Fallout Equestria: Recovery

We stepped out of the cave to the sight of a wasteland. The ground was barren and grey and seemed to extend forever. A few dead trees were scattered around the hewn and unforgiving landscape. As we stepped out we all froze at the sight of the sky or the clouds in the sky. It was dizzying, I felt as if I could fall into the air.

“Come on you two, we need to move.” Deadbolt snapped. He was right, we were still in danger.

We galloped as fast as we could out into the wasteland. Behind us we could hear the sound of the Stable doors opening again. I was surprised when I didn’t hear the sounds of gunfire soon after. I took a glance back and could see one of the robot ponies standing at the exit of the cave, but he wasn’t following us. He wasn’t even looking at us. He was looking back into the cave.

I found a nearby ditch and dropped in.

“What the hell are you doing?” Deadbolt said as he stopped.

“Hold on, their not following us.” I said poking my head up to get a look at the armored machine.

Rose and Deadbolt dropped into the ditch and watched as well. The other robot pony soon emerged along with the suited pegasus. He was furious, I couldn’t make out what he was saying but it was clear that his lackeys were getting an ear full. The pegasus flew off in the other direction and the other ponies followed him.

“Why aren’t they following us? That one definitely saw us.” I whispered regardless of the fact there was no way they could hear us.

“Who cares? Let’s just get out of here while we can.” Deadbolt said standing up.

“Where do we go?”

He sighed in annoyance. “I don’t know. I just want to put as much distance between me and that Stable as possible.” and he started off.

We spend the rest of the day walking. We didn’t have a plan, we didn’t have a destination, didn’t have anything anymore. Rose followed us silently, I had to turn back to make sure she was still there a few times. My leg was still burning all day from where the robot ponies monstrous weapon had glanced me.

It was starting to get darker. We decided to hold up in a small ramshackle hut we found. The inside was trashed. If anypony had been here they left in a hurry. There was still food sitting on the table. Of course, more apples. Not the nice bright red or green apples we had in 12. They were dull and nearly tasteless. I didn’t think I could ever miss Stable 12’s apples.

As I bit into one my Pip-Buck started clicking. The geiger counter on it had activated, it wasn’t a lot of radiation but it did make me hesitate. I had been exposed to higher levels of radiation when working on the Stable’s magical generators. I ate them regardless of the radiation. I hadn’t eaten properly in over a day. Rose slowly ate hers as well.

Deadbolt has found a small safe below the bed. After examining it for awhile he finally turned back to us.

“I might be able to get that safe open.” He said and started looking around for something to pick the lock.

Rose and I watched as he found a screwdriver and a bobby pin and went to work. After a minute or two of fussing around the lock popped open with a satisfying click.

“Where did you learn how to do that?” I asked, I had never seen him pick a lock before; he usually had some kind of access code for anything that would have been locked in the stable.

He didn’t answer, instead he pulled out the contents of the safe. Inside were a few bullets that didn’t fit the pistol I had and some bottle caps.

“Why the hell would somepony keep bottle caps in a safe?” Deadbolt asked of nopony in particular.

“Maybe they collected them?”

He shot me an aggravated and confused look “Who the hell collects bottle caps?”

I shrugged; it sounded as good an explanation as any to me.

We let Rose take the bed, though I'm not sure anypony should have been laying on it. It was stained brown and yellow and didn’t really look comfortable. DeadBolt and I laid on opposite sides of the room. He was by the door and I was against the back wall.

I didn’t sleep well normally, but that night I couldn’t sleep at all. Between the burning in my leg and thoughts of what had happened today, I was wide awake. I had never killed anypony before today. I had only ever fought with DeadBolt, and that rarely turned violent. How many did I kill today? The pony in Rose’s room, the two in the hall, three more on the lower levels and and two more down in maintenance C and by extension Nightwatch and Scarlett. Ten ponies, I had taken the life of ten ponies in one day.

Rose had seen me kill them all, I wonder what she thinks of me now. She still hasn’t said a word. DeadBolt probably would have done the same thing, but still I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I ejected Y34RK from my Pip-Buck and studied it. Why did that pegasus want this? He had to know we took it. Why didn’t he chace us?

“Is that it?” DeadBolt whispered from across the room. I didn’t notice that he was awake too.

“Yeah, this is it.” Everything that happened today was because of this.

