The tunnel was long, no doors, no turns. Only me and the concrete walls.

Half an hour or so of walking later I was nearing some form of an end to the tunnel. There wasn't any door, only a brick wall with a switch on it. I switched the switch, as one does, and the wall slid upwards. On the other side, there was a small room, almost a closet. Looking closer it WAS a closet. A broom, a bucket and some other cleaning supplies were neatly placed against the wall on the right proving once and for all that the room was, in fact, a closet.

As soon as I walked into the closet the wall behind me closed as though nothing was there.

Exiting the room I felt a wave of heat wash over me, then a putrid smell hit me not a second later. This wasn't a good sign.

The air felt like a warm moist rag being dragged across my entire body and the smell that I couldn't even begin to describe, it burned my nostrils.

Trying to keep my eyes open I looked around. It was a big space. There was a broken metro train right in the middle of the room coming from a tunnel on the left. The only light source in the room was a still working headlight on the train.

The platform was littered with benches. But on those benches...

There was something on these benches. Wet and dripping something. These things were all over the station. On the benches and the floors and I didn't want to guess what these were.

The smell was getting worse, the putrid stench was choking the air out of the station, it was getting harder to breathe.

Looking around the rancid station I saw a plain metal door on the other end of the platform. It was a long ways away, but I focused every fiber of my being to go straight to it. I couldn't stay in that place for much longer.

The stench was getting unbearable. With every breath, I thought I was going to puke. It felt like there were little things crawling under my skin. Every next step was harder and harder to take.

The door was the goal, I just needed to get to it.

Only look at the door, only the door. There's nothing else here, only this door. Just look at the door and take steps. Step and a step and a...

I slowly raised my right hoof to see. It was covered in something greenish. The something slowly dripped down from it to the ground. I stood still watching it drop from my hoof to the floor.

My throat was on fire, my last meal was trying to get free. I tried to swallow the bile, but it was too much, the stench of rot, the warm putrid air and the disgusting greenish things, all of it was just too much for me. The half-digested chunks of a carrot fell on the already awful floor.

I tried to force myself to look away from the grizzly image under my hooves. It was horrid, it was revolting, but I couldn't look away. The intricate shapes of this disgusting puddle, the small bits of carrot floating in it, the small dots of red poking out from under the top layer. This was weirdly mesmerizing.

I shook my head. It was getting even harder to breathe. I have to get out of here, now, I thought.

The door was still a good few feet away from me and the puddles on the floor didn't make it any easier.

Step by step I moved myself to the door and swung it open running out of the disgusting station. The second my tail crossed the door I slammed the thing shut with all the magic I had.

I took a deep breath, the stuffy air of the metro tunnels was a thousand times better than the dead stuff inside the station. I wanted to stay there a minute to catch my breath, but I couldn't stay there knowing what's behind the door.

Pressing onwards into the tunnels I tried flicking the mix of every bad thing imaginable off my hoof, but it just wouldn't come off. And the smell, oh Celestia, that smell was disgusting, I almost puked multiple times in the first few minutes of walking.

The gray walls of the tunnels embraced me again. The unchanging empty corridors of concrete felt welcoming, even comforting. This comfort didn't last long though, my right hoof was beginning to itch and the stench was becoming even worse.

The tunnel seemed to go on for a very long time and there was only one direction to go.

Hours passed by as I traveled the empty tunnels. I was about to collapse when I saw a small light at the end of the tunnel. It was bobbing up and down. A little glimmer of hope.

I sped up to a trot. The light meant that there might be somepony there. At this point, some friendly company would be just the right thing. After all, it couldn't have been another crazy gang, could it?

The light started moving from side to side and it was getting closer too. Then a young mare started speaking.

"Who's there?" she was still getting closer to me. She sounded friendly enough, so I decided that talking with her wouldn't hurt.

"My name's Fritz. I'm kind of lost here," I said simply. And I wasn't even lying, I had no idea where I was.

"Well then," she lowered her light to the floor allowing me to see that the light was crudely taped to a gun. How did she even get her hooves on a gun?

"Um, if you don't mind me asking, why are you armed?" I inquired. Ponies with guns never were my crowd, too dangerous.

"Because the gun safe on the station we settled in was malfunctioning after the huge spells hit in the distance, something to do with the magic of the explosions," she answered calmly. But that "huge spells" part made little sense.

