The dark forest that the Odyssey had landed in turned out to be a few dozen petras the wrong way away from Amperdam. Starlight had landed them in the hilly, wooded region south of the city that was popular with tourists and saddlebaggers. Once every pony had calmed down, Sunrise had gone up to the top of the RV to scout around while Staten looked over Starlight.

Starlight had shivered when her new horn was poked and prodded, but didn't protest. Eventually, Staten decided it was real about the time Sunrise had plotted a way back to Serenity Valley and Amperdam.

The RV had to bounce over rough ground to make it to a dark road leading to Amperdam, then drive along the pavement with the lights dimmed just in case the IS had come to track them. Starlight was in the back bedroom, laying on top of the bed and staring at the ceiling. She was quiet, just listening to the engine noise coming through the thin walls of the vehicle.

Starlight's namesake shone in through the window above her head, giving the room a pale glow. She had to fight the desire to reach up and rub her horn for the millionth time. It felt so strange to her, like somepony had attached a rod to her head, but one that wouldn't come off. If she didn't think about it she couldn't feel it, but it was always there.

She hadn't bothered to close the door leading to the rest of the RV, and could hear whispered voices coming from outside. They were talking about her, she knew it, but she didn't bother trying to stop them. Even with Sunrise and his wings, he had never teleported four ponies and the Odyssey miles and miles away, so their attention had all focused on her.

Starlight sighed. She felt like a prized pet that everypony wanted to grab and cuddle but wasn't going to be thought of like a real pony. The horn still felt a little hot when she touched it again, against her wishes, and she wished it would all go away.

"Starlight?"

She looked up to see Staten in the doorway. "What do you want?" she asked.

"I wanted to talk to you about Amperdam," he said, walking over to the bed and sitting on the edge. "There is a lot we need to do and little time to do it, after all."

Starlight crossed her hooves in front of her chest. "What, are you and your doctor going to run tests on me?"

"It's not just like that," Staten said.

"Then what is it like?"

"We need to test what's happening to you so we can know how to make you better," Staten said. "Something is happening to you and Sunrise, something we don't understand. I get the feeling nopony in Teton does. The government is desperate to get you just so they can figure out what's going on."

"Maybe I should let them," Starlight said.

Staten sighed. "I get that you're scared and hurt, Starlight, I'm just trying to help."

"Well first I'm shot, and now I've got some horn growing out of my head!" Tears started to well up in Starlight's eyes. "Of course I'm scared . . . I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I didn't ask for any of this, and now it's like everything is being piled on at once. I wasn't even give a choice about going on this stupid trip anyway."

"And yet, you've proved to be far more than just a museum worker," Staten said.

"I wish I was back there," Starlight said. "Things were so much simpler. All I had to worry about was my job, not getting shot or a . . . a horn!"

"I know, I know."

Starlight looked down and drew her legs closer to her. "What do you think they did with my mom and dad? Do you think they're in a cell . . . are they still together at least?"

"I know that they're strong," Staten said. "The IS won't have broken them, and I'm sure they're together. They are probably planning an escape right now."

"You think so?"

"I know so."

The RV hit a bump and Starlight hissed as she came down on her flank. She rubbed it and tried to roll on her side. The Odyssey came around another bend and straightened out. The rumbling engine filled the night.

"Hey, we're nearly there," said Red from the front seat. "You two might wanna be up here when we get in. Especially you, Staten."

Staten nodded to Starlight. "Need some help getting up?"

"I got it, I got it." Starlight heaved herself out of the bed, though made sure to keep most of the pressure off her bad leg. She half-walked, half-limped to the front of the RV, and was joined by Staten. Sunrise was asleep behind the kitchen table.

Out front of the RV, Amperdam glowed. Whereas Skyhall's buildings had been spindly and built with the land, Amerpdam's looked like they had been built in spite of it. The skyscrapers were blocky rectangles that stuck out of the ground, with sharp edges and lots of steel and concrete. Spinners flew over the great city blocks that extended all the way to the foothills of the mountains behind the city.

