The ride into City Three was not a comfortable one, and that might have been a deliberate design choice.

The Combine detainee transport that Dejon was an off-roading type of vehicle with a boxy hold large enough to fit around eight prisoners inside. There were two seating benches on either side of the hold, and they offered no cushioning and somehow felt harder than the metal they were made from. Given the Combine's level of inhumane cruelty, this was likely one of their more 'merciful' features to have when moving dissidents.

I couldn't complain though, because I physically couldn't. To better sell the image that I had been captured in the outlands, my wrists had been locked together behind my back in cuffs while a large metal restraining muzzle was strapped around my face, which was a little big for me given how much shorter my muzzle was. There was nothing I could do but patiently wait until we arrived at City Three, and the only thing I could do to pass the time was watch the landscape go by through small and narrow grated windows along the wall behind me.

We had left the area around the Limpiadores' mine less than an hour prior and had been driving down an old dilapidated freeway ever since. Now and then we passed abandoned rusting wheeled vehicles of all kinds that sat abandoned off to the side of the road like they had been pushed there. We would occasionally pass checkpoints that were guarded by thin walls of blue energy, though we harmlessly drove through each of them, no doubt this vehicle was embedded with some type of registration that enabled passage.

'How are you doing back there?' Dejon asked me telepathically as he drove up front alone in the cab. Before we went underway, I was able to establish a temporary telepathic link with the Limpiadores double agent so that we could coordinate while remaining in character. There was always a slim chance that the coms in his filtered mask were tapped by his superiors, which was quite a fair concern.

'I've been in worse confinements,' I answered back in thought. 'It's rather unpleasant on one's rear, but it's better than being trapped inside a crystal.'

'Crap,' Dejon acknowledged, rightfully finding that to be rather morbid. 'How'd you get out of that?'

'I was rescued,' I replied.

'Huh. Krystal in a crystal. Isn't fate a cheeky thing or what?'

'Quite so,' I humoured, well over the additional irony of my past predicament. Dejon didn't say anything more until we got to the city, which gave me ample time to replay the memory of that Saurian night now that it was on my mind. I couldn't help but think of Fox and the adventures I had with him and the others afterwards.

I missed my life with them dearly, and I was going to find my way back to them even if it killed me. But above all else, I wished to reconcile with Fox and be forthcoming about how I truly felt about him and hopefully convince him that I was a worthy member of his team. If I couldn't, and he truly wished to let me go even after all that we had done together, I had to honour his desires, even if they were enough to make some tears well up like they were right now as I thought about him.

Fortunately, something much worse came along to distract me from my inner woes, and that was our inevitable arrival into City Three. Dejon stopped at our final checkpoint along the freeway, which was connected to a long, dark metal wall that ran around the outer border of the city. A Civil Protection officer at the gate greeted Dejon by the cab door.

"You're late, 3881," the unseen officer stated. His voice was heavy and grave, distorted by his filtered mask. "You're going to be reassigned further out beyond the city if you can't keep to concluding your nightly patrols on time."

"I had my hands full last night," Dejon insisted, speaking in a similar distorted voice. "I caught something just outside sector eight around the dunes. The higher-ups will want to take a look at this."

"A single runaway civvy?" the officers assumed. "They'll take them, but don't expect to get any extra stims."

"Not a civvy," Dejon said. "Feel free to have a look in the back."

The officer said nothing as I heard a set of boots marching around the side of the transport towards the back doors. 'All right, time to look a little pathetic, Krystal,' Dejon telepathically nudged with urgency, though I was already prepared.

The transport shifted a bit as the officer took one step on top of the footplate on the rear below the doors and promptly swung them open, exposing me and himself to each other as the bright light of the sunny day flew in. This Combine civil protection officer had an identical uniform to Dejon's: a bulky grey vest, a black shirt with padded white shoulders, black gloves, deep sandy-green trousers and black boots, and a single armband with the digits C03. His white filtered mask had small clear glass eyes and two circular air filters positioned vertically over each other around the mouth.

I commenced my bit to appear dreadfully frightened by him, folding my ears and curling my tail around my ankles―supplemented by fretful moans and whimpers. The officer just stared at me in still silence for a long moment before promptly closing the doors back up. His thoughts were of course bewildered at the sight of me, and was evermore thankful he wasn't forsaken with a position like Dejon's.

"On your way, 3881," the officer authorised, patting the side of the transport with his hand, causing the hold to vibrate metallically.

"Copy that, 1298," Dejon replied, seconds before the quiet engine of the transport revved up again as we began to roll past the gate. 'He never just lets me go like that; even if I do have something back there,' Dejon relayed to me in my mind. 'You must've put on a good show.'

'Perhaps,' I replied, though I was more concerned over what awaited me now that I once more returned to Combine territory, and a big part of me was starting to regret getting up from bed today.

We slowly drove down the city streets while elaborate and colourful buildings flanked us on either side.

