After a brief argument, it was decided that we would find Aaron some first aid to patch up that gash in his arm before resuming our quest together for that coveted device.

We left the open atrium and ran down one of the several tunnels that linked this area to other sublevels. Alarms were still going off, so the heat was still on to find what we came for and jet before we would inevitably get overrun. It felt magnificent to have my staff back in my hands again; the reinvigorating effect it had on me stimulated confidence high enough to make me want to take every soldier in this depot, but my mind had enough experience to temper my often-thoughtless ambitions.

The hallway we traversed was vacant and only illuminated by a series of spotlights fixed to each corner whenever the hall would bend in another direction. It had been a minute since we encountered any soldiers, which made me worry that we may have been running into an ambush if those announcements I heard a while ago meant anything. Even still, I felt like we stood a much greater stand now with my staff at my side, but that still meant little if Aaron's "good" arm hadn't been patched up in time to fight with it.

Luckily, we seemed to have stumbled across a haven of some kind—at least that's how Aaron saw it when he pointed it out to me. We had passed several rooms that had their metal sliding doors closed, but the one that was coming up ahead was open, where two units of some kind attached to the walls could be seen in plain view. "Bingo! A health station! I knew we'd find one eventually."

I ran ahead to scout the inside quickly for any possible soldiers trying to bait us with what should have been an obvious trap, but I was relieved to see that it was empty. After I gestured him the all-clear, he barrelled his way inside, still clutching his wounded arm. Instead of darting for those machines on the wall, Aaron darted for the console that was closest to the door, nearly knocking me over. His movements were quick for being so massive.

"Okay…this should buy us a little time to breathe. Maybe…" he said, fiddling with the alien-looking controls on the console for a second before one of those collapsing doors closed in over the entrance, sealing us inside. I leaned against the wall for a moment to catch my breath while Aaron turned around and lumbered towards the devices mounted on the wall at the end of the room. "Drat; I don't see a grub. Maybe they've got them stored somewhere…"

I looked over to see Aaron poking around with a large row of circular drums mounted to the wall just off the side of the health station. A row of red levers opened up the drums to reveal various contents, though he couldn't seem to find what he was looking for in the ones he opened. By the time came over to find out what it was he was looking for, Aaron had already opened up the fourth drum, revealing a soft but eerie green glow emanating on the inside. "Hello there little beauties…" he grinned with satisfaction. He reached down and pulled out a clear cylindrical vail that contained a plump larva bigger than my hand, emitting a green glow from its body that made Aaron's face light up.

I never had a particular liking for large insectoids (which was only made worse after fighting Aparoids), so seeing that grotesque specimen made me take a wary step back. "What is that?" I asked, both repulsed and curious about the find.

"Something that'll take the edge off," Aaron stated. "Observe if you have the stomach for it."

With one broad motion, Aaron attached the metal end of the jar to a port on the dark blue charger with the white stripe on it. He then pulled down a lever, and I watched as the grub got crushed into a glowing green mush. Somehow, without even regarding how disgusting that sequence was unlike me, Aaron placed his large hand on a panel that flipped out, and a set of five needles emerged and began poking and prodding his fingers, emitting a series of beeping sounds as the green mush from the grub got drained away into the healing module.

A little peppy-sounding bing announced that the healing process had finished right before Aaron withdrew his hand, curling his fingers a couple of times before a large shiver was briefly sent across his body. "Yep, that'll do it," he said, shuddering with apparent alleviation.

"Did… Did you just inject yourself with that thing's fluids?" I asked, wishing I heeded his advice to look away while I engaged in that process.

"Pretty nasty, right?" Aaron affirmed. "Turns out antlion grubs got a lot of fantastic healing agents in 'em. You know those giant bugs that swarmed you back on that beach? Yeah, that was one of their babies that I sucked the essence from."

I had the aggressive compulsion to gag just then but I suppressed it the best I could, only managing to come out as a violent cough. "Yeah, I don't blame you one bit, lassie," Aaron said sympathetically, though he was shrugging his wounded arm like it had never been gashed in the first place. "But these stations will do you in a pinch if you need them. Just be sure to look away when you do."

"Rest assured, Aaron, I will do everything in my power not to need them…" I said, trying hard to get this sickly feeling out of my stomach.

