I float, suspended in darkness. As I have for an unknown and unknowable amount of time.
I feel nothing here, save the deep sensation like that of sleep. Dreams don't even come to me in this void... and thoughts come rarely. Nor really memory. I can see nothing. In here I remember only a name, rank and serial number. I repeat them in my mind, when I can. The knowledge of duty placed within me... from some distant place where I was taught. Then it all fades away again... until I half wake again, and keep repeating them. It's all I have left to hold. I don't know where I am, or how I got here. I don't even know who I am, if the name I remember is my own. But I am drifting, in and out of slumber. How many hours, days and years have passed between each momentary rousing? How many seconds in an eternity? I don't know. I can't move. I can't do anything. I don't have a body to move. Most of the time, I cannot even hear... but sometimes if I try between sleeping I hear a distant ambient hum, oddly familiar. A hum that is simultaneously comforting and chilling. Where am I? Why am I here? Why can't I die? Or just slip away? Maybe I already am, and this is true death... floating among the stars with only an abstract form of consciousness. Dwelling inside of eternity. It was almost a comforting thought... and yet, I didn't feel any real need to be comforted or want for much of anything. I didn't really feel here. I am truly alone, with my thoughts... but my thoughts have dimmed. I am neither cold not warm. Neither full nor empty. I have no wants or needs, desires... but I have a name, a rank, and a number.
I existed somewhere, in some form. I exist.
I hope.
By contrast of my dimming thoughts, the hum grew louder, slowly but surely... and for a time I thought I imagined it. It echoed, muffled, somewhere... and then, something beside me opened audibly with an automated artificial noise. A metal, mechanical door retracting. I was bathed in otherworldly green light from beyond bringing me back, dragging me to some semblance of existence. Of reality. The light burned my eyes... and for the first time I felt something... pain, irritation. Even through the alien device attached to my face and head. The device... it began to read out numbers to my vision, two one hundred percentages for two separate status indicators next to one another in the lower left corner. And a third icon, in the top right corner of my vision... each of them glowing green like the very light blinding me now. Even as my eyes burned, I could see a tall shadow standing in the doorway, holding something... a case... and beyond him the source of the light. It was such that it shone through the entire... interior, of the space I was enclosed inside. I blinked quickly and saw beyond, off to the side of the shadow and the light... to a void of blackness, save a stream of passing, tiny blinking orbs of white light. Passing in the night. As though I were looking through a window into another world. There were two differing hums... one higher pitched and oddly soothing that came from the stream outside, and the other lower and synthetic from the ball of green energy belonging to the figure before me.
The figure... dark, powerful and ominous stood there for a moment, adjusting something attached to it... lazily dusting off its self with a hand, before looking up and examining the area. It seemed to deliberately take its time spotting me, even knowing where I was. The figure's gaze falling upon me, it paced forward at last. The echo of well polished shoes tapping on metal rang in my ears over the hums... and when the shadow stood in front of me, towered over me, it turned, peering down at me. Overhead, a white light blinked on from nowhere, and along with the lights passing outside in the darkness, and the green energy, the cabin of an aircraft was brought back to me. I didn't know if the orbs were passing by themselves, or if the aircraft was somehow still flying through a never ending nebula. The light overhead was shining down upon the dark shape, that leaned forward slowly, bringing his features to the forefront of my vision. My first instinct was that of fear, looking into his eyes... followed by dawning familiarity, anger and helplessness. Memories stirred somewhere. I knew who this man... this pale, dark haired thing was, but I didn't know. I had seen him... it, before. I still couldn't move from where I was, in a sitting position, on a row of seats facing an opposite one. I couldn't breath, and I couldn't speak. I didn't need to breath here. I couldn't turn my head or eyes. But I felt my heart inside pulsing quickly with life, as I was forced to look back at him, unable even to blink.
Much less close my eyes.
