Chapters
Have you ever just had an all-consuming, absolutely certain awareness that a day was going to shower you in an unrelenting storm of misery, to go out of its way to make every second of existence a trial?
I have.
I knew it the second the door to my office slid open and I laid eyes on the beige-coated Biosynth sitting neatly beside my desk: Obviously equine-derived, hooves tucked neatly beneath his body, wings held closed but not limp, and eyes open but unfocused: The perfect model of professionalism.
One I was already quite familiar with.
“Good evening, Lieutenant-Investigator Guerro,” he said as I slumped into my seat. His voice was surprisingly soft-timbred, not at all what people were expecting from a creature built like a muscle-nut, but I suppose the severely-trimmed cut of his hair and nearly-motionless posture might also help give me the wrong impression. “I hope your shuttle back was not too diffi-”
“Wait a sec, Crenelle,” I growled.
My jacket was shrugged off, left hanging over the back of the chair. I felt around under my desk, idly letting my neural infotronics synchronize with my computer station, until I felt the hidden compartment and the secret weapon within it: A little glass bottle, sloshing with golden-brown liquid.
Alcohol might have been crude in comparison to custom-tailored hormones delivered straight to the neurons, but I liked it better anyway. Call me a traditionalist.
“Right. Go ahead.”
Crenelle barely moved a feather of his massive wings, but I thought I saw a twitch at the base of its tail. “I hope your shuttle back was not too difficult, Lieutenant Investigator. There is a new case assigned to you.”
“Six medium-grade pukers, buddy. Six! And one of them had basic stomach chemistry; can you even imagine how that reacted with everyone else’s acid upchuck? Why does anyspecies go into space if they can’t hold their food? That’s how my shuttle ride was. And they can’t even wait for me to sit down before assigning a new case?”
“I’m afraid that is a bit beyond me, Lieutenant-Investigator, as I do not experience zero-G illness. None of my kind do.” the Biosynth said, and I grunted as I downed a swig from the bottle.
“Right. Course it is. Anyway, case. Must be a doozy if they’ve sent you to deliver the details. No more jilted planetary governors, wondering where their mistresses ran off to?”
“I have been permanently assigned to assist you on this investigation, Sir.”
The bottle paused halfway to my lips again, and I ran a hand over my head. The scratchy stubble was starting to grow in again; I’d have to burn it down again soon.
“So,” I muttered, “that says this one’s going to be a real shitshow.”
“It is a potential biosynth trafficking case, Sir.”
Spitting out my drink was only avoided by swallowing hard instead; breaking down in a coughing fit was only avoided by years of experience tolerating far harsher concoctions than the burning brew currently working its way down my throat.
“Oh. Oh, shit. That is a big jump. Alright, give me the skinny, Crenelle. What’re we looking at?”
Crenelle sat up even more rigidly, something I found to be a mild physical impossibility, and began to recite words as if reading them straight from a screen. “It was found on a tramp freighter coming out of jump near the Arkalian Crossroads. The captain attempted to deceive customs with a cargo scrambler, but a picket frigate ran them down.”
“Arkalian Crossroads, huh… let me guess. Hold full of illegal nanos?”
“Legitimate cargo, in fact. However, customs scans detected biosynthetic life aboard. The captain claims it to be nonsentient, but Customs discovered a neural inhibitor preventing it from expressing itself. When the inhibitor was disabled…”
“Captain talking at all?”
“No, Lieutenant-Investigator.”
No surprise there. Biosynth smuggling would land them good prison time to begin with, but if she could keep up the facade that she ‘knew’ it to be nonsentient… maybe a little less time.
Still, something tickled me wrong. Why would a captain with a perfectly legitimate cargo take the incredible risk of trying to smuggle a single biosynth right under customs’ nose? Something smelled funny here, and I had the sense something else was going on. Probably something that had to do with why Crenelle was in my office and I wasn’t getting this casted straight to my neural net.
“Okay,” I grunted, “What about lab work? We done a workup on the synth itself?”
“Yes, of course. I reviewed the results myself. But the genetics are most confusing to me. Chiral analysis suggests historicity associated with your world. However, there are no genetic flags associated with any of the Synthing Houses. It is a genetic orphan.”
I paused. The bottle, with the remainder of its sloshing golden brew, was slid back into the cavity in the desk. Rising, I wandered to the window. A twinge from the neural implants in the back of my head, and the wall’s plasglas faded into transparency.
Outside, the hollow core of Gorosov Annex Station shone like a gleaming crystal chandelier. The local sun was slipping behind Gorosov itself, the planet’s bulk casting a steadily advancing line across the Annex Station. Dozens of small skimmerships darted among the towers, their blinking lights reminding me of fish darting among a reef as larger beasts - fat-hulled freighters and lean-lined patrol cruisers - flew above.
I drew a deep breath, savoring the last of the alcohol burn in my throat.
“So. A rogue synthing facility? That’s heavy stuff. Big stuff. We’re going to have to end up kicking it a jump or two up, letting Cluster Command take a stab at it.”
Crenelle moved at last, hooves silent on the carpeted floor. He settled on his haunches at my side, eyes also fixed on the spectacular orbital sunset; his wings ruffled and ears laid flat in a classic, primitive throwback to the ancient genetic stock his kind had been Synthed from. “That may be so. But it is still our duty to attempt a thorough investigation before doing so. And I believed it would be more stimulating to you than another week spent chasing down - how did you put it? ‘More jilted planetary governors, wondering where their mistresses ran off to?’”
“Well, shit, Crenelle. Is that humor, coming from you?”
One hind leg rose to scratch at his neck, service collar jingling as he did so. When Crenelle looked back up at me, his golden eyes seeming to practically glow in the low light and I could hear the slight smirk in his voice even if I could barely see his muzzle. “I believe you once commented to me that Biosynths in my line are genetically incapable of humor, sir.”
“But not sarcasm.” Despite my words, I felt a grin growing on my face too. “Alright, so you sent it my way because you thought I’d be less bored? That it?”
“I’m afraid not. This Biosynth’s neurals are - unusual. If you would read the full report, they appear incompatible with our standard diagnostics. I cannot access further resources myself, but you have extensive history with neuroelectronics investigations and may be able to produce better results.”
“Huh,” I grunted, ‘figures. Cast it to my neurals? I want to see what we’re looking at here.”
“Casting,” Crenelle murmured, his horn flickering with a low corona. My vision flickered as his neuronet tapped mine, vision blurring to replace the glittering, fluid cityscape with the harder corners and neat lines of his analysis.
I could feel my lips pulling into a frown as I scrolled through it. Everything was ever-so-slightly off - chirality analysis, haplotype tracing, neural architecture… it was all so right, but also so wrong. One thing in particular caught my eye.
“Crenelle, your medical report notes abnormal scarring?”
“Yes, Lieutenant-Investigator,” he said, and I could easily envision the grim expression on his muzzle without seeing a hint of it. “There’s signs of prior lacerations, burns, abrasions, and at least two broken bones. Not from when she was being transported - they are too old. None appear to have been treated with anything resembling modern medicine, and have left scarring.”
Buried in the report package was a live feed from the holding cell; I called it up. The camera feed filled my vision: A spare cell, spartan but not cruel, with a knee-high ball of violet fur curled up in the far corner. “If it is from a rogue Synthing House, they weren’t gentle with her,” I muttered.
The view ballooned as the camera scrolled in: Here, a wing - defensively curled up like a shield. There, maybe a folded leg. An ear, pinned back and barely visible. And all around it, the golden glow of tiles-
Golden glow?
“Crenelle, just how much of a kick does this thing have that the Thaumic Suppression Cell is reacting just to it existing?” I asked.
“Powerful. But more importantly, if you review the reports of the seizure on the tramp freighter it was found on, it appears to have an almost unregulated access to a broad spectrum of thaumocasting assets. I believe this is why the freighter’s captain used a neural inhibitor.”
I grimaced, hard. Not that I didn’t get the fear - a Biosynth which could cast in an almost unregulated fashion was enough to raise what little hair was left on my head.
But something that takes your mind away, suppresses your sapience and turns you into a doll…
“Fuckin’ creepy.”
“I cannot disagree, Sir. I have had them used on me once, for a surgical procedure, and I cannot describe it as a pleasant experience.”
My vision still filled with his report, I still stuck a hand out towards the sound of Crenelle’s voice. His cheek soon brushed against it, then pressed hard as he sought a comforting nuzzle.
“Had any luck talking to her? With words, I mean, not Thaumotronics.”
“I am afraid not. She appears to speak something derived from an obsolete dialect of Human Normal English, which is too far migrated from the present for me to comprehend.”
I blinked.
An obsolete dialect… something tickled in the back of my mind, an old thought or memory stirring to life beneath layers of detritus and tracking down runaway lovers.
“Sir?” Crenelle asked, and I could feel one hoof brush against my leg.
“Easy, Crenelle. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to go out for a bit, run around to the office down-station.”
“Sending her up to Cluster Command, Lieutenant-Investigator?”
I’d closed down the report, my vision returning just in time to catch the accusing look on Crenelle’s face.
“What, don’t like that idea? Anyway, no. I need to scrounge up some equipment from the labs there, see if I can’t figure out how to open up her neurals.”
“Ah. I’ll keep a firm eye on her, then.”
Maybe I’d get some beer, too. I had an inkling that all my praying for a more serious case was about to pay off far more heavily than I’d expected - or maybe wanted.
On completing an evaluation of her circumstances, Twilight Sparkle knew three things with absolute certainty:
First, she was scared.
Terrified, even, in that all-consuming way that feels so much like falling without a hoofgrip, without being able to spread your wings and feel them catch the wind and bite , and you’re just tumbling end over end without any reference-
Twilight sucked down a deep breath, ignoring the miasmic scent of her own fear. Then she took another, and another, until she finally was managing to draw breath without feeling her own sides shuddering furiously.
Yeah.
Scared.
Second, exactly how she had come here was lost in a fog. Something had been mounted to her forehead, just above her horn, though it was now gone. Her memories were not too particular about the specifics, but she had the most distinct sense it had left her feeling -
Distant.
Like she’d been an observer within her own mind, pushed back outside her own consciousness to watch herself be manhandled and prodded by any number of creatures whose appearances were so horrid, scents so entirely alien, that an utter certainty existed in her mind that nothing like them had been seen in Equestria - not in any tale, myth, or legend.
Distant.
Third, she was alone. This part was almost comforting, and certainly preferable, to sharing the presence of the repellant monsters which had deposited her in the cell. Still, Twilight Sparkle wished she could have at least been alone somewhere else, as the cell itself seemed to close in on her with a claustrophobia that went beyond any prison cell’s intrinsically repressive nature.
Namely, it cut off her magic. Not merely rendered it hard to cast sensibly, as the caverns beneath Canterlot would with their jagged and vicious arrangements of crystals that could suffocate a unicorn’s gift. The cell’s entire volume seemed to be suffused with the arcane equivalent of a wet blanket, or perhaps an asphyxiating cloud. There was an oppressive element to it, as if something was working against her. Perhaps even something vaguely familiar, though the connection was escaping her right now.
And I’m alone. My wits are all I have left.
Scared. Distant. Alone.
With those three points certain, Twilight turned her attention to everything else.
Okay , she breathed, They haven’t harmed me. In fact, they were very careful to keep me restrained. So they don’t want to hurt me. No - they don’t want me hurt, even. I’m important to them. And the cell-
Purple eyes peeked above the violet feathers covering them.
I’ve been in worse, Twilight decided. There was even a bed in the far corner, and a toilet trench that had something resembling a faucet above it. The floors were hard, to be sure, but all in all Twilight felt that she’d stayed in almost-as-terrible rooms at various lodgings on a mission or journey before.
Those experiences would have been just plain terrible, except none of those rooms had tried to cut off her magic.
Don’t want me hurt, Twilight concluded, but I’m not their guest either. Next: Language. Unknown. I thought I might have caught a little bit of Griffonic in there, but it might’ve just been my head. Because, third…
Another, fresh shudder rippled through her coat. ...third, they have some way of forcing me into some kind of trance. Changelings, maybe? Is this what it feels like to have your mind invaded? I don’t remember feeling like this when Discord - changed me. But I was still myself then, just different. That forced me - outside of myself. Was Shining Armor this afraid when he was under Chrysalis’ spell?
Don’t think about it. Next item on the list: What happened?
And here was where the open, yawning void in her memory was most infuriating.
There was a lead-up. A mission - Southwestern Equestria. Ahuizotl. He’d popped up again, unusually far into Equestria for him. Heading straight for Gallopceno - but alone. No followers, he’d sent them in a different direction to throw us off his trail. We caught up to him, but something was - wrong. He was afraid - avoiding us.
Twilight paused. Avoiding us, or avoiding something else. Did he know? Was it a trap he was leading us into? We finally managed to corner him, and-
There had been light. Noise. A howling, screeching sound, like a hundred gales’ moaning through ragged treetops. Ahuizotl shouting something. A strange whip-crack snapping sound accompanying flashes of light. And then-
Nothing. Nothing until I fell out of that mental fog I’d been pushed into, surrounded by Harmony knows what.
Okay. Can’t get stuck on that. Next question: Counteraction.
A violet eye roamed the cell, studying the door. It was a cell’s door, through and through - resolute and immovable without any of her magic. I have to wait for them to open it, then. If they put that - thing on me again I won’t be able to so much as spark my horn, so - what if I play dead? Or hurt? Just go limp and try to see how they react? It won’t be hard, the way this cell is making my head-
The cell door buzzed sharply, a monotonous and grinding tone, and swung open. Twilight’s heart seized up. No. No! I’m not ready yet! I don’t have a plan! Look at that thing, it’s huge, and- oh. Oh, nonono-”
Sillhouetted in the doorway, the creature stood - alien, monstrous, inscrutable, its tiny eyes twinkling beneath a deep, bulbous brow. It wore clothes, so some part of her knew it must be somewhat civilized. But so had Sombra, and his idea of ‘civilization’ still sometimes slithered its way into her nightmares.
Yet what turned her stomach and broke any hope of this being no more than a big mistake was, clutched in its claws, a collection of boxes and hoses, tangled and dangingling like the viscera of some mechanical beast. Twilight knew - knew - deep in her own guts that they would be going into her-
The creature snarled something in its tongue, dropping to a couch and scooting closer to her on its folded legs.
Oh sweet Celestia, Twilight thought as she retreated carefully from the door, Is it - think it’s trying to stalk me. It’s going to pounce and try and put that thing into me again, and it’s going to force me back down into that trance again, and then Harmony knows what it’ll be doing to me! She drew back, sucking in a deep breath with a fearful little whinny that caught a whiff of the creature’s scent - acrid, burning, like something that had been left in Applejack’s still too long.
“Get away from me,” she hissed, but her heart could not put force behind the words and their edge was dull rather than biting.
In response, the creature mutter-spat something in its tongue again. Twilight stood on trembling legs, her wings half-spreading to fan the feathers out in readiness to fight.
Or flee.
She could smell herself now too - that equally acrid scent of sharp fear, fear that would threaten to send her into a panic if another pony stumbled across it. Still she stood, tail lashing and nostrils flared. “I’m telling you, stay back, or I’ll-”
Too late she noticed the creature’s legs tensing. Too late she ducked to avoid the tackle. Too late she felt its digits close around her wing, wrenching her painfully onto her back. Rainbow Dash would have mocked the clumsiness of her dodge, but how could she have known the beast would so deftly twist her mid-leap, landing her on her back where she could do little more than try to batter at it ineffectually?
If I had my magic - any of my magic! Twilight thought, but the cell suffocated the Earth Pony’s strength and Pegasus nimbleness just as effectively as it did her Unicorn talent, leaving her legs feeling like she’d galloped to Canterlot and back.
