April 30, 9:10 PM

Play it safe, take her time to learn the ropes and follow legal channels to get her friends released. (45%)

Of course, Wayfinder wasn’t going to reject any option given to her. She wanted to know what Hazel might be thinking, even if she was a half-starved adolescent who had spent most of the pandemic hiding in a trap house.

She closed the laptop, then tucked it under the covers of her bed for good measure. “What plan do you have in mind?”

The result was impressive—impressive enough that she swore, stumbling away from her with open shock on her face. A flash of bright green light, and the frightening-looking insect in front of her was suddenly gone, replaced by a mirror.

A mirror that moved, her cerulean tail flicking to either side and her eyes eager for praise. When she spoke, it was in Wayfinder’s own voice. “I’ve been able to do this since the beginning. Like… right after I wasn’t sick. But the last few weeks, I’ve been so weak, I… couldn’t make it work. But things are better now that I’m with you!”

She paced around in a slow circle in front of Wayfinder, close enough for Way to move forward and inspect the quality of the illusion. It was perfectly accurate—embarrassingly accurate. Though she had no reason to believe that Hazel had even thought of that. The voice was perfect too, with that slightly-off quality Way got when listening to recordings of herself, rather than hearing her own voice in her head. But this was how other ponies heard it—of course it was.

“I don’t have to be around a pony for very long to copy someone,” she went on, a little quieter. “But it helps if I get… if I get…” She wilted, slumping against the bed for a second to hold herself up. Her expression got unfocused and strained, as though she’d spent the last several minutes balanced on one leg. “But it… helps if I can see… how they act. It’s easier to make sure I get it right that way, when… when I…”

Way made her way over, resting one hoof on her own shoulder. The effect was incredibly strange, but she fought through that part, trying to imagine the bug girl looking back at her instead. “Change back, Hazel. I’m very impressed, but you need to save your strength.”

She did, almost too quickly. Another flash, and her foreleg now held quite a bit above where the little bug was sitting, panting visibly from the effort. “Y-you… see where I’m going with it, right? I could… be whoever, get right into the jail, and…”

“Be whoever,” she repeated. Way dropped to her haunches in front of the kid. “That’s just the question though, isn’t it? We don’t know how this place works yet. We don’t know who you would be. And from the look of it, we also don’t know how much magic you need to do it. Whatever changed to make you feel better… you need more time.”

She gave her a gentle pat on the head with the side of her leg, then straightened again. “I’m glad you showed me. But we should save that for now. We can’t… go rushing into things. I’m eager to get my friends back, but… if we do something like that, and it goes wrong, we could end up right there with them.”

And given the way you look, I’m not sure you would survive, she added privately. “Save your strength for now. I’ll see what else I can come up with. But I’m very happy you told me.”

Of course she couldn’t spend every second planning an escape for her friends. Initially, she couldn’t spend any seconds on it, given she had lessons to teach the very next day.

First, that meant determining what her lesson plan would be, and exactly how much information she wanted to give the police about the existence of magic and its practice. Obviously, she couldn’t reveal too much about what the practical limits of those powers were, as the book described. She couldn’t even be seen carrying that book around, in case it might be taken from her.

She focused her lesson on the very basics, with any specific vocabulary removed. This would all be about division of focus now, building magical endurance, and the various thaumic exercises to build strength. As for everything else magic could do—that would have to wait until she trusted her hosts a little more.

The morning came—morning of military-style breakfast, of friendly conversation with the police and security staff of the isolation zone. Perhaps she would’ve had a worse experience if she’d been forced to deal with human staff, but these people were all victims of the same condition. Every single one of them had suffered their own version of the same nightmare that Way went through.

No one was going to judge her for deciding not to wear much clothing, because every single person in the room had the same struggles with their dexterity. Hazel got a few weird looks and suspicious glances, nothing Way couldn’t overcome with a little overfriendliness and redirection.

Then came the lesson, and Wayfinder’s first packed auditorium. Not everyone who attended were unicorns, and a few other ponies or half-bird things argued with her that they ought to be able to learn too.

Without the book as an authority, Way couldn’t stop them from wasting their time outright. The best she could manage was cautioning them that she was fairly sure the energy came from the horn, but that she imagined other mutations might have their own powers to discover. But she wasn’t qualified to do that, for visually obvious reasons.

When the lesson was over, over a dozen unicorns in the class had already started producing light. Many others seemed like they would reach a similar point with a little more practice on their own. So she left them with homework, and urged them to return.

The most remarkable portion of that first class was her debriefing with a young woman at the CDC over the webcam, once the room emptied and it was just her and Hazel lingering near the stage.

The woman’s backdrop went unseen over the laptop screen, showing the obvious effect of background replacement whenever she moved her limbs too quickly. The lighting was too harsh, suggesting a government building somewhere.

She didn’t look very much like an experienced biochemist, researcher, or anyone of much importance. Rather, she looked about the same age as Ruby, someone who hadn’t finished their undergrad.

Way had looked her way a few times during the lesson. At first she saw boredom, as the mousy-looking researcher snacked on a Pop-Tart from a silver foil packet and played with various pens.

