I had no idea where we were going, but it was obviously someplace dark.
The violent water currents continued to flush me and Shephard along to who knew where, but I had completely lost track of him, and my mind was too overloaded to trace him with telepathy. All that I could do was try not to drown as I held onto my staff like it were my kit, ferociously intent on not losing it again. There was a series of small dim white lights up along the ceiling of this massive horizontal tubular chamber we were speeding through, though they did little to provide any aid as far as making me able to see amongst the chaos.
Moments later, though it felt like hours, our tunnel ended abruptly as our maelstrom rushed over a ledge, sending me soaring into a giant pool of black liquid―though it likely looked this way due to the persistently sparse lighting in this new location. I crashed beneath the depths of the pool as the water roared in my ears, still clutching my staff, though the unexpected slam I endured when I hit the bottom of the pool forced me to let go of it.
I tumbled around for a disorienting moment, for there was still a current dragging me along, but it wasn't as strong. I eventually managed to retake control of the situation and breach the surface once more, inhaling a mighty gasp of air. My feet could be felt dragging along the ground, even when my shoulders were above the rippling waterline. This turned out to be a rather shallow pool.
As I was catching my breath after enduring such horrendous rapids, I gained my footing and pushed hard to rejig my bewildered mind. Gradually, I became more spaciously aware of my surroundings and discovered that I was in a huge circular chamber with massive pipes leading up into the hollow ceiling before disappearing into shadow. Dim white lights along the walls and ceiling shaft were still the only source of light here, making visibility pitiful, but it was enough to see my own hands as I held them out.
While I was looking around in a daze, the roaring sound of the waterfall suddenly stopped behind me. I turned around, wading my arms a bit, to see that the waterfall did indeed vanish. I looked up and could make out the end tunnel we had been thrown out from about forty feet high. We… The remembrance hit me like a glide-rail train.
"Corporal!" I cried out, my voice amplified to a resounding degree as it bounced around this cavernous chamber filled with water aiding in its effect―and also having a strange metallic taste to it. I waded around for a few seconds trying to spot his silhouette emerging from the water somewhere, but I couldn't see such an occurrence. I wasn't sure if it was simply the mental backlog after recovering from that traumatic experience, but I could pick up his telepathic signal either. Could we have gone down different tunnels and I had not noticed?
Trying to keep my head together, I decided to get to higher ground, because I was at least able to see that. At the end of the chamber was a platform with metal guardrails along the edges, all of which were revealed to me by a single red light that was on in that area, which also shone the location of what was suggested to be an exit. I was only grateful that there was one of any kind.
I was naturally inclined to venture towards it. Even though I had lost sight of my staff again, I at least knew that it was in here somewhere beneath the water. I had sensitivities to its presence too, so I knew it wouldn't be a difficult feat to reclaim it. My mind just needed to settle down a bit; it was a tad addled by all the action.
The water went from waist-deep to ankle height as I trudged out of the mysterious water and onto the dry platform, rendering a drenched mess as I dripped incessantly. My tail felt like it gained ten pounds, and my suit and coat felt cold and stiff, made even worse by soaked fur. Sometimes I wondered why furred beings even wore clothes. As lightweight and scanty as my garments typically were in the humid climate of Sauria, drying off in them was a significantly less cumbersome process than fully arrayed like I was now.
Nevertheless, I did my best to shake myself dry with minimal results, doing little more than make my exposed fur stand up in that awkward fuzzy way. Knowing that I had no luxury of moaning about wet clothes, I returned to the task at hand and moved to the doorway with the red light fixed above it. The orange metal door housed in the frame was currently shut, and there was a warning sign posted on it―presumably in this previously-mentioned Spanish language.
I feared that it might have been locked when I grabbed hold of the handle, but I got it open with no issue. The only issue I did have was a horrible creaking sound it made as I pulled it open. It was so bad my ears folded to the sides of my head, made even worse by the acoustics of this waste chamber―assuming that's what this place was.
This night would have already gone slightly better if this was the only unpleasant thing to happen at this doorway, but I should have remembered that the Combine were not the only horrors in Aldana. It was not right in front of the door, just a few metres down the adjacent hall that was decently lit by fluorescent lights. The smell wafting through was so egregious that I had to cover my nose.
As much as I did not want to go through, I saw no other exits down here, so I braved a look around and found a twisted mound of rotting flesh and bone lying on the floor at the edge of the light caused by one of the ceiling lamps. Dried blood covered the floor and walls, and several flies were flying about as revealed by the ceiling lights. The sight of a rotting corpse would have been more than enough for my senses to bear, but witnessing the once-living carcass suddenly jolting upright was beyond mortifying to properly describe.
