Just A Small Job

I walked up to Lucky Break. That, as I’d only found out after our talk, was the name of the mare who’d chatted me up after I first arrived in the warehouse. “Hey, Lucky?”

“Mm?” She turned to me.

“I’m a bit curious, have you seen that red buck around? Strawberry, I think.” I meant Cherry, but didn’t want to admit I remembered his name.

“Cherry,” she corrected. “Ever since what happened with Sweet Spirit—” Seeing my ‘I’m bad with names, remember’ look, she added, “The mare you scared shitless a week ago—he hasn’t been sleeping here. I think he sleeps in Dog’s quarters nowadays.”

I nodded. “I see. That would explain why I haven’t seen him around.” Hopefully, none of my relief was visible on my face. I really didn’t want to seem like I was taking a side. Being left alone was nice, now that I knew how it felt. In Fillydelphia, I’d constantly had to fight off other raiders to keep my place in the food chain.

“Kinda sad, really. I can’t say I blame him, with the way ponies have been treating him just for being her assistant. I just hope this won’t be the thing that breaks him. The buck has spirit, but spending this much time with a slaver… I’m not sure.” She sighed.

I still didn’t understand why everyone saw Dog as a slaver; she struck me more like a chained up raider than anything else. Maybe Cherry was right, and those ponies simply couldn’t help but see anyone above them as a slaver.

The line we’d picked was the yellow one, meaning we’d first gone along with the green line for four hours before switching to the yellow one at the Clover underground station. About an hour after entering the metro, our trip was uneventful. We’d occasionally bumped into a feral ghoul or two, but nothing Iron couldn’t handle. I helped as well, of course, but by the time I’d lined up a shot and killed a single one, she’d have taken out the rest.

We’d found two maintenance closets so far, but neither of them seemed to contain what we were here for. They just had smaller electronics, tools, or medical supplies.

At some point, maybe fifteen minutes after our last encounter with a ghoul, she spoke up, “Now’s probably around a good time for you to take some Rad-X. Radiation’s getting worse with every metre.”

I nodded and dug through my saddlebags. While I did so, I said, “Kinda wish I could deal with radiation the way you do.” I picked out the bottle of pills and shook one onto my hoof before swallowing it. “Would make survival a whole lot easier,” I added with a chuckle.

I turned to see Iron shaking her head, an uneasy smile on her face. “Trust me, you don’t. It’s convenient, sure, but it makes me feel like some mutated abomination.” She kicked a piece of rubble to the side, and her expression softened. “Never would have thought that I’d say that, but can you blame me? Something as deadly as radiation makes me feel warm and cosy, like a soft blanket, of course I’m gonna feel like a monster.”

I had to admit, when she put it like that, it was quite creepy.

We continued to walk in silence for another long while. Since we couldn’t talk out of fear of getting any unwanted attention, time passed very slowly. On top of that, it was too dark to see further than Iron’s flashlight illuminated. Without anything to distract me, boredom was slowly overtaking my mind, causing my mind to wander aimlessly.

Iron wasn’t faring much better, as she suddenly shook her head, as if trying to clear her thoughts. A moment later, though, she swore under her breath.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered.

She gave me a strained smile. “Nothing, just pissed off at those damn cravings. Fucking hate Mint-Als. Never taking that garbage again.” But her tone sounded like she was about to add a ‘hopefully’ at the end.

A while later, she informed me that the radiation levels had increased further—still nowhere critical, though. After that, I would have expected to run into more feral ghouls, not fewer. For a while, we’d been encountering them so rarely, even with all the noise our guns would make. Now, though? It was as if somepony had painstakingly cleared out the main tunnel and the side ones.

Finally, I spotted some light in the distance. For a while, I thought it was the outside’s light. But as we approached it, Iron shut off her PipBuck’s light. When my eyes adjusted, I could tell this wasn’t daylight. Instead, it seemed like somepony had actually managed to turn the ceiling lights back on.

