"WARNING. EVIDENCE OF ONCOGENIC FORCE SIGHTED IN THIS COMMUNITY. THREAT LEVEL ONE. GROUND PROTECTION UNITS; ASSEMBLE AND DEPLOY SECTOR PERIMITERS. QUARANTINE IN EFFECT. CONTAINMENT CODES: PURSUE. ISOLATE. SUPRESS."

This was the message that was being blasted across the city by the Overwatch voice as I tried to flee. I was able to climb up the side of a building (in no small part to clawed feet) and found myself hopping over rooftops at a flighting pace. That awful claxon siren continued to blare as dozens of metro cops ran out into the streets, wielding pistols and light machine guns as they chattered instructions to one another, locking the streets down and shepherding frightened civilians into buildings.

I tried as much as I could to stay away from the buildings' edges to avoid being spotted from below, but I knew it was only a matter of time before I would have to confront them again. The radio tower was in prominent view now that I was above street level; it was several blocks away at my two, and I could even see a portion of the airstrip. It was only a matter of getting there and getting out with what I came here for.

I had almost kept my eyes on my destination for a little too long before I noticed that I was rushing towards a gap that was too great for me to jump. I actually fell backwards in my attempt to slow down, but quickly shot back up to my feet and looked over. It looked like another portion of the main street as indicated by a single set of metal rails running down its centre. The space between my building and the next was about thirty feet, making it a rather risky leap if I didn't want to end up down below, where a squad of officers had already begun to occupy, cutting off the street entirely as a shimmering wall of blue energy flashed to life at the end of the street to my left.

Now having been forced into this moment of pause, I breathed heavily as I looked around below. Combine APCs had been deployed and were cruising up and down the main street, a sight that consequently led my attention to another large monitor hanging over the corner of a building that overlooked the street. Images of myself were on display, such as the one that was just taken of me by that lone sneaky city scanner a few minutes ago, but most of them showed me in a darker environment, clearly engaging with Combine soldiers, followed by blurrier images of what I identified as me wielding my staff while it was crackling with siphoned power.

I realised rather quickly that those had to have been taken while I was inside the depot. I looked upon these snapshots with dread; it looked like the Combine had not forgotten about me and all the trouble I had caused them in the outlands. I was now a 'level one threat', and I had a bad feeling that things were going to get much worse for me before they got better if I stayed in the city much longer. As repetitive as it was, I had no choice but to return to the sewers. While it was bound to be monitored to some extent at this point, it was better than contending with the more lethal forces patrolling the streets.

While I felt lucky having found another manhole entrance on the street to seek refuge in before Civil Protection could arrive and set up fortifications, my nose and feet certainly did not, as the dark tunnel I found myself in was the foulest place I had the misfortune of finding myself in.

The sulfuric odour was outright suffocating, making me squeamish to light a flame if by chance the air was combustible, and the mushy sludge beneath my feet felt harrowingly warm. Forget cutting my feet on broken glass; this was the reason you wore boots in the city. All this was enough to make a grown woman cry, but I unfortunately had far bigger problems to contend with. The Combine would most certainly attempt a sweep of the sewers in due time if not sooner, so I had to keep moving forward, though seeking cleaner air to breathe was honestly the biggest motivator for me at that brief time.

Navigating the sewers again was not an enjoyable experience this time around. It hardly ever was, but resorting to this route was growing rather tiresome―especially when my feet were trudging through human waste among other things I dared not guess. There were at least working lights down here, so I was able to see where I was going as I closely listened to the thoughts that crackled above me on the surface. Civil Protection had the streets locked down tight and occasionally mentioned scanners in the skies. The thick sewer walls made it difficult for my telepathy to receive the full range of the thoughts I picked up, but from what limited chatter I heard, the sewers were most definitely next to be investigated.

The airstrip was not too far away the last I had seen it on the surface, and I tried to remain true to the direction underneath the city, though tunnel choice was regrettably not munificent. Eventually, I rediscovered the underground canal system again, or at least a divergent channel that might have led up to it somewhere. Either way, whether it would have taken me closer to the airstrip, I eagerly jumped down into its rather shallow but clear water and began to wash my feet as hard and as thoroughly as I could, cherishing its cool and cleansing properties after stepping in all of that rotten sewage. Such an activity reminded me to take my own swig of water from the canteen in my pack.

