A/N: This came to me, along with other Half-Life plots, completely out of nowhere. For those of you who don't know, I write for the CoD fandom. Whilst suffering an extreme bout of Writer's Block on my main story, Fire, I started playing through all of my old video games, including Half-Life, Portal, and Bad Company. And then, this happened. Enjoy.
I Was a Teenage Stalker:
I don't know if the Combine realize it, but all of their horrifying Synth creations retain some of their memories of life before the mutilation. I can remember faint bits of the Resistance, and defending Station 8, a part of the Underground Railroad. I can remember helping citizens out of the city; giving them food and medkits, and wishing them the best. I can remember the day the Combine shut us down, the day I was taken to the train station, the day I was shipped to the prison-hospital where I was created. I remember some of the process, and the horror of losing the only thing I had left. My humanity.
It started as a faint whisper that went over our secret radios. The Combine were after somebody, an "unidentified person of interest". As the day progressed, the icy female voice that poured out of the citadel announced this more frequently, and we assumed that this POI would be coming our way soon.
Shortly after, we heard a distress signal come up from Station 9. According to the brief, static-filled message, CPs were targeting all of the stations. As the survivors from Station 9 made their way to our station, a panicked voice from Station 12 called out for help. The last thing we heard from their end were gunshots, and CP chatter. Station 4 tried to contact them, and heard nothing. Sighing, I reached for the radio.
"This is Station 8." I said. "We heard 12 go down and out. Surgical strike teams are targeting railroad stations. Repeat, Civil Protection is coming down on underground stations. We're already getting refugees from 9 and outlying. Looks like we're..."
A sharp explosion rocked through our small building, disconnecting the microphone and sending me flying across the room. Combine voices flooded the station, along with the screams, shouts, and gunfire of the human resistance. I reached for the pistol at my waist, holding it ready and aimed at the door. I was not going down without a fight.
"Station 8, do you copy? Station 8, are you there? We're getting confirmed reports of manhacks. Repeat, they're filling the underground with manhacks!" reported Station 4. The door burst open as I reached for the microphone, desperate to reply. Startled, I dropped my pistol, whimpering quietly as three CP soldiers entered the room. One of them held a charged night-stick, and before I could react, a sharp blow to my head sent me down to the ground, and into unconsciousness. I thought I was dead.
I woke up in one of the Combine transport trains, along with a few survivors from other stations. We were crammed in a small car, with barely any room to move. Not that I wanted to move, anyway. My entire body burned from the impact of the night-stick, and my head throbbed in unison with my heartbeat. My face and hair were crusted with blood. I could feel the beginnings of bruises littering my body, remnants of the explosion that ripped apart our station. A guard stood against the solid metal door of the car, armed with a submachine gun, a night-stick, and several grenades.
"What's going on? Where are we?" whispered a pale, brown-haired man next to me. I wanted to reply, but I couldn't. I couldn't find my voice.
"Silence!" boomed the mechanical voice of our guard. Most of us flinched back, but the man who had spoken before forced himself into a standing position.
"You can't do this! Where are you taking us?" he shouted, his small fists clenched in anger. Without hesitation, the guard charged his night-stick, and attacked the man. Instinctively, he covered his head with his hands, but the guard beat him down to the ground with a few sharp hits to the back. Satisfied, the guard walked back to his post. The man didn't move for the rest of the trip. I never saw him again.
When we arrived, we were sorted by gender and forced into stasis pods. The lid slid over the pod, and an instant wave of exhaustion fell over me. I fought, but it wasn't long before my eyelids closed, and I fell asleep. I wasn't sure how long in was in stasis, and I don't remember being removed from it. I remember being bound onto a table, a bright light shining over my eyes. A mechanical muttering filled my ears, and the smell of blood clogged my throat. I felt a needle pricking my arm, and the fuzzyness of a sedative, and then there was nothing.
I woke up to a throbbing pain in my throat and torso. My eyes felt heavy, but I was soon able to open them and look at my surroundings. I was in a small, closet-sized cell, with a Combine shield blocking the open part of the room. My body had been thrown into the room, leaving me slumped against a wall. I felt very cold, and looking down at my body confirmed that I was naked. I shivered, the violent motion making my body hurt all the more. Slowly, I raised one stiff arm and ran it over my torso. My fingers stopped, feeling a small metal square in my side. Confused, I felt at my throat. My thumb probed a gaping hole in my neck, and I flinched, pulling my hands back. What the hell had they done to me?
A sharp metallic screech filled the air, and the room filled with light. Footsteps approached, walking right into my cell. I tried to find my voice, but failed again. All I produced was a weak cough. Strong arms grasped my limbs, strapping me onto a gurney. The gurney was wheeled out of the room, and more sedative was pushed into my body. This time, I remained awake, able to watch in horror as I was taken into a large operating room. Several women were also bound to tables, with Combine standing around them, performing brutal operations. I made eye contact with one woman. She stared at me, before her head was pulled back and held in place. When one of the Combine held a blade to her forehead, I looked away. A Combine raised a large, sharp knife, and pushed it against my left elbow. I felt the first prick of pain, and then I was gone.
I regained consciousness on the table, and all I could feel was pain. It spread through my whole body, concentrating in my lower arms and legs. I felt something grip my left leg, then a tearing pain in the bottom. Someone injected another needle into my arm, and the world faded again. The last thing I saw was a metal band being placed over my wrist.
