“You couldn’t save me.”

She glared through me, my muddled reflection glistening in her chilling, gray eyes. The agony in her words bled me out more than the bullet holes across my chest. I lay at her hooves, my life blood pooling across the snow.

“YOU COULDN’T SAVE ME!” she wailed as a blizzard engulfed us both.

I held out a hoof to her but she swatted it away. “I’m sorry … DD … I …”

“Failed. You sorry little fuck up … you failed us all. You ran … I saw you run. You let us all die.”

“Dew Drops …”

“YOU LET US ALL DIE!”

The blood drained from my face. “DD… w-why? I tried … please …”

She craned her neck to the bloodied, shivering heap at her hooves.

Dew Drops murmured, her voice trembling, “You tried … you tried …” A cruel grin stretched across her bloody lips. “Just like how you tried helping those slaves… or how you just stood there and let those all those zebras die.”

I froze, my heart skipping a beat as her words sank deep into my heart like a frozen blade driving into my chest. I could do nothing but whimper and sob as the agonized screams of zebras, and ponies, and my friends coalesced into Dew Drops’ gravelly voice.

“You ran.”

I shook my head as if my life depended on it. “N-no – please, it wasn’t like that … I … I … I didn’t …”

Her chilling breath choked away my words, like a bed of icy needles pressing against my throat. I could smell the stench of spilled innards and rotting death about her.

The dead mare whispered into my ear, “You’re a coward … a fucking coward.”

“I’m sorry … Dew Drops … I’m so sorry,” I sobbed. “If I had another chance … I’d … I’d …”

“Fail. Again.” She reared up on her hinds and dropped her hooves onto my face. I cried out weakly as they slammed into my muzzle – “Again! AGAIN! AND AGAIN!” Blood trickled down my forehead and out of my nose, freezing against my bruised, shivering flesh and staining my coat black.

I struggled to my hooves, gasping a raspy breath only to collapse pathetically into the snow before her.

“Dew Drops … why … why are you doing this to me? This isn’t like you … stop … please … I … I love you…”

She levitated an icy, warped machete, lifting the blade over my shivering form.

“Dew Drops – please! I love you –”

“No,"she whispered, “You failed. You couldn’t even save the ponies you cared about. You couldn’t save me. You can’t save anyone. Not even our stable.” The grin she wore upon her ghastly, corpulent face squeezed the air from my lungs.

“Heh…” she chuckled as I let out a pathetic sob. “You can’t even save yourself.”

“No …”

She swung the machete into my neck.

“NO!”

I flung my hooves in front of me, gasping for my breath as sweat froze against my forehead. I lay there for what felt like hours, rocking back and forth in silence.

I opened my eyes … finally, truly awake.

I was still curled up beneath the corrugated roof that stretched over my head. Three stories above the slums below, I watched the snowflakes seethe past me.

Still shaking, I gathered my bags and hugged them close, nuzzling Dew Drops’ scarf.

Tears welled up in my half-closed eyes as I tried to still my trembling body.

Minutes passed, my wheezing breaths barely visible in the darkness of my shelter.

Every setback was a fuck up in my book. Every pony … every zebra I had been helpless to save so far was a fuck up.

I didn’t want Candy Cane to be another bullet on that list.

My muzzle, a barely perceptible outline against a curtain of darkness, tipped slightly as I saw a pony leave the brothel. A stallion.

If I ever found out that he touched Candy Cane in any sort of way I swore to the Goddesses that I’d remember him and that I’d find him. Not too far from the Sultry Scullion I lay in wait. For most of that day I had been there, crunching on an apple or two as I watched ponies leave and enter the brothel.

I hid among the remains of a collapsed building, wedged deep between its rubble like another chunk of debris. I shifted a little bit, stretching my hind legs slightly.

I glanced at the screen and the clock told me that it was 0100.

Another hour passed by, and the stream of ponies dwindled until nobody entered or left at all. Only a changing of the guard. I’d watched the guard change every three hours for nine hours. I switched on my PipBuck’s light, smothering the glow with my left hoof.

Two of the guards I saw outside were ponies I’d seen before.

My eyes darted to the entrance. Dahlia shooed away Dawdleshoes and leaned against the front doors, lighting a cigarette. I watched as the large stallion shuffled back inside.

There were six guards. Grifter told me yesterday that he had half of his boys outside with him and the other half at the brothel. I just hoped his math was right.

I wanted to wait there for another hour and see who they’d swap out next, but Goddesses, my legs were aching. It felt like they were going to atrophy. But my stupid legs were the least of my worries.