It was of course possible that it just so happened that the lights in this part of the metro had kept working for nearly two hundred years, but somehow I doubted that.

“There’s something ahead,” Iron whispered to me. “Pass me my sniper rifle.”

Pulling the individual parts out of my saddlebags, I hoofed them over to her. “What do you see?” I asked as she started screwing the parts together with her hooves.

“Dunno yet.” She placed the rifle on a block of concrete and peered through the scope. After a moment, I saw her eyebrows furrow. “There’s some kinda wall made of scrap, with a unicorn ghoul on top. Has a rifle strapped to her back. Or his, I can't tell. Looks like some kinda guard.”

She started adjusting the knob on her rifle. Elevation, probably.

That meant she wasn’t just content with watching the ghoul. “And… you’re just gonna shoot her? She’s probably just defending her settlement, she’s not a threat to us in the slightest. And you’re gonna shoot her?”

“Yeah, I—” She cut herself off, then turned to look at me. “I mean, she’s in our way, don’t really have a choice.”

“Really?” I deadpanned. “You’re really telling me we can’t just take one of those side tunnels, go to the surface and completely avoid her? There’s even the chance she isn’t hostile at all, but I’m not naive enough to risk getting shot up to test that out.”

“But they might have what we need; they got power, somehow.” She sounded so hesitant; an emotion that I wasn’t used to from her.

I just stared at her blankly, trusting my expression to convey what I meant better than words could.

“I—I don’t have a choice, okay?” She sounded like a filly with her hoof caught in a cookie jar. “I can’t go against Star Seeds’ orders. I have to do what he says.”

Now that was worrying. A few months ago, I thought she wasn’t much better than a slaver. When she said things like this, though, I couldn’t help but see the slave come to light. “He only wants us to find a few generators. He never asked you to kill an unknown settlement of ghouls.” At least I assumed it was that. “What’s stopping you from just leaving this part out when you tell him what happened?” Why are you so eager to anticipate his orders? It took some effort not to say that out loud.

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Finally, she said, “I guess you’re right. I just want this to be over with as soon as possible, and didn’t think it through.”

I didn’t buy it. That would imply she forgot it was wrong. It would mean that she was willing to commit an atrocity just to make her own life a little easier, and that didn’t seem like the mare I’d gotten to know.

We were back in the metro. We’d managed to find a transformer relatively close to one of the big stations. We’d found it behind a locked door, in a room so full of ghouls that even Iron had wanted to avoid it at first. No doubt, that was the reason nopony else had gotten to it.

That was exactly why I’d insisted on trying it instead of just walking around. Killing all these ghouls took a long time, especially because we wanted to avoid getting overrun. I didn’t bother counting, but there were at least thirty of them, some having sucked up enough radiation to emit a faint glow. Those took a couple of shots before finally going down.

Had I been scavenging on my own, I wouldn’t have considered that room to be worth the trouble. Frankly, it would have been a huge risk for somepony like me. But with Iron’s combat experience, something “too dangerous to bother with” had become “dangerous enough to not have been looted yet.”

That had been almost two hours ago. Now, though, we were deep under Old Detrot, following the blue line. We’d gone through the entirety of the yellow one until reaching the central station. That had taken us a good chunk of the day, and if we wanted to remain on schedule, we really needed to find that spark generator soon, or we would need to spend the night here.

Normally, that wouldn’t have been a problem since the old city was relatively empty. However, the temperatures had been dropping for the past few days, and I wasn’t keen on finding out how low they would go.

Since I’d been right about the locked door, I managed to convince Iron to explore the deeper parts of the Old Detrot metro. Specifically, the blue line passed underneath the hill that housed the ancient parts of the city—parts already old by the time the balefire bombs fell. The tracks themselves were only on a mild slope upwards, but every station we’d found was deeper underground than the last.

