They left the next day.

Not the same way they’d gone during their last adventure—they weren’t leaving their home behind for good, carrying all they now owned on their backs. They had no need to abandon all their property this time—only to carry enough to survive during what Lightning Dust insisted would be only one day of flying in each direction. She hadn’t brought her armor—there was no way to fly in that. But she did have her helmet, hanging off her saddlebags on a length of bungie.

Lucky didn’t bring her armor, though that was what she really wanted. But all that extra weight hadn’t been made to be carried. No amount of conservation had been in mind with its creation. If the conditions are really that extreme, we can just come back.

The winds grew fierce once they left the shield around the Crystal Empire, forcing them to higher altitudes. Flying above the clouds made for lousy scenery sometimes, but so long as they didn’t rise too high, there was no worry of being blasted out of the air by an errant gust.

The land north of the Crystal Empire was like something out of the arctic. Lucky saw endless expanses of blown snow, sheets of ice, and the occasional patch of hardy plants boldly standing against the inhuman cold. Armed with a secondhand coat, Lucky hardly felt the cold—at least not so much that she would’ve needed to slow in her flying.

After all her practicing for the (completely meaningless) Junior Wonderbolt certification, Lucky had far less trouble with the adverse conditions than she might’ve otherwise. Instead of getting knocked sideways by every other gust, she knew how to angle her flight to keep herself as much on the same path as possible. She had learned to increase her speed during the important bits, then ride the updrafts to conserve energy.

Tricks were still beyond her—she wasn’t an aerial ace like her mom, nor could she ride into the heart of the worst winds. Once the storm began to pick up, they were forced to land near a sturdy mineral formation to take shelter until it passed. Lightning Dust probably could’ve kept going through it—but she didn’t complain at the need. They were only here for Lucky Break anyway.

Lightning Dust was also their navigator—Lucky had learned much about pioneering during her time with the SPS, but she didn’t know how to keep track of identical cloud-banks which were also drifting in time to the same winds they were fighting. Somehow Lightning Dust always seemed to know their exact heading, and how long they’d flown, just from “how it feels.”

Eventually she announced: “We’re here. Five leagues north, one west. Just like your… what was it, exactly?” Lightning Dust stopped in the air, hovering. They were about five miles up, the ground only a distant suggestion below them.

“A secret code,” Lucky said. “From a pony who didn’t want anyone else to know she was helping me.”

“Right.” Lightning Dust sounded skeptical. “And she wanted us to fly… all this way out, because…”

“Because there’s something here for us to find,” Lucky said. “Something secret about Equestria’s past. I want to find out.” She looked around, but the most interesting thing was not something below them. Their destination was only an empty field of ice. But before them, stretching out forever, was a mountain range that defied anything she had ever imagined.

Even in the air, it seemed to tower above her, its image lengthening and distorting. The clouds couldn’t even get close to its height, nor could the snow. The mountains continued to either side, as she knew they must until the very edge of the ring. I wonder what the point is of having mountains on the edge. Below them, it already seemed like the ground was sloping slightly uphill. Only directly below was there any exception to this, on a specific patch of ice unlike all around it.

“Because your ponies are scholars?” Lightning Dust asked. “You’re just curious because you like learning things.”

“Well no… but learning how Equestria got here would help ponies too. None of you know… even Princess Twilight didn’t know. Aren’t you the least bit curious?” Lightning Dust looked like she was going to speak, so Lucky just raised her voice, not letting her.

“Think about it! Ponies just assume Equestria’s the oldest thing ever, even though they know the tribes were separate. They act like Luna and Celestia have ruled everything even though you all know Luna hasn’t been helping for more than a few decades! Doesn’t that…” She hesitated. “Don’t you see? You’re lying to yourselves! You like ignoring things that you don’t like. Humans did that too—it was always easier to pretend the hard problems didn’t exist than to solve them. Keep pretending long enough, and you start believing your own lies.”

“Alright, alright.” Dust put out her hooves. “So, you feel very passionate about this. I don’t get it. But maybe I will once we find this thing. Unless we’re out here trying to catch the east wind.” She narrowed her eyes. “If we got sent out here for nothing, I’ll make the pony who did it think twice.”

