Have you ever just had an all-consuming, absolutely certain awareness that a day was going to shower you in an unrelenting storm of misery, to go out of its way to make every second of existence a trial?
I have.
I knew it the second the door to my office slid open and I laid eyes on the beige-coated Biosynth sitting neatly beside my desk: Obviously equine-derived, hooves tucked neatly beneath his body, wings held closed but not limp, and eyes open but unfocused: The perfect model of professionalism.
One I was already quite familiar with.
“Good evening, Lieutenant-Investigator Guerro,” he said as I slumped into my seat. His voice was surprisingly soft-timbred, not at all what people were expecting from a creature built like a muscle-nut, but I suppose the severely-trimmed cut of his hair and nearly-motionless posture might also help give me the wrong impression. “I hope your shuttle back was not too diffi-”
“Wait a sec, Crenelle,” I growled.
My jacket was shrugged off, left hanging over the back of the chair. I felt around under my desk, idly letting my neural infotronics synchronize with my computer station, until I felt the hidden compartment and the secret weapon within it: A little glass bottle, sloshing with golden-brown liquid.
Alcohol might have been crude in comparison to custom-tailored hormones delivered straight to the neurons, but I liked it better anyway. Call me a traditionalist.
“Right. Go ahead.”
Crenelle barely moved a feather of his massive wings, but I thought I saw a twitch at the base of its tail. “I hope your shuttle back was not too difficult, Lieutenant Investigator. There is a new case assigned to you.”
“Six medium-grade pukers, buddy. Six! And one of them had basic stomach chemistry; can you even imagine how that reacted with everyone else’s acid upchuck? Why does anyspecies go into space if they can’t hold their food? That’s how my shuttle ride was. And they can’t even wait for me to sit down before assigning a new case?”
“I’m afraid that is a bit beyond me, Lieutenant-Investigator, as I do not experience zero-G illness. None of my kind do.” the Biosynth said, and I grunted as I downed a swig from the bottle.
“Right. Course it is. Anyway, case. Must be a doozy if they’ve sent you to deliver the details. No more jilted planetary governors, wondering where their mistresses ran off to?”
“I have been permanently assigned to assist you on this investigation, Sir.”
The bottle paused halfway to my lips again, and I ran a hand over my head. The scratchy stubble was starting to grow in again; I’d have to burn it down again soon.
“So,” I muttered, “that says this one’s going to be a real shitshow.”
“It is a potential biosynth trafficking case, Sir.”
Spitting out my drink was only avoided by swallowing hard instead; breaking down in a coughing fit was only avoided by years of experience tolerating far harsher concoctions than the burning brew currently working its way down my throat.
“Oh. Oh, shit. That is a big jump. Alright, give me the skinny, Crenelle. What’re we looking at?”
Crenelle sat up even more rigidly, something I found to be a mild physical impossibility, and began to recite words as if reading them straight from a screen. “It was found on a tramp freighter coming out of jump near the Arkalian Crossroads. The captain attempted to deceive customs with a cargo scrambler, but a picket frigate ran them down.”
“Arkalian Crossroads, huh… let me guess. Hold full of illegal nanos?”
“Legitimate cargo, in fact. However, customs scans detected biosynthetic life aboard. The captain claims it to be nonsentient, but Customs discovered a neural inhibitor preventing it from expressing itself. When the inhibitor was disabled…”
“Captain talking at all?”
“No, Lieutenant-Investigator.”
No surprise there. Biosynth smuggling would land them good prison time to begin with, but if she could keep up the facade that she ‘knew’ it to be nonsentient… maybe a little less time.
Still, something tickled me wrong. Why would a captain with a perfectly legitimate cargo take the incredible risk of trying to smuggle a single biosynth right under customs’ nose? Something smelled funny here, and I had the sense something else was going on. Probably something that had to do with why Crenelle was in my office and I wasn’t getting this casted straight to my neural net.
“Okay,” I grunted, “What about lab work? We done a workup on the synth itself?”
“Yes, of course. I reviewed the results myself. But the genetics are most confusing to me. Chiral analysis suggests historicity associated with your world. However, there are no genetic flags associated with any of the Synthing Houses. It is a genetic orphan.”
I paused. The bottle, with the remainder of its sloshing golden brew, was slid back into the cavity in the desk. Rising, I wandered to the window. A twinge from the neural implants in the back of my head, and the wall’s plasglas faded into transparency.
Outside, the hollow core of Gorosov Annex Station shone like a gleaming crystal chandelier. The local sun was slipping behind Gorosov itself, the planet’s bulk casting a steadily advancing line across the Annex Station. Dozens of small skimmerships darted among the towers, their blinking lights reminding me of fish darting among a reef as larger beasts - fat-hulled freighters and lean-lined patrol cruisers - flew above.
I drew a deep breath, savoring the last of the alcohol burn in my throat.
“So. A rogue synthing facility? That’s heavy stuff. Big stuff. We’re going to have to end up kicking it a jump or two up, letting Cluster Command take a stab at it.”
