Sunny Skies lay back in her bed, staring up at the ceiling. The cell the IS had given her was small, and smelled like dish soap. The walls were slate gray and the ceiling had one long crack in it that her eyes traced over and over again. An incandescent bulb sprayed her with harsh light for sixteen hours per day, and was turned on low for the rest. They never let her have complete darkness.

Somewhere else in the prison block, the little foal of Carpenter and Frankincense began to cry. Its wails were loud and echoed around the cell block, but Sunny didn’t yell at him. She couldn’t blame the foal for being scared. If she were in his position, she would never have stopped crying.

The two parents had been looking more and more haggard every time Sunny saw them, which wasn’t often. Then again, she was never completely sure what time it was. They didn’t let her see any clocks, and the cells had no windows to tell time with. She assumed the lights dimmed at night, but for all she knew they let them sleep from ten in the morning to six at night.

“We’re sorry!” Frankincense, the mother, yelled down the hall. “He’s just been so fussy lately!”

Sunny had to strain her voice to yell back. “It’s no problem, I just hope he gets some sleep.”

“Thank you!”

With a sigh, Sunny rolled on her side. Her golden mane flopped over her face, but she didn’t wipe it away. She let it stay there to give her some shielding from the light. Slowly, softly, the foal began to stop wailing and even started to coo. Babies were strange like that, and Sunny had never understood them.

She’d never had any brothers or sisters, and most of her early years she remembered spending them at home in her father’s library or with him while he showed her off to his colleagues. Her mother had been gone long before she could remember. Sunny shut her eyes.

“Would you be proud of me?”

The door at the end of the cell block slammed open, and the foal began to cry again. Sunny sighed and stood up, walking over to the door of her cell. She knew what was coming, and had learned not to resist. She still had a circular burn on her neck from that lesson.

Two dull-faced guards appeared at the front of her cell. In the middle of them was Agent Nightcall. He took out a key and held it in his teeth to unlock the cell. His eyes didn’t meet Sunny’s as the guards came in and grabbed her by the waist. She was hauled into the hallway and shoved toward the door at the far end.

Outside, she was met by the female agent, Rose, who stared at the ground. Beside her was a needle-nosed doctor in a white lab coat. Silver glasses wrapped around his face. He grinned cruelly at Sunny, running a hoof against her cheek.

“How have you been, Miss Skies?” he asked.

“I’ve been fine, Dr. Bond,” Sunny said, injecting fake cheerfulness into her voice. Bearing a black eye, she had also learned what happened if she back talked to him.

“Bring her to my lab,” he told the guards. “I’ll need to go wash up. We have a special visitor today.”

The guards dragged Sunny down a blank hall in the back of the IS Sundown building. She had tried to talk to them before, but they always told her to be quiet. They at least looked repentant when they threw her inside the lab before they slammed the door shut behind her.

Dr. Covalent Bond’s lab was a converted store room with machinery from Sundown General Hospital arrayed around a cold metal table. A tray of tools was locked inside a case, just in case she got any ideas. Like her cell, the room was covered in harsh light that Sunny tried to blink away. The place smelled like antiseptic and, vaguely, the air tasted like copper.

The doctor, at least, didn’t leave her waiting for long. The door opened and Dr. Bond waltzed in, a smile on his face. He took no time to walk over to her, and ignored the very concept of personal space with her. His hooves reached around her side and found the masking tape he had applied.

Bond unwrapped the tape from Sunny’s side. “So how are your wings today, Miss Skies?” he asked.

“Stiff,” she said. “As usual. I can barely feel them after a while.”

“Well, that’s what we’re trying to do. See what happens when we put them under certain . . . conditions,” he said.

Sunny held her tongue while the doctor poked and preened the feathers of her wings. She was still getting used to them, and it felt so strange to feel another pony touch them. They had appeared while she was sleeping, and the doctor had shown up the next morning.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked, shining a light in her eyes.

“As well as I could in a place like this,” she said.

Bond pursed his lips. “Now, now, you are a guest here with us, Miss Skies. Do try to show a little hospitality.” He slapped her lightly below the chin, then started wiping off the metal table. “I’m afraid we won’t have much time to do a proper examination today. I have a guest arriving and I’m going to need to . . . show you off. I’ll have to make sure that you are your best for her.”

“How will you do that?” Sunny asked.

“Hop on up here and you’ll see.”

Sunny hesitated for a moment, then sighed. She wasn’t interested in getting another mark on her, so she walked to the table and swung herself up. The metal was deathly cold against her coat and skin, and she shivered. She lay on her back, but Bond shook his head.

“On your side, with your back facing me,” he said.

