Lara got up from the workstation and joined him. They left the control room and slipped back into the armory. "Can you start the generator?" he asked. She nodded. "Okay, take care of it. I'll see what I can find here," he said. She went through a door at the back. He didn't have much luck, sorting through the gun lockers and cases, until a moment later when the generator snapped online and the lights flickered to life. He'd thought they'd be weak or flickering, but they were strong and steady. The lights and the hum of electricity went a long way towards soothing his frayed nerves. Lara reemerged from the generator room and helped him search.

They managed to find a shotgun and a battle rifle. Lara ended up taking the battle rifle, since it was more suited to her abilities: elegant, graceful and accurate, and he took the shotgun since it was more suited to his: blunt, forceful and very primitive. They managed to find some ammo for their respective weapons, and then returned to the main hall. Kane was glad to see that the corridor and the rooms they'd previously cleared were well-lit now. But he was less than thrilled to see that everything else wasn't.

"Guess it's just one wing to a generator," Lara murmured.

He grunted. "Come on, let's get this over with."

They opted to go down into the garage first. They moved ahead into the darkness once more, Kane playing his light over the barren walls. There were more signs of destruction and chaos revealed as they checked the area. A pair of large storage bays full of inert stacks of crates flanked the hallway on either side. They only managed a cursory inspection of each. Kane spotted a bright red pool of blood and some shell casings on the floor.

They investigated a pair of maintenance bays, really just glorified repair rooms of workbenches and tables scattered with oily rags, spare parts and dented, well-used tools, some lockers and a few pieces of equipment.

Nothing there, either, but Kane felt they were getting close to something.

They moved into the garage. He saw light coming in, but it was very faint. Glancing to the left, he realized that the main door had been forcefully ripped open in the same way the front gate had. More crates, some broken open, supplies scattered everywhere. A Warthog, another carrier class, this one just as broken and useless as the other two. Tables, chairs, all sorts of crap. Nothing of any real use, no clues to this growing mystery.

They moved across the garage, their footsteps echoing, and came to the power center at the back of the room. They quickly cleared it, and Lara set to work reactivating the generator. Kane moved back to the door leading into the garage, as it was the only way into the room, and stood guard. His mind was wandering, he was thinking of Hux. Where the hell was the man? What had happened to him? He couldn't keep the worry at bay.

In the garage, something shifted.

Kane jerked his SMG to the right and felt a bolt of icy fear shoot through him as he spied a dark figure lurching towards him.

"Shit-" he snapped and squeezed the trigger.

It was a good shot, three good shots actually, and if it was a normal person, they would have been dead, or at least dropped, as they'd gone right through the chest. The person coming towards him, the Proxy, was a former female Marine. She was still wearing her fatigues. Her eyes had that same shadowy effect.

He remembered something, suddenly, and aimed the flashlight up, at her face. She hissed in agony, throwing her hands up in front of her face, stumbling back. Light in their eyes hurt them. He filed that away for later. As soon as she lowered her hands, he squeezed the trigger. The round went into her forehead, above her right eye, and blew out the back of her head in a spray of black gore. She hit the floor like a sack of bricks.

"You okay?" Lara called.

"Fine," Kane replied. "Just a Proxy." He didn't like how unsteady his voice sounded.

"I'm almost done," Lara said.

A moment later, the lights flickered to life. As they did, it became more obvious just how bad the garage had been hit by whatever it was that had happened. There was stuff everywhere, a lot of it broken, the Warthog really dented and dinged up. More blood and shell casings, too. God, he was really getting tired of seeing crap like this. How many buildings had he come into and everyone had been murdered by the Covenant?

This was different, but...murder was murder.

Especially when he was the one who was having to do it. He'd never had to fight humans before, and although these things were no longer human, these Proxies had once been human. As Lara emerged again from the power room and they began making their way back across the garage, an idea struck Kane.

"Lara, if the generators are tied to each wing, why don't we just go back to the command wing, since it's already turned on, and do what we need to do?" he asked.

She shook her head. "That's not how it works, unfortunately. The individual generators just control the basic stuff, like lights and outlets and doors, all three need to be on before it activates the big stuff like the security network and the transmission array and BioScan."

"Of course," Kane muttered.

They got back to the antechamber and looked around. The room itself and the way they'd originally come, were noticeably brighter now. They stepped into the final corridor. Kane wanted to hurry, he really needed to check in with Goll, let him know about Hux, get some damned backup down here, but he wouldn't let himself hurry. Hurrying increased the chances for mistakes, which increased the chances for death.

They began to sweep and clear the area, starting with the pair of barracks. They moved quickly and quietly among the bunk beds, found nothing and headed back to the corridor. As he stepped out, Kane barely managed to catch some dark movement before something slammed into him. A startled grunt of pain escaped him as he was picked up and thrown several feet. He hit the floor and he heard his SMG clatter away, the flashlight's beam flipping around madly. Something growled ahead of him, and he reached for the shotgun he'd grabbed.

