"MOVE IT! MOVE IT!" Shephard hollered with the highest of urgencies as the rockslide was now almost halfway down the mountain.
We were already more than halfway down the mountain by the time that mysterious impact caused this chaos, but the rocks were tumbling faster than we were running. Shephard and I took advantage of the lower gravity by jumping down the remaining five switchbacks. There was considerable space between the base and the edge of the island, and the yellow rope led around the side of the hill, clear from the path of the landslide, so our goal had already been well established. Now it was a matter of getting there before we got smashed to pieces by the boulders before getting buried alive by them.
Neither me nor Shephard dared a thieving glimpse of the wave of certain death closing in behind us as we kept our eyes trained solely on the bend. The sounds of small rocks beating at the back of my helmet spurred me to leap even faster, and they kept getting louder and harder as the larger rocks began to catch up. By a miracle bestowed upon us at the very last moment, Shephard and I successfully managed to shirk being pummelled to death as we leapt around the corner once we arrived, barely escaping the rockslide.
We both lost our footing due to overcompensating, skidding and tumbling on our sides like loose fuel drums before eventually rolling to a messy but favourable stop that was out of the way of the giant rubble pile that seemed to extend the mountain wall to the end of the ledge, effectively cutting us off entirely from the way back.
"Holy shit. Hooooly shit…" Shephard exasperated, breathing heavily from the adrenaline still rushing through his body as we both unsteadily rose to a stand. "What the hell just happened? Did you see what happened? What the fuck happened up there?!"
"I don't know," I gasped, very jittery to the point where it felt like I would shake my own suit to bits. "That flash in the sky… Something… I think something must have appeared in Xen."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Shephard pressed, trying to calm down as he brushed his suit of all the dust and grime from the tumble.
"As in, well…appeared," I emphasised. "Something, in some universe, must have slipped through and wound up here, if I had to guess. Blimey, what a messy entry…"
We both stared at the wall of boulders piled on top of the former switchback in mutual shock and disbelief as the dust cloud swirled in the air, still bewildered at the fact that we had just barely managed to escape being buried alive by the rockslide. As Shephard collected his thoughts, he began to dwell on my hypothesis. It unsettled him as it did me.
"How the hell does that happen?" he queried, still trying to quell his highly stricken nerves. "You're telling me that things anywhere can just…pop up in this dump on the fly at a moment's notice?"
"More or less," I said, taking a mindful breath. "The vortigaunts in captivity here often witnessed phenomena like this happen. Cross-dimensional rifts open up at any point in any universe by one intermediate or another. It happens more often than we think, so they've told me…"
"Oh. Great. That's great to know," Shephard sighed, sarcasm and dread oozing from his tone of voice. "So, we're literally in the lost and found dimension, eh?"
"I mean…when you put it that way." I shrugged, crossing my arms as I shook off the remaining bits of my lingering shock. "All these lifeforms had to have originated somewhere."
"Yeah. I guess they had to have at some point," Shephard said, muddled but otherwise resigned to the concept. He then took note of the line of yellow rope that continued on behind us, leading through a wide ledge that had several rock archways holding it up. While any chance of being able to backtrack seemed and near-impossibility now thanks to the only way up getting destroyed, we could at the very least proceed down what was still the right path.
"Well…no use dwelling on near-encounters with death. We better march on!" Shephard declared, making sure his pack was well adjusted and his rifle slung over his shoulder.
"Indeed. Let us make haste," I resounded, very much eager to get away from this area. Trying to make light of things again, and I mean really trying after surviving such a terrorising ordeal, Shephard cited an outrageous―but not technically impossible―possibility as we wearily moved forward.
"Say, maybe this place was where all the stuff in Al Capone's vault went?" he theorised. "Of all the garbage that finds its way in this crap shack of a dimension, it would be nice to come across boatloads of cash."
Unfortunately, rather than find lost treasures like Shephard hoped, headcrabs were found in their place. A lot of them. Too many.
