Disclaimer: Valve owns the cute headcrabs, not me.
"Look Magnusson, I really don't know what to do! She could be anywhere, anywhere! White Forest is a huge place, all I need to do is wait for someone to say something!"
I was feeling especially aggravated by Magnusson's rants as we walked together across the vast space that was Silo 1. The rocket had been launched successfully, which was a definite reason for celebration.
However, I had no reason to celebrate as I was missing a certain debeaked headcrab, a fact that my colleague felt had to be continually shoved into my face. He had suffered greatly from her antics and sensed it was now time for payback.
"Magnusson, please stop ranting at me or I might just-"
I suddenly realized he was gone. No wait, everything was gone. I was no longer walking across old, clacking tiles that had been in place since the Cold War, but ebony nothingness.
"How curious, to be back again..."
I blindly reached up my face for my glasses, thinking bleak thoughts as I wiped them on my worn out lab coat.
This unending darkness, this thick blackness that I had sworn off years ago. There was no ceiling, no walls, no floor, no anything. No physical restraint whatsoever. In this place, one was truly alone with their regrets and desires to look over and over again. Delusions and memories lived side by side in the timeless atmosphere that covered all who were ruthlessly thrown into this unending cataclysm of...
Dark matter? Perhaps, or it could just be another illusion that I have to play around with in order to find yet another puzzle's solution.
In spite of the darkness, I held up my glasses and peered at them to look for dust particles. Right on cue, I was instantly bathed in a beam of sunlight from above.
Yep, no dust particles.
As I replaced the glasses over my eyes, it seemed that something was off. Specifically, the nonexistent floor under my feet had harshly tipped to the left as if a great weight had fallen onto it.
The door looming in front of me was the only indication of this quick change. With no other options, my feet brought me to the doorknob before skidding to a stop. I had to blink twice to realize this was the real thing. (Read: slashes in the wood, peeling paint, a bullet hole in the tinted glass... not a fake.) The remaining letters on the door read:
Ma_ Administrator_ Off_, _ Wall_ Br_
A touch to that tinted glass and... yes, I remembered everything. My first time in this office had been with the doctor, my friend, as he had been welcoming me into my previous job. (Friend no more, the traitor...) As the years skipped by, I would meet up with Eli and his family, Magnusson, Calhoun and Gordon...
I wished to be happy again...
Since that one little event blotted out my life forever.
The door shuddered, then creaked as it was forced open for the first time in twenty years. The room was the same: the windows to the right casted a shivery light onto the blank walls, illuminating the imposing desk and swivel chair in the back of the room. The huge computer screen on the wall behind the desk was a dull black.
I peered around the room cautiously, for who could tell if any of the aliens from that time ago had been living and waiting in this very room?
"Hello? Is anyone there?"
No one answered to my inquiries, so I stepped in and gently closed the door behind me (it had a tendency to slam shut). I approached the desk.
"Look here, I do not know what to call you, but this isn't the first time I have been taken out of my world. And from what you've allowed me to know and understand, this will not be my last trip either.
"If you want to show me something, show it. If you want to speak, speak away. If you want me dead, well... make it quick please."
One minute passed.
Two minutes passed.
Four minutes-
The feeling that something was off came back as my surroundings started to change rapidly. Door, windows, walls, chair, screen, ceiling, floor and desk all melted and solidified into thick blackness. At the same time, I started smelling this exotic scent of... not flowers, perhaps more like flowers combined with the searing smell of burning metal that jabbed into my senses and left me shivering.
When I was able to stop shivering, I noticed I had ground to step on again. But this time, I had a jagged, rocky surface staring up at me instead of smooth, black tiles. The surface extended into a huge cave with a luminous blue pool in the center of it. The exotic scent was more breathable now and the air felt cleaner.
A sharp, shrill shriek sounded from behind me and, while I turned around, a small, round body landed on my chest. I screamed as the momentum of the body landing on me made me fall on my back. I quickly picked myself up and prepared to disable the creature's grasp on my chest.
"What the- Lamarr!"
The mischievous headcrab began emitting squeaks as I picked her off my chest.
"Amazing, I thought you were dead, Hedy! Geez, didn't Magnusson give you enough warnings to never leap into his rocket as recklessly as you always did? When I realized you were in that rocket, I-I just gave up on you, you know that? I had given up on you, Lamarr."
I could never stay angry at my headcrab, so I hugged her to my chest and began looking for a way out.
It turned out there was no need to look around. I was sitting on the floor of White Forest's now empty Silo 1.
o0o0o0o0o0
The swivel chair was once again occupied as the man watched the huge computer screen on the wall. The doctor had made it through yet again another interesting trip between worlds.
And yet again, everything had gone according to plan.
As the doctor began to stand up, the screen faded into black. The swivel chair creaked as its occupant turned around to survey the IOU on the imposing desk.
The doctor's name was written under the title "Borrower".
Hm, I think I made Kleiner too OOC... but then again, how can he not get aggravated by Magusson if his precious Lamarr is gone?
As for the G-Man's appearance in this story, I don't think Kleiner really knows him in the series itself...