The proceeding days were an eventful period of innovation.

My precious Arwing had successfully been converted into a hybrid runner thanks to the joint efforts of Doctor Mofuni, the Limpiadores' engineers, and our vortigaunt consultants. My presence during the whole project was rather sparse given my bumpy exploits over the last several days, but I was at least able to attend the moment of truth a day after our outing in Aldana. They had managed to disconnect the Cloud Runner's unique NTD-FX model plasma engine, removing it from the lifted haul where they had been able to play with it uninhibited. We had the vortigaunts to thank for guiding the engineers during the whole process in no small part due to their affinity with power.

The components sourced from Combine hardware proved to be just what the plasma engine needed to patch up its cooked delicate circuitry, and in place of the charred components were meshes of techno-infused organic matter that were wrapped around the engine like surgical tape, providing a conductive pathway throughout the ship's systems. I could not begin to figure out how such an unnerving solution would restore the Cloud Runner, but after countless tests on the engine, the results were conclusive. Power could generate and flow again.

As groundbreaking and stupendous as these developments were, there was still plenty of work left to do. Mofuni and the engineers would continue to run several more diagnostics on the engine itself before inserting it back into the Cloud Runner, where they would run proceeding diagnostics on its system regulators―a process they insisted I be present for given my experience operating the ship. I wore a massive grin as I was able to re-engage power through the ignition steps, making the warehouse hum loudly as the Cloud Runner began returning to life, but it wasn't quite there yet.

Power was indeed circulating, but many vital linkups were still out of sync, indicating further complications with the ship itself apart from the plasma engine. While it was a tad disappointing to myself and the devoted crew, we knew this was an extremely delicate process. I and the vortigaunts were confident that they could locate the internal damage easily; and unlike the compartment housing the engine, the outer panelling was easy to remove to allow for convenient access to internal systems.

Of course, all the advancements and setbacks made that day seemed to get completely overshadowed when Hal was found dead in his bunk towards the end of the day. It did not appear to be a painless experience, as plenty of foam was found having frothed from his mouth―and even out from his ears. The discovery caused quite a disturbance around town.

The autopsy revealed that a violent chemical reaction occurred inside of him, but the exact cause of the reaction was unknown. I didn't know how to process this; Hal was perfectly fine that morning, I had seen him at breakfast, and now he was no more. It was such a surreal event. People were shocked, scared, and sad, and I could feel all of it from everyone, but I don't think anybody was more despaired than Aaron. This was his old friend; they had been in the rebellion together for years and had their own adventures together, and now Aaron was left to confront Hal's untimely and abrupt end.

It was utterly heart-wrenching to see this kind, gentle old giant shed tears over the body of his friend. I did my best to comfort him as he grieved, but I could not help but feel ashamed I had not sensed Hal's passing. I get a subtle inkling whenever death occurs within my vicinity, and Hal's bunk was not far from the warehouse. Was I simply too excited by my reviving Cloud Runner to properly notice? I didn't know, and it was useless to dwell on it. The telepathic stench of death accompanying a dead mind lingered forebodingly; I was relieved that Aaron was not able to sense that layer of decay―or anyone else for that matter.

The following day, the town held a small but attentive funeral service for Hal. His body was buried out over by the east hills outside of town, where all the other former residents had been taken to in years past. Hal's death haunted the town proceeding the burial, for still, no one knew what actually happened to him. Many suspected a poisoning; the fatal chemical reaction in his body was certainly indicative of that. Before anybody could point fingers at one another and accuse foul play, the compounds found in Hal's bodily secretions during the autopsy were revealed to be alien.

It had been several days since the funeral, and I could not shake this ominous feeling in my gut.

Hal's untimely death still haunted the town, and I was no less fixated on what happened. When fishing wouldn't help clear my head, I opted to go scavenging in the outlands with my dear horse friend Dahlia. It had been a little while since we went on a little adventure together, and we would be having a guest coming along.