"Ash!" Lara called, then let out a startled shout of her and he saw the staccato flashes of her SMG as it spat bullets. In the flashes, Kane went cold.

He saw half a dozen figures in the hallway.

He found his shotgun, brought it up, aimed and fired, going off of the scant memory of the location of the hostile he'd seen in the muzzle flare. In the stark yellow blaze thrown up by his shotgun blast, he saw the nearest Proxy's head disappear in a plume of dark gore, spraying the ceiling and the walls. Groping madly, Kane found the flashlight function on the shotgun and turned it on. The light sprang into existence, (he realized, belatedly, that the one on his SMG had gone out at some point), and he aimed at another one of the strange former humans as it came for him and squeezed the trigger a second time as it hissed in pain.

He blew its freaking head off as well.

Lara had backed into the barracks they'd come out of. She'd taken one of them down. Another was hurrying in after her, while the final two came for him. He took aim, preparing to decapitate them as well, when the closest one rushed him. It was a former male Marine, a pretty built one from the look of him, and he easily batted aside the gun, causing it to discharge harmlessly, and punched Kane in the chest hard enough that he didn't just stumble backwards, he was literally picked up and thrown. He grunted, pain shooting through him as he flew about five feet and hit the floor hard. The former Marine stepped forward, grabbed him, picked him up and threw him straight into the arms of the other Proxy. Kane struggled to fight them off.

They were strong as hell.

He managed to shove the second Proxy away, then turned and kicked the big guy in the stomach as hard as he could. It stopped him, but only for a few seconds. Kane turned around, driving his elbow into the second man's face as hard as he could. He heard as much as felt the guy's nose break, and it drove him back, but briefly.

These assholes were tough.

He'd lost his shotgun in the altercation, so he tore his pistol from its holster, stuck it in the big Proxy's mouth and squeezed the trigger twice. That put him down for good. Spinning around, he saw the second one making a grab for him. He backed up and shot it in the eye. As he prepared to hurry forward and check on Lara, she emerged in the hallway, looking around, probably doing the exact same thing: checking on him.

"They're dead?" she asked.

"Dead," he confirmed, retrieving his shotgun and then his SMG. Damn, the flashlight had broken on it. Sighing, he slung it and switched to his shotgun. Oh well, it wasn't like he needed to be stealthy anyway, and the extra firepower would be nice against these Proxies. He joined Lara and they finished sweeping the area. Thankfully, there were no more dark horrors hiding among the shadows, and they reached the third and final generator room without incident. It was a simple matter to reactivate it and walk back to the control room.

"Okay," Lara said, settling in once again at the main control station. "Ash, I'm going to see what I can find out about what happened here, why don't you plug into the main comms and see who you can talk to?" she suggested.

"On it," he replied.

Sitting down at the comms console, he ended up wasting ten minutes fiddling with it and calling out to the Winter's Edge, trying to reach them with increasing desperation. But no matter what he tried, what frequency he attempted, how he boosted the signal, he simply could not get through. Frustrated, he looked back at Lara.

"Have you found anything?"

"Yes," she murmured, studying the screen before her. "Though not much. There's a few reports here, but the database is scrambled. It seems that they got the evacuation order and began to comply with it. Several small teams were sent out to get started, and then they never reported back. And then...I don't know what happened. It's a real mess."

He sighed. "Great. Well, let's call Goll and see what he has to say." He reached out to the Sergeant, and was reassured to see that the radio signal came through loud and clear. Okay, so with the comms array working, local contact was possible, at least. "Sergeant Goll, Kane here. I've found Lara and we made it to the military base. It's empty. No one's here, and there's signs of an attack. And...Hux is missing. Over," he said.

"Say again, Corporal? Over," Goll replied.

"Hux vanished, Sergeant. And that's not the worst of it. Over." He proceeded to give all relevant data about the strange slender figure and the Proxies, and Lara got on the line to back him up, because it sounded pretty damned insane. Goll was quiet for some time after they wrapped up their report. Finally, he spoke again.

"Okay. We've managed to locate Diaz, but Thompson is still missing. Hendrix, I want you to activate the local radar and navigation equipment. We're having trouble locating the data core, we keep getting off track. Once you do that, I want-"

A new voice suddenly broke onto the channel. "Sergeant! This is Thompson. I require backup. I'm holed up at a rest stop garage about a mile north of the ranger's station as far as I can tell. I was attacked by people, something's wrong with them...um, over."

"Affirmative, Thompson," Goll said. "Kane, get to him. Hendrix, nail down the location of the satellite and uplink the NAV marker to our HUDs. Kane, once you've got Thompson, link up with us. And everyone keep a sharp eye out for these Proxies, and for Hux. Out."

Kane looked at Lara. She stared back at him. He didn't want to leave her again, and he got the feeling she didn't want to be split up either. But it was only temporary, and Thompson was waiting, possibly in danger.

"Good luck," he said. "And...stay safe, Lara."

"You, too, Ash," she replied.

They shared one last lingering gaze, then he left, hurrying to get out of the outpost.