I opened my eyes, the dark room didn't change of lighting while I've slept. At my surprise I saw something on the ground right in front of me : a plate with bread, a bar of old chocolate and a glass of water. I was with a blanket on my back and a mattress under me, but remembered that these things weren't present yesterday.

"Could these slavers made a special treatment with me during the night?" I asked myself.

I checked my whole body. I got my horn, my two eyes, my four legs and hooves, my mane and my tail, no trace of any contact unless the presence of the food and the improvised bed.

This was good in a sense. I took a look in the room and a detail took my gaze's attention. The door was a bit opened, just enough to let me pass and I should have to refine my belly and push when I'll have to make my hips pass.

"Well, that gap looks pretty like a open door to Ms Freedom." I thought.

Raising on my hooves was a bit difficult, like every mornings, 'cause I was a lazy mare at waking up, and my mother was the one who knew that more than anypony. But my freedom was just in front of me, and I didn't wanted to fuck up this chance.

I walked to the metal door and stopped when I exited, next to a sleeping guard.

"I should advance with caution..." I murmured to myself. "Not the time to get caught..."

My hooves were slowly walking as I sneaked despite of my chains to the Barbed Wire chamber, she could have the keys for my metal ties after all.

I stopped before the door, looked at right then left, checking the presence of some possibles guards. After verifying I was alone, I decided to act and pushed the door slowly. When it was opened, I took a look: Barbed Wire was in her bed, sleeping with her forehooves around Windigo's massive chest.

Well, they weren't really in the bed, their coverage was lying on the parquet.

"Ok... just search in a desk or something else... Don't wake her up and keep calm..." I whispered at myself.

I advanced slowly and silently, crawling just in front of the bed, passed and focused my attention on a desk, centimeters per centimeters, it was closer, just some meters... and the wooden ground was creaking under each hoofstep.

"Oh Luna, please, makes the sound don't wake her up... please please please..." I thought so hard I believed I was saying it.

I opened the drawer with my magic in a raspy sound of wood against wood.

"Oh please... Luna, I'll be a good pony, I promise, I'll go back to my village and do anything you want but pl-"

A moan just came at my ears and I frozen then turned my head at the source of the sound: Barbed Wire was smiling as she slept, caressing her stallion's body, then she rotated on the matress, spreading her legs in a caricatural pose.

I came back to my first objective : found the keys for my chains, escape away from this damn place and go back to my home.

"Psst !" A masculine voice whispered.

I looked again to the bed, Windigo was woken.

"You're escaping?" he asked.

"Of course I am, why do you think I'm here? for shopping?"

He dropped a look at my chains then looked at me.

"I think I got something for you..." he whispered calmly

"Wut?"

I didn't understand what he meant before he shows me the keyring with one of his wing's claw.

"Gimme that!" I murmured nervously.

I drawed a movement towards him and stopped when I saw he was ready to wake Barbed.

"I've keys, but I can't escape by myself... So, ok for a deal?" he said as he was looking at me with half closed eyes.

I gulped.

"And why can't you escape by yourself? You'll be able to force the passage..."

"They've guns, I don't... And..."

He showed a chain around his neck which was hook to Barbed Wire's left hoof.

"She won't to let me go..."

"I've seen she was mad of you..." I said sarcastically.

"Yeah, really funny... but while we're talking, the clock is ticking and our chances to escape is decreasing each minute..."

He was right... I looked at the drawer and picked all. My inventory showed the stuff: ten picklock, twenty four .357 magnum ammunition, a healing potion and a butterfly knife...

"I've picklocks..."

"You know how to use it?" he asked.

"Yes... I've learned a bit about lockpicking..."

I began my business, introducing a picklock. I lend an ear at the lock. A bit to the right... another at left... and... finished!

The collar around Windigo's neck fall on the mastress.

"Thanks... Now, my part of the deal..." he said as he massed his neckline.

He gently tended the key ring at me.

"If you need help, just ask..."

I retrieved my chains, but the sound when it hit the ground was a bit too loud to me.

And not only for me : A friction sound came from behind Windigo: Barbed Wire just awoke.

"Dammit! Hide under the bed!" The bat-pegasus whispered quickly to me.

I did what the said and looked at a mirror from my location to see the situation.

"Hum... good morning, my honey..." She softly said.

Aw... I was under a psychotic slaver boss's bed, trying to hide, and I though it was

Windigo didn't answer, feigning to sleep.

I saw her raising her hooves on his shoulders slowly, lighted by the amber sun light between the orange curtains.