She did as she was told, but she had to bite her lip from saying anything back. She hated herself right then, doing as the doctor ordered without protest. Every fiber of her being told her to scream at him, to lash back at him, but the marks and bruises on her body cowed her. They made the experience even more revolting.

Before she could act in surprise, the doctor took some rope hanging on one wall and tied her hooves down to the table, leaving Sunny unable to move. Goosebumps rose on her skin as her heart started to beat faster. Little beads of sweat formed on her forehead and she started to whimper.

“Wh-What are you doing?” she asked.

“I told you, I have a special guest arriving today,” Bond said, “and I don’t want you to cause her any distractions. Director B absolutely hates them, and she’ll have my head if I mess this up.”

He began to hum, and Sunny felt him wipe something on her back. Her breath started to quicken when she realized it was right on her spine. She tried to fight, to inch her way away from his prying hooves and what she knew was coming, but it was no use. A sharp electric shock ran through her body and Sunny yelled once before lying still on the table, moaning softly and twitching.

“Now, now, no fighting today,” Bond said, putting away the stun gun. He carefully picked up a large syringe with his teeth and walked toward Sunny. He placed the needle on a bump in the mare’s back, then pressed the needle inside.

He heard her whimper and moan, but the electric shock had taken its toll on her, and Dr. Bond found no more resistance as he emptied the inky fluid into Sunny’s spinal column. He withdrew the needle and cleaned the small wound with a sterilizing cloth.

“There, all done,” he said. “If you can’t feel anything, then you know it’s working. That should keep you in a state of minor paralysis while the Director visits, and a few hours afterwards. Nothing permanently damaging, though. We wouldn’t want our favorite little subject getting hurt.”

He left her there, laying on the table. Sunny had to bite back salty tears as she gradually felt her limbs go numb one by one. It was a horrifying experience, to be losing control of her whole body. If she could have started shaking she would have. Eventually, though, she lay on the table unable to feel anything, just listening to the soft whir of the machines in the room.

The tears came easy to her then, flowing unbidden down her cheeks and forming a puddle beneath her head on the cold, hard table.

Doctor Bond stood just outside the IS building along with several security stallions and the two senior agents on the site, Agents Nightcall and Flower. The two of them stuck close together and hadn’t spoken to the doctor since his arrival. Their eyes were cast on the ground, though it might have just been because of the glare.

The midday light over Sundown was harsh, and beat down mercilessly on the blacktop outside the building. The glare from the downtown glass office buildings was intense, and Dr. Bond kept a hoof over his face to keep out the sun. He watched as, for a brief moment, that same sun was blotted out by a massive spinner that moved in front of it.

Twin blades kicked up dust and debris from the parking lot outside the building and threw them around in the buffeting wind. Dr. Bond’s coat flapped hard in the wash, but he paid it no mind. Instead, he watched the spinner settle down onto three wheels and a side hatch open on the fuselage. A ramp extended and a small legion of IS agents marched out, their gazes sweeping the small crowd.

Once they appeared satisfied, the Director herself cantered out of the vehicle, her head held up high. Her signature white mane whipped in the wind, and made her look like a warrior striding onto the battlefield. She, unlike the rest of the agents, wore nothing. To Bond, he had always thought it was her way of challenging the resolve her agents had.

She walked straight to the doctor, ignoring the rest of the procession. “Do you still have the subject in custody?” she asked.

“Yes, of course, ma’am,” Bond said.

“Good,” she said. “It seems, lately, that our agents have been having trouble keeping anything from slipping out of their hooves.” She beckoned to her accompanying agents and they ran ahead into the building to sweep it for her. The Director walked with Bond into the building, her eyes holding steadily upon his.

Bond coughed and felt himself sweat a little. “Director Bilhaus,” he said, “before we go in, I must inform you that I have access to the subject for only a few days. As such, I have had a very limited amount of time to run any experiments or tests on her. I’ve only been able to gather preliminary knowledge based on what little we know.”

“Preliminaries will have to do in a time like this.” Bilhaus swept a hoof through her mane. “The Joint Command staff urged me not to go here, that it was ‘too dangerous.’ I came anyway, but know that I am still taking great risk to do so, Dr. Bond. I do not want my time wasted.”

“Of course.”

Bond led her down the twisting hallways of the squat building toward the back where he made his home. His teeth were chattering a bit as he opened the door to his hastily-constructed lab and let Director Bilhaus in. He walked in after her, letting the door slide shut behind him.

The first thing the Director saw were Sunny’s wings, just as Bond had planned. He smiled when he heard her give a small gasp at the sight. She trotted over to the mare on the table, and ran her hooves over her.

“You paralyzed her?” Bilhaus asked.

“Only temporarily,” Bond said. “It was a fairly simple mixture, and I wanted to make sure that she wouldn’t interfere with your examination of her.”

