As exhilarating as it would have been to freefall back down to Earth like a fiery meteor, I had to play it very safely and conduct a highly controlled descent once we inevitably made it over our desired global coordinates―which happened to be on the planet's dark side, relatively close to the North Pole.

I had to fight hard against the intense gravitational force pulling the Cloud Runner down. Controlled descents were not an easy feat to pull off, especially for much bigger ships of greater girth and mass. A lot of power needs to be funnelled into the front propulsion jets to temper the physical demand for rapid acceleration. The G-Diffusers created a false impression that we were making a very smooth descent, but the numbers on my holographic display kept me on edge, prompting me to tell my passengers to be silent and strapped in tightly while I focussed, and they did so without question.

Within minutes, we made our way down the stratosphere, and the view of the expansive mountainous landscape came closer and more detailed the further down to ground level we came. It was quite an icy region, full of snow-topped peaks, vast snowy valleys, and icy lakes along with sparse forests that spanned for many miles in all directions. Bright green auroras could also be seen whipping around over this region from space, and they were even more of a spectacle as we soared to ground level.

I had only been to Fichina once during the Aparoid invasion, and much of what I was seeing in this arctic north was very reminiscent of it. Though nowhere near as ferociously brittle and barren, it nonetheless made me think of my adoptive home system and all of its inhabited planets. From what little I did know about Earth, it was apparently the sole life-bearing planet in its star system, aptly named the Solar System.

Earth looked to have a little bit of everything that all of Lylat's planets seemed to have somewhat exclusively. An oasis in a barren region of local space. The Combine were on track to decimate this oasis forever, and I was very motivated to stop them for good now that we were on our way to help strengthen our dedicated numbers. My Cloud Runner was a deadly asset, but I knew it wouldn't win the war. I prayed that Mofuni's confidence in this expedition yielded productive fruits that would strengthen the brewing rebellion.

Given that Arbeit Communications was an off-the-books subsidiary of Aperture Laboratories, according to Doctor Mofuni, its remote location made it a bit of a challenge to locate. My scanners were insurmountable in finally finding it, but it was still a bit of an effort―but luckily not a long one. Three facilities made up the overall complex that were linked through a winding roadway that weaved around the mountains: Arbeit #1 through #3. What we were after was not directly in one of those three facilities, for those were primarily where they tested products along with multiple corporate edifices.

Nestled away up the hills outside of Arbeit #1, branching off from the main road that led to the proceeding facilities, were the highly secretive teleportation labs housed beneath an old IT building: codenamed the Stargate by some former staff apparently. Upon arrival, I detected no Combine signals anywhere for miles. This region appeared to be untouched by them.

Doctor Mofuni urged me to land the Cloud Runner in the abandoned parking lot just in front of the drab rectangular office building covered in snow. The parking lot looked quite clear and open from my perspective, with plenty of room for my Arwing to land, so I flipped out the landing gear as I commenced my final descent. My extended wings began to retract upward for added space, folding behind my canopy as I ran the last system's diagnostic on my ship before powering down. I felt like the Cloud Runner had never actually run better than before receiving her patchwork.

"All right, gentlemen, we have arrived. Thank you for flying with me," I announced in triumph, removing my targeting headset and setting it aside as the ambient hum of the ship withered away.

"A full transcontinental flight that took less than twenty minutes?" Shephard regarded, sounding quite impressed. "Where's your survey slip? I've got a few positive words I'd like to submit on my review."

I laughed. "Thank you, but I know it was not the most pleasant fit back there," I said, already priming myself to manually open up the canopy. "My ship is still a prototype model that I'm trialling. I'd love to hear any suggestions if you can think of any."

"Peanuts," Doctor Mofuni proposed readily. "All proper airlines give out peanuts."

"I'm allergic to peanuts," Shephard added.

I could feel Mofuni grumble a bit. "Fine. How about fruit snacks?"

"Now that's the shit," Shephard mused with enthusiastic approval, which made me chuckle to myself as I dislodged the airtight seal on the canopy, enabling the hydraulics to lift the canopy up and over the cockpit, letting in a nippy gust of arctic air. It was something we weren't entirely prepared to endure.

