It took another gluttonous few moments on my part, but I felt my strength return to a much more capable state soon enough, and we were on our way once again.
I was still fatigued considerably after maintaining that intense sealing spell, but it was nothing I wasn't able to shake off in due time. Trudging passed this terminal, Shephard and I found ourselves returning to the historical human-made remnants of the facility. Long corridors filled with pipes, valves, and gauges once more became our prowling grounds.
There were no immediate threats in our path, which was always appreciated―especially in my current state of recovery. However, I had a nagging hunch that danger was not far away and may have been coming towards us if several pangs received by my telepathy rang true―which they often did. We were plenty careful though, keeping close to the walls as we heard distant radial chatter occurring in various locations a couple of blocks away.
"Don't suppose you've got enough inertia to make another bubble in case of a firefight, do you?" Shephard asked as he led with his rifle drawn, turning to look at me. I just shook my head doubtfully.
"I'm afraid not. Not for a little while. I'll let you know when I can."
"Don't bother," Shephard insisted. "Save what you got left for what's coming. We'll need everything we can store up."
"Yes, sir," I complied, indulging his former rank as a squad leader. Shephard didn't look back, but I could sense he was a little caught off guard by that and was nevertheless humoured by it, which was kind of my goal to lighten the mood a bit. Such an accomplishment did not last much longer as we came across a station of unknown purpose.
Combine metal plates consumed the foyer-like area up ahead with cables dangling beneath the high-raised ceiling. We had been forewarned ahead of time that soldiers dwelt on this level, but it was still a bit of a startling sight when we saw them congregating up ahead. Hiding behind some cover of some old concrete columns that ran down from the ceiling, we observed the activity in the station, where soldiers wearing greyish cerulean-coloured uniforms, all of which had a tag on their collars that read "ALDANA", were gazing at monitors where I could see clear video footage of random hallways. This had to have been a security checkpoint
"Maybe we'll find out where our friend is on one of those computers," I suggested quietly. It was then I spotted one of those white-uniformed soldiers with the single red optic in its helmet stroll around the systems, watching its colleagues like it was bored.
"It's worth a shot," Shephard considered. "But we gotta clear out the vagrants first." He then turned to look at me again. "You can shoot some more fireballs?"
"I can."
"Peachy," he said. "Why don't you lob a few over them? They'll blow up down the way and make them curious, giving me the edge to run 'em down with their backs turned. I'd launch a grenade, but I don't really wanna break stuff that could help us."
"Fair point," I too considered. I looked ahead again and adopted his plan. "All right. Get ready."
Shephard did just that as I raised my staff like it were also a rifle. I took aim, my spearhead opened up, and I unleashed a trio of flaming projectiles that soared through the air and right over their heads before combusting in the corner of the station. This spooked the soldiers greatly as they all jumped and rushed to the scene of the explosion with their pulse rifles drawn. Shephard did the same, only he opened fire without a second thought.
If there is anything I should say about automatic Earth weaponry is that it's crazy loud―nothing at all like the energy-based weapons of my realm. I winced and covered my ears as Shephard unleashed a rapid-fire barrage of bullets at our enemies, lighting up our corridor with bright muzzle flashes while ejecting casings were flying across the floor. The Combine had no time to react to this surprise assault as one by one fell, at least five in total before Shephard abruptly ran out of rounds. "Shit―reloading!" he yelled impulsively as he reached for the pouch around his waist to grab another magazine.
The white soldier was one of the few who held back and did not get gunned down, and quickly moved for a counterattack as they rushed in our direction while Shephard was preoccupied. I stepped up to cover for him as I dispelled a glistening sheet of ice across the floor just before the soldiers. They all slid on their backs, shouting distorted calls for assistance to each other as they slid in my direction, where I promptly impaled their masks with the end of my staff's hidden blade, making the troops' internal systems flatline in an instant.
Shephard had already finished loading another magazine by the time he had watched me dispose of these last few stragglers. "Whoa…shit," Shephard gawked as he got up, looking at my handiwork. "Where the hell were you when I got my squad?" he asked me.
I quickly retracted my blade and was slightly dumbfounded by his question, still getting over trying to use my staff's hidden feature again. "Well… Better late than never, I suppose?" I shrugged, criss-crossing my feet.
That made Shephard chuckle to himself as he stepped over the corpses and the facet of ice I created before we ran to the control centre of this station. We looked at all the monitors and their video feeds, trying to find any that might have been monitoring a prison cell. We soon arrived at an identical realisation.
"I have no clue on how to operate these consoles," I said with dread, looking at the alien assortment with ears that were folding downward with dread.
"Me neither…" Shephard admitted, scratching his head behind his helmet. "Shit. I didn't really think this part through."