"About time we got here," Red said. "It only took us that whole fiasco in Skyhall."

"Well it's fortunate that we picked up your friend," Staten said.

"I hope he sees it the same way."

Starlight watched as the traffic went from nonexistent to a street filled to the brim with cars in a few short minutes. The main highway leading into Amperdam was clogged with traffic even so late at night. Tail lights gave the air above the street a red tint.

"Finally a city that stays up past nine," Starlight said.

Red snorted. "Yeah, you could say that. Amperdam is the only interesting thing in the whole valley. Or in the whole middle of the country, really."

"Which also makes it the home of the largest IS office outside of Lupine Falls," Staten said. "We'll have to be on our guard the entire time we're here. Which, hopefully, will not be for long."

"Yeah, why are we here again?" Red asked.

"We're here to check out Starlight and Sunrise with an old friend of mine," Staten said. "She knows a lot about that Crystal Heart, and has equipment that might be able to study them and figure out exactly what is going on."

Starlight looked down. "Great, I'll be a lab experiment."

"We have to find out what's going on," Staten said. "Whatever this is, it's what the IS wants and it's something strange. We have to know if this is hurting you, Starlight."

"I guess."

Red turned the RV down one avenue, then skidded onto another. He kept a tight grip on the wheel, and his eyes locked on the road. "You know, it would be nice if you told us where to go," he said. "Seeing as we're just going to be going in circles until you say something."

"Right, right, sorry," Staten said. "If I know her, she'll still be in her office, even this late at night. Most times she doesn't even leave it. The building is downtown, just head down this next road."

Red did as Staten said, and merged into the right lane to roll down a smaller, uncrowded road. Most of the buildings standing on either side were dark, their concrete facades staring down like silent gargoyles.

"Her building is at the end of the row, closest to downtown," Staten said. "You'll know it when you see it."

Starlight watched them approach a small, squat building that stood in the shadow of a great glass skyscraper just a few blocks from it. The boring building was only noticeable for the lights on in the top floor that burned bright orange in the otherwise dark neighborhood. Staten directed Red to park in front of the building, and they came to a shuddering stop.

Staten rose and tapped Sunrise on the shoulder until the green pegasus woke up with a start and looked around. "Where are we?" he asked.

"We're in Amperdam, Sun," Red said. "We're here to meet one of the professor's friends."

"What for?"

"She's might have some answers for what's going on with you and Starlight. You know, the whole becoming magical creatures thing."

Sunrise rubbed his head. "I wish I was still selling drugs."

The group piled out of the RV, and looked down the sidewalk both ways before heading to the building. Red made a move for the front door, but Staten shook his head. "The front's always locked," he said. "She keeps a door open around back, though."

Starlight limped behind the group as they made their way around the building, and Red moved back to help her. She tried to throw off his reaching hooves, but eventually let him help her walk when the pain began to get too great. Starlight still kept from looking directly at Red while he half-carried her to the back of the building.

When they got there, Staten was holding open a small door that led to a lit hallway inside the building. Red helped Starlight inside, and over to a silver elevator placed in the middle of the hallway. Sunrise waited by it, tapping his hoof against the ground.

"What if the IS got to her?" he asked. "What then?"

"Then we're already done for," Staten said. He pressed the button for the elevator, and stepped in when it arrived.

Starlight slumped against the back of the elevator as it rose up in the building with a gentle whirr. Her grip on Red grew tighter when she started to think about what awaited her. Tests for sure, and Adana knew what else. She pressed harder against Red.

The elevator doors opened into a small hallway with a single door at the far end. Staten led the way to it, then slowly opened it without knocking. He stuck his head in. "Midnight?"

There was a muffled cry from inside, then the door swung open all the way to reveal a cluttered office. Desks were piled with papers below maps that hung on every square inch of the wall. A couple filing cabinets were practically buried inside a mountain of papers.

In the middle of it all stood a navy blue mare with a curly black mane, with horn-rimmed glasses wrapped around her face and bearing a scowl. "Why in Solaris' name did you come here?" she asked.

"Somehow, I thought you'd be happier to see me," Staten said.

