"Hey...can you hear me?...come on, wake up..."
Blake uttered a thick groan as the world came back to him in bits and pieces. The first thing he became aware of was the fact that he had a pounding headache. The second was the smell: it smelled like he was in a hospital, which set him on edge. He'd never liked hospitals. Someone was trying to talk to him, a voice he didn't recognize. As he shifted and opened his eyes, a brilliant white light cut into his head, making the pain flare.
"Come on, get up, it's important," the voice insisted.
Groaning again, feeling a million little aches and pains assault him, Blake shifted once more and slowly sat up.
He was in a cell of stainless steel. A single bright light was bolted to the ceiling overhead in a metal grille. Looking around, he found that he was on a thin metal slab jutting out of the wall, sharing company with a stainless steel toilet and sink and nothing more.
"Hey! Here!" the voice whispered intently.
Blake turned his head. There was a small window over his bed. A man with wild white hair, pallid skin and dark bags under his eyes stared in. He looked crazy.
"Who are you?" Blake asked, rubbing his head and remembering how he had stupidly walked right into a trap.
"Nuzzi," the man replied. "Doctor Dario Nuzzi."
"Captain Blake."
"Ah! Perfect, I was hoping it was you. Graves has had a lot to say about you and MacReady," the man said.
"Fantastic. What do you want?" he grumbled, leaning his head down and massaging the back of his neck.
"I want to help you escape, and, in doing so, help myself escape. I was one of the lead scientists for Gen Inc. I'm a biologist and geneticist and I was helping them map the genetics of the Cloud Virus," Nuzzi explained.
"So what the hell are you doing in here then?"
"When we started capturing people, using them as live test subjects, when the experiments grew brutal…I could no longer be a part of it. I tried to stop them. I failed and they locked me up. Now I'm going to be experimented on along with the others."
"So...you said you had a way out of here?" Blake asked.
"Yes. I've studied the schematics of this facility intently. I was always concerned something like this might happen. Beneath your bed is a maintenance hatch, locked tight. But, here, take this." He fed a thin metal rod through one of the narrow holes in the glass. "Use it to unlock the hatch. That hatch will lead you down into the maintenance areas. Once you get down into the tunnel below these cells, go left, follow it to the end, then take a right and follow that corridor to an end. You will find several doors. Go through the one marked Electrical B Three. Find the master control switch in that room and throw it."
"What will that do?" Blake asked as he got up and then crouched down beneath the bed. He found the hatch the man was talking about and began to fiddle with the locking mechanism.
"That will cut electricity to a good portion of the base, including these cells and the cells containing the specimens."
"This doesn't sound like a safe plan," Blake murmured. There, he had it. The locking mechanism popped open, and thus did the hatch.
Nuzzi laughed. "Nothing down here is safe, but it's our only option. Listen, when you do this, come back and find me. I have vital information and I can help you take down Graves and Gen Inc. They've gone completely mad."
"All right, I'll be back as soon as I can. Don't die."
"I haven't so far."
Blake crawled down into a narrow shaft that the hatch led to and made his way quickly down the ladder, trying to get his thoughts sorted. How long had he been out? Had anything happened to him while he'd been unconscious? Was he infected? He didn't feel infected, but then again, what if you didn't know? He didn't particularly like this train of thought, because there was nothing he could do about it at present, so he derailed it. Just in time, too. The ladder came to an end. He found himself in a small niche in a metal wall.
Poking his head out, he looked left, and then right. There was a ceiling of pipes dripping with condensation overhead. The walls were made of shiny new metal, some of them marred with instrumentation panels crammed with dials, switches and buttons. Blake broke left, making his way down the narrow corridor he found himself in. As he did, he began to pat himself down, his head slowly coming back into the game.
The good news was that they'd left him in his cold weather gear, so if he had to go outside for whatever reason, he had a fighting chance at least. The bad news was that they'd stripped him of what little gear, guns and ammo he'd had left. Back to square zero, unfortunately. He'd have to resupply from some enemies or raid an armory if he wanted to get back in the game. The corridor he was in came to a halt. He stood at a crossroads, looking around, trying to determine if there was anyone down here with him, but he couldn't tell.
He broke right and set off once more, eager to get this show on the road.
After another thirty seconds, he'd found the door Nuzzi had instructed him to hunt down. Opening it up, he froze as he saw a man in a blue jumpsuit with a clipboard. He'd been staring at some dials, but now he was staring at Blake. There was a pistol on his hip, in a holster. For a long moment, the two men stared at each other, as if on opposite sides of a yawning abyss. Then, Blake moved. He jolted forward, moving a little bit before the engineer did when he began to reach for the pistol at his hip. Blake smashed into him.
He managed to get him whipped around, slammed him into one of the walls and then began choking him out. The man abandoned the effort to get at his pistol and instead tried to break Blake's hold on him. A moment later, he was out like a light, his body going slack. Blake set the man down, considering his options. He wasn't sure he wanted to kill the man. What if he had no idea what was going on here? What if he didn't deserve to die? So, finally, Blake relieved the man of his fully-loaded pistol and a single magazine, then hauled his body out of the room, across the hall and into a storage room.