"Attagirl."

Now that Aaron had seemingly been perfectly restored by unquestionably abhorrent means, we were moments away from leaving our little haven to parts unknown yet undoubtedly dangerous until he abruptly shouted, "Hold on!"

I stopped and turned around to see him staring wide-eyed at a row of similar-looking storage drums on the opposite wall to the healing stations, but they were more box-shaped in design. "What is it?" I asked, a little startled.

"Oh, lassie, if I'm right about this…"

Aaron said nothing else as he opened up a drawer-like extension out from one of the angular drums, revealing a whole rack of contents. I watched as Aron knelt and began sifting through the various items before stopping at one. He gingerly pried it out of its socket and held it aloft for me to see, wearing one of the happiest grins I had ever seen him make.

"Here it is," he said with amazement, cupping the small device with two hands. I walked over to look. It didn't look particularly special; it resembled a screwdriver of some kind but with three long ends and a triangular-shaped pack fixed in between the prongs and the handgrip. It took me a second to realise that Aaron was showing me that this little device was the whole reason why we came here.

"Is… Are you sure that's what will free Ben?" I asked, unsure whether this is what we went through all this trouble for.

"You bet your boots it is, lassie," Aaron confirmed excitedly. "I didn't think one of these would be kept in a little corner room like this. But then again, custodians use these things for electrical issues; it makes sense that they'd be kept in a tool cabinet if you think about it. I guess this means that this is a glorified utility closet of all things."

I have to say, my initial feelings were underwhelmed. The fact that we just came across our prized tool that we had gone through quite a lot to get by accident was a bit unsatisfactory, but then I remembered I was holding my staff in my hand and had my backpack over my shoulders. What did I have to complain about?

Resigning to be grateful for all the miracles we had been blessed with thus far, I nodded with resolve as I planted the end of my staff on the floor. "Well, this little trinket looks rather breakable from the looks of it," I observed. "Would you mind if I held onto it for safekeeping? Since I got my bag back and all."

Aaron looked at me for a moment before giving me a trustful nod. "Of course, lassie. Was planning on it. If there's one thing I'm not, it's that I'm careful with tiny things."

I whipped my backpack off and took the tool from Aaron. I opened it up and gently nestled it inside one of the sleeves meant to hold sensitive items such as this, right next to the Cloud Runner's cloaking and homing beacon. While our luck with finding treasure today was fantastic, our luck with timing was not so, because seconds after zipping our hand-held circuit breaker away, the sounds of marching boots could be heard outside in the corridor, accompanied by the distinct radio chatter of the Combine soldiers zeroing in on our location.

This was the inevitable price to pay for staying in one spot for too long. Dozens of soldiers could be seen out the window, kneeling and aiming their weapons at the door. They weren't shooting through the glass, making me think it was as impenetrable as the glass pane I shattered a while ago.

Aaron and I were tense at the sight of this, but somehow not too worried. Aaron had finally obtained what he had been planning for a month to steal and I reclaimed what belonged to me. Our escape was not assured, but our renewed confidence would make it a great possibility. And evidently, we were both in the mood to be taking chances.

Loosening my shoulders a little, I spun my staff around in my hand before grabbing it with both hands, aiming it at the door that was already getting breached by a soldier trying to hack it from the outside. "It doesn't look like they'll be letting us go so easily, Aaron," I observed, looking at him. "Do you think you're up to taking on this whole depot?"

"Maybe not if I were doing this by myself as I had planned," Aaron said as he leisurely loaded rounds into the wheel of his massive silver handgun. "But I'm eager to see how well you even the odds. I wanna see some of that magic of yours in action."

"Oh yes, but you'll get more than a spectacle. You're going to be a part of the show after all," I smirked, as the spearhead of my staff opened up, emitting a ball of light that was ready to cast a magic shield.

"Good thing; I don't like being sidelined," Aaron smiled back, determination lining his white brow as he clicked his gun's chamber back in and spun it for good measure. The door began to sputter a bit as the hacker was moments away from opening the door, prompting me and Aaron to ready ourselves. "Let's get outta here and finally give Ben what he's been waiting so patiently for, shall we?" he asked, pointing his gun at the two with two hands.

"Gladly."

To say that our escape was hectic and stressful is being generous.

