//------------------------------// // Chapter Five // Story: Station Thirteen // by Jarvy Jared //------------------------------// The prospect of assistance renewed Cypress’s energies, but unfortunately, other responsibilities drew his and Kai’s attention away from the task for the rest of the day. “Don’t let yourself get stirred up by this,” Kai told him before departing. “We still have time. I’ll give it some thought and talk to you tomorrow. Try and get some rest.”  Once his other tasks were completed, Cypress’s newfound energies were spent. Exhausted by both the physical toil and his worrying which had returned once he was no longer occupied, he crawled back to his room and laid on his cot. He wanted to fall asleep, but feared doing so would cost him hearing the thief re-enter the storeroom, even though no noise could travel from there to his bedroom. His tiredness eventually won out, but, perhaps due to his failing constitution, he was gifted no dreams; only an empty restlessness which, upon his bleary-eyed waking, made him feel like he hadn’t slept at all. He'd woken up to the sound of somepony thudding a hoof on his door. “Cypress,” a voice said—it was Kai. Cypress blinked his blurred vision away and opened it.  “Do you know what time it is?” he asked. “A little past six,” Kai answered. They tilted their head and smiled apologetically. “Sorry. I know it’s early, but I thought it be best to wake you now. You never know—the thief might have returned, and we might be able to catch them in the act.” That fully woke Cypress up. The two of them left the room and quietly yet hurriedly made their way down to Logistics hub. Station Thirteen was not yet stirring, but the gentle hum of electricity that was threaded through every nook and cranny reminded them that nothing truly slept here.   Logistics was still dark. Flicking on the light, Cypress didn’t see anything seemingly amiss. He nodded to Kai, and the pair worked their way down through the narrow corridor to the storeroom.  “That reminds me,” Kai said when they approached the door. “Was this locked, at all?” “Peppy didn’t lock it,” Cypress explained. “She didn’t trust that I’d somehow not lock myself in here at some point, so she made it a rule to keep it this way..” So in a way it’s her fault, he thought—then he shoved that thought away in tandem with shoving open the door. Kai found the light switch and pulled. The resulting flash momentarily blinded Cypress, who cringed and hid behind a hoof. The dots that gathered in his vision seemed to coagulate into the vague outline of a pony, but when his vision returned, all that appeared in front of them was a room apparently devoid of any other occupants. “Well,” Kai said, but did not say anything else. They looked at Cypress and nodded, and together they began to search.  Soon, however, it became apparent the storeroom really was that empty. Nothing had been disturbed. No new items were missing. The room, as far as the pair could tell, had miraculously remained as untouched as the night sky.  With a sigh that could have filled a forest, Cypress slid against the wall, the tension from that morning seeping out like cold mercury. “Gah. This whole thing is gonna kill me before we figure out what’s happening.” Kai hummed, but in a manner that suggested they were distracted. Glancing over, Cypress noticed they  were gently hovering in the air and looking over the tops of the shelves. “What are you doing?” “Following up on something,” Kai said. They fluttered from one end of a row to another. “It was something I noticed yesterday, but up until now, I thought I was imagining things.” After a few moments, they lowered themselves to the ground and stroked their chin. “Huh?” Cypress stood and trotted over to Kai. “What did you see yesterday?” Kai glanced at him. “No one’s been in here before, right?” “That’s what my boss told me.” “So we can assume, before you got handed the assignment, this place was basically undisturbed for whoever knows how long.” “What’s your point? The thief still entered, didn’t they?” “They did, and yet, if this place was as undisturbed as it was when you first entered, why, then, is there not a speck of dust to be found now?” “That’s easy. It’s because…” Cypress’s mouth flapped uselessly.  Kai tilted their head. “Right. And, when you made the discovery, did you notice any dust in here?” Cypress thought back, scanning his mind for that. Peppy’s words of warning came rushing back. He tried to recall if she had been joking, but no; her warning had been delivered with a graveness he’d come to fully associate with her. “No,” he said. “No, I’m certain of it. No dust.” “None whatsoever,” Kai said, satisfied. “That’s definitely strange.” They furrowed their brow, then returned to looking all around the storeroom. Cypress grew antsy and stepped closer. A nervous bout of excitement ran all over his body with a curious, tingling sensation. “So? What does that tell you, master sleuth?” “I’m not sure. It might not mean anything. It’s just… really weird, is all.” Noticing the look on Cypress’s face, Kai offered a sympathetic shrug. “I’m sorry. I know, it’s frustrating.” Cypress shook his head. “Not your fault, Kai.” Then he remembered something else Peppy had said. He trotted over to one of the shelves and placed a hoof on the dust-free surface, thinking. “Something occur to you?” Kai asked. “Maybe. Peppy said she’d checked this place out two days before she told me to start digitizing all the records. When she checked it, it was apparently full of dust. Now there’s none.” He looked at Kai. “Which must mean the dust went away, or was cleared up, or whatever, sometime between when she checked, and when I found those components missing.” “In other words, your thief only recently stole them. But I imagine that doesn’t tell us anything about their identity.” There was not much else they could do. As morning was fast approaching, they decided to return to the investigation at lunch break. The day passed obscenely slow, such that by the time lunch was called, Cypress was just about ready to bolt. He saw Kai in the hallway outside of the engineering division, standing behind a group of other engineers who were busy discussing one of their projects. The group was arranged in a tight circle, one that Kai could not enter. They seemed confused, fidgeting from one side, yet the circle refused to yield.  