It wasn’t the call that put me off my oats, I’d seen plenty of unpleasantness in my time on the force. It wasn’t the target, either. Hospitals are prone to more than their fair share of violence. It wasn’t the time, with only three hours until what passed for dawn. I was scheduled for desk duty. It wasn’t even the victim, one Nurse Redfern who’d always been good with the foals in her care.

No, it was the method. I’d been told by the first responders to expect the worst, and it hadn’t been enough.

Not for any of the usual reasons, of course. Nothing dripping, oozing, or pooling here.

Somehow, in the middle of the Nursery, one of the most secure wings in Celestia Memorial Hospital, the attendant for nineteen foals had been bound in wires, suspended, and turned off.

The technicians on scene had never seen anything like it. She was alive, the emergency brain scans showed that much. She just didn’t react to anything. No one was home.

The wires, though, they were the real strange part. The teeth-chattering hum that had plastered my cocoa brown ears under my blonde mane poured off of them. I slid in my earblooms to filter it out, while allowing me to interview those first on scene.

“Darndest thing I ever seen, Chance,” Summer Breeze said. He was the lead medtech on site, and had been the one to discover what unique properties the wires had held. They were mechanized, with over thirty thousand volts charging through them. “If I’d been an Earth pony, or had the cutter in my teeth…”

The scorch mark on the other side of the room made it clear what the unicorn was saying.

“What in the sweet sunshine is it?” a junior medtech asked.

They all looked at me.

I pulled my hat low on my brow. I didn’t have an answer.

The silence coiled around me like a python. I hated not knowing, which is why I chosen my profession. Black or white, no exceptions.

My name is Bon Chance. I’m a glitterpony for the LPPD. It’s not a glamorous job, certainly not one most ponies would choose, but one that’s increasingly relevant. Technically, I’m part of Property Crimes, but that’s growing more inaccurate by the month.

Short version: I keep illegal tech off the streets of Las Pegasus. Usually that means VR sims that push the simulated sense programs too hard, or the more dangerous artillery that slips in via CrystalCorp.

Sometimes it means spiros.

“What are we doing about this?”

Breeze cut through my reverie, bringing me back to the ruined nursery ward, the nineteen missing foals, and poor Nurse Redfern suspended by cables.

I still didn’t have an answer, but protocol exists for a reason.

“Leave her for now. Clear the room. I’m going to find out what in the moonlight those cables are. You,” I singled out a security buck with a hoof, freezing the poor sod in his tracks. “Bring me the sensegems for this floor for the past hour. I want to see what happened here. The rest of you, get back to your stations. Life doesn’t stop in LP for one nurse.”

There was a flurry of activity in all directions, as ponies cantered this way or that to start carrying out my requests.

I was left alone in the room with the body. My muzzle ached just behind the bridge of my nose. This was going to be a bad one.

I traced the wall where Breeze’s cutter exploded against it. There was very little sign of the plasma torch, except for a few twisted pieces of metal and a rank odor of burned plastic. The amperage inside those coils must’ve been ludicrously high, to do this to hardened rescue-grade material.

Following that train of thought, I gazed up at the coiled cables cocooning Redfern to her place.

Her blank stare felt accusatory, like I had somehow failed her.

Maybe I had.

I paced around her, studying every inch of her cocoon. It almost stank of spirotech. I wished I had wings. If I could get closer, I’d—

I bopped my forehead with my hoof. I slid my SparkleTech glasses out of my saddlebag, and clipped them on. They whirred quietly as the spell lattice booted up.

I blinked past the welcome screens, waited for the retinal login, and then began recording.

“Log date twenty-nineteen point five point twelve. Unknown magitech construct holding Subject One seven feet off the ground. Subject is catatonic. Cause unknown. Beginning initial analysis.”

I dragged my gaze across the splintered bassinets and the shattered incubation pods. “Missing: nineteen foals. Victims cross races, sectors, corporations, and economic lines. No clear motive as of yet. If this was targeted, it’s unclear as to whom. Could be the Riches, could be the Apples. Both had foals here.”

