The little yellow rope made a reappearance on the presumed Quadlings Island, so me and Shephard were enticed to follow it to see where it would take us next.
While we initially landed on a generous plot of open terrain after getting flung to this new floating island, our path took us into another cave network that ran into the towering mountainside that flanked the giant net. Unlike that camp on the island where we jumped from, this colonised patch of Xen had working power. There were light fixtures in the tunnel linked by a series of connecting conduits, and the ground was incredibly smooth and rounded, suggesting that this place often saw personnel going back and forth regularly.
The sight of power made me think that perhaps some survivors could still be in this area, but I couldn't pick up on any telepathic signatures yet. None that were human or of any other sapience, I should correctly say. I sensed the signatures that were more animal-like, and since my first encounter with wildlife in this realm was considerably sour, I forewarned Shephard to be ready for another confrontation with more of those armless chargers.
Our tunnel went up an incline where metal planks were placed to aid in the effort of traversing up and down the natural shaft. Right at the top of the shaft, I could see what looked to be faint natural light shining through along the short ceiling and walls, which suggested that we were nearing the surface again. Once we arrived at the shaft's end, we discovered that we hadn't breached the surface as I had assumed. Instead, we found ourselves stumbling into what was perhaps the most splendid-looking thing we had encountered in Xen so far.
Shephard and I entered a massive cavernous chamber with a high ceiling and rounded sloped walls that sparkled with glittery blue luminescent plants or fungi, making it seem like we were staring up at a brilliant indoor starry night sky. The chamber itself was almost entirely taken up by a lake that shimmered underneath the luminance on the ceiling and walls, where we soon discovered a small waterfall coming down from a hallowed stalactite in the ceiling, making the glimmery water wake and ripple. There was also an abundance of large, jagged orange crystals jutting out along the walls and on a couple of tiny islands positioned right in a few spots around the lake.
"Ooo,' Shephard gawked, mesmerised by the discovery as I was. "I like the vibe of this place, I won't lie."
"Indeed, it is surprisingly attractive," I agreed. "However, we are not alone in here. Look over there."
I pointed to a section on the other side of the lake, where I showed Shephard a small congregation of three bipedal creatures along the shoreline near some luminescent plants about twenty-three metres away, near the end of the chamber. I couldn't quite make out their details due to a hazy layer of mist that hung around in the chamber, but all that I could see was that they were much squatter than the creatures we previously encountered, their tails were fatter, and they had many appendages around their faces. Shephard evidently recognised these creatures, and he recoiled with displeasure.
"Oh no, not the acid snot monsters…" he moaned with unease.
"Pardon?" I asked, turning to him.
"I've run into plenty of those things in Black Mesa," Shephard recalled. "They're real pieces of work. I'm inclined to avoid them, and you should be too."
"Well, if they keep to their side of the lake, we shouldn't have a problem."
"That's not their style, Krysy," Shephard rebuked. "They've got range, and they've got damn good eyesight."
I took Shephard's precessions seriously, but we only had so many directions to keep following the yellow rope, which assured us that we were going the way we should be going, which was down a raised section of rock that continued on into the chamber.
"We'll dispose of them should they become aggressive," I said, already well past the pacifist route. "Nothing you haven't handled before, right?"
"Sure, but I don't have to like it," Shephard replied, tapping a finger from the hand holding his gun's barrel.
We continued following the metal planks that rose and declined along with this outcrop's elevation, keeping in route with the yellow rope. Along the way, we discovered that the lights were being powered by one of the large orange crystals that were sprouting out from the ground, as the cables running through the fixtures ended at a transformer that was welded to the crystal, which must have been configured to syphon their energy. Quite the remarkable things these crystals were; unlike anything I had ever seen.
We were about halfway down the chamber when the commotion occurred on the tiny beach at the other end of the cavern. Those stocky and wide creatures seemed to take notice of us and took great anger at our presence―I knew so after sensing their intentions. They huffed and snarled loudly like they were severely congested, only for them to start wagging their tails before one of them shot a large wad of an unknown substance right at us, and the projectile's speed was alarmingly fast and accurate.
"Head's up!" Shephard cried as we both scattered. The organic projectile flew right in between us and hit the wall with a very loud and wet *splat*, coating the wall in an acidic mucus that sizzled threateningly, which was doubly emphasised when my suit's visor display lit up with a new luminous icon.
