Station Five was already a ruin by the time we arrived at the scene in the late afternoon.
The rebel hideout was an old waystation along a dilapidated branch line that eventually linked up to the Combine's working mainline. Shephard found irony in knowing that the underground railroad seemed to be following an actual railroad. There was some kind of cultural context to refer to the refuge route as a 'railroad' that I wasn't quite picking up on, but that hardly preserved any importance to our objective.
The backroad we took when driving here was nicely obscured by the surrounding hills, offering very little in the way of obstacles as we drove. Quite a scenic route it was for refugees on their way to Red Bay. The waning sun made the sky turn a light indigo and the clouds a warm beige while a dry breeze whipped across the arid landscape.
We followed the overgrown tracks alongside the gravel road before arriving at the waystation, though we had an unpleasant teaser of its current state by the faint columns of black smoke rising from its location. We drove into a tiny abandoned industrial complex that was walled off by an already-smashed rusty metal gate and quickly came to a stop before the set of buildings that had nearly all been levelled to rubble. "Oh Lord, please no…" Aaron pleaded, utterly distraught by what he was seeing as he rode in the back with me and Shephard.
He hardly waited for Nuri to stop driving before he opened the back doors and hopped out. He ran for the set of small (former) buildings that resided alongside the overgrown railyard that was chuck full of rusting rollingstock. All of the buildings around us had been grazed with the scars of recent destruction in various states, but the ones before us were destroyed much more so. I climbed out the back seconds after we stopped, and so did Sofia and Nuri upfront as they rushed forward to search for survivors.
Shephard was the last one to emerge onto the gravel lot, adorning his full H.E.C.U uniform along with his boots, backpack, armoured vest and helmet. He brought his nocturnal vision gasmask along with him, but he currently had it fastened around a clip on one of the many pouches on his belt. He wielded a long black rifle with a grenade launcher attachment, a gun that he said was called a 'G3', and looked on at the wreckage before us.
"Damn…" he murmured, lowering his gun solemnly. He turned to me and nodded his head towards the destroyed building. "Come on."
We caught up with the others seconds later when they stopped before the concrete ramp that led up to the former entrance. Like myself at that moment, they were quick to notice the few large black metal pods jutting out along various points of the mounds of debris with their fins open, revealing a circular opening to their inner chambers. I could recognise them from the refinery where I first encountered the G-Man.
"Shells…" Sofia realised dreadfully, holding her shotgun up nervously.
"Headcrabs about, I reckon," Nuri agreed, just as worried.
"They are," I confirmed, cranking up my telepathy. "Most of them wandered into the railyard back there, but I would recommend dealing with them before they cause us trouble."
"What about survivors, lassie?" Aaron asked pressingly. "Do you sense anyone still alive under that rubble?"
I concentrated hard and miraculously picked up a faint telepathic signal beneath the mounds of debris somewhere. Such a feeling invoked a tragic memory of a certain metro cop I discovered before leaving City Three. I was overrun with a drive to not repeat the outcome of it. "Just one. Over there!"
While Shephard and Nuri were keeping watch for stray headcrabs around the vicinity, I was busy trying to remove as much debris as I could with my staff's magical beams.
I telepathically was keeping a lookout for those little monsters myself, but I had to divert most of my mental energy into maintaining my hold on the lone survivor's signal. Aaron and Sofia helped me along in the process by removing large chunks of collapsed drywall and wooden beams that piled up on this corner of the ruined building. There was also plenty of hazardous dust flying around from our actions, so I also had to command a bit of wind to blow it away when it became too noxious for myself and the other two.
Eventually, after much stress and haste, the buried victim was uncovered. A woman with black hair whose face was covered in blood, and had numerous wounds and gashes around her body that tore through her raggedy clothes. She was barely conscious as we gingerly hoisted her up, gasping for breath like anvil was resting on her chest. While Sofia was rummaging through her satchel for some water, I positioned myself behind the woman while Aaron took her in his hands to allow me the room to work.
I placed two fingers on her left temple and whispered a simple rousing hex. "Nubo."