"Things have changed since we last talked," she said. "The IS are out in greater force than ever and I don't want to be in their way if they found out I took you in."

"You two get right to the point, don't you?" Red said.

Midnight turned to the smuggler and looked him over. "I recognize you from the wanted posters," she said. "You looked better on those than in real life."

"He's traveling with me," Staten said. "We've been on the road for a long time now just to get here."

"That's great, now you can leave too."

Staten stepped forward and glared at her. "Midnight. We need your help and you're greeting us by turning us away. We risked far too much to get here to just be thrown out."

"Do you know how much I risked just taking that call?" Midnight's voice dropped low. "If you're here, the IS can't be much farther behind. They'll come after you, and now after me for helping you."

Staten stepped past her into the room. He beckoned for Starlight and Sunrise. "Well, I might have a reason here for you to risk the trouble," he said.

"And what could that possibly be?"

"Show her," Staten said.

Starlight took a deep breath and walked into the room. She bowed to show the thick horn sprouting from her head. Sunrise stepped in behind her and extended his wings, flapping them around and sending papers flying everywhere.

Midnight's eyes looked like they were straining to pop out of her head, and were only held back by sheer force of will. She took a step back, knocking over a pile of folders on top of her desk. Her mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.

"Yeah, I had about the same reaction when I found out I had these," Sunrise said.

"Tell me about it," Starlight said.

Midnight began to stammer. "Y-You have wings, and a horn, a-and they're really, and . . . oh my." She swayed on her hooves, and Starlight was afraid she was going to faint, but she held steady. She pressed a hoof to her forehead and rubbed. "Why, Staten, have you deemed it necessary to bring these two to me at this late hour? Are you trying to give me a heart attack?"

"Not if I can help it," Staten said, "but you can see why we're in such a rush. If the IS catch these two, we don't even want to think of what they'll do."

"I can see that." Midnight fell into her chair and rested her head in her hooves. "Well, they have them, but do they work?"

"My wings don't," Sunrise said, "but her horn transported us and an RV a few dozen petras away from Skyhall in the blink of an eye. I'd say it works."

Starlight felt like the room was turning its attention to her, and she wished she could hide her horn. Midnight stared her over like she was a very expensive toy that may or may not have been broken. She tapped a hoof against her desk.

"A working horn is definitely going to give the IS pause," she said.

"It also gives them more incentive to find us," Staten said.

Midnight nodded. "So tell me, girl, what do you think of all this? Either you performed an act of god or you just created magic, but either way you've got a horn and can use it."

"Yeah, I guess so," Starlight said in a quiet voice. "I'm not even sure what to make of it anymore. I don't know how I did all that, it just . . . happened."

"And I'm guessing that Staten took you all here to find out why," Midnight said.

She turned in her desk and stared out the window behind her. Starlight stood by her side, while she watched the mare chew on her lower lip as she thought. Starlight wasn't entirely sure of it, but she thought that Midnight looked scared more than anything else.

Midnight let out a long sigh, and let her head droop forward. "As much as I want to say no, I'm just as curious as to what's going on with everypony as much as you all are. You mentioned on the phone that you think this is connected to the Crystal Heart?"

"I'm almost certain of it," Staten said. "The way my daughter described it to me, the Crystal Heart is very much powered on and emitted some kind of energy wave when it was awoken. I'd say there's a good bet that it's at least a starting point."

"Well, there's only one way to find out," Midnight said. She got up from her seat and grabbed a set of keys from off the top of her desk, carrying them in her teeth. "We're going to have to set up a Magnetic Resonance Scan and run it on both of them. It should give us a picture of what's going on."

Sunrise cocked his head. "You're going to give me an MRS?"

"I'll give you one on your torso, around your wings." Midnight gave him a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, it won't hurt one bit. It's just a scanner that uses magnets to take detailed pictures of the inside of your body."

"Oh, because that sounds so simple."

Staten coughed. "Do you have an MRS machine on-site?"

"Of course," Midnight said. "It's mostly used in the labs for examining fossilized skeletons, but it'll work just as well on a living pony . . . I hope."

