Unlikely Allies
"You did what?"
This is my longest chapter yet and probably one of my favorites. Again much inadequate thanks to The Wallflower for fantastically amazing beta-reading.
It wasn't Gordon's fault, not exactly. He just had bad luck in general. Such as when he made the propane-fueled tennis ball cannon for the fourth grade science fair. It wasn't his fault that Robert Jenkins in the fifth grade had increased the propane flow on a dare so when Gordon demonstrated it the tennis ball knocked the vice principal out for two days straight.
Or back in grad school when he his roommate Donnie McCormen suggested he hold onto some papers for him and it turned out to be the answer key he'd stolen from Professor Long's desk. Thank god they'd caught Donnie in Mr. Longs office a week later, just before Gordon could be expelled.
Or even more recently when Dr. Magnusson had asked him to heat up his microwave casserole for him. Gordon had put it in, turned the microwave on, and promptly pulled out a book to read while it warmed up for the required two minutes. Five minutes later when Gordon smelled smoke, he opened the microwave and took one look at the casserole before throwing it in the garbage and pretending it never happened.
"Gordon, get ready!" Gordon perked up at his name and looked outside. Fisher was on the second level waving frantically before dodging back inside to avoid the frenzied tentacles. So picking up a grenade from the small stack at his feet. Gordon pulled the pin and hurled it into the chamber.
Immediately all the creatures fury was focused on where the grenade exploded, swiftly reducing part of the floor to Swiss cheese. Fisher took his chance and bolted across the floor to the ladder leading up. The creature took notice of this and swung around to attack him. So Gordon armed another grenade and chucked it into the chamber.
The creature's attention was diverted once more, allowing Fisher to climb the ladder and sprint over to the door. Leaning against the wall for a moment while the monster slammed against the door, the trooper got his breath back and stood up, casting a near shadow over the comparatively small scientist and asked, "So?"
"So, what?"
Fisher let out an exasperated breath. "So aren't you going to ask me how the mission went?"
Gordon replied quietly, "Ok, so how did the mission go?"
"Awful. I was bitten, smashed into a ceiling by a giant spinning fan, attacked by zombies, cut, nearly zapped, and I'm out of bullets." He let out a wide grin. "I got the power on, plus the fuel supplies. Now let's go fry this thing!"
Gordon couldn't argue with that. He was about to follow Fisher back to the control center when the soldier stopped dead in his tracks. He rotated around on one foot and set his eyes on him.
"Freeman, where'd my rifle go?"
Gordon's heart sank. He forced out the breath in his lungs in an exaggerated hissing sound. So when Gordon decided to stay silent. "Gordon. Where, is, my, rifle?"Gordon started to scratch his head, a nervous habit of his which was quite difficult in his bulky HEV suit. Opening his eyes slowly, he shrank under Fisher's increasingly intense gaze before stabbing his arm to his side, his finger rigidly sticking out to point out the door where the thing was.
"Out there."
"What do you mean, out there?" Gordon clenched his eyes together again.
"Well, since I don't have the best, well, throwing hand I uh, kinda thought that if I used a, you know, club of some sort I could get the grenades further into the chamber."
"Get on with it!" Fisher roared.
"So I took your rifle to use a club but when I swung to hit the grenade I accidently let go of the handle and threw the gun and it landed at the bottom of the blast pit and I really didn't want to go get it because I would probably die so I decided to wait for you to get back. Sorry."
Fisher stood there for a moment, jaw-half open, stunned.
"You did what?"
Throwing up his hands in exasperation, Gordon pulled Fisher's arm toward the entrance to the blast pit, he jabbed his finger to the far side of the pit. And there lay the black, sleek shape of Fishers rifle.
After a long sigh, Fisher turned around and shrugged his shoulders before trudging off to the control room, mumbling something incomprehensible.
Fisher was already at the panel, when Gordon arrived and realized the only protection between them and the incoming ten thousand degree heat was a shattered glass window. He was about to raise a warning to Fisher when the marine, apparently a bit eager to do this, raised his fist down on the red FIRE button with a great deal of enthusiasm while calling out in victory, "Hasta la vista baby!" And before Gordon could do a thing about it, he slammed down on the button with all his considerable strength.
Gordon's heart shot into his throat as he lunged for Fisher and tackled him to the ground, he just had enough time to yell, "You idiot you'll kill us all!" before the mounted engines in the pit finished their short preparations and fired.
The roar of the rockets shook the very earth, and the thunderous sound they produced removed all surrounding sound. Gordon just managed to shut his eyes tight and throw a hand over Fishers face before brilliant, burning light spilled into the room.
