The sun had long dipped beneath the horizon and the stars were being painted across the sky by the time the train arrived in Canterlot. The four ponies disembarked onto the gilded platform, Night Light casting an enraptured glance up at the waning moon overhead that hailed the passing of the Moon of Grain, and the upcoming end of summer. A distant clock chimed out the hour of nine-thirty.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he mused as they passed beneath a gilded glass roof. “Doesn’t it make you wonder, where did the stars and moon first come from? And what rules did they first operate under before we unicorns took control of them?”
His soliloquy was interrupted by Phillip yanking him to one side so that he wouldn’t wander face-first into a pillar. “It makes me wonder how some ponies manage to look where they’re going,” he replied, shaking his head. Night Light just smiled sheepishly at him.
“Hey, I think I see our ride,” Daring said, pointing. A unicorn stallion in a pristine blue uniform and cap was standing on the street side of the platform, holding up a sign with a trio of purple stars and a pair of crescent moons on it.
“Lady Velvet, Sir Night Light,” the uniformed stallion nodded as they approached. “I am to bring you and your companions to the palace. Please follow me.”
He led them up to a waiting black Haysler Windstream limousine with the flags of Equestria on the hood, lightly flapping in the wind. Opening up the back door, he gestured them inside.
“You gotta be kidding,” Daring said, scowling at the small entrance to the tiny compartment of the vehicle.
“Magic, remember?” Velvet smirked, casually sliding into the seat along with her husband and settling into the chair with a contented sigh. “Ooh, teak leaf leather.”
Daring and Phillip exchanged glances, shrugged, and slipped inside.
As soon as they did so, their eyes widened. The back of the limousine proved to be much larger on the inside, with a pair of benches facing each other, both of them easily wide enough for four or five ponies. A small bar was set into the door, featuring trays of small cakes and other hors d'oeuvres and bottles of expensive-looking wines and champagnes set in buckets of enchanted unmelting ice.
“I love magic,” Daring said, sliding into the seat and immediately scooting over to the bar. She started digging into the hors d’oeuvres, munching down carrot sticks and mini-doughnuts like a starving mare.
“You ate on the train,” Phillip muttered, closing the door behind him as he entered. The driver climbed into the front seat and started up the engine, which roared affirmatively in an instant and pulled away from the platform, smoothly inserting itself into traffic.
“Did you even taste that shit?” Daring muttered through a mouthful of dough. “No train in the world serves an actual honest-to-Luna meal anymore. Least, not a train that we can afford.”
Velvet chuckled heartily and took a set of apple slices for herself. “A mare after my own heart,” she said, glancing over the bar’s contents. “Rats, no eclairs.”
“Weren’t you on a diet?” Night Light asked wearily, earning a raspberry in reply.
The limo cruised up and down the wide, cobbled streets; even this late at night, the traffic was almost bumper to bumper, headlights glaring out through the darkness like multitudes of yellow eyes. Yet, somehow, the cars glided smoothly across traffic like blood flowing through the veins of the city, the traffic lights representing the beating heart of Canterlot.
“Here it comes,” Velvet said with a smile, staring expectantly out the window.
They rounded a corner and the Palace appeared before them. The entire edifice shone with implanted magic, ivory and golden towers stretching up towards the darkened star-spangled sky. The entire building dominated the city beneath, separated slightly from the rest of Canterlot by an artificial river that ran down from the mountain that the structure was placed against.
“Crikey,” Phillip breathed, tilting his trilby back so that he could admire the structure.
Daring stared at the strangely asymmetrical building with an unimpressed frown, then commented, “Did the architect have epilepsy or something?”
“Daring!” Phillip hissed, though Velvet let out a loud snort of laughter.
“At least some ponies think I’m funny,” Daring stated.
The limo pulled up a driveway and paused before a set of ivory gates. A thestral Royal Guard in a ceremonial gold and blue uniform exited a security booth in front of the gates and trotted up to the driver’s side door as the chauffeur rolled down the window.
“Evening, Sundown,” the chauffeur nodded. “They still got you working here?”
“Overtime’s at a rare slump; this is all I could get for the moment,” Sundown replied. “What’s your business tonight, Slick?”
“Escorting four visitors to Princess Luna to see the Royal Archive,” Slick replied, nodding to the four passengers in the back.
The Royal Guard stepped over to the back seat as Slick rolled the window down. “Evening, ladies and gentlecolts,” Sundown greeted them. “Identifications, please.”
