God, it was freezing in here.
Her breath misted in the air, echoing through the wide, empty, silent space. The whole place was so quiet Alyx could hear her own shivering through the fluttering of her pistol, the metal shaking under her fingers. She ducked down, scanning behind stacks of crates, perfect spaces for a nest of Combine soldiers to be lying in wait. The hum of the gravity gun softly teased her ear, and a quick peripheral glance showed Gordon expertly piling boxes to reach the horseshoe-shaped footway overhead.
She plucked the flashlight from her belt, shining it into the nearest darkened corner, chasing away the shadows that carpeted the place. Broken bottles and cans, a yellowed jug of she didn't want to know what, dust, and what looked like a rusted-over socket wrench. Empty. With a sigh she clicked the light off and relaxed against a concrete pillar holding up the catwalk, glancing up. Beside a window filled with the flashing white of driving snow, she watched Gordon leaning over the rails, peering into the dark below.
"Gordon, you see anything?" she called, the echoing of her voice briefly overtaking the howling of the storm outside. He glanced up—she smiled and waved. He waved back a little before remembering himself and pointing down, hopping over the rail to the floor below.
Instinctively reloading her pistol, Alyx stood and carefully ducked into the maze of crates that split the room. A few dark, ominous stains decorated the concrete floor, too old and worn away to really identify (but she had a pretty good hunch). Kicking aside a few cardboard boxes and squeezing through a tight gap, she emerged on the other side of the crate-range to find Gordon by the far wall, bathed in the glow of his flashlight.
"Damn it," she swore as she approached. She hated when she was right about these things—blood smeared the wall, three bodies splayed across each other at the foot of it. Blue workers' jumpsuits had largely turned with the rest of the bodies, a dust-covered hardhat sitting on a box nearby. Great. "Looks like the Combine's already been here."
Gordon nodded slightly as he inspected them, dragging the lamplight slowly and deliberately across the ground. Alyx contented herself with the fact that the blood looked old, crusted and indistinct. That and, well, at least their heads were unoccupied.
Gordon paused, his light revealing the markings of a supply crate beneath the old hat. Nice! Exactly what they needed. It was only after she had half-raised her hand in a high-five (a snappy little compliment forming in her mind that she hoped made this whole thing a lot less unpleasant and maybe turned up the corners of his mouth a little the way she liked) that she saw the insignia stamped across the box's side.
She stopped. Gordon fired up the gravity gun, pulling the crate out from underneath its makeshift adornment, and lifted it to eye-level. Aperture Science Laboratories it read, hastily stenciled in blue-grey, that camera-lens logo staring sardonically back at them.
"Oh, man." Alyx caught her breath, swallowing uncomfortably. Suddenly, the whole space around them seemed to take on a darker air, its quiet and its emptiness making her heart pound.
Calm down, Alyx, she told herself, sighing and rubbing frozen fingers against her forehead. She forced herself to focus on the coordinates, the maps and data stored safely in the EMP. They knew where the Borealis was and, thank God, it wasn't here. And even if the Combine had gotten this far, this close—well, she thought grimly, jaw tightening, they would know by now if the bastards had found it. Heat flared up in her stomach, an itch to get back in the air. She cursed the storm outside, the lack of visibility, the cold that could freeze their fuel lines, the barely present overhang that didn't hide the chopper at all and—the angry murmur slipped through her teeth as she shook her head, tapping nervous fingers against her temple.
She was pretty sure she felt more than heard the shifting at her side, the slight oscillation in the gravity gun's mechanical hum. She glanced up and found Gordon looking at her, eyebrows furrowed, the box in the gravity gun's grasp apparently forgotten.
"Guess we know what the Combine were doing here," she said bitterly, shaking her head. "Let's just hope they didn't find anything useful." She turned away, squinting at the far wall. "Well, we might as well look around and see if there's anything they missed, right? Maybe get some supplies out of it."
Gordon didn't move. When she looked back over her shoulder, he was still watching her, fingers fidgeting slightly against the gravity gun's the near-light she caught the downward slant of his eyebrows, the slight tilt of his head, the way his gaze shifted as if he didn't want to be caught staring. He looked—hmm.
"Gordon," she said, a chuckle pulling up from her heart, seeping through her harsh mood. "Don't worry, I'm fine." Switching the light to her other hand, she clapped him on the shoulder, eliciting a muted thump from the HEV suit's dense coating. "Let's just nab whatever this place has left before the the weather clears up. You can start with the box."
Gordon eyed her a moment longer as she gestured at the crate; she answered his gaze with an arched eyebrow. Then, with a slow dip of his head he nodded, turning away and firing the box into the wall. A quick brush through the shattered wood with his boot revealed a couple of medkits, a HEV recharge, and a few boxes of shells.
"All right," she said, helping him to gather up their bundle (giving him a quirky little smile when she looked up and found him looking at her again), and depositing it on a conspicuously placed crate for safe keeping. Relying on failing light from the windows to illuminate the the room, she squinted, searching for—
Aha, there! Along the dust-covered, grey-washed wall she saw the lines of an industrial door frame, barely visible in the shadow of the catwalk but there, a dying beacon to—well, something, she hoped. She jogged over and tried the handle to little effect, heard and felt the thing groan in protest. Great. Rusted shut. She turned to Gordon as she felt him appear at her shoulder.
"Like to do the honors?" she said, giving him a smile and a quick door-ward nod before stepping out of the line of fire. He really was a sight with that thing; she smiled at the memory that flashed across her brain—the difference between the John-Q-Scrub on the floor of an apartment block in City 17 and the HEVed-out terror that blew gunships out of the sky—as he stepped up and hit the thing with a few blasts from the gravity gun. He tore it off its hinges like it was made of cardboard before launching it to the other side of the warehouse. Impressive as always, she thought.
After taking a moment to admire the back of his head over the HEV suit's collar, she turned her attention to the now empty doorway. Black. No windows, no lights, not even the slightest flicker from reserve-power nodules. Looked like this place must've been abandoned for a good long while, now.