Cypress approached the circle from the front and said, “Excuse me.”  The pair of engineers from the day before were also there, and, at the sound of his voice, turned and recognized him. “Oh, hey, it’s you,” the second engineer said. “How’s your cousin doing?” “He’s fine. Sorry, you’re, ah, standing in the way of my friend.” The first engineer blinked. “Your friend? Who’re you—”  He turned around, saw Kai, and recoiled a little. “Don’t sneak up on us like that!” Kai frowned. “I didn’t. I’ve been here the whole time.” “Well, I didn’t hear you, so—” “That’s all right,” the second engineer interrupted. “Here, we’ll get out of your way.” She offered Cypress and Kai apologetic smiles before pushing the entire circle down the corridor. “Charming group,” Cypress said, once they were alone. He was hoping to hear a chuckle, but Kai looked more morose than anything. They looked in the direction of the group as it shrank into the distance.  Cypress cleared his throat. “Anyway, uh… what should we do next?” Kai came back into themselves with a brief start. They shook their head rapidly. “Right, um… Well, I was thinking we ought to see if anypony caught the thief on camera. Let’s head to the security booth.”  Kai abruptly headed off, not waiting for Cypress to follow. An agile trot brought them to Station Thirteen’s security booth. It was a shockingly cramped space, with scraps of paper, broken pencils, Styrofoam cups, empty chip bags, and other assorted junk littered about the floor, and a lingering miasma of unnamable description festered unseen in one of the corners, causing Cypress to scrunch up his nose. There was  only enough room for two guards, who, when Cypress and Kai arrived, were lazily sitting in ocean-green roller chairs. One monitor, covered in an assortment of sticky notes, displayed slightly slowed-down footage of certain areas of the observatory. The other had what looked like old footage of a Hoofball game playing, which the second guard was watching with slitted eyes and an expression devoid of actual enjoyment. One of the guards, a grumpy-looking yellow pegasus who was watching the first monitor, stared at the pair with distrusting eyes. His name tag indicated his name was Lux. “Can I help you?” he asked, in a tone that suggested he wanted anything but.  Then it occurred to Cypress that he hadn’t even come up with a reason for them being here that didn’t involve revealing the theft. He glanced at Kai, caught between pointing that out and stifling himself, when the Changeling took a step forward and stood straight.  “I’m Kai, and this is Cypress,” Kai said. “We were hoping to ask if you could show us some security footage?” Lux narrowed his eyes. “Why?” “Cypress works in Logistics, and he swears he heard something moving around in the ventilation system a few days ago.” Cypress tried not to marvel at the ease at which Kai delivered the lie. If the Changeling could read his own fib, he didn’t want the guards to recognize befuddlement on his end.  Lux, however, simply snorted and turned away. “That sounds closer to a job for maintenance than anything we should care about. Let alone something that requires us to show you security footage.”  Cypress sensed an opportunity, and joined in. “I did ask maintenance for help, but they didn’t find anything. They were the ones who suggested we come to you guys for help.” “Then you must have imagined it,” the other guard scoffed. He, a light-blue pegasus barely older than Cypress, averted his gaze from the game to look at the pair. In one of his wings, he swirled a spoon around a cup of coffee. He didn’t have a name tag on, but a splotch of Velcro on his chest indicated its previous existence.  “Wouldn’t be surprised. Logistics isn’t the most exciting department, from what I hear.” And this is? Cypress thought. “Even so, it’d be nice if we could settle it once and for all,” Kai said, undeterred. “Can’t you just show us the footage from a few days ago? See if anything slipped into the vents without us noticing?” The two guards exchanged looks. Cypress wondered if they were considering throwing the pair out, when Lux said, “Alto, why don’t you go refill your cup?” “Seriously?” Alto replied, his eyes wide. Lux nodded. “Yeah. This shouldn’t take too long. Go get me a cup extra, yeah?” Alto hesitated, looking at Kai and Cypress. Then, he sighed and got to his hooves, balancing the cup on his wing. “Fine. I’ll be back shortly.” Alto slipped past the pair, but not before murmuring, “Don’t try anything funny, y’hear? Haven’t had a single incident on my watch.” He glared at them for a solid five seconds before he finally left. Cypress turned to Lux, hoping for some sort of consolation, but all Lux said was, “All right, let’s get this over with. Keep your hooves, wings, and horns where I can see them.” Cypress glanced at Kai. Kai shrugged. Lux tapped a few keys on the keyboard. The computer screen flashed, then opened to a security camera network. The feed was noticeably stilted and colored black-and-white. Next to it was a map of the observatory. “Black-and-white? Isn’t that a little outdated?” Cypress asked. Lux let out an annoyed snort but did not answer. He tapped another key to bring up the camera placed in Logistics. “There’s your space right now,” he said. Cypress leaned over Lux’s shoulder, ignoring the grunt the guard made. The footage revealed an empty Logistics department, with the camera focusing on the main work area with all the monitors and record-keeping equipment. The door was somewhere off-screen. Notably, the corridor leading to the storeroom was out of sight.  “That’s the view? That’s it?” Kai commented. “You got a problem, buzz brain?” Lux replied.  Kai, to their credit, brushed the insult aside; meanwhile, Cypress bristled and only just managed to restrain himself. “It just seems a strange spot to have the camera focus on, that’s all.” Lux grunted. “I’ll grant you that much, but that’s what the head of Logistics wanted. Seemed to think that the data storages were more important for us to keep an eye on than anywhere else. Worked for me—meant less work for us.” Kai looked like they were about to question the decision, so Cypress cut them off. “Can you show us the footage from a few days ago, then?” he asked.. After some passive-aggressive clicking, Lux brought up the camera’s history. The stilted framerate made it look like a poor rendition of a puppet show, with characters wandering under the careful gaze of the camera, their movements stilted and janky. Peppy Pusher appeared, trotting quickly past one of the computers. Then Cypress himself was there, and he watched himself sitting at one of the monitors with a bored expression. Lux scrubbed the timeline forward a few days, and Cypress’s double and Peppy appeared—it was the moment she’d dropped all those archaic inventory logs on his desk.  “Go back a day or two,” Cypress said. Lux gave him annoyed glance, but did so. Cypress leaned close, hoping to catch all details. But as the footage continued, disappointment sprang like a weed in his stomach. It showed nothing; or rather, due to its placement, the camera failed to capture anypony entering the corridor.   “Well, there you have it,” Lux said, leaning back into his chair. “Nothing went into the vents during this timeframe. I’d say you were just mistaken.” “What?” Cypress had been so focused on watching, he’d forgotten about the lie. “No, wait… Are you sure? Play it again.” “I’m sure,” Lux said gruffly. “And you can play it all you want, you’re not gonna see anything. Besides, Alto and I were here every night, and I can assure you, we didn’t see anything crawling up or down the ventilation system.” He barked out a short laugh. “What would you be looking for, anyway? A rat? That one’s larva?” Cypress saw Kai stiffen. Inside of himself, the momentary shock began to give way to simmering appall, but before he could reprimand Lux, Kai pushed a hoof at the screen. “I was curious about one thing, actually. This map—it has all the places where cameras are positioned, right?” “Yeah?” “Well, what about here?” Kai shifted their hoof to point to an empty spot on the map next to Logistics. Lux glared at Kai. “You tell me, genius. Would we have a camera where there isn’t a room?” Cypress started. “But there is a room—”  “Oh, for the love of—” Lux pushed himself back, sending the chair backwards. He glared up at the two of them, and suddenly, it occurred to Cypress he was actually a bit small for a pegasus—that absurd observation threatened to spill into laughter. He jabbed a hoof at the screen. “Look at yourselves. You’re still green behind the ears, and I don’t mean that literally, kirin. You haven’t been here long enough to know this place better than I do. So don’t go insisting on phantom rooms or that sort of thing. And even if there was some room here, I highly doubt we’d care enough to put a camera in there. Why would we? We’re just looking at the sky most of the time—nothing here worth committing a crime over, unless you count the garbage cafeteria food.” “Actually,” Cypress said, “we’re looking for comets—” “Read my flank, bozo. Does it say I care?” Alto returned just then, unannounced, and Kai, caught off-guard by Lux’s outburst, nearly backed into him. “Sweet Celestia, look out, darn it!” Alto exclaimed. He was carrying two cups in his wing, and peered at Kai and Cypress with murderous annoyance. “We’re surrounded by electronic equipment, you dolts! One spill and the whole system’s fried!” “Sorry,” Kai mumbled. “Yeah, yeah, I don’t need your apology.” Alto pushed past them and handed one of the cups to Lux. “Bad enough that stupid robot talked my ear off about the dangers of handling liquids around electrical outlets. I know how to handle it. Guests, on the other hoof…” “Wait. Robot?” Cypress furrowed his brow. “You mean Roccu? What was it doing here?” “What else? Cleaning! While we were working! You’d think it’d know better…” “That, wait, that doesn’t seem like—” “When was this?” Kai asked. Alto looked furiously at them. “A couple of days ago. Can you leave, now?” “Leave? But we haven’t even—” “You’ve seen the footage and managed to get on both our nerves,” Lux said. “Don’t you think you two have done enough for today?” Cypress glared back. “Okay, seriously, what is—mmghf!” Kai had clamped a hoof over his muzzle and was attempting to drag him away. “An excellent suggestion,” they said, their voice dripping with faux cordiality. “We’ll be on our way, then. Thank you for your help!” “Don’t mention it,” Lux said. “Don’t come back anytime soon,” Alto added. He pressed a button on the wall, and the door to the security both shut with an abrupt hiss.