Shephard wanted to get out of town a bit as well and decided to tag along. Teasingly, of course, I told him he was allowed to come if he carried all the heavy things we found. He brought along the largest camping backpack that the supply house had to honour my precondition.

While it took Dahlia a little bit to warm up to Shephard, she quickly learned he was trustworthy in no small part to my reassurances, and suddenly she was able to carry him and me at the same time without issue on her back. Dahlia would have pretended he was too heavy had she remained unsure of him. She was such a lovable little cheek.

Our little troop didn't venture too far out from Red Bay. We went to the northeastern peninsula, just over the hills. There was a small abandoned village out there on the road to City Three and the abandoned copper mine that served as the Limpiadores' headquarters.

Being that it was a relatively close proximity to Red Bay, much of its valuable resources had already been scavenged a while ago, but someone would always find something new when taking a trip back to it every now and then. I was itching to see if we could find anything neat ourselves. We likely wouldn't find a bounty of copper wire, but I was sure we would find other kinds of treasure.

It was a roughly fifteen-minute ride from the town to the village, and we arrived at the dilapidated village to see it was no less abandoned than it was said to be. At least two dozen houses made up this village, all of which were in varying stages of decay and disrepair, but otherwise in decent condition compared to other places I had seen. There were signs that the place had been raided by scavengers in the past―no doubt by our scavengers―indicated by broken windows, various bits of scrap lying around, and even the fleet of abandoned cars spaced around the village had many of their engines and rubber tyres removed.

Shephard and I left Dahlia to graze outside the village, though I instructed her to be nearby in case we needed to flee quickly. This village was outside Red Bay's Overwatch signal-jamming field, so outland scanners were a definite danger to encounter out here. She dutifully did as I asked and generally remained within her line of sight while Shephard and I explored.

We perused through the first few houses that greeted us, grabbing anything we thought looked fetching. This was meant to be a more leisurely excursion, anticipating to find mostly knickknacks rather than invaluable resources, but we were keeping an eye out for them. The former homes were certainly ransacked; most appliances connected to old gas lines had been removed, many homes had holes in the walls that indicated where valuable wiring was scavenged, and a slew of other commodities that I could feel were missing, all for repurposing materials.

However, things like furniture, pillows, old clothes, utensils, and plates among other things were left untouched, and generally quite dusty from neglect. These were more or less the items we expected to find in abundance, and me and Shephard stuffed the trinkets we each found appealing. The mess hall could always use more serving supplies, and the tenants could fancy some interior furnishing with all the random decorations left behind.

All of the pictures of families and other people along the walls, however, we let be. I learned from the vortigaunts how precious a vivid record of history was when they strewn theirs along the walls of the Sanctum. The walls would preserve the memory of the old world here amongst the ruins, and a part of me believed that was why most of the homes weren't looted of these former belongings, leaving them where they were as passive tributes.

"Ah sweet; a box of old smokes!" Shephard suddenly called from one other room in the third house we infiltrated. I had been inspecting some wooden dresses flanking a giant changing mirror when Shephard hollered this, pulling my ear to the door. I was naturally inclined to see what he was so excited about, so I went over to find him after stashing some novel coasters in my bag.

My boots pounded the creaky old wooden floors as I entered the living room area to find Shephard in the midst of rising to his feet after rummaging through a floor cabinet. He wasn't wearing his military fatigues and instead was wearing a pair of old jeans and a sporty red flannel shirt. Combining all of that with those stubbly whiskers of his, I thought he looked rather smart for this relatively casual outing, but he was still wearing his black combat boots, which kind of upset the look he adopted.

"What did you find?" I wondered, approaching him. Shephard turned and presented a small red and white wooden box to me. He opened up the latched wooden cover to reveal a metallic image of two figures adoring each other on the bottom of the lid and a row of several brown tubular objects that fit snuggly inside the box.

"Romeo y Julieta," he spoke with an exaggerated accented voice, emphasising his rolling R as he underlined the bold text on the box. "Looks to be some old cigars that belonged to the Spanish dude who lived here. There's still more than a few in here. Guess he never got the chance to finish 'em."

