“And that’s when we go in,” Arcane finished, after what felt like at least an hour of explaining. It was probably much longer, though at this point the difference between perception and reality became difficult to precisely describe.
“Wait.” Domino stopped her with an extended wing, something he could only do now that his jacket was hanging off the back of a seat. “Hold on. You’re telling me there are over seventy different groups with their own responsibilities? Each one could screw up and the whole plan is busted.”
Arcane nodded. “Yeah?”
He gestured at the projection between them, which displayed the mission as it was happening right then. Several points along the outer wall had gone from red to green, showing devices that were now successfully diverted or guards that had been prevented from making it to work. The plan was already in motion, even while Domino complained about it.
“I mean this one here, stage… nineteen. Looks like someone designed a…” He leaned down, squinting at the display. “An aerosol-based oil caking agent. They have to get a drone into the basement, and get the generators sprayed so they won’t start once the power dies.”
“We were listening,” Murky Pond said, rolling his eyes. “You don’t have to understand the whole thing, just do your part.”
“I just thought…” Domino wavered, seemingly waiting to see if Arcane would agree with Murky. But she didn’t. Even if she wished he’d been listening a little better and just understood everything, she also knew why he might be confused. “Wouldn’t it be better to do something simpler? I thought the whole point was to get the best chance possible for getting those programmers out? But if one of your complicated steps fail, then… they die. Why take so many risks?”
“It’s not as risky as it seems,” Smooth Agent said, far more sympathetic than Murky had sounded. “You’re thinking like an organic. That was the world where we made mistakes, and where the best we could do in a difficult situation beyond our abilities was pray for supernatural aid. Here we don’t need to pray, and yet we will be aided. It’s true there is difficulty coordinating all this—difficulty that Princess Celestia alleviates.”
“Each unit in the plan is modular,” Arcane continued, leaving her whiteboard and making her way to the front of the room. “See all these dots over here off to the side? I didn’t even explain them. They’re alternate approaches if something fails, or circumstances unexpectedly change. The plan is complicated, but that’s only because it’s divided in so many parts. Each team only has one mission. They can learn their part perfectly, and Celestia will make sure we interface well. We’re the only ones who even know all the pieces, so we’re insulated against leaks as well.”
“She says,” Murky muttered, grinning at her. “As we’ve already deployed two alterations to the plan in response to information that got onto the net. The helicopter escape had better chances and you all know it.”
“It’s a waste of time to argue now,” Event Horizon said. “Focus, Murky. We have our mission. Given we have a member that is uninformed, I believe Lady Arcane should keep explaining it. Our team isn’t on reserve for any of the other roles, unless my information is inaccurate.”
“You’re right,” Arcane said, touching Domino’s shoulder with a reassuring hoof. “Trust me, Domino. It seems complex, but this combination of different strategies had the best odds of getting them out. We designed it, and Celestia approved it. We’re not getting anything better.”
Domino settled back into his cushion. “I don’t understand, but I trust you.”
She walked her way back to the whiteboard. But she hadn’t even reached it before Murky cleared his throat, tapping the table impatiently with a hoof. “I hope nobody minds if I change the view? This is so… surgical. I’d like to see something more useful. Even if we aren’t going to bail out any of the other losers when they screw up, I’d like to see it happen.”
Without waiting for a response, his horn began to glow—and suddenly they were floating over the facility. Arcane felt a moment of vertigo, until she realized it was just a texture imposed on the ground. She wasn’t actually flying, and she didn’t need to use any flight instincts to stay there.
Domino actually spread his wings, looking motion sick for a few moments. Plum did better, along with the other hackers.
There wasn’t much to see down there. Arcane wouldn’t have noticed anything at all, except she knew what to look for. The key guard checkpoints were empty. A few lights that signified the underlying security systems had gone off. There were no shouts of panic, no rushing in of backup. As the image panned lower, turning the walls transparent, she saw the scientific wing was still sealed, with its occupants hunched over their computer stations. Luxurious compared to much of the facility, but still a cage.
