"How'd you get this job?" Steven asked.

Eric gave the storage room he was investigating one last look-over and saw nothing but rusty shelves and old boxes. Same as the last two rooms he'd stopped to check out. Part of him wanted to hurry, but part of him was anxious about leaving a survivor or something useful behind. He felt like he was in uncharted territory right now. He had all sorts of training, and even disaster training with regards to Black Mesa, sure, but this…

This was not just a disaster.

This was a goddamned cataclysm.

"Friend of mine got me in," he said as he rejoined Steven in the maintenance tunnel. They'd found it after returning to the antechamber and finding an old door that Eric had to kick open because he didn't have time to go looking for the key.

"Oh...another guard?"

"Yeah. He was the guy in the office we found the keycard in. Martin."

"...I'm sorry," Steven murmured.

"Me too. We were in the Marines together."

He resumed his journey, moving down the passageway. It was lit by weak florescent bulbs overhead that buzzed annoyingly.

"You're a Marine?"

"I was a Marine," Eric replied a little more sharply than he meant to. That was still a sore spot. If anything, it felt more sore now that Martin was a corpse. His mind kept suddenly jerking back to it, throwing up that image of the man's death mask of a face, the way his flesh was blackened and missing in several places, a hole burned in his cheek, exposing his teeth, most of his hair melted away...Eric shuddered at the thought.

"What happened?" Steven asked softly after a few more moments.

"To what?"

"The Marines. And you."

Eric sighed but forced himself to relax. Steven was just anxious, and hey, hadn't he been asking for that all important human contact an hour ago? He made himself remember that this was better than being alone.

"I was dishonorably discharged. I...got into a fistfight with my Sergeant."

"Holy shit, seriously? Over what."

"It's...complicated. We should focus on the task at hand," Eric replied.

"Okay," Steven murmured.

He fell silent again and Eric felt at least a little bad. They reached a junction at the end of the maintenance tunnel and looked first left, then right, and then went right. There were more doors down the left corridor, but he couldn't stop and search every last room. They'd never get anywhere. He opened up another door and looked inside, then sighed at the fact that it was basically a carbon copy of the other rooms he'd investigated so far.

"God, what are these rooms even for!?" he snapped, lowering his shotgun as he realized that nothing was hiding in here. "I mean, what's even in these boxes? Nothing useful, obviously, because no one has been back here for a goddamned decade."

"There's a lot of places like this in Black Mesa," Steven said quietly.

"Don't get me started," Eric muttered. "I've been all over this sector when the workload is too big and there aren't enough of you techs to go around. They send me to make repairs."

"What's the worst one you ever had to deal with?"

Eric thought about it as they continued. "Had to make a repair once hanging off the side of a tram," he said finally.

"What? For real?!"

"Yep. There was supposed to be a ladder, but it was so old it broke off. Only way to get to the junction box that needed fixing. Still get nightmares about that every now and then. Some of those tunnels are so damned dark they looked like endless abysses down there."

"Yeah," Steven agreed.

"What about you?"

"Had to crawl into a damned drainage pipe to get into a locked room that no one knew how to open. No vents were big enough and the door was too thick to just kick in. We would've had to have cut it open with a torch. But then someone had the bright idea to take a drainage pipe into an adjacent room and try to get in that way, and I drew the short straw."

"Damn. That must have sucked bad."

"Yeah, it did. I got that job done, though."

Eric hesitated as they reached another turn in the hallway. So far, it seemed like nothing had reached these back areas, but the storage sections up ahead might be a different story. It was a bit more open and accessible. He motioned for Steven to wait several feet from the door and moved slowly up to it. Pausing, he waited, listening intently. Nothing. Eric grabbed the knob and slowly twisted it, then opened the door up, pulling it in. He waited and yet still the silence mocked him. Shotgun first, he peered out, then swept the concrete corridor beyond. No movement.

"Come on," he whispered, and moved out.

These storage areas were set up very simply, crossing corridors made a plus sign, with four big storage rooms in the area, one in each corner. At the ends of the corridors were doors. The one ahead of him led to another, similar area, the one to the left led to a bathroom, he wasn't sure what the one to the right led to.

He made it almost to the central area where the corridors met when he heard something. He raised his fist, freezing up, and was glad that Steven knew enough to do the same. Carefully, he moved forward. Whatever it was, he thought it had come from the left. He got right up to the edge, waiting, listening, then began to peer around the corner.

Eric found himself staring down the long, black barrel of a shotgun.

"Oh, crap," he whispered.

The shotgun suddenly lowered. "Thank God," the woman holding it whispered. "Who are you?" she asked.

"Eric Bishop. I've got someone else with me. A technician with Steven," he replied, relaxing.