"C'mon, sweetie, I want to play another time... " she said.

Somepony knocked to the door, she stopped focussing at the door. She got up, and looked at her left hoof, noting the unlocked chain.

"So cute, you've free yourself and you stay with me..." she muttered with a tone full of "love".

As she walked to the door, she wiggled her thighs against each other.

"Ugh... I really need to go wash myself... whatever, that's proves he loves me."

I wasn't sure it was really sane to think about these things right after waking and I didn't wanted to think about it anyway.

She opened the door, and Steel Mane was waiting her boss at the entrance.

"Wire? We've the sale at 1:00 pm... and we need you, Red Eye's guys are gonna want to see ya..."

"Oh... boring... I can have a little fun then..."

"Wire... It's 11 am..."

Barbed Wire looked surprised then stressed.

"Shit! Why nopony woke me up?!"

"You were with Windingo and- "

"I don't care! Prepares the slaves, told to the others I'm coming! I just need my vest and a short wash!" shouted Barbed Wire quickly.

He turned her back at the slaver, looking for her vest.

"A short wash... yeah..." Steel Mane sneered.

Barbed Wire pass the mare in hurry.

"Shut up" she dropped at her subordinate.

"Okay, boss..."

The door closed, letting Windigo and I inside.

The giant pony rose on this four hooves as I was crawling out of my stash.

"Got an idea to escape?" I asked.

"Hum... maybe I've an idea..." he said as he looked at the window. "Do you see the sewer entrance right in front of the building? I think it's another entrance in this building..."

"And what makes you think that?" I continued, a bit surprised.

"We are in a old mayor house, there must be a access to the municipality areas like sewers, police station, pipes and all the rest... If we take the sewers, we're gonna have no problems with the guards... only some rats or roach... nothing dangerous..."

"And if we escape by outside?"

He looked at the window another time.

"Then you exchange rats, roaches and bad smells by guards with guns... personally, I've made my choice …"

And I've made mine.

"We'll take sewers..." I answered quickly.

We opened the doors, nopony, not a cat... We walked slowly in the building, passing into the corridors and down the stairs to the ground floor. We both stopped at the end of the stairs and I scrutinized the piece. The desks were deserts, and a guard was sleeping on his chair and his back legs on a desk near to the entrance, his nightstick against the table.

I decided to walk slowly to the door with a "staff only" written on it.We opened it, showing she was a way to a maintenance stairs which was going to the depths. I looked at my escape mate, then decided to follow the stairs. At the depths of the stairs, a metal door with a plate.

-Sewer entrance, authorized personnel only-

"Hey... our escape card..." Windigo said.

The door was a little rusty, but opened after I pushed it with a bit of force.

"Do you see something?" asked Windigo in the darknesses.

"Let me just a second..."

I felt something at my left forehoof.

- Clic -

The light of my pipbuck was on, enlightening the sewers around me and the thing which was under me: a radroach.

For ponies who don't know what is a radroach, then you're probably stupid or ignorant. The radroach is the most popular non-equine lifeform you can see when in a stable. Unless if you have some freaks in your stable, which raises most important questions about the security of your underground living space. This vermin is between twenty and sixty centimeters long and among seven hundred gram and a good weight of two kilos. And it was on my leg.

"AAAHHH!!! REMOVE IT!!!" I screamed.

"WOW! What the fucking Celestia is that bloody thing!" yelled Windigo.

I grabbed a old metal pipe lying on the ground with my magic and activated my S.A.T.S. Four hits at the head and I killed it.

"What was that?" asked my almost former roommate.

"A radroach... You've never seen it before?"

"The roaches I remember were only five centimeters long, not thirty..."

He was really strange, don't I told you?

We walked a time before find the outside, a river full of waste. As I put my hoof on the water, my geiger counter slowly cracked at less than 2 rad per seconds.

"Ok .. I need to go to my home..." I said at the giant pony next to me.

"And where it is?"

I looked at my mini-map and selectionned an objective.

- New objective, go back to home, marker placed on Stable 13 -

"Right there..." I answered.

"Let's take a look... Hey, it's on my way..."

"What?" I asked, confused.

"Yeah, I've to go... there!"

I looked, focusing on the undiscovered place showed by the bat-pegasus at twelve kilometers south of the stable..

"Can I come with you before take my journey?" he gently asked.

"Well why not ... But when we'll arrived, say nothing and let me speak ..." I answered.

"Alright then, miss." he smiled.