Twilight shrieked a fearful whinny as it slid something cold, hard, and unyielding over her head - a mockery of a crown, circling her ears and pressing on her horn. From the corner of her eye she saw a dark shape moving beyond the cell door - another predator, waiting for its turn with her?
Bucking and heaving wildly, she beat her wings against the cell door. The creature, straddled atop her, grunted something but otherwise seemed unbothered; it began to fool with the boxes and wires it had brought. I don’t have more than a few seconds before it tries to put me back into that swamp of nothingness again and then I’ll be lost Lost LOST-
Already she could feel the crown of metal on her head starting to whine like the hum of a gigantic fly buzzing about her head. Something was happening up there, a weight starting to press on her mind and not merely her head. The creature made a note of noise, its bulbous lips twisting into something resembling a ring as it burbled to itself, and Twilight - her limited strength spent - fell back even further on what she knew:
With a grunt, she sent magic surging down the length of her horn - forcing back the cell’s oppressive blanket and forcing a spell into shape with raw, unmitigated force that only a true student of magic could manage. Purple lit the cell, a full halo of violet light shimmering about her horn as the teleport took shape and coalesced-
Digits grasped her horn and squeezed, snuffing out the light like a candle. Twilight let out a sharp, terrified cry - expecting the backwash of the failed spell to carve into her brain at any second - but the creature went right on working; its hand, when it let go, proved to be wrapped in a glove of some form.
Grounded, Twilight moaned internally, it’s got some way of creating a thaumic sink through that glove, which means it expected this.
Something was happening in the back of her head, a sensation like icewater creeping into her skull, into her brain, and down her spine. It’s going inside of me. That thing - that thing it put on my head, it’s going inside me and then - then - get out! Get out of my head!
Spreading like a spider’s growing web, the ice-water sensation seemed to fill her skull. There was static in her ears, a sort of odd pop that seemed to come from just behind her horn, and Twilight struggled: Not the coordinated, planned struggle of before but a mindless, terrified wriggling as Get out, get out, GET OUT! echoed through her mind - an echo so strong she almost missed the creature’s burbling resolving into coherent words:
“...God above, girl, what kind of fucked-up codec architecture are you configured for? It’s almost like - hah! Got it! Patch complete, now you’ll-”
Its grip loosened for a bare instant, and a bare instant was all Twilight needed.
Sliding gracelessly from beneath its bulk, Twilight ducked beneath the beast’s now-clumsily grasping arms to dive for the door. Relief filled her as she passed through the door, magic returning to her with a sensation like the warm sun striking on a summer day.
So did her wits.
Accomplice still outside. Another creature like it? Got to keep moving, Stay out of gripping range. Shield? No. They have gloves that can make a thaumic sink. A shield wouldn’t be-
Something moved in the corner of her eye, and Twilight casted without hesitation - the teleport leaping her ten paces forward along the dingy hallway, well outside of any reach it could grab her from-
A single, unrelenting force seized Twilight Sparkle’s entire form and drove her to the floor. She shrieked, but fell utterly silent in open-mouthed awe as her pursuer rolled her over and she caught her first sight of him.
The stallion was massive - Probably only masses slightly less than Big MacIntosh , Twilight estimated - but moved with a kind of solid certainty that reminded Twilight of nothing so much as her older brother. A collar was his only adornment - not quite a royal peytral, too narrow and too high on his neck yet still bearing an insignia Twilight did not recognize (and, indeed, a quick glance confirmed was not his cutie mark). A sandy coat, darkening in some places like sandstone cut and polished, and a mane the color of worn steel.
Yet what drew her eyes most and utterly paused all other thoughts, was the undeniable horn jutting from his head and vast wings (truly vast, almost seeming too large for his body) which were currently held out in a show of warning.
“Stop,” the alicorn said, and a part of Twilight vaguely registered that it was surprisingly soft for a creature who almost seemed to rival Celestia in size and whose build left little question that he was a stallion.
“Stop, please,” the alicorn repeated as he snuffed his horn out. “We are not your enemies. We want to help you.”
Sugar was always good for calming nerves, especially when it came to this lineage of biosynths, and Crenelle had acquired a whole plate of pastries somehow.
I snagged two as he was on his way back in. Can’t blame me, right? Sugar helps my nerves too.
Crenelle gave me an ugly look as he stepped back into my office’s lobby, but I didn’t care. Sugar got my mind moving, and our little guest had given me plenty to think about in the meantime.
For one, Crenelle hadn’t been joking. Her capacity for Thaumocasting was incredible, and well outside the scope of what most Biosynths were capable of. Hell, she’d pulled off a small-scale faster-than-light jump while trying to bolt from the cell block! I’d gone and watched the sec holo three times, just to be sure I was seeing that right.
The few minutes I’d had the Diagnostic Halo on her, though, were what was really eating at me. Getting the Halo to interface with her neurals was pure, stupid luck; finding the right codec to get a patch into her neuroware, though?
That’d been a lucky guess. And I didn’t like what it was saying.
Crenelle trotted in, the remains of the pastry dish in his magic, and headed straight for my desk. “You were watching my conversation with her, Lieutenant-Investigator?”
“Yep. Interesting stuff.” I grabbed at the pastry dish again; Crenelle deftly swung it out from beneath my fingers. I scowled. He stared flatly. “Whoever Synthed her’s got a real imagination for the old classics. Princesses, gods, ‘Equestria’… They filled up her head with a lot of weird stuff.”
“You believe she is lying, then. Or has been lied to, during the imprinting process. Living a fantasy.” Crenelle said.
“Hey, hey!” I raised a hand defensively. “I said ‘classics’, not ‘myths’.”
“I fail to see the difference.”
I set down my coffee and pointed at him. “Difference is, some of what she said… it’s turning gears in my head. Old gears. And I don’t like the wheels they’re making spin. They’re dangerous wheels, the kind of things that attract attention. I’m thinking of sending the lab work you had done somewhere else - genetics, protein architecture, chirality analysis…”
Crenelle frowned sharply, his ears pinning back. “I believed you said we would not be sending this further up to a higher level.”
“Of the Force? We’re not. Just to a different lab. One with a bigger library.”
“If these are ‘dangerous wheels’, as you put it-”
“I’ve got to know, Crenelle. Know for sure.” If what I thought was right… “You see that faster-than-light jump she did, when she was running out of the cell? That’s big stuff. That’s the kind of thing only highly-authorized Biosynths can do. I saw one from Union Counter-Intel do it once. Never another time.”
“Where did you see a Union Counter-Intel assigned biosynth?”
“The news, haybrain.” I reached out and tapped him between the eyes; Crenelle went slightly crosseyed and huffed, pawing at the floor. “Anyway - I’m going to run that data up to the other labs, see if they can run it through their databases. Make anything of her. In the meantime, you keep an eye on her. Make her as comfortable as you can, but log every word out of her mouth. And keep her from wandering.”
And , I thought, really, really hope I’m wrong about what I think we’re dealing with here.
My thoughts must have shown on my face, because Crenelle nervously pawed at the floor with a hoof. “Do you believe she is a counter-intelligence - asset?”
“No. No, that’s not what I’m thinking. I actually think she’s way, way older than that. And trust me on this, Crenelle - some history, you shouldn’t be digging up.”
Twilight Sparkle looked up as the door slid open again and the alicorn - it was an alicorn, she had to remind herself - stepped in.
He paused at the entrance, head tilted, and swished his tail cautiously. “Am I interrupting you, Twilight Sparkle?”
“No,” Twilight shook her head, just a little too quickly to pass it off as a calm reaction. “No, it’s fine. I’m - still just a little bit out of it, you know?”
“I see,” he - Crenelle, Twilight reminded herself. He’d said his name was Crenelle - laid down on his side at a distance. A gesture, Twilight thought, meant to reduce his apparent size and put her at ease. It’s not him I’m afraid of.
The room wasn’t helping much. It was spare, with only a handful of shelves sealed-in by some transparent material she didn’t recognize. The desk and chair were at least recognizable, though neither the material or the equipment atop them were whatsoever understandable. But worst of all, it smelled like -
Weighingpressingholdingontopofme-
-the creature who’d attacked her. Its scent was all over this place.
“Where’s, uh-”
The monster. The horror. The thing that attacked me. The thing that-
‘Violated’ felt like too strong a word. But what other word could there be for how she had felt as that icy, trickling coldness squeezed itself into her head? The next closest comparison she could think of was -
Smoke, dark and black and oily among the crystals. That low, rumbling laugh as he broke through Cadance’s shield.
“Where’s the other one?” Twilight asked.
“Lieutenant-Investigator Guerro?” Crenelle asked, still watching her with soft eyes. “He’s gone to - look into a few things. To see if we can figure out where you came from.”
“Oh…” Twilight sighed softly, her feathers rustling as she stirred. “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help. I wish I could tell you, but I don’t even know where I am.”
“I remember,” he said, and Twilight’s cheeks colored slightly. Turning away, she lit her horn and fiddled with the cloth they’d hung around her neck, and the badge covered in inscrutable writing which hung from it.
“Does it bother you?” Crenelle asked, and Twilight bobbed her head in acknowledgement.
“I’m sorry. The only other times I’ve worn anything like this was at my coronation, and a couple of other official ceremonies. Do I really have to wear it?”
“I am afraid so,” he said, and Twilight sighed softly. “It identifies you, as best as we are able to for now, and explains why you are in here. And if you have a medical emergency, the paramedics will know who to call.”
“Ah.” Her eyes drifted back over to him, and to the far more solid counterpart he wore, and the uncertain symbol etched on the metallic badge which hung from it. “Is that what yours means too? Is that design - your family? Or your job?”
Crenelle’s eyes followed hers, and tilted his head in thought. “Sort of both, I suppose. It is the insignia of the Cravat Sector Investigative Bureau, to which I belong. Lieutenant-Investigator Guerro has the same on his badge.”
“Um. Right. Sorry. It just - looked sort of like what the Princesses wear back in Equestria. And I thought - nevermind.” Change the subject. Gotta change the subject. “Lieutenant-Investigator? So you’re - you’re like some sort of guards, then?”
Crenelle nodded, and Twilight thought she could see the slightest touch of a smile on his muzzle. “In a fashion. He is a member of our police, but he does not guard one place. He looks into matters which require longer, deeper investigation.”
She nodded. “Ah, and you do the same thing?”
“I assist them in their tasks as the Bureau sees fit. Often, this means directly aiding employees in the missions. I was given this particular task, I believe, because it would be best to have one Biosynth assisting in a case involving another.”
Biosynth. Both of them used that word before. But I still don’t know what it means. I can guess what it’s from - Biological Synthetic? But what does it mean?”
“So - um - what’s your rank, then? If he’s a ‘Lieutenant-Investigator’?”
Crenelle chuckled softly, then gave her an apologetic look when Twilight frowned. “Forgive me, Twilight Sparkle. I continue to forget that you were not properly - that you’re unfamiliar with everything here.”
“Trust me, I’m not forgetting,” Twilight muttered, “nothing here makes sense. I still don’t understand how I can even speak this language. This all doesn’t feel quite right. There’s words I don’t understand, even now. This room - I don’t know what it’s made of. I feel like I’ve fallen into another world.”
Shaking his head, Crenelle replied, “That is a longer answer, so let me answer your first one. I do not have a rank - I simply inherit the responsibilities and authority of whoever I am assigned to.”
“What? But I thought you said you belonged to the, uh, Investigative Bureau as well.”
“I do,” Crenelle answered. When her confusion did not relent, he decided to destroy what little stable ground she had managed to gather beneath herself since she woke up.
“I mean, I belong to the Bureau. I am the Bureau’s property.”
There was a chance, Twilight new, that it was a mistranslation of whatever was permitting her to speak this strange alicorn’s tongue. An error. A mistake.
She also knew it was a false hope, little details sliding up from their brief conversation so far to fit together into one awful puzzle picture.
He’s a slave.
Oh, sweet Harmony protect me - he’s a slave. That’s why he listens to whatever the other creature’s orders are. That’s what that collar - it is a collar - is about. Showing who owns him.
“Twilight Sparkle?”
Her breathing was coming fast and shallow as a new thought wormed its way up from the back of her head:
Wait. The tag I am wearing. Is that - am I -
Suddenly the little ribbon of fabric seemed to be a choking, strangling force around her neck; the thin, flexible tag which hung from it seemed to weigh on her like an anchor.
“Twilight Sparkle, are you okay?”
What kind of place enslaves alicorns?
She needed to get it off, right now. Her horn sparked, but her legs weren’t waiting - hooves pawing fruitlessly at the collar to pull it over her head until her magic finally found the clasp and opened it.
“Twilight, please!” Crenelle was rising now, his face painted with alarm. “You shouldn’t take that off!”
“No!” she snapped back, holding the thing aloft in her magic as if it might sting her.
“Twilight Sparkle, if you are seen without that - you don’t have an identity imprint of your own -”
“Or what, Crenelle?” Twilight stood, lips drawn back into a snarl and ears laid flat to her neck. “Or what? Can’t you see what this is? ‘You want to help me’ - and then you put a slave collar on me?”
Another step forward, and her wings spread to hang unfurled at her sides. “I’m leaving. You want to help me? Show me a map. Show me the sky - I can read Luna’s constellations. I’m going home. Now.”
“You will be sought.”
“I can manage.”
For a single, silent moment Crenelle stared at her in silence. Then he sighed and walked to a wall, head hung low, and faced a wall with eyes closed. “I suppose I have already broken the rules for you once; it cannot hurt to do this now. You wish to see the stars, Twilight Sparkle? Look. Look and see.”
She did look, her heart skipping a beat as the wall itself seemed to melt away into transparency.
Beyond was madness.
Gleaming towers that seemed to stretch as tall Canterlot’s mountain peak. Colossal craft drifting by with a low rumble, while smaller points of light darted around them fish about a lazily-browsing whale. Deep below, a myriad of glittering lights stretching out in an ordered grid, as if a mathematician had scribed a city onto a blank slate.
And behind it all, stars - innumerable stars in the open sky, at the edges of a city that seemed to simply end at the border. In the distance, what could only be a planet or moon sat, lit only by a tiny crescent sliver of blue-white at its edge.
“What is this place?"
“Gorosov Annex Station, Cravat Sector. The planet is Gorosov. We orbit it.”
Planet. Not Equestria’s. Not even Equestria’s by another name. We’d have seen anything this close, Luna would have known.
Her breath was coming short and sharp now, and Twilight found her rump falling to the floor with an audible thump.
“How many live here?” she whispered.
“Humans? A few million. Biosynths, like you or me? Also several million, all classes and types combined. Other species?” His wings raised in slight shrug. “Probably totalling up a few tens of millions more. Gorosov is a fairly robust trading port.”
Millions.
I’m a droplet fallen into an ocean here.
“Are - are they all - slaves?”
“All biosynths are someone’s responsibility, but we are not slaves,” Crenelle said, but his adamant defense only deepened the icy pit in her stomach.
A droplet fallen into an ocean of a society built on slavery.
But she could still not tear her eyes away from the scene before her, despite how insane it was. There was a certain absurd, impossible beauty to the whole thing - an entire madhouse city, spread out before her.
So Twilight stared as she mentally scrabbled for any purchase amid the revelations she had been given. They circled, churned, solidified into hard realizations only to be broken into chaos again by some new, tiny detail. She ate, when Crenelle brought more food. Preened herself, just to feel the familiar touch of a soft muzzle on her wings.
Eventually, she drifted into a troubled and exhausted sleep, a sleep filled with little rest and many nightmares of long-limbed, tooth-filled, ebony creatures reaching for her head, and not any sign of Luna’s watch over her.