Gordon was quicker with the light than she was, and his flash swiftly illuminated the wide and mundane-looking hallway that lay beyond the door frame Cautiously, he stepped inside; slipping her pistol back into both hands, Alyx followed. She heard the swish of a couple decades' worth of dust beneath his feet, watched as it swirled up around their ankles in little typhoons. Silently (well, yeah, duh), Gordon forced open a stubborn door to their right, revealing an exciting trove of cardboard boxes, old tables, a few industrial plugs in the wall, and some crusted over cans of sealant. The opening at the hall's end revealed a break room, holding an overturned refrigerator and a plastic table covered in the remains of food long since disintegrated. And of course, dust.
One more bare doorway greeted them as they backtracked, one last chance for something beneficial—the self-destruct codes for every Combine ship in the known universe, maybe, while they were making outrageous demands. Their luck was as good as could be expected: the room yielded only a utility closet, door hanging off its hinges; a file cabinet set sideways and haphazardly tilted against the wall, and a thick steel desk occupied by a lone rotary telephone. Great. Alyx let a frustrated puff of breath slip from her mouth. So much for anything useful.
As Gordon's light flitted across the ground, it jumped over the corner of something white and square, folded up in an accordion shape and—"Wait," she said quickly, waving at him. "Over here, Gordon."
After a bit of maneuvering to figure out where 'here' was, Gordon lit on just the right spot beneath the desk, illuminating a stout portable heater. It was as old as everything else here, covered in dust and with a few dark singes on the edges of its folds, but that didn't stop Alyx from nearly drooling at the sight of it. Suddenly, she was that much more aware of her prickling skin, the room's cold breath on the back of her neck making her shiver.
"God, I'd give anything for that to work," she said wistfully, dropping to her knees and pulling out her own light for a closer look. Electric—great—and with Aperture's logo stamped on it, so even if she could get it to turn on it would probably blow up in her face. She fiddled with its loose knobs, followed its cord to an integrated power strip beneath the desk, traced that with her fingers. She saw Gordon's light shift and then vanish, stiffening before she heard the calm slowness of his footsteps, hmmed and shrugged and went back to her vain inspection. Her eyebrows furrowed at the strip as she found a small switch, flipping and unflipping and reflipping it again. Sighing, she bundled herself further into her jacket and carried on with the rhythm of the movement, losing focus on the dark little switch.
And even as she tried to stifle it, keep her mind blank, in the quiet and the dark, she started to think . . .
One more, repetitive flip, and the switch lit up with a click. Alyx jerked her head in surprise, eyes widening. The miniscule hum of electricity just barely edged out the silence, but was still unmistakable. Turning, she shuffled back to the heater, flashing her light across its smudged face and twisting one of the knobs. A blast of air hit her side, the smell of burning dust assaulting her nose but not stopping her whoop of victory. "Awesome!" she said, pumping her fist as she hopped to her feet. "Hey Gordon! Come in here!"
She turned to call into the next room, only to find him stepping through the doorway, eying the heater almost knowingly before looking up to her. She turned her head, glanced from him to the heater (which—and she almost sighed obscenely at this—had slowly begun to pour hot air out against the backs of her legs) and back again. She gestured to it slightly, eyebrow quirked. "Did you . . .?"
Gordon answered with a shrug, but even in the muted-dark she caught the slight twitch of a smile on his face. Huh. Scientist, Opener of the Way, and apparently a magician. His resume got longer every minute.
"Well," she said, crossing her arms over her chest and admiring the little machine, thrumming with the strain of its task, "nice to get some good luck now and then." Crouching down, she delicately propped her light beside it, shining upward to cast a twilight glow over the darkened room. She sat down cross-legged in front of the heater, leaning forward to feel the warmth on her face. "Have a seat," she told Gordon, smiling and giving the ground a welcoming pat.
He started to dip to one knee, tilting the gravity gun's nose down, when something apparently caught his eye. She followed his gaze to the desk, but whatever he saw, she didn't spot. He strode to its far side and peered between it and the wall, shining his light into the space. After a moment, she heard the telltale hum of the gravity gun's lift, and Gordon stepped back, pulling something with him.
Alyx squinted at the thing as Gordon set it down on the desk, not sure what to make of it. By the light of his flash, it looked like a radio, with a few extra, unnecessary surfaces and buttons. Upon getting up and inspecting the thing, she was quick to recognize it. "Hey, cool."
An old radio, a cassette player; she tapped its hard plastic front, the little window to watch the tape turning through. She could hear a slight buzz of feedback coming through the speakers. Jeez, these things sure had a shelf life. She toyed with the radio knobs on top, turning up the volume and pressing her ear close to it, listening for any kind of friendly—or unfriendly; that could be useful—transmissions, and came up with nothing. Not that she'd expected any different. Even if anyone were transmitting this far north, the storm would have seen to any messages. Oh well. Letting her sigh out through her nose, Alyx prodded one of the buttons, labeled with a small square. The casing popping open for her inspection.
Hmm, there was something in here. Plucking the cassette free, she flipped it over, squinting at it in the near-light. "Beatles mix-tape for Sara," she read, the writing an almost illegible scrawl (with Sara crossed out, then rewritten overhead in different ink), turning it over in her hands. "Ha, wow, old music. Your kind of thing, Gordon?"
He turned sharply and furrowed his eyebrows at her, the very shape and appearance of his young-looking face seeming to express offense. She chuckled, waving a hand at him. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding. It's just"—she leaned over to slide the tape back into place, smiling lightly as she clicked the case shut—"you couldn't exactly hear real music on Breen's show, but dad always likes t—"
She froze. Choked on the words. Dad.
Close your e—she clamped her eyes shut, hard, trying not to see—I love you, sweetheart. Don't look.
She said nothing for a moment, her tongue hurting where she didn't realize she'd been biting it. "He always liked to play old music like this," she forced herself to say. "Whenever he could find it."
She felt a weight on her shoulder, light at first, then heavier, fingers curling and gripping her comfortingly. She turned—the dark made it hard to see his face clearly, but, still, she was pretty sure she knew what was there.