"The spells?" I continued to ask questions.

"You know the super spells, or whatever they are called, that those zebra bastards threw at us?" she answered once again. It seemed likely that the Zebra Empire wouldn't bomb places other than Conterlot with things like the Cloud. It made sense that the zebras would use something as deadly as the Cloud on the biggest target. But at the time my brain wasn't working as best as it could, so I'm guessing the look on my face wasn't a clever one. Seeing that I still wasn't understanding anything the mare continued.

"The ones that almost levelled Stratusburg? You know, the city we're in?" she explained. With that revelation, I lost the ability to construct coherent sentences for a second or two.

This far!? How could a spell that takes so little effort to learn do that? Why here? Why in the subway?

Several seconds passed while I was staring at the armed mare in disbelief.

"Are you alright? You sure the rads didn't fry your brain or something?" the mare returned me to earth.

"Yes, I-I'm sure. I'm alright. Just a bit shocked that's all," I responded.

"That's an understatement, you should see your face right about now. But, let's get to it. I'm not standing here for nothing, I'm guarding the Celestia station," her expression changed. She turned around and started going in the direction of, presumably, the station, "You coming?" she asked, cheery again.

"Yes. Didn't get your name by the way," I followed after her. I was going that way anyway, so a mare's company would be quite a good thing.

"Well, don't see a reason not to tell you. I'm Cheeky Rose. Me and a couple of my friends are staying at the Celestia station, trying to build some sort of a safe house. We got insanely lucky with the place, it's full of supplies and weapons, it's like this station was some important military base or something," Rose told her story. I was walking a little ways behind her and without the gun being aimed in my direction I could properly look at Cheeky Rose.

She was a red-ish unicorn in a technician's overalls. She was quite cheery for somepony living in the metro tunnels after the end of the world. I liked that.

"We even got connected to the metro's power grid, apparently the thing mostly works. So we have everything a pony in these times may need. But we lack one thing, ponies. I don't think that all that many survived the hit on the city. And even fewer are going around looking for a group to join," Cheeky Rose continued as we kept going to the station. I sensed a pattern here, the same as the Tunnelers, these ponies were about to ask me to join them. But unlike the crazies, these ponies seemed to be more civilized. And I wasn't locked in a cage this time, that kind of changed things too.

"But look at me, where're my manners. Tell me about yourself, we've got some time till Celestia," she changed the subject.

"As I already said, my name's Cold Fritz. I'm from the EEA-" I began my not so long story, but was cut off right when I mentioned my place of employment.

"The EEA? I thought that the EEA joined the Ministry of Image," Cheeky interrupted.

"We were a separate entity, but the Ministries had power over us, it doesn't matter anymore," I answered quickly to avoid that subject. That topic is quite a beaten one for anypony who worked at the EEA for more than a week. Every third call we used to get was about some things requested by MoI."

"Oh, that's something new. I really thought that MoI just took everypony from EEA," she paused, "You were saying?"

"So, I worked for the EEA. And I was at work when it all went to heck, pardon my language. We got stuck on the building's lower levels for an entire month with almost no food. And just recently, thanks to some weird EEA magic I got teleported here. That's about it really," I finished telling Rose the compacted version of my misadventures so far.

"Sounds like you got lucky, we've got a bunch of food here," Cheeky Rose responded, "You just need to talk to Gears, he's running the station. I'm sure he'll be happy to see a new face around."

Rose was weirdly bright for what was happening. Not quite happy, but she was still positive. And I wanted to know why. It was a good thing to see someone be in a good mood and all, it just seemed weird.

"If you don't mind me asking, with all the things going down in the past month, why are you so, well, positive?"

"Well, it's a bit of a story, but we still got time. The day the spells hit my friends and I were walking around town. We needed to get from the town center to the border of town, a friend of mine lived there. We had a party planned and all. We decided that the subway was a good idea. That decision, literally, saved our lives, we were close to the station when the sirens started blaring, quickly ran in with a couple of other ponies, it was the middle of a workday, so most ponies were at work. We got down and the staff locked the doors.

"We were scared. The staff tried to get in contact with the authorities, but everything was silent. We had nothing to do, but wait. A few minutes later, it hit. Everything was shaking, the ceiling started cracking and the loudest noise you ever heard filled everything. Apparently, something around our little town was important enough to get bombed. After a minute or so, it settled down a bit.