Candy Cane.

Not a single minute had passed when she hadn’t crossed my mind. I didn’t want to imagine the things they’d done to her … or the things she’d been forced to do in the confines of that filthy place. My jaw clenched as I let my chin rest against the frozen concrete beneath me.

I exhaled a trembling sigh. There was some intangible thing about her that bothered me. And the more I thought about it, the more horrifyingly absorbed in it I became. Steel gray. Her eyes were the color of frozen steel. It sent shivers down my spine as I remembered vividly the last time I saw those eyes.

They weren’t the first pair of teary grays that had widened at me in desperation.

When I first met her gaze ... I thought that I had seen a ghost staring back at me.

I stuffed my face with a hooffull of chilling powder, jolting myself back to reality.

I’d had enough of sitting around.

My muzzle broke the stagnant pool of darkness that had settled over me. I stuck to the shadows, gliding my flank across the cold pockmarked wall as I inched along the edge of a fallen office building. I stalked the perimeter of the brothel, out of sight and as quiet as a radroach.

There was a back door around the building. It was only a matter of sneaking in unnoticed.

The flesh on my face prickled as I bounded past a burning trashcan, my shadow dancing against the walls around me in the firelight.

I neared a small, empty lot behind the brothel, walled off with metal panels and lit with the flickering glow of more burning trashcans. As I approached, I glanced at my PipBuck, keeping track of the blips that blinked on my EFS. At least seven inside. Several dozen more outside, somewhere in another building or milling about in the snow. But for now, I was alone as I approached the empty lot.

My EFS blinked as something began trotting my way.

I stopped in my tracks and ducked behind an overturned dumpster as a stallion, one of Grifter’s henchponies, trotted by. Curled against his body with one of his hooves was a bag of garbage. He walked past my huddled form, yawning as he stood on his hinds and tried to dump it into an open dumpster a few feet away from me.

The bag slipped from his hooves and tumbled to the snow, scattering filthy rubbish across the snow.

“Blech…” he sneered, hoofing a used condom off his chest as he gathered the trash and used toys into his hooves and tossed them into the dumpster.

The stallion picked up one half of a purple … dildo … rolling it around in his hooves.

“How the fuck do you even break one of these things?” he muttered, gagging as he tossed the broken phallus into the trash. Rolling my eyes, I thought about sneaking past him while his back was turned.

I eyed the machine pistol slung around his neck and shook my head. I didn’t want to risk getting caught. As I stared, a blankness settled upon my gaze. I thought for a moment, ‘Maybe I could just kill him.’

Then I blinked, frowning at myself as I shook my head once more. I bit my lower lip as he began to whistle a tune that was barely audible beneath the pounding in my temples.

I pressed my back harder against the wall. A quiet breath exhaled from my lips as I closed my eyes and waited for his hoofsteps to disappear. The sound of a gate closing and a door slamming behind the fence followed soon afterward.

Slipping out of cover, I followed his tracks, my shadow sweeping across the wall’s corrugated metal panels. I came to the gate and found that there wasn’t a knob, a latch, or anything to open it with. Frowning, I pressed my forehooves against it and pushed.

It rattled, but didn’t budge.

“Son of a …” I glanced over my shoulder, squinting through the glares of the burning trashcans. The coast was still clear.

The gate must’ve been locked from the other side. There had to be another way. But as I searched the wall’s perimeter, I found everything short of a way inside. I tried climbing over, but barbed wire and broken glass blocked my path.

Back again at square one, I tried heaving the gate open again.

“Come on …” I murmured, trying to force it open with my hind legs. Sucking in a breath of air, I heaved and pushed and heaved and pushed - but the thing simply refused to open.

I groaned, panting for my breath and I slid to my haunches, leaning against the door. I lowered my irritated eyes upon my PipBuck, bringing my right leg to my face. Another hoof came to toggle the device’s brightness, but something else reflected against its glossy screen. Something flashed in my eyes.

I turned to my left and caught a shaft of light glimmering through a small crack in the wall.

I rose to my hooves and studied the opening, about two inches in length and an inch in breadth. I brought an eye into the light, peering inside through a layer of rusty chicken wire.

That was my way in.

I glared at the brothel’s backdoor, lit by a flickering gas lamp that reflected brightly in my eyes.

