Weaving through the crowded streets was easier than I would have expected. Of course, that might have been because our target was all too eager to smash his way through everypony in his way. Regardless, he was running like Tirek himself was hot on his tail and keeping a measure of distance between us.
Corium made it seem effortless to navigate the carnage he was leaving behind, twisting and turning around some obstacles and hopping over others. I was probably the one who looked most like a clown at that moment, skidding to dodge around ponies that were busy shouting things at the fleeing pony.
It was all I could do to keep him in sight, but I could still boast some of that earth pony stamina. The chase lasted a good fifteen minutes and I could see our mark was running out of steam and he was slowing down. He wasn't giving up though as he took a sudden left turn into an alley and broke line of sight.
I heard Corium curse and we put on an extra burst of speed, rushing to the alley. We turned into it, eyes wide and ears alert...
...and saw nothing.
The alley was long enough that the sudden disappearance of the earth pony was baffling. I looked up, checking the fire escapes against the buildings, but he wasn't there either. Corium was darting about with a buzzing of his wings, carefully checking windows here and there, but I was willing to guess that his shaking of his head meant he was having about as much luck as I was.
He landed next to me, wings buzzing in agitation, “How do they keep doing that,” I glanced at him inquisitively and he explained, “this is what keeps happening. Agent Glass and the rest manage to pin down a possible lead and give chase. Just when it seems like they have the suspect they vanish into thin air.”
Sitting on my haunches, I took that information with a grain of salt, “Cloaking spell of some kind? Maybe he was wearing something charged with one?”
Corium shook his head, “Glass always sweeps the area with spell to check for those. On top of that, a cloaking spell can't stop a changeling from sensing emotions. I had him locked down and his emotions just... went away when he got to this alley.” He scuffed a hoof on the ground in frustration.
Standing, I began to pace the length of the alley. I'd known a few unicorns that were well on their way to being proper mages and they loved to tell me the limits of magic whenever I suggested they do something with it. One of those limits was that you couldn't just make something no longer exist. So... our case of Cherry Houdini had to have gone somewhere.
The question was where.
Stalking through the alley while Corium took to the air once again, I searched for anything that would tell me where he'd gone. There was nothing. I could see why Glass was always so angry if this was what she had to deal with on a daily basis for her investigation. Well, smart, guardly tactics weren't working, so maybe it was time for some silly, small-town pony moves.
Trotting back toward the side of the alley we'd entered on, I faced the length of it, pawing at the ground with one hoof. What I was doing probably looked foolish to onlookers, but I'd managed to win a few games of hide-and-seek doing this. Thinking back, I counted a good two seconds between the time the fugitive had entered the alley to the point Corium and I had caught up.
With that in mind, I dug in my hooves and charged like I was running recklessly from something. Giving it a two count, I made it roughly halfway down the alley and tried to apply the brakes. The keyword there was tried. The cement that made up the ground here was seamless work... or so I thought.
Planting my front hooves down, I ended up pressing my hooves firmly down... and the ground gave out from under them. With a yelp, I slammed into the ground chin first. I might have knocked myself a little loopy and as I tried to recover, Corium darted down, “Lucky, are you...” he trailed off and looking up at him, I saw his mouth was hanging open in surprise.
Tilting my head to follow his gaze and blinked rapidly. Part of the cement had come loose, forming a perfect square that stood perpendicular to the rest. I clambered to my hooves and leaned over the top. I could just make out a softly flickering like a fair distance down and the top rung of a ladder offered us a way down.
Corium gave a noise that I could only describe as the most masculine squeal I'd ever heard. Seizing me by the hooves, he began to dance around like a foal who'd been told he could have any candy he wanted from the store. He was laughing giddily, “Of course! Underground hideaways! No magic and just enough cement to block out my senses! So simple and yet intelligently so!” He cried out.