"Good. Come with me. It's not safe out here," she said, and turned around, marching down the left-hand corridor.

"Come on," Eric said to Steven and they followed her.

He studied the woman as they walked. She was a scientist and wore a blood-stained labcoat. Her black hair was pulled into a severe bun and her brown eyes were full of sharp intelligence behind a pair of simple glasses. She had dark skin and looked middle-aged, though in good shape. If she was alive and as quick as she seemed to be, both mentally and physically, he supposed she'd have to be. One of the scientists who took the hazard course seriously, he supposed. She had an authoritative, no-BS air about her.

"Do you know what's going on?" Eric asked as she led them through the door. It did indeed lead to a bathroom.

"No," she replied curtly as she walked to the end of the row of stalls and opened it up. He watched as she stepped up onto the toilet lid, then onto the tank. "Hold this," she said, and passed him her shotgun. He let his own hang by its sling and accepted it.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Getting my stash," she replied as she lifted one of the ceiling tiles.

"Stash?" he asked uncertainly.

"Yes. I've been concerned that something like this could happen, so I secured some supplies here over the past few months. Some ammunition. Some food. Some emergency medical supplies," she replied as she reached for something.

"You suspected we were going to get invaded by...whatever the hell these things are?" Steven asked.

"No, I honestly thought it was going to be something more mundane. I'm a cautious person by nature, and an observant one. I knew that they were doing something dangerous, but I never thought it was this insane," she replied.

She pulled down a small metal box and stepped carefully back onto the floor. She left the stall and moved over to one of the sinks, where she set the cardboard box and opened it up.

"Are there any others?" Eric asked.

She sighed softly. "No, not now. There were. That's what I've been doing: trying to save people. There were a lot of injuries. From the initial event, from the creatures, from friendly fire, from panic. I've got a full morgue not far from here. The last one died twenty minutes ago. I finally decided to go and grab my stash and start making my way elsewhere."

"Did you have a particular destination in mind?" Eric asked.

"The dormitories where I sleep, at first, to see if anyone else was there. After that..." she shrugged and then passed him a pair of magazines. "I didn't manage to secure a pistol. I imagine these will suit you more than they will me."

"They will. Thank you," he replied, accepting them both and pocketing them. "What's your name?"

"Oh. Yes. I'm Doctor Vanessa Thompson," she replied. "I'm a medical doctor here. Hungry?" She passed each of them a pair of breakfast bars and two bottles of water. Upon seeing them and hearing her mention it, Eric realized that he was actually starving, and parched.

"Thanks," he said, giving her the shotgun back and accepting them both. He sat down against a wall, and then he and Steven each tore into the small meal, eating the food and draining the bottles in just a few minutes. When he was finished, he didn't feel satisfied, but he did feel better, at least. He made a mental note to find some real food at some point.

Especially after losing his breakfast earlier.

"Where were you going?" Vanessa asked.

"There's a communications facility on the other side of this storage area and the medical wing ahead of it. We're going to call for help," Eric replied.

"A sound plan. I'm going to assume from your demeanor and the direction you came from that the nearest security checkpoint is not viable?"

Eric sighed and shook his head. "It's a slaughterhouse."

She pursed her lips unhappily. "I thought as much," she murmured. "Several guards came from there and they told me it was bad. I had hoped that there were survivors, or that perhaps in their panic they were describing it as worse than it really was. I'm sorry."

"So am I," Eric muttered. He rubbed his eyes and then rested his head against the wall he was sitting beside. "We should compare notes about them. The monsters."

"Yes, we should. What have you seen so far?"

"The headcrabs and the zombies. Self explanatory, I figure. Then there's the little ones that are kind of like dogs. Call em houndeyes. You come across any of those?"

"A few, yes. They are quite dangerous."

"Yeah. Got knocked on my ass a few times fighting them. And then there's another one I've seen...only once, and it was dead, back in the security zone. It was...greenish brown, sort of humanoid, definitely looked like an alien though. It had this like...green metal on its wrists and neck. I saw burn marks on the walls, almost like electrical discharges hitting it and grounding out. But they weren't making any sense. And some of the guards I came across were burned bad too, like they got hit by a burst of electricity. I can't be sure, but I think maybe they're doing it. Have you seen anything like what I'm describing?" he asked.

She shook her head. "No, nothing like that. It sounds fascinating though...but have you seen the barnacles? The ones that hang from the ceiling?"

Eric felt a chill shiver through him. "No, I haven't...what do they do?"

"They're relatively benign. So long as you're paying attention, they shouldn't be a bother. They're basically fleshy mounds that hang from the ceiling and drape a long tongue down almost to the floor. Anything that gets caught in that tongue gets dragged up into the mound and eaten. It's rather...repulsive," she explained.

"How'd you figure this out?" Eric asked.