After a day of walking, we saw my village away, some column of smoke were coming from it.

"Your family does barbecues? Sweet!" Said happily Windigo

"Wait... We never do fire... Mom told me it could attract the raiders..."

"Well... maybe they... oh shit! "

"What?"

"It's not a barbecue, it is houses in fire..." He said as he took off.

I ran as fast I was able to do. As this pegasus said, it could be an attack. My family and my friends were in trouble and we weren't prepared to an attack. My mind imagined the worst things possibles.

When I arrived at the village, there was only death, ashes and fire... corpses were half-shredded, blood everywhere... some corpses were raiders, half-eaten too... what could have happen?

Tears came at my eyes, the village builded my our grandparents when they went out of the stable and made their new houses around the bunker entrance, where our parents were born and a part of our generation had born too. Efforts of three generations reduced to nothing...

Windigo drew circles in the sky, maybe looking for survivors.

I walked from houses to houses, looking for survivors too, but nothing... only cadavers and fire...

"Oh Celestia... Why? " I muttered between my teeth.

I continued to walk.

"Mom? Mom!!!!"

Something moved under a pile of burning wooden plate and a grey-crimsom hoof trying to go out. Only one pony was having this color, the pony I knew the best.

"MOM!"

I ran and tried to remove wood from my mother.I was able to see her characteristic horn which made her different of the other inhabitants of our stable-village.

Windigo landed at my side.

"Help me dammit! It's my mother!" I shouted at him, half crying.

"Stay away!"he said, raising his right foreleg.

His gauntlet brought out his metals claws and he removed the wood with a single hit, destroying the remnants.

We plucked up my mother from the wooden heap. She was a grey-crimsom unicorn mare with long wavy dark-grey hairs on her mane and her tail. Her horn was a bit curved, with torsades only at the base, almost looking like a blade which was darker at the tip.Like a lot of the stable's engineer descendant, who were showing the same types of characteristics, her horn was a very rare thing in the stable.

She was looking miserably, now, covered of blood and ashes, her usually splendid mane was completly messy, her eyes were like mad, looking for some help but her gaze calmed when she saw us.

"Mom, are you alright?"

"Yes... I'm fine, sweetheart..." She moaned of pain as she moved her right shoulder. She got a big piece of wood in it. "Not so fine after all..." She said.

"Mom? Where are the survivors?"

"In .. *cough* *cough* in the Stable's lower levels..." she answered, trying to breathe.

Windigo helped my mother to walk with us.

"Raider attacked us, they were completely in frenzy... they didn't care about their own protection, they only think to kill and eat ponies, no matter if they die... And there was a big pegasus mare, she wasn't mad like them... they obey to her …" Mom said.

We were arrived at the Stable.

"We need to go at the lower level... there will be a door to the caves..." my mother slowly told.

"The caves?" I questionned

"Yeah... I've something to say you... something that only engineers of our stable like me know..." she continued.

"And what's that?" asked Windigo.

"I think you know this... "

"Sorry Ma'am, but I've no idea of what you're talking about..." answered the pegasus.

We entered the Stable entrance, arriving at the giant steel blast door. There was my house, the house of my mother and the house of all our ancestors after the Great-war... With a slow walk, we passed the entrance, continued in the corridor and passed by the hydraulic door to really enter the stable.

We stopped at the clinic and I looked by the glass.

A unicorn nurse was lying on the ground, covered with blood on her white medical coat which was rose above her lower body part, showing her spreaded legs, covered of blood too... Her eyes an mouth were opened, her face frozen in a horrible fear, fixing at me, like she was asking for help a bit too late.

A raider was on the ground next to her with his fifth member out, the head splitted by a bonesaw between his eyes. She have defended herself ardently at the sight of the shotgun shells, the Benelli M3T shotgun on the floor and several raiders killed. But it hasn't been enough… Her neck was bitten several times, half opened and showing a bit of her vertebrae in the bloody gap in her nape.

The door was blocked by a table, so I levitated the shotgun at me. If raiders were still here, we would be able to defend ourself.

We continued, descended the stairs to the living part of the stable, among the apartments, with

bodies of dead raiders and guards, smell of blood, powder and a bit of decay.

We passed over the bodies, going deeper inside the stable. The cafeteria was full of dead bodies ... the guard should have defend this room with a heavy defence, as the sentry turrets were out, but destroyed, the guards had change their usual ten millimeters pistol, uniform and their police baton to riot shotguns, kevlar armor and tactical fight knives. They had been regardless about calm down the situation or just approach some drunk troublemakers, they had been using lethal force to defend the stable at all cost, using the stable's "protocol 11".

