-=Turn of the Head =-
However much he despised such assignments, he was grateful for the time they offered him to consider why he was leaning idly at the futuristic button-coated console on the wall, watching a large security monitor mounted above it with the enthusiasm he'd give to a lecture on paint drying techniques.
The Resistance had required an inside man, and an inside man was what he had become.
It hadn't been easy. A few months previously, he and Alyx had ambushed a pair of Metrocops as they had been marching through the streets on their daily patrol. After hastily donning one of the deceased policeman's helmets and quickly clothing himself with the rest of the threateningly blank uniform, Barney had continued the patrol route they had been watching the pair follow for the past three weeks and returned to the Civil Protection Headquarters in one of the City's numerous districts.
From then on, he had been assigned to gradually less important tasks, eventually convincing some of his superiors that he would perform the task of relocation officer magnificently.
That had been two weeks ago.
Now, bored as hell and wishing he could be breaking the malformed alien nose of the guard waiting outside — in case someone decided not to cooperate during their 'interrogation' — Barney continued standing there at the security consoles, his eyes watching the roof-mounted security cameras on either side of him from behind the opaque aqua lenses of his stolen Combine mask.
He didn't know what they were for, other than to perhaps record any of his 'interrogations' so that the sick bastards higher up could have a good old laugh as their subordinates carried out every brutally sadistic whim they demanded.
It was enough to make anyone sick.
Looking behind him at the bloodstained chair in the middle of the room, having seated so many unfortunate souls that it had been coated entirely in a thick red sheet of blood and surrounded with a pool of the coagulated stuff, he tried ever so hard to suppress the urge he had bubbling inside him to not only break the nose of the guard outside but kill him as well, and take his pistol and shoot every last alien Gestapo piece of shit standing in that trainstation.
He couldn't even allow himself to shake his head, because if anyone was watching then he had no doubt it would be the straw that broke the camel's back.
Having allowed himself a moment to contemplate the sad purpose of the chair nailed to the floor behind him, he turned back to face the monitor and continued watching.
One of the Razor Trains was pulling away from the station. Listening closely, he could hear its engines roaring to life through the walls.
Sighing quietly at the thought of the unlucky people headed for their doom on that train, Barney continued watching the screen, hoping that something important would happen and the Resistance wouldn't need him to stand here every single day waiting for their saviour to arrive.
When — and if — he finally got here as Eli kept insisting he would, Barney sure as hell wanted to know how Freeman had gotten out of Black Mesa alive, not to mention survived by himself all these years.
—
Drumming his fingers on the cold metal of the hard bench he was now seated on, Gordon looked around the brightly lit metal carriage, wondering where on earth he was headed now.