"Izzy, could you lay off those charts for just a moment and get over here?" Eli cast a glance over his shoulder at his bespectacled colleague. "We need to find out how long Alyx and Gordon have down there!"

"Yes, Eli, yes. In a moment, I promise." Dr. Kleiner toyed absentmindedly with his glasses. "It's just that Magnusson rather insisted that I make sure these material transport systems we have around the camp be fully functional. He seems worried about it for some reason."

"What're you talking about?" Eli limped over to the desk. "We tested those things already. Shoot, Alyx, Gordon, Judith, me… we've all been through those things and come out in one piece."

"Yes, yes." Kleiner nodded, bent over his drawings. "But there was some unusual interference the first couple times Gordon used the teleporter."

Eli chuckled. "That was because that pet of yours jumped into the xenium stream at a crucial stage."

"Lamarr had nothing to do with it!" Kleiner looked up, his expression wounded. "She merely got a little excited, that's all." He frowned a moment in recollection. "The poor thing… it took me weeks to find her after that incident, and then she was frazzled for some days after…"

"Izzy." Eli shook his head, smiling. "The teleporter works fine. The only problem with those teleportations was that the first one was interrupted, and the second blew up just as they were going out."

"But that's just it!" Kleiner raised an excited finger, once again studying his charts. He pushed a long printout covered in jagged lines over to Eli. "According to these readings, that couldn't have been the only explanation! The resonance is off the charts, but not because of any interruption or enhancement during the process. There was some impediment of the atom transmission process."

Eli picked up the printout and scanned it over. About halfway through he looked up. "Well… maybe you've got something here, Izzy. Do you know what it could be?"

Kleiner shrugged. "It looks like some kind of suspension field of some kind, or a counter-resonance to the xenium. But what that could be, or what it might even entail…" He shook his head. "The odd thing is, there's a similar disruption around your daughter, but on a much smaller scale. None of our other transports have…"

"Alyx?" Eli ripped the paper out of Kleiner's hands. "But… How? Where would she have gotten it? Is it dangerous?"

Kleiner took a step back, surprised. "I… I told you Eli, I can't be certain. I don't even know what the disruption is. It's like nothing I've seen before." He tried a reassuring smile. "In any case, it's nearly non-existent on her. It must've been from a long time ago." He scratched his bald head. "Possibly something from the old days at Black Mesa. There were a lot of things going on then."

The words were not exactly comforting, but Eli seemed to relax slightly. He let out a light laugh and lowered the printouts to the table.

Kleiner smiled. "There, see? Nothing to worry about after all. Now, how about we get back to work on that estimate you were talking about."

Shrugging, Eli turned over to the computers, gesturing at a screen. "I've worked out some energy discharges, and some other things, but nothing else. It looks like the core was almost hardwired to explode, but that doesn't make any sense."

"Well, let me take a look at those figures, Eli." Kleiner clicked a few keys on the board, the eerie blue light of the screen reflecting off his glasses. He frowned. "So indeed it does, but why would that be an objective? There could be no purpose for such a discharge…"

"Hey, Doc, Doc, Judith just cleared the hanger." Barney came walking into the conversation. "By the way… she said she'll do her best to keep in constant contact, but isn't that kinda dangerous? I mean, last I heard, we were hiding from the Combine…"

"The Citadel's destroyed, Barney." Eli looked up. "Or will be in another five minutes, give or take. The Combine are going to be too busy regrouping to pay us much attention."

Barney shrugged. "Suit yourself. I'm all set to head out to City 17. Any word back from Alyx about Gordon?"

"What?" Isaac blinked up at the man. "Oh, yes! That's right, you weren't here… Alyx called in about a half hour ago. She found Gordon."

"Man!" Barney shook his head. "How does that guy do it? I swear, he could riverdance in a mine field!"

"Doctor Freeman does seem to have a knack for getting out of these situations, yes." Kleiner nodded, turning back to the computer. "He is a man of many skills indeed. I wonder how I never saw it when he was working before…" He shook his balding head. "Adaption, I suppose."

"Well, you give him that special Mach 3 suit and let him tote around that zero-point whachamacallit." Barney rolled his eyes. "It's not as much a surprise as you make out. I still don't see why we don't make more of those things. If they work out so well for him, why don't we just…"

"We didn't have enough supplies to make more than one of those things." Eli looked up. "You know that. And Gordon knows how to operate them things better than anybody else. But you got a point. We're gonna have to work on that."

"Yeah…" Barney nodded, slowly. "And the guy is lucky. Doggone lucky. Gotta admit that. He gets some real good breaks."

Eli eyed Barney. "You ain't jealous, are you Calhoun?"

"No! Of course not! I…" Calhoun sighed a little. "It's just… I dunno. Gordon's my buddy and all, and nobody was more glad to see him back then me. I mean… when I saw him getting on that train…" Barney chuckled. "…nearly had a heart attack."