The Director spun around. She had a frown on her face, which surprised Bond. “I did not give you permission to do such a thing to one of our ponies,” she said. “We are not monsters, Dr. Bond, and I would expect you to act like it. The IS has reacted badly to this situation, I admit, but we are still supposed to protect these ponies.”

“The subject resisted when we first tried to work with her,” Bond said in an even tone.

“I could tell by all the bruises on her.” Bilhaus sighed and rubbed her head. “Dr. Bond, I chose to send you here because you are the best practicing expert on ponies we have, despite your . . . reputation. However, I would expect you to at least show some empathy for anypony you work on. Are we clear?”

“Crystal, ma’am,” Bond said.

“Good. Now that I’m here, show me what you had planned to. You were going to go over her anatomy, yes?”

“That’s correct, ma’am.” Bond walked over to Sunny on the table and held up one of her wings for the Director to see. “As you can see, these appendages are not crudely grafted on, but instead appear to grow naturally out of her back.”

“How naturally?”

“Several nerve clusters have realigned to match up with those inside the wings to form a perfect loop into her nervous system. The strangest thing, however, is that they seem to almost be . . . too natural. Almost like she was born with too many nerves and they waited until now to be activated.”

Bilhaus stared at him. “That’s impossible. These wings were activated by the high amounts of radiation from the crystal heart, were they not?”

“In theory, yes,” Bond said. “But I can find no other explanation as to why her wings seem to be so naturally built into her body.”

The Director walked over to Sunny’s body and touched her hoof to the wings. The feathers felt soft in her hooves, and the wings so fragile. Bilhaus marveled at how they seemed liable to break any moment, and felt like she couldn’t touch them for long or she’d snape them in half.

“Can she fly with these?”

Bond shook his head. “Most definitely not. The bones in these are hollow, like a bird’s, so they would need to be several times larger than her body to keep her aloft. From my perspective, they seem to be vestigial at best, further suggesting that they are products of the crystal heart.”

“And she is the only pony we know to have grown these wings?” Bilhaus asked.

“Yes, the only one with wings,” Bond said. “The foal, of course, has a horn, but he is . . . different from her. We’ve had trouble examining him, and have largely focused our efforts on the subject here.” He pulled out a sheet that showed an x-ray of Sunny’s midsection. It showed the small bones of the wings that connected to the larger spine. “See here, no fusing in the bones, either. The wings fit into pockets in her back and on her spine. Unfortunately, the earthquake damaged the records in the hospital, so we were not able to pull her medical records.”

“For what?”

“To see if she was like this before.”

Bilhaus rubbed her head and stepped away from the mare on the table. It was all too much for her to take in at the moment. She had gone, in a short amount of time, from having to deal with a few domestic disturbances to suddenly having ponies sprout wings and horns and a big heart causing an earthquake.

There was something almost funny about the whole situation for her. She had spent so many years training to take a position like this one, only to find that, when she took it, she had no idea what she was doing. Then, when she finally managed to figure things out, this whole thing happened. She wanted to laugh.

“Are you alright, Ms. Director?” Bond asked.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I just feel a little . . . lost. Was this all you wanted to show me for the day, Dr. Bond?”

“Well, ah, not exactly . . .” Bond rubbed the back of his head. “Well, you see, we had planned a, um, demonstration for you if you wished to see it today.”

“What kind of demonstration?”

“Well, you see, Ms. Director, we have been planning since I arrived on testing the effects of bringing in the crystal heart and laying the subject next to it. We want to see if there will be any more ‘events’ or if things will simply stay the same.”

Bilhaus stared at him. “You would risk another earthquake for that?”

“Of course not, ma’am. We do not believe another should occur, as the leading theory is that the earthquake was simply the Heart becoming active. It has not stopped its radiation stream since we brought it in, so there is nothing more to activate. It should be perfectly safe.”

“Using ‘radiation’ and ‘perfectly safe’ so close together seems like a bit of a contradiction, Dr. Bond.”

“As I said, Ms. Director, it will be perfectly safe. We will be well behind radiation-proof doors and those that handle the subject will have radiation suits. The test could provide some very vital information for exactly what we are dealing with here. We could stop this deadlock of information and figure out how to put a stop to all this craziness.”

Bilhaus thought it over. Her gaze kept drawing to the mare on the table, still unnaturally still and quiet. She wasn’t sure how she felt about exposing her again to the Crystal Heart, but she had an entire country of ponies to worry about. Surely, she thought, the life of one would balance out the safety of millions.

That was what she told herself, anyway.

“Alright,” Bilhaus said. “Let’s set it up. Today. I want this whole thing over.”

