Something had changed in Adrian once we left our little hideout in that crawlspace, he carried me to.
Much of that had to do with him being emotionally spent from finally letting himself grieve for a thieving moment, but his attitude towards me was as different as night and day. He no longer felt guarded around me or mistrustful of my abilities. Even when he was being friendly with me, he still had a hand on his metaphorical dagger.
It was hard for someone to return to that state when they poured their heart and soul out to the one, they had been trying to shield it from. He felt many things as we recollected our gear to resume our mission; frustration, regret, embarrassment, but also an underlying level of relief. He didn't have to hide what he was guarding against me anymore now that I knew, and with that came a neutralised burden he had been carrying with him ever since infiltrating the power plant.
While he didn't seem compelled to try and close himself off from me for the time being, I knew he wasn't fit at the moment to discuss his ghosts, nor did we even have the time with the Combine undoubtedly sweeping the place for us. We needed to keep moving, and Shephard was once again taking the lead after reequipping himself of all his gear. There was one thing we both knew for certain though as we left but neither of us officially declared: we would be coming back to this later when all of the chaos was settled and we were back home safe and sound.
Until then, it was back to the corridors until we found Hal and rounded back up with Aaron and Nuri. Plenty to keep our frazzled minds occupied. After I zipped my pocked suit back up, covering my gauze wrappings, Shephard led me back out the way he brought me, which was some kind of narrow hatchway along the floor that led out into an old boiler room of sorts. I had to give plenty of appraisal to Shephard for finding this place amidst the conflict while I was unconscious, a conflict he won as evidenced by the bodies of soldiers strewn about in the proceeding hall. I also didn't fail to thank him immensely for preserving my staff, and even my silver diadem. The latter secured him an automatic gentleman's status.
Bizarrely, no alarms were going off at this time and apparently hadn't been for a long while according to Shephard―almost an hour since that grenade went off by my gut. This was somewhat in character for the Combine; they had a remarkably slow response time whenever an incursion was happening under their watch before turning deadly serious. I incited several pockets of mischief when I was sneaking around City Three before the Combine found me out, but those were fully human officers I was harassing.
These were augmented drones that had a direct link to Overwatch. Either there was a malfunction in communications, or this was an overt display of the holes in their infrastructure. It was these little occurrences that provided me with the hope that humanity had a real shot at making the rule of their oppressors implode if given the slimmest of chances.
"That friggin' detention centre has to be somewhere," Shephard said suddenly, almost pleadingly, as the unfitting silence had been getting to him.
"We're almost there. The more cables on by the ceiling, the closer we are to something important," I wagered, referring to the trail of cables that were hanging above us as they led down the industrious hall. That was only my guess, but it seemed logical.
"Better than going off of nothing," Shephard agreed, keeping his rifle close. "No soldiers around, though?"
"Not on this level, anyway," I reported, keeping an eye on the ceiling. "I sense many on the upper floors, but it is difficult to tell on this one with so much of this bloody plating all over the place."
"Hmm. I doubt these guys rely on happy accidents like that," Shephard commented. I knew exactly what he meant. I too had a feeling that these mysterious telepathic-impermeable properties found in virtually all of their structures were taken into account when these alien alloys were utilised. Did this mean they encountered other beings like me at some point during their many conquests? So many mysteries surrounding this multi-dimensional blight, so few opportunities to try and understand them.
Not long after, the trail of hanging cables ended up validating my bet tonight, for we did end up encountering an area that looked significant. An entire section of wall about twelve feet high greeted us as we rounded another empty curve in our path with a large rectangular door made of many interlocking segments placed squarely in the centre. There were two holographic monitors fixed adjacently to both sides of the door, projecting silent recruitment pieces for the Combine Overwatch.