Our pathway took us through a wide, partial subterranean conduit that was wide enough to fit a freeway through and had many open slits and gaps in the high ceiling of four stories, letting in the green tinted Xenian sunlight. There was also an abundance of luminescent Xenian flora along the walls and floors, in addition to an apparent infestation of a very infamous species of cranial parasites. Wanting to conserve on as many rifle rounds as possible for the bigger denizens, Shephard whipped out his shotgun from his pack as we came upon this hostile situation, and he very leisurely began blasting away at anything fleshy and pumpkin-sized running across the floor while I sliced or set ablaze with my staff's numerous abilities.
I wanted to argue with Shephard that perhaps he should have been conserving a few of those rounds he had on hand, but I quickly understood that letting loose a bit was his way of regulating his stress meter since it was still very high after narrowly surviving the rockslide. If it let off some steam, it wasn't my place to keep him from bringing his pressure gauges back down. While I never found much solace while killing anything, I cared very little for these horrible creatures and the fatal torture they inflicted, so seeing them succumb to my blade and magic felt more satisfying than it would have been any other day.
Unfortunately for myself, I was a vixen that tended to receive certain signals most others lack the ability too. I envy those who can't for the very reason I was unfortunate to run into while Shephard and I were clearing out this area of burrowing, head-clamping pests. There were evidently a few others who had come through here before that did get their heads clamped, and although they were as good as dead, the parasites kept them alive enough to fill my head with the worst telepathic despair I had ever heard since first encountering these types of victims.
While I had detected the vague presence of cerebral wavelengths in here that were different from those of the primitive headcrabs, my telepathic senses were then violently assaulted by psionic screams of pure indescribable agony as bloodied armoured figures suddenly sprung to life and stumbled out of the cover of some large rocks with webbing all over it. The screams that pierced my ears and mind in unison… Screams that begged and cried for release in whatever form it took to end it all.
"N-! Ngh! NO!" I shouted in desperation, trying to clamp my ears instinctively to muffle the screams, but my helmet prevented me from acting on that impulse. I felt dizzy as I tried to flee from the zombies lumbering towards me, but the screams assaulting my mind were too much. I hadn't had the time to lock down my mind before running into the zombies; they jumped on me before I could fortify my mind from their harrowing cries of anguish. Now, I was forced into a simulative state as they were in for a brief moment, stumbling about without any direction other than chasing any kind of thing that could possibly make it all end. That end came for all of us when the telepathic pangs of the zombies vanished one after the other before finally ceasing, making me drop to the ground as my legs gave out from the simulative trauma.
I breathed heavily as my mind had spontaneously returned to total clarity, lying on my back as I held my helmeted head, still unable to properly hold it like I wanted to. "Krystal!" Shephard cried out, rushing to my side as I was propping myself back up. He collapsed on one knee, holding his shotgun in one hand, barrel still smoking, while using his free hand behind my shoulder supportively in case I needed help.
"Shit, what happened? Did they get you?"
"No. No… They didn't," I replied, still a little dizzy from the whiplash. I then looked up ahead, and about ten metres away were the bodies of three zombies wearing EASs, their white plates drenched in blood and pockmarks from Shephard's shotgun blasts. "You killed them…" I observed, still recovering from the whiplash as I got back up.
Shephard rose to his feet as well while I motioned over to the bodies. "Had to," Shephard said. "They were moments away from smashing your helmet in. They were overwhelming you."
I got a psychic notion that Shephard seemed a little confused as to why I was so shaken, but I ignored him for the moment as I investigated the three bodies that had once been hosts for insidious headcrabs. They were lying strewn about and each in a slightly different condition. Their white suits were stained in a copious amount of blood; the torches on their abdomens flickered as the garbled digital dribble of their suits' readout voice tried giving vital statuses in vain.
Their hands were excessively mutated into gnarly clawlike appendages that broke through the gloves of their suits, and their headcrabs had been blown away thanks to Shephard's good aim, though I truly wished they had remained on after death.
The faces of these poor victims were nauseating to look at. One had pale, bloated skin soaked in blood, hardly looking human it was so deformed, and the other two corpses had a very different appearance.
