The Crimson Crucible

Manehattan – 06:45

By the time he reached Manehattan Central Station, Crimson had lost count of the number of times he had replayed his sister’s voicemail message.

Stepping onto the platform, and emerging from the escalator into the central hub, Crimson drank in the familiar feel of Manehattan that he had so deliberately moved away from. The fear in ponies’ eyes, the hooks that pulled at their souls; the beast welcomed him back with open arms and shut them tight once he was inside its embrace.

His first port of call was his dad’s house. He needed to make sure that the old stallion was alright and, if necessary, to take him somewhere safe while he went out and looked for Sea Swirl.

Crimson waded through the sea of faces towards the taxi stand outside. He got into the back of a black taxi cab, mumbled the street name of his dad’s house and said nothing afterwards.

The taxi driver was a middle-aged stallion from South Manehattan who was dressed in a blue tracksuit. At the first opportunity, he started talking about football and women, before moving on to violently blaming immigration for the recent nosedive in his trade. Crimson sat and listened. He nodded occasionally, not in agreement or even acknowledgement of what the stallion was saying, but simply because it was the appropriate situational response.

When they reached their destination, the first thing Crimson noticed was the police cart that was parked just outside the block of flats where his father lived. He allowed his eyes to wander up towards the entrance of the building and he saw the uniformed policeman who was standing next to the door.

“This the place, sir?”

Crimson nodded and turned to the taxi driver, handing him a £10 note. He got out of the taxi and walked up to the front entrance of the block of flats. He nodded inconspicuously at the police offer that stood outside the door and pushed it open.

Crimson climbed the eight flights of stairs separating him from his father’s flat. He knew the building; after all, he’d helped his father move here after his heart attack.

As he stepped out onto the eighth corridor, the door to his father’s flat stood out immediately. Crimson was beset by a rising sense of anxiety as he approached the door. By the time he reached it, his heart was wedged in his throat. The door was shut and two strips of tape had been strung across it.

Crime scene – do not cross.

With a shaking hoof, Crimson reached around and took out a set of keys, but when he saw that the lock on the door was broken, he simply pushed against it. The door swung inward. Crimson ducked underneath the tape and walked into his father’s flat.

Crimson swallowed hard.

He could clearly smell the sprays and powders that had been used by the forensic teams to dust for prints. Worse still, he could smell the noxious scent of air freshener that had been sprayed over something foul. The offensive mixture they both made was acrid and nauseating.

The kitchen was messy. There were dirty plates in the sink that needed washed up and there was a cartton of stale milk that had been left out on the worktop. A kitchen stool was lying idly on the floor, and next to it, a smashed cup. Crimson turned and saw marks in the carpet in the hall leading out of the kitchen.

Crimson tried to visualise the scenario: his father had been in the kitchen making a cup of tea when he had been grabbed from behind. There had been a struggle, during which, he dropped his cup on the floor. He was dragged backwards, knocking over a stool in the kitchen in the process and was taken out into the hall.

Crimson walked across the hall and stepped into the living room.

A chair stood awkwardly in the centre of the room. The carpet beneath it was stained with blood, as was the wall behind it.

His father had been moved, presumably by the police, but Crimson could almost feel his presence in the room. He inspected the chair, a picture forming in his mind: his dad, sat on the chair with his hooves bound behind his back, staring up at his killer with a terrified expression on his face.

He examined the blood spatter on the wall behind him; saw the empty hole where a bullet had been extracted from. At that moment, a strange feeling came over Crimson and he suddenly found himself on all fours, barely able to support his body weight.

Their father had always worked hard to support his family, even throughout the recurrent bouts of depression. He wasn’t the most hooves-on dad in the world, nor was he the most affectionate or encouraging. At best, he’d been distant and reserved; at worst, he’d been emotionally detached and unavailable, and then there was the constant struggle that he had with drink. Yes, the stallion had his flaws, but he was their dad. He was there when Crimson Cage and Sea Swirl were brought into the world. He was there when they started school. He was there when their mother passed away. He was there the day that Crimson left for Crossovo and was there when he came back. He was there when Sea Swirl was first admitted to rehabilitation, and every time thereafter.

The realisation that his father would no longer be there was sinking in. Like a huge black stone, it touched down in the pit of Crimson’s stomach and lay there, unmoving. Crimson was no stranger to death. For a long time, death had been a huge part of his life. But the death of his own father? That was something he’d never considered possible. His eyes started to twitch. His knees went weak.

The moment he finally realised that his father was gone was the moment that the surge of grief crashed violently against him. In an explosion of rage, Crimson drove a clenched hoof against the wall, punching straight through the flimsy plasterwork. He let out a roar of anguish and broke down to his knees, weeping bitterly into the ground.

