Bit brought the injured pony back with her to the tower.
It wasn't easy to make the trip—even skirting the edge of the square brought stares and shouts of confusion and fear. Ponies scattered around them, shouting about “death machines”. Before her eyes, whole sections of the temporary town collapsed, as ponies trampled over and around each other to escape from within.
She thought about leaving Pathfinder there, so that his own ponies could find him. Whatever sickness he had contracted would be best treated by a doctor. The kindest thing she could do was leave him to someone else. But if their doctors were anything like their engineers, Bit had a decent idea of Pathfinder's odds of survival, and they weren't good.
So the "death machines" carried his body cradled between three of their legs, obeying her instruction without objection. She had to take the trip slowly, considering how damaged both of them were—but it was probably faster than she could manage with so much weight.
Bit was no doctor, but that didn't make her clueless. She had a decent guess for what was happening to him.
A few ponies had retreated to the tower at the shouts of “death machines,” and so there was a small crowd standing before her as she approached. They watched her come, eyes filling with despair.
"The wizard will save us!" a few shouted, banging desperately against the front door. "Any moment, she'll come down to help!"
"Please get out of the way," she said, her voice calm. "A pony in your group has become sick. I must have the tools of the tower to help him."
They barely seemed to hear her. But a few did, tugging the other ones out of the way. Bit recognized the plump mare they'd seen earlier that day as one of these, dragging ponies to the side and away from the door. She stopped a little way in front of Bit, glaring at her.
"Ponies saw you go into the palace. Nothing comes out of there that goes in, so they say. Pathfinder's ten times the pony you'll ever be, and you let him go to his death. Didn't you?"
"Yes. He insisted on accompanying me."
Ponies retreated from the doors, dodging as far away from the automatons as they could. A few actually clambered over the icy walls, rather than pass through the gate. Not the mare, though.
"Why'd you kill him, then? Only showed you nothing but kindness, he did. Convinced the Union you was good and all. This is how you pay him back?"
Bit fidgeted in her bag, removing the security tag, and scanning it against the door. It clicked, then swung inward. Without prompting, the automatons carried him through the opening. "He is not dead yet," she said. "He did tell me the palace was dangerous, but at the time I believed it was a product of security measures left by evil King Zircon. I should have realized that your revolution would have destroyed any active countermeasure, and what remained was more insidious."
The mare backed away from her, eyeing the opening. "You're trying to talk your way around this? It'll get out. Ponies saw, ponies talk. The Union ain't what she was, but we'll rise up. We'll fight like our grandparents, see if we don't."
She saw the flames flickering through the windows, heard their chants again. They screamed about breaking chains, of toppling monarchs. They surrounded her tower, and filled Crimson's face with fear.
"I'm going to try and save him," she said, pleading. "I believe Pathfinder is suffering from acute radiation sickness. There is a course of treatment, and now that I have power I have access to the tower's library computer. If I am quick, I will prevent his death. But every moment I waste explaining worsens his chances."
She turned her back on the furious pony, letting the security doors seal behind her. The loyal automatons were already halfway up the stairs by then, on their way to the tower infirmary as she'd instructed.
"Good work," she told them, sliding past them up the stairs. She flicked on the lights, clearing away a sheet from stiff sterile wraps. They deposited Pathfinder on his back, as gently as a feather pillow.
He looked up, wiping at the frozen vomit around his mouth. "I don't... what happened... where are we?" He tried to sit up, but the effort was too great, and he only flopped back to the bed. "It's so clean."
"The infirmary," she answered, taking a few steps away from the bed. She called up the library computer, entering his symptoms with a few rapid strokes from her hooves. "The artifabrians often performed unsanctioned experiments here. In order to prevent official notice, they treated their own injuries with doctors sworn to secrecy. The facilities are just as good as anything in Crown Medical."
He laughed, the sound dissolving into something between a cough and a choke. "The home of medical miracles? Are the stories true, Bit? Could they make blind ponies see? Could they give back their limbs, and cure any disease?"
"Some of those are true," she said flatly. "Not any disease, though. My master was on the way to curing every disease. But he—he vanished before he could finish."
A crystal printer hummed quietly in the corner of the room, and a roll slid out a slot into the station beside her. "Here we go: your medicine regimen. You're going to be fine, Pathfinder."
He coughed again, eyes turning towards her. There was something cloudy in them that hadn't been there before. "What am I suffering, Bit? It feels... like poison. Hard to think, hard to breathe."
"ARS. I believe the emergency fission reactor in the palace's basement may've suffered a critical containment failure. The palace crystal contained the radiation all these years, and so few openings limited the spread of contaminated particles," she answered, approaching him with the little roll of fragile paper.
By rote she opened the cupboard, selecting an empty pneumatic capsule from the stack and settling the instructions inside. "This will send your medical information to Crown Medical. The pharmacist will send back your medication in a few minutes, and treatment can begin."