Shephard reached a hand in and withdrew a long brown cigar with a red strap towards its end, examining it curiously before smelling it. The grimace he made afterwards revealed that he was unprepared for the potent pepperiness. "What do you suppose the name means?" I asked, intrigued by the box's art. Shephard began wandering back to his giant backpack leaning on the wall close by with his findings.

"They're Shakespeare characters," he answered as he walked.

"Shakespeare?"

"Oh, that's right," he remembered. "He was a famous play author from a country called England. Not too far away from here, actually. Romeo and Juliet was one of his most famous plays."

"Hmm," I pondered with interest as I began looking around the room now that I was here. "What was the play about?"

"A guy and a girl fall madly in love, but they're a part of two different rival gang families essentially. They're forbidden to see each other, but teenage horniness is a powerful thing."

That made me laugh. "Does the play have a happy ending?"

Kneeling before his sack and stuffing the cigar box inside it, Shephard answered, "Kind of. Not really. They both kill themselves by accident. It really depends on what you think 'happy' is."

My ears fell to a near-perfect horizontal line. "Oh. How very tragic…" I said, sullied by the sad resolve in the story―or lack thereof.

"People ate that kind of shit up back then," Shephard explained, zipping the box of cigars up before standing back up again. "We got a term for it: Greek Tragedy. Or something like that."

"Greek Tragedy?"

"Yeah, rich stories with horribly abrupt endings; usually ending in untimely death by preventable means." He began walking back over to me, his heavy boots also pounding the floor as he fondled two cigars in his hand. "I remember one Greek epic about a guy named Jason. Did a lot of heroic deeds, sailed the seas for a golden fleece, and died a homeless old bum with nobody to mourn him. I can't remember all the details―that crap was years ago―but I think the figurehead of his expedition ship actually broke off and landed on his cervical, killing him on the spot as he slept in rags on the pier."

I just frowned at him in silence, apparently giving the false impression that I was mad at him for these endings, to which he raised his hands modestly. "Hey, I didn't write these."

"Those are some depressing outcomes," I said, pulling at my backpack's strap with my thumb. "I hope not every form of human literature is so morose."

"Nah, it's mostly boring stuff. Guess adding needless death helps to spice it up for people who don't care enough," Shephard shrugged, holding up the two cigars. "Anyways, how about you and I have a puff?"

I cocked an eyebrow at him over such a proposal. "What?"

"Come on, I found them fair and square. We were meant to have one," he insisted, offering one of them to me, but I gently pushed it away.

"Thank you, Adrian, but I will pass on that. Please," I declined politely, more amused than I was offended.

Shephard shrugged again before pocketing his offering. "Okay. We'll store it away for a special occasion, 'aight?" he suggested, giving me a wink. I only crossed my arms in silence, but that hardly discouraged Shephard's antics. "Could you at least spare me a light?"

"From what?"

"You got that magic fire-shooting stick, don't ya? Come on, lend me a lick," he insisted, holding his cigar out to me. It was quite rash of him to assert that I use my magic staff as a lighter for him, but I had grown to realise that this was part of Adrian's character―when he wasn't bogged down by his emotions. He enjoyed poking people's buttons; that was why he prospered so well with his rambunctious squad mates.

I shot him a tolerating smile as I unclipped my retracted staff from my belt. "I feel that I will never understand why boys are the way they are―no matter what universe they're from," I said in resignation, opening the spearhead's end without extending it, letting a little orange flame flicker to life.

"Clearly you haven't caught a glimpse of Jackson," Shephard said with a grin. "He was our squad's engineer. He'd light his cigarettes with his blowtorch."

He leaned forward with his cigar in between his lips, stuck the end inside the little flame and began inhaling. He withdrew himself as he released a cloud of tobacco smoke from his nostrils, predictably coughing up a bit of a storm after inhaling so much at once. "Jesus, that's pungent," he wheezed, turning his head to breathe fresher air while I fanned my hand in front of my nose to clear the second-hand smoke away after closing the spearhead back up.