Before Starlight could protest, Staten followed Midnight out of the cramped office and into the narrow hallway outside. She took them into the elevator once more, and tapped the button for the basement. With a whirr, the car slid down the shaft and landed on the ground floor of the building.

Starlight stepped out behind Sunrise, her head angled toward the ground, as they walked into a brightly-lit lab. Linoleum floors polished to a shine and metallic machinery covered in plastic tarps greeted them beneath the harsh lighting.

The room was icy cold, enough to raise goosebumps beneath Starlight's coat. She shivered and rubbed one hoof over the other. Luckily, they didn't have to walk far to reach the MRS machine. It was the centerpiece of the room, with a myriad of cables snaking across the floor to and from it. The machine itself looked like a giant tube with a bed sticking out of it. There were control panels built in the side of it that glowed and hummed when Midnight switched the machine on.

"We're going to want to make this fast," Staten said. "If we stay here too long, the IS will come knocking eventually. How soon can you have the results?"

"Regularly?" Midnight pressed a button on the machine and stared at a blinking light that came on next to it. "Two, maybe three days."

"We don't have two days."

"Which is why I'm going to get the data raw. We're going to have to make do with it or figure something else out."

Red watched all of them in silence, then stuck his hoof out. "So it's 'we' now?"

Midnight rolled her eyes. "Don't remind me or I might change my mind about helping all of you. You're going to owe me big time, Staten."

"I'll try to keep that in mind," Staten said.

Midnight tapped a few more buttons on the side of the large machine, which caused the bed to slide out of the interior of the machine to wait for a pony to climb on. It was hard plastic and didn't look very comfortable to Starlight. Luckily for her, it was Sunrise that Midnight pointed to.

"Alright, you're up first, flyboy," she said. "Hop onto the bed and keep those wings at your side. Oh, and it might help to close your eyes."

"Why?" Sunrise asked.

"It gets a bit cramped inside the machine."

Sunrise nodded, and climbed up onto the bed. He lay on his back with his wings tucked beneath him. His hooves were crossed over his chest, and he nodded at Midnight for her to continue. She retracted the bed into the machine, and started it up.

Midnight worked with her tongue hanging out of the corner of her mouth, her eyes concentrated on the screens before her. She wiped at her forehead as the machine began to hum louder and louder. Lights flashed on the side of it, and then a clicking sound began to emanate from the MRS machine.

"Those are the magnets," Midnight said. "They spin really fast to give us a picture. I just hope they'll work on his wings."

"Why wouldn't they?" Staten asked.

She rubbed her head. "I'm not sure what these wings are made of, but all I know is that they're not natural. I'm not sure if this machine was built to handle acts of Solaris."

The clicking sound increased, until it was a constant thumping in Starlight's ears. Click. Click. Click. The more it hit, the more she could feel it pressing at the back of her mind. She rubbed at her temple and shook her head, but it didn't go away. She stepped away from the machine and paced around the rear of the room, her mane swishing behind her. The pain in her leg grew, but she managed to ignore it.

"Hey, you okay?" Red asked. He ambled over to her and stood by her side.

She sighed. "I'm fine."

"You look like you're going to be sick."

"I'll be fine, it's just nerves."

Red stepped closer to her. "It's okay if you don't feel good about this. It's been a big, wild ride and none of us have slept since we left Skyhall. And you, more than all of us, should be feeling uneasy."

"Well I'm just not going to have much time to rest," Starlight said. "That option flew away when I got a horn."

"I'm sorry." He paused. "You don't deserve this."

"Well wouldn't it be nice if I could tell the universe that."

The clicking, at last, stopped as the machine powered down. The bed slid out of the chamber and Sunrise climbed off it. He held his head, and gingerly flapped his wings behind him. He swayed a little on his feet, so Staten held on to him until he got his balance back.

Midnight trotted over to a panel on the wall, and pressed a few buttons on it to bring up an image on the screen. It was a detailed picture of the outline of a pony with bones, nerves, and blood vessels in various colors. The most interesting part, of course, were the two wings on the image, which Midnight zoomed in on.