"Likewise," I admitted, "but we must try. Come on; the interface shouldn't be that hard if Nuri knows how to use these."
We each anxiously chose a console and began fiddling with the buttons, but they were surprisingly sparse on this surface area, and an odd little arm with a needle-like end poking out from the console itself seemed to be pressing all of them for me automatically, which felt like it negated any progress I would have made on this thing before I could even try.
"Going sharp."
"Moving to suppress and secure perimeter."
These accursed metal walls prevented me from sensing the approach of reinforcements before it was too late. I only managed to hear these three nines directive to my left before I had a few clicking sounds that bounced to my feet. I looked down and saw a cylindrical object with a red light blinking on top of it rolling around my feet, emitting a sequence of soft clicking sounds that grew quicker and quicker each second.
"GRANADE!" Shephard hollered in surprise. I quickly kicked it back to the aft corridor where it came from, but it exploded in midair before it could clear a safe distance from me. The ensuing shock of the blast forced me on my back, and my rings began to ring deafeningly for a moment. I was suddenly overcome with a harrowing amount of pain in my abdomen.
It was so intense that I lost the voice to yell out in pain as I writhed on the floor, feeling like time was slowing down. Gritting my teeth, I gazed down to my stomach where my hands were currently pressing against, and I lifted one of them to see it plastered with blood. It appeared that a few shards of shrapnel had embedded themselves in my body, and I was now bleeding out profusely, gradually turning my muted violet suit black from how much blood I was losing.
Muzzle flashes then began going off, but I was hardly able to register them as my consciousness began to wane, along with my vision and my hearing. Shephard's blood-curdling battle cry felt very distant and watery as rushed to my defence and fired back at our enemies, though I was barely paying attention to it. Perhaps I was more fatigued by my spell-casting in the chamber than I first thought, or my wounds were more severe than I was perceiving. Either way, my strength was slipping away quickly as my head plopped on the floor, leaving me with the muffled clangs of bullet casings falling around me before I lost consciousness entirely.
Miraculously, I did not die.
I woke up in a very dark area with limited visibility, making me think I didn't open my eyes at first. It was also quite cool down here; quite contrary to the warm ambience of the power plant hallways. I was lying on my back on rough and gravelly ground, almost like I was sitting on a bed of rocks, which wasn't too far off from the truth.
I slowly began to muster the will to rise but was swiftly pushed back down from a writhing pain in my stomach that made me hiss. It was then I gradually remembered the grenade going off and getting pelted with shrapnel. After my eyes adjusted adequately to the darkness, I looked at my wounds and saw that I had layers of gauze wrapped around my whole bare lower torso, which was stained copiously with dried blood. This was also the moment I realised that I wasn't wearing the top portion of my suit, which looked to have been hastily removed shown by my sleeves lying aside of me, leaving me with only my light bra on.
Mortified, but curious, I caressed my hand across my wounds, shivering a bit from the sensation, but otherwise impressed with the bandage work. Whoever patched me up did an amicable job as far as my weakened self was concerned. Although my abdomen felt incredibly raw and sore, it was still able to sit up with some effort. The pain could have been much worse than it was now, which made me believe that all of the shrapnel had been removed.
My breathing was laborious at first, but I was able to get a steady rhythm going as I delicately sat up―letting a few grunts slip out. As I adjusted to my conditions, I began observing my surroundings and found them quite ominous and mysterious. There were what appeared to be shadows of rafter-like structures around eight feet above me, and the whole room looked to be quite wide with its full size being undeterminable in my current state of visibility. What I was able to see quite clearly, and not far away at all, was a bright light several feet away from me to my left, revealing to be a battery-powered torch lying on the ground, shining its light against a concrete wall that was coated with condensation.
I squinted as I adjusted to this new source of light, which was around the same moment when my hearing began to clear up some more, allowing me to hear what sounded like frantic muttering. My tired eyes traced it to its source, leading to other peripheral discoveries such as an open green backpack on the floor with various supplies scattered about, and alongside a mask and green helmet, before identifying the man in combat boots and grey and white camouflaged trousers pacing around just outside the torch's light rays, making him look blurry.
My psionic senses were also rousing back to working order around this time as well, and I was able to sense a feverish amount of internal turmoil in the obscured individual, who I soon realised was Shephard. I could not see him wholly, but my eyes were not needed to realise the debilitating emotions that were overriding him as he anxiously paced around while simultaneously remaining in place. I couldn't make out much of what he was muttering, but two words repeatedly came into circulation: "Wasn't there". Wasn't there, wasn't there, wasn't there.
Unfortunately for both of us, I was currently in a state of mind where I wasn't sure if I was speaking with my voice or my mind. I had done through a few times before and caused quite a ruckus to unsuspecting bystanders. I lament eternally that this was one of those moments, and it couldn't have happened to a more vulnerable person.
