the power fixed!”

“Has the Minister said anything yet!”

“Why aren’t the Liquidators doing anything yet!”

“Why isn’t my house getting electricity!”

This was bad. I rammed my way into the crowd, most ponies didn’t wear anything when not working, and so, still in my utility barding, I puffed up my breast and tried to look important, it did have some effect as I managed to worm my way through the crowd a little faster than I expected, but panicking ponies did illogical things. Eventually, I came to the front of the herd, there was the door to the workshop, locked and clearly barricaded, through the window could be seen a scared brown pegasus mare in utility barding with a two-tone mane, shiny orange and dull green, like rusted copper, wearing a pair of reading glasses.

I went up and knocked a hoof on the window, the mare turned to look at me, recognition flashed in her eyes and she rushed to the door. I turned to the crowd, “Everypony, return to your homes! I will talk with Cogwheel, rest assured that I have everything handled,” I shouted in my best imitation of the Minister’s secretary when she gave a speech to the Hub, I was nowhere near as confident as I tried to sound, but it had some effect.

The door shot open and I rushed inside, Cogwheel proceeded to lock the door behind me. The workshop was filled with all kinds of machinery, all salvaged from different parts of the City, sometimes a pony working for the Liquidators or Minister would even come in with parts from some device out in the Uninhabitable Zone. A strange boxy device called a computer sat behind a pile of scrap metal, but no pony knew what it was supposed to do, and a long contraption made from pipes and metal plates, apparently called a ‘rifle’, was brought in by a pony earlier today and was now sitting in pieces on a workbench to the side.

I turned, only to be tackled in a hug by the much older and larger mare. “Chem! You were supposed to be back over an hour and a half ago, I was worried about you!”

“I got trapped outside the Hub when the power went out… Had to wait for a backup generator to be brought up.”

The mare pulled me tighter, “I-I shouldn’t have sent you out there by yourself… What happened out there, you feel a little strange…”

“Umm…” I blushed, “The thaumic engine, the one that hadn’t been working right, apparently something was wrong in the energy converter and some of the magical energies were flooding the engine with heat, I disabled the primary coolant pumps to inspect the energy converter myself, and apparently the secondary coolant pumps weren't working.”

“And you… Survived that?” Cogwheel stared at me, confused.

“You can thank Boron for that, he was there when I was testing the converter, he activated the emergency coolant system and flooded the generator room, you don’t want to know how close we were to an engine meltdown,” Tears of fear started to flow from my eyes, “I nearly killed everyone in the Hub.” I shivered, there were stories about thaumic engines exploding and causing kilometres of the City to be flooded with magical energies, such that those places were now part of the Uninhabitable Zone… Those were just stories though, no pony had seen one actually detonate, or been to the places where it supposedly happened, but just the rumours alone was the reason why no one tried moving a thaumic engine into the Hub or using the Central Line’s engine for power.

“But you didn’t” Cogwheel hugged me tighter, “You’re safe, and once we get the power back on, we’ll all be safe, and things can return to normal.”

“Well… Safeish, I got exposed to the magical coolant,” A look of shock and worry crossed Cogwheel’s face and she loosened her grip on me, “D-Don’t worry, it isn’t too bad, but I do need to see a doctor, right away.” I continued talking to Cogwheel, telling her the story of what happened to me after I left the workshop this morning. We must have talked for nearly half an hour, then suddenly there was a bright flash of warm light. At first, I thought something must have exploded, but the light didn’t go away, I opened my eyes and stared painfully at the glowing crystals in the ceiling.

“Looks like the power’s back,” Cogwheel said, pained and stunned by the sudden illumination after being in near-black. Slowly my eyes began to adjust when there came a voice from outside.

“All ponies of the Hub, gather by the Central Line!” Came a voice, commanding authority and obedience. Instinctively, Cogwheel and I let go of one another and marched out into the Hub. Roughly three thousand ponies were cramming themselves into just a small section of the tunnel, luckily Cogwheel and I were some of the first ones out as we piled underneath the Central Line, the pegasi were all perched on outcroppings that normal ponies couldn’t reach, or were simply hovering in the air, which made the air and walls into a blur of colour. Between the gathering crowd, a pair of ponies could be seen on the other side of the tunnel, one was nearly pitch-black, with a black mane and black coat, the other was yellow with a red and white striped mane, I waved my hoof at them.