Their faces were skeletal, drenched in a pasty red bloody residue that covered their whole heads, and their eyes were all but missing from their sockets while their maws were fixed wide open, far too open to be normal, frozen in a perpetual scream of pure agony as a reflection of their ceaseless torturous existences.
I stared at the eyeless sockets of one of the zombies in utter contempt and grief. "Oh my goodness…how long have they been like this?" I fretted, absolutely horrified by the physical records left on these former people.
"I wouldn't know," Shephard said, walking up next to me. "They change into these things pretty quickly from what I've witnessed. You good? You sound like you want to panic," Shephard said a little bluntly, clearly not in the mental state I was in to realise that saying something like that would unknowingly tip me off.
Rather than raise my voice in outrage and sadness, I simply looked at him. While his helmet and visor obscured his face, I could feel him looking at me with concern. Knowing he might not know the right thing to say, but was willing to listen. I took this moment of shaky respite to vex a little bit.
"They hear us, Corporal," I stated, pointing a finger down at one of the bodies of the zombies. "They're not 'dead' in the way that other people think. I can hear their thoughts. They still think. I was just…surprised and overwhelmed by them. I hadn't had a chance to block out their horrible…horrible thoughts…"
Shephard didn't say anything at first, staring at me as blankly as his helmet allowed him before looking down at the zombies contemplatively for a moment. "I knew it…"
Continuing down the open tunnel, we came across more remnants of Aperture's presence.
We happened upon a section of the tunnel that looked like another basecamp of sorts with a lineup of mobile generators, spotlights, and what looked to be compact mining vehicles with treads sitting idly. No power was on; just as dead as the other camps we passed through, but something felt particularly off about this place. A lot of the equipment, upon further inspection, looked like they were smashed in by something massive and long, like an iron stake driven through a wedge.
With this deduction present in my mind, I soon began to notice strange divots in the soil that bared a consistency with wet sand, reminding me of fields that had been aerated, only these divots were far too big and piled up too much. There were human bodies here as well, four, all wearing identical EAS suits, but one of them was missing a leg. The separation looked very messy, suggested by the loose strands of rotten flesh and the thigh plating being warped downward, I realised that something had sliced through the leg rather than tear it off like a conventional predator would. Something very large.
I would have dwelt on these eerie findings longer had it not been for the numerous headcrabs suddenly clawing out from their burrows once they were alerted to our presence. Shephard and I made quick work of them by bashing and blasting them away, and only more seemed to pop up out of the ground the further along we went. We encountered a few more zombies as well, since this little mining site went on for a little way more.
Now highly keen on what happens to me whenever in the presence of those terrible entities, Shephard disposed of them as quick as he could while I awkwardly tried to do the same, trying to block out their screaming thoughts. I couldn't quite tap into the blind fury mindset I did when I encountered the stakeout of former rebels-turned-zombies in the bowels of Aldana somehow, which rendered me more liable than I would ever be comfortable with. Eventually, we moved past this tragic worksite and continued down the tunnel.
The wide-open crevices in the high ceiling had now become less abundant, and the roll of illumination primarily fell to clusters of light blue crystals that glowed softly. They apparently resembled a candy that Shephard liked; blue raspberry Jolly Ranchers, he specifically referred to when pointing it out. The yellow rope continued to lead us down this tunnel to parts unknown, but we had the reassurance that it was where we should be going.
"Do you ever get that feeling you're in a place where you really shouldn't be?" Shephard eventually asked, holding his shotgun at the ready while on the lookout for more headcrabs.
"I've had that feeling ever since arriving here," I admitted, trying to bring in a little humour, but it also wasn't an exaggeration.
"Same, same," Shephard chuckled a little dryly. "But for real, something smells fishy about this place, and it ain't just the abundance of head-humpers."
"I know. Things aren't adding up around here…" I agreed. Neither of us could definitively pinpoint what it was that was unsettling about where we were going, but my mind kept going back to the smashed machinery and the many divots in the ground, which, at one point, I assumed were burrows that headcrabs climbed in and out of, but they seemed too small.
