Starlight Over Detrot
Act 2, Chapter 31: Foal's Play
Who wants to live forever?
Well, lots of ponies, really. And immortality is easier to achieve than is widely believed; there are more ways to go about it than simultaneous wing/horn development. Reliable immortality without strings attached, on the other hoof, proves to be something of a greater difficulty.
Alicornhood is not only monstrously rare, but tends to come with burdensome royal and cosmic responsibilities, plus the risk of going mad and trying to benight Equestria, metaphorically or literally. Plus, you might as well get your cutie mark replaced by an image of a set of crosshairs over a rubber duck, because you will be a target for every recently-awakened magical entity with fears of inadequacy and delusions of grandeur, and they will know where you live.
Age alteration spells can reset the clock; sadly, Equestria's very best wizards have trouble casting them. Even if you find one of the maybe three horns in Equestria capable of managing such a feat, mishaps can and will occur. One pony who paid dearly for such a reset seemed to have disappeared completely after the ritual was finished, and only in the post-analytical phase was it discovered that the pony in question had actually been reverted to a zygote.
Necromancy is another route, but it is a largely illegal one in Equestria. It tends to have too many side-effects: too many displaced souls, too many wandering bodies seeking vengeance for crimes against equinity/nature/fashion/etc.... Too much disharmony. And it smells positively awful. That said, there is one known Detrot example of immortality through necromancy, and he is known as the Lich King of 34th and Staccato Street: A unicorn nearing the end of his life who tapped into the power of death basically to keep colts off his lawn. His yard care strategy works 364 days out of the year; on Nightmare Night, his home is awash in costumed bodies. Fortunately for him, the authorities seem to tolerate him and his total lack of ambition... and his lawn does look nice, tended as it is by friendly zombie ponies occasionally demanding "Graaaaains."
Finally, bio-arcanelectrics show promise as an emergent field of life-extending experimental magic. Astute minds should have, by now, an instinctual flight reaction when the words "magic" and "experimental" are uttered side-by-side.
--The Scholar
“Sir, I think I’m feeling it in my teeth…”
Swift was just ahead of me, her ears flat against her head as she tried to block out the all-encompassing hum. It never varied, and never seemed to change tone, but it gave me the weirdest sensation of things wiggling about inside me. It seemed to come from the walls, all around us, and right up through the floor.
“Me too, kid. Just try to ignore it,” I replied, lamely. “With luck, we won’t be down here long.”
Limerence was just behind me on the stairs. He wasn’t quite as quiet as Zeta, but his hoofsteps still made about as much noise as a sneaky kitten. “Detective, I do believe we are heading in the correct direction. My horn is beginning to resonate in a manner that is most uncomfortable.”
“It’s...not going to split or crack or something, is it? If it is, we can do this without you.”
“I think if that were at all likely, Miss Skylark would have been less inclined to come this way. Still, I will monitor it.”
“Hardy, do you think we’re likely to run into Skylark again?” Taxi asked, catching up to me on the stairs.
“I couldn’t say. Agent Night Bloom said they’re blind below this floor.”
“Do we at least have a plan for the possibility that we do? There was a big crowd with her,” she persisted.
I flicked my hoof at her saddle-bags. “What’d we bring a P.E.A.C.E. cannon for if not that?”
She paused, and I saw her fighting a tiny smirk.
I held up my hoof. “I want to find another option if we can.”
My driver looked crestfallen.
I nickered a little, bumping her with my hip, “However, if it comes to gunfire, I promise you get to pick your own ammunition.”
Her expression blossomed into a smile and she started practically skipping down the steps.
“Sir, haven’t we been going down a long time?” Swift asked.
I nodded. “This building’s floors aren’t exactly one right on top of the other. I imagine that has something to do with the original prisoners.”
“The... dragons. Sir, did you notice the smell is getting stronger, too?”
Now she mentioned it, I hadn’t until I sniffed at the air. “They removed all the dragons from this building at the same time. Shouldn’t the smell have degraded at the same rate everywhere?”
Limerence nodded without looking back. “It should, yes. I admit to a certain amount of internal disturbance in discovering that this is not the case.”
A pair of double doors were up ahead at the bottom of the steps, wider than necessary for ponies, with heavy dead-locked bars pulled back on either side. The way was open, but my heart was fluttering. Walking into the sewer had been bad. It’d been foul, death in the darkness.
It hadn’t made my cutie-mark sting. It hadn’t made my guts writhe. I’d been afraid, in the sewers, but it was the fear of death. Death is something I’m used to fearing. It’s tangible. It’s real. You can touch the knife that kills you, or the bullet, or feel the spell fire before it scours your flesh away.
Something in Supermax was making me afraid, and it wasn’t something I could touch. It was just a sound; a perpetual ringing in the ears.
“Lim, what’s your thoughts on this sound we’re hearing?” I asked.
“It is not a sound,” he answered.
“Come again? I’m hearing it pretty good.”
“Nothing I can really declare it to be besides that. It does not vibrate the surfaces underhoof, nor our bodies. The stimulus is some reaction in our brains to passing energies, but they aren’t simple kinetics.”
“So...the spell, then?”
“Possible. It is an order of magnitude more extreme than anything I have personally been in the presence of, up to and including any artifact I have handled whilst working at my father’s hoof." Limerence’s mouth twisted, bitterly. “I am aware he has...protected me...from certain aspects of our business...but this is still-”
“I get it. Big mojo. Nothing good.”
We gathered behind the double doors and Taxi began the labor intensive process of reassembling her cannon while Swift stood lookout at the top of the stairs, ready to faint or ask where the bathroom was should somepony be on the way down. I loaded my sawn-off shotgun, fiddling with the duct tape to try to get it to sit comfortably.
“Are we...expecting a fight, Detective?” Limerence asked, his horn glowing softly. I don’t consider myself any sort of expert, but the way the light flickered didn’t look terribly healthy as he levitated his crossbow out from beneath his robe and settled a bolt in place.
“We’re expecting to be prepared for the unexpected, yes.”
As Taxi finished assembling her weapon, she wrapped the strap around her middle and threw her robe over her cannon, leaving it dangling along her side. It bulged in a ridiculous manner.
“Sweets, I don’t...think that’s likely to convince anypony you’re not carrying a personal howitzer,” I commented.