Lucky Break looked away from her mom, focusing on the world beneath her. It looked like almost solid ice as far as she could see—nearly a kilometer of it as level as Earth salt flats. For salt, that made sense—there were geological reasons for all that salt to be there, tracing back to ancient lakes… she hadn’t really cared.

But ice? There was so much snow everywhere else, and only large bodies of water or steep slopes seemed clear of it. So why wasn’t any of it piling up here? The ice didn’t seem all that thick—she could see stone not all that far down. Black stone, with patterns on it. Arrows.

“God…” she muttered, taking off again as fast as she could, following one of the arrows of light stone set into the dark. At her height, it didn’t take long at all before she passed over an arrow pointed the other way. She turned to one side, and found another arrow perpendicular to the other two.

“What are you doing?” Dust followed her through the air with ease. “What are you looking at?”

“Not sure.” She stopped abruptly, right over the middle. There were four arrows in all, each aimed at the same point—a void about five hundred meters across. She had thought the ice continued over stone in this whole area, but that had just been a trick of the light. Here, it continued downward for so long she saw no reflection. It was just darkness. Maybe if I get closer I can see more. “I think this might be a runway.”

Lucky dived. It was one of the easiest things for a pegasus to do—staying in the air was always harder than falling.

She tucked her wings and pointed her hooves, grateful for the goggles. This was the kind of flying that ponies did to entertain one another. She could feel a little of what Lightning Dust and the others were getting at—the thrill as the ground zoomed up to meet her. That rush came with the knowledge, certain as she could be, that her life was in her own hooves. Even Lightning Dust couldn’t stop her from smashing into the ice as a discolored mess.

Instead, Lucky leveled out, spreading her wings and catching herself about a hundred meters above the ground. It took much longer than that to stop—the pale blue sky turned into a blur. Only the distant mountains of Nibiru were so large they were unmoved by her speed.

She landed on the ice with the force of a jump from her bed. She didn’t expect much more than a slight thump. Instead, one of her hooves broke through, sinking up to the fetlock. She screamed, beating her wings furiously, kicking out with her other hooves and trying to rise.

In her panic, Lucky forgot every lesson she’d learned about flying in the last two weeks. Taking off from a stationary position was hard enough, but while she was stuck? Practically impossible.

“Lucky!” Lightning Dust’s voice came from behind her. She was close, close enough to almost touch.

Then the ground gave way completely, and huge chunks of thin ice went tumbling with her down into the void.

---

Lucky screamed as she tumbled forward, her saddlebags thumping against her back. She kicked and squealed.

“Lucky, fly! What are you doing?”

Lucky’s head jerked towards the sound, but she couldn’t make out anything in her tumbling. She was falling so fast; the ground must be rushing up to meet her! But maybe… maybe that wasn’t as desperate a situation as she had first thought.

Responding to a fall in the human way might be natural, but it wouldn’t help her.

She stopped squirming, spreading her wings as wide as she could. They caught the air with a jerk, and immediately she started to slow.

Lucky opened her eyes, watching metal zoom past her on either side. She stopped in the air, legs hanging limply out below her, chest rising and falling in rapid breaths as though she were a scared puppy.

“What was that, Lucky?” Mom asked from a few feet away, sounding terrified, angry, but also relieved. “Why did you just… stop flying? What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t…” she stammered, looking away. “I thought I was landing, and suddenly I wasn’t, and…” She looked up. Less than two meters away was a wall of reddish metal, covered in grooves, slots, and indentations. “What’s this?”

“I have no idea,” Dust said, “but we should get onto the ground.” She pointed down, maybe twenty meters. “We’re running out of magic.”

“Huh?” Lucky followed her down towards the ground, confused. “What does that mean?”

As Lucky neared the ground, it felt like it took more and more flapping to keep herself moving at the right speed. As though somepony was piling rocks onto her back. She landed less gracefully than she had up above, rolling onto her face amid the shattered pieces of ice.

