I was awake five minutes before my alarm went off. I always was, but if I didn’t set the thing, then I’d oversleep. And today was a day I couldn’t afford to sleep through, so I ended up just staring at the digital clock face as it blinked along.

It didn’t have a chance to buzz once before I flicked it off with a burst of blue magic. I groaned and sat up in my bed, wincing as I tried to work out all the kinks in my spine. I must’ve slept wrong again. The faintest glow of the sun knifed its way through the blinds in my hotel window, so I flicked them open with some more telekinesis. Hopefully the light would help me wake up.

It took a lot of effort, but I rolled out of bed. I arched my back and waddled over to the window on my tip-hooves and ended up resting my forehead against the glass. All around, a huge city with harsh steel skyscrapers rising up to touch the heavens stood in the morning mists. Resolute. Defiant. I saw a wing of ringbirds fly between a few of the skyscrapers some blocks away. Manehattan was the heart of the Synarchy’s military, and every day, it shuttled thousands of soldiers—thousands of heroes, as the state-run news insisted on calling them—off to the Front. It was only a matter of time before the Coalition collapsed.

A shame I wouldn’t be here to see it. The last tickertape Triumph was twenty years ago. I was just a little filly then. I didn’t want to miss this one when we finally laid low the bastards who attacked us. Even as it seemed increasingly unlikely with each passing day.

I heard the coffee machine flick on in the kitchen, so I left the window behind. A turn to the right and a pair of steps took me right to the vanity in the cramped bedroom, and I got out my brush and comb and went to work. When I was done, my blue coat glistened like sapphires, and the sharp zigzag between the blue base and white fringes of my mane and tail were perfect, not a single hair out of order. I tilted my head this way and that, keeping my eyes locked on the yellow discs of the mare in the mirror. I might as well look presentable on my last day on Equus.

The coffee machine beeped at me, and I moved from the bedroom to the kitchen, stopping to use the bathroom along the way. I didn’t even look at the machine as I floated the cup of coffee directly to my lips. As soon as I took a sip, I hummed and pranced in place a bit. I was already feeling more alive.

I sat down at the table and flicked on the portable radio. I would’ve turned the telescreen on to catch the news that way, but power rationing meant that the electricity wouldn’t come back on for another two hours. Everything I needed to run in the morning could be charged by horn, so I made do. We all did. We had to. But if my research went anywhere, maybe we wouldn’t have to.

I caught the tail end of a weather report, but I didn’t pay it any attention; why would I have to? Equus’ weather wasn’t going to be my problem much longer. But I did turn the volume up a bit when Junebug launched into the after-action report of yesterday’s fighting at the front.

“Morale among our soldiers at the front remains high as ever! Yesterday saw another substantial push from Coalition forces in Bramble Ridge. An estimated fifty thousand enemy soldiers, supported by artillery and heavy tanks, attempted to force the ridge, but once again they were repelled by our brave heroes. General Beachhead has informed us that this should mark a turning point in the battles in the east, as the enemy simply cannot maintain this level of offensives for much longer. Our reporters in the field have told us that action in the other fronts has been contained to skirmishing as we bolster our numbers to defend our country. Remember: we must all do our part to support our heroes in the field. Only through pony unity will we defeat the forces of darkness that threaten our way of life.”

It was interesting what you could read out of the radio by what wasn’t said. Though ingrained patriotism made me believe that we would one day triumph over the enemy, recent reversals on the field had at least delayed our victory. It was obvious to anypony who listened closely that we wouldn’t see victory this year. A month ago we were on the doorstep of the caribou capital, and just last week the radio mentioned reports of fighting nearly fifty miles outside of it. And the lack of any mention of fighting on the other fronts more likely than not meant that we were still withdrawing. The radios were the first to announce our victories and praise our defenses, but they always remained silent when it came to our losses.

Of course, the average Equestrian wouldn’t know that. It wasn’t their place to know that. They fought and struggled for our High Council and our High Queen, as was expected of them. I only knew because I had enough gray matter in my skull to make a thought or two of my own instead of letting the propaganda do all the thinking for me.

Junebug continued to chirp along on the radio; I didn’t know if she was always this cheery or if the Synarchy paid her to be. “Back at home, High Queen Twilight Sparkle will be attending Harmony Day services tomorrow outside of the ruins of Ponyville, in honor of those who died in the centaur Tirek’s attacks on the nation two hundred and twenty-one years ago. As is custom, she will lay down wreaths on the graves of each of the former Element Bearers, and will conclude her services with a private visit to the sarcophagi of the princesses. May they watch over us in our darkest hours, and give ponykind the strength we need to stand against the Coalition.”

I flicked the radio off and set my empty coffee cup aside. I’d heard all this a million times already; they just phrased it differently each year. But so long as the soldiers did their job, I did mine, and the High Queen did hers, then Equestria would survive. The Synarchy would weather the toughest the other species could throw at us.

Of that, I was certain.

“Ember, put the gun down!”

I tell you what, that was not the first thing I expected to hear after snapping back from… whatever that was. I was still shaken up from what I’d seen, what I’d felt. It all seemed so real. Was I hallucinating? Did that shock off the keyboard fuck me up more than I thought?

