The first thing that came to Eric as he was unceremoniously thrust back onto the shores of consciousness was that his head hurt.

It ached and throbbed, like someone had taken a baseball bat to him.

He tasted blood. Groaning, blinking his eyes a few times, he tried to move, realizing that he was lying on a very hard surface. What the hell had he done this time? Something big shifted somewhere nearby, and he heard the clacking of rock hitting rock, like it was bouncing down a trail or the side of a mountain.

And that…

Brought back his situation in a flash. Eric forced himself up into a sitting position and looked around, wincing at the flickering lights. He was in the tunnel, and it had caved in, but not completely. Just enough so that he couldn't get out the way he'd come in. He sat there, collecting his thoughts and staring at the cave-in for a few minutes, waiting for the pain to subside to something a bit more tolerable, and finally began the miserable process of getting to his feet. His whole body hurt, and his forehead burned from where he was sure he'd scraped it bad going down. Obviously, he surmised as he got shakily to his feet, a rock had hit him.

How long had he been out?

He didn't think terribly long, surely no more than an hour, but it was impossible to tell. As Eric stood there, staring at the pile of cracked, ruined concrete, he reached for his belt, where his radio would normally sit. It wasn't there, of course. Neither was his gun. And his helmet would have really helped him out. He reached up and tentatively probed the back of his head. He cried out as a bolt of pure pain shot across his head.

His hand came back sticky with blood, but it didn't feel like it was bleeding anymore…

At that thought he glanced down, and his frown deepened as he saw a small pool of slowly drying blood. No medical kit, either. He might need stitches. Damn. Eric knew that he wasn't going to be able to get out this way. That much was made clear. He looked back down the corridor, the way yet gone, and saw a lot of flickering lights. Some were outright dead. With a sigh, he began walking slowly. He felt a little unsteady and everything ached, but he'd had worse damage before. He'd been shot twice. This was a vacation compared to that.

What had happened?

Although he was still a little slow and fuzzy from the injury, Eric's mind quickly became abuzz with possibilities. Was it an earthquake? Did they have earthquakes in New Mexico? He couldn't be sure, but he didn't think so. Maybe it was something massive. He felt his stomach clench coldly as he thought about the possibilities. What if a comet had hit somewhere? Or what if Yellowstone had finally blown its top?

They'd said that when it did happen, it probably would be able to be felt hundreds, even thousands, of miles away. He was as scared of the end of the world as the next guy. "Please," he whispered as he reached the end of the hallway and took the only way available to him, a right turn, "please let it not be the goddamned apocalypse."

He had no idea who he was talking to, but he felt the need to say something out loud. It was way too quiet. Maybe it had been some kind of experiment gone wrong? Maybe they were building new bombs. The atom bomb had been developed in New Mexico. Was it something crazier? Something science fiction?

He doubted it, but being trapped down here was making him paranoid. Eric moved down the next stretch of concrete corridor, trying to ignore the flickering lights. He tried to clear his mind, to focus, because this is what he had trained for, this is what his job was really about: disaster response. And clearly this was a freaking disaster.

Man, was this ever a 'careful what you wish for' kind of scenario. If it was this bad down here, how bad was it everywhere else? Thinking about other people who might be trapped, injured, alone and afraid, made him focus more easily. He straightened up and pressed himself harder, trying to set a brisk pace. The faster he could get back to the antechamber, the better. From there, he could take the tram back to the Security HQ and then figure out what was going on. He did doubt that anyone knew what had happened yet.

Well, anyone but some of the scientists, probably.

He reached the end of this corridor and broke right. Jogging down it, he was deeply grateful to see that no more cave-ins had occurred. This corridor connected back with the crossroads antechamber he'd initially arrived through. Relief flooded him as he moved through it, making a beeline for the tram platform. He hesitated as he stepped out onto it and it groaned and shifted uncertainly under his weight. He pulled back.

"Crap," he whispered.

Well...maybe if a tram was there, he could just run and jump. It would probably hold his weight enough for him to make that initial run. Then again...Eric looked down at the darkness below. Something sparked down there, and he thought he saw something, but it was too indistinct to tell what. He began patting at his belt and pockets, grabbed for the flashlight he'd appropriated from the storage room, but came up empty. It must have fallen out of his pocket at one point or another. Maybe it was buried under that rubble.

He also realized he'd forgotten his toolkit. Not that it particularly mattered now. Eric moved back over to that initial storeroom and saw that it had become littered with parts and tools. Several of the shelves had been knocked over. Among the debris, he saw another flashlight and snagged it. Moving back to the edge of the platform, he turned it on and pointed the beam down. He sighed as he confirmed his suspicions.