“It means…” Lightning Dust touched down beside her, panting from the effort. “That flying gets harder the further north you go. Those lines on the map… everything gets heavier. That means flying is harder. It takes more magic to lift…” She shook her head. “Forget the stupid egghead stuff. It’s the only reason this trip was gonna take two days and not just one. Cuz’ we’ll need time to rest and get ready to fly again.” She looked up, eyes widening. “Sure is a deep hole.”

Lucky looked up. She slumped onto her haunches, tail tucking between her legs as she saw the sheer scope of the opening. Hundreds of meters across, and at least a kilometer down. Guess I was falling for a long time.

There were deep grooves set into the sides, like tracks. Other than that, the sides of the shaft were almost perfectly smooth. Good thing we don’t have to climb out. Even a Hephaestus with a grapple would have a hard time with something this deep.

“Guess Twilight wasn’t leading me on,” she muttered, kicking aside a piece of ice with one of her hooves. “Really was something here.”

Lightning Dust jerked, as though Lucky had just hit her in the face with a yellow snowball. “Wait. Back up. When you said Twilight, you don’t mean she’s the one who told you go north of the Empire, do you?”

She whimpered. “I… I might…”

Lightning Dust straightened, puffing out her chest and spreading her wings. She looked and smelled as big and angry as a pegasus could. “You took us twenty-eight kilometers north of the Crystal Empire because Princess Twilight Sparkle sent you a code. Princess Twilight Sparkle. You took us all the way out here and you didn’t tell me?”

She whimpered again. “M-Mom… she was right!” Lucky pointed all around them with a hoof. “This is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. Twilight told the truth!”

Lightning Dust took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, then let it out in a hiss. “What if this is a big prison or something, Lucky? What if this is the gates to Tartarus, and we’re gonna get locked down here forever?”

Lucky rolled her eyes. “It’s not the damn gates of nothing! It’s part of the infrastructure of your Niven Ring! Twilight led us right here, and now we’re gonna find out what it does!”

Lightning Dust stomped and hissed, then fell silent. “We’ll see. But next time… you’re gonna tell me where we’re going.”

---

Lucky was tired from the journey—nearly thirty kilometers of flying in the frigid cold was exhausting work. They had no tent with them, no sleeping bags—when it came time to make camp, they’d have to make it to the clouds. Either that, or sleep on the floor.

On the other hand, it was already dark at the bottom of the pit, and getting darker as the day above wore on. Lucky removed her helmet from her pack, expanding it to full size and settling it on her head—it was the only piece of her armor she’d brought, mostly because of the camera and night-vision circuitry.

“I don’t know how we’re gonna find anything down here anyway, Lucky. Maybe if we came back tomorrow at noon. Then at least we’d have some sun. But we can’t fly out for at least another few hours… if you fell, I might not have enough magic left to catch you.”

Lucky nodded. “A few hours should be enough to get good video at the bottom of this shaft, and to get a little exploring done.”

“I don’t know what that means.” Lightning Dust sat down on her haunches, pulling a little bag of crystal berries out of her pack and snacking on them. “But whatever. We made it this far. Just don’t fly again. I’ll be here.”

“Sure.” Lucky galloped past her, letting the camera take in the entirety of the shaft from all angles. The helmet’s night vision highlighted finer details—massive seams on one side that suggested an opening of some kind. It’s a little like NASA’s old factory in Florida. Is this a launchpad?

The tracks in the wall might be used to guide something to the top, or maybe to lift the platform. It was hard to tell which. Hopefully this was for more than just shooting things. What we really need is a door.

The area was so dark and so big that it took Lucky nearly an hour to find the doorway—a section of wall that opened into a hallway at about twice pony height, wide enough that several could’ve walked abreast.

She lowered her head, moving slowly across the ancient surface of faintly reddish metal. No snow, no dust, no debris of any kind. I wonder if I should be worried about that. It snowed so often on the surface that it did seem a little unusual there wasn’t thicker ice above them, or that the opening hadn’t filled in over the eons. Someone must use this often enough to keep it clear. Please don’t clean it while we’re down here. It would be just their luck for an eruption of fire (or whatever else the ring used this for) to come blasting out of the depths as they flew down.