All four ponies handed over their identifications, which were subjected to a brief but thorough scrutiny. “Be right back,” Sundown nodded, trotting back to his booth. His silhouette appeared into the window, speaking into a phone briefly, then he reemerged.
“You’re all set,” he nodded, handing the IDs back. “Princess Luna will be waiting for you in the main hall.”
“Thanks,” Phillip nodded as the gates opened wide and the limousine cruised inside. They wound up a long driveway and into a grand parking lot in front of a wide drawbridge over a moat of crystalline water. Two Royal Guards, assault rifles slung across their chests, stood post in front of the large golden doors that led into the palace proper.
As they exited, Phillip tilted his head back to study the massive ivory towers that they were now in the shadow of. “Hooley dooley,” he whistled.
“Admire the architecture later,” Daring called, proceeding to the drawbridge. “We got business.” She trotted onto the drawbridge, which creaked beneath her hooves, and frowned down at the flowing moat.
“Are there at least crocodiles or something in there?” she asked one of the Guards standing post in front of the bridge. “Because that’s not gonna stop anypony otherwise.”
The Guard didn’t react in the slightest. “Whatever,” Daring shrugged.
“I think that’s what the rifles are for,” Phillip commented, following her. The doors opened wide with a creak, allowing the four ponies entry.
The main hall was larger than some houses, featuring huge vaulted walls that reached up to a massive chandelier that hung overhead, casting the room in warm light. A grand set of golden-carpeted stairs, almost as wide as a lane of traffic, led up into the palace proper. A set of Royal Guards was manning a security checkpoint in front of the door; the group was immediately halted while their bags were passed through an X-ray scanner and a detecting wand passed over their bodies.
"Relax, I left the cache at home," Daring reported in response to Phillip's questioning glance.
Once Night Light was given the green light to proceed, one of the Guards spoke into a radio. At once, a door at the top of the stairs opened and a dark blue figure stepped out.
Princess Luna was nearly as tall as her sister, and like Celestia, her mane and tail spilled gracefully down almost to the floor; the dark blue hair seemed to contain many twinkling stars that flickered and danced in the light. Her hoofsteps clacked imperiously against the floor as she proceeded to the top of the landing, frowning down at the four visitors with eyes as deep and distant as the night sky itself.
Phillip, Daring, Night Light, and Velvet knelt down at the foot of the stairs as the Guards all simultaneously snapped to attention in perfect unison, producing a loud stomp. Princess Luna paused at the landing, then started trotting down the steps, one at a time, every step echoing disproportionately loudly.
“Sir Night Light, Dame Twilight Velvet,” she declared, her voice rolling low. “That is not the proper way to greet us, and thou knowest it.” She reached the bottom of the stairs and paused, staring down at her visitors. Velvet and Night Light both hesitantly looked up at the Princess, and Phillip and Daring followed suit. Luna scowled down at them for a moment longer, then her face creased into a wide smile and she raised a hoof invitingly.
Velvet immediately ran up and hugged the Princess tight, ramming into her hard enough to almost knock the alicorn off her hooves. Night Light joined the embrace as well as Phillip and Daring both rose.
“How are you, my students? And how is Twilight?” Luna asked, nuzzling Velvet’s head.
“Great!” Velvet replied. “Did you hear that Twilight has a coltfriend?”
“Celestia told us about him,” Luna chuckled, then turned her attention to the two detectives, her face returning to a stoic mask. “Detective Finder, Detective Do,” she nodded. “Our gratitude for your assistance to our sister last year. Would circumstances be otherwise, we would have thee both knighted for your services to the nation.”
“Um…” Daring said.
Luna blinked, then coughed and cleared her throat. “Our...er, my apologies. Nine hundred years of habit are difficult to break.” She turned and beckoned them with a wing. “Come. I will bring you to the Royal Archives and allow you access to the Restricted Section.”
The group ascended the staircase, with two Royal Guards breaking off and taking up position behind them, and into a long hallway with stone walls. Absconces decorated with fresh lavenders provided illumination, along with the moon and starlight that shone through the stained glass windows. Each of the massive windows depicted a scene from Equestria’s history: the first Hearth’s Warming, the magical accident that transformed Faust and Speranza into alicorns, Faust being crowned the Queen of Equestria, and the birth of Celestia and Luna at the turn of the millennium were all within sight as they trotted down the red carpet.
“Is Twilight being guarded?” Luna asked as they proceeded. “Celestia was beside herself with worry when she learned that these fiends who haunt Horseshoe Bay attempted to abduct her. I had to remind her that burning every criminal in Ponyville would not have been an effective way to keep her safe.”
