She will be our salvation.

I know this because I trust her. And she, perhaps, trusts me.

The mirrors are ready. I am I ready to walk through them, to escape the hell that our home has become. But she is not ready. And so she will stay here, to remake the world in our image.  The Nexus believes this, and so I cannot complain.

I take the final needle and inject it into her foreleg. A tear comes from her eye, but she does not cry. I stroke her soft mane and psionically whisper comfort into her mind.

"Why?"

The question comes from nowhere, and yet I understand it perfectly. She wants to know. Perhaps I will tell her. Perhaps I will not. The secrets will have to be hidden for her to find.

I see the dark scarab-ships fall from the void outside, and I pull the needle out from her leg. I wave at the nearby biped, and it caters toward me, arms already extended. I point at the creature - that is all I have to do. The biped lifts her up in its robotic hands.

The world shakes. I hear the scarab-ship's synthetic roar - I feel the searing heat of its crimson beam tearing through the asphalt and earth. It could destroy me, but if it did my purpose would be nothing.

So I run, and I command the biped to follow me. We crawl through the ruined streets together, running through rubble, watching as everything we have ever created was torn down in an instant. Everything I have ever done to make this reality was destroyed. Even my staff was thrown aside in desperation. And so we have little else to do but run.

The lab is nearby. The building is all but destroyed, but the basements are still intact. I run out onto the open street and I see one of the scarabs turn to me. There is nothing left. I run, the searing-hot beam crossing behind me, just barely scraping the biped and the future of everything. The machine is fine. The creature is gripping the biped as if it were a pillow.

There is no more time left to waste.

I break open the ruined doors to the staircase. But it is too late. The harsh, mechanical scream echos over the the city, and suddenly I am falling, falling.

The cold metallic grasp of the biped's arm finds my shoulder. The bone breaks but I am not dead. She is still alive. The staircase is still intact, and I can see the exit. I command the biped to move us onto the stairs proper, even as the earth crumbles around us. I run forwards, holding my broken shoulder. I find the door and blast it open, letting the light flow where it never should. The labs are empty, and the world cracked. Nothing is working. No lights, no doors, no machines, nothing. Even the biped begins to exclaim that it is running out of power.

But there is one thing in here that works.

There is a glass tube, mounted on the wall. There are hundreds like it.

Specimen storage. Designed to freeze whatever is inside to preserve it.

Meant to keep things alive for longer than they could live. And powered by an uninterruptible power source.

I rev the flywheel, ignoring the pain. Once, twice, three times I pull, and on the third time the bank of cryo-pods flickers to life.

Even as she stares at me with tearful eyes, I know that I could do no better. But the things she carries - she will save us all. Even as the tube is sealed I smile at her. My hand touches her hoof through the steel-glass. Her eyes well up with tears, but I shake my head no. No tears now, my dear.

Be brave now, my little pony. Soon, your nap will be over.

My tear slips off my face and drips onto her pod. She smiles, but only a bit. I turn off the light inside her pod, and quickly insert it in. The cryo-module begins to whirr, and I run, as quick as I can, away from the lab as it begins to crumble.

And maybe, just maybe, she will be our salvation.