If there was one place in the entire metro system that had been touched the least by scavengers, it had to be on this line. In general, a good rule of hoof in the wasteland was that anything underground was dangerous, and ponies were generally apprehensive of diving into a dark tunnel far below the surface.

Frankly, I didn't like it one bit. Everything about this place screamed “bad idea” to me, and it was only because I trusted Iron’s skills that I’d even suggested it. However, the general atmosphere of this place made me uneasy. I couldn’t quite tell why, but apart from the obvious, something else was stressing me out.

Not only that, but the radiation levels down here were very high, enough that somepony had put up a sign warning potential scavengers. I was forced to drink more RadAway than I liked—it could be tasty in small quantities, but after a couple of sachets, I was really fed up with it.

On the bright side, we hadn’t encountered any ghouls in a long while.

Eventually, we stepped into a large, open, subterranean metro station; the largest we’d seen so far, in fact. In here, the sound of rushing water was loud enough that even Iron seemed to pick up on it. It had already been stressing me out before, but it was so much worse now. The perpetual noise made it hard to hear anything else, and before I knew it, I was grinding my teeth.

On either side of us, plexiglass walls separated the platforms from the tracks. Iron made her way to where the wall had been broken, before climbing onto the platform and helping me up as well. I spotted a sign that informed us this was the “Castle” station, apparently. So we were now at one of the deepest points of the metro, since the ruined castle was at the very top of the hill.

Soon, I spotted the source of the noise. A white sign stood before a shattered window overlooking an abyss of black.

As Iron lifted her foreleg to illuminate further down, I saw the light glint off of water. A few spotlights lined the walls leading down, but it didn’t look like any of them had worked in years.

I turned my attention to the sign in front of me, bearing the title “Dried riverbed of the Twinstream River.” Didn’t look very dry to me.

The rest of the sign explained how the metro had been built next to the river before it dried up, and that unknown conditions had caused that. Apparently, whatever it was, it had undone itself since.

Suddenly, I heard something. A rock tumbling just a couple of centimetres. While the metro’s silence was occasionally broken by distant howls and echoes of heavy thuds, this was way too close.

I turned around to face where I’d heard it, but didn’t see anything.

Iron must have noticed my sudden movement. “Is something wrong?”

“I… think I heard something around there.” I pointed a hoof towards the general direction of the noise.

Iron turned to illuminate that area with her PipBuck, but there was too much rubble lying around. We looked around for maybe two minutes, but didn’t find anything. If there was something here, it could very well be hiding in the shadows cast by some of the larger blocks of concrete.

I heard my breathing grow shallower and faster, and I almost jumped when Iron touched my withers. “S-sorry,” I muttered.

“My bad, I should have said something first. I was gonna try to calm you down. We need to stay sharp.” Her tone just barely betrayed her own worry. Let’s keep going, or do you think we’ll find anything in this station?”

I swallowed, then shook my head. “Too open. The ponies who built this place likely placed the actual electronics just a bit further in the tunnel.” I’d started rambling without really thinking, as if trying to justify leaving this place as soon as possible. I paused for a moment, gathering my thoughts. “A big station like this would probably have warranted an equally large, separated backbone to keep it running. The entrance could be somewhere in here, or just a bit further down the tracks.”

“Then we should probably look around for any doors around here before we move on, right?” The look she gave me helped me pull myself together. She was genuinely asking for advice, not just contradicting me. In fact, I’d been the one to contradict myself first.

I nodded. “Yeah, though I’d think it’s more likely to be further ahead, but we might as well look here.” Scared as I was to stay here, who was to say that whatever had made that noise wouldn’t just follow us?

I started walking towards the edge of the station, Iron in tow, the clop of our hooves barely quiet enough to be drowned out by the rushing water. My eyes scanned the wall for anything that could indicate any sort of mildly concealed entrance.

