15:42, 28th February 2016
“You’re sure about this?” Dr Richards asked. “Eight of our psions just attacked her without warning?”
“It’s what she told us,” Santiago confirmed, “although she didn’t use the word ‘attacked’.”
“‘Tested’ was mentioned once or twice,” Popov noted, the word hanging heavily in the quiet air of the base’s small library.
“Yes, well,” Dr Richards frowned, “I think the aliens have done enough of that sort of ‘testing’ to last us a century, we don’t need our own soldiers doing it.”
“You look after her medically, right?” Santiago asked, “I’m guessing she’s not normally that compliant?”
“Well…” Dr Richards thought silently for a moment. “Twilight’s never really resisted any of the procedures I’ve undergone with her, even before she started speaking, but she’s definitely not willing to let us do anything to her. Numerous interviews have shown her to have a distaste for exactly this sort of thing…”
“Do you think she might have been affected by them?” Popov suggested.
“I couldn’t say, I’m no psychologist,” the veterinary biologist replied, “but it is counter to her prior behaviour. We need to tell Dr Vahlen about this, at any rate. Would you two be willing to tell her the same as you’ve told me?”
Both soldiers agreed, and the scientist led them towards the research labs.
***
The head of research became increasingly agitated as the story was relayed to her. It had started with concerned frowning, which was to be expected. This had given way to annoyed frowning, and then outright angry frowning. After both soldiers had finished their explanation, she uttered only a quiet “Follow me,” before silently leading the three men out of the room and towards the barracks (abandoning her input on a proposal to trial variant medikits that included stimulants similar to those emitted by some soldiers modified with Berserker genetic material in doing so). They found Officer Bradford discussing the fireteam standby rota for the next month with one of the administrative staff.
“Officer Bradford!” Dr Vahlen shouted as she entered, causing both men to jump as she put her dataslate down on the table quite firmly. “Just what do your psions think they are allowed to do to Miss Sparkle?”
Bradford quickly got to his feet to be at eye level with the head of research as he asked, “Why, what’s happened?”
Dr Vahlen looked pointedly at the two soldiers she had escorted, of whom Santiago spoke first. “Some of them attacked her at lunch, sir,” he explained. “According to Twilight, eight of them managed to overpower her with psionics and started rifling through her memories. She convinced them to stop long enough for one of them to explain what they were looking for.”
“They thought Miss Sparkle had yourself, Dr Vahlen and Dr Shen controlled, sir,” Popov continued, “and were looking for her memories of doing so. They also induced paralysis in her body and later interfered with her eating, to test whether or not the inhibitor she wears functions correctly.”
Bradford nodded as he listened. “Who were these eight psions?” he asked.
“We don’t know sir,” Santiago admitted, “the only name Twilight mentioned was someone named Jason.”
The CO frowned. “Jason Jones makes sense, but dragging seven others in with him… and you’re saying this happened in the canteen? Today?” He crossed his arms as Santiago gave the time it happened, before continuing, “There isn’t enough space for all eight of their squads in the canteen, being there alone would make them stand out, and only two of them were meant to be in there at that time.” He turned to Dr Vahlen again, “Our psions do need to be able to see a target to affect it, don’t they?”
“Under normal circumstances, yes,” Dr Vahlen replied, “though this is only because sight is the easiest way to make a psion aware of their target. It’s possible, if this were a pre-arranged attack, that any psions not supposed to be in the canteen could extend their minds to a soldier who were heading there before they entered, and made use of their awareness to target Twilight. If they worked through another trained psion, they would suffer very little loss in their mental strength.”
“Piggy-backing off of another soldier…” Bradford mused for a moment, before replying, “But the other psions would need to be close to the canteen, if not directly in it, to maintain awareness of their contact, correct?”
“No,” the head of research answered, “As long as they established the connection within visual range, their contact could then move further away with no penalty - their psionic connection maintains their awareness. It’s the same reason a soldier can send a mind-controlled alien to scout ahead of the rest of the squad.”
Bradford looked back to the two soldiers. “And you two can confirm this yourselves, not just from Miss Sparkle’s information?”
