Graduation Day

Disclaimer: The information described in the story below is the copyright of the Valve Corporation. Although this is my original story, one of this background story regarding the passage has been generated by myself and shall not be thought of as such. The story below consists of merely the same background as the Half-Life series but from a different character viewpoint. This would simulate the exact same time period as the beginning of the video game Half-Life 2.

Date: June 14, 2019

Place: Austin, Texas, at the Combine-controlled Graduation Center

Name: Cheryl Tumper, Age 18

I knew that this was a death sentence right from the beginning. The whole place was loaded with Civil Protection units, or Metrocops, Combine police officers that enforced the laws of the Combine Overwatch. They wore light gray gas masks and dark blue armor, carrying with them electroshock beating sticks for people who didn't do exactly what the law specified. I hate them; the thought of those gut-wrenching monsters destroys my faith in humanity. They weren't just soldiers for the Combine, they were humans, sick, horrible humans that legitimately volunteered (yes, volunteered) to work for the greater good of the Combine Overwatch when they took over. They were pretty brutal, I've heard, and I did not disagree with the people that I'd heard it from, seeing as the Combine overall was pretty brutal to us. There had been harshly strict law enforcement ever since the end of the Seven Hour War.

It seems that I should explain the Seven Hour War, for those of you that haven't heard about it. I should actually go way back to the incident at Black Mesa. From what I've heard, Black Mesa was a giant laboratory for conducting chemical experiments. I had read in the paper, after they'd announced the end of the Seven Hour War, that the scientists at Black Mesa had made contact with some alien world, and a malfunction in one of the experiments that was conducted there resulted in the invasion of multiple alien species that had inhabited that alien world. They said that the Vortigaunts that we have here had actually been enslaved by those species and went on killing sprees around the facility. It's pretty hard to believe though, since the Vortigaunts here are so nice to us, and there's actually a reason for that. One of the scientist at Black Mesa, the one that had performed the actual experiment and caused what we call the Resonance Cascade (I think his name is something like Freeman), actually had to jump into the portal between Black Mesa and the alien world in order to close that portal and save the Earth. Well, he did do that, somehow, and in turn freed the Vortigaunts from their enslavement, and they were so grateful that they decided that they wanted to serve the human race.

But that wasn't all for the better. When the scientist closed the portal, he set off a chain reaction that caused widespread portal storms around the Earth. These portals were the same ones as in Black Mesa, so we were completely engulfed in alien life forms. That wasn't even the worst of our problems, though; the portal storms that occurred actually attracted a kind of inter-dimensional empire called the Combine, a force that raged through the universe and took control over everything that they could. All of the Earth's military force tried to resist when the Combine invaded, but it was not enough; the forces were defeated in the entirety of seven hours, hence the Seven Hour War. In order to end the war, though, a man called Wallace Breen sold humanity into slavery in return for their agreement to peace. And now, in a horrible turn of events, that monster has the say of the entire world.

I guess that would explain it for you. And now back to my death sentence.

The auditorium of the Graduation Center was filled with twelfth-grade students, with the Combine Metrocops lining the walls. One of the Combine's slaves stood on the auditorium stage, handing out diplomas to the graduates. And all was calm.

I know, all of this seems very light for something like the death sentences controlled by the Combine. But the Overwatch is not entirely strict; they allow us to finish school before we become slaves. So once any of us graduates, we become slaves for the Combine, and all of us are really too afraid to try and resist. If you get caught, you get killed, or even worse, you get taken in by the Combine and become a Stalker. And believe me, you do not want to know what that is. But even risking that, I don't want to become one of the Combine's pets. Which is why I plan to escape.

I've talked to many Vortigaunts in my day; they pretty much accommodate any human's needs. When I told them that I wanted to escape the graduation, they allowed me to speak no further and assured me that they would take care of the rest if I knew what I was risking. What I hadn't known, though, was that there had been a sort of Underground Railroad going on for a couple years now, helping Combine slaves escape, and it was simply powered by the Vortigaunts. They were happy to help me escape.

