Red had found a gurney that wasn't completely rusted in a storage room inside the building and let Starlight lay down on top of it while he wheeled her back up to Midnight's office. While he had gone looking for the gurney, Staten had taken the liberty of bandaging Starlight's head, since the rough journey had left her dazed and with a knot on the back of her skull.

Starlight herself felt, ironically, powerless to do anything more than let them cater to her. The pesky horn on her head throbbed like somepony had started to hammer it down, but for all the pain Starlight was too weak to even reach up to rub it. Once she was laid onto the gurney, she felt as if she couldn't move one more muscle without a titanic effort.

She noted that teleportation, as cool as it was, left much to be desired. The feeling it brought, in that spare moment when she was neither alive nor dead, here nor there, had been exhilarating, but the cost upon her body was enough to make her not want to do it ever again. Worse, the bullet wound was flaring up again and had started to bleed, so now her entire hindquarters were wrapped in gauze.

To Starlight, she didn't know which was worse: having her flank wrapped in so much gauze it vaguely resembled a diaper or having Red be the one to wrap it.

Once they were up in Midnight's office once more, however, the joking around her had subsided. The mare had a grim look in her piercing red eyes. She had booted up her computer and pored over screen after screen of text that Starlight couldn't see, but figured that they were important. Red paced around the room as she did so, while Staten stood close behind the mare, his gaze locked on the screen along with Midnight's.

"Well are we going to sit around here all night or not?" Red asked after a few minutes, his voice flaring up.

Midnight scowled. "These things take time. To find out what's wrong with your friend, we'll need to go beyond my pay grade, and farther than what any normal citizen could get their hooves on."

"What do you mean?"

"What we mean is that the machinery available to ordinary ponies isn't enough to accurately figure out what's going on with Starlight," Staten said. "Whatever is powering that horn of hers, whether it's some form of radiation or magnets, is too alien to be read with a normal scan. Our goal is to find something that can overcome that limit."

Red cocked his head, then smiled. "You two are going to do something illegal, aren't you?"

"In the barest sense of the word, yes," Midnight said. "Although, since it would appear that it is the Intelligence Service who are the only ones in the city to have that sort of equipment, we would technically be using what our tax dollars bought."

Over on the gurney, Starlight groaned. "Can there just be one part of this whole quest-adventure thing where we don't tangle with the IS? Can't they, like, go pop little foals' balloons or ruin birthday parties somewhere else? I'm sure they've got better things to do."

Midnight rolled her eyes, while Staten chuckled under his breath. She kept poring over her computer, the glare of the screen reflecting off her glasses. Staten started to pace behind her, and occasionally shot glances out of her window as if a spinner would show up at any moment to take them away.

Red walked over to where Starlight lay and looked down at her. "You okay?" he asked. "I mean, it seems like you need to rest, not go rushing out on some other crazy adventure thing. You're bleeding, after all."

"I know," Starlight said with a small laugh. "Aren't I a roughflank?"

"You're stubborn, I'll give you that," Red said.

Starlight smiled, then looked away as she bit down on her lip. Her eyes closed as a sudden wave of pain washed through her body, with the epicenter right under her horn. She wanted to cry and scream at the same time, but settled on shaking like a fish out of water.

Red rushed to her side. "Are you alright?"

"I'm . . . fine . . ." she said. "Just a little more pain. It should go away soon."

"I don't like seeing you like this."

"I'm not a fan of it either."

He looked down. "I'm just worried we're not doing all that we can for you, Starlight."

"You're all doing fine," Starlight said in a halting tone. "I'm just . . . scared. That's all. I mean, I've got a horn growing out of my head and I can teleport and I've been shot and I'm so far from home and, and . . ." Tears welled up in her eyes. "I don't know if we'll make it, Red. I don't know if we'll get through this."

Red reached out to say something, but Sunrise burst into the room before he could. He was grinning and wearing a tacky red coat around his green waist. "I finally found something to hide my wings!" he said. There was a gray beanie sticking out one pocket, and he tossed it to Starlight. "I found something to cover up that horn, too."

