The room was poorly lit; the only light Twilight had to work by was from the soft glow of her horn. It was enough for her to work by though; she only needed to see a few feet in front of her anyway. And besides, some of the chemicals she was working with were light sensitive.

In front of Twilight was a table set with various test tubes, beakers, and assorted flasks. Twelve of the test tubes were filled with multicolored chemicals, each one marked with its respective symbol. To the side, Twilight had a Bunsen burner set up in case she needed something to be heated up. The experiment she had planned out didn’t call for any of the chemicals she was working with to be heated, but Twilight never knew when inspiration might strike.

Twilight levitated two of the test tubes into the air. One was filled with a lime green substance that Twilight had gotten out of Timberwolf sap; the other contained a clear liquid that Twilight found made a great stain remover. Twilight raised the test tubes together and poured half of one of the two substances into the other. As the chemicals mixed, they bubbled and released a foul smelling vapor into the air, turning a bright orange in the process.

Twilight quickly measured any differences in the new substance she could find, and recorded them in the notebook she kept on a shelf. When she was done, Twilight placed the test tube off to the side, and repeated the process with two more chemicals, this time one was blue while the other was a sickly green. Twilight continued this pattern until all of the chemicals had been mixed to form new substances.

When she was finished, Twilight turned to the table behind her, where a figure wrapped in plastic was bound with straps of webbing. The figure was the next part of Twilight’s experiment. She had drilled holes into the figure’s body earlier that evening, specifically in the skull and torso areas. Twilight had then placed tubes into the holes and connected them to a large bowl that now hung a few feet above the figure’s head.

Twilight picked up a round bottom flask from the table, and one by one mixed all of the chemicals into it. The liquids bubbled and hissed as they combined with each other. Twilight lightly shook the flask and the mixture turned a light purple.

Satisfied with her concoction, Twilight moved the figure’s hood slightly so that its mouth was exposed. She then checked the figure’s breathing and heart rate. Both were faint, but enough to ensure Twilight that the figure hadn’t expired since her last experiment.

“Asleep are you?” Twilight asked the figure, smiling to herself, “Good for you, you need as much sleep as you can get. I know how these past few weeks have been affecting you physically, and I can only imagine how they’ve been affecting you psychologically. You deserve some sleep. But not right now. Right now I need you awake so…”

Twilight opened a drawer on the other side of the room and got out a disposable syringe. She brought the syringe over to the figure and stuck the needle into the figure’s neck. Twilight placed a hoof onto the syringe’s plunger and pressed down, injecting the figure with epinephrine. Almost immediately the shallow breathing of the subject strengthened.

“Awake now sleepy head? Good, now we can begin.”

At this, the figure’s breathing sped up rapidly and it began to struggle against its bonds.

“Hold still. This won’t take long.” Twilight said, being as soothing as her level of excitement would allow her.

“NO. NO. NO.PLEASE NO.” The figure begged in a high pitched voice, “PLEASE TWILIGHT, DON’T DO THIS. I BEG YOU.”

Twilight was starting to get annoyed, “We’ve been over this before. You’re the best subject for me to test my theory on. If I let you go, it’ll be like throwing five weeks of research in the garbage.”

The figure was crying now, “Please Twilight, I don’t want to be here. I want to go home. Please, we used to be friends!”

Twilight paused for a moment, “We are friends. I know this isn’t fun for you. Believe me, I do.” Twilight laid a hoof on the figure in what was as close to a hug as she could manage with the table, “I promise that when this is over, I’ll make it up to you. We’ll hang out with all our friends, play a few games, and laugh about these experiments; it’ll be just like old times, you’ll see. But for right now, I need you bear with me on this, I promise it’ll be over soon.”

“Please, just let me go.”

Twilight lifted the flask up to the bowl.

“Twilight, please don’t.”

Twilight tilted the flask.

“Let me go. LET ME GO!

