Solar had to forgo the elevator.
The backup batteries only powered the bare essentials and containment systems, which unfortunately meant the stairs were her only other option. Flight after flight, she slowly made her way down into the heart of the mountain. Her hooves rapped on the rough cement, her lab coat bouncing up and down.
Here the walls were solid, bare rock, and a thin film of dust coated the stairwell. Solar lit her horn with a quick spell, warding off the darkness that consumed the meager emergency lighting. She definitely didn't want to trip and stumble here; it was a long way down.
When she finally reached the bottom of the shaft, her hooves contacted something wet. She looked down to see her reflection in the water pooling on the floor.
Condensation. They needed the power back soon, the warm autumn air outside was filtering down, condensing on the cold rock and dripping without the protection of the air systems. Just something else to add to the list, Solar sighed, sloshing through the water.
Level Four was the deepest portion of the Center for Equestrian Diseases and thus the most secure. The multiple layers of rock and granite were a natural barrier to the outside while more modern measures made sure nopony wandered where they shouldn’t. The inhabitants of Level Four were particularly dangerous and equally.
Producing her identification card from her coat, Solar waving it in front of the scanner.
Click. Hissss.
The heavy door opened with a puff of air, forcing the water back. Solar stepped through, the door slowly swinging shut behind her. Her ears popped with the change in pressure; at least the seals were still intact. Without a whisper, the lock engaged behind her, sealing the Director behind its stalwart barrier from the rest of the facility.
Polished linoleum echoed beneath her hooves, and Solar's nose wrinkled at the harsh, sterile air. The wing was completely vacant, the labs dark and quiet behind the reinforced glass windows. Everypony would be too caught up with watching the news and waiting for the power to return anyway. Disease waited for nopony. She had found that out the hard way.
Solar peered behind the dark glass of the labs as she passed, inspecting the rows of steel canisters. Frosted pipes protruded from them, keeping them fed with a continuous supply of liquid nitrogen. Everything appeared to be in order; the inmates were still contained.
They went by many names: Swamp Fever, Ponypox, Draconis Lapis Conundrum, Polo. And their crimes ranged from the petty to the deadly, their symptoms a rapport of varying degrees. And Solar was the warden.
With a generous supply of coolant, they could store the vital disease samples near indefinitely. If they lost sample containment, however, it would signal the loss of years of research and vaccine and treatment trials. Scarier still was the possibility (albeit low) chance something got out. Any single contagion on Level Four could have the potential for a massive outbreak — it housed those most dangerous to the public. Hence why she had insisted on the increased barrier security. She didn’t want anypony tracking plague out on the bottom of their hoof.
Solar came to the end of the immaculate hallway, another door blocking her path. She had picked this one out herself: an expertly crafted dark oak cut from the Everfree and varnished with transparent resin, giving it a deep shine. It would only open for her, and nopony else. Perks that came with being Director.
Solar leaned her rump against the door once inside, letting out a breath she did not realize that she had been holding.
“I don’t need this,” she whispered to herself, eyes squeezed tight as she breathed the sterile, cold-filtered air deeply. It hit her lungs, soothing the burning still raging inside her from the latest episode in the bathroom. “I really don’t need this right now.”
Solar peeled herself from the locked chamber door, setting her satchel on the marless countertop, its surface cluttered with scratched notes and scrawled observations. Gleaming equipment waited patiently for her, ready to resume her work. Solar powered on her computer terminal, the screen flickering to life as she surveyed the rest of her personal lab making sure everything was still in order. Her glowing horn revealed the glass barrier to the inner work lab, where all the samples were handled. There was one thing she had to be sure of.
The keypad beeped somberly, clear doors sliding back to the airlock entrance. First, Solar scrubbed her hooves vigorously in the basin before donning her gloves. The disinfectant burned.
Then came the biosuit, Solar slipping the mylar fabric back and stepping inside. The slick fabric crinkled around her like a bag of chips. She poked her head through the headpiece and quickly sealed herself in.
The airlock whooshed closed behind her, and she levitated an air hose from the lab ceiling. The heavy fabric made her spell clumsy at times, but she had adapted to it. She plugged herself in, the biosuit inflating with a hiss until she resembled and orange marshmallow.
Polished stainless steel glimmered under faint blue lighting, casting dark shadows around the inner lab. Slipping on a thick insulating glove, Solar approached the containment vessel in the corner. Thick rubber hoses protruded from the device, wafting sub-zero condensation and thin wisps of ice crystals that flittered in the air like glitter.
She lifted the lid gently with rehearsed care. Beneath the shimmering layer of liquid nitrogen throwing out a constant plume of fog, her four vials slept undisturbed. The temperature was still in the green she read. The samples were still safe from the blackout.
