Sight... smell... sound... the City hammered on the senses like a sledgehammer. There was no way anything could concentrate here, but still, there was a small creature, sleeping in a corner...
There was a sound. A new sound here, the sound of footsteps. That must have been what woke me up. Somebody was coming. I crawled through a small opening in the metal wall, and waited to see what would happen. A man, dressed in a strange metallic suit, orange-and-silver, with a familiar λ mark on his chest, walked by. He, too, was holding a crowbar. He ignored me entirely, but when another headcrab attacked, he swatted it out of the air like... like... I'm not sure what the word would be. Suffice to say that he will not need to do it again.
Darkness. A smell of old rust. Silence. Down here, there was nothing but corroded steel girders travelling across, down, diagonally, as if some god had decided to play pick-up-sticks and left halfway through the second game.
The man obviously seemed important. Now I had just got to find a way to communicate with him. He was walking quite quickly, not paying attention to anything except the walls, floor and ceiling in front of him, possibly in case of another attack. Through the maze of steel we go, not far underground, the sound of huge wheeled machines riding along their tracks echoing around us. Soon there was light. Not from above ground, but from a female holding a torch. She spoke rapidly in that strange human accent, impossible to understand. I caught the word "Gordon" a few times, but then nothing else. They had moved on, leaving me behind. I followed them as far as I could in the shadows, but I soon lost track of the beam of light, and settled down again. I couldn't sleep, though; the humans had piqued my curiosity.I closed my eyes and thought.