He stopped about as quick as he started, leaving me spinning around from the momentum as he squinted in focus. His horn lit up with a sudden, electric blue light. I'd just managed to get my uncontrolled rotations dealt with and shook loose the last of the dizziness when he finished. He hopped around eagerly, “Okay, Glass and the others are on the way! Let's go find our mystery stallion!”
Before I could explain to him the number of reasons that was a bad idea, he was diving down the hole. I groaned. I'd rather have waited for the rest of the crew before venturing into the unknown, but I couldn't let him go down there alone. With a sigh, I swung myself down onto the ladder and followed.
The passage we wound up in was a fairly standard dirt tunnel. Periodically, electric lights flickered ahead of us, illuminating the way. It was something straight out of a horror story. At least that's what I thought. The changeling ahead of me seemed to think of it like a carnival ride as he strutted forward. At least one of us was having fun.
Strangely, the air in the tunnel wasn't as stuffy as I was expecting and a quick glance at the walls told me why. Piping in the wall whistled with fresh air coming from somewhere on the surface and that made me nervous. This wasn't something built by twitchy drug addicts. Add on that if all the vanishing suspects were coming to places like this it was starting to look like a large scale project.
“Corium,” I whisper-yelled at him, “I don't think we-” He shushed me with a hoof, his ears flicking back and forth. What happened next was something that I wouldn't have believed if I didn't see it. With a soft flicker of magic, Corium vanished. More accurately, his chitin took on the coloration of the dirt wall next to him and he appeared to vanish.
Interesting trick, but watching part of the wall start to move stealthily forward was unnerving. Taking the hint, I pressed myself against the opposite wall and started watching my step. Soon enough, I caught wind of what made him go silent. Voices were starting to hit my ears from further up and as we closed in on them, I recognized one as the pony we'd been chasing.
The other was an unknown and sounded more annoyed than anything...
“You can't even go one day without being discovered?” asked the unknown one. Male by the sounds of it, with an accent I couldn't quite place.
“Look, I sold the first bag and then the loony bug snatched the second from me! Cut me a break, dude!” answered our runner frantically.
“One bag doesn't get our employer the money he needs, colt. We've done the hard part getting it into the country. All you had to do was sell it and bring the money back. Instead, what did you do? You blow your cover day one...,” a sigh escaped the second voice, “just... stay here and don't do anything stupid. You get one more chance.”
The sound of distant hoofsteps echoed down the passage as Corium and I came up upon a wooden door at the end of the tunnel. The hoofsteps were receding on the far side, so there was probably another exit. Looking over at Corium, I noticed that his eyes were shimmering softly and were shifting back and forth.
Turning to me, he began to flick his ears in guard cant (I'm guessing Glass taught him.) One enemy. Not alert. Left. Capture and question. I nodded in understanding and took up position with a straight shot at the door. Corium's magic gripped the door handle and I braced myself.
The door flew open and I rushed in, angling to the left. I barely had time to register what must have been a small safe room, complete with dried rations in barrels and a single-pony bed in the corner. The room was lit by a single light hanging precariously from the ceiling. Mr. Hoodie was sitting at a small table with his head in his hooves, but it snapped up as I came in. His eyes widened as I cleared the distance between us and bodily grabbed him, wrapping my hooves around him and lifting him from his chair.
I'd gotten stronger than I thought.
Pushing that to the back of my mind, I slammed him into the ground, knocking the wind out of him, then pinned him to the ground. He struggled, but he hadn't undergone basic training like I had and eventually he fell into grunting obscenities at me. I promptly ignored them.
“Alright, buddy,” I hissed into his ear, “this is how it's going to work, I'm going to ask you a question and you're going to answer. Truthfully. Understand?”
“Fuck you!”
“I don't swing that way,” I snorted and took a page out of Top Shot's book, giving his leg a bit of a yank, “answer to me or answer to my current CO. She's not as nice as I am, so either way, you're going to talk. First question: who's your supplier?”
“It's not nice to talk about somepony when they're right here.”