The two greatest problems I and Aaron faced when engaging the Combine head-on were the fact that there were an awful lot of them and that they knew the layout of the depot much better than us. Nevertheless, we proved a formidable team against these autonomous drones as we fought our way through the corridors of these sublevels, beating back waves of oncoming troops hoping to eventually encounter an exit of any kind.

My shield proved effective in protecting us from the soldiers' pulse fire, but any liberal use of it required much of my stamina to maintain it, so I needed to give Aaron a hand by helping him engage our enemies. I was inherently much more agile and quick, so I tended to be the bait in most scenarios to draw the soldiers' attention while Aaron shot them or rushed them with his ferocious size and strength. I and my staff inflicted plenty of our rank-breaking damage; I sparingly used fire blasts so I wouldn't get too carried away and end up scorching Aaron in the frenzy, so I relied primarily on quick melee strikes and showed off some of my athletic skills with wall skips, flips, kicks, and closing my legs around their head and hauling them backwards off balance.

Aaron would later describe this ongoing fight as the time I went into "feral mode", which I find amusing. When fighting SharpClaws on Sauria, I often had to fight like them if I wanted to gain the upper hand. I guess a little bit of their ferocity had stuck with me, and I was thankful that I managed to learn a thing or two from them.

While the Combine soldiers themselves were not the most clever brood I had ever fought, they were certainly no pushovers. They took damage like nothing at all; I witnessed Aaron shoot at one soldier multiple times, tearing straight through his padded armour, and he hardly even flinched. Heavy augmentations I would later find out were the direct cause of this—along with the neurological removal of being able to process bodily pain. They could be killed sure enough, but it was their lack of a desire to take cover and to 'live' that made them such a dangerous force to be reckoned with.

By the time we found a way out of the sublevels and found a way back up in the main complex, squads of soldiers had set up gun nests on a suspended passageway up above, raining pulse fire down on us. My magic didn't have the best range when it came to the projectiles it threw, so I was forced to rely on my MP5K in taking out targets up above while Aaron handled troops on our level with one of the pulse rifles I stole from a soldier he killed. The kick that these mechanical Earth weapons produced made aiming tricky, but learning to push against their recoil made it a little easier.

While the soldiers on top were taken out, that gun nest up ahead required a much more elaborate strategy. I volunteered to leap out into the open to draw their fire, which they took to with no hesitation. I ran in one direction, generating a shield around myself as they fired at me while Aaron ran in the other direction, hopping into their nest and beating their already mutilated bodies into submission.

Seeing those pesky suppressors taken care of, I stole a moment to stop and lean on my staff, panting in exhaustion from generating that shield and from the overall fatigue of the near-nonstop fighting and running that had erupted from what felt like hours ago. "Brilliant job, Aaron," I wheezed, jogging to his position behind the gun nest. Aaron had been eyeing that mounted gun with the spotlight fitted to it, which closely resembled the soldiers' standard issue rifles, and began to dismount it from its post.

He held it up with two hands and nodded with approval. "Yeah, yeah, this'll do nicely," he said. He turned to me and patted me on the back supportively, looking spent himself. "You're doing great, lassie. I got a feeling we're almost outta here. Just gotta keep moving."

We continued past the now-looted gun nest. I had a feeling that Aaron may have been right; it was reasonable to suspect that the more fortified our path became, the closer we were to escape this wretched death trap. The loud intercom voice that reverbed throughout the depot continued to update our progress, relaying more orders to more troops that the longer the "outbreak" would fail to be contained, off-world assignments would start being issued. I had no time to ponder anything the voice was saying, let alone hear, because more soldiers had already arrived and were raining suppressing fire.

Aaron's new higher calibre gun was a welcome addition to our arsenal as he relentlessly mowed down soldiers like I had never seen up until that point. At that moment, my reflexes had slowed down due to fatigue taking a toll on me, so I was forced to get creative with my magic. I shot fire blasts at nearby fuelling stations on the loading platforms, causing chain reactions that would blow oblivious soldiers away, and I also made better use of my ice attacks by freezing our enemies outright or turning the floor to ice to make them slip and slide off balance.