Then something changed. She couldn’t say when, since Way was focused more on her students than the observer. But as the lesson wore on, she caught the young researcher now right up next to her camera, scribbling notes on a notebook that occasionally appeared in her hands, then filtered out with the background blur leaving strange smears across the screen where it had been.

She was practically bouncing in front of the lens by the time Way finished chatting with the students, and stood in front of the webcam. “I’m not sure what they wanted you to learn, but I hope there was… something useful there.”

The girl nodded. “I should say so, Wayfinder. You spoke with such confidence, and your results—I’ve seen nothing like it in the other hundred cases of individuals who claim they could understand or manipulate their noncausal mutations.”

Way shrugged. Her tail flicked behind her. “If something stole your hands, you’d be eager to figure out a substitute too.”

She made a few more notes at Way’s words, though her expression remained unchanged, unconvinced. “What about what you said about ‘magic’ being a muscle that needed to be trained? How can you be sure it works like that? There’s still considerable debate on our end about the nature of the noncausal field. There’s a good number who think…”

She leaned in closer to the camera then, voice dropping to a whisper. “I’m probably not supposed to tell you any of this, so no narcing on me. But… our current best working model suggests that the infection releases considerable energy, kinda like… dropping something huge into a gravity well. Each time another human being is transformed, we release another burst of power that saturates the environment and enables other infections. It seems like the ‘magic’ you’re using is residual energy in the environment left over from those transformations. Once there are no new infections, your supply of power will dry up.”

Way could think of someone to ask about that—though of course she would have to get to him to do so. So she could only shrug again. “I’m not trying to argue with anyone on your end. I’m sure you’ve got way better tools for this stuff.” And I’m not going to trust you with any of the information from Peter’s scan or whatever bioinformatics was doing, yet.

“It will be worth observing into the long term. A gradual decrease of available ‘magic’ in the environment would be ideal for everyone. Right now, levels are significant enough to cause infection almost anywhere in the continental 48, along with the southern portion of Canada. One particle, and we’ve got a fresh outbreak.”

“Are levels dropping as infections slow down?” she asked. Way wasn’t really expecting an answer, certainly not from this official source. But then she got one.

“That would require infections to be slowing down.” The woman winced, then leaned away from the camera again. “Name’s… just call me Gwen. Guess I’ll be watching your lessons for the near future. I hope you keep impressing me, Wayfinder.” The call ended.

It didn’t mean she wasn’t still listening, or the computer wasn’t recording somehow. Wayfinder would keep treating it like a potential spy into the foreseeable future, just in case.

She got her first real chance to talk to Peter after the second lesson, which he was apparently signed up for. Lance was on the morning shift, so Peter could stick around in the multipurpose room after other police and staff had all left.

“Look at you,” he said, shuffling his way up to the stage. “You’re a natural at this, Way. Word’s getting around that you actually know your shit. You know how much of a miracle it is to make police excited about continuing education requirements? It’s a thing of beauty.”

She snapped the laptop lid closed, unplugged it from the wall, and stuffed it away into its padded case. “So you planned to just run away and join without telling us?” She snapped. There was far more bitterness in her tone than she expected. But it came with every word, so she just gave up fighting. “Were you going to leave us in that basement?”

“No.” He settled onto his haunches near the stage. “Once your quarantine ended, I had some pay squared away to get you better housing.”

“What about Ruby and Sam?” The question came out before she knew what she was saying. Not shouted—even with the loud conversation in the hall outside, she couldn’t chance someone listening in. “Don’t they matter too? We were a team, Peter. You find some chick who will have you, and that’s it?”

Peter shrugged. “I left you the data. I assume you’ve still got it somewhere. Don’t tell me where. Don’t… want to know.”

He rose, then made his way closer to her. Nearly the same height, meeting her eyes. “This system tried to kill me twice, Way. I served this country and it left me exposed to an unknown disease, then would’ve sacrificed my life for a few scraps of data. Fuck ’em. I owe you. Have I done anything to hurt you?”

You’re sleeping with Lance. She wobbled, silent on her hooves, and made no answer. “Look. I’ve poked around, asked command about getting your friends out. I think we can swing it. And yes, I will help you. Just…”

He glanced to either side, then lowered his head to her ear and whispered. “Confinement is overcrowded. There are really violent people to deal with, dangerous elements. They can’t afford to waste space on smugglers. I’ve already asked around about the right bribe. If we put our pay together, we can have enough for two people in… a few weeks. Don’t spend a single cent on base requisitions. We’ll put our cash together, and… then we’ll be square. Debt repaid. Agreed?”

Wayfinder nodded. “Is that… all this was? A debt to repay?”

He winced, then backed away from her. “Way. I tried for how long with you? I told you pretty clear: if we made it back to civilization, I wouldn’t wait. Now we’re back. We made a pretty good team for surviving the apocalypse, I’m glad we were together. But we made it. If now we go our separate ways…” He shrugged. “Keep your head down, save your cash. We’ll get them out, then… we can both move on.”

She watched him go in silence, staring out the door as it banged closed behind him.