"Thanks, Gordon," she said, smiling weakly. "I'm okay, really."
He didn't take his eyes off her, back up or even move his hand. She saw his head tilt just a bit, like he was trying to get a closer look in the dark, before she looked away. "Okay, how about," she started, brushing her fingers across the buttons and pressing 'play'. She got a hiss from the speakers as they clicked to life, the somber strum of a guitar coming through. "Yesterday. All my troubles seemed so far awa—"
In a blink she found Gordon leaning past her, finger pressed firmly against the fast-forward button. He glanced up as the tape zoomed through the track, and the look of forced nonchalance he gave her—or, really, the is-that-shyness-I-see-Doctor-Freeman? way he looked away—made her lips quirk despite the tightness in her chest. He pressed play once he apparently thought it was safe, and seemed to consider the next song a little bit longer ("—writing fifty times I must not be so-oh-oh-oh. But as she turns her back on the boy, he creeps up from behi—") before changing that, too.
She chuckled a little, stepping back and leaving Gordon to it, returning to her spot in front of the heater. He finally settled on a shock of an upbeat tune (a young guy's voice crooning, "You say yes, I say no") before coming over and sitting down beside her. Alyx wrapped her arms around her knees, staring at the gently buzzing bit of machinery, listening to the music. "Never heard this one before," she noted absently, and was happy for the fact. If she had—well. She tried to let the unfamiliarity of it clear her head.
She saw Gordon nod slightly. He stared into the dark, and even after he was done nodding his head seemed to bob with the weird rhythm of the song. Strangely, and she didn't know why, it made her want to look at him more, made him hard to look away from. "Like this band?"
He shrugged, setting the gravity gun aside and propping his elbows on his knees. She . . . well, she watched him. The way he inattentively ran a hand over his hair, toyed with the corner of his glasses and straightened them. Thoughtful. It shouldn't have surprised her—after all, he was a scientist—but every time she saw him like that it made her stop, made her think too. About something different, of course.
"Not your thing, huh?" she found herself saying. He looked up at her, eyebrows raised—a second later, though, she caught a little smile of acknowledgment on his mouth. She shrugged, answering with a grin of her own. "Well, you can't really kill Striders to it, right?"
His smile dampened a bit, but held as he tilted his head noncommittally and looked to the heater. The song changed—she heard something about strawberries. She knew that they should turn it off, with what little power was probably left in reserve, but she couldn't bring herself to want to. Sure, the music was a little strange (she squinted at the ground trying to make sense of the lyrics, and gave herself about two minutes before giving up), but it was appealing just the same. It seemed so sentimental and happy; heck, maybe it was just the fact that it was music and not abject silence barely covering the echo of sobs. Maybe.
Or, well, maybe it was something else. She looked at Gordon out of the corner of her eye so he couldn't catch her staring. It was an odd thing to think, really. As young as he looked, just a little bit older than her maybe, she knew what that betrayed. A man that, from all of Dr. Kleiner and Barney and da—all of the stories she'd heard, had up and vanished for twenty years. Like them, he knew what the world was like before—well, before everything. He knew the world before the First Days. He knew this music.
The song changed again after a few seconds of silence, a heavy strum giving way to a strangely bouncy tune. "I've just seen a face I can't forget the time or place where we just met—" But that world was long gone now, wasn't it?
On an impulse, she scooted closer, half an inch from rubbing shoulders with him. Gordon jumped a bit and moved to make space, but stopped (looking kind of cutely confused, not that she'd say so) when he got a look at her smile. Cautiously he settled, arms sinking back down against his legs. She leaned a bit closer, tilting her head. "Hey, Gordon . . ." she started, slowly reaching for his shoulder.
The flashlight flickered.
"Uh oh," she murmured, and it was all she had time to say before it blinked out. The red power light of the heater seemed to float in midair, the music playing heedlessly on—"I'd've never been aware, but as it is I'll dream of her tonight"—from out of the dark. She felt Gordon shuffling at her side, leaning unintentionally against her as he searched for his own light.
Something, out of the black, caught her eye.
"Wait," she said, gripping his arm, and though he probably couldn't feel it through the suit he stopped. She could almost feel his expectant, blinded gaze on the side of her face. "Do you see that?" she asked, squinting at—yeah, there it was, a little line of white light standing out in the dark.
A moment of silence passed as Gordon seemed to consider it (if he saw it, anyway, if she wasn't just imagining things) before shifting again, his flashlight clicking to life and turning toward the source. The speck predictably vanished; the old file cabinet, tilted against the wall, filled the light's scope.
That . . . that was a really weird way to stand a file cabinet. "Gordon," she started, her hand drifting over his arm and shoulder as she stood, not taking her eyes off the forest green piece of ancient furniture. "Can you move that?"
He was way ahead of her. In one fluid motion he stood, raised the gravity gun, and pulled the trigger. The cabinet lifted off the ground like a box of feathers (full of helium) and he moved it with surprising grace, only banging up the end of the desk a bit and snapping off a closet door where he dropped it. When that task was done to his satisfaction he turned, shining his light on the newly emptied space.
A door, painted with a thick layer of grime and rust, doorknob snapped off and keypad suspiciously shattered, greeted them glumly. A thin seam of light, only visible when Gordon jostled his flash about, palely lit the frame.
Alyx slipped the gun from her hip, looking Gordon's way. He stepped forward and, using the nose of the gravity gun, edged the door open. Harsh, white-blue light assaulted Alyx's eyes, and she threw a hand up to shield them just as she saw Gordon hurry through the door. Well, time to follow the leader.
She ducked low as she raced out on his heels, her eyes watering as they adjusted to the brightness. Well, first thoughts, they weren't being shot at. That was a good sign. Dented, scuffed but intact steel walls quickly presented themselves—beat up, sure, but looking a whole lot better than what they'd just left behind. Giant windows stood across from them, light pouring in to outline every inch of the room, highlighting its small size.
And revealing some very interesting things within.
