One of our four fighters was dead. We had no functioning turrets. But that didn't really matter because our best turret, the one we'd been spamming, was level four "Knowledge is Power" turrets. They're powered by our reserves of the science resource. There was only 32 science left. That's not very much science. Even if we wanted to build more, our best rooms were disabled by EMP.
Its all pretty irrelevant though, there was only 9 dust left. Not enough to power even a single room.
Most of the level was explored. I figured I could make a dash for it if the exit was down the shorter unexplored path. I opened the door. Science resource, no enemy waves. I opened another door. Chest, no enemy waves. I opened another door, enemies... but no waves. Also no other path forward.
i switched focus to the long way. Left Elise at a hallway close to our base, put Sara by the crystal. Skroig opened the door. "You have opened the last door on the level". Without even looking to see what was inside, Sara grabbed the crystal. Most of the waves spawned down other paths; we ignored them. Skroig pulled back to a crossroads close to the exit, Elise killed the bugs that were near the crystal. She started moving towards Skroig when Sara reached her hallway. More waves spawned, Skroig was getting swarmed. He dropped Red Plume to make them fight each other. Right before it ran out Elise came in and blew them up. They stood there and defended. Sara reached them with the crystal and everyone started moving through the last three rooms. Enemies are everywhere, they're in the exit. But it doesn't matter, we're out.
I thought that big circle at the top of the level chart was a boss battle or a super hard level. No, it was open air. Escape. Freedom.
I fucking won.