It was three in the morning and everything was silent. No surprise since the usual noisemakers were all asleep (or in Medic's case, slumped over unconscious over unfinished work).

Well, not everybody.

Hidden away in an abandoned mineshaft miles away from 2fort, a purple suited woman with greying hair and an aroma of cigarette smoke sat, glaring at the glowing monitors before her.

She was not happy.

She had been woken up three hours ago by Miss Pauling, informing her that a Black Mesa operative had been sighted a mile north of 2fort, where BLU team alpha had been assigned. Since then, several more had been seen, along with a unmarked convey, but wherever they had gone, she had no cameras.

This meant three things.

One: the enemy had somehow managed to sneak past her defences and was now camped somewhere near her precious team of mercenaries.

Two: they had somehow seen past her clever ruse and had gone to attack the unprepared BLU team, as opposed to the ready and waiting RED team out in Colorado.

Which meant three: they had a leak. Most likely on the BLU team.

The Administrator sighed and rubbed at her temples. A leak. So much for trusting the mercenaries. She'd thought that that group of mindless ageless idiots couldn't be of any harm, but she had obviously been wrong.

She didn't like being wrong.

But she had more important things to worry about right now than a leak.

"Pauling, put Nathaniel Palmer on the line please." She curtly ordered, activating the communication line with her secretary as she did so.

"Yes ma'am."


The water silently lapped at the pier, its distorted surface stained a deep indigo by the twilit sky above.

The waterfront was empty. It always was. He never knew why, but it always appeared empty to him.

He sat on the wooden pier, legs dangling down over the ocean as it ebbed in and out below him. It was stained a deep, almost blood red by the horizon by the invisible sun, small waves casting tiny silhouettes of black blue against the pallet of colours that bled through the sea.

Nathaniel Palmer let out a deep sigh and drew his attention from the water below to the sky above. It was clear, with stars dimly shining from the early morning light of the not yet visible sun. it too was stained a deep shade of vermilion, blotting out the tiny pinpricks of light that were somehow stars.

He didn't know how he'd gotten here. He never did.

You never did in dreams.

Ever since he'd taken off into the american unknown, he'd had this dream. Sometimes the time of day would change, or the location, but no matter when or where it was, one thing was always the same.

It was always empty.

Nate got up. He knew this place well, having spent countless summer days running up and down the worn wooden slats of the causeway, perhaps pausing to grab a drink from the shop if he could wrangle enough money up from his brothers or his mother.

Breaking into a jog, he set off along the walkway, past the pier he'd been on, past the shops with their sun bleached signs advertising products, waging their silent wars against their competitors for the attention of beach-going customers.

It could've been worse, he reflected. He knew most of the team had nightmares, caused by the constant, endless cycle of death and life and pain created by respawn and their...colourful histories. Not that he didn't have the nightmares – far from it – it was just that out of all the things his mind could have focused on, it had chosen on the past that he had left behind some seven years ago.

Beneath his feet, the wood turned to tarmac and he was in Boston city proper now. Buildings dwarfed him from all sides, some with billboards advertising nuka cola or some show at the cinema or fallout shelters from some company still stuck in the depths of the cold war.

And as he ran, something changed. There was still no one around, but yet the youth felt a presence. Like someone was watching.

Some part of his mind, honed by years on the run in a fairly unknown and hostile country, told him to wake up, that there was someone with him, someone who might be prepared to strike at any moment; but it was ignored, another part of him having grown used to the relative safety of his job and his life.

He took a left, taking him even deeper into the city. Some part of him knew this place, knew its streets and its alleys, but it had been worn down by years of traveling, by years of not being in his home city, dulling his memory of what was where. And some part of him ached, as if that missing information was not merely street names and shopfronts, but an actual tangible part of him, grown weak and heavy from lack of use.

The presence grew stronger, and not even his partly desensitised mind could ignore it. There was someone in the room with him.

Some logical part of him, the part that called himself the Scout, not Nathaniel Palmer, warned him that it was Spy or some other member of his team, out to get revenge for some petty thing he had done earlier.

But it didn't come through.