"I did an experiment. There are several in the medical wing and I tossed a dead...what did you call it? Oh yes, headcrab, at the tongue. It's messy."

"Oh...so that's it? Nothing else?" She shook her head. "Okay then, so we've got headcrabs and zombies, houndeyes, barnacles, and whatever the hell that thing back in security was." He heaved a sigh. "This is going to get worse before it gets better."

"Oh I'm positive it will," Vanessa agreed. "Things do tend to work out that way."

Eric groaned and took a moment to massage his temples. "So should we move on? You think this is a good idea?"

"You're asking me?"

"You're a doctor and based on this interaction alone I'm almost positive you're a lot smarter than me, so I thought it'd make sense to run it by you."

She laughed softly. "It makes sense, given the circumstances."

"Okay, good. Well, unless anyone has any objections, I'd like to keep going."

"I'm ready," Steven said quietly.

"As am I. I see no reason to linger," Vanessa agreed.

Eric nodded and got to his feet. It was time to press on. He felt better, he realized as they made their way out of the bathroom and deeper into the storage area. Having food, water, a small break, and another survivor at his back, especially one who seemed so competent and sure, (a stark contrast to Steven), probably had a lot to do with that.

Back out in the corridor, Eric took point, shotgun firmly in hand. He moved with a bit more confidence down the hallway and took a left, heading for the next section of storage. "Is there anything up ahead?" he asked softly.

"Just a few barnacles, but that could have changed since I passed through. It seems difficult to be truly secure," Vanessa replied.

"Understood."

He hit the door and opened it up. Beyond the threshold, Eric got his first look at a barnacle. The words that Vanessa had used to describe them, flesh mounds, seemed disgustingly accurate. It looked like a dark lump of organic substance stuck to the ceiling like a wad of chewing gum. A long, narrow tongue, like a vine, hung from its center, stopping just a few inches over the floor. It was in the center of the area, where the two corridors met.

"That's really ugly," he muttered.

Vanessa nodded in agreement, glancing up at it. They moved on, passing it by carefully after clearing the side passageways and finding nothing, then moving to the next doorway. As he opened this one up, a low growl stopped him. It sounded like a zombie. He heard another growl, and some shuffling. They weren't in obvious view, so they had to be somewhere to the left or right. He let his shotgun hang and pulled out his pistol, given that these were zombies and pretty easy to put down. He motioned for the others to wait and moved down the corridor.

After a moment, he determined they were coming from the right and he stepped out, aimed, and opened fire. Three zombies were stumbling around, and he put them down with relative ease, emptying his pistol's current magazine in the process. As he reloaded, he turned around and scoped out the other hallway, realizing that he should've done that before taking on the zombies. He was getting sloppy. Although he saw nothing, the door at the end of that hall was open, and the way beyond was dark. Frowning, he moved a few steps closer, staring long into that darkness.

"Is everything okay?" Vanessa asked.

"Fine," he replied finally, moving back to the crossroads. "Come on."

As Steven and Vanessa joined him, something let out a deep snort. Eric jerked in response as he caught movement from the dark doorway. He began to shout a warning but a loud, wet exhalation sounded and something came flying out of the darkness. He heard it smack wetly against something, and then Steven began screaming and collapsed against him. Eric cursed as he was dragged down to the floor.

"Vanessa!" he shouted.

"I've got it," she replied calmly. As he struggled to untangle himself from Steven, both trying to get to his feet and see what was happening to Steven, (the poor kid was clutching his wrist and Eric could see something green and bubbling on the back of his left hand), he heard her shotgun sound off like a cannon. Something wailed loudly. The shotgun spoke a second time, then a third, and the wailing cut off abruptly.

Something hit the floor in the darkness.

"What is it?" Eric asked as he crouched over Steven, who was laying on his back now, crying out in agony.

"I don't know...damn, that looks like acid. You have a medkit?" she asked.

"Yeah." He unclipped it and passed it to her.

She took it, crouched beside him, and snapped it open. "Watch our back," she said as she dug into the kit.

"Uh-huh," Eric replied, getting up and surveying the area.

"It hurts so goddamned much!" Steven cried. He was gritting his teeth and trembling, tears of pain running down his cheeks.

"Shh," Vanessa murmured. "Don't worry. It'll be fine."

He glanced down as she found something, a small glass container. Opening it up, she grabbed Steven's wrist and upended the container over it. He gasped and let out a loud moan of relief. The bubbling slowed, then stopped.

"What was that?" Eric asked.

"Vinegar, basically. Neutralizes chemical burns in a pinch. Come on. We need to get him to the infirmary. I can help him," Vanessa said.

She closed the kit and passed it back to Eric, then helped Steven to his feet.

They hurried off towards the medical wing.