The beanie landed on Starlight's chest, where it stayed since she did not feel the immediate need to pick it up and place it on her head like some tactless idiot. Midnight turned around in her seat and only stared at Sunrise before shaking her head and going back to her work. Staten, however, wrinkled his nose.

"You know, I think you were less conspicuous with the wings," he said.

"Not my fault that nothing goes with green," Sunrise said. "So what's everyone looking so down about? We aren't dead yet."

Red walked up to him and put a hoof around his shoulders. "Maybe now wouldn't be the best time for optimism." His nose perked up, and he sniffed the air around Sunrise. "Hey, ol' buddy . . . please tell me you didn't shoot up in the bathroom."

"I can tell you I definitely didn't not do it," Sunrise said.

"What?"

"C'mon, Red, one of these nerds had a big vial of stuff marked 'psychedelic' and there was no way I couldn't try that stuff out."

Red stared at him, then shook his head. "Stress getting to you?"

Sunrise's eye twitched. "A little bit."

Midnight shushed them, then went back to her computer. She tapped the screen and let out a small laugh. "I think I've found the place!" she said. "There's a hospital downtown, on Third Street. It looks like the IS have some sort of advanced scanning machine that they've been running trials on located there. It's not exactly a high risk area, so security should be light, if any."

"And you think their machine should give us a better look at Starlight's brain?" Staten asked.

"It'll give us the best shot in the city."

Red stepped forward. "Alright, how do we get Starlight in there?"

"We—" Midnight began to speak, until she saw Sunrise standing by the door. Her eyes went wide, then she sighed. "You took the white powder, didn't you?"

"Why, is it noticeable?" Sunrise asked.

Everypony else turned to look at him, and let out a collective gasp. There were angry blue and red welts all over Sunrise's hooves and face. They swelled up and looked utterly painful, though he didn't seem to feel anything and only kept dumbly looking at them.

"What?"

A smiled grew on Midnight's face. "I think I know our ticket in."

[hr]

A unanimous decision by Midnight—in which she was the only voter—led to the group taking her office's van over the RV since it was, as she described, "a lumbering target ready to bring the entirety of the IS down on our heads." Red grumbled about it, but the thing had at least a big enough back seat to let Starlight lay down. It was also large enough to pack the gurney on top, which Midnight insisted they would need.

Sunrise had, as ordered, brought out as much of the chemical he had found as he could carry. His fur was already starting to change colors into various hues of pink and violet, with a vague undertone of green. Other than that, though, he seemed fine.

Red sat in the back seat with Starlight, keeping her head raised above her body as Staten had instructed. The ride over to the hospital wasn't a long one, but it seemed to take forever to all those inside the van, as they grew closer to yet another possible capture by the IS.

It was still late in the night, so the cars out on the roads of Amperdam were few. There had been a light drizzle while the group had been discussing the plans, so the road was wet and the buildings slicked with raindrops. The lights on lampposts reflected off puddles in the street and onto the windows of the van. From her perch on one of Red's thighs, Starlight looked out one window and smiled. To her, at least, the night was peaceful.

She hadn't told anypony yet, but inside she had given up. Or, at least, largely found peace. To her, the entire situation was one that was rapidly worsening. Her body wasn't hers anymore, and the government itself wanted her. With nowhere else to go but down, she had begun to accept the inevitability of it all, and simply concerned herself with resting on Red. She smiled to herself.

"Glad to see you're happy about all this," Red said. "I'd be pretty worried myself."

"Me, worried?" Starlight asked. "I think you know me better than that, Red."

"I'd like to think I do." He stared straight ahead, toward the hospital on the road in front of them. "I just hope we're ready for whatever we find inside."

" . . . I am too."

He didn't say anything more after that. He didn't feel like he had to. His only focus was making sure they all got out in one piece, and it was for that reason that he leered at the back of Midnight's head. She had elected to keep their plan all to herself, on letting him in on a few sparse details. He wasn't entirely sure that he trusted the mare, but then again, he thought, there weren't many ponies that he could trust in the first place.