"I wonder what makes all these giant cobwebs?" Shephard looked up and around, taking note of all the massive canvases of earthy-coloured webbing draping across the walls and ceiling. This was his invitation to partake in some more satiating small-talk, and I gladly took it.
"It is quite a lot," I replied, giving the webs a look myself. "But I've seen bigger. There are giant arachnids on Fortuna that make far more elegant-looking webs that can be big enough to drape around buildings. They can be quite beautiful, too; if you catch one at night drizzled with evening due and with a full moon, it's like a little collection of stars woven together into a giant canopy. They would make for a smashing hammock if they were not also being monitored at all times by giant, eight-eyed creatures for prey to get caught in it."
"No kidding?" Shephard replied, interested in my account but also a bit disgruntled. "How is it that spiders manage to exist in another universe? Of all things, it has to be spiders. Giant spiders, no less."
"By the same odds that likely made a common animal from your world into a sapient person like me," I offered. "In a weird way, I'm comforted that our universes have some similarities. It makes our interdimensional kinship a little stronger."
I sensed that Shephard appeared to like my disposition. "Looks like it does," he said with favourability. "And here we are, two unlikely compadres from different universes thrown together in this dumpster fire of a dimension that separates both of them. Did you ever imagine life taking such a turn?"
I had been through enough in my life to know how quickly things can drastically change in an instant, but winding up in a place such as this did kind of pull the rug out from under me. Perhaps there was a paradox here; my universe and the quirky curveballs it liked to throw at me had no jurisdiction over me currently. Not in Earth's universe, and not here.
Would the misfortunes given to me by my own universe be nullified while dwelling within another? Could I hypothetically settle down in another universe and live out my life in peace in contentment? Or was I over-analysing an absurd concept for the sake of keeping my anxious mind occupied? Probably that.
"You're asking the wrong vixen that kind of question, Corporal," I forfeited.
"You ever gonna stop addressing me by my rank?" Shephard reproved with little sternness.
"I'm in your squad, aren't I?" I reminded. "It feels only fair that I affirm such a title."
"Well, that just means you'll have to call me sir interchangeably," Shephard conditioned, kind of stretching his true military authority a bit.
"If it so pleases you, sir…" I purred, trying to give the impression that saying this would get me to behave in a certain way.
"You just gotta start making things weird now, don't ya?" Shephard lowered his gun along with his head, shaking it sullenly from side to side.
"You, sir, called me freaky a while back," I reminded, poshly indignant. "I'm still quite offended by that. If you insist on such a rude sentiment, then I suppose I will have to embrace it."
"Christ, girl, I'm sorry," Shephard groaned, rolling his helmeted head. "You're not freaky at all. You're very, very pleasant, actually. If you'll believe me."
I giggled a little bit before I elbowed him in his plated arm spiritedly. "The feeling is very mutual."
Very soon after, we came across a slight deviation in our path.
Along our trek down this tunnel, we passed a few narrow, excavated tunnels for mining and soon happened upon a curious change in scenery: a gantry lift that ran up into an excavated incline in the rocky wall to another sublevel several stories up, well past visible as it vanished behind the ceiling. While one of the more curious discoveries we encountered in here, the faithful yellow rope did not lead through there and instead continued onward down the tunnel, so we had little reason to deviate from the path.
Several minutes later, after covering a distance of about fifty metres or so down this winding tunnel that felt like it was going on for ages, something loud and distressing suddenly coursed through the damp air of the tunnel. A low but booming wail akin to a high-pitched fog horn echoed throughout the tunnel and did not settle for a good while until after it was uttered. It sounded almost distressed and far too monstrous and alien to be anything remotely positive for us.
"Holy shit; the fuck was that?!" Shephard spazzed, brandishing his shotgun, though I could sense his desire to quickly swap weapons from his pack. I tensed up as well, holding my staff close and had pre-emptively opened with magic fizzling out―something I had not realised was happening at first, being so stricken with sudden fear.