The temperature went from room to one hundred and twenty degrees in a scarce second. The metal floor against his forehead quickly rose in temperature until he had to pull away from it. The air coming was hot and thick; it almost burned his lungs just to breath. And still the rockets fired, on and on as they incinerated the creature to absolutely nothing as it shrieked in agony.
Slowly, the roar died away. The heat dissipated and was replaced by the sound of alarms and Gordon's own labored breathing. On wobbly legs he rose. His face and hair were soaked with sweat and the metal parts of his armor still radiated heat. Miraculously though it had cost him no power at all, his suit was still at sixty seven percent. The frame of his glasses was cooling off, and they almost burned his skin. He was thankful the lenses hadn't melted.
He pulled himself up and leaned against the wrecked control panel. Fisher was slick with sweat, his fatigues clung to his body and his face was beet-red. He was panting for breath and steadying himself against the wall, ignorant to the cooling metal. Gordon gave him a moment to recover, then. "Fisher you idiot, you could have killed us!"
"Hey don't give me any lip, isn't there supposed to be a blast shield or something? Why didn't that work?"
"Oh I don't know, maybe it had something to do with the giant alien smashing through?" Fisher didn't have a reply to that, he backed off before changing the subject.
"Well, now what?" Fisher asked, clearly at a loss of answers. Gordon couldn't blame him either, now what? Going back wasn't the best option, and there was no other way out. "Gordon, what are we gonna do?" Fished asked again.
The question struck Gordon like a stack of bricks. What where they going to do now? Since leaving the Anomalous Materials lab he'd just been focused on survival. He had just been trying to get out of the facility, get to the surface, and get help for everyone trapped down below. He'd been hoping he could get out safe and let the military come in and deal with everything. Of course now the military, with the exception of Fisher, hadn't been the best source of help.
What would they do know? Presuming they survived this madhouse and managed to get away, they would only have solved some of their problems. They would be fugitives, hunted by the government to the best of its abilities. Gordon could imagine it already, news stories about a renegade marine and an insane scientist.
So what was there left to even live for? Gordon wasn't a suicidal type, but reality was now slapping him in the face. Doctor Kleiner and Eli were still down where it all started, probably dying if not dead already. Barney was also probably dead; Gordon could imagine it in frightfully graphic detail. Barney, lying deal in a pool of blood on the floor, eye open in an expression of horror. Eli with a headcrab tearing into his face, muffling scream of-
Gordon was acutely aware of being lifted into the air by two strong arms. "Gordon, wake up! Snap out of it, we need to get outta here. I think I saw a ladder in the blast pit where that thing was, now come on!" Gordon looked up at him, surprised. He'd never heard this tone of voice from Fisher yet, a voice of strong authority and determination.
Fisher set him down gently, then slid out through smashed the window that overlooked the blast pit. Gordon hesitated for a moment, was there really any point in going? But an old quote he'd heard before, the author's name failed him, echoed in head. Where there's life there's hope. So Gordon started after Fisher, maybe this hopeless situation would turn around for the better somehow.
Crawling out the empty window frame, he slid onto the metal walkway and clambered down the ladders. Gordon was hit by a thick choking wave of stench, it filled his nose and mouth like water. Without delay he bent over and threw up, tried to stand up, then threw up again.
Wiping off his mouth, he stood up to see that Fisher was struggling not to do the same despite the gas mask he'd pinched off a dead soldier a while back. In the end though he failed, and he just managed to pull the mask away from his face before he too curled over and blew chunks.
While Fisher recovered, Gordon tried to find a way to filter out the stench of vaporized alien. Breathing through his mouth was barely any better than through his nose, he could literally taste it. What a day to forget my helmet. He though bitterly.
Fisher had recovered; standing back up on two shaky feet he didn't say a word but just pointed at the rim of the blast pit where the creature had been with one hand, while using his other to hold the mask in front of his face.
A red ladder dropped fifteen feet from the rim of the pit down into the tunnel the creature had carved up, although how it had survived the heat was beyond Gordon.
Does he want us to go down there? Apparently Fisher did, he was already heading for the ladder. Gordon hesitated, on one hand, did he really want to travel down the tunnel of an alien creature which had just been vaporized by test-rockets. But on the other hand, did he have any other choice? So with a shrug, he followed Fisher into the pit.
The heat radiating up from the hole fogged his glasses immediately, and he had to follow Fisher's hazy shape down the tunnel of slag and glass. When Fisher disappeared, Gordon didn't stop in time, and fell ten feet.
This would have been no problem normally, but as it was when he hit the un-even surface and slipped, he rolled right into an unsuspecting Fisher who gave way with a startled "What the-" before hitting the ground and sliding down the slanted surface with Gordon right behind.
Gordon couldn't see anything, so he just grabbed his glasses and held them tight against his face as they slid down faster and faster. Another drop landed him on his back with a hard bump. To make it all worse, Gordon couldn't see anything, being in a pitch black tunnel. All he could do was hang in tight and go with the ride.