He picked up his pace, his slow jog turning into a run and then finally a sprint, as if he could outrun that real-life problem here, in this dream. He ran through the deserted streets, taking corners and turns seemingly at random, all in the hope that he could perhaps outrun whatever it was.

But much to his horror, it did nothing. That haunting feeling still lingered.

His mind and heart quickened, fear starting to take ahold of him. What could he do, if he couldn't run? He couldn't hide, he couldn't fight back, and he couldn't run...

And then the world faltered.

It shook, buildings folding in upon themselves like origami. He stumbled, but picked himself up before he could fall.

He continued running, fear making him go even faster than what was possible. Buildings collapsed around him, driving him even faster through the deserted streets.

The world shook again, this time harder and his feet lost contact with the ground, sending him falling down, not onto the sidewalk he had been on, but into a black void that had suddenly opened up below him, swallowing him, tearing his mind back into consciousness…

And then suddenly he was staring up at the off-white ceiling of a room, a purple, bespectacled figure leaning over him.

He lay like that for a long moment, mind still racing in fear as he tried to make sense of what had happened.

"Scout?"

Nate opened his mouth, his mind already asking who she was referring to, because he was Nathaniel, not this 'Scout' when finally reality caught up to him.

He sat up in his bed, blinking his eyes rapidly in an effort to clear his eyes of sleep.

"Miss...Miss Pauling? What…" His mind was tired and confused, still having trouble formulating words.

"The administrator wants you." She briskly said, not really caring the slightest for what had just happened. Most the team were light sleepers and had similar reactions upon awaking (if they didn't instantly attack her that was), a habit gained from their... lifestyles.

"Admin? Jesus, what the fuck is the time?!"

"Its three twenty in the morning."

"Three–holy shit!" The Scout jumped up, once again in fear, but this time of the Administrator. His mind raced through all the things she could've called him for – socialising with RED, skipping battles, ignoring Medic...he was pretty damn sure he'd broken nearly every damn rule in the book – but then again, who hadn't?

"Yes it is. The Administrator is waiting scout."

"ShitshitshitshitSHIT!" The Scout swore, hurriedly grabbing his clothes from yesterday and throwing them on. You did not keep the Administrator waiting if you wanted to keep your job or your life.

Throwing on a jacket and his cap as an afterthought, the Scout turned to the secretary, somewhat ready.

She nodded and lead him out of his room, down the stairs that lead to the ground floor and then another set that went down into the basement. The communications room was under the base, next to Medic's office, where the other team couldn't reach during normal combat.

Walking by the doctor's office, the Scout caught a glimpse of his white form lying sprawled across his desk in a rare moment of lethargy.

But then he turned and the Scout was ushered into the communications room, the thick soundproof door quietly closing behind the duo.

Computers lined the walls of the room, the harsh bluish white of fluorescent lighting illuminating the room. The computers quietly flashed and whirred, perhaps occasionally beeping or spitting out a card onto the ground.

A huge monitor covered half the wall, its surface flickering with static. Directly below it, a desk sat covered in papers and folders.

Miss pauling nudged the Scout forwards and he shuffled towards the desk and the plush looking desk chair before it.

He was nervous. Why wouldn't he be? The Administrator, the power that be, the woman who for the last six years, had controlled every aspect of his life. A single word from her and he might be utterly erased off the face of the earth, with not a single photograph or memory to be recalled by.

He could become nothing more than a statistic, quoted by the Administrator to his replacement.

Turning the chair slightly, he sat down. The screen before him flickered to life and the runner let out a shaky breath.

The screen before him showed a darkened room, the only source of illumination being a bare bulb behind the caller, silhouetting her form for the camera.

The scout could faintly make out some basic features of the woman - her suited form, a head of black hair with a single, thick streak of white running through it and a cigarette held loosely in her left hand but beyond that, nothing.

There was a silence as each party waited for the other to speak, before the older woman spoke.

"Nathaniel Palmer." She said, her words sharp and roughened by years of smoking and shouting.

"Y...yes ma'am." He swallowed, like a disobedient student before the principal.