Crenelle moved at last, hooves silent on the carpeted floor. He settled on his haunches at my side, eyes also fixed on the spectacular orbital sunset; his wings ruffled and ears laid flat in a classic, primitive throwback to the ancient genetic stock his kind had been Synthed from. “That may be so. But it is still our duty to attempt a thorough investigation before doing so. And I believed it would be more stimulating to you than another week spent chasing down - how did you put it? ‘More jilted planetary governors, wondering where their mistresses ran off to?’”
“Well, shit, Crenelle. Is that humor, coming from you?”
One hind leg rose to scratch at his neck, service collar jingling as he did so. When Crenelle looked back up at me, his golden eyes seeming to practically glow in the low light and I could hear the slight smirk in his voice even if I could barely see his muzzle. “I believe you once commented to me that Biosynths in my line are genetically incapable of humor, sir.”
“But not sarcasm.” Despite my words, I felt a grin growing on my face too. “Alright, so you sent it my way because you thought I’d be less bored? That it?”
“I’m afraid not. This Biosynth’s neurals are - unusual. If you would read the full report, they appear incompatible with our standard diagnostics. I cannot access further resources myself, but you have extensive history with neuroelectronics investigations and may be able to produce better results.”
“Huh,” I grunted, ‘figures. Cast it to my neurals? I want to see what we’re looking at here.”
“Casting,” Crenelle murmured, his horn flickering with a low corona. My vision flickered as his neuronet tapped mine, vision blurring to replace the glittering, fluid cityscape with the harder corners and neat lines of his analysis.
I could feel my lips pulling into a frown as I scrolled through it. Everything was ever-so-slightly off - chirality analysis, haplotype tracing, neural architecture… it was all so right, but also so wrong. One thing in particular caught my eye.
“Crenelle, your medical report notes abnormal scarring?”
“Yes, Lieutenant-Investigator,” he said, and I could easily envision the grim expression on his muzzle without seeing a hint of it. “There’s signs of prior lacerations, burns, abrasions, and at least two broken bones. Not from when she was being transported - they are too old. None appear to have been treated with anything resembling modern medicine, and have left scarring.”
Buried in the report package was a live feed from the holding cell; I called it up. The camera feed filled my vision: A spare cell, spartan but not cruel, with a knee-high ball of violet fur curled up in the far corner. “If it is from a rogue Synthing House, they weren’t gentle with her,” I muttered.
The view ballooned as the camera scrolled in: Here, a wing - defensively curled up like a shield. There, maybe a folded leg. An ear, pinned back and barely visible. And all around it, the golden glow of tiles-
Golden glow?
“Crenelle, just how much of a kick does this thing have that the Thaumic Suppression Cell is reacting just to it existing?” I asked.
“Powerful. But more importantly, if you review the reports of the seizure on the tramp freighter it was found on, it appears to have an almost unregulated access to a broad spectrum of thaumocasting assets. I believe this is why the freighter’s captain used a neural inhibitor.”
I grimaced, hard. Not that I didn’t get the fear - a Biosynth which could cast in an almost unregulated fashion was enough to raise what little hair was left on my head.
But something that takes your mind away, suppresses your sapience and turns you into a doll…
“Fuckin’ creepy.”
“I cannot disagree, Sir. I have had them used on me once, for a surgical procedure, and I cannot describe it as a pleasant experience.”
My vision still filled with his report, I still stuck a hand out towards the sound of Crenelle’s voice. His cheek soon brushed against it, then pressed hard as he sought a comforting nuzzle.
“Had any luck talking to her? With words, I mean, not Thaumotronics.”
“I am afraid not. She appears to speak something derived from an obsolete dialect of Human Normal English, which is too far migrated from the present for me to comprehend.”
I blinked.
An obsolete dialect… something tickled in the back of my mind, an old thought or memory stirring to life beneath layers of detritus and tracking down runaway lovers.
“Sir?” Crenelle asked, and I could feel one hoof brush against my leg.
“Easy, Crenelle. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to go out for a bit, run around to the office down-station.”
“Sending her up to Cluster Command, Lieutenant-Investigator?”
I’d closed down the report, my vision returning just in time to catch the accusing look on Crenelle’s face.
“What, don’t like that idea? Anyway, no. I need to scrounge up some equipment from the labs there, see if I can’t figure out how to open up her neurals.”
“Ah. I’ll keep a firm eye on her, then.”
Maybe I’d get some beer, too. I had an inkling that all my praying for a more serious case was about to pay off far more heavily than I’d expected - or maybe wanted.
On completing an evaluation of her circumstances, Twilight Sparkle knew three things with absolute certainty:
First, she was scared.
Terrified, even, in that all-consuming way that feels so much like falling without a hoofgrip, without being able to spread your wings and feel them catch the wind and bite, and you’re just tumbling end over end without any reference-
Twilight sucked down a deep breath, ignoring the miasmic scent of her own fear. Then she took another, and another, until she finally was managing to draw breath without feeling her own sides shuddering furiously.
Yeah.
Scared.
Second, exactly how she had come here was lost in a fog. Something had been mounted to her forehead, just above her horn, though it was now gone. Her memories were not too particular about the specifics, but she had the most distinct sense it had left her feeling -
Distant.
