After a few seconds of study, Comet Hum gestured urgently. She spoke in a hurried whisper, barely audible even right beside her. "Wizard, we can't just use a spell like this on anypony. Wherever you got this spellbook... it says we need someone who knew the victim. Someone needs to know the person they were to put them back. Before he came to your laboratory I'd never met this pony."
"I knew him," Bit said flatly. "Will my memories do?"
Comet hesitated, glancing to both doors and then to Pathfinder before continuing. She whispered even quieter, if that were even possible. "If the one who did the original damage ever meets him again... they'll know what we've done."
"What I've done," Bit corrected. Then it was her time to whisper. "I cannot give Zircon weapons that could take endless lives, even if I could make them. I will flee soon. You can come with me."
Comet's expression was a mask. Finally she nodded, pointing across the room. "Come with me, Wizard. I need you to focus on those memories. Hold them before you with as much clarity as you can. Your failure will doom this spell."
Bit walked to the indicated place—just before Pathfinder, looking directly into his eyes. So if another one of her failures was about to kill an innocent pony, she wouldn't be able to flee from it. "This is all assuming, of course, that magic like this even works on your kind. There's almost nothing known about you yet. Are you sure you want to risk it?"
"For Zircon no risk is too great," Pathfinder declared. "Whatever you've been ordered to do for her glory, you should do. Right, Wizard Bit?"
Bit nodded sharply. "We've stepped onto this road, without knowing where it would take us. It is too late to turn back."
She did have one advantage, at least. Bit had perfect discipline of thought. She hadn't known Pathfinder as well as she would've liked—a few weeks just wasn't long enough for that. She watched him go from fawning gratitude to agonizing death, then wishing he had died. Maybe she wouldn't remember that last part.
"Protect us," she ordered one of her crystal automatons. "This shouldn't take long."
"Understood," said Alpha. It wasn't much of a name—but it was something. "We protect."
Comet shifted uneasily on Pathfinder's side. She kept glancing back to the console, though of course it was impossible to see from here. That was entirely the point. "Pathfinder, if you could look this way for a moment."
He obeyed, far less abruptly than he did with Bit's commands. His respect for her orders went only so far as respect for Bit as the Wizard. Then her horn began to glow. "Now think, Pathfinder. Who are you?"
"A servant of Zircon," he recited. The pale light of a single amber bulb was swallowed in bright blue from Comet's horn. Bit felt it too, a light that held her in place, made her feel lethargic somehow.
"And before that?"
"I am a servant of... Secretary Sombra Bolero," he stuttered. "I am..."
"Why?" Comet Hum asked, insistent. The spell-light was bright enough that Bit could see nothing else. It swallowed the laboratory, and a crystal growth vat, and her two patrolling assistants.
"Because—because... it is... right to..." Pathfinder shook, one hoof twitching towards his belt. Where he'd held a weapon before. Bit didn't keep weapons in her lab, of course. Only the soldiers outside wore them.
"Because you cared about ponies," Bit supplied. "You saw the suffering of thousands who had been abandoned. You realized they would continue to suffer if something wasn't done. You ventured up to the thermal plant to find them somewhere to shelter from the storm."
"I... went..." Pathfinder said. "Because I cared about... Zircon and her people. I knew there was... was..."
"Then you cared about me," Bit continued. "You were curious about the pony who had restored the thermal plant. You came to meet me. You followed me into the palace, even though I told you it would kill you. Your concern for me was stronger than your self-preservation."
With each word, she could feel those memories returning to her, relived over and over. Not just for her. Without knowing how she knew it, Bit knew that Pathfinder was seeing them too. His time caring for the ponies of the favela—exploring the palace with her, and his eventual reliance on her as his body started to fail.
Bit hadn't known this pony during most of his life. But she knew enough—enough to remind him that he was more than a puppet.
Pathfinder opened his mouth, forming the words to a shout. Sombra's name? The word died half-formed, without a sound escaping. Then he collapsed, as though he were an automaton taken far from the spire.
Then he wept, a whimpering pile of misery on the floor in front of her. The spell ended, and Comet Hum dropped to one foreleg, breathing heavily. "That was... worse than I feared. I think the caster... wanted it to be permanent." She looked down at the pony between them, shifting nervously. "I'm fairly certain I cast the spell properly, Wizard. The active magic is gone form his mind, anyway. The one who put it there will realize instantly."
"I'm aware of that," she said. "I have been considering ways to prevent such an attack from being effective. I'm afraid I don't know how to protect an organic pony like yourself, though. The strategies I've considered will only work for our kind."
Comet Hum shrugged. "Respectfully, Wizard, I suspect we don't need as much protection. Living minds are delicate things—there's a reason magic like this isn't done. It's rare to find a spellcaster with enough dexterity to leave the victim functional. You crystal ponies must be different somehow. Resilient, or... rigid, anyway. Damage doesn't propagate so far."
Bit dropped down in front of Pathfinder, reaching over to force him to look up. "Pathfinder? Do you remember me?"
Probably a bad question—after all, he'd known her in both incarnations. But she doubted the traitor would reach over with a hoof, pulling her into a tight hug. She twitched once at the surprising closeness of it, but didn't try to shove him away. She could hardly blame a pony who had obviously suffered so much.
If only she could go back and let the Wizard hug her a little more. She would have more memories to cling to now that he was gone.
"What happened to me?" Pathfinder sobbed. "How did I get here?"