The mixture was now flowing through the tubes.

“PLEASE NO! NO! NO!”

Twilight bolted upright, her eyes opened wide and her mouth unsure of whether or not it should scream. She quickly looked around and saw that she was still the hospital room, and still lying on a mattress with slightly uncomfortable bedsprings.

Twilight lay back down and said to herself, “Just a dream Twilight, only this and nothing more. Go back to sleep.”

Twilight closed her eyes and tried to drift off. Instead, she tossed and turned beneath her covers, trying to find a position comfortable enough for her. In some positions she was too warm. In others, not warm enough. Thrice Twilight’s position ended up with her being poked with a broken bedspring.

After a few minutes, Twilight gave up all attempts at slumber as a lost cause. She opened her eyes and instinctively began looking for a clock. There was no clock in the room though, at least not one that worked. The clock that hung in Twilight’s bedroom was a battery powered analog that was forever convinced that the time was eight past five.

Twilight climbed out of her bed and began pacing around in a small circle. How long would it be until the Administrator decided that it was ‘morning’? For that matter, how many hours of sleep did she get?

‘Not many,’ Twilight’s instincts told her.

Twilight turned her mind away from time and started thinking up ways that she might fall back asleep. The methods she used back in Ponyville were mostly unavailable to her, sans reading. Reading was a double edged axe for Twilight anyway, at least as far as sleep goes. It was possible that reading would relax Twilight enough for her to drift off, but there was as much of a chance of her becoming so absorbed in what she was reading that she forgot to sleep at all.

Twilight decided to walk around the hospital for a little bit. If it was almost morning the Twilight would already be up. If not, then she could always return and go back to sleep.

Twilight had forgotten how dark the facility got at night. There was no flashing light coming from Dread’s room tonight, leaving the hospital shrouded beneath a near opaque blackness broken only by a few faulty lights that seemed cursed to flicker pathetically for the rest of eternity. Twilight didn’t mind though, she had long since out grown her fear of the dark.

As Twilight walked through the halls she was reminded of all the horror stories she had read that had taken place in hospitals. Twilight’s mind was invaded by visions stories of patients with an incurable virus; of the spirits of aborted foals cursed to forever wonder aimlessly in search of the mothers who never loved them; and of insane surgeons stalking the shadows for some pony to satisfy their bloodlust.

Twilight laughed nervously. She knew that her fears were probably just her being silly. But still, if there was something watching from the shadows then such thinking could be dangerous. In most horror stories that Twilight had read, there was always at least one character that died because they dismissed their fears as ‘just their imagination’. Even thought Twilight knew that her life was not dictated by literature clichés, there was always a chance that fiction could bleed into reality.

Twilight stopped to look behind her to prove to herself that she had nothing to worry about. Aside from a few benches the hallway was mostly empty; if there was something watching her then Twilight would’ve at least been able to make out its outline. After a minute of staring into an empty hall, Twilight assured herself that her fears were nothing more than her imagination.

As she continued, the feeling that she was being watched began to creep its way back into Twilight’s mind. Thrice she thought she saw movement out of the corner of her eye and in the distance Twilight thought that she heard the sound of blood soaked hooves clip clopping in the distance. Twilight began to long for her bed, to feel the comforting warmth of her blanket. Without her magic, Twilight was as capable of defending herself as a newborn foal.

Twilight turned around. She was no fool; there was little reason for her to be roaming the halls in the first place and given what her experiences at Sleipnir, if she was afraid of something it not likely unfounded.

Twilight retraced her steps to the best of her ability, but in an act of carelessness she had forgotten to keep track of how many doors she had passed on her walk. This would not have been a problem if there was enough light for Twilight to make out the number that marked the rooms, or if Twilight had thought to leave her light on to find her way back.

“Idiot, you shouldn’t be out here right now.” Twilight scolded herself beneath her breath, “You could’ve stayed in your room and just waited to fall asleep, but no. You had to go out and wander the halls of a semi-abandoned hospital without any source of light or a way of finding your way back if you get lost!”