There was nothing human in his face, and less so in his eyes. Too large and blue-green to belong to a person. Only something that was trying, rather deliberately half-heartedly to look like one. And failing utterly. The same thing applied to the blue suit and the tie he wore... he was the grim parody of a middle aged businessman or government employee. Neatly groomed and tidy, complete with an orderly haircut. He had me exactly where he wanted me to be. Looking closely back at me, as hard as I was studying him, there was no satisfaction, warmth or coldness to his empty stare, only the bare truth about what he was, in each detail of his face. He knew I couldn't resist, fight back, or do anything. He looked back at me exactly as I appeared to him. A thing to be studied under a microscope. Property. Even looking back at him, I still wasn't fully awake and I remained every bit confused to my whereabouts. I could only listen, nothing more. One moment he looked sympathetic, and the next he smiled. Nothing about him was certain. Or meant to be. He spoke then, slowly and purposefully... but in a manner that gave away the fact he couldn't do so normally... like a mute man perhaps, only having realized he could actually speak. Untrained with something as simple as speaking. Equal parts halted and awkward at certain words, and sinister, unnerving at others. When he spoke, the sounds of the green ball of rippling energy, and the hum of the passing light orbs vanished, leaving only his voice. His tone was as low and as ominous and knowing as his features... and I could simultaneously hear the... thing, through my ears and inside my skull.
"Rise and shine... Mister Shephard. Rise and shine. You very nearly overslept through your interview. You have rested... long enough. If not well enough. I require now only your fullest and undivided attention."
Rest?
Was that what it had been? Was that all it had been? Where was I sleeping then? Was this phantom something born of my dreams? Dreams I could only faintly recall? The figure breathed sometimes as he spoke alien words... and like his vocal cords, it seemed he didn't entirely have full control over his own lungs. No, if this was all fake, it wasn't a dream. It was the stuff of nightmares... and it would not end. Not until he allowed it to end. I felt his will impose its self over me again as his shadow fell over me, and do so with ease. My attention wasn't going anywhere and he knew it.
"I have come directly from a meeting with my... employers, and they now agree with me that sufficient time has passed, in which your knowledge no longer presents a danger to their plans. Indeed. Your knowledge instead poses a threat to others now. The right sort of... individuals. Suffice to say, your hour has come at last. Do forgive the passage of time since last we spoke... I'm sure you'll understand. A great many important matters have concerned and occupied me this past while. Yet I have checked up on your status at each interval, and have at last successfully argued the case on your behalf. I'm afraid to say, the world has moved on rather far and quickly without you... and has forgotten who you were, or rather it never knew who you were. Those that dwell there have far more important matters to contend with, now."
Images came to me, then, dream-like yet powerful... not dreams or illusions, but images torn directly from reality. Windows. Leading to wherever reality was. The all too intelligent expressions on his pallid features were enough to convince me that for all his cunning, he was not lying to me now. As he hadn't before. He was many things, but a liar was not among them. He projected them directly at me. I saw the Earth, covered in raging portal... storms, in the wake of the Black Mesa Incident. Not even the nuclear fire I'd tried and failed to stop that had consumed the facility had bought the planet much time. Much of the human race moved into various heavily fortified, secure cities around the globe, to resist the dangers the portals posed outside. The portals opened to species I'd already seen before and others I hadn't, sentient and wild life alike. A large glowing neon blue tendril, of three that comprised the organism, impaled a soldier and pulled him into a sewer. Headcrabs latched to those they found and brought them back as something far worse, gradually mutated them into even less human, more powerful forms. Barnacles pulled unsuspecting prey that walked into their traps, devouring them whole with ease. Then, he showed me something else... far worse than the beings from the Portal Storms... a dark and ominous threat, like himself, but unlike himself.
Where he was one, they were many.