“She became agitated, collapsed, and nearly went into a fit of some sort,” Santiago explained, “no denying that. I couldn’t tell you what was going on inside her head, obviously, but her struggling to lift a sandwich looked real enough.”
“And that couldn’t be just a result of her inhibitor?” Bradford asked.
“After the way she was aiming her training gun around, pulled mine out of my hands, then pulled a grenade pin from my chest? No, I wouldn’t think so,” the soldier responded.
“Officer Bradford,” Dr Vahlen spoke up, “a group of soldiers under your command have abused their psionic powers, mentally assaulted X-014-1, intruded in her personal memories, attempted to take control of her body, and restricted her autonomy, all in a pre-planned attack. Please tell me they did not have your authorisation to do so, and that you will be properly investigating and delivering punishment to these soldiers for aggression to both a member of foreign royalty and a highly valuable test subject!”
“I had hoped our psions would be more understanding, given Sergeant Murray’s involvement in Miss Sparkle’s testing,” Officer Bradford explained with a somewhat sorry tone to his voice. “Apparently even our best will require a little more convincing than that. I’ll begin looking into the situation immediately.”
“Thank you, Officer,” Dr Vahlen replied, picking up her dataslate again and beginning to tap away at it. “You three, follow me again,” she ordered Santiago, Popov and Richards as she left the room, “I need you to give the same report to X-014-1’s psychiatric health officer.”
“I… didn’t think you’d appointed her one, Ma’am?” Dr Richards asked as he kept pace behind the head of research’s brisk walk.
“I am about to,” Dr Vahlen replied simply.
***
“Let me make sure I’m understanding this right,” Dr Dysart said once the two soldiers had finished their explanation, “she did try to defend herself, but then believed they had sufficient reason to distrust her in retrospect?”
“Basically, yes,” Santiago replied.
“And this doesn’t conform with her prior behaviour?” the psychologist continued, turning to Dr Richards.
“Not exactly,” the vet replied. “Twilight has never been hostile, but I think she’d normally be willing to defend herself.”
“Given her explanations of some of her previous exploits during our second interview, I have to say I agree with Dr Richards,” Dr Vahlen added.
Dr Dysart rubbed his chin in thought. “Well, there are two likely explanations that I can see. Either the psions who attacked her changed something in her mind while they were there, which you’d need to determine, Ma’am,” he nodded to Dr Vahlen.
“I’m planning to perform another neural scan of Miss Sparkle and compare it to our earlier results,” Dr Vahlen noted. “If we find significant differences, we’ll call her attention to the possibility.”
Dysart nodded. “Other than that, it’s possible that Miss Sparkle has developed, or is developing, Stockholm Syndrome, likely due to recent privileges being granted in place of an earlier lack of consideration.”
Dr Vahlen was quiet for a moment. “Would you explain your reasoning for us please, doctor?”
“Certainly,” Dr Dysart replied, “Stockholm Syndrome is, at its core, the empathic attachment of a captive to their captor, often developing due to perceived kindness on the captor’s part, usually through the alleviation of restrictions, and the overlooking of the captor’s role in applying those restrictions. In the original Stockholm bank robbery, for example, one hostage thought it kind that she was allowed to walk around the bank wearing a noose to prevent her escape, so that she didn’t suffer claustrophobia in the vault with the other prisoners.”
“So, how does this relate to Twilight?” Dr Richards asked.
“Simple. For the first month of her being here, Miss Sparkle was kept as a specimen to be studied. She was tested harshly and kept isolated. In the last week, she has been allowed to move about the base, albeit only while wearing an inhibitor device. The parallel there should be clear enough,” the psychologist noted, “but Miss Sparkle has also been receiving more informal and friendly contact, better food, and is awaiting having her own bunk granted. Let’s not forget that she has seen a number of XCOM operations from Sergeant Murray’s perspective,” he went on. “Twilight understands as well as he does that XCOM has killed nearly every alien it encounters, yet we have not done the same to her, instead taking measures to ensure her safety in some instances.”