'It wasn't your fault…' I channelled him unintentionally with telepathy. I had been registering incredible guilt over something he was obsessively dwelling on, which I first believed was my injuries, but that couldn't have been more wrong. Shephard lurched when he heard my voice in his head and clamped his hands around his head.
"FUCK!" he shrieked in disorientation, leading him to fall over. I jumped in shock, suppressing my pain after tugging my torn ab muscles.
"Corporal―!" I called out, but Shephard was back on his feet in seconds before trudging across the torch's light, and his face was so full of rage and anguish that I registered him as a threat.
"Stay the fuck out of my head, you freak!" he chided with potent venom in his voice, pointing a cruel finger in my face as he loomed above me. I was rendered paralysed in fear over how quickly this escalated. "You don't belong there! You don't belong in my memories! You weren't fucking there! NOT THERE! YOU HERE ME?! YOU BETTER FUCKING HEAR ME!"
This was so petrifying I almost could not comprehend it, so I remained frozen with only a single arm raised in my defence as Shephard held my gaze like he was a snarling beast ready to eat me whole. His gritting teeth certainly looked so given the sharp lighting contrast produced by the single ray of light from the torch on the floor just behind him. I did nothing but cower his presence, neither having the strength to flee or counterattack his aggressive verbal assault.
About as quickly as Shephard exploded into this terrifying fit of rage towards me, it immediately began to falter the longer he looked me in the eyes. His steady finger trembled along with his whole arm, and his face melted into horror as if he realised it was me he was pinning his wrath onto. I had never seen Shephard look more scared than he was now.
" Fuck…" he whispered to himself so feebly that it may as well have been a faint exhale. I blinked a few times as my stiffened body began loosening up again once I felt the danger beginning to subside. Before I could hope to quell Shephard on any achievable level, his face scrunched up in anger again as he whirled himself around and ran over to the wall. "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!" he screamed in a primal deluge of overwhelming and unrestrained emotions as he began to punch the concrete wall incessantly, repeatedly beating his knuckles into it over and over.
He screamed brusquely in pain with each one he landed, but he would not stop. The pain in his heart was far more unbearable than this, and he was mad enough to inflict bodily pain onto himself to try and mitigate it. It became too much for me to witness by the time he landed his seventh punch; even when brought down to one knee, he refused to stop.
"STOP IT!" I wailed at him in despair, in both voice and mind. That was enough to finally make Shephard freeze his arm in between punches. He held his fist up in the air; his knuckles were bloody from the trauma and his face grimacing with excruciating amounts of anguish. His arm trembled violently as he tried to resume his wailing spree, but he just heaved shakily as he looked at the wall now stained with his own blood.
He had finally reached his breaking point.
Shephard collapsed on both knees before letting his arms fall to his sides. His head hung low over his chest as he tried the hardest I had ever seen him do to suppress what was trying even harder to break out now that his walls caved in, slipping out into grieving whimpers that made him quiver unstably. I finally found the strength to rise to my feet.
I stumbled in Shephard's direction; considerably drowsy from my wounds, but nothing I could not manage―especially when my friend was in grave distress. Shephard remained a quavering shell of repressed emotions that were pounding to be let out by the time I arrived and knelt at his side. I closed my hands around his shoulder and nuzzled up against his head. A Krazoa envoy's job was never done.
"Hojk ouj0, nouh0 jed," I whispered to him gently in Saurian speech. "Walo 0eih neoj ke kxo ucc-ad-edo. Celo kxo cavo kxuk vejkohot 0ei uj A te. Celo uj A celo 0ei…"
At first, Shephard was unresponsive to my neutering technique, but he raised his bruised and bloody hand and closed it around mine. His trembling sobs came out more aggressively as he grabbed my other hand, occurring moments before he turned and practically fell into me, crying hopelessly into my shoulders as he finally allowed himself to mourn. To mourn over the loss of everything he knew and everything he wanted to be. And especially the loss of everyone he loved dearly in his life―particularly one.
My maturing empathetic sensitivities were forcing me to mourn with him as if they were also my loved ones, and I found myself hugging him as hard as he was hugging me as I held back my own tears. I couldn't bear to see him like this. I finally understood then why the implied spectacle of seeing a grown man cry was so heart-wrenching. Someone who was so strong and resilient, someone many could rely on, becoming so broken and lost transmitted a viral hopelessness.
"I wasn't there… I wasn't there, dammit. I wasn't there for her!" Shephard croaked. The admission alone was enough to force several heavier sobs out of him. He sounded so regretful that it hurt me deeply inside as I resonated with him―somewhat against my will.
"You had no control over what happened, Corporal," I reassured him. I was convinced by my words, however, I worried that I hardly communicated in my trembling voice. "You are a victim of fate as much as she was."
