Amber was almost ten when the Black Mesa incident occurred, and now at the age of 30 she couldn't remember much about life Pre-Combine. Only fleeting sensations, memories dulled by the food, water, and stress that has been forced on her these past years.
She missed those few things she can recall. She missed lazy days, spent in a hammock with a soda and a good book, gently being blown by the wind. She missed waking up to an alarm clock playing her favorite song, instead of the siren the Citadel would blow every morning at dawn. She missed running barefoot, the wet grass coming up between her toes. She missed a fresh grass lawn in general. She missed the color green.
There was no green now, not room for green in a crumbling city. There is only enough room for large amounts of grey and brown that color the city. No bright colors there except the bright red splashes of blood; even the sky is dark.
Amber was trembling in the middle of the sea of grey, brown, and black. She was drowning in it. Her eye skipped from one depressing sight to another; there was a dead rebel, there was the Citadel, there was a mass amount of debris, and there was a Strider Amber was trying to hide from.
The one good thing about Striders is they can't catch you unaware. If you are killed by a Strider because you didn't notice it, you must be blind and deaf. Their sounds echo for miles, and they're as tall as most buildings. So Amber had easily seen it from far away. Unfortunately, it had seen her too, and started to thump, thump, thump to Amber.
It had now lost sight of Amber and was peering over mounds of dirt and in holes looking for her. She held her breath and pushed her back as close to the wall of the crater as it could go. As the thumping got closer, Amber realized that she'd get either crushed or shot at. Panic started to destroy her common sense, and without thinking, she got up and ran.
That strange, mechanic but still beast like sound of a Strider roaring reached Ambers ears, along with the sound of the Strider charging up it's gun. Instinctively, Amber dived, hitting the ground hard. She tried to finish of with a quick role to get back on her feet, but since had never been flexible she ended up face flat on the ground. The Strider's blast missed her by a couple of yards, but the following blue blast hit Amber's face with surprising heat. An involuntary scream escaped from Amber's mouth.
A sudden, sharp, stabbing pain started to come from below her eye. In shock, when she tried to get up, she stumbled over her own feet. Amber started to run clumsily due to her hard landing, and the Strider just kept coming closer and closer. She brought her hand up to her face, and it came away coated in blood. She must have scraped her cheek with a piece of sharp rock.
The Strider, who was gaining on Amber every second, was charging up its laser again. She closed her eyes, preparing for the end, when her hand was grabbed and she was jerked out of the way. But before she could catch her footing, the Strider's blast, which had hit a couple of feet away from Amber, knocked her off her feet.
She opened her eyes to see her savior. Before she could get a good look at the face, her hand was being tugged again and Amber had to get up and start blindly running with only the hand to guide her. Amber's other arm flailed wildly, and she knocked the pistol from her belt.
"Get on your feet! Hurry!" The voice confirmed that Amber's savior was a female. But before she could register any of what was happening to her, more voices joined in.
From her left, "I'll distract the Strider!" From her right, "Get back to the hideout!" From in front of her, "Run! RUN!"
The Strider made a sudden grunt. The female on Amber's left had a Pre-Combine hunting-rifle and had fired at the Strider. It changed it's course from running at Amber to running toward the woman with the hunting-rifle.
"STOP SHOOTING, GINGER, JUST GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!" a man yelled to the woman, evidently named Ginger. Before Amber could see what was going to happen, the woman who had Amber's hand started dragging her to a small Pre-Combine restaurant.
"Get down," the woman hissed at Amber, and Amber ducked beneath a table which was turned on it's side. Another shot came from inside, and the woman sucked in her breath.
"Damn, if you got them killed, I will kick you out." The woman glared at Amber until Amber glanced away.
"It's not my fault," Amber grumbled. But she didn't need to worry, as the two other rebels triumphantly walked in the doorway.
"Got a bullet up through it's casing," Ginger said smiling. She held her rifle up proudly. "It's dead now."
"You did that with a Pre-Combine gun? Impressive," the other woman said.
"So, what's your name?" the man asked. "Are you a Rebel?"
"Uh, n-no," stuttered Amber, "I'm a Civilian. And my name's Amber."