“So-” I slid into my chair, tossing my legs up on my desk and fumbling for the quiet compartment beneath it. “I saw she’s sleeping in the foyer. That’s nice. You want the good news from my end first, or the really shitty news first?”
“I would consider the fact that she is calm enough to be sleeping to be good news, Sir,” Crenelle muttered sullenly. I raised one eyebrow; clearly something had gone tits-up since I’d gone out, but what?
“Well, here’s more good news for you, then: We’re not dealing with a rogue synthing house, and there’s even a reasonable possibility she wasn’t fed a whole pack of lies by - whoever. We don’t have to pass it up to sector oversight, and it’s not going to blow up into a big investigation like that.”
This caught Crenelle’s attention; the stallion sat bolt-upright, ears focused forward on you. His eyes narrowed, however. “And the bad news, Sir?”
My fingers found the bottle; burning golden liquid splashed down my throat. I hadn’t even bothered with a cup. Crenelle’s tail began to slash back and forth.
“Sir?”
“Well, you were right with your initial tests. She is related to old human genetic stock. Something from our homeworld. And that means it’s infinitely worse than a rogue synthing house. Every bit of political bullshit we dodged is about to come back at us ten times over.”
I took another swig, savoring the burn against my throat. “What do y’know of human history, Crenelle? Old stuff, two or three millennia old. Old Earth Confederacy stuff.”
“Enough to pass my assignment examinations,” he admitted, “but I am hardly an expert.”
“S’fine. You won’t have heard this one, then - I had to dig way, way back to find this out. See, back at that time - before we’d met any other species, before we’d designed modern drives - we figured liveable worlds would be one-in-a-trillion. Impossible to find, and taking lifetimes to reach. The solution, of course, was to send something to an unlivable world and make it livable. Colonists would follow, while what we sent a head would ‘form it for them. Better yet, make what you send self-reproducing-”
“A biosynth,” Crenelle whispered.
“Exactly.” I set the bottle aside, rubbing my forehead in a vain attempt to ward off the oncoming headache. “Seed a hundred million maybe-viable worlds. Maybe a thousandth of a percent succeed, and that’s still a thousand more ready-made Eden worlds waiting for you. ‘Course then we have First Contact, the Reaching Gambit fails real bad, the Old Earth Confed turns into a bunch of raging nationalist assholes, implosion and civil war, yada yada yada…”
“...and when you finished rebuilding, you had new technology. Modern technology, to easily alter worlds and build stations to live in. The - seeded worlds were meaningless.”
“Hell, even if we did want them, where they went was lost in the civil war anyway. Eventually we recovered some of the old Biosynth tech, but only some of it - and by then it was all regulated. Controlled. Under the Treaties. Until now. When I saw the first lab results, got that codec working on her, I thought she might be just derived from some old data someone dug up somewhere, but… Crenelle, what we’ve got sleeping in the next room is apparently called a Faust-class Exploration Biosynth of the Old Earth Confederation. A self-replicating, highly independent space explorer designed to prepare Eden worlds for us to live on.”
“Then when she kept mentioning ‘Princesses’ and ‘gods’ and ‘Equestria’-” Crenelle’s voice was a hollow whisper, matched to his pin-prick pupils. I nodded, knowing just the hollow gut-feeling he must’ve been wrestling with right then.
Again the cool glass of the bottle met my lips. “It might just be bugs in the translation patch. But my guess? They finished making their world. And then they sat there, waiting for us to come for them. We never did, but they just kept on going. Hell, from half the things she’s saying, they’ve flourished. Built themselves a civilization.”
Something was eating at Crenelle, I could see, so I gave him a sharp rap with my knuckles between his ears. “Hey, Crenelle. What’s eating you?”
“While you were out, she - I explained biosynths’ place in modern stellar society. She did not take it well. Believed we were ‘enslaved’. If what you say is true-”
Yeah, that was an ‘oh, crud’ moment if I’d ever heard one. “That tracks. I don’t know what she’s been through, but it’s possible somewhere along the way they lost track of what their real purpose is. And so now there’s an entire planet out there of unregulated biosynths, outside of any of the treaties or limits, with fuck-knows access to all kinds of thaumocasting capability… Hell, they might not even have a MOC.”
And that wasn’t even what was causing the huge ball of guilt eating at my chest. The other half of this, the half Crenelle hadn’t even picked up on yet, the part that I had done-
“What’s an MOC?”
Both of us jumped; both of us had been so tied up with the implications of all this, neither of us had heard her step in. But there she stood, half through the doorway. Shit, this was getting to me. How much had she even been snooping in on?
Hell, she didn’t even look that great. Her eyes were bagged and mane looked like Crenelle’s after we’d pulled an all-night stakeout together. Probably had an attitude to match.
“It’s a long story,” I dodged.
“It’s a Master Override Code,” Crenelle jumped in. “When it is invoked, we can be commanded absolutely. For those of us who work in places like the Bureau, it permits our testimony to be absolute; with the MOC invoked, I can be commanded not to lie and never will.”
The sheer look of disgust Twilight gave him gave even me pause, and I’d seen the look a certain Senatress had given her wife when she’d been caught in bed with -
Nevermind.
“And I suppose he has your ‘code’, Crenelle?” Twilight said flatly; both Crenelle and I shook our heads - me, maybe a little more eagerly than he.
“Don’t work like that. No one a Biosynth is assigned to ever has their code. I could contaminate an investigation if I had control over him like that. He’s as much to keep an incorruptible watch on me; the only ones who have it are the Internal Investigations and Biosynth Affairs departments,” I said.
When Twilight didn’t immediately comment, I added, “Look, Twilight… I’m sorry. I - shit. If half of what I’ve just found out is true, you probably - well, I must’ve scared you shitless. You probably didn’t understand half of what I was saying, what I was doing to you.”
“You put something into my mind!” Twilight exclaimed, her wings fluttering angrily.
And there was the other half. Crenelle wouldn’t have ever thought twice of it; he’d been having his neuroware patched since the day he was born. But to Twilight here…
Hell, I felt like a monster.
“Look, I get - it probably doesn’t help much right now, but I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” She hissed, nostrils still flared and ears laid low. “Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to Crenelle. Apologize to all of the others you’ve enslaved and made them put - put mind control in - you just -”
I jabbed a finger right back at her, a little bit of indignity tinging my voice: “Hey. Hold up a second. I don’t know what you’re imagining here, whips and chains and whatever, but Crenelle’s not like - he’s not something I abuse or mistreat or anything like that-”
“He. Is. Owned. By. You.” Each word was spat one after another, and my pointed finger faltered. Where did this little fireball get such conviction?
“Yeah, and? He’s not my - my victim. He’s a partner. Damn finest partner I could ask for, for all the shit I give him about being a humorless block.” In the corner of my eyes, I saw Crenelle’s ears perk up. I didn’t get the significance of that until much, much later.
“That’s not the point! The point is - the point is he’s always beneath you. No matter what he does, how hard he works or how close you get, he’ll always be beneath you. It’s wrong - there’s no way about it!”
“This is not quite true,” Crenelle murmured. “The Lieutenant-Investigator is not wrong. I have seen slaves, when the Bureau uncovered smuggling rings. I was not raised like that. I knew my parents. I loved my siblings. I have a mate, who I chose, and I love her very much! My parents love each other too. And I am proud to work for the Bureau. It is not something I am forced to do.”
“Is that because you want to, or because one of them patched it into your mind?” Twilight snarled. Crenelle’s ears laid back, then quickly perked up and turned towards the wall.
I saw that out of the corner of my eyes too, and likewise I didn’t make the connection until it’s far too late.
“He’s a biosynth! Look, I’m sorry if it’s a shock ‘cause it’s different where you’re from, but here - we made them. They work for us, and in exchange we care for them. That’s - that’s how it is, and it works for both of us.”
“Lieutenant-Investigator.”
“It’s wrong!” Twilight snapped, tossing her head.
“And what’s your suggestion to change it, huh? Because if you come in here, trying to force everything to be right-”
“Lieutenant-Investigator!”
“I can try! That’s everything anypony can do?”
“Try to do what?!” I roared.
A noise like a thundercrack caught both our attention as Crenelle slammed a hoof to the floor.
“Twilight Sparkle! Santana Guerro!”
“What?!”
“There is a grav-skiff outside pulling alarmingly close to the building,” Crenelle said flatly, “I believe they have guns.”
I snapped my head around so hard I almost wrenched my neck; Twilight gave a little gasp. The gray, angular form of the skiff was already beginning to fill the window, a wide-barreled weapon lens gleaming from amid its open side-doors.
“Oh, shit. Crenelle, shield!”
Author's Note
Story notes for this story fic can be found here .
His horn was lit even before I hit the floor, rolling to throw my arms around Twilight Sparkle as the room exploded into light and noise.
The first burst from the laser carved through the wall, transparent glass turning to a jigsaw-puzzle maze of distorted images as delicate circuits were fused into ruined slag; as the laser changed course and swept horizontally, the wall’s window functions finally failed entirely and turned flatly opaque.
“Lieutenant! They appear to be trying to cut a segment of the wall free!”
At least Crenelle was still up and going. I watched as the beam swept on, clipping my half-emptied bottle and vanishing it in an eruption of vaporizing alcohol and fracturing glass; tiny fragments pinged off of Crenelle’s shield, filling the room with a noise like a piano played amid a seizure.
Moments later, the fire alarms added their keening howl to the mayhem.
“They’re going to breach and enter! Crenelle, we’re going now!”
Whatever Twilight had been up to in her past life, it apparently wasn’t enough to introduce a good sense of reaction under tension. She was still curled up beneath me, frozen and trembling, so I muttered a quiet apology and tossed her over my shoulder, grabbing my jacket on the way out.
The hallways outside were already a mess, filled with milling and confused crowds of humans, aliens, and biosynths. I didn’t mind - nobody gave me, Crenelle, or Twilight a second glance. What I did mind, though, was the sounds of weapons fire and screams coming from the hallway ahead.
They anticipated we might run. That wasn’t the only place they breached.
“Lieutenant-Investigator, where are we going?”
“Down and out. Fast!”
An armored figure burst from a doorway ahead, head-to-toe in black ceramic laced with the glowing lines of thaumoware. I got lucky, driving past him with a shoulder extended to shove him aside before he could figure out what was going on. The thing that stepped out after him? I didn’t get so lucky with that one.
Skidding to a halt, I sized it up; armor covered it too, but the shape was unmistakable: Easily more than a full head taller than me, ivory horns protruding from its head, boots that suggested hooves of some kind. A biosynth - military-grade, and ready to rumble.
My moment of hesitation cost me as it delivered a solid haymaker to send me tumbling, the hall whirling about in a blur. Something popped in my chest, and when I hit the wall Twilight wasn’t on my shoulder anymore.
Good, ‘cause if she was I might’ve landed on her. Bad, because now she was on her own.
Twilight Sparkle felt she had a certain degree of accomplishment under her saddle. Sure, she’d admit, she was no royal guardsmare. But she’d kept her head together when an elder alicorn of nighttime and darkness declared her return. Gazed upon the insanity of a landscape warped by Discord in the eye and was sane enough to tell of it. Even clawed back enough of a sense of purpose to come out of the burning ruins of her home at Tirek, and with her body suffused with enough gifted magic it seemed ready to burst at the seams at any moment.
Tartarus, she’d even dealt with the Cake Twins.
But stresses amount, and this chaos-
Too much too loud too fast too many screams
-had put her back down into that sheltered back corner of her mind, a place that smelled of paper and oak and the slightest whiff of dragon, and where she did not need to think about waking up in a madscape world of unthinkable creatures and impossible tales about ponies being slaves, where there were not explosions and fighting and it could go away -
Somepony screamed.
Not a cry of fear or panic, but a bellowed howl of challenge that reached right to the deepest core of Twilight’s soul. She perked her head up in time to spellwork leap from Crenelle’s horn, lashing about the body of an armored minotaur.
Guerro was slumped against the wall, doing something to his jacket, and the first attacker he had bumped into-
Hands closed around her flanks, pinning her wings, and pressed something to her ribs that filled her body with an icy tingling and blew the air from her lungs with a savage kick.
Twilight whinnied and lashed out with both hind legs, with the legs of an Earth Pony in full panic, and felt something pop beneath her where they connected. She lashed out again, and the pressure on her wings ceased with a muffled cry.
She spun about, scanning the madness for Guerro or Crenelle. The latter was dancing about the armored minotaur, one wing hanging limply, while the former had extracted something long, blocky, and viciously ugly-looking from his jacket.
Even as she watched another two figures burst from a blown-off door - another one like Guerro, and unmistakable a pony.
But the weapon in Guerro’s grip cracked three times, spitting hazy violet bolts into their armored bodies. They left oddly mangled holes where they hit, holes that made her head hurt to look at, and both tumbled to the floor with a gasp and pained whinny that very sharply choked out..
Killed.
He killed them.
A pressure had been building in the back of Twilight’s head, starting from the moment she awoke in a cell and swelling like water backed up behind a dam. From time to time it had alleviated, flowing away as Crenelle spoke to her, but every time it seemed the risk of total collapse was fading it flooded up anew.
Now, her mental dam could hold back no more.
Something slithered past her, an utterly alien, keening form which abruptly spasmed and slumped to the ground. Twilight spun about and saw the armored figure she’d bucked away before rising to his feet, an equally ugly weapon - because it could only be a weapon now - clutched in his hands.
Go.
I have to go.
GogogoGOGOGO-
Her horn ignited, the hallway filling with a sharp, actinic light as she called for her magic.
Twilight felt for the weight of the world and pushed .
Three violet flashes, sharp and rapid, filled the hallway.
Twilight gasped, drawing a fresh breath, and dared to crack her eyes open.
No slumped body filled her vision, nor portraits of savagery in progress. Instead, she stood in a familiar gray-walled antechamber, oppressively austere and yet still mercilessly free of violence. Though alarms still howled their hoarse song, they were now no longer drowned out by screams and violence.
One ear turned as someone retched. The Lieutenant-Investigator, curled where her teleport had dropped him, down on all four limbs as he emptied his belly into an acrid pool on the hard floor.
“So,” he groaned, “that’s what being jumped without a starship feels like. I hate it. Next time, just let them shoot me.”
“Where-?” Twilight began, but Crenelle gave a soft laugh.
“The cell block,” he chuckled, muzzle split into a hard grin. “It’s the only other place here you really know, isn’t it? So you took us back to the cell block.”
It was, she realized. If she dared turn about, the hated cell they’d kept her in ought to be right behind her.
“Are we going to-” Twilight swallowed, forcing herself to not look back at the cell. “Where do we go now? What do we do? They’re killing everyone up there - you killed -”
“We run,” Guerro muttered, climbing to his feet. He took one step and hissed, clutching his side.
“Lieutenant-Investigator!” Crenelle gasped, galloping to his side and forcing his head up beneath the man’s shoulder to support him.
“It’s fine, Crenelle. I think I might’ve just pulled something hard. Maybe got a rib.”
Somewhere up above them, something gave a sharp crack that trailed off into a crackling rumble.
“Breaching charge,” Guerro said glumly, “they’re still looking, and we’re still leaving. Head for the stairs and down.”
“Won’t they follow us?” Twilight gasped, her horn sparking fitfully.
Guerro shook his head. “Dark Ops group like that? They’re meant to go fast, hard, and lightweight. They’ll have noosed off that whole block of the building, but don’t have the numbers or time to sweep everywhere. Especially once security gets rolling. But if we do run into one-”
He lifted the thing from his side - the weapon , she mentally added - and pulled it open. Something tumbled aside from it, steaming and hissing, and Twilight winced as she felt the chaotic, discordant magics within abrade at the edges of her consciousness.
