Sunny leaned her head against the back window of the government car and watched it drive past the Sundown Oasis. The massive, spindly dome of steel and glass soared over the city’s primary lake and the grass around the edge to keep it safe from the outside desert and allowed the ponies of the city to cultivate it. It was Sundown’s biggest tourist attraction and Sunny had walked through it a few times herself.
The IS motorcade moved on past the Oasis and through downtown Sundown, beneath the watching eyes of a row of skyscrapers adorned in lavish ornamentation around sharp, geometric edges. Sunny didn’t have much of a choice but to look out the tinted windows, as she was squeezed into the back seat of the sedan with two other government ponies in tacky suits. A fourth sat in the passenger seat next to a uniformed driver.
“Are we there yet?” she whined. “I’ve got classes tomorrow and I haven’t even started writing my lecture yet.”
“You will be taken to the Sundown Branch of the Intelligence Service and held there for an undetermined amount of time,” the agent in the front seat, who Sunny now realized was a mare, told her. “No further questions will be answered at this time.”
Sunny crossed her hooves over her chest. “You all have the nerve to drag me away from my dig site in front of all my colleagues like a common criminal and don’t even have the decency to tell me what all of this is about.”
“If we deem you fit to know, then you will be informed once we reach the Sundown facility,” the female agent answered. “But until then, no questions.”
Sunny grumbled and sat back in her seat. Outside, the car left downtown behind and passed into the expansive suburbs that ringed the business districts. Little clapboard houses were done in earthy tones and had rocks for lawns instead of grass to preserve water.
Ponies walked along the sidewalks with umbrellas and floppy hats to avoid the afternoon sun in what was turning out to be a particularly hot summer. At the moment, though, Sunny envied them and their ability to walk around unmolested by the likes of the IS.
The row of four black government cars turned down a side road that was lined by small businesses and a shopping mall. To Sunny’s surprise, they turned in, not to some monolithic building, but to a small parking lot in front of a low-slung adobe building that lacked any decoration besides a sign that proclaimed, “Teton Intelligence Service - Sundown.”
The four cars parked in a semicircle around the front steps and the doors were opened in a flurry of movement by agents who scrambled to get their passengers out. Sunny hadn’t seen them take anypony from the dig site with her, but there was a stallion in a police uniform being pulled out of one of the cars, and a mare out of the other. She was placed in a shiny metal wheelchair with a bundle of clothes in her lap. When the bundle began to cry, Sunny’s eyes widened.
“You are to follow us into the station,” the female agent said. “Any deviation from that action will be treated as resistance of arrest and punished as such. Are we clear?”
Sunny said nothing and fell in line behind her. They marched her up the concrete steps and through glass double doors into the inside of the building.
The interior of the office was taken up by a number of desks scattered around the room. Various agents sat at them with collars undone and sleeves rolled up while the whirring of electric desk fans filled the room. Light got into the room through half-open blinds, while the overhead lights were switched
One of the agents near the door—a copper-colored stallion in a white, button-up shirt—stood when Sunny’s group walked in. The other ponies in the room were quick to follow suit.
“What’s going on?” he asked in a gruff tone.
“Ah, you must be Agent Nightcall,” the female agent said. “I am Agent Flower from the Intelligence Service Homeland Division, and we have been instructed to secure these . . . ponies of interest . . . by order of the state and bring them here for examination and questioning.”
Nightcall leered at her. “Why was I not informed of this?” he asked.
“The information we were given was highly sensitive and not confirmed until mere hours ago,” Flower explained. “You will be give a full debriefing once you have secured your prisoners.”
“Prisoners?” The male agent stared at the group. “These are your prisoners?”
“Yes, and we will need a necessary facility to house them,” the other agent replied, then sighed and looked at the foal wrapped in swaddling clothes in the hooves of its mother. “They may be taken to a more . . . accommodating . . . interrogation room if you so choose, however.”
“Right.” Nightcall led them past overflowing desks and the scraggly-looking agents who stared as they went by until arriving in a plain, concrete hallway in the rear of the building.
The agent took out a silver key from his pocket and opened a wide metal door to a sparse, white interrogation room. It had a one-way mirror that took up all of one wall, a rickety wooden table, and some equally unstable-looking chairs scattered around it.