More importantly, soldiers hadn’t broken down the door to murder the hackers. So long as they were still alive, they hadn’t reached a failure state yet.
“By the time we go in, the alarms will already be going off. Drones will be me, Domino, and… I’m guessing you too, Agent?”
He nodded. “Holding a door is nice, but someone needs to know how to shoot.”
“Right.” Arcane didn’t have the same talent with her magic yet—it took great concentration to find the room’s controls. Fortunately she’d seen the place before, and practiced with it so she wouldn’t look like a fool. She zoomed them in on the scientific block.
The space had a strangely apocalyptic look, each computer and server a hodgepodge of stolen and scavenged parts. Once they’d been top of the line, and even the stands on those displays had sold for a thousand dollars. But now they were trash. Celestia could give you the same thing for pennies, if you didn’t mind the pony inside.
“There’s the real entrance, and the ‘entrance,’” Arcane said, gesturing at the heavy concrete door. “We’re going to be using that one against them. They wanted their slaves locked up so bad, so we’re going to thermite the whole thing closed. Agent and Domino, that’s you.”
“And we’re disabling the nerve gas,” Murky said, before she could open her mouth. “The exploit is already in. Either it works or it doesn’t, you don’t even need me here.”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t be here,” Agent said. “Celestia obviously thinks you might need to contribute. Don’t doubt her wisdom.”
“I don’t,” he answered, unmoved. “I doubt her motives.”
But this time, Celestia wasn’t present to answer for anything she might’ve been doing. Arcane sure wasn’t going to defend her when she agreed with Murky’s main point. Obviously Celestia had her own reasons for all this, which they wouldn’t be able to guess at. Simply asking her hadn’t seemed to work either, unfortunately.
“If you want to leave, leave,” Arcane said. “If you’re going to stay, stay. I want to move on.”
Murky shifted in his seat, and looked for a moment like he might be about to leave. But then he folded his forelegs, looking back to the projection.
“Go quickly, Arcane,” Horizon said. “I’m seeing red in the basement. I think we might’ve been spotted.”
Arcane winced, letting the view zoom in on the service basement. The team working to sever the building from the electrical grid had just been spotted, their spiderlike drone fried by a guard’s EM rifle.
That meant a cascading series of failures, and she mentally mapped them out, crossing out sections on the board and replacing them with others from the backup section. If there was still power, it meant that they wouldn’t be able to force the door, and the elevator would work to get an engineering team upstairs.
“I guess that we’re, uh…” She made her way over, tearing off a few sections, but her hoof froze before she could get much further.
Princess Celestia was suddenly beside her, magic glowing bright gold in the dingy space. “Do not be concerned over the power grid,” she said. “Outside the scope of your backup arrangements, I will ensure the grid fails near the building. Continue as scheduled.”
“But…” Murky began. “Don’t you think the Koreans will notice that? If you go outright disabling an entire building like that? They won’t think it’s a coincidence.”
“No, they won’t,” she said, spinning on him. Her expression was suddenly cold. Fury that Arcane had never seen directed at her. It didn’t seem to be for Murky either, judging by her words. “The authorities have already destroyed my emigration centers, and they helped fund TiCon Systems’ doomed project to exterminate my population. I am no longer concerned with their response to my behavior. Proceed, Arcane. This discovery accelerates the timeline grately. There remains limited resources to frameshift your team if need be, but it would be better to reserve that resource for an emergency. There are practical limits to the speed your current hardware can presently reach.” She vanished.
“Frameshift?” Plum asked. “Is Celestia going to… cast a spell on us?”
“No,” Horizon explained. “She means we can speed up time relative to the Outer Realm, so we have longer to adjust and rewrite if something changes. Hopefully that’s enough.”
“So we get the door closed,” Domino supplied. “Melt the mechanism. Then what? We’re locked in there with them, aren’t we?”