Adrian and I were too distracted by the imposing facet of this location to notice the two tripodal machines with tall flat frames placed just in front of the door. Our attention was instantly drawn to them when we heard two sharp alarming sounds coming from them, along with red lights flashing to life on them both. Me and Shephard both jumped backwards when a pair of twin lasers crossed our chests before a barrage of pulse fire flew across the hall in a flurry before abruptly ending.
We slammed our backs against the wall as we heard the turrets beeping softly as they tried searching for their targets. "God, they've got portable turrets too?" Shephard groaned with a dismayed shake of the head. "I hate those damn things; friendly fires constantly. Barely made it out of trials before they got approved by command for use."
"Your military used those automated turrets?" I wondered.
"Something similar, but those up there definitely inherited the same ballistic suckage from I can see." Without looking, Shephard positioned his other hand around his rifle's grenade launcher as he leered around the corner. "I don't have patience for bad concepts."
Acting quickly, Shephard took quick aim and launched his explosive round at the current before whipping around back into cover. A loud and bright explosion rumbled the vicinity before a pair of frantic alarms went off as well as frantic gunfire before we heard the distinctive sound of power being drained. We slowly looked around to see a large crater on the floor and the turrets scattered around and palpably offline as smoke rose from them. Yet, Shephard was a little dumbfounded by the sight.
"Damn; thought that would have blown them both to bits," he said, pulling out a grenade round and looking at it like it were spoiled fruit.
"They're deactivated, aren't they?" I insisted, growing a bit more nervous as I sensed activity stirring on the level just above us, prompting me to look at the ceiling. "I think they felt that. We need to keep moving."
"Into that room, right?"
"It'll make a decent holding point if nothing else."
We both moved quickly to the large door that used to be guarded by those deactivated turrets. The iconic Combine lock was right by the door, but I made short work of it as I gave it a jolt of siphoned power that I took from a generator a few blocks back from my staff, and the segmented door began to rise into the ceiling in separated fragments. Beholding us on the other side was a long room, about fifteen metres long, lit by a single strip of light blue light that ran the entire length of the room.
There were energy barriers on either side of the room, which we both quickly deduced to be storage cells of some kind, about twenty blocks on each side. Neither of us quite knew what to expect when opening this up, so Shephard and I kind of looked at each other in suspense for a second. Keeping to my previously established conduct in quite a childish way, Shephard motioned that I should go in first.
I gave him a critical look, but I nonetheless stepped inside first while he followed behind. There looked to be a small armoury to our left and a stache of supplies to our right occupying the first section of the room while the rest were filled with these cells. I took a glance at the first one I came to and discovered a row of benches that rounded the entirety of the walls inside. Shephard had been glancing around in the one next to him, identical to mine, and appeared to arrive at the same conclusion I did.
"You thinking what I'm thinking?" he asked, glancing at me.
"Perhaps…" I considered, wondering if this were the place we had all been looking for this entire time. A gruff, disgruntled male voice sounding off somewhere deeper in the room was our second clue.
"Hey, what's keeping you neutered bastards? I waitin' on those damn urinal cakes you call food!" the voice called out impatiently, which was quite a startle for me and Shephard. I had sensed no indication of anyone else in the room, but it was not hard to understand why given all of the alloyed plating in the room.
"Who's there?" Shephard called back with authority in his voice, which was helped by the mask over his face.
The voice did not answer back at first, but he responded with dismay when he finally did after several silent seconds "Oh Christ, you're not a guard, are you…?"
Shephard and I spared each other one more wary glance before jogging up to meet this mysterious stranger. He was being held in the eighth cell to the left. Revealed to me a middle-aged pale-skinned man wearing a ragtag set of clothes and a grey beanie over his shaggy head. He was wearing an arm plate around his right arm that had the yellow lambda sign painted on it, ensuring that he was indeed a resistance member.
The disgruntled man was quick to notice me as we came across his cell, and he made the most baffled grimace as he looked at me. "Okay…what the hell are you?" the prisoner asked jadedly. I deduced just by his slack face and tired voice that he had given up being surprised by things long ago.