I was back in the big room with the computers and that ring thing, only I wasn’t anywhere near the keyboard. I was maybe a dozen strides away at this point, but what frightened me most was that I had my rifle leveled at Ace’s head, and she in turn had hers pointed at mine.

What the fuck was happening?!

I tried to lower the gun, but my body wouldn’t respond to me. It felt like I was trapped inside of my skull, looking out at the world like my eyes were windows. My leg shifted without me making it. I swallowed against my will. My breathing was quick and ragged, and I felt like I was suffocating because I didn’t have any control over it. And my orange magic was blue. The same blue I’d had in… whatever that just was.

Was this the wailer fungus? Had I finally lost control? But my body was acting like it was intelligent, not some mindless zombie…

I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t make myself.

“Who you?” my body said, and the way it pronounced the words was… odd. It was garbled, to say the least, and my tongue didn’t feel like it was moving right. My face grimaced in response to the sensation, and I couldn’t stop tonguing my teeth like I didn’t know what they were. Gauge must’ve seen it too, because he took a step out from behind Ace’s shoulder.

“Ember, we’re your friends,” he said, almost like he was speaking to a frightened child. “That keyboard must’ve given you a good jolt. I’m Gauge, remember? This is Ace. Just… put the gun down. It’s okay.”

My body stepped back; whoever or whatever was in control didn’t trust him. I tried once again to take control of my limbs, and my body jolted in response.

She’s awake. Are you awake?

I stopped. I’d clearly heard a mare’s voice, but it sounded like it came from within my skull, like a thought. Not only that, but it was familiar.

Well, if she was in my head… that would honestly explain a few things. Give me my body back! I thought-screamed at her, and I started wrestling for control of my limbs. The blue magic holding my rifle aloft changed to orange, and before it could flicker back, I ejected the mag and fired the bullet in the chamber into the floor. Seeing that I was disarmed, Ace dropped her rifle as well, only to tackle me. I grunted as I slammed into the ground beneath her, and she ended up straddling me with a pistol pressed under my jaw.

“Don’t move,” she warned, and I felt the other presence in my skull stop struggling with me, which let me take control of my body again. “What in the blazes is going on?!”

“Ace!” I gasped. Then I just tried to force words out for as long as I had control over my mouth. “I don’t know what’s happening, it’s like there’s somepony else in my head with me, I don’t—!”

“Get off of me!” the other me insisted, again speaking in a slightly off accent from how I normally spoke. “What year is it? Has there been any news from the Synarchy?”

“Synarchy?” Ace asked with a blink. Frowning, she just jammed the pistol harder into the soft part under my jaw. “Who the fuck are you?”

Gauge’s tugged on her shoulder with a hoof. “Get that gun away from her! Don’t hurt Ember!”

I tried to take control of my mouth again, but the presence in my brain just forced me out; it was like by surrendering her control of my limbs, she’d made her hold on my mouth unbreakable. “My name is Dr. Electric Surge. I ran this facility before the mutiny. When the soldiers attacked, I fell through the torus in this room and died.”

Ace just had a dumbstruck look on her face. “Wait, you’re Dr. Surge? You died? What?”

“The torus ring was my work. We were testing to see if we could harvest energy from the ambient mana that surrounds us. To summarize a long story, you can, and we did. But that’s not the only thing it can harvest.

“Souls are made of mana, and they’re bound to our bodies in some way we don’t understand. But that bond can be severed by a strong enough force, one which I had the misfortune of determining can be applied by the torus. My soul has been trapped in this installation, in the very copper and wiring that powers it, ever since I died. Do you understand what kind of Tartarus that is? To be dead for years and years, to watch from the cameras as your body decomposes into a skeleton?” Apparently, her control over my mouth included the ability to spit, because she spat into Ace’s face. “I don’t care if you threaten me with a gun to my head, I’m more than happy to die and move on! But your friend is still in here, and I’m not sure she’d agree with me.”

Since I couldn’t use my mouth at the moment, I vigorously shook my head from side to side. I really wanted to keep my head.

Ace sighed and slowly stood up, then gestured for me to do the same. “Let us speak with her. I ain’t gonna do anything just yet, I promise.”

I stood up as well, and I felt Surge let go of my mouth. “Yeah, I’d really like to keep my head, thanks,” I said with a chuckle.

Both Gauge and Ace just eyed me warily, though. “So, what are we going to do about this?” Gauge asked us. “Dr. Surge, can you… I don’t know, get out of my friend’s head?”

I felt Surge step in to grab control of my voice again. “I need her body to stay alive. The mana her horn produces can sustain me. I could leave to jump into a circuit, for example, but without a steady source of mana, I’d fade away.”

“How’s about we just start from the beginning,” Ace said, still eying me like I was going to lash out at her. I didn’t think I’d be able to stop Surge if she took control of my horn before she did something nasty. “Ace, Gauge, and the mare you’re possessing is Ember.” She pointed her wingtips to each of us in succession. “Were you the voice from earlier?”

Surge pulled my lips into a frown. “Yes, that was me. I’d been in a thoughtless torpor, a coma, if you could call it that, for decades. It was the closest to death I could come.” She sighed with my lungs, and I think she would’ve made me shake my head if I’d let her. “But then you restarted the security system, disrupted the flow of power from the torus to the rest of the installation. I felt that. It woke me up. And then I knew that I had a chance of either escaping from this cursed place or finally ending my suffering.”