Helen, from behind her veil of smoke and darkness, smiled.

Everyone was scared of her. Even her own late employers had shied away from her words and her ruthlessness. Some tried to hide their fear behind tall words like Spy, it behind a seemingly emotionless façade like the Heavy, but it was still there, still buried away deep in their minds. She had even somehow managed to strike fear into the insane monster that was the Pyro, the fear considered impossible by many.

But while fear was a useful thing to have, it did not always suffice. Many men throughout history had found out that fear would eventually crack and give way to revolt, and the Admin did not want to tread down the same path as they did.

She didn't use fear. She used incentives.

Every one of those eighteen men had something that if offered or threatened, they'd do anything for. Throughout her years of working with the current generation of team fortress industries, she had had to appeal to the Pyro's insanity, doubt a Spy's skill, challenge a Sniper's... manliness, threaten a Heavy's Medic and lover, and that was only for RED. The BLU team had their own set of fears and desires and mixing the two would only ever lead to chaos.

But thankfully, the Scouts were the easiest to manipulate. They always had been.

"I have seen that of late, your team has started to doubt your ability." She waited for the Scout's reaction before continuing.

The youth cringed a little and shrank in his chair. She smiled. Both Scouts had a weak point in their pride - challenge that and they would do about anything to prove themselves. Add that to the steadily growing pile of issues and problems the BLU scout had with both himself and the team and you had a mercenary desperate enough to do anything to get attention from his colleges.

"Uh...yeah…" The Scout stammered a little, unsure of how to reply. "But hey, don't listen ta them! Right? I mean…" He trailed off, giving the administrator a slightly hurt look from underneath the brim of his cap. It was obvious that the fact hurt him more than he wanted to let on. "Its nothing though. Just those dumbasses not knowin' talent an' skill if it bit 'em on the ass."

"But what if...what if I had something to fix that?"

"Wait...what'dya mean?"

"I have a mission for you."

"Like, a contract?"

"No, a mission."

"Go on…"

To the Scout's right, one of the various computers beeped into life and spat out a page onto the desk before him.

"Several Black Mesa operatives have been sighted several miles north from here, approximately a mile out of the respawn zone. I need you to go out and do reconnaissance on this new...development. alone."

"Wait, what?" The youth explained, his voice squeaking a little. "You want me to go out, alone and spy on the same guys that nearly killed me for real, all without respawn!? Are you fucking crazy lady!?"

"I am not asking you to engage them Scout. I am merely asking for you to do what you were hired to do."

"To hurt people?"

"To scout ahead."

"But…"

The Admin silently sighed. The boy's trepidation was obvious, and especially after what had happened, it was easy to see why. She wished she was speaking to Frederick, the RED Scout - he would already be out there, instead of having second thoughts in here.

"Look, why did I hire you?"

"Because I'm the best of the best." The Scout said, sitting a little straighter, his statement filling him slightly with confidence again.

"Exactly. But if you are the best of the best, why does your team think otherwise?"

"Because they're idiots." he tried to grin brazenly, but it came off as more desperate than confident.

"But what if you could fix that?"

"By taking this mission?"

"Yes."

"Ok, how does that work?"

"Simple. Do the mission and perhaps then they will realise that you aren't as useless as they think you are."

The Scout paused and took the sheet the computer had spat out. It was a mission briefing, complete with a small map of the area where the enemy was supposed to be.

Was this really the chance he was looking for? He'd be all alone out there, and any death would be permanent.

But this was a chance. If they saw that he had gone out and taken out the enemy, perhaps they'd stop looking down at him. Perhaps, if he did what they couldn't…

He tucked the sheet into his jacket.

"I'll do it."


changelog 1-9-16

+ ad-ah screw this. who looks at these anyway?

so, new chapter. and new author notes to go with it. yay!

anyways, I just want to take a moment to say...thank you. why? because you guys. somehow, you have slogged through over 50k words of my writing and yet you are somehow still here, reading. even if you don't review, follow or even like, it all means something. it means that somehow, someone likes my writing. and I just want to say thank you. it means a lot to me.