Enough
There are a lot of things you hear about Gordon Freeman, about the places he's been and the things he's done. Stories of the mythical, legendary type, stories which you have no way of knowing if they're true or not, and when you're both running for your lives across a plaza that feels more like a shooting gallery, you don't exactly get the opportunity to ask. But there is one story I hear them tell that I know is true, one thing he definitely did do, and that one thing was more than enough for me.
We were all crammed into the foyer of what used to be a factory, where Barney (yes, that Barney) had rallied us. The train station was our objective, our way out of City 17, and it was tantalizingly close. But there was no way Barney was going to let any more of us try to make a run for it. The plaza was a closed square at this end, and the other end was overlooked by two full detachments of Combine troops, with more arriving every second. A shooting gallery, like I said.
Then Dr Freeman arrived, along with Alyx Vance, and Barney's face just seemed to light up with relief under all the dirt and blood, like he knew that everything was going to go alright from now on. But there was no time for greetings.
"If you can keep us safe and provide cover, we might actually stand a chance of reaching the escape trains!"
Freeman and Alyx's eyes met briefly, and I saw her smile at him, that certain kind of smile. Then she nodded, not directly at him but over his shoulder, towards us. He turned slightly and looked at us, huddled together against the wall. Then he nodded too, took a deep breath, and flipped his helmet on He moved to the edge of the wall, stuck his head out cautiously, and waited. The Combine opened fire, and I even heard a bullet or two pinging off his armour, but he took his time. Eventually, he just slipped back into the room and used the first-aid box on the wall. A few of us were looking at each other then, but then he pulled out the crossbow. It looked like it came from Hell, entirely black, with the bolts giving off a red glow that was both sickly and lurid. Ironically I found the sight of it reassuring, because I knew exactly where it had come from. A man named Jerome had worked before the War making replica weapons to use as props in movies and high-end stage productions. He knew how to do all kinds of crazy metalwork, so since he got his hands on that weird Combine alloy he's been making real ones for the Resistance ever since. I used to be stationed as a guard at his workshop, so the sight of the crossbow was actually quite comforting, because I knew exactly what it could do.
Freeman turned back into the doorway, aimed and fired. There was a terrible smell of burning chemicals, a cry, and then the unmistakable sound of a Combine flatlining. We all met each other's eyes and found that we were smiling. Freeman reloaded, gestured to Barney, and took aim again.
Barney was sending us across in groups of four. My squad made it across the plaza and into the train yard. I was in front, climbing a ramp that lead to a walkway spanning the entire building. And as I reached the top, it happened.
The Elite appeared in front of me as if out of nowhere, the red eye expressionless, the gun pointing straight at me. I'm not a coward; in fact I've been commended for my bravery in combat, which is how I come to have a squad of my own. But I felt a hot band grip my head and chest then, and squeeze them oh so tight. My tongue felt like a dry sponge, and my hands were so cold they just didn't seem to be there any more, so I couldn't even feel my rifle as I tried to raise it.
See I'm not afraid of the CP, because I understand who they are. They're just people who couldn't take it any more, so they decided to trade in a bit of their conscience for guaranteed food and shelter and a small amount of status. It's a choice I could totally imagine making, especially if you were a woman with hungry children, a man with a sick mother. And the more of them you shoot and the harder you beat the ones you capture, the more you prove to your comrades that there's no way you would have ever made that choice, that you are once and for all a better human being. Sometimes, you almost manage to convince yourself. But oh, those men in white…
They're not even men any more, but once they were. Maybe some of them were women. That's what makes it so horrifying. I was just helpless standing in front of it. I heard a whirring, and I knew then that it was going to shoot me with one of those balls of energy. It would pass through me and wipe out the rest of my squad, leaving us as if we'd never even existed.
There was a terrible flash, and at the same moment, he appeared in front of me. He was a blur of orange and grey, but to me everything was in black and white. I've heard that can happed to your vision in really high-pressure situations. The energy ball struck him square in the chest and bounced back, passing directly through the Elite trooper, lifting it off its feet and dissolving it in mid-air.
Dr Freeman shuddered, frozen in position in front of me. A greenish spark traveled across the plates of his armour, and I could see silhouetted against the light from the window that his hair was literally standing on end, The moment passed, and when he turned to me I saw that he was grinning, genuinely amused by what he'd just done. I couldn't think of anything to do but grin back, and wonder if he knew that there was blood visible between his teeth. He waved me on, pointing me to the end of the walkway. I turned and saw Alyx Vance guarding the entrance to the platforms.
As I ran I knew Dr Freeman was with us, covering our backs, chivvying the rest of my squad along. As he ran past, I saw Curtis turn slightly and mutter to Jan.
"All right, I'm moving. Jeez!"
As I crossed the threshold to the platform and the waiting evac train, I resolved that Curtis would be doing a lot of cooking, carrying and late night guard duty from then on. He hadn't even noticed what had happened. But like I said, I knew what Freeman had done in that train yard, and that was more than enough to make him a legend to me.