The ground gave away under Gordon, just as he heard a yell from Fisher. He snapped open his eyes in time to see the water's surface rushing up. Again he managed to grab hold of his glasses before he plunged in.
What shocked him about the water wasn't its cold, he'd been expecting cold. No, this water was hot. Almost hotter than a hot tub, which was reasonable seeing as they'd just fired a rocket engine into it. Letting go of his glasses Gordon's instincts kicked into gear, and swam hard for the surface far above. He could see the blurred shape of a man below to him, also swimming hardup.
His lungs were starting to burn when he broke through the surface, sucking in a huge breath of air. But no sooner had he taken a breath then his Geiger counter jumped into action, clicking away like machine gun. Gordon took a moment to rub some of the water out of his eyes before taking a look around the dark room he was in.
He took in a deep breath instinctively and felt a chill race up his spine. Right in front of him was a dead security guard, sprawled out grotesquely. Next to him were several metal barrels knocked over with toxic waste oozing out.
Fisher broke water next to him. He took one look at the scene around him before casting an urgent glance at Gordon. Gordon nodded and taking a breath, they both dived back down again.
Fisher had grabbed Gordon's arm and was leading him down, down, down. Gordon felt the pressure in his ears grow as they sank deeper and deeper, going through a small hole in the bottom. Was Fisher insane? They should be going up, not down.
As to answer him, Fisher suddenly let go of him and kicked off the floor, shooting up through the water like an arrow. Gordon was running low on air now; he could feel the burn in his lungs. Kicking off the concrete bottom, he too shot up through the water towards a distant surface. Shoving himself up with his arms, difficult to do when covered in a heavy HEV suit, Gordon strained to get to the surface. He could feel the need to breathe growing rapidly inside him, the pressure in his lungs getting worse and worse, he began to feel the rising panic.
Air! He exploded out of the water like a breaching whale. He groped for a surface. Not finding one he began to sink under once again. Before he could though, a strong arm grabbed him and pulled him up out of the water and toward a ledge which Gordon reached out gratefully and grabbed to support himself.
For awhile Gordon just stayed there, breathing heavily. Beside him Fisher was doing the same, obviously recovering from the adrenaline-juiced experience. Gordon took a moment to be grateful his suit was water-proof; it would not have been fun to take the thing off and empty it.
Gordon pulled himself up and out of the water and onto the ledge, Fisher quickly followed suit. The marine pulled his big pistol out and tried to empty as much water from it as he could while Gordon turned to check out what was around them. But before he could take two steps Fisher's angry voice boomed out behind him.
"Freeman, what the hell was that? You nearly killed us back there." Gordon cringed, this might not be pretty. He turned gingerly to face the really annoyed looking Fisher.
"Um, well my glasses fogged up you see and when you jumped down that first drop I kinda fell and slipped and, well, that was that."
"Oh, and you didn't stop to wonder when I just dropped out of sight?" He asked sarcastically. Gordon fell silent, what could he say about that? He threw up his arms in an "I don't know" gesture.
"I don't know, I just don't think about these things sometimes, sorry."
"How did you ever become a scientist? You keep this crap up and you'll kill us both next time. Now let's go." Without another word he turned and headed for the other side of the ledge they were on, and Gordon followed. Fisher soon came to an abrupt stop. Gordon peeked around him to see, and his mouth dropped open.
It was a river of radiation. A massive chamber rolled before them, and it was flowing with thick, viscous luminous green sludge which Gordon's ticking Geiger counter told him it was radioactive. It poured out of a massive pipe on the left side of the chamber and filled the bottom before flowing around the corner.
Gordon's mouth went dry, was this a recent development? Or had Black Mesa always been spewing thousands of tons of radioactive waste into god-knew where? He hoped it was the former, the prospect of this much radiation entering the world did not give him a good feeling.
Apparently Fisher wasn't too thrilled about it either, for after a moment of open-mouthed silence he stuttered, "I-is-i-is that radioactive?" Gordon said nothing and just nodded grimly.
Walking out onto a small platform, he looked down the hole in the floor with a ladder descending to another platform that was just above the oozing green muck. Nothing there except for a recharge and a first aid station.
With a slight smile, Gordon climbed down the ladder, dropping the last few feet and landing with a thump. Walking over to the stations, he slid open the cover for his HEV suits recharge port. Unwinding the plug from the station, he plugged himself in and felt the power begin to flow into the suit with a satisfying hum. He closed his eyes and sighed in relaxation as his nearly dead suit thrum to life, administering morphine to his various cuts, rips, and bruises. Well it technically wasn't morphine; it was a far-better alternative that accelerated the natural healing process greatly as well as dulling pain.
