Finger Knit cracked the blinds, just enough to see the streets below. The room was dark, and his eyes had to readjust to the outside light, again. There was nothing except some wandering pedestrians and two bug street cops, as it had been the last times he checked. He was getting impatient. He didn’t like waiting. What he really wanted was for this to be done. Suddenly, he heard the noise of an engine. He kept watching outside, but once again, the car he was looking for was not the one coming up the road. It was the wrong color *and* model, this time. That made the sixth car. It annoyed him. What was taking so long?
He had been watching for too long. His legs had started to shake under the anticipation. He checked his grip on his sub-machine gun, hoping to steady his nerves, but it didn’t work. That was another thing that was annoying him. Although he knew that what he was doing was right, he didn’t feel convinced. He once again pushed away thoughts that he was making some sort of mistake, that this would do nothing to the Changeling Civilian Government, or worse, it would invite retribution. Of course, he knew that this was the right thing to do, to fight the foreign invader… but he didn’t believe it.
He cracked the blinds again. There was still nothing, although the cops had walked off for their rounds, which was good. Fewer pursuers. He tried to take his mind off of the situation by going over the escape route. Empty the magazine, bolt out the open door, sprint across the hall to the fire exit, jump down onto the closed dumpster, and then run four blocks up the Manentale Road to the safehouse. Although he had never charted a route to get him away from something so extreme, he knew it was a good route. The problem was that he didn’t believe that, either. He noticed that he had picked up a case of the cold sweats, and wished that he had brought a jacket. He went back to standing and waiting, occasionally checking outside.
He was making sure his magazine was loaded when he heard another engine. He put the magazine back in and looked out, and it wasn’t his target once again. The constant false-positives were wearing on his nerves. He felt slightly sick from stress. Sure, none of his operations had ever had him actually *fire* a gun, but still, what had gotten into him? All he had to do was aim, squeeze the trigger, and run when the loud noises stopped. It wasn’t hard, but he kept having thoughts where it would go wrong. The gun would jam, or the target’s guards would get a bead on him, or he loses his nerve at the critical moment. He gritted his teeth and tried to stand firm.
He checked outside again. Still nothing. Suddenly, he felt an unusual chill on the back of his neck. It was like something almost metallic. He realized it was a gun to his head when he heard the twisted, sneering voice of the bug holding it. It commanded slowly and precisely, making sure every word was understood.
“Do not turn around. Drop your weapon. Lay down and put your hooves over your head.”
His mind raced to try and find a way out, any way out, but he already knew it was too late. He threw aside his submachine gun and did as he was told. As he laid on the surprisingly-soft wooden floor, the bug officer went through his typical play-cop routine.
“You are under arrest for carrying prohibited weaponry. Do not attempt to resist.”
His front hooves had freezing, heavy manacles slapped onto them. He was still struggling to fully process just how wrong this operation had gone when he was smashed in the back of the head by the bug’s gun, knocking him unconscious.
He had been lying in the rural holding cell for a while now, staring at the ceiling. It had been around an hour. Maybe more, maybe less. He had always found that time got fuzzy when he was thinking about what would happen if he was ever caught. He had always tried to avoid those thoughts, but usually failed. Now, there wasn’t really anything else to think about, besides wondering when the hoofcuffs would come off.
Right now, he had tallied up all of his illegal acts, and determined that what he was caught for was life in a military prison. If his former activity came to light, well, he didn’t know if they had punishments that harsh. He sighed, trying to blink away the tears welling up in his eyes. So many years without being able to see his friends, or his parents… it hurt to think about.
There was a knocking against the cell door. It was another bug officer. There were a lot of changeling police these days. They were taking like a bug to any other crevice, since the town’s real police had been drafted as a militia and summarily lost back during the war. Most perverse of all, the changelings usually wore refitted versions of the blue uniforms of the original police, as if they had always been a part of the ponies’ society. He idly thought to himself that, considering the scale of their early-war sabotage, maybe they had been.
This one spoke with their normal piercing tone. “There’s been a change of plans. The governor had a Special Ambassador in his retinue at the time, and she’s decided that you’re her new subject. Instead of spending the next few days with the judge, you’ll be spending it with her.” He seemed to take no joy in saying that. Knit took even less joy in hearing it.
He sat up and shouted back, “Wait, what? That can’t be right!” That was pretty much the only way this could have gotten worse. Had he known it was an option, he would have told Fifth and his assassinations to shove it!
The bug stared past him. “Yeah, she’s on her way now, apparently. Have fun, I guess.” Then, he walked off.
Knit scrabbled to his feet and frantically searched the holding cell. He had heard of what happened to the ponies who were “interrogated” by the Special Ambassadors. Whatever nightmares made them that way were something he couldn’t even stand the thought of. Unfortunately, the small, wooden room had only a bench nailed to the wall for furniture, and a bucket in the corner. The cell door was the only large non-wooden piece, and was better-attached than it looked. He had nothing on him, and if he did, he couldn’t use it through his cuffs. It was all he could do to pace the room impotently, desperately trying to imagine a way out. Any way at all would work. Unfortunately, he found none, and was starting to lose control of himself.
There was a banging on the cell door that did little to shake him out of it. He shot straight around and looked, seeing the changeling guard from before. He was standing uncomfortably, as if there was something gross nearby. Knit looked through the bars and saw what had him unsettled.