She grunted, nipping the air in the direction of my tail. “You worry about your stupid little toy you have on your leg. I’ll worry about my real gun.”
I mock growled, and then leaned forward, grabbing her strap in my teeth and twisting it so the P.E.A.C.E. swung off her spine and down between her back legs. Before she could snap my neck, I hopped back a few steps and she lurched forward in an uncomfortable waddle, her forelegs outstretched in half of a zebra attack pose.
“Not funny, Hardy.” Taxi humphed, fighting to pull the gigantic weapon back into position.
“Yeah, but when you tell this story to your grandkids, it’ll be hilarious.”
“If I get to have grandkids, considering the way things have been going lately…”
****
I called up the stairs for Swift to join us, then stacked up Limerence and Taxi against one wall, myself and Swift behind the other, in standard storming formation. Pushing the door half open, I peered both directions, looking for any immediate threats.
It was just another cell block. The cells seemed to all have heavy duty-metal doors, rather than ordinary bars, but it was still just another row of cells.
I scratched at my mane, puzzled, then stepped through and turned in a little circle. Same blue walls. Same blue floors. Same starry patterns on the ceiling and walls.
“We’re clear,” I murmured, shaking my head. The hum was still there and, if it’d actually been a sound, it would have been shaking my molars. Despite this, I didn’t have to speak much louder. Limerence was right. It wasn’t actually a noise.
That wriggle in my belly suddenly redoubled, and I sagged heavily against the wall, feeling my head swim for a moment. My eyes fuzzed around the edges and my cutie-marks felt like somepony was trying to cut them off with a rusted spoon. I felt a foreleg on my shoulder, and looked up, expecting to see Taxi there. Instead, Limerence was standing beside me, supporting my weight very gently.
“You are under some severe discomfort, Detective.” It wasn’t a question.
“My talent hates this place…” I replied.
Lifting his hooftip, he put it against my neck and pulled his watch out, counting off for about thirty seconds.
“Your heartbeat is irregular. Not weak or suggestive of failure, but not normal.”
“You think the amount of magic in here is messing with Gale?” I asked, worriedly.
“If you mean this consciousness you claim inhabits your transplant, then yes, entirely likely. If the prosthesis is failing, you will experience symptoms not unlike the heart attack you had back in the Nest. Are you feeling something of that nature?”
“Not...really. Bit light headed.”
Limerence tucked his watch back into its pocket. “Blood pressure fluctuations and some negative response to the local environment.”
“Any advice you can give me, doc?”
“Try not to die from a heart attack in a situation where bullets, knives, or rays of cosmic light slicing through your essential organs will exacerbate the problem.”
“Tell me that was a joke, Lim.”
“No.”
****
The cell block we’d found ourselves in was empty in a way that made the relative vacancy upstairs seem downright unsettling. We passed cell after cell, not one of which had anypony in them. They were all open and the exterior locks had been disabled, but it did nothing for the somehow much more oppressive feeling of being in an empty, ultra-high security prison block. On the other hoof, it also meant we weren’t passing anypony who might want to know why four strange individuals were wandering around by themselves in an otherwise secure area.
Whereas the cells upstairs had all been neatly labeled, there were no labels, nor any signs that might guide a pony from place to place. It was almost intentionally obtuse. Swift was trying to construct a map and making some progress with Limerence’s help, but after a good ten minutes of fruitlessly wandering empty, labyrinthine hallways which didn’t seem to have any relationship to the rooms above, I dragged us into an open cell and called M6.
“Night Bloom, you there?”
Cereus picked up. I heard all four of his hooves doing a panicked dance. “Detective? Detective! Please talk to me! What in Equestria possessed you?”
“Ahhh, Cereus. Good to hear from you, mate. I take it you mean ‘Why am I in Supermax?’.”
“What else would I mean?!”
“I dunno. The list is long. Where’s Night Bloom?”
“She’s on her ‘drinking chair’. She said if I disturb her, she’ll send me to the moon.”
I rubbed my neck, thinking. “You...you guys actually have something in the warehouse there that could do that?”
“I don’t want to take the chance!”
“Alright, makes sense. I need your help down here. Night Bloom said there was somepony on this floor and we’ve been checking around, but so far we’re hitting dead ends.”
“Some... pony?”
I slumped against the wall of the cell. “Is there a problem?”
“Well, you’re somepony and your partner is somepony. You’ve got like, four someponies right there,” Cereus replied.
I had to pause for a moment and fathom whether he was being sarcastic or whether he might actually just be that stupid.
“I need… to know if there is somepony besides Taxi, Swift, Limerence, and myself...on this floor. Can you do that for me?” I asked, very slowly as though speaking to a foal.
“Righty-oh! One sneaky, sneaky surveillance coming right up!” He sounded like he was practically bouncing along as he trotted back into Survey and fired up the map. The sounds of machinery in the background rattling and beeping had me hastily covering the speaker.
“Um...well, I...huh. We don’t have any sensors down there. There’s a few spy cameras. One of them’s painted over and one’s in a bathroom. The other one is...oh! Yeah, there’s a mare! She’s... errr... she looks like she’s on her knees or something, talking to the ceiling.”
“Praying? Alright. Any details you can give us? We can’t check every cell in this place.”
“I...don’t see anything specific. It looks like it’s at the end of a hallway, but there’s no signs or anything. Not even a smoke detector. I’m pretty sure that’s not up to building code...” He hummed to himself, then exclaimed, “Wait! I don’t know if this will help, but... there’s a set of stairs leading up nearby!”
Limerence’s ears twitched and he pulled the map Swift and I had constructed out of his pocket, spreading it on the bare concrete floor. Laying it over top of the map of the ultra-high security block he and Swift had been working on he traced his hoof across the various hallways, then off the edge.
“Here. It must be here.” He pointed at a blank part of the map we hadn’t filled in yet.
“How do you figure?” I asked.
“It is the only staircase on your map that isn’t on the one of this floor.”
I pressed the walkie-talkie’s send button. “Thanks, Cereus. I’ll buy you a beer as soon as we’re out of here.”
“Oh! I...uh...I helped?”
“Yes, yes, it helps. Good work, agent. Could you let us know if she moves?” I would swear I heard him puff his chest out at the word ‘agent’.
“Will do! Happy to be of service, Detective!”
I broke the connection, stuffing the walkie-talkie back in my pocket.