The van at last came to stop in a parking lot in the rear of the building, away from most of the other vehicles. Midnight turned off the van and got a few things out of the center console next to her. She got out, and had Staten and Red take the gurney off the roof of the van.

Once Starlight was secured to the gurney, Midnight stood in front of the rest. "Alright, here's the plan," she said. "I've got some badges from my office that should let two of us, plus Starlight, inside the hospital without too much suspicion. We handle cases together all the time. However, getting into the wing of the hospital where the IS machine is located won't be so simple."

"Is there where I come in?" Sunrise asked.

She nodded. "You take the rest of that experiment and drink it, and you should get all the side effects without any pain. Nopony at this hospital will have the slightest idea what's going on, so they're going to be rushing around like crazy. In the chaos, we can slip into the back of the building where the machine is."

Red stepped forward. "And who is going where?"

"I have to go with Starlight, of course, to run the machine, and I need Staten with me to figure out whatever results I get. That leaves you to be with your friend here and stay with him while the doctors look him over."

"And what happens if they figure out who I am? Or if they figure out that he has wings?"

"Improvise."

He wanted to grumble more, but there wasn't much of a choice at that point. Sunrise downed more of the vials and complained he felt sick as his eyes flashed different colors. Not the pupils, but the white around them. Midnight and Staten, meanwhile, put on the badges and began wheeling Starlight toward the building.

They stopped just outside the front door and Midnight motioned to Red. "Take him in there first and stir things up. We'll be in afterwards."

Red nodded and headed inside.

Starlight watched him go from on the gurney. It wasn't comfortable to be laying on the thing, but it was better than any alternative. Some of the strength had come back to her, but not much. She had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach when she watched Red go, and she wished she could have said something to him before he left. She got the feeling she wouldn't see him again for some time.

Staten held on to the back of the gurney and drew deep breaths. He had his head down, and had remained silent for much of the night.

"Are you alright?" Midnight asked.

"I'm fine," he said.

"You don't look fine."

"I'm just nervous about this whole thing. I almost don't want to go in, and just leave it all a mystery. I just want to keep them all safe and find my daughter."

"Well I'm sure that—"

From inside the hospital, they began to hear some yelling. Then, several loud crashes and a few ponies ran out the front door. Midnight grinned at Staten and nudged him forward. "Well, we don't have much of a choice now, do we?"

Staten nodded and began to wheel Starlight in. He kept his head bent low, as Midnight did as well. They walked through the lobby relatively unopposed as a large crowd gathered at the far end around some chairs where Red and Sunrise were shouting. Hospital staff were swarming out of doors all around the room, and nopony paid attention to them. The entrance to the wing of the hospital where the IS machine was didn't even have a guard, and they passed through with only a few cursory nods from the nurses.

The inside hallways were wide with bright lights spaced every couple petras and smelled strongly of cleaning supplies. The gurney, while it may have stuck out in the lobby under normal circumstances, was in its element inside the larger areas of the hospital. Nurses and doctors rushed back and forth, and were all too busy to pay attention to just another patient and attending physicians. Some ran by muttering about a "craziness in the lobby."

Midnight walked like she had been in the hospital a thousand times before and the path she was taking was as natural as walking around her home. Staten admired that about her. She had always been something of a frantic memorizer, able to quickly recall anything she wanted to remember. He envied her for that, as he felt very lost.

After trotting through twists and turns, they at last came to an area that was blocked off by a single, large door. There was a moment of fear as Midnight tried the handle, but it turned and they were in. Compared to the rest of the hospital, the IS wing was silent. The lights were even turned off, and only switched on once Staten and Midnight caused enough movement.

"Alright, the machine is straight down this hallway," Midnight said. "The worst is over. Now we just have to get her in the machine and start it up."

Starlight sighed and tried to push down the little twinges of fear that threatened to bubble up inside of her. She held on to the gurney as she was wheeled in through a set of double doors into a large room. Unlike a lot of normal rooms, this one seemed to be in a spherical shape, tapering up to two flat point, one of the ceiling and one on the ground. In the middle of it all was a large chair that was attached by crain to the ceiling. It had little electric diodes blinking all over it, and a helmet to boot.