"We were even more scared than before. Most of us were panicking, running around like crazy. But then Gears started a speech.

"He told us to focus on surviving, on the "now" rather than on the "before" or the "after". He got us all together and started ordering ponies around, assigning tasks and getting everypony doing something. He even got the workers to listen to him. Got us all fed and equipped. He may be a bit straight-to-the-point, but he kinda saved our butts, so we don't mind. He runs the station now and everypony focuses on work instead of mopping about. And that's why we all try to keep a positive outlook. Look where being serious got us?"

We chatted a bit more as we got closer to the station.

We stopped right before a big makeshift door that blocked the tunnel. Rose knocked on the door a couple of times and the thing slowly opened.

"Welcome to our little humble abode," said Cheeky Rose showing me the station. Celestia station was a lot bigger than the previous one. The roof was at least thirty feet away from the floor, golden arches were decorating the walls and the lighting here was kind of ethereal. This definitely looked like a Celestia station to me, regal and big, just like the Princess. My admiration, however, was stopped by Rose.

"Um, you'd better visit Gears before too long, wouldn't want to keep him waiting," she said while pushing me towards, presumably, the place where Gears was. Just one turn away from the station proper in the utility tunnels, then a flight down and we were there.

Rose led me into a small office room. She didn't come in, instead choosing to stay in the door.

The room was nice, for an underground office, it was quite a let down after the station itself. There was a table with a terminal in the middle of the room. A blue stallion sat behind the terminal.

"And who might you be?" he asked me, his voice was stern, but not aggressive.

"I'm Cold Fritz..." I didn't really know what else to say. You usually say something during introductions, right? But what am I supposed to say?

"Mhm, Cold Fritz, you are a survivor and as I understand it you're looking for a good place to stay. And as it so happens, we here at Celestia station have all the things you might need to survive," he almost repeated what Rose already told me word for word, "But you already know that, don't you? So, I'll be brief, I'd like to share our supplies with every pony who comes here. But I can't. We're not a charity and our supplies are limited, and I'm sure you understand that. And so, I have a deal for you. You see, we have a problem that needs solving, after the zebra fuckers hit us some of the wildlife moved to the city, and some of those critters got into a good few of our rooms. And I can't take any of my ponies off of their things to deal with the critters, everypony here is doing something necessary. So," he paused for a second, "if you help us deal with our little problem, we'll provide you with food. Sounds fair?"

This did sound somewhat fair, he didn't have free hooves to deal with this problem and I was getting quite hungry. It's been around a day or two since I last ate. I didn't know exactly how I would get rid of the vermin. I had a few ideas, a stun spell and some Luna's mercy could work, but breaking necks of small woodland creatures wasn't really a thing I was comfortable with. But I wanted to eat, badly.

"Yeah, that sounds fair enough," I said still not sure of how I'd get the thing done, "Give me a couple of minutes and I'll be ready."

"Oh, that's just wonderful, talk to Cheeky when you are ready, she knows where the little boogers are," Gears informed me and went back to his terminal.

I walked out of the room. There was a thing I needed to do before doing any kind of work. Visiting a toilet or any other place where I could clean myself a bit and take the bandages off.

I asked Rose about it and she showed me the way. They still had running water, so it didn't take long to clean off my hoof. After it was as clean as it would ever get without some magic or chemicals, I took off the bandages, they'd done their part, there were no traces of the wire cuts from earlier.

"I'm ready to go. Where are the rodents?" I asked Rose while walking out of the toilet.

"The little devils took two rooms. Sub generator two and the employee lounge to be exact. The generator room is important for obvious reasons, and while the lounge itself is not that important, besides being a nice place to eat, the only way to the water pump goes through the lounge. I wasn't joking when I said that we've got everything to survive. The problem is we can't get to it," Cheeky explained to me while we were going deeper into the station. After some time we came up to a closed door.

"The generator is in there. After you're done with it, there's another door that'll lead to the lounge, you can't miss it," she explained and started to walk away, but turned to say, "And good luck."

She trotted back where we came from and quickly disappeared behind a corner. I was alone, without weapons and I still needed a plan. Gears didn't mention what kind of animals were in there, maybe it's harmless?

Opening the door I walked into the generator room. It was dark there, a big generator stood in the middle taking up most of the room. I heard something immediately. Like a chittering sound. Then I saw it, a little pair of bunny ears behind the generator.