The hallway didn’t continue into the bowels of an ancient station. About fifty meters and she hit a door—though it looked more like an airlock than anything from a conventional building. It was also the first sign she’d seen of writing or markings on anything down here.

The door had the general silhouette of a pony on its surface, with wings spread and a long horn on its head. Lucky approached slowly, watching the walls warily with the EM-sensors in her helmet. But there was no energy passing through them, at least not that she could pick up. It was just solid metal like it looked.

Except for the airlock itself. As she got close, she saw signs of energy passing through the metal, lighting up the wings, the horn, the hooves, and the cutie mark on the silhouette. It got so bright that she switched off her night vision for a second—the wings on the silhouette were glowing, particularly as Lucky got close. She walked up to the edge of the wall, spreading out her wings and touching the bas-relief. They glowed bright white.

Nothing happened. The door didn’t open, traps didn’t deploy, there was no communication system. Nothing at all, in fact. Lucky whined and kicked at the door with one hoof. It hurt, but didn’t budge. Even an earth pony couldn’t get through this. “Mom, can you look at this! I found something!” she shouted, as loud as she could.

“Uh, sure… but I can’t see you! Where’d you go, Lucky?”

“Headlights on,” Lucky whispered, and bright spotlights on both sides of her helmet switched from infrared to visible light.

“I didn’t know you brought a torch!” Lightning Dust arrived about five minutes later, shielding her eyes from the headlamps with one hoof. “That’s a powerful flashlight. How many batteries does it take to keep it going like that?”

“Reduce illumination to 10%,” Lucky ordered, before setting the helmet down on the ground pointing at the door. Then she looked up. “Just one. But it’s a really nice one.”

“Apparently,” Dust said, staring at the helmet. “Did you buy a unicorn lamp without telling me?”

“No.” She shifted uncomfortably, pointing at the door. “Mom, can we focus on that? I’m trying to get in, and I don’t know how. Maybe you can help. Have you ever seen a door like that?”

Lightning Dust approached slowly, skeptically. She stared at the pattern, particularly where the wings started to glow bright enough to see through the light. They were even brighter for Dust than they had been for Lucky. Another splotch appeared on the carving’s flank, where a cutie mark would be. But the horn and the hooves remained dark.

“This is Daring Do stuff.” Lightning Dust pointed at the wall. “Like something that might be in one of those books. That… I’ve heard ponies read.” She turned away, grumbling. “Bad luck though. Looks like we need an Alicorn for this. Whoever put this door here doesn’t want anyone else getting in.”

“Alicorns are… the royal family, right?” Lucky asked, walking back to the door, and nudging it with her hooves. As before, it didn’t give, even a little. Even conventional metals she knew of would’ve resisted whatever means she had of opening it. Explosives might do it, or they might not. Her helmet couldn’t identify the composition, so it was hard to say.

“Not… quite.” Lightning Dust shook her head. “Princess Celestia and Luna are the royal family, but they don’t have any children. The other Alicorns just sorta…” She blushed. “Well, I guess I don’t know. They come from somewhere, though. And once they do, they’re put in charge of something vague and stupid, and they’re never as good at their job as if Celestia just kept doing it from the beginning.”

Lucky glared at the wall. This was still useful information—a team of explorers could probably get through this if they had enough time. And ponies didn’t spend much time out here, so they wouldn’t have to worry about getting caught. Assuming they could find a route that avoided pony civilization. With so many ponies able to fly, simply staying in the air wouldn’t be enough.

“Any chance one of them would want to help? I could… I could ask Twilight—”

“No,” Lightning Dust barked, expression darkening. “There’s no way she wants to help with this, Lucky. Doesn’t matter how nice she seemed—if she wanted to explore up here, she could’ve had a dozen ponies here from the most important schools in Equestria. She’s not gonna help. Probably she’s just waiting for you to say you came up here, so she can arrest you using some law nobody remembers. You shouldn’t write her back.”

