Never in her life could Twilight Sparkled recall every having seen a vehicle like the motorcycle she found herself upon. Indeed, though, that could be said about most things in the strange world that she suddenly found herself in. None of it made sense, and none of it matched her memories of home. It still remained unclear to her how she had arrived in this place or what it meant, although she suspected that it had something to do with powerful magic- -and a spell that she would no doubt need to find a way to reverse.

Twilight had at first been overjoyed by the sight of Rainbow Dash, but doubt was beginning to set in. It only grew as she hung onto the mare’s back, desperately trying not to fall off the roaring two-wheeled vehicle below. Even through all the leather, the pony below her felt soft and organic, and her wings appeared to have real feathers- -but the feathers were strange and not exactly birdlike, and though soft the Rainbow Dash that Twilight held was cold. No internal warmth seemed to come from within her.

As much as she wanted to ask, Twilight could not bring herself to. She kept dismissing it, rationalizing to herself that the machine between her legs was too loud and that she would almost have to raise her voice to be heard. In actuality, though, she was stalling, because she did not want to give up the hope that she had actually found a friend that she knew and could trust.

She did not need to ask, though, as the answer was provided for her. Rainbow Dash’s hair was short and did not hang down in the back, and Twilight just so happened to look up when a gust of breeze pushed back her collar. There, on the rear of her neck, was an implant- -or what Twilight perceived to be an implant. It was not highly apparent, especially in the dim light, but it was obvious wat it was: thin strips of silvery metal that sat flush against the blue flesh beneath, each integrated to cervical vertebrae and each with several small ports of various sizes and shapes.

Twilight could no longer stop herself from asking. “Are you…like her?” she asked.

Despite the noise of the motorcycle, Rainbow Dash- -or Roxanne, as Morgana had called her- -looked back. “What? Like who?”

“Like the robot-me. Morgana.”

Rainbow Dash’s eyes darkened as she frowned. Then she turned back forward. “I’m nothing like HER,” she said. The vehicle picked up speed, and as the motor revved Twilight squeaked and closed her eyes as she hung on tighter.

The trip was long, and there were many turns and intersections. Most were empty, but sometimes figures could be seen along the edges of the street. Workers, travelers, or residents who still walked the real-world would sometimes leave wherever it was they lived, and they would come out for whatever unknown tasks they believed needed to be attended. Most of them moved slowly, and almost all cloaked their large and strangely-shaped bodies with heavy fabric to keep the moisture and condensation off of themselves.

In time, though, Roxanne came to an area where there were few people. She turned off the road and through a wide opening with barely enough clearance for her to enter. The tunnel dipped downward and continued for some distance, branching off in several places. Roxanne took more turns until she came to a door. The engine of her motorcycle slowed as her and Twilight approached. It echoed through the damp concrete structure, and was suddenly joined by a loud clink and a quiet mechanical hum as the door unlocked and began to open.

Once it had opened enough to enter- -which meant raising nearly to the ceiling, considering how low it was- -Roxanne released the clutch on her motorcycle and moved through into the darkness slowly. When she was inside, she got off and began to close the door, leaving it partially open at the bottom to allow the dim diode lights of the entryway to filter through the gap. Those lights and the headlamp of the motorcycle were all that illuminated the room within.

Twilight squinted into the darkness. The light was minimal, but she could see that it fell on a number of boxes and metal shelves of various sizes and makes. There was also a preponderance of old furniture, though largely of the utilitarian type used for storage in older building: filing cabinets, lockers, institutional cabinets, and other things that were designed strictly for a purpose without aesthetics in mind.

“I can’t see.”

“That’s because I haven’t turned the lights on. Hold your horses.”

Long spiral tubes in the ceiling suddenly ignited with purplish light. They flickered with strange patterns before warming up enough to produce a bright white glow that revealed the room. It was, as Twilight had expected, filled mostly with dusty containers- -and one trenchcoat-wearing purple unicorn sitting atop a large wooden box.

“WHAT THE- -!” cried Roxanne. She looked at the door and then at Morgana. “How the HELL did you get here?”

“You took a circuitous path to try to get anyone tailing you confused.” Morgana shrugged. “I went strait. Did my thinking while I was walking. Got here before you.”

“But- -you can’t get here BEFORE me! You don’t know where it is!”