Sunny and the police officer were marched in while the mare with the foal was wheeled in. She kept a stony glare on Agent Flower. Nightcall nodded to them, then shut the door behind them with the audible sound of the lock being turned.
With that, they were alone in the room. Sunny sighed and slumped into one of the chairs while the police officer followed suit. The mare in the wheelchair sat, cradling her child in her hooves, and didn't look at the either of them.
After a moment, the officer took his off his service cap and scratched at his indigo mane. He seemed to realize, for the first time, that Sunny was there too. He smiled a little. “What are you in for?” he asked.
She snored. “I wish I knew. Do you? Being with the police and all . . .”
“Nope, not a thing,” he said. “Name's Carpenter, by the way. Sergeant Carpenter, Sundown PD. The pretty mare there is my wife, Frankincense.”
“Sunny Sky, Professor of Hippology, University of Sundown,” she said in return, nodding. “I am sorry to see the two of you put in here with a kid so young . . .”
“Born today,” Frankincense muttered. “And they almost took him from me.”
Sunny turned in her chair to look at her, but the new mother was back to staring at her foal. The little pony made the occasional cooing sound, but was otherwise quiet, for which Sunny was thankful.
“When the IS showed up, we didn't know what to think,” Carpenter explained. “They came into the room and dragged us out of there. They tried to separate us but, well, my wife talked them out of it.”
Sunny grimaced and tapped a hoof on the table, which groaned in protest. “Right, but what would they want with the three of you? Especially a police officer, because isn't the police supposed to work with the Service?”
“We knew something was strange when he was born, but for them to just show up like that . . .” Carpenter said.
“Wait, hold on, what was strange when he was born?” Sunny asked. “Was it some kind of defect?”
“He's not defected!” Frankincense growled from her wheelchair. Even with her mane still clinging to her face and massive bags beneath her eyes, her expression was enough to give a trained soldier pause.
Carpenter leaned closer. “He was born with, well, an abnormality,” he whispered.
“What sort?” Sunny asked. “I'm in my university’s Hippology department, remember. These things are what I live for.”
“Well, you see—” he paused, then gulped. “Our son was born with, well, a horn.”
“A horn?” Sunny repeated. “A horn. Like, magic and rainbows type of horn? Like, from all the stories and myths type of horn?”
Carpenter nodded.
Sunny sat back in the chair and let out a breath she hadn't known she had been holding. Vestigial horns weren't quite unheard of as far as birth defects went, but this was the first she had heard of a government taking an interest in the child. Especially so soon after it had been born.
She turned to the mother. “Frankincense?” she asked in a soft tone. “Could I, maybe, see your child?”
She hugged the baby closer to her chest. “What for?” she snapped.
“Your husband tells me the baby was born with a certain, ah, trait. I'm from the Hippology department at Sundown U; I specialize in these sorts of things.” The mother hesitated for a moment, so Sunny added, “I can use my professional opinion to sway the agents that nothing is wrong, but to do that I'll need to see the child.”
Frankincense glared at her, but after a moment, sighed, and let the lanky professor walk over by her side. Frankincense cleared away the bundled blanket around the child's light brown head. Its wide blue eyes stared back up at Sunny with wonder and amazement while its little mouth turned in a smile.
Sunny couldn't help but smile back a little, even as she examined his forehead. When Frankincense took away the blanket covering that spot, the teal mare gasped. There, on the baby's forehead was a thick, spiral horn. Not a fleshy pouch of skin like the other cases had been, but a real horn.
“What, is something wrong?” Carpenter asked, springing from his chair.
“No, no, your son is perfectly fine,” Sunny said, “but this is something that I haven't ever seen before.”
Below her, the little foal cooed and waved one little hoof up at the adults above him.
Special Agent “Night” Nightcall of the Teton Intelligence Service led Agent Flower away from the interrogation room and back toward his desk in its solitary position at the front of the spacious main room. The desk, which he had inherited from the previous station manager, was chipped and stained from its years of service, but still clung to usability.
Night dropped in his padded swivel chair and cleared the papers and styrofoam coffee cups off the center of his desk with a sigh. He watched Agent Flower, who regarded him with an apparent disinterest.
“Okay, so spill it,” he said. “What's HQ want with some bookworm, a cop, his wife, and their kid? They don't exactly scream 'national threat' to me.”