“Lim, you think you can lead us there?” I asked.
“Gladly.”
Refolding the map, Limerence took off in the lead.
****
There’s only so long a pony can have his guard up, and I was quickly reaching the limits of my attention span. Five more, entirely uneventful minutes walking brought us into the unmapped section of the floor and I was starting to pray for some flying bullets. The school had been interesting. The danger was mostly irritating; not lethally dangerous… and at least it wasn’t dull.
Moving through the endless blue walls and lines of empty cells was giving me the surreal feeling of walking through the shell of some giant shelled beast. A breeze of ventilated air was like slow, mighty breaths, ruffling manes and the edges of cloaks. I didn’t especially care for the metaphor, but nor could I escape the sensation of having willingly strolled into the stomach of a horror scaled for a different time and a different place. Supermax, the Hole, would always be a prison; the sins of Saussurea and the ponies who built it or were interred there could never be truly cleansed.
I was so wrapped in these thoughts that I ran nose-first into Limerence’s flank when he stopped suddenly in front of me.
“Oof...Detective!” he grunted, using one rear leg to push me away. “I might expect that behavior from some of our other companions, but not from you!”
Before she could start, I put my hoof over Taxi’s muzzle. “Hold on making me blush until after we’ve escaped with our lives.”
“B-but I might never get another chance like that one!” Taxi whined.
“...We get out of this, Swift and I are going on a double date. Payment for the ease with which we accessed Saussurea. She’s going with the Warden. I’m…” I shut my eyes and groaned. “I’m going with Scarlet Petals.”
My driver’s eyes lit up like Hearth’s Warming Eve lights. “Best… night… ever! Eee! Oh, I am so picking you out a tux.”
“-And you won’t find out what restaurant we’re going to unless you hold the mocking until after the imminent death is no longer quite so imminent. Got me?”
“I… er… dammit…” Taxi grumbled, but fell silent.
“Good. Lim, why are we stopping?” I asked, turning to our the librarian.
“We’re here, I believe,” he answered, pointing at the far end of the hall. A set of broad, double doors was set to one side of the cells. “That appears to be stairs.”
I tilted my ears towards the hall, trying to pick out any sound which might indicate which our target was in. All was quiet.
“Spread out and check each one.”
Swift and Limerence took one side, while Taxi and I took the other, moving from cell to cell. At each one, we stacked up, weapons at the ready on the off chance there might be guards of some kind. Like everything else in Supermax, however, it seemed that there was a policy of ‘lowest profile is most secure profile’. That or they were relying on the internal magical sensors somewhere upstairs to alert them of trouble. Either way, I felt reasonably safe.
We were halfway down the hall. I stuck my head around the corner of a cell, gun at the ready, trigger in my teeth. Another empty cell. Yay.
I was about to move on, when a small part of the wall moved. I hesitated, then blinked a few times. My eyes were working just fine and I wasn’t hallucinating. I’d had enough experience hallucinations of late to say that probably wasn’t the case.
What’d I just see?
There it was. It moved again.
Slowly, a shape resolved out of the wall as my vision adjusted to the notion that there should be something there. Bowed shoulders. A hood. It was the form of somepony wearing a robe of the Lunar passage, though this one was nothing like the cloak my companions wore. Against the midnight blue walls, it was nearly invisible. The sequins looked to be actual gemstones. It was a gorgeous piece of clothing, covering hooves, tail, and head so thoroughly I couldn’t even tell if the individual under it was mare or stallion.
I waved towards Taxi and Limerence, who nodded and took up guard positions on either side of the hallway, then stepped into the tiny cell.
Swift whispered in my ear, making me jump, “Is...is it her, sir?”
I shook my head and gently pushed Swift away.
“Miss Cerise?” I asked, quietly.
The kneeling pony didn’t look up. Didn’t even acknowledge that I’d said anything.
Cautiously, I stepped into the cell, keeping my trigger tight. The cot’s blankets didn’t look to have been used and the footlocker was still open, and empty. It was almost as though the tiny room had been picked at random by an occupant who didn’t intend to spend long.
I took a couple of steps forward and reached my hoof out, gently putting it on the hood and tugging the fabric back. It tumbled onto the pony’s shoulders along with a shock of beautiful, flowing mane.
Silver mane.
Silver mane, olive green pelt.
Just like Chief Iris Jade.
The girl’s face was pinched, like she was deep in concentration. Cerise looked very much like her mother, though her eyes had fewer of the stress lines and her cheeks suggested gradually disappearing baby-fat rather than the skeletal slings and arrows of long-time drug addiction.
Her lips were moving, but she wasn’t saying anything. She turned to one side, shifting on her rear knees, balancing awkwardly with one hoof. Her horn was glowing a faint white, but the light from it sputtered and crackled, as though nearly spent.
There was no way she was still unaware of us, but still she remained where she was.
I reached out to pull her up, but before I could, I felt a tug at the hem of my cloak.
“What is it?” I asked, peering at Swift.
She nodded, silently, upwards. I followed her eyes up towards the ceiling and, at first, I wasn’t entirely certain what she was telling me to look at. The walls looked pretty much the same as in every other room; dark blue, with starry patterns on every surface.
Twinkling starry patterns.
Moving starry patterns.
The pattern of sparkling points spread out across the room appeared to be very gradually shifting, sliding across the surface of the wall. Some appeared to be carried on invisible eddies of wind, while others simply circled one another, like fish in a pond.
“Oh... that... may not be good. Is that good?” I backed up a couple of steps, then called into the hall. “Lim, could you come tell me if this is good or if we’re about to die?”
Limerence poked his muzzle into the cell and glanced at the walls. “As you would say, Detective, ‘Not a clue’. This spell is of a considerable size and complexity, though there were always rumors during the war of magicks that could level cities. Without my library, your guess is as good as mine. Is that the filly in question?”
I nodded at the kneeling figure, whose only response was a slight shuffling of knees as she changed position again, this time facing the doorway. “Yeah, but… something’s wrong here. I don’t know.” I raised my voice slightly, and tried again. “Miss Cerise? Can you hear me?”
Still, no response. Some part of me was shrieking that moving her forcibly might be a terrible idea; probably the part that says ‘don’t poke the magic thing with a stick’. I became aware that the ever-present tone which had followed us throughout the floor was somehow even louder inside the cell.