There was a second bug standing next to the guard. It looked like a female, and was extremely small, so much so that he hadn’t seen her at first. Her uniform was unusual, being all dark colors, something that not even the Changeling Army did. It was like a mix of a military officer’s uniform and a nice dress suit, and was so clean that it looked brand-new. Besides all that and the strange purple color of her ears, she was otherwise like every other changeling Knit had seen. Her blue compound eyes and her fanged mouth looked identical to those of the guard standing a short distance from her, and the rest of her body followed suit.
The guard unlocked the cell door while the small bug began talking. Her voice was not nearly so grating as a bug’s voice usually was, and it seemed very cheerful.
“Hi! My name is Spiracles, of the Special Ambassadors. I’ll be your security officer for the next few days. What’s your name?”
After he got over the surprise, he dumbly answered, “...Finger Knit?”
The metal door slid open loudly. The bug, Spiracles, paused until it was done, before motioning Knit to follow her. He tentatively did so, but the glare of the guard made him hurry. At least, he tried, as his front legs were still in cuffs. The three began to walk the halls of the police station. Spiracles was on his right, her head slightly turned to talk to him, while the guard was on his left, fiercely looking forward to avoid seeing either of them more than he absolutely had to. She continued to go through her routine.
“As your security officer, I am responsible for your health and well-being. I am also going to be asking you a few things while you are in our care. If you have any questions, concerns, or requests, do not hesitate to bring them up to me, especially if they pertain to your physical well-being. We will do our best to accommodate you. As a creature in our charge, you are entitled to food, water…”
As she droned on, Knit found it hard to keep paying attention. He felt as if hearing her voice and understanding it was somehow letting her see into his mind or something. His gaze shifted around, looking for anything to keep him from having to listen to her. The only thing he saw was when they passed the reception area, and Sheriff Big Iron met his eyes briefly. Only briefly, as the aged sheriff immediately found a piece of paper to stare intently at. It did not help Knit’s nerves.
The trio walked out the front door. The day was still very pleasant, and Celestia’s sun was radiant as always. The bugs were unfazed by it, although the guard took the opportunity to move further away from the smaller one. There was an olive military truck with a covered bed idling just a few steps away. The interrogator motioned to it, before talking some more.
“That’s the truck we’ll be taking, but there’s one last piece of business.” A magical glow came from the handle of a pistol, which floated in front of Knit, pointed off to the side. “On the way, there’s a small chance that some of your buddies try to take you. I’ll be in the back with you, and if you hop out without me telling you to…” She pulled out the magazine and tilted it towards him with a devious smile. “…There’s a bullet with your name on it.”
Knit nearly stepped back at this. However, the green magic field started to wobble the magazine around, as the interrogator continued to stare at him. He hesitantly looked closer. The sun glinted off of the golden bullet on the top of the stack, but he could see something on it. It was the text “Your name”, beautifully etched into the lead front. He looked up at her and saw her trying to hold in a laugh. As she gave up and gave in to the joke, he didn’t know what to make of it.
After a few seconds, she got control of herself. “Never gets old!” She chuckled to herself, putting her gun away again. She continued, her voice suddenly finding emotion, “Yeah, I’ve never had anyone try that, but they make me say it anyways. Now, shall we?” Then, she walked to the truck and hopped in the back. Knit looked at the guard staring at him impatiently before going to join her. It took a bit of a leap to make it into the bed, but he made it. He found a place to sit down on the flat metal, while the interrogator said to the driver, “Take us back, please.”
As the truck picked up speed, Knit looked at the tiny creature sitting across from him. In the covered bed, it was either that or look out the back, but even with that, he was trying to figure her out. How could this miniscule thing command so much fear, even from her own co-workers? How could she possibly do the things that Special Ambassadors were said to do? He didn’t like the answer.
She tried to strike up a conversation. “I looked at your file. What’s with the name? Parents spend a lot of time around griffons?”
He did not respond to her question. “I know what you’re doing.”
She seemed surprised by his defiance. She leaned in and asked, with that same devious smile, “What am I doing?”
“You’re buttering me up. That way, when you start the real torture, it’s more shocking. It won’t work. You might as well kill me now, because I won’t talk.” He felt slightly sick saying that last part.
She laughed, gesturing at him. “That’s another thing that never gets old. How did everypony get convinced that we work like that? We only torture the folks we really don’t like. You’ll be fine.”
That was not reassuring for somepony with his history. “Oh yeah? Then why are you talking to me?”
“Oh, I’ve been doing this job for… seven years? From my perspective, it’s actually kind of dull now. We’re heading to the regional enforcement center, and once we get there, it’s going to be all business, and I try to take what time I can to talk to my clients without all that baggage.”
He did not believe that for a second but couldn’t figure out what exactly was so off about it. He decided to let it sit. A big outburst over nothing would just make him tired, and he would need all the strength he could get.
She looked out the back as the truck started to leave the small town, but he could tell she was still looking at him. “Back to the question, if that’s fine with you…”
He couldn’t keep his mind on it. He was just too amped up on stress and concern and confusion. He tried to remember why his parents gave him that name, but horrifying futures crowded it out. Visions of his own body, twisted and broken, forced themselves into his mind’s-eye as it suddenly dawned on him that he was truly in for a horrible time.
His mind was briefly distracted by the voice of the interrogator. It had taken on a more soothing tone as she said, “Hey, hey. Listen. It’ll be fine. They don’t call me in for any creature that’s really in a bad place, they just kill them.”
