With the additional weight of a second rider on her back―a rider that was bigger than me―Dahlia had a harder time hoofing it back to Red Bay, but she still managed it like the champion she was.

Adrian inadvertently became a cushy stabiliser that propped me more firmly within Dahlia's saddle, though that put Adrian in a slightly awkward position by being wedged in between me and the top of the cantle. He hardly had anything to hold onto either and sort of awkwardly kept his hands tightly gripped on the saddle's skirts while closing his knees into it.

I was initially worried that Adrian would not stabilise himself on a saddle that wasn't designed to accommodate two riders, but he held on rather well, giving me the impression that he had experience with this kind of arrangement―or at least something else like it. Adrian wasn't very talkative on the ride to Red Bay as he continued to process the radical transition between continuities. Coming off fresh the frontlines of the Black Mesa incident here had to have been a jarring experience for certain.

I hardly had anything to say myself given all that I had witnessed this morning. Whether we liked it or not, Adrian and I had a tight connection with each other now through that suited entity. Much like Adrian, I too had many questions that I wanted answered, but the most important thing at the moment was getting him to Red Bay safely, which was now not far away.

"So…uh…" Adrian then spoke up, feeling like the first time since we started. "Are there any more of you…?"

I turned my head to look at him behind me. "You mean others who look like me?"

"Uhm…yeah," Adrian answered, still unable to decide how he felt about me. I had been feeling him looking at me nonstop since we began riding, surveying every exotic detail that the back of my head and arms could offer him. There wasn't much else of me he could look at while confined to the rear end of the saddle.

"No. I am special around here," I answered honestly.

"Oh," Adrian accepted. The sound and motions of Dahlia's hooves beating against the grassy ground persisted in filling the dead air before Adrian followed up with another question, seemingly finding the courage to converse with me. "So, what; are you like a mutant or something?"

Though rather blunt with his words, he asked this question far more sincerely than Gus of the Limpiadores had asked when I met him, giving me a generous indication of his character. "No. I'm from another universe."

"Go figure," he accepted again, not inclined to question such a claim. I suppose anyone who witnessed the events he did would have trouble dismissing anything outrageous at that point. Even still, he continued to make small talk with me. "You sure ride a horse pretty well," he noted. "You've been riding for a long time?"

"Several days," I said, turning my head back to look at him this time. "Do you have some experience with these creatures?"

Adrian still had his mask and helmet on, preventing me from reading his face, but those eyes of his told me that his fascination with me remained unending. "I rode them a lot when I was a teenager, mostly," he said, somewhat startled to see my face again. "I used to help out on my uncle's ranch a lot. He has horses. Or…uh…maybe he used to have horses. I sure as hell don't know anymore."

"You will get filled in once we're there, Corporal," I reassured, addressing him by his unit rank after he briefly mentioned it before setting off.

"How much time did you say had passed since that shitstorm at Black Mesa?" he asked.

I was hesitant to tell him, which was why I didn't specify when he first woke up. I didn't want to be the one to tell him, but I could sense that he was now anxious to know, and would likely get angry if the answer was withheld from him for much longer. I always hated being the bearer of bad news no matter the context.

Turning away, I said, "Over twenty Earth years, Corporal…"

I did not need my sensitivity to one's thoughts to hear the utter confusion and dismay being voiced through his lengthy silence.

"Oh shit…" he uttered softly, almost like he had no voice left. But what caught my ear was that he did not just sound disheartened by the passage of time on its own, but rather what it was he didn't do within that time. And if his muddled, overcrowded thoughts whispered anything to me on that notion, was that there was a promise he made, and he did not fulfil it.

Until I got a better procedure established, I stored away Dahlia's saddle in a trunk just outside the east gate.

After another round of nuzzles, I sent Dahlia on her way to return to her herd until I would call for her again. Having a shared agreement made between an equestrian and her horse was a precious thing, especially when a psionic bond was also established. Corporal Shephard, now that he was off Dahlia, had already removed his helmet and mask, revealing a young angular face with a stubbled chin and a tightly trimmed head of dirty blonde hair, bordering on brown in certain lighting conditions. The corners of his face were a little red and dimpled with lines that shaped the moulding of his mask, a prime indicator that he had been wearing it for an extensive amount of time.