“Hmm...” Lucky picked up her helmet, carrying it on her back as they walked back up the tunnel. She would have more time to examine the door, she hadn’t given up on it yet. But for the moment, her mind was occupied with something else. “So Celestia and Luna are out too. They must know about this if Twilight does. So that leaves… two more. Cadance and Flurry Heart.”

“Forget about Cadance too,” Dust said. “She’s okay at ruling the Crystal Empire, but she’s close to Twilight. They… grew up together or something. I dunno, I don’t read the tabloids. But anything you tell her, Twilight will find out.”

Which left only Flurry Heart. Lucky knew a little about her, if only because she was the darling princess of the Crystal Empire, loved by all who lived there.

Also feared. Her magic had apparently almost killed everyone on at least two occasions. She wasn’t that much older than Lucky herself, though that wasn’t necessarily an advantage. She might take me even less seriously. Or she might be an opportunity. “Do you think Flurry Heart cares about archeology?” Lucky pointed all around her with a wing. “Do you think she’d want to come on an adventure to help us open the door and see what’s in there?”

Lightning Dust stopped walking. She didn’t look upset anymore, so much as sad. “Lucky…” She brushed her mane out of her face with one wing. “I think it’s cute how naïve you are. But I want you to think about this—nothing happens around a princess that all Equestria doesn’t find out about. Even if you can convince her, even if you sneak away and find all kinds of amazing things… unless the princess keeps it all secret, the world will find out.

“And maybe you come back besties with the little monster, and you find something amazing for Equestria. But… if that happens, you’re coming back into the spotlight. Everypony in Equestria is going to want to know about the princess’s new friend, where she’s from, who she is. Your fake identity can’t survive that. Same goes if the princess really dislikes you—then her mom wants to know who made her daughter so upset, and she goes digging. Only way we don’t get dragged out into the open is if you’re so boring she doesn’t want anything to do with you, but not so boring she gets mad. And that’s just not who you are.” She squeezed Lucky briefly against her, and she didn’t resist. “Sweetie, you’ll never do that. She’ll either love it, or she’ll hate it. Either one means I might never see you again.”

She let go, meeting Lucky’s eyes with her own. “I’m not going to tell you what to do. I don’t understand why you care about this… but nobody knew why I cared so much about being a good flyer, either. I just want you to understand what might happen if you do it. Okay?”

“Okay.” Lucky pawed at the ground, blushing.

Lightning Dust was probably right. Her logic was sound—someone with something to hide didn’t attract the attention of ponies who had the eyes of the world on them.

She looked up. “It’s… probably nothing. I’d have to convince a princess to come with me up into the snow. She probably doesn’t care about this stuff. I probably couldn’t even see her. There’d be guards all around… couldn’t even get close enough to talk without being seen. I might get caught just explaining it.”

“Now you’re thinking.” Dust pulled her close again for one last squeeze. “I’m sorry we couldn’t find a way past your door. But… I might be able to find more stuff from the past. I have some friends at work… I could ask them for you.”

“Really?” Lucky grinned, her ears perking up. “You could?” Besides, I can ask my friends to come here. Doesn’t have to be me.

Mom nodded. “Sure thing, squirt. I’ll ask. Can’t promise he’ll find anything, but he might. And I think I know some books you might like, too. I was looking to buy another set since we moved anyway.”

---

Dr. James Irwin didn’t have much to do. Overseeing the Forerunner’s construction efforts might make humans feel better about being in control, but she wasn’t fooled. The Forerunner had better sensors than she did, had the whole library of construction methods, and all the right tools. If it really made mistakes, she wasn’t going to catch them.

So, she left the Forerunner to its work, only checking in the morning when it started and the evening to make sure it had accomplished everything it should. Minus an hour at lunch for teaching language classes, that left her with an entire day to do whatever she wanted.

The first step on James’s “totally working” tour was the lab, since it was the only section of Othar that was:

A. Fully assembled,
B. Guaranteed not to have the major anywhere near it.

Besides, Dr. Born was making some real progress. Her study was more interesting than watching the Forerunner build more hydroponic gardens and identical bathrooms.