Focusing on this allowed me to ignore the fear gnawing at my mind. The walls were covered in large, rectangular tiles made of specular teal ceramic. Suddenly, something in the corner of my eye moved, and I turned to face it.

I breathed a small sigh of relief as I realised the movement was just the reflection of the light Iron’s PipBuck was shining.

If there was an entrance here, it would be very easy to spot, as the tiles would need to be cut in the shape of a door, and I wasn’t looking for any sort of secret passage. Just a maintenance tunnel that was most likely designed so that it didn’t look completely out of place.

I gasped as a noise reverberated through the station, before realising it was the same as what we’d heard a few times already. Something heavy, falling to the ground very far away. The noise was just a bit more distorted than usual.

“Is that it?” asked Iron in a whisper. It took me a few moments to see what she meant, but it didn’t seem to be the case. The door was too grand, too easy to notice. It was meant for the public. A few steps later, it became obvious that this was just an elevator.

We continued. Down here, every second felt like an eternity. At most a minute had passed, but I was conscious of every single step I took, making sure to remain quieter than the water. Iron’s hooves, however, occasionally made a noise just above that threshold, making my entire body tense up momentarily.

I stumbled as I kicked a small rock. I saw it roll and jump up, deafening me every time it hit the ground. Every time it bounced upwards, my heart stopped for a moment, dreading the noise it would make. Every time it came down, I clenched my leg muscles, trying to will it to stop. Every time it skipped, I held my breath. Every time it dropped, I winced.

Finally, it came to a halt, but the sound reverberated for another fraction of a second. I didn’t dare move, listening for anything that might have reacted to this sudden noise. Iron stopped as well, looking around the room with her flashlight.

Five seconds passed. Nothing.

Ten seconds passed. Nothing.

Fifteen seconds passed. Nothing.

After twenty seconds, I let out the breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding. There was nothing here, just like there hadn’t been anything in the tunnel leading up to this place. That one pebble I’d heard had probably just shifted off of a bigger pile. Everything was fine.

We continued looking through the abandoned station, eventually deciding to move on after failing to find anything of importance at all. There was a set of caved in stairs, maybe twenty metres from the elevator, that we could potentially try on our way back. Still, instinct and experience told me what we were looking for was ahead.

And indeed, after five more minutes, we spotted another opening near the tracks. It was much smaller than any actual station, but just as long as most of them. There was no platform, and no ceramic tiles, just a metal staircase, as well as a door. After trying it, Iron found it locked.

I nodded to Iron, and her horn lit dimly. A red aura appeared around the edges of the keyway, intensifying as her horn grew brighter and brighter. I turned to avoid being blinded, but as the light grew further, my heart skipped a beat.

Down the corridor we’d come from, a pair of pupils, reflecting a measly amount of red light, was slowly moving away. When I met its gaze, though, it stopped. Then it started moving closer. As my eyes adjusted back to the darkness, I could see jagged teeth.

“I-Iron, there’s something there…”

Had it been following us?

The next thing I knew, Iron pointed her PipBuck at it.

In front of us stood a pitch black dog, mouth open as it panted happily, even wagging its tail.

I breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s just a dog. What are you doing here, little guy?” It wasn’t actually small, but compared to what I’d been imagining, anything was good.

Iron, however, remained quiet. My initial relief having died down, I started noticing odd details about it. Its coat, dark as it was, was glistening as if it was drenched in water, but it wasn’t dripping.

Suddenly, Iron’s horn glowed, but by the time she pulled out her shotgun, the dog had already closed more than half the distance between us in a single leap.

Instead of aiming at the dog, Iron turned it upwards in an attempt to strike it. Meanwhile, I fumbled for my battlesaddle’s trigger bit.

She swung at the dog, but it bit down on the shotgun’s stock. With a sharp tug, it tore it free of Iron’s magic, dissipating the red aura in a second. Looking satisfied with itself, it let out an excited, happy bark before leaping once more.