"Wow, that's brisk!" Shephard commentated, shuddering slightly, as he was the only one here wearing short sleeves.

I wasted little time as I leapt out of my seat and began climbing down the extended steps that had deployed along with my landing gear. Shephard was the first to follow me out, diligently climbing down the steps adorning his full HECU attire―mask and all―with his AR2 hoisted over his shoulder. Doctor Mofuni took a little more time trying to get out, but he managed to step down onto the frozen asphalt lot in the end.

After I remotely closed my canopy back up and activated the Cloud Runner's cloaking sheet, adopting the form of a snowbank after making a quick scan of its surroundings, we three forged our way to the main building on the other side of the lot. It was very dark out here, very chilly and very quiet. The only sounds to accompany us were our own footsteps and the icy wind whipping by, carrying flakes of snow and frost across the snowy lot in captivating waves.

All of our boots crunched in the hard snow as we ventured for the ominous shelter with Mofuni standing in between me and Shephard. Even though I couldn't sense anything alive anywhere in the vicinity, synthetic or otherwise, I still had my staff deployed at the ready. Shephard was on alert as well; his mask's lenses glowed green after switching on his night vision feature, keeping his Combine rifle close and surveying all of the abandoned cars we passed, which were topped with snow piles at least three feet thick. All of their rubber wheels were deflated, and rust was plaguing a good many of them. Despite their decrepit condition, Shephard appeared to discern the features of a few models he apparently knew.

"No way…" he gawked; his voice distorted slightly by his mask as he honed in on one particular red-coloured vehicle we were walking by. "Who was the IT Eskimo intern driving a Ferrari to work?"

"On the semi-rare occasions when the government gave Aperture grants, some of it trickled down into Research and Development," Doctor Mofuni answered, though he didn't pay the neglected car much mind as he remained focused on the shadowy four-floored building in front of us, trying to stay warm in his heavy winter wear. "Especially to certain sectors like the one just in front of us. The things we were conducting just below the surface of this place was one of the few instances we were buddy-buddy with the bigwigs."

I internally recalled a few crucial titbits about this location's significance to the human race at large. Human research into teleportation was still in its infancy by the time of the Black Mesa Incident. Doctor Mofuni said that there were only a handful of working teleporters on Earth before the Combine conquered the planet, and had remained inoperative or destroyed ever since. The machine Mofuni was leading us to was one of these prestigious teleporters.

"How capable is this teleporter, Doctor?" I asked.

"Very capable," Mofuni assured. "It was one of the crown jewels of our entire enterprise, and yet sadly so few were ever permitted to know of its existence."

Shephard snorted with irony. "What were the odds that the few suckers to stick it out this long happened to be among the few that did?"

"Yes. Quite fortunate," Mofuni agreed, wiping his foggy glasses with a little cloth he had in his jacket. "Even still, as good as our model was, we would have better success at our mission if we had access to Black Mesa's Lambda Complex. Their teleporter was the Rocket to Aperture's Pareil, but it all got blown into a field of glass along with everything else. Even though it was conceived by our rivals, it's still a tragic loss to what remains of the global science club."

"Well, I suppose Aperture won in the end, didn't it?" I offered, trying to be a little uplifting. "Yours is the only one to still be working."

Mofuni turned and gave me an appreciative smile. "We'll see when we get inside, dearest," he said, holding his old ID in his hand. "If we can get inside, that is."

"I see a lot of windows," Shephard noted as we came up to the front lot of the building, where the Arbeit Communications' logo was displayed on a single cold dark brick wall outside the building. "We've got plenty of ways inside if we need to take them."

"By barbaric, lowbrow means of entry insisted by your military mentors, I am presuming?" Mofuni cocked an eyebrow.

"Potentially," Shephard answered honestly. "It's not like anybody's here to call security."

"Do not be so presumptuous of such things, my dear boy," Mofuni warned. "Our facilities have always had a stubborn tendency to run themselves…"

I would have dwelt on that ominous statement a lot longer had I not sensed something. While Mofuni was putting his card into the scanner by the front door, my ears stood up as I felt like I heard something from a far distance behind us. It was a very low-frequency sound, blending in almost seamlessly with the wind until it got a bit more powerful briefly. A deep, ghostly horn felt like it droned across the air. It vanished as quickly as it came, but it made me turn around to see nothing in the parking lot and beyond (apart from my cheeky snowbank).

