A parade of dead hoof shuffled slowly up the creaking staircase towards the seventh floor.

The hungry moaning zombies had been alerted by the noise of the grenade exploding. It had echoed through the apartment building.

The zombies walked slowly walked slowly with outstretched hooves, tumbling onwards.

Twilight was trying to get away from the fire in the apartment floor she was lying on but her injured hoof stopped her.

"Thorax?", she repeated, more quietly.

Twilight Sparkle played on the floor with her stomach on the ground. She struggled, attempting again to rise from the floor but she failed.

She was getting dizzy from the lack of oxygen, and she felt herself slowly slipping away, her vision became hazy and blotted. Sweat poured from her forehead as the room became increasingly hot.

"Where are you?", She asked loudly and coughing loudly.

The only noise that replied was the crackle of fire all over the apartment

Unconsciousness was on it's way for her now, and would soon after be surely followed by suffocation.

"Where did he go?" Twilight asked herself in her mind.

She coughed loudly again, another jolt of sharp pain shot through her chest and back hoof as she did.

Suddenly a horrible realization sprang into her mind at once, and she felt her heart sink to the bottom of her stomach, and her eyes sparkle with tears.

"H-he left me here to die... after all I've gone through and survived, I'm going to suffocate in this apartment... It's not fair... goodbye Equestria." Twilight said to herself with a tear rolling down her cheek.

Faintly, in the distance, she could hear what sounded like hoofsteps coming towards her from doen a long tunnel, over top the noise of tje inferno across the room and it was pacing across the floorboards.

She then opened her eyes a slit, her own hazy vision made it impossible to make the dark shape out. She closed her eyes again against the harsh fumes.

"It must be a hallucination.. of what? Death?" Twilight asked herself in her mind.

"Your not dying here princess Sparkle." A distorted voice told Twilight, hovering on top of her.

Her eyes shot fully open this time in surprise, even against the foul smoke and haze.

She felt a strong, covered hoof wrapping around her bare back and another underneath her hooves, picking her up off of the floor easily.

Twilight gasped out loudly, as she rose into the air, her heart pounding furiously.

"That's not a hallucination...what?"

She reached her hooves out through her haze and clutched at the figure desperately, feeling the hard material it wore.

The hoof under her hooves was careful not to accidentally touch the wounded spot on her back hoof, as the hoof supported her, all she could hear from the figure was an oddly muffled heavy breathing.

Twilight wrapped her hooves around it's shoulder, holding onto it like a drowning mare clutching a life preserver and she gazed upwards at it's face.

She could make out the familiar metal helmet and large, impenetrable red eyes on it's unusual face, and a strange shape seemed to protrude from the front of the mouth portion, another circular shape was on the left side of the mouth, and a smaller one on the right.

The field of haze faded slightly from her vision, and Twilight could see that she was now staring into the gas mask and her soft eyes widened.

"He didn't leave me." Twilight said to herself quietly and surprised.

"Thorax... i-is it you?" She managed to speak, ignoring the pain in her throat and her mind racing confusedly.

"Who do you think? The Nemesis?" Thorax's muffled voice suggested slowly, as he turned them back towards the doorway and moved towards it.

Twilight could have cried in relief at hearing that familiar muffled voice, but forced herself calm.

"No, I just didn't expect that a cold blooded jerk like you would ever-" Twilight started quietly, a hint of smile starting to touch her lips.

Thorax's eyes narrowed behind his mask.

"Enough talk, princess Sparkle. We're going up to the rooftop and crossing over again." He reminded her Sicily as he passed the kitchen "Focus on the mission and spare me the emotions and then we can talk." He added grudgingly.

"I'm actually happy to see him." She thought to herself.

Thorax stared down at her smiling face and he blushed behind his mask.

"I'm probably going to end up regretting this." Thorax thought to himself bitterly.

He carried her out the smoldering apartment and into the zombie filled, brass casing covered hall.

He looked up at the gaping hole in the ceiling above that the Nemesis had burst open earlier, and seeing the night sky above.

Twilight gasped in the fresh air and quickly brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes.

"Thank Celestia.. I never thought I'd breath again." She stammered, both hooves gripping onto his back.

He glanced to their right side, back at the staircase, as rotting zombies staggered up the wooden stairs and caught sight of the pair survivors, Twilight looked over Thorax's right shoulder at the monsters shuffling down the hall towards him.

"Let's get out of here!" She told him.

"Shoot the zombies off with your magic." Thorax ordered.

Twilight nodded and activated her horn and she fired it at the zombies head and each of them fell on the floor dead.

Thorax reached the final step of the tall staircase and looked up, a red neon sign was glowing just above the door. It was shaped in a single obvious word: EXIT

Thorax moved the hooves supporting Twilight's hooves, gripped the handle of the wooden door and pushed it open roughly, the door swung open and Thorax carried Twilight through.

The cold night air fell upon Twilight once again and goosebumps rose up over her body.

"It's freezing out here!" Twilight thought.

She shivered and tightened her grip again on Thorax's warm outfit.

"We should close the door behind us, it'll slow them down for a couple of seconds." Twilight suggested.

"That's what I was going to do." He replied calmly.

He turned back around and pushed the door shut with his pot, then turned back to the roof.

Once they reached the end of the roof and they looked down and it was a 7 stories fall.

"That's a long way down." Twilight commented.

Thorax ignored her and looked up from the alley, searching across the side for his target, his eye pieces stopped on a small metal scaffold, that hibg on the adjacent apartment building. It was lined up directly across the alley with where they were on the roof. The opposite building was one story taller though and there was alsi a small panel of buttons on the scaffold, and a long rail hung around the entire edge of it.

Thorax nodded to himself slightly, considering his plan.

"We can get a running jump, grab onto the rail and pull ourselves up. The scaffold is better than the one we used earlier.. I can use the control panel to take us up a story to that roof, then find the nearest clear floor and take her to an apartment, work on the wound, if she's up to it." He thought calmly and prepared.

Author's Note

Got you guys with a cliff hanger and don't worry I'll get the next chapter up really soon.