Adrian looked around at his new surroundings as we walked alongside the white brick border wall of Red Bay, following me up to the staff door that our dear old Redgie was still monitoring. "You say that this is a town made of refugees?" he asked, holding his mask and helmet in one closed arm.

"Yes. From City Three mostly," I answered.

"City…what?" Adrian winced.

"All will be explained to you soon, Corporal. We have to get you inside first."

Adrian rescinded in silence, though his thoughts would continue to ponder what he heard as we approached the familiar door. It was funny that I would be the one to lead someone lost and astray through this door to safety this time around.

"Eh-wha? Who's there? Who is this?" the staticky audio from the receiver crackled to life after I pressed the buzzer, effectively ringing the doorbell. The camera adjacent to the door then swivel to life and fixed itself onto me. "Oh. Hi, Krystal."

"Hello again, Redgie," I greeted, trying to sound pleasant. "I'm back from scouting."

"I can see that," Redgie observed astutely. "Find any good knickknacks over at the refinery?"

"I found stockpiles of ammunition along with a small gun arsenal. And one peculiar―"

"You don't say?" Redgie interrupted me, enthralled with the news of a weapon stache. "Did you manage to haul it all back with you?"

"Does it look like it?" I asked, holding out my empty arms for the camera to see.

"Grr…" Redgie groaned. "Always making the rest of us do the hard work, aren't you?"

I chuckled. He and I had been playing this little game for a little while now; he would always sound disappointed whenever I returned empty-handed or returned with less than he was expecting. There was never any payoff or punchline of some kind, but I could tell that this was Redgie's attempt at being friendly with me, which I always found sweet coming from a grouch like him. The camera then began to pan upward slightly to get a better view of the space behind me.

"Hey, who the hell are you?" Redgie demanded, his prickly side coming out again once spotting my new friend.

Adrian flustered slightly, but his boots remained in place. Being that he was our guest, I saw fit to introduce him. "Someone I found at the refinery," I said, giving Adrian a look of reassurance. "He'll be staying here."

"Hmm," Redgie grunted. "If you say so."

The camera then panned up to look at Adrian again. "Follow her inside, bud. She'll get you where you need to be. Be sure to keep your hands in your pockets whenever you're around her, though; she likes to bite off and eat fingers."

Redgie's audio feed then instantly cut out right before the lock on the door disengaged. I grimaced at the camera is it turned off as well. The nerve of that bloke.

Adrian then just stared at me; not quite believing what Redgie said but not keen on ruling out anything now that his world had been flipped on its head. I shook my head at him in silence, expressing that he disregarded the sentry's word and motioning him to come follow me through the door, to which he briskly did.

Adrian surveyed the little community with great curiosity as I led him through the grassy field just before Main Street.

Being human himself, he fit right in along with the other human residents, assuring him a much easier time assimilating unlike me during my first week. He did receive a couple of stares from some of the residents walking about outside, particularly stares that centred on Adrian's strange uniform. Most dissidents who arrived in Red Bay typically arrived in their civvy uniforms, so the armoured apparel that Adrian was wearing made a few turn their heads.

Adrian noticed their interest in him and only would give a modest wave at them when we would pass. "Geez… Now I know the world's gone crazy when I'm more interesting than the fox person," Adrian thought to himself quite loudly, making me smile.

Like all other new arrivals, we were to bring them to the Municipal Edifice at the old harbourmaster's building to meet with Sabrine Grace so she could get them situated in one of the communes around the several old office buildings. Adrian got a good eyeful of the old building as I led the way inside. The little makeshift lobby office remained as tidy as it always was with Sabrine sitting on one of the couches, scribbling notes on her clipboard while simultaneously looking at the various piles of papers stacked on the coffee table. Sabrine was rather compulsive when it came to management, taking her job quite seriously as she triple-checked all the reports spaced out around the table, which was prone to stressing her out much of the time.