The lab, like everything else in Othar, had been built to human measurements, not pony. That meant they had to use stools to reach any of the counters. Or fly. But none of us can do that.

One end of the lab was mostly empty counters, space for disciplines that didn’t exist to do their work. That was where Martin and Karl were sitting, having an early breakfast of oatmeal while they watched Dorothy work.

Both were wearing lab coats, though Martin had cut holes for her wings. Martin was also growing out her mane again, while Karl kept hers almost as short as the major’s.

“Any progress?” James asked, pulling up a stool and hopping up beside them to watch. She set her warm coffee down on the table in front of her, occasionally taking a sip. It still took her both hooves to move it without dropping the mug. Unlike my clone. That guitar-playing cheater. “Looks like she’s… pretty excited over there.”

Karl nodded. “She never came to bed. I think she must be close to something.”

“Or she’s just losing her mind,” Martin suggested, her voice weak and shaky. “I know the feeling.”

“Y-yeah.” James chuckled. It was hard to tell exactly how much of a joke Martin was making, though. She had kept working with the satellites, though she hadn’t shared anything else world-shattering. Thankfully.

“I’m gonna go talk to her,” James said, settling the coffee back into the little holder on her shoulder. It was basically just a claw, mounted to a gyroscope that would keep it level as she walked. James basically wore it everywhere now. “Maybe she’ll share.”

“Don’t bother!” Karl called after her. “When I tried to give her breakfast, she just screamed at me. She’s in a trance or something.”

James ignored her, walking slowly past the high counters and cabinets. Many of them had new equipment still wrapped in their protective film, with no scientists around to use it.

She smelled Dr. Born about the same time she got close enough to see what she was doing. Lots of antiseptic and alcohol, but also the stench of a pony who had gone too long without a shower. Her mane was still pulled back, but it’d gone ratty and frayed. She was surrounded with the equipment of biology and genetics—gene sequencers and flat plastic disks in the incubator. Strange machines that would sometimes begin to spin rapidly, like they were trying to take off and fly away. Also, little ovens, and dozens of different computer screens.

“Paging Dr. Born,” James said, quietly enough that she hoped it wouldn’t startle her too badly. “You have a patient waiting, Dr. Born.”

The mare jumped nearly three full feet into the air anyway, spinning around in mid-flight and landing so she was facing James. Her expression was wild and confused, but settled quickly back into rationality. “Oh. My coffee.” She took James’s glass without waiting for confirmation, draining what was left with a few long sips. “Fill it all the way next time.”

James grunted, folding up the claw-arm with an annoyed gesture. “Did you figure anything out?” She pointed up at the screen. “Looks like you’ve got… some tissue samples up there.”

“I do…” Dorothy walked away, back to the large screen she’d been staring at. “Was being a right bitch. But it couldn’t hide forever.” She pointed at the screen on the right with one hoof. “Recognize that?”

She shook her head. “Nope.”

“You should. It’s your skin. Well… it’s technically my lower epidermal tissue, but there’s no genetic difference.” She held up one leg, where clean white gauze was wrapped around the inner fetlock. “How’s it look to you?”

James turned to squint up at the screen, which had been tilted down towards them but still wasn’t at a comfortable level for their eyes. “Looks like… it’s doing great?” It’d been a very long time since she’d seen cells under a microscope. These looked about how she remembered—eukaryotic cell membranes filled with transparent cytoplasm, separated into a nucleus and numerous little organelles. “The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell,” she said.

Dorothy’s face instantly became annoyed. “Have you ever heard the word ‘powerhouse’ used that way to describe anything else? Is the reactor room the ‘powerhouse of Othar?’” James opened her mouth to retort, but Dorothy didn’t give her the chance. “You get the opportunity to learn about the paper I’m writing because you brought my coffee. You want to waste it?”

She shut up, and Dorothy smiled again. “Good. Anyway, this is pony tissue. It’s healthy, obviously. If it couldn’t survive here, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” She took two steps to the left, so they were looking up at the other half of the screen.

