Pain. That was all that Adagio could feel as she woke up. Pure, unfiltered pain. Like every single bit of harm done to her was amplified to eleven and condensed into a five-minute beatdown. She stirred slightly, deciding that maybe she’d have Aria get the food today…

Aria…Sonata!

The memories of what happened the last time she was awake came flooding back to her. The man in the suit, his offer, and his reaction to the rejection. She immediately flew into a panic, standing up quickly and whipping her head around as she desperately looked for an exit. She saw a door and immediately ran to it. She grabbed the handle and tried desperately to turn it to no avail. It was locked from the outside. Unable to do anything else, she stumbled and fell back, beginning to sob as the tears began to fall. Confusion, anger, sadness, all these emotions and more were flowing freely through her and out through her eyes.

As she was wallowing in her perceived failure, she heard something click on in a corner of the room she was in. Her sight was drawn to the source of it, revealing it to be a desktop computer. It was remarkably new, especially considering the room she was in. Speaking of, as she began to calm down, she noticed that the state of the room she was in was, in the gentlest possible terms, disgusting. The walls were covered in mildew and other muck, and the windows were all boarded up.

She decided to go towards the only functioning thing in the room. On the monitor of the computer, what seemed to be an old school chat window was maximized to take up the entire screen. In the window, a single word was typed in stark white on the pitch-black background.

“Hello”

Adagio didn’t quite know how to proceed. There was a keyboard connected to the computer. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. With a shaking hand, she slowly typed and sent a message.

“Hello”

After a few moments, the screen spat back a response.

“There’s an earpiece taped to the back of this monitor. Go ahead and put it on.”

Confused, Adagio carefully turned the monitor around to find a piece of black electrical tape holding something to the bottom left corner. She removed it to reveal a small wireless earpiece, seemingly turned off. Looking around one last time, she put it in her right ear and turned it on, hearing a faint beep before something else came through.

“Hello? You got it all set up, miss?”, a male voice asked in a polite, if slightly impatient tone. She could not readily tell who it could be from the voice, but whoever was in Adagio’s ear at the moment, she had the strongest indication that it didn’t belong to anyone friendly.

Adagio was silent at first, but eventually forced out an answer. She wasn’t entirely sure why, but something deep in her gut was telling her that it would be a bad idea to be difficult with the man in her ear. Quietly, she said, “Yeah…yes it’s working.” As she realized that this man could know something, she immediately flew into a silent barrage of questions. “Where am I? Where are my sisters? Who are y--?”

“Easy, Miss Dazzle. I’ll answer all your questions in time. First, let’s at least get you outta that stuffy ass room, huh?”, the voice said in a weirdly humorous tone. This man almost sounded like he was just talking to someone over a cup of coffee.

After that, Adagio heard the door she was attempting to open let out a loud “ch-gunk”. Reflexively, she whipped around to face it, and she saw it slowly creak open to reveal a hallway illuminated by a dim fluorescent bulb hanging overhead. Adagio then gulped down a mouthful of fear and slowly leaned out of the doorway, feeling like a baby rabbit in the middle of a bloodhound pack.

The hallway wasn’t in much better condition than the room. It was stained all the way to the ceiling with piss, vomit, and something fouler. The combination of the smell rolling off the stains and the mental image of how they all got there was enough to bring a feeling of nausea to even the most hardened person’s throat.

Just before she was about to lose her last meal, the voice in Adagio’s ear cut in again with, “Welcome to Shade City. You can consider this the seedy underbelly of Canterlot.” He continued as she walked to the only end of the hallway that didn’t end in a boarded window, “If Canterlot proper is all sunshine, rainbows, and smoothie stores, think of Shade City as darkness, depression, and porno theaters--wait!”

Adagio suddenly stopped when she heard that, stopping just short of the end of the hall and the opening into the next one. She waited for a moment, frozen in fear of the sudden command. The man in her ear then said, “Ok. Now I’m gonna give you this one, given you’re fresh as a daisy. There’s a man at the end of the hall on the right keeping watch to make sure no one comes for you, but he’s NOT watching you. Now, he’s not gonna leave anytime soon and the other hall is a dead end…you’re gonna have to MAKE him move.”

Adagio gave a confused look before peeking around the corner to the right. At the end of the hallway, leaning against the wall with his back to her, was a man in dirty cargo pants and a black hoodie. On his feet were some steel-toed boots with what seemed to be mud or…blood on the bottoms. Along with that, the other distinguishing characteristic he had was what he wore on his face. He wore what seemed to be an old hockey mask, weathered, with his spikey black hair starting precisely where the mask ended.