Agent Flower leaned against his desk and raised an eyebrow. “What this Service regards as a 'national threat' is hardly up to you, is it, Agent Nightcall?”
“Spare me the official bullshit,” Night said. “I just need to know what's going on.”
“We were called out to assist in any way we could with earthquake relief this morning,” Flower began, pulling a small order form out of her suit pocket. “While covering evacuation from the afflicted areas via the Red Road, we received orders to seize these ponies of interest and bring them to the nearest Branch for containment and interrogation. That's all I know.”
Night grit his teeth. “I don't like this; Lupine Falls knows more than they're telling us. Did they order you to bring in anything else?”
“Just a big crystal from a dig site outside the city,” Flower said. “It’s shaped like a big heart. Fancy, but the crystal quality is too poor to be worth much.”
“So that's what they give us, then.” Night shook his head and leaned forward in his chair. “I can't interrogate them in this sort of position. Hell, what would I even say? I don't know anything, and you don't seem to have much of a clue either. What do we tell them?”
Flower sighed. “Let's just keep them as comfortable as we can and prevent anything drastic from happening.” A ghost of a smile appeared on her face. “We have a new mother in there; we don't want to piss her off.”
“Right.” Night nodded and picked up the bright red phone on his desk and held the receiver to his ear. “I'm going to call Lupine Falls and see if I can't get something out of them. You get back in the room and keep them calm. Bullshit as much as you can. You're in my department now, so get going.”
Flower hesitated, then did as she was told, scurrying off toward the back room without a word.
“And somepony around here get that new father a damn cigar!” Night barked.
A couple hundred petramin inland from Gracia, at the peak of a highway that looped off the Red Road, sat Lupine Falls. Amidst a vast sea of impenetrable forest was a town of simple brick buildings clustered around monolithic factories that belched smoke toward the cloudy skies above.
It was an insignificant city of less than one hundred thousand, save for one defining feature: a massive campus that ran from the hills south of the city and stopped at the first row of houses. Featureless concrete buildings that extended three stories above and four stories below ground marked the headquarters of the Teton Intelligence Service.
Back away from the town, on a hill that was hollowed out and stuffed with offices and personnel facilities, stood a small tower that belonged to only one pony. Some said she was as powerful as President Morrel, though others insisted it was she who had started the rumor in the first place.
Whatever the truth, it was undeniable that Director General Bilhaus Haze, known to her minions only as Director B, was the queen of Lupine Falls.
Atop the reinforced concrete tower, above the hidden networks of air-to-ground missile batteries, was an office with a single window at the top. A pony looking out of it could watch the vast forest pitch and bank until it smashed against the mountains that rose in the west, their rocky peaks capped with ice year round.
As she often did, Bilhaus enjoyed the view from her plush, high-top chair spun around to face the window. A small glass of brandy sat on the glass top of a massive oak desk that dominated the rear of her office. The sun had peeked over the tops of the mountains just minutes ago and bathed the forest valley in tinges of copper and gold that marked a new morning.
It also marked the fourth consecutive morning she had spent in her office. She yawned and took a sip of the brandy. It went unnoticed down her throat, but slammed into her empty stomach like a brick.
The azure-colored mare growled and held her stomach for a moment before it settled back down. Satisfied, she pushed a lock of her ghostly white mane over her ear and tried to enjoy the view for a few more minutes before the rest of the IS caught up to her.
A red button on her desk phone lit up and began to buzz. The Director sighed, then spun her chair around and pressed the button.
“Yes, what is it?” she snapped in her usual haughty tone.
The voice on the other end hesitated, as most did when speaking to her. “The suspects we brought into custody have all been flown into our holding facility,” the little black box told her. “The one you wished to speak to, one, uh, Noctilucent, is being escorted to your office as we speak.”
“Good,” Bilhaus said. “Who is the escorting agent?”
“Agent Fresco, as you requested.”
Bilhaus smiled. “Just checking. Report back if there are any complications, otherwise allow them access to my office.”
She switched off the phone before whoever it was working the desk could thank her for her orders. She rolled her eyes and pulled another bottle of alcohol from the bottom drawer of the monolithic desk. If there was anything the unruly thing was good for, it was storing alcohol; her predecessors had made sure of that.