"Whoa," Alyx breathed, relaxing out of her battle stance and taking a step forward. Against the near wall stood a vast computer terminal, wall-propped screen slightly tilted, three Combine soldiers splayed across the desk. A reassuring amount of blood covered them, the table and—eugh—the wall itself. Another metal desk sat in the middle of the room, toppled and heavily dented by what must have been an intense firefight. From the looks of it, it hadn't done them much good.
Gordon pulled the crowbar from his hip, giving the topmost Combine soldier a good whack to the back.
"Gordon . . ." she said with a muffled chuckle as he paused, eying the guard a moment before stepping back, apparently satisfied. Thoroughly reassured of their safety thanks to her knight in orange armor, Alyx holstered her gun, and took a moment to look around the room. More utility closets stood against the wall opposite the computer, a blank space between them, and—well, aside from the desk and the terminal, that was about it. Sidling across the room to the industrial-sized windows, she leaned against the frame and gazed out.
"Hey, look at that," she said, pointing. On the other side of the glass lay a manufacturing dock, a smaller, near copy of the storage area they'd just left. A few metal work stations replaced the plethora of crates from the previous room, some toppled, barely discernible objects that'd probably occupied them scattered across the floor. A massive overhead door filled the far wall, probably rusted over. It was the room's lights, though, that caught her attention: giant industrial hanging lamps, a few of them broken from disuse and all of the dimmed by grime yet somehow powered up.
"That's one hell of a reserve grid you tapped, Gordon," she said, rubbing her chin as she looked the wing over. "Either it has insane retention or all of this is running on nothing."
After a moment's quiet consideration, she turned, casting her gaze back to the, well, occupied computer. "Hey," she said, turning to Gordon as she moved back across the room, pointing toward the console. "Think we'll get lucky?"
He raised an eyebrow, then followed, shifting the gravity gun in his hands as he looked down at the first Combine soldier. Poor Gordon—he probably missed the super gun even more than she did.
Alyx stepped up next to the console, arms folded over her chest as she sized up the situation. "Guess those Aperture guys didn't go down without a fight," she said, then, unceremoniously, hauled the first soldier off. "Glad we don't have to deal with them, huh?"
Gordon set the gravity gun down and helped her with the second. She caught his half-shrug as he stood up and she took the liberty of throwing off the third. Ha. Of course the terror of Black Mesa wouldn't be afraid of a few Aperture Science goons.
"Now," Alyx muttered, scooting into place and setting her fingers on the familiar keys, hoping and doubting but hoping harder that Aperture and Black Mesa had worked on similar systems. "If I could just . . ."
For a second, a sadly predictable bout of nothing happened, and she wasn't sure whether she should feel eager or crestfallen. She was beginning to lean toward the latter when the screen seemed to sputter, a firecracker of color flashing through the black, mechanisms whined—and then the whole thing jumped to life, the color distorted and the image a little snowy but still, miraculously, working.
She gave a whoop of triumph, turning to Gordon and pumping her fist in the air. He answered with a more restrained version of the gesture; Alyx couldn't keep the silly little smirk off her face as she took up the EMP and turned back to the machine. "Let's see what this baby's got stored up, huh?"
A whole lot of nothing, she quickly found out. She scrolled through the system's stored folders, a plethora of creatively named files from f_0001 to ANQ72 greeting her searching eyes. She worried her lip in concentration, looking for anything that might be useful, or even interesting. "Dr. Kleiner said these guys were supposed to be working on a fuel icing inhibitor the same year that Black Mesa was putting one together," she thought allowed in Gordon's direction. "Maybe they managed to complete it before . . . well, you know. Maybe if they had some blueprints put together, we radio Dr. Kleiner when the storm clears and read them off. He can make sure it won't blow up on us."
A file labeled overrides managed to jump out at her, buried in a sea of dwnld_1's and memo3's. Opening it revealed an old document, defining task links and button commands. Opn by dr she read, eyebrow raised, glancing at the code that followed. Curiously, she tapped it in—a grinding howl sounded from the manufacturing floor. Turning, she found the rusty old door slowly sliding back, creaking upward inch by inch.
"Hmm," she murmured thoughtfully, glancing to Gordon where he'd begun to inspect the utility closets. "Hey Gordon," she said, jerking her head toward the door, "you think you can fit the chopper through there?"
Dropping a dingy-looking health capsule that he'd been using the gravity gun to inspect, Gordon looked out the window, watching the door crawl its way open. He stepped closer, eyes narrowing behind his glasses in thought.
"Nobody can drive quite like you can," she teased, and bit down on her smile when he turned a thoroughly unamused look on her. She went back to the computer, poking and prodding through the system. "I think I might even be able to . . ."
A buzz of white noise sounded through the speakers, fuzzy with disuse, but still, good enough for her. "Yes!" she said, fingers flying as she entered the proper frequency into an ancient, but functional radio program. "I should be able to keep in contact with you from here," she said, throwing a glance and a smile over her shoulder. "In case you need help parking."
The look of quiet exasperation on Gordon's face only made her smile more.
"I'll stick around here, see if there's anything else I can dig up." Turning back to the computer, she pulled up the main network window and hoped, with the slightest gritting of her teeth, that the fuel lines hadn't already frozen.
It took her a moment of quick scanning and quiet typing before she realized Gordon was still there. She glanced back at him, about to say something, and froze midway through. He was watching her again—not worried, not skeptical, without that little frown and folded-down eyebrows that made her snicker even though she knew she shouldn't; he didn't even have on his purposefully blanked face. She—it confused her. She couldn't really tell what that look was.
"Um," she said, clearing her throat a bit, uncomfortably, "Gordon?"
He paused a second longer, then slowly, deliberately, shook his head. She, in response, gave him a little smile, in that weird way she felt compelled to smile these days.
"Go on, Gordon," she said. "I'll be right here when you get back."
He nodded after a moment, then slowly jogged from the room. She swore she felt his gaze on the side of her neck as she turned away, like a little shock of static, maybe a flash of light magnified by those glasses. She felt a light shiver down her back and cleared her throat as she leaned over the keyboard again, swiftly clicking away, the old-school system odd and disorganized but slowly unveiling itself before her.