Twilight took a deep breath and held it for about ten seconds. When she exhaled, Twilight felt herself become much calmer than she had been. Berating herself would not help her get back to her room. She needed to figure out a logical method of figuring out where she was and using that to go back to bed.

Twilight considered sleeping in one of the other hospital rooms, but dismissed the idea. If Dread or Dr. Layne entered her room tomorrow to find her missing they would have no way of knowing where she was. Twilight had no desire to cause either of them unnecessary stress.

Twilight turned around and continued walking. She figured that eventually she would end up at one end of the hall. From there, Twilight could count the doors until she found her room. It wasn’t the best plan Twilight had ever come up with, but it would do.

When Twilight made it to the hall’s end, she turned around and began counting the doors as she passed them. When she reached the number that her room should be, Twilight opened the door and stepped into what appeared to be a supply closet that for some reason smelled like rotten meat.

Twilight sat there, dumbfounded. Had she made a mistake? She counted the doors correctly, she was sure of that, so how could she have the wrong door?

The answer hit Twilight like a falling piano. She had turned around twice while out in the halls.

“Sweet Luna, I need to go back to sleep.” Twilight muttered to herself, “I’m starting to lose my mind.”

Twilight closed the closet door and turned into the direction where she knew her room was. Out of the corner of her eye, Twilight noticed that the next door on her right was the door with the strange warning symbol.

Immediately old curiosity was piqued and Twilight was nearly overcome by the desire to open the door. There was no pony around to stop her, and no way could any pony find out afterwards. All Twilight would have to do was open the door and…

Twilight shook her head to snap out of what was almost certainly a bad idea. Both Dread and Dr. Layne had told Twilight to stay out of that room and why. Hay, if wasn’t for Dread, Twilight would still be stuck in that cramped cell. It would be disrespectful for her to throw herself into a potentially dangerous situation based on the off chance that she might learn something.

On the other side of the coin though, what if the technology behind this door was exactly what Twilight needed to get out of Sleipnir? What if she could learn how to use the technology and augment herself so that she could conquer any of the Administrator’s little games? Hay, if she was careful she might be able to turn herself into a goddess worthy of worship, and she would be beautiful.

Twilight shook her head again and smacked herself for good measure. What she was thinking about doing to herself was monstrous. A lust for power was not something to be taken lightly; Twilight knew this better than any pony. It was more than likely that she would end up as a shapeless mound of flesh, or as a monster that was not unlike Sam.

Twilight turned away from the door. She had spent long enough on it and needed to get back to bed. And besides, what good would going in there do her anyway?

As she was walking away, a thought whispered to Twilight in the back of her mind, ‘What about Fluttershy? Don’t you want to save her?’

Almost instantly, Twilight felt herself being drawn back to the door. It wasn’t an enchantment causing this (Twilight had enough experience to know what an enchanted door felt like), but rather it felt like Twilight’s body could not decide which way it wanted to go. It was as if Twilight wanted to go both ways at once. Twilight herself was unsure of how to stop the situation; it felt like she was fighting off both decisions without allowing either side to win.

The struggle didn’t last long though; Twilight jerked her head toward the door and stepped forward. She would have a look inside, and then go back to bed once her curiosity was satisfied. And if she so happened to discover a way to save Fluttershy, then what’s the harm?

Twilight gingerly bit down on the door handle and turned it. The door squeaked open on its dirty hinges. The noise that came from the door echoed throughout the hospital, causing Twilight to jump back and make sure she hadn’t woken any pony. Once she was sure that no pony would bother her, Twilight stepped beyond the door.

The room was darker than the hallway, here Twilight was completely blind. Twilight fumbled for a light switch, nearly cutting herself on a metal object as she did so. When she finally found the light switch, the room filled with a blood red light, similar to the lighting used in dark rooms.

