Once more, Shephard and I found ourselves riding up on a lift together.

Aaron and the others had remained on the first level while we went up to sabotage the base-wide security measures that prevented our escape. I was incredibly apprehensive about their position, as they were backed up into a literal corner while swarms of soldiers were trying to bust their way inside and massacre them. Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to stay behind and make sure all of them would be dealt with so no harm would come to my friends, I didn't believe I could in my current state.

I leaned against the railing as the lift ascended the tall narrow shaft of the Combine command tower, having my other hand over my stomach. The injections Shephard administered a few minutes ago were numbing the pain, but I could barely turn my body without feeling a pang that endangered my efficiency. Shephard was all too keen on my condition and expressed concern as we awaited our stop.

"How's your gut?" he asked, stepping closer to me to see for himself.

"I've endured worse, believe it or not," I reassured, grunting a bit as I straightened my posture, still holding my abdomen. "It shouldn't hinder anything should a fight be awaiting us in the control room. I'll be fine."

"If you say so," Shephard conceded, having faith in my judgement. Even still, it was obvious that I wasn't in sound condition, and he couldn't leave that unvoiced. "But hang back a bit if you truly have to. A wounded marine is about as good as a dead one."

I looked at him incredulously, removing my hand from my stomach. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means you gotta cut yourself slack when you really need it," Shephard clarified, smiling a little under that mask, amused by how that ruffled me a bit.

"I'm not a marine, my friend. I can take a few cuts," I refuted sternly. I did not mean to sound as harsh as I did, for I knew Shephard was right. I regrettably became a stubborn fox whenever I was hit with a disadvantage that kept me from being at my best, and that had the chance to endanger my friends. Maybe now was a good a chance as any to humble myself a bit and take support when it was offered. "But…I suppose the marine knows what he's talking about. I will be more careful with my actions from here on out."

"So, no more slamming helicopters into buildings then?"

"Not if it tears open any more new wounds again, but I'll look for a workaround."

That attitude seemed to please Shephard, which spurred a little smile from me.

Our lift then arrived at our destination very abruptly, which startled us considerably. We both pre-emptively hugged our sides of the lift for a slight surprise advantage; Shephard readied his newly acquired infantry weapon, the AR2, swiftly and steadily at the sealed door to the control room as I readied my staff. I could not sense anything past those alien doors, so I anticipated the worst as Shephard did. "Get ready," I said, hearing a few mechanisms in the doors humming to life.

"I'm always ready…" Shephard replied, aiming through the glowing iron sights of his Combine rifle. The doors slid open seconds after, revealing an open space devoid of enemies, which we found unsettling. We both gave each other an uncertain look before Shephard silently moved forward to peek outside the doors. There was a wall to the right of the lift door, and our only way forward was to the left.

Shephard silently motioned for me to follow him, and I did so accordingly. There was a narrow corridor that led us to a much more open area that looked to be where the command centre was. Shephard held his hand up, signalling me to stop as he did before he braved a look out into the room. While my vision of the large room was more limited than his, the abundance of serious-looking hardware was difficult to overlook.

It was a considerably dark environment illuminated by the blue glow of the giant monitors that interconnected with each other as they rimmed around the walls. I could also see traces of stairs leading up to a second level to the right of the room, though what awaited there was beyond my range of sight. Shephard withdrew from his peering and looked at me with trepidation. "There's more of those bony things up there…"

I knew precisely what he meant; those same creatures we encountered before entering that reactor chamber were also up here, monitoring these systems as they did down there. The idea of being in the presence of them again admittedly was an effective deterrent for us from entering. But we knew there was no turning back now―our friends were down below counting on us.

"Well…they shouldn't bother us if we leave them alone," I rationalised. "We can just stick the chip in the corresponding machine and we'll take the lift back down without any problem."

Shephard was incredibly uneasy about it, but he knew we didn't have a choice. "All right. Stay behind me."