Gauge immediately stepped forward and pressed his nose against mine, a hateful glare in his eyes. “You’re the one who triggered the purge, aren’t you? Where’s Nova?! Where’s my marefriend?!”

“If you’re worried about her safety, Stripy, then don’t be,” Surge retorted, sneering at him. I guess that was her old Synarchy racism showing. If she stayed in my head long… well, I wondered how long it’d take before Gauge beat me up just trying to shut her up. “And that was an accident. I needed to restart security to see what was happening up there. The system triggered the purge on its own, not me.”

“Where can we find her?” Ace asked.

“Before I jumped to Ember’s skull, I noted doors being opened and shut in the cybernetics wing. I’d imagine she’s there, and she’s mobile. She was near the surgery rooms last I knew.”

I sort of pushed her out of my mouth for the sake of actually being able to speak with my friends. “We should go there quick. We don’t know if that’s dangerous or not.”

“It’s not,” Surge flatly insisted. It was kind of weird to be answering myself like this; this was going to take some getting used to. “I was in charge of this installation for four years, I know it inside and out. There’s nothing dangerous in the cybernetics wing.”

I feel like we all breathed a sigh of relief at that. “Good. We should still go see her anyways,” Gauge insisted.

I nodded. “We can talk and walk,” I said. As we turned down toward the stairs, I asked aloud, “So did you read the message that was sent to the computer there? The shit that the other bastard stole?”

“I wasn’t aware that the installation had received any outside communications until you woke me,” Surge said. “But yes, I remember it clearly.”

As she said that, I felt something flit across my mind. It was like Surge took what she remembered and pushed it against my consciousness. Suddenly I ‘remembered’ the message on the computer terminal as if I’d seen it maybe an hour ago:

>>>SECURE SIGNAL INCOMING FROM INSTALLATION BIC01

>>>PREPARING SECURITY PROTOCOLS

>>>INITIATING HANDSHAKE…………100%

>>>DATA TRANSMISSION RECEIVED

>>>WARNING!!! ATTEMPTING TO ACCESS ENCRYPTED FILES!!!

>>>ENCRYPTION LEVEL: ONYX STAR

>>>OVERRIDE: EOH PROTOCOL DUSK

>>>EMERGENCY OVERRIDE INITIATED

>>>ACTIVATING WISPR COORDINATE TAG…………100%

>>>BROADCASTING DISTRESS FREQUENCY 27.065MHZ

>>>ADGGA | I | 36-J

I stumbled on the stairs as that all flashed against my mind’s eye, but Surge took control of my legs and stabilized me before I—or I guess we—could fall down the steps. “Woah…” I groaned, rubbing at my skull. “That was… trippy.”

Gauge touched my shoulder. “You alright, Em?”

“She’ll be fine, zebra,” Surge informed him. “I showed her what I saw instead of saying it aloud. It’s much faster that way.”

“Also disorienting,” I muttered, shaking my head. “The next code piece is ADGGA and an I. Usual 36-J and all that.”

“EOH Protocol: Dusk,” Surge murmured aloud. She turned my features into a frown, and I could tell she was thinking about what exactly she had seen.

But then she forced me to turn around on the stairs and glare up at my friends. “I’ve answered your questions, so now it’s my turn. What happened to the Synarchy? What happened to Auris? Who exactly are you three, and why are you after these code pieces?”

“Talk and walk,” I insisted, turning around again and forcing us down the stairs. “Answer number one: we don’t fucking know. It’s been two hundred winters or some shit like that since Auris last heard shit from them. We called it ‘the Silence’, though I guess with these code pieces, the Silence is over now. In that time, the planet basically blew up and now there’s all sorts of fun things running around the countryside, like rape and slavery and all that nasty shit. There’s answer number two for you.”

I made it to the bottom of the stairs and started toward the door, Ace and Gauge right behind me. “As for the third and fourth answers, you already know our names, and Gauge and me are with the remains of the Synarchy’s special forces or some shit, or at least that’s what they used to be before they became paladin protectors of the valley to the north. The Sentinels, they call themselves now. And Ace is…” I kind of stumbled on words to say.

Ace apparently had no qualms about admitting her ‘profession’; I’m pretty sure she took pride in it, honestly. “Outlaw,” she said, with a little smirk on her muzzle. “Though I ain’t the common kind.”

Surge looked at her with annoyance and disbelief; I knew because she twisted my expression to match hers. “An outlaw is an outlaw, whether they’re common or not. Now I have concerns that apparently a lawless mare is plundering the secrets of the greatest nation to have ever existed.”

Ace jabbed her hoof into my chest. “Greatest nation or not, Equestria’s fucking dead, Surge. And now us poor shits on this fuckin planet gotta scavenge and plunder what you fuckers left us if we’re gonna have any chance at surviving. You fuckers done killed yourselves, and you dragged a whole ‘nother planet down with you.”

My horn flared with blue magic as Surge pushed Ace back. “You will not disrespect Equestria and our High Queen.”

“Who’s gonna stop me? Sure as shit ain’t gonna be your army. Sure as shit ain’t gonna be your ‘High Queen.’” She sneered at me (or I guess at Surge) and walked past us. “Y’all fuckers destroyed yourselves. Now we gotta deal with the aftermath. Get over it.”