A vast empire spanning dimensions and galaxies, a collection of races that the aliens before had been fleeing from all along. Synthetic, alien beings that drained, absorbed entire planets and took each race it found into its ranks by force. It followed the source of the Portal Storms across the stars, flitting among them... no, tunneling crudely, and found Earth. The war that followed, the blood shed, the horror... had been compacted into a mere seven hours, and had dwarfed any conflict that had existed before it. Great metal walkers making the sounds of living beings strode across the world, devastating armies. The Earth's combined forces had surrendered to the collection of races... known to the Human race as The Combine. Becoming one more slave race beneath them, facing imprisonment and genocide. Those who resisted received the worst fates of all. And what they did to the children. Horror beyond all comprehension, was pouring fresh and concentrated into my mind, filling it like a basin. Thousands of bodies lying in the streets, being pushed aside by otherworldly machines... taken away to be processed whether they were dead or alive. Those bodies that weren't taken away for processing were burned in the streets by walking, living Cremators. Beings built in factories by the tiny, grimy hands of starving enslaved children. I silently implored him not to send any more images, to stop, but he ignored my request. He sent me a stream of everything, all that had transpired on the world in my absence... but much of it flew past my reach before I could even grasp what it was.
"You were merely one more faceless civil servant of the old order, a soldier moving down the steel corridors of Black Mesa, armed to the teeth with everything down to a wrench. A wrench you put into a great many individual's plans, I might add. But you and I know the truth, don't we? Why you were sent... and what you instead accomplished, for a world that does not know you. If they remember you, it is only for the former... the actions taken by some of your... now fallen, brothers in arms. Those few that survived Black Mesa carry those memories with them. Yet you were not like those men. And there still exist individuals that have witnessed a degree of who you really were, though for all intents and purposes, like the billions dead you are lost to the passing of time. Save the antiquated uniform you still wear. A mannequin of a warrior clad in an ancient suit of armor, in a private museum occupied by you alone."
Bodies lined the winding halls of Black Mesa Research Facility... belonging to humans and an assortment of aliens alike. Blood ran in streams, along with spent shell casings and ruined computers. He showed me images of my fellow marines executing various scientists and security officers, shooting them in the back of the head or lining them up in front of a wall. Dumping their bodies, along with the aliens, into raging fires. Some scientists had believed they were there to rescue them... and were greeted by a hail of gunfire. I heard the marines talking among themselves all the while, saying a variety of things. Some enjoying the slaughter, some disgusted by it. Others still disobeying their orders. I'd never received the order myself, I remembered. My sergeant's voice had been drowned out by the low hum of something I'd thought an ordinary enemy aircraft... until I realized what it was. The shouting of my panicked squad. Only later did I fully comprehend what we had been sent in for... and why so many of the facility personal I encountered watched me with fear and apprehension, even as I helped them. I would have given my soul, if it wasn't him gambling for it, to be able to close my eyes. I hadn't signed up to shoot civilians, none of us had... but some of us had gone through with it anyways. It was one more stain of the past that followed me. Yet there was no judgment in the man's eyes or tone, as he reminded me of this. On the contrary, it seemed to interest him.
"Recently, another remarkable individual like yourself became... estranged, from my employ. Due to unforeseen interference. He has performed great things, before and during the world's current... predicament. Your paths did cross once, albeit briefly. With him none the wiser. But you remember. I am in need of another... talented asset, out there in the world, seeing through what needs to be done. One that might yet prove worthy of replacing him. The world requires the right man like yourself in it, to remind them of what they were. Their past. Perhaps what might their future be."
The next image that danced over my vision was a door opening, a great automatic metal door to the Lambda Complex's Teleportation Laboratory. A scientist was shouting to the man below to enter the portal. And the man himself, a figure in orange power armor, bolting forward into the center of a man made portal. Vanishing within it, while all the while beings overhead floated, screeched, and threw glowing yellow balls of energy in his direction. The portal had collapsed behind him, leaving me alone to contend with what remained of the room, before finding my own way out. There was another image, of a great grey monstrosity floating that had created the levitating beings and others, as the man in the power armor battled and ultimately defeated it, releasing it's control over the Borderworld. And subsequently, I was shown the same man in the suit in front of me, offering a job to him aboard a train drifting through the same void I now occupied. And the silent, armored figure in question accepting it.