Manehattan – 07:29

Cloudchaser turned over in bed and exhaled. She checked the time on her phone and scowled at it.

Why is it, she thought, that when you get dragged out of bed ridiculously early, all you want to do is go back to bed; but when you finally do go back to bed, you can’t sleep? She wasn’t due back in work till after lunchtime. In theory, she could get up now, go to the gym and maybe even meet up with one of her old friends from Uni and get a coffee before she had to come in.

Or she could go back to the crime scene and work out what it was that had bothered her since she left the building and continued to bother her as she lay in bed.

With an exasperated sigh, she heaved herself out of bed and crossed the floor to her wardrobe.

Manehattan – 07:51

Crimson emptied the contents of the drawer onto the living room carpet. Bank statements, hospital letters, bills, mail order confirmations... he immersed himself in his dad’s belongings, hoping to find a shred of connection to his departed soul. He sat and waited for a voice to reach him from beyond the barrier that separated living from dead, but nothing came and once more, Crimson found himself pacing the room trying to make sense of what had happened.

Clearly, whoever murdered his father hadn’t just turned up and killed him; they’d wanted something from him first, which was why they had taken the time to sit him on a chair first before they blew his brains out through the back of his head.

His sister’s voicemail replayed once more in his head:

“Something awful has happened, and there are ponies coming for me.”

He still hadn’t heard back from her. No unknown numbers, no voicemails. Had she even gotten his message? What if she had gone along with her original plan and was standing there in Trottingham Central, waiting for him to come and pick her up?

No, she would have phoned.

So did that mean she wasn’t able to phone?

Anxious thoughts began coursing through Crimson’s body, working their way from his head to his hooves and toes. Were the ponies who were after his sister the same ponies who had murdered his father? Crimson had no doubt that they were – the question was who, and more importantly, why? Last time he had checked, Sea Swirl had been clean for more than six years. She’d turned her life around and even had a job now. What could she possibly be involved with now that had spilled over into killing her father?

He couldn’t lose his sister. Not now. Not after losing his father like this. Somepony had crossed a line. Somepony was going to pay with their blood for what they had done. But first, he had to track Sea Swirl down. Visit her house, retrace her steps and find out who she was running from; it wouldn’t be easy, but it was better than sitting around in his dad’s flat feeling guilty that he hadn’t there to protect him.

As he turned to walk towards the door, he was taken aback by the sight of the young, female unicorn with the brilliant cyan mane, standing in the hallway, staring at him.

Manehattan – 07:57

The stallion who stood before her was tall and well built. His fur was a light grey and he wore a black leather jacket over  his muscular frame. His dark red mane was short and spikey and his face was coated with rough stubble that was at least two days old. He appeared to be in his mid-to-late thirties, but the hollow, grey eyes that seemed to be looking straight through her, appeared to come from a much older stallion, one who had seen a lifetime of trouble and hardship.

Instinctively, Cloudchaser bent forward, sparks crackling to life on the tip of her horn. A single blast from it would be enough to send most ponies reeling, and this stallion was no exception, no matter how tough he looked.

“Let me see your hooves,” Cloudchaser instructed, horn levelled at the stallion’s chest, ready to fire at a moment’s notice. “Now!”

The stallion standing before her, slowly and without a word started to raise his hooves. When they were roughly in line with his chest, he stopped. His facial expression remained unchanged, his cold, dark eyes hardly blinking as he stared at her.

“Turn around and face the wall,” Cloudchaser told the stallion, stepping towards him. She spoke with as much authority as she could muster, being consciously aware of the slight uncertainty and nervousness that was evoked when she looked into the stallion’s eyes.

Slowly, the strange stallion turned around and put his hooves on the wall. When at last both hooves were planted firmly against the wall, he ceased looking at her.

Cloudchaser took out her radio. “This is Detective Cloudchaser requesting assistance. I’m holding a suspect at eight-one-seven Grey Field Towers – check active crime scenes.” She returned her radio to her inside jacket pocket.

“You’re making a mistake, detective,” the stallion said softly.

Cloudchaser raised an eyebrow, “this is a restricted crime scene. The only mistake is you being here. Who are you anyway? Why are you here?”

The stallion said nothing. He appeared to be exercising his right to remain silent.

Cloudchaser kept her sparkling horn pointed in the stallion’s direction. He said nothing the whole time. Even when the four uniformed policeponies arrived and arrested him, securing both of his limbs behind his back with a set of handcuffs and escorting him down the stairs towards a parked police cart, he said nothing. When they finally reached the outside of the building, the stallion glanced over his shoulder at Cloudchaser and she caught his eye.

His eyes.