The wail sounded like it came from somewhere up ahead, down the generous bend that rounded rightward. Shephard and I were dead silent as we tried listening for a possible follow-up―and also because we were frightened so badly. We didn't hear another accompanying wail, but we did start to notice that the ground felt like it was quaking beneath our feet.
The faint sounds of stomping could also be heard coming our way, accompanying the very light tremors that felt like they were getting a little quakier with each succession. It was obvious something huge was coming towards us, and neither of us wished to see what it was, but we braved ourselves anyway by running up along the rounding wall with our backs to it before taking a peek around into the next section of the tunnel. The ceiling crevices were in abundance again up ahead, letting in the sickly green sunlight, which granted us a very unsavoury first glance of our interloper. Or, as we were soon to discover unpleasantly, we were the interlopers intruding on its territory.
Lumbering through the sharp light rays was a giant creature about twenty feet tall that had four gargantuan legs as big as tree trunks attached to a rounded body, walking in a wavy motion with one leg in front and back walking together at a time. Its body was primarily tan in colour with a very crab-like shell covering its main body as well as its legs which had very sharp ends. The beast had four tiny black eyes in total, with a pair positioned on both ends of its shell.
And, by far the unsightliest thing about this creature was the enormous fleshy sack that dangled below its body. A veiny, wrinkled mass of flesh that bobbed and swayed with the creature's motion as it lumbered our way down the tunnel, taking up most of the overall mass of the creature from the looks of it―more than half of the size of the body itself. The sight of the monstrous beast was more than enough to terrorise us to the core, but it was the proceeding high-pitched wail it unleashed as it spotted us with hostility that sealed the deal for us.
"NOPE!" Shephard billowed, bolting in the opposite direction as I followed diligently, equally terrified by what was now charging after us. I had no mental room in my head with all the fear and urgency having overtaken it, but something convinced me after the fact that we had, in fact, intruded on this monster's territory. And, as we would also find out soon enough, it was not chasing us for the reasons we assumed initially. However, such details are of no relevance when you're running for your life.
"The lift!" I shouted, running alongside Shephard as I pointed in the lift's general direction around the next corner of this tunnel. "We have to get to the lift!"
"There's no power!" Shephard rebuked. "That thing can't work without―WHAAAAAAAAH!"
We both were forced to leap out of the way as the four-legged, giant crustacean thing barrelled right past us―its giant legs stabbing the ground with enough weight and force to surely crush a landmaster's hull all the way through. It was also during this pass by did I noticed a sticky clear secretion leaking out from the bottom of the creature's giant…sack. And I had thought the Combine strider bore the most suggestive asset I had ever seen up until meeting this thing.
Shephard absolutely lost it and began letting loose on the giant, utilising the fully automated feature of his shotgun instead of using his preferred pump-action. "I'm freaking out! I'm freaking out! I lied, I'm freaking out!" he screamed bloody murder as he emptied out his chambers in a flash, blasting away at the top of the creature's shell in a show of sparks and broken shell, forcing it to stumble away in disarray with another thunderous wail.
"Die! Die! Die! Die again! Die some more!" These were just a handful of obscenities he yelled at the beast as he ran around it, trying to shoot its legs out, but to no avail. The creature's armoured shell was enough to absorb 12-gauge buckshot decently well. All good for the creature but terrible for us.
I ran to aid my friend, staff ready and all, but an instinct in me yelled at me that I shouldn't attempt to kill this thing. As asinine as the disposition was, I somehow began to register that the loud grunts and whines coming from the monster had less to do with the shrapnel picking away at its shell and more to do with the…contractions? Giant alien freak of nature or not, we couldn't kill this creature, all for reasons that Shephard couldn't hope to understand at the moment―let alone sympathise.
"Shephard, come on!" I beckoned, trying to lead him away as I yanked at his arm. Shephard complied quite willingly now that his magazine tube was empty of shells. "Run to the lift! I'll get us power!" I ordered, eying all the crystals jutting out in patches all around the tunnel. I almost couldn't believe it took me this long to realise I might have been able to siphon power from them. I sometimes tend to think better under pressure, I suppose.