"I'm Coby, that's Sable, and the girl with the gun's Ginger." Amber took a closer look at her saviors. Ginger had all of her hair up in a hat, except for a small red cowlick that came down from her forehead. She was wearing a torn Medic outfit with faded colors. She had very short legs; she was around 5'2. Sable looked as if she could be part Japanese. Her eyes were slanted, and her hair was jet black. The slanted eyes, however, were an unusual dark olive green. Coby, the man, was probably mixed-race. His skin was the same light brown as his hair, and his eyes were a dark blue. He was taller than Amber, but shorter than Sable, who was the tallest of them all.
"You got any weapons?" Sable asked, eyeing Amber's empty hands.
"No, I dropped my pistol when we were running from the Strider."
"Great," Sable said sarcastically. "Good job. You got any medkits or ammo?"
"Uh, I got some ammo," said Amber, taken aback by Sable's harsh response. She shoved her fingers into her pockets, only to find them empty. "Oh, I guess I don't." Sable scoffed.
"How useless are-" Sable started, but Ginger cut her off.
"Stop being such a jerk, Sable. Coby found a Magnum under a mattress, we'll give her that."
"Why would I need it though? Aren't we staying here?" Amber cut in.
"Are you crazy?" Coby asked. "This city's falling apart; there's no food and no water. It'd be suicide to stay here."
Amber was shocked; she had been a prisoner in City 17 her entire life, but the thought of leaving terrified her. Most of her memories were in this bleak city. Everyone she ever knew lived here. Even though the city was destroyed and all her friends were dead, she could not bring a picture of herself in another place to mind.
As if on cue, the T.V. which Ginger had forgotten to turn off came to life. The blue screen was replaced with an old man.
"Careful, Lamarr! These lamps are quite hot!" The old man exclaimed, holding a Headcrab.
"Dr. Kleiner!" Sable and Ginger both exclaimed at the same time.
"Who's he?" asked Coby and Amber simultaneously.
"He's part of the Resistance. He's a scientist who used to work at Black Mesa," Ginger responded. She and Sable both pulled up a chair and started to watch Kleiner speak.
"So, what part of City 17 did you live in?" Amber asked Coby over the sounds of Kleiner's speech.
"West side, pretty close to the Citadel. You?"
"South."
"That's pretty far. How'd you get here?"
"Bad guide," she responded, thinking of Matthew. What an idiot.
". . . First, as a matter of great urgency, if you find yourself still within the confines of City 17, you are well advised to leave the city at once by the fastest means available to you. . ." Kleiner's voice echoed out from the T.V., overlapping Amber's thoughts.
"Oh shit," Ginger cursed, "Kleiner says this city's gonna blow up soon. We gotta get out of here sooner then we thought."
"Damn," Coby muttered. "That means we can't rest at all. We gotta keep going." For the first time, he looked at Amber closely and noticed the scratch under her eye. "I think I saw some bandages upstairs, if you want to patch up."
Once Amber was upstairs, Sable stood up and walked towards Coby.
"Come here, Ginger, I want to talk about the girl," she whispered in a harsh tone.
"You mean Amber?"
"Yeah, I don't like the looks of her. You sure you want to drag her around? We barely know her, and she looks pathetic."
"Hey," Coby interjected, "You barely knew me when you took me on. Why not her?"
"You're different, Cobalt," Sable said, earning glares from Coby. "You can handle yourself. She can't hold onto a gun."
"You're just too judgmental, Sable," Ginger replied. "You've been wrong before. I've worked with you for ten years now, so I would know." Sable was about to reply, but was cut short when Amber came downstairs with a bandage beneath her eye.
"Anyway, as I was saying, we should get out of here now," Sable said in a loud, wooden, unconvincing voice. Ginger couldn't help but roll her eyes at Sable's bad acting.
"Grab the Magnum under the mattress, Amber," Coby told her. "I'll pack up the remaining ammo."
"Don't forget the Medkits," Sable reminded, glaring at Ginger. "We only have two."
Ginger rolled her eyes again.
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A/N- I could probably write something funny and witty here, but it's almost midnight and I'm tired and have headache and anything that sounds witty to me now will not sound witty in the morning, and it's too much of a bother to replace a document in an attempt to cover up a pathetic joke, and I've used "and" way too many times now because most parts of my brain have already gone to sleep, including the writing and humor part (arguably though, the humor parts don't work often anyway).
You are free to start laughing at the screen as if I wrote something particularly humorous, though.