He lashed out. “Why should I listen to you? You’re a bug! You lie!”
She tried to lay a hoof on his shoulder, but he attempted to bat it away. Even though his restrained hooves couldn’t reach, she backed off. She leaned in, and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll tell you a secret. Our interrogations are not fun. But they’re not unbearable, and in a few days, they’re over and you get back to living your life. We want you to talk to us, not be hurt forever.”
“I’ll… I’ll believe it when I see it!”
“Just tell me if you think I can help out.” Her voice was understanding, almost sad.
Knit leaned back as best he could in the truck’s bed, and tried to work through his future. The horrors of military prison, the years he would spend there, unable to talk to his loved ones or even let them know he was alive, the unknowns of how long he would even have, it drowned out the world with despair.
The truck took the newly-built Vraaksstrasse Road through the northern forest, and then over some plains, before reaching the regional capital of Hoofington. As it snaked its way through the streets, which had more traffic than Knit had ever seen, he began to come out of his state. Spiracles looked at him, and asked, “You alright?”
He didn’t respond.
She sighed and kept waiting.
Eventually, the truck pulled into a parking lot, and then a parking space around back. “We’re here.” Spiracles said, before hopping out. She turned and looked back at him, before adding, “That means you, too.” Knit took a precious second to keep sitting there before he stood up and followed her.
The regional enforcement center was a large concrete block in the high-rises area of Hoofington. The spartan decorations and sharp corners were accentuated by being next to much, much nicer buildings made of plaster and glass. The lot itself was sparsely populated, save for a number of other covered transports carrying boxes, with bugs occasionally coming by and hauling them inside. A few of the items were unboxed, things like furniture, tins of food, and an ornate phonograph.
Spiracles followed his eyes. “We’re getting dug-in here, since the resistance in this region is so much stronger than the higher-ups thought. It’s gotten so bad that one of the locals tried to kill the governor. Can you believe it?” With that last bit, she lightly smacked him in the leg while staring him dead in the eyes.
They entered the “Regional Enforcement Center” through the glass-steel doors. The interior was all concrete and tile. Spiracles waved her badge to a pony behind the reinforced front desk, and they were in turn waved through a heavy steel airlock after being tossed a set of keys. They quickly reached the main cell block, which only had around a dozen basic single-pony cells, six on either side. Spiracles took out the key to a random one, opened the bar door, and said, “This one’s yours. There will be meals later. Are there any problems?”
Knit could see a few. His new cell managed to be both empty and claustrophobic, due to the sparse arrangements. It was like the holding cell in the police station, but instead of dark wood, it was one big piece of concrete, from the floor to the ceiling. There was at least indoor plumbing, and the bed was nicer (but still uncomfortable). Of course, that was all typical jail stuff, so he suspected that he couldn’t get it changed. He replied, “No, it’s fine.”
“Good. Get settled in. I’ll be by to talk to you later.”
He entered the cramped space and asked her, “Hey, when do the cuffs come off?”
She looked at him for a while. Eventually, she responded, “When someone has the time to head back to the station and pick up the keys. Uh, sorry.” Then, she walked away.
Knit took a closer look around his new room. Oddly enough, there was a hole in the far wall, not two hooves wide. He thought about expanding it, but although the concrete was missing, there was still heavy rebar blocking him. It looked like it opened into a maintenance tunnel of some sort. He was the only prisoner in the block.
He got onto the bed to escape the icy floor, but soon discovered that it was the entire cell block that was too cold. He crawled under the thin blanket, a difficulty due to his hooves being chained together. It didn’t help as much as he hoped. It only warmed him enough that the cold was no longer a distraction from his own fear. At least he had more time to work on his cover story.
Knit didn’t know how much time had passed, as there were no windows or clocks, but he was forced out of his wondering by a cacophonous banging on the cell door. It was the baton of another bug, one which was larger than an average pony, and must have been absolutely massive by changeling standards. There was a scar across one eye, which went into the eye itself and blackened a line of sub-eyes. It wore a distinctly Changeling Army uniform, despite being a guard. Its voice grated against Knit’s ears as it almost shouted, “Hey, Spiracles wants you. Get up.”
Knit stood up slowly, his joints stuck from cold and stillness, as the bug opened the door. He took a second to stretch out, but the bug’s baton came down loudly on the open door again, startling him into moving faster. He shuffled out of the cell and into the hall, before being shoved forcefully by the bug to get him to move faster. The two went down the drab, concrete hall and around the corner to another drab, concrete room.
The guard motioned him inside, nearly pushing him in, and shut the heavy door behind him. The room was small and lit by a bright incandescent lightbulb that buzzed incessantly, bathing the whole room in a stronger blueish-white than the rest of the facility. The only furniture was a large table pushed up against the left wall, and a sitting pillow on its corner, in the center of the room. On the pillow was Spiracles, still in her uniform. She said, “Please, take a seat on the grate over there,” and he did. The cast-iron grid was cold and had hard edges, and put him in the corner of the room between the table and two featureless walls.
Once he was settled down as best as he could be, Spiracles took out a manilla folder full of papers and started reading from it. “Let’s start with some basic questions,” she said dryly. “What’s your name?”
“Finger Knit.”
“How old are you?”
“25.”
“What is your occupation?”
Knit had never been much of a liar, but there was no time like the present to learn. Regardless, he just wanted to give her a reason to say he acted alone. “Gunsmithing.”