Taxi appeared at Limerence’s side, her cannon propped across one shoulder. “What’s wrong? Is it Cerise?”
“Yeah, but...I don’t know. Something feels very wrong about this.” I gestured at the penitent filly, then at the bizarre, moving ceiling.
Limerence sucked his cheek between his teeth, then pointed at her flank. “Detective, I realize this may seem an odd request, but...could you move the girl’s robe away from her hip?”
“This room feels like somepony hit it with a really big, really magical tuning fork. Are we sure even touching her is a good idea?” I asked.
The librarian thought about this briefly, then shook his head. “No, but I think we have few options.”
Giving my trigger an idle kick, I sighed and moved forward. As gently as possible, I took the edge of her robe between my teeth and pulled it away from her flank, then stepped back to get a look.
“Ah… yes. I believe your earlier question has… perhaps now been answered,” Limerence murmured.
I stared at Cerise’s leg, where it met her barrel, enraptured by that sensation of all of time and space coming together to finally present me with the Truth.
Her cutie-mark was a hammer poised over an egg; I hadn’t a clue what that might be, but the surrounding iconography was certainly familiar. The flesh of her hip was puckered, like an infection had set in, stretching around her cutie-mark into the shape of a brilliant red moon.
Limerence peered over his shoulder at the double doors. “If the alarm system is disabled, it’s possible we might move her without setting something off.”
“We came through the sewers without anypony noticing. Should we take that as a good sign?” Taxi asked.
“I’ve no idea. This is, frankly, beyond me,” Lim replied, gesturing at Cerise. “What I do know is there is a direct route between this room and the front door two floors up. If we cannot make it out there, we can go down past Arcane Control and take… erm… Plan B.”
I pulled a face. “We’re not taking Plan B unless we have to. She’s not… all there right now. Can we… I dunno… deface the spell or something? Maybe get it to stop doing whatever it’s doing?”
Limerence rose and moved over to one of the walls, resting his hoof on the ever-changing pattern. “Brute force is, as ever, not the solution, Detective. Be glad you aren’t in possession of a horn right now. If you were, you would realize how apt your ‘tuning fork’ statement actually was.”
“So, is that a ‘no’, then?”
Reaching up, Limerence touched his horn with one toe, barely hiding a wince at the gentle contact. His horn seemed to be letting off a very faint glow, though he didn’t appear to be casting any spell. “Based on the weight of ambient energies I can feel simply being in this room, if we damage this enchantment incautiously, it’s entirely possible the feedback could simply fry her. Or us. Or everypony in the building.”
“Are we saying that moving her isn’t likely to do the same thing?” I queried, easing around to look into the girl’s face. Cerise’s lips were in constant motion, but I couldn’t tell what she was saying. The look on her face was one of absolute calm. Taxi, at her most serene, had never come within a mile of that expression.
Limerence shrugged. “In all likelihood? No. I don’t believe they intend the girl to remain here. She’s being moved at some point, probably tonight.”
I glanced around came to the same quick deduction. “Unused bed, nothing in the hooflocker, unscuffed floor, and ‘special’ robe which looks more like Skylark’s than anypony else’s in the building. Alright, yes, these were temporary accommodations. We heard Skylark talking about somepony being ‘prepared’ earlier.”
“Shall we assume whatever she meant has some relation to this?”
Swift looked at her hooves, then shuffled her wings a tiny bit. “Sir, I... don’t want to go all ‘Daring Do and the Temple Of Flaying Alive’, but…-”
“Officer Cuddles-” Limerence said, scoldingly, “Imagination has it's place, but I don’t think it’s likely that the head of a regional religion would sacrifice the Chief of Police’s daughter for such foul purposes.”
My partner’s ears drooped a tiny bit and she looked, if anything, a bit disappointed. “Why not?”
"…Because… because such things are simply not done!" Limerence sputtered.
I gave him an appraising look. "We're talking about people we suspect of possibly setting up a conspiracy to assassinate Celestia. You're saying there's things they wouldn't do because it's 'not done?'"
"Even criminals have standards, detective! My brother Zefu, walks a fine line as it is. To cross it is to call down the Royal Guard! And, the murder aside, necromantic magics one might extract from such a thing, when discovered, would invite the immediate, fiery wrath of Celestia herself!"
"If we're right about the assassination thing, that may be what they're hoping," Taxi pointed out. It might have been my imagination, but I swear Limerence turned a slightly paler shade of blue.
I raised my hoof. “Wait... Back up. Magics? Killing somepony could be done for...magical purposes?”
Swift giggled and nodded. “Oh, yeah! That was what I meant! It’s one of my favourites in the whole series. Daring totally saved her love interest from losing all his skin! An evil priest pony was going to draw a spell on it which would be super, duper powerful! It was so awesome! She swung-”
“Hold the phone, kid.”
She trailed off, staring at me, quizzically. “I...I was just making a joke, Sir. I don’t actually think-”
I put my toe over her mouth, cutting her off.
The resulting silence was deafening.
I tossed my robe back over one shoulder like a serape, flicked off my safety, and picked up my trigger with my toe, holding it at the ready. “Has anyone else just noticed the hum stopped?”
Limerence glanced at his horn, then took several quick steps back, peering into the hallway. Pulling his robe up, he levitated out his crossbow. “If... there is a time to move this filly, it is likely to be now.”
I knew exactly who was going to move the filly, too. Taxi had to hold her cannon, Swift was too small, and Limerence’s horn was burned out.
Joy of joys.
“Alright, everypony out of the cell. If something explodes-”
I didn’t even get to finish my sentence before I was, very abruptly, alone in the cell with Cerise. Limerence, Taxi, and Swift all peeked around the edge of the door.
“Alright, Miss Cerise… I dunno if you can hear me, but please don’t snap my neck.”
Shutting my eyes, I reached down and took a muzzle-full of Cerise’s robe in my teeth. I gave it a light tug. No movement. I opened one eye, frowning around the fabric in my teeth. Cerise’s lips were still moving.
I risked a look back towards the door.
Taxi made a little ‘go on’ motion with her hoof.
Taking a deep breath and bracing my rear hooves, I put all of my weight behind my muzzle and pulled sharply on the robe, trying to drag Cerise away from the wall. Earth pony strength being what it is, I generally expected to topple over in a pile of flailing legs with an angry unicorn demanding to know exactly what I thought I was doing. Painful, but probably not lethal. At worst, I expected to end up with a mouth full of torn robe.