The next powerful image projected to me, was that of a dark tower, looming high into the clouds. The dark tower numbered seventeen was a nexus for The Combine, a focal point for all the other towers and cities like it, scattered across the globe. It was mechanical, and rose like a titan over the land, the city sprawling around it. It was a bright, clear day I was watching... an unfamiliar helicopter flew past my vision, and an alien aircraft of sorts with multiple engines, waving back and forth like a living breathing thing. Suddenly the mechanical, metal plates of the tower drew back like exposed ribs, and from within like a hive poured hundreds, thousands of tiny floating metal objects in a stream, that flew down towards the city. Scanners, watching over every citizen, and sending constant reports and updates back to The Combine. Finding every civil disobedience possible, and unleashing a response to all law breaking. On various monitors scattered around the city, an increasingly desperate Administrator called for cooperation in apprehending Anticitizen One. Doctor Gordon Freeman. As that failed, he resorted to outright berating and threatening the citizens and his own forces, for all the good it did him.
Walls along the streets, and Combine propaganda posters became steadily more covered with graffiti. Primarily, orange spray paint, of the logo that had been over the Lambda Complex's Laboratory. Slave labor workers were forced to clean it up by civil protection, only for each symbol to repeat it's self the next day. Those caught spraying the logo were shot in the middle of the street, a demonstration for all to see. For a moment, the tower was intact, and in it's prime, and the buildings below while in varying conditions, stood. In the next moment, it was burning like an inferno at the top, ripples of energy poured out of it and the clouds it penetrated had gone black and swirled in a spiral. The city below was a war zone, as armed citizens and the masked soldiers of The Combine's Overwatch forces fought in the streets and fled one another's advances. Alarms rang, along with an artificial woman's voice. Chaos erupted like a spark touching a powder keg. Gunships, Dropships and Hunter-Choppers soared all over like hornets. With many field generators around the city brought down, now tunneling insectoid creatures burrowed up from the ground in the city, and Headcrab infected beings wandered in the streets through the districts that the Combine lost control of.
The floating metal objects no longer poured from the dark tower, but well over a dozen much larger ones did... escape crafts, leaving the straining, breaking tower behind. When they had flown some distance from the tower in differing directions, the great monolith detonated entirely, destroying everything within miles of it's base. Taking the city and much of the surrounding countryside and woods with it. In the next moment, a great unstable portal comprised of blue energy, as large as the tower it's self now dominated the sky within the smoking ruins. Miles away, storms raged, bringing with it more gateways to other worlds, pouring alien fauna and creatures into it. A man and a distantly familiar alien creature stood together on a rock in the distance, watching what little remained of the devastated city. In another moment, I watched a man made rocket launch into the stratosphere from an old concrete facility that belonged to the Humans and... Vortigaunts. The Resistance, deep in a forest somewhere in what had been Europe. In the next moment, there was a flash of light, and the portal was closed in an instant, the cloud dissipating with it. While the ruins of the city remained, the backdrop of the view had begun to clear up.
Peace and tranquility returned to the skies... save the blaring, angry noises of a machine, inhuman squeals of agony. And then there was a young woman's screams and pleading for her dying father not to leave her.
"In the days, weeks and months to come, you are to change things, as he has. Forever. As with all changes, your presence will start as a small, seemingly insignificant detail within a larger picture. And grow quickly beyond the control of Earth's current... 'Benefactors'. The game already turns against them... you will be the catalyst within the next change, that tips over the board."
There was another blinding flash of green light that overtook my vision. When it had cleared, the great stream of passing white orbs outside the aircraft had vanished... and another familiar background had replaced it. An ominous sound came with it... a distant, ambient screaming like that of the howling wind. A cosmic, glowing green eternity stretched out before my eyes for unending miles, bathing the entirety of the aircraft, in a way the portal and the white light above couldn't. An eternity that comprised of endless floating islands, covered in more of the organic alien flora and fauna from before, life forms and just as familiar glowing yellow crystals embedded in many of the islands. Great winged, stingray-like beings... that I had watched destroy aircrafts like the one I sat on, drifted by in flocks lazily, as though they couldn't see us. Or didn't care. The same thing was true of the far smaller alien birds that drifted even further in the distance, calling out to one another in the darkness. I'd been here before, among the floating islands, jumping from one to another. Passing through one portal after another.