It almost sounded like a sea-fairing ship's horn; deep and lung-rattling. There was a shipping port down the road that linked to the sea, but I had a harrowing feeling that nothing out on the water made that noise. It sounded like it came from the mountains.

It isn't often I find myself getting spooked like this, but all of my fur was standing on end. Shephard apparently heard it as well, and even Mofuni. They both were looking in the same direction as me, intensely observing our surroundings while remaining frightfully still after the ghostly noise died down.

"Am I the only one who heard that…?" Shephard asked us, his voice wispy as he tightened his grip on his rifle. I too was holding my staff a little closer now.

"Let's just get inside, shall we?" Doctor Mofuni insisted, quite hurriedly. "It feels like it just dropped twenty degrees all of a sudden."

The feeling was most definitely mutual.

The old building didn't feel any more inviting once we ventured inside it.

We were greeted by an open lobby with a front desk and tiled floors, which were dusty and sprinkled with debris caused by rot in the ceiling panels. Aside from a few more signs of long-term neglect like scattered papers and extensive water damage in certain areas, the building appeared quite pristine―at least that was the case with what we saw on the first floor. With the power having been out for more than twenty Earth years, it left the building in a very dark and poignant condition―almost like it was closed for the night and would reopen in the morning.

Being quite partial to light and good visibility, I ignited a magical flame on the end of my staff and shortened the length of the shaft by a few clicks, converting it into a handy-lit torch to alleviate the eerie darkness of the halls the Doctor led us through. We took our time exploring, walking at an observant pace while Mofuni tried to remember where the entrance to the subterranean labs was, as it had been some time since he visited this complex last. I was cautioned, but curious, peering my head through most of the open doors we came across while Shephard did much of the same.

Empty offices made up most of the first floor, and I was inclined to assume that it wasn't much different for the top three floors. Terminal monitors were black, chairs were either pushed in neatly or fallen over, and loose papers were strewn so far that they were lying out in the hallway. A few offices even had broken windows where piles of snow were seen cultivating at their bases and on the surrounding desks. It was kind of hard to tell what exactly happened here before it all became abandoned, and that only added to the haunting mystery of it all.

What I also found curious about this place was the abundance of motivational company posters behind cracked glass frames that were plastered around the walls of the halls we navigated. They were a little off-putting. Many consisted of illustrations of humanoid robots with blank faces, wearing human business attire, and completing obscene loads of paperwork behind a desk at record speed. One such poster read in human text: REMEMBER… ROBOTS DON'T SLEEP. They can test AND do your job. VOLUNTEER FOR TESTING TODAY.

I remember passing another poster. It was a warning poster, telling the reader to remember their paradoxes in the event they encounter a dangerous rogue AI. There was also another poster projecting the image of a calculator with a happy face on it, and right below was what appeared to be one of Aperture's mottos: Science isn't about why… It's about WHY NOT?

These were quite peculiar findings, providing insight into what company life might have been like. I had been told several stories about Aperture's often unethical practices from Doctor Mofuni's account, and the disconcerting messages within these posters seemed to facilitate such accounts. Shephard had been taking a greater interest in these relics as well as we encountered more and more of them.

He stopped in front of one particular poster briefly, which was a photo of a human woman in a white lab coat, wearing a rather uncomfortable smile, standing next to a vapid-faced robot wearing identical attire and coiffed hair. The texts accompanying the image at the bottom read loudly: APERTURE SCIENCE. LET'S WORK TOGETHER.

"What the hell were you guys up to, doc?" Shephard asked, resuming his ranks amongst our investigative troop. "Were you trying to supplant people with store mannequins or something?"

"You're half-right again, my boy," Mofuni answered, keeping his head leaned forward as if he were trying to sniff out our way to the labs. "Aperture had been on a hard and steady financial decline since the seventies. Human staff was getting expensive, and we were pinching pennies. Artificial Intelligence was meant to solve that problem; our strive to innovate in that field was just as strong as our unwavering will to save money."

"AI, huh?" Shephard said, apparently projecting little favour for the concept. "Call me old fashioned, but I think you guys were doomed to fail taking that route. Anybody who's ever watched Terminator knows that."