Security protocols were simple: If the stable security was compromised by an external threat, then heavier was the threat, heavier was the counter.

If it was radroaches, protocol 1: low danger, usual extermination procedure, calling specialists.

If it was rats, protocol 2: low danger, but threat of bites and contagious diseases, extermination procedure.

At protocol 8, the security was beginning to use force.

Protocol 11 was the higher rank of threat management: If protocol 10 didn't work and the invaders were entering the stable, lethal force was used, killing every threat, no matter the ethic, all invaders would be killed, outsiders stallions, mares, pregnant or not, foals and even pets who were going to harm our citizens.

Protocol 11 had never been activated before.

My gaze stopped above us. By her window, the "Overmare", or instead our mayor, was in her office, looking at our group. She shook her hoof at me, so I answered the same.

"Mom, miss Mercy is alive!" I told to my wounded mother.

She looked at the glass pane, and miss Mercy gone from the window. After a minute, the door of the cafeteria opened, showing the pale tall unicorn who was levitating her ten millimeter submachine gun, aiming at Windigo. I understood her intention and placed myself between the beast pegasus and the Overmare.

"Red Sky! Get out!" shouted the unicorn at me.

"No! Miss Mercy, stop before doing a shit! He's not our enemy!" I answered.

Miss Mercy was a calm mare who was always thinking at the consequences before acting. Her cutie mark was a red lily flower, symbol of a high rank in hierarchy. She lowered her submachine gun a bit, considering my giant helper with her piercing and vindictive gaze. After analysing the pegasus, she stored her gun.

"I hope you're not doing a mistake, Red Sky ... It would be regrettable that I have to kill him." she sighed. "Is somepony having a good idea how we're going to exit ?"

"I got *cough* an idea..." said my mother. "We need to go to the lower levels .."

"Well ... got to go..." whispered Windigo. " Show me the way, miss"

We began to walk, Windigo with my mother on his back, miss Mercy and I behind.

"So, miss Mercy? How did you survived?" I asked the Overmare.

"I defended myself with Sleepytime, and hid in my office, when they tried to force the door, I took a stash inside my locker." she answered. "When they finally entered, a tall pegasus came inside and began to touch my terminal... I think she was looking for informations on the stable.."

"What kind of info?"

"Something like "genetical card", but I didn't understood and I was too focused on hide and survive to take attention."

We arrived at the lower level of the stable, with generators and water purification. It seemed raiders didn't came here. We walked several minutes, then stopped in front of stairs.

"I didn't know this stair." said miss Mercy.

Windigo began to down the stairs slowly, trying to keep my mother on him. At the end of the stairs was a heavy reinforced door with a terminal.

"Here it is... The code is : L-U-N-4-F-0-R-3-V-3-R..." my mother said.

Windigo's metal claw were completly able to type the code and the door opened, showing a long coridor in the stone right in front of us.

"Come on... they must be waiting..." My mother whispered as she lighted the cave with her Pipbuck.

Our journey was not so long, but these caves were dark.

"Hey... I heard something " Said Windigo "It sounds something familiar..."

"What?" I asked

"Don't I told you you were one of these... handsome pegasus..."

"Wait .. pegasi? Did you say pegasi like me?"

"Of course, I did .." she answered with a smile.

Windigo showed a large smile, like hope came from the depths of caves to hit him.

"Holy Nightmare Moon ! Luna be blessed!!!" he cried with happiness.

My mother, miss Mercy and I looked at his with surprise...

I because his reaction was... special, and miss Mercy because he said something...

"Did you said Nightmare Moon?" She asked.

"Yes, I did, but we... I mean I must go to them!"

He galloped right forward and stopped on a overhang of stone. I stopped at his side with my mother and miss Mercy. It was beautiful, magnificent... I was speechless before this: a gigantic cathedral-like town in a giant cave, builded with black ebony stone...

"Mom? Since when do you know this?" I asked, looking at the buildings...

"Since twelve months before your birth, sweetie..."

Miss Mercy and I were confused and unable to ask more.

Footnote: Level Up.

New Perk: Lockpicking is magic (Lvl 1) - Your Lockpicking skill is increased 10, each picked lock gives you a small chance of achieving the second rank(Luck +1). Next Chapter: Chapter 3: Other dwellers (rewritten) Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 48 Minutes