"I promised… I fucking promised…!" Shephard wailed into me harder.
"Your chances were robbed from you, Corporal, as much as you were robbed of time," I sniffled, leaning my head into his shoulder. "You are here. You are alive, and you are alive for a reason. Sam lives through you, now…"
A hard lesson I had to learn when my parents died, and it was one Shephard was now forced to embrace.
He had a few more sobs aggressively forced out of him after I uttered her name. His heart was in pieces over the loss of his fiancé; a woman whom he made many promises to, and kept to most, but ultimately could not fulfil the one that mattered most to him. I inadvertently learned many things about Adrian when I indirectly established a brief vortal connection with him early this morning―things that I didn't realise I had learned until now as it all came rushing back to me. I didn't quite know everything about their former relationship, but I knew what was crucial. My heart wept for how much of a failure he thought he was for not showing her that he was no longer the man he used to be.
I allowed Shephard to grieve for a few long minutes longer, up until the point where all of his repression was finally spent and grew tired of the unfamiliar sensation of crying his eyes out. He began to gently pry himself off of me, and I let him go when he no longer desired my support which would have lasted even longer if he needed it. "Oh…Jesus Christ, I'm a fucking mess…" he groaned with emotional backlog, rubbing his eyes intensely as he sat on his knees.
Shephard's hands fell to his knee as he finally looked at me and I came out of a similar grieving state. He looked like he wanted to bawl up all over again as he looked at me. "I'm sorry I yelled at you, man," he quivered. "I didn't mean… You're not a…"
"It's all right. I understand now," I reassured, stealing his hand from him again to hold it. "Whatever you were then, you are nothing of the sort now. You're a hero. Is that not what she wished for you when you enlisted?"
Shephard's face sagged with great sadness again. But it was reminiscent; lassoed to a fond memory of his former lover. "I couldn't stop Black Ops from nuking the damn place," he lamented. "I tried. I switched off the damn bomb, but…"
"You did everything that you were capable of doing," I said. "Take solace that you've grown in the way you both wanted. Sam may not be here in person to see for herself, but now you are showing others who you truly are. You are here to be a hero for these people, just like you were to the few in Black Mesa. I know she would have been proud of you."
Shephard broke down again for another mindful moment as he ingested my words that were hitting too close to home for him. Not by design; they just happened to be what I knew was true. The truth had to be spoken, and it didn't always have to hurt.
I could feel Shephard squeezing my hand tightly as he grappled with my remarks. "My God…who the hell are you?" he exhaled heavily. That question couldn't be answered with only one due to how loaded I could feel it was. I could feel that this question carried numerous smaller questions in it. It did not carry any demeaning connotations, though; it was much more of a comment to something marvellous and unbelievable that he saw in me.
I thought about his question for a second. I have always tried to wonder who I really was for as long as I could remember; who I was meant to be if my world hadn't been destroyed, and who I was becoming as I grew older in a universe alone. As of now, I was in a completely different universe, and my go-to answer still remained my best one, even now. "A girl trying to find her place in the universe…" I answered his question honestly, regretting that it was not much more complex than that.
Shephard then made the first smile I had seen him make since I succumbed to the grenade attack. "I can see why that's been so hard for you," he said. "You're too good for it. Especially this one, goodness gracious…"
I felt touched that he would say something like that to me. "That was sweet of you to say, Corporal," I smiled.
"It's Shephard, Krystal. Holy hell," he corrected with a stern knit of his brow. "Thought I told you to drop the rank addressing thing a while ago."
I only shrugged. "Just because I'm late to join your squad, that doesn't mean I shouldn't partake in Marine formalities."
"Whatever…" Shephard shook his head, still sniffling from his breakdown, but it was relieving to hear him recover to a more jovial state of being, in turn making me feel livelier as well. Empathetic sensitivities were a powerful set of developing skills that I still was not proficient in controlling.
It was a good thing we were concluding this emotional jaunt on such an uplifting note because I was beginning to feel dizzy again from my shrapnel wounds. Shephard seemed to remember my condition around the same I did once he glanced at my bandaged stomach, and his face fell flat again. "Holy shit, girl, you gotta lay your ass down―I just tweezed those bits out of you twenty minutes ago!"
"You don't have to tell me…" I groaned a bit as I lay down against a comfy rock.
"I've got another medkit in my bag. That should take the edge off some more," Shephard informed as he got up to rummage through his backpack on the ground.
"Patch up your hand first, for spirits' sake," I encouraged, looking over at him.
"Yeah, yeah; let me do some more hero-ing first," he argued as he pulled out of fresh medkit from his bag. As long as it wasn't antlion larva in a jar, I was completely happy to receive the contents in that automatic remedial dispensing kit.
