Only darkness and a deafening howling wind occupied my senses as I got punted around from side to side, moving at a frighteningly fast pace.

It was also incredibly disorienting; I couldn't tell which way was up or down, let alone see it for myself. The only light source I had was the faint purplish glow from the enchanted gem embedded in my staff's spearhead, and I huddled it tight with all of my strength like it were my own infant child. There was no way I would allow myself to lose it again.

I initially could do nothing but keep my eyes shut and curl up tightly into a huddled knot, bracing myself for a potentially abrasive impact, but another light source soon penetrated my eyelids, so I reluctantly opened them to see something extraordinary. The pneumatic vacuum tube I was flying through now turned into a clear glass one suspended just below a ceiling amongst long-lit light fixtures, granting me a full view of an enormous storage facility down below me.

My bewildered eyes soaked in as much as they could as I flew through the tube, just barely giving me enough time to register long wings filled with crates and other supplies before flying through the wall at the opposite end of the room. I briefly returned to blanketing darkness before my tubular rapids swept me through more hidden rooms hidden beneath the surface of the facility. Rundown breaker rooms, concrete chambers filled with who truly knew, and even a massive cluttered network of rusty pipes and cables that were basking beneath harsh orange light coming from the rafters above.

While I had no true idea of where I was being flown to, I knew it had to be nowhere good as I recalled that security robot announcing my disposal. I had to be ready for whatever form that took at the end of my ride―whenever that truly was. I continued to fly around winding curves, sharp bends, and even trying to avoid getting pelted by other rubbish that was flying alongside me, presumably heading towards the same place.

Sooner than later, I finally made it to my inevitable destination when the tube took a hard dive straight down, sending me hurdling down a much bigger shaft towards a giant pit of fire. Many other pneumatic tubes appeared to meet their end in this shaft, as they too were shooting garbage out onto the flames that were hurriedly on their way to lick my singable body as I plummeted.

I rightfully screamed as a response to this situation and desperately unleashed a magical stream of ice from my staff towards the inferno. My intense panic only helped to strengthen the ice's integrity when manifested into a rushed impromptu icy canopy along the shaft's walls that did not shatter upon impact. My staff's frosty jetstream helped to soften my landing, but it was still a bit hard on my knees. It was a much better alternative than burning to a crisp just a couple dozen feet below.

Though momentarily safe from the flames, the smoke was burning my lungs, and bits of rubbish were bouncing off of my frozen safety net―and off of me a few times, which hurt quite a lot. Before I could begin to think of a plan out of there, I was caught by surprise when a robotic arm appeared from the wall behind me and snatched me up in its pincers while I was dazed by the ashy fumes of the fire. It hoisted me straight up into the air, though I still managed to keep hold of my staff relentlessly.

I was hauled about thirty feet into the air away from the fire before the arm suddenly threw me down another vacuum tube that whisked me off elsewhere into the facility, once again setting me on another joyride through this abominable transportation system of moot purpose. I flew through many similar sights I witnessed in the first tube I flew through such as rundown-looking rooms full of cables and ventilation fans, but I also found myself flying over brand new sights that intrigued me.

I flew over a few chambers that had clean concrete floors and walls, chambers with concrete floors and metal walls, metal floors and concrete walls, and even a chamber with huge sections filled with green sludge that looked acidic with mysterious beams of energy crackling over them, running from one end of the chamber to the other. The strangest one of these chambers was one of the last I flew through, which appeared to have odd-looking robotic units sitting around a table with what appeared to be a tea set and were even wearing hats. They clearly noticed me flying passed overhead and focused their blazing single red optics at me, and I could even hear them speak from a few open cracks in the glass of my tube.

"Hey, what's going on up there?"

"I didn't see nothin'."

"Why am I not surprised?"

I soared out of that odd chamber just as fast as I entered it, and before I knew it, after a few more aggressive twists and turns, I found myself plummeting straight down again. No pit of fire awaited me this time, but I had no time to react as I abruptly crashed into a heap of rubbish face-first after falling at least fifteen miles an hour. It was not a pleasant landing at all.