The woman's eyes flung open with a great startle accompanied by a painful gasp before she began coughing violently. Aaron continued to hold her steady as the woman struggled to get a hold of herself. "Whoa, easy, easy," Aaron told her calmly as she began to settle down now that real air was filling her lungs again. Air that I made sure was particle-free.
The harshness of her wheezing voice alerted me that she needed water, and I urgently motioned to Sofia to pass the canteen she fished out. After we provided her with a few generous sips of the live-giving fluid, her recovery gradually increased. The woman began blinking as her eyes adjusted to the world, and she was quick to notice Aaron supporting her.
"Easy there, love. We've got you. Take deep breaths," he instructed, but the lady didn't have patience for that.
"The… The Combine…" she moaned, unleashing a couple of hard wet coughs. "The swept in and…and…they took him…"
Aaron frowned at the suggestion of someone being captured, and he was doubly anxious over who he suspected it to be. " Who'd they take, love?"
"Hal… They took Hal…"
The rebel continued coughing as Aaron lifted his eyes, looking off towards the hills. A vengeful scowl then took shape on his brow, which significantly altered his aura. He no longer looked like a cuddly gentle giant, but rather a cold-blooded force of nature hellbent on vengeance. A rockslide personified. I had many peaks into this side of him when we escaped the depot together, but Sofia did not. This sudden change intimidated her considerably.
"Ladies?" Aaron asked us, retaining his determined brow. "Let's help her out of her and get her into the van. We'll have to treat her first before we figure out our next move.
"Please tell me you're not thinking of going to get your friend…" Sofia begged. Aaron's determined expression softened after hearing her desperation. He looked at the still-barely conscious person in his arms thoughtfully. Aaron wisely took the route of levelheadedness, at least for the time being.
"Let's get her in the van and search for more survivors first," he insisted, trying to ease Sofia's concerns. "We'll decide our next move once we patched her up and whomever else we may find around here."
The decision was not made lightly, but we ultimately decided that we were going to rescue Aaron's friend.
Samantha, the woman we had pulled out from the rubble, was in favour of the plan herself after we revived her in the back of the van. She believed with good reason that Hal had been taken to the Combine's fortress in Aldana, which I learned was an old powerplant that the Combine repurposed into an outland stronghold. But amidst her grief over the loss of her colleagues, she expressed doubt that we could somehow get inside the power plant with it being so heavily fortified.
I learned from a past heist that it wasn't too difficult to break into a Combine facility if you knew where to look; it all depended on whether or not luck would be on our side when it came to not getting caught this time. There was a brief argument on whether or not we should take Samantha back to Red Bay to get her better treatment first, but Samantha herself was adamant that we retrieve Hal. I learned that Hal was a more senior resistance member, much like how Aaron was, and has been amongst the resistance for many years. The Combine somehow identified this seniority Samantha believed and was now going to rip his brains out and analyse all of his incriminating secrets about the resistance, specifically, certain locations where we operated.
It quickly became even more apparent now that we stop this from happening immediately. Our better collective judgement was apprehensive about taking a wounded rebel with us, but Samantha cared little for a broken leg and a couple of ribs. She demanded that we find Hal before the Combine could use him to get to us. We set off for Aldana minutes later, driving alongside the overgrown railway which would eventually lead to the old power plant several miles down the line around the hills.
Less than an hour later, just before sundown, we arrived at the power plant, the Combine's presence was unmistakable with its dark architecture having been built all around the site like a cluster of fungus. We made sure to park our van well out of the way and out of sight of any possible surveillance, nestling it nicely underneath the cover of tall brush and bushes. Sofia volunteered to stay behind, both so she could watch over our only ride back and to give the still-traumatised Samantha needed condolence and company. Having faith that the two of them would take care of themselves until our return, myself, Aaron, Nuri and Shephard set off to infiltrate the imposing Combine fortress.
We followed Aaron's lead as we manoeuvred our way through the dense foliage, primarily due to his hulking size clearing a helpful path for the rest of us to move through. I kept my eyes on the corrupted powerplant in the distance. Tall and angular towers made of that dark alien alloy rose into the sky, hugged by rows of giant ribbed walls and a complicated grid of pipework that weaved across various sections of the complex, which was intensely lit by a copious amount of exterior lighting.