Gordon disconnected himself once the well ran dry, saw his suit was at a satisfactory eighty five percent, and moved on to the aid station and flipped the lid. He reached inside and grabbed a pair of small kits both full of medical supplies. Clipping them to his magnetic waist, he climbed back up to the ladder to the waiting Fisher who was tapping his foot impatiently.
"What where you doing?" he asked.
"Filling up on power, and grabbing some med kits. Here, take this." He plucked one kit off his waist and tossed it to Fisher who caught and opened it. Shuffling around its contents, he pulled out a big syringe full of a blue liquid and looked at Gordon inquisitively.
"And these areā¦" Gordon perked up; he liked explaining stuff like this.
"One of Black Mesa's inventions that will probably rewrite the world of medicine when it's released to the public. It is an assistant drug to the human body's natural healing process. It blocks pain and can fix small muscle and ligament tears in about twenty minutes, and superficial wounds even quicker. In large enough doses it can even repair broken bones in a few hours. Right now it's being used by Black Mesa privately." Fisher put his hands forward at this point.
"Okay, okay, I get it. Fixes you up faster, like my PCV right?" Gordon nodded,
"Similar, but it works much faster." Fisher took this in and nodded.
"Faster, right." With this he jabbed the needle into his arm causing Gordon to wince, he'd always hated needles. Fisher was apparently unfazed and merely watched in complete fascination as a long jagged cut on his arm that had been opened up again slowly scabbed over. Ten seconds later the scab fell off, leaving a bare pink strip of new skin beneath.
Fisher held his newly healed hand in front of his face, silently mouthing amazement at this marvel of science for a moment before returning to the problem at hand. "So how are we planning to cross this crap, that pipe?" Fisher pointed to a large, rusty pipe jutting out across the expanse of waste and going around the corner.
Gordon swallowed, he wasn't very particular about crossing a fifty foot drop over a lake of radioactive waste on a rusted pipe, but it wasn't looking like he had any other choice.
So, Gordon crouched down and holding his arms out for balance, he began to carefully cross the gap with Fisher coming carefully up behind him. The pipe trembled slightly under each foot step but never gave, and eventually Gordon's anxiety and tension died down, but never completely.
After rounding the corner, they saw two things. One, the pipe forked up ahead over a massive chasm. Two, the flowing river of waste gave way to a massive drop and resulting in a turbulent waterfall that poured thousands of tons of toxic sludge over the edge and into the massive, growing pool of it far below.
Trying his best not to look down, Gordon kept heading forward. Behind him he heard Fisher mutter a quiet swear of amazement that Gordon heartily agreed to, this was ridiculous! For God's sake, this was a river, a torrent of radioactive waste that was being dumped out like so much water. It must have been a result of the resonance cascade; surely Black Mesa wouldn't be this criminally incompetent.
Gordon spotted an open hatch to the left fork and headed there. Nearly on his belly, he crawled into it and slid down a ladder, landing inside the pipe with a hollow thud. Fisher landed with a heavier thud.
The thundering of the waterfall outside was now significantly reduced, though it still echoed through the pipe all around him. Checking back Gordon saw heavy grating blocking the way. Checking ahead, he saw unblocked passage.
So he kept going forward, standing up as he found out with some surprise that the pipe was tall enough for him. Not for Fisher though, the big marine had to half-crouch his way down the pipe.
"Freeman, do you know where we're going?"
Fisher sounded a little despairing as he asked, and Gordon did have to agree. He didn't know where he was going. One of the scientists had told him to get to the Lambda lab to help try and stop all of this, but he didn't know where it was, and he didn't think he needed to get there. How could he stop something like this? He sighed deeply before answering Fisher.
"I don't know, but it's probably better than back there." He heard no reply to this, just a deep sigh of disappointment.
Pausing to jump over a break in the pipe floor, Gordon rounded another turn and kept going in silence; the thundering of the waterfall had died to almost nothing. What would he do now? He couldn't head to the surface and just expect a happy ending, not with the US military looking for him.
What about the Lambda complex? Could he really stop this madness somehow? Frankly Gordon doubted it; Lambda had some of the brightest minds in Black Mesa, all of whom outclassed Gordon. If they couldn't fix this then he sure couldn't. But what if he headed there anyway, he might at least find some answers there as to what was happening. Maybe-
A groaning sound echoed through the pipe and sent a spike of fear through Gordon. His recent experiences had taught him that when something groaned, it was usually about to break.
"What was that?" Fisher said.
Gordon began to back up when the entire pipe groaned once more. Then with a shriek of shearing metal the entire shaft broke free and plunged down, taking them with it.
Not much to say here, just reader and review! Those reviews keep me alive!