It was a small thing, but seeing squads of these brutes slipping and sliding while yelling to their comrades for assistance brought a kind of nervous laughter out of me. Even a little bit of that was enough to reinvigorate me enough to keep going. Moving around my icy concoctions, Aaron and I persisted down another corridor past this latest ambush, and I made sure to create a massive wall of ice at the entrance so that we would at least not have to worry about anything flanking us.

"I can see why you've been pining for that thing, Krystal," Aaron huffed, lugging his big weapon in both hands as he looked on at my icy fortification. "You're making me want one of my own."

"Maybe if we make it out of here, I'll lend it to you so you can make it snow outside the estate," I said, sighing and holding my head for a moment.

"That's a when we make it out, not an if, lassie," Aaron corrected, putting his big hand on my shoulder. "Come on, we can't be far off now!"

We resumed our gallop down this new corridor. The metal walls were tall and were relatively close together, leaving no room for me and Aaron to run alongside each other. There was no telling when the soldiers would intercept us again, so I was rather eager to keep moving and cover as much ground as we would, heedless of Aaron's advice that mirrored the same sentiment as I kept my pace up ahead of him.

The corridor eventually arrived at a wider room that was brighter and had a higher ceiling, but the corridor could be seen continuing onward past the room. This felt suspicious to me and slowed down my pace to a stop, but I made the mistake of taking one step into the room, and a wall of solid energy erupted behind me, preventing Aaron's passage as he slammed into it.

The exit on the other end of the room also became blocked off by an identical field of energy, making me realise that I had wandered straight into a trap, which was further proven by the alarm that began going off in the room. "Oh shit!" Aaron cursed, beginning to pound his fist against the wall of energy dividing the two of us.

"Aaron? What's happening?" I spun around anxiously, beginning to fear that maybe automated turrets would appear and gun me down.

"I don't know," Aaron admitted, panic blazing in his eyes. "Just stay calm, lassie, I'll figure out—"

"WARNING. UNREGISTERED WEAPONS DETECTED. CONFISCATION FIELD ENGAGED."

As that announcement was being made, two large indented panels on the walls to the left and right of me flared up with power. Particle beams then shot out from them and fastened around my wrists and ankles like energised ropes, heavily limiting my movements. As I struggled to resist these restraints, I felt a tugging at my belt and shoulder, and then my machine gun, the sidearm holstered on my leg, and even my staff were yanked off of my person and suspended in the air a few feet away from me, carried away by particle beams identical to the ones that restricted me.

It was discouraging enough that I had been disarmed by this room's forceful security system, but to watch my weapons getting vaporised was a harrowing spectacle on another level. The particles that removed my weapons were now dissolving them on a molecular level until nothing was left. My pistol went first, then my machine gun, and once I knew that my staff was next I began to violently lose my temper.

"NO!" I thrashed with no success, unable to prevent the horrifying inevitable as I watched the particles completely envelop my treasured heirloom in the same disintegrating energy that befell my other weapons. I expected the same outcome to occur, but something entirely different happened. My staff trembled but did not vanish; the beams around it grew brighter and more intense as if the confiscation fields were syphoning more energy to deal with it, which came at the cost of syphoning from my restraints as I fell to the ground.

The whole room was now trembling as my staff seemed to create great stress for the system. Before I even knew what was happening, pieces of the wall began to rip apart as the machines generating these beams began to overload all the while my staff had yet to be vaporised. Perhaps it was not the machines that were syphoning the energy after all.

"SECURITY ALERT. ILLEGAL COUNTER-RESIDENCE SINGULARITY DEVICE DETE—"

Within one second, the energy flying out from the walls ceased, making my staff fall to the floor, which caused an enormous discharge that blinded me and made my ears ring. There was a small gap in the time between the flash and when my consciousness began to return because the next thing I knew I was being revived by Aaron as he gently propped me up against the wall and rubbed my forehead.

When I opened my eyes, I had thought for a moment that I went blind when I only saw darkness, but it wasn't until Aaron lit his torch did I realised that all the ambient light in the corridor had gone out. "Wh… Wh-What…?" I groaned, trying to wake from my daze.

"Easy does it, lassie. We all get blown up every now and then," he reassured with a gentle voice. He then gently lifted my head by my chin, trying to see if my eyes were responsive to the limited light that his torch provided while being placed on the floor. Relief washed over his face when he saw that I was focused. "You good?" he asked, almost in a whisper.