I didn't know what room I ended up in, but it was dark and dingy. That was all I was able to do as I tried to lift my body, which was intensely groggy from the crash. As if my luck couldn't get any worse, just as I was beginning to survey my new surroundings, an obnoxious grainy tune started coming from the ceiling where I fell from, getting louder and louder before I felt something extremely hard and fast crash into the back of my head, instantly knocking me unconscious.

Concussion dreams are dreadful ones.

I have only experienced several in my life after battles where I wasn't the victor, only to wake up within enemy confines or out in the Fortunian wilderness yet to be eaten (I spent much of my preteen years learning to climb the vast treetops, and I didn't always manage to secure a good grip). The dream proceeding this present fall was quite different. It felt far more substantial than the formless projections that seemed to consist in these kinds of dreams, in that there was an actual tangible space I found myself navigating through. Or rather, being flung through.

I can't say for certain when it started, but I found myself hurling through a grey void, and I could feel that I was going at an incredibly fast speed. This must have been inspired by my recent joyride in the vacuum tubes for all I know. I felt bleary and not quite sure what was happening.

My sleepy sense of awareness received a harrowing spike of clarity when something enormous just popped into existence right in front of me. Its details were hazy and indistinct, but I was only able to make out blobs of colours and general shapes before I crashed into it seconds later: a bright orange deck area, and a large white vertical surface, which I instantly released had windows near its top when I careened straight through them.

I tumbled and bashed around tight metal corridors and spaces, though remarkably I wasn't injured by the time I rolled to a stop, however, I felt that I was still in a whole different realm of danger. While I couldn't feel pain, I think that was the problem; my body was fluctuating between solid and semi-translucent, and a horrible sense of impending doom was washing over me, and I got a rather good preview of where the source was coming from.

Just on the far end of this cold metal corridor I landed in was a narrow, rounded door with a single porthole as a window, and shining through it was a blazing blue ray of light that flickered with intensity, syncing up with the portentous tremors occurring beneath the metal floored I laid upon. I would have normally been reluctant to be near such a door, but terror-infused adrenaline forced me to my feet before sprinting with a ferocity I had never put out before.

I pounded my hands against the metal door as I looked through the porthole into the next room, and saw a machine that defied all sense of comprehension. I couldn't exactly make out its definitions, but it was massive, imposing, and took up nearly the whole room. A high-intensity turbine of some kind, the source of this blinding light, was gyrating in the centre of it; the rate of its acceleration was beyond measure, and its power output was unreal. Whatever this machine was, it was putting out so much that it was altering reality itself.

I could feel my body coming apart and reassembling as the machine altered the way local space behaved. Time felt both stagnant and erratic―frequently jumping between histories, presents, and the presents before and after. The kind of power in that machine was beyond conception; it could literally change everything.

As I realised in a moment, the machine itself was not actually what made me spur into action, it was the entity inside that room with the machine. Stepping out of the steep shadows caused by the intense light was the unmistakable silhouette of the G-Man. He slowly traipsed directly in front of the gyrator, partially obscuring it from me. I knew he had malevolent intentions.

I never pleaded with my enemies, but what he was about to do was far more dire than my sense of pride. I screamed and pounded on the door, begging that he leave it alone. The G-Man, in response, turned and gave me a side glance, and those intense teal eyes filled my heart with fear. He knew what would happen, and it made him snicker.

"We…h-have…places to do. Things…to…be…" he muttered, his slithery voice weaving through my mind as he reached his hand inside, inciting a volatile and explosive reaction that tore through the fabric of space and time, altering everything around it, including myself. I screamed as if I were dying a thousand times in a row because that's likely what was happening.

Amid my eternal destruction, I abruptly woke up in a dark and dank room with a horrid sound going off next to me. I groaned with discomfort, covering my ears as the sound of a wretched, unfittingly bouncy tune was pounding my sensitive ears. I had yet to know what getting a severe hangover felt like, but I imagined it felt akin to this. Uncanny to the numerous times I had been awoken in my bed by my alarm clock aboard the Great Fox II, I reached my right arm out with my head still turned away, trying to search for the music's source.