Like she’d been an observer within her own mind, pushed back outside her own consciousness to watch herself be manhandled and prodded by any number of creatures whose appearances were so horrid, scents so entirely alien, that an utter certainty existed in her mind that nothing like them had been seen in Equestria - not in any tale, myth, or legend.
Distant.
Third, she was alone. This part was almost comforting, and certainly preferable, to sharing the presence of the repellant monsters which had deposited her in the cell. Still, Twilight Sparkle wished she could have at least been alone somewhere else, as the cell itself seemed to close in on her with a claustrophobia that went beyond any prison cell’s intrinsically repressive nature.
Namely, it cut off her magic. Not merely rendered it hard to cast sensibly, as the caverns beneath Canterlot would with their jagged and vicious arrangements of crystals that could suffocate a unicorn’s gift. The cell’s entire volume seemed to be suffused with the arcane equivalent of a wet blanket, or perhaps an asphyxiating cloud. There was an oppressive element to it, as if something was working against her. Perhaps even something vaguely familiar, though the connection was escaping her right now.
And I’m alone. My wits are all I have left.
Scared. Distant. Alone.
With those three points certain, Twilight turned her attention to everything else.
Okay, she breathed, They haven’t harmed me. In fact, they were very careful to keep me restrained. So they don’t want to hurt me. No - they don’t want me hurt, even. I’m important to them. And the cell-
Purple eyes peeked above the violet feathers covering them.
I’ve been in worse, Twilight decided. There was even a bed in the far corner, and a toilet trench that had something resembling a faucet above it. The floors were hard, to be sure, but all in all Twilight felt that she’d stayed in almost-as-terrible rooms at various lodgings on a mission or journey before.
Those experiences would have been just plain terrible, except none of those rooms had tried to cut off her magic.
Don’t want me hurt, Twilight concluded, but I’m not their guest either. Next: Language. Unknown. I thought I might have caught a little bit of Griffonic in there, but it might’ve just been my head. Because, third…
Another, fresh shudder rippled through her coat. ...third, they have some way of forcing me into some kind of trance. Changelings, maybe? Is this what it feels like to have your mind invaded? I don’t remember feeling like this when Discord - changed me. But I was still myself then, just different. That forced me - outside of myself. Was Shining Armor this afraid when he was under Chrysalis’ spell?
Don’t think about it. Next item on the list: What happened?
And here was where the open, yawning void in her memory was most infuriating.
There was a lead-up. A mission - Southwestern Equestria. Ahuizotl. He’d popped up again, unusually far into Equestria for him. Heading straight for Gallopceno - but alone. No followers, he’d sent them in a different direction to throw us off his trail. We caught up to him, but something was - wrong. He was afraid - avoiding us.
Twilight paused. Avoiding us, or avoiding something else. Did he know? Was it a trap he was leading us into? We finally managed to corner him, and-
There had been light. Noise. A howling, screeching sound, like a hundred gales’ moaning through ragged treetops. Ahuizotl shouting something. A strange whip-crack snapping sound accompanying flashes of light. And then-
Nothing. Nothing until I fell out of that mental fog I’d been pushed into, surrounded by Harmony knows what.
Okay. Can’t get stuck on that. Next question: Counteraction.
A violet eye roamed the cell, studying the door. It was a cell’s door, through and through - resolute and immovable without any of her magic. I have to wait for them to open it, then. If they put that - thing on me again I won’t be able to so much as spark my horn, so - what if I play dead? Or hurt? Just go limp and try to see how they react? It won’t be hard, the way this cell is making my head-
The cell door buzzed sharply, a monotonous and grinding tone, and swung open. Twilight’s heart seized up. No. No! I’m not ready yet! I don’t have a plan! Look at that thing, it’s huge, and- oh. Oh, nonono-”
Sillhouetted in the doorway, the creature stood - alien, monstrous, inscrutable, its tiny eyes twinkling beneath a deep, bulbous brow. It wore clothes, so some part of her knew it must be somewhat civilized. But so had Sombra, and his idea of ‘civilization’ still sometimes slithered its way into her nightmares.
Yet what turned her stomach and broke any hope of this being no more than a big mistake was, clutched in its claws, a collection of boxes and hoses, tangled and dangingling like the viscera of some mechanical beast. Twilight knew - knew - deep in her own guts that they would be going into her-
The creature snarled something in its tongue, dropping to a couch and scooting closer to her on its folded legs.
Oh sweet Celestia, Twilight thought as she retreated carefully from the door, Is it - think it’s trying to stalk me. It’s going to pounce and try and put that thing into me again, and it’s going to force me back down into that trance again, and then Harmony knows what it’ll be doing to me! She drew back, sucking in a deep breath with a fearful little whinny that caught a whiff of the creature’s scent - acrid, burning, like something that had been left in Applejack’s still too long.
“Get away from me,” she hissed, but her heart could not put force behind the words and their edge was dull rather than biting.
In response, the creature mutter-spat something in its tongue again. Twilight stood on trembling legs, her wings half-spreading to fan the feathers out in readiness to fight.
Or flee.