"Are you satisfied with yourself?" I asked, wrinkling my nose. Shephard pounded his upper chest a couple of times after he settled his coughing down.

"I'll find out in a minute if I get a massive headache or not," he said, trying to clear his throat.

While our venture didn't bear much fruit, I found it a pleasant outing, and it looked like Shephard thought so as well.

It would have taken all day to loot through all the houses, so we were only really able to browse through eight, taking us about four hours, and it was well into the afternoon before we knew it. The air was still warm and dry like I had always known this region to be, but I could not deny the noticeably cooler breeze flowing through my fur whenever outside. The signs of a seasonal shift were growing more copious by the day.

We managed to bag some materials of interest, like some brass kettles and adhesives like duct tape and glue, but most of what we took were things of novelty that would look nice around our commune for some interior decorating. There was a lot of dust in these houses being kicked up from our snooping, which was starting to make me a little sneezy, so Shephard and I thought it best to have a break outside once our bags were full.

Being that this village was on a peninsula, the coast was well within sight, ringing around to the right before continuing off east into the distance. There was a lengthy distance between the water and the tall rocky cliffsides. Such a familiar sight made me remember the first time I saw the coast on my first day on Earth when happening upon those beached shipwrecks. While Shephard had been made aware of declining ocean levels, the sight of the beach in the distance unnerved him a little more so than the evidence shown around the bay.

"They really are trying to bleed us dry…" he said as we sat together on a large rock within a dilapidated playground outside of the village. Dahlia was nearby, enjoying the breeze and the dry moss patches she found a little further away, flicking her tail contently. "How long has this been going on?"

"Not too long after the Combine established dominion," I informed what had been explained to me some time ago. We were both eating little provisions we had packed for ourselves as we looked out at the blatant evidence of global distress.

"Where do you think it's all going?"

"Off-world," I guessed. "Most likely to satiate arid Combine territories across their multiversal empire."

Shephard pondered on this for a second before sighing discontentedly. He had already worked through that cigar he had found in one of the first houses we sifted through, and was now a little agitated from minor withdrawal. While that didn't help to soothe his nerves, it was the information that I told him that was the primary source of his agitation.

"Multiversal empire…" he repeated to himself quietly. "It's still a little hard for me to confront the fact that this is all really happening. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for everyone who had to watch it all happen." He then dawned a bereaving frown as he began holding his head while shaking his head. "Christ, I'm sorry I wasn't there with you, Sam…"

I looked at him with lowered ears. Even though Shephard had been steadily making progress in accepting his place in this new, harsh world, he still frequently thought about Sam. The regret he felt over not being there for her during everything that proceeded the Black Mesa Incident was difficult for him to get over, and I wasn't expecting him to get over it so quickly even after airing it all out. Even after having a wonderful meditation session together that same morning, Sam would continue to haunt his subconscious.

As much as I wanted to say everything was all right, I knew it truly wasn't. Not until Shephard could muster the strength to let it all go. All of the guilt and the grief, but he was still mourning, and that would only subside when he was truly ready to let it. The most I could do was be there for him in whichever form that would take, and so at this point, the best I could do was put my arm around him in silent reassurance. He actually took my hand when it slid over his shoulder and held it for a little bit.

"What do you think happened to her, Krystal? Do you think she's still out there somewhere? Or did she die off at some point during the last twenty years?"

I pressed my lips. "I'm not sure, Adrian. I don't believe it's for me to speculate."

Shephard seemed to accept that answer with a sad nod. "Yeah. I guess it doesn't really matter anyway," he conceded, letting go of my hand as he raised his back upright. "I don't want to know, honestly. I really don't. But I hope she's okay. Wherever she is…"

In light of recent discoveries in my dabbling within the Vortessence, I learned of potential avenues that suggested the ability to reach out to the deceased. I was indirectly made aware of this during my first session in the Sanctum, sensing vortigaunts that were no longer bound to the waking world and in communion with our gathering. Could there be a way to reach out to Sam regardless of whatever state she was in?