After her eyes adjusted to the light, Twilight found herself starring into the lifeless eyes of a severed head. She screamed and leaped backwards, knocking into another metal object. When she turned to see exactly what she had hit, she found herself face to face with even more heads. This time, Twilight got a better look at them. The heads were all disfigured in some way; earth pony heads with feathers, unicorn heads with two horns, stallion with eyes too big for their sockets, a mare who had somehow grown a hoof out of her left cheek, and a pony that had two faces growing out of either side of the skull, one side was a mare while the other was a stallion. Each of the heads had their eyes opened so that they stared at any pony foolish enough to enter the room. Whether this was intentional or not, Twilight could still feel the lifeless eyes of the countless heads staring at her, judging her for trespassing in what was effectively their tomb.

After the initial shock wore off, Twilight was able to calm down enough to actually examine the heads; she was here for academic purposes after all. The heads were displayed in glass jars filled with a clear liquid that Twilight guessed was used to prevent them from decomposing. The jars in turn were placed on metal shelves that lined the room’s walls.

Twilight supposed that she should’ve expected something like this. After all, the lab was basically studying ways to mutate ponies. Keeping a few failed experiments around for study wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. But the decision to display them right at the entrance was… questionable.

At the far end of the room was a glass tank that was roughly the size and shape of one of Sleipnir’s cells. Attached to the tank was a piece of machinery that reminded Twilight of a pipe organ. The machine was decorated with an assortment of blank screens, buttons, and levers. At the top of the device were two oddly shaped rods that stood on either side of the tank.

Twilight cautiously approached the device. Based on what she had been told, Twilight had to assume that simply being near the device was dangerous. Still, if she could understand the secrets that it had to offer, most if not all of her problems would go away. If not, well then hopefully she wouldn’t end up too disfigured.

Twilight began her examination trying to figure out how to turn the device on; nothing was labeled so the only method of figuring out the device was by trial and error. When she did managed to activate the device it emitted a loud humming sound that made Twilight’s teeth feel like they were vibrating. As the device warmed up, the monitors lit up one by one, the glass on the tank twisted open, and the rods let of stream of sparks.

Twilight quickly shifted her attention to the monitors. Displayed on them were streams of letters that spelled out random gibberish that meant nothing to Twilight. This did not stop Twilight from attempting to get information out them however. Twilight used a simple method of decoding that she had been taught by one of Celestia’s advisers.

In her mind, Twilight counted the number of times each letter appeared and compared it with the consistency that letters appeared in the Equestrian common tongue. Most codes that ponies came up with were simply letters being replaced by other letters, and therefore could be cracked by simply figuring out the pattern in which the letters appeared in. The downside was that the method was turned on its head if the code in question was more complicated than simply substituting letters. The code presented on the screen was one such code.

There was no rhyme or pattern to how the letters appeared on the screen. Sometimes they would come in instances of four or five, other times they would spell out forty five letter nonsense. Once, the screens only displayed the letter ‘Q’ copied eighty times.

Twilight gave up on decoding the screens; she only knew the one method of decoding, and thinking of other method would keep her here for days. Instead, Twilight began looking for a way to activate the device’s function. After that, she would remove a section of the device’s casing and try to reverse engineer how it worked.

Twilight pressed what was most likely the button to activate the radiation (the big red one) and raced as fast as she could to the far end of the room. The lights in the room faded into near darkness, the air filled with a low hum, and the rods on the device sparked and released two crackling streams of light that struck the tank with a loud ZAP. A second later, the electricity spewing from the rods began to travel down the tank’s glass walls, giving it the appearance of a bird cage. From inside the tank small holes had opened up in the floor releasing a light purple gas that swirled around like a serpent in water.