She could smell herself now too - that equally acrid scent of sharp fear, fear that would threaten to send her into a panic if another pony stumbled across it. Still she stood, tail lashing and nostrils flared. “I’m telling you, stay back, or I’ll-”
Too late she noticed the creature’s legs tensing. Too late she ducked to avoid the tackle. Too late she felt its digits close around her wing, wrenching her painfully onto her back. Rainbow Dash would have mocked the clumsiness of her dodge, but how could she have known the beast would so deftly twist her mid-leap, landing her on her back where she could do little more than try to batter at it ineffectually?
If I had my magic - any of my magic! Twilight thought, but the cell suffocated the Earth Pony’s strength and Pegasus nimbleness just as effectively as it did her Unicorn talent, leaving her legs feeling like she’d galloped to Canterlot and back.
Twilight shrieked a fearful whinny as it slid something cold, hard, and unyielding over her head - a mockery of a crown, circling her ears and pressing on her horn. From the corner of her eye she saw a dark shape moving beyond the cell door - another predator, waiting for its turn with her?
Bucking and heaving wildly, she beat her wings against the cell door. The creature, straddled atop her, grunted something but otherwise seemed unbothered; it began to fool with the boxes and wires it had brought. I don’t have more than a few seconds before it tries to put me back into that swamp of nothingness again and then I’ll be lost Lost LOST-
Already she could feel the crown of metal on her head starting to whine like the hum of a gigantic fly buzzing about her head. Something was happening up there, a weight starting to press on her mind and not merely her head. The creature made a note of noise, its bulbous lips twisting into something resembling a ring as it burbled to itself, and Twilight - her limited strength spent - fell back even further on what she knew:
With a grunt, she sent magic surging down the length of her horn - forcing back the cell’s oppressive blanket and forcing a spell into shape with raw, unmitigated force that only a true student of magic could manage. Purple lit the cell, a full halo of violet light shimmering about her horn as the teleport took shape and coalesced-
Digits grasped her horn and squeezed, snuffing out the light like a candle. Twilight let out a sharp, terrified cry - expecting the backwash of the failed spell to carve into her brain at any second - but the creature went right on working; its hand, when it let go, proved to be wrapped in a glove of some form.
Grounded, Twilight moaned internally, it’s got some way of creating a thaumic sink through that glove, which means it expected this.
Something was happening in the back of her head, a sensation like icewater creeping into her skull, into her brain, and down her spine. It’s going inside of me. That thing - that thing it put on my head, it’s going inside me and then - then - get out! Get out of my head!
Spreading like a spider’s growing web, the ice-water sensation seemed to fill her skull. There was static in her ears, a sort of odd pop that seemed to come from just behind her horn, and Twilight struggled: Not the coordinated, planned struggle of before but a mindless, terrified wriggling as Get out, get out, GET OUT! echoed through her mind - an echo so strong she almost missed the creature’s burbling resolving into coherent words:
“...God above, girl, what kind of fucked-up codec architecture are you configured for? It’s almost like - hah! Got it! Patch complete, now you’ll-”
Its grip loosened for a bare instant, and a bare instant was all Twilight needed.
Sliding gracelessly from beneath its bulk, Twilight ducked beneath the beast’s now-clumsily grasping arms to dive for the door. Relief filled her as she passed through the door, magic returning to her with a sensation like the warm sun striking on a summer day.
So did her wits.
Accomplice still outside. Another creature like it? Got to keep moving, Stay out of gripping range. Shield? No. They have gloves that can make a thaumic sink. A shield wouldn’t be-
Something moved in the corner of her eye, and Twilight casted without hesitation - the teleport leaping her ten paces forward along the dingy hallway, well outside of any reach it could grab her from-
A single, unrelenting force seized Twilight Sparkle’s entire form and drove her to the floor. She shrieked, but fell utterly silent in open-mouthed awe as her pursuer rolled her over and she caught her first sight of him.
The stallion was massive - Probably only masses slightly less than Big MacIntosh, Twilight estimated - but moved with a kind of solid certainty that reminded Twilight of nothing so much as her older brother. A collar was his only adornment - not quite a royal peytral, too narrow and too high on his neck yet still bearing an insignia Twilight did not recognize (and, indeed, a quick glance confirmed was not his cutie mark). A sandy coat, darkening in some places like sandstone cut and polished, and a mane the color of worn steel.
Yet what drew her eyes most and utterly paused all other thoughts, was the undeniable horn jutting from his head and vast wings (truly vast, almost seeming too large for his body) which were currently held out in a show of warning.
“Stop,” the alicorn said, and a part of Twilight vaguely registered that it was surprisingly soft for a creature who almost seemed to rival Celestia in size and whose build left little question that he was a stallion.
“Stop, please,” the alicorn repeated as he snuffed his horn out. “We are not your enemies. We want to help you.”
Sugar was always good for calming nerves, especially when it came to this lineage of biosynths, and Crenelle had acquired a whole plate of pastries somehow.
I snagged two as he was on his way back in. Can’t blame me, right? Sugar helps my nerves too.