The gurney stopped and Staten picked up her back end while Midnight got her front. She felt odd for a moment as she was held between the two, then settled into the large chair. There were clamps that closed around all of her hooves, and for a moment she felt a primal rush of fear due to her inability to move. It settled down quickly, but she was still having trouble sitting still. It didn't help that her horn felt sore when Staten pulled off the beanie.

"Is this all really necessary?" she asked.

"Trust me," Midnight said, "I'm a doctor. Sort of. Well, we'll see."

Before Starlight could object, she was left alone in the big room as Midnight and Staten stepped out. They reappeared a moment later through the windows into a small control room next to the exit. They stared at her through the thick glass and appeared to talk, but Starlight couldn't hear them until they turned on an intercom.

"Alright, we're going to start you up!" Midnight said. "Try to relax and remain as still as possible! Also, it might help to close your eyes."

Starlight took it as a warning, and immediately shut her eyes. All she heard was a loud whirring sound as the machine came to life. Where she couldn't see, her chair was raised higher into the air and the helmet came down upon her head. Machines built into the walls of the room turned on, flashing lights and making small working sounds.

In the control room, Midnight and Staten could only watch in silence as the machine did its job. The screen in front of them didn't show anything that was happening, evidently, until it was finished, so there was little else they could do.

The machine began to spin on a gyroscopic wheel, turning every which way and making Starlight feel like her stomach was trapped in a hurricane. She tried to keep herself calm, though, lest she repeat the accident back in Midnight's lab. She didn't want to go through that again, and so did her best to breathe regularly and keep herself from shaking.

Then, as if it had never begun, the shaking stopped and the seat was lowered back to its starting position. The helmet drew off Starlight's head and she shakily tried to get off it and to the ground. This proved to not be the best of her ideas, as her unsteady grip on balance resulted in her falling to the floor and laying in a heap on the ground.

She grumbled and picked herself up, though still shuffled from side to side as she made her way back to the control room. Staten let her in, and she stood behind him and Midnight to stare at the display monitor that currently had a lot of graphs and charts on it that she could not understand.

Midnight herself was looking over them with a worried expression on her face. Her lips were pursed and her eyebrows kenaded. "I've never seen anything like this," she said. "Logically, it shouldn't make any sense at all. And yet, we're still here."

"What is it?" Starlight asked. "Am I going to die?"

"No, no, I highly doubt that, barring unfortunate circumstances," Midnight said. "What is wrong with you, though, is a bit more complicated."

She clicked a few buttons with her hoof and the graphs and charts were spirited away to be replaced with a 3D model of Starlight's head. The picture zoomed in to show her brain, and some sort of purple field around it.

"See, this is your brain, which appears normal," she said. "Around it is a substance that, back at my lab, I tentatively identified as radiation."

"But now you're not so sure?" Staten asked.

"Precisely. What it appears to be is, well, impossible."

Starlight stepped forward. "Tell me."

"Well . . ."

"Doctor, I deserve that much."

She sighed. "Well, currently that field around your brain that the monitor shows is, well, impossible. It is exhibiting natures of radiation that have never been witnessed before and should not exist by every law of science, but it still is, and growing. When you grew stressed inside the seat, the field even grew, and began focusing itself on your horn. I can't believe that I'm saying this, but by all accounts it seems to be . . . magic."

Staten laughed. "Magic? Really, Midnight? Surely you can come up with a better explanation."

"Don't laugh," Midnight said with a snappy tone. "It's not as absurd as it sounds. There have long been theories of . . . unexplained happenings . . . that crop up every few decades, especially in Teton. We seem to be the central place for this weird stuff."

"Right, like the tooth gremlin, the five-hooved monster, and, don't forget, Father Winter. I'm sure they're out there somewhere, right?"