"Are you crazy?!" Shephard exclaimed in protest.
"Just trust me! I'll take care of this!"
The gantry lift was well within view at this point, about twenty metres away, and Shephard reluctantly obeyed my command as he made off for the lift. As he did, I turned around and spread my feet before thrusting my staff's hilt straight into the ground, causing its leaf-shaped spearhead to open up. The giant stumbled with a discordance of thunderous moans and wails from being pelted from all the gunfire.
Its tiny, liquid black eyes soon made contact with me standing in front of it. It began to groan with aggression, revving up a charge before I began channelling my telepathy at full power into that beast. "Yield!" I commanded. I didn't speak in actual words when performing simple telepathic coercions on animals, but this was what I essentially told the beast in the figurative sense.
The beast stumbled in confusion, overwhelmed by the sensations mingling with its primitive brain. While this was happening, I began to siphon energy from the crystals closest to me in bright blue streams that were being collected into the enchanted gems, simultaneously proving that drawing power from them was possible. I was far too busy influencing this beast to revel in my sudden discovery. The beast needed to lie down, and it was imperative now more than ever, being that we indirectly hurried the process along from all the action and stress we had caused it.
"Rest. Rest. Ease. Ease. Relent. Relent," I channelled to it over and over until it became overrun by the passive commands I messaged into its simple mind. Before I knew it, as soon as I gathered enough power in my staff, the giant beast carefully laid down on the ground, groaning in discomfort as it rested sideways on its left legs, which folded in underneath its enormous sack. It was now leaking profusely, and I could have sworn I saw tiny white organisms scuttling out of it, but I was far too focused to pay attention fully.
Creaking loudly like rotting wooden boards bearing too much weight and strain, the giant creature settled in and got as comfortable as it could have been for what was to come. I didn't really wish to be around when it happened, so I hightailed back to my friend, who had been watching everything from the lift. Regarding Shephard's intense waving motion beckoning me to hurry up and join him, I wasted no precious time as I unleashed an arch of my freshly siphoned power at the generator that was hooked up to the lift's operating panel, which seemed to instantly activate the lift as green light flashed on above it along with an enthusiastic jingle.
The lift started ascending up the track rather quickly before I could reach it, but I was able to grab on to the ledge just in time, and Shephard got down and pulled me up with him. A true gentleman, he was. I had little time to savour my newfound standing as I heard the beast cry out in that harrowing, horn-like moan, prompting me and Shephard to watch in disbelief as the giant began convulsing intensely.
It creaked and groaned with unrelenting discomfort, leaving Shephard utterly perplexed, however, I knew what was moments away from happening, and I was forced to watch in wide-eyed anticipation. With one final wail of pain, the pressure being pent up so highly inside the beast was finally released in the way of a violent eruption of white discharge shooting out of the giant's sack like a firehose, jetting across the floor and walls as hundreds…no…thousands of tiny white four-legged offspring immediately began fanning out in all directions.
"OH MY GOD!" Shephard shouted in horror as thousands of scrambling babies blanketed the whole tunnel, turning the whole place white as they tried to burrow in whatever crack or crevice they could find right as our lift cleared the ceiling, putting everything we were forced to see out of sight, but certainly not out of mind. Nowhere close to it.
I was just as much at a loss for words as my friend as we both stood in silence, gobsmacked with awe and total disbelief amongst the whirring ambience of the lift's cable mechanism as it carried us further and further up the track in this shaft. However, sooner than later, Shephard stumbled backward a bit before leaning on the siderail with a hand over his stomach. Witnessing that horrible miracle was not settling well with it.
"I'm gonna fucking puke…" he declared, with a very nauseous voice. We hadn't eaten anything since coming here, so the best Shephard could do was dry-heave, but that didn't matter anyway. I also felt like I was about to upchuck my stomach contents, too, despite not having any.