I followed down this channel for a few minutes before arriving at an abrupt drop-off. Before me was a cavernous chamber that had a series of pipes flanking the walls from my left and right. The shallow water in this channel was running off the edge into a moderate waterfall and into a large pool about seventy feet down from where I was, along with the other runoff pipes in the chamber. A familiar location to a couple of other places I had been to before indeed.

Standing on the edge, I saw that there was a sixty-foot drop from here to the pool, and at the other end of the chasm was a ledge that led off into another passageway. Reaching that ledge would not be an issue, for there was a grated catwalk suspended above the chasm supported by metal beams fixed to the ceiling. I had to climb out of the canal and up onto the ledge on one of the walls to reach it, so I aimed to do just that.

As I made my way to the wall, a distant metallic croaking sound reverbed around the rounded ceiling of the canal I came from―almost sounding like a broken alarm. It wasn't loud, but it made my fur stand. I looked back down the lit tunnel, not seeing anything, though the distinct whirring sound was growing in pitch and intensity as it echoed around the tunnel―several of them.

Once it reached a point where the sound made my ears tremble like the needle on a seismograph, I pulled my staff out and prepared for what was coming. I sensed no thoughts approaching, inclining me to believe they were robots. I received my answer when a small flying drone about the size of a cantaloupe rounded the corner of the tunnel. It had a single bright red optic near the top of its frame and was gliding around through the air with a horizontal propeller that ran through the centre of its friend.

A short, light blue vaporous tail trailed behind it as it flew towards me, likely some form of propulsion. I got the impression that it noticed me when it accelerated towards me and deployed a couple of sets of sharp metal pincers. I effortlessly punted it out of the air with my staff and sent it straight into the wall, smashing it to bits. I found this encounter to be quite underwhelming, but the whirring sounds in the tunnel persisted. It was then it dawned on me that a little robot like this likely wasn't designed to act alone.

Before I knew it, more than a dozen of identical flying robots appeared down the tunnel and began making their way towards me, sounding like a swarm of angry metallic bees as they deployed their pincers for the attack. The deafening sounds of their collective spinning blades made the air choppy as I whacked and bashed at the little pests. My initial strategy was to pick them off one by one, and it was working decently well up until I smashed the fourth one, when a sharp pain erupted on my left thigh, making me cry out before stumbling over.

One of the robots managed to slice through my suit and tear through my skin, leaving a fresh bleeding wound. I likely would have foreseen that attack if the robot had a mind, but my telepathy was useless against them. The remaining robots converged on me in an identical motion, trying to take shots at me so that their sawblade-like propellers could tear at my body.

My patience quickly expired and resorted to a tactic I probably should have done much sooner. I raised my staff and proceeded to siphon all the reserved power from the robots, rendering them completely lifeless as they all splashed down into the sand bed, their red optics black as running water lapped over them. I let the spear end of my staff drop into the water too as I released a weary sigh, feeling my injured leg. I could still walk, and the gash itself wasn't large enough to be severe, but I could tell my leg was probably going to be sore for days.

"Viscerators gone dark. Probable biotic contact."

"Converging on subgrid. Prepare for possible 8-11-09."

I tensed up as a group of faint distorted voices could be heard emanating on the other side of the chasm, appropriately accompanied by a slew of matching thoughts. It looked like Civil Protection had finally made its way into the sewers, and they unfortunately were invading my path.

I turned around to see four officers running out from the tunnel on the other end of the catwalk and dispersing out along the ledges with their weapons drawn, making clear sight of me. "Contact sighted!"

"Open fire on contagion!"

A flurry of gunfire sprayed across the chasm as I ran for cover behind a curve in the canal wall, all small explosions in the water and the walls combusted as the bullets reached my end of the tunnel. The end of my staff glowed bright with fire magic as I readied my retaliating blasts. "Target is evasive."

"Move forward and apprehend."

"Possible 10-1-0-1 here. Requesting wallhammer deployment."

Sensing and hearing the officers moving quickly across the catwalk, I whirled out into the open and unleashed a blast of fire at the advancing officers. I struck the lead one squarely in the chest, causing him to burst into flames. His distorted scream emanated around the chamber as he flailed around wildly, making his comrades back up in surprise before he inevitably flipped over the railing in his panic and fell into the pool below.

I spared not a second more and fired upon the rest, cascading the yonder chamber into a literal firestorm that was quickly overwhelming them. "Officer needs assistance!"

"Officer needs help!"

"HELP!"