A wet snarling sound came from the now-animated carcass as it terrifyingly rose to its bony feet. It was a human corpse stripped of all its skin and even organs it seemed at first glance, nothing remaining except exposed muscle and tattered remains of clothes. Amongst my shock, I instantly noticed the round and smooth body of a headcrab atop the head, but it looked smaller and paler, and each of its legs was long and of the same length.
Unhinged and unearthly wails began billowing out from this abomination as it quickly noticed me. Its stagger instantly became a sprint before becoming an aggressive lunge accompanied by a hideous shriek. I slammed the door shut as the zombie flew straight into the wall, just barely missing me and the door.
I jumped back so quickly that I fell backwards onto my bum, though that hardly stopped me from scurrying away just as quickly. Of the several zombies I had the horrible displeasure of encountering on scouting missions for the town, I had never seen one quite like this. No thoughts at all were coming from it, much less anything tortured. It truly was a corpse being pupated by that cranial parasite tapping into the emaciated remnants of that poor former person's nervous system.
For something that was a little as rotting flesh and bone, it was unnaturally strong as it began pounding at the door viciously all the while snarling for my blood on the other end. Knowing that it would stop at nothing to tear me to pieces, I climbed back up to my feet. I needed to reclaim my staff fast.
I leapt back into the water and began calling out to it with my mind, hoping to pick up its enchanted signal as I did in the depot. I then pinpointed it much to my relief near the other end of the chamber, but such relief was shattered by the door bursting open. I took off for my staff in immediate response, wading through painfully slow at first though I began to freestyle like a mad fox when it became deep enough, fuelled by the terror insinuated by the zombie's harrowing howl made dreadfully worse by the acoustics of the chamber.
I had almost arrived at the spot where my staff lay submerged beneath the water when I sensed violent splashes coming from behind me accompanied by terrible snarls. I turned around for a brief second, only to be met by a gnarly clawed hand that swatted me across the muzzle. My reflexes were slowed being in the water, so the monster was able to quickly take the upper hand.
I quickly found myself forced beneath the water as long bony fingers grabbed at my face and chest and tried to cut into both of them, prevented only by my coat and pelt which it could easily tear away in seconds. I cried out as bubbles escaped my mouth as I felt this monster trying to dig into me. I blindly reached out for my staff as I struggled underwater, hoping that it would somehow fly into my hand, but such a thing had never happened before.
My primal instincts stepped in to take back control of the situation once I decided to stop being desperate. My legs quickly coiled to where my knees touched my stomach before kicking the zombie off of me, making it stumble back into the relatively shallow water. Gritting my teeth, I shot out of the water and gasped mightily, but I spared no time to recover as I immediately made a counter-lunge at the monster, baring my jaws as I sunk my teeth straight into the spindly headcrab while the zombie was disoriented.
With a guttural scream, I managed to tear the main body right off the head of the dead victim while its legs were still punctured into the rotting body. I tossed the limbless body away, squirting yellow blood across my face, though I hardly paid mind to it as I stood there heaving with rage, bearing my jaws as they too were soaked in yellow blood.
To combat some of the worst beasts on the planet, I sometimes had to fight like them. I applied this to fighting SharpClaw later on Sauria, though this was the first time I resorted to an animalistic tactic in a long time. Not since Fortuna did I have to act like an animal to beat one. I continued to heave heavy breaths of air as I silently watched the motionless corpse bobbing lifelessly in the water. My adrenaline was still running high, so I did not find myself standing around to fully take in what happened.
I simply straightened my diadem on my forehead and then reached down into the murky water, where I finally fished out my reclaimed staff and washed my face. I began walking towards the exit, trying my hardest to calm my heart rate by listening to the sloshing sounds of the water as I waded through it. The water always brought me peace, even this water. It would remind me that all would be fine and would only get better from here on out.
It did not get better.
If anything, the terror factor only quadrupled. I happened across even more zombies after leaving the chamber and delving into a series of lengthy corridors filled with old machinery and pipework. The first group of hosts I encountered were overtaken by the more common headcrab and were all wearing 'civies' along with other kinds of clothing. Most had an arm plate with yellow lambda painted on it, which revealed their former allegiance with the resistance.
Why they were here and for how long did not matter to me at all, because the thoughts of unending agony were broadcasting so loudly that it spurred my own mental anguish, forcing me to keep far away. I used to think that was as bad as it could get, but I had been getting empathetic tendencies as of late, and I hadn't met a zombie since it started happening. Their suffering was indescribable. I had to end it for them.