“I’m sure her experience with the Thin Man only helped justify both courses of action,” Dr Vahlen noted.
Dysart nodded. “Twilight is likely now in the position where she feels that it is rational for XCOM and its operatives to treat her with suspicion, due to her non-human status, psionic abilities, and because we simply don’t understand her fully. She has found a sense of normality in being treated as both a captive and a potential threat, and is now empathising with us not only due to our previous hardships against the aliens, but also due to our efforts to make her captivity more comfortable.”
“But how does that change what happened in the canteen? They attacked her, for crying out loud!” Santiago protested.
“In an organised, concerted effort,” the psychologist noted, “and all with a clear goal in mind, that matches with two of the reasons previously outlined: fear of her psionic power, and a desire to understand her better. That they ceased direct assault when prompted and left her alone after their ‘tests’ were completed likely doesn’t help. Stockholm Syndrome develops as survival self-conditioning, and here it worked; she complied, and they relented.”
“So, what can we do?” Dr Richards asked. “We can’t exactly let Twilight out of the base and leave her alone.”
“Under the circumstances, it would be difficult to create a firm counter to the situation. However, the core of Stockholm Syndrome is one of control, in this situation that we control Miss Sparkle and that failure to comply with our control will result in punishment,” Dr Dysart explained. “We must therefore try to dispel this illusion; Twilight must remain within the base, yes, but she should be free to act within it as any member of staff or visitor might. It may also help if she were exposed to opinions of the aliens other than our own.”
“Given her exposure to the aliens’ intent from their own perspective, I can’t see her developing any sympathy for them,” Dr Vahlen noted.
“Are there even any alien sympathisers out there? I mean, human ones?” Popov asked.
“Doubtful, but give it five years,” Dysart sighed, “there’ll be something online. In the meantime, perhaps you could ask Twilight if there has ever been a similar incident wherever she calls home, and how it was handled there? Otherwise, I suggest making it clear to Twilight that today’s event was not an official XCOM action, and that no member of staff has the authority to enter her mind or physically touch her without permission. Give her back control of herself, if nothing else.”
“Thank you, doctor,” Dr Vahlen said with a nod, “I’d like to assign you to be Miss Sparkle’s personal psychiatrist, to monitor her mental health and counsel her when necessary.”
“Of course,” Dysart accepted, “just tell her where my office is. I’ll need to conduct a preliminary interview with her, but I’ll let her set the time for it.”
Dr Vahlen turned and left the other three visitors to say their own thanks, starting to feel uneasy about her decisions.
***
“I have to say, I am disappointed,” Officer Bradford addressed the room at large. “As I understand, at twelve-fifteen hours, eight of you psionically assaulted and overpowered a non-hostile visitor, who has been fitted with such restraints as to be unable to pose a threat to anyone. Would any of you care to explain what provoked such bullying?”
The fourteen soldiers, XCOM’s active psionic operative core in its entirety, stood at ease before the officer. They all remained silent.
“You are XCOM’s best soldiers, possessed of abilities that require you to act with self-restraint. You are not meant to flagrantly abuse that power to satisfy your own curiosity!”
“With respect, sir,” Sergeant Vinogradov spoke up, “I believe we all had concerns for XCOM’s security, not just curiosity regarding X-014-1.”
“Is that so, Sergeant?” Bradford asked pointedly. “Would you care to explain what these concerns were?” He knew what Twilight had said earlier, of course, but it was best to have both sides of the story.
“I can’t speak for the other persons involved, sir, but personally I was worried that X-014-1 might have psionically manipulated yourself, Dr Vahlen or Dr Shen, especially regarding the psionic inhibitor it now wears,” the sergeant explained, still stood at ease and looking directly ahead. “Originally I simply intended to provoke a response from X-014-1 and see if it was able to retaliate, but finding it already under assault by others I elected to review its recent memories to look for evidence of it manipulating yourself, Dr Vahlen or Dr Shen.”
Officer Bradford was silent for a moment, trying to determine what was the more pressing issue in his mind. “I’m trusting you had a backup plan in the event that Miss Sparkle could and did retaliate?”