"I'm Krystal," I replied formally. "This is Adrian. We're looking for a man named Hal."
"Who's lookin'?" the man asked. I could sense that he was toying, mostly out of tolerance for our presence rather than for enjoyment.
"Us. Obviously," I said, already getting an inkling that our search was over. "You wouldn't happen to be this individual, would you?"
"If I wasn't, would you still let me out?"
Shephard then stepped in. "Only if you're able to fire a gun," he said, lowering his rifle. "Now quit bullshitting us. Are you Hal?"
"Of course I'm Hal, you meathead," Hal confirmed as he rose to his feet. "And you two are both buffoons for breaking into this place and thinking you can leave alive with me in tow at the same time. I'm betting this was the little furry princess's idea, right?" he assumed while pointing to me, making me frown.
"No. It was your friend Aaron's," I stated, which seemed to soften Hal's harsh brow a little when I mentioned his friend
"You know him?" Hal wondered in surprise.
"Yes. He led me to Red Bay. We've received Station Five's distress call. We arrived to help but found the place obliterated. Britney was the only survivor; she told us you were captured and brought here to Aldana."
Hal lowered his head and covered his mouth, a little rattled by my account. "Britney's alive? Oh God…" he muttered to himself, relieved to hear this but also plenty bereaved. "But the others are dead, aren't they? Wiped out. Dammit, I should've gone with them…"
"Now's not the time for weeping, sir―I already used up our only slot for it," Shephard decreed, not lost on the irony of his directive, which I found a little sweet. "We've gone through some pretty extensive hurdles to get to you, so I would recommend you buck up and follow us before things around here get too hot."
"They already are, kid. Don't you understand?" Hal pressed his lips testily. "We're on their turf. Doesn't matter how leisurely they take their time; the Combine doesn't mess around when they fully wake up. But something's telling me you don't quite understand that, don't you? You've got fresher eyes behind that mask. Have you been living under a rock or something?"
"You've got no idea," Shephard disputed, getting impatient before looking at me. "Let him out. We're just gonna have to carry him out of here if he's so content on being deadweight."
"Good luck, son; you don't have pricks to disengage these blasted walls," Hal dismissed, curling his index finger. "You two might as well pick an open cell while you're here and wait before the―"
With a single slam of my staff's hilted end against the floor, I collapsed the energy wall in front of Hal's cell as its power got sucked straight into the gems inside the spearhead, making it crackle a bit with harmless discharge. Hal backed up so quickly he hit his back against the wall.
"Great garbanzos!" he exclaimed, looking at me with awe. "H-How'd you do that?"
"There's a whole lot you can do with only a little magic," I smiled, swivelling my staff a bit while it was still planted on the ground.
Shephard laughed a bit when he saw how flabbergasted Hal still was. "Come on, gramps, you'll get used to it," he advised as he walked into his cell and began to pull the man out by the sleeve of his coat. Hal did not resist too hard and just kept looking at my staff as we led him out.
"Okay. Why not?" he grumbled indignantly to himself as he shuffled past us with passively raised arms. "Didn't wanna die alone anyway…"
Even though Hal thought our situation was hopeless and had full confidence that we would all be killed, he at least humoured us by resigning to going down fighting and grabbed one of the weapons kept in the small armoury by the front door before heading out: a small Combine pulse pistol. "Hey, you better grab a new sidearm," I nudged at Adrian, figuring this would be a good time to do so after he gave me mine a little while ago.
Shephard looked at the assortment and grew uncertain, put off by their alien designs. "They look kinda funky. I would imagine they take time to get used to."
"Hardly any time at all, son," Hal refuted, clipping a crescent-shaped magazine into the open side slot positioned at the end of the short barrel. "They're no more complicated than what you're probably accustomed to. Just remember to press the little button near the grip here that looks like a safety switch but isn't. The Combine doesn't care for safeties."