“I just looked for every place that Aetna-Cross wouldn’t. Mostly by cross-referencing map-diagrams with registered real-estate, then checking what was left against people I know who don’t register their places.” Morgana jumped down from her box, landing hard on her transplanted limb and wincing. She looked up at Roxanne. “Which does lead me to a question: what is this place, exactly?”

“It’s mine,” said Roxanne.

“One, that’s not what I asked. Two, since when do you have an unregistered space out here on the West End?”

Roxanne groaned. “You’re asking how did I get it. Fine. Because back in my old profession, some long-term clients worked out deals to pay me with real-estate.”

“Then it’s no good. This will all be listed on your tax filings- -”

“It isn’t listed on my tax documents.”

Morgana raised an eyebrow. “Why…?”

Roxanne rolled her eyes. “You know why, Morgana.”

A voice spoke from between two large crates. “Because Hexel helped you forge the return documents.”

The space from where the voice had spoken seemed to distort as a polychromatic cloak was disengaged. The fabric returned to its normal opacity, and a tall Rarity unit in Aetna-Cross armor emerged.

Roxanne gasped and immediately put her hoof over the ports in the back of her neck, something Morgana immediately took note. Then Roxanne’s expression changed from one of shock and fear into one of disgust and anger. She spread her wings and shot forward. The Rarity unit did not dodge or attempt to resist and received a hard punch squarely to the nose.

“No!” gasped Twilight, putting her hooves over her mouth. “Rainbow Dash, stop!”

“You’re not going to get me again, you sick freak!” screamed Roxanne as she pulled back her hoof and struck again. This time the Rarity was forced to take a step back, and although her face received no damage from the blows she suddenly looked extremely annoyed.

Lynnette raised a hoof and Roxanne recoiled, taking a step back.

“Now now,” she said, smiling at the Pegasus before her. “I am aware that you take great pride in your body, and as gauche and slutty as you seem to have made it that aspect is something we have in common. But work for the Corporations pays much more than undressing for uncouth hooligans, and certainly more than…well, the sort of work you specialize in.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that if I address your violence toward me, I will break you.”

“Put one hoof on her and I will break YOU,” snapped Morgana, jumping down off her box.

“I don’t need you to defend me!” shouted Roxanne. She turned sharply toward Lynnette. “Fine. If it’s going to go that way, then I know when to quit. Just stay the hell away from me.”

Lynnette lowered her hoof and smiled. “You and I both know that’s not what you really want, darling.”

“Enough!” exclaimed Morgana. “O’Toole. Hexel said to expect you.”

Lynnette frowned. “Lynnette, darling. Despite my mother’s inexplicable love of hirsute Irish brutes, I at least ATTEMPT to have some class.” She looked around the room. “Unlike anyone else in this place, it seems…”

Twilight, having been initially shocked into silence by the exchange between Roxanne and Lynnette, suddenly seemed to at least partially recognize yet another one of her friends. She stepped forward carefully.

“Oh wow…you’re tall,” she said, having to look up to see Lynnette’s face. “And you…are you Rarity?”

Lynnette looked at Twilight, and then turned to Morgana. “And who, pray tell, is this? I have no intel about her.”

“I was about to ask the same thing,” said Roxanne, turning toward Morgana with an accusatory glare. “My assumption was that a certain narcissistic self-hating bitch decided that she wanted to take my advice and literally fuck herself. You sick pervert.” She pointed at Twilight. “And why is she wearing my clothes? Don’t think I didn’t notice! What the hell kind of fetish is this?”

Lynnette’s eyes shifted toward Twilight. “That explains why the quality looks so low. Positively ghastly.”

“But…Morgana said I looked pretty…”

“It’s a long story,” interrupted Morgana before the situation could grow worse.

“One you surely need to explain, darling. And I do use that not a term of endearment, you realize. It is meant to be patronizing.”

Morgana rolled her yes. “Yes, O’Toole. I know. And you no doubt pointed it out because you think I’m an idiot as well.”

“Oh! So you private detectives do have a modicum of intelligence!”

“Stop changing the subject!” cried Roxanne. She pointed vehemently at Twilight. “Who is she and did you fuck her?!”

“What do you care?!” Morgana and Roxanne stepped toward each other, but Morgana immediately sensed that this, like much of her relationship with the Rainbow Dash unit, was just going to turn into a pointless shouting match. So instead of engaging she took a breath and stepped back.