I shifted my gaze and saw to my left the latch that opened the gate from the inside. I muttered irritably to myself, wishing that my horn was working. If only I had my magic, I could’ve easily gripped the latch and opened it from the other side …

'My magic …'

My eyes fluttered to my bags and a lightbulb flickered to life inside my head. I lowered myself to the snow and opened my saddlebags. Beneath a hooffull of apples and a few health potions, I found a peculiar bottle of sparkling purple liquid resting at the bottom.

‘Sparkling … sparkling … sparkling …’ I repeated inside my thoughts.

I lifted the vial of Sparkle to my muzzle and narrowed my eyes at the drug as I sloshed it around inside its bottle. If it wasn’t for its faint violet glow, I might’ve mistook it for a sample of some lab-borne energy drink from back home, or a bottle of grape juice if I’d ever seen one.

It certainly looked … tasty. I peered into the hole above me and watched as the slender stallion poked his head outside. He blew out the lamp and plunged me back into the darkness. I sat there with my back to the wall, holding the bottle of sparkle close to my chest.

I had no idea what terrible side effects that drug carried with it. But I knew one thing: I needed to get through that damned gate.

I yanked out the cork with a pop and emptied the sparkling vial into my mouth, gulping it down to the last drop. I sat down and waited, a fruity aftertaste lingering upon my tongue. Too many long seconds dragged by, and I narrowed my eyes at my horn in irritation.

I waited for a shimmer, an arc of electricity – something.

Nothing.

“What the hell!?” I hissed, stomping a hoof into the snow.

Lightning erupted inside of me like a spark battery going haywire.

It surged through me, shocking me from the inside out as every nerve ending in my body ignited with electrifying agony. I doubled over, wheezing and choking through clenched teeth as I fought the inferno burning up inside of me. I writhed and convulsed, digging canyons into the snow with my trembling hooves.

Then everything flashed white.

My eyelids flew open and a chunk of snow tore itself out of the drifts, enwreathed within my magical grip. I blinked, and the snowball flung itself away from me and into the darkness. Far away, I heard glass breaking and a mare scream.

“Well fuck …” I trailed off, a wide grin stretching across my face.

I rose confidently to my hooves and peered through the chicken-wired crack in the wall, squinting my eyes into the darkness. I could see the latch.

For unicorns, that’s all it took.

Sparks of magic arced across my horn as it gave off a crimson glow.

Clack.

The gate swung open.

‘Back in the game,’ I thought as I drew my pistol without raising a single hoof. With my weapon hovering close, I shut the gate closed and trotted to the backdoor, testing the door knob.

Without resistance, the door parted open. Closing it quietly behind me, I slunk inside and into a narrow, dirty corridor. I wrinkled my nose at the scent of cigarette smoke, sweat, and a long, rough night.

The brothel was barely lit. A hoofful of flickering light bulbs overhead vomited ruddy beams of yellow light onto my chilled flesh. Creeping through the hall, I noticed that the walls were plastered with posters of scantily-clad mares in very exposing positions.

One poster depicted ... a mare inserting a … Goddesses … I hadn’t even known that ponies could put things in that hole. The poster said in huge bold print, ‘PLOT DEVICE’; at the bottom, it screamed, ‘WATCH FOR THE PLOT!’

I pursed my lips and tried not to look as I began to sense an uncomfortably warm sensation growing between my legs. I shook my head vigorously. That place was filthy, abominable, and terrifyingly unsettling.

Pornographic material was unheard of at ’91.

I followed the corridor further into the brothel and found myself behind a stage, curtains and all. Long metal poles stretched up and into the ceiling. Flickering strobe lights lined the floor and hung over stage, hanging from the rafters.

I poked my head through the curtains and out into the room, spotting a few dozen tables, benches, and a bar stocked with bottles of colorful drinks at the other end of the room. In the flickering rainbow glow of dim, neon lights, the three ponies lounged at the bar, pouring each other drinks and puffing on smokes.

“So, read any good books lately, Twiggy?” one of them yawned.

“Eh. I did finish Dark Edge 2,” I overhead him say. Twiggy glanced over at the corridor and I ducked back into the shadows. “Bad guy wins, world goes to shit and everyone dies - the main character goes to the moon and dies again for the ninth time, but this time he somehow comes back as an immortal Star God or some shit.”

His friend narrowed his eyes at him.

“Then he fucks the only other Star Goddess in the universe that everyone worshipped in the first story, and they live happily ever after. Except for the rest of the world which is still shit, because the bad guy still won.”

The other stallion blinked three times.

“That sounds fucking retarded.”

Twiggy sighed, reclining in his chair and tipping his head back.

“Forget about it.”