Surge was silent, and I could feel her thinking in my skull. It was a weird sensation; I got wisps and hints of words and ideas that weren’t my own, almost like I was talking in a room but I could overhear bits of conversation in the far corner. I used the opportunity to take control of my mouth back and try to sort things out before this mare from the past started yanking my limbs around at will. “Okay, Surge, before we go any further, I want to at least lay down some ground rules. I’ll let you use my mouth as you want, but don’t fuck with the rest of my body, okay?”

Gauge shot me a concerned look. “You sure that’s okay, Em?” he asked me. “We should try to find something to get her into and keep her out of you. I don’t want you to have to keep another pony in your head.”

“You regard me like a parasite, don’t you, Stripy?” Surge spat at him. “An evil spirit, perhaps? Your kind was always so fascinated with your ancestry and your strange voodoo magic that you refused to let us bring you into the modern age. You were always so afraid of what you didn’t understand, too afraid to actually try to understand in the first place. That is why we colonized Zebrica, and you threw our gift of enlightenment back in our faces and spat at our hooves.”

“And that’s part of the reason,” Gauge grumbled, rolling his eyes. “I’d like you to stop making my friend spout racial slurs.”

“Implying that you share our genes! You are a different species, though a closely related one. It is obvious simply by looking in our genetic code which of the two of us the Sisters decided to raise from the filth—!”

I basically mentally slapped Surge out of control of my mouth. “That’s enough, you crazy racist scientist,” I growled. “I swear, I don’t know how the fuck I’m going to do anything if I have to spend all day literally arguing with myself. Just… try not to fuck with my body and I’ll let you speak at will, alright?”

She thought hard about that for a few moments, trying to decide if it was worth it to call me out for being disrespectful to her and her obviously superior Synarchic ways. “Alright. That is… agreeable,” she finally said. “In return, I can offer you my help in spellcasting. I can combine my soul energy with yours to create more powerful spells.”

“But, like, don’t you need your soul energy to stay alive?”

“That’s why I must stay in your body, Ember. I need your body to produce mana to sustain me, and in turn, I can use that to help you. I have effectively doubled the size of your mana pool, and added my own knowledge of spells to you. Speaking of which…”

I shivered as I felt an icy blue hoof go poking through my memories. I felt her reviewing the basic cantrips I knew that I used to cast spells, and in what ways I knew how to use them. It was weird to suddenly be thinking about fire protection, shields, and fireballs against my will.

Then I felt her disapproval. “I expected more from a unicorn like you. You have an incredibly limited repertoire at your disposal. It explains why I find your brain so… cozy.”

I blinked. “Did you just fucking call me an idiot?”

“Did I?”

I growled and smacked my head against the wall; I knew from the surprised jolt in my mind that Surge felt the crack of pain too, though maybe more sharply than me since she hadn’t known pain for so long. “I’m surprised it’s not more cramped with a fucking zombie fungus in there, too.”

“Oh, is that what that is? I was wondering. I thought it was just cancerous and I could deal with it later when you were resting.” She poked around my brain some more, and I felt a sickening wave of nausea overcome me. “Yes, Cortexus equus. A particularly nasty fungus, or so I heard; I was a mana engineer first and foremost, not a biologist. Usually preys on wargs and spider rats, but adapts to equine physiology surprisingly easily.” I felt her preparing something in my skull, and Gauge and Ace warily watched me. “I can take care of this, but it will hurt.”

“Hurt?” I asked, nervously shuffling my hooves. “How much is—!!!”

I broke down into uncontrollable screaming as Surge did something to my brain. It felt like she’d taken a white-hot bar of iron straight from the forge and driven it through my skull from horn to neck. I’m pretty sure I fell to the ground and started convulsing, and I’m pretty sure that Ace and Gauge hovered over me, worriedly asking me what was happening and insisting that I’d be okay, but I was in too much fucking pain to comprehend any of that. After what felt like an eternity, the pain finally ebbed away, and instead I was left with a pounding headache that felt like nothing but gentle head pats in comparison.

Even though I could hardly move from where I lay on the ground, Surge used my mouth and voice like I wasn’t in agony at all. “I told you it would be painful.”

“What did you do to her?” Gauge asked. “She was screaming…”

“Better than wailing, wouldn’t you agree, Stripy?” she asked him. “I fried the tumorous mass that the fungus was building on her brainstem. I also had to track down spores and mycelium bodies elsewhere in her brain and burn those, too. I think even you could understand just how painful such a procedure would be… though I do admit that the level of control I have in this form is astounding. I can navigate her brain down to the cellular level. I wouldn’t have anywhere near such control as a flesh and blood surgeon.”

“If you could avoid fucking with my brain and my mind, that’d be awesome,” I groaned, finally finding the strength to stand up again. “Please?”

“I make no promises,” Surge said, but I could feel her acting all sardonic in my head. Wait, fuck, I didn’t even know what ‘sardonic’ meant. Was she putting words in my brain too, now?

Then she urged me forward, since I guess I was standing too still for her liking. “You’re welcome, by the way,” she said. “Now there’s only two of us in here. And not to push the envelope, but we should find your friend and leave this place behind. It’s been my tomb for two centuries now. I want to see something else. Anything else.”