When everypony was gathered, a figure stepped out from the engine of the Central Line, a mare in a heavy trenchcoat, adorned with a heart-shaped symbol on her flanks, where her Cutie Mark should be. Her fur was nearly the same shade as mine, a pale yellow, but her mane was a bright, vibrant, sickly, yellow. She commanded an air of dominance, and I felt the desire to bow to her, several of the others did, she was the Minister’s secretary, Sulphuric Acid… Unlike the Minister himself, who nearly never left the comfort of his home aboard the Central Line, she was a common sight, standing there, giving motivational speeches and telling everyone about how lucky they were to be alive, and how the Princesses were looking down at us from beyond the City.

“Ponies of the Hub! Due to a malfunction in one of the thaumic engines, we have temporarily lost power. But rest assured, we have activated one of the larger backup chemical engines, but we cannot afford to waste chemical fuel for long… So, because of this, we will be sending a mechanic to activate another thaumic engine somewhere in the City, and rerouting the power back to the Hub.”

There was a lot of chatter as ponies wondered about the day’s events, and who would be chosen for such a critical mission… Most likely one of the liquidators. Sulphuric Acid continued, “Now… A pony by the name of Hydroxide has confirmed that the cause of the destruction of the engine was a mutant creature that managed to get past the Liquidators patrolling the perimeter of the Habitable Zone… Apparently the abomination was killed when the engine overheated, incinerating the beast before the systems flooded the room.”

I felt both relieved and somewhat worried, why did Boron lie about the engine’s destruction… It wasn’t like I destroyed the engine on purpose. “This pony is commended on bringing this threat to my attention, there will be an increase in Liquidator garrison around the Habitable Zone. We thank the Princesses for their eternal vigilance in protecting ponykind, and in creating the City in which we all live! Praise to Celestia, the creator of ponykind! Praise to Luna, the first Liquidator and bane of abominations! Praise to Flurry Heart, the first Minister of the City and creator of the Habitable Zone! That is all.”

The herd slowly dispersed, but only after Sulphuric Acid returned to the Central Line’s cab. There were several ponies here who feared her more than they respected her, but it was her job… Outside the Habitable Zone, there was the Uninhabitable Zone, the part of the city infested with mutants, dangerous thaumic energies, and all sorts of environmental hazards… There were rumours of rivers of solvent, rooms filled with poison gas, hub-sized furnaces that a pony could fall into, and the further away you got from the Hub, the less oxygen you had to breathe, even being outside the Hub was considered dangerous… There were those ponies who wondered what existed beyond the Uninhabitable Zone, but that kind of thought could get you in trouble, after all, we can’t have ponies venturing out to their inevitable deaths just out of curiosity. The common belief was that the Uninhabitable Zone went on forever, but there were plenty of others who thought that there was nothing beyond the city, just an endless void… There were only three thousand of us, and while that number sometimes rose or fell, we always stayed around three thousand, we couldn’t afford ponies throwing their lives away on exploration.

That’s why her job required ponies to fear her, without respect it would be difficult for all these ponies to work together in harmony, and some ponies needed that fear to control… If we didn’t respect the Minister… It’s best not to think about it, chaos was the last thing this place needed, without the Minister ponies would be throwing themselves into the acid-pool below, ponies were stupid without guidance, and that guidance came from the Minister, and the Minister came from the Princesses.

I needed to see a doctor, but seeing my parents at Sulphuric Acid’s speech had changed that… I needed to tell them I was ok. I crossed one of the numerous bridges set between the two sides of the platform and soon found myself standing in front of my home. It had once been some kind of large tank, it was a huge cylinder set on its side, studded with bolts, it was about two thirds the size of the airlock, but still a luxury home, featuring two storeys.