I pressed my back against the wall as they chattered sleepily, hoping they’d stay distracted by their boredom for a little longer. I bit my lower lip, counting to myself the ponies I’d seen so far. Six. There were six plus Grifter. He only had three with him when he was staked out at the market. He had said that was only half.

I prayed that his math was right.

Down the hall to my left were private rooms where countless debaucherous deeds beyond my virgin imagination had been committed.

I came upon room after room after room – all of them, thankfully empty. Reaching its end, I found a door that led into a different section of the brothel.

More rooms. I trotted up to each, reading the names that were stenciled upon each door. Stellar. Buns. Iris. Nine others.

I pressed an ear against a door, and I heard someone snoring softly on the other side. The entire hall surprised me somewhat; the dormitories inside were slightly warmer than the rest of the brothel. It was a nice sunny day in there in comparison to the frozen hell outside.

They had a roof over their heads, and a bed to sleep on, and a warm place to escape the blizzard. They even had armed guards. I remembered what that one mangy pony had said when I was being hauled off to Poneva in chains, not too long ago.

‘They’re going to put us to work and work us to death.’ the earth stallion had said.

‘That ain’t true,’ replied the mangy pony, ‘I heard they feed you and put a roof over your head…’

A trembling sigh seethed out of my lips. I knew how horrible the wasteland could be. The blizzards. The snow. The monsters outside. I could still hear the bloodletters howling inside my head.

Maybe he was right. Maybe a life in there … maybe it was truly a life better than a life outside. I could relate. I lived in a stable my entire life, sheltered from all the shit that was festering and curdling outside 91’s door. I wanted to live in one again. I wanted to go home.

But I stared at the posters that plastered the walls.

These mares were getting fucked one way or another.

‘No. Never. Not like this, I thought in grim silence. They had everything they needed, more than what most ponies could say they had out there – but for what?

To those slavers, those mares weren’t even people. Just tools. And once they were broken, well … I remembered what happened when Sugar Rum flipped the switch. I remembered the sounds their skulls made when they popped.

My blood began to boil as I listened to Buns’ soft breaths behind her locked door. The Scullion needed to burn – all four of its filthy walls – burned to the ground. I wanted to see balefire wipe it all away.

No longer wary of my hoofsteps, I found myself at one end of the hall to the next, searching for Candy Cane’s name. Then I found it. Eyeing the name ‘Candy’ stenciled upon the door, I pressed my ear against it and listened, carefully.

Nothing. She wasn’t inside. I clenched my jaw and wondered where else she could’ve been.

Lying in a ditch with a hole in her head. Or without a head at all, her collar detonated.

I shook my head even harder that time. ‘No. No, they wouldn’t do that,’ I reassured myself.

I hoped to Celestia they didn’t … I hoped to the Goddesses that I wasn't too late. I gulped down the dreadful taste of another failure, bitter upon my tongue. Sweat beaded up on my forehead as my skin prickled with shivering apprehension. I thought for a moment, switching my pistol’s safety on and off as the seconds ticked by.

I needed to find her.

I pushed onward, stalking the brothel’s halls as I left the dormitories behind me. I inched the door closed and left its aura of chained comfort. Outside in the hall, the unforgettable wasteland chill returned to rake at my flesh.

Trotting down the dim corridor, I saw that there were two doors, one to my right, and another at the other end of the hall. The slit beneath the door to my right glowed with a dim light. A shadow passed over it for a second as someone milled about inside.

I ducked into the shadows instinctively, holding my breath. But no one came trotting outside. Exhaling thankfully, I hugged the wall, peering around the corner once more.

It was just me, my gun, and the darkness.

I slunk to the right and leaned against the door’s frame, listening to whomever was moving around inside.

“- 435, 436, 437,” I heard Grifter count. There was a short pause. “Uhh ... uhh... Fuck! Lost count.”

I played with my pistol’s safety.

Off. On. Off. On. Off. On … I sighed. Off.

Not yet. I glanced over my shoulder and trotted to the door at the end of the hall. I pressed my ear against it and listened. Nothing. I wrapped a magical field around the door’s knob, and turned it slowly. It clicked, and I pulled it open.

The chamber was pitch-black; I could barely see an inch in front of me. But I could feel the northern wasteland air. I might as well have been standing outside, because I was shivering once more beneath my security barding and my peacoat.

Glancing around, I saw to my right, a barred, yet open window that welcomed in the glacial winds like eager house guests. My ears perked as I listened.

Someone sniffled.

My PipBuck beamed a shaft of teal light before me, parting the darkness.