Her face did light up when she saw me walk in though. It was always a nice sight to see her smile. "Oh, welcome back, Honey," she greeted, setting her clipboard aside. "Did everything go well out there? You didn't tussle with any roaming headcrabs, did you?"

"Thankfully no," I informed, making room for Adrian to step inside, "but I did find a new friend."

Adrian cautiously stepped inside, and Sabrine's happy complexion fell when she made eye contact with him. "Uhm…howdy there, ma'am," Adrian nodded his head politely, regarding Sabrine with a mutual sense of connection. Sabrine only looked at him for a thoughtful moment, almost like she noticed a detail in a photo she never noticed before.

"My goodness…" she said softly, slowly rising to her feet. "Who are you, sweety?"

"Adrian Shephard. Corporal Adrian Shephard," he answered, straightening his posture a little. "Your, uh…foxy friend here found me at that refinery."

Sabrine walked up to get a better look at Adrian, specifically his soldier's uniform. Her eyes enlarged when she saw the arm patch with the stripes and star signs on it. "Where are you from, sweety?" she asked him. She sounded almost afraid to hear his answer, and her loud subconscious thoughts affirmed this. Something about this man resonated strongly with her, and Adrian seemed to sense that when seeing the desperation in her eyes.
"Ah…Arizona?" he offered. Sabrine only nodded in reply, her eyes still quite wide with disbelief before turning to me.

"You might wanna bring Mofuni here, Honey," she prompted me. "He'll want to have a look at this."

"My, my; look at what the fox dragged in," Doctor Mofuni said with rousing interest as he sat in a wooden chair backwards with his arms and chin residing on the backrest directly in front of one of the couches where Adrian was sitting.

Adrian was unsure of what to make of our zany scientist friend at first, but I knew that Mofuni was in a much better state of mind today than he would have been most days. He had managed to obtain a few cans of coffee grounds when the supply route opened back up; he treated himself to some that morning and was quite excitable. And most importantly of all, considerably level-headed, which was vital when conversing with a time-logged prisoner who had sadly yet to comprehend the full extent of his situation.

"Hazardous Environment Combat Unit," Mofuni worded out the acronym on Adrian's left arm patch. "Right? Did I win the million-dollar trivia game?"

"Yessir…" Adrian affirmed, looking at our friend incredulously as Mofuni clapped his hands happily.

"It can be fun being an overly medicated genius sometimes!" he laughed, not at all helping Adrian's perception of this eccentric man who he had just met. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're a marine of some kind. A United States marine no less. Damn, a fine country that was. About as rich as the debts it owed to everyone else."

Adrian blinked, agitated by something the doctor said. "Was…?"

"Hold that thought; can I look closer at your person really quick?" Mofuni interrupted, leaning his chair forward before pressing up against Adrian's bulky vest with his hands.

"Hey―!" he protested, but Mofuni ignored him and flipped up a little concealed latch positioned near the left breast, revealing what looked to be a circular charging port.

"Oh, and you've got yourself a PCV no less!" Mofuni exclaimed in wonder before pushing himself off Adrian, which forced him back into his couch. "Quite a nifty piece of hardware that is; my company were one of the few commissioned to develop a piece of infantry wear that could administer aid and regenerate armour plating. Sadly, neither we nor Black Mesa made it to the finals; it was some bloated UN tech committee that beat us out of it. It was probably for the better, really; the best that Aperture's submission could do was administer anabolic-infused mercury into one's bloodstream. It was supposedly meant to boost the wearer's endurance, but we ran out of homeless people at the time to properly test its effectiveness."

"Informative stuff, doc, but all I care about is―"

"Ah, never you mind the mistakes made by my company. Everyone's beef is rightfully situated with Black Mesa, as I'm sure you likely know of?"

"I don't really―"

"Granted, there's tons of shade that my old employer has committed, I will confess, but it's great to see that at least Black Mesa's sins have been fully revealed to the world, even if it did ultimately cost us everything."

"What is―?"