Spiracles lowered the folder slightly and glared at him. “Yeah, no. Next question. What are the names of your parents?”
His heart skipped a beat. “Why do you want to know?”
She imitated rolling her eyes, and responded, “Because we need to tell them where you are.”
“No. You leave them out of this.”
She growled. “Oh, what’s wrong?”
Knit began to stand up while shouting, “Don’t you dare bring them into-”
Spiracles was unfazed as she firmly said back, “Sit down or I’m calling the guard.”
He slowly sat back down. He chastised himself for losing his temper so easily.
“Now then. What are the names of your parents?”
He took his sweet time responding. She was motioning for him to say something, anything, when he finally said, “My mother is named Daily Rag and my father is named Duck Weaver.”
She sighed. “Damnit, this will go a lot faster if you tell the truth.”
“Now why’d you ask me if you weren’t going to believe my answer?” It was annoying to always be second-guessed, even when he was being wrong intentionally.
“That was an obvious lie, and you know it. So, what are your parent’s real names?”
He did know it, but he still didn’t feel right about telling her his parent’s names. The fact that it had blown up in his face didn’t mean that his side activities were something for them to worry about. He suddenly became aware of a buzzing in his ear, which accompanied a strange burning feeling near his upper spine. The burning spread until it took over the entire back half of his head. He scratched at it, but when he finally figured out a way to reach it, he found that it was inside of his head, not outside. What was it?
He snapped back to reality. Spiracles was staring at him, the same way you would stare at a child who said one insult too many and just got beaten senseless on the playground. “What are you looking at?” He said.
Her voice became soft again. “I’ve seen a lot of ponies look exactly like you do right now. That… hotness you feel, in your head? It’s shame.”
He was about to stand up and tell her off for pretending she knew what he was feeling, but then he remembered that the guard was just outside. It suddenly struck him that she was a changeling, and always knew what he was feeling. He pounded the table impotently, and said “What am I feeling shameful about, then? Huh?”
She took a second to collect her thoughts and replied, “Well, it looks like you’re realizing that the reason you don’t want us to talk to your parents is because you know that they wouldn’t approve of what you’ve been doing.”
He shot back. “Oh yeah? If you know me so well, then what’s wrong with what I’ve been doing?”
Spiracles turned around to face the metal door, and then turned back to him, although he could tell she was still looking directly at him the whole time. His eyes drifted away from her face, but were pushed back by the dull, grey walls that he was up against whenever he couldn’t see her. If he didn’t try to look at anything, there was the burning in his mind, and he could swear that this room was even colder than his cell.
Spiracles spoke again, saying, “Now that you realize what’s happened, we’d like to let your parents know that you’re okay.”
Trying to keep himself composed, he responded, “Don’t you already know who my family is?”
“Probably, but we can confirm it easily by asking you.”
He sighed. He really had no excuse to not tell her now. “My parents are Flying Carpet and Spinning Loom. They work at the weavers’ on the east side.”
“Thank you.” She paused to pick her Manila folder back up and flip through it. In a monotone voice, she continued. “Next question: Do you know what crimes you have been accused of committing to be placed in our care?”
Knit was learning to hate these questions. “How would I know that? Nopony’s told me yet.”
“We want to make sure that you know. Could you list the charges you believe you have been accused of? In case you were wondering, there’s five”
It was not lost on him that this was an odd way of making sure that he knew something. He put it aside for later to figure out why they were doing it this way, as he had no idea right now. If it was some sort of confession, then there was already one charge he was definitely going to be found guilty on. “I’m here for possessing an illegal firearm, and nothing else. Hey, wait, five?” He could only think of three.
She wrotely listed them off. “Possession of illegal weapons, conspiracy to assassinate, trespassing, being a member of a resistance movement, and sabotage of law enforcement vehicles in the town of Tuckyton.”
Knit froze. That last one was actually something he did. But that was three months ago! How did they know? And she definitely saw him react to it. Was it just a test? It was pretty vague, maybe it was a guess. He looked at her. Her face was stony, but she was definitely watching him. The best way out was to deflect, right?
“Trespassing? Isn’t that, uh... out of place?”
“Well, it’s one of the crimes you’ve been accused of, so it’s on the list. What do you make of that?”
She didn’t see it. That was hard to believe, but he would take it. “It doesn’t make sense to me. When was I trespassing?”
She flipped around her folder. “Well, according to this, there were two times. First one, that’s part of the charge of sabotage, since the car was in the station at the time it was damaged. The other time was the one that got you here. The shopkeeper was adamant that he never let anyone with your description onto the second floor. Anyways, that’s not going to really factor into anything, but for technicality reasons...”
They knew. That was too specific. Still, at least they hadn’t brought in any of the other illegal activities he had done, and he couldn’t imagine why they wouldn’t do that unless they didn’t know.
Spiracles continued. “Next question. Did you commit that crime? Let’s say, the one of possession of an illegal weapon.”
“Why would I say yes?”
“Admitting to a crime is taken as a sign of regret by the courts. That usually gives you a lighter sentence, since you’re less likely to do it again.”
“Can’t you changelings feel regret?”
She stared at him. “Care to word that in a less insulting way?”
He thought for a second. “No.”
She growled. “Right. Yes, we can feel regret in others, but we can’t tell between the regret of doing something wrong and the regret of being caught. Naturally, the former tends to stick a lot better, since everyone feels regret at being caught. Now, what is your answer?”