Crenelle gave me an ugly look as he stepped back into my office’s lobby, but I didn’t care. Sugar got my mind moving, and our little guest had given me plenty to think about in the meantime.
For one, Crenelle hadn’t been joking. Her capacity for Thaumocasting was incredible, and well outside the scope of what most Biosynths were capable of. Hell, she’d pulled off a small-scale faster-than-light jump while trying to bolt from the cell block! I’d gone and watched the sec holo three times, just to be sure I was seeing that right.
The few minutes I’d had the Diagnostic Halo on her, though, were what was really eating at me. Getting the Halo to interface with her neurals was pure, stupid luck; finding the right codec to get a patch into her neuroware, though?
That’d been a lucky guess. And I didn’t like what it was saying.
Crenelle trotted in, the remains of the pastry dish in his magic, and headed straight for my desk. “You were watching my conversation with her, Lieutenant-Investigator?”
“Yep. Interesting stuff.” I grabbed at the pastry dish again; Crenelle deftly swung it out from beneath my fingers. I scowled. He stared flatly. “Whoever Synthed her’s got a real imagination for the old classics. Princesses, gods, ‘Equestria’… They filled up her head with a lot of weird stuff.”
“You believe she is lying, then. Or has been lied to, during the imprinting process. Living a fantasy.” Crenelle said.
“Hey, hey!” I raised a hand defensively. “I said ‘classics’, not ‘myths’.”
“I fail to see the difference.”
I set down my coffee and pointed at him. “Difference is, some of what she said… it’s turning gears in my head. Old gears. And I don’t like the wheels they’re making spin. They’re dangerous wheels, the kind of things that attract attention. I’m thinking of sending the lab work you had done somewhere else - genetics, protein architecture, chirality analysis…”
Crenelle frowned sharply, his ears pinning back. “I believed you said we would not be sending this further up to a higher level.”
“Of the Force? We’re not. Just to a different lab. One with a bigger library.”
“If these are ‘dangerous wheels’, as you put it-”
“I’ve got to know, Crenelle. Know for sure.” If what I thought was right… “You see that faster-than-light jump she did, when she was running out of the cell? That’s big stuff. That’s the kind of thing only highly-authorized Biosynths can do. I saw one from Union Counter-Intel do it once. Never another time.”
“Where did you see a Union Counter-Intel assigned biosynth?”
“The news, haybrain.” I reached out and tapped him between the eyes; Crenelle went slightly crosseyed and huffed, pawing at the floor. “Anyway - I’m going to run that data up to the other labs, see if they can run it through their databases. Make anything of her. In the meantime, you keep an eye on her. Make her as comfortable as you can, but log every word out of her mouth. And keep her from wandering.”
And, I thought, really, really hope I’m wrong about what I think we’re dealing with here.
My thoughts must have shown on my face, because Crenelle nervously pawed at the floor with a hoof. “Do you believe she is a counter-intelligence - asset?”
“No. No, that’s not what I’m thinking. I actually think she’s way, way older than that. And trust me on this, Crenelle - some history, you shouldn’t be digging up.”
Twilight Sparkle looked up as the door slid open again and the alicorn - it was an alicorn, she had to remind herself - stepped in.
He paused at the entrance, head tilted, and swished his tail cautiously. “Am I interrupting you, Twilight Sparkle?”
“No,” Twilight shook her head, just a little too quickly to pass it off as a calm reaction. “No, it’s fine. I’m - still just a little bit out of it, you know?”
“I see,” he - Crenelle, Twilight reminded himself. He’d said his name was Crenelle - laid down on his side at a distance. A gesture, Twilight thought, meant to reduce his apparent size and put her at ease. It’s not him I’m afraid of.
The room wasn’t helping much. It was spare, with only a handful of shelves sealed-in by some transparent material she didn’t recognize. The desk and chair were at least recognizable, though neither the material or the equipment atop them were whatsoever understandable. But worst of all, it smelled like -
Weighingpressingholdingontopofme-
-the creature who’d attacked her. Its scent was all over this place.
“Where’s, uh-”
The monster. The horror. The thing that attacked me. The thing that-
‘Violated’ felt like too strong a word. But what other word could there be for how she had felt as that icy, trickling coldness squeezed itself into her head? The next closest comparison she could think of was -
Smoke, dark and black and oily among the crystals. That low, rumbling laugh as he broke through Cadance’s shield.
“Where’s the other one?” Twilight asked.
“Lieutenant-Investigator Guerro?” Crenelle asked, still watching her with soft eyes. “He’s gone to - look into a few things. To see if we can figure out where you came from.”
“Oh…” Twilight sighed softly, her feathers rustling as she stirred. “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help. I wish I could tell you, but I don’t even know where I am.”
“I remember,” he said, and Twilight’s cheeks colored slightly. Turning away, she lit her horn and fiddled with the cloth they’d hung around her neck, and the badge covered in inscrutable writing which hung from it.
“Does it bother you?” Crenelle asked, and Twilight bobbed her head in acknowledgement.
“I’m sorry. The only other times I’ve worn anything like this was at my coronation, and a couple of other official ceremonies. Do I really have to wear it?”