Only to have its torso torn by two dozen pellets of lead, spraying the opposing wall with pitch black blood.

My shotguns’ retort echoed throughout the tunnels multiple times, growing more distant each time. It had been at least two hours before either Iron or I had needed to shoot something, so the sound felt like it cut into my ears with a hot knife. The earmuffs were right around my neck, but I hadn’t had the time to pull them up.

I didn’t have the time to lament that as Iron pulled my thoughts back to reality. “We can’t stay here, I’ll get the door open.” She kept her shotgun nearby as she continued to work on the lock.

I couldn't agree more. That gunshot was sure to attract ghouls. Actually…

Hmm… that didn’t seem right.

I took another look at the creature’s corpse. Like this, it hardly looked like a dog anymore. Its flesh was liquefying, as if rotting on the spot.

Then it clicked, and in a moment I realised why I’d been so uneasy down here, and that ghouls were now the least of our problems. How could I be so stupid?

We hadn’t encountered a single ghoul in such a long time that I wanted to bash my head into the wall for not noticing. The radiation in here was so strong, I should have realised! Bones were notoriously absent as well, which was an even worse sign. Either ponies had avoided this tunnel when the bombs fell, or something was very wrong.

Attracting ghouls wasn’t a problem. Ghouls were predictable. Ghouls always walked mindlessly towards any non-equine noise. Only when they realised there was a pony involved did they break out into a sprint to catch you. They were scary, yes, especially in large groups. However, they did not have any sort of intellect, and certainly appeared to lack the ability to learn.

That dog, however, had clearly been smart enough to stalk us for a while, and it was a lot faster than any ghoul I’d ever seen. Somehow, I doubted it was the only one of its kind.

This reminder made my nerves finally catch up to me. “Hey, Iron, we need to leave. Now. Fuck this generator, this place is way too creepy.” We were already starting to run low on ammo, despite the enormous amount we had packed. That was the biggest reason ghouls were dangerous, killing them burnt through one’s ammunition reserves at an alarming pace.

Her brows furrowed, and then she dropped the aura in the keyhole. “You’re right. I wanted to try hiding inside here, but now I’m having a rough time focusing.” Her horn picked up her shotgun, and she nodded at me.

We turned around and broke into a light canter. One just slow enough to not risk getting a hoof stuck on a rock or a plank and avoid getting exhausted. Normally, I was healthier than Iron, but the radiation down here reversed that, and I could tell I would get winded very fast.

Now that we’d seen what we were dealing with, I felt like I could actually face it. Adrenaline was kicking in, and despite how much danger we were likely in, I felt less terrified.

Soon, I could hear the distant sound of water coming from Castle station. It didn’t have the time to stress me out as Iron suddenly shouted, “Earpro!” Her magic illuminated the tunnel.

Getting the hint, I pulled my ear muffs up from their resting position. Just a second later, her shotgun roared once, then twice as she gunned down something much further down the tunnel. After taking a few steps forward, she looked back and nodded.

On the ground lay another one of those dogs, face and throat shredded by buckshot. We didn’t stop to stare.

Iron’s vision really was something else, I had to admit. One always heard of stories that when a pony lost one of their senses, the rest sharpened. Seeing it directly really put things into perspective.

We finally stepped into Castle station. For a moment, I was tempted to run straight for where I’d seen the stairs and pray to Celestia that somehow there was a way up. But I knew it wasn’t the case. I’d seen the staircase and knew it would just be a waste of time.

I was brutally snapped out of my thoughts by the sound of rocks clattering against each other. “Another one!” I jumped to face it, but without Iron’s flashlight, I couldn’t see it.

Iron immediately turned around and pulled the trigger. Then again. And again. And again. How many of those were there?

Finally, I saw it. It was another dog, running just as fast as the others, but unlike them, it was dashing from side to side. Iron’s shotgun roared once more, but the monster seemed unaffected. She’d missed again. I knew she only had one shell left. I turned the dial in my trigger bit to the left, switching it to alternate between each weapon, instead of firing both at once.