The tram lay at the bottom of the dark abyss, broken and smoking slightly.

Suddenly, the idea of using the trams was deeply unappealing. Sighing again, his frustration (and fear) mounting, Eric turned off the flashlight and secured it. He considered his situation for a moment. There had to be a way out of here other than the trams. He was missing something...but what? He'd seen something earlier.

Eric returned to the crossroads and looked slowly around, trying to jog his memory. It was difficult, thinking through the haze of pain that assaulted him, but then his eyes settled on the storeroom again and he had it.

The ladder!

Moving back into the room, he locked eyes with it and saw that an eerie red light was now creeping out of it. Emergency lighting. Well, at least it was doing its job. He began crossing the room, and nearly tripped as his foot came down on something heavy. He almost kicked it roughly out of the way as his frustration quickly mounted, but stopped as he saw what it actually was: an old, scarred, red pipe wrench.

It looked, for some reason, appealing.

Crouching, listening to his instincts, Eric grabbed it and picked it up. He studied it, then smacked the end of it into his palm. It hurt. It was heavy. He wasn't entirely sure why, but he wanted a weapon very badly, even if it was just a wrench. Well, it probably had something to do with the unknown emergency situation he now found himself in. He felt threatened, in some way. Eric secured the wrench on his belt, then approached the ladder. Now that it was lit, he stared up at it and could actually see. The hatch at the top seemed a good thirty or forty meters away.

Not a pleasant climb, especially considering the circumstances.

But what else was there to do?

With a sigh, Eric grabbed the nearest rung and began to climb.


It was indeed a long climb, but not as long as he had feared.

It gave him at least some time to think this whole situation over. This was clearly a disaster situation, which he had actually trained for. In fact, given the amount of training and emphasis they had put on the possibility of an emergency scenario, he had always suspected that they were pretty much just counting down the days until something catastrophic happened. Maybe that was why he had never truly lost that curious and perhaps paranoid spark. He kept trying to piece together scenarios of what could have caused this.

Eric kept coming back to 'explosion'. That seemed most likely. Whether it was some kind of experimental bomb, or maybe a chemical reaction on a huge scale, or maybe even they'd pushed one of the bigger reactors too hard and it had finally given out. That seemed most likely of all. The idiots in the white coats running this place were always pushing their equipment too hard. Repair work like he had been down here to do was a chronic problem, and they never seemed to have enough people to get the job done.

Finally, the hatch at the end of the shaft grew in size until he had reached it. Eric waited and listened, but he could hear nothing out there. Gripping the wheel, he squeezed his eyes shut as he started to twist it. Sure enough, a bunch of rust and dirt came off of the ancient thing as he turned it. After several twists, he had the hatch open. Crawling carefully up out of the hole, he found himself in the back of an old storage room that looked slightly more recently used than the one he'd just come from.

He checked it out, but just found more generic and random parts for an eclectic assortment of things. Moving over to the only other door in the room, Eric found his hand resting on the pipe wrench he'd grabbed. His instincts told him to wield it, so he did, extracting it from his belt loop and gripping it tightly. Eric opened the door and looked out, unsure of where he had come to. He found his gaze settling over a concrete platform with tables and chairs. Stepping out slowly, he realized that he actually recognized this area.

To the left was broad, open area that trams passed through. The concrete platform was edged by an iron railing. To the right were a pair of basic structures with a stairwell cut into the rock set in between them. One place had a sign that simply said BURGERS! The other read TACOS! They were both simple, open-faced structures, housing little more than a serving area, a kitchen, and a storage room. He had actually been here before. He'd tracked it down sometime last year when he'd heard about it. The burgers were okay, the tacos were actually pretty great. As Eric began walking in between the tables and chairs, he felt an eerie sense of dislocation.

Several of the chairs were knocked over and a piece of the roof had dislodged, coming down to absolutely smash one of the tables to splinters. The sign over the burger joint had been damaged and now hung at an awkward angle. There was food, plates, drinks, silverware scattered around the fronts of both buildings. He felt like he was looking upon an area after an earthquake or some kind of massive attack.

He supposed that was just about true.

"Hello? Is anyone there? I'm with security," Eric called out, because he suddenly, almost desperately, needed to fill the silence.

But the silence mocked him, stretching out.

Swallowing, muttering to himself quietly that he needed to get a grip, Eric set off to search the area for survivors and clues as to what might have happened. He went right, into the taco joint. Stepping past the stretch of scarred white counterspace that served as the building's front wall, he felt his senses sharpening up, his combat instincts securing more of his mind, more of his internal processing system. This felt like a battlefield.