Bilhaus turned her chair until it faced the mahogany double doors, far at the end of the room. There was a portion of tile leading from the doors up to her desk that was painted red, as opposed to the uniform black found in the rest of the cavernous office. She had had it repainted so that, by tricking the eye, it appeared that the room widened and her desk got bigger as ponies approached, even if the only thing that changed was the width of the red path. It had been the very first thing she had changed in the office after assuming the Director’s position.
The doors slid open with a soft hiss against the glossy tile and two ponies stepped through. The familiar sight of the grey and black-spotted Senior Agent Maxis Fresco was enough to set Bilhaus at ease. The newcomer, however, kept her from any thought of relaxation.
Standing taller than Fresco by half a head, the ivory pony with the inky black mane marched beside the agent without missing a step, even as he approached one of the most powerful mares in the country. His icy blue eyes bore into Bilhaus.
Their footfalls echoed through the empty office that extended far above them. Light streaming in from the windows behind the Director cast the two in an orange glow. They came to a stop in front of the desk and stood before her. There were no chairs, and the desk was angled upward to complete the feeling that Bilhaus sat above where they stood.
She smiled at them.
“How was the flight in?” she asked, her voice echoing around the bare office. “Those spinners can be rough coming over Lupine Falls, but, unfortunately, we had no time to arrange for airframes to bring you here.”
The stallion, Noctilucent, looked up with a snarl on his face. “You act like I was brought here as a guest, not as a prisoner,” he said.
Bilhaus smiled. “But you are here as a guest,” she said. “If you notice, we have not bound you. You are free to leave at any time.”
Noctilucent didn’t budge.
“What?” she asked. “Do you not trust me?”
“I know your kind,” he growled. “You’re not letting me go that easy.”
The Director turned in her chair and picked up her glass of brandy. “I assure you, it is that easy, Mr. Noctilucent, but the effects it may have upon you could be . . . considerable.”
Noctilucent eyes narrowed. “You’ve already taken my wife and I, what else is there?”
“Mr. Noctilucent,” Bilhaus asked with a smirk, “when was the last time you were in contact with your daugher?”
“So you have her too,” Noctilucent muttered. “What, is that it? You’re going to keep me here by threatening her?”
Bilhaus held up a hoof. “There is no need to get upset,” she said. Behind her, the rising sun reflected off the glass window and appeared to project a halo of light around her. “We do not, at this time, have possession of your daughter. Which brings me to the purpose of you being brought to me.”
She sighed and took a sip of brandy. “I am a busy mare, Mr. Noctilucent. This country expects me to have my eyes and ears on every square petrabit of Teton without considering that such an effort would require the resources of every nation on this planet. With the recent events in the city of Sundown, my agency is spread thin, and some individuals have slipped through our grasp.”
“You mean my daughter,” Noctilucent said.
“I mean the stallion who has absconded with your daughter,” Bilhaus snapped. “You are familiar with Professor Staten, I would assume. Your former archaeological excavation partner and current curator for the Gracia Museum of History and Science.”
Noctilucent raised an eyebrow. “Are you implying that my former partner has kidnapped my daughter?” he asked.
“I would not go so far as to call it ‘kidnapping,’” Bilhaus said. “My sources tell me that she was seen willingly fleeing my agents with Staten. It is my belief that he has fooled your daughter into following him.”
“But why?”
Bilhaus shook her head, her ivory mane flopping about. “That is unknown at this time, which is why we have called you in. If you assist us in capturing Professor Staten and bringing him in for questioning, then you, your wife, and your daughter will be free to go.”
Noctilucent smirked. “No strings attached?”
“No strings attached.”
“So let’s say you’re telling the truth,” Noctilucent said. “How am I supposed to track down an old buddy of mine if I have no idea where he’s going or why?”
Bilhaus motioned to Agent Fresco, who marched back down to the doors and walked out, shutting them behind him. Once he was gone, Bilhaus reached under the desk and flipped a switch. She grinned and watched Noctilucent’s eyes widen when the smooth wooden surface of her desk lit up into a tabletop touch screen that displayed a glowing map of the entire country.
It had been one of the more recent installments to the room, and by far her favorite. No paper meant a clean and more impressive room, as well as a toy to astound visitors with. With that in mind, she had been quick to master it.
“What you are about to see is known only to the topmost individuals in the country,” she said. “Revealing this information to anypony except official personnel is constituted as an act of treason against the Republic of Teton and punished as such. Am I understood?”
