Two in a month... huh, I guess the creative juices are flowing.

~x~ The next week

Alex gave Kleiner a hug as DOG crawled into the helicopter, Gordon was flipping the various switches and the engine started to wind up. The helicopter had been rolled out of the hanger into the courtyard and was fitted with a special air intake that split water in the air into hydrogen and oxygen for fuel for the jet engines powering the helicopter.

"Radio us every hour till you get out of range" Kleiner said as he gave a gentle squeeze.

"Will do" Alex said. The blades on the helicopter started to spin. Alex looked over at the cockpit to see Gordon give a thumbs up and a slight nod. "Take care doc." Alex climbed into the back and shut the sliding door. DOG gave her a nudge and let out a small whine. She rubbed his head and reassured him. "I know you hate flying, just go into sleep mode and we will wake you when we need you. OK boy?"

Dog nodded and tucked his head in and shut down for a while. Alex climbed into the copilots seat and put a pair of head phones on. Gordon tapped her shoulder and then tapped his headphones then made a talking movement with his hand. Alex nodded and tried her headphones to make sure that Gordon could hear her. He nodded when he heard her voice come through.

Gordon increased the throttle and let the blades get up to speed. He pulled the collective lever up about half way, and then a little more to start the ascend. After the craft had climbed to about 150 meters off the ground, Gordon tilted the helicopter forward. After a moment or two they had a sufficient speed. Gordon banked and turned the helicopter around.

"Where are we going?" Alex asked over the head set.

~x~ Magnussons office.

Magnusson walked into his office and noticed that it had warmed up considerably with the computers working over time trying to catch up on 20 years of work from the satellite network. He grumbled something about blaming one of the resistance members not fixing the AC unit.

He walked over to the windows on the wall and opened a few of them. He then proceeded to open the rafters to create a draft from the warm air rising, pulling in the cool outside air to the computers. After doing so, Magnusson sat down at his desk to do paper work he had failed to do during the past few days with everything going on.

About 30 minutes later, after he had gotten everything organized into its place. He had just started on the paper work when he heard the helicopter starting up.

After a few moments the helicopter took off and the drone added off into the distance. Happy to have the annoyance gone Magnusson finished another paper and set it onto the growing pile of completed work.

Out of nowhere the helicopter was over his labs and was pushing air into his labs throwing all his paper work up into the air and out the only way it could, through the window.

"Curse you Freeman!" He shouted shaking his fist at the helicopter as it pulled away.

~x~ A few hundred Miles away from Magnusson

It had been a few hours and Gordon was starting to get a bit hungry. He reached behind his seat to the pouch where he had stashed a few apples earlier. Alex had fallen asleep about an hour back after she had checked in with base, Gordon grabbed two apples and bit into one and carefully placed the other one in her lap. The flight was going smoothly so far, but the monitoring system on the new intake and converter was warming up and was about 45 minutes away from overheating. Meaning that the chopper would be using regular fuel soon, with it being so scarce nowadays Gordon started to look for a good area to land.

They were passing over a field with golden wheat from what Gordon could tell. 'Better now than later' Gordon thought, he pulled back on the stick a little to start slowing down. Once the helicopter was level, he pulled back a little more and dropped the collective to start the decent. Alex started to mumble something but Gordon ignored it to concentrate on landing. He had only done this once before with a much lighter craft.

After a somewhat soft landing he reached up and shut down the engines and turned off the converter. Alex stretched in her seat and yawned. "Why have we stopped?" She asked putting the apple onto the dash. Gordon pointed at the temperature gauge on the monitor. She nodded and took off the harness holding her to her seat, Gordon did the same. They climbed out of the helicopter and Gordon leaned against the hull.

He pulled the GPS device off of his thigh magnetic holder and turned it on to see where they were. He knew they were going the right direction, but wanted to make sure he did not stray out off the path he had plotted out for them. After letting the device sync up to the sats, he noticed that he had gone off by a few miles, but it was nothing to worry about.

What happened next did worry him, it was strange. The device showed an error in the system, it was picking up a beacon. He opened the message showing details about the beacon. He did a double take, it was encoded to him, with an encryption that he had made back in college with a class mate that went to a different research company.

He zeroed in to the beacon and found it was only 20 minutes away by foot. He pulled a side arm from the helicopter and tapped Alex on the shoulder, She was laying on the ground enjoying the sun. "What is it Gordon?" She asked opening one eye.

He held the device over her to read. It was showing the beacon and the details.

-Transmission=LOCATION

-Address=G_FREEMAN

-Direction=SSW_800M

Gordon pointed in the direction and started to jog that way, Alex got up and followed. They fought their way through the tall grass that was not pushed down from the helicopters downdraft. Gordon had no idea if it was who he thought it was or if it was just a trick by someone else. They saw a small shed in the distance, where the beacon was coming from.

He pulled his side arm out and made sure that it was loaded. getting closer, he could make out that the shed had a small clearing right in front of it. They were approaching it from the backside. He stopped jogging and used his hand to tell Alex to get low, they made their way to the shed in a crouch and got to the back. He inched his way to the side and peaked around the corner. There was a rumbling sound coming from the shed.

The door opened and there was a loud thud followed by the door slamming shut. He popped around the corner with the gun raised and ready to fire. Alex right by his side doing the same. They stared at a woman standing next to a cube on the ground for a second.

The woman with brown hair and a orange jumpsuit tied around her waist, revealing a sleeveless shirt with a faded aperture logo on the chest.

"Michelle?" Alex ask.