“Well, uh… I don’t think I can really argue that it wasn’t mine, was it? Yeah, I had an illegal weapon.”
She leans back and breathes out. “That’s probably enough for today. What do you think?”
“Fine by me,” he replied. He didn’t want to accidentally say something incriminating. His arrest was more than enough of that. He stood up slowly, and she stood up with him.
She spoke out again. “Actually, there’s one more thing. Remember how I told you that the shopkeeper said that he didn’t let you be in his building?”
She had to remind him of where he was going just one more time, didn’t she? “Why are you telling me this?”
She paused, as if she didn’t want to say what she was about to say. “I won’t claim I know what exactly you two did, but you should consider what it means that he said that. It will really make you look a lot more malicious in court.”
“Yeah, thanks for telling me.” He said sarcastically as he walked up to the door. Spiracles knocked on it, and there was a series of loud clicks as the guard unlocked it. It swung open slowly, and he shuffled out. The guard was just as mean as he was when he went in. As soon as the door closed, he started pushing Knit down the hall, making him move as fast as he could. He already almost missed being interrogated. There was one silver lining to dealing with the guard, though, and that was that his head was no longer burning.
When he got back to his cell, that was when he realized his mistake. There was little to do except sit and wait under the covers. He eventually opted to just sit propped up against the wall and watch for anything interesting. The chill was uncomfortable, but better than nothing in terms of feeling.
What he saw was, truly, very little. The guard made a round around the hall outside once every fifteen minutes, and then went back to sitting on a pad in the far corner. Eventually, he left, and returned with a second prisoner, a blue unicorn who Knit had never seen before. The unicorn was placed in the cell as far away from Knit as possible, and she soon discovered that she also had nothing to entertain herself with.
Knit walked to the edge of his cell and shouted across, “Hey! Who are you?”
She got up and was about to respond when the guard appeared at his cell door. He banged against it loudly, creating a shocking racket, while screaming, “NO TALKING! YOU GOT THAT?” Knit jumped back, and as the surprise faded, he saw the unicorn moving back to her bed. He went back to sitting and waiting for something to happen.
Nothing did happen, save for the most flavorless meal he had ever eaten. All he was left with was his own thoughts. He tried to avoid thinking about what Spiracles had told him to, and what she said to him, because he knew that she was trying to get into his head. She was trying to make him doubt himself. She wanted him to confess to his crimes, and to turn in his compatriots in the resistance. He may confess to his own acts, but he had no doubt in his mind that he would never turn in his fellows.
He was invigorated by his newfound stance, so he continued to posture to himself. His job now was to cover for his allies. To confuse the occupiers, and hinder them. They knew more than they were letting on, but so did he. They would be confounded every way he knew how. Nothing was off the table. After all, they were the oppressors of his town, and his entire country, and he was the one fighting against them. He had the moral grounds to do everything he had done and what he had tried to do. In fact, it was his imperative to do it, for his culture, for his town, and for his sister. He set out to craft a plan.
The result was simple, but flexible. He would say as little as possible, but if she ever implied that he did something, he would nudge her in that direction. He would maintain this for as long as he could. Hopefully, then they would either believe him, or see the strength of his conviction and give up.
The first challenge to his idea was that evening, when the lights simply went out to signal night. He crawled onto his bed and under the sheets, and found it still chillier than he liked. In spite of the rough accommodations, it was easy to fall asleep after the day’s rigors until he heard something. It rose and fell in intensity with seemingly no pattern, sometimes dropping out altogether. It was loud, but far away. Not far, no, under the floor. He leaned off of the bed and put his ear to the concrete slab. It was screaming, coming from a pony underneath him.
He pounded on the floor and shouted, “Hey,what’s going on down there?” But it only served to wake up the guard, who stormed up.
“Quiet, you!” The guard shouted into his cell in his usual offensive manner.
“Don’t you hear that? Somepony’s in trouble!” He shouted back.
“Yeah, I hear it, and it will be you down there if you don’t cooperate and go to sleep!”
By now the screaming had been replaced with sobbing. Knit silently crawled back into bed. He could still faintly hear it, but could just barely block it out. He began to feel the heat of shame on his head once more, and realized that it could have been him down there. Nopony wanted that to happen to him.
He didn’t know how long it continued for, but it was gone when he woke up.
The next morning, the situation was the same as it was the day before. At least, he assumed that it was morning. The lights had turned back on and woke him up, which was his real clock. Regardless, he was back to sitting on the floor and waiting for something to happen. This time, the prisoner who was brought in was another earth pony. He was put a few cells down, on Knit’s side of the room, so the two couldn’t have talked even if they wanted to.
He checked on the hole in the wall again. Unfortunately, there was no color on the other side, just another light grey hallway. Even the rebar was perfectly grey and unrusted. He searched for quite a while, but it really was just a featureless, dull room. He was getting tired of the only color he could see being himself and the unicorn, who was lying under the sheets. She didn’t even have a hole in the wall to look through… or a magic suppressor ring?
He quickly put an end to that train of thought as he heard the guard walking up to his cell. He watched the guard bang on the bars once again with his baton. Metal clashed with metal, and it was not less frightening when Knit had seen him walk up and prepare to do it. “Celestia, I’m right here! You don’t need to do that!”
The guard cracked a brief smile, before resuming his usual gruff demeanor. “I know. Boss wants you again.”
Knit stood up as the guard unlocked the door. His shackles were starting to chafe, they had been on for so long. “Hey, when are these coming off?” He asked, as he walked out.