“I am afraid so,” he said, and Twilight sighed softly. “It identifies you, as best as we are able to for now, and explains why you are in here. And if you have a medical emergency, the paramedics will know who to call.”
“Ah.” Her eyes drifted back over to him, and to the far more solid counterpart he wore, and the uncertain symbol etched on the metallic badge which hung from it. “Is that what yours means too? Is that design - your family? Or your job?”
Crenelle’s eyes followed hers, and tilted his head in thought. “Sort of both, I suppose. It is the insignia of the Cravat Sector Investigative Bureau, to which I belong. Lieutenant-Investigator Guerro has the same on his badge.”
“Um. Right. Sorry. It just - looked sort of like what the Princesses wear back in Equestria. And I thought - nevermind.” Change the subject. Gotta change the subject. “Lieutenant-Investigator? So you’re - you’re like some sort of guards, then?”
Crenelle nodded, and Twilight thought she could see the slightest touch of a smile on his muzzle. “In a fashion. He is a member of our police, but he does not guard one place. He looks into matters which require longer, deeper investigation.”
She nodded. “Ah, and you do the same thing?”
“I assist them in their tasks as the Bureau sees fit. Often, this means directly aiding employees in the missions. I was given this particular task, I believe, because it would be best to have one Biosynth assisting in a case involving another.”
Biosynth. Both of them used that word before. But I still don’t know what it means. I can guess what it’s from - Biological Synthetic? But what does it mean?”
“So - um - what’s your rank, then? If he’s a ‘Lieutenant-Investigator’?”
Crenelle chuckled softly, then gave her an apologetic look when Twilight frowned. “Forgive me, Twilight Sparkle. I continue to forget that you were not properly - that you’re unfamiliar with everything here.”
“Trust me, I’m not forgetting,” Twilight muttered, “nothing here makes sense. I still don’t understand how I can even speak this language. This all doesn’t feel quite right. There’s words I don’t understand, even now. This room - I don’t know what it’s made of. I feel like I’ve fallen into another world.”
Shaking his head, Crenelle replied, “That is a longer answer, so let me answer your first one. I do not have a rank - I simply inherit the responsibilities and authority of whoever I am assigned to.”
“What? But I thought you said you belonged to the, uh, Investigative Bureau as well.”
“I do,” Crenelle answered. When her confusion did not relent, he decided to destroy what little stable ground she had managed to gather beneath herself since she woke up.
“I mean, I belong to the Bureau. I am the Bureau’s property.”
There was a chance, Twilight new, that it was a mistranslation of whatever was permitting her to speak this strange alicorn’s tongue. An error. A mistake.
She also knew it was a false hope, little details sliding up from their brief conversation so far to fit together into one awful puzzle picture.
He’s a slave.
Oh, sweet Harmony protect me - he’s a slave. That’s why he listens to whatever the other creature’s orders are. That’s what that collar - it is a collar - is about. Showing who owns him.
“Twilight Sparkle?”
Her breathing was coming fast and shallow as a new thought wormed its way up from the back of her head:
Wait. The tag I am wearing. Is that - am I -
Suddenly the little ribbon of fabric seemed to be a choking, strangling force around her neck; the thin, flexible tag which hung from it seemed to weigh on her like an anchor.
“Twilight Sparkle, are you okay?”
What kind of place enslaves alicorns?
She needed to get it off, right now. Her horn sparked, but her legs weren’t waiting - hooves pawing fruitlessly at the collar to pull it over her head until her magic finally found the clasp and opened it.
“Twilight, please!” Crenelle was rising now, his face painted with alarm. “You shouldn’t take that off!”
“No!” she snapped back, holding the thing aloft in her magic as if it might sting her.
“Twilight Sparkle, if you are seen without that - you don’t have an identity imprint of your own -”
“Or what, Crenelle?” Twilight stood, lips drawn back into a snarl and ears laid flat to her neck. “Or what? Can’t you see what this is? ‘You want to help me’ - and then you put a slave collar on me?”
Another step forward, and her wings spread to hang unfurled at her sides. “I’m leaving. You want to help me? Show me a map. Show me the sky - I can read Luna’s constellations. I’m going home. Now.”
“You will be sought.”
“I can manage.”
For a single, silent moment Crenelle stared at her in silence. Then he sighed and walked to a wall, head hung low, and faced a wall with eyes closed. “I suppose I have already broken the rules for you once; it cannot hurt to do this now. You wish to see the stars, Twilight Sparkle? Look. Look and see.”
She did look, her heart skipping a beat as the wall itself seemed to melt away into transparency.
Beyond was madness.
Gleaming towers that seemed to stretch as tall Canterlot’s mountain peak. Colossal craft drifting by with a low rumble, while smaller points of light darted around them fish about a lazily-browsing whale. Deep below, a myriad of glittering lights stretching out in an ordered grid, as if a mathematician had scribed a city onto a blank slate.
And behind it all, stars - innumerable stars in the open sky, at the edges of a city that seemed to simply end at the border. In the distance, what could only be a planet or moon sat, lit only by a tiny crescent sliver of blue-white at its edge.
“What is this place?’
