"You with us, Stephen?"
I turned to see Kyle stood a little in front of me. We were in a surprisingly large sewer pipe (I thought it might be a main one into which the smaller pipes fed), and the group were running ahead through the filth. Raw, dark sewage filled my boots and reached up to my shins; I quelled the urge to gag.
"Yeah..." I replied, half-dazed – mostly by the situation, but the stench wasn't helping. "I'm right behind you. Lead the way." Kyle nodded.
Sludge squelched beneath my feet with every frantic step through the mysterious, unpleasant liquid. The sound of Combine activity was ever-present above our heads – a platoon of soldiers sprinting here, the whir of a heli's rotors there, even the crushing blows of a Strider's spiked appendages on the asphalt sometimes. Still, we made our way through the pipes until we eventually reached a clearing of sorts: light fell through a grid about ten feet above us to show three pipes, one of which we were stood in, spilling out into a little pool, which in turn spilled into a storm drain. Beyond that drain, a large, steep ramp flowed down into shadowy oblivion. Kevin must have detected the look on my face as I surveyed the environment.
"Three guesses where we're going, kid." I gestured beyond the storm drain. He nodded.
"How do we get through?" I asked. The two-inch-thick steel poles barring our way presented an obvious obstacle.
"We employ a little initiative, he said, strapping what appeared to be an explosive charge to one of the poles. "Up and out, everyone. You don't want to be in here when this little beauty goes off."
We all hopped into a pipe, and crouched as low as we could without getting a face full of sewage. Kevin thumbed a detonator, waiting for a signal from Kyle: when it came, he pressed the button with force.
The bar was utterly disintegrated by the blast, and its neighbours didn't fare much better. I could see we would easily fit through the gap... but what then? Surely it wasn't safe to slide down that ramp into who-knows-what. Kevin once again read my mind like I was shouting it all out.
"Come on now, Stephen. Do you really think I'd just throw you into a storm drain if I didn't think we'd survive it. Trust me, kid," he said in a voice that made me want to do just that, "I know what I'm doing." I hesitated, then nodded once.
"Now I don't suppose we have any volunteers for pole position?" Kyle asked the group.
"Here's one," Kevin said, seizing my limp hand and raising it as I stood dumbly.
"Good job, Stephen, I like a bit of enthusiasm. Feet first or head first?"
I sighed. I suppose it was decided that I was sliding into the jaws of fate before the rest then. "Feet first would be the obvious choice." I said with a hint of spiteful resignation.
"As you wish. After you, then - into the breach and all that."
I gave one last look above me, to the sky beyond the drain. The sky had cleared up now and, by the looks of the shades of pink creeping in from the West, it was coming up to dusk. Elegant clouds drifted by, one side of each illuminated a soft rose, oblivious to the pandemonium so many miles below. If that view of the sky had been my last, I wouldn't have minded a bit.
Luckily, it wasn't.
With a powerful swing, I flung myself down the greasy ramp and into the unknown.