I looked over at him curiously, and Shephard understood my silent query. "It's a movie franchise about evil robots killing everybody."

"Hmm," I pondered, pursing my lips. "Well, I can't speak for Earth's ways of going about it, but in my realm, AI is quite common in everyday life. Nearly everything has a computerised synthetic assistant or feature. I have yet to encounter an aggressive rogue AI unless it was deliberately programmed to be so."

"You see, my boy? AI was a worthwhile endeavour!" Doctor Mofuni said with a vindicating point of his finger at Shephard. "If animal people from another universe could make it work, then we sure could!" That only made Shephard narrow his green-glowing eyes, but Mofuni continued on before Shephard had a chance to rebuttal.

"And we were so close to making that a reality as well―at least that's how it seemed," Mofuni said. "The chaps over at the Enrichment Centre in Michigan, my main place of dwelling, suffered the most from all the layoffs. It was our primary testing facility for all of our products, and we were running out of overseers to watch all the test chambers. The AI Department's magnum opus was primarily meant to run the entire facility by itself to solve the understaffing problem: the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. Or, affectionately called GLaDOS by the engineering team. She was meant to be the ultimate overseer. I saw her when she was being assembled and hooked up. She sure was a marvellous thing to behold."

Finding myself more curious about this project, I asked, "Did it work?"

"On a technical angle; absolutely. She was a mechanical marvel," Mofuni answered. "She did have a few kinks they needed to work out during her first activation, though, like trying to kill everyone in the facility by shooting neurotoxin in the air vents each time they turned her on. She actually succeeded one day―Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, to be exact. The tragedy probably would have gotten national attention really soon after that if the Resonance Cascade hadn't happened only a few weeks later."

It took Mofuni a moment to realise that me and Shephard were no longer keeping pace with him, leading him to stop and turn around to find us standing still and staring at him aghast. He appeared confused by this. "What?" he wondered, possibly relapsing a bit if he didn't understand why we were floored.

"All of your colleagues perished? Along with their children…?" I asked, wishing to demand that he correct his accounts, but I knew Mofuni wasn't being dishonest with his retellings.

"And office gerbils," Mofuni added. "One mustn't squander their memory."

"Jesus Christ, man," Shephard shook his head in profound disbelief. "How the hell did you get out alive?!"

"I was home sick that day!" Mofuni grinned, shrugging his shoulders with humorous irony. "I hadn't had a sick day in over five years at that point. Lucky break on my end, wouldn't you say?"

Shephard and I glanced at each other, hardly knowing what to think or say. So, wanting to stay focused on the mission, Shephard shook his head and nudged us all to keep moving. "Let's just postpone Black Mesa's sins against humanity for a moment; I think we should've raided you guys many, many years earlier."

Mofuni raised his eyebrows in silent agreement. "In hindsight, I truly wish you did, son."

Not too long afterwards, we did manage to find the access elevator leading straight down to the subterranean labs, which was situated at the end of a long narrow hall that practically eradicated conspicuousness.

Now that we knew where it was, our next obstacle was getting the power back on to power the lift. The office building topside on the labs hidden beneath them ran on different grids, and unfortunately, the lift ran on the power generated for the building. Doctor Mofuni reassured us that this was an easy solution, for every major building in Arbeit had a backup generator in case the power ever cut out during a ferocious arctic blizzard.

Briefly wandering outside into the cold again, we surveyed the yards and spaces outside of the building before coming across the generators in a tiny lot around the back of the building, nestled within a three-walled brick-laid barrier. Unfortunately, the generators were covered with snow, overrun with rust, and looked like they hadn't been looked out for in two decades―which was most certainly the case.

All was not lost, though. I had inadvertently developed a keener instinct to determine the functionality of a machine through my voyage in learning the Vortessence, and I was able to see that these generators could thankfully still work. They just needed a little tidying up.

My staff's magical flames could be configured to only warm rather than burn, so after bathing these old machines in a nourishing dosage of reviving flames, which nearly gave Mofuni a heart attack given their near indistinction from the normal harmful flames, the generators were ready to be powered up, and I knew a tested method I was confident would get the job done. I was rather excited to try it again after it worked so well in bringing the Cloud Runner back to life.