Like a calculation, she thought as she tried to piece together evidence of a coherent filing system. A really difficult calculation, the kind that would keep him up hours thinking about it. Or maybe—hmm . . .
recent caught her eye, a plain-looking little folder that she opened half-attentively. Maybe like a theory he was studying. She imagined him in school, working with her fath—she gave one of the keys a violent tap, accidentally clicking on a file, the old mechanism humming as it struggled to complete the task. Back, she forced herself to think, when he was just starting at Black Mesa. He must've been curious, as curious as he was thoughtful, studying something he really cared about. Something he really . . .
She had a split second to raise her eyebrow at the window that popped up on screen—a clock, a line, a play and stop button—before a roar of a man's voice came blaring through the old speakers. "Gentlemen, Cave Johnson here."
Alyx slapped her hands over her ears, still hearing that voice loud and clear through her fingers. "You may not be as well-trained, intelligent, or indispensable as the science boys up here at Aperture Main, but you and I both know most of those pansies wouldn't know a hammer if it hit 'em in the kisser," the voice bellowed on. "You boys are on the ground floor, screwing and soldering and nailing that stuff together like nobody's business.
"Now, we've got some new information that we know you'll want to hear about. We know, because it's mandatory. My lovely assistant Caroline will be attaching some useful viewing material about our competition, so whenever that lunch whistles blows or whatever happens, just feel free to go ahead and watch that. Memorize it, even. It'll do your brains good."
Alyx wasn't sure what would be worse: listening to any more of that bellowing, or moving her hands long enough to try and shut it off. She forced herself to do it, grinding her teeth as she tried to close the program, and found it locked by inlaid protocol. The voice, meanwhile, tore heedlessly on.
"Gentlemen, you're the key to beating the pants off those nancies over at Black Mesa. Remember that you are building the future of Aperture Science, one steel sheet at a time. Though, if you get any ideas about unions or anything, just remember that bit earlier about you being dispensable. Aperture Science does not tolerate witchcraft or Communism."
Giving up on stopping it, Alyx sighed in relief as she managed to dial down the volume, the last few words coming as quietly as a light yell. "Aperture Science: tomorrow's science, today. This is Cave Johnson, signing off."
Her ears rang in the silence as the program closed itself, and she grumbled bitterly under her breath. Wow. That guy seemed like a real piece of work, whoever he was. Looked like Dr. Kleiner hadn't been exaggerating about these people.
She searched the rest of the folder. There was barely anything with a date later than the 1990's, with only three files from 2001. FORM-55551-5, FORM-55551-6—she tapped her temple and, checking that it wasn't audio file, opened FORM-29827281-12. She quickly read the text that popped up on-screen—her eyebrow arched with every line. Test Assessment Report, it read. This was a triumph. I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS. It's hard to overstate my satisfaction. Aperture Science we do what we must because we can. For the good of all of us. Except the ones who are
From there it descended into a mess of nonsensical characters—corrupted data, probably, poorly compiled and then sent over a bad connection into a failing network—but she really didn't think she needed to see any more.
She backtracked out of the folder, barely glimpsing each file as her mind whirred on. That was the last thing that'd been sent, and even before that, there was at least a three-year gap between it and the last file this station had received.
She was searching randomly now, hardly taking note of the repetitive names as she delved deeper into the system. That gap—that was before the Black Mesa incident. Why, she wondered in the part of her brain that wasn't busy with her bewilderment—why had they stopped communicating with their outposts? What had happened? What was—
Her gaze flicked to the edge of the screen. She froze. Her eyes widened to the cold, her breath catching and setting thick in her throat. "Oh my God," she whispered into the quiet.
PRJCT AURORA, read a file at the very corner of the monitor, its colors altered by the warped screen. One file, instantly looming on the face of the network.
AURORA.
She felt her fingers gently shaking against the keyboard. Her mind flashed to the manufacturing dock even as her eyes stayed on the screen. The Borealis could have been built here. They already had its blueprints, the coordinates and hailing frequencies, but—the Project. Dr. Mossman had called it that. The Project.
But that could have been anything, part of her brain offered up. And, well, even if the name matched, even if it was the same thing, they wouldn't need to know what it was to destroy it. She tapped her fingers nervously. Of course not. If there was one thing she and Gordon were good at, she thought with a (strained, forced) chuckle, it was breaking things. Yeah. They didn't need to know.
But, came a stronger voice in her mind, but if they did . . .
Her teeth gritted behind her lips. Rubbing a hand over her face, she looked away from the computer, toward the wall. She pulled in a breath, let it out slowly. Destroy it, she heard in the back of her mind, but—God damn it, let go of him!
Her eyes flicked back to the screen. Slowly, she set her fingers back on the keys, staring down that little icon and its capitalized title. It sat there innocently, unimposing, like a sheet covering an atomic bomb.
If they knew what it did, knew how to use it—her fingers curled—they'd really be able to strike back at the Combine.
(Bring back that old world again, huh, Gordon?)
Hands quacking, breath echoing in her ears, she opened the folder.
A gray box blinked into being before her eyes, a small white space and a cursor beneath a row of red text. Admin. key required. She took another deep breath. It was fine. Nothing she couldn't handle. She plucked the EMP from her hip, fingers wrapping tight around the base. Steadying herself, she pointed it at the screen for the second time.
Project Aurora. It couldn't be. But . . .
The familiar shock of electricity flashed to the computer, danced over the keys and cords—and an alarm sounded, blaring in her ear. Unauthorized Entry shot across the screen. It flickered out a second later, Locked taking its place. "Damn it!" she swore, and brandished the EMP again. It was fine, it was fine. She just had to get the system open again, disable the alarm and security protocol, and then—
"Hello."
Alyx turned. She caught the barest glance of something long and white, a brilliant red sphere, before a hail of bullets ripped through the air.