My eyes were kept frantically busy as I looked and watched at all of my surroundings through the narrow window just behind me. Unlike the abandoned city around the depot down south, City Three was full of human civilians. There were many wandering the sidewalks, and I could sense a good many more within the surrounding buildings. This transporter was platted with this same strange alien alloy that somehow could block my telepathy, so I had to stay as close as I could to the exposed grated window if I wanted to sense anything beyond these walls.

What I could sense and see in these people was despair and hopelessness. Many citizens wore the same denim uniform, nearly all having their heads down and avoiding eye contact with each other. Having my telepathy cranked up to eleven, I listened to the fears expressed through their thoughts, and from what I gathered, they couldn't be seen talking to each other, as this would be seen as a possible act of dissidence or conspiracy.

The police had a massive presence in the streets. There was at least one metro cop stationed by every street corner, either keeping a steady watch, interrogating pedestrians or just casually leaning on something and expressing clear boredom. I soon realized that the police were not like the soldiers I fought; they were fully human with no neural augmentations whatsoever. Their minds were as autonomous as any human I knew.

More and more things were revealed to me the further we drove into the city. I wasn't sure of the exact scale of City Three, but I got the sense that this was once a thriving metropolitan area―possibly the biggest in the region. What it was now was a shell of its former glory as the Combine layered themselves on top of the original human architecture, such as large metal barriers in the streets that divided the city into different sectors, cameras that monitored every corner, and even small floating robots that acted as mobile cameras.

I found these contraptions to be one of the more oppressive elements of this place, which is making quite a statement. They hovered ominously up and down the streets, floating up in the air and over buildings to survey another street, and liberally took pictures of citizens trying to get by, enveloping them in blinding flashes. The level of oppression here was almost unbearable to witness.

I also bore witness to large holographic monitors fixed to the corner ends of buildings or in small plazas. They projected the face of Doctor Breen, broadcasting an unending stream of propaganda regarding their benevolent "benefactors" to the miserable populous, marking this as the first time I saw and heard Earth's puppet leader for the Combine speak. He had a softspoken voice, a gentle face and a charming smile, portraying an almost fatherly or grandfatherly type of figure. We were still driving too quickly for me to fully hear what he was saying, though I knew it to be all rubbish of the most insufferable kind.

We had already been driving a rather steady pace through the city at a cautious pace, though eventually Dejon was forced to slow to a stop at an intersection. I heard a few spurts of chatter coming from his mask's receiver before being obliged to answer back to it. "Copy that, Chaplin 492. Strip is vacant. Hanging tight for boomer passage," he replied in that distorted voice.

'What's going on?' I wondered, shuffling a little closer to the cab window.

'You'll see,' he answered vaguely, keeping a leftward gaze down the street in front of us. Several long seconds then passed before I began to feel a series of brief, light tremors rumbling beneath the transport.

They grew with intensity with each proceeding one, almost like something large was coming our way. I had been around numerous creatures through much of my life that were dozens of times my size, and I knew for certain that a massive creature was lumbering in our way. I wouldn't be guessing what it was for very long.

Moments later, when the tremors were beating the loudest they had yet, I saw something towering emerging before the transport's windshield. A pair of three long, spindly legs with giant black razor-like stilts strutted their way into the intersection, revealing a new synthetic monstrosity that was as tall as the buildings around it.

This tripod giant was a warm brown in colour and had a relatively small body or a head held up by its towering legs that made unsettling creaking and groaning sounds as they walked. A small discernible turret on the front was barely visible from my viewpoint, and a massive cannon that I could tell yielded tremendous firepower dangled underneath its undercarriage, swaying around along with the creature's movements. I knew for certain that Falco would have made quite the suggestive joke at the giant synth's expense if he too saw what it was packing in between its legs.

I watched in awe as this giant synth, which I would later learn was called a 'strider' by the rebels, moved down the street, followed by a tiny escort of city scanners as it disappeared around the corner. I had been so captivated by the sight of this behemoth I had not realised that another unit had come up alongside us until I slinked back over to my bench. I looked out my window in surprise to see another metro cop, wearing a unique trenchcoated uniform, and curiously riding on top of a large, muscular hoofed animal with a pair of leads in his hands. It seemed that he had stopped to watch the synth walk by as well.

My attention was soon overtaken by the creature that the rider rode upon, and my curiosity quickly enveloped into horror. The creature had a long neck with no head. Instead, in its place, was a module attached to its scarred stump, where a flat panel was able to swivel like a head, and two clips on the end of the panel acted as bits for the leads. Once the giant synth had left the premises entirely, the rider on top of his beast of horrors spurred the sides of its stomach, where I had just noticed that two ports of some kind were implanted in, and the cybernetic monstrosity obediently trotted forward, quite stiff and robotically.

"Late again, aren't we 3881?" he chuckled as he rode off down the street in the other direction. The beating sounds of hooves reverbed around the buildings for a moment before gradually fading away. I could not think of anything to say I was so shocked at what I saw. My silence seemed to be loud enough for Dejon to catch on.

"There's nothing they don't remake…" he messaged me telepathically, moments before he revved up the transport again and began to ride off into the street ahead of us.