“Gorosov Annex Station, Cravat Sector. The planet is Gorosov. We orbit it.”
Planet. Not Equestria’s. Not even Equestria’s by another name. We’d have seen anything this close, Luna would have known.
Her breath was coming short and sharp now, and Twilight found her rump falling to the floor with an audible thump.
“How many live here?” she whispered.
“Humans? A few million. Biosynths, like you or me? Also several million, all classes and types combined. Other species?” His wings raised in slight shrug. “Probably totalling up a few tens of millions more. Gorosov is a fairly robust trading port.”
Millions.
I’m a droplet fallen into an ocean here.
“Are - are they all - slaves?”
“All biosynths are someone’s responsibility, but we are not slaves,” Crenelle said, but his adamant defense only deepened the icy pit in her stomach.
A droplet fallen into an ocean of a society built on slavery.
But she could still not tear her eyes away from the scene before her, despite how insane it was. There was a certain absurd, impossible beauty to the whole thing - an entire madhouse city, spread out before her.
So Twilight stared as she mentally scrabbled for any purchase amid the revelations she had been given. They circled, churned, solidified into hard realizations only to be broken into chaos again by some new, tiny detail. She ate, when Crenelle brought more food. Preened herself, just to feel the familiar touch of a soft muzzle on her wings.
Eventually, she drifted into a troubled and exhausted sleep, a sleep filled with little rest and many nightmares of long-limbed, tooth-filled, ebony creatures reaching for her head, and not any sign of Luna’s watch over her.
“So-” I slid into my chair, tossing my legs up on my desk and fumbling for the quiet compartment beneath it. “I saw she’s sleeping in the foyer. That’s nice. You want the good news from my end first, or the really shitty news first?”
“I would consider the fact that she is calm enough to be sleeping to be good news, Sir,” Crenelle muttered sullenly. I raised one eyebrow; clearly something had gone tits-up since I’d gone out, but what?
“Well, here’s more good news for you, then: We’re not dealing with a rogue synthing house, and there’s even a reasonable possibility she wasn’t fed a whole pack of lies by - whoever. We don’t have to pass it up to sector oversight, and it’s not going to blow up into a big investigation like that.”
This caught Crenelle’s attention; the stallion sat bolt-upright, ears focused forward on you. His eyes narrowed, however. “And the bad news, Sir?”
My fingers found the bottle; burning golden liquid splashed down my throat. I hadn’t even bothered with a cup. Crenelle’s tail began to slash back and forth.
“Sir?”
“Well, you were right with your initial tests. She is related to old human genetic stock. Something from our homeworld. And that means it’s infinitely worse than a rogue synthing house. Every bit of political bullshit we dodged is about to come back at us ten times over.”
I took another swig, savoring the burn against my throat. “What do y’know of human history, Crenelle? Old stuff, two or three millennia old. Old Earth Confederacy stuff.”
“Enough to pass my assignment examinations,” he admitted, “but I am hardly an expert.”
“S’fine. You won’t have heard this one, then - I had to dig way, way back to find this out. See, back at that time - before we’d met any other species, before we’d designed modern drives - we figured liveable worlds would be one-in-a-trillion. Impossible to find, and taking lifetimes to reach. The solution, of course, was to send something to an unlivable world and make it livable. Colonists would follow, while what we sent a head would ‘form it for them. Better yet, make what you send self-reproducing-”
“A biosynth,” Crenelle whispered.
“Exactly.” I set the bottle aside, rubbing my forehead in a vain attempt to ward off the oncoming headache. “Seed a hundred million maybe-viable worlds. Maybe a thousandth of a percent succeed, and that’s still a thousand more ready-made Eden worlds waiting for you. ‘Course then we have First Contact, the Reaching Gambit fails real bad, the Old Earth Confed turns into a bunch of raging nationalist assholes, implosion and civil war, yada yada yada…”
“...and when you finished rebuilding, you had new technology. Modern technology, to easily alter worlds and build stations to live in. The - seeded worlds were meaningless.”
“Hell, even if we did want them, where they went was lost in the civil war anyway. Eventually we recovered some of the old Biosynth tech, but only some of it - and by then it was all regulated. Controlled. Under the Treaties. Until now. When I saw the first lab results, got that codec working on her, I thought she might be just derived from some old data someone dug up somewhere, but… Crenelle, what we’ve got sleeping in the next room is apparently called a Faust-class Exploration Biosynth of the Old Earth Confederation. A self-replicating, highly independent space explorer designed to prepare Eden worlds for us to live on.”
“Then when she kept mentioning ‘Princesses’ and ‘gods’ and ‘Equestria’-” Crenelle’s voice was a hollow whisper, matched to his pin-prick pupils. I nodded, knowing just the hollow gut-feeling he must’ve been wrestling with right then.
Again the cool glass of the bottle met my lips. “It might just be bugs in the translation patch. But my guess? They finished making their world. And then they sat there, waiting for us to come for them. We never did, but they just kept on going. Hell, from half the things she’s saying, they’ve flourished. Built themselves a civilization.”
Something was eating at Crenelle, I could see, so I gave him a sharp rap with my knuckles between his ears. “Hey, Crenelle. What’s eating you?”