"Phew, it's just some little bunnies. Gears's just a little panicky," I sighed with relief. But suddenly the ears started to move towards me. It hopped out into my line of sight. This wasn't a regular rabbit. It had a bright red coat and had a pair of antlers on its head. And it was staring right at me with its bright glowing red eyes.

There was a moment of silent realization. This was not a rabbit or a bunny, this was a Jackalope. And it looked like the carnivorous variety. Red eyes, sharp teeth, pointy horns and a bright coat, yup, that's the dangerous one.

The Jackalope leapt trying to impale me with its horns. I dodged to the left, it just about missed me and flew into the door, knocking itself to the ground. Then the little devil just stood up, shook its head and continued trying to impale me. He lept at me again, but this time I didn't have room to avoid him, the generator was on my left side and the wall blocked the right. I got as close to the wall as I could, but one of the horns still caught me cutting a thin line across my left side. These things were sharp.

Now, I never was an angry pony, especially to little animals. But all of that changes the moment an animal does something like that. For a second I simply stopped thinking about that Jackalope as a living breathing creature. It was just a ball of danger and pain. So I resorted to dealing with this problem the old fashioned way, I caught the bastard into my magic grip and hurled him into a wall with all the strength I had.

I heard its horns crack on the wall. The thing didn't get up. My side wasn't looking much better, there was a jagged line going from my shoulder all the way to my cutie mark. It was bleeding. I drank one of the potions from my bag and the bleeding slowed down almost immediately.

Standing up, I looked the room over now that the immediate danger had passed. There were cracks in the wall where the Jackalope landed, these things were a lot more powerful than you'd think. The generator itself seemed fine if a bit banged up, presumably by the monster rabbits.

There was a second of silence as I looked over the room waiting for the potion to take full effect. While I was looking around I noticed something scurrying under the generator. I came closer to see the Jackalope in there, but the small bastard jumped at me as soon as it saw my leg. This one was much smaller than the previous one and the horns were really small, but that didn't make them any less sharp. Its head hit me right in the legs knocking them out from under me. I fell face-first into the generator.

As I already said, I never was an angry pony, but these little daemons were bringing out the worst in me. Grabbing this one just like the first I flung it right into the opposite wall. But as I hurried to get back up on my hooves a third Jackalope skittered its way onto the generator prepared to leap towards me. I didn't want to wait until this one hit me, so I quickly hurled a stun at it. The ball of light hit the little creature and it went limp falling off of the generator. With a little effort and a snap the varmint was dead on the ground.

When all the little monsters in the room were dealt with, I finally noticed the door Rose was talking about and with this room cleared I opened the door and went in.

Another corridor. Long, dark and narrow. Thankfully, the night vision goggles were still working, so darkness wasn't really an issue. The other problems with this corridor, sadly, couldn't be fixed by the goggles. With a grunt, I continued into the corridor.

I closed the door behind me and started walking, but I didn't even get a couple of feet away from the door when I saw the next Jackalope, this one was small with little horns. I couldn't see its color because of the googles, but I was quite sure that it still was in the reds.

The monster jumped at me, but this time I wasn't about to try dodging the attack, I caught it mid-jump. It was trying to get out of my grip, shaking its head to attack, but there was nothing to attack. I turned my head away. There was a loud crack.

Once I was done, I threw the corpse to the floor, there still was a room to clear.

To be completely honest, these little things got me all riled up like I never was before. It wasn't hatred or cruelty. I didn't kill them just because I wanted to kill them. It's hard to explain. I didn't need to kill them, I could've easily stunned them and then thrown them away. But I didn't. The second the first one cut me I knew that none of them would survive the encounter.

Another door was in front of me, the same metal door as any other door in the metro. But I could hear chittering behind it, there was more than one there.

I entered the lounge. It was a small room with a couple of exits and two tables in the middle. There were a least five critters here, but I could hear more. On the table, I saw the biggest one of them. It was unnaturally big for a Jackalope. The horns were almost twice the size of the thing itself. It was staring at me.

It snarled in my direction. Got up to its feet. And lept at me.

It was too big to just catch it out of the air, the momentum would just carry it to me, but I had just the spell for that.