"Warning. Hazardous chemical detected," its systems announced inside my helmet.
"All right, that's it. Get a damn handkerchief!" Shephard decreed vulgarly at the monsters. I stood back in surprise as he quickly got down on one knee and began to unload his rounds, shooting them across the lake at the hostile creatures, the loud pangs of his gunfire making the whole chamber rattle with encompassing reverberation, along with the metal clings of casings dropping to the ground as they were being rapidly ejected. He managed to kill them all quickly with some good aim, though it depleted his magazine, which had been halfway dispensed after that fight with the chargers.
"Bugger," he griped, suddenly picking up one of the expletives I uttered from time to time. "Just ate through two mags already. I've only got five more left in my pack."
"Perhaps you should have used one of your grenade rounds?" I wondered.
"Nah, I gotta save those for the big uglies and demolition, if need be," Shephard reasoned, temporarily whipping his pack off to grab the appropriate ammunition clips out and stuffing them in the ready-to-pull satchel on his waist.
"Well, best you conserve as much as you can from now on until we find one of those resupply stations. Perhaps there's one close by along the trail?"
"That would be a dandy thing indeed," Shephard agreed, slipping in the magazine and pulling back the vertical charging handle on the bottom of his rifle's iron sights. "But I can manage until then. I kinda have to; nothing I can't handle."
"Especially when you've got me buying you time," I teased, flicking my sleeved tail against his plated shin. He replied by playfully elbowing me in the waist with a dense metallic *thunk, knowing it wouldn't hurt me.
Moving on a little further, the yellow rope led us to something rather distressing on a multitude of levels at the end of the chamber. The rope looked like it was meant to go through another tunnel. But not only was the way blocked by an apparent cave-in with all the large boulders piled up by the wall, there was actually a human corpse wearing an EAS smothered underneath with only its head and right arm poking out.
I gasped when we stumbled across this. Despite wearing an identical suit to what we were wearing, the body looked like it had been here for a long time, as indicated by the puddle of oxidised blood right at the side of the body. Having a light on it, the corpse looked like it had been here for months, most definitely not recently.
"Damn. Poor guy," Shephard sympathised with lowered shoulders before looking up around the ceiling. "Wonder what caved this all in?"
"I'm not sure," I admitted, heavy-heartedly, as I knelt for a second to place a hand on the dead human's. Even though I wore dense gloves, I could still somehow feel the deathly cold and solidness that dead bodies had―especially really old ones like this. Shephard remained silent as he allowed me this moment before standing back up to survey the wreckage. "All that I know is that this way is blocked. We'll need to find another way somehow."
Shephard had been looking around with that very aim in mind. "What about the water down there?" he suggested. I turned around to assess his suggestion. While the lake certainly looked inviting to take a little dip in literally any other place in existence, I was quite wary of what Xenian waters offered in terms of aquatic life because surely it couldn't be much better than the land creatures.
"What use do you suppose jumping in there will do for us?" I pressed, fuelled more so by my reluctance to dive in there rather than any dismissal of Shephard's idea.
"Those Cthulhu dogs over there had to have come in here some way, right?" Shephard figured. "I've seen them swimming around in the bowels of Black Mesa; they're semi-aquatic. I reckon there's some underwater tunnel down there we could look at. Hell, maybe it'll take us past this little roadblock here and right where we need to be?"
I stepped over to the ledge right next to him, looking down at the water, which was about ten feet below us. The ledge wasn't sharp; there was some leverage to climb back up here should we have had to, thankfully, so we had that going for us. Even still, I looked at the water with distrust.
"I guess it's worth a look," I wagered. "But should we go in there, we better be mindful of how long we stay submerged. We can only be underwater for roughly a minute before we run out of air."
Being that our air-filtration helmets were vacuum-sealed to our waterproof suits, and even pressurised to some extent, we could technically breathe underwater for a short time before the air already stored in our suits was used up. That would provide us with more time to investigate what lay beneath the depths, but it was still a risk, nonetheless. I knew that we were likely destined to take plenty of risks while here in Xen, so I figured I'd start getting used to taking them now.
Shephard's intuition was proven true, for we had discovered that there was an underwater conduit that ran through the wall upon submerging ourselves.