"Uuuhhh―shut your bloody trap, I'm awake…" I hissed with groggy displeasure before my hand eventually closed around a smooth, cold metal object and, wondrously, found the button to shut off the infernal grainy music.

Quiet once again returned, which allowed my ears to finally register the hollow ambience of the environment I was in. I slowly opened my eyes, lifting my upper body to where I was resting on my elbows. I took a hazy look around, and a hollow feeling seeped throughout my chest as I remembered my swift separation from Shephard and Doctor Mofuni.

I didn't know where I was now; I was lying amongst heaps of rubbish that looked too broken and mangled to distinguish, but I was able to gauge that all of this was discarded in this room many years ago. And what this room I was in now was still very much a mystery. Not wanting to have more things fall down the tube right above me and knock me out once more, I crawled away stiffly as I tried to make out the details of my surroundings.

This room wasn't too large; it looked like a small loading area of some kind with three sliding garage doors on the wall in front of me. I was currently residing in a pitted area of this room, with my eyes just barely meeting the flooring of the main room. The only amount of illumination was through the eerie orange glows coming through some of the rusty walls that were layered with industrial piping and frames.

There were also bundles of loose cables dangling in certain areas of the room, and along with a cold and damp feeling in the air, combined with a low metallic ambience, I didn't feel so inclined to linger around for so much longer down here. I needed to regroup with the others, and that required me to leave this room promptly. I had a few things temporarily getting in the way of doing that right away; my aching head, and my recent displacement of my staff.

After refitting my silver diadem after spotting it a few feet away from me, I collected the will to rise to my feet, though it was a bit of an unstable one being so lightheaded. Rubbing the back of my head where I was hit, I began surveying the bed of junk I awoke in, which was when I saw that thing making the awful music I woke up to; a simple round, white and grey radio-looking device with an antenna sticking out of its domed top. While I was annoyed that I was incapacitated by such a stubborn little piece of coils and tubes, I was extremely fortunate that it didn't rupture my cervical spine―that would have certainly killed me given how hard it hit me. I was eternally grateful that I was, at least, still alive and able to get out of here.

After a suspenseful moment of snooping around for my heirloom, I eventually found it lying in the corner of this little pit I was in. "Ah, there you are," I sighed in relief, carefully walking over to my staff to pull it out of the rubbish with two hands. I then regarded it for a mindful moment.

"See? I told you I wouldn't lose you again," I told it quietly, gently caressing its rune-inscribed shaft with my thumbs. Just like it did countless times before, the glowing areas of my staff flickered slightly whenever I would directly speak to it. This was one of the few signs that made me believe my staff had some manner of intelligence. If it was able to discriminate the pure-hearted as its preferred wielder, surely it possessed other discerning faculties. How lucky I was for it to think I still met the requirements after all these years.

Now having reclaimed my lifelong extension, I looked around this long-forgotten section of the facility again, aiming to find my exit, which appeared to be on the other end of the room. Noting this, I looked at my staff again. "All right, old friend. Let's go find the others," I told it, right before retracting it back up and clipping it to my belt as I began my trek through this industrial mausolea.

I've been to many lonely places in my life, but there was something especially foreboding about the bowels of this section of Arbeit #1―or wherever I truly was now.

I was utterly alone down here; my telepathic sonar was able to penetrate through surfaces and conventional metals reliably well if they weren't too thick, but I couldn't detect a single living creature down here. Even insects were able to project a faint signal, and I wasn't able to feel one. I concluded unless I were eventually proven otherwise, I was likely the first thing to set foot down here in a very, very long time.

During my quest to find a way back to the surface or any kind of way out of here, I wandered down long corridors of rustic metal walls and diamond-patterned steel floor plates. While there was the occasional service light posted around certain corners, the ambient orange glows coming from certain openings in the walls and random crawlspaces provided my primary source of illumination. There was also a myriad of clanging sounds and hissing steam sounding off somewhere down here, going off somewhat in sequence like they were part of some stationary machine, but I questioned that occasionally.