First the sparks. Then the ball of energy formed. And I quickly hurled it at the flying rodent. It was a precise hit, right in the body. The big Jackalope flopped to the floor and I heard all of the lesser ones scurrying away from me.

I picked up an empty Sparkle-Cola bottle off the table and broke it over the King's head. Then I stuck the broken bottle into its gut, twisted it and dropped the dead Jackalope to the floor.

My skills in animal cruelty seemed to impress the other rabbits. All of them were gone, presumably the same way that they got here. I sighed in relief as the last one scurried off into a small hole in the corner of the room. I looked around for a second, there were still a couple of things on the table. Most importantly for me, an unopened Sparkle-Cola bottle that stood at the far end of the table. I opened the bottle and having nothing else to do there I headed back to Gears. I tossed the empty bottle away near the toilet.

I returned to Gears drinking another potion on the way back. The first bugger got me good, it'd take some time to heal. But at least the pain was gone.

I knocked on the door to Gears' office.

"Come in."

I opened the door, Gears was far more relaxed than before. He looked away from his terminal.

"I saw how you did there. The rooms are clear and the generator's fine. As far as I'm concerned you've done you're part, time for us to keep our end. Go back up to the station, you'll see a bright yellow unicorn there, her name's Bright Glow, she watches the food pile. I already informed her that you'll be coming," he said and quickly went back to doing his terminal thing.

Closing the door to the office, I went to get fed for the first time in what felt like years.

Bright Glow was standing in the middle of the station proper. She was exactly as Gears described her, yellow and a unicorn. He neglected to mention the Pinkie Pie styled mane and the smile like the Ministry mare herself.

"Hi! I'm Bright Glow, but you can call me Bright, or Glow if you want to. Gears told me you did the thing with the little critters, I sure hope that wasn't much trouble," she chirped happily as I approached her, "So, what's your favourite colour? Is it grey? And what's your favourite food? Oh, no, no, let me guess. It's cupcakes, isn't it?" she paused for a second as if to let me answer, but I didn't have enough time to even open my mouth before she continued, "Well, that'd be bad if you like cupcakes, because we don't have any. But we've got a bunch of other stuff like carrots, apples and daisies, maybe we can even find you a box of Fancy Buck Cakes, but I wouldn't count on that."

With that, she happily trotted off. I followed Bright Glow until we came to another door. It probably led to their food pile. She went behind the door and I stayed near it waiting for her to come back with my "payment". Never expected to get paid in food, to be honest.

I shuffled through my bag while I was waiting. I only had a single potion left and with the speed, at which I seemed to use them I'd definitely need more. I quickly thought about asking for a couple of theirs, but that would probably lead to some other menial task that'd end with me being hurt.

I only started thinking about myself getting hurt when Bright Glow returned with a small saddle-bag filled with food and a carrot she was eating.

"Here," she passed me the bag, "come with me, I know a good place to eat around here. It's a little nook I found a week ago, there's a great view of the station from there."

She led me behind one of the arches propping up the walls and there was a ladder there that went along the arch all the way up to the ceiling. Bright went up pretty fast skipping some of the steps and cheerfully munching on the carrot. I on the other hoof, was a bit slower. Placing my hooves carefully I moved up the arch levitating the food behind. The arch was steady, but it had no guarding rails, so I tried to be very cautious while Glow just hopped up without a care.

On the top, there was a flat platform with a sleeping bag on it. She sat on the bag and focused on eating her carrot.

I sat down and opened the food bag. There were four carrots, three apples, a box of cakes and an actual hayburger. The burger caught my attention immediately. I got it out of the bag and started munching.

"I like this view, it reminds me of the time before the war," said Bright Glow still eating her carrot, "I used to work as a history teacher, believe it or not. This station was constructed to celebrate another hundred years of peace under Celestia," she paused to look at the glimmering station. The station was quite long, from the nearest wall to the one at the furthest end was at least two or three hundred feet. The walls of the station were covered in a gigantic painting that depicted Celestia at the very top of the ceiling surrounded by golden light and crowds of cheering ponies closer to the ground. Some pegasi were flying above the crowd, cheering to the Princess above. There was no Luna on this one, it was probably built before she returned.

It was quite ironic, now that I think about it. A station dedicated to a Princess that left her post the second things turned bad. Luna proved to be a better leader when things came to it. Not that a better leader was enough to save us in the end.