I really didn’t expect to almost yank my own teeth out of my head.
“Ow! Oh, Celestia, why?!” I moaned, stumbling backwards, clutching at my jaw with both forehooves. Tears sprang to my eyes and I screwed them shut. “What’s that damn robe made of?!”
“Uh... um... s-sir?” Swift stammered.
I turned to look at my partner, wiping my eyes with both fetlocks. “What? You want to try moving her? Give it a shot!”
“N-no, sir…”
Something in her voice brought me up short. Her brilliant blue eyes were wide as the moon and full of fear.
I slowly let my head swivel back around, then swallowed heavily.
Cerise was staring at me. Her horn continued to glow. What set my stomach twisting was her expression, or perhaps, her complete lack of one. She wasn’t worried, curious, or even slightly disturbed.
She was just staring.
Eloquence, Hardy. Think eloquence! What would an enchanted, deranged, emotionally unstable cultist girl who doesn’t know she’s a hostage and intended for death or worse want to hear from a police officer?
“Uh...h-hello?”
Putz.
Cerise’s face didn’t change, but her mouth dropped open. I found my gaze drawn involuntarily down to her thin lips. At once, a shrill, thundering voice issued from her muzzle.
“Intruders detected! Report to Arcane Control for immediate processing!”
I leapt back from her, bringing my revolver up and leveling it between her eyes. I don’t know what I intended to do with it, but I was so surprised that ‘shoot the hostage’ sounded better than ‘death by possessed unicorn’.
I paused. A funny feeling had crawled into my brain and it took me several seconds to realize exactly what had caused it. When I did, I gnawed on my lower lip.
Well, what can it hurt? It’s not like fighting our way out was ever really an option, I said to myself.
“Pardon...could...you repeat that?” I asked, quietly.
“Intruders detected! Report to Arcane Control for immediate processing!” the voice barked.
Hesitantly, I let my weapon fall.
“Intruders detected!” the not-Cerise voice snapped again. “Report for processing!”
“What if I say ‘no’?”
“You… You will report for processing! Come to Arcane Control immediately!”
“Shouldn’t you be sending guards?” I asked, feeling one of those cocky smirks spring up on my face.
There was a protracted pause.
“Guards are on their way, but it will save them time if you come to Arcane Control. Immediately!”
I dropped my flank onto the thin carpet in the tiny cell, taking a moment to scratch at a spot under the robe that’d been bothering me for some minutes.
Taxi hissed from the doorway. “Hardy, what...are you doing?! We have to move!”
“I’m asking where the guards are,” I said, with a shrug and a smile. “Our friend here has apparently detected some intruders. Why send us to Arcane Control? The only thing down there is Astral Skylark, and Skylark isn’t incautious. I somehow doubt our illustrious host wants us to voluntarily trot our heavily armed selves down into the center of whatever ritual she’s got going on, either.If this is anything like any other prison, then the security stations will be upstairs. Nor, I think, would she order any of her lackeys to tell the ponies with guns to head in the same direction as their leader. Something stinks.”
“Report to Arcane Control for processing!” the voice insisted.
“Yes, yes, certainly. I just want to know what’ll happen if I say that I damn well won’t.” I replied, reasonably. Rising to my hooves, I took couple of steps forward and poked Cerise in the nose with the tip of my hoof.
There was a protracted pause. It lasted a full minute, during which the girl just sat there, her mouth still open and eyes dull.
When the voice returned, it was somewhat quieter and far less commanding.
“Um… Please… could you… come to Arcane Control?”
Swift poked her head out. “Please? What kinda mean disembodied authoritarian voice are you?”
I narrowed my eyes at the girl being used as a puppet.
“Let Miss Cerise go.”
The voice was quiet for a long time and when it spoke again, it quavered a little, “If I do that, then the guard ponies really will come. Please? If you go down the hall, and turn left, the stairs are there. Don’t go to the others! Those go down to Secure Containment. I promise, if you come, I can… I can tell you stuff!”
Stuff? Not how a security pony typically refers to essential information.
Something in that voice still sounded very strange, too. It was high, and tinny, but I couldn’t quite put my hoof on exactly what was so odd.
“Sir?” Swift’s voice brought me out of my thoughts.
“What is it, kid?”
“I know this is probably a stupid question, but what do we do now?”
I flicked the hammer on my gun, then tongued the safety back on and stepped out into the hallway to join my friends. As I did, Cerise’s mouth snapped shut and she turned back to the wall, her lips resuming their non-stop litany of what I assumed to be prayers. I had the most unsettling image in my head of a television showing static.
“I think we go to Arcane Control and hear about ‘stuff’,” I replied.
“This is way weird, sir.”
“I must concur with Miss Cuddles, Detective,” Limerence added. “Yes, this intelligence seems disinterested in passing us along to Astral Skylark, else it is likely we would be up to our hocks in cultists just now, but I find myself uncertain what ulterior motivations it could have.”
Taxi pulled at her braid with her teeth, nervously. “Hardy, I think we should leave. Call Chief Jade. Let her know Cerise is here, and let her take it from there. Send her one of those magic robes and-”
“Leave the girl here to Skylark’s sweet mercies?” I growled.
“It’s not like they can just kill her, right?” Taxi murmured, eartips hanging low. “I mean, they need her for a hostage for now...”
“Sweets, I don’t see as they have any other options. Jade let me go. Flat out. They might not be able to prove it, but her daughter is no longer reliable leverage and she can identify them. Even if they managed, somehow, to strip her memories then they’ve lost all credibility if they let her go.”
“But just… murdering a helpless girl!” my driver protested. “I realize Skylark might not be on the up and up, but the church is about forgiveness and generosity!”
“Yeah, like the spell-worked robes? Look, you said it yourself! Knowing that the Supermax construct is operating will bring Celestia and Luna in here, if we’re not careful, and that might be the point!” I replied. “We lose the armor immediately, and our perps will vanish. Celestia and/or Luna become prime targets. We can’t afford to let this get out of hoof. We’re leaving with Cerise, and if we’re lucky, the Moon Weapons.”
Limerence’s nose wrinkled. “But… walking into this intelligence’s den does not strike me as terribly wise, Detective!”
“Did walking into this building?"