Solar breathed a sigh of relief. If her work had been lost, she would be starting at ground zero again. And she knew she did not have that long. She had to crack this one, and soon.
Her contact at the Defense Coalition had been very specific on their private agreement. She would only get this one chance. That was the deal in their arrangement when that gave her the samples.
Keep it hidden, keep it safe, keep it secret.
Nopony must know. She couldn’t lose this one chance. If she could deliver the altered sample results to her contact, she might utilize the same sample as a treatment for herself. It was up to her to save herself, nopony else could do it for her.
Solar gently closed the cooler, flinging the mitt off her hoof and retrieving a recorder from her equipment. It was time to get back to work.
She clicked the recorder on. “Beginning viral incorporation trial number twenty-one.”
Trotter gently dabbed at his brow, wiping his forehead the best he could with the face shield.
“Ready, Stardust?” he asked his counterpart, a notepad and pen levitating patiently beside her.
"Ready," the young, unicorn gulped, eyeing the disfigured cadaver before them on the examination table. The air conditioning was still offline, and it was beginning to warm up under the intense operating lamps suspended overhead.
“You were a Royal Forces medic, correct?” Trotter wondered as he straightened his instruments. “Have you ever assisted an autopsy before?”
“No, sir,” she replied, donning her mask and slipping the strings behind her ears. “But I have treated my fair share of combat wounds.”
“Was it tough, trying to help?”
Stardust shrugged. “Sometimes you might get a casualty that would put up a fight. But it was usually due to the pain. Somepony would have to hold them down while we worked.”
"Well, this should be a walk in the park. I don’t think our guest here is going to be putting up much resistance. We’ll keep it simple,” he assured her. “Basic examination and sample collection until we clear the subject for contagions.”
“Do you think you will find something?” she wondered. She stepped aside while Trotter slid around the table.
“It would be a rather boring day if we didn't."
Trotter cleared his throat and cracked his hooves. “Ok, here we go. Beginning initial examination,” he noted, Stardust’s pen transcribing everything onto her pad. “Subject is female, mid-thirties, pegasus. Recorded on record as Second Lieutenant Thundercell, Wonderbolt Rapid Response Wing.”
He moved down what remained of the body, his gloved hooves carefully palpating and searching. “Subject is missing most of her left symmetrical hemisphere,” he sighed, unaccustomed to such a sight.
“Division is charred, exhibiting scorching consistent with MAG based arcanic burns. An unconfirmed transcription of events puts her wingpony as the shooter. Subject has undergone some sort of” – he withdrew his hooves uneasily – “disfiguration. Advanced rapid necrosis set in just before the time of death. Fur and mane, what wasn’t torched, has fallen out in patches and the underlying dermis had hardened into a black mass. Does not appear to be related to the cause of death.”
Standing on his hind legs, Trotter examined her face under the lamps, pulling back the lid on the remaining eye. “Eyeball exhibits pressure damage, most likely from the hot gases of the arcana. Strange,” he noted, “It’s faintly blue, the whites of her eye. The iris is bleeding out. Her entire eye is light blue.”
“A result of the MAG?” Stardust wondered, her bio-mask fluttering with each word.
“Arcana can be unpredictable in a condensed state," Trotter offered. "But I think there have been enough casualties from them to know they don't cause allof this,” he waved over remains. “No, this was something else. Her wingpony claimed something bit her.”
“A bite? Do you believe that?” she asked skeptically.
“Ponies can lie, misremember, stretch the truth. But the dead can’t lie, Stardust,” Trotter told her.
He moved on, gingerly shifting the body’s head over. “Subject has some sort of bone spur protruding from her forehead, or broken skull fragments that have shifted under the skin. The knob is approximately three centimeters in height, ten centimeters above the browline, about the spot a unicorn’s horn is, along the intracranial plate.”
“Moving further down.” Trotter grabbed a pair of forceps, leaning closer and using the instrument to open the mouth. “Subject appears to have knocked several molars ou— sweet Celestia!” Trotter threw down the forceps, jumping back from the examination table and knocking over his tray of instruments. Stardust sidestepped the spooked stallion, her spell breaking, pen and pad skittering across the floor.
“What?!” she yelled. “What is it?”
Even more sweat was streaming down his splash visor. Trotter looked around, finally spotting the dropped forceps and scooping them up. That was no trick of the light, what he saw.
“Get that light,” he ordered Stardust, pointing the confused unicorn to the flashlight nearby. “Point it here.”
Stardust levitated it toward him, holding it steady for Trotter. His hooves trembled as he pulled Thundercell’s limp jaw back open.