“Well?” demanded Roxanne.

Morgana closed her eyes and opened them. She then addressed Roxanne and Lynnette in Standard Language.

“I injured myself,” explained Morgana. “Pretty bad. I needed parts.”

“Ugh. That’s the dialect you use? Disgusting.” When Lynnette spoke, she did so with a perfect Georgian accent and heavily minimized the bantu, slang, and loanword aspects of the speech.

“Wait,” said Twilight, “I can’t understand what you’re saying!”

“Because we’re talking about you,” said Morgana, in English. She then returned to normal speech. “I took a fall from the Surface to the Sound.”

“You mean you flew,” said Roxanne. Her dialect was a more polished but simplified version of the one that Morgana used, but not nearly as pretentious as the one Lynnette clung to.

“Yes. I flew with one wing incapacitated, if that’s what you mean.”

“Like hell you did! Nobody could survive a fall like that, not even me!”

“She could,” said Lynnette. “You hide it well, but I know what that body you use is.”

“Not all of us can afford the best.”

“And not all of us are foolish enough to acquire something restricted for sale on eight continents.”

“If you think the embargo does anything to keep MHI tech out of Bridgeport, you’re an ignorant moron.”

“She’s right,” said Roxanne. “I’ve seen it more than once.” She gestured toward Twilight, who was standing near the group looking profoundly confused. “Is that where she came from?”

“No,” said Lynnette. “I don’t recognize her design. Immensely low quality, though.”

“Not low quality,” said Morgana. “Old.”

Roxanne and Lynnette looked at each other, and then at Morgana. “What do you mean ‘old’?” asked Roxanne.

“Like I said. I fell to the Sound. I was injured. I needed parts.”

Lynnette’s eyes widened. “You went to the docks.”

Roxanne turned sharply. “That place actually exists?”

“Not only does it exist, but it is a class one restricted area. All content there is owned either by the Connecticut State Government or by Ellison Holding Corp., and secured under contract by Aetna-Cross. The penalty for trespassing is slow death.”

“What is slow death not a penalty for these days? And besides. Me trespassing on public land is hardly as bad as what you’re doing right now, isn’t it?”

Lynnette frowned but remained silent. Roxanne turned to Morgana. “I don’t understand! Do you have to be so….what’s the word I’m thinking of?”

“Obtuse,” suggested Lynnette.

“I was going to say shifty, but sure. Why not.” Roxanne grimaced. “Can’t you just give a straight answer when I ask you something, just this once?”

“Fine.” Morgana sighed. “I tried to harvest from new old stock. One of them reactivated.”

Roxanne groaned sharply and Lynnette hissed. “Surely you’re joking,” spat Lynnette. “You have to be.”

“You know as well as I do that there are some stored down there.”

“Yes, dead ones! That place is virtually a catacomb to our ancestors! They died in their boxes. Reactivating them is impossible.” A look of disgust overcame her appearance of anger, but there was something else in it. Morgana took it as pity. “You know why.”

“Because reactivation in a damaged state is worse than death. I know. But I checked her program. It’s genuine, and fully functional.”

“But that means she’s factory-born. She’s never undergone Genesis!”

Roxanne stared at Morgana. “Like you.”

Morgana nodded slowly. “Yes.”

Roxanne shook her head. “Crap. That explains why she’s so…weird.”

“Without having undergone Genesis, she has only her factory default memories.”

“I know,” said Morgana. “She’s still trying to find Ponyville.”

That particular word did not translate into Standard Language well. The result was a cognate. Twilight’s ears perked up. “Ponyville? Do you know a way I can get back?”

The look of pity on Lynnette’s face grew, and Roxanne looked far more sad than Morgana had seen her in a long time.

Roxanne turned slowly to Twilight, but addressed Morgana in a slow and solemn voice. “She doesn’t know she’s a machine.”

Twilight stared at Roxanne, still smiling at the thought of what she clearly believed to be her home. She did not understand what Roxanne was saying, and the confusion showed, but the look of joy and hope on her face was sincere.

“No,” said Morgana. “She doesn’t.”

Roxanne looked at Twilight, and then at Morgana. “And you brought her into all of this. Figures.”