“You should get rid of it.” I looked over at him, his brow was low as he glared at the chip.

“Don’t you want to find out what it is first?” I asked him. I was curious about it, I wanted know what was so important that somepony was willing to slaughter a stable for it.

“I don’t care what it is.” His voice was starting to raise.

I snapped Y34RK back into my Pip-Buck. “I'll get rid of it once I know what it is.”

He took a deep breath to calm himself. “Fine.” With that he turned over and went back to sleep.

I was stiff when I woke up. The wooden floor of the shack wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world, but I supposed it beat sleeping outside. We spend the morning making sure we hadn’t missed anything in the shack. We found some more irradiated fruit and Deadbolt found a few more bobby pins.

“Where do you think we should go?” I asked looking out at grey wastes before us.

Deadbolt pointed over to an old road, it was broken apart, parts of it missing completely. “I figure we follow that, it’s got to lead somewhere.” He said and we started down the road.

We followed the road for a few hours before we encountered anything. My leg had started hurting more sense last night and the lack of breaks wasn’t helping it. Finally we heard someone yelling from over a hill.

“Come on! Get a move on!” The voice was angry and gruff.

We approached the top of the hill and saw a small group of ponies. Four of them looked like the ones that attacked the Stable. Two of them had guns, another had a large knife that was flat on the end and the last wielded a pool cue. In between the four rubber and bone clad ponies were a yellow and white earth pony mare and a blue unicorn stallion. The two ponies in the center had chains around their legs and looked like they had been beaten. The stallion looked like he had it a lot worse. His eye was swelled enough for us to notice from on top of the hill and he was walking with a limp.

I brought up the EFS and it registered the two in the center as neutral, all the others were red.

“We’ve got to help them.”

Deadbolt looked at me like I was mad. “Are you crazy? We should keep moving, they won’t notice us.”

I checked my pistol. Seven shots, I could probably take out one of the ponies with a gun before they noticed us but we might be in trouble after that. I slammed the clip back into the pistol.

“Fine, you go. I'm helping them.”

He grabbed me by the leg. “Rivet, they’re not our problem. We need to worry about us.”

I shoved him off. “Then worry about yourself.”

Before he could respond I had started to move closer to get a better shot. There was a few dead bushes between us and the other ponies. They weren’t great cover but they let me get up closer without them noticing me. I slid into SATS.

*BANG, BANG, BANG*

I put three shots into the first pony with a gun. His partners were stunned for a second when he dropped.

*BANG*

I got a glancing hit on the second one with a gun. They finally spotted me, the one with the knife running at me like a madpony.

The captured stallion wasted no time in trying to get back at the ponies who had beaten him. He threw the chains on his fore hoofs around the other gun pony's neck and started to pull.

Pool cue turned and started beating him relentlessly, but the stallion didn’t let go.

Knife pony dashed up the hill at an alarming rate.

*BANG, BANG*

He managed to dodge both shots, or rather he moved so erratically that I missed. He was nearly on top of me when DeadBolt tackled him and started wrestling the knife away from him. They rolled down the hill trading blows. Deadbolt grabbed the knife from the pony and swung. A splash of red covered the ground near them and I heard what sounded like gargling coming from the pony.

The blue stallion had managed to choke the other pony with a gun to death before the pony with the pool cue had beat him into submission, he just kept beating him, unaware that I was rushing down to them. He turned around just in time to see the barrel of my pistol aimed point blank to his head.

*BANG*

The blue stallion was lying, bleeding on the ground. He could barely breath and each breath came with a cough and some blood. The yellow mare was holding him.

“Hes not going to make it.” Deadbolt at least had the decency to sound sorry for him.

“You don’t know that.” I said, trying to convince myself that he might pull through. Maybe if we could get some help he’d be fine, I thought to myself.

“Do you have any medical supplies? Because I sure don’t.” He said aggravated.

The yellow mare looked up at us. “Please, let us go.” She sounded like she thought we were going to keep them captive like these ponies had.

“What? Of course we’re letting you go.” I was shocked that she thought we would even consider not doing so. “Deadbolt, search these ponies while I get them out.”

He just gave a grunt and trotted away to look for anything useful. I searched the nearest and found the key to the shackles.

“Why did they have you guys chained up?” I asked as I started to unlock the shackles of the stallion. His legs were raw, the fur had been completely worn off and it was red and bleeding slightly where the shackle had been.