I also passed through some peculiar rooms that made me question their purpose. There were wide open spaces, likely storage spaces, filled with wooden pallets, crates, and oil drums, but I couldn't see a way how these items could have gotten in there with the only doorways in there being so narrow. There were large rooms, typically filled with a massive machine or two, with high ceilings that had catwalks that seemed to lead to nowhere, and the amount of spinning fan blades I passed that were fitted in the walls, revealing more passages behind them, was becoming unsettling.

Even though it was very cold and damp down here, my throat felt dry. I could easily envision myself getting lost down here forever. Another option was to retrace my steps and somehow climb my way back up the tube I got deposited from, but I had an eerie feeling that I wouldn't remember the way back. I also didn't truly know how long I had been down here; I could have been unconscious for hours.

I had spent roughly fifteen minutes in total exploring these corridors and chambers before I began to feel weary. I likely would have been more methodical in my directions had I not still been reeling in that unnerving dream I had before waking up down here. The mystifying contents of that vision were rattling me still, and being stranded down here all alone was not helping my nerves.

I had been projecting a telepathic call to Shephard and Doctor Mofuni several times during my wandering, yet I had yet to receive feedback, like a submarine yet to hear its sonar bounce back at it in the open ocean. I must have been too far underground for my telepathy to penetrate. As much as it distressed me, I was on my own until I found a way out of there.

After what felt like hours, I eventually came across something startlingly distinct. Walking out into an open area that had metal support beams rising up into a raised ceiling, a flight of metal stairs about twenty steps high led up to a small metal platform along the yellowed concrete wall with a prominent open doorway in clear view. There was a yellow sign right next to the doorway that read in bold human words: EQUIPMENT RECOVERY ANNEX.

Seeing this as something promising, I eagerly trotted up the metal steps to investigate with the soles of my boots pounding them. Quickly arriving at the top of the platform, I cautiously entered through the doorway and was beholden to a much cleaner set of hallways, with cool whiteish-blue walls that were lit by small vertical spotlights along the walls in the floor, which were made of smooth dark tiles. This brief hallway ended with an intersecting one that led horizontally to the left and right.

I still sensed no telepathic signals in this new area, but I trod lightly. Making it to the end of this hall, I had a good view of the proceeding ones to my right and left. The one on the right led further down before curving off, while the one to my left revealed a wide-open room with clear glass chutes extending down from the ceiling―not unlike the kind I was shot down through―and directly below them were large bins that contained a whole assortment of things yet identified. My ears seemed to lead me towards them as they perked up with curiosity.

The sign on the wall adjacent to the room relayed the same information as the sign by that stairway, so this had to be the elusive equipment recovery annexe. There were many strange things in these bins beneath their respective tubes; everything from random bits of metal to large pieces of equipment that I couldn't know the purpose for. Many of these items had warning labels on them, saying things such as Dangerous, Experimental, or even Experimentally Dangerous.

There were ten total bins in this room, five on each side, corresponding with the ten tubes in the ceiling. I leered over each bin curiously, wondering if there was anything of potential value in there that might help me in some way, but much of it appeared to be discarded junk that had been abandoned for ages. However, the far end of the room told a different story.

The fifth bin to my right concealed a rather intriguing find; a pair of robotic legs lying on the floor. Taking a steady stride, I looked around to discover the surprising scene of a pill-shaped bipedal robot with smooth but rusty white panelling and long and spindly mechanical limbs lying face down on the floor amongst a whole other mess of junk scattered around. There were many workbenches back here filled with all kinds of tools and disassembled parts belonging to projects never finished. It reminded me a lot of Mofuni's lab in Red Bay, only this place was much dingier.

Of all the forgotten projects back here, I spotted one that might have been close to completion. Propped up on a metal chair, just two feet in front of the dead robot, was a large metal sphere, around the size of a beach ball, with faded green paint with a large circular camera in its centre, though I only guessed that because two shudders appeared to be covering it in an almost eyelid orientation. The sphere also seemed to be contained in a darker-coloured case that hugged it on both sides, where two handlebars were fixed to the top and bottom of it.