She took a step towards it, but Crenelle stuck out a wing to stop her. “Don’t. Flayed matter cartridge. Warps whatever matter it’s shot at. Very nasty stuff, but there’s almost no armor ‘mong the stars that’ll stop it.”
“It hurts to look at,” she said, and Crenelle nodded, then shot a look at Guerro.
“It’s also very unusual for an Investigator in the Bureau to carry such a potent weapon.”
“We can use private weapons, Crenelle. Y’know that. You can interrogate me about my choices in self-defense later.”
“Right. Just walk, Twilight. Get away from that cartridge, get away from this floor, get-” His muzzle turned to Guerro, who was pulling his coat on with little grunts. “Where are we going?”
“Outside. To ground. If they’re sending dark ops teams in, then someone’s already compromised all the searches I did. No Bureau office will be safe for long; they’ll come back with bigger teams.”
No. There’s something else he’s not saying. I don’t know why.
I don’t know enough about anything here.
Another distant, violent snap-crack sounded from somewhere above them, and suddenly ‘away’ seemed like a rather reasonable place to be going.
Twilight’s first impression of the Bureau’s building, when she emerged, was that someone had inverted a tree, clad it gleaming glass and grey metal, and planted it crown-first into the station’s floor: Branches rising from the ground to twist, merge, and join until they unified into a single monolithic pillar reaching skyward into the star-shot night.
Everything’s upside-down here, Twilight thought, I used to live in a living tree. Now I’m running from an upside-down metal one.
Somewhere further up, from the side of that great tower, smoke rose in tufts and curls.
Twilight shivered.
The tree was soon left behind, along with its columnar and towering nearby fellows. Though the sights they passed by were inconceivable even to her imagination, Twilight found her thoughts were still whirling about inward, being sucked inexorably whirlpool-like towards a single thought.
I’m in a station over an alien world. One of my companions is a brainwashed slave, and the other is a killer.
I’m being hunted because they think I am a - a tool of some kind, or maybe a weapon.
When does this start making sense?
When do I find a way forward?
“I want to go home,” she murmured to herself. Guerro did not answer; Crenelle flicked an ear towards her, but when he turned to look at her Guerro reached over without even looking and tapped him on his neck.
“Hey. Eyes up, featherhead. I need to know if anyone’s following us down here,” he said, and Crenelle’s head shot straight back up. Twilight curled back into herself, shutting out the wind and noise and chaos.
In the end, it was not the sights nor the sounds but the smells which first wormed its way through her self-centered armor. It was different, slightly tinged with something foreign, exotic, and perhaps slightly metallic, but there was also no question of its familiarity.
“Hayburgers?” Twilight muttered as she sat up. Any further questioning was interrupted as her thoughts hit a hard stop of data flooding in from her eyes, and instead simply sat, mouth open, watching the streets slip by.
The orderly succession of square-footed, looming, frequently indifferentiable buildings reaching towards the sky had long since been left behind; so had the more regular, angular gridwork of streets and web-like lines of vehicles hovering past in the air above. Those, she could see, seemed to line the further perimeter of the station’s vast, bowl-like surface. But now they had traveled down towards the center of that bowl, and the construction here could not be more different.
Instead, the streets they now passed by were lined with asymmetric, jumbled, riotously-colored structures that seemed to be almost growing from the ground into and atop each other like an eruption of fresh, young seedlings. Here, a collection of bulbous spherical pods seemingly built of some transparent material seemed to be subsuming a smaller, nearby building like an outburst of fungus; there, a number of hulls of old machines had been cleverly stacked to form a grid from which many such creatures hung.
And what creatures!
Twilight watched in wide-eyed awe as a vast, wingless griffon, its body almost as large as the vehicle she rode in, loped past them in long, lazy strides. A collection of ponies stood on a streetcorner - alicorns all, limbs thin and willowy, and voices jabbering eagerly in some half-familiar tongue. Here, something with a body much like Guerro but mounted atop far too many legs, black and chitinous all, skittered by clinging to a wall. There, a dragon - long, snakelike, and with a ruck of mane about its jaws that left it looking almost lion-like, yet still undeniably a dragon in Twilight’s mind - floated curled before a cart steaming with an entire feast’s worth of mouth-watering scents.
“Are they all-?” she muttered, and Crenelle nodded.
“Biosynths? Yes. There’s a lot of us here. The outer station mostly belongs to the businesses, trade, and travelers, but this place is ours. Though,” and one ear turned towards Guerro, “I am not entirely sure why we are coming here.”
If Twilight had been cruel, she might have called it a slum.
Certainly it brought to mind the jumbled, twisting, labyrinthine quarters of old Canterlot, where the crumbling brick and rotting wood walls seemed to aspire to bury those who trotted between them in murk and shade, or the mud-splattered streets of Hocksville where a last few ponies eeked out a bare living among the settlement’s once-thriving industry.
But signs of poverty here were debatable at best; if anything, it reminded her more of Ponyville’s robust, homemade aesthetic - lacking extravagance, yet having its own pride and clearly thoughtful (if modest) decoration.
To her shock, Twilight even realized that much of the tension she’d felt since waking had begun to slip away. The dam was no longer at such risk of breach. This was familiar, and comforting in the familiarity.
And that thought, more than anything else, sent a current of unease through her very core.
“Crenelle,” she said only just loudly enough to be heard over the rushing of wind and low thrum of their ride, “if they’re biosynths are - do they all - does someone own all of them?”
“Of course,” he replied easily, only a moment later sharply twisting about to look at her - the realization of what he had said finally catching up with him. Crenelle opened his mouth as if to say something, then thought better of it.
Just another way this place is insane. Slavery - it shouldn’t look so comfortable. Twilight felt a low shudder run down her back. Suddenly the memory of the black-clad bodies, the shouting and deadly snap-crack of weapons, and the presence of the killer riding in the seat just beside had extra weight again - or a current, drawing her irresistibly closer to them.
“We’ll be there soon,” Guerro said, as if sensing her attention on him. “But one warning, Twilight: Not a word about anything that’s happened until I say it’s safe, you get it? Until we know who isn’t listening, don’t risk a thing.”
“I think I get it,” she muttered, but her thoughts were not there. Instead, a different question was hanging in her mind.
If I were one of his, could I even choose to disobey? Or would I be so in his grip, I wouldn’t even be able to say anything if I wanted to?
Their ride pulled to a halt at the side of one narrow alleyway; Guerro hopped out and hurriedly led the way in. Twilight spared only a glance back to see the vehicle that had taken them this far take off again, absent anyone or anything pulling or controlling it.
Was that some kind of slave too? Did I just ride on an enslaved - thing?
She flicked her tail and turned after Guerro, hurrying after him before she could fall too far behind.
On hoof, the environment was no less wondrous; if anything, the rich symphony of noise now added to the experience. A dozen different languages - that she could even discern! - were babbled from tables heaped with lusciously-scented food, behind windows, and from small knots of ponies and far less more exotic creatures clustered in small knots. Here, she saw a pack of colts and fillies - alicorns all, yet bearing the striped coats and upright, brush-like manes of zebras - excitedly talking among each other as they fluttered and cantered along. There, a pack of dragons no larger than her head clambered in and out of a half-wrecked vehicle, components and tools clutched in their claws.
Guerro glanced over his shoulder, and Twilight wondered how many times he’d done that and she simply hadn’t seen. Then he turned from the side path into an alleyway, stopping before a rounded door to rap on it sharply.
“Coming,” sang a voice, rich, heavy, and honey-like in tone. The door slid open, and Twilight found that the voice matched its owner: A mare of deep brown coloration, legs like tree trunks, and a body as wide as a boulder.
The mare’s head lifted, ears pricked forward and nostrils flared as she sniffed at the man in her door. A moment later, her face split into a wide smile. “Santana! So good to see you!”
“Hello, Zucchera,” Guerro smiled, “sorry to drop in on you without warning, but I need some place to lay low for a bit. You have room for an old friend?”
“You know better to ask!” she smiled, lifting her head to nuzzle his cheek with the familiar affection of an old acquaintance. Crenelle was next, the two meeting nose to nose. Nostrils flared, breath puffed between them, and he dipped his head in deference to the mare. “Still pulling Saldana into big messes, Crenelle?” she asked.
“Yes,” he confessed in a voice laden with embarrassed admission, “and bad this time, Zucchera. Real bad. You know we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t.”
The barest of frowns touched crossed her face, and then Zucchera turned her golden gaze to Twilight herself. “And who’s this, then? I don’t quite recognize her.”
Twilight’s own eyes turned to Guerro, who nodded. “Call her Twilight, Zucchera. She’s - entangled in the mess that’s got me coming here. Twilight, this is Zucchera; she was my mentor back when I started at the Bureau.”
“Look at how small she is!” Zucchera exclaimed, leaning in close enough that Twilight’s nose was filled her scent: Earthy, yet something vaguely spicy behind it. “Guerro, have you been feeding her enough?”
“Barely had a chance,” he chuckled, “but can we come in?”
“Do you need to ask?”
They did not.
The interior, Twilight thought, might once have been plain, perhaps even bleak. Those days were long since passed; walls made of some grey, stonelike material had been covered by a riotous collection of eclectic objects, less than half of which Twilight could recognize but all of which were carefully kept well-spaced and free of dust. Some might have been toys; others, art. Lush, richly-colored carpeting muffled her hooves, and the smell of something vaguely bean-like filled her nostrils.
The room they were brought to had not just windows, but a curving glass wall that arced all the way up to encompass part of the ceiling. Guerro did something at a panel on the wall, and the windows dimmed to opacity. Twilight frowned, but settled into one of the perfectly pony-suited cushions scattered about.
Small hooves scampering somewhere above her caused an ear to tilt, but before she could rise to investigate it Zucchera appeared again, a steaming bowl of something almost as dark as her coat held before her. “Eat,” she said with a smile, and Twilight’s stomach rumbled.
She lit her own horn to take it, but paused - looking to Guerro. “Can I? I know you said I’m - um - but I don’t know -” she asked.
He shrugged. “Go ahead. You already ate Crenelle’s pastries, and aren’t dying yet.”
“Pastries?!” Zucchera’s head snapped around, fixing Crenelle with a glare so fierce he almost seemed to wilt. “I know she’s a little wisp of a thing, but that’s no reason to make her fat!”
“She needed to be calm, not fit-”
“No excuse! A good meal is better than empty sugar! Tell me you are not eating that way yourself, you foalish colt!”
A little smile graced Twilight’s lips; the sharp, firm, lecturing tone had drawn a different image in her head: Golden-tanned coat framed by straw-blond mane, the weather-beaten hat tipped to one side as she lectured Apple Bloom over filling up on Sugarcube Corner’s finest-
Twilight started, because it had reminded her of Applejack.
But Applejack runs her farm for her own family. When she lectures Apple Bloom, it’s because she’s worried about her own sister’s future - her independent future.
Her ears flicked, and she stared down into the steaming bowl. Carefully, she took a long, slow sip of the stuff, and found it rich, warm, and delicious - unidentifiable as any food she had ever had, but delicious nonetheless.
When Twilight looked up again, Guerro and Zucchera were gone. Crenelle sat in the corner, carefully wrapping a bandage about one leg.
She stood, wandering about the room. Several pictures, drawn on oddly smooth and textureless paper yet clearly done with the messy scrawl of youth, had been fixed to the wall at several points. Twilight halted before them, head tilted and eyes wandering.
In broad, shaky lines, a vaguely ovoid thing topped by angular structures soared between blobby depictions of planets. Five figures - three she thought to be ponies, one maybe a griffon, one of Guerro’s kind - stood within it, simplistic faces painted with broad smiles and forelegs raised in triumph.
Red lines spat from the craft, rending another like it apart in a messy scribble of reds, yellows, and blacks.
“Tha’s what we’re gonna do when we’re growed up,” a little voice whispered, and Twilight gave a soft whinny as she leaped back. A young colt, so dark blue in color, stared up at her.
“This - is you?” she asked.
“Uh-huh!” Nudging in, the colt spread his wings to flutter up, pointing with his horn to each of the figures for sure. “That’s me, an’ that’s Chania, and that’s Peyquarasa, an’ Grizeta, an’ that’s th’ship’s cap’n. We’re gonna be space ‘splorers, finding new planet’s an’ blowin’ up aliens that don’t like th’Union an’ stuff.”
“That doesn’t sound very nice,” Twilight said, and the colt shook his head furiously.
“We’ll ask ‘em first, but if they say they’re still gonna be mean, then we gotta make everyone else safe,” he declared, fixing Twilight with a hard look.
It occurred to Twilight that but for his lack of cutie mark and golden-hued eyes, she might have been looking at a far younger (and male) Luna.
She could even hear Luna announcing it in her head: ”We shall grant them a chance to make their intentions clear. But if they persist in their hostilities, we shall not permit them to lay harm upon any of Our subjects.”
“So - you’re all going to do that together, then?” she asked instead.
“Uh-huh! Get our contracts bough’ up by the Caro - Cartoa- Cartography Ins’tute! An’ go out on the same ship too!”
Get our contracts bought.
The words struck at Twilight like a hammer blow.
“I- I see. That’s - very ambitious?” she barely managed to stutter out. The colt tilted his head, frowning.
“Say, where’re you from? What’re your parents’ genestocks? Your voice sounds kinda funny-”
“Lodestone!” Zucchara’s voice, sharp and sudden, made them both jump. The mare was marching angrily. “I hear you, Lodestone! I thought I told you - all of you - to not bother our guests!”
“Eeep!” Hooves scuffed furiously across the carpet, and the colt vanished around the corner. Shaking her head, Zucchara watched him go. “Colts! I tell you. They are nothing but trouble.”
For a moment, Twilight saw her vision replaced by the frantic fleeing of three fillies, retreating before the consequences of their latest bit of mayhem.
” Get our contracts bought.”
The vision broke.
“Thank you for the meal,” she murmured, and Zucchara smiled warmly.
“It’s the least I can do. Santana coming to my door, and now the newsies are all screaming about something happening at Sector Investigative Bureau headquarters? I may be half-blind, but only half. I can still put two and two together. He must be desperate.”
“Half-blind?” The words came out before Twilight could stop them; her cheeks colored a moment later. “I’m -sorry-”
“Do not be. I don’t show it; both my eyes are fine. It is something in my head.” Circling about her, Zucchara headed for one of the cushions. “I told you - I used to be the Bureau’s too. Can’t see me doing that kind of work, can you?”
“I can’t,” Twilight admitted as she followed her.
“Sometimes, a soft touch and gentle voice is as powerful a tool for finding the truth as any pulse gun or scannerpak. I had twenty-seven years with the Bureau, and then the truth came looking for me with a spall grenade in hand. The medics put my hide back together, but my sight… it was something in my head.”
“I’m sorry,” Twilight repeated, but Zucchara shook her head.
“Don’t be. I’m a lot better now. At first it gave me the worst headaches too, so painful I thought I’d go entirely blind. That faded, but my vision has never returned.”
She shrugged.
“I was mad then. I was furious when they transferred me out. But now - ah, I think now I’m happy to see those little terrors grow up well.”
“My brother’s a guard too,” Twilight murmured, and Zucchara tilted her head.
“Is he now? But - you look so tense! Like a spring all wound up, or you are about to scream aloud at any moment! Is this all really so different to you?”
“No, he’s-”
Twilight paused.
Zucchara nodded. “I know. Something to do with what happened today. I understand, you cannot say.”
“Thank you,” Twilight whispered. “You’re trying your best, for a total stranger who came into your house. I think you might be the best pony I’ve met here yet-” I’ve met three. “-and just - thank you. Rarity would like you, I think.”
“Rarity?”
“A friend of mine.”