Several of the Wonderbolt’s teeth were missing, a few lodged at the back of her slack throat. Trotter knew he had made a mistake; the teeth had not been knocked loose, but replaced. Incisors, sharper than speartips, had sprouted from the bare gums, her jaw bursting from their overcrowded invasion.
“Are those, teeth?” Stardust took a step back. “What does that to a pony?” Stardust wondered, shining her light over them, the razor-sharp teeth glistening like icicles.
Trotter surveyed the wicked fangs. “You were in the Royal Forces, weren’t you Stardust?”
“Fourth medic corp,” she replied, unable to tear her eyes away from the Wonderbolt’s mouth. “Deployed to Saddle Arabia during the coup.”
“Tell me, did you ever encounter anything in the forces that could do this?
"Well there was rumor Maretonia was working with nerve agents, but this is not even close."
“A spell then?”
“I don’t know of any spell that can do this to a pony.”
“Then what could?”
“Maybe her wingpony was telling the truth. Maybe something that bit her caused this.”
Trotter quickly rolled the Wonderbolt’s head, careful to avoid the sharp teeth. A clear line of puncture marks revealed themselves.
“I’ll be — something did take a snack on her,” Stardust whistled behind her mask.
“And with some serious force, too,” Trotted breathed. “Subject exhibits multiple puncture wounds to the jugular area approximately eight centimeters deep. Four are significantly deeper and pierced the victim’s windpipe.”
"She would have probably died anyway. Why the only thing I know with chompers like that are timberwolves."
Trotter tossed the forceps back on the examination table, taking a cautious step back. “Not unless a timber wolf suddenly decided to sprout wings. We are not prepared for this,” he seethed, ripping the gloves off his hooves and dousing them with a strong disinfectant. “I want the body moved to Level Four immediately. Tell Solar.”
The phone, buried beneath the mountain of ungraded term papers and research reports, gave a shrill ring. The red-checked stallion asleep in the chair awoke in a flurry of parchment.
“What? Phone? Stars, wherein Tartarus is it?” the greying pony cursed pushing the piles aside. "Why I swear I just saw it the other day.”
The office was in varying states of disaster, musty folders and empty plastic sandwich containers strewn about like a dragon’s horde. Dust-caked bamboo blinds hung from the equally grimy window, letting in a thin sheen of afternoon sunlight. The university still had power for the time being despite the power surge, but it had been touch and go for the morning, the lights flickering as the repair crews adjusted the power grid.
“Where is it, where is it?” the unicorn muttered as he levitated another disorganized of papers and unceremoniously dumped them on the frayed carpet. “I knew I should have requested a teachers assistant.”
The professor wore the many years of his life, his bushy but well-trimmed white beard sprouting from his face and trailing up his jawline, still sharp and defined despite his encroaching age. His tweedy, work cardigan hung from his husky frame, round crystal-lensed glasses bobbing on the end of his nose as he rummaged.
His searching hoof brushed against the receiver, triumphantly extracting the phone from the papers covering his desk. “Professor Lakeshore, Royal Canterlot University of Science,” he announced breathlessly, running a hoof through his salt and pepper mane. “How can I help?”
“Hello, Professor.” He had not heard that sweet yet tired voice in a long time.
“Your Highness,” he replied. “ I’ve been try— it’s been a while since I've had the honor," he quickly reserved a reverent tone.
"I know. I'm sorry," the voice apologized quietly. "I should have kept in touch."
Lakeshore plopped into his armchair, the vinyl material cracking with age and wear. He levitated the phone's cradle out of the term papers he had still yet to grade. "No need to apologize, my dear," he said, his fatherly voice calm and assuring. "Your hooves have been full. I understand.”
“I need a favor, an academic one. I need somepony who knows Arcanic Theory, somepony I can trust.”
"I can name several on the Royal Science Board off the top of my head. I could write a recommendation if you desire.”
“I’m not looking for a recommendation. I was hoping for you, Professor.”
“Me?” he chuckled. “I’m not sure you would want me, Princess. I’ve grown a little greyer since the last time you saw me.”
His jovial, well-rounded face sank slowly as he listened.
“A what? I...I had wondered what had happened.” This was the first concrete news he was hearing. “Are you sure? Have you told anypony else? The news has been waiting for an official word from Canterlot Castle all day.”
Lakeshore stood from his chair, it swiveling behind his desk. With the receiver clutched to his ear, he peered out the dirty window of his office. Far in the distance, at the other end of the sprawling capital, Canterlot Castle loomed just over the horizon. Her white spires stood like silent guardians.
“Of course, I’ll be there first thing in the morning,” he told the other end of the line, hurriedly scrawling several notes on a scrap piece of paper and throwing several folders into an attache saddlebag. “Just let see what I can find out here. First light, I’ll be there, Celestia. I promise.”