“What do you mean? They’re raiders. They were gonna probably gonna sell us to some slavers. At least, I hope thats what they’re plan was.” The mare said rubbing her legs where the chains had been. She looked back at the stallion, his breathing was slowing even more. He wasn’t going to live much longer. “Theres nothing we can do for him.”

I sat on my haunches and stared down at the dieing unicorn.

The stallion let out a coughing fit. That lasted almost a minute, then he went limp.

The yellow mare stood up and backed away from the dead stallion. DeadBolt and Rose joined us after searching the others.

“My name’s Daisy. Daisy May.”

I looked back up to her. “Oh, um, I'm Rivet. This is DeadBolt and Rose.”

“Y’all are Stable ponies right?” She asked pointing at our Stable 12 bardings, “I don’t think I've ever seen a Stable pony this far from Las Pegasus.”

“Where do you plan on going Daisy?” DeadBolt cut in.

“I'm heading back to Marefield. What about you three?”

DeadBolt and I exchanged a quick glance. “Would you mind if we tagged along with you?” I asked.

“Absolutely! Least I could do is guide you to town after y’all helped me out, but can I asked a favor?” She looked down at the blue stallion. “I don’t wanna leave him out here. Can we at least bury him first?”

DeadBolt and I covered the shallow grave we had dug for the stallion. Daisy didn’t know his name so I didn’t know what to carve into the small stone I found to mark his grave. I ended up leaving it blank.

Deadbolt laid everything he had looted from the corpses on the ground. They didn’t have much: a pistol and a smaller caliber revolver, a few bullets for each, a knife, a pool cue, some rotten meat, and some bottle caps. DeadBolt took the knife and the revolver; I took the other pistol. It was the same kind that I had but it seemed to be in slightly better condition.

“Aren’t you going to take the caps?” Daisy asked as we got ready to head out.

”Why would we want some bottle caps?” Deadbolt asked.

“Did y’all ponies come out of a Stable yesterday or something?” She asked sarcastically,

DeadBolt and I glanced at each other. Deadbolt spoke up, “We’re not from around here, so humor us.”
Daisy gave us a strange look. “Well, ‘round here we use caps as a currency”

“You're kidding... you use bottle caps as money?” Deadbolt asked.

“Umm, yeah we do...” Daisy’s look grew more and more confused.

DeadBolt gave another one of his aggravated sighs. “ Of course you do. Lets just get going.”

It was a few hours walk to Marefield. The adrenaline from our fight with the raiders had worn off long ago and my leg started to hurt again. It was starting to get hard to walk on. I started limping when we were still about an hour outside of MareField. I had started to fall behind a little. Rose and DeadBolt took the lead.

“Hey, are you okay?” Daisy asked.

“Yeah, my leg kinda hurts, but I'll be fine.”

She eyed me suspiciously. ”I don’t know, you're not looking so hot.”

I wasn’t feeling so hot either. I was thirsty, tired and wanted to stop walking. “I'm fine. How much farther is it to Marefield?” Once I had taken a break my leg would stop hurting.

“It’s just over that next hill. If it was a bit brighter you could see the smoke stacks.”

When we reached the top of the hill we finally saw Marefield. It looked like it was a decent-sized community, though I didn’t really have anything to compare it to. A wall of old billboards and train cars surrounded the town.The town had been built next to a small cliff face and and stretched partly onto it. Most of the houses were similar to the shack we had held up in last night only they looked like they had been taken care of a fair bit better. In the center of the town was a building that looked to be three stories. You could see lights starting to turn on all over town, slowly illuminating the dirt streets and metal pathways that crossed through the town. It was quite dark by the time we reached the gates.

As we approached the gates somepony yelled from above. “Hold up.” We looked up to see a grey earth pony wearing a strange harness with two long barrels coming out of the sides, pointed straight at us.

After a second of scrutiny he recognized Daisy. “Oh, sorry Daisy. Didn’t see it was you. Who are these ponies with you?”

“It’s fine, Stead. These here ponies helped me out earlier. They won’t cause any trouble.” Daisy shouted back.

“Alright if you say so.” He disappeared for a moment then the gates were enveloped with a green and blue glow as the two unicorn guards opened it for us. My Pip-Buck popped on with a message.

-Discovered “Marefield”-

How the hell did it know that?