“While you were out, she - I explained biosynths’ place in modern stellar society. She did not take it well. Believed we were ‘enslaved’. If what you say is true-”
Yeah, that was an ‘oh, crud’ moment if I’d ever heard one. “That tracks. I don’t know what she’s been through, but it’s possible somewhere along the way they lost track of what their real purpose is. And so now there’s an entire planet out there of unregulated biosynths, outside of any of the treaties or limits, with fuck-knows access to all kinds of thaumocasting capability… Hell, they might not even have a MOC.”
And that wasn’t even what was causing the huge ball of guilt eating at my chest. The other half of this, the half Crenelle hadn’t even picked up on yet, the part that I had done-
“What’s an MOC?”
Both of us jumped; both of us had been so tied up with the implications of all this, neither of us had heard her step in. But there she stood, half through the doorway. Shit, this was getting to me. How much had she even been snooping in on?
Hell, she didn’t even look that great. Her eyes were bagged and mane looked like Crenelle’s after we’d pulled an all-night stakeout together. Probably had an attitude to match.
“It’s a long story,” I dodged.
“It’s a Master Override Code,” Crenelle jumped in. “When it is invoked, we can be commanded absolutely. For those of us who work in places like the Bureau, it permits our testimony to be absolute; with the MOC invoked, I can be commanded not to lie and never will.”
The sheer look of disgust Twilight gave him gave even me pause, and I’d seen the look a certain Senatress had given her wife when she’d been caught in bed with -
Nevermind.
“And I suppose he has your ‘code’, Crenelle?” Twilight said flatly; both Crenelle and I shook our heads - me, maybe a little more eagerly than he.
“Don’t work like that. No one a Biosynth is assigned to ever has their code. I could contaminate an investigation if I had control over him like that. He’s as much to keep an incorruptible watch on me; the only ones who have it are the Internal Investigations and Biosynth Affairs departments,” I said.
When Twilight didn’t immediately comment, I added, “Look, Twilight… I’m sorry. I - shit. If half of what I’ve just found out is true, you probably - well, I must’ve scared you shitless. You probably didn’t understand half of what I was saying, what I was doing to you.”
“You put something into my mind!” Twilight exclaimed, her wings fluttering angrily.
And there was the other half. Crenelle wouldn’t have ever thought twice of it; he’d been having his neuroware patched since the day he was born. But to Twilight here…
Hell, I felt like a monster.
“Look, I get - it probably doesn’t help much right now, but I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” She hissed, nostrils still flared and ears laid low. “Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to Crenelle. Apologize to all of the others you’ve enslaved and made them put - put mind control in - you just -”
I jabbed a finger right back at her, a little bit of indignity tinging my voice: “Hey. Hold up a second. I don’t know what you’re imagining here, whips and chains and whatever, but Crenelle’s not like - he’s not something I abuse or mistreat or anything like that-”
“He. Is. Owned. By. You.” Each word was spat one after another, and my pointed finger faltered. Where did this little fireball get such conviction?
“Yeah, and? He’s not my - my victim. He’s a partner. Damn finest partner I could ask for, for all the shit I give him about being a humorless block.” In the corner of my eyes, I saw Crenelle’s ears perk up. I didn’t get the significance of that until much, much later.
“That’s not the point! The point is - the point is he’s always beneath you. No matter what he does, how hard he works or how close you get, he’ll always be beneath you. It’s wrong - there’s no way about it!”
“This is not quite true,” Crenelle murmured. “The Lieutenant-Investigator is not wrong. I have seen slaves, when the Bureau uncovered smuggling rings. I was not raised like that. I knew my parents. I loved my siblings. I have a mate, who I chose, and I love her very much! My parents love each other too. And I am proud to work for the Bureau. It is not something I am forced to do.”
“Is that because you want to, or because one of them patched it into your mind?” Twilight snarled. Crenelle’s ears laid back, then quickly perked up and turned towards the wall.
I saw that out of the corner of my eyes too, and likewise I didn’t make the connection until it’s far too late.
“He’s a biosynth! Look, I’m sorry if it’s a shock ‘cause it’s different where you’re from, but here - we made them. They work for us, and in exchange we care for them. That’s - that’s how it is, and it works for both of us.”
“Lieutenant-Investigator.”
“It’s wrong!” Twilight snapped, tossing her head.
“And what’s your suggestion to change it, huh? Because if you come in here, trying to force everything to be right-”
“Lieutenant-Investigator!”
“I can try! That’s everything anypony can do?”
“Try to do what?!” I roared.
A noise like a thundercrack caught both our attention as Crenelle slammed a hoof to the floor.
“Twilight Sparkle! Santana Guerro!”
“What?!”
“What?!”
“There is a grav-skiff outside pulling alarmingly close to the building,” Crenelle said flatly, “I believe they have guns.”
I snapped my head around so hard I almost wrenched my neck; Twilight gave a little gasp. The gray, angular form of the skiff was already beginning to fill the window, a wide-barreled weapon lens gleaming from amid its open side-doors.
“Oh, shit. Crenelle, shield!”