I woke again to the pain. But this time, it was dull. The agony in my limbs had been replaced with a strange numbness, and a weak, slow feeling. The world was fuzzy, and I couldn't see very well, but a look around confirmed that I was back in the cell. I raised my heavy head, looking into the cell across from mine. I had to bite back a scream when I saw the person inside. I couldn't tell what gender they were, because of the mutilation. What used to be forearms and shins had been replaced with stiff metal instruments. Thin metal poles were bolted into this person's leg, and snug metal cuffs were bound to what had once been wrists. A metal bar was attached to their forehead, with room for a hinged addition. This person was whimpering, curled into one corner of the cell. From what I could tell, there were others held in this room, with the same body modifications. I didn't want to look down, but I did. I wanted to see what they had done to me.
My skin was filthy, and stretched across my bones. Very little fat or muscle remained. Two small, blue disks were screwed into my chest, and a metal band was bound to my waist. Similar metal objects were screwed into the stumps of my arms and legs, and my forehead. All I had left from the surgeries were a few faded scars. Not a drop of blood remained on my skin. I knew then what I had become. The Combine had stripped me of my humanity, and turned me into a Stalker.
The screech from before sounded, and several Combine walked into the room. They hauled us up and placed us into modified transport pods. These ones were thin and wiry, meant to hold our new bodies. We were taken back to the train station, and loaded into a sleek, shiny Razor Train. Red light flooded the train as three Combine stepped into the train. One approached me, holding a metal hood. It
placed the hood over my eyes. The same sleepiness that accompanied stasis flooded my body, and I was too weak to resist. I fell into a dark slumber, with nothing but the rumble of the train left in my mind.
The hood was lifted from my head, waking me instantly. I recognized the building. I was inside a Citadel. I didn't know which city I was in, but the dull blue metal and sheer size of the building was a dead giveaway. Still strapped into the transport pod, I was taken through a series of tunnels and into a large, bright room. A strange orb, pulsing in many different colours, hovered in the centre of the tall room, held in place by metal instruments. Before me was the core of the Citadel. I was taken to a metal platform on the side of the room, pushed out of my pod, and left on the platform, which held a large console. They left me lying on the sharp metal, dazed and blinded from the light of the Citadel core.
A Combine entered the room, dressed in a radiation-proof white suit. He activated a series of light bridges, walked over to my platform, and roughly lifted me off the ground.
"Move." he ordered. I struggled to comply. Each step was agony, but I slowly hobbled to the console. A series of buttons were arranged before me, and I was surprised to note that I understood them all. With my new supervisor watching, I got to work, watching and maintaining the condition of the fragile Citadel core.
The days blurred together, for they were all the same. I lost track of time very quickly, but measured my days by the routine. I was herded into stasis, then woken and "fed" through the box in my side, which I learned was a kind of feeding port, where nutrients were pumped into my body through the box. Then I stood, pressing buttons and watching the core. This continued, on and on, for what felt like forever. I didn't know. It could have been a week. It could have been a year. Occasionally, something would fall out of place, and I would have to use a laser that I could control with the device in my forehead. It didn't happen very often, and I remember a thrill of excitement when I could use it. Slowly, I got used to the pain that existing caused me. It was always there, but I chose to ignore it, to suppress it as best as I could. All it did was distract me, and I needed to be focused. Eventually, another Stalker took up work on the other side of the room. It followed the same schedule that I did, and we would often work together to fix things with the lasers. We never spoke, or made eye contact, or communicated in any way. We couldn't, even if we wanted to. The Combine took all of that away from us.
A sudden change occurred, in the form of a massive explosion. The core shuddered, waves of radiation pouring off of it. I remember being surprised that it didn't hurt me. It must have been something else that they did to me in surgery. My supervisor left, fleeing the room with his gun ready to fire. I heard a computerized shout of pain, and figured that he must be dead. I didn't know what to do, so I went over to my console. All of the numbers were out of alignment, and had to be fixed. I had to fix the core, before it was destroyed.
I don't know how long I worked, only that I did not stop. The core was delicate, and any error would cause it to overload. I knew that there were stabilizers somewhere, but I could not go anywhere other than my platform. So I stayed, working to put off the inevitable destruction of the Citadel core.
A sudden disturbance caused me to look up from my console. A man, clad in an orange and black hazard suit, and wearing thick glasses, had entered the room. He carried a strange object in his arms; it glowed a piercing blue, and shuddered with an electrical power. I watched as he used it to manipulate energy, and create a light bridge. It was then that I noticed that he was heading for the other Stalker. Without thinking, I roared, aiming my laser at this man. He sidestepped my beam, and walked right past the Stalker. After creating another bridge, he joined me on my platform. He looked at me, his face remaining neutral. Neither of us spoke. Finally, I stepped aside, allowing him access to my console. I don't know what made me decide to let him go, but it felt like the right thing to do. He was human, after all.
The human pressed a button on my console, and the light bridges changed, taking him very close to the core. With a final glance at me, he left for the bridges. Painfully, I lifted my arm in what would have been a wave, if I'd had my hand. With nothing left to do, I walked to the corner, and forced myself to sit down. I forced my eyes, my real eyes, shut, ignoring the hood I was supposed to wear. This put me into a relaxed state, where I waited, hoping this human was there to help me fix the core.
The whirring of machinery brought me back, and I stood, watching as metal arms reached down to hold the core. Beams of light shot into the center of the core, and slowly, it stabilized. If I could have smiled, I would have. My mission was complete, the core was saved. I knew what I had to do.
"No sense sticking around." I though, limping back to my stasis pod. "I'd better wait this out somewhere else." I climbed into my pod, forcing my arms up to reach the hood.
"They'll wake me up when they regain control. They'll come back for me."
The last thing I felt, as the stasis went offline, was a massive, burning rush of blue fire. And then, for the first time, there was truly nothing. No pain, no drugs, no cruel Combine surgeries. Finally, I was alone. Finally, I was where I wanted to be. Finally, I was free.