“She’s got the entire police force and a dragon to hide behind,” Daring reassured the Princess. “She’ll be fine.”
“We hope that you are right,” Luna sighed. “Tell me, do you have any theories as to why these pirates wished to abduct her?”
Daring paused for a moment. “I do have one idea,” she admitted. “Whitestone recently got a copy of a spell called the Lazarus Ritual. I guess that they need somepony to translate it for them—”
“WHAT FOOL ALLOWED THEM TO GAIN A COPY OF THAT RITUAL?!” Luna thundered, her voice causing the windows to shake in their casements and sending everypony scampering backward, flinching away from the utter fury on the Princess’ face. “IF WE EVER FIND THE PONY WHO GAVE THEM THAT SPELL, WE SHALL SEE THEM HANG!” Luna declared, gnashing her teeth in rage.
Daring gulped and shifted slightly to take cover behind Phillip. “Your Highness...it’s a fake. Necromancy isn’t real,” she protested in a voice that just barely managed to not be a terrified squeak.
Luna took a slow breath, the anger on her countenance slowly evaporating. “Were it so, Daring Do,” she replied gravely, gesturing for them to continue following her.
“The Lazarus Ritual was designed as a weapon centuries ago, in a war between two small nations that have been largely forgotten by history,” Luna explained. “Copies of the spell trickled across Equestria over the years. The spell is indeed intended to be used to raise an army of the dead that is completely under the caster’s thrall. However, the spell itself had many flaws: first of all, the power required to perform the spell was impractically great. Even five unicorns would find the strain of raising a mere dozen ponies difficult to bear, let alone an entire army.
“And this is beside the point that necromancy falls very deep into dark magic,” she continued, turning down another hallway, this one featuring floor to ceiling windows that looked out onto a topiary garden. “That kind of power is extremely corruptive and addictive, far more than any drug. Once a pony has a taste of that power, all they can ever think of is getting another, stronger taste. And with every taste, they give up a little bit more of their soul until they are a mere shadow of their former selves, obsessed with gaining more power by any means necessary, with no care at all to morality.” She sighed. “The Lazarus Ritual represents the worst that dark magic has to offer. If Whitestone truly has it, it is a grave concern.”
Daring tried to wince with only the half of her face that Luna couldn’t see.
“Here we are,” Luna declared, pausing before an arched oak doorway inscribed with carved scrolls and constellations. Plucking a key from her belt, Luna unlocked the door and opened it with a creak.
Daring’s jaw dropped in astonishment as they strode into the humongous circular room. In every direction, there were books, placed with great care on massive, gold-trimmed bookshelves, each of which had a small placard that described their contents. The shelves formed long hallways that branched off into other rooms. Soft cushions and chairs were placed around oak tables with reading lamps and well-stocked kits of notepads, pens, and magnifiers. The smell of parchment lingered patiently in the air, filling her nostrils with its gentle aroma with every breath.
“Did I die and go to Elysium?” she wondered aloud.
Night Light giggled. “That’s what I thought when I first came here,” he stated. “Sometimes that’s how I feel when I come back here after a while.”
“The Archive is open to the public, but the Restricted Section is available only to those with the permission of the curator, or my sister and I,” Luna explained as she led them out of the wing that they were in and into the public entrance hallway with its white marble walls and granite busts of the Seven Pillars. She guided them into another wing and up to a thick sealed door with a sign on it: “Restricted Section. Authorized Visitors Only.”
Luna paused and looked around, frowning. “Odd. Where is the guard on duty?” she wondered out loud. “He should’ve been here to open the door for us.”
Something squirmed in Phillip’s stomach. “I’ll check on him. Where’s the security room?”
“Down that hallway,” Luna pointed, taking out her set of keys again and inserting one of them into the door.
Phillip started off down the indicated hallway, quickly reaching a door that had “Security: Employees Only” painted on it in white letters. He rapped sharply at the door.
No answer.
“Hello?” he called, knocking harder. Still nothing. Trying the door, Phillip found to his surprise that it was unlocked and opened it wide.
The security room was a small office with a long table and a set of security crystal projectors implanted in the wall, each of them projecting a view of the various wings of the Archives. A coffee machine, currently switched off, sat on one end of the table next to an open logbook. A satchel lay on the ground beneath the table.