“Yes sir,” Vinogradov admitted, “Corporal Ward was nearby with an Arc Thrower. They have previously proven effective against X-014-1 while it was involved in a psionic struggle.”
“Corporal Ward brought a live weapon into the canteen?” Bradford asked.
“...A live, non-lethal weapon, sir,” Vinogradov noted.
“Were the rest of your squad involved?” Bradford pressed.
“Corporal Hashim had planned to give overwatch, but it was decided that taking a more lethal weapon from the armory would be too extreme,” Vinogradov admitted. “No other member of my squad was directly involved in the incident.”
Bradford nodded, making a mental note to add disciplinary action for Cpl Ward to the investigation. “Does anyone else have something they want to admit?” Bradford prompted.
“I was involved as well, sir,” Lieutenant Erikssen confessed. “I had concerns regarding the validity of X-014-1’s claims regarding it being unrelated to the other aliens we have encountered, and wanted to question it via psionic contact, since psionic conversation makes it more difficult to hide emotion and associated knowledge. I operated alone, and I believe I was the first to attempt contact with X-014-1.”
“You do know that Dr Vahlen came to the conclusion that Miss Sparkle is unrelated to the other aliens by her own research?” Bradford knew this wasn’t entirely true, but the head scientists had been beginning to have suspicions.
“I… actually did not, sir,” Erikssen admitted.
Officer Bradford sighed. “Let me make this clear to all of you,” he spoke, “X-014-1 is completely unrelated to any other alien we’ve encountered so far. She has volunteered to side with us of her own volition. She has not demonstrated any willingness or capability to use her psionic abilities to mind control members of staff, and if she had done so, she wouldn’t even be wearing the inhibitor.”
“She would still need a mock-up made to appear to comply with the Council policy though, wouldn’t she, sir?” Sergeant Vinogradov pointed out.
Officer Bradford gave him a deadpan look. “Sergeant, do you really believe that the Council has a policy on letting aliens with psionic powers, which we only learned could exist eight months ago, walk freely around the base?” The room was silent for a moment. “The Council’s policy specifically states that any alien that does not demonstrate hostile intent does not need to be restrained outside of containment, and does not specify anything more than that.”
“Wait, sir,” Corporal Jason Jones spoke, “you’re saying that it doesn’t actually need to wear that thing?”
“Not to uphold Council policy, no,” Bradford confirmed. “Sparkle herself is unaware of this fact, and from this point forward you’re all under orders not to tell her, in case she convinces Dr Vahlen or Dr Shen that she doesn’t need it on any more.”
“You actually... don’t trust her, sir?” Lieutenant Erikssen asked.
“I trust her to not try anything until she’s at her full capabilities,” Bradford replied, “especially not when she can be overpowered by a single psion. But the point is, she believes that I do fully trust her and am merely complying with restrictive legislation until I can have it changed to accommodate her better. What we do not need is half of the soldiers who stand to benefit from her compliance openly attacking her and causing her to lose trust in us, in the middle of a crowded room. Do I need to remind everyone what happened to Captain Pimenova when she attacked Miss Sparkle?”
“No, sir,” the three soldiers spoke in unison.
“Because everyone involved in this incident just risked that happening to the entire lunchroom, not just yourselves. Three whole squads, eight of Dr Vahlen’s team, thirteen engineers and technicians, and potentially all of our kitchen staff too. I’ll let that sink in for a moment.”
“I’m… not sure I understand, sir,” Lieutenant Erikssen said, “those people weren’t in direct contact with the alien’s mind.”
Officer Bradford sighed. “Even Dr Vahlen’s earliest findings showed that Miss Sparkle’s abilities primarily affect the physical world around her. She nearly took Red Six apart when we first encountered. Red Six, one of our most experienced and capable squads, fully armed and equipped. If she could handle them, she could easily handle ten times their number of unarmed, unaware and off-duty personnel. You were testing to see if the inhibitor was working; did you even consider who you were putting at risk if it wasn’t, and X-014-1 decided the game was up?”