As much as I wished to mention this to him now, I firmly held my tongue. When I first began my lessons, I was told that my sensitivity to the Vortessence was a rarity amongst other creatures. My mentors lacked confidence in humans to have the innate ability to ascend.

If that were true, I did not want to give Adrian false hope. He did not deserve that at all. However, it wasn't in me to rule it out. I had now become closer to my parents than I had ever been ever since delving into the Vortessence.

I felt like I now had a greater purpose in this practice if it would help bring Shephard some form of resolve, but that still had to wait. Right now, Shephard had other things to keep him busy―even now. There was still the matter of getting back to base with all of our sundries.

"I know for certain she is," I promised. It was an uncertain one, Shephard knew that, but he appreciated the kindness.

"Thanks, Pop-Tart," he smiled back fondly. I, however, was a little taken aback by what he just called me.

"What?" I wrinkled my brow upward.

"You insist on being in my squad? We gotta give you a nickname," Shephard insisted, a little teasingly. "I think Pop-Tart's a fitting match for you."

I wasn't sure what a 'pop-tart' was, but I got the notion it was slightly derogatory based on my appearance. "All right, then," I tolerated, crossing my arms. "What did they call you?"

"Popeye," he answered. "I apparently got big arms."

He then flexed his bulky arms to demonstrate. I had to admit, he did have really nice arms. "I cannot refute that," I agreed with an impressed nod. Shephard put away his eye candy before I would end up staring for too long. Our tiny break proceeded for a few more minutes afterwards until I picked up something in my ear being carried along the breeze.

It wasn't too severe at first, but I soon found myself growing still as I tried listening intently while Shephard was initially oblivious. My right ear swivelled acutely as I tried singling out the strange humming sound coming from the east, getting a little louder each moment. Shephard eventually noticed me, and immediately got tense.

"What's happening?" he wondered, reaching down to grab his rifle that was lying on the grass by his feet.

"I don't know," I answered, feeling increasing tension the louder the low hum became in the air, soon arriving at a point where Shephard could hear it. "It…sounds like…"

The reality of what was coming hit me like a speeding magnet train. I could recognise that terrible droning sound anywhere. "Get back to the village! Find cover!"

Shephard questioned nothing and leapt over our sitting rock before bolting back towards the street past the houses, taking his backpack and his rifle while I ran alongside him. We took cover behind the house closest to us, but not before I turned around and whistled as loudly as I could for Dahlia to come. She neighed loudly in obedience before she came charging our way, right as the daunting droning sounds became quite clear as they rumbled through the air, getting louder and louder each second. Combine aircraft were heading our way.

Dahlia cantered to an anxious stop behind the house Shephard and I were hiding behind, whinnying nervously as she sensed my dread. Me and Shephard looked around the corner to see the ghastly sight of dropships emerging from the haze, flying about three hundred feet in the air. There were three of them and were appeared to be escorted by two gunships flanking the sides of their aerial convoy, producing a chorus of accompanying chopping sounds amongst the dropships' drones.

"Oh, shit," Shephard hissed through his teeth. "What's the Combine doing out here?"

"I don't know, Adrian. I…" I stopped as I noticed black shapes making an appearance on the road riding alongside the cliff. I was quickly able to make out the distinct shapes of APCs and other road vehicles travelling down the road in their own convoy, parallelling the small fleet above them. It became deadly clear what was happening.

I didn't want to believe it, it shouldn't have been possible given all the measures taken, but I could not deny what I was seeing. This was an assembled Combine strike force, heading down the road westward, where there was only one place they would inevitably arrive at. The realisation of the situation, I could sense, hit the two of us at the same moment.

"WE NEED TO GET BACK!" I yelled frantically, practically jumping up on Dahlia's back without even looking.