A starry white pegasus stallion with indigo and black hair and the cutie mark of a moon and a padlock lay slumped in the seat, his closed eyes facing up towards the ceiling, snoring loudly; thick lines of drool trickled out of the corner of his gaping mouth. His once-pristine uniform and lap were drenched in an only partially dry coffee stain; the thermos lay on its side on the floor next to the chair, the remaining contents spilled out into a sticky stain on the floor.
“Hey, wake up,” Phillip called, shaking the stallion’s shoulder. All he received in reply was an even louder snore. He leaned in to try to shout louder, but an odor mixed into the stallion’s reeking breath made him pause. He sniffed deeply, trying to identify that strange, sickly sweet scent that resembled slightly rotten oranges mixed with honey and rose petals.
It took a few moments of panning through his mental annals and records, but Phillip identified the scent as Nightdraft, a powerful sleeping potion. He bent down towards the coffee stain on the floor and sniffed again. Yes, the coffee was tainted with the drug.
“Bugger,” he grunted and rushed out of the room.
At the same time, Luna had led Daring, Velvet, and Night Light into the Restricted Section. This wing consisted only of a couple reading tables with cushions and a few bookshelves that lined the walls. The books here were mostly old tomes, their covers and binding eaten by rot and time; skulls, serpents, and similar icons were a prevalent theme on the bindings.
“Wow,” Daring commented, studying a particularly large book that had an image of a dagger piercing a fox skull. “I guess this is where all those cliches come from.”
Luna proceeded to a vaulted door at the end of the windowless room and inserted another key into the door, turning the combination tumbler as she did so. With a great clicking and groaning of gears, the vault door opened wide, revealing a single metal bookshelf with a few books set faceup upon it, all of them faded and yellowed with age.
But Luna’s eyes widened in horror as she focused upon an empty space in the middle of the top shelf, the dust on the shelf revealing a large rectangular outline where something had once lain. “The Kyaltratek!” she gasped. “It’s gone!”
That was when Phillip re-entered the room. “Princess, the guard’s been drugged,” he reported, spotting the empty section on the shelf and realizing what had happened in a moment.
Luna’s shock lasted only a moment. Turning around, she barked at one of the Royal Guards, “Sound the intruder alarm! Lock the palace down, summon the police, and start searching!”
The Guard immediately sounded the alarm into his radio. Within moments, a blaring alarm began sounding across the palace grounds and there came the sound of clattering hooves and shouts in the distance as winged Guards took to the skies, forming a perimeter around the entire palace grounds.
“Do not touch anything!” Luna ordered her companions as she exited the room, following Phillip back to the security room. Entering the small office, she examined the Guard, then lit up her horn. After a few moments, the sleeping Guard started with a shout and nearly leaped out of his chair. Spotting the Princess, he scrambled to his hooves and knelt down.
“Corporal Crescent Lock,” Luna declared coldly. “Explain yourself.”
The corporal looked up slowly and swallowed. “I don’t know what happened, Your Highness,” he stated in a soft, quavering voice. “I took on my shift at twenty-hundred, as ordered. I was doing my regular patrols and having my coffee, and then I just got overwhelmingly tired. I thought I could just...close my eyes for a moment, and…” He gulped and flinched beneath Luna’s piercing stare.
“You will remain here until the police arrive, and you will cooperate with their investigation fully,” Luna ordered coldly. Corporal Lock swallowed and nodded.
It took mere minutes for police officers to arrive and start searching the area for any evidence. Officers and other Guards started combing the Archives and grounds for any sign of the ancient tome. The shame-faced corporal was patted down and his pack turned out, but the only thing that they found was a few cups of maple walnut coffee flavor and a thick, red-covered romance novel ("It gets boring on shift, I didn't think anypony would notice," Crescent Lock confessed to the scowling sergeant).
“You have any idea who could’ve drugged your coffee?” the lead detective, a gray unicorn in a dusty trench coat with a cutie mark of a deck of cards with the ace of clubs faceup on top of it, asked Crescent Lock.
“Well, I keep my flavor cups in my hoof locker, so it’s possible one of the other Guards got to them,” Crescent admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. “But I can’t think of anypony who would want to do this.”
“Detective Stacked Deck, please,” Princess Luna interrupted. “It is unlikely that the culprit has made it out of the palace. Our focus should be on finding the Kyaltratek.”
“Don’t worry, Princess,” Detective Deck replied, not looking up from his notebook. “I’m pretty sure that a nine-hundred-thirty-seven-page dark green book with a sun, moon, dagger, and serpent on the cover doesn’t have a lot of places to hide.”