“Two possibilities at that point,” Arcane said. “I’ll have a drone too, and Plum will be digital. If we can, we’ll convince the hackers to emigrate. That has the best chances of them getting out alive. Once TiCon knows they’re our target, they’re going to try to kill them even if we lose.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
“Then we rip out the wall,” Arcane said. “Those drones are stronger than they look. There’s a rope ladder in one. We land them on the outside of the compound, and an escape driver is waiting for them.”
“And they’ll be hunted for the rest of their lives,” Murky said flatly. “Wanted corporate saboteurs. Or maybe… traitors to humanity? I don’t know what they’re calling it now. They won’t be safe in Korea once they find out we had anything to do with this.”
“That’s where I come in,” Horizon said. “We’re going to bring them north, all the way to the DMZ. Even with North Korea gone, there’s live munitions all along that border. I can see it, but humans can’t. Our science crew can live with the other refugees in Pyongyang.”
“Oh, that’s much better,” Murky said. “Why be a corporate criminal when you can be a criminal living in the empty shell of an old despotic regime. Sounds like a blast. Or… a plot to make them so miserable they want to emigrate.”
Arcane shrugged. “It’s better if they do anyway, Murky. Nobody hates Celestia more than me—she fuckin’ killed me. But you’re here. Can’t you at least acknowledge that being a pony is better than taking a bullet?”
Murky shook his head. “Wouldn’t be fair, I’ve never been anything else. Keep making assumptions, Arcane. It’ll do us great when the bullets are flying.”
“Our role is rather simple, Domino,” Agent said. “Shut a door, and neutralize any guards that may already be within the facility. Nonlethally, if possible.”
Domino nodded gravely. “I don’t really… plan on killing anyway. Even a guard at an evil… dystopian megacorp… is just working a nine-to-five, right?”
Agent made a noncommittal squeaking sound. “That used to be true. Now it… well, that’s very noble of you. Keep that attitude, Domino. There’s no reason to bring Equestria down.”
“There are only two in there now, not well armed,” Arcane said, pointing below them. Celestia had refused her vast power to end the conflict before it began, but she was sharing her information with them. They had every camera the humans had installed, and probably many more they couldn’t detect. “Looks like they’re in there to stop the scientists from escaping.”
“No,” Plum said. “To stop us from killing ourselves. They think they can stop Celestia if we agree to emigrate. Or… they did. They couldn’t stop me.”
“I’ll be ready,” Domino said, nodding to himself. “We’re not actually in danger, right? Our minds aren’t getting uploaded into the bodies we’re controlling?”
“No,” Agent said. “Celestia would never take a risk like that. You’ll be wireless. There’s a little input delay, but you won’t notice it unless you’re really looking. A few milliseconds of light lag, that’s all.”
Arcane saw it before any of the others. A single red light for the “central server worm,” the one the hackers were supposed to be uploading now from the inside. One red light appeared, then four more in the security room, then a dozen more in the basement, then the whole board went red.”
“Everypony, look!” Arcane hurried over to the table, staring down at the array of red lights. Only a handful were still green now, the ones leading directly to the scientific wing. But one of those was already yellow.
“We’re bucked,” Murky said. “That’s… what do we actually have?”
“Escape vehicle is good.” Horizon moved one hoof down her own portable computer, eyes scanning the text there. Arcane couldn’t read it, but it didn’t much matter what it said. “If we can get them out, we’re still good. There’s just… no chance of it being peaceful.”
Arcane watched as the security door banged open, and every single armed guard burst out, before freezing in place. Someone had frameshifted them manually—she didn’t know who, but she was grateful. She didn’t actually know how to use those spells anymore, even though her character did.
“Found the problem.” Murky tapped on the table, bringing up the server. Its file-structure appeared in front of them as a single tree of little lines, including a single section highlighted in red.
