The Early Storm
Prologue
Somewhere, a long time ago in America, after that great war in the east, but before the end of the cold war, there was a small room in Washington DC, inside one of the several government buildings in said city (it is not important which one). This small room would be of little note to observers such as ourselves: all the room had was a desk with a phone and some papers, a computer, a chair, and some various common items such as pens, and an American flag.
Yet, this room lacked a window, this room, for being small, was still important enough to be kept out of the public eye. Indeed, this room was nestled deep inside its structure, and not listed in most files. The room in question had three shifts, each manned by a highly trusted federal agent (again, the agency is not important here). While in theory, these men were supposed to be on alert, in practice, the constant lack of action in this job meant a high turnover rate, and little attention paid, this room, you see, was a special crisis contact room, for some obscure ex missile silo, turned research facility, named Black Mesa. While most people know what happened some few decades after this time, when Black Mesa was a bustling, and important research facility, and the site of the largest resonance cascade, a much smaller incident in the early days, put this facility in the minds of many important... entities, both within, and without America, and the universe itself.
And this room, of little importance to anyone, would at this day, at this hour, become the most important room on earth, when the secure phone line which was fused with the desk, rang for the first time in a long time.