"All right, fine," Shephard conceded, his boots beating on the metal floor as he marched over to grab a pistol for himself while I kept an eye on the hallway, though my attention was more focused on the activity occurring above us, which only seemed to increase since we came in here.
"So, what're you supposed to be? An old-world soldier? Or did you just find all that fancy gear in a stache somewhere?"
"Nope, I'm the real deal," Shephard stated as he struggled to fit the pistol in his holster. "Corporal Adrian Shephard: United States Marine Corps; Hazardous Environment Combat Unit; third squad leader of Golf company; formerly stationed in Santago Arizona."
"…Uh-huh," Hal noted, a little sceptical, but wasn't unwilling to believe. "You sure are late to the game, are you? Where've you been all this time, son?"
Shephard glanced up after giving up on holstering his gun and tossing it aside. "Asleep," he answered forwardly. "Are you gonna ask where and how too?"
Hal oddly blanked on that question, which was enough to make me turn to look at him. "No. I…think… No."
"Figured so," Shephard shrugged off, unnerved by the continuous lack of curiosity that people couldn't express about Shephard's past before conceding himself with his trusty assault rifle. "Come on, ladies; we better go and regroup with the others," he ordered, taking the lead again as ventured into the hall again after receiving the go-ahead from me. Hal was rather annoyed by Shephard's boyishly demeaning designation for him, which made me giggle to myself as I took to the growing squad's flank again.
My fears were realised when a facility-wide announcement from Overwatch was coursing through the hallways on the intercom system only minutes after freeing Hal.
"ATTENTION. MULTIPLE INCURSIONS DETECTED IN BLOCK FIVE. GROUND FORCES, ASSEMBLE AND DEPLOY TO INCURSION POINTS. EMPLOY RESISTOR CODES: FORTIFY. PACIFY. STABALISE. MAINTAIN INTERNAL INTEGRITY."
Flocks of soldiers appeared suddenly moments after the announcement was made, almost like they were remotely activated, which was most likely true given their machine-like existences. Hal groaned with displeasure as we took to hiding in a tight space along one of the corridors we took―a former maintenance closet of some kind given all of its old miscellaneous contents. We were rather packed together, but we were forced to content ourselves as we watched groups of soldiers hurriedly moving along through the sliver in the rusty metal door as they chattered to each other.
While I was busy watching for opens to make a move, Hal was decidedly less interested in aiding in this and instead found it appropriate to begin tugging at the tufts of my cheeks. "Hey, knock it off," I chided quietly, annoyed that he found me as something to poke and prod―mostly as a way of expressing discontent with the plan.
"Relax, dolly, just making sure you're not a hallucination from the pre-emptive injection I got stuck with when coming here," he excused as he began stroking my bare arm like a proper pest. "Wow, you really are as fuzzy as you look. Would you mind if I shaved some of this to make mittens for myself?"
Shephard then grabbed the man's chin and jerked his head to face him in a startling switch of demeanour. "She said knock it off, gramps. Show her respect…" he growled angrily, the green glow from his goggles making his eyes burn in the dark. Hal withdrew his hand and quickly raised both of them in submission. Shephard meant to look scary, but I found myself smiling a little as he came to my defence so readily.
Shephard let Hal go and returned to looking at the closed door. "What are you reading, Krystal? We good?"
"Yes! Yes, we are!" I realised moments after Shephard asked, shuffling to a quick stand. "Come along, boys!"
We were running down the hallway seconds later with me in the front this time acting as the telepathic figurehead with Hal right behind me and Shephard behind him. They kept up with me as I moved briskly, foreseeing that we only had fleeting moments of vacancy in the corridors as the soldiers swept throughout the facility about as quickly as we were, heightening the urgency.
"Do you even know where you're going, fille?! We could run right into them!" Hal wheezed, whacking my tail out of his face as he hurried behind.