One by one, the remaining officers succumbed to the flames consuming them and fell over into the pit, their masks making loud flatlining sounds as they splashed into the pool out of sight. I just stayed where I was for a second in silence. I had not meant to utilise such a brutal magical counterattack, but I was finding out that my anger had been steadily welling up.

I was stirring up all of this trouble and endangering so many innocent people just so I could make an errand for a fat vindictive dobber? The absurdity of all this was truly beginning to get to me as I wedged my staff into the sand bed beneath the running water, growling to myself as I stood back up. I climbed up the wall and quickly made my way to the catwalk so that I could finally leave this area, but a pair of blue glowing optics on the far end of the tunnel on the other side of the chasm stopped me.

It was a soldier, I could sense that much by his monotone thought patterns, but I realised this trooper was of a different kind as lumbered in the shadows towards me, chaffing and shuffling a heavy assortment of gear. "Biotic sighted. Converging to contain and suppress," he announced, speaking in a particularly harsher voice distorter. Readying my staff, I watched this new contender emerge into the grimy light of the chamber.

His uniform was an almost metallic dark blue with copious amounts of armour outfitted around his whole upper body―almost to the point where it was a little comical when seeing how much it made his considerably less armoured legs look in comparison, quite similar-looking to the bomb squad troops I saw on the surface. Regardless of how overcompensating his appearance may have looked, I sensed tremendous aggression as we faced off each other on our ends of the catwalk.

I drew first and fired a burst of fire, but this soldier was well-equipped and swiftly deployed an energised shield from his left forearm, easily dispelling my fiery attack. The move took me by surprise, but the soldier had not finished his strategy. In an instant, his shield then exploded into an enormous ray of light that blinded me, making me hiss in pain as I tried to cover my eyes with my free hand.

The disorienting flash worked as intended, leaving me vulnerable to attack, which was exactly what this soldier did as I heard it rush towards me, making the whole catwalk tremble under his weight. I was violently shoved off balance and flung backwards into the water again. This inadvertently helped in restoring my senses as I shot my head up for air, but the soldier had jumped down right behind me, creating an enormous splash.

He marched up while I was still recollecting myself and grabbed my head before thrusting it down into the water in a vicious attempt to drown me. His grip was unnaturally relentless and would not budge a centimetre no matter how hard I tried. I began kicking viciously at the brute's knees with desperation hoping to injure him and release me, but this wasn't a metro cop. This was an augmented monstrosity, specifically designed to be my worst enemy.

The seconds rolled by as water continued to fill my lungs. My resistance became weaker as my kicks slowed. I was mere moments away from losing myself until the pressure was abruptly thrown off of my head as a green light flashed above me. I could vaguely sense violent commotion ensuing close to me, but I was too preoccupied with coughing up copious amounts of water as I meekly crawled to a shallowed bank.

I laid my head on the sand as the cold water lapped over my mostly submerged body, causing me to shiver as the shock of what had happened overtook me. Even in my rattled state, I pushed myself to regather myself by focusing on just breathing. Although quite shaky and brittle, air was flowing through my lungs again, gradually encouraging my nerves to settle down.

This effort had been sped up substantially when a three-fingered hand closed around my shoulder, and a familiar growly purr coursed next to my waking ear. I turned to look and saw that it was a vortigaunt who had knelt by my side, and his neck and wrists bared familiar dark brown chafe marks. "Ben…?" I croaked with wonder.

"Forgive me for not arriving sooner, Krystal," Ben lamented, rubbing my arm tenderly. "It was an arduous effort to keep up with you while staying below the city. You have most certainly…'stirred up the hive'…as one might say?"

I coughed a bit more as I tried to rise with Ben's help. I was able to glance over Ben's shoulder to see the bulky soldier lying dead in the water, missing half of his head. I would have commented on it, but knowing why it was even here made me grind my teeth. "Yes…and all for what?" I resented; my voice being as silky as sandpaper.

"For the good of Red Bay," Ben reminded, holding both my hands with his as his large red eye gazed thoughtfully at me―along with the three smaller ones above it. "We will do what we must to preserve its longevity."

He momentarily looked down close behind him before reaching down and fishing out my still-deployed staff. He then turned and offered it back to me. "We must now continue forward if we wish to uphold this duty."

While standing shin-deep in water, dripping profusely, I could not help but find myself smiling within the wonderful presence that Ben provided. I took the staff back and retracted it, right before I leaned over and gave him a thankful hug. "I'm happy you're here, my friend…" I said honestly before he gave a humble embrace back.