I scratched the tufts inside my left, feeling the remnants of my deafness fading away. "I think so…" I answered, beginning to look around, taking a much keener note of the drastic change in our environment. Not only was it pitch black in here, but also unsettlingly quiet, which was why I thought I was still a little deaf at first. "What happened? Why is everything so dark?"

"Looks like a blackout, lassie," Aaron guessed. He then glanced anxiously over to his left. "And I think your staff over there is the culprit…"

I turned to where he was looking and spotted only one remaining light source a dozen metres away, lying on the floor of the confiscation room. It flickered as it produced a warm white glow, illuminating the walls of the room enough to make out its definitions. Without saying a word, I stood up and cautiously made my way towards it with Aaron trailing close behind me.

My staff was intact and all right, or at least that's how it appeared. What was different was the white glow that emanated from the gemstone inside the spearhead, and the swirling patterns that decorated the shaft pulsated with the same light. I could feel intense power radiating from it; power it was barely able to contain as it produced a low humming sound akin to a high voltage power box.

I knelt and studied my weapon, fascinated by its transmogrification, as well as the power that I could feel coursing through it. I reached out to grab it until Aaron verbally held me back. "Hold on a second, lassie; that thing doesn't look safe to hold. I don't even think gloves would be enough to handle it," he warned direly.

"I think it's safe, Aaron. It would tell me if I couldn't handle it," I reassured, resuming my reach.

I gently gripped the shaft, and a tingling charge shot up throughout my body, though it wasn't enough to debilitate me. It felt rather invigorating honestly—like the jolt one would get from eating a spoonful of caramel. I stood up with it in my hands, and I could feel the power it now commanded. In other words, what I now commanded. I only had to slowly wave it across the room to feel the electrical currents crackling silently in the air, and of my fur in my arms and face standing in whatever direction the staff was.

It wasn't hard to guess where all the power in the room went, and I was surprised to see that my staff was even capable of doing this. Perhaps the particles had altered its magic in some way, I couldn't tell. I hoped that my staff hadn't been permanently damaged, but I didn't sense that this was the case. I wasn't quite sure what to make of this change, but I began to grin with childlike fascination.

"I think the Combine's security system may have backfired a little," I realised, planting the end of my staff on the floor, creating a passive but noticeable surge through its metal plating.

"I second that," Aaron looked over warily, keeping himself at length as the spear end crackled and sparked with stray electrical arks. It was then I noticed that his beard and moustache had bushed up like a large shrub, something that made me chuckle out loud. It took Aaron a second to realise what I found funny and quickly patted down his bristling facial hair. "Now, now, I've looked way worse than this in the past," he insisted, unsuccessful at keeping his hair down.

"I think you look rather dashing," I said sincerely, letting a few more giggles out.

"Likewise, puffball," Aaron remarked, poking a little fun at my expense as well. Our little moment of light-heartedness was shattered once we heard and felt a massive explosion going off somewhere in the complex, though obviously close enough to make the room quiver with instability. "Oh, that sounded bad…" Aaron deduced, wedging his cap further down his head.

"The Combine will be catching up with us soon. We better get moving," I prompted.

"Certainly."

We both swiftly exited the room and returned to the following corridor. The power contained in my staff was bright enough to light our way through the dark passageway, simultaneously serving as our light in the dark and a beacon for our enemies to stop, which I knew would be more conspicuous the farther we travelled. The walls were still blocking my telepathy, so locating any more incoming squads was still a useless endeavour. We just had to keep surviving and make it out of here alive, and I prayed that we were still going to be able to pull that off.

Eventually, not long after leaving the room, Aaron and I reached the end of the corridor and emerged into an open space that I sensed was massive, though visibility was still hardly present. Not even the electrical glow from my staff was enough to illuminate any walls aside from the one behind us, which only further accentuated this mysterious cavernous environment.

"Oh jeez, where are we now?" Aaron pondered, dread permeating his thoughts as he grappled with our complete lack of visibility.