A single Guard trotted up, snapping off a salute to the Princess. “Detective, we went over the surveillance crystal footage for the Archive. For a few minutes, from 2105 to 2112, it appears that the footage froze. We don’t have any image of the theft.”
“There are a few things that can freeze surveillance crystal footage,” Detective Deck mused. He looked around briefly. “Hey, where’s that detective and his friends?”
Phillip and Daring slowly walked across the ground outside the archives, flashlights panning across the grass and dirt.
“Are you sure you don’t want some help?” Velvet asked again in a hopeful tone, waiting by the exit door with her husband.
“No, thanks,” Daring called back, briefly making sure that her back was turned to the mare before rolling her eyes. “Just leave this to us, alright?”
“They’re right, hon,” Night Light said, laying a hoof on her shoulder. “Best leave this to the professionals.”
Velvet pouted a bit but did not complain further.
“Where the hell are the rest of the cops?” Daring wondered out loud. “They still working inside?”
“That’s why we’re here,” Phillip answered.
The duo reached an outside window and bent down to study the ground in front of it. “Here, hoofprint,” Phillip said, pointing to a mark amidst the trampled flowers that bordered the entire building. Daring tilted her flashlight to provide better lighting while Phillip took his magnifying glass out and studied the hoofprint.
“Cloudwalker brand, size eleven,” Phillip muttered. “No sign of wear, all nails in.” He frowned for a moment, then stood up straight.
“Either of you know how to do a tracking spell?” he called to the unicorns.
Velvet perked up. “I do!” she said. “Came in handy when dealing with two kids and a dragon.”
“Walk over here slowly,” Phillip called. “Follow our steps.”
Grinning from ear to ear, Velvet trotted over to them; Night Light watching with a half-cringe, as if afraid that a single misstep on her part would crush an important clue. Velvet walked up to the window and without prompting, cast a tracking spell over the hoofprint. A long line of dark red hoofprints immediately began to glow, one set leading away from the window and another set leading to it.
“Thanks,” Phillip nodded, bending down to study the trail. “Okay, gait length suggests...Daring?”
“Little over four feet tall,” Daring replied after a brief mental calculation.
“Ripper,” Phillip nodded approvingly, following the trail to its end, about twenty feet away from the window. “Okay, the trail starts and stops here.” He looked around. “No good surveillance crystal angles over here. They could’ve teleported.”
“No,” Daring replied, bending down and tilting her flashlight to study the ground. “You see the way the grass is bent down in a circle around here? That’s from a pegasus taking off.”
“Hey! What are you guys doing?!” a voice barked. Everypony looked up to see Detective Stacked Deck stomping towards them.
“When did I deputize any of you lot for this investigation?” he snapped, carefully stepping over the line of hoofprints.
“We’re here, you need us,” Phillip stated plainly. “Theft from the palace is a serious crime, and—”
“Damn suspicious, you two showing up the same night this happens,” Stacked Deck hissed, getting up into Phillip’s face.
“You wanna step out of this crime scene and say that again, asshole?” Daring snarled, her wings splaying wide.
“Detective!” Luna called from the doorway. “They arrived long after the theft. They had nothing to do with this! You will cease harassing my guests and return to your real work!”
Stacked Deck scowled, but nodded. “Alright, but you need to get off my crime scene,” he snapped.
Phillip, Daring, Night Light, and Velvet scowled but did not argue, slowly walking back inside.
“How does he get off on that?” Velvet groused, glaring at the detective’s back.
“Yobbo’s up himself, never mind him,” Phillip grunted.
“Come,” Luna beckoned them with a wing, guiding them out of the Archive and into the palace proper. “We have guest rooms selected for you to stay the night. We shall pick this up in the morning.”
“He really stayed here all night?” Trace said, staring down at the snoring figure sprawled across the desk in the spare office, papers and notes scattered across him.
“Apparently,” Red commented, studying the styrofoam coffee cups in the trash can next to the desk, with the duty belt laying on the floor next to it. “Gotta give the kid credit, he’s determined.”
“Should we wake him up?” Trace asked.
“Well, Cold’ll have a fit if she sees an officer sleeping on the job,” Red said. He reached out and shook the snoring pegasus’ shoulder. “Hey, Flash, wake up.”
Flash grunted and sat up, blinking blearily up at the detectives. “Huh? What time is it?” he mumbled, yawning loudly.
“Almost nine in the morning,” Trace smiled thinly. “What’ve you been up to?”