Rather than tell you what our fairly simple plan was, I'd be content to perform it for you myself. Here it goes.

As of now, there are about twenty or so students on the stage, being given diplomas and trying to swallow the fact that their life meant nothing from this moment on. I could see it in their eyes; they were attempting to be strong and push past the idea that they would be slaves for the rest of their lives, but they knew that it was the horrible, horrible reality. I felt bad for them, though, having such weak willpower. They never tried to fight back. I've never tried myself, but I knew that nobody else but me would be willing to pull a stunt like this now.

We've been arranged throughout the aisles of the audience in alphabetical order, A's in front and Z's in back. I kind of felt bad that Joseph Zimmerman and Kalie Yeller had to go with our group, the T's, instead of having a group of their own. We were last. The D's finished performing their own death sentences, and the ceremony moved on to the G's, where the two E's and one F had to be placed also because their groups were so miniscule.

I almost fell asleep during the rest of the graduation procession before my group, since it was oh so very boring and uninteresting. I think that it was odd, though, that the Metrocops had their slave perform a small speech for every group that went up, saying at least one original good trait about each group that, surprisingly, rang very true. All in all, though, it was the most boring thing that I had ever experienced in my life, besides literally watching what I had painted on a building wall dry so that I could leave the site.

Finally, after one full hour of standing around, our group, the T's, made our way onto the stage. It was helpful that I was small, because I could unnoticeably slip into the left backstage wing at exactly the same moment that I set foot on stage.

It didn't matter if the Metrocops saw me; I was free, free from the hands of the Combine. But I knew they would never go down without a fight. Quickly, I checked the backstage, and spotted the backside of a Metrocop behind the curtain at the front of which I had exited the stage, watching the procession and making sure that there were no disturbances. Quietly, I made my way to the back of the stage, making sure that I was not spotted. Careful in my movements, I noticed that there was another Metrocop standing precisely opposite the first one in the right wing. Unfortunately, he saw me, extracted his baton, and pointed at me, but by the time the other cop had turned around, I was gone into the hallway behind the left wing.

Making sure that I had no followers for the moment, I tore off my graduate's hat and robe, reverting back to my purple T-shirt and jeans. Suddenly, I realized a simple problem: I had no weapon to fight with. Searching the bare hallway for something hopeful, I found absolutely nothing.

Blinding pain shot through my brain like a dagger of ice. Cold and searing hot burns engulfed me, and I was sent crashing to the polished floor, spilling blood over the pearly tiles. A white haze blocked my vision, and I felt the shock of a stun baton wash over me and seize my body in a wave of stinging pain. There were sounds of struggles, and a hopeful energy burst let me know that my friends had arrived.

Slowly but surely, I became able to see again, noticing that the two Metrocops that had been pursuing me were dead on the same floor that I was lying on, small extra bits of electricity jolting out of their bodies. I tried to push myself off of the floor, but I faltered, still feeling the fading pain around my body. Suddenly, I felt a smooth jolt of energy, and the two-fingered hands of a Vortigaunt lifting me to safety.

It was amazing just how humanoid and just how alien these Vortigaunts were. They were a perfect combination of each, their elliptical head housing one massive eye with razor-sharp teeth in their mouth underneath their head and ogre-like ears on each side. They had very thin green bodies, with two normal double-fingered appendages on their sides and one small arm in the center of their torso. Their spindly legs lead down to two pyramid-shaped feet.

"Let us bring you to safety," it said, the Vortigese accent almost palpable. "There will be more. I advise you to take one of these weapons from the Civil Protection."

Obeying the wise alien, I kneeled and gingerly grabbed one of the stun batons, standing and holding it firmly in my left hand. I whipped it through the air to test it, and sure enough, it lit up in a flame of blue electricity. I found a small button on the base of the handle, pressed it, and it obediently doused the flame, returning to a normal baton.

"You are ready?" asked the Vortigaunt. I nodded, and he took off through the hallway, leaving me no choice but to follow in his wake.