“I couldn’t leave her down there.”

“And what exactly are you going to do with her?”

“This.” Morgana stepped forward toward Twilight.

“Are you going to tell me what you were saying now?” asked Twilight, still sounding cheerful but growing somewhat discouraged by the look on Morgana’s face.

Morgana focused her mind and Twilight suddenly took a step back.

“What are you doing?!” demanded Roxanne.

“I feel…bad,” said Twilight, closing her eyes and shaking her head as though she were dizzy.

Then, as soon as it came, it cleared, and Morgana looked up. “I just changed your metadata,” she said, now in a language that Twilight could understand. “Not substantially, but enough that Aetna-Cross won’t recognize you. I suggest you change your clothes. You’re free to go now.”

“Go?”

“Yes. Go. They’re looking for me, not you. There’s no reason for you to be caught up in all of this.”

Twilight’s eyes became wide and her cheer vanished entirely. “Wait,” she said. “But I can’t go out there! I have no idea where I am, or what to do!”

“Not my problem.” Morgana turned away and pointed toward the door. “Go that way. Leave.”

“Bullshit,” said Roxanne, forcing her way past Morgana and shoving her as she did so. “You can’t do that!”

“You wanted me to deal with her.”

“Not like that! Look at her! She can’t survive out there on her own!”

“She’s a Twilight unit. She’ll manage. And she’ll have a longer lifespan doing that than staying here with me.”

“But…I thought we were friends!” Twilight looked as though she were on the verge of tears.

Morgana turned toward her. “I don’t have friends,” she said. “Just people who hate me and people who work for me. That’s it. If you want to stay here, fine. It’s not my house, I can’t kick you out. But don’t get in my way, and don’t talk to me.”

Twilight looked crushed, and Roxanne rolled her eyes. “Of course. How could I be so thick? For as much as a narcissist as you are, you’re self-hating.” She put her hoof around Twilight. “Come on,” she said. “All this negative energy’s going to get us both down. Let’s see if we can find you a place to sit.”

Roxanne led Twilight off into the depths of the dusty warehouse. Morgana waited until she was out of site before speaking.

“Now, I can’t help but wonder, O’Toole.” Her voice as barely above a whisper and she turned slowly. “Why is it that as soon as she saw you, she covered her ports?”

Lynnette did not look at Morgana. “Because she’s a slut. Walking around with them exposed like that.” She rotated her eyes toward Morgana and smiled. “She is a whore, isn’t she? It only makes sense that she would try to defend her most valuable assets.”

Morgana pushed forward suddenly and drove her shoulder sharply into Lynnette’s chest. Lynnette was armored and took a step back. “Bullshit! You did something, didn’t you?”

Lynnette’s smile grew even more vicious. “We are both detectives, Morgana. So I trust you understand that I will do whatever it takes for a case.”

Morgana’s eyes widened and her jaws clenched. “You tried to hardline directly into her. You son of a bitch.”

“Darling, I’m sure she enjoyed it. Her kind tend to like that sort of thing, don’t they?”

Morgana pushed forward again, this time making a motion as though she were about to strike Lynnette. Lynnette called the bluff and remained still.

“Stop smiling!” she spat.

“Or what?”

“Or I will make you stop.”

Lynnette laughed. “I needed information. So I got it. It’s as simple as that.”

“Do you have any idea what that means?!” Morgana stamped her transplanted hoof down hard and winced as the plastic nearly shattered. That only made her angrier. “What that feels like to a pony? That level of intimacy- -you can’t for a pony into doing something like that! It’s just wrong!”

“If you must know,” sighed Lynnette, “while I did penetrate her, I never actually reached her core processes.” Her pupils narrowed and focused exclusively on Morgana. “Because it seems that someone had been in there before me.” She chuckled. “Although I suppose a great many individuals have. Honestly, I’m somewhat disgusted with myself. In retrospect, I probably should just have offered her a few vod and saved myself the trouble.”

Morgana was by this time seething. She took another step forward, but Lynnette did not back down.

“How would you like it if I did it to you?” As she spoke, her prehensile interface probes emerged from where they were hidden behind her hair.

Lynnette laughed loudly, covering her mouth with one hoof as she did. “Darling! Don’t make threats you don’t intend to follow up on!” Her own probes emerged from behind her perfect styled hair. They were longer and the tips were plated with gold. “We’re both male!”