Now and again, I spotted distant portals on some of the islands. Portals the Displacer had brought me to. There were organic elevators, towering, moving fungi and trees, pools of glowing regenerative liquid and light emitting flesh toned stalks protruding from the ground and swaying as though in a breeze. Great green living tentacles in various pits around the world, feeding on those that came within their long range, alien and human alike. There were human bodies now and again, clad in familiar helmeted power suits. The same ones that the man known as Freeman had worn. Some lay on random platforms, while others still lay dead among various survey outposts the Black Mesa Personnel had established before the incident. The great expanse of stars and systems that dwell beyond this world... and I remembered its name. What the scientists had called it.
Xen.
As I watched it all pass by, one after another, the thing in the suit looked away from me and moved steadily over to the aircraft's open side door. Turning away, he looked out it, and into the same endless space I had been, taking in the sights. The lights of Xen were reflected off his features... and for a moment, now and again, he looked almost transparent. Ethereal. When he spoke again, it was without the slightest change in tone or manner. Although he no longer looked into my eyes, he was still looking deep within me, seeing all.
"You have traversed dimensions of time and space. The Borderworld it's self before you was not even enough to overcome your talent. A land you were neither trained nor prepared for. Nor could possibly have imagined. Where many others who ventured there well prepared fell to a world that wasn't theirs, you lived. And you belong to an old world beyond even our reach now. The past. Your ability to adapt and survive against all odds is something primordial... a gift ordinary people now are struggling for, in a world no longer theirs to control. They are preparing for the struggle in each city, if not already engaging in it. They have figures... heroes among them, but they do not yet have the, if you will pardon the phrase... shepherd, to guide them through the valley. Times have changed... but some constants remain. You will come to discover that for yourself."
A stream of images hit me all at once again in a barrage, one after another, dwarfing my senses. The Osprey, my own, crashing into Black Mesa. My subsequent blackouts, as I watched men I'd known die around me fighting the Xen beings. Waking up in a medbay while a kind old doctor worked desperately in vain to revive my friends. Navigating my way through the facility to the extraction point. Traversing deeper into the facility, finding more survivors left for dead. Fellow soldiers, scientists and security officers alike. Engaging the Black Ops troops alongside my men... the advanced mutations of the Headcrab creatures, growing into hulking, running beings. The appearance of another race, races, unlike the others of Xen that I'd fought before them. Single eyed aquatic looking beings that could teleport, kidnapping scientists, firing electrical charged bolts my way. Before taking one... no, two of their living weapons and aiming rounds right back at them. I remembered a corridor lined with the bloodied remains of my fellow marines... and I remembered a great horrific worm creature with a single vibrant green eye, occupying a toxic disposal basin, barring my escape. I heard it's screams again as I activated the release switch, drowning it in waste. I felt the satisfaction of avenging my brothers in arms, again, and erasing something that shouldn't exist on Earth from the planet.
Then, I saw something even worse than it, that had come at the end of the road. In the deepest recesses of the Black Mesa Research Facility.
Another worm-like creature, much larger, transparent as it emerged through a giant purple hued portal. I remembered firing some manner of advanced laser turret into it's glowing eyes when it had materialized... that some marines had set up before me, before themselves falling. I remembered the sounds it had made and how exhausted I had been by then. It had nearly killed me several times, through the lengthy fight to destroy it. In the end, I'd succeeded, and had collapsed into unconsciousness as the purple portal had pulled it back through the door it had entered, before collapsing in on it's self in a flurry of smaller portals. I saw again the Black Mesa dam... and the titanic, alien creature from Xen tied to it. Saw the twin flaming streams it shot out of each arm... heard the gunfire as my men fired on it. The bullets had merely glanced off it's hardened, metallic blue shell. And in the midst of that fight, before the dam had been destroyed by charges, and the gargantuan Xen thing with it, I saw the very man in front of me, in the suit, watching the battle of the dam. All the while he had been speaking on a cellphone, a small portal behind him as it was now in whatever present they were in. In an expanse where time had no meaning.
Speaking no doubt, to his so called 'employers'.