The biggest relic that indicated this place's human past was the enormous beige, hourglass-shaped cooling tower nestled off to the eastern side of the complex. There was observable evidence that a second identical tower may have been there as alluded to by a field of rubble near the tower, though the Combine appeared content to build over it rather than take the time to clean it up. The setting sun behind us made the beige tower and the surrounding buildings look a reddish-orange colour, and the accompanied by the large sheet of dark grey clouds in the dark azure sky made the place look all the more ominous and daunting.
Our troop eventually made it to a simple rusty chain-link fence with barbed wire coiling around at the top. We could see an opening further down the line, so we opted to go over and use it. Perhaps we were not the first to break into this place.
We maintained low stances as we moved along, trying to keep to the cover of the bushes as much as we could. We soon passed a warning sign that was corroding with rust along its outer triangular frame, and Shephard took an interest in it as we passed by it. "Advertencia: No está…prohibido entrar…ilegalmente. Sólo personal autorizado," he spoke out loud, speaking in that dialect that both Sofia and René sometimes spoke.
"What are you saying?" Nuri mumbled to him. He was moving along in front of Shephard, so he did not realise what he was doing, which was irked by his heightened nervousness.
"Just reading that sign," Shephard answered. "An 'old world' policy is all it's saying."
"You can read Spanish, son?" Aaron looked back intrigued.
"Enough to get by," Shephard replied, rolling his shoulders as he held his rifle abreast. "Lotta Spanish speakers where I grew up. You pick up an idiom or two the longer you hang around them."
"Fascinating," Nuri said, slowing down his pace a bit so he could walk alongside Shephard. "I've noticed you've got a patch of the American flag on your arm. I presume that you're American?"
I couldn't quite read their faces as I paced behind them, but I could sense their feelings well enough. "Would I be wearing it if I wasn't wearing it?" Shephard asked in a teasing way, making Nuri a little flustered.
"No…I suppose not," Nuri admitted, feeling a bit foolish for a second before his inquisitiveness kicked back in. "I assume you're from one of the southern states then. The ones bordering Mexico?"
"Yeah. Arizona."
"Ah, I understand now," Nuri acknowledged. "My father went to an international academic convention in Nevada once and spent a week down in Puerto Peñasco. He was a linguistics professor at the University of Belgrade; he had a real knack for languages. I picked up a few idioms as well, you could say."
"I guess I can," Shephard said, regarding Nuri's fluent ability to speak in this alternative-Lylatian-equivalent language we were all speaking. It had never occurred to me that Nuri might have originally spoken a different language before meeting him. Being multi-lingual must have benefitted him tremendously in a world that had all of its people shuffled around the planet.
"So…where are we supposed to be in the world anyway?" Shephard asked. "I see a lot of Spanish signs around, and I have a suspicion we're not by the Caribbean."
"We're in Europe, lad. You can be sure of that. What remains of it, anyway," Aaron proclaimed unwaveringly.
Shephard pondered that for a few seconds. "So, I wager we're in Spain, then?"
"Either that, or Andorra la Vella, but I haven't seen anything around in French yet myself," Nuri admitted.
Continuing to follow the group in silence, I watched and listened to Shephard's ongoing inner conflict about his current plot in this new world. He was a complete stranger in it, but the remnants and references to his world continued to haunt the displaced marine quite deeply. After a thoughtful moment of silence, Shephard chuffed a bit to himself in irony.
"You know, it's funny; I always wanted to go to Europe at some point," he said a little glumly. "It's all well and good that I do when aliens have turned the world upside down."
"We've all been there, son," Aaron said with great sympathy, same as Nuri's unvoiced sentiment. "You will unfortunately learn to live with it. We all had to, eventually. I am just a little surprised at how quickly you've decided to jump back into the heat of the action after finding sanctity by the bay."
Shephard turned his head, looking on at the Combine facility about a quarter mile beyond the fence. "I feel it's time that I start knowing my enemies."