It was quite the large one at that―easily able to fit a few Earth vehicles in at once. And when shining our lights through the murky water, we saw that it weaved on for some distance. While not an ideal path to take, this did appear to be the only way out of this chamber apart from the way we came in.
Our suits were weighty and made us less buoyant, but we were still able to swim effectively enough. Even still, if we were going to swim through and explore that underwater tunnel, not only did we need to be ready to encounter anything, but also be mindful of our limited oxygen reserves, for it wasn't a lot. After coming back up to take in one last deep breath for the reservoirs in our suits, we plunged beneath the water and began to swim into the tunnel with our lights on.
We swam alongside each other, with Shephard brandishing his sidearm, which could fire underwater, while I had my staff deployed with the hilt's hidden blade deployed. I have had numerous hostilities in the lakes of Fortuna and of Sauria, and so often have I had to convert my staff into a spear to defend myself in the waters from all manner of beasts. I, at least, had muscle memory going for me.
It was very dark down here; the peated water ate up any ambient light, and our lights could hardly penetrate several feet. Shephard and I stroked close to each other, trying to take as few breaths as we could. We made it around two tight bends before encountering another corpse that lay dead on the cave floor. Its suit was in pieces like it got torn apart, and a skeleton was all that remained of the body.
"Shit, there goes another one," Shephard cursed through our comms, unnerved as anyone would have been coming across such a morbid finding in a very dark cave.
"I don't sense anything nearby," I relayed, easing worries I didn't need telepathy to know he had as we swam past the body, mutual eager to keep moving. "Perhaps one of those squat creatures got to them?"
"Probably," Shephard replied. "But one must wonder what that guy was doing down here."
"Perhaps attempting what we are doing right now," I guessed.
"And I'm wondering if it was before or after those rocks fell and blocked up the way out of here."
I didn't answer that particular query, but it did make me ponder the affairs that went on in this place long before we arrived. After a few more anxious moments of navigating this underwater conduit, we eventually reached its end and appeared in another open lake, prompting us to shoot up to the surface and take in some air through our filters despite the lack of urgency. This chamber was identical to the one we came from, but its length was longer, and its width was much narrower, resembling a channel more than an open lake.
"Well, that went better for us than that poor guy," Shephard said contentedly as he waded around, curiously looking up at the walls and ceiling that it bared numerous luminous sections of growth.
"Indeed, but we're not in the clear yet," I reminded, looking up at my right to see the yellow rope on its pikes running along the ledge leading down the chamber, obviously the way that we were always meant to go. "Look. We're heading the right way, but I can't spot any way to get up there. There doesn't appear to be any leverage."
"Hmm," Shephard scrutinised the lack of relief as he surveyed the ledge we were meant to walk along. "Maybe we'll find some further along; looks like it goes on for a little ways more."
"Quite," I concurred, noting the grey, dewy haze before us as a marker of greater distance.
We continued swimming on, following along in the direction that the yellow rope was taking us, which thankfully coincided with this little still channel. However, minutes later, I started picking up on telepathic signatures again, beastly ones, much akin to those squat-legged bipeds in the prior chamber, heading in our direction. Shephard readied himself immediately upon this news and asked how close they were.
"Close," I simply replied, concentrating on their simple but detectable signals. "They're coming up this way, somewhat leisurely."
"Well, that's sure about to change in a moment," Shephard concluded, deducing from his own prior experiences. "I'm going under."
"I'll cover you," I said, taking an impulsive breath before submerging beneath the waves. The channel floor was very rocky and somewhat shallow, but not enough for us to stand above the waterline comfortably. Soon enough, emerging from the murky shroud that saturated the water were a couple of those creatures swimming towards us, primarily moving with their large tails swishing back and forth.
This was my first instance where I saw these creatures up close, and they were an imposing presence. They were primarily a greenish tan in colour, but their backs, heads, and upper legs were covered with a dazzling pattern of black and brown spots that a leopard fellow would have. Their faces were frightening; they had two enormous milky white eyes with long black horizontal pupils on the sides of their heads, and their round mouths were surrounded by an array of long red tentacles with sharp white tips, all pointing forward as they helped steer the creatures through the water.