“Agreed,” Ace said, taking point back down the hall. “We can all sit ‘round the campfire and trade stories later, because Surge, I promise you, we all got a lot of questions.”

“As do I,” the pony in my brain said. “Can I at least trust that you uncivilized killers of the far future are literate? Can you at least read the directions to the cybernetics wing, or do I have to guide you?”

“We had books and simple schools in Ember’s and my settlement,” Gauge said. Then he whipped his head over his shoulder and glared back at me and Surge. “And before you say anything, yes, I know how to read, and I probably know my way around the guts of a machine better than you do. So, can it.”

“I’m surprised you even would be taught how if you work menial, filthy labor,” Surge muttered. Thankfully, Gauge knew better than to respond to that barb. I really didn’t want to get sidetracked into yet another racist argument, and thankfully for your enjoyment, we managed to get our shit together and fucking focus from there on out.

We made it to the entrance to the cybernetics wing, but before we could enter, Surge brought us to a stop. “I’m no longer in the circuits of this installation, so I can’t stop the turrets and defenses from firing on you like I did earlier,” she warned us. “And I will not jump back into the grid just to keep them off of you. I won’t risk you leaving me here. If you want to leave the installation, I am coming with you.”

I wasn’t sure if she was just being overly cautious with us or she’d actually sensed a few ideas I had, but I nodded regardless. “Can you at least give us a heads-up to what we’ll have to fight through?”

“There are two turrets in the room immediately ahead. Beyond that, there are a pair in the administrative offices, and another four in the secure labs. I hope your friend didn’t wander into any of those since I stopped controlling them, though I do recall her using a modified SCaR unit to disable some of them anyway. Clever. I can appreciate a pony with enough skill to control one of those and keep it functioning centuries after it was built.”

“She didn’t do it, I did,” Gauge said with a pleased smirk. “Built SCaR back up from scratch using several other sentry units. Even tweaked its response parameters some, gave him a little bit of a personality.”

Surge scowled at him, but I focused my will on keeping her out of my mouth. I felt a pang of irritation and anger bounce off my mind, but simply the satisfaction of denying her another racist remark was enough for me. Instead, while I was distracted focusing on my mouth, she kicked me out of my limbs long enough to open the door with a wash of blue magic and march inside.

She didn’t draw my gun as she entered the room, despite Ace’s surprised protests. Instead, my horn glowed with her blue magic, and I felt an unfamiliar spell building along its grooves. She manifested two small shields on either side of my head to block the barrage of bullets that the turrets fired at us, and while doing that, she managed to cast another spell directly at the turrets. They sparked, and then just like that, they fizzled and died.

I reasserted myself over my body and pushed her back to the little space in the back of my mind; it was already getting much easier for me to push her influence around now that I knew how to deal with it, and I guess my will was stronger than hers because this was my body or something like that. “What spell was that?” I asked, warily watching the turrets. They didn’t seem physically damaged in any way, just… off.

“Electromagnetic pulse,” she said. “Just as you have an affinity for fire, I have an affinity for electricity. I disrupted their electronics with a single spell and severely crippled their circuitry. They will be inoperable until they get repairs.”

“Which’ll be never,” Ace said, brushing past us. “I hate to admit it, but maybe we should let Ember and racist grandma take point. I ain’t got nothing that can deal with turrets as simple or as quickly as that.” She nudged Gauge and added, “Why waste bullets when we got these two to deal with everything this place throws at us?”

“Good a point as any,” I said, walking further into the room, at least until I felt Surge trying to take control of my legs. Sighing, I yielded control to her and just started looking around. “You know where you’re going, you do the walking.”

“That’s still so weird to hear…” Gauge muttered behind me.

“Try being the one living it. It’s fucking weird.”

“Try not having a body for two centuries,” Surge countered, “And suddenly finding yourself in control of flesh and blood again. It’s funny how you forget how everything works, and how quickly it all comes back to you.” She chuckled and added, “I’m just glad I’m not in a stallion’s body. That would feel strange.”

I couldn’t imagine that, but I’m not going to go into my own thoughts on that matter. “I’m with you on that, sister,” I said as she walked past a desk and toward a big door. “That’d be all sorts of fucked up.”

“Even more than this already is?” Ace grumbled.

Surge chose to ignore her and her blue magic pressed a control panel. She twisted my muzzle into a frown when nothing happened, and a wispy jolt of blue energy hit the control panel. In that moment, it felt like my head was a little less cramped, and the panel suddenly lit up. This time the door opened on its own, and the blue wisps jumped back to my horn.

“What was that?” I asked her.

“Being incorporeal has its advantages,” she said. “Like I mentioned before, I can jump to electronics and back, making them work how I want, within the limitations of their design. I bypassed a broken diode in the door panel to open this door, for instance.”

I just nodded, and Surge walked us through the door into a long hallway. All the doors on our left and right were sealed shut and dark, but Surge just went by all of them without stopping. Her eyes (and mine) were set on a big door at the end of the hall labeled ‘SURGERY WING’. This door, however, immediately opened when Surge pressed the button.

She came to a stop just inside the door and sighed. “I spent so much time in these wings. It’s… melancholic to be walking through them again. I feel like I’m out of my time, out of place.” She hung her head. “Everypony I knew when I fell through that torus is dead. I’m the last mare of a dead world.”

