City 17 burned and the Combine kept shooting.
It all seemed so stupid. So futile. Amber just wanted to scream, "What's the point?" She wanted to negotiate with them, telling them that they could help each other. For the first time the Citizens and the Combine Soldiers were in the same boat. They both had to face the dangers of Antlions. They both had to dodge falling rubble. They both were stuck in this damned city, the city that Amber had been in for most of her life; the city that she felt like she would die in.
And there was one person to blame. No, not Breen, although he seemed to be the obvious choice. Not Matthew, who gotten Amber even more lost in this broken land due to his complete certainty that he knew the way out, which he didn't. Not even the leader of the Combine, whoever the hell that was. No, Amber didn't blame them.
She did, however, blame Gordon Freeman.
Why not? He started the Black Mesa Incident. He unleashed the Combine on Earth. When he came back, some 20 years later, he made sure everything went to hell again. Before he stepped off the train in City 17, life was hard for Amber, but predictable and bearable. She knew who to trust. She knew who to steer clear of. She knew how to avoid Civil Protection, and how to make it through the day by working hard and falling asleep early, the combination allowing her little time to think.
Shortly after the "great" Gordon Freeman arrived, there was the rebellion. The war, where everyone who could picked up a gun and fought alongside Freeman. Amber watched from her window as her lifelong friends and neighbors were shot down. Her family died helping Freeman fight Striders. Amber saw her mother fall to the ground, killed by friendly fire. She saw her brother be impaled through the chest with a Strider's foot. She saw this all from her hiding space on top of a roof. She hated herself for being too cowardly to fight, and hated Freeman for starting the battle in the first place.
Now this. Amber had been hiding from the fight in a small shed, listening to the sounds of war outside, when it blew apart. A bright flash. She had the sudden thought that this was nuclear war, an old fear she had when she was young, a Pre-Combine worry. It wasn't nuclear war, of course, seeing how the only one with the weapons now were the Combine. No, it was the top of the Citadel exploding. It was her old life; horrible, but still familiar, being shattered like the glass on the windows.
She couldn't ignore the sounds, not like she could ignore everything else. She heard the cliché sounds you expect to hear after such an explosion, such as screaming and the toppling of bricks, the sounds of chaos. But these noises came with ones Amber hadn't heard much before. The high pitched, screeching sound of Scanners, Dropships, and Manhacks, all rushing out of the Citadel. Something that sounded like air being let out of a tire, something being blown through the city. The deep, echoing thump, thump, thump of a Strider's three legged walk as it reduced tall buildings to rubble in seconds.
She wished she had stayed in the shed, now. She missed having shelter. She felt vulnerable out here. She had tugged a gun from Matthew's bloody fingers and grabbed some extra ammo from his pockets for protection, but still didn't feel safe. Amber didn't like using the small pistol, but she had to. She used it to protect herself from the Antlions and Manhacks.
She used it to protect herself from the Combine. Because, although City 17 burned, they just wouldn't stop shooting.
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A/N- I've decided to take a break from my Oneshot style of writing and try doing a
longer story. I'll update at least once a week, but sometimes I'll do a new post twice a week, depending on how much homework I have.
Also, I don't own Half-Life. I forgot to put this in my other Oneshots, so this goes for them as well. Also, this is set in Episode 1 if you didn't know.
Thanks for reading! There will be more action, more characters, and more fights in later and longer chapters. Please review, as this keeps me motivated and will lead to me writing faster and better.
Psychotype