Comet whistled. "This is expected too, Wizard. Reverting to his previous personality results in dissociation with anything he did while under another pony's control. It may take years for the memories to return, or not at all. Your spellbook wasn't sure. This is too rare."
It won't be for much longer. If only Bit could spread some cure for this effect through all the ponies of the empire, before the conversion process got too far. There just wasn't enough time. "We need to get this information out as far as possible," she whispered. "How many ponies could someone control at once?"
Comet Hum shrugged. "Magic this dark isn't studied here. Maybe Equestria would know. But I can tell you it takes concentration, so... not a city's worth. A dozen, maybe two?"
The revolutionary guard, Bit thought. Perfectly loyal and obedient no matter what. But even if the whole city wasn't being actively controlled, any one of them might be vulnerable. What could an evil pony do if he could subtly redirect those who disagreed—rewrite ponies with problematic instincts, crush glimmers of independence before they could grow.
"Where is this, Bit?" Pathfinder asked. "I've never seen this before. Or... maybe I have. Feels more like a dream. A nightmare. I thought such strange things... didn't make sense. What happened to the favela?"
Most of them are already being treated by now. But she didn't think a shock that big would do him much good just now. He had already suffered enough pain. "This is my new lab. We work directly for the Party. I'm a member, in fact. You've been assisting me here, while I found a way to heal you. But I don't think the secretary will be too happy I could reverse your conditioning. What could be done for you can be done for anypony..."
"Likely," Comet agreed. "For the same reason you're more vulnerable, you should be easier to treat."
"It's a problem future ponies like us can solve," Bit continued. "For now, we need to make sure there are any. This city... we can't stay here. Zircon is too dangerous. We need to flee, somewhere they won't be able to follow."
Pathfinder nodded. There was still pain in his expression, heavy confusion. He didn't have much reason to trust her over anything else he knew. But at least he had the chance to consider what she said, instead of being compelled to obey it. "Where?"
She shrugged, though this was just a front. She knew exactly where they had to go. There were vanishingly few options for creatures like them. But she couldn't risk that information getting out. "We'll gather as many friendly ponies as we can," she said. "Beta, drain this crystal tank. Take the parts into the backroom with everything else. We'll say the batch failed and start another."
Bit wanted to be there for Pathfinder—the pony probably needed comfort now more than ever before, no matter what he was made from. But all her effort would be for nothing if Sombra could just go and reverse it all. But while she waited for this opportunity, this was something she'd actually spent some time thinking about. Thinking, and building.
Bit crossed the room back to him with a little velvet-wrapped bag, still smelling of fresh solder from the workstation. She'd only finished the second of these a few hours before, after all.
"Could you hold your head over here, Pathfinder? I need to do something."
She shook the bag out into the air with her magic, holding up the little crystal sliver and intricate mesh of wires. It looked a little like a wig-liner, though of course Bit's mane was crystal and she'd never need to wear one.
"What? Bit I'm... still confused. I don't know what to do. I used to know. Everything made so much sense. But now nothing does. I was alive, but I'm not alive. I went with you... did I do something wrong?"
"Of course not." Bit held the crystal for him to inspect. "Pathfinder, your mind was taken from you. This device will... prevent that. It can detect external writes and enable write-protection. You'll be unable to form any long-term memories while under attack. But that shouldn't last more than a few seconds. More complex magic is more difficult for the caster to sustain, so a few seconds should be enough. I matched your color as best I could, and this adhesive will dry clear. But I still need you to hold still."
He shuddered. "I don't really... understand." But he stopped struggling, and that was enough. Off to one side, Beta worked diligently in the crystal tank, removing a body section by section, before packing them in foam and carrying them off into a dark space. A storage room... but more than that. This had been a train station once, after all. Bit never forgot a map.
"What will we do?" Pathfinder asked. "Is it... okay? Will I feel better?"
"In time," she promised. "For now, we'll be very careful. I've been given an assignment I cannot follow. I've been planning a way to escape it for some time. But I had to move slow—Zircon is dangerous, and disloyalty is ruthlessly punished."
Bit stood, settling the little bottle of adhesive on a nearby desk. "Now we just have to figure out how many other ponies we can safely bring with us. More, if they're crystal too. But we can bring treatment for organic ponies who want to come, and treat them there."
"What if we want to stay alive?" Comet asked. She'd remained nearby through this whole process, watching with fascination. "All these new weaknesses don't seem worth the advantages to me, Wizard. No offense."
Bit shrugged one shoulder. "Then you should flee to the south—to Equestria. There will be no room for organics where we have to go."
"Wizard!" Alpha shouted, its voice alert. Despite a new body with the ability to speak, it didn't actually sound like her. It used the standard speech-reproduction software Zircon had written centuries and centuries back. Unfortunately that meant it had no way of expressing emotion, if it could experience any. "Soldiers in black approach from the hallway! What do we do?"
Bit froze, glancing over the room in a rush. There was nothing overtly disloyal going on here, really. Her tireless crystal staff worked while a single, very dedicated organic pony had come in to help at her request.
She heard their hooffalls seconds after Alpha's alarm. They weren't running in to reach her as quickly as possible—these hooves were marching. Could they be going anywhere else?
"Help Beta," she said. "But be ready to help me if I look like I need it."
Was that instruction clear enough for a simple automaton? She didn't have a chance to give more, because the door banged open seconds later, and the Revolutionary Guard flooded into her lab.