She took the tube in her mouth, settling it into the waiting pipe on the side of the room. She sealed the door, pressed the button, and nothing happened.
"I don't know what ARS is," he muttered. "But earth ponies... we're stronger than other tribes, right? We just... have to wait it out. I'll get better on my own."
Bit pressed the send button a few more times, so hard that the thin shell cracked under the force of her hoof. "I don't understand. This line goes directly to the hospital pharmacy. Delivering medication in a timely manner is one of their foremost responsibilities."
"They're gone, Bit." Pathfinder slumped back in his chair, closing his eyes. "The whole world you came from is gone. The ponies who joined the revolution all died too. All those amazing things ponies could do... that's gone. We can't waste time on that when there isn't enough food."
Bit walked back to the screen, reading over the rest of what it contained. "You will not survive without them," she said. "You've experienced lack of coordination and nausea immediately after exposure. That indicates an extremely severe case. Based on the time of exposure and your first symptoms, you are unlikely to survive fourteen days.
"But these drugs can treat you! We need to prevent the destruction of..." She squinted. "Marrow tissue, and your GI. We have approximately six hours to administer the first dose, or your odds of survival drop to one in ten. You won't get better."
Pathfinder laughed again, and somehow managed to focus on her. "I've lived through things ponies thought would kill me before, Bit. If I can last through a Zircon winter without a home, I can... survive this. I'll have to. Those drugs ran out a long time ago."
There was no mistaking the truth of what he said. She'd seen what happened to Zircon. The ponies living in it now had forgotten what made it work—if they couldn't fix its power plants, they certainly couldn't manufacture a drug only needed in case of rare disasters. Everypony who goes into the palace dies.
"There are emergency supplies in the vaults below," Bit continued. "Not medication, but... food. There's water in the cistern I use to make cleaning solution. I will provide for you."
"Good." He sat up, settling his back against the padded cushions and meeting her eyes. "That's all I need. Somewhere warm, something to drink. I could use a little now, actually."
Bit hurried out to oblige, though she hesitated in the landing outside. The automatons waited there, sharpened limbs facing the stairs as though preparing for an attack. Of course there hadn't been any.
"I will do something about both of you," she said. "Please remain here, and avoid moving as much as possible. If you shatter, I won't be able to fix you. I would like to do it now, but Pathfinder's case is more urgent. He has only a few weeks, following which he will suffer an agonizing death if I do not assist him."
"I can hear you," came his voice from the open door. "Have a little more faith, Bit. I'll be fine."
"He will not be fine," Bit said simply. "Unless I find a way to treat him." The automatons obeyed her instructions, remaining on the stairs as she passed down into the basement. She found a clean metal bucket to fill with water, her mind already starting to spin.
The hospital didn't have the drugs she needed. It was possible she could find the machines to make them, rebuild them, and eventually produce enough. But getting the power on had taken... so long she didn't even know. Pathfinder would not survive that process.
But there was another treatment, one she'd memorized in great detail.
"Master, you say I'm the future of all ponies," Bit said, delivering his tea. "I believe you have made a mistake."
"Oh?" He levitated the glass up to his lips, took a sip, then settled it beside the transparent display. "You're probably right, I've made many mistakes. Which are you referring to?"
"I cannot be your future." She tapped one hoof on the edge of the table. "You already know how I'm created. You could become like me any time you wanted. You do not. Therefore, I must conclude that your statement is false."
The wizard's face became unreadable to Bit. But aside from the most basic emotions, his feelings were usually inscrutable to her. "Do you resent my decision, Bit? Do you think that I'm a fool for waiting so long?"
She stared back, expression blank. "You are not attempting to entertain me. What is 'resent?'"
He shook his head in his peculiar way, the one that meant he didn't want to answer one of her questions and wanted to redirect her to something more important. "The process will not be the same. You were built, given a spirit taken from the dead. Despite my best efforts, you have not yet achieved sapience.
"I would not be created in the same way, but would experience the same transition meant for all of Zircon. I might be unaffected by that process, or... I might be like you."
"Perfect," she supplied. "Without weakness, or fear of cold."
He couldn't meet her eyes. "And without a soul. My goal for ponies is not just to escape fear of the cold—suicide could do that. Don't you remember, Moss Flower? We're building the future of ponies together. But if I cannot experience the joy of my success, I have failed. I will not allow anypony to risk themselves until I prove that a crystal pony can be a living thing. You aren't alive yet, Bit."
Bit stopped in the stairs, staring down at her full bucket of water. But if I desired to reproduce, I would be alive. If I use the wizard's research on Pathfinder, that would be an act of reproduction. I do not desire to see him die, no other treatment is available. I desire to reproduce.
I am alive.
She ran up the stairs, taking the rest of them two at a time. "I figured it out!" she announced. She scooped a glass full of the icy water within, settling it down beside him. "We don't need to go to the hospital, there's a treatment upstairs.”