Limerence's riposte died on his parted lips.
"That's what I thought. Now come on. I’d rather not keep our disembodied friend waiting, lest it decide to actually send some guards to check on us.”
****
It didn’t take us long to find the particular staircase, but getting into it was another question. Arcane runes ran the length and breadth of the door-frame, which was just a little taller than your average pony, and it was covered with a thick, metal security door.
“What now, sir?” Swift asked, putting her hooves up on the thick metal door and giving it a light push. It didn’t budge.
“Maybe we should just knock?” Taxi suggested.
Limerence snorted, waving his horn at the door. “This is a type Twenty Six Elevated Security Portal. It would take a team of ten hydras to yank it loose. I somehow doubt that ‘knocking’ is-”
I rapped my hoof on the door and a dozen heavy bolts rattled back. A hiss of releasing air blasted our cloaks up around our knees.
The librarian stared at the door, then glared at me. “Detective, I hate that you manage that.”
“What? What did I do?” I asked, plaintively, taking the door handle in my teeth and hauling it open, revealing a dark passage behind.
“You frequently manage to make ponies smarter than you are look very stupid by being more lucky than any single creature has any right to be.”
“You say that, but the luck extends only until bullets start flying or the universe needs somepony to take a beating,” I answered, poking my head into the unlit hole in the wall. In the depths, I heard the sound of another door unsealing, followed by a rush of air. An overpowering smell rolled out of the tunnel and I staggered back, holding my nose with one hoof.
“Pheeew! That’s foul!”
Swift covered her muzzle with both hooves, her cheeks inflating as she tried to hold her stomach. “Ugh, yuck! What is that?! It smells like...like dragon, but it’s...gross!”
Limerence’s horn flashed, pinching his nostrils shut. “Id is decaying dragon,” he said, quietly.
I tried to draw in a breath, but I could almost taste the awful stink. My eyes were watering ferociously. The four of us quickly retreated down the hallway and into some cleaner air.
Taxi fished around in her saddlebag, then pulled out a tiny vial labeled ‘Menth.' Holding her breath, she uncorked it and smeared the substance on one toe, then under her nose before holding it out to me. I quickly snatched it and applied a liberal dose, before passing it to Swift. When I inhaled again, all I could smell was high powered mint.
“Ahhh... okay, that’s better,” I let out a sigh of relief. It hadn’t improved the flavor of the air much, but I could breathe.
Limerence was last, practically emptying the vial over his face, then returned it to Taxi.
“What, exactly, could be causing this scent? I don’t remember any of the stories about this place mentioning a… a dumping ground for draconic corpses,” the librarian muttered.
“Saussurea never mentioned anything about sending us down into her prison’s control center,” I answered. “She wanted us to clear the cells. I got the distinct impression she wouldn’t be terribly happy to have us down in Arcane Control, if her refusal to tell us anything about the construct is any indication.”
“Then I suppose, this being you, that is where we must go, yes?”
“I’m glad you’re finally beginning to get how this works. Now come on. Safeties off, but triggers down. I don’t want to walk into an ambush, but nor do I want us to end up shooting somepony who might help. Clear?”
Without waiting for an answer, I marched back towards the stairs. A few overhead lights flickered on, invitingly.
****
The fire in my cutie-marks was a constant thing by then. I hoped the distraction wouldn’t catch me off guard at some crucial moment. It’s the problem with having a talent that, now and then, tells you something you already know; there’s no good way to shut it off. Still, I hoped once I knew exactly what grave injustice it was working off of, it might let up a little.
Death is one thing. I’m used to death. Most deaths are pretty quiet. A dose of pills. A slip in the tub. The front bumper of a bus.
I’m even used to death that’s had a few months to simmer in its own juices. It’s never something a pony looks forward to, but it is never boring and, most frequently, it gives you a point to begin piecing together a picture of what led up to the moment of death.
Some very smart pony once said that ‘Death is the great story teller’. He or she wasn’t wrong. All the most interesting stories begin somewhere and, in between, somepony dies. The more violently, the more interesting the tale; at least, to this of us of a macabre disposition.
The thing I will never get used to is just how poorly the world treats those who survive. Sure, death will get there eventually, but the survivors tend to be the ones who end up having to piece things back together.
On the upside, they’re also the only ones with any hope of learning the truth, and death is happy to have a captive audience.
****
“Sir, about what Lim said. Do you think there’s some kind of... dragon burial pit down here?” Swift asked as we descended the long, spiraling staircase.
“Could be, but I doubt it,” I replied, cocking an ear back towards her. “Celestia and Luna returned the corpses of any dead dragons they could for proper funeral rites after the war ended, remember?”
“I...read about that once, yeah,” she answered, then paused and added, “But...but, why would there be a dragon down here? Unless there’s another way in or something, the hallways upstairs are wide enough you could lead a mid-sized dragon down them, but this would barely fit a hatching-”
I waved a hoof for quiet. Around the next curve, the second security door came into view.
Taxi wiggled in beside me in the narrow hallway and whispered, “Does this smell like ‘trap’ to you?”
I raised my head, looking back in the other direction. “If they wanted to trap us all they had to do was wait until we were down here, then shut that upstairs door and the one ahead. They’re airtight and remotely controlled. This hallway was made to seal in the event of a prison break. Anypony in here would be dead in real short time.”
Swift’s wings puffed out for take-off, but she forced them back down. “That...is still super unnerving, sir.”
“If it’ll make you feel better, I think we may be about to meet the reason why none of the alarms in the sewers went off,” I said, “With all that running around we were doing, we must have set off a couple of them. The path Limerence and I set was pretty clean, but it wasn’t perfect.”
“You mean the other ways through the sewer were more dangerous?!” Swift asked, disbelief all over her orange face.
“Errr... yeah. Much. If things go bad, we’ve still got our ladybug and M6 on the outside. It might mean a trip to jail, but if it all goes wrong, we have options.” I don’t know whether or not I was saying that for my comfort or the kid’s.
Deciding that, trap or not, I needed to know what was down there, I forged ahead through the open security door.
More lights came to life and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the harsh neons. Blinking away the glare, I surveyed the small room I’d found myself in.
On second appraisal, I realized small might have been inaccurate. If I’d been able to actually see the walls, it might have been pretty good size. As it was, every spare inch of space that wasn’t a pathway was crammed full of equipment. Screens, monitors, work stations, and machines of all kinds hummed to life. A few let out operations noises and fans started blowing fresh air through the room from overhead vents, helping considerably with the stink of draconic death.