The room was stunned to silence for a moment.
“Combine that with insubordination, risk of damage to valuable research material, misuse of transhuman capabilities, and conspiracy to attack what is essentially a foreign diplomat…” Bradford crossed his arms over his chest. “The other five of you involved in this incident can step forward now, or all fourteen of you are on disciplinary, and I won’t be any kinder to you for sharing.”
Five other soldiers stepped forward, along with the three who had already spoken.
“Good. The eight of you are hereby removed from combat duty for a month, required to wear psionic inhibitors inside the base for three months, and will be spending your free hours giving the sanitation staff some time off until Miss Sparkle tells me that it’s excessive. Those of you awaiting genetic modification procedures can also consider yourselves moved to the back of the queue. And all of you, be glad that Dr Vahlen left me to administer punishment - anything like this happens again, and I’ll be asking her for suggestions. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes Sir!” all eight soldiers said in unison, a note of trepidation in most of their voices.
“Good. All of you are dismissed to your duties, those who need mops and buckets can speak to the quartermaster. Report to engineering tomorrow morning for inhibitor calibration. Dismissed.” With that, the CO turned and left the room.
***
Twilight Sparkle sat on the bed in her cell, in quiet contemplation.
Dr Vahlen had visited maybe ten minutes ago, and informed her of her findings involving lunchtime’s… attack.
She had been attacked, and had been unable to defend herself. The fact that everyone had been concerned with how unconcerned she had been about it did concern her, so she had listened. The scientist's description of Stockholm Syndrome sounded almost bizarre - it would be like if she had started to agree with Discord, or if Cadance had started to agree with Chrysalis.
Except, Twilight rationalised, Discord had actively tormented her and did so for less than a day, and Chrysalis had already done the single worst thing she could to Cadance by imitating her and deluding Shining. The alicorn really didn't want to think about how far that had gone, but she couldn’t see her sister-in-law sympathising with the changeling regardless.
But then, magic worked differently here. It wasn't based on life energy, it was based on emotional energy. Did that mean that emotions worked differently, perhaps making things like Stockholm Syndrome possible by a person’s innate psionics trying to defend them? It didn't always happen to humans, after all, and similarly not every human had psionic potential…
Twilight shook her head - she was jumping to conclusions. The sensible thing to do was test for what she could determine before conjecturing what she couldn’t; notably, she should be looking to see if the attack had addled her thoughts at all.
Twilight’s personal inhibitor was removed while she was in her cell, since she was instead within the damping field. That technically made the next exercise harder, since the damping field affected all psionics and magic, while the inhibitor let her affect her own mind with no extra difficulty. Still, she knew she could cast this spell now, since she had done the same when she had removed Cameron’s memories from her mind.
The alicorn looked up from her bed sheets, instead focusing on the two lab technicians sat at the consoles across the chamber her cell was in. Catching the eyes of one of them, she waved, before pointing a hoof at her horn, then at her own chest. He nodded, before flicking a switch on one of the consoles (the one that recorded her psionic signal output) and went back to his conversation with the other technician.
Again, Twilight questioned the policy that prevented the speakers in her cell from being used outside of testing. At least she’d managed to get her point across.
Her horn lit, and the alicorn felt her mindscape open up around her conscious thoughts again. It was meant to look like a tidy, organised library, cataloguing and classifying her memories and knowledge for easy reference. Twilight grimaced as she saw the state of it now, with connections between her memories twisted, frayed, stretched and, in a few instances, torn, but was pleased to note that the proper structure she had created for them was still there. The filing cabinet had been emptied and rifled through, but the folders were still there, so to speak.
As Twilight began to re-organise her experiences and repair the damage, she noted that it was mostly limited to her more recent memories; her experiences since being found by XCOM. The initial encounter was blurred, due to both her own confusion throughout and a few days' sedation preventing her from organising it before it deteriorated, but the rest of it was understandable. A good deal of the damage was centered around her extended interview with Dr Vahlen and Officer Bradford, and her encounters with Sergeant Murray. Both quite clearly showed no foul play on her part, and yet they still hadn’t trusted her.