I knocked on the door… The entire doorframe had been cut away from wherever it had come from, and then welded to the tank, this home had belonged to my grandparents, and their grandparents, and so on for as long as anypony could remember, but whoever first built it was evidently a master of materials manipulation, the welds looked completely natural. The door, once some smaller bulkhead into a room, not too unlike the one I had escaped through, out of the thaumic engine room, swung open and out stepped a pony.

“Hey, Hydrocarbon.”

My father bent down, this time I was prepared for it, and managed not to be thrown to the ground, instead, I was buried in a sea of glossy black fur and feathers. “Hey! Cat, our daughter’s back!” He shouted.

A dishevelled, but still bright and vibrant unicorn ran through the door… I wasn’t prepared this time. She ran right into me at full gallop and sent the both of us flying across the platform, “H-Hi, C-Catalyst,” I wheezed out.

“By Celestia! Where were you!”

“T-Trapped outside the d-door to the Hub”

Catalyst gasped, “We need to get you inside, and grab a bite to eat… Hydro, get some rice cookin’, right now!”

Hydrocarbon gave a nod. I continued, sarcastically, “Yay, more rice…”

We must have spent a few hours just talking and eating, rice is one of the only foods available in the Hub, but sugarcane is grown for important events, such as the appointment of a new Minister. Once they heard about my near-death experience and my safe return, Hydrocarbon spent no time in pulling out what little sugarcane we had bought this year. I was surprised how cold it was inside the house, and quickly threw on a spare blanket. I described how Boron had opened the thaumic coolant valve, and how I had gotten a little bit of exposure. “Tomorow morning, the first thing we should do is get you to the clinic, see if Caustic can reverse the effects,” Catalyst said. Once I helped clean, threw the trash out beside the house for the trash-mare, and used the outhouse, I returned to see my parents getting into their utility barding.

“Now that the power’s back,” Catalyst said, “We’ll need to make up for lost time, I might need to work all night… Nearly three hours of no oxygen production means an extra six hours of work.”

“And I need to check on the farms, make sure that we didn’t interrupt the plant growth too much,” Hydrocarbon continued.

“You should get what sleep you can… It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.” I Nodded and wasted no time in taking a cold bath and rushing off to bed, a fluffy mattress, made from the remnants of barding that was too damaged for repair, and stuffed with dead plant matter.

As I lay in the bed, I let my mind wander to places it doesn’t normally go during the day, I pull my pillow closer, some of the more important ponies, such as the Minister, get pillows stuffed with pegasus feathers, and blankets made from pony-hair, while most others get simple straw pillows, painstakingly crafted from leftover plant-matter. Mine was a simple bundle of cotton-cloth, more comfortable than the organic pillows, though a lot more expensive, cotton wasn’t grown much, and most of it was used in repairing damaged barding.

The first place I rushed off toward was the Clinic. It was built into the base of a large statue on the middle floor, it was made from copper, and surprisingly rust-free, putting one’s hoof to it you could feel the magic pulsing through the metal, preventing corrosion. The statue itself was massive, the top of the mare’s head almost reaching the level above, it was once of an alicorn, perhaps one of the princesses, but over time metal had been salvaged from it, the statue was now missing a wing and had only half a horn, her foreleg was missing, and had only half a face, not to mention the plates cut from her underside and tail.

Overall the clinic was a dour place, particularly with the skeletal princess outside. The symbol on the clinic’s door was the same as on the flanks of the princess-statue, but no one knew what the symbol was supposed to be, it was some kind of pointy polygon, but no one could agree whether it was one twelve-pointed shape or two six-pointed shapes layered atop one another, it was surrounded by five other spiky polygons. It looked painful… I don’t want to know how you would get a cutie mark in spiky-balls. Whatever it was, it was now the symbol of the clinic.

“Be thankful you came in here when you did,” The doctor, Caustic Burn, and his mate, Carcinogen, were treating a few ponies who were injured during the blackout, most had suffered only minor wounds, but one of the older stallions had fallen into the acid pool, and while a pegasus had flown down to save him, the stallion still had horrible burns down his side and leg. I wanted to let them treat the stallion before they turned their attention to me, but once they realized I had been exposed to radiant thaumic energy, the stallion was taken into Carcinogen’s care and Caustic rushed to my aid.