"I will be watching you each step of the way, as it was before... often times you will not see me, other times you will, while others around you cannot. Perhaps I will provide assistance from afar, if it suits me... but my employers have asked my interference to remain minimally so. This will be your trial run... I can hardly offer you preferential treatment over my other candidates and assets, former and current, now can I? There are others out there in the world you shall meet... that will help you along, bring you up to speed on the going ons of the land, more so than I am at liberty to."
I remembered being trapped in a chamber amid the beeping of an alarm. The massive tankards storing radioactive waste had broken under pressure, and were gradually filling the chamber. I'd climbed desperately over the ladder, to a catwalk overhead, working to escape the rising, deadly fluid. My Powered Combat Vest's Geiger counter had been beeping louder as it rose, echoing in my ears inside the helmet. I'd run to the end of the catwalk, to find the security door to the next area, the path to safety, locked. I'd stepped back, defeated, at an impasse, looking below the catwalk to the rising waste. Helpless to resist it. I had known then I was going to die. Looking up again, the man, for lack of a better term, in the suit had been standing at the security door controls, beyond a plexiglass window. As it was now, I'd been entirely at his mercy, and we'd both known it, looking at one another. Taking the time to straighten his tie, he'd released the lock on the door at the last possible moment. By the time I'd gotten through it and the door locked behind me, heading around to the control station, he'd been gone... and the chamber behind me had been flooded. The next memory, was that of what could have been my escape, once I'd reached the extraction point. But at the last minute, this time the metal doors had shut on me as I'd tried to leave the cargo bay to reach the last departing Osprey at the extraction point. The man in the suit had again stood beyond my reach, peering back at me with that all knowing look. That hint of a smile.
I remembered watching my fellow marines just past him, all climbing into the aircraft, not so much as glimpsing the man in the suit... and the Osprey rising into the air and departing, as he too turned and left. And as I was left behind. He'd not been done with me... he hadn't intervened to save my life without some manner of return for his investment. Like the scheming government employee he pretended to be, the bastard worked all the possible angles. And I remembered the first time I'd seen him... watching me from afar at boot camp, when I'd been training with the HECU for the classified Black Mesa mission. I'd seen him doing so several times throughout it all... and I had no illusions about who had placed me at the top of the advanced training list. I saw him again, rearming the nuclear device after I'd killed the Black Ops men working on it. I'd tried to go back, but the door had been sealed behind me. I'd pounded on the reinforced plexiglas and shouted for him to stop arming it... but this time he'd ignored me entirely, then. I had known then I only possessed a limited time to accomplish what I'd had to.
"You do not even yet fully grasp what it is I am speaking of. That is ok. When you wake, truly wake, you will remember very little of... this for some time. I show you all this to prepare your mind, to strengthen it, so it will not... shatter when the monumental scale of the truth reaches you. The truth of what has become of your world... the world you once knew, before all this. The human mind is extraordinary delicate, yet equally adaptable. A gift. But in time, you will remember it all again. You have questions, many of them... as another will soon have many for you... but they are not for me to answer. In the meantime, I offer you what I didn't before... the illusion of free will. A choice. You may stay here, for all of time. You have had a small taste of what that is already. To remain unknown to all but myself and my employers. You would be safe and alive though... such as that life would be. Or you may arise again. Simply step into my office. And your interview will commence, as your duty shall again, in a city, a world far away from here. A place where you would never be safe again."
He paused for only the slightest of a moment. He appeared in deep consideration of his own words. His offer. He nodded slightly to himself, seemingly pleased with what he had said. Then he spoke again from the side door.
"Regardless, it's time to wake up and to choose for yourself."