"I used to love my job, telling the kids what happened in the past was amazing. If you do it just right something as boring as the history of the Wonderbolts becomes the most interesting thing ever. But then the Ministry of Image came with their propaganda, you couldn't even publish an article in the local newspaper without it getting re-written to "fit the current climate"," Glow sighed.

"Oh, don't even tell me about that. I used to work for the EEA. The amount of crap the Ministry of Image made us implement is just unbelievable, to be honest. And don't even get me started on the official communications with the Ministries. You mistyped a letter, now you are a spy. It's honestly such a joke," I let out a sigh of relief at finally having someone from a similar field to talk to.

"The EEA? The making the school guidelines EEA? Weren't you assimilated into the Ministries?" Bright Glow asked the question. Well, it wasn't a single question, but that's not the point. Every time you mention the EEA ponies ask if the thing still exists. This question becomes a little easier with the world gone, but still two ponies that I mentioned my job to in the last day and both of them asked almost the same question.

"Yeah, the EEA, it still worked. Celestia stepping down took away almost all political leverage the EEA had. Even had to change the Chancellor, the old one wasn't happy with Luna's policies. And with the Ministries getting all the power we were just taken for parts basically and what was left just did its job under the "guidance" of the Ministry of Image. Most of our scholars joined Twilight's Ministry, the relics were taken by the Ministries as well. The only good thing is that when your organization exists for hundreds of years and for all of the time it exists it makes powerful magic items, it becomes almost impossible to take all of them," I gave a little chuckle at the end.

"Ooo, magical relics. Like what?" the expression on her face was like a filly in a candy shop.

"Well, we had a lot of stuff. Like the Seal, which is just a medallion used to lock schools down. The robes themselves were a magical item of sorts, the owner would spend time to add little trinkets and baubles to the robe. After years of work, some of the Chancellors had so many things that the robes turned into an armour of sorts from the sheer amount of metal things on it," I explained with a smile.

"So, some ponies were just walking covered in medallions? They'd make a lot of noise, wouldn't they?" Glow asked. I was all too happy to answer.

"You wouldn't believe how loud they were, some of the old scholars were almost impossible to miss. You'd hear the ringing minutes before they'd get close to you and they weren't fast walkers. That helped avoid them in the halls, they'd get all grumpy if you were blocking their way," I told Glow. She chuckled before changing the topic.

"Sooo, what are you planning to do next? We could really use a pair of working hooves around here, especially somepony with your experience," she asked.

"I don't know really. I haven't thought about it yet. Ever since I got into Stratusburg I haven't had time to think about what I was going to do," I answered, "Don't get me wrong, you guys are fine and all, but I don't think staying here is for me. I've been cooped up in the EEA building for a month, I don't think that staying at any place is a good idea for me now. I might try to get further down the subway, maybe find something interesting," I thought out loud.

"That sounds like a great idea! Maybe if you found something cool you could bring it here? Or come back to us, so that we could send ponies to look at it?" she loudly approved of my idea.

We set up there looking at Celestia station for some time. The hayburger was gone before I knew it. Always was a sucker for hayburgers.

After my little snack, I got off the arch leaving Glow there to watch the station. The way back down was as nerve-wracking as the way up. I got down without major problems, checked if everything was in place. I wouldn't want to stay too long at this station. But it never hurts to just enjoy the peaceful moment.

There were some ponies walking around the station carrying things around, some ponies were having a lively chat and one earth pony was even playing some games. It was a good place. Sad that it didn't last that long.

BOOM!

The gate that I came in some time ago flew off the hinges and onto the rails. Three ponies emerged from the smoke. They were armored and armed. All of them had rebar wrapped around their bodies and road signs tied to the bars. There was one word legible on their signs, "Tunlrz" written in red paint.

The unicorn in the middle had a weird looking blade in his grip and the two earth ponies around him held big chunks of concrete on rebars.

The middle one was covered in blood. And the only pony who was that way was... I stopped myself. The trio started moving towards all the other ponies. Most just stood there and did nothing, they were too naive or too shocked to do anything.

The guard that stood at the door, a young stallion with a pistol shot at the knife-wielding attacker. The bullet simply bounced off the armor. Then the blood-covered unicorn lept at the guard and twirled around him keeping the knife at the guard's neck. The guard fell to the ground clutching his bleeding neck.