Seeing that this was someone who’d chew her up if given the chance, she looked around for a moment before noticing that an old CCTV camera was set up in the corner of the hall. She looked back down the one she just came from and saw another. She guessed this was how the man in her ear was watching her. With a somewhat panicked expression towards the latter of the two cameras, she wordlessly asked the question, “How the hell am I meant to do that?!”

It was silent for a moment before he said to her in a slightly patronizing tone, “Well, there’s a broken window with shards of glass all around it at the other end of the hall, and he has some nice, squishy flesh…need I elaborate further?”

Adagio felt her brain process the statement bit by bit, all happening in a split second. When the processing was finished, it clicked for her in the worse possible way. He…he was asking her to KILL that man. She looked to the glass, the man, and the camera quickly, a shocked expression on her face.

After a long sigh on his end, the voice said as calmly as he possibly could, “Look, babe. I know that you’re new to the idea of outright killing. I get it, really, I do. But if you don’t kill him, you can be damn sure that he’ll kill you.” He then said carefully, “This guy and the gang he reps, the Jury, will not hesitate to kill you, are not shy about spilling blood. You’re gonna have to follow suit if you wanna survive.” His voice fell back into a frightfully casual tone when he said, “Now, if you don’t mind…tear him apart…”

Adagio felt all the color drain from her face at that statement. Either she could murder a man and get to leave this horrid place or stay and likely die a painful death. The more she ran the scenarios over and over in her head, the more obvious the answer became. Quietly, she shuffled over to the broken window and grabbed the largest shard of glass she could find. When the weapon was gripped in her hands, she turned back to where her obstacle stood and slowly began to approach him.

She steadied her breathing so as not to alert the guard. As she drew closer and raised up the shard, she could swear that she began to hear a heartbeat thump faintly from his direction. The man sighed and scratched his leg as he mumbled out, “Damn…can’t WAIT for someone to come for this bitc—”

Adagio took this opportunity to strike. She felt her arm swing downward as she planted the glass deep into his back. The glass had missed either of the ribs it could have glanced off, made evident by the sickening squish of the guard’s flesh and the sudden, loud intake of breath by him. Adagio looked up in a frantic panic as the guard slowly turned his head around, a look of terror evident in his eyes. In an act of pure instinct, she pushed the man down onto his belly as she pulled the shard out and crawled on top of him, pulling his head back by the hair and stabbing him in the neck over and over, turning his strained cries of pain into gurgling groans as his legs kicked furiously, right up to his final death rattle. His body went limp under her, his panicked eyes now glassy and half lidded, almost akin to a porcelain doll.

Adagio kept stabbing, letting out strained grunts as she did so, well after his body had gone limp. It was only stopped by the voice in her ear yelling her name. “DAZZLE!”, he said in a stern manner. “For all that’s blessed, he’s fuckin worm food. You can stop now.”

She stopped abruptly, looking between the now broken shard and her first kill before backing away in sheer shock. The smell of his blood, the sound of his cries, the feeling of his flesh resisting the glass as it first went in. The delayed reaction of all these combined stimuli had finally hit her like a tanker truck on full speed, setting off the contents of her stomach to slowly rise from their confines.

The voice continued in a soothing tone, “Now look. I know this is all new and scary for you, but—”

He was interrupted when she ran to the further corner of the corridor, the vomit flowing like Niagara from her mouth as it splattered on the ground. Her eyes were flooded with tears of fear. What had she done? She held her gut in pain as the round of vomiting slowed to a halt. Good thing the only food lost was a chunk of bread.

Adagio heard his sigh through her panting as she leaned against the wall. After letting her slow her breathing, he asked quietly, “Are you all right?” A short nod from her later, and he said, “Good. You’ll be doing that often, so just remember: they are horrible people. Think of a severe sin or crime, and chances are that one of these pricks have done it.” He then took on a more urgent voice and said quickly, “Now, the door out of the building is around the corner. Head on out and we’ll get you through the scene outside.”

Adagio looked around and noticed the small lobby area. It seemed like she was locked in a repurposed storage room of a hotel. She quickly ran into this lobby, immediately feeling relieved at the presence of the double doors, already opened to the street outside.

Author's Note

Chapter 2 for you all! I’m thankful for everyone’s input (especially my first comment, you know who you are XD). As always, further input is ABSOLUTELY welcome