The guard just laughed, before pushing him towards the interrogation room. His joints popped from inactivity, and he could feel his muscles coming back to life after hours of sitting still. They took the same path as yesterday before arriving at the same room. A few steps short of the door, Knit’s chains were pulled out from underneath him. He tried to stand up, but he was not entirely recovered from sitting for so long, and he was still not used to moving in his cuffs. “Get up!” The guard hissed at him.
“You’re the one wh-” Knit attempted to complain, but took a black hoof to the stomach, culling his attempt to stand back up. A very peculiar pain took over one side of his chest.
“Don’t talk back to me, scum! Now get up!”
He tried to get back on his hooves, but took too long for the guard’s liking, and was hit again in the same place on the other side. He keeled over and attempted to hold the injured places, suppressing a groan in case the guard took that as an excuse, too.
Before things could get any worse, there was a now-familiar voice coming down the hall. “What in the queen’s name are you doing!? Do I need to call Creature Resources again?” It was Spiracles, looking out from the interrogation room at the guard standing over the poor pony.
The pair paused. The guard stepped away from him and grumbled, “No, ma’am,” although Knit could see that his muscles were tight with indignance. Knit took his time standing up while he had a reprieve, and stumbled hurriedly into the interrogation room. Spiracles closed the door behind him, and they resumed their seats from yesterday, with him on the grate in the corner and her in the center. The instant he was sat down, he angrily asked, “What’s his problem?”
It surprised him that he got an answer, as Spiracles replied through gritted teeth, “I. Wish. I. Knew. Ever since the oh-so-wise home office in Vesalipolis gave him to us, he hasn’t been able to go a whole month without doing something violent and stupid. He is an insubordinate thug, and nothing I do makes them take him back because they don’t want him either. I swear, if all of the soldiers were like him, then…” She stopped herself, although she really looked like she wanted to continue.
“Why’d they even give him to you in the first place? He seems like the opposite of what your whole organization does!”
She leaned in, her hoof pointed with purpose. “I’ll tell you what I think. He was a hoofslogger in the war, and did something really heinous. But one of his relatives is a big shot, so he can’t go to military prison, he has to be jumped two chambers over to a civilian office like us, to hide until the military's internal investigators stop caring. I bet he’s not the only one. Get this,” she said with a confidential tone, “Most of the creatures who come to me? Their problem with us started during the military occupation. They hate our advisors and leaders and such showing up because the last changelings who came through blew up the granary as a joke or something.”
Knit remembered when his hometown was first taken by the bugs. A thousand Equestrian soldiers marched through the streets that morning, and although they were clearly beleaguered, the town was optimistic about the defense against the chitinous menace. Then, the Equestrian soldiers, rifles glinting and equipment clanking, kept up the march until they were out of town and over the horizon, with their commanding officer citing “indefensible position”. That evening, a horde of bugs in grey uniforms marched through town similarly, but these ones left many of their number behind. For the next six months...
“Yeah. That’s how they acted here, too. They were unbearable! They invented warrants so that they could break into our houses and seize whatever they wanted. You couldn’t go outside without risking one of them trying to assault you over some law. Tuckyton even had public executions!”
“Damnit! Just once I’d like my job to be something other than cleaning up their mess.” Spiracles sighed.
The two sat there, being angry, for a while. The blows the guard put in Knit’s chest were still easily felt, but were slowly receding. Eventually, she said, “The new Civilian Government has done a good job of keeping that behavior down, right?”
Knit thought back to those days. “They’ve been better. Not as good as things were before the war, but better.” He suddenly began to feel the familiar heat of shame in the back of his mind, along with the buzzing in his ears. Why was he so regretful about being part of the resistance? He was defending his homeland from foreign invaders. Was it suddenly a bad thing just because they weren’t the worst possible tyrants anymore?
“That’s good. I meet a lot of important creatures in the civilian government. Most of them try really hard, they just don’t alway succeed.” She looked as if she was staring off into the distance, although she was clearly still looking at him. “But let’s get down to business. The next charge is conspiracy to assassinate. Let’s talk about that.”
“What’s there to talk about? I didn-”
She cut him off. “Hold on, you were doing something with a scrap-metal submachine gun.”
Now was the time for some deception. He let out a theatrical sigh, and said, “What I was doing was waiting for some police to walk by so that I could ambush them.” It wouldn’t get him a more lenient sentence, but it would make it less likely that he had been acting on outside information.
“That’s a lie,” she responded flatly. “The officers who arrested you were in your field of fire and you didn’t do anything. What were you actually waiting for?”
Well, that didn’t work. “Can I skip this question?”
“It’s up to you. Just remember that the courts will assume the worst if they don’t have any defense from you. The easier you make this on them, the easier it will be on yourself.”
A thought occurred to him. It was a miracle that it did, since it was almost hard to think straight through the cold air, and the cold metal he was sitting on. “Why are you doing this?”
“Do you mean this job, or talking to you in particular?” She asked, confused.
“The last one. You make it sound like you can send me into the courthouse to get convicted at any time. Why do you want a confession?”
She relaxed a bit. “Long stays in jail tend to annoy creatures who were next to you. If we can shorten it, it’s easier for everyone.”
He was going to say that that was too altruistic of them, but right as he opened his mouth, she continued talking. “If you want a pragmatic reason, just assume that feeding and housing you costs money and they don’t want to do it for longer than they have to. Does that make sense?”