We were all quiet as she sorted her thoughts, but she shook her head and kept walking. “The surgery wings are this way. Come along.”

The four of us walked through the room. Like the main entrance, it had a reception area, though it was much smaller and pushed out to the side so it wouldn’t interfere with ponies entering and exiting the wing. Like the other rooms, this one was devoid of bodies. I had a feeling I really needed to ask Surge about just what happened here, but now wasn’t the time.

“Hold,” Surge said, and she stopped me next to some exposed wiring. “I’m going to try to find your friend. Do not try to go anywhere until I say so, or I will not let you leave. Okay?”

Gauge shrugged. “Not like we have much choice in the matter.”

Surge smiled at him. “Thought so, Stripy.” Then my horn flared a wispy blue, and suddenly Surge was gone from my skull.

I rubbed my face and groaned; now it felt weird to not have another pony in my brain fighting for control of my limbs. “Fuck, I really don’t want to let her back into my brain…”

“But you have to,” Ace finished for me, and I sighed and dipped my head. “Otherwise that mare ain’t gonna let us leave.”

“I know…” I groaned. “It’s just… you try having somepony living in your head with you. I want to do something and it feels like I need her permission to do it easily. Sure, I can force her to let me do what I want, but if she doesn’t agree with me, it’s a fucking pain in the ass.” I flipped open my bags and stuck a cigarette between my teeth; I really fucking needed it after all this bullshit. “And you know what the scary part is? I can hear her thinking, feel her emotions. It’s not right. And after that keyboard zapped me—or I guess, she zapped me—I think I relived one of her memories.”

Gauge’s ear perked up. “Really?” he asked. “From before the Silence?”

I nodded. “Yeah. She was back on Equestria.” I shuddered as I remembered this something I shouldn’t have been able to. “It wasn’t like watching a vid, though. I was her. I had her thoughts and emotions and her knowledge on the war and everything. I wasn’t Ember. I was Surge.” A cold shiver ran down my spine and I shut my eyes. “It… I-It’s scary, now that I think about it. I want to be Ember, not Surge or some combination of the two of us. And the longer she’s inside of my head…”

Gauge gave me a hug, while Ace stepped forward and patted my shoulder. “You’ll be alright,” she said. “You ain’t gonna let her change who you are. I ain’t been traveling with you long, but I know you’re strong. Stronger than you look. And, well,” her eyes looked around the room we were in. “I might not’ve found any treasure or weapons like I hoped, but this code thing y’all are pursuing? It’s important, whatever it is. And if you’re doing something about it, trying to stop Reclaimer from getting his dirty hooves on it, then I’m with you, all the way.”

I was a little taken aback; some part of me figured that Ace would just leave after we went through this installation. It was the first I’d really heard about her staying with us. But she was a great fighter, and she seemed to know her way around Auris like nopony else. She’d make this so much easier for all of us.

“Well, we’re happy to have you, then,” I said. I was just relieved to have her expertise and know-how with us, but I will admit that once I got past her walls, she reminded me of myself. She truly wanted to help ponies, even if she often took the simplest or most practical route without much care for who got caught in the crossfire. Which sounds kind of weird at first, but it’s who she was. She’d kill a dozen minions without a thought if it meant stopping their higher-ups from hurting more.

Of course, that was a dangerous morality to walk, and I certainly didn’t always approve, but maybe I’d be able to iron that out of her.

“It’s just because you’re a pegasus,” Gauge teased her. “Ember has a thing for them.”

I blushed. “So what if I do?”

Gauge blinked. “Snrkktt!” he snorted. “I was just teasing you, Em, but that’s nice to know, too. Must run in your blood.”

Ace rubbed the back of her neck with the crest of a wing. “ Didn’t know you felt that way about me. Should’ve just said something, it’s been too long since I had a roll in the hay.”

I hung my head, though now it was more from darker thoughts than embarrassment. “I’m… n-not looking for love, right now.”

Ace clammed up immediately, and when she dipped her head, it was slow and understanding. “If it’s any consolation… I know how you feel.”

The door in front of us opened with a sharp hiss, revealing a short hallway that branched left and right. Once more, Surge’s voice crackled over the speakers, though she definitely sounded less insane than the first time she’d spoken to us that way. “Your friend is in the fitting and calibration room to the right. I have to help her with the last bits of the procedure. She’s remarkably intelligent to have gotten it that far on her own, though these last few steps do require some assistance.”

“Procedure?” Gauges asked, pushing past me so he could go down the hall first. “What do you mean?”

“Something that’d go over your head, Stripy,” Surge hissed back. “But let’s just say that we’re putting her back together.”

Putting her back together? Considering we were in the guts of one of the Synarchy’s most top-secret installations, that could’ve meant anything. And Gauge was likely just as worried about what that meant as I was, probably even more so. He was all but cantering down the path Surge had told us to go, and as soon as a door near him opened on its own, he went into it.

I followed a little ways behind and stood off to the side of the room. An assortment of mechanical arms glided along from where they hung in the ceiling, obviously working on something (or somepony) in a chair with its back turned to us. Gauge approached the chair warily, and Ace rested a wingtip on my shoulder when I went to follow him. Within seconds, the arms all abruptly stopped, and then they retracted in unison to lie flat against the ceiling.