The entire group clustered around the screen and stared at it. Red whistled. "Looks like those wings are attached pretty hard to you," he said. "All the nerves and blood vessels are connected, looks like."

Sunrise stared at him. "Since when have you been a doctor."

"You'd be surprised what you learn when you can't see any official doctors."

Midnight tapped the screen and clicked her tongue. The image wavered, then zoomed in further. It showed a more detailed look of the wings, and little else. "That's about what I thought," she said. "Strange, but not fully unexpected."

"What is it?" Staten asked.

"The wings are a physical impossibility," she said. "See the skeletal structure? The wings, like those of birds, have hollow bones, but the rest of your friend doesn't. Even if he did, the wings are far too small to ever get him off the ground. They are vestigial at best."

Staten nodded. "I thought as much. Anything else that's . . . unusual?"

"No, there doesn't appear to be." She scratched her chin. "That's what is so odd. The wings don't look like they were grafted on, but rather they fit perfectly like a puzzle piece. His body looks to have taken to the wings perfectly, with nerve endings lining up perfectly."

Midnight sighed. "I wish we had more time or better equipment here, and then maybe we could figure out more. As it stands, there's a lot I don't understand, and I don't see a link between the Crystal Heart and these wings."

"But you wouldn't rule it out, right?"

"At this point, I don't think I'd rule anything out."

Staten turned to Starlight. "Alright, it's your turn," he said. "We're going to need to look at that horn of yours."

"Are you sure?" Starlight asked, looking at the machine with a gulp. "I mean, if you couldn't tell anything from Sunrise . . ."

"That was a pair of wings, something that we've seen millions of times with birds," Midnight said. "A horn? That's something we've never seen before. This part is going to be more valuable than any scan this MRS machine has ever done."

Starlight looked down, then slowly began to nod. "Alright, fine. I'll do it."

"Get up on the bed, please."

Starlight looked at the machine once more, then walked over and hopped up on the plastic bed. It felt warm under her from where Sunrise had been on, which helped a little but not much. Staring up at the ceiling wasn't so bad, but things got worse once the machine turned on and the bed started to retract into the chamber.

The first that hit her was how dark it was inside the machine. She felt like she was being shut inside a pitch black tunnel that held her tight. The walls pressed in on her, forcing her to keep still and not move more than a couple inches in any direction. Worse, she had to hold her head farther back to keep her horn from scraping the ceiling.

Her breath started to come in small gasps, and she felt like her chest was clamping up. The walls . . . they were too close. She wanted to kick, to shove them away, but forced herself to stay still. She bit down on her lip so hard it started to bleed. Then, the magnets started up.

The clicking was slow to start, but grew in pitch and volume with every second. It was an incessant clicking, one that thumped in the back of Starlight's brain. All alone in the darkness of the machine, the clicking hammering itself into her mind, her mouth opened and closed in silent screams. Sweat ran down her head and she whimpered.

Her flank ached where the bullet had hit it. It felt like the darkness was coming for her, coming for her wound like it had before. She'd almost died before, and felt like she was going to again. Starlight did her best to not throw up.

She heard from outside: "She's screaming! Get her out of there!"

That was when Starlight realized that her mouth was opening and, yes, a scream was coming out of it. Somehow, she felt disconnected from herself, like she was watching a movie about her own body. All she knew was that she wanted out of the machine.

She closed her eyes as they scrambled to shut the machine down. She wanted out, wanted out so bad, didn't want to die. She didn't want the darkness or the pain or the clicking that with every passing second sounded like gunshots. Her chest heaved and she gritted her teeth. Starlight told her brain to take her out of there.

Then, her brain obeyed her.

In a bright flash, Starlight appeared on the other side of the room, gasping for air and lying in a rough circle of burn marks on the floor. She coughed and felt like her horn was on fire. Maybe it was, for all the looks that Red, Midnight, Sunrise, and Staten were giving her.

While Starlight stumbled to her hooves, it was Midnight who spoke first. "If I'm going to study that, we're going to need a better machine."