I followed Shephard into the room, and it did indeed have two levels. While the left side of the room held primarily computer equipment, the right side had a wide observation window that overlooked a vast portion of the powerplant. The level above the observation deck, as it were, hosted more computer terminals and machines with the steps to it being mounted along the wall.

Five once-human drones could be spotted in total around the stations by the window and the area above it, which was too many for me to stomach. I eyed them all with mistrust as Shephard looked around the room with his rifle abreast. "Okay…which one did Nuri say to put this thing in?" he asked, pulling out the override chip from one of the pouches around his belt.

"The master computer," I recollected. "He said it wouldn't be hard to distinguish. We'll just have to…" I turned around and rediscovered the much larger terminal and monitor around the backside of the room flanked by giant machines that had to add to its computing power. Our search looked like it was a brief one.

"Yeah, that looks like a master computer if I ever saw one," Shephard noted, agreeing with my unspoken conclusion as we motioned towards it. "I guess we just find that slot and stick her right in―"

Then, completely out of the blue, four shimmering silhouettes materialised before us around the computer in a single second before taking the form of Combine soldiers in the same amount of time. I could see they were much bulkier than the standard infantry or 'elite' units were, wearing thick armour that had a glistening finish to it and something akin to hoods draped over their masks, which had optics that glowed a menacing orange.

I had no prior telepathic warning of their presence, so I was just as shocked by the surprise as Shephard. Before all the chaos ensued, I instinctively conjured a shield all around us faster than I ever did before, saving us just in time before pulse fire pelted our bubble from all directions, revealing that these camouflaging units appeared to the right of us as well. This was an obvious planted ambush for us, and I never saw it coming.

"¡Coño!" Shephard prompted, his legs shuffling in overwhelming excitement―but it was far from the good kind of excitement. I succumbed to his infectious desire for cover and inched my way to a generous metal barrier near the hall entrance that was housing hardware with cables running out of it. It looked to serve well.

I cancelled our bubble before we dove for cover, timing it to when the soldiers had to replenish their guns' cells. I could hear them chatter to each other, their voices distorted by their respirators, but I couldn't hear their machine-like thoughts coinciding with them. My immediate assumption was that their helmets were encased with the same metal found in all of their structures like the one we were in now, preventing me from reading their thoughts. Something told me that this wasn't accidental; the Combine were always deliberate in every design choice they made.

I had no time to ponder this discovery, for I was trying my hardest to save my tail and save Shephard's buttocks along with it. We were pushed back into a very tight corner with little room for counteraction. Pulse fire pocked our surroundings like a deadly hailstorm, producing short sprays of sparks. Shephard retaliated regardless and took any opening he could to fire back at our enemies with his new weapon. Even though we were outnumbered and pinned down, he still found a moment to marvel at its apparent efficiency.

"Damn, this has some oomph!" he marvelled in between shots, managing to shoot a couple of soldiers dead. Wanting to conserve as much inertia as I could for spellcasting, I took using the pistol Shephard had given me. I was regrettably a lousy shot, which I attributed to the forceful kickback of the gun's recoil that wasn't prominent on the energy pistols from home. Each shot was like a tiny explosion going off, and that essentially was the science behind it.

I ended up being less useful than I could have been had I had an energy weapon instead, but I had to work with what I had. Shephard managed to offline five out of the total twelve soldiers in the room before I depleted my gun's magazine, managing to kill only two soldiers when I had around twelve bullets. I grunted in frustration when the pistol's slide locked into its recalled position, producing only empty clicks as I fruitlessly pulled the trigger a few times.

"Bugger…!" I cursed to myself as I tried to finagle around in my pouch for another round, blocking out the lethal bolts flying over and beside me. One thing that I was unable to blot out was the familiar pinging sound of something metallic bouncing along the ground, before a grenade rolled right up next to me, blinking a soft red light that increased in intensity as the seconds passed. Not in the mood for one of these things to actually kill me this time around, I dropped everything and grabbed the little bomb before throwing it with a vehement yell back at the aggressors, making sure to take cover again as the grenade exploded, sending shards of debris past my cover as a group of soldiers simultaneously flatlined, signalling that the counterattack was successful to some degree.

