The 200-Story Mare

The list of people who could get me back into Canterlot just by asking was a short one.

I guess Scootaloo wasn't sure if she had been on that list or not.

Part of me wondered on the flight in: just where had a college student and one-time Line-Walker gotten her hands on 100,000 bits to set aside, plus the money for a Dead Mare's Switch? What kind of job had she been working on to get that kind of money? What kind of fucking job was she even working where she felt she needed that sort of insurance policy?

Another red-eye flight out of Manehattan saw me catching whatever sleep I could on the way in.

Past that? My old datapad was tracking the signal code for Scoots chip to - the Canterlot slums. Miles and miles of poverty: the same place I swore I'd never return to more than once and where Scootaloo's first job had gone so wrong. Some part of me thought that maybe, just maybe, it had been me that got her into this mess. That when we first met I should have just told her to stick to school and get a good job working on tech for any one of the corporations with their own mega-buildings in Canterlot or throughout Equestria.

But mag-rails travel fast. I didn't brood on the idea long before I came to my stop.

My stop found me at the station on the corner of Baltimare and Goldbank Avenue. The rain was coming down in a drizzle that made the streets shine black under the streetlights and a cold breeze nipped at my fingers when I stepped onto the open platform. The rain was drizzling against the metal roof of the platform and only added to the cold. It was five o' clock in the morning. The streets were dead at this hour as I hit the stairs and started down for the sidewalk.

In fact that meant that, despite the kinds of ponies who were walking the street at this hour, I didn't come across so much as one hooker in any of the alleys along the seven blocks of my walk.

But during the walk? A lump kept forming in my throat each time I looked at my datapad.

What was going to be there? What kind of place would this be? Had the cops found her body yet, or would it be right where she'd been killed? Was I just going to find her body - laying in the back rooms of some drug-house full of young mares and stallions doped out on Sunshine? Or covered in trash bags back in some alley, cut to bits? Maybe I was going to have to shoot my way through some serial killer's hideout to get to her.

Each heavy, booted thud of my own feet down the sidewalk drew me closer, and brought a more accurate ping from her chip. I didn't know what to expect. To be honest, some of the things I thought of were starting to make me sick by the time I was on the same block.

Maybe the building I finally came to wouldn't have been so embarrassingly unexpected if my mind hadn't been pondering - all of those other possibilities.

"Headstone's Mortuary Services"

A simple-looking one-story building. Adobe brick front that I was willing to bet only served for aesthetics over actual metal walls, flanked on either side by uncharacteristically well-lit alleyways, and a lobby I could see through the doors out front. It looked - morgue-ish, I supposed. Nothing too flashy or eye-catching to draw a pony's attention. Of course that's because the last thing the rich kids coming down to the slums from Canterlot-proper wanted to see while they were cruising for whorses and drugs was a reminder that the few hours of vice and depravity they took for a vacation were a life-draining constant for the locals.

No business hours were posted on the front window but the doors slid open automatically for me. I suppose that sort of thing was necessary: the dying didn't have the decency to always limit themselves to only passing away between nine and five.

When I stepped inside, my boots echoed on the white tile floors, and with my hands stuffed in my pockets I took in my surroundings. A rectangular room with an unattended desk in front of me. In the right corner was a closed door with a frosted glass window that read "Dr. Tombstone, Funeral Director" and it looked like the lights were off in the office.

On the left wall was a single door with a sign marking it as a unisex bathroom. And in the left corner on the far wall was an open doorway with grimy-looking strips of plastic hanging in the doorway and a small gray box set in the wall with what looked like a speaker on it. As I stepped further into the lobby I must have triggered something. A blinking green light came on under the speaker of the box and there was a moment of static.

"I'm in the back if you need me." A mare's voice came through the speaker.

My first thought was that, I assumed it was Dr. Tombstone speaking, was a very trusting sort of pony. I mean, I could have been anypony coming through the door at this hour of the night. But I had second thoughts when the whirring of gears made my ears twitch and I looked behind me to see a camera in either corner with one focused on me. There was probably a monitor or two set up in the back, not far from the doctor's - work station.

I brushed aside some of the hanging strips of plastic and was assaulted by - nothing. No smell of dead bodies. No wave of embalming fluid mixing with equine fluids. Just a clean, climate-controlled back room. As sterile as any hospital ever, and as I took in the bright overhead lights, the several spotless operating tables in the center of the room, and the racks of visibly ordered and well-cared for chemicals and tools I was certainly reminded of - any hospital I could think to name. And then I set my eyes on Dr. Tombstone herself.

"Good evening!" The lilac colored mare declared, "What can I help you with, miss?"

With a table between us, it looked like she barely sat high enough to put herself head-and-shoulders above the operating table. On the table in question were an array of tools. All of them made of metal shining under the too-white lights overhead. She held a - a laser of some kind, I assumed, and looked like she'd been in the middle of inspecting it when I walked in.