After a few minutes of watching the spectacle, Twilight began to notice errors in the machine’s design, namely the design of the tank. Based on what Twilight knew about the device, she could infer that the tank is where subjects would be placed to be mutated. But the tank was clearly not built to contain radiation, so any pony near the device while it was active was at risk of being mutated on accident. Twilight could think of only one reason why the scientists of Sleipnir would design a device this poorly. But in order to confirm her theory, Twilight would have to wait until the rods stopped spewing out sparks.

She sat there for a few more minutes while the device ran its course. When she once more approached the device, Twilight focused all of her attention on its case rather than its buttons. After a little searching, Twilight found a chink in the device’s build that was just large enough for her wedge the tip of her horn into.

Twilight noted the chink’s location and began searching the room for something to pry it with. She quickly realized that there was nothing in the room for her to use. Twilight shouldn’t have been surprised; she was in a laboratory, not a tool shed.

Twilight snorted. Once again she was confronted with a problem that could’ve easily been solved if she had access to her magic. How earth ponies could spend their entire lives trapped in this eternal frustration without killing themselves was beyond her.

Twilight was about to give up when she was suddenly struck with an idea. If she could stick the tip of her horn into the chink, then she be able to use it was as an organic crowbar. Sure, it was possible that she might hurt her horn in the process, but so long as Twilight was careful that wouldn’t be an issue.

Twilight eased the tip of her horn into the chink, taking care that she didn’t force it in. When the horn was at a point where it could not go farther in, Twilight shifted her head so that her horn was putting pressure on one side of the chink. To her surprise, the casing easily slid out of the way when Twilight applied force.

With the device’s casing out of the way, Twilight bent down and began examining its interior. What she found were some wires that connected to various parts of the device, but nothing that told her how the device actually worked. Investigating a little further, Twilight found that connected to the back of each of the device’s screens were small computer chips, the same kind one might find in a digital clock.

That didn’t make sense though. A device used to calculate the intricacies of a pony’s genetics and rearrange them should’ve required more computing power than a clock. Shouldn’t it?

Twilight considered the probability that she was wrong about the computer chips. She had spent as much time studying technology as she did anything else, but not enough to call herself an expert. She also had to consider the possibility that the device she was trying to study was beyond even her comprehension, and that she was wasting her time trying to understand it.

Twilight tried to force herself to focus on the device, but something about it kept bothering her. Something was wrong with the device, though Twilight couldn’t place a hoof on what it was. All the wires were connected and none of the computer chips looked damaged. Aside from that, there was nothing in the device that looked amiss.

Then the answer came to Twilight with the force of a slap to the face. There was nothing in the device’s casing but wires, nothing. Whatever emitted the radiation used to mutate ponies wasn’t here.

Twilight closed the device’s case and turned her attention on the twin rods on its top. After all, they did emit sparks when the device was active. After taking a moment to move a shelf to climb up on, Twilight hopped onto the device and began to look over the rods.

The rods were wrapped tightly with metal wires that covered of the rods’ surfaces. At the top of the rods were objects that reminded Twilight of steel donuts. Something about the rods seemed familiar to Twilight, as if she had seen them somewhere before.

‘These are the same type of rods that Dread has in his bedroom!’ Twilight realized.

Aside from a small difference in height and diameter, the rods were exactly the same as the ones Dread uses to recharge himself. What they had to do with mutation, Twilight had no idea. She doubted that Dread needed a radiation emitter to recharge his batteries, so all Twilight could come up with was that the rods were there to react with the gas inside the tank.

Twilight hopped down from the device and approached the can shaped tank. After sliding it open, Twilight investigated the tanks walls, where the gas had condensed into tiny droplets. At the bottom of the tank was a small hole that was obviously meant to be used as a handle if the areas under the tank needed maintenance.

Twilight bit down on the handle and pried the floor from the tank without a second thought. After taking a moment to get the taste of metal out of her mouth, Twilight began to inspect what she hoped was the source of the device’s mutagenic abilities. She was disappointed with what she found.