With a cry she jumped back, leaping to the side and tumbling behind the desk, her arm screaming where it touched the floor. She clutched it hard, her hand coming away bloody—bullets pinged off the desk, dents appearing in the metal surface. She scrambled back, breath coming in pants and a whimper, keeping her head down.
Then, in the same half-flash of an instant that it had begun, the barrage ended. Her ears rang, her heart pounded, arm throbbing and burning. "Are you still there?" she heard in a high, childish voice, a small red dot moving across the floor beside the desk. A turret guide. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she moved closer to her makeshift shield.
Shuffling to her knees, her wounded arm hanging limply at her side, Alyx pulled her gun from its holster. "Would you come over here?" came the voice again; her blood, even as it seeped painfully past the bullet in her arm, boiled.
"Like hell," she swore, and sprang up shooting.
She saw that red light jump toward her, made to dodge out of the way even as she fired—her bullets connected with, with whatever the hell this thing was, and with two harsh pings, it tumbled over. And screamed.
Another blast of gunfire, flashes as it ricocheted off the floor—she dropped to the ground, jostled her arm and cried out, but it was nothing against how that thing shrieked, echoing and wracked with fear. She clamped her hands over her ears, trying trying trying to block out that piercing wail—and then, it was over. She heard the click of cartridges falling, the crying going silent. "I don't hate you," it said, and then, quiet.
Her chest ached, throat burned, wracked by her own hard breaths. The alarm continued to bellow outside as Alyx carefully pushed herself up, gun clenched in her good, stained hand. She aimed at the thing where it lay, finally getting a good look at it. A thin, bright white oval with three spindly legs at one end and a single, red orb right in its center, like someone had taken an Overwatch elite and crushed it down into even more of a machine. The circle wasn't bright red anymore, giving way to a dull, dead-looking crimson. It didn't budge and it didn't—it didn't talk, which she took as a good sign. Only now did she realize how far back it was, planted between the two utility closets, in a hole in the wall that was definitely not there before. She refused to look at the three corpses as she cautiously stepped around the desk.
Watching the thing to make sure it didn't jump up when she least expected it, Alyx opened the utility closet door, putting it squarely between herself and the machine before setting her gun down. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she pulled her arm from its sleeve. The bullet had passed through. That was good news. She didn't even want to think about having to extract the thing.
She snatched up the health capsule left in the bottom of the closet, sighing with relief as she administered it to the wound. The pain didn't vanish, but it did ebb, and a quick stretch showed that her arm was working. Thank God. If she hadn't seen Gordon messing with that thing, she—
Gordon.
She spun in place, whirling back to the computer. Security protocol C initiated, read the screen as she sped back toward the console, diving beneath the desk and searching for the EMP. Questions—terrors—tore through her mind faster than any bullet-storm. Were there more of these machines? How many? 10, 20? Where were they? Inside, outside? How long would the HEV suit last if they—?
Her eyes snapped to the glow of the EMP, thrown nearly against the wall beneath the console. She practically leapt on it, scrambling to her feet and attacking the system. The text vanished as the screen sputtered and fizzled under the EMP's assault, jumping back to life, unlocked. An instant later, she shouted in frustration as the protocol started up again. "Gordon!" she cried at the screen. "Gordon, something's gone wrong! Do you read? Gordon—damn it!" Her fist came down on the table as the system shut her out again. If, if she just had time, she could break in and disable the security system, maybe even recover the files still and—
Commencing lockdown sequence, read the screen, right before a great grinding met her ears over the alarm's shriek. Neck craning as she turned toward the window, she found the bay door sliding closed.
Shit.
She didn't stop to think. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a door against the near wall, leading out into the dock. She vaulted the desk, burst through the door, found herself on a new catwalk with a set of steel stairs leading down to the floor. She took them four at a time, hitting the concrete sprinting. Gordon locked out, her locked in, trapped in here with old and violent Aperture machinery or exposed to the cold—she couldn't tell which was worse. She didn't try.
She dodged past toppled desks, nearly slipped on wrenches and tripped over boxes as she flew past, screaming over the concrete. Get out, get to safety, get to Gordon, find a way back in later but right now just safety—
Her eyes flicked to the wall. Her heart nearly stopped.
It was moving. The wall, and the wall beside it, and maybe the wall beside that but her body refused to turn and look, were pulling feet had slowed to a stop, knees threatened to buckle. Behind the walls—turrets. Those bright-white machines, one-hundred, two-hundred—too many to count.
At once, every one of those giant red eyes lit up. All at once, she felt herself dotted with a thousand red guides.
Every sound vanished. Her own, shaking breath echoed in her head.
"There you are," said every turret, in unison.
She didn't think.
She dove.
In an instant, her world was gunfire. She tumbled between two gray metal sheets, blocking her on both sides, her salvation a pair of modesty panels from two askew desks. She curled tight, covering her head, the squeal of lead ricocheting off her shelter filling her head. The two desks groaned and jerked, old bolts left on one or two legs just barely holding them in place. She grabbed one of the supports to steady it—a bullet nearly took off her fingers.
She pulled her gun from its holster, held it in both hands, fingers curling around the grip, and stared at it. All she had, all alone, against an army of drones. Pinned. Unable to move.
(Get away! Dad, look out!)
She curled tight, resting her forehead against her knees, the pistol swaying in her clutched hands. The crack of bullets at her back drowned out everything else.
How long could she hold out?
From over the thunder of gunfire came a crash that rocked the ground. The desks shook on their rivets, a gasp yanked from her throat, she lifted her gun—God damn it, let go!—and found a helicopter smashing through the closed door.
Gordon. The name had no time to tumble from her slack-jawed mouth before everything lurched forward, shredded hunks of metal flying through the air as the chopper careened across the dock. She heard the whir of the tail blade as it swung feet over her head, the landing skids overturning reinforced tables, bullets deflecting off the surface of the cabin. With an ear-splitting crash, it slammed into a line of the machines, crushing and shredding and sending them tumbling. The slowing of the propeller blade drowned out dozens of machines shrieking, bright blats of ammunition and red eyes going out. The rest weren't shaken; the rain of bullets against her shelter powered on without a break.