“The mutagenic properties of RTE is hard to pin down, being magic it’s difficult to predict how it will affect you, particularly since you’re a unicorn… According to my cursory scans, you were already starting to suffer some minor mutations,” A look of horror crossed my face, mutants had a certain reputation, every pony has at some point heard the rumours of the mutant creatures that existed beyond the Habitable Zone… W-Was I going to turn into one of them, would the liquidators need to kill me?

Apparently the doctor read my mind as he continued, “N-No, it’s nothing like what you’re thinking, that comes from constant exposure… The only anomaly I can find is that your core body temperature has permanently gone up as much as five to fifteen degrees, that’s why you feel so cold all of a sudden.”

“How does that make sense? I was exposed to thaumic coolant, shouldn’t that make me colder?”

“Magic is rarely so straight-forward, you’re a unicorn so you should be used to the oddities of magic… I think the coolant must have pumped the thermal energy out of the environment, and into you… Whatever it did, I believe the effects are permanent.”

I nodded, a bit sourly… I was, something else now, I wasn’t a pony, or at the very least, the same pony again. The doctor seemed to read my mind once again. “Look on the bright side, you won’t be suffering heat-based illnesses, like heat stroke, as easily as the rest of us… You were just at the wrong place at the wrong time, just be thankful that the mutant was more interested in the engine than you.” I nodded, but this time tinted with a bit of anger… Why did Boron lie to the Minister, lying was wrong, it was something no pony should do, and he just did it to the most important pony in the Hub… Possibly the entire City.

I gritted my teeth, the doctor stared with a strange expression… Clearly he couldn’t read my mind now, “No… It was my fault that the power failed!”

The doctor gave a sigh, “Petrochem, if even a quarter of what I heard about the mutants is true, there was no way you could have stopped it on your own… We were lucky the creature was killed in the engine’s meltdown.”

I stared at him, perplexed, was it really more believable that some clawed, toothed, tentacled abomination managed to sneak past the Liquidators and destroy a machine that has worked since the dawn of time, then some dumbass mare didn’t check the secondary coolant lines before cracking the machine open… “It was Boron… He must have told that mutant story to Hydroxide!”

The doctor lowered the device he was holding in an emerald telekinetic field and turned to stare at me, “Boron Alloy has been a friend of mine for nearly two decades now, he’s always been serious, I don’t think I’ve ever heard him make a joke… I seriously doubt he would embellish the facts, and lying is something foals do, no grown pony in their right mind would ever lie, particularly about something of such importance.”

I slumped to the clinic floor, minding the bloodstains, and growled… Whatever I was going to do next was forgotten… I needed to find Boron. The obvious place was his job, materials processing. I rushed out of the clinic as fast as the doctor would let me, he seemed intent on giving me a complete physical checkup, though I would be just as insistent if I were in his position, yesterday hadn’t been kind to me, and he wouldn’t rest until every little bruise and cut had been healed.

I galloped over to Materials Processing, a large room, four times the size of the workshop, unlike most of the other buildings that had been constructed from pieces of the city, this room was part of the city originally, and certainly not built by pony hooves as it was clearly part of the Hub since the day it was created. Part of me dreaded opening the door, the head of materials processing, Mercury Vapour, had a certain reputation, and just hearing of her exploits from Boron was enough to make me hesitate.

I worked with Cogwheel in the workshop on the lower floor, it was a place where ponies would send broken machines to us in the hopes that we could repair them, that was mostly Cogwheel’s job, I on the other hoof, was usually sent out of the Hub to find mechanical parts and salvage scrap-metal from parts of the City that no pony was using, occasionally a machine would break somewhere and I would be sent to repair it, or if it was something truly critical, like a thaumic engine, I was sent to inspect the problem before the Liquidators handled the repairs… This place on the other hoof, Materials Processing, was where things were made, not repaired… Well, made was a strong word, this place was more like another level of salvaging, many of the things that couldn’t be repaired were usually taken here.