"I don't know," I admitted, equally tense as I held my staff closer—making the fur on my body stand even higher towards it. "I'll release a flare; that's sure to help with—"

Just then, cutting me off, a series of nearby explosions made the ground quake with such intensity that me and Aaron fell off balance. Still, no light could be seen, but they were definitely close. "D'oh, my old noggin'," Aaron groaned, trying to quickly get back up as I did. "I sure hope I'm wrong here, lassie, but I think the blackout may have extended a little way beyond that little room back there."

"I somehow doubt that will be beneficial to us."

"It sure won't be if crucial systems that keep this place from exploding have been shorted out as well…"

Trying to escape an exploding facility with no visibility would have been a grave task by itself had it not been for the telepathic signals I had just detected that were closing in on us. The mechanised minds of the soldiers were chattering to each other—revealing that their coms were still working—and I was able to listen in on their directives ahead of time before their inevitable arrival.

"All perimeter units; assemble and move to automotive housing sector on level eight. Biotics on route to open bypass."

"Frisking chamber compromised. Cellular restoration dispatched. Correcting critical bypass."

"Cardiac regenerating delegates; get vital conduits back online and attenuate collateral desecration. Restore and report."

"Aaron, prepare yourself. Company's coming. Real fast…" I forewarned, holding my charged staff at the ready.

"Naturally," Aaron replied, lifting his heavy dismounted pulse gun.

Another moment later, the sounds of heavy boots could be heard emanating out in the darkness, accompanied by the ominous blue glow of their mask lenses. Several appeared on our level, and a few more above us. Just seconds after the soldiers appeared at the scene, five smouldering red flares were shot out into the open, illuminating the soon-to-be combat zone with a limited red light that revealed the shadowy outlines of the surrounding terrain, which was shown to be populated by various kinds of equipment and Combine machinery.

"Suck on this, boys!" Aaron hollered with fury as fired his heavy weapon, making the area flash rapidly with each blast. He killed a couple of them on the ground, but more soldiers kept entering the area and fired back with intense retaliation, making me and Aaron duck for cover.

With my back against my chosen cover, which was some kind of unmanned utility vehicle, I sensed a line of soldiers on the ground advancing towards my position, so I readied my charged staff to unleash a streak of fire as a means to both kill them and to better light our dark surroundings. What happened instead after whirling out into the open with my spearhead open, an enormous arch of electricity shot out from my staff and tore straight through the now-limp bodies that I unintentionally sliced into pieces.

The stray bounced around nearly every metallic surface in the room, including the ceiling, putting the oncoming soldiers in severe disarray as sparks showered all over the place. "Jiminy Cricket!" Aaron shouted in surprise, covering his head as sparks rained down above him.

The blast was so powerful that I almost flew out of the room had my feet not been planted as well as they already were. My hands and arms were tingling after the blast, almost like they fell asleep but without the discomfort. Time felt like it slowed after I unleashed the arch as this new power began to resonate with me like I were a bell still vibrating after a deafening gong.

This sensation made me near-impervious to everything around me, including the shower of sparks as I looked down at my treasured heirloom. The signals that it was sending me telepathically confirmed what I already subconsciously presumed by just looking at it. Those confiscation fields had permanently altered my staff's magic, though it has already proven to be about as stubbornly resourceful as I often was.

Its magic had learned from the Combine's machine and was now knowledgeable in making its own confiscations as well as being able to give them back. I continued to stare at my staff, which was still crackling with electrical discharge and began to smile like a mother would seeing their child win the science fair. "You never let me down, old friend."

This little blip in the space-time continuum ended quickly thereafter, and I found myself with a rush of newfound determination as I leapt back into battle, eager to experiment with and test the limits of my staff's new ability. I naturally resumed my role as the primary target as I counter-rushed my enemies while they were still disoriented from the stray blast.

I engaged with another squad of soldiers jumping out from cover once they realised I was coming. My melee attacks now had a much greater punch to them, if having a whole sector's worth of power behind each hit with my staff had anything to do with that. Their dead, deserviced bodies twitched and jerked with looping discharge as I continued with my assault.

The soldiers above were revealed to be traversing across a suspended service walkway of some kind, which made them a bit trickier to neutralise while I was on the ground as they rained pulse fire down on me. I wouldn't outrun their shots forever, so I was forced to retaliate with my own. Already having a firmer grasp on which spell I could use despite all the trapped energy just buzzing to be released first, I was able to summon an aerial lift that pushed me high up into the air so that I could kick off of it towards the service walkway.