I felt a tremendous resurgence of adrenaline after thwarting that grenade attack, so I leapt out of my cover and defaulted to how I fought best. I instantly became the centre of attention as the remaining soldiers trained their aim on me. I deflected most of their shots with a conjured shield, though I was able to outpace their stiff aiming adjustments, gritting my teeth as I ignored my ab pains all the way. Much of the fur on my tail did end up getting grazed by their high-velocity bolts, regrettably.

As imposing as these new troops were, they were untrained to take me hand to hand. I made relatively short work of the first two soldiers I confronted by punting them straight in the face and caving their knees in when I was delivering ferocious cracks to their arms and chests. While they were poor mele fighters, they had some hidden tricks up their arm guards. And because their 'minds' were inaccessible to me, I wasn't able to see such a surprise coming when the third soldier I engaged with sucker-punched near my right shoulder with its gloved hand, which seemed to house some kind of device that forced a burst of enhanced momentum into me, sending me careening up and over the confined battlements to the upper level above the viewing window.

I tumbled to a painful stop on the floor while Shephard called my name, and I heard my staff land somewhere down below. I would have been on my feet and jumping back into the action again if my wounds had not been flaring up again as bad as they were. I hissed in great discomfort, fighting the urge to curl up into a miserable and vulnerable little mollusc, but the sounds of conflict made my head stay within the game.

I suppressed my pain and forced myself to rise, still holding my abdomen with one hand. Coming to a full stand was interrupted when my gaze was met with the skin sack abominations still operating close to me, completely oblivious to the battle going on beneath us. They weren't any more aware of me even after crashing into their workspace.

I nearly forgot about the fight altogether when looking at these abominations. I could not bring myself to imagine that these, at one point, were human beings like Adrian and my friends in Red Bay, but I knew this was all too possible. It threatened to make me weep had I had the chance to remain here long enough to, but a lurid declaration from Shephard down below was enough to snap me out of my daze.

"Screw this! Let's play ball!"

I looked over past the railing to see Shephard briefly emerging from his cover. A charging high-pitched sound squealed from his rifle alongside a bright light emanating from his barrel before a streak of energy shot out, forcing him backwards. To my bewilderment, an energized pellet of some kind began flying across the room, rapidly bouncing off of the walls, floors and ceiling.

Its velocity was scary, as nothing seemed to slow it down. It flew right through a pair of soldiers, causing them to erupt into a fizzling combustion as it soared towards me in a blazing streak. I ducked and covered my head as it flew over me, but I was able to see it ram right into one of the creatures before bouncing off to wreak havoc elsewhere. I watched in horrified fascination as the creature's mutilated body floated in the air, turning pitch black as a disintegration effect played out before vanishing altogether in a little 'puff' of disbursement. Its coworker could not be bothered to look up from its business―not that it possessed the faculties to do so.

A reverberating blast then rang out through the air, which was so resonating that it made my heart skip a beat. I looked outward and saw that the ricocheting, highly destructive energy pellet had burst in a little shower of sparks, alongside the rest of the soldiers from what I could see. "Holy crap!" Shephard cried out in surprise, emerging from his cover again apprehensively as he surveyed the area. "Krystal? Where are you?!"

"Up here!" I called out with a wave of my hand, which caught Shephard's attention quickly. He waved back with great relief and enthusiasm as I climbed to my feet before leaping over the railing and landing on the bottom main level on my hands and feet, where I spotted my staff lying nearby. With a hand still steadily placed on my abdomen, I went over and retrieved it before running over to meet Adrian at the other end of the room by the master computer.