As we entered Daisy stopped us and pointed to the large building in the center of town. “Okay, theres a trader’s rest-stop on the first floor of the big place in the center of town. You guys can stay there for tonight. They’ve got food and water there too. The caps you guys got from the raiders should cover it. I'll meet back up with you and give you a proper tour in the morning.”

Daisy went back to her place for the night. We wasted no time in getting to the large building. The rest-stop portion of the first floor was basically just a large room with a line up lockers and several rows of cots, but it was a welcome sight after walking all day.

We stuffed our things in a locker and claimed a few beds. Rose waited for us while DeadBolt and I got some food and water with the few caps we had. She was the first one to fall asleep.

“Hey Deadbolt.”

He groaned. “What?”

“I'm really worried about Rose. She hasn’t said a word sense we got out of the Stable.” Actually she had barely made any noise at all. Its like she was a ghost just gliding along with us.

He sighed. “I'm worried about her too Rivet. You saw what happened to her back in 12. Frankly I'm surprised she's been able to keep up with us. Actually, she's been doing a better job of it than you have been all day. Are you okay?”

It was my turn to sigh. “I'm fine. I just need some rest and I'll be good as new.”

“Alright, if you say so. And who knows, maybe if we stay here a couple of days and rest, she’ll snap out of it.”

“I hope you're right.” I turned and tried to get some sleep. My leg kept me up most of the night. I had hoped being off of it for a while would make it stop hurting but It hadn’t helped.

When I woke up Rose and DeadBolt had already left the trader’s room. I got up and headed out into Marefield. I was surprised by all of the ponies that lived here. The streets were packed with ponies going about their business.

“Rivet, over here.” Somepony called out. I looked over and saw Daisy waving me over. She was standing with the guard from last night. Now that it was light out I got a better look at him. He was grey with a charcoal colored mane. His cutie mark was some sort of gun, it resembled the ones he had strapped to either side of him.

“So this is the guy who saved you from becoming a raider fuck-toy, huh?” The grey stallion said as I approached. His voice was booming even when he wasn’t shouting. He wasn’t exactly a subtle pony.

“He sure is!” Daisy replied happily “Rivet, this is SteadFast.”

“Uh, hi nice to meet you.”

He gave me a quick once over. “Marefield owes you something fierce. Don’t know what we would have done without our only doctor.” As he said that I noticed Daisy’s cutie mark. It was a red cross with a roll of bandages wrapping around it. “Listen, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.”

“Actually, I do have some questions to ask if you don’t mind.” There was a lot on my mind. With any luck somepony around here could answer even a few of my questions.

“No problem, ask away.”

My stomach let out an audible rumble. “Um, maybe we could talk over some breakfast?”

Steadfast and Daisy both laughed.

“Sure thing. Daisy, why don’t you go fetch his friends?”

“Alright, meet you at the diner.” She said and trotted off.

I sat staring and poking at the plate of strange food that had been placed in front of me. It was some kind of meat. I’ve never eaten meat before and the thought didn’t really excite me.

“What, y’all never had Radhog before?” Daisy asked in a teasing manner. “Its really not that bad. Give it a try!”

Deadbolt and I looked at eachother, then back to the strange food. Tentatively I took a small bite. Surprisingly enough, it actually wasn’t that bad. It was certainly a drastic change from having eaten almost nothing but apples my entire life.

“So Rivet, hows that leg of yours? It feeling better?” Daisy asked. It actually was feeling a lot better than it had last night. The burning had gone away, it hurt slightly when I walked but It wasn’t any cause for alarm.

“Yeah, its fine now.” I was starting to get annoyed by everypony asking me if I was alright.

Steadfast let out a chuckle while watching the three of us start to eat the weird meat.

“So, you said you had some questions for me?” He asked

“Oh, right.” Where to begin? I figured I’d start small. “What's with the harness?” I asked pointing at the strange weapon sitting next to the table.

“Oh that? It’s a battle saddle.” He must have noticed the confused look on my face, as he decided to elaborate. “You see, some weapons are too big or powerful to wield effectively in your mouth or with magic, so they’re made into a harness you can wear. Makes ‘em much more stable.”

I studied the large weapon. It reminded me of the weapons that the armored ponies had used. “Are there other kinds of battle saddles?”