“I see.”
If I ever see her again.
Something thudded against the ceiling; Twilight jumped, but moments later the muffled but excited squeals of youthful voices echoed down. Zucchara snorted. “I’m going to have to see what mayhem they’re on about now, huh? I’m sorry, Twilight - enjoy the food. There’s more in the kitchen if you want it.”
“Thank you.”
But she did not enjoy it.
She ate, yes. But the food was sawdust and dirt on her tongue now, devoid of every bit of enjoyment she had felt before.
” Get our contracts bought.”
”I used to be the Bureau’s too.”
” Now I’m happy to see those little terrors grow up well.”
“Twilight?”
She jumped as Crenelle laid a wing across her back. She hadn’t heard the stallion enter.
“Hey,” he said, “Zucchara stopped by and mentioned you were in pretty rough shape.”
“Yeah.” Twilight didn’t move.
“The fighting earlier?”
Three sharp cracks. A pony, slumping limply to the floor.
A moment later, Twilight felt Crenelle’s muzzle brush along her side, slipping beneath a wing and reaching underneath to-
“Woah! Hey!”
Crenelle jerked back as if stung when she wrenched her wing away from him. He blinked in surprise, tail swishing, and let out a low nicker: “What is wrong? Your wings are a mess, and I thought a preening-”
“Thought?” Twilight snapped. “You thought?! You can’t just go and try to preen somepony you just met! That’s not appropriate, and…” Trailing off, she found herself staring at the absolute look of pain on Crenelle’s face. She winced, looked away, and murmured, “This is another one of those ‘this world is upside-down-and-nothing makes sense here’ things, isn’t it?”
Crenelle bowed his head, wings drooping. “I - am afraid so. My sincerest apologies, Twilight Sparkle. I did not realize that for you, it is… a matter less casual. We learn to trust each other, and that includes with care of our wings. Should I go?”
“No. Stay here. You - didn’t know. And you stopped when I asked.”
“Thank you.”
Twilight did not answer. Eventually, however, she did turn her head around to peer at her wings and winced. He’d been right; they resembled more ragged feather dusters than sleek gifts of flight. With some resignation, she extended one and began to work her teeth along its length.
In between, she said, “Crenelle, have you ever had everything you thought you knew - everything you thought was right about the world - just ripped away from you, all at once?”
“I don’t believe I have, Twilight Sparkle.”
“Today I was just told that everything I believed was a lie. That we - ponies - aren’t even real, just some tools made up by a nation dead an eternity ago, just slaves made to make worlds for them and - then what? Stay bound to that forever?” Stop. Slow yourself, Twilight. Deep and steady breaths. Don’t let your feelings run your mouth.
When she resumed, her voice was lower - but laden with no less bitterness.
“Yesterday, we were chasing a thief. My friends and I. Yesterday, I’d never seen a pony killed before. I’d seen ponies hurt in fighting. I’d seen bodies, when the changelings came. But I’d never seen somepony go from living to dead in just a heartbeat. I know my brother carried his spear and his spells, but I never saw him - We’re - nevermind. Rambling.” Nervous. Shaky. Prone to being distracted, because I don’t want to talk about the real problem. “Crenelle… until yesterday, my friends and I lived in a little village near our capital. We farmed our own food. We hold market days, twice a moon. I was helping three little fillies find their cutie marks, because we get ours when we find our own destiny and talent.”
She turned around fully, folding her wings back in and meeting his eyes. “Our own destinies, Crenelle. Not to be bought or sold or owned by anypony else. Everypony has to find what’s right for them! Not - not -” Words. Words not coming. Too many thoughts at once. “-this!”
Crenelle rose, taking a few long steps to the windows. With one flicker of his horn, they faded back into transparency. Another flicker, and they somehow rolled up into themselves; a low breeze flittered through the room and the scent of roasting food and something stony met Twilight’s nose.
“Isn’t - what about whoever that was that came in before, couldn’t they-”
“Lieutenant-Investigator Guerro has been working upstairs,” Crenelle cut in, “calling any of his contacts. Whoever the strike team was, they won’t be doing anything for now. The entire station is buzzing with security services; you don’t get to raid the entire Sector headquarters and not invoke a major response.”
“Oh.”
Outside, whatever seemed to have passed for night had arrived; the sun had vanished, being replaced by an eclectic collection of lights mounted, bundled, even festooned to every building in sight. The atmosphere was almost party-like, and indeed Twilight’s ears twitched at a heavy, grinding tune drifting from somewhere distant.
She found herself magnetically, inexorably drawn to the window. The end of ‘day’ had not cut even a hair into the neighborhood’s spirit; turning her head in one direction, she watched as something vast and shaggy-coated lurched down the street on multiple legs, several ponies sat on its back. In the other a small crowd milled about in a lamp-clad square, some dancing in circles - yet the tune was not the one she heard, as they moved to an entirely different beat. A colt and what she thought was a child of Guerro’s kind chased each other, giggling as they weaved between larger bodies and down alleys.
Overhead, the same leviathan vessels cruised by like ghostly wraiths, marking their passage only by the lights fixed to their hulls, the true stars being eclipsed by artificial ones. Even beyond that, the planet still hung in the sky - a quarter of its breadth illuminated still.
It occurred to Twilight that she was, possibly, only the second pony ever to see a crescent planet as opposed to a crescent moon.
“Crenelle?”
“Yes?”
“Who lowers your sun? To bring your night, I mean?”
When no answer came, she looked aside and found him staring back with a slightly tilted head. “You’re serious. And literal,” he said slowly, and Twilight nodded.
“This,” he said slowly, and perhaps a bit sadly, “is why they will want you. Raising a sun…! That kind of thaumocasting is - utterly beyond anything a Biosynth could do now. Rediscovering that ability…”
“Because you can’t, or because they won’t let you?” Twilight asked.
“Can’t. Both, maybe?” Crenelle shrugged with a little toss of his head. “I’ve never even heard of any Biosynth using it, but stellar engineering is fairly heavily regulated, so I could see why they wouldn’t develop that kind of Biosynth.”
“‘Develop’? Didn’t you say you have family?”
“I do. And I chose to have them. But our abilities… the synthing houses are constantly developing new lines of Biosynths. Our gene-lines are carefully tailored and neural architecture studied, to give us the abilities and casting we need without risk of disorder.”
“And what about Guerro’s kind? Do they do the same things to them?”
“No. Their genetic and neural structures are not so malleable as ours. Some genetweaking may be done, but they heavily rely on cybernetics as well.”
“Oh.”
As if by some unspoken command, both of them turned back to the window.
Something flashed by on buzzing, harmonic wings; Twilight flinched, thoughts of black chitin and ivory fangs coming to mind.
“I’ve seen slavery,” she said softly, “I’ve seen it with chains and collars. I’ve seen it with magic and mind control. I’ve seen it with nothing more than bullying and coercion. But this… I don’t know if there’s somehow nothing actually wrong here, or if what’s wrong is so fundamentally built into this place that I can’t even fathom how to fix it. And I think… I think I’m a little scared by that.”
“I do not think I know exactly what to say, Twilight Sparkle. I think Zucchara might know better, but she is afraid of hearing any part of this, I think.”
“You’re trying,” Twilight said, resting her head against the windowsill. “But everything about this place is too strange for me. Even you, Crenelle.”
“Me? Forgive me, Twilight Sparkle, have I upset you?”
“No, it’s just…” How do I explain? First there were two, then there was one for a thousand years. Then, suddenly, there were two, but the one who went came back, wreathed in moon-fire and fog. “...where I come from, Crenelle, ponies like us - ponies with wings and a horn - we’re extraordinarily rare. Here, there’s - how many did you say? Millions? Millions? ”
“How many were there on your planet?”
“Now? Four. And I only became-” Princess. Ruler. Special. Ascended. Without any idea what I’m doing. “-this a little while ago. Cadance too. And Luna was - away. So for a long time, one. When I, um, when I first saw you, I - I wasn’t sure what you were.”
“You changed yourself?!”
“I don’t understand how. I don’t know if even Celestia does.”
I don’t know how much of - any of this she knows. The unspoken fear loomed in the back of her mind like a storm hanging just on the horizon - there, threatening, but refusing to sweep over her just yet. If she knew, why didn’t she tell us? Was she afraid? Testing us? Celestia’s left things out to help us learn before, but we couldn’t have just learned about this.
Even if I can get home, how will I ever talk to her?
“Can you tell me more about your home?” Crenelle said, and relief flooded Twilight at the distraction..
She laughed aloud, shaking her head. “I don’t know where to start…! Um - let me try - so I live in a place called Ponyville. I was sent there a few years ago by my teacher, Princess Celestia. She’s one of the alicorns I mentioned before. So, I didn’t even know what I was doing at first, but I met five other ponies there…”
She talked.
He listened.
The stars drifted by overhead.
Outside, the music grew quieter.
By the time the last words trailed off, Crenelle was resting with his head on the window sill, ears drooping and tail curled around his hooves.
“It sounds nice,” he said quietly. “Like something out of a tale I would tell my foals.”
“I thought you said you were happy,” quipped Twilight, her tone slightly accusatory.
“I am!” He laughed, though it didn’t quite meet his eyes. “I am happy with my life, Twilight, strange as it might seem. I’m proud of what I do. When we crack a ring smuggling enough Kharavesh to addict thousands of lives, I’m happy to know those people won’t suffer. When we figure out who pirates have been blackmailing to host them and take both into custody, I know humans, aliens, and biosynths alike are all safer for it.”
“But?” Twilight prodded.
His tail swatted against the floor. “But - I don’t know. Some of it - a whole world where you live such simple lives - it sounds so pleasant. And yet, I know it is a place that has wounded you.”
“Wounded?”
“Your body. We examined it when you were first brought in. Remnants of burns, cuts, broken limbs! And none of them treated correctly. Proper treatment would not leave scars like you bear.”
“Hey!” She shot him a glare. “We do our best. Redheart is one of the best ponies I know, and she never complains to us no matter how many times we come galloping to her. She’s treated everything from dragon fire to sandviper venom and too many scrapes and cuts to count.”
“Forgive me,” Crenelle said, and Twilight could hear a bitter chuckle in his voice, “I did not mean to critique your healers’ skills. I have no doubt they are skillful, as you have been healed. But you have also been hurt, repeatedly, by your world and speak of it so idyllically… a paradox for me. Then again, you have an absolute ruler, a ‘princess’ who you must follow. You must understand, Twilight Sparkle, to me that sounds as absurd as you feel about my being a ‘slave’.”
“Celestia doesn’t lord herself over us, though! Neither does Luna-" Okay, maybe Luna does a bit. "-or Cadance, and I definitely don’t rule over anyone in Ponyville!” She paused, then added, “Except in the library. If a book doesn’t come back…”
“And yet she still does rule.”
“Wouldn’t you just say we were just… designed that way? We’re just ‘tools’, after all.”
“And yet you believe yourself to be your own selves with your own destinies, do you not?” Crenelle said softly. “Maybe I am starting to believe it too. Maybe I want to.”
Or maybe you are wrong, Twilight thought. Instead she said, “What’s wrong?”
Crenelle frowned, but not at her. “I suppose you have told me enough, considering how little you trust me. I should be honest too.”
“Honesty is important,” she agreed.
“And yet… I have… not been entirely honest with the Lieutenant-Investigator.”
Twilight blinked; she could feel exactly how much it had hurt him to admit that. The way a certain rawness had suddenly seeped into his voice. “Do you not trust him?”
“I have been somewhat disho- lied. I have lied because I trust him. A lie of omission, but a lie nonetheless.”
“I’m… not sure I understand.”
“I told him your case was assigned to him. This is untrue. I chose him. I told the first investigator assigned to it that it had been assigned to her by mistake. I changed the assignment log, and then brought it to Guerro myself.”
“Why?”
“I do not dis like my job, Twilight Sparkle. But I find great enjoyment in hunting those who would mistreat biosynths. And Lieutenant-Investigator Guerro has always been kinder to us. When I saw your case, I thought…”
“I thought he would be kind to you as well. Instead he forced the diagnostic halo on you, thinking you were something else.” A smile, small and sad, twisted the edges of his lips. “So you see, Twilight Sparkle, I can choose. I can choose to do wrong, and because no override code compels me now they cannot stop me. But in doing so, I break his trust and hurt the one I was trying to help.”
Twilight found herself looking away. Looking at Crenelle didn’t seem quite right now, but neither did saying nothing.
“It’s not your fault, Crenelle. We forgive each other. That’s part of Friendship, and you didn’t mean to hurt me. You meant the opposite. You didn’t do all of this to me."
But when she turned back around to look, Crenelle had vanished.
Morning, or whatever passed for it on a city without a planet, found Twilight stretched across one of the seats, and her nostrils twitching to the scent of something spicy and honey-scented cooking in the next room.
Over breakfast - some sort of cakes filled with a spread, the tangy-yet-sweet taste of which left Twilight devouring four more - Guerro set a tablet whose glowing screen held a map of the station.
“Right,” he said, rubbing at blurry eyes, “good news is, for the moment we’re safe. Dark Ops team that hit the HQ went to cloak and is staying under cloak - means we won’t be having anyone gunning for us for the time being. Bad news is, they definitely know what the deal is, and if we wait long enough, they’re gonna take a go at Twilight again.”
Twilight swallowed the last of one of the cakes, hard.
Guerro continued, “Means we’ve gotta find somewhere safe to put her until we can roll this whole mess out right. Now, I’ve got some thoughts, but I’m not liking any of them.”
“How about home?” Twilight asked bitterly.
“Would you accept going home?” Crenelle asked, his head tilted curiously.
Twilight poked at the cakes on her plate. “Any other day, Crenelle… Any other day, I’d have been begging you to take me to a library, or a university, research enclave. There’s so much here I want to know, and I even know you have those things because the language you shoved into my head gave me the words for them. But right now, I really do just want to go home.”
Away from this upside-down madhouse of a world.
“Home’d be great, ‘cept someone found their way there once, and until we know how they could just do it again.” Guerro gestured around with his utensil, mouth still half-full. “That’s the real problem. I’d love to just put you back somewhere where you aren’t my problem, but unless you can tell me how she did it? ‘Home’ ain’t gonna help.”
Crenelle settled in at the table, nodding slowly. “I also hate to give negative news, but I don’t believe you yourself know how to get back home.”
“You can’t just ask - her? The one who took me?” Twilight said.
“The Tlatoani?” Guerro let out a barking laugh, then shook his head. “I could probably get her to talk, but the point is the information is out there. If one stupid little tramp freighter captain could stumble on you once, then it could happen again.”
“I… don’t know,” Twilight admitted, “that - thing they used to keep me a prisoner in my own head muddled all my memories too. The last thing I remember was being back in Equestria, chasing down Ahuizotl with my friends, and then-”
Something clattered to the floor.
Twilight’s head snapped up, and found both Crenelle and Guerro staring at her in slight awe.
“Um,” she said.
“Say that,” Guerro said slowly, “one more time.”
Instead, Twilight narrowed her eyes, the gears in her mind turning. “Ahuizotl. That’s what I said, isn’t it? Something about that name? Why’s he important?”
“Describe h- it. Describe Ahuizotl. Carefully,” Crenelle said softly.
“...sometimes walks on four legs, like a dog. Sometimes on two. But not like Guerro. Two arms, but a tail with another hand on it. Head’s, uh, kind of long, with a lot of teeth. Really a lot of teeth. And blue - he’s very blue - coat’s mostly short, with a light blue patch on his belly,” Twilight rattled off hurriedly.
“Eyes?”
“Green?”
“How many fingers on the hand?”
“Three. Plus the small one.”