"I'm mean ho-hos! Does anybody remember ho-hos? Best stack cakes on the planet. You'd be hard-pressed to find any around still sealed, but even without 'em, they've got enough preservatives to mummify a small―"

"SHUT UP!"

Adrian then exploded in a fit of anger so venomous I actually reached for my staff, though I did not deploy it. Sabrine backed up against the wall and Mofuni jumped to his feet in surprise, nearly falling on his back before hitting his back against the wall as well. Adrian's arms trembled vigorously as veins bulged from his neck, gritting his teeth as he stared bloody daggers at our well-meant but perhaps inappropriately excitable Doctor Mofuni.

"I don't fucking care about ho-hos!" Adrian yelled again; his frailly maintained composure was already well past collapsed at this point. He pointed to me suddenly before resuming his fiery reproach. "An animal person is standing in the room and nobody's batting an eye about it! What the hell happened while I was gone?!"

"Honey, please, you need to calm down," Sabrine pleaded with a timidly raised hand, trying her best to temper Adrian's frustration. Adrian snapped his gaze at her when she spoke, still wearing a near-murderous expression, but it began to crumble quite quickly when he saw just how frightened she was. Subconscious thoughts can be tricky to decipher when one's emotions are hyped up to the degree of Adrian's. However, the same shock I sensed in him when he realised he had failed an unknown promise returned for a few seconds, louder than all the other thoughts streaming through his mind.

Sabrine's plea for peace may have worked a little too well, for Adrian collapsed into the couch, making its legs grind against the floor as it moved back several inches. He covered his face with his hands and sighed in shame and resignation, though the others were a little apprehensive to move. The same could be said for me as well having slowly slinked by staff back into its hoop around my belt.

"I'm so sorry about that, ma'am, I'm just…" Adrian said remorsefully, sliding his gloved palms down his face as he looked down at his knees. "I'm just really confused…"

"I bet you are, sweety," Sabrine said, mustering the courage to sit down beside him and put a hand on his forearm. "But we'll get you situated here. You don't have to hide anymore."

"I'm not hiding from anything," Adrian denied, leaning towards anger again. "Neither of you know half of what happened. I was kidnapped by some―"

In what can only be described as a 'cosmic scruff of the neck', time felt like it had paused. It was a threatening kind of pause, and neither Sabrine nor Mofuni was moving aside from myself and Adrian, whose eyes were now wide with a mutual dread. No words were said to us, nor were they truly transmitted to us telepathically. But somehow, both I and Adrian received the same voiceless message: say nothing.

And just like that, the flow of time resumed again, and the next thing I knew, Aaron had suddenly burst through the doorway. "Hey, is everything all right in here?" he asked with concern having overheard the commotion inside.

I wasn't sure what he was currently doing around this side of town, but I was immensely relieved to see him here amidst all this tension. Adrian suddenly became aware of the hulking old man in the large coat and was, rather alarmed by his abnormal size and physic. "Whoa―wha?" Adrian stammered slightly, his eyebrows rising so high they looked like they would fly off his forehead.

Aaron regarded Adrian for the first time, and his reaction surprised me. It wasn't an interest in his unusual uniform or immediate suspicion that he was the cause of the disturbance. He saw something in Adrian; a resonation; relatability. Aaron began to look almost saddened as he studied Adrian for a moment longer.

"Oh, dear me…" he said, his broad shoulders slumping. "You've been out of the loop for a long time, haven't you, son? I know how disorienting that can be."

Adrian started to relax steadily after Aaron said these. "What?" he asked, looking up at the giant elderly man in awe. Not just for his size, but for the gentle face that seemed out of place on that hulking body. But above all, there seemed to be a strange relatability between the two that I don't think Adrian fully realised yet, though something in him compelled him to listen.

Aaron looked to Sabrine in Mofuni. "Would either of you mind if I whisked him away for a while?"

Sabrine and Mofuni were a little surprised to see this insistence from Aaron but silently honoured his request―mainly because I think they weren't eager to be around him should he have another outburst. Having the confirmation he needed, Aaron turned to Adrian again. "Come on, son. Why don't we grab a few drinks? There's a lot we've got to catch you up on."