That didn’t sit right with him, but he couldn’t figure out why. “Yeah, I guess.”
She replied, “Good. The other advantage is that, because creatures who confess are less likely to reoffend, we’ll have to worry about you less. Trust me, fewer ponies shooting at our officials is really good.” She rhetorically said to nobody in particular, “Come on, you think the government’s going to let go of this land for anything less than being forced to in a second war? Who in their right mind wants that?” She chuckled to herself.
That brought the same burning and ringing that Knit had been feeling ever since he got captured, and stronger than ever before. The problem was that she was right. He had front-row experience with the destruction of war, and was even a little thankful that it only affected him so little. He had seen what it did to some of his less-fortunate friends. As he struggled to keep his composure, he wondered why he had never felt this way before when he had thought of this. It had always just been “the right thing to do”, to show the bugs that they’ll never crush the Equestrian spirit. Now, though…
The rumors about the Special Ambassadors were plenty. Their presence was unavoidable, but their results were unquantifiable. The story went that they were the reason that ponies with resistance contacts occasionally went missing - and returned as shameless double agents, days or weeks later. The suggested reasons for this was that it was intense torture, or magical brainwashing, or it was all just a lie designed to keep potential resistance recruits scared. Now that he was here, he was starting to realize that there might be some truth to what the rumors said. There was something off about her, and he could feel her putting his mind on strings. There was foul play going on, he was sure of it. He would figure out her tricks, though, and figure out a way to defend against them. He had to, for his sister.
He didn’t say anything for a while as he worked through that. She stepped in to fill the silence. “Listen. I don’t think that you’re a bad pony. I think that you had one of us do something bad, and you tried to do something back, but you fell in with a bad crowd.”
“But I-”
“One second, I’m not done yet. Your resistance friends haven’t done you a lot of good, I bet. You’re looking at twenty-five years to life in a military prison. Looking at where you’ve ended up after doing their dirty work, you should consider whether you want to keep covering for them.”
“...I know what you’re doing.”
“Maybe.”
“It won't-”
“Yeah, it will.”
He was thoroughly tired of being interrupted. “Can we end this session? I want to go back to staring at a wall.”
“If you want.” She stood up and knocked on the door. The guard opened it, and Knit walked out after him. As the pair went back to his cell, Spiracles shouted after them, “I don’t want a misplaced hair on his head, you hear me?”
Sure enough, Knit returned to his cell unmolested, although the guard seemed regretful about it. As the door screamed shut, he crawled under his covers, and wished that his front hooves could be free again. He was freezing, and annoyed, and bored. The only thing to think about was what she said, but he knew he wouldn’t like where that took him. Even if they had made a bad call this time, the resistance members were his allies, and he wouldn’t lose faith in them just because they put him in this cold, miserable...
He tried to push out those thoughts with more comforting ones, but they only reminded him of what he had lost. He would likely never see his parents again, and they would lose their other child. His friends were in the same situation. This can not have been a good- he didn’t want to think about that, since that would be the changelings winning.
He remembered when he didn’t have to worry that he would realize his enemies were right. It was more of them getting into his head. Some of his co-workers had been ambivalent on the occupation, and he recalled being shocked at how little they cared about their side being correct. He briefly considered if that was one of the ways the changelings fought against the resistance, but realized that that was another of their mental traps, and avoided it. He had to find something to do other than think.
The only spot of color in his entire view, save for his own coat and the guard’s blue eyes, was the unicorn in the cell across the hall. From his shelter under the sheets, he looked at her as best he could from such distance, and imagined what she had done to get in here. It was just entertainment, but it was better than nothing.
He got the evening meal as her mythos rose and fell in his mind. At one time, she was some innocent mare pulled off the street by mistake, who could only hope that the error was realized soon. At another time, she was a resistance fighter from another town, in the same predicament as him, but fighting against it in her own way. His personal favorite was thinking of her as a veteran of the war, who was the leader of his own branch of the resistance and was here to prepare to rescue him, although that was the least likely. Every new story had a new emotion, and was interesting because it had a new reason for why her horn was uncapped, like the changelings underestimating her, or they just didn’t have the suppressor rings.
It was a good thing, too, since the guard was particularly inactive today, and that was the only other thing to look at. He realized that, remarkably, the guard hadn’t left the room for more than an hour ever since he had arrived. If any changeling could subsist entirely on their own malice, it was him, but still.
Eventually, the lights went out, and he started trying to go to sleep. It was a struggle, as today had not been as physically or emotionally challenging as yesterday, and he was assaulted by the same noises as the last night, but after hours of waiting, it finally happened.
Not for long, though. He was woken up by something, like a nightmare, and felt like he had made a terrible mistake. It was nearly pitch-black in the cell block now, and he could still hear the pained noises coming from beneath his cell. His mind immediately took it to be that his mistake was trying to murder the governor. He didn’t know why, that was just the first thing that popped up. As the heat flooded into his mind again, he tried everything he could to block it out, but it all failed. He felt simply terrible for it, there was no way around it. He forced his head onto the strange thing that was supposed to be a pillow, and tried not to cry.
With his eyes wide open, however, he noticed something strange. The hole in his wall was glowing. It pulsated a sickly, faint green through the rebar grid. With there being nothing else he wanted to do even a little bit, he got out of his cot and shuffled over. The second his hooves hit the concrete, it fizzled out briefly, before dying down. There was a scuttling behind the wall, and the block was silent once again. He couldn’t tell if a chill went down his spine, or it was another draft.