I stood and studied the metal object for a moment, wondering what purpose it could have served until I looked back down at the dead robot again, and I finally noticed something in its right pincer―the arm that was raised upwards towards the sphere. It was a large grey computer chip-looking object with a curved top and lines of golden circuitry plaiting across its sides. The precise context for the preserved scene in front of me was still a mystery, but from where I stood and literally stood, it looked like this robot had been moments away from applying this component to the sphere before shutting down.

I walked over and examined this scene more closely, taking a particular interest in the sphere, where I discovered an empty narrow slot with a collapsible dust cover right on the top of it, and its dimensions looked to fit something like that chip in the robot's pincer. While I felt ambiguous about this discovery thus far, I now began to feel a little pity for the robot. I didn't know what significance this sphere played for it, but the robot must have run out of power only seconds before inserting that chip inside the sphere's slot. My ears lowered a few degrees as I came to the unplanned decision to, at least, complete what the robot tried to do before deactivating.

The pincer's grip was very stiff and firm, but I managed to pry the chip out of the robot's cold inactive servos. The chip itself was cold and dense, and it was quite heavier than it looked. After a moment of examining the chip more thoroughly, even wiping some dust off of it, I looked over to the sphere again, and after a moment of contemplation, I stepped over and inserted the chip directly into the slot―which appeared to be a perfect fit as it clicked resoundingly into place, flush with the rounded surface of the sphere.

"There you go," I muttered to myself, remarking the bittersweet conclusion of the robot's objective. "Glad to see that your chip is right where it should―"

Not three seconds after slotting the chip inside, the seams all along the sphere began flickering with yellow light flaring from inside it. The sphere also began to tremble along with a high-pitched whirring sound. I backed away quickly in surprise, realising at the last moment how unwise it was to mess with things if you didn't know how they worked.

Before I could chide myself for being so careless, the sphere's shuddering abruptly stopped, and the yellow glow breaching through its seams died along with it, returning to a lifeless state. My jaws were exposed with anticipation, and was somewhat taken aback by the instant deflation. Nonetheless, I took a couple of steps closer to it, wanting to take a much more careful look at the potential trouble I may have unintentionally insinuated.

"Now you've done it, Krystal," I mumbled to myself shamefully. "Don't mess with things that don't belong to―"

Suddenly, the two shudders in the centre of the sphere flashed open, revealing a blazing yellow optic that flared like the headlights of an oncoming car (it almost certainly made me feel like I was standing in the path of one in that very moment). Without giving me even a second to react, the sphere began to scream violently as its entire form trembled with vigorous intensity. Instinct completely overtook me as I deployed my staff and whacked the wretched thing straight off the chair with a spike of adrenaline.

The metal ball flew across the room like a javelin before crashing hard against the wall. "OOF!" a voice in that direction cried out seconds before the sphere crashed into the second rubbish bin in the line of five. My whiskers and the fur on my cheeks were fully flared as I breathed heavily from the shock, primed and ready for a fight that wasn't actually starting.

"Oooowwww…" that same voice groaned once again, sounding low and male, coming from the other end of the room. This caused me to lower my stance a bit as I tried to figure out where that new voice was coming from. "Ooooohh man, now that was a doozie. I've gotta tell Robotics being a golf ball is beneath my pedigree…"

That was coming from one of the bins. It couldn't have been what I thought it was. My curiosity once again propelled me forward to investigate, though my staff was still at the ready.

Approaching the second junk bin, where the sphere landed, I cautiously peered over and saw the sphere spinning around in its clamping case. Its single yellow optic was also spinning around, almost like it was dizzy. The shudders once covering it frequently closed together, almost like it was an eye that was blinking as it shook from side to side before acknowledging me drowsily.