I winced as a grim possibility crossed my mind. “Or worse. Lots of genetic diversity present.”

Using my kit to interface with the Bureau of Arcane Science’s database, I cycled through my glasses’ filter, landed on my magic analysis, and began to analyze the cables. They were channeling a truly impressive amount of magic through them. I watched as two distinct colors swirled around each other. One was Redfern’s own, but it was faint. The other was as vibrant as the other was dim. Correlating the data, this was tied to memory and identity.

Before I could really start wrapping my head around that, an alert flashed across my vision. The cables had been crafted out of a biomechanical alloy normally found in cyberware or—

Sweet Sun. This was spirotech. Probably generated internally, like a spider and her webs.

But why? I could usually understand what purpose a spiro served from its tools. A cargo loader will be stockier than others. A bodyguard will look unassuming but possess hidden weaponry, like hoofspurs or something.

What could something that leeched magic to transmit memories possibly do? And where were they being sent to? Who was receiving? The spiro?

Why?

The security buck returned with two thick onyx crystals. These had witnessed everything on this floor. I hoped they held an answer.

“Thanks, er…”

The security buck doffed his cap, revealing a balding mane. “Buckle. Brass Buckle, miss.”

“Detective.”

“Oh. Right. Uh, sorry, Miss Detective.”

I rolled my eyes again, and slotted the first one into the media channel of my glasses. Taking a deep breath, I accessed the sensegem.

The color bled out of the world as I was suddenly floating out and above the seventeenth floor. After a moment, all I could see was the general floorplan hovering in space. Little specks of color flitted from place to place.

I checked the time code. T minus seven minutes. I slowed down the playback and watched carefully.

There was a commotion near the freight elevator. Within moments, it had spread throughout the hallways. Some kind of gas? Nanotech? I couldn’t be certain.

Suddenly I was blind. The whole lattice blipped out, suspending me in an infinite empty blackness. Sweet Sun, but I hated malfunctioning gear. I let it ride, trying to center myself so I didn’t get vertigo and lose my hayburger.

After too long, the floor plan swam back into focus. It was too late. Whatever I wanted to see had already happened. Redfern dangled over the devastated Nursery. So much for that.

I dialed in the quit command, ejected the sensegem, and slotted the second.

I hoped this one didn’t wig out, like the other had.

“‘Once more into the breach,’” I muttered.

Again, the color washed away and I was borne up into the sky. This time, I was looking at columns running the length of the building. Elevator shafts for Earth ponies like myself, others for large cargo.

I watched a day’s worth of shipping whiz by twice before I caught it. A pony, her rose petal pink coat swathed all in black and a silver mane that glowed wanly in the yellow lights of the elevators, was stepping on. The time code said T minus eight minutes.

She glanced up at the sensegem, light catching at the back of her eyes, and her chrome mane bouncing. She was beautiful, with features that would have looked at home on any Manehattan socialite or Applewood starlet. And she was deadly.

“Spiro. Of course.”

She was muttering something to herself, and being quiet enough that the two other ponies in the elevator didn’t even look her direction. At the seventeenth floor, still mouthing sounds, she stepped off the elevator and shook herself like she was shaking off water.

The ponies nearby began to scream.

“Rewind fourteen seconds. Zoom sector three and track current car. Enhance audio by one-hundred-fifty percent.”

Only whispers now. I watched her lips.

“Loop it.”

Again, and again.

I slowed it down once more, and watched her mouth as she babbled:

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."

What did that mean? Had she snapped?

I wasn’t sure spiros could get unhinged. It was a scary thought.

I quit out of the view, and ejected the second sensegem.

Drat and double drat. I spun up my supervisor. “Gaffer? Chance, GP61661. Celestia Memorial suspect is confirmed Synthetic Pony-Replicate Organism. We have a breach.”