“But you still have ports.”

“And so do you. But what you’re implying wouldn’t be forced dominance. I would enter you, and you me. The result would more or less be extremely violent lovemaking. Lovemaking that renders one of us comatose.”

Morgana glared at her, and then smiled. She laughed softly, something that seemed to confused Lynnette greatly.

“So all that talk about caring about your body is horseshit, then, isn’t it? It’s just a tool to you, like everything else. Fine. Let me rephrase. How would you feel if I did that to Hexel?”

Lynnette’s eyes narrowed, and her voice dropped. “I will reiterate, Morgana. Don’t make threats you don’t intend to follow through on. Or aren’t able.”

“I would be able. It wouldn’t even be hard. He probably has all the high-grade Aetna-Cross firewall systems that Corporate’s willing to give, and then some.” She stepped forward and grinned. “But he’s not a technomancer. And I know for a fact that you haven’t been in there to install anything special.”

Lynnette frowned deeply. “You wouldn’t.”

“Why not? He’d probably enjoy it. He’d probably drop his little Applebloom in an instant after knowing what it’s like to do it with a real mare. Of course, that’s exactly what YOU always wanted. The ‘whore’, an Applebloom, and then me. All of us beating you to what you really want- -”

Lynnette raised a hoof and slapped Morgana. It was not a light blow. Most other ponies would have lost their cranial superstructure from the impact. Morgana took a step to the side before regaining her balance.

“Don’t talk about him that way.”

Morgana lifted her hoof and struck back. She used the one that had not been damaged, and Lynnette was knocked three meters across the floor and into a set of wooden crates that shattered on impact.

“Hey!” cried Roxanne’s voice from the distance. “Be careful with this stuff! I don’t actually own any of it!”

Morgana shook off her hoof and walked over to where Lynnette had been knocked.

“For the record, I didn’t get this body for the strength. I got it for the advanced processor and aberrant network access configuration. But the strength is a plus.”

She stood over Lynnette, who lifted her head. Unlike Forth or Morgana, Lynnette’s eyes did not have a hard surface. One of them had ruptured from the blow, and was leaking a highly reflective fluid.

“Don’t touch Roxanne like that ever again. And no. I would never do that to Hexel, or anyone. Not even an inhuman monster like you.” She leaned in close. “Because I actually have the capacity for sympathy. Do you understand?”

“I understand that she left you because you’re overprotective and overbearing,” muttered Lynnette. “And a fool. Of course I’m not going to do it again.” She stood up, running diagnostics through most of her body and recalibrating the musculature on her neck. As she did, Lynnette reached up and touched the fluid leaking from her broken eye. “Goddamn it. Do you have any idea how much these cost?”

“You were in the Military Intelligence Corp for six years. You army types always come prepared, don’t you?”

“I have limited supply of spare parts,” admitted Lynnette. “But the operant word is ‘limited’. And I would greatly prefer not wasting them on fighting you.”

“Did you take a microfactory?”

“Only for small parts. Why?”

Morgana raised her other arm and pulled back the sleeve. “I need to reskin this.”

Lynnette looked at it and sighed. “I know how to requisition it. But I don’t see why you took the skin off in the first place.”

“New old stock. It came from a Rarity unit. And white is a horrible color for a pony.”

“There’s no reason to be childish.” Lynnette tilted her head and ejected her damaged eye, leaving only a massive empty socket in her head as it clattered to the floor.

“You started it.”

“Again, childish.”

Lynnette walked through the mass of boxes and shelves until she reached one where a small package had been stowed. Morgana took note of this, as it meant that Lynnette had already declared this her temporary base of operations.

As Lynnette removed a new eye and began to install it, the garage door to the warehouse suddenly released a low clattering sound as it was moved. Lynnette turned sharply, but Morgana shook her head.

“Don’t bother. That’s Forth.”

Almost at the sound of her name, a buzzing started. After a few seconds Forth came hovering over the boxes before landing beside Morgana.

“You took your time,” said Morgana.

“Yes,” said Forth. “We did.”

“Wait!” cried a voice from the other side of the of the towers of boxes. “I can’t fly! I don’t know how to get around all this!”

There was a sound of shuffling and something fall over.

“What did I just say?!” screamed Roxanne from the other side of the warehouse.