I was able to unleash a blinding arch of power onto the metal mesh it was made from, making the whole thing light up across the room in a sparkling light show that stunned the soldiers stiff, making them drop their weapons. I touched down on the mesh once the surge died out and proceeded to whack and beat the still-stiffened soldiers out of commission, making a good few of them topple over the railing and fall to the floor below.

Despite my advancements up here, a massive gunfight was persisting down below. I could see more squads closing in on Aaron's position as he valiantly fired back with his heavy weapon, lighting up the area with his muzzle flashes. I was moments away from running to the end of this meshed walkway to aid my friend, but another nearby explosion made the cavernous room tremble with enough force to make me fall off balance—though thankfully not over the railing.

The unseen blast took its toll on Aaron as he too collapsed, along with a dozen other soldiers on the ground, but they recovered with unnatural resilience and advanced towards Aaron while he was still down. I quickly climbed back up and unleashed enormous arcs of electricity at the troops, forcing them to evade as my bolts took to their metallic surroundings. The deafening buzzing emitting from each arch my staff unleashed made me realise I was unloading enough energy to power a whole fleet of moderately sized star skiffs, which inspired a crafty but risky idea that I couldn't be sure would work in anyone's favour. I just needed to have faith in myself that I would be able to guide my storm.

While the soldiers down below were preoccupied trying to navigate their electrified environment, I ran further down the walkway, desperate to find some kind of conduit of some kind that would be serviceable for my half-baked idea. Alongside a towering metal column that reached the high unseen ceiling—a column that was also helping to hold up this suspended walkway—was a long, thin metal rod that curved crudely above the utility grounds. It almost resembled an elongated welding torch that could extend and move itself around while remaining in a fixed position. I had seen similar designs in the assembly lines at Space Dynamics the few times I visited, but of course, this was all an assumption.

Whatever it was, I knew it had to be due. I stopped in front of it on the walkway and pointed my staff at it, still jittering with energy that begged for release. My grip tightened as I focused all of my mental strength into the link that bonded me with my Cerinian relic, and exhaled with a relaxed but firm composure. That composure was put to the ultimate test as I let out the trapped energy in one continuous release that got absorbed into the maintenance arm and began to disperse all across the room in a destructive indoor lightning storm that was bright enough to illuminate the whole maintenance facility.

I kept my eyes shut as I mentally tried corralling the wild bolts to strike the specific metal found in the filtering apparatus on the masks worn by the soldiers. It was an impossible job to make every bolt behave the way I wanted, but I tried my best with the ones that I believed I did and kept as many as I could away from Aaron, who I was still able to sense was staying behind cover and covering his head. Only loud and violent electrical buzzing pounded my ears as I let the surge continue for a long fifteen seconds before I could hold it together no longer and let out a strained gasp as the spearhead closed up and the stream of power ceased, subsequently ending the lightning storm.

I leaned forewarned on the railing to keep myself from collapsing and just hung there for a tired moment, noting that the whole room was now devoid of Combine chatter (both audibly and telepathically). After a few more good long breaths, I pulled my hair back as I lifted my head, and I saw that my lightning storm appeared to have unexpectedly restored power to most of the lights inside the room, which highlighted a massive interior with ramps, height-adjusting platforms and a slew of utilities that made of the majority of the space below me.

This was most definitely a room designated for the service and repair of vehicles with the racks of stationary wheels along the distant walls and a few more robotic arms like the one I used to conduct my attack. All of the soldiers were dead; this was a certainty given their telepathic silence. And as morbid as it was to see many of their lifeless bodies with their heads blown off, I was more at peace now than at any point when exploring this horrible place. I could have curled up on the mesh for a lovely catnap if it weren't for the ambient groans of the infrastructure reminding me that the facility outside this room appeared to be falling apart.

"Great garbanzos…" My right ear caught the distant whisper of Aaron's timid voice from around the corner of his cover a few metres away. I couldn't see him, but I sensed that he was braving his first look at the aftermath, hoping that it was safe to emerge, which I intended to confirm for him.