A mare held a hoof to her face to shield herself from the glare.

“Candy Cane?” I breathed, trotting up to the bars between us.

She squinted through the light. “Red … Dawn?” The mare’s eyes widened and her mouth opened to speak, but her words were lost upon her lips. She ran a hoof through her curly red and white mane, blinking her eyes vigorously as if I wasn’t really there.

“I … you … you came back,” she whispered, barely loud enough for me to hear. “You came back for me … I thought …”

“I left you behind? No. I promised you I’d bust you out – for good,” I told the shivering mare. “What are you doing in this place?”

She smiled weakly, her face pale. “I was thinking about asking you the same thing.”

I panned my PipBuck’s light across the room, and saw only cold, bare tile and steel bars. Glaring at the frozen concrete that surrounded us, I concluded that that was her punishment for escaping: to sit in a frozen, bare chamber, exposed to the elements with nothing but the skin on her back.

“I’m getting you out of here, Candy Cane,” I told her, trotting up to her lonely cell.

A moment passed as she sat there freezing to death, her pale, miserable flesh shivering beneath her frost encrusted coat as if she was going to bore a hole into the floor.

I really wanted to hug her.

I stared at my hooves, and whispered, “I’m sorry I couldn’t do it earlier … I didn’t know there’d be more of them -”

“It’s … okay. You’re here now. I wouldn’t want anypony throwing their life away for me again.” Candy Cane wrapped her hooves around the cold steel bars between us. “It … it means a lot to me,” she said, looking me in the eye as she smiled faintly. The mare pursed her lips, wrinkling her brows. “How, exactly are you going to get me out of here?”

I thought for a moment, frowning.

“I didn’t think I’d actually get this far…” I confessed, scratching my mane.

Candy Cane chuckled softly, leaning against the bars. She tapped her chin, thinking until before her eyes darted to mine. She pointed at my bags. “Do you have a screwdriver? Any hairpins? Anything thin or pointy I can use?”

I stared at her for a moment, wondering what she’d need those for. Then it struck me. I remembered her picking locks at the factory yesterday. My eyes narrowed at the lock on the cell’s door.

She wanted to pick it.

Nodding quickly, I levitated out everything I had carried with me since I left ‘91. The first thing I yanked out was a screwdriver. ‘I’m an engineer, of course I have a screwdriver,’ I thought. ‘As for the other thing ...’

I rifled through my tools. Screws, bolts, lug-nuts, wires, a soldering iron, several types of wrenches, ratchets, screwdrivers, pliers -

My hooves came away, empty. I fixed an irritated glare at the lock as I sat there with a screwdriver floating in front of me.

Candy Cane bit her lower lip, thinking. Her head swung in every direction, searchingly. Then something caught her eye. She pointed a hoof at a cabinet at the furthest corner of the chamber. "There ... pry a nail out of it; I have an idea."

Cocking an eyebrow, I did as she asked, hurrying upon my hooves. I studied the poorly built cabinet - an amalgamation of charred wood and scavenged materials. I spotted a rusty nail head and stabbed at it with my screwdriver.

I struggled for a moment, trying to get the tool's head beneath the nail's. Prying for purchase, I forced the nail out of the wood a little less than half an inch. It was buried deep. My levitation magic wasn't strong enough to tear it off outright.

I eyed it hesitantly, figuring I could pull it out myself. I sighed. That thing was a tetanus shot waiting to happen. I leaned forward and clenched the rusty finishing nail between my teeth. I wrenched my head back and ripped it out of the cabinet in a plume of splinters and shattered wood.

I spat out the rusted sliver of metal and hurried back to Candy Cane’s cell, levitating to her both the screwdriver and the nail. I watched the mare get to work.

Her eyes lit up with renewed hope as she bent the nail’s tip into a rough, L shape. The mare was certainly in her element.

She poked her muzzle between the bars and floated out her newly-fashioned torque wrench, working it into the lock as she turned it carefully with the screwdriver curled in her hoof.

Clank.

I watched her with amazement as the bars swung open, a thin smirk stretching across her pale lips. Impressive.

She looked like she was struggling to hold back a triumphant grin as she floated back my screwdriver and tucked the wrench inside her mane. Then there was a long pause. She stared at me in silence, her eyes welling up with tears.

“I-I really didn’t think you’d come back for me.”

I said nothing as I drew my pistol, checking the rounds in its magazine. All I could do was give her a quiet smile.

“Now … now what?” Candy Cane asked faintly.