“Oh sure, there's tons of different ones. You got some larger rifles, like that one there, machine guns, missile launchers, hell, you can even find some of the large magical energy weapons in battle saddle form.”

None of those sounded like something I would want to go up against in a fight. Especially when all I have is a small pistol. “Magical energy weapons?” I asked.

Steadfast nodded, he was clearly happy to show off his knowledge of weapons. “Very different kind of weapon compared to your average gun. They use energy packs instead of magazines or clips and fire beams of magical energy instead of bullets. They’re a bit more rare but you can find them all over the Las Pegasus area.”

I took a look around the room. The diner was full of patrons. Close to twenty Earth ponies or Unicorns but no pegasi. “I can’t help but notice that I haven't seen a pegasus sense we got here.”

“That’s because there aren’t any pegasi Marefield.” Daisy explained.

“Why’s that?” Deadbolt asked as he took another bite of Radhog.

“It’s a long story.” Said Steadfast.

“Well we don’t exactly have anywhere to be.” Deadbolt said sarcastically.

“Well you know about the war right?” He was talking about the Pony/Zebra war that happened over 200 years ago. It was the reason that the Stables were built.

Deadbolt and I just nodded.

“Well in the last days of the war the Zebras got desperate. They dropped massive alchemic bombs on most of the major cities in Equestria. One of the first cities to get hit was one of the bigger pegasi cities, Cloudsdale. As soon as Cloudsdale fell, the pegasi retreated into the clouds and pulled the skies closed. That’s why it’s always cloudy. You might occasionally get some breaks through the clouds, but they usually don’t last long. But anyway, now almost no pegasi are ever seen on the ground.”

The thought that there was even more above the layer of clouds was actually a little scary. I still wasn’t used to the outside. Every time I looked up I felt vertigo at the sight of the sky.

“Almost?” I asked.

The grey stallion let out a sigh. “You do see some, but they're almost always trouble. They’ve either been exiled or they’re part of the Enclave, but the Enclave haven't been seen around Las Pegasus for a long time, ever since the Steel Rangers ran them out of the area, that is. Sometimes they send their ‘scouting parties’ out around Trottingham or Whinneypeg, but-”

“I saw a pegasus leading the group of ponies that attack our stable.” I interrupted. “He had some ponies in some kind of robot armor working for him, but they weren’t pegasi.”

Daisy and Steadfast exchanged a quick worried glance.

“That sounds like the Organization.” Daisy said to Steadfast.

Once again, SteadFast picked up on our confused looks. “A small group of Pegasi that came down from the cloud layer about ten years ago now. They made a group they call ‘The Organization.’ They’ve been stealing up all of the pre-war tech they can get their hooves on. They’re even worse than the Steel Rangers ,and better equipped too. I’ve never heard of them attacking a Stable before though.”

“They were looking for this.” I ejected Y34RK and handed to SteadFast.

DeadBolt nudged me. “Rivet, a word.” He grabbed my leg and dragged me away from the table. DeadBolt glared at me and spoke under his breathe, “We have a small army of well equipped ponies that are willing to slaughter an entire Stable full of ponies to get pre-war technology hunting us. Do you really think its a good idea to show off thing that they attacked the Stable for?”

I shook his hoof off of me. “I trust these ponies, they’re the first ones that don’t seem like they want to kill us. Besides we saved one of them, and from the sounds of it they don’t like this ‘Organization’. I doubt they’re going to throw us over to them.” I walk back and took my seat again. “Sorry about that. DeadBolt’s a bit paranoid.”

SteadFast handed the chip back to me. “What is it?”

I slid the Y34RK back into my Pip-Buck. “No idea.”

He sat back and took his hoof through his mane. “It’s gotta be something important if they attacked a Stable to get to it. How the hell did you three manage to get out with it?”

*WAMB* The door to the diner swung open drawing the attention of everyone in the the room. A light green unicorn stallion rushed up to our table. “Steadfast, there you are! We need you at the front gate!”

Steadfast stood up grabbed his Battle Saddle. “What's the problem?”

“Its those Organization bastards, they say they’re looking for somepony.”

The grey stallion strapped his Battle Saddle on and rushed out the door with the unicorn.

We all exchanged worried glances. How did that old saying go? Speak of the Draconequus and he shall appear?

We ran quickly down to the front gates, but were stopped by one of the guards. “You three should stay out of sight.” He warned. “Its one of those Organization pegasi. Says he’s looking for three Stable-dwellers.” He explained looking at our bardings.