The cells here looked different. Many of them had already broken apart, organelles spilling out into a thick, goopy soup of faintly-colored lines. The cells that hadn’t died yet looked like overinflated balloons, though James could only barely make out faint lines densely packed inside.

“What is this?”

“I had the Forerunner grow me some of my own epidermal tissue. What it should be, I mean.”

“Yuck.”

She gave James another dark look. Then she relaxed. “I guess so, yeah. I’ve had this sample growing since the day after I woke up. You can see cell death is nearly universal. If I…” She leaned forward, and that half of the screen changed to a different image. “Here’s what it looks like after one week.”

The cells still looked alive, but like they were fighting through a soup to do anything. “That looks… unpleasant.”

“That is what killed the earlier generations. Well… generation one and two.”

Martin and Karl had made their way over to watch by then, staying far enough back that Dorothy wouldn’t see them unless she turned around. There didn’t seem to be much chance of that—Dorothy was completely distracted by her work.

“So…” James kept her voice quiet, not wanting to upset Dorothy so much she stopped explaining. “What is that, and why didn’t the Forerunner detect it? Shouldn’t it have known back during the first generation that there were diseases here?”

“It isn’t a disease,” Dorothy corrected, waving a hoof dismissively. “Not in the conventional sense. The Forerunner looked outside, and it saw life with the familiar structure—double-stranded DNA, the same basic proteins, similar cellular composition. Minor differences, sure—but we weren’t ever going to eat or breed with what was outside, so those shouldn’t have been an issue.”

She gestured at the various printouts on the desk—computer models of specific proteins. She held up just two, both labeled “Hemoglobin.” “This is just one example. Notice the structure on this? Basically all vertebrates depend on this for respiration. Grow a sample in the lab, and this is how it looks. This is how we’re able to make working human bodies in the first place—without radiation, without any foreign contaminants, the body works normally.”

She pointed to the other image, this one looking elongated and flattened. “This is a prion variant of human hemoglobin. Same molecular composition, you’ll notice. Different folding. And here’s collagen.” She pointed to another screen, pressing a button on the nearby keyboard and cycling through several more images. James couldn’t tell what was wrong, but judging from Dorothy’s expression, none of these looked right. “Here’s actin, integrin, insulin…” She looked back. “I could go on.”

“Prion variant,” James repeated. “Where did it come from?”

Dorothy shrugged. “Landfall station has an airlock, and there are lots of rules to avoid contamination. But with an outside world that looked so safe…” She trailed off. “Look, prions weren’t well understood even when we left. They’re just like this.” She pointed again. “Badly folded proteins. They change the function of the original. They can spread their ‘mutation’ to correct forms. They’re stable, so they tend to bioaccumulate in healthy tissue.

“Oh, and did I mention there’s no treatment? No medicine can clean them out, because they’re made of the same stuff you are. Can’t flush them out, or repair the damage. Eventually you die.”

“Fucking awful way to go,” Karl muttered, from far away. “Why isn’t it killing us?”

If Dorothy noticed the subtle difference in their voices, she didn’t react. “I’m not… positive.” Her ears flattened. “But you look back here at pony tissue, no accumulation. Samples I took suggest as much as three percent of our proteins are prion variants, at least if it follows the same distribution as in epidermal tissue.

“The function of these proteins is identical in pony tissue—it’s still a problem. It’s just that our bodies—and every other vertebrate on this ring—have developed ways of coping with it.”

“If they can, we can,” James said. “Right? It’s just about… figuring out what pony bodies do to clean themselves out. Stick that in humans, and we’re good.”

“Y-yeah…” Dorothy agreed, shivering all over. “Or just live in a biohazard suit your whole life. There’s nothing supernatural about it—prions still need to be introduced to your body and encounter normal proteins to spread. Never encounter anything that could’ve been exposed to native proteins, and a human would be safe. It’s just that doing that for any length of time is… well, even harder than living in space. But sure. I think it’s possible. I need more help. More than just a lab assistant.” She glanced over at Martin, then sighed. “Dr. Irwin, shouldn’t you be supervising the construction of my biofabricator? The Forerunner told me it was being installed today.”