Twilight frowned as she finished correcting those memories’ connections, and looked around for more. One of them had gone looking through her earlier memories, it seemed, and had come across her first time attending the Summer Sun Celebration. Thankfully, the connections were less strained and more like simply dislodged, but the most tested one seemed to be the one that linked to her memories of Princess Celestia.
Twilight’s heart panged as she thought of the elder alicorn, who’d smiled when she perfected a new spell, who’d comforted her when she’d cried that she wouldn’t see her brother while he was at boot camp, who’d encouraged her to try harder whenever she began to doubt herself.
Clearing her throat and trying to ignore the feeling of homesickness setting in, Twilight carefully fitted the connections around her memories of her mentor back into place, only to find one which didn’t fit. Curious, she followed it, only to find it attached to a point of knowledge, a definition to be exact.
Fear.
Twilight blinked, a little shocked. That didn’t make sense. She wasn’t afraid of Celestia, why would she be? The princess had never been anything but kind, caring, gentle, and… well, maybe not always honest, given some of her reasons for sending her student to Ponyville, but certainly reasonable.
The alicorn went to sever the connection, guessing that it had been put there by one of her attackers trying to implicate her somehow, before stopping. She focused on the concept of fear she had found, and discovered that it had only one other connection. That alone gave Twilight the impression that this was a distinct sense of fear - notably, not her own, since she had a lot more connotations, synonyms, and memories of fear than this single connection would imply, but that of the psion who’d made that connection. It was a very poor attempt at manipulating her by altering her mind, really.
Curious, she checked the other connection this sense of fear had, to find a definition, which also linked back to her memories of Celestia; Retaliation.
Twilight thought about this for a moment. This didn’t look like an attempt to manipulate her any more, this looked like a panic response. The psion had seen something of Celestia in Twilight’s memories that had made them panic, and had accidentally copied their own fear of the elder alicorn into Twilight’s mindscape. And apparently, they were afraid of Celestia coming after them.
Twilight erased the two concepts and their connections as she continued to think. The psion had known or believed that what they were doing, or what XCOM was doing, would be enough to cause Celestia to take action against them should she arrive here. They knew they were in the wrong.
So why had she defended them?
With her memories fully organised again, Twilight reflected on how she felt about the paramilitary organisation that had her captive. She was a little surprised to find that even after reorganising her memories, she still felt mostly positive about them - they continuously risked their lives to protect an entire planet from a superior, hostile alien menace, much like she had risked herself to stop Nightmare Moon, Discord or King Sombra.
Except Nightmare Moon and Discord hadn’t been killed by laser fire for what they did. Admittedly, what they did was less horrific than what the Ethereals had been doing to humanity, but that still made it hard to justify killing all of them, especially when they had quickly become capable of capturing hostile aliens instead.
Much like they had done to her, which to be fair made a lot of sense. Twilight frowned in confusion, her muzzle scrunched up a little. Thinking through it, she had a lot of respect for what XCOM did, but she should still be upset by what they did to her. Especially since they didn’t have a valid reason to do so beyond simple paranoia.
Paranoia born of what she did to Captain Pimenova. Twilight let the frustration go with a sigh; she was potentially extremely dangerous to XCOM, and they had to account for that. That wasn’t going to change now, especially not with Council policies in place, but she seemed to have earned their trust so far. The sensible thing to do was to sit tight, continue to be trustworthy, and hope that Officer Bradford could get the Council's policy rewritten so that she didn’t have to wear the inhibitor around the base.
Twilight’s head flopped to the bed, the frown returning to her brow. Now she was defending them again. Nightmare Moon had been bad. Discord had been bad. XCOM weren’t bad; they were just distrustful, and Twilight didn't know how to feel about that. Should she dislike them, even though she understood why they did this to her? Should she like them for why, even though it was almost painful being held captive like this? Maybe she should make an appointment with Dr Dysart, if only to get a second opinion on what she was feeling.
At the very least, she knew that surprise tests weren’t a thing here. And she may have found something with which to deter future attacks...