"My God, that shit was so freaking dangerous. I had no idea it would do that," Shephard said shakily from the rush, looking almost afraid of his AR2 as he held it out. I looked around at the dead soldiers, noting that there was a conspicuous deficiency in the body count compared to how many soldiers there were during the initial ambush. The fact that there were more stray guns lying around than bodies was indicative of a probable disintegration sweep.

"Well, the results are what counts, right? No more soldiers."

Shephard took a deep and relaxed breath with a head nod. "Yeah. Silence is a nice―"

Our precious moment of respite was unfairly cut short when a stream of burning red energy flashed in front of us, erupting from a source on the upper level as it moved towards us. We both ducked behind one of the many consoles again before looking up at the source of the attack. The upper balcony displayed that lone slave looming over the railing as it spewed a continuous red beam of energy from its eye plate, currently unable to penetrate our cover. It looked like the only thing left in the room to apprehend us was the docile slave staff, who were now ordered to apprehend us.

"Are you shitting me?! They've got fucking heat vision?!"

Shephard was enraged by this interruption and began firing back with his pulse rifle. While he was busy trying to kill the drone, along with a few more of its mindless colleagues wading over to help it kill us, I stumbled away from the firefight towards the corridor we came in from. I applied pressure to my wounded abdomen, but my suit was beginning to feel wet again. I held my hand up to see my white palm stained with a print of red blood. I still felt adequate in the stability department all things considered thanks to the medicine, but I was not getting better. I knew I needed serious treatment soon should I befall to a deadly infection―if any gunfire didn't kill me first.

My telepathy was revealed to be a serious crutch for me today because I found myself oblivious to the danger sneaking up right behind me as I tried soothing my wounds. There was apparently one last soldier in a cloaking suit still hiding away, and it seized the opportunity to strike while I was vulnerable and with my back turned. A pair of ruthlessly strong arms reached around and locked me in a suffocating hold, with one arm around my neck and the other just above my wounds―which didn't hurt any less had it actually crushed them.

I could not breathe, let alone cry out for help as I gagged and gasped. My hands were hard at work trying to ferociously claw my apprehender's eyes out as it tried dragging me away, but if it had any eyes left behind that mask, it likely wouldn't have cared anyway. "Oncogenic biotic detained. Overseeing chamber compromised. Requesting Airwatch support on this perimeter; sterilization sweep of sector authorized."

The soldier's hold on me radically shifted in the blink of an eye, and where its hands now had me made me freeze for a horrifying second; one gripping my chin and the other on the top of my head. It was about to break my neck. "Malignant designation: Sapphire. Exterminated―"

I was suddenly forced to the ground when something rushed the soldier from behind, forcing its release on me. I landed hard, but I was treated to a truly gruesome display of barbaric proportions as Shephard mercilessly pounded at the Combine soldier with a large red object in his hand, though his swings were so quick any details regarding it were blurred.

Shephard forced my would-be executioner against the wall and beat him to death with his bludgeoning weapon, letting off tremendous stress as he shattered its mask to bits, screaming bloody murder before he had no more steam to let out, forcing him to relent. Shephard heaved tremendously through his respirator as he loomed over the beaten Combine asset with the mushy remains of a head lying lifelessly on the ground. I was stunned by the violent rescue, but my eyes were more drawn to the weapon in Shephard's hand.

It was nothing more than a large red pipe wrench that was now dripping with blood, or perhaps a form of machine lubricant given how mangled and altered Combine soldiers were. Shephard's wrench arm trembled slightly as his shoulders relaxed, releasing a tired sigh before he turned around to see me standing back up. He noticed that I had taken an interest in his bludgeoning weapon and held it up more prominently.

"Excalibur!" he introduced, loosening to a more eased posture. "Every knight needs his sword."

"Where did you get that?" I wondered, not recalling any particular moment recently where he acquired it.

"Would you believe this was one of the few things still in my pack when you pulled me back to reality?" he recalled, making the adjusting ring on the wrench jingle a bit as he shook it gently. "Saved my ass in Black Mesa more times than I could count, and I'm happy to see it saved yours too."