He crawled back under his sheets in order to figure out what to make of it. He couldn’t figure it out. Was that a spy? Had they been spying on him all along? Were they using some sort of mind-reading spell? If they could read his mind, then why did they need to talk to him about his mistakes?
That was when he figured out what the changeling had been doing, as his thoughts wandered back to the governor. As images flashed in his mind of the potential family of that strange creature, he felt like his face was both tight and numb at the same time, and his heart felt as if it did not want to be in his chest. In other words, it was what shame normally felt like. No intense burning, no annoying buzzing in his ears, just regret. Those things had somehow planted those thoughts inside of him.
Terror gripped his heart. If that was something that they could do, then there was no hope. No matter what he did, they would reach into his being and make him feel what they wanted, think what they wanted, and eventually do what they wanted. They were likely just going through a routine to try and keep him from noticing that he was behaving oddly. He looked back on his environment. Where did the mind games start? Where did they end? That was how they got ponies. The way forward was clear, then, and it was something that he hated with every fiber of his being.
The lights came on the next morning, or at least it was probably morning. Knit was standing at the bars to his cell, having been unable to go back to sleep. The guard was resting on his seat in the corner. The other prisoners were staying in bed to avoid the cold. In his long fear-induced wakefulness, Knit had had some thoughts about them. He had had some thoughts about a lot of things.
He called out, “Hey, guard!”
The guard jumped awake, and stormed over to him. He tried to roar, “What do you want?” but he was still a bit groggy.
“I want to talk to Spiracles.”
“And what makes you think you can just tell her to bother with you, whelp?”
“Because I’ll tell the other prisoner why you only need to eat one meal a day, what’s it to you?”
The guard imitated cocking his eyebrow smugly. “Which ‘other prisoner’? There are two.”
“Well, the unicorn’s one of your plants, so that leaves the other one.”
The guard turned around to look at it sitting in its bed, before laughing heartily. “Yeah, she’ll want to talk to you! Hold on, I’ll go get her.”
He left the room. After a few minutes, he returned, unlocked the cell door, and took Knit to the interrogation room for the final time. There was no shoving or assault, just the two of them walking there, although Knit’s cuffs rattled fiercely as usual.
When he entered the room, and the heavy steel door closed behind them, he took his spot in the corner. Not long after, Spiracles entered the room also, and took her seat in the center. She yawned, and said, “Sorry, you called me before I could get my morning coffee. I’ve got the long and short of what happened, so I’m guessing I know what you're here for.”
Knit’s mouth did not want to say it, but he forced it through anyways. “What do I need to do to go to jail and leave here?”
She smiled, although Knit believed he saw a delay. “It’s up to me when exactly you move on to that part. You sure do look done with all this, so I’m guessing that I’ll be filing that paperwork later.”
“That’s it, then? I ask for it?”
“Well, if you don’t have any other questions.” She leaned in. “Now we negotiate terms.”
He sat there, unmoving, as he said, “I do have one question.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“How many of my thoughts are my own?”
She made a horrendous noise, somewhere between the sound of a changeling talking and the sound of a pony dying from pneumonia. It was a laugh. He stared at her blankly until she was able to get it under control enough to reply, “A magician never reveals her secrets, silly!”
He was not in a place to feel strongly about anything. “Right. Let’s just make a deal already.”
She put her hoof out for emphasis. “Here’s my offer: Life in military prison, option of parole in twenty years. Start giving me things and I might intercede on your behalf to make it easier.”
He understood where she was going with this. “How much can you intercede? Ten years, medium security, promise of no more messing with my mind, I give you the resistance contact who gave me the order to try and kill the governor.”
She smirked. “Tempting, but I don’t like that. Ten years, high security, with the ability to send and receive letters granted after three, no mind-messing, but you tell me every illegal thing you did for the resistance.”
“Five years, medium security, ability to send and receive letters granted after three, no messing, and I tell you everything about the resistance that I know… with one extra piece. I want a hoof-written note from a Queendom high officer apologizing for the war that I can take with me.”
“What do you want the note to say?”
“I want to hear that they’re sorry for the war that killed my sister. If I’m going to sell the resistance out, I want to feel like I’m not doing it to heartless monsters.”
She stretched her hoof out to his. “I can do that. You have a deal, unless we find your information faulty.” He took her hoof, and they shook over the table. As she leaned back, she said, “Prepare to copy this all down, F.”
A changeling’s voice came from beneath the grate Knit was sitting on, saying, “You got it, ma’am,” followed by a rustling. Knit was unsurprised, but he was disappointed that his theory was right. Spiracles also pulled out her manilla folder, with a pen.
She looked at him, with a simulated warmness. “Could you start at the beginning? How did you get into contact with the resistance?”
Knit steeled himself. He had a long day ahead. “My first meeting was with one of my old friends, who called me…”
As the earth pony walked out of the room, “F” realized that Spiracles would probably be sour for the rest of the day. She always was whenever one of these things caught on to her. Something awful stirred inside him, and he was suddenly very uncomfortable. Her “failing” still involved the subject saying everything about everyone out of self-induced fear. To make matters worse, she did it with little more than a thermostat, a phonograph, a changeling who could cause headaches, and three creatures pretending to be the same guard. He briefly wondered if she had ever pulled a similar routine on her teammates, but she would never do such a thing, right?