“Nov?” Gauge asked, finally reaching the chair. “Nov, is that—?”

A flash of metal cut him off, and me and Ace both flinched. A series of pleated metal panels extended from the right side of the chair, ending in the rough shape of a wing. White feathers stuck out from the other, and when they began to move in unison, I recognized the happy laughter coming from the chair.

The chair spun around, and I felt all my worry suddenly go away when I saw Nova grinning at us. She was a little bruised and nearly gray from dust, but she was alive and in one piece. “Gauge! Ember! Ace!” she exclaimed, jumping out of the seat as the belts holding her torso down popped free on their own. “You’re okay! Oh, I was so worried!”

Gauge rushed forward and wrapped Nova in a tight hug, one which she returned with her wings, one feathery and one metal. “We thought you were dead!” Gauge exclaimed, nuzzling his marefriend. “How did you—but where—?”

Nova booped his nose. “It’s… it’s a really long story. But SCaR helped a ton, didn’t you, little guy?” She looked over her shoulder as SCaR came flying in from another room, and the drone flew in close enough for Gauge to pet it before it began idly floating around the room like it usually did.

By now, I’d finally managed to join my two friends now that they’d had their moment, and the first thing that drew my eyes was Nova’s shiny new wing. It was sleek and thin, and it folded and flexed and twitched like a real wing would. But I could tell just from looking at it that it was some kind of stainless steel alloy, or maybe titanium, though it had a very slight blue tint to it that I couldn’t explain. Each ‘feather’ was individually shaped, and even though they slid against each other as Nova subconsciously fidgeted with her prosthetic, they glided along on well-oiled joints. Just from the way that the feathers caught the light, I could tell that they were razor-edged and probably incredibly sharp. Honestly, it looked like a combat prosthetic, and given the kind of ponies that’d made it, I didn’t find that hard to believe at all.

“Nice wing,” I said, tapping it. I noticed that Nova moved the wing in response, almost like I’d touched the real flesh and blood thing. “You look like such a fucking badass now.”

“Ember!” Nova squealed, turning her excitement from Gauge to me and burying her nose in the hair along the side of my neck. Then she held out her wing and looked at it. “Isn’t it amazing?! I can feel it and move it like it’s the real thing! It’s not even that heavy despite being made out of metal; it probably weighs as much as my other wing!”

“It was designed to be as integrated and unobtrusive as possible,” Surge said from the speakers. Nova jumped at the dead mare’s voice, but Surge didn’t notice or didn’t care. “We lost fliers constantly, especially when fighting the dragons and harpies. Pegasi aren’t tough enough to be hoof soldiers; their real value is in the sky. The Experimental Wartime Injury Neural Gateway prosthetic—X-WING—was simply the latest effort. It performed so well in trials that we submitted a proposal to the Department of War to replace and augment the wings of our fliers currently in active service with this prosthetic. We calculated it would have increased lethality by 17% and survivability by 9%. Sadly, this so-called ‘Silence’ happened before we could actually implement our work.”

Nova swallowed hard, but when none of us reacted with any concern, she calmed down a bit. “Who are you?” she asked. “You’re the mare from before, right?”

“That’s an explanation I’m sure your friends can deliver to you; I don’t wish to repeat myself again. Now, Ember, we’re going to leave. The easiest way out is through the emergency escape stairs the other pegasus took after downloading the contents of the computer. Head there immediately, and I’ll open everything up for you. But you aren’t leaving without me or my skeleton. I won’t leave my bones to rot here any longer.”

I nodded and turned around, certain that Surge was watching us through cameras. “Right… come on, guys, let’s get the fuck out of this shithole.”

“We’re leaving already?” Nova asked. “Can’t we stay a little longer?”

“I have locked every door in this facility save the way out. The Synarchy’s secrets were not meant for your eyes. We will be leaving immediately. There is no discussion.”

“If we can’t see those secrets, then who will?” Nova muttered under her breath as we began to backtrack. “Who is she, by the way?” she asked me.

“The soul of the doctor who used to run this place,” I said. “It’s… a long story.”

“She’s Ember’s new imaginary friend,” Ace more or less summed up. “She won’t let us leave unless we take her with us, and the only way for her to do that is for Ember to let her into her head.”

“Trust me, I’m not that happy about it,” I grumbled. “At least maybe we’ll learn something about what life was like before the Silence. That kind of knowledge has to be worth it, right?”

I could certainly kid myself about that, at least.

We made it back to the room with the big donut thingy, and I could just tell that if we weren’t in a hurry, Nova would’ve wanted to spend days here just analyzing the thing. But I could also tell when the door sealed behind us and powered off that Surge was serious about us leaving. If there were any turrets in this room, I was afraid that she was going to force us out at gunpoint.

I walked closer to the ring thing, still whirring and humming along. The frigid air felt so much colder next to this thing; I think it was the reason everything was coated in ice under the mountain. It was just sucking all the warmth out of the air. But as I walked closer, I could feel it pulling on something inside of me. Strange colors I don’t have names for flickered at the edges of my vision, and I felt like I was holding my head underwater. Rather than fuck about next to this thing that literally rips souls from their bodies, I grabbed the pale unicorn skeleton under the ring with my magic and quickly backpedaled away from the whooshing, pulsing, glowing air being drawn through the ring of the generator.