"Well, I -"

"Oh! Wait! Don't tell me!" She was grinning like a Cheshire cat, "Somebody died!" And she sounded way too happy about that, "That's usually why folks come around. Well, except for the police. They come around acting all tough and so rude, asking questions all the time." She frowned for - I blinked and it was gone before I could be sure it had actually been there, "But you don't look like you've got a badge, and you haven't pulled out a warrant yet, so I can only assume you came here because you were going to be bringing in a body!"

She reached underneath the table and I heard a motor whir. She jerked back from the table, turned, and came around. It was then that I noticed she was sitting on a wheelchair. Only metal-capped rounded stubs above where her knees would have been, tail underneath her hanging over the front of the chair as she came buzzing up to me on four little wheels. It looked like under the chair was a lift system to elevate her.

"Actually, no. Not - well, I'm not bringing a body in." I fished my PDA from my pocket. And the chip was still reading as in this building even after a double-check.

"Oh." she shrugged. "shows what I know. Mom always said 'to assume makes an ass out of u and me'!" She giggled, "Can't be right all the time, huh? So then what brings a pretty young mare like you to this part of town." She pointed with the odd little laser contraption off in one direction, "Most of best whorses are that way, at Berry Punch's place."

"No I -"

She continued on, turning away from me, "The Dancer's Studio. Cannot miss it."

How? How was such a scatter-brained mare a doctor?

"I'm here to see a body!" I finally snapped out with a fist in my pocket balling up.

That brought her to a stop, blinking at me over her shoulder, "Well. You came to the right place. I think." And she began eyeing me critically from back at her collection of tools, "You aren't pervy, are you?"

I blinked.

"Because the last pervy pony that came through here locked himself in cold storage. It took three hours for the cops to get him out. Three." She motioned to a thick set of double doors across the room.

"No. No I - I'm looking for somepony specific."

"Okay, good. Because you didn't look too pervy. I just wanted to be sure."

. . . too pervy?

I let the comment slide, "A mare. Barely a mare, really. Would have been eighteen. About so high?" I held a hand just above my shoulders, "Purple mane and an orange coat. With -"

"Stop." She suddenly declared, "Just - stop." The once smiling mortician looked unnervingly grim now, "I think I know the mare. Would you know her name?"

"Scootaloo?"

She nodded and backed away from her table again, "Come with me."

I stepped further into the room to follow her but didn't have far. I quickly realized that along either of the side walls were off-gray doors with windows frosted so well I couldn't see anything inside them. Above each one was a single light with most of them off save for two others and the one she was leading me to.

"We keep them in here for a while. For when the family comes to identify them. For privacy." She explained, tapping into a keypad by the door, "And I'm going to warn you now. You may not like what you see."

I'd seen plenty of dead ponies before. I'd even seen a dead filly or two on bad, bad jobs. But her warning was one I took to heart. I may have seen a lot of dead ponies, but none of them had been Scootaloo.

The door opened with a hiss, sliding away up into the ceiling. A small, hexagonal room, just deep enough to fit a surgical table in length-wise with a padded bench across from it. The lighting in the ceiling of this room was dimmer than the main room and I could guess it was probably to present a more - forgiving atmosphere, maybe? I didn't know. Words weren't really my thing.

It was definitely a mare resting on the table. Or at least the shape of one hidden underneath a pale blue sheet. She was set out straight as a board in the most unnatural pose imaginable. Nobody ever died laid out so perfectly. A small buzzing sound started and I watched Dr. Tombstone's chair begin to lift her until she was sitting at level with the table. She gave me one last look to see if I was ready, not as grim as before but certainly not smiling, and I must have nodded without realizing it because she slowly pulled the sheet back.

The dead don't look like they're sleeping.

The only dead pony that looks like they are sleeping is one who died while sleeping.

Her coat was more pale than I had ever seen it. Her lips had the barest blue coloring to them and looked so cold. The only thing that made the frazzle-mained filly look like she was sleeping was her eyes were closed.

"So," Tombstone sucked on her teeth, "you family? Friend?"

I set a hand on the table, "I'd - I - how'd she die?"

If the doctor was offended then she didn't show it, "Drug over-dose, as best we can tell. Blood tests show she was drugged, first, and there are track marks in one arm and signs of restraint all over. Whoever did this used high-quality, professional stuff. She wouldn't have felt a thing. If that helps."

It didn't, "Yeah. Thanks. Any idea - why she was killed."

"I don't think you'll like the answer to that."

"I'm already not liking any of this." I replied.

"Fair enough. But hey, I warned you." Dr. Tombstone reached out and pulled the sheet back further.

Faust must have loved me, or at least had some respect for the poor filly. Because somehow I found the strength not to throw up.