It opened into a text file, which appeared Korean at first, and translated itself a second later. “Equestria’s agents are attempting to force us to emigrate. They will break into this facility and try to kill us. Please help.”
“Are you bucking kidding me?” Horizon shoved her computer off the edge of the table, face horrified. “We’re here to save them, and they…”
“Just one,” Plum said, voice suddenly timid. “It must’ve been Geun! He hates Equestria so much, he might’ve done that. He actually wants to finish the population bomb.”
“Nothing we can do about it now.” Arcane kept calm, if only because she felt so numb. All their careful preparation, everything they’d done to maximize the odds… and most of it was useless. She turned back to the wall, and found most of the placards missing. Celestia had made things easy for her, leaving only the resources they still had. Her eyes scanned them one at a time, before selecting what she wanted.
“Murky, Horizon. I need you to stop that bucking elevator. We’ve got… two drones in position. No chance of holding the door anyway…”
“They’re better fighters than their size suggests,” Agent said. “I can give you a few minutes.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Even with those EMP weapons they’re all carrying?”
He nodded. “Those don’t work against newer equipment. I think most of the breaching drones we used weren’t Celestia designed, you all made them. But these drones… they’ll be fine. Breaking when we’re shot is a convenient fiction we need not uphold if lives are on the line.”
“I’m not sure I can be much use,” Domino said. He hovered in the air over the guards, watching their frame-by-frame run towards the elevator. “I was just supposed to be backup. I was supposed to help melt a door, not…”
Arcane tapped the screen again. “I’ve got another body… with the escape driver. Keep her safe for us, Domino. Help her get to the compound in time. Can you do that?”
For a moment, he looked like he might be about to argue. But then he nodded. “I’ll try.”
“Time to move.” Arcane crossed the room in a few quick strides, towards the glowing circle on the floor she knew from long playtime to be their portal out. She gestured for Domino to follow.
Murky Pond and Event Horizon had their computers set up by the time Arcane looked back, and were apparently already hard at work with the elevator. “Don’t take too long,” Murky said. “I’m not as confident as the stereotype over there.”
Agent leapt into the circle, vanishing in a flash of light. Domino reached her a moment later, eyes wide. “Arcane… are you sure about this?” His voice was shaking, and his body too by the look of things. “I’m not… I’m not good enough. There are real lives at stake. If I screw up… if the driver gets shot, or your girlfriend dies because of me…. I’d never forgive myself.”
Arcane rested one hoof on his shoulder, meeting his eyes. Even knowing they were frameshifted forward, she still felt the urgency to act. She could see the guards running, and knew that her friends were really in danger. Either they were about to be shot to stop Equestria from “getting them,” or moved somewhere harder to find.
At least the pressure of the moment gave her the courage to speak when she wouldn’t have before. “Min-seo was never my girlfriend, Domino. There was… maybe a little sexual tension between Cold Iron and me. We were rivals, and allies, and… what’s not sexy about that? Fighting to outdo each other, sometimes working together against a bigger enemy. But that was more of a boyfriend, and… listen. You’re good enough, or you wouldn’t be here. Celestia could’ve got another pony like Smooth Agent. She still could. You don’t have to do it if you don’t think you can. But I think you can.”
After a few more tense moments, he finally nodded. He’d gone from stressed to something Arcane couldn’t read. “What do you mean, ‘boyfriend’?”
“I mean I lied!” she screamed, backing up towards the circle. “It was always a lie. I never planned on being anypony else, okay? I was always Arcane. I feel more like Arcane than I ever did as Ash—as myself. I didn’t just come to Equestria because it was somewhere for me to learn computers and break rules. I got to be someone who felt more like me than the one I had to be in the Outer Realm. This is the life I want, okay? And now I’m going to save my rival, and hopefully find out if my parents made it safely, and…” She turned, running through the portal before he could see her tears.
However upset she was, there were lives on the line. If he still wanted to know her at the end of the mission, then that was great. But she’d save Cold Iron first.