"It was indeed a shock to see him so suddenly like that." Kleiner put in, bent over the charts. "Especially so very much like the day of the Incident. It… heh." He stood up, shaking his head. "It brought back so many memories, all at once."

"And that's what really get's me." Barney suddenly interrupted. "See, I don't think Gordon's really even aged since then. I don't really even think he's been on earth, or even spent much time between then and now. Heck, for all I know, he got zapped straight from one day to the next! For years, he's been gone, off the radar, off the combine, off the underground, everything, and then one day he just pops up and nearly hops on the train to the most dangerous place on earth! He doesn't know about the Combine, doesn't know about Dr. Breen, doesn't even remember about the Seven-Hour freaking War!" Barney looked from a silent Eli to a silent Isaac. "I mean… ahhh… oh, never mind."

"Zapped from one day to another…" Izzy mused, a thought striking him. "Or possibly…"

"It…. It seems unfair sometimes." Barney shook his head. "I… I mean… we, all of us. We had to live through the Seven-Hour War. You, Eli, had to run and hide, with Alyx, and try to bring her up through all the Combine terror. I had to join the CP's. Izzy here had to duck and dodge, make a tiny lab in a subway basement. We had to live every second of those twenty years, and he just gets zapped through them? Skips right from the beginning to the end? It… it doesn't seem right." Barney sighed. "Sometimes."

There was a momentary silence. Eli leaned against the desk, looking at the ground. Isaac was bent over it, back to studying the graphs. Barney looked from one to the other.

"…possibly a stasis-like dimension portal…" Isaac mumbled under his breath.

"Barney." Eli replied, still staring at the ground. "Would it have been the end? If he hadn't come when he did?"

Barney just looked at him.

"The Combine might never have stepped on us. The people might never have gotten hope enough to fight. Certainly Nova Prospekt would never have been infiltrated and destroyed, and probably Judith would never have done… well, what she did." Eli winced a little with the memory. "Gordon didn't skip to the ending. He created the ending. Not consciously, no. He didn't make any great speech or get caught up with this holy desire to rush right in. But simply his appearing gave everyone a sense that things… that they were changing, Barney. Even us." A chuckle escaped him. "You know, Barney, when he popped up, that we were getting as tired of the whole thing as everyone else. The resistance mighta just kicked the bucket after I got taken, if they hadn't felt that the war was just beginning."

Nodding slowly, Barney rubbed his neck shamefacedly. "I know. I'm not saying I'm not grateful. But when I think of all those years…"

"Actually," Eli frowned. "Those years are actually the best part. Barney, tell me, if you had the chance to skip all the years in the middle, would you?"

"Well…" Barney started, then stopped.

"Would you really want to skip all that? Want to skip the beginning of each and every day? Want to just miss the rise of the Underground? Want to miss Alyx, growing up? Would you want to fly past the first time you brought people out of the city? Want to skip past all the time you spent hiding and helping others… me, Isaac, Magnusson, Gina, everyone?"

"Gina…" Barney closed his eyes.

"Gordon's skipped some bad moments, yeah." Eli stepped forward. "But he's also skipped every tiny triumph we've had over the years. He's skipped the little joys we've shared, the everyday victories that make the fight worthwhile." Eli stopped a moment and drew a breath. "He's skipped most of life, Barney. Jumped right from one battle into another."

Barney was silent. His fingers gently stroked a tiny ribbon tied to the edge of his rifle, and his mouth was set in a firm line. Finally he nodded. "Yeah… yeah, I guess so. Sorry, doc. Got a little caught up, I guess."

Drawing a final breath, he looked up and smiled. "So. Guess I'll head out to City 17, then."

"You do that, Barney." Eli nodded. "We'll keep you posted if the Citadel goes boom."

He watched in silence as the middle-aged man made his way out the door and stepped out. Slowly his head shook.

"Eli." His attention was suddenly drawn back to the balding Isaac, pecking at his elbow. "I think I know what's the problem with the teleporters."

Eli sighed. "Izzy, can we talk about this later?"

"But you don't understand!" Isaac gestured to the sheet. "The problem's with Gordon. He must've somehow been put in a stasis-like state for an extended period. That would explain the unusual problems with the teleporters. They didn't quite know how to handle the time-space displacement already inherent in his moleules!"

"That's great Izzy, but…"

"The only thing I can't understand is how Alyx has the same reading." Isaac frowned at the chart. "Did you ever put her in a stasis, Eli?"

Eli sighed. "Izzy, we don't even have a stasis field, and neither does the Combine. To my knowledge…"

"Taking Gordon's current readings, and the time since, I'd say Alyx's stasis exposure was much shorter or a long time ago, say…" Izzy thought a moment. "Seven Hour's War. Or Black Mesa, if it was very short."

"We didn't have even teleporters then, Izzy, there's no way…"

Suddenly Eli stopped. His eyes got very large. And wide.

"Aw crap." He muttered. "Gordon must've met him too."