These monstrous cephalopod-like creatures evidently had better eyesight than us in the water, for they were already charging towards us by using their two strong legs to propel themselves even faster. "Oh, here we go―!" Shephard yelled through our comm as he began blasting them with his sidearm as they made their advance. Bullets did not fly so reliably in water, so the beast managed to evade Shephard's attack as it lunged right at him, wrapping his helmet with its tentacles as he got pushed further down, making him lurch with desperation.
This was happening at the same time as the other beast advanced on me. Even though I was bulkier than I was used to, I still managed to swish out of the way before the creature could wrap those hideous tentacles around me. It whirled around for another go at me, curving into a full C shape before darting straight for me, opening its tentacled mouth up to reveal a ring of sharp teeth inside. I was quicker with my counterattack.
Being already quite skilled in using my staff underwater, I was able to pivot my grip and thrust the bladed hilt of my staff straight through the head of this semi-aquatic aggressor, and just by how the shaft vibrated from the impact, I could discern that its body had a frame made of mostly of hard cartilage. I have caught many aquatic game with methods such as this throughout my life, and this occasion wasn't much different. A cloud of yellow blood poured out from the lifeless floating carcass after I freed my staff before jetting off to help Shephard, who was already overwhelmed by the monster as he was getting tumbled around as it sucked at his helmet.
While he managed to shoot it a few times in the leg, that only fuelled the beast's rage as its fight or flight instincts kicked in, now trying to kill my friend out of self-defence. Desperate fighters were always the most dangerous in my experience, so I had come to Shephard's rescue quick as I kicked off from the rocks and thrust my bladed hilt straight through the beast's torso, killing it instantly without much pain. Shephard was still wriggling ferociously by the time it died, so he kicked the beast away as he flailed his arms, continuing to froth the waters with bubbles as he realised that he was free.
"Oh God!" he heaved, sounding out of breath. "That was…! That―! Ahgk!"
Shephard began to gag like he was suffocating, which prompted me to realise that he was running out of air.
"Adrian! Get some air!" I hollered. He did so and shot up to breach the surface, gasping for more air as I swam up next to him―getting my fill of filtered oxygen as well.
"Shit! Holy hell…" Shephard coughed, taking this precious moment to catch his breath. "That thing tried to suck my eyeballs out!"
"We need to keep moving. These waters aren't safe," I stated urgently.
"Yeah, no shit!" Shephard exasperated. "As soon as I go down and find my gun, we're stroking for our lives!"
Much to our delight, our prospects lightened up very quickly as we swam to the edge of this narrow channel.
Another wide-open chamber unveiled itself as the dewy mists parted some, showing off its twinkly ceiling and the array of other glowing growths around the walls. The water ran into another large body of water, though not as big as the previous chamber, as most of the space was taken up by a little indoor beach that bore not only generous open surface area that we could easily walk up on, but a human settlement was also stationed there, presumably Aperture's, complete with a structure made of collapsable materials and surrounded by spotlights which were powered by neighbouring Xenian crystals.
"Well, hot-diggity-damn!" Shephard exalted in triumph as we both swam quickly towards the shoreline on the other end of the chamber. "I don't think this Marine's cut out for being a Navy SEAL just yet. Why don't we lie on the sand a little while, huh?"
"That sounds lovely," I agreed, hardly slowing my strokes as we made a break for the shore. We were going rather fast, all things considered; perhaps our suits did enhance our strength to swim faster, or perhaps lower gravity played a role in it. Or maybe a little of both.
As we neared the middle of the chamber in our pursuit of dry land, I suddenly detected something uncanny. Something had suddenly appeared in the chamber, and it was now alerted to our presence. It was angry and in pursuit, and more so, it carried a…charge. A real charge. So strong I could feel my body tingle as if my fur had rubbed upon a million rugs.
"Woah, do you feel that?" Shephard asked, unsettled and clearly aware of the sudden disturbance in the water too, which only seemed to grow more uncomfortable by the second. Without answering his question, I plopped back under the waterline, finding the terrain much deeper but not all that varied from what I had already seen in the prior chambers.
Almost right away, I spotted something quite different moving through the murky waters in the distance. A gathering of light blue glows wagging through the water, closing in on our position fast, and the fur on my body continued to erect even firmer, almost like I was standing next to an electrical coil. It wasn't until this new creature came into the rays of my light did I finally understood the trouble we were in.
