016. Criminal

The alleyway stank of rotten food and moldy papers. A large section of sheet metal had been erected up in one corner, and another perpendicular to that, so there was cover from all but one side.

Gordon ran a finger over the faded lambda symbol here, knowing that this was a place of refuge, though it was empty now.

He could still hear the Combine dispatcher, its feminine yet hollow voice echoing over the rooftops above him.

The whole situation reminded him of cop movies, where the convict would flee into an alley, then wait for an officer to stumble upon him. Unfortunately, the convicts always seemed to lose in those movies.

Footsteps echoed down the brick walls, dragging him from his thoughts. Shadows fell across the debris-strewn ground. Beneath the sheet metal, Gordon waited, pistol in one hand and crowbar in the other.

The mangled voices of CP units drifted to his ears.

They came closer, and Gordon awaited them.

017. Play

Gordon stared at the pattern of black and red below him, tapping a finger pensively on his knee as he thought over his next move. His eyes flicked sharply around for a moment before he carefully leaned forward and reached out a hand. He picked up the disc of plastic carefully with his thumb and forefinger, handling it as if it were nitroglycerin.

Letting out a breath, he placed it into position, already seeing his fate rushing at him like an oncoming freight train.

Across from him, Dog tilted his head, made a small bloop sound, and moved his own checkers piece, overtaking Gordon's last three pieces.

The physicist growled and threw his hands in the air. Alyx, who had been watching from the corner of her eye from across the room, laughed.

"I told you, you're never going to beat him. He's a robot, Gordon."

"Have you ever beaten him?"

"I have the good sense not to play chess with a robot."

Gordon scowled and leaned back in the chair. "Checkers," he muttered.

Alyx's smile split into a grin. "You fell back to checkers?"

Rolling his eyes, Gordon stood up and left the room in irritation. Dog hooed and began to gather up the pieces.

"I told you to go easy on him."

018. Numbered

Five, four, three...

There: a lull in the gunfire.

Four, five, six. Rack a shell. Pull the trigger.

They were relentless, the Combine, and the heavy thukthukthukthukthuk of their pulse rifles had become commonplace.

Once, he had been used to the sounds of cars and rain.

Then, the humming of machinery and the rumbling of electric trams.

Now, gunfire and garbled radio static.

Five, four, three. Around the corner- big guy. Close. Both barrels, this time.

One.

Gordon leaned back against the inside of the boxcar.

A Manhack came shrieking inside, right at his face.

Zero.

He knelt down and pushed the shells into the magazine.

The numbers he kept always at the front of his mind, his own constant, his own comfort.

Six.

It was really all he had.

019. Fun

The sounds of laughter echoed through the halls of the base, sourced from the large warehouse where the helicopter was being kept. Pale sunlight brushed against the stained brown windows, casting bizarre shadows across the oil-stained floor. The helicopter sat stoically off to one side, rotors detached, blades set up against a wall.

Another burst of laughter bounced through the warehouse, feminine, nearly a giggle.

"Gordon! You're going to-"

Which dissolved back into laughter again.

There was a hill behind the warehouse where Dog sat, peering out with his single aperture at the woodlands beyond. The giggles from inside at initially put his sensors on the alert, his internal computer convinced it were a threat. Then, as his memory shuffled through all of the audio he'd heard throughout his long life, it came to know it as harmless laughter. He let out a small woo and stretched forward, watching and cataloging the rebels walking throughout the base, the way the wind was blowing, the birds in the nearby trees.

There was a short, rough bark of laughter that was immediately recognized as male.

"Alyx, I-"

"Don't you think-"

And quiet.

Dog tilted his head and looked back toward the warehouse, the sound of his aperture zooming in and out being the only sound registering in his audio receptors. He knew silence was good but could also be bad. The quiet of a sleeping base? That was good. Sudden quiet from the warehouse that he knew Alyx was in? That was bad.

Turning, he loped down the hill towards the warehouse.

He was halfway there when voices started back up again.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I-"

And then, they were laughing again.

Dog lowered his head fractionally and went back to his spot on the hill.

(A/N: I've replaced 018 with something I like a bit more than the last. Unfortunately that makes this chapter a wee bit short. Sorry about that. I hope you enjoy anyway.)