She was bare. No surprise there: that was how morticians did things. But her belly was - it looked like it had been shaved. And the skin had been cut open. Peeled back to reveal her insides. And I was no anatomy major, but it wasn't hard to miss the void where something belonged. I already had a good guess just what it was.

"This is all postmortem. She was gone by the time this was done. And she isn't the first mare that's been found like this." Doctor Tombstone shook her head, "The ponies on the street are calling the suspect the Canterlot Surgeon. Disgusting really."

"Is she -?" The lump in my throat robbed my words and I could only point with the hand not holding the edge of the table in a white-knuckled death grip.

"Missing something? Her womb. The same as the other victims. Tied, over-dosed, and then - this. Whoever they are, its always mares - young ones - and they always take the womb. Clean cuts, too, like I said."

I felt the urge to vomit again and had to fight it back, "Is - are there any leads? On who did it?"

The doctor shrugged, "No suspects, no. But likely somebody who knows medicine - or butchery, at the very least. All these cuts," she motioned to the peeled away areas of skin. "are done with a professional touch. And by a scalpel or other metal blade, since there's nothing cauterized along the cuts. So that narrows it down to - ponies who like antique surgical equipment is my bet. These days even the poorest facilities use laser incisions."

"And what are the cops doing about this?" I asked as I stepped back from the table.

"The Gendarmes? Nothing much. Trying to keep it under wraps and grasping at straws trying to find leads."

I nodded.

"By the way," she turned to me. "you never answered my question. About who you were to her."

"I -" I stopped "- I think we were friends."

"You don't know?"

"I'm starting to think she wouldn't be here if I hadn't fucked up."

"What happened?"

I said nothing.

She took the silence as I meant it, "Fair enough. So why come along now, out of the blue then? I've never seen you around this neighborhood before. And I'm pretty sure I'd remember that mane if I'd seen it before."

"She's got a Dead Mare's Switch. It was set to send a message to me. I didn't know it until my vid-phone went off - a few hours back now. Last night. Asked me to come investigate, and see if I couldn't find who killed her."

"I see." Dr. Tombstone nodded, "A Dead Mare's Switch, huh? She a Runner?"

"No," I shook my head. "she wasn't. At least - not after her first job."

"What about you?"

I nodded again. As if I was completely unable to speak while looking at Scootaloo down on the table anymore.

"Think you have what it takes to track the Surgeon down?"

I reached in my pocket for my cigarettes, something to calm my nerves, "I've been a Runner for a few years now. I'm not a detective - but I can do things no badge could ever do. And I have to. She asked me to."

Dr. Tombstone nodded and pursed her lips. Already she'd switched emotions on me so fast I had been questioning her sanity earlier. I couldn't even begin to guess what was going on inside her head at that moment as she looked at Scoots' body on the table. Then she looked up at me again.

"Her belongings?" She pointed to a small drawer on the side of the surgical table, one of several, "They're in the drawer. You can pick around there and see if there's not something that could give you a clue. Then - use your Runner friends to find out some things that maybe the Gendarmes can't. I don't know," she shrugged and started for the door again, "not many mares I know would come in out of the blue for a call from a dead pony. So maybe you can at least get a suspect named for the cops, if nothing else."

I nodded even though I knew she wasn't looking my way by then.

"I'll give you some time alone." She called as I reached for the drawer.

I looked to Scootaloo, laying still on the table, and a moment later pulled open the drawer. I wasn't happy to be scrounging around in her things, but it was one small hardship so I could find whichever bastard walking the streets right then had done this to her.

Her - underwear rested on top of her folded and otherwise orderly close. That was just the thing I wanted to see when trying to find her killer: the realization that the mare I couldn't see as anything other than a little filly was wearing scarlet, lace panties. Just the sort of thing I needed to know about her.

Among the other contents of the drawer was a tube of lipstick, some eyeliner, and a pair of tampons. 200 bits in hard cash resting under her card told me she'd been planning to do some serious spending in one shot. Plus the makeup and - now that I looked at it, the looks of the skirt and shirt folded up in the drawer told me that Scootaloo had been looking to do some partying. That was when I saw her cellphone, sitting off by itself.

I grabbed it and tethered it to my datapad to start it charging. Turning it on and letting it draw from the pad, I could see that it hadn't even been locked out. By this point I'd already invaded her privacy so thoroughly and seen her chest cavity so I didn't even hesitate to look into her phone messages. I searched and quickly found the most recently received text. Sent from Sweetie Belle, a friend of Scoots' that I'd met in passing from time to time.

"Hey. Heading to Dancer's Studio. Be there at 8? ~ SB"

Well, it certainly wouldn't be the first time I'd gone to "investigate" a whorses' den.

But I cringed thinking that Scootaloo had been headed there. In scarlet lace.