Just past the edge of the desk, the sliver of helicopter door she could still see burst open, a flash of orange tumbling into the line of fire.
"Gordon!" she cried. "Get down!"
The unmistakable sound of the gravity gun firing met her ears, the weapon clenched in his hands as he dashed for cover. For a moment, he raced out of view. As she vainly scrambled to see without sticking her head out into swarm of artillery, she heard those inhuman cries from collapsing machines. An instant later, he rushed back, crouching behind another desk, snapping up tools from the floor with the gravity gun and launching them at the gunner onslaught.
It wouldn't be enough. Not to destroy them. But, maybe—maybe enough to get out. If they could just get back to the chopper.
He looked at her. Maybe, maybe they could get out of this—
Something gave. The desk in front of Gordon spun. He wasn't ready. Her breath froze in her throat as a dozen shots slammed into his chest.
The bullets knocked him back. He hit a knee, tried to duck out of the way but they kept coming—he jolted and jerked and went to lift the gun, a shot knocked that aside and—
He crumpled. With a metallic thnk, he fell backward, collapsing behind where his desk-shield had landed.
Her breath came back in a scream."No!"
He didn't move. "Searching," bounced off her ears. "Are you still there?" A bullet deflected off his shin, then his boot. The world rang in her ears as her heart squeezed in her chest. He lay still.
I love you, sweetheart.
Don't look—
She had no space for a running start. It was like diving through molasses, her forearm hitting the concrete, her mind screaming with how slowly she rolled onto her shoulder, along her back, tucking in tight. Apparently the turrets had been distracted from her position; as ready as she'd been (as she could ever be) to take a calf or knee-cap full of lead, none came as she tumbled across the gap.
She came out of the roll scrambling. He was less than two feet from her. Fists clenched tight enough to put holes in her palms jammed under his arms—oh God what if something was hurt, what if his head, but it was either this or something worse so she could only hope—and she jerked him back, dragging him on her knees into the steel alcove beneath the desk. It was with frantic clambering and gasps of frustration that she forced Gordon into the pitiful shelter (hoping their weight against the panel would be enough to keep it in place), gritting her teeth against the echo of gunshots exploding in her ears. He moved limply with every jerk and push, head flopping to the side, glasses barely clinging to his face in front of closed eyes.
When they were safe—for the moment—she pressed against his side, chest heaving, palm flat against the black of the HEV suit, and looked at him. She, she couldn't feel if he was breathing. Not through the suit.
Her fingers curled. Her stomach twisted. She reached slowly toward his head, bile rising in the back of her throat. Gordon. Please, god, please—Blood-smeared fingers shook as they brushed the side of his face and, gently, slid beneath his nose.
"Oh," she let out in a rush of air and relief (lighter than the air, lighter and bigger like helium expanding her lungs) when she felt that little puff of breath on her skin. He was alive.
Time seemed to skip like an old record. One second her head was upright; the next, her cheek was against the HEV's lambda, her own breath bouncing off the metal. Safe, alive. Okay. They were—okay.
Then, like the end of a rainstorm—or a thought-deafening hailstorm, maybe—the gunfire petered out. Through the ringing in her ears she heard the machines staggering their ceasefire, red dots trailing across the floor in the corner of her vision. "Target lost," she heard. "Resting." "Naptime."
They were okay. But if they couldn't get out of here, if she stepped out in front of those turrets again, if she couldn't get them back to the chopper, they wouldn't be for long.
Think, Alyx. Her fist tightened against his shoulder and she clamped her eyes shut tight, pushing out the wail of the alarm, trying to force her mind to work. Gordon was dead weight (she bit the tip of her tongue). She couldn't move him with those turrets in place, and the shiver that went down the back of her neck reminded her of the cold barreling in through the destroyed door. Waiting was not an option. Even if she could override the protocol—she looked up, craning her neck to see the still interior of the raised deck—there was no way she was making it to the computer room. God damn it, there had to be something!
As she shivered with the cold, she caught sight of the broken windows. Whatever shattered them, the thousand rounds of gunfire or the scientist with a death wish (she flinched), she didn't know. But there stood the empty space, shards of glass shining where they clung to the frames, and the transistors in her brain started to fire.
A few seconds of thought and she turned, reaching for his belt. "Sorry, Gordon," she murmured under her breath, trying not to jostle him too much, before her fingers closed around a familiar-feeling canister. "Yes!" she said as she pulled the grenade from his hip, reaching back and finding one more. Her heart sank a bit. Two grenades. That was it? But, well, if she could pull this off, she'd only need one.
She clutched the first grenade tight, and focused her eyes on the window. How was she going to do this? Sure, if she was gonna brag she'd say she had an arm on her, but at this distance she'd be on the losing end of a fight with the laws of physics. Her eyes darted to the floor in front of her; red dots crawled across the dirty, cold surface like angry insects. She'd make it back to the next desk, tops, before they started firing again, and the five extra feet wasn't worth it.
She bit the inside of her cheek. She'd—she'd just have to try it. Breathing deeply, she pulled the pin, and let fly.
Her heart sank as the grenade did exactly what she'd known it would do. It fell pitifully short, bouncing off the top of another work station, chirping as it rolled off the edge. She ducked beneath her shield, covering her ears, and a few seconds later the blast sent a charred workstation rolling head over leg past them.
It woke up the turrets. Suddenly she heard their childish little voices again, faint as she pulled her hands away from her ears: "Searching," "Sentry mode activated," "Preparing to dispense product." More dots moved across the floor now, looking for them. Shit, shit, shit!
She'd looked to the last grenade, mocking her where it sat, when she caught a hint of orange and grey out of the corner of her eye. The gravity gun. Not a few feet from her, right where Gordon had dropped it.
In the midst of the turrets' distraction she clambered for it, ducking dangerously out of shielded range to drag the weapon back. She heard the machines catch sight of her for a split second ("Who's there?", "Activated," "Hello, friend"), held her breath as she ducked back under the desk. Okay. She hefted the weapon her hands, balancing its increasingly unfamiliar weight. She gulped as she let the nose sink, looked up to the window and back.