The return of the unknown voice threw me for a loop. Then his magic physically threw me. I slammed into the wall hard, grunting from the impact and slid to the ground for only a moment before I was yanked up and tossed into the supply barrels roughly. Thank Celestia that I was pretty sturdy these days.
“I'd ask how you got in here, but that would be pointless now.” I looked up and took in the pristine white fur and slicked back, black mane of the unicorn standing over me about the same time that I took in what appeared to be a hammer suspended in his yellow magic. Sweet sisters, this stallion looked every bit like a Jet Bond villain.
Several things happened at the same moment. I heard my name called out, I saw the hammer swing, and I felt something slam into my side, pushing me away.
A resounding crack! split the air and I heard something flop to the ground. Instinctively, I rolled to my hooves and took in the scene before me. Green liquid stained the head of the hammer that had been meant for me and looking back, I froze. Corium lay amid the barrels that had been knocked over and even from here I could see the cracks in the chitin that covered his head... and the flow of green blood escaping them.
I stared in horror as the alabaster stallion surveyed his hoofwork.
“Pity. He might have actually been able to catch me by surprise if he sacrificed you. So much for the intelligent plans of his kind...”
“SHUT UP!”
The words left my mouth in a rush of anger. I'll admit that I wasn't a good fighter, but at that point I didn't have to be. He panicked as I charged him, swinging his hammer toward me. It struck me in the side and I grunted, pushing aside the pain with adrenaline as I tackled him to the ground and brought my hooves to bare.
One strike to the horn. His magic failed. Two to the face in my rage. Two more to the abdomen. He tried to arch his back and buck me off, but I rolled with it and used the momentum to lift up and drive both of my hind hooves into his stomach.
I lost track of how long I spent hammering into this stallion. It wasn't until I felt strong hooves wrapping around my barrel and the voice of Impact in my ear that my thoughts returned to me, “Stand down, Lucky Signs! Stand down!” he shouted at me and snapping me back to reality.
I looked down at the battered mess of a stallion beneath me. It was a wonder that I hadn't killed him. Bruises covered his body and his face was a mess of blood, but he was still breathing... barely. Then I heard Cocoa's voice, calling out a single name that chilled my blood...
“Corium!? Wake up Corium!”
**
Boop...boop...boop...boop...
The steady sound of the heart monitor was the only thing that occupied my thoughts. Corium lay still in a medical bed a few steps from me and yet he might as well have been on the moon. His head had been bandaged and the doctors had been working with him for hours, but... he hadn't woken up yet.
It was all my fault. I'd dropped my guard and Corium had payed the price for my folly. Even now, all I could do was sit there at his bedside, praying for him to open his eyes. To crack a stupid joke. To do anything.
He wasn't going to... at least not anytime soon. The blow had caused a lot of damage and while the doctors had been able to mend most of it, they weren't sure if he was going to heal. He'd been hurt, possibly fatally, because I couldn't defend myself...
Glass and the others had returned to the hotel some time ago. My misery was made worse because even Glass refused to scream at me like I deserved. It was one of the few times that I wished Sergeant Boomer was here. He would scream all the thoughts in my head at me, give them life beyond myself.
Now... all I could do was think over the conversations we'd had only a few short hours ago. How open he had been with his past and the mistakes he'd made... how he felt about each one.
Sometimes we have to remember what we've done to find the strength to move forward.
I grit my teeth hard.
She may forgive me, all of Equestria might forgive me, but I can't forgive myself...
He didn't deserve this...
That is why I am here, Lucky Signs. To make sure that nopony ever has to ask why and receive no answer..
He deserved his answer...
Near the bed, set on a nightstand, was a pad of papers and a pen. He needed this. We both did. Taking the pen in my mouth, I wrote...
Dear Princess Cadence....
**
I made it back to the hotel as evening rolled in. The three ponies waiting for me there looked up at me in silence that reigned for several long moments. I breathed in, steeling myself. I breathed out.
“Teach me how to keep this from happening again...”