“How the hell did they find us here?” DeadBolt asked himself.

“Follow me, I know where we can watch them without being spotted.” Daisy took off up one of the ramps leading to one of the shacks that was up on the small cliff.

We were hidden by some shadows and hopefully we were far enough off to the side where the ponies at the gate wouldn’t look. We could see SteadFast and a group of other guards talking to a pegasus accompanied by two of the robot ponies. This pegasus was a different one than I had seen back in Stable 12. That pony was a teal-blue and this pony was red with a yellow mane that looked like fire. I could just make out his flaming wings cutie mark. He wore a suit like the other pegasus, but this pony’s was jet black.

“We know that they’re here. Just bring them out and we’ll be on our way.” I could hear the pegasus yelling to the guards.

“I don’t know what the hell you're talking about. I haven't seen any Stable-dwellers enter Marefield and I'm sure any of the other guards would have told me if any had come by.” Steadfast yelled back. “Besides if they had come here, what makes you think we’d turn them over to you Organization bastards anyway?”

One of the armored ponies was looking around, his eyes fixed on us as he spotted us up on the cliff.. He must had said something to the other one because he looked by and stared us down as well.

“Bring out the Stable-dwellers. We promise that no harm will come to them.” The fiery-haired pegasus demanded.

“Bullshit, we all know how The Organization works. Even if we did know where the Stable-dwellers were, you would butcher them and steal anything they had before they cleared the gates.”

One of the robot leaned forward and whispered something to their leader. He glanced up at us, then back at Steadfast. “Fine, we’ll be on our way. But be sure that Mr. Avarice will hear about this transgression.” The pegasus turn and started to walk away. His two goons sat for a few seconds starting up at us before following.

We quickly made our way down to SteadFast. “Well they know you're here. That’s for sure.”

I could see the understanding dawn on DeadBolt’s face. “Fuck... Our security tags.”

“Our what?” I asked him.

“Dammit!” He shouted and kicked at the ground. “That’s how they followed us, and probably why they didn’t bother to chase us. They must have found our security tags in one of the Stable’s terminals.”

Fuck... I had completely forgotten about those. Each Pip-Buck is given a security tag that is used to find the wearer if he or she goes missing or gets lost. Getting lost didn’t happen much in a Stable but it was still possible. If they did have our security tags, that meant they could follow us no matter where we went.

“What are we going to do now? If they can track us we’ll never be safe.”

Steadfast cut in. “Listen, we still owe you guys for helping Daisy. If you stay here we’ll keep you safe.”

DeadBolt wasn’t calmed, “Wasn’t it you that said they were super well-equipped? What's stopping them from just coming on into town with more of those armored goons and just wiping the place out?” You could hear the frustration in DeadBolt’s voice. For once I didn’t blame him for being angry.

“Avarice may be power-hungry, but I doubt he’s insane enough to try to attack a settlement as big as Marefield. We’re that last major settlement before New Pegasus. That’s a few days travel west. If Marefield is attacked, a major supply line to the Las Pegasus area will go with it and that’s not something that’ll go unnoticed. I highly doubt that Avarice is dumb enough to do that.” Steadfast seemed sure of himself. But we had seen The Organization attack that Stable. I didn’t like the idea of that happening to Marefield too because of us.

It was about then that the pain in my leg came back. It was worse than ever.

“Ugh, I don’t think we should stay in Marefield very long.”

DeadBolt turned to me. “And just where do you suggest we go, Rivet?”

I felt hot. It was getting hard to even stand on my leg. “I don’t... I don’t know”

I could see a growing concern in Daisy’s face. “Rivet, are you feeling okay?”

“I'm fine.” I shouted at her. I clearly wasn’t. My head was spinning, I could barely think straight.

“Rivet, calm down.” Steadfast said.

It was starting to get hard to breath. “Why should I be calm? Were being hunted down by a group of ponies that can track us no matter where we go!” Why was I so angry all of a sudden?

Deadbolt turned on me. “Rivet, what the hell’s gotten into you?”

I turned to scream at him but before I could my leg gave out from under me. “Arg!”

The last thing I heard before I passed out was the only thing I had wanted to hear sense we left the Stable.

“Rivet!” It sounded distant as my vision faded but I knew that voice, Rose’s voice.