“Twilight and I were going over the evidence from the Adamantium robbery,” Flash said, passing a hoof through the papers on the desk: stills from surveillance crystals, witness testimonies, forensic reports from Suunkii, and other notes. “We’re still working on who might’ve taken the prosthetics out of the vault.”
“Well, you’re not going to be doing much thinking if you’ve just woken up,” Trace commented. “Go get some coffee and something from the cafeteria, son.”
“And dust your uniform off,” Red added, looking at Flash’s rumpled, partially unbuttoned uniform. “You look like a What Not to Do picture.”
“Right, sorry,” Flash said, hurriedly clipping his belt back on and trotting out of the room on a quest for sustenance.
Trace looked over the log of the vault unlocks from Adamantium. The log for Short Circuit’s key being used to unlock the vault at 1426 hours fourteen days ago. “Why didn’t they notice the theft earlier?” he asked out loud.
“That manager did mention that he’d gotten a little slack on doing inventory,” Red shrugged. “Greedy bastard just couldn’t be put to the trouble.”
“Where’s Short Circuit anyway?” Trace asked.
“He’s still in a holding cell,” Red replied. “He was howling up a storm last night after you were finished with him: I thought he was going to get sprayed for sure. Fortunately—or unfortunately—he calmed down after a while. Still insists he didn’t do it.”
Trace rubbed his face, trying to force the last vestiges of tiredness off his countenance. “Okay. So we figure that the prosthetics were taken from the vault and hidden in the dumpster behind the factory.” He took out a photograph of the back alley of Adamantium Prosthetics, showing a large dumpster with peeling green paint standing next to a back door, one wheel standing in a pothole of clay. The ground was littered with empty soda cans and squashed, wet cigarette butts.
“Then, later that night, the thief, or an ally of theirs, came back with Bentley in the stolen taxi and retrieved the wing and the limb,” Trace said. “So the question is, who was it?”
“Good morning, detectives!” a chipper voice sounded from the door. Twilight hopped into the room, with a snoring Spike sprawled across her withers.
“I still say you run off of batteries, not sleep,” Red muttered darkly, fighting down a yawn. “Just seeing you like that makes me tired again.”
“I note from the chalk and the deep lines from the edge of a table on your coat sleeves that you were out at a bar playing pool and drinking last night,” Twilight advised. “You should probably get more sleep.” She pulled out a manila folder and opened it up, ignoring Red’s grumbles.
“Doctor Suunkii and I were going over the trace evidence from the robbery,” she declared as Flash reentered the room, hastily munching down a scrambled egg burrito. “We found that the clay in the back alley matches a clay that was found in the taxi; I’m hoping that if we find a suspect that they’ll still have traces of that clay on them.”
Flash looked over one of the papers in the folder, finding that it was a list of traces collected and identified from the stolen taxi. Hairs, food crumbs, tobacco ashes, various drugs.
And found beneath the rear passenger seat, a clump of dried chewing gum, reddish-orange in color.
Something in the back of Flash’s mind clicked and he dove back into the pile of papers on his desk. After some rummaging, he found what he was looking for: a collection of stills from the surveillance crystals from the factory. He started tossing pictures aside, muttering to himself.
“What are you doing?” Trace asked, calmly ducking as a photograph flew past his face.
Flash didn’t answer, instead pausing as he studied a pair of photographs, bringing them both up close to his face one at a time. “Aha!” he cried with a bright smile, dropping the pictures and running out of the room. After a moment, he ran back in and wolfed down another few bites of his burrito.
“Flash, what is it?” Twilight asked.
“Sorry, no time, I got an idea, gotta go!” Flash cried, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek before running out again.
“He’s taking after Phil already,” Red muttered, bending over the dropped stills. “What did he see here?”
Trace and Twilight leaned in close and studied the pictures, a pair of stills of the hallway leading towards the back of the alley from the vault where the completed prosthetics were kept. “Okay, this one’s from soon after the vault was opened,” Trace said, pointing to one. “And this one is from a bit later. What’d he see—?”
He paused, leaning in closer. “Well, holy shit. That kid’s a genius.”
“I see it, too,” Red nodded. “C’mon, let’s go catch up with him.”
The two sprinted out of the room after Flash, leaving a bewildered Twilight standing alone in the room. Spike stretched across her back and woke up with a yawn, blinking his eyes.
“Oh, sweet,” he declared, snatching up the remaining burrito with his long tongue and swallowing it in one go. “What’d I miss?”