"Let her work, gramps," Shephard ordered from behind.
"What's that supposed to mean―?!"
"HALT!" I shouted as I came to an abrupt stop at the start of a junction, nearly making the boys pile up behind me if their reflexes weren't already so edgy.
"Biotics confirmed!"
"Neutralise contagions!"
I slammed the hilt end of my staff onto the ground in less than two seconds, which was just barely enough time to deploy my shield right before seven Combine soldiers jumped out behind their cover and opened fire on us.
Pulse bolts cascaded against my wall of energy, though none were able to penetrate it. "Get behind cover!" I shouted to my friend and ungrateful ally. Hal crawled behind some pips in a frenzy while Shephard crouched behind some loose crates, ready for a counterattack with his arsenal when the time came.
The energy I siphoned from Hal's prison made my shield aptly strong, but I needed to use it for more offensive measures now. I waited for the precise moment when the soldiers realised their onslaught was ineffective, ceasing their barrage momentarily, which provided me the window I needed to collapse my shield and unleash bright arks of electricity at several of our ambushing attackers; severely wounding a few and killing a couple on sight.
Shephard cleaned up what I had left behind by gunning them down with his rifle, and they too fell to oblivion, effectively soiling their ambush. "Holy shit!" Hal gawked after witnessing the whole thing, almost trembling from the excitement as he peered around his pipework cover.
"'Betcha want to tug on all that fur now, huh?" Shephard chuffed, fresh smoke still curling from his riffle's muzzle.
"Absolutely not! Keep at a safe distance from me, missy!" he pleaded, holding his arm out at me in a defensive gesture, scooting a few feet backwards for good measure. I found that as entertaining as I found it vindicating.
We did not have much time to recover after that, because the Combine were hot on our tails. It was obvious that they were much more aware of our presence now, designating us a greater problem now that we had killed several more of their expendable blaster fodder. I knew plenty well that the Combine were not to be reckoned with when they were fully awake, which only made our chances of escape dwindle the more we caused trouble. But still, we wouldn't give up, and we didn't.
Our main goal at the moment was to find a way to the outside and escape this labyrinth of a deathtrap, but the Combine weren't one to make it easy. With each soldier we killed along the way, their flatlines projected their locations to corresponding units close by, prompting them to close in on their location. They would bring this whole powerplant down on top of us before they let us escape, so we had to outrun them.
Several hectic minutes had passed, intermittent with brief spats of combat. Firefights within corridors were incredibly tense and claustrophobic with so little cover to get behind, but we performed well with what we were granted. I am a preferred melee fighter through and through, so I was put at a great disadvantage with all the bullets and bolts flying through the air. I did my best to provide magical support by disorienting our opponents with an assortment of elemental spells so the Shephard and Hal could pick them off.
Shephard was putting his marksmanship on full display; he was a well-trained soldier for sure and was not afraid to rush the enemy head-on whenever the opportunity was given to him―of which there were a few. Even Hal contributed amicably, showing to be a straight shot with his pistol. Although he preferred lying behind cover and leaving most of the fighting to me and Shephard, he unwittingly became our sniper, so we made sure to stay out of his line of sight whenever he garnered the will to fire back.
Our pursuit was tiring, but we were determined to make it out. Along the way, however, we noticed that fewer soldiers were apprehending us with each proceeding push they forced our way. Eventually, we began to hear gunfire erupting elsewhere in this maze of pipes and machinery, and we had almost found ourselves becoming a secondary priority―or at least that's what it seemed like.
This led to great caution, but also great curiosity to see what was differing a sizable portion of their containment away from us. Much sooner than later, when the sounds of the neighbouring conflict grew even louder than before as we snaked our way into an annexe coated with Combine plating and technology, we finally found the source of all of the fuss stealing our thunder. Imagine our surprise when we unwittingly wandered into a standoff with Aaron and Nuri―one that did not last long once we recognised each other.