I had lost my holstered sidearm in the torrents; I had only my magic staff, but any spell I conjured would intensify their pain before death. It needed to be quick and painless. As much as it scared me since childhood, I needed to use my staff's hidden features.
Rounding the edge of the room where the small horde of zombies was, seven in total, I commanded my staff to deploy its thin, twelve-inch blade with runic indents flashed out from its hidden sheath inside the hilt-end of the shaft. I had been terrified of this thing since I first discovered it as a child by accident and nearly sliced one of my hands off.
I had only used it sparingly in extreme situations in combat where my life was in grave danger, which was why it was so clean and underused. I loathed the idea of killing those who did not deserve it, but I no longer felt this way after hearing and feeling their neverending agony while these parasites led them around like crude puppets without any hope of removing them. A forced symbiosis. This deadly extension of my magic weapon was going to set them free.
Guarding my mind and my heart, I confronted the horde head-on. I tried even harder to block out their moans of despair and torture as I whirled my staff around and impaled the headcrab along with the mutilated head inside, cutting straight through both of them like warm butter. After one mutated body fell to the floor in blissful silence, I jabbed at the next one, and the next.
The remaining zombies staggered at me, swatting their mutated clawed hands at me before I kicked them up against the wall, allowing me to end their suffering by swift and clean impalement. I encountered a few more who staggering in my direction as I tried to quickly leave this pocket in the corridor. I killed them just as quickly.
It wasn't until after I killed them and when my frenzy subdued a little did I noticed rapid flashes of light shining through from one of the halls off-shooting from the one I was in. I must have overcompensated when blotting out the pained cries and screams of the zombies because I was slowly starting to hear gunfire amidst the flashes. It took me a hot second, but I realised that I had armed company. And being at the fritz as I was, I took it as a danger.
"Show yourself!" I called, putting great emphasis on my voice as I readied my staff, though I did not reveal myself to the other hall should the attacker be aggressive.
"Krystal?" a familiar voice called. A slightly muffled voice speaking behind a respirator mask. I gasped in surprise and rejuvenated hope.
"Corporal?" I answered. I braved a cautioned peek around the corner and saw my favourite marine standing in a shadowed corner of his own hall, given away mostly by the sight of the blazing green glow of his nocturnal mask lenses. "It's you!" I realised, a little joy reigniting in my heart after having to seal it up to kill the zombies.
Shephard began jogging in my direction with his rifle at rest once he saw it was me. His uniform had bloodstains on it, and the bloated bodies on the ground that he leapt over informed me that he too had a skirmish with these unfortunate souls. "Well damn; am I not glad to see a familiar face," he huffed as we met at the end of his hall.
"Likewise," I replied, reflexively closing my arms around him in a relieved hug. Shephard was slightly startled by that at first, but he closed his free arm around me tightly with mutual relief. "Where were you? You were nowhere to be found by the time the water ride was over," he asked as he released each other.
"I would ask you the same," I said, still breathing heavily from my fight. "I fell into some kind of flooded chamber, but I found a way out."
"So I can see," Shephard regarded. "I fell into a big chamber place too. I guess the flush sent us down different tunnels."
"That's what I figured," I said. "I'm just happy that we managed to find each other so quickly."
"Same, same," Shephard nodded, lowering his guard now that we were talking. The nocturnal vision inside his mask lit up his eyes vividly, and I was able to see them looking at me up and down. "Jeez, you look like a drowned rat. Are you okay?"
"I'm alive," I pressed my lips with a tired nod. "That's all I can say with confidence. I can't say the same for these poor humans…"
I motioned sadly at the corpses that littered the hallway behind me. Shephard stepped forward a bit to see and was nothing short of impressed by what he saw. "Damn… You had run-ins with those things yourself, huh?"
"It appears you have as well," I noted. "I wonder what they were doing down here. They're with the resistance. Well… were, anyway."
"I've passed a bunch of make-shift beds and maps on the way here," Shephard informed. "I think this might have been a rebel stakeout of some kind. I guess the poor suckers didn't sweep the place for pests before setting up camp."
"I suppose not," I said, wondering about the full story behind the tragic end of this suggested camp by Shephard's account. Perhaps Sabrine knew given that they wore lambda signs; I would have to ask her later―assuming we would make it back alive. Now that me and Shephard had reunited, my priorities soon returned to the mission. "I'm not eager to encounter more of these things, Corporal. We should find a way back to the others."
"I'm all in with you, missy," Shephard complied. "There's got to be a way back up to the surface somewhere. Why don't we both daisy chain up and go look for it?"