“Sorry! It’s not my fault everything is so fragile and dusty!”

It took most of a minute and a substantial amount of barely audible complaining before Elrod managed to climb over one of the crates.

“There,” he said. “I’m here.” He looked at Lynnette, his eyes immediately going to her Aetna-Cross colors. “I don’t know who she is. Did we capture her? Are we going to interrogate her?”

“Detective Lynnette O’Toole,” said Lynnette, admitting the last word only begrudgingly.

“Detective?” Elrod turned to Morgana. “I’m not paying for two!”

“You’ll pay what I tell you to pay when I tell you to pay it.”

“And I would never stoop so low as to charge for my services.” Lynnette looked up at Elrod and took a step closer. He took a step back, even though she was barely over a meter high. “You. I know you. I’ve been spending a great deal of time and effort looking for you.”

“Oh. I was with her.” Elrod pointed.

“Clearly.”

“He’s not Bronislav Spitzer,” stated Morgana.

“I also know that.”

“How?” asked Elrod. “My appearance was apparently close enough to fool a technomancer and a group of misguided weirdos.”

“I won’t ask. But the point is, in all my searching I eventually established what happened to the real Mr. Spitzer.”

“He’s dead,” said Morgana. “Head probably removed, too.”

Lynnette showed a brief moment of surprise before regaining her composure. “Quite. He was found several months ago face down in a reservoir pool. Or would have been face down, had he still possessed one. And judging from the look of your friend here, it’s probably for the better that it was removed.”

“And this was never reported?”

“It was. Or rather misreported. Toxicology reports found a substantial opiate burden in the individual, so it was assumed he was a junkie and not of consequence. Without a face or teeth, there was no way to identify him.”

“You didn’t run his DNA?” asked Forth.

“We did. But scion DNA is not shared between vassals, for security reasons.”

“To prevent cloning,” added Morgana.

“That is one reason, yes. As the scion of Monsanto, we did not have his DNA on record. There was no what to know that the body we found was actually Spitzer. The investigators of the time assumed it was of little consequence and ignored it.”

“And how did you find out, then?”

“By detective work, of course. Spitzer used a company slush fund to open a line of credit.”

“Drug money?”

“Among other things. Many other things, most of them unsavory. One thing he did purchase, though, was a tattoo. I checked with the parlor and their records, and one of tattoos- -a horrendous design indeed, simply grotesque in execution- -matched one that was reported on the Doe’s body. Hence the connection.” She paused. “And that was not the only thing reported on that particular body.”

“There was something else?”

“Firstly, it was noted that he was a natural human. No genetic engineering whatsoever and no cybernetics in what we could find of him. That is very unusual but disproportionally common in the less fortunate segment of the population.”

“We already knew that.”

“The other was in how his head was removed. There was some level of decomposition, but the subcoroner doing the investigation noted that the head was not severed roughly. Or, rather, it was not simply hacked off.”

This piqued Morgana’s interest. “Then how was it removed?”

“Surgically. With extreme precision using a technique and tool that we do not have any knowledge of. The description was limited, and that subcoroner has since been terminated. The fact that it could not be identified, however, strikes me as odd.”

“This whole thing strikes me as odd,” said Morgana. “And it just keeps getting weirder. Our cases just intersected.”

“Meaning you were working on the Spitzer case as well?” Lynnette looked up at Elrod. “That does make some amount of sense, I suppose.”

“Not really. He was incidental. But he’s not the only one. There have been other disappearances as well. All natural humans. Some with their heads taken off. “This trench ended up stepping in it. Someone came after him.”

“And you believe this…trench? What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means him. And yes. I saw one of the things that attacked him.”

“Things? What manner of things, exactly?”

“I don’t know yet.” Morgana shook her head. “But that’s where this whole thing suddenly went south. For some reason, everyone and their mother wants me dead now.”

“And you can’t help but wonder if it was related to this case.”

Morgana reached into her coat and checked her cigarettes. There were only a few left. “Damn,” she said, lighting one of them.

“Do you have to be so crude?” groaned Morgana, taking a step back from the smoke as though she were about to gag.

“Bite me.”

“Do you think this case caused all this trouble?” asked Elrod.

“I cannot reject the possibility,” said Lynnette. “But I do not see how.”