The look of pain was unmistakable. It wasn’t a physical pain, but a chilling, emotional anguish, one that appeared to be buried deep inside the fibre of his being. She had seen ponies look that way at her before. The first time had been when she was a fresh recruit and had just informed a stallion that his fifteen-year-old daughter had been found dead in a skip after being subjected to hours of brutal sexual assault. The way that he looked at her as the words rolled off her tongue... it was something that she had never forgotten; it was something that had burned into her mind and had stayed with her all these years.

Seeing those eyes, she felt as if she were standing in the middle of a haunted wasteland that had been drained of life and colour. She heard nothing but the echoes of those who had once walked there, and saw nothing but an empty landscape in a hostile, alien world. She had not felt like that for some time, and yet now, almost six years on, those same feelings were being evoked once more, when she caught the gaze of the strange stallion before her.

The stallion’s head suddenly moved out of view as one of the arresting officers shoved him forward. He continued to walk towards the parked police cart. One of the four uniformed policeponies broke away from the group and opened the door to the police cart.

“In you get, dickhead.”

The officer stood by the cart expectantly as the other three ponies walked the suspect towards it.

Cloudchaser appeared behind them. “Make sure he’s taken to Wandsworth Station,” she instructed the police officers. “I want him processed thoroughly. I’ll come later so I can pick him up and take him back to Central MIT myself afterwards.”

The lead officer nodded and motioned to his colleagues. One of the other arresting officers put his hoof on the back of the suspect’s head and guided him into the back of the police cart. Then, he and two others got in with him. Door shut, the cart pulled away from the residential area and drove off towards Wandsworth Station, leaving Cloudchaser and a single uniformed officer standing at the roadside.

Cloudchaser let out an exasperated sigh.

She checked her watch.

It wasn’t even-eight thirty yet.

Manehattan – 08:22

There was one police officer sitting with him in the back of the cart, two at the front pulling. The two at the front were exchanging their thoughts on The Games while the stallion in the back, who was younger than the other two, played idly on his smart phone.

Crimson Cage had both of his hooves behind his back, secured by a set of rigid handcuffs. He sat and said nothing as they drove through Manehattan.

Towers passed them as they drove. Ponies crowded the streets and slipped amongst the traffic. Another police cart roared along the road in the opposite direction, blue lights flashing and siren blaring, the banshee wail cutting through the noise of the traffic.

Crimson immersed himself in the noise. He knew exactly where he was in Manehattan: his recall was such that he could look at a map of somewhere exactly once and memorise every location on it, to the point where he could reproduce it again on a piece of paper almost exactly. As such, he knew exactly how far away Wandsworth Station was, and how much time he had until they arrived.

Making as little movement as possible, Crimson slid his right hoof against his tail and prised free some of his tail fibres. He knotted the wire-like hairs of his tail together until they formed a single, solid wire that he could flex.

Crimson kept his eyes on the police officer sitting next to him, watching for the first indication of him looking up from his phone, and then, with practiced precision, he bent the hairs into the desired shape and started to pick the lock on his handcuffs.

“I heard Bob’s wife left him,” one of the police officers in the front said, “took the foals as well. Poor bugger.”

“His own fault really for stepping out on her with that cleaner,” the other officer responded. “If you ask me they’re welcome to each other.”

“Yeah, but it’s not a nice thing to happen to anypony, especially the kids.”

“He should have kept it in his pants then.”

Both officers could agree there.

Crimson listened to their conversation intently as he picked his cuffs. He clenched his teeth slightly.

Almost there.

The cart stopped at a set of traffic lights.

“We should probably ask him if he wants to come on Friday.”

“You serious?”

“I’d feel bad. He’ll probably say no, but I still think we should ask.”

The officer sighed, “If you insist.”

The lights changed to amber.

The cart pulling police officers prepared to move forward.

Crimson’s handcuffs clicked open.

The lights changed to green.

The cart pullers moved off.

The officer on his smart phone turned around to face Crimson, but all he saw was the hoof that slammed into his left temple, knocking his head against the window. He fell forward, unconscious, supported only by his seatbelt.

The officer at the front on the left whipped around to face Crimson, and was dealt a punch to the nose before he could even open his mouth to cry out. His unconscious body slumped onto the knee of the other cart puller.

The police officer panicked. He broke hard and swerved, spinning the rear end of the cart outwards.

Crimson slammed his elbow into the back of the cart, shattering the wood into pieces. He eased himself backwards out of the wrecked cart.

The police officer’s CS gel squirted into empty air, and he bailed out of the cart angrily.

The police officer looked around for the suspect, scanning the area, trying to spot where he had run off to, but all he could see was an ocean of vehicles, many of which were sounding their horns angrily at the police cart that was now causing a major road block in a busy Manehattan street.

“Shit,” he growled.

No sign of him.

“Shit!”

The suspect was gone.

The police officer let out a roar of anger and frustration as he reached for his radio.