I stood in between the two diesel-powered generators―both of which were as big as a lorry―and mentally reached back into the Vortessence, reeling out the needed vitality that manifested as green energetic discharge from my hands before shooting inside the machines, making them roar to life like magic. I would have revelled in my accomplishment at that moment had I not been immediately blasted by crude exhaust from fuel that had been sitting in their tanks for twenty years.

After coughing up a storm as I staggered into clean air, I looked up at the building and saw all the lights on every floor were back on, making the snow around us illuminate with a soft yellow. My feat was received with much appraisal from my two expedition companions, with Shephard even regarding it as a killer 'party trick'. I was pleased they found my vortal progression as impressive as I did.

Afterwards, we hurried back inside the building, and it felt like an entirely different environment now that it was all lit up. Still creepy and empty, but at least we could all see our surroundings perfectly. Returning to the hallway housing the elevator door on the far end, we saw much to our mutual elation that the lights were on by its keypad, indicating that it was restored to working order.

"All right, my dear friends, our dosage of salvation lies right at the bottom of this shaft," Doctor Mofuni announced, the excitement in his voice harmoniously syncing with his peppy stride. "All I need to do now is scan my ID card and we head down. It's all smooth sailing from he―!"

Just then, Shephard bunted Mofuni's shoulder with his rifle's stock, making him flinch in surprise. "I'm gonna stop you right there," he warned sternly, which sounded more severe given the slight distortion from his mask. "You don't say anything like that until we're there. I'm not in the mood for jinxes."

"Oh, feigh…" Mofuni grumbled, rubbing his shoulder as his good mood dimmed slightly. It came up to full capacity again by the time we returned to the silvery doors of the elevator. Shephard and I held back for a moment while Mofuni put his card up to the reader adjacent to the two directional buttons. A small sequence of beeps and a ring of tiny flashing lights circled around the reader before flashing green with approval, making Mofuni tuck in his arms with triumph.

"There we go," he beamed. "This will be so much easier than I had anticipated if our luck keeps up at this rate!"

"Doc, you better shut your frickin'―" Out of nowhere, a panel in the ceiling just above the elevator doors opened up as a white ovular-shaped machine dropped down in between us and the doors. "―mouther effer!" Shephard quickly finished as he raised his AR2, bracing for a fight alongside me as I did. Mofuni just froze in place as this strange machine confronted him directly. It was made out of smooth white metal, resembling the shape of a conventional Earth security camera, but its lens was a massive yellow optic that shone intensely upon the doctor, dilating and expanding as the camera scanned him.

"Phase 2 of security screening initiated," it announced in a robotic voice that seemed to try too hard to sound approachable. "Please provide audio confirmation."

"Oh…r-right! I forgot about this part!" Mofuni turned to us with a shaken laugh before turning forward while straightening his heavy winter jacket. "Doctor Caleb Mofuni!" he confidently proclaimed with clear emphasis.

The aperture in the camera's lens spun around for a moment as it registered Mofuni's reply, and its lengthy duration didn't make me and Shephard any less tense. Sooner than later, the camera answered back, "Audio confirmation approved. Welcome back to Arbeit #1, Doctor Mofuni."

"A-Ah! Yes! Thank you, my good automatic screener!" Mofuni laughed again, still quite startled as the camera began turning up to look at me and Shephard. "I have come with guests, as you can see!" Mofuni said, acknowledging its shift in attention. "I have administrative permission to bring them down with me. Worry not your―"

After staring at me for a second, the robot's eye suddenly flashed a deadly red, and a harrowing klaxon began sounding off all around inside the building. "WARNING! ALIEN DNA DETECTED! ROGUE SPECIMEN IDENTIFIED! DISPOSING!"

A panel in the wall to my right suddenly shot down into the floor, revealing a large tube hidden in the wall. I then felt a powerful vacuum suction pulling me into it. My brief attempts to resist and jump out of the way were completely in vain as I was suddenly swept off my feet and sucked inside with a brusque yelp.

"Krystal!" Shephard yelled in surprise before I descended into darkness, accompanied by the deafening sound of air rushing all around me as I was sucked away to parts unknown.