This creature was half the size of the tentacled beasts we fended off, and it was much more akin to a large fish. It was primarily red in colour with blue accents, it had many fins along its spine and belly, and its head was hammer-shaped with large black eyes on the ends. This creature appeared to possess a particularly terrifying ability as I quickly discovered; this creature was obscenely conductive and was already charging up an electric pulse as indicated by the swells of blue light emanating around certain glands near its belly. We could not have been in a more vulnerable position for an intense electrical discharge, being completely submerged in water and wearing metal suits.
"Corporal―!"
That was all I managed to shout before I was abruptly shot with a devastating level of electricity acceding well beyond any tolerable voltage. The pain was so sharp and total as I succumbed to the creature's electrical attack, my body feeling like it had burst into flames for a half a second before my heart gave out, and all went to black.
However, rather than leave me at death's doorstep, fate seemed to have more in store for me, as the next thing I knew, I found myself waking up to the sight of being hurriedly hauled up along the open shoreline of the chamber before being gently set down on my back. My body had never ached this badly in a very, very long time. It was like every muscle in every corner of my being underwent the worst cramp that could be physically possible, and my vision swirled as my brain tried rebooting itself.
My immediate vision began to pick up the familiar sights of the illustrative icons shown on my visor's heads-up display. They were flickery and buzzy, though I saw that my vital readout was currently at 41%, and my suit's power was at 53%. I was much more alive than I felt I should have been, but the numbers seemed to validate how alive I currently felt somehow.
"Wa-a-arnin-n-ng," my suit's automatic system's analysis voice crackled unstably, its tempo lowering and rising as it tried to stabilise itself after the electrical overload that my suit took the brunt of. "Power: fifty-three percent. Vital signs: cr-i-i-i-itical. Seek medical a-a-attention. M-Morph-ph-phine: a-a-dmin-i-istered." My suit's automatic onboard inoculator systems kicked in, and a series of tiny needles hidden in the sleeves of my suit injected a potent dosage of painkillers directly in my arms all at once, and the effect was almost instantaneous.
"Uuuurrrrrrrrraaaaaaaagggghhhh!" A gargled groan was forced out of me as I was overtaken by an overwhelming surge from the drugs, and my eyes nearly rolled to the back of my head. The surge of the drugs felt painful for a few seconds, but the relief immediately following it was exceptionally palpable. I didn't have the time to indulge in this sensation before I found that my helmet was then suddenly yanked off my head, exposing me to the open air as a pair of wet gloved hands grabbed my head and tried to make me look up.
"Hey, Pop-Tart? Come on, Pop-Tart, you okay? Look at me, look at me," Shephard pleaded, his voice calm but holding back a lot of anxiety. My raw vision was blurry but steadily clearing as more of the morphine kicked in, revealing the very worried face of my friend. I smiled at him, feeling surprisingly light and airy, though I suppose that's what typically happens when getting injected with a load of pre-emptive drugs.
"Well…where have I seen this happen before?" I snickered tiredly, calling back to being pulled out of that pool of industrial solvents back in Aldana by the same man kneeling over me. Shephard wasn't exactly thinking about that right now, nor did it cross his mind. He only sighed with great relief as he set my head down, which was when I finally noticed that he had taken his helmet off too.
"Okay…okay…okay…" Shephard repeated to himself mostly, crawling over so that he could sit down next to me. "Thank God you're okay. You are okay, right?"
"Ooh…simply delightful, now that I'm a little doped up for the time being," I said, giving him an admittedly goofy look that I hoped reassured him, which it seemed to do as suggested by the amused grin he returned my way.
Shephard began to lie down on his elbow, mimicking my current stance, though not completely relaxed. "I think…we should both take a breather for a little bit…"
While I didn't answer back, I nodded silently in agreement before laying my head back down on the ground as I let the morphine work its way through my nerve-shot system. I didn't even have the will to ask Shephard at the moment what had happened or how we managed to end up where we were now, so I resorted to picking up on clues left around my environment. The only big things that stood out to me was my staff planted firmly in the almost spongy ground we lay upon by Shephard's feet, and a dark mass floating lifelessly in the water a few metres away from the shore.