Beneath the floor of the tank was a set of pipes, not unlike the ones that could be found beneath the average sink. The pipes were set up so that whatever liquid they carried passed through some sort of filter before being shot up into the tank. Thinking that that filter was important to the device, Twilight tried picking it up with her mouth to get a better look at it.

As soon as Twilight teeth made contact with the filter, a scorching hot pain forced its way into her mouth. Twilight let out a loud shriek and leaped back from the red hot pipes. Her mouth continued sting with pain for a minute, after which the pain deteriorated into a tingling sensation.

Twilight considered going back to bed once again. She was being sloppy in her research and she knew it. She knew better that to bite down on something without making sure it was safe, especially if that thing was a part of a plumbing system that carried Celestia knows what in it. She was lucky that all she got was a burnt tongue. She could’ve been poisoned for Luna’s sake.

But even as Twilight contemplated sleeping, she found herself wanting to stay even more. And why not? She would likely never have an opportunity like this again. And besides, she had already examined most of the device by now, what was the harm in staying a few more minutes and finishing the job?

Unhappy with both extremes, Twilight compromised with herself that she would look at type of filter the device use then be on her way. Twilight bent low into the tank’s plumbing (taking care not to touch the pipes) and read aloud to herself what was inscribed onto the filter.

“Berry Punch’s berry special grape juice mix.”

Twilight blinked and double checked the inscription, believing she had some sort of mistake.

Once more she read, “Berry Punch’s berry special grape juice mix.”

Twilight stared at the filter with her mouth open, her left eye twitching slightly as she tried to make sense of it. After a moment, she turned her attention to the purple droplets that dotted to interior of the tank. Without thinking, Twilight leaned in towards the tank’s wall and licked one of the purple droplets. Sure enough, they were grape juice, although it was very sour grape juice.

Twilight stepped back from the device and sat down on the floor. The device had no way to emit radiation, no way to calculate data, no way to do anything except spray ponies with grape juice vapor. This was all that there was to the device.

‘But that can’t be right.’ Twilight thought to herself, ‘The room is filled with mutated heads. Those had to come from somewhere. I mean, that’s not something you can just fake right? The heads have to be real, just look at them. If the heads are real then that means that there is some way to use the device, and I just haven’t found it yet!’

With that thought, Twilight got up to examine the nearest head. The head in question had belonged to unicorn. It seemed completely normal aside from a twisted horn and a bloated eye that had somehow grown teeth. Looking at the thing made Twilight’s stomach lurch, but despite this she opened the head’s jar and turned it over. The head hit the floor with a dull SPLAT. Twilight poked at the head with a hoof. As she did so the fur and skin began to flake off, leaving behind large, bright yellow patches. Seeing these patches, Twilight pressed down on the head. There was no skull inside of it.

“IS THIS SOME KIND OF JOKE?” Twilight screamed.

She kicked the head towards the device. It bounced and hit one of shelves, knocking over more of the jars. Twilight didn’t notice, she was mad; mad at the fact that some pony would go to much trouble just to set up an elaborate hoax; mad at how they deceived both Dread and Dr. Layne, convincing them that they were able to mutate ponies; mad that what was likely Fluttershy’s best chance at recovery was a lie.

Twilight kicked another shelf, sending countless jars falling to their doom. When the jars hit the floor they shattered with a satisfying CRACK. Twilight then kicked the foam heads at the device, relishing in the act.

After a minute, Twilight collapsed onto the ground. The hot tears rolled down her face and her body trembled. Twilight wanted to continue her tantrum, to break the deceitful device in front of her into a thousand pieces, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

After several minutes, Twilight got up and plodded back to her bedroom, her head hung low. Twilight counted the doors on her right until she got to the one that belonged to her. When she crawled back into bed, Twilight cried once more.

Author's Notes:

Sorry this took so long. For some reason June causes me to lose all interest in anything I've done for the past year. I have no idea why.