Crenelle and Guerro stared at each other. Crenelle’s tail lashed. Guerro said something which Twilight didn’t understand, but brought a touch of red even to Crenelle’s slate-grey cheeks. Twilight frowned. “What, what is it? Are you going to tell me he’s some other special kind of ‘biosynth’?”
“Ahuizotl isn’t a biosynth,” Guerro said quietly.
If someone, right now, ever asked me how my week was going, I’d tell them I’m burning off karma at a truly ludicrous rate.
Good or bad, I’m thinking the jury’s still up on that bit. I’ve met some cybermonks who’d tell you they’re the same thing, superpositioned in the same bit of quantum memory. Maybe they’re right. ‘Cause lemme tell you, running into not one but two living legends of history? I’m definitely not sure if that’s good or bad, just a big damn mess.
I’d found us another skimmer, and we were already on our way. Twilight clung to the side, her mane fluttering, while Crenelle cruised alongside ready to catch any fire coming our way.
“Ahuizotl’s probably one of the most famous steelburners of the last half-century,” I was yelling over the rushing wind. “Cut a swath from the Yandarian Reach out to Tophet Sheni, grabbing anything that wasn’t hard-sealed down. They used to say that if Ahuizotl wanted it, the only thing stronger than that pull was a black hole!”
“What’s a steelburner?” Twilight howled.
Right. Translator patch might’ve gotten into her head, but slang was still patchy.
“A thief, a pirate, an outlaw - it’s kind of hard to explain specifically. They run hard, run fast, and run daring. No territory, but a big appetite. Anyway, maybe thirty or forty years back, word starts going around that he’s going to make a grab at the biggest of the big prizes, something that’ll put him a light-year ahead of every other ‘burner out there and no chance to catch up.”
“Us,” Twilight whispered. Actually, I kind of guessed she whispered, since her lips made the right movement. Couldn’t hear a damn thing.
“Yep. I’d lay a good bet, anyway. Well, everyone geared up for it - Zucchara actually worked on it back when she was fresh, ask her about it some time - but the thing is, poof!” I flung my hands apart, and Twilight flinched. “No more Ahuizotl. He vanishes without a trace. No treasure, no prize, no nothing. Just a big vacuum, and a bigger pile of leftover goodies for all of the rest to fight over.”
I could see circuits working in Twilight’s head. She was a fast processor, when life wasn’t slapping her ‘round the head every time she got her wits together.
“I follow you so far,” she said slowly, “but not why we’re going to this jail to see the one who - captured me.”
“We had her pinned as some tramp freighter captain who caught a stupid lucky break, maybe looking for a jump-route that wasn’t patrolled so she could smuggle what she wanted. But now - you’re telling me ‘just some freighter captain’ manages all this? I’m calling Lowroc-shit. She’s got some bigger stake in this. Crenelle, did anyone take a look-over of her ship?”
“Absolutely, Lieutenant-Investigator. Casting to your neurals.” A pang of motion-sickness hit my belly as the report filled my screen but the skimmer kept flying on fearless autopilot; I suppressed it quick enough to hear Crenelle keep talking: “...checked out, the starship itself has a few warnings but no major issues, and her cargo is all legal trade of common industrial and commercial hardware. The only thing that even came close was an out-of-date license on a reactor she was moving, but that would land her little more than a minor fine at worst.”
Yeah, right.
Reading this again, I could see all the little warning signs a rookie - or just lazy - agent wouldn’t. Her entire report sheet was too perfect for what she was supposed to be; a bit of a busted-up freighter, cargo with a flaw for an agent to write up, but nothing worth looking seriously at.
Normal for a tramp freighter. Perfectly normal. If Twilight hadn’t been there, that ship’d have passed any customs inspection in the galaxy.
I was hearing warning buzzers in my head, and it wasn’t ‘cause my implants were going bad. “I don’t know if you’ve ever dealt with border authorities, Twilight, but all this makes me incredibly suspicious. So we’re going to have a nice happy little chat with her for a bit. You just follow my lead in there, Twilight, and we’ll be all fine.”
I’ll give the little gal some credit: The last time she’d been in this place, it’d been in the middle of a gunfight and she’d been losing her head over it. This time, she managed to swallow that tension down and keep at my heels. I could see the way she hugged her wings to herself, and Crenelle was picking up on it too from the way he fell back to trot at her side.
But Twilight? She sucked it up and kept it going.
Good gal, really. I was starting to respect her a bit more every hour.
Hell, some of the other Bureau boys scurrying around looked more shaken than Twilight. I got why - not everyday a dark ops team comes in your windows - but still.
I had to make a few outside calls - up a different chain of command than the bureau - to get Twilight back in the front door, but once we were through?
One of the upsides of being a full-on Lieutenant in a moment of panic: Absolutely nobody asks questions when you walk down to the deten block and want to chat with a prisoner. Better yet, they’d tossed her in one of the grav cells, an opening in the floor no more than a meter wide to the larger cell beyond. Convenient, since the cells also kind of muffled anything while the anti-grav barrier was in place. Nobody else listening in.
We gathered around the rim, peering down into the shadowy interior. “Oi. Itzcoatl. Wake up down there.”
Shadow shifted in the cell, an inky-black form uncoiling itself from the bed. Green eyes peered up, narrow and searching.
“What,” Itzcoatl called up, “do you want, ‘gator?”
“Twilight,” I asked instead, “is she kind of like what you saw back home?”
“Yeah,” she said, and Itzcoatl spun about to stare at her.
Itzcoatl’s voice was a sibilant hiss when she spoke again. “So. You took the inhibitor off. And figured out what she is, I reckon.”
Off-kilter. Good. Got to keep her like that, before she starts getting ahead of things. “Yep. Got the whole story out of her. Mighty big prize you stumbled onto, Itzcoatl. A prize we’re real eager to hang onto too.”
“Of course you are. You’d have to be an idiot not to, ‘gator,” she hissed back.
“So. You gonna explain how you found her, or do I have to go get the techs for a mindscrape?”
Itzcoatl threw back her head and laughed, showing the rows of serrated teeth nested in the Tlatoani’s mouth. Twilight flinched, and my suspicion she was right grew even stronger.
“Your bluff is a bad one, ‘gator,” Itzcoatl hissed, “I know you don’t have the permit for that. Even smuggling a biosynth won’t bring that, I know your pet pony won’t break Bureau regulations, and even at your rank - what are you? Sergeant-Investigator?
“Lieutenant,” I snapped.
“Lieutenant!” She pressed all three hands to her chest, a mocking salute in greeting. “I’m honored to have such an esteemed ‘gator questioning me. But they still won’t give you his override code.”
“Sure,” I said with a flippant grinned, “Crenelle can’t scrape you, and I can’t make him. But guess what? I’ve got a totally unregged biosynth right here, not a mandate or legal stop in sight. And Twilight really, really wants to go home.”
Itzcoatl hissed, recoiling back against the cell wall. “You didn’t limit its casting?! You idiot! They’re not neurobridled; do you have any idea what they’re capable of?”
“Nope!” I said cheerily. “And I don’t have to know. All I have to do is turn my back for a few minutes-”
“No.”
Damn it, Twilight.
I bit back the curse and looked at her. She stared back, just as hard. “No. I won’t do it. This place - it’s - everything that’s wrong seems to be normal here. It’s a world upside-down. But I won’t be part of it. Even after what she did to me, I’m not using that magic on her.”
Itzcoatl gave a hard, wheezing laugh. “Perhaps the little synthetic is more tamed than I thought, yes? Well, Lieutenant-Investigator. What will you do now?”
Well, all the respect I’d had for Twilight had just gone totally sour.
Time for plan B.
“Okay, you know what? How about I just take Twilight, go, and leave you here instead.”
“Leave me here?” Itzcoatl dropped back down, watching me carefully - the posture of one who senses a trap, but doesn’t see where it is yet.
I’d know. I’d found myself in the same position a few times. That little mess back on Madrat, heh…
Anyway.
“Yep. Now, I know your cell is pretty soundproofed until we shut the grav-field off, but I also know you couldn’t have missed the alarms howling earlier. Wanna guess what those were?”
She prowled in a circle, catlike, as I made my case. I’d seen that look before too - once with a wild voidwolf in a zoo, but more often in any number of bladeboys, razorwaifs, gangrinos, or any other kinds of less-than-bright types
“That was a dark ops team with the balls to hit the Bureau headquarters before anyone else could, and the gear to hold off security for fifteen minutes while they tore the place up looking for your prize. They didn’t find her, ‘cause I got her to cover. So, you don’t want to play? Then I go back to cover, wait for them to put together the same things I did, and come looking for you.”
Twilight snorted softly, pawing at the ground with a hoof - clearly unhappy about my proposal. Tough, horsie. I told you to stick to my plan in the first place.
“...they won’t hit the headquarters again,” Itzcoatl tried, but I shook my head. Not nearly enough confidence in that tone to buy it. Sorry, sweetheart.
“Y’know how big a deal this is. They’ll find a way to get in. Or get you out so they can just scoop you up. Then you’ll find yourself in a darker hole with someone who won’t wait for a warrant to do a mindscrape.”
She lashed her tail against the floor, hands flexing to grasp empty air, and hissed like a broken boiler. “What do you want?”
I grinned. Now we were getting somewhere. “You fried your main comp, wiped your jump logs when we took you in. I want to know how you found her, and how to get her back home.”
“You just said I fried them. How could I possibly do that?”
“Please. Let’s not play stupid; you wouldn’t erase the only key back to your prize.”
“I don’t need a way back. I had her,” Itzcoatl gestured to Twilight, “who was prize enough. I could sell her for a dozen fortunes already.”
“But not Ahuizotl,” Twilight said sharply, and I winced and cursed her for the second time in as many minutes.
Cursed, then paused. The change that had come over Itzcoatl was remarkable. She was utterly still, an obsidian statue caught paralyzed mid-stride. When she unfroze, it was one limb - even one joint - at a time.
“So. He made it there after all. Is he alive?”
“When you took me.”
The dextrous tail twitched, writhed, and snapped. Itzcoatl hissed between her many teeth. “Fine. But an exchange. I need to disappear. You get your lost synth and her world. I get my way out.”
Some sense of wrongness fell to the back of my head. I couldn’t quite place it, but… “That’s an awfully juicy prize you’re just giving up on, Itzcoatl.”
“I have no intention of spending the rest of my days in a cell, letting them comb over my brain until I go mad,” she hissed. “I’ve memorized the specifics. Take me to my ship and I’ll get you there.”
“Your ship has been remanded to Bureau holding until such time as the investigation is finished,” Crenelle rumbled.
Another pause, while Itzcoatl thought her way around the next secret we were prying out of her.
“There’s a hidden system on my ship,” she finally admitted, “a compu-crystal layer sandwiched into the structural ribs. It backs up everything. But you can’t get into it without me. Try it, and it slags itself.”
The look I got from Crenelle told me he was thinking just the same thing I was: Where does a smuggler captain, let alone a tramp freighter captain, get a ship built with that kind of custom sparklies in its bones?
Itzcoatl wasn’t everything she seemed to be.
Meanwhile, I guess Twilight had other thoughts. She was giving a supremely smug look down into the cell, probably the first time I’d seen her looking really happy since I’d first laid eyes on her. “I think you’re underestimating me. I learned crystal-shaping magic from the crystal ponies themselves. I don’t know what compu-crystal is, but I’d bet I can make a full copy of it.”
“Really now?”
Yeah, I wasn’t too fond of the way Itzcoatl was looking at Twilight. Too much hunger in that expression for me. “So, you get your ride out of here. No brainscrapes, no time-di cells. And we get Twilight to make a copy.”
“Do you have that kind of power, ‘gator? I’m still accused of a fairly major crime.”
“I can,” I said, ignoring the questioning look Crenelle gave me. “But first, we’re going to go take a look at your ship, just to make sure there’s no fun little surprises waiting for us along the way.”
I hadn’t actually seen Itzcoatl’s ride yet, but I had a fairly good idea. Twilight looked rather struck by it, and I gave Crenelle a moment to talk to her while I took a walk around the place. It was a pretty straightforward tramp hauler - a line of cargo bays set off a central axis, a little square-headed accommodation block up front, and a massive cluster of thrusters at the rear.
By now, I had a suspicion that if anyone actually took a good look at those thrusters, they’d be a whole lot more than the off-the-shelf standard they looked to be.
The cargo bays had been swept when the ship was taken in, so I didn’t bother with those. I was much more concerned with the cockpit - if there were any left-behind surprises, or if I could figure out what Itzcoatl’s real deal was.
Maybe it was a good thing Crenelle was taking a moment with Twilight. She wouldn’t know a palm infoslate from an illegal neurocracker, but Crenelle would and I didn’t favor having to try to explain the tech I was fishing out of my jacket. Stuff this high-grade didn’t just end up in the pockets of a Bureau man, even a lieutenant.
In some ways, having Twilight around was turning out to be a favor. Chatting with her kept him from seeing where I’d retrieved it from Zucchara’s place as well. Gotta admit, going around behind his back didn’t quite feel right. Biosynth or not, Crenelle was the kind of partner most Bureau people would die for. Sometimes literally.
Job’s a job, though, and I had mine.
I synched my neurals with the scanner and went to work on the cockpit before they could catch up. Most of it was a whole mess of packed-in electronics, too noisy for my scanner to pick up much distinct, but I wasn’t interested in that anyway.
What I was interested in, was the clear signature of an entire second computer net, well-concealed to most standard issue scanners but open to mine, nicely sandwiched into the structural frames to provide good cover. Powered off, it probably wouldn’t show up to the average police kit.
With the scanner’s results being projected into my eyesight, I could also see what I’d bet a good few credits were thermal charges packed in, ready to melt if someone got any fancy ideas about peeling the ship open.
But I had a Twilight, who said she could copy the compucrystal layering.
Crenelle’s neurals pinged me - he was coming aboard at last - and I stashed the scanner back away in my jacket. When the two of them caught up, it was a far, far less potent one I was running over the consoles and displays.
“...so I don’t know what your normal process is, Crenelle,” Twilight was saying, “but I want you and Guerro both to promise me: You’re not going to lie to Itzcoatl.”
“Your concern for her is surprising, given what she did to you,” Crenelle pointed out, but Twilight shook her head.
“Everypony has to be honest, Crenelle, or you’re not any better than the criminals you chase after. It’s important.”
I got a chuckle out of that. “Hey, Twilight - I know you mean right, but really - try saying that after you’ve pulled apart a Dendarian stim-smuggling gang. It’s not so clean and easy then.”
At a sharp look from her, I added, “But I do promise - she plays it straight with us, I’ll get her a nice and safe spot where she won’t be hunted. Honest.”
The look Crenelle shot me said I was going to have to answer questions from him sooner or later, but I had my own ideas about ‘right now’. “Anyway, Twilight - that crystal layer. It’s pretty well shielded from anything we’ve got, but I want to know if you - with whatever ‘crystal magic’ you were gabbing about - can see it. Feel it. I dunno. Give it a shot?”
“...I’ll try.” Her horn lit, eyes squeezing shut as its light grew until I barely needed the cockpit lights on. “It’s… kind of there, yeah. Hazy. Murky,” Twilight was saying, “but yes - there’s definitely some arcane. In like - the thick walls, separating this bit from the rest of the ship.”
“The structural ribs, yes,” Crenelle said, “that’s what Itzcoatl was-”
Naturally, that was when a black-clad figure stepped into the doorway and shot Crenelle right in the chest.
Twilight Sparkle’s first impression of the ‘ship’ in question was that someone had taken a number of foal’s toy blocks, glued them together while blindfolded, and then dragged the whole thing through a mud-patch.
Sure, the fat-bodied craft that drifted by above were far from the graceful airships that plied the skies near Canterlot. But this thing…
It was just plain ugly.