Sunny was tied to a gurney and wheeled into a different room of the building. She couldn’t see where they were going, since all she could see was the ceiling above her. She watched lights flash by over her head and could feel the rumble of the cart they’d shoved her onto.

Feeling was starting to come back to her limbs, not that it did her any good. They had tied her down so tight that she couldn’t move even a little bit. It was for the better, though, since her first instinct was to start bucking everypony around her in the face.

Instead, they wheeled her into another boring, slate-gray room and shut the door behind her. She was made to wait there for a good ten minutes or so, doing absolutely nothing but stare at the ceiling. There weren’t even tiles for her to count, just bare concrete. She hated it.

Then, the door opened again and she watched out of the corner of her eye as more ponies marched in. She fought the urge to hit all of them, but they didn’t pay attention to her. Instead, they jabbed a needle in her neck and emptied it into her veins.

A wave of nausea hit Sunny, and she wanted to bend over and throw up. No bile came to her throat, however, so instead she started to shake. The guards then unstrapped her from the gurney and tossed her to the floor, where she lay. She wanted to get up and make her escape, but felt too weak to do anything but moan and groan.

They started to wheel something inside the room with her, but Sunny didn’t see what it was at first. It was only when she fought to roll herself over did she see the object, and gasped. In front of her, on a steel cart surrounded by stallion in gray radiation suits, was the Crystal Heart.

Despite what it had been through, the crystal was still flawless and seemed to shine even where the light didn’t hit it. It seemed to pulsate with a hidden power, like it was calling to Sunny. She wanted to reach out and touch it, to feel it beneath her hooves . . . she shivered.

The stallions, as quickly as they had come, left her. They slammed the door shut and she could hear it locking. It was just her and the Crystal Heart. Sunny gulped and looked at it.

One of the walls of the room had a long mirror on it, which she knew was going to have ponies on the other side watching her. She could almost hear them writing on their clipboards when she walked over to the heart. She figured that was why she was there anyway, so she might as well.

Sunny had to hold her stomach while she tumbled to the heart. It still rumbled and made her feel as weak as she had ever felt. Still, she pressed on. She knew what the IS wanted, and what she had to do if she ever wanted to leave the room: Touch that damn Crystal Heart.

For a moment, she wondered if it would be good to think things through or hesitate, but she pushed the thought away. Sunny was sick and tired of being pushed around that day, and just wanted the whole thing to end. The IS, Dr. Bond, everypony. She just wanted to take them all down.

Sunny shoved her hoof against the Crystal Heart and closed her eyes.

A moment later, she opened them again. Nothing had happened. She didn’t feel different, her mane wasn’t glowing gold, she was just standing in the room with the Crystal Heart.

With a heavy sigh, Sunny let her hoof drop from it. “Just great,” she said.

Then, the room blew up in light.

When Sunny opened her eyes, the door to the room hadn’t just been opened, but had crashed through the wall behind it. Alarms were sounding somewhere, and red emergency lights seemed to bathe the room in light. There was no sign of the IS anywhere, and the mirror on the far wall had caved in.

Despite the air that smelled like acid, Sunny found herself reinvigorated. Her head had cleared up, and she could feel the energy pulsing through her veins. With a smile, she got up. One way or the other, the Crystal Heart had fulfilled her wish, and she wasn’t about to let it slip away.

She galloped out of the room and to the right, sprinting down the hall toward the exit of the building. She knew it was down that way somewhere, and made a mad dash for it. The hallway was empty, and her hooves felt lighter with every step she took. With a smile on her face, Sunny ran toward freedom.

There was a right turn, and then a left, and a right again before she neared a set of double doors with “EXIT” printed on a sign over them. She smiled and ran toward them, but before she could arrive they opened on their own.

Standing in the middle of them, with his glasses cracked on his face, was Dr. Bond. He smiled a cruel grin at her and shook his head. “No, no, you’re not getting away, not so easily,” he said. “Do you understand the power you just unleashed? The IS staff is still unconscious, and the entire city is without power! You have done it, you’ve mastered the Heart!”

Dr. Bond smiled and started to advance on Sunny. She noticed that there was something wrong with his head . . . it seemed like part of kept switching colors, to where it made it look like his head kept morphing between Director Bilhaus’ and his own.

Sunny didn’t really care that much to think about it at the moment. Instead, she just ran at him. He was in her way, and she would be damned if she let him stay that way. She thought that Bond looked a little surprised to see her running at him, enough that he didn’t move.

She thought it was nice of him to hold the doors open for her.

Just before she ran into him, Sunny jumped. She soared over Bond’s head with a small laugh at the look on his face. Only, she didn’t come down on the other side. She kept soaring, up out of the doors and over the IS building.

With a flap of her wings, Sunny flew on away from the building, not a care in the world.