Raid
We found the police station easily enough; it was a solidly-built structure in one of the bigger streets of the city’s central area, its location indicated by sign-posts in a number of spots across the city. Night had fallen by then, and though a few cops were busy corralling some thugs out of a carriage and toward what I assumed was the side-entrance closest to the jail cells, the place was pretty quiet compared to some other stations I’d seen in Equestria during my early years in Chrysalis’ army, and compared to what this same station probably looked like at daytime. The place would never be completely empty for us to raid as we please, but most of the cops should be at home at this hour as far as I knew, leaving only a smaller force active overnight in case of emergencies. This would inevitably include at least a couple of higher-ranking individuals, who were more likely to possess the logs we needed than some random low-level cop, and if our luck served us well, the pony in charge of the raid logs would have been assigned to cover some other night shift, and he or she wouldn’t have carried the logs home.
Fang and I hid behind some trash cans and turned into rats when nopony was paying attention, then snuck in through the side-door that had been left open after the group of thugs had gotten in. A guard was posted at the entrance, but he took no notice of us as we scurried past him. Some of the prisoners noticed us as we ran past the cells, but hardly any of them responded to our presence, and the biggest reaction was a mildly annoyed scoff that nopony would have cared to heed. The cop who had opened the door to the rest of the building, thus inadvertently letting us in, blasted his magic at us, missed as we ran around a corner, and swore under his breath, but didn’t bother to pursue us. Apparently, much like we’d assumed, rats were a common sight in the jail section of this station, and we couldn’t have been the first ones to have found their way into the more respectable parts!
Our original plan had been to transform into cops upon finding a secluded place inside the station, but a better opportunity presented itself in the form of a janitor who was just getting out of a storage room.
Having made sure the corridor was otherwise empty, we dropped our disguises and shoved the janitor back where he’d come from, and before he had the chance to cry out, Fang held him in place while I sank my fangs in his neck, careful to pierce the skin where his mane would hide the telltale bite marks. Then, I took his form and Fang pretended to be a broom that I took with me. We were now ready to tear the place apart and nopony would suspect a thing! Much like in the hive, the ponies weren’t going to take on cleaning duty if there was someone else designated for it; the only difference was that pony janitors were known for a fact to not have their movement restricted by security clearances. As long as I looked the part, nopony was going to ask for my credentials or clearance code in order to let me into a room!
I went around room by room, and instead of cleaning, I signalled Fang to drop his disguise whenever we were out of ponies’ sight, and we tossed every room together, looking for anything that could be useful.
“I think I found it,” Fang announced in, probably, the tenth room we’d gotten around to.
“Let me see.” I dropped a stack of files and joined him.
“It says, ‘Operation Bug Stomp’. Who’s naming this stuff?”
“Never mind the title! Does it list our infiltrators?”
He skimmed through it.
“Not the names, but there’s an awful lot of addresses… Do you still have that list that Grim gave us, Sir?”
“How would I have hauled it around as a rat without drawing all the attention to myself, you idiot? I tucked it into a gutter behind those trash cans, along with the communicator!”
Admittedly, I could have planned that part out a bit better. I looked around. The room had a window, so theoretically, one of us could fly out and fetch the list, but which disguise could we use without drawing undue attention to ourselves? Even pegasi cops didn’t go in and out of their offices through windows, and though this one wasn’t barred like some of the others, what if somepony noticed us and realized we weren’t the ones working in this office even if we disguised ourselves as cops like originally intended?
Then my gaze fell onto an object on the cupboard, partially hidden by donut bags. Is that what I think it is?
“Sir?”
I pushed the donut bags aside and took the polaroid camera in my hooves. Perfect! I’d only used one of them once before; I hoped I still remembered how!
“Can you hold that report up so I can snap a picture of the whole thing?”
The report consisted of several pages, but he managed after some fumbling.
I got in position, adjusted the aperture and shutter speed, and snapped the photo. The resulting flash caught us off guard; for a moment, we were sure it had given us away! We braced for battle, but nopony came in, and soon the photo had gotten out of the camera and developed itself enough to show the text would be readable, albeit tiny. Satisfied, we returned everything the way we’d found it, then backtracked to the storage room, where we arranged the still-unconscious real janitor as if a box had fallen on his head, and gave him an appropriate lump that he would have gotten from the said box. If anypony were to wonder why the station hadn’t been cleaned, that would explain it, along with why he couldn’t remember what had happened to him… or, in worst-case scenario, nopony would be very surprised to learn that he’d had a strange dream about having been randomly attacked by a couple of changelings.
Once we were satisfied, I folded the photo I’d taken so it would be small enough, which was easy with it being significantly smaller than Grim’s scroll, then turned into a rat again, only this time, I gave myself two extra appendages on my underside that would be unnoticeable by a casual observer while still allowing me to carry the folded-up photo out the same way we’d gotten in. It took some waiting until a cop opened the door to the jail section, but we were ready to zigzag-scurry to the other end of the hallway at full speed to avoid getting hit by any more spells aimed at us, not that it mattered in the end because the cop who opened the door this time was an earth pony too busy reading a piece of paper to notice and stomp pests running about at his hooves, and the guard at the side-entrance was half-asleep and might not have noticed us if we were in our real forms.