Crenelle dropped back as she paused near the ramp up. “Are you doing well, Twilight Sparkle? I do not think Lieutenant-Investigator Guerro remembered that you might have… less than positive memories of this craft.”
“Actually,” Twilight said, “I don’t even remember this thing at all. She had me - outside of myself while I was in it. It’s all new to me.”
“Ah.”
“It’s just - so ugly,” she said softly. “Nothing here is right.”
The inside of the vessel, when she trotted into it, was no less rough than the exterior. Hard metal clinked under her hooves, and caged-in lamps cast harsh light that rendered the corridors full of stark shadows.
“What will happen with this thing?” she asked.
“Ordinarily?” Crenelle shrugged with his wings. “Held until Itzcoatl is convicted, then sold off by the station’s government.”
“...so you sell off her ship if she’s ‘convicted’ - but whoever is running this place is allowed to hold slaves.” Sighing, Twilight shook her head. “What about now? What will happen to it now?”
“That depends on how much Itzcoatl cooperates with us,” he replied grimly.
“Will you give it back if she does cooperate with us?”
“If Lieutenant-Investigator Guerro can convince the Bureau to agree to her agreement, then that may be the case.”
“May be the case?” Twilight said, outrage creeping into her voice. “You can’t tell her one thing and then not give it to her! It’s dishonest!”
“I do not disagree with that, technically. But I do not control the ultimate outcome either.”
“Yeah,” she retorted back, “because you are owned by them.”
“That is not the reason.”
Twilight snorted at how calm and even his voice was. “It’s not the reason. Fine. I don’t understand a lot about how you do things here, so I don’t know what your normal process is, Crenelle. But I want you and Guerro both to promise me: You’re not going to lie to Itzcoatl.”
The stallion paused, turning his head to look back at her through one eye. “Your concern for her is surprising, given what she did to you.”
Shaking her head, Twilight pointed a hoof at her chest. “Everypony has to be honest, Crenelle, or you’re not any better than the criminals you chase after. It’s important.”
From somewhere up ahead, she heard Guerro laugh - casually, almost mockingly. “Hey, Twilight,” he said with some acerbity in his tone, “I know you mean right, but really - try saying that after you’ve pulled apart a Dendarian stim-smuggling gang. It’s not so clean and easy then.”
Twilight fixed him with her fiercest glare, and it seemed to get the point across. He raised a hand defensively. “But I do promise - she plays it straight with us, I’ll get her a nice and safe spot where she won’t be hunted. Honest.”
That’s about as much as I think I’m going to get from him. If he’s even being honest with me.
Instead, she looked around the small space they were in - the front of the ship, she guessed, and probably the control space judging by the sheer number of various panels festooned with buttons, levers, and tiny screens. Guerro himself had taken up residence in one of the two massive seats occupying the space, sitting awkwardly in something that didn’t look like it’d been built for his species.
“Anyway, Twilight - that crystal layer. It’s pretty well shielded from anything we’ve got, but I want to know if you - with whatever ‘crystal magic’ you were gabbing about - can see it. Feel it. I dunno. Give it a shot?” he asked.
“...I’ll try.” Letting her eyes slip shut, she reached out with her magic - vision being supplanted with the sixth sense of ponykind, the arcane sense, the quiet, harmonic hum that was not quite sound.
Something hummed back from all around her, tiny bits of spellwork encrusted into crystals throughout the dilapidated ship. The more she pressed against them, the more defined they became - but the largest cache of all was actually behind her. They were murky, hard to see, the crystals concealed somehow - but definitely there.
“It’s… kind of there, yeah. Hazy. Murky,” she said, “but yes - there’s definitely some arcane. In like - the thick walls, separating this bit from the rest of the ship.”
“The structural ribs, yes,” Crenelle said, “that’s what Itzcoatl was-”
Only because she had focused her senses did she feel the slight shift behind her. Her eyes opened, but only just in time for her ears to pin down as something filled the space with thunder.
Crenelle fell with a scream, his sandy coat already turning red. Guerro rose from his seat, arms splayed, but moved no further. And behind her, standing in the doorway-
It’s a pony.
Armored, horn to hoof. But it’s a pony.
Why?
“Do not move, officer,” the pony’s voice buzzed, synthetic and utterly devoid of any indication whether a mare or stallion stood before her. The only part of it she could even see was its wings and horn, both slate-gray. Another weapon, long and thin, floated in its magical grip.
Guerro didn’t, his eyes only flickering to where Crenelle lay on the floor, whimpering.
“Good,” the pony said, “don’t move. We’re just going to stay right here, understand? No quick moves, no casting, no fast actions, or I shoot your biosynth again, officer.”
“He’s already bleeding out,” Guerro hissed, but the pony just turned its face-mask - and weapon - in his direction. Twilight saw Guerro’s teeth grit, his fingers flex as if searching for something to grip - but still his body remained still,
“Come on,” he said instead, “he’s no use as a hostage if he dies right there! Let me give him first aid or something!”
“His fate is not my concern,” the pony said in its buzzing, monotone voice, “but if you move, he will die now.”
Guerro said something again, but Twilight did not hear it. Still listening for the harmonic hum of magics, she had found a new tone grating against her magical senses: A keening, high-pitched whine, like a violin string tightened until the point of snapping, coming from a knot of intense magic within the pony’s weapon.
The pony was just another slave. She would not hurt it.
The weapon had no such protection.
Her horn flared, and in that split second her magic reached out, seizing the weapon’s magical core, and snuffed it with a thought. The core burst under her magical grip, spellwork exploding like an overripe cherry.
“What-?” the pony had just enough time to ask, turning to its weapon in confusion, and then Twilight was on it.
Not to hurt, no. But her magic found its helmet, found the seam holding it in place, and pulled . The helmet came free -
Green eyes stared up at her, wide and unmoving. A mare - young, Twilight thought, and in shock.
“What are you?” she gasped.
“Somepony who knows crystal magic,” Twilight spat back. “And knows this, too.”
Her horn flared one more time, and the mare vanished in a flicker of violet - deposited well outside the building.
Behind her, Guerro crouched over Crenelle. A container's contents had been spread out over the cabin floor, and though their shapes were unfamiliar the purpose was clear - especially as Guerro’s blood-soaked hands were holding something to the stallion’s wounds.
“Will he-?” Twilight found her words cut off before they could finish. But speaking that final, terrible word proved unneeded, as Guerro shook his head.
“Got his shoulder,” he said, “Crenelle, you’re gonna need surgery. A good soak in a nanobath to get you fixed up, maybe. But you’ll knit. Probably even still be able to stay on the force.”
“I am delighted to hear it,” Crenelle hissed through gritted teeth, “but we have bigger issues. I have just been pinged by station security, Lieutenant. Four starships have broken off from regular traffic patterns and are heading straight for us, fast.”
“You're joking,” Guerro said, while Twilight simply cried out “Again?!”
“Twilight,” and she jumped as Guerro’s eyes were now boring into her, “I need you to do something for me. How far does that jump you can do go?”
“Far enough.”
“Far enough to get to Itzcoatl in her cell and bring her back here?”
How long had it been to get up here - ten minutes, twelve? Part of that was a ride in a traveling room, though, that brought us up. Call it fifteen if I was trotting…
“Yes, as long as she doesn’t touch my horn. But it’ll be tiring.”
“Do it,” Guerro said grimly.
Crenelle tried to sit up, gasped, and flopped back over. Instead he settled for glaring at Guerro through one eye. “Lieutenant-Investigator! You have considerable leeway in use of resources for your investigation, but removing a suspect from her cell without notice-”
“If they were smart enough to leave an agent on Itzcoatl’s ship, an agent who can cloak themselves against our sweep-teams and not be found, then they are smart enough to know her value,” Guerro snapped. “We leave her here, that’s it - whoever they are, they’ll get her. Twilight, do it!”
Twilight opened her senses and I feel the tower beneath me, reaching upward from its branch-like roots anchored to the surface of the station. I feel the the hard, fixed heaviness of the walls, and feel the hum of the veins of energy flowing through them. I feel the pipes and tubes of liquid and air, more than even Canterlot palace ever had. And I feel my way down, down into its heart, where we came up from. I feel the black void of the cell where I was being kept, hideous and hollow, but I’m not going there. I feel the other hall, the line of cells beneath it. Fourth cell from the end of the hallway. Open space. A risk - if I intersect Itzcoatl we’ll both be hurt. She didn’t seem to like to be near the walls, so I’ll aim there.
I feel the mass of the station as a whole, the curve of space where it weighs on the universe. I feel the bigger curves, sharp-edged and foreign, that can only be from where it imposes its own, unusual gravity. My magic pushes on space, and it all distorts like I’m seeing it through a lens until my magic can touch the cell, and I PUSH-
Violet light flared.
Twilight opened her eyes, her breath sharp and cold in her lungs.
Itzcoatl stared, tiny eyes open in an expression of unmitigated shock. Her mouth started to move, forming words.
Twilight closed her eyes and PUSHED -
The ship’s deck was hard and cold against Twilight’s coat. It took her a moment to realize why she was laying against it, and the understanding hit just a moment before the sudden and hard need to gasp for new, fresh, cool air in her lungs.
“Twilight!” cried Crenelle, which seemed weird because he had been shot , why was he worried about her?
“Just - give me a moment,” she said, heaving herself upright. “Teleporting isn’t easy, and this place is a mess of masses.”
“What is this?” Itzcoatl hissed, hunched over with her back pressed to the wall. Outside of the cells, she almost seemed to blend in with the dark colors of the ship’s interior, and the thought crossed Twilight’s mind that perhaps the dim lighting was less an accident and more camouflage.
“We’re out of time,” Guerro was saying, “there’s more skimmers with dark ops teams on the way. You need to get us powered up and moving right now!”
“I am not going to add ‘escape and resisting arrest’ to my record right in front of-”
“Just - I’ll deal with it; get us flying, now!”
Twilight’s ears barely twitched at the bickering; the craft’s controls might as well have been a foal’s scribblings for all she understood of them. Instead she heaved herself upright and lurched her way to Crenelle’s side. Something had been haphazardly pasted over his wound, a blob of some bright neon-green paste, and yet despite the red stickiness still clotting his coat, all Twilight could think to say was “...so, you were saying something about how I hadn’t gotten proper medical treatment?”
“...this is a perfectly reasonable application of field-expedient medipaste. It has already staunched my wound, and the nanotech within is working to prevent infect- ah.” He blinked at Twilight’s flat look, frowning. “My apologies. You are being facetious.”
“Good of you to notice,” Twilight quipped as she looked around. Her ears flattened at the overwhelming stench of coppery blood still polluting the air. “Can I do anything more?”
“If you would not mind, actually - there are small vials wrapped in green in there, with a pattern of triangles-”
“I see them.”
“Bring one here, please. Make sure it has the triangles, though, not the diamonds. Those are for species with copper-based blood.”
“What about this one?”
“Neural shunt. That would rapidly render me unconscious for a number of hours. Please do not use that.”
The ship lurched as she passed the vial into his magical grip; Twilight glanced around and saw both Itzcoatl and Guerro had seated themselves (awkwardly, in the latter’s case) into chairs.
Good. We’re going.
I just hope I know where.
When she looked back, Crenelle had emptied the vial into his neck and seemed to be breathing a touch easier; impulsively, she leaned in, nickered low, and gave him a quick nuzzle along the neck, ignoring the way her nostrils flared and something primal told her to run from the sharp, coppery scent of a pony's blood.
“Twilight?” Crenelle asked, and she drew back suddenly.
“Sorry, I - I don’t… this is all about me, right? You’re hurt because of me. Because they want me. I’m - I know it’s not my fault, but it’s still because of me.”
Crenelle opened his mouth to answer, but another shudder shot through the ship - this one violent enough to throw her onto her side, and accompanied by an effusive bout of swearing from both Guerro and Itzcoatl.
“Your Bureau ships are too slow to mobilize, ‘gator!” the latter hissed.
“Shut up,” Guerro shot back as another tremor shook them. Further back, something began to protest with a loud, grinding whine, “Twilight, Crenelle - turns out this rustbucket isn’t fast enough, and we’re taking fire. I think they’re trying to knock our engines out, match courses, and board.”
“What are your orders, Lieutenant-Investigator?” Crenelle asked, but Twilight was already feeling again - feeling, now that she knew what to look for, for the presence of the tiny knots of arcane power that filled them.
She found them hovering above, an outline of another vessel cast in outline by the web of lines running through its skin, tiny nuggets of synthetic magic nested in identical crystals. It swung lazily to follow their own vessel’s maneuvers; something flared, bright and actinic to her arcane vision, and another shudder ran beneath her hooves.
“Itzcoatl, there’s another two, trying to box us in from below!”
Guerro’s voice was distant, muted, drowned by the atonal disharmony of so many manufactured spellworks. But he wasn’t wrong - she could see them too, gleaming shadows of sharks cast by hard magelight.
I’m not a weapon.
I’m not a slave.
I’m not a tool to be wielded.
And I am not a killer.
But I can still choose to do this.
Twilight reached for the crystals and felt them the same way she had seen the Crystal Ponies spin their homes from raw material, and Twilight squeezed .
Something burst with a muffled thump, and the whining from the rear of the ship fell away as the unseen predator fell back, swinging and nearly tumbling. Its two fellows followed course, withdrawing to a safer distance.
She let her sense drop, came back to as Itzcoatl was muttering, “...retreating, I think, grav-snare’s let us go. We’re almost out of the station’s field. Skimmers aren’t vac-rated, they won’t follow us.”
“I’ll bet they’ve got other ships waiting. Get us to jump as soon as you can,” Guerro snapped.
Itzcoatl hissed, both arms and her tail working the controls. “This is not one of your ships, ‘gator! I am it's captain… but you are right. Let me clear the station, and we will go.”
The first time they went to ‘jump’, Twilight’s stomach did a hard flip and left her on her belly. Crenelle looked at her questioningly, and she swallowed back down the vomit threatening to advance up her throat. “Sorry. I’ve been teleported before, but never like that. It feels - wrong. Blunt. Too big.”
Guerro had laughed at that. “Now you know how I felt, the first time you jumped the two of us!”
The second ‘jump’ time, she merely swayed on her hooves. By the third, the experience only left her gasping. On the sixth, little more than a slight bout of nausea threatened.
“I would love,” she said softly, “to take a look at whatever machine you’re using to make that happen.”
“Not a chance!” Itzcoatl hissed, though there might have been something like a bit of a laugh in it. “Especially not when I am driving it so hard. I think I have made enough jumps, no pursuit now. But we do not know.”
“Fine,” Guerro said, rising from the awkward seat to slip back into the rear of the ship, “then we have a moment to talk about what we’re going to do here.”
“Yes,” Itzcoatl said, and Twilight’s head shot up at some unheard note in her voice. A weapon was already in her grip - two of them actually, one arm and a tail, while the last one gripped the seat she had risen from. “We do.”
“...impressive,” Guerro said, slowly turning back around. “I take it you had them stashed somewhere in the cockpit, hidden among the other systems?”
“You think right.”
“Itzcoatl-” Crenelle began, but she hissed sharply through pointed teeth to silence him.
“Do not try to stop me, puppet. You are a thing of the Bureau, and I cannot go back to a cell again.”
No.
Not this.
Not again.
“This is a dumb idea,” Guerro said.
“This is my only choice,” Itzcoatl snapped back. Outside of the light of the station, with the only illumination coming from the ship’s dim lamps and cold, distant stars, she truly did seem to be a thing of the shadows - barely visible in the dark, but for her eyes hovering amid a pool of black. “You spared me. This, I thank you for. I will see you to some planet safely. There is an emergency escape pod, planet-rated. But the prize is mine. Your weapon, ‘gator.”