"Fine, you explain it," Midnight said. "I'll take what I can get, thank you. As for me, I'm leaving and going to check up on Red and his friend." She rose from her chair and trotted out the door, her nose up in the air.

"I see you're a big hit with her," Starlight said. "You didn't have to mock her like that."

"A lifetime of having your own work grounded in fact being compared to magic will do that to you." Staten tapped the monitor and studied it a bit more. "I will agree with her, though, these figures aren't like anything anypony has ever seen."

"No wonder the IS want their hooves on it."

"Agreed. Speaking of whom, we should probably leave ourselves—"

Starlight heard the doors open, and thought it was Midnight returning to say something. What she saw, instead, was a small stick, no longer than a petra, fly through the door and land on the ground in front of the control room.

She had no time to cry out before the world exploded into a pure sheet of white and a loud ringing that made it feel as though her head was home to a beehive. She writhed on the floor, holding her head as she yelled out, but couldn't hear herself.

When she opened her eyes, however, she felt her heart sink. Standing all around her and Staten—on the ground next to her—were IS agents wearing black uniforms and pointing guns at them. The most confusing thing of all, the last thing she saw before she passed out from the experience, was that she thought she saw her father standing with them.

[hr]

Upstairs in the hospital, burly IS agents barreled through the narrow corridors. Their guns were swung around their waists and they wore gasmasks that made them seem less pony than machine. Doctors and nurses scrambled out of their way.

The beat of their hooves grew closer to the room down the hall that one of the nurses had informed the head agent that the fugitive, Reddington, was staying in. The stallion smiled to himself. He had been with the team for weeks trying to catch them all, and suddenly they were stupid enough to trigger the silent alarm at the hospital. His muscles quivered with excitement, like a racer at the starting gate.

He indicated to his team to stack up behind him once they reached the doorway. They lined the wall around the door, but it was the team leader who went in first. He couldn't help but smile to himself while he did, ready to see the smug grin on that Reddington's face disappear at gunpoint.

With a yell, he burst through the door and swept his gun around the room. In his excitement, it took him a few moments to notice that, besides himself, there was nopony in the room. There was, however, a note on the hospital bed. It read: You should really turn down those sirens. -Red

The stallion looked to the window, which was open and letting the wind come through as the first rays of the morning sun appeared over Amperdam. Despite all his training, the IS agent let out a yell of rage as he stared out window, and the empty parking lot outside.

[hr]

Red was panting as he rounded the corner away from the hospital, taking a rest against the brick wall of a coffee shop next door. He faced away from the street, toward the suburbs that were separated from the business district by a chainlink fence.

Sunrise came running around the corner after him, breathing even harder. He had to bend down for a few moments before he could catch his breath and stand up. Red was relieved to see that he had at least had the mind to throw away the hospital gown.

"What in the world happened?" Sunrise said with a frightened screech in his voice. "Everything was fine until the IS just showed up out of nowhere!"

Red growled. "I know, I know. Starlight and the others must have set off an alarm or something. Of all the stupid things to do . . ."

"What do we do now? Do we go back for them?"

"No, the IS has taken them already, I'm sure of it. We barely made it out ourselves, and we weren't even who they were looking for." Red smashed a hoof against the brick wall and ignored the pain. To his surprise, the bricks instead crumpled beneath his blow, but he shook it off as adrenaline. "Damn it all! We got lazy and now look what's happened!"

Sunrise slumped to the ground. "So what do we do?"

"I'm thinking."

Red paced around, his hooves trembling. The combination of anger and helplessness was getting to him, and he knew it. He shook his head to clear his thoughts and, like a burst of lightning from the heavens, got an idea. He started to smile.

"Well, there is one thing we can do," he said.

"And what is that?"

"We already know where the IS is going to take them: Sundown. It's where that whole earthquake thing was that started this weirdness." He started to laugh. "And we've still got the Odyssey, and guns. Lots of guns. You thinking what I'm thinking?"

Sunrise rolled his eyes and offered a hoof to Red. "Suicide mission?"

Red took his hoof and helped him up, smiling. "You're goddamned right."