The taco joint was an absolute mess and he could smell something burning. He drifted past the ruined front area where they kept plates, cups, condiments, and the soda dispensers. In the back he found the kitchen, and some taco meat was being burned badly in a skillet over a burner that someone had forgotten to turn off. Eric killed the burner and moved the skillet to the side almost out of reflex more than anything else. It seemed like practically everything else had fallen onto the floor. Still no one. He poked his head into a storage room, a very small freezer area, and a tiny bathroom. No go. No one here, either.

Eric left and headed over to the burger place.

He performed a quick search of the area, and almost wrote it off as being in similar condition to the taco joint, but...no, something was different. First, he smelled it: blood. Then he saw it: a dark stain dripped onto the floor. Someone had been injured here. They must have gone in search of first aid, only...he spied a first aid kit right on the wall, in plain sight. Well, maybe they'd just panicked and fled. The brain tended to fumble even basic things during a panic. Eric sighed softly and finished up his search.

Ultimately, there was nothing here. No people, no supplies, beyond that medical kit, which, after a moment's hesitation, he grabbed off the wall and clipped to his belt. Might come in handy. Well, given the nature of what he was facing, it would more than likely come in handy. Once it was secure, he left the burger joint and came to stand before the stairwell. He stared up it, briefly rooted in place. There was something…

Ominous, about it, for some reason.

As if to cement this feeling, a sound came to him, a strange one that he could not at all place, beyond the fact that it sounded organic. It was a weird kind of gurgling noise. It was coming from somewhere beyond the top of the stairway. Eric swallowed. For the first time since he'd really gotten control of himself after the initial incident, he felt real fear. What made that sound? Was it some kind of animal? What kind of animals did they have at Black Mesa? He'd heard all sorts of rumors, everything from bears to a freaking giant shark and even mutants. It felt like Pandora's Box had been opened up. Anything could be loose now.

"Get a grip," he whispered. "It's probably just..."

But the words died in his throat. Just what? The sound came again, and he thought he heard something small shifting around up there. Well, the only way to face it was to face it. Eric gripped the wrench tightly and began to work his way slowly up the stairs, keeping his eyes open and ready. Seconds slipped by slowly, almost painfully, as the tension ratcheted up with every step taken. He swallowed again, tightening his grip on the wrench even more. Eric tried to make himself relax. What if it was a person up there making a weird noise? Didn't want to get too amped up and smash some poor bastard's skull in.

He breached the top of the stairway, his eyes level with the concrete floor beyond. He stopped there, sweeping the area with his gaze, hunting for the origin of this mysterious sound. Then he saw it. Movement to his left, scuttling closer to him, something low to the ground and pale green in color. It issued another one of those gurgling sounds and suddenly straight up launched itself at him, right at his head.

He screamed, having absolutely no idea what he was looking at.

Luckily, his reflexes saved him. He ducked, and the thing sailed over his head, hitting the wall beside him and bouncing off, landing further down the stairwell. It let out a frustrated, high-pitched shriek and as he spun around, he saw it quickly righting itself, preparing for another attack. He turned fully around and began backing up, but before he could get on solid ground, it leaped again. Man, this thing could jump!

His reflexes saved him once more and he smacked it out of the air like a baseball with the wrench. There was an awful crunch and when it slammed into the other wall of the stairwell, it released a thick spray of yellow-green blood.

"Aw, God!" he cried as some of it sprayed onto his uniform. And the smell! It hit one of the steps and began tumbling down the stairway. Eric stared at it, watching it make its gradually faster journey until finally it hit the floor beyond the first step and rolled to a stop. He sighed, knowing that he was going to have to go and get a good look at it. He trudged back down, keeping an eye out for anything else, and then came to stand over it.

"What are you?" he whispered.

It looked like...it looked familiar. But why?

He'd never seen anything like this. It certainly wasn't like any creature he'd encountered before. It had a central body and four bent legs, kind of like a...crab? He carefully pushed it over onto its back with his shoe and saw a big mouth in the bottom of it. He shuddered and looked around again, suddenly paranoid that there might be more.

Okay, so…

Black Mesa was researching, like...what, exactly? Where had this freaking thing come from? Eric was suddenly a lot more willing to believe in some of those stories. Especially ones about mutant animals. Turning away from it, he looked back up the long, lonely staircase of concrete. Well, this didn't really change his goal.

He still had to keep going.

So, climbing the stairs once more, Eric kept going.