“Y-yeah.” James backed away, looking down. “I was just checking in on everyone. I’ll go… I’ll go back to it. I’m sure we’ll make the deadline. You’ll get your… bunch of scientists… soon…”

She left, wandering back down the halls towards the sound of heavy machinery. It was probably getting close to the major’s morning inspection, so she’d want to be there for that.

She passed the (much larger) women’s showers, which she still hadn’t entered. She could feel a trickle of steam emerging from the edge of the door and hear water. That was the major—when she finished, she’d want to see James “hard at work” watching automated equipment dig hallways.

They all looked the same—textured stone mixed with a chemical adhesive that connected prefabricated sections brought from Landfall. Future sections on lower levels would be excavated much the same way, with walls and floors dragged down and assembled in pieces instead of all at once.

But there was one stop on her tour before the inspection—the brig.

Technically it was the security office, though with such a small population there was very little “security” to be done. It did have a few empty cells, and one full one.

James made her way in. The cells were spacious—like everything else, they were built for humans. It meant a little difficulty using the toilet or the food dispenser, but otherwise it was probably better.

The native explorer no longer looked like a hospital patient waiting for the day of his release—there was no mistaking the bars for anything but a prison.

“Hello James,” he said, in somewhat passable English.

He watched James come in, watched her pull over the chair from the control panel, then climb up into it with her collapsible guitar already hiding between the cushions. No one else came in here, so there was no chance of it accidentally being discovered. For some reason, James seemed like the only one still bothered by the fact they’d taken a hostage.

“Hello friend,” she responded, in her best impression of Eoch. She said it, yet she knew it wasn’t true. If he was my friend I wouldn’t lock him in jail.

“Ĉu vi liberigos min hodiaŭ?” he asked.

“Se mi rajtus,” she answered, expanding the guitar to full size and settling it between her hooves. “Vi scias, ke mi volas.”

He sat down on his haunches by the bars. Deadlight no longer looked the least bit injured. He wasn’t withdrawn with hunger either, but healthy and fit. She could smell that, even though he’d done something to the light in his cell, obscuring him in gloom. Those eyes work better in the dark than mine do. He seems to like it better. But he did have bat wings, so that made sense.

“Se vi vere volas liberigi min, vi farus ĝin.” His ears flattened to his head as he watched her strum inexpertly on the guitar.

Whatever Lucky Break had learned to do, it took more than a few weeks to learn. But if the child-clone could do it, James was confident she could do it too. Having a goal gave direction to her practicing.

She strummed inexpertly for a few minutes, making sour noises with only an occasional glimpse of any real music underneath.

“Here.” He put out a hoof, through the bars. He could get a whole leg through if he wanted, though no more than that—they’d made sure of that before they stuck him inside. If Olivia couldn’t worm her tiny body through, then an adult male didn’t stand a chance. “Let me try.”

She hesitated a moment—the collapsible instrument was a delicate piece of mechanical tech. One good blow, and it could be shattered. Would Deadlight do that out of spite? She didn’t think so. “Ĉu vi promesas esti careful with it?”

“Yes.”

James got up, offering the instrument through the bars.

Deadlight took it with one hoof, something she never could’ve done. He sat back, propping it up with one of his legs, playing with the strings with his wings. They were different—more skin, more bone. She wasn’t sure if they were more flexible or less, though.

“Provu tion. Tenu ĝin ĉi tie… poste fleksu vian flugilon. Premu la ostojn kontraŭ la kordoj por teni ilin kiam vi ludas.” He played, filling the room with the sound of a familiar E-flat cord.

“Woah. Do it again!”

He did, and she grinned. “Sen magio?”

“Nope.” He played again, inexpertly. He didn’t seem to know any songs, he was just imitating what she had been doing (or trying to do).

It still sounded better than she could. “Let me try again. I bet I could do that…”

Next Chapter: G5.05: Marked by Harmony Estimated time remaining: 28 Hours, 57 Minutes