//------------------------------//
// 10a - Doubts 
// Story: Half-Life : A World Beyond 
// by Random Gamer 
//------------------------------//

	What followed was a bloodbath. After no more than five minutes had passed, whole squads were mowed down almost effortlessly, in part due to the darkness and the fact that they had nowhere to hide. Deeming the losses too great, the remaining ones fled, but left the wounded behind. When Darek turned the lights back on, before them were piles of motionless, dead bodies. Peppered here and there were the wounded, flailing about, bleeding out and screaming. All three had seen what the Combine were capable of, but even despite that, they couldn't help but feel sorry for them.

A dillemma downed on all three – should they leave them to suffer a slow, agonizing death or end it with one, well-aimed bullet? Both of them were bad options. They had already been defeated and disarmed. If they weren't, at least one of them would have taken the opportunity to retaliate.

But none of even tried.

Eventually, Clara took it upon herself to make the decision. "We'll leave them here," she proclaimed. "And continue on with our mission." The two of us nodded without any questions, but I knew she wouldn't have done it if there was any other way. Maybe if we had a medic, we could at least stabilise the ones that weren't dying. 

With the locked doors now open, we ventured forth.

We were lucky – instead of fleeing to the surface, the Combine instead retreated into the lower levels and by doing that, opened a few gates along the way. Following their tracks, we came upon a horrible, rancid stench in one of the hallways and just this once, we complimented the soldiers for having filters akin to those of gas masks built into their helmets.  If it was true that the prison barely had any kind of ventilation or the one it had was broken or rusted away, then it would explain why the smell was so strong.

It didn't take long for us to reach the source, but once we saw it, it burned a vision into our brains. A unicorn was tied to a chair and impaled by multiple long tubes that protruded from the ceiling, with some sort of metallic ring around its horn. Additionally, the whole chair and the surrounding white and black checkered floor was covered in dried blood. Whoever it was, he or she was probably slowly tortured to death and then left to rot.

"Who do you think it was?" Darek asked. "A rebel or a civilian?" Clara approached the corpse. A small piece of blue cloth around the shoulders gave her the answer.

"C-22, B-17, P-24," she read the label aloud. "That's the city name, block and assigned number. Definitely a civilian." Every once in a while, there would be a raid where they would take away citizens for no reason. Then, to make it seem like everything was okay, the official number of citizens in that particular block, both past and present, would change and each and every one of the remaining citizens would be kindly persuaded that the household always had fifty one occupants, not fifty two and that the mistake was nothing more than a sabotage by the Rebellion or just plain bad memory.

Then again, this unlucky individual was also a unicorn and just like pegasi, his kind were hunted relentlessly, the Combine justifying it by saying that they were purging what they deemed undesirable traits. Whether they were actually killed or used as lab rats, exploited for the sake of science, was a mystery, but one thing was sure – there were only a handful of them left.

A sudden, sharp pain in her side broke her line of thought. The cauterized wound opened as she walked about and, through her clothes, blood started dripping. If she had her helmet off, they could see how horribly pale she was, to say of nothing of how weak she felt. Sitting down at the ground and leaning against a wall, she pressured the wound with her hoof, to no avail.

Of all places, it had to be a dirty, underground room. Her idea of dying was almost always connected with tired, yet satisfied eyes of a victorious warrior and senility so severe, she couldn't care about anything even if she tried. Then, when one of her many children would approach her on her deathbed, preferably the oldest, she would tell him, with the last bit of her sanity, where she had buried all the treasure so many years ago and with her last breath, mutter that she regrets nothing.

No, no yet. Death and its tendency to always wait around the corner had to wait.  She had business to attend to, Combines to kill and younger colleagues to protect, even if it meant defying cosmic laws and angering a few deities.

Checking the terminals and deeming them worthless, Darek turned around.

"Clara!" He shouted, kneeling down to help her the moment he was what was happening, but did very little to actually make her feel better. "Listen, listen to me! Don't go into the light!" It was almost unbelievable how little he actually knew about medicine and pretty much everything that didn't concern technology. Those were words one would say to someone who was dying. She wasn't, she was merely bleeding out.

Big difference.

I tore out one of my sleeves and cut it open with a knife, revealing several firm, yet elastic strings. Using a bit of water, I cleaned the wound and then, using a small, sharp piece of metal from a broken down radio, I started sewing the wound shut. The pain was unbearable and she was smart to ask for a piece of wood to bite into before I started. Many tears, minutes and amateur stiches later, the bleeding finally stopped and all three of us let out a sigh of relief.  I wish I could have done this sooner, but there's only so much one can do when he's being shot at. Cauterization via gun barrel seemed like a good idea at the time.

"You didn't tell me," she wheezed. "That Trixie trained you."

"She was worried one of us would get hurt."

"Clever girl." We slowly helped her up. She was able to walk on her own, but her steps were heavy and slow – she lost way too many red in a very short time span. She probably held on to her consciousness by her nothing more than sheer willpower. If me or Darek were in her place, we would have already fainted. 

Breezing through the floors the same way we did just a while ago was out of the question. We had to take it slow and look for medical supplies or at least food. We searched the surrounding rooms, but found nothing. Not even a bottle of aspirin or a painkiller, not that we would be expect them, given what the room was used for.

"I'm slowing you down," she exclaimed. "Just, go on without me." We disagreed and took her with us anyway, not minding that she had to rest frequently. If this happened to any of us, she would have done the same. Probably.

The zeroth level was suprisingly tame. Holes were present on the ceiling, the walls and even the floor. Every once in a while, an antlion would pop out, but ignore us and instead go straight through a hallway, take a turn and then by promptly shot and killed. Soon after, another antlion ventured in and then, another. Deeming them too preoccupied with what we assumed we soldiers, we scouted the block and found what were looking for.

It wasn't much, but it was still better than nothing. Taking refuge in one of the cells, we agreed that this was a good place to get some rest...