Moving between the rows of machines, some of which were running videos of the sewers and others which seemed to be beeping a tune, I quickly determined the room was unoccupied.
“It’s safe!” I called back towards the steps. “You can come on down!”
Swift stepped in, cautiously sweeping her gun around and checking the corners. Glancing at the vents, she inhaled the fresh air coming through the vents, then pulled her robe over her head and stretched her wings.
“Kid, we’re wearing disguises for a reason,” I chastised.
“Sir, you try having feathers and then wearing a big, itchy blanket on top of an itchy tactical vest. I’m going to have to preen for an hour just to feel like I don’t have wing-mites when we’re done here.” I frowned and she sank down a little. “I’ll put it back on when we leave, okay?”
I smirked, then tore my own robe off, throwing it across my back. “Honestly, I’m glad you said that. These things are miserable without those spells on them.”
Taxi followed Swift in and her lips twitched in disgust as she surveyed the rows of technology. “All this machinery just to make sure ponies’ wills stay broken so we can tuck them away someplace quiet where they won’t bother the civilized people...”
“Miss Taxi, before you make sharp judgements, you must remember the time and circumstances under which this building was commissioned,” Limerence murmured as he moved into the room and began casually inspecting the various monitors.
My driver raised one eyebrow at him. “You can’t seriously be defending this place…”
“No, I am not defending Saussurea’s methods,” he explained, poking at a keyboard attached to one of the machines. “I simply wish to make sure we remember that before she became the villain of this particular tale, she was a hero. Before Saussurea, ponies did not capture dragons. We killed them. We slaughtered them en-masse. We’d become very good at it. Had we proceeded just a few more years in that direction... a few centuries from now, we would live in a world without dragons.”
“But what about this magic being used on ponies?”
“Would you have prefered your father be kept in a less secure facility? At the time, you must understand… there were no other options. Equestria did not contain a more secure prison. Princess Luna had sealed the original Tartarus, permanently, to prevent the dragons from freeing any of the horrors therein. Anything left inside is dead or encased in stone.”
My driver glared at him, but there wasn’t much force behind it. He met her gaze, levelly, and after a moment she let her eyes slide away. Nopony really had anything to add to that, so we began exploring the room in greater detail.
I poked around a few of the monitors which showed the sewers and the interior of Supermax. Something about them was very strange, but I couldn’t pinpoint precisely what it was.
“Lim, I need a second pair of eyes here,” I called to our librarian, who was scowling at a bundle of wire spilling from the back of one of the terminals. He heaved himself up and trotted over to my side, peering down at the image on the screen. It was in black and white, and a touch grainy, but I could still tell something was off. “Does this look...funny to you?”
His expression turned even darker as he examined the picture. “If by funny, you mean humorous, then no. If by funny, you mean it is entirely bizarre… then I concur. These are not images of Supermax. Not as it is today.”
I blinked at him. “What?”
“The walls, Detective. Despite the monochrome, you must see that those walls are not blue. They are white. Unpainted. That is the hallway we just came from. As well, if you look here-” He indicated another image which seemed to be the sewers. “-If you remember, this was where we ran into somepony carrying a torch who had been unlucky in his attempts to avoid the basilisk eyes?”
I squinted at the particular screen and it did look familiar, but there was nopony in it.
“Where is he?” I asked, dumbly.
“A very, very good question,” Limerence said, turning in a circle. “Also, not the only one I must raise. This room, presents an enigma all its own.”
“You mean, besides that there’s nopony here?” I asked. “Wasn’t our friend supposed to be ‘processing’ us or something?”
“Quite the trick it would be, too, considering none of these machines are connected to anything of significance. This is not a control room in any way, shape, or form.”
“What do you mean not a control room?” I waved my hooves at all the machinery. “What exactly is all this crap for then?”
Limerence shifted his weight and swung his horn towards the back of one of the nearest pieces of equipment. Shutting his eyes, he let out a guttural noise and the glow around his forehead intensified slightly. The screws affixing the back panel in place slowly worked themselves free, then he tore the sheet of metal away, propping it to one side. Reaching in, he wrapped his hoof in a bundle of cable and pulled it out, letting it flop across the floor like some giant, artificial snake.
Working his way to the end, he held up an unconnected plug.
Stuffing the wire back into the machine, he fitted the panel back in place, but didn’t bother with the screws. “A functional fake, and probably good enough to fool anypony not looking too closely or who’d been paid to be less than thorough. I imagine one might input commands into this system for ‘effect’, but whosoever is actually executing them is not doing it from here.”
“So...who is actually making this whole place work?” I asked.
“Um… that… that’s me.”
Everypony jumped and I snatched my trigger into my mouth so fast I almost bruised my lips.
Twisting around, I searched for our benefactor, but there was nopony there. We were still alone.
“Could you give me… uh… gosh, this stupid thing sticks,” the voice trailed off, as though talking to itself, then popped back, “I saw you come down the hall, I think. We’re talking, so I guess you made it. My sensors are acting dumb and there’s no cameras in there, but if you’re actually in the control room...could you go kick the wall? I mean, kick the bit that doesn’t have any machines on it.”
“Who is this?” I asked the air above my head. “Why have you been watching us?”
The voice seemed to be coming from a hidden speaker somewhere. It didn’t reply for a long moment, and when it did, it sounded somewhat subdued. “My… my name’s Tourniquet.”
“Okay, Tourniquet. You care to explain the spying?”
“There’s nothing else to do, and I waited a really long time for somepony who...you know...who wasn’t with those weird church ponies. Please, just go kick the wall. I promise, I can tell you lots of things.”
“You’ve said that twice, but...we’re working on scant trust here,” I grumbled, trotting around the room in a slow circle. I discovered the single, very-much-out-of-place blank section of wall tucked behind two banks of whirring mechanicals. “You gonna promise me I’m not about to die horribly if I do this?”
“I promise!” Tourniquet replied.
Limerence, Swift, and Taxi piled up at my sides.
“Mayhap it would be best we keep our weapons ready,” Limerence murmured.
I picked up my trigger bit, then turned and planted a solid buck on the section of wall. Something inside went ‘crunch’, then there was a soft humming followed by the sound of working hydraulics. The wall sank in, then swung upwards out of sight on two enormous hinges.