The room was filled with ponies, a few of which I recognized as friends of my parents or Boron. Most were unicorns, in fact, a good majority of the Hub’s unicorn population was assigned here, but that didn’t mean that earth ponies, like Boron, and pegasi, didn’t have jobs in this place. The glow of dozens of horns illuminated the building a cacophony of colours, some were weaving fabric from freshly harvested cotton fibre, others were taking freshly forged screws and bolts and magically assembling devices of all kinds. Behind what I think was some kind of reinforced glass, ponies who’s bodies glowed with some kind of magic field were doing magical things with quartz crystals. In one corner, ponies were using an electric furnace to melt all sorts of metals and using magic to separate the alloys into their components, and in another, earth ponies were grinding up metals into powder, pegasi too were collecting the clouds of dust that hung in the air and gathering them into a corner, doing something to them that a unicorn, like myself, couldn't understand.

In the center of it all was a mare, tall and thin, an earth pony, with a vibrant bluish-green mane and silver coat. She turned, a wild look in her eye, and stomped over to one of the ponies working on the quartz crystals, “You!” She shouted, the pony turned, the fear in his body language was obvious. A few of the ponies on the other side of the room turned to look at what was about to happen and started whispering things to each other, however, most simply kept their heads down and continued working.

“That crystal should have been completed three-point-seven minutes ago!” The stallion raised his leg and was moments away from saying something when the mare slapped him across the face with her hoof, “Unacceptable! You have slowed production by six-per-cent!

“F-Forgive-”

Suddenly, the mare’s hoof flew downward, faster than the eye could track and was followed by a loud crack. The crystal the stallion was holding in his magic was smashed into the ground and with a pop and a burst of orange light, the crystal shattered into dust, “Do! It! Again! Better, faster!”

“Y-Yes-”

“Now! Now! Now! Now! Now!”

The stallion didn’t bother responding, instead, he quickly grabbed a crystal from a box and started tracing invisible magic through it. Mercury turned to the rest of the forge with a disapproving glare, “What are you hideous creatures doing! Each and every one of you is guilty of lowering our production rate! Work!” She yelled, then her eyes settled on the unicorn in the door… Part of me was tempted to run back the way I came, just from looking around at the Earth Pony workers, it was clear that Boron wasn’t here today.

“You! You are not one of my useless herd! What are you doing here!” She trotted up, the metal below her ringing with each step, “Each second you waste gawking is a second of my time wasted! Speak!”

“Umm…” I squeaked, “I-I’m looking for Boron Alloy, I-”

I didn’t think it was possible for Mercury’s expression to get any more maniacally angry, apparently, I was wrong, “That useless! Useless! Useless! Buck didn’t show up today! The blackout was bad enough! That was an entire two-hundred-and-seventy per-cent drop in production! These lazy foals will need to work thrice as hard if I’m to get even a single per-cent of that time back! And now that Celestia fucking waste of resources hasn’t shown up! This has led to an eight per-cent drop in efficiency! Eight-Per-Cent!” She yelled into my face.

I was about to continue speaking when Mercury’s eyes turned into pinpricks and she shot back around, “Fluorescence!” She shouted, “The copper is supposed to be cut into cables three meters in length! Not three-point-four!” She spun back around in an instant.

“Soooo… Boron isn’t here.”

“No! No! No! Unless a Liquidator shows up this moment with explicit orders not to, I’m throwing that lazy piece of horse shit out into the acid pool!” She paused a moment, breathing heavily, “What are you still doing here! Get out!" She shouted. Her hoof reached out to the side and I frantically backed up as I realized what she was about to do, the bulkhead door slammed shut as if it was as light as a plate of sheet metal with a deep metallic ring, “What are you ponies doing! Get! Back! To! Work!” Came Mercury’s voice from the other side, still loud enough to make my ears ring, despite being muffled by the door.