“I don’t see how either. But I know that’s what happened,” said Morgana.

“Oh? How?”

“Gut instinct.”

Lynnette rolled her eyes. “Of course.”

“What else, then? Do you think the entire world just suddenly woke up one day and decided ‘hey, do you know what would be fun and definitely worth billions upon billions of vod investment? Let’s kill that one random third-rate private eye down on the Farmill Bank District!’”

“At least you recognize that you’re third-rate. But that’s exactly what I am also wondering. Although from a different approach.”

Morgana puffed on her cigarette. “What approach?”

Lynnette smiled. “Sometimes it pays to think reductively, darling. Who is trying to kill you is not nearly as important in this case as who is NOT.”

“Who is not trying to kill us?” asked Forth.

“Thirty-nine Corporations, nearly all of them Prime Vassals, mostly from North America and Europe all put a price on your head. But where in all this is our dear old Uncle Sam?”

Morgana took a drag from her cigarette for a long moment, trying to contain her surprise and her personal shame at having missed that aspect of her death warrant. “The government is dying anyway,” she said.

“It might have been when you were still young and presentably attractive, yes. But all public aspects are now controlled by the vassals. The United States government’s sole occupation these days is war. Hence why your friend here was ever constructed in the first place.” Lynnette motioned to Forth. “The United States is the world leader in armament, rivaled only by Israel and Bangladesh. And as critically important as your death seems to have become, not a word has been stated on the federal level.”

“It’s all backward,” said Morgana.

Lynnette nodded. “When the government says ‘jump’, the vassals do so without even bothering to ask ‘how high’. The only way this level of mobilization would be possible would be if the government were the one putting out the order. Which they might have. But then why not send their own forces to collect you? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Unless the government doesn’t know,” said Forth.

The others turned to her. “How could they not know?” asked Lynnette. “This is one of the most massive manhunts in history.”

“No, she’s right,” said Morgana. “It makes sense. If all the vassals worked together outside of the scope of the government, there would be no federal edict. Just a Corporate one.”

“That’s hardly a logical conclusion. These are sworn enemies. The only thing that binds them is that they are all incorporated and sworn to the federal government.”

Morgana took a deep breath through her cigarette, and then dropped the butt to the floor. She stamped it out with her hoof. “Unless all of those vassals were trying to do something that they didn’t want the government to know about.”

Lynnette frowned and looked hard at Morgana. “You are implying something very dangerous. And something that I believe is beyond all of us.”

“Agreed. I don’t deal with government shit. It ends bad for everyone.”

“You said that about murders,” noted Elrod.

“I did. I broke my rule on that one, and look how that turned out.”

“I’m certainly not going to get involved with any conspiracies or what have you,” huffed Lynnette. “I’m only here because Hexel asked me to be. My loyalty to him, as you well know, apparently, is far stronger than my loyalty to any Corporation.”

“And his plan? What did he intend to do, exactly?”

“For me to help you to survive.”

“For how long? The situation is pretty grim, and I don’t see a way out of this. Like everything, Hexel went off before he thought it through.”

“You always underestimated him. No. I’m sure he has a plan. I just can’t get in contact with him.”

“That’s not a good sign.”

“My loyalty comes with trust, Morgana, something you no doubt cannot possibly understand. If I had to guess, though, his thought would be to get you out of the city.”

“To where? To the woods up in Vermont somewhere? At this point, the only thing that keeps me from getting taken down by an orbital strike is the fact that there’s several hundred trillion vod worth of city over my head.”

“There are ways to mediate that risk.”

“Even then. I’m wanted everywhere. There’s nowhere I can go. No. I can’t leave. Frankly, the only way I can get out of this is the only way I know how.”

“By being rude?” asked Forth.

“No. By investigation.”

“But you just said you were not going to bother with conspiracies.”

“I can’t solve a problem unless I know where it’s root is, and who to go to if I want it fixed.”

“If such a person even exists,” said Lynnette. “And I doubt they do.”

“Still. I need more information.”

“And where, pray tell, are you going to get it?”

Morgana sighed. “I know a guy.”

“Of course you can do. One you can trust?”

“Hell no. But one who might know something.”

“The sort of something that will actually benefit you, or the variety that only digs this particular hole deeper?”

Morgana sighed. “At this point? I don’t think there’s a difference between the two.”