Safely out of the building, we returned to our trash cans, where we restored our previous pony disguises and retrieved the scroll and communicator I’d hidden. We then set out to find a quiet place where we could study our find undisturbed. Fang suggested doubling back to Rampage’s hideout; I dismissed that immediately. Even if the neighbors weren’t aware that the place was empty, we couldn’t be sure the cops hadn’t posted any anti-changeling security measures inside the cottage itself, or that they wouldn’t decide they needed to check something in there and that it couldn’t wait until morning!
Eventually we settled on spending the night in a cheap motel we’d come across, deeming it safer than trying our luck with any seemingly abandoned shop or cottage that could turn out to be thug headquarters or overnight shelter for homeless ponies. Not that we were concerned about not being up to the task of fighting them if it came to that; we simply wanted to stand out as little as possible! Paying for a room wasn’t an issue, either, since we’d been saving whatever bits our prey happened to have at the moment of becoming food and Fang had forgotten to leave his team’s stash behind at Foal Mountain.
Once in the room, we got straight to reading the report from the photo I’d taken and comparing the list of arrest locations with our own scroll.
By morning, we were done comparing lists and discussing the findings, and were ready to report to Chrysalis. Fang drew the curtains to give us privacy from any pegasi that might get too curious for their own good, and I activated the communicator.
“What have you found?” she asked right away.
“From what we’ve learned so far, one of the infiltrators got spotted in his own form by accident, and it prompted the cops to perform a city-wide raid to catch all the changelings they could find, and it looks like they were admirably successful. I don’t know how they figured out where to find our infiltrators yet, but the police report lists most of their hideouts correctly. Seven got captured elsewhere, unsurprisingly, and the drones you sent from Fillydelphia are on the list too judging by the date and time of the last arrest, but three more got captured in between, specifically the day after the majority of the infiltrators, and that’s three more than we have on the list Psycho gave Grim. Did he forget to count anyling in?”
“I’ll ask him, but there’s another possibility. The team of hunters you assigned to Manehattan never returned. They should have by now, considering how all but the most distantly-deployed teams are back.”
“They were listed as a group arrest,” Fang interjected, having checked the report again.
“Are you both saying they got captured?” I exclaimed, perhaps a bit too loudly.
“It does seem likely. Pharynx, you picked the hunters personally, and you insisted they were the best you could find. How are so many of them suddenly this incompetent? First the Everfree team gets eaten, then the Foal Mountain team can’t fight off an ursa and the Yakyakistan team can’t dig themselves out of an avalanche, and now the Manehattan team gets captured and the Rainbow Falls team gets their hideout discovered on the same day, possibly minutes apart! What is going on?”
Rainbow Falls too? What had happened there?
“What are you suggesting, Your Highness?” I was pretty sure I knew, but wanted to hear it from her.
“Is Thorax alive and are you protecting him?”
I think so and yes, but why should I tell you?
“How would I know? I haven’t seen him since the evening before he escaped!”
“And you’re sure you’re not pulling any elaborate schemes on the off-chance that he’s alive?”
I am pulling schemes, but good luck getting me to admit it!
“Yes, I’m sure! Ask Fang if you don’t believe me! We were discussing the likelihood of him having been captured along with the others and possible scenarios how it could have happened!”
She looked at him and he nodded.
“Pharynx finds it unlikely that Thorax would have successfully taken the place of one of our infiltrators, and I tend to agree. But it could have happened if a drone got seriously injured or something like that and was unable to fight back. It would be a good disguise for him, after all. Either that, or he simply got captured along with the others and one infiltrator is still free, lying low until the dust settles.”
“Or Thorax chose to pretend to be the one infiltrator lying low until the dust settles.”
“Possibly. But we haven’t found anything to prove or disprove any of that.”
“Did you find out which prison they were taken to?”
“Hold on... “ I consulted the photo. “I know I’ve seen it somewhere… ah, there it is! They were taken to Alcatrots, all of them.”
“I’ll have Psycho assemble a team to deploy there.”
“What are your orders for us?”
“You’ve found out enough for now. We’ll see if anything else might need clearing up eventually, but for the time being, you can return to Foal Mountain and continue preparing for your mission.”
“Understood,” we said in unison and terminated the link.
Having made sure we’d left no trace of our business here, we checked out of the motel and set out for our camp.
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Seriously tho, hi.
10211597
Call me stupid, but I'm not sure I understand what you meant by that last comment on The Bug in the Cave
Uh, hi?
10211615
You're not stupid, I made a very off hand reference to markiplier, and the way he acts sometimes.
10211799
Oh. Okay. I don't think I'm familiar with him
Damn fine chapter. Very creative infiltration
That polaroid camera was very convenient as was the fact the report wasn't in a locked desk drawer.