“Good,” Surge said as I walked up the stairs to where my friends were waiting by the way out. “Maybe my bones can get some rest, even if I cannot. I’ve spent too long studying my own corpse, watching it decay, noting all the tiny insignificant irregularities in the shape of my bones.”

Have I mentioned that the sentences ponies were saying today were really weird? I never expected to hear this shit in my life!

Ace, Gauge, Nova, and SCaR all waited by the door out of here; even though I felt like there was so much more we could learn from this place, we were all really antsy to get back above ground and away from the turret-filled murder base. “This is how it will work,” Surge said. “You three go first. Take my body with you. I will open the door at the top of the stairs, and then you will keep it open. It’s designed to close automatically in case of a system failure, and that pegasus from earlier damaged its circuits on his way out. I can bypass it myself, but as soon as I jump from the circuit board to Ember’s skull, it will attempt to close. Ember will wait here until you leave and do that before she is allowed to go. I will not be tricked into being left behind.”

Gauge and Nova gave me worried looks, but I waved them off and sat down on the floor. “I’ll be fine,” I assured them. “Surge needs me to leave this place. Nothing’s going to happen to me.”

“If you say so,” Nova said. The door to the stairs opened and she reluctantly set off down them, followed by Gauge and Ace. The outlaw spared me a glance and a nod before she followed the other two up the stairs, and I sighed as I waited for them to disappear. The door slammed shut after them; I guess Surge wanted to make sure I didn’t get any ideas.

It took a few minutes before the door slid open again. “They’re at the top, Ember,” Surge informed me. “Your friend is making good use of her new wing. The results are impressive given her small frame, but I wouldn’t keep her waiting.”

I stood up and immediately went to the door. “Alright. Let’s get going then.” I lowered my horn toward the panel at the door, and again, another disorienting jolt ran down the length of my horn and through my spine. At least it was nowhere near as bad as the first time, but I immediately felt Surge’s presence at the edges of my thoughts, and some of my muscles twitched as she felt them out. “Are you settled in?” I asked aloud.

As much as I can be, her consciousness thought at me, foregoing the need to use my mouth at all. The presence of nicotine in your blood disgusts me, but your body is already addicted and I don’t feel it’s worth it to undo on my end.

“Good,” I muttered back, starting to climb the stairs. “I like my body just the way it is.”

You wouldn’t want a bluer coat? I raised an eyebrow; it felt like the sour mare was actually teasing me. I’m not good at parsing through cellular DNA, but I can recognize some phenotypes by feel alone. You inherited genes for a blue coat from one of your parents; a lovely shade of sapphire, if I’m interpreting them right. And—oh, you have pegasus blood in you? Interesting. As for the rest of your genes... oh my.

“I was born in a town that’d been isolated for two centuries,” I grumbled. “I get it, I’m a little inbred. It’s not like we had much choice in the matter. Though yeah, my dad was a pegasus and he wasn’t from Blackwash, so I at least have it better than pretty much every other pony or zebra in our settlement.”

How unfortunate. Your town likely would have been assigned menial labor with this much genetic damage, were the Synarchy still around. We certainly would not have wanted you to pass on your genes. the doctor thought, returning to her usual biting remarks.

“Yeah, whatever. Fuck you too.”

And then I came across a sight I wasn’t expecting to see. At the top of the staircase, the door… simply wasn’t there anymore. The edges of the frame glowed orange, and I could tell at a glance that something extremely hot like a blowtorch had sliced through them like a hot knife through butter. But standing in front of me was just Nova, and the normally blue edges of her new prosthetic still glowed faintly, and the feathers were all arranged perpendicular to the crest so that they looked like a heat sink. A few beads of cooled steel dotted the grass around her, and Gauge and Ace just stared in awe at the two halves of the door lying on the ground.

“What the fuck…” I muttered, stepping through the hole in the door and being careful not to burn myself on the edges. “Did you do that, Nov?”

She beamed at me. “This wing is amazing!” she shouted, though it didn’t look like she could move it that well while it was cooling. “That computer mare, Surge, told me I could use it to cut apart the door. I can’t even imagine how hot the edge had to be to do that!”

“I can,” I said, admiring her work. “Metal’s my thing. You’re looking at at least 1400 degrees to do it. That’s fourteen times hotter than water’s boiling point.”

Ace whistled. “Wish I got me one of them,” she said, pointing to the wing. Then she turned to me and smiled. “Hey Surge, think we can go back in and hook me up with a pair?”

“I shudder to think of what a lawless mare such as yourself would do with prosthetics that strong,” she hissed. And I was just starting to enjoy not having her use my mouth as she wanted.

Ace shot me a sympathetic look, though I didn’t get to look at it long. Surge seized control of my eyes and my legs, and she walked me farther out into the open. Around us, the pink and gray mountains rose up from the earth like teeth, and far below, I could see a snaking blue river fed by innumerous waterfalls. A breeze rippled through my mane, and a wave of pleasure from Surge settled over me. I guess feeling wind and being outdoors for the first time in centuries could be an exhilarating experience.

“I’m alive,” Surge breathed. “I’ve been dead for two hundred orbital cycles of this damn planet… and now I’m alive.”

She turned around and made me smirk at my friends. “Let’s put my own private Tartarus as far behind me as we can, alright?”