The yellow light in the optic shrunk intensely as the handlebars on its top and bottom turned outward in sync, making me think of a widening eye. It looked like this anomalous sphere was surprised to see me. "Ah, jeez…better get them to call pest control too. The last time a fox snuck in here it sprayed all over a sample cart of radioactive chocolates. Let me tell ya, the results they got back from those tests were so…"

The sphere stopped talking as it watched me lean over the bin at full height, giving it a good look at my form. I couldn't read its mind, for it didn't really have one. It was a robot, it had artificial intelligence, but its yellow optic continued to stare at me, blinking its shudders a few times like it was trying to comprehend what it was seeing.

"Oh boy, it's worse than I thought," he said, resuming that low, fast-paced synthetic voice of his. "Those poor suckers ate the sprayed samples. Last time I saw a mutation this bad was the mantis-men of fifty-two. Give the boys back then slack, though, they didn't make those test subjects drink bug urine."

"I'm not a mutant," I corrected, assessing that perhaps I wasn't in danger at the moment, so I retracted my staff. "I'm not from this world either; I'm from another universe, and I'm trying to find a way out of here."

The sphere pondered my blunt case for a moment, his optic steadily fixed on me while its shudders blinked a few times. "Heh. I bet you thought I would find that strange, right?" he asked, his bottom shudder closing up a quarter way up his optic (a vague happy expression?). "Nah, nah. Here at Aperture, we play hookup with the unnatural all the time―I'm a witness to it all! This place is like a revolving door for most things out of left field. But I gotta say…you're one anomaly I haven't seen the likes of until now―let alone up close."

"Likewise," I replied, finding myself feeling less and less endangered by this strange intelligent device. "What are you? What are you doing down here?"

"I'd ask you the same question," the sphere answered. "But seeing as you asked first, most of my associates call me Rod. Hope you won't mind if you did the same."

"Very well," I complied, resting my arms on the edge of the bin in a comfy criss-cross. "I'm Krystal. It's nice to meet you, Rod. Sorry for punting you across the room like that; you gave me quite a scare."

"Ah, no harm done, dolly," Rod assured, motioning around understandingly in his case. "I've been dealt far worse. One of the doctor's kids thought I was a talking piñata. He whacked me open with his dad's beaker tong expecting candy but instead got a face-full of axel grease. I told him 'Sorry kid, I bet on a fart and lost!"

I knitted my brow, finding the story kind of gross. Rod saw that I was less than impressed and his shudders closed to a defeated slit. "Okay, that wasn't very smooth," he lamented, his slitted yellow optic shining its light on my chest like a flashlight. "Living the life of a personality core can be rough, you know? You're at the total mercy of the sophomore coder who programs you with the personality of their choosing."

"Choosing?"

"Yeah. I was programmed to emulate a guy who never got no respect, but it isn't a perfect recreation. I try my best, but if you don't have a good coder, you can't always perform the way you're meant to."

Taking note of how lifelike this "personality core" was in his speech and in his dynamic range of expressions through simple panel movements, I recognised that this was one of the most sophisticated pieces of hardware I had ever encountered―even when compared to robots in my universe. Why was such a marvel of robotics discarded down here? I was certainly curious to know.

"I'm sure you're a real riot, Rod," I told him with a little smile. "You're a lot more than your programming dictates."

Rod seemed to take well to that response as he fluttered his shudders a little bashfully. "That's not true…like at all…but I appreciate the sentiment."

I nodded contently. "Now then, how do you suppose we get out of this place, Rod? Do you know the way?"

"Hey, you help me out of this trash bin and I'll do anything you ask," Rod bargained, fluttering his handlebars eagerly. I then reached down and grabbed the bars before hoisting him up. The sphere was a lot lighter than he looked, which surprised me. I was able to hold him directly out in front of me without much strain on my arms.

I held him out in front of me as his optic reoriented itself with my vertical holding preference. "Do you know a way out of here?" I asked him.

"Let me get my bearings really quick," Rod said while I turned to face the open hall.

Rod then spun his whole inner spherical body around to face forward―revealing a three-pronged plug right on his rear―before spinning back around to look at me. "Ah, we're in the sublevel recovery annexe!" he realised. "That means we're not far from the testing tracks. Keep holding me out, and I'll lead you where to go!"