I shrugged off my peacoat and wrapped it around her. Her gray eyes widened at me as I held her forelegs and gently guided them into the open sleeves. My hoof lingered upon her shoulder as she stared into my eyes. She was so cold.

I blinked when I realized I was staring back. Averting my gaze, I buttoned the peacoat across her chest.

"Thank you ..." she whispered.

I sighed, rubbing at my weary eyes. “Don't thank me yet." I started towards the door, "We still need to deal with Grifter."

I noticed that she still hadn't budged an inch as I swirled my magic around the doorknob.

“What are you doing?”

There was another long pause.

"Why … why me?” she whispered, finally.

I fixed my gaze upon the door.

“I can’t save them all.”

She cocked her head at me. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“We’re wasting time …” I began softly, pressing my ear against the door to listen for movement outside. Nothing. I sighed, as she remained where she stood.

There was an uneasy silence between us. I wanted to answer her, but I honestly didn’t know why I was actually there … why I was risking my life to save that pony.

I didn’t need her. I didn’t need to come back for her. I could’ve just walked away. I had what I wanted, anyways. But … why?

Maybe it was because I wanted to spite Grifter for what he did. Maybe it was because I wanted to spell out a big ‘fuck you’ to the Palominos. Maybe it was because it was the right thing to do.

When I woke up in Dusktown, I would’ve traded the entire wasteland just to get my friends back. Standing there in that dark, cold room, I told myself that I still would’ve done the same.

But I knew that the world didn’t work like that.

Sterling’s voice echoed in my thoughts.

‘The closest thing to being cared for was to care for someone else.’

I grinded my teeth, frustrated with myself and annoyed at her for standing there with that pitiful look on her face.

“I don’t know,” I murmured. “I don’t know ...”

“I’m not the only mare here…” she whispered.

“Candy Cane, believe me, I’m aware.”

“There are others who’ve been here longer than I have.” Candy Cane sniffled, hanging her head. “I don’t deserve this.”

I glared at her restlessly.

“You don’t have a choice … I don’t. Save yourself or no one at all,” I said over my shoulder before glancing at my EFS.

The mare hung her head, her curly mane falling before one of her eyes. “I wish I could take the others with me,” she whispered.

Dew Drops’ bloody face flashed before my eyes. I shook them away, vigorously, growling, “What’s the point in thinking about saving them if you can’t even save yourself?”

Candy Cane hung her head and sobbed, injured by my words.

I exhaled softly, turning slowly to face her.

“Candy Cane … they’re your friends … aren’t they?”

“Some of the only friends I have left,” she whispered.

“Well you can’t save them if you’re still in chains.” She just shook her head and stared at the floor as tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Candy Cane?”

Silence.

“Candy Cane …” I curled a hoof around her shoulder, squeezing her gently. I thought for a moment. “When you and four others are in separate cages, and only you have the tools to pick their locks, who do you free first?”

The mare shut her eyes and bit her lower lip, shaking her head. Candy Cane thought for a moment, her brows furrowing.

“I’d … I’d have to free my ... myself,” she murmured. “I would need to pick my own lock before I could get to the others.”

I forced a smile. “Exactly.”

The mare stared at her hooves, her shoulders rocking with silent sobs.

“Candy Cane …” I murmured. I was giving her another chance at life – like Night Sky did to me. And there was no way in hell that I was going to let her waste it … not for Iris, not for Buns, not for anyone else.

“We’re running out of time, here … why don’t you just save them too when you have the power to actually do that?”

Candy Cane sighed.

“You’re right … you’re right Red Dawn.” She lifted her head, parting her mane with a hoof. A lonely spark of determination flashed behind her eyes. “I … I will.”

I started towards the door once more. “We need that detonator, or else all of this is just a waste of time.”

She followed closely without saying another word as we left the chamber. I checked my EFS, and found that no one had left their rooms. I checked and rechecked my pistol as we waited on either side of Grifter’s door.

“What’s the plan?” she whispered.

“I’ll pull my gun on him – make him give me the detonator.”

Candy Cane nodded, uneasily. “What happens after that?”

“Then we run.”

She smirked as if I had just made a dumb joke.

“They’ll be on us as soon as the first shot’s fired.”

I rolled my eyes. “Then we run faster?” She looked at me, her eyebrow raised. “Well, you got a better plan?”

Candy Cane nodded, “This building wasn’t a brothel before the war,” she began. “It was a motel. There’s a patio right outside Grifter’s office. That’ll be our way out.”

“Alright … let’s do this.”

I turned the doorknob, and it swung open with a drawling creak.