She couldn't hit it from this angle. And she was only going to have one shot.
Her hand shook as she grabbed the grenade. She didn't even know if this would do it, but—that computer, with its executive control, functioning as a central hub for this whole facility—holding information about the Project . . .
She looked where Gordon lay quiet, still, eyes closed. She paused, for just a second.
(No—don't—)
She gritted her teeth. Took a breath. Pulled the pin.
The world slowed down. She dropped the grenade with a flick of her wrist, caught it with the gravity gun. She stood. At the eye of a storm of springing red guides she aimed toward the windows, pulled the trigger—
Alyx fired just as the world sped up around her, and she was too slow to dodge the barrage. She screamed as searing pain shot through her side, her knees buckling. She hit the ground with a thnk, fingers quaking as liquid, burning and thick, seeped through them. She struggled to roll over, to get off the screaming wound—and opened her eyes in time to see the grenade's blinking red light vanishing through an upper deck window frame.
Something killed the logical part of her brain. Suddenly, her free hand pulling her with every excruciating ounce of her strength, she threw herself back under the desk, across Gordon's front, shielding pressed her forehead to the metal floor, right beside his, and closed her eyes.
She heard the boom of the grenade, solid and rending, the smashing of glass. Roaring, groaning as door mechanisms failed. The screech of sliding and grinding metal, the rumble of steel wheels moving. The floor shaking beneath her knees (her hand behind his head, holding it still) and then—
Crash.
Screams. One-thousand child-like voices, shrieking to fill the room, frenzied bursts of gunfire tearing through the air and floor and each other and screaming, screaming—
"Why?" one said. "I don't blame you," said another. "Critical error." "Shutting down."
The voices vanished. The alarm rippled and died. Heat and agony flared in her side. Gordon's breath lightly dusted her cheek.
And, for just a second, the world was quiet.
/
Her breath misted, just a little, in the cold air. Her eyes stayed fixed on the helicopter windows, fogging lightly from their bodies alone. It must've been frozen out there, she realized with a twitch of her lip, before the thought flitted away like a moth from the dark.
Her side itched where she'd poured an entire med capsule and used one of the helicopter's emergency blankets to bandage it. She didn't move to rub it. She, well, she just didn't want to let him go just yet.
Gordon lay in her lap, still silent, still unconscious, as spaciously stretched as she could manage for him in the back of the helicopter's cabin. He looked content for an unconscious person: face calm, not twisted with dream-felt pain, breathing almost returned to normal (she'd take it). She stroked his hair, one more time—matted with blood and the leftovers of a health capsule. She couldn't give him one to drink, yet, and he might've been concussed. She tried not to think about it.
(John-Q-Scrub and a HEVed-out terror—looked like they weren't that different after all.)
She lifted her eyes again—hot and itchy, and probably bright red too—just in time to feel him shift. They were quick to drop back down, and air flooded her lungs as she saw his eyes slowly blinking open.
"Gordon? Gordon can you—?"
She wasn't fast enough. In an instant his eyes shot open wide behind those glasses, and he tried to fling himself up.
"Whoa!" she cried, pressing the inside of her arm against his chest, staring in loose-lipped surprise at the frenzied look on his face. "Gordon!" she said, loudly, and his gaze snapped to her face. "Sssh, it's okay. It's okay."
He stared at her for a second, eyes dropping to look her over, catching on the bandage, lifting back up to her face. Then, with a slow, heavy sigh, he relaxed, following her lead as she gently pushed him back down.
She curled and uncurled her fingers nervously as he set his head back against her thigh, his eyes drifting closed again. She swore she felt her heart heat like a little furnace, touches of warmth pricking beneath her cheeks. "You were worried about me, huh?"
He made a deep, quiet sound in the back of his throat, head brushing across her leg as he nodded lightly. She swore she even saw the corner of his lips twitch. But even then, he looked dizzy, unfocused, not all there—it did little for her anxiety.
"Guess you heard me on the radio after all," she thought aloud, catching herself starting to stammer as she reached for one of her medkit store. Popping one of the health capsules out of its white case, she set it beside his head, her fingers gently twitching against the glass. "Drink this when you can, okay?" she told him, even though this probably wasn't very helpful when his eyes were closed like that, but he was smart, he'd figure it out—he probably already knew, and . . .
She chewed her lip, a warped little smile spreading over her mouth. "Well, you scared me too. I think that makes us even."
There must've been something in her voice. His brows furrowed a little, and he opened his eyes, blinking slowly up at her.
Her own eyes were burning again. He suddenly turned blurry. Shoot.
"You," she started, trying nonchalantly to wipe her eyes and failing. Damn it, he was staring at her, watching her. But she—she couldn't stop. She lifted her eyes again to the outside, to the makeshift battlefield and destroyed equipment and up above, the blackened room she'd limped through, the network and all that data that was lost forever.
But her mind, what was mercilessly pulling at her—it wasn't out there."You aren't gonna leave me too, are you?"
Silence choked the cabin. Alyx bit her tongue, closed her eyes, didn't even know if she'd be able to breathe in here.
A hand gently came to rest on the back of her shoulder. She let her eyes fall open; Gordon lay still for a moment, looking at her, before pulling her down to meet him.
She followed his lead, folding herself, her forehead coming to rest on the side of his arm. It was probably the most awkward hug she'd ever participated in. But the way his arm wrapped tight around her back, his chin tucked against her shoulder and—and the way she could feel him fidgeting too, pulling her as close as he could—
Her eyes flooded. Thick sobs rose in her throat. She grabbed his arm, fingers squeezing tight around the metal. She listened to his breathing as it lightly shook.
I'm here. I'm alive. And so are you.
(I love you, baby.
I knew if you both stayed together . . .)
And as she let go, as she pulled against him and felt the way he clung back and realized—
Somewhere in the warehouse, beyond the shattered turrets and destroyed computer deck, an old cassette quietly played.
"Remember to let her under your skin. Then you begin—"