Even wearing the menthol spread, the scent of dead dragon washing out of the room behind still very nearly knocked me off my hooves.
“Phew... I am going to bury my face in a rose-bush when we get out of this place,” I muttered. Swift had her teeth clenched around her trigger bit so tight they creaked.
Behind the wall, there was a sea of black, and then, farther on, a single light hung in the distance, illuminating a perfectly circular space in the darkness.
“Lim? Can I borrow your glasses?”
The spectacles dropped over my face and the lenses whistled softly as they adjusted themselves. Suddenly, I was right up there in that circle of light. I took an involuntary step back, trying to make sense of exactly what I was seeing.
A nursery?
That’s certainly what it looked like. There was a soft looking blue crib, complete with mobile and teddy-bear. A rocking chair sat beside it, surrounded by stuffed animals, along with a bookshelf that overflowed with books. A few toys lay on the floor, where they'd been dropped. They were mostly familiar pieces that I’d had during my own youth; a set of building blocks, a heap of comic books, and a whole pile of puzzles.
There was a child’s bedroom, floating out there in the blackness.
The voice drifted from far off, only slightly raised. I realized, at last, what had given me pause back in that cell.
It was a filly’s voice; not a mare’s, but a girl’s.
“You...you can come over! Just walk straight towards the light!” Tourniquet called to us, though I still couldn’t see her.
“Why don’t you walk towards the light? Where are you, anyway?” I shouted.
“You came into my home! Be nice!”
That gave me pause.
The way she said it, I got the feeling she wasn’t just referring to the room we were in. I set my trigger back against my leg and moved forward a couple of steps onto soft carpet. My hoofsteps seemed muffled, but I got the impression of a simply gigantic space around me. Something in the way the air moved around my ears. Whatever the room around us might have looked like, it was huge. I wished I could see more of the details. That scent was stronger than ever, though the ventilation system seemed to be working overtime to fix that.
Deciding that my situation could only improve, I turned to my companions and gestured for them to wait, then started out into the dark. The carpet smelled a bit musty, but it was clean enough that I wasn’t stirring up dust-devils with every step.
For some reason, Limerence’s glasses weren’t adjusting for the low light levels. That was a touch worrying, though the way the circle of light didn’t reflect on anything else in the room seemed to indicate magic.
As I approached the crib, the burn in my cutie-mark intensified. I let out an involuntary yelp and stumbled down onto one knee.
“Are you okay?” Tourniquet and Swift asked, almost simultaneously.
I rubbed at my back leg with one hoof. “I’m fine. Cramp. Walking down lots of stairs, you know?”
“Oh…”
I couldn’t tell which of them said that, so I rose and kept walking. Reaching the little nursery that seemed to hang in empty space, I paused at the edge of the circle of light, then, with some trepidation, I stepped into it. My heart was thumping in my ears, and the very air seemed to shudder with some great power.
“Alright, that’s my part of the bargain here. Now, will you show yourself?” I asked.
“I...I can, but you have to promise me something, alright?”
Tourniquet’s voice came from the other side of the little bedroom, somewhere just beyond the other end of the lit region. I stepped around a loose roller-skate and gave it a light kick, sending it scooting across the carpet under the crib.
“Another promise?”
“Promise you won’t...you know, you won’t hurt me? Please?”
“You don’t hurt me, I can promise I won’t hurt you. Is that fair?”
Tourniquet seemed to think for a second, then answered, “I guess. I...gosh, are you really a detective? I heard somepony call you that.”
“Yes, yes, I am. You can call me Hardy.”
“Hardy? Um...okay. Could you... you know, could you just sit? Please? I don’t want you to freak out.”
I let my rear legs slide under me, sitting down as the girl gathered her courage.
One slight, pink hoof appeared on the far edge of the circle. Then the other. I thought, for a second, she was wearing some kind of strange horse-shoe, but as more of the filly shuffled forward, I couldn’t keep my eyes from pulling wider and wider.
Tourniquet’s left leg was perfectly ordinary, but as the light shone on her right, it reflected and refracted off metal and crystal. The illumination traveled up to her chest, where the chrome spilled out over her side, stretching up to her neck. She poked her face into sight and I had to repress a shudder; her face was still there, mostly, but her eyes were gone. Not even a milky white remained. In their place, two glittering jewels split the light into sparkling rainbows.
It might have been pretty, if it didn’t suggest an especially cruel mind. The girl’s eyes had been extracted.
There was nothing to indicate what had done the damage, but as she moved, something behind her rattled in the air above us. As her back came into view, I found myself scooting backward, almost tumbling over as my flight response took momentary control of my brain.
Wires.
Endless shining wires.
Dozens of them spilled out of her back, disappearing up toward the ceiling like a pair of grotesque wings. They moved with her as she took a few steps into the light like a shadowy mechanized horror pulled from a twisted mind.
The parts of my mind that could be afraid were so overloaded they simply switched off, leaving the analytical bits to take notice of the tiny details. She was an earth pony. No real wings, no horn, and all the lean muscle of a young athlete. Her face had lost its baby-fat, but she couldn’t have been much into puberty.
Half-turning, she looked away, letting me study her.
A patch of flesh on her side was gone, exposing a criss-crossing spaghetti work of cable. It flexed as she breathed, simulating muscle in a way that made my hackles try to climb up the back of my head. Much of her skin seemed original, but some parts weren’t exactly pieced together correctly, as though the surgeon had been rushing.
Even her tail was artificial. It sprung out of her backside in very natural looking curls, falling down her ankles with wild abandon, but even the best kept hair is not that shiny. The individual strands must have been some kind of thin, durable material. Subjectively, I suppose it was very pretty, but nothing covered the cruelty of what’d been wrought by a depraved, vicious, and very creative mind. I suspected I knew exactly whose mind that might have been.
An unkind, deeply irrational part of my mind was screaming ‘Shoot it!’, but my trigger bit remained where it was.
After a more than appropriate period letting me get used to her existence, the girl tested a smile.
“Hi-EEP!”
Tourniquet squealed and leaped backwards, eyes wide and frightened. I was momentarily confused, until I realized she wasn’t looking at me. She was watching something over my shoulder.
I turned just in time to catch a face-full of raging, razor sharp teeth.