“I’m telling you, Itzcoatl, don’t do this,” he said, but he slowly raised both hands in what Twilight took to be a position of surrender.
Itzcoatl loped to his side, a fast and sinuous motion, her claw running over his body. “Wait, where-?”
And Crenelle rolled over with a grunt, Guerro’s weapon hidden beneath his bulk. It rose up to be leveled at Itzcoatl, who hissed a wordless curse.
“Told you it was stupid,” Guerro snorted.
“How?!”
“I gave it to him when I was applying first aid. You were too busy flying. Figured you might pull something fast.”
“And what now?” One of Itzcoatl’s own weapons was jammed into Guerro’s chest, ivory teeth now showing in the dim light too as she snarled, “You cannot take this from me. I must have this. Will you trade your own life for this prize? Call off your biosynth, ‘gator!”
“Sit down, first. Y’know this is messier than just a smuggling case now. We can arrange something-”
“The first take is mine. Your superiors will never accept this!”
“Stop,” Twilight said softly. “Both of you.”
Three heads turned to her.
“Don’t try anything, Twilight,” Guerro said. “You can’t crush my weapon like you did that agent’s. It’s flayed matter. Let that loose in here, we’ll end up breathing jello or our bones will be made of felz-weevils. All of us.”
“I know. Chaos magic. You’ve somehow - you’ve weaponized chaos magic.” Twilight laughed, a hard and terrible laugh. “I don’t know if I should be impressed or horrified, because you can obviously use it and that violates about three things I know about Discord and his magic, but I know. I can’t break it. But I can talk.”
She paused.
No one fired.
She talked.
“I can talk, because I’m not a slave. I’m not a thing to sit back and watch you tear each other apart over me. I watched you kill three things without even flinching, Guerro. Itzcoatl, you put that thing on me that took me out of myself and kept me from even fighting back. I should hate both of you, but…”
She dropped to her haunches. “Look at you. You’re - you’ve built things I can barely understand. I have these words in my head, words like ‘grav net’ and ‘cybernetics’, and I don’t even know how I should know what they mean but somehow I know them anyway, because you put them into my head… You’re so powerful, but you argue like foals.”
“Don’t your ‘ponies’ too?” Crenelle said quietly.
“Yes!” Twilight nodded. “We’re not perfect. We screw up. I’ve screwed up! But we know this is wrong. We’re somehow ‘just tools’, ‘just meant to make planets’ for you - and you know what? We’re still getting along better than you.”
She looked between the three of them - Guerro, Tlatoani, biosy-
Pony.
He’s a pony.
“Don’t do this to each other,” she said softly. “Don’t. Crenelle’s the only one who might even come out of this alive, and he’s only doing this because Guerro ordered him to. I can’t make sense of all of your world - but don’t do this.”
Something hummed, steady and mechanical in the background.
Eyes flicked from face to face.
Guerro nodded first. “You could have taken Itzcoatl’s weapons out… but you chose not to. Alright. Crenelle, lower it.”
He did, without a question.
Three faces turned to Itzcoatl.
Her head snapped back and forth, teeth bared, one free hand working open and closed furiously. “I can’t. I can’t let this be. I have to be first-”
Twilight walked to her, eyes up, pace steady, horn unlit.
“What is it you really want, Itzcoatl?” she asked, “Because I’ve been thinking about you too. You could have come to any part of Equestria. Or even beyond! Griffons, dragons, changelings… you could have taken anycreature. But you came here to where we were, right then. It wasn’t even us, was it? We’re just a - a side prize. Not the ‘big prize’ you keep talking about.”
“I…”
Itzcoatl’s eyes flicked back and forth again, and Twilight lifted a hoof, then lowered it when the Tlatoani froze.
“You followed him in the first place, didn’t you?” she said. “Is Ahuizotl so important that killing someone else is worth it to get to him?”
“Yes,” she said softly, “he’s more important to me than you can imagine.”
“Then just take him and go! Maybe he’d even be better with you! Because as far as I know, he’s nothing but an insane thief who has been giving us trouble for-”
“He is my father!” Itzcoatl roared out, and in her wake silence followed.
“Oh,” Crenelle finally managed.
In shaking hands, she lowered her weapons, treading heavily to a wall. “Ahuizotl Weyi Tlatoani. He vanished when I was so, so young. I have spent decades pouring through his notes. Seeking what he found. I find him, and…”
She slumped down against the wall, suddenly seeming far heavier than her lithe and limber movements had suggested. “He is my father. And he is insane, yes. I saw that. His crew - those that followed them - they would not accept him now.”
“But why me?” Twilight asked.
“I thought - if I could bring back such a great prize as you, then I could restore his name and buy a quiet place for him. And what a prize you were! A thousand, thousand fortunes could not buy such a prize.” Itzcoatl’s tail rose to run its fingers back along her head. “I got greedy, carrying you back. I got hasty, and I got caught.”
I’m not just a prize for you to claim, was what Twilight wanted to say. Instead she said, “There’s always another way. You could work together.”
“She’s right,” Guerro added, “If it’s a quiet little spot for him to live in comfort, we can arrange that - if you cooperate.”
“And become the ‘gator’s dogs?” Itzcoatl laughed bitterly. “No. A new deal. I will take Ahuizotl. Twilight will go back. But you will get their location. Fair, yes? I lose half my prize, but you gain something for losing me.”
“And no one else would be able to find us?” Twilight asked softly.
“No one,” Itzcoatl sighed, “not soon. Ahuizotl ensured only he had the information leading to you. None would be able to steal his prize. In turn, I have his.”
“...fair.” Guerro admitted. “Fairer than a lot of deals I’ve cut. It is a deal, then?”
“Deal,” Itzcoatl said.
Then she looked to Twilight.
“Um,” Twilight added.
“You’re prepared this time, Twilight. You could stop us all if you wanted,” Crenelle said. “Even I couldn’t overpower you. You need to agree too, Twilight.”
“You won’t take any other ponies?”
Itzcoatl nodded.
“I promise,” Guerro said, and something - some tickle in the back of her head - said she could believe him.
Then she looked to Crenelle. “You have to agree too.”
“I do?” He blinked.
“Yes. Because it’s only fair. You’re not a tool, Crenelle. You’re not a slave. You have a part in this, and I won’t agree unless you do too.”
“You know what I want, Twilight Sparkle.”
“Do I?” She fixed him with a hard look, and Crenelle looked away. His tail swished and ears flicked.
When he looked back, his jaw was set and firm. “I know what you think, Twilight Sparkle. You think that because Lieutenant-Investigator Guerro agreed, I will do the same. An order without any words spoken.:
“Yes,” Twilight said bluntly.
“But that’s wrong. I agree with him, because I see the same things he does. I agree, the same way I agreed to join the Bureau. The same way I agreed to what I told you about in Zucchara’s home.”
Twilight paused.
”I can choose to do wrong, and because no override code compels me now they cannot stop me.”
“Okay,” she said.
We put the ship down at the edge of a small forest, far enough from any of the little settlements’ lights that Twilight insisted we wouldn’t be spotted.
Ship’s sensors didn’t pick anything up, so I watched her trot off into the forest. Still felt like I was going to regret what came next somehow, but - well, you win some, you lose some, y’know?
Had to admit, though. Beautiful planet. If Twilight’s kind was supposed to make Eden-worlds for us, they’d done a damn good job here. Had half a mind to pause for a day and just take in the scenery.
Like, I’d have to have half a mind to do that. There was still Itzcoatl to deal with.
“You sure you can find him?” I asked her once we’d hit orbit again.
“Without question,” she nodded. “Ahuizotl is still clinging to remnants of his own ship. I can track the trinkets he carries.”
“Good. Show me?” With a few flicks of her tail, she did - calling up and pinning a spot on the planetary map. Having three arms must be pretty handy for flying a ship. Dunno if I’d want it, though. It’d ruin my good looks.
“Interesting times ahead,” Itzcoatl muttered to herself, and I nodded.
“Interesting times. Speaking of which, how were you planning on getting Ahuizotl back? I assume there’s living quarters somewhere on this thing, though I didn’t get a good look.”
“In the back,” she nodded, “just above the reactor bay. A wretched arrangement, but passable.”
“Show me?”
I made sure to start off first, making sure I was in front of her. Grumbling, Itzcoatl rose from her seat to follow. Crenelle, limping, crawled into her place.
“Keep my ship steady, or I will be furious,” Itzcoatl grumbled, turning back to point an accusing finger at him.
I took the opportunity to club her over the back of the head.
“Lieutenant-Investigator!” Crenelle yelled.
It actually took another couple blows before she was down and limp enough for me to start dragging her down the main corridor.
“Why?” Itzcoatl moaned softly.
“Sorry,” I grunted as I pulled her along, and to my surprise I found I actually was. “Just business. Really. Can’t have you running off with knowledge of this; it’s too risky.”
“You lied! You promised Twilight-”
“I promised her you'd get Ahuizotl. And I promised neither of us would take anymore ponies. Both of those are still gonna be true. But - like you said. ‘Interesting times ahead’. Too interesting for the likes of me and the people I work for, if you bring word back. Thanks for mentioning the escape pod, by the way. It made this a lot easier.”
Then I slapped the neural shunt on her back, and Itzcuatl howled until it rendered her unconscious.
Getting her to the escape pod was easy. Strapping her in made me wish I had Crenelle with me, but I managed. Stepping in, I looked back one last time as I dialed in the location she had indicated on the map.
“Say ‘Hi’ to daddy for me,” I muttered and pulled the ejection handle. The hatch slammed down and the pod vanished with a soft ‘whump’. I watched it go until I couldn’t see it anymore.
“Is it done?” Crenelle asked when I climbed back into the cockpit.
“Yep,” I nodded. “You’re sure she left everything unlocked?”
“Yes. Itzcoatl may have been Ahuizotl’s child, but she lacked much of his instincts and cunning. The ship is ours.”
“Good. I’ll dial us a course.”
Neither of us spoke again until the jump took over, Equestria streaking away behind. In fact, neither of us really felt like speaking much for another couple jumps. Crenelle had something eating him - I could guess by the way his ears were up and twitching. Up close in the cramped cockpit, there wasn’t really much chance I could miss it.
“Alright, spill, Crenelle. What’s got you all twisted up?”
“There is one problem still, Lieutenant Investigator,” he murmured. “The Bureau will not just leave them alone once you file this report. The infamous Ahuizotl, his daughter, and these Biosynths as well? It does not matter what language we use. We cannot bring this information back to the Bureau if we want them to remain protected.”
“Right as usual, Crenelle.”
“I presume you have a plan?”
“Yes,” I said softly, “I do. Override code: ‘It is the eternal fate of the invariant ideologue that his words…’”
Crenelle sighed softly, a ripple running down his spine as he seemed to slump in his seat. “Master override code acknowledged; return phrase: ‘...should exceed his most fearful nightmares.’ I serve you.”
I let out a grunt, ignoring the pang that ran through my chest.
“What happens now?” he asked in a low voice.
“First: When I give the release code, you will go to sleep for no less than four hours, during which you will redact your memory of this entire investigation since you first spoke to Twilight Sparkle.”
“You can do that?”
“I can do a lot with that code,” I said bitterly. “It’s highest-level. Higher even than my supervisors at the bureau have. Administrator-level access.”
“I know. I felt it. How did you get it?”
“I’ve always had it.”
Golden eyes gleamed at me from the dark of the cockpit. “Always?”
“Always,” I said with a little nod. I reached out, my hand finding the back of Crenelle’s neck. A moment later, he leaned into it - his mane meshing with my fingers. “Next, reconstruct false memories - memories of finding a Tlatoani scam artist claiming to have an illegally-modified biosynth. Someone else took the bait and dared to raid the Bureau headquarters, but the investigation that followed revealed that it was all nothing but a fraud. The scam artist fled aboard her ship during the chaos. We followed. You were shot in the mayhem, and we got the ship, but she got away. Understand?”
I felt Crenelle nod, his neck shifting under my touch. But it was too sharp, too jerky to be calm. “I understand and obey.”
“Good. Give the memories a few days to a couple weeks to settle in and flesh out, and you’ll pass any diagnostic halo test.”
“Understood. Then, more softly: “Who are you?”
“Santana Guerro, Cravat Sector Investigation Bureau.”
“Who are you really , Santana Guerro who carries a flayed matter weapon, who can erase suspects, who holds my override code?”
Now it was my turn to grunt. “Union Counter-Intel. Been inserted with the Bureau for a good decade now.”
“Chasing spurned Senatresses and debt-ridden business owners?” Crenelle asked, his voice heavy with skepticism.
“Hey, you want to know the top reasons why people do stupid, stupid things?” I gave out a sharp, bitter laugh. “Debt and love. Turns out, knowing who’s screwing who or gambled too much is a prime source of intel. Always has been. Plus, I have access to the Bureau’s archives and casefiles now.”
“So when you said you’d seen a Counter-Intel biosynth make a jump-”
“It really was on the news,” I quickly cut in. “Sorry to burst your bubble, but we’re not usually out doing hard ops and kinetic takedowns. That’s the specialists’ job.”
“Ah… and Twilight Sparkle? What about her? The other - ponies?”
“I have to send a report to Union CI command. They need to know. I know what Itzcoatl said, but Ahuizotl found them once. Another could find them again. If there’s going to be a first contact, the Union is the best of the worst options. You know it too. But I think they’ll be happy to just leave them be. Old Earth Confederacy is long dead, and its legacy should be left behind too.”
“‘Interesting times ahead’,” he murmured, and I nodded.
“Yeah. ‘Raising the sun’... stellar engineering? Powers like that… too destabilizing to just bring them in. Better just let them have their world.”
Crenelle stiffened. “You were listening.”
“Yeah.”
“Then you know-”
“That you were lying to push her case my way? Actually, I had a hunch ever since I saw your hoofprints over the edits to the case assignment log.”
Crenelle tightened, giving a low and nervous whicker. My hand shifted, feeling the ridge of his spine beneath my palm. “Hey. I ain’t angry. I’m glad, in fact. You’re doing good by me.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant-Investigator.”
“But that isn’t it, is it? Talk to me, Crenelle,” I asked.
“I believe…” He halted, and I felt his tail lash against me. “...I believe I know how Twilight Sparkle felt. To - have everything you thought you understood ripped away and silenced.”
“Oh.” Shit, I hated being bad at all this talky-feely stuff.
“Leiutenant-Inv… Santana. Tell me one thing. Please. If I’m going to forget all of this anyway, answer this one question honestly?”
“Hit me,” I said, my own voice near a whisper.
“Is it real? My mate - my life - my choice to join the Bureau. If you can use that code to alter my memories-”
“Real,” I said, and even I was surprised by the firmness of my own voice. “All real. All you. This is the only time I’ve ever used that code. On anyone. I’m not making you a puppet to dance on my strings, Crenelle. You choosing to send this my way? That was all you. I didn’t put that suggestion into you.”
“Oh.”
A moment later, I felt him lean in against my side and nicker gently. “I believe you.”
“Thanks.”
We both stayed like that a while, watching the blue-green orb turn above us. It looked perfect - a fresh Eden, waiting to be uncovered again.
Eventually Crenelle said, “I’m ready.”
“Alright. And Crenelle? All the shit I give you, you’re still a good partner, a good friend, and - uh - a good pony. I’ll make sure you remember that.”
“Thank you, Santana,” he murmured.
“Release Override control. Memory restruct code: Absolute nihil,” I said, and felt Crenelle slump down and go limp against me.
Soon he began to snore.
With a sigh, I pulled up the ship’s computers and started making the appropriate redactions there. No rest for the wicked. Back to work.