"Aaron?" I called out from my high advantage point. Amongst the eerie straining sounds of the depot around us, as well as a few muffled distant booms, Aaron revealed himself by poking his head out from his cover. He looked relatively unharmed, but his eyes were so wide with worry and wonder that I could see their whites even amongst the shade they were in.

"Krystal, I don't know if I can allow you to use that thing around me anymore. Never came this close to a heart attack before…" he chuffed with nervous laughter, putting a hand over his chest. I sensed that he was partially joking, but I received the message clearly enough, which in turn made me grin down at him tiredly.

"I won't do something like that again without warning you, my friend. I promise," I reassured, rising to a full stand, though I did hold my staff close to my chest, making a subconscious gesture that projected no regrets over my course of action.

"Thank you. Please do. Thank you…" Aaron nodded, straightening his coat.

Before either of us could get too comfortable with our victory, reality brought its hammer down when one of the explosions that rocked the depot blew its way into this maintenance room down the expansive tilted metal wall facing my back. It flared the room in bright orange light as metal debris got flung into the room and obliterated a quarter of it. The blast was powerful enough to send me tipping over the railing, but I gripped at the last moment before I could fall.

The low but oscillating alarms could now be heard much more crisply as a window to the main complex was revealed. I couldn't see much, but there were a lot of fires that made the misty open environment of the depot glow an ominous, flickering orange. It was hard to believe that my staff did all of this. It was pointless to ponder over just how far this EMP wave travelled because I and Aaron would surely be dead if we stayed here any longer, something neither of us was passionately advocating for.

"Come on, lassie! It's hustle time!" Aaron ordered with great severity. I complied and safely dropped down onto the flow on both my feet before running after him. I followed him down one of the low gradient ramps that led onto a wide rectangular lot where a row of large, ark-coloured vehicles were parked. They were large armoured wheeled vehicles with angular designs and mounted turrets on top that stuck out of narrow glass canopies.

A lot of these vehicles had a similar design and aesthetic, but I could tell that many were built for different purposes. Larger ones looked like they were made for transport, a few had six wheels and were more armoured, but Aaron had darted straight to a row of vehicles that were relatively higher off the ground, had wide and dynamic suspension, and a more roomy-looking gun canopy towards the back, suggested that this vehicle was tailored for all-terrain usage.

By the time I caught up to Aaron, he was already inspecting one of these vehicles, and he was greatly distressed. "Oh no no no no… It's outta juice!" he relayed in dismay. "We can't wheel this thing to a charging station, and who knows if those are even still working!"

Before I risked devolving into a panicked state like Aaron, I looked at this car for a moment before I had another idea. Hoping that my luck with my evolved staff would persist, I urged Aaron to back off for a moment as I approached the desired vehicle. I gently tapped the now-opened spearhead against the front hood of the car and a visible surge of power flowed straight out from it, creating a few sparks as the car literally jumped to life with a roar of its alien engine and its cab flashing with lights.

Aaron was shocked at first, but his feelings turned jubilant as he turned to me with a manic but hopeful grin. "Lassie, your talents are endless!" he said, wrapping his gargantuan arms around me in a massive hug. The move initially stunned me and left me standing where I was until I realised Aaron had already climbed inside the cab up front.

"Hop in, lassie! You get literal shotgun!" he poked his head out the side opening, gesturing his hand to the gun canopy behind him. It took another explosion to remind me that the place was still falling apart and about time to finally book it. I retracted my staff's length and clipped it around my belt safely as I jumped up into the gunner's seat in one leap.

The weapon I was provided with was a long-barrelled gun with a holographic sight and a blast shield made out of solid energy. The chair and gun could also spin around smoothly and without any resistance, which almost made spinning around its own kind of fun. While I was getting used to my new seat, Aaron was busy getting this car moving, but he was apparently having trouble.

I was only able to see a little bit inside the cab, and the dashboard flashed red whenever an attempt to get the car moving failed. I then sensed a great amount of remorse coming from Aaron's mind once I caught a glimpse of him looking at his gloved hand. With a tepid shake of his head, he removed his fingerless leather glove, revealing a strange glinty surface on his palm before he clutched the wheel, and only then did the car seem to accept him as its driver. The headlights flashed to life seconds after, and our departure subsequently followed as Aaron began to drive us out of the lot and into another tunnel that took us out of the maintenance room.