As his ghostly words faded away, the hum of the green energy... the portal, and the sounds emanating from the passing otherworldly landscape of Xen returned. I watched him where he stood in the doorway, looking off into green expanse of the Borderworld, all the various platforms of land... and there came another sound... low, like an engine. Not from the aircraft I sat on... but from another, passing by in the distance. The figure's eyes tracked it from the doorway, and I only caught a brief glimpse of it. As it had been with the other images he'd shown me... an alien aircraft, one of the dropships passing by that belonged to The Combine. I didn't know where the bio-synthetic machinery began and the living being it resembled ended. Once it had passed, out of sight and out of the range of sound, I automatically stood up. I didn't do it consciously, my body operated on it's own accord. I don't know if I chose to do it or not. I didn't think. I just stood for the first time in... a long time. I felt no pain, no stiffness. It was as though I'd only sat for five minutes. I stood and turned, in the direction of the portal within the dark pilot's cockpit of the aircraft. The Osprey floating forever through space. In the direction of the side door in which he stood with his briefcase, looking back at me at last with that same remote intrigue.
I moved forward a few steps, standing between him and the portal. I looked only at him... and the eternity of islands beyond him, somehow in a space where breathable air existed. I felt the impulse, the growing impulse born of anger, somewhere within, to grab him by the throat and either strangle him to death, break his neck, or push him off the Osprey. Or all three. To throw him alive into the void appealed the most, where he could float for eternity... as I had. Or land on one of the islands and remain stranded there, as surely others out there had been. I towered over him now, was much bigger and stronger than he was... armored, or rather, stronger than the appearance of the thin, weak form he had taken. The illusion he'd chosen, mocking me, while rendering my strength useless. I wanted to kill him, but I couldn't even raise my arms to do it when I tried. My body worked against my will in that regard, no matter how hard I tried. He seemed to sense the attempted impulse, for the faintest touch of a pleased smile appeared on the thin lips of his bony features.
It said more than he ever could. He said nothing. He didn't have to. He had power beyond any I had or would ever have. Beyond my imagination... and for all I had seen, I could imagine a great deal.
As it had been at Black Mesa we both knew who held the power over the other, who pulled the strings of life and death and fate. All I had was the pretense of a choice that wasn't a choice. A choice where he already knew which choice would come to pass. Something his former employee, Freeman, had probably known too. Before he had somehow managed to escape the grasp of this... thing. Defied him. An act in it's self that struck him as impossible. This thing seemed accustomed to getting his way. More infuriating, the thing in the business suit seemed to believe that whatever he had done to me, had been of no inconvenience or importance to me. Indeed, the expectant, knowing look on his face was that of a man waiting to be graciously thanked. To have his hand shaken, even. I turned my head away from him in defiance and remained silent, all I could do, denying him gratitude... not even knowing if my voice was even my own again. The smallest defiance possible by me and surely one that only amused him further. He could force me shake his hand, but he didn't. He allowed me that small resistance. I knew my choices. I could stay here, and continue to sleep for all eternity... or I could go onward, through the portal... on to what lie ahead. Where I might have a chance again, however remote. Choices, as the thing in the suit defined them. I hadn't bothered getting a good look at it before... now I saw the portal, it was a floating orb of energy, with a dancing green electrical current running off of it. I'd seen it before... it, like countless other things, was another piece of an incomplete puzzle. Whatever it was that lie beyond, the devastated world he had shown me, it had to be better than here. Anything, any world in any condition, any feeling or person had to be better than this blank, empty void, and trapped in the company of the one that had imprisoned me here.
I hoped.
Even then, I still hoped.
I moved forward again without a second thought... perhaps out of fear that if I thought about it again, I'd take my seat once more. Maybe I should have. Should have gone back to sleep. I'll probably never know if I made the right decision. I won't remember. I stepped into the portal without looking back... the green light overtook me, bathed me in it's power, every hair on my arms standing up. There was a burst of noise and static as I walked into the energy of the portal... a cosmic gunshot in my ears that gradually vanished into the distance. I was enveloped into eternity. I heard my own muffled breaths, the first breaths my lungs had taken in what seemed forever, and I saw only darkness as the blinking of the portal vanished around me. As it took me onward, away from Xen and the Void, the last thing I heard was his unmistakably satisfied parting words. A promise. Echoing around and through me on all sides.
Following me across the dimensions and stars.
"Wisely chosen, Corporal Shephard. I will see you up ahead."
Subject: Shephard
Status: Reinstated
Evaluation in progress.