The panic started. Everypony tried to run somewhere. This felt familiar almost.

I took off the second the blade touched the poor guy's neck. I already had experience with this sort of thing.

I remembered the tunnels that lead to Gears's office, everypony was probably running there. He saved them once he'll do it another time.

But that way wouldn't work for me. I needed to get out of this station. I needed to get to the utility tunnels, it'd be easier to avoid pursuit there, tight space, even a little empty bottle on the ground might slip somepony over.

I needed to think this over quickly. Every station has at least two directions to go in. I came from one and the Tunnelers came from there too, so that's a no. So the utility tunnel must be... That way!

The door was at the other end of the station. A good three hundred feet or so away. And there were at least three ponies behind me ready to end my life. I was running like crazy to the other side, ponies were still screaming behind me, some a lot louder than others. I heard hooves hitting the tiles behind me. One of them was following me. I tried speeding up, but it sounded like the Tunneler was still right behind me.

I got to the door, grabbed the handle and opened it. Then I was pushed into the room like a train hit me in the back. I stumbled inside.

"Look who we have here. Our little runner," the stallion pushed me to the ground, "Done running now? Our policy on new members has changed. You missed your chance. Prepare to die."

He took the pistol that the guard used into his mouth and aimed it right at my head.

Time seemed to slow down around me. My life was going like a flash before my eyes. Childhood with my parents in a small village on the northern borders of Equestria, school with my friends at Canterlot, uni with new friends, the war and my job, then the last month. And then there was the barrel of this gun.

I snapped out. He fired the gun. I swung my head to the right grubbing his weapon with my grip and ripping it out of his mouth along with a few teeth. The bullet flew, the gun was ripped from his mouth. Instantly turned to his head. He looked right at the barrel with horror. I pulled the trigger.

He fell to the ground. Blood was coming out of the hole in his head.

The pistol dropped to the floor, I was over-ventilating.

This wasn't happening, I didn't just put a bullet into another sentient being. No, no, no, no, no! It can't be happening. I never held a gun before, nevermind killing somepony! I've seen ponies die before, but to do it myself is just, just wrong!

I wasn't fast enough his shot went straight to my shoulder. It was bleeding and fast. I backed into a corner facing the body, I was sweating and shaking. My heart was pumping hard, I could hear it.

Panicked I looked for a way out, a door, a vent, anything. Then I felt what I backed into. It was another cold metal door. I flung it open flying into the tunnel as fast as I possibly could.

I ran like crazy for what felt like hours. I could only hear my heart pumping. The corridors were as I thought, narrow and long. I threw out every empty potion bottle I had on the floor. One of them shattered.

Then suddenly I dashed past something to my right. I stopped. Maybe it could be my way out of this one. I backed up to the thing. It was another door, a utility closet.

I opened the door, got inside and locked it shut, also placing everything in the room to block it. The shelves, buckets, mops, everything.

I sat there silent hoping for the best. Minutes past. I did not move. My heart was beginning to settle down.

I heard it. Clattering of hooves. They were running. At first, they were barely there, like distant drops of water. Then they got closer, turning into a stampede. Then, they were right at the door. I prepared myself for the worst.

They darted past my closet. Then their clattering disappeared somewhere to the right.

I sighed. I could focus on myself now. The Ministry of Peace educational tapes always said that you shouldn't drink healing potions with things in your body that shouldn't be there. I needed to remove that bullet if I didn't want to bleed out in that room. But I needed something to get the bullet out.

Thankfully, the closet had the perfect set of pliers. Not sterile, but I didn't care.

Jabbing the pliers into the hole, I groaned from the surge of pain. I felt around, found the bullet. But the pliers would not grab the damn thing. I tried again and again until the entire tool was covered in blood. But in the end, I got it out.

My last potion went down my throat and the second the bullet was out of me. The pain was getting intense.

I took a bandage and tried to cover the wound, but it's not that easy to bandage a shoulder. It took some attempts, but in the end, the bandages were on.

I was sitting on the floor, exhausted after all that had happened. The fatigue finally caught up with me. I moved my hooves around lazily trying to find a good position. It was getting harder and harder to keep my eyes open. The Tunnelers weren't here and the door was locked, I was as safe as I was ever going to get.

With a yawn, I dozed off to sleep.

Author's Note

Thank you for reading! If you have any thoughts or suggestions you are welcome to comment.