Noctilucent looked her in the eyes and nodded.
“Good,” she said, then touched a button on the map that zoomed in to show a holographic representation of the city of Sundown and the desert around it. “Yesterday morning, as I’m sure you’re aware, an earthquake struck outside the city of Sundown, resulting in minor damage to the city and no loss of life.” On cue, little red warning signs appeared around the afflicted areas of the city.
“What few know is that, while there is, in fact, a fault line that runs near the mountains north of the city, the quake did not originate there.” A red line appeared on the map, not north of the city, but east, out among the open sand. “You may recognize the source of the epicenter as the same area in which your digs with Professor Staten took place, which were continued by his daughter and the university”
Bilhaus switched the map off and brought up a series of digital pictures. Most of them were taken years before, but a couple were much more recent.
She tapped one of the older ones, which had a picture of a large stone tablet containing a rough inscription of a heart on it. “You may recognize this as one of the pieces you and Staten uncovered from the Sundown dig, which was donated to the University of Sundown where his daughter teaches.”
Bilhaus brought up another image of the same heart, but instead of a picture on a tablet it was a real, physical crystal. Rougher around the edges than on the tablet, but very real. “What you may not know as the recent excavation of the same piece by Staten’s daughter.”
Noctilucent shook his head slowly. “No, no, they couldn’t, it’s . . . it was just a legend. How could they—”
“It was being kept under wraps, only just shown to the investors yesterday. The finding of an old artifact is monumental, of course, but not in any way that anypony could have predicted.”
“What do you mean?”
Bilhaus switched back to the map of the city, which now displayed little blue columns that rose at various heights. Around the dig site and the hospital, they were tens of times higher than anywhere else.
“Radiation monitors in the city, left over from the tests farther east sixty years ago,” she continued, “picked up massive fluctuations shortly after the earthquake. Though it is perhaps reasonable as to why the artifact was affected, given the circumstances, the event at the hospital is much more . . . perplexing.”
The map switched to images of a newborn foal, wrapping in swaddling clothes and lying in his mother’s hooves. Noctilucent craned his neck for a better look, and let out a small gasp when he saw the horn on its forehead.
Bilhaus flipped the screen off and it returned to its default state of appearing to be a normal wooden desktop.
“We seized Staten’s daughter along with the piece, but we believe she was able to get a message to her father before being taken,” Bilhaus said. “Our best guess is that Professor Staten successfully convinced your daughter to come with him to Sundown and fled Gracia before agents could apprehend him. That task, as he travels out of our thinning net, falls to you.”
Noctilucent scratched his head. “But why does he have to be caught?” he asked. “What’s he done wrong?”
“Nothing, so far,” Bilhaus said, “but it’s the potential. Since its activation this morning, the radiation levels surrounding the artifact have not gone down like the child, and have instead kept a steady outpouring of radiation in the surrounding area equal to standing at the blast zone of a megabomb. Yet, reports indicate that no harm came to the unshielded civilians who stayed within the vicinity of the artifact for hours.”
She leaned back in voluminous chair. “You can see why the Intelligence Service does not wish for power of this magnitude to fall into the wrong hooves.”
Noctilucent nodded. “And you will allow me to bring my daughter home safely?”
“You have my word.”
He sighed. “I don’t really have much of a choice, do I?”
“I wouldn’t like to think so, no,” Bilhaus said.
Noctilucent thought for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll find him, for my daughter and to keep the artifact safe. Don’t expect me to be your henchpony.”
“Of course I wouldn’t,” Bilhaus said. “I have Agent Fresco for that. Meet him out in the hallway and he will escort you to the loading station. From there, you will track Staten from the outskirts of Gracia: his last known location.”
The stallion turned and walked back down the long path to the door. He kept his head down and did not not look back at the Director. His heart beat faster. He knew the potential of the heart, knew the power . . . and could only wonder if Bilhaus did too. For the sake of Staten and his daughter, he hoped not.
Director B smiled at the back of Noctilucent’s head and turned around again in her chair to look out her window.
She reached behind her and tapped a button on the phone.
“Yes, Director?” came the voice.
“Make sure Agent Fresco keeps a close watch on Mr. Noctilucent,” she instructed. “We wouldn’t want him getting any wrong ideas.”