I spent the next few minutes searching every part of the Hub I could think of… If you were looking for an earth pony, chances were that they had been called into the farms. On the lower floor, on the opposite side of the tunnel from the airlock I had used yesterday, was another large door going deeper into the City, down a few flights of stairs you entered a massive building, not quite as big as the Hub itself. The room was filled with troughs filled with dirt, from the dirt, all sorts of plants were grown, mostly rice. Hydrocarbon was flying around, carrying bags of compost. Boron wasn’t here, the boss of the farm, Mycelium, proved that.

Life support, much like the farm, wasn’t inside the Hub Tunnel, but rather up a flight of stairs and passed a big door on the middle level. It was another large room, easily a fifth the size of the Hub itself, but still not quite as large as the farm. Here, flocks of pegasi were racing around, collecting the gasses that leaked out of machinery, flowed from open and broken pipes, and from the massive number of vents and air pumps all throughout the room. In the center of the room was a large cylindrical opening, like a massive pipe, that had numerous actual pipes going down its length, it seemed to go downward forever, a deep, black, emptiness… Mom had called it a well, but no one knew why it was called that, it was from down there that water was collected, although it had to be filtered before you could drink it. Catalyst was trotting around, her horn in the air, magic flowing around the room from where she stood. I didn’t bother her, whatever she was doing was important, and this was one of the most important rooms in the Hub. Those giant machines in the corner would turn massive amounts of water into breathable air, and air was something in short supply here. The pony in charge of this place, Electrolyte, flew down from his perch, a large pipe sticking out of the wall, and greeted me, confirming that Boron didn’t come through this way.

Up, above the upper level, on nearly the highest point in the Hub, up a staircase that led into a wall, was a smaller room, only about as big as my house. For the most part, ponies simply did what they were told, reading and writing was something that the ponies in charge needed, but not the others... I was more literate than most, being able to write my own name and a few cohesive sentences, and as long as the word wasn’t longer than three letters, I could read it.

The record center was thus a mystery to most ponies, here the ponies who could read and write were pouring over hundreds of plates of metal, magically painted on them were strange symbols called letters, in one corner record keepers were going over a large plate of yellow metal that had words painted in black on it, apparently something a someone had found out near the Uninhabitable Zone. In one corner, a young white stallion with a red mane was talking with a few other record keepers, though the content of their discussion mystified me. Most of the ponies in the record center were simply taking plates of metal whose writing was beginning to fade and restoring them. From what I could gather from their arcane conversations, the spell used to paint the letters to the metal plates would fade after a given amount of time, it was rare for a record to survive more than a few decades, but the record keepers tried to keep the writing as intact as possible, still though ponies would get words wrong, and some of the records were apparently completely different than when they were originally painted.

I certainly wasn’t going to be bothering them, I simply scanned the room and confirmed that Boron wasn’t here, but before I could leave a pony took notice and rushed to me. Young, tall for her age, she wore a large cotton saddlebag and a big pair of glasses that made her look equal parts smart and silly, she said, “I am Palladium Plate, I was ordered to give you this,” She pulled out a metal plate covered in writing, “Assuming you can’t read I will be reading it out to you.”

I nodded as she cleared her throat, “You, Petrochemical, daughter of Hydrocarbon and Catalyst, are ordered to gather by Airlock Three in two hours, with saddlebag and utility barding, and meet up with the team that will be looking for a replacement thaumic engine.”

Of course, it was my job… Sure, Cogwheel and Clockwork were too valuable to risk being sent outside the Hub, but it couldn’t have been one of the other apprentices, like Refinery Flare, I’d love it if he went away for a while. “Understood,” I said, a little bitter.

Author's Note

This chapter was both a little longer, and a little shorter than I intended it to be, I was going to split it into two chapters, with the first one ending when Petrochem fell to sleep, the second ending as she first stepped out into the City again, but I decided later to merge the chapters into one, cutting off what was going to be the ending of this chapter, and making that into the start of the next one.

I was mostly making it up as I went along, the idea originally coming to me out of nowhere while playing a game of Factorio. Took a bit of inspiration from Fallout Equestria and one of my favourite fics: H’ven Sent, amazing fics by the way, you should probably be reading them instead of this.