Biting down on it time and time again, I was hoping to buy Iron enough time. It jumped to the side as she shot once again. It didn’t connect, but the dog couldn’t dodge my own rapid fire anymore. Its forward momentum was cut by a set of pellets impacting into its chest and side, and then another. How many times had I pulled the trigger? Five? Six? Seven? Definitely less than ten; I still had at least two shots.

My blood froze as I heard a noise behind me. I turned my head to see yet another one, rushing at me.

It was too close. My body wouldn’t turn in time. I screamed. I was finally facing it, but it was already too late.

Its jaws closed around my throat, the weight of its body throwing me to the ground. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. As quickly as it had killed me, it jumped away, barely dodging Iron’s knife.

My vision… grew blurrier by… the second, dark… edges… closing… in.

I was sitting across from Petal and Banter, in the room that was essentially their prison. I’d just finished catching them up to what had happened over the past month. Last time I’d seen them was roughly a week before I received Gloam.

I told them how I’d gotten her to pick up shadow magic, and that she was apparently a natural at it. Something told me that wasn’t a coincidence, but I obviously couldn’t ask Crow about it without revealing my trump card.

Still, I put her talents to good use. During the day, she assisted me with my regular duties as overseer, but between shifts I had her stealing supplies from slavers further away. Medicine, survival equipment, all sorts of things. She even managed to sneak into the firearms factory.

All of that was to make sure our escape would go smoothly. With Gloam’s help, I’d mapped out a large portion of Fillydelphia and had a decent idea of what path to take in order to avoid being spotted. I still needed to come up with some safe routes to cross certain very open streets. On top of that, I still needed a way to get past the guards near the inner fence. Escaping through the main wall and its gates would be an impossible task, even with somepony as sneaky as Gloam on our side.

Of course, what I didn’t tell them was how bad I felt about it. I couldn’t help but feel like I was truly and genuinely acting the role of a slaver. I may not have been whipping or threatening her, but I knew the reason she never hesitated to follow my orders, even when I dressed them up as mere suggestions.

The truth of the matter was that she was scared. Terrified, even. I knew she dreaded every single thing her mind thought I would do if she disobeyed. Would I lash her? Would I lock her up for a few days without any food? Would I simply decide she wasn't worth my time, and give her back to her previous owner?

I, of course, wouldn't do any of those things, but she didn't know that. And even if she did have a hunch, she was too scared to follow up on it. I could see it in her eyes, that fear that bound her tighter than chains ever could.

I almost tried to reassure her a few times, but in the end couldn't manage to bring myself to it. I just couldn't tell how she would react. Would she take it as a mind game and only submit further? Or would she take that as a sign of weakness and betray me? Maybe she'd trust me, but relax enough to slip and forget to show me respect in front of other slavers?

All of those sounded like lame excuses, and I knew it. It was why I didn't dare bring it up with my family. I knew they would judge me and end up thinking less of me.

At the same time, I did have a reason to exploit her. As horrible as I was for taking advantage of her mental conditioning, I was also doing it for her sake. After all, I would set her free once we were out of here.

Besides, I already knew I was a bad pony, so what difference would it make to me? I’d determined long ago that I was willing to step on others for my own survival and fulfilment, so why was my conscience still beating me over the head?

I didn’t realise how long the silence had stretched out until Banter broke it with a heavy sigh. “I… I really appreciate what you’re trying to do, but…”

Oh sweet Luna, was he going to call me out for being a slaver? I wasn’t doing anything wrong!

Banter bit his lip, hesitant to continue. He swallowed and faced me, and then Petal. “I think there’s one thing you need to know first. I should have said something sooner, but I simply didn’t have the courage.” He paused for a moment, steeling his nerves. “It’s about what happened at Dodge Junction, almost a year ago. I didn’t tell you everything…”