Satisfied that he'd be out of there before the man woke up, Blake returned to the other room, located the switch and pulled it. Nothing happened. He waited for about ten seconds before, distantly, he heard an alarm begin to cycle. Sure that his job had been done, Blake left the room and began jogging back down the corridors.
A moment later, he was back in his cell. The door at the front was open.
"You did it!" Nuzzi cried, joining him in his cell.
"I did. Now what?" Blake asked, pulling out the pistol.
"Now we find some guns, some allies and Graves. And then we kill him. I know where we can find an armory and Graves," Nuzzi replied.
"Fine, stay behind me."
Outside, beyond the relative safety of the cell, absolute chaos reigned. The cell led into an enormous room that reminded Blake vaguely of his old high school gymnasium. Emergency lighting had flared to life, painting the area in an uncomfortable yellow light. Dozens of uncertain figures raced about, trying to escape the facility.
Some of them wore Special Forces uniforms.
"Soldiers! Front and center!" Blake screamed, hoping to be heard above the din of chaos.
It caught the attention of three men, and they hurried over to stand before him and Nuzzi.
"My name is Captain Blake. I'm going to kill Graves and I need assistance. Consider yourselves drafted," he snapped.
"Yes, Captain!" the three men responded.
Blake couldn't help but feel a strong appreciation for the chain of command. All the rest of the world might be going to shit around you, but the regulations and routine of the military that had been pounded into many a soldier's head could still be relied upon.
"Let's move out!" he called, and followed Nuzzi's instructions as the man pointed out a side entrance that a lot of the others seemed to be missing. He wanted to help them all, as they would make a veritable army, but right now there simply wasn't time, and he could end the war here and now if he successfully managed to assassinate Graves.
In the distance, he heard screaming and the staccato burst of automatic gunfire. And, not distant enough, the inhuman roaring of Thing creatures.
There was no time for conversation as Blake led Nuzzi and the three men through the door and into a side passageway. He'd managed to pick up a team of two soldiers and an engineer. The soldiers were named Cooper and Wilson, the engineer Smith. Blake had to get them weapons and fast. And he needed to lay his hands on a flamethrower or they were all royally screwed. Around them, the base was alive with awful activity.
The corridor ended in another door and Blake opened it up. As he peered out, something on fire streaked past the doorway. Someone was screaming and he heard the staccato burst of gunfire. He surveyed the immediate area, finding a larger corridor that ended not far to the left and kept going to the right before terminating in a T junction. A trio of soldiers were trying to put down a burning Walker that was made of tough stuff.
Blake stepped out, took aim and put a round through one of the soldier's gasmasks. The glass lens shattered in a spray of blood and the man went down, slamming to the metallic floor. Blake aimed and fired off another two shots, hitting a second soldier in the arm and then once more in the neck. The third man was so distracted by these sudden turn of events that the Walker slammed right into him and both of them tumbled to floor, becoming a single, fused entity of screaming, writhing flames. Slowly, they stopped moving.
"Let's go," Blake said.
Jogging down the corridor with the others, towards the T-junction, they paused to police up whatever guns and ammo they could find. Blake snatched up an MP-5 and passed the pistol to Nuzzi. As he was doing this, suddenly, gunfire cut through the air and Wilson went down in a screaming spray of blood and gore.
"Hostiles!" Cooper called out belatedly.
Blake snapped his MP-5 up and sprayed fire into a pair of men in white camo gear that came around the corner. At the same time, Cooper and Smith, who had both grabbed shotguns, added their own fire to the mix and the two enemy soldiers went down under a hail of lead. Blake's pulse was racing and he tossed a glance down at Smith. The man was dead, a bloody hole in his forehead. Dead, just like that, and nothing could ever be done about it.
Shaking his head, knowing they didn't have time for this, Blake fought through the mental and physical pain, leading his ragtag band of survivors along.
For the most part, the chaos of the base worked to their advantage. The armed security force that protected Gen Inc was far too busy trying to contain the outbreak of Thing beasts to deal with a couple of errant prisoners more often than not. Nuzzi led them along a series of interconnected corridors, through a few storage rooms and finally into an armory that was largely depleted from who knew how many others coming by.
The good news, however, was that there was enough to keep them going.
"Smash and grab!" Blake called.
He managed to find about a dozen magazines for his MP-5, another pistol for his hip holster and, lo and behold, a flamethrower! It was a rock solid model with a big, black muzzle that looked like it was just asking to light some malformed creatures up. He checked the fuel canister, found it full and pocketed another three canisters, as well as a pair of fragmentation grenades and two flame grenades. Feeling a hell of a lot better about his chances, he led the two Special Forces soldiers and Nuzzi back out into the chaos.
"Here, it's here," Nuzzi said suddenly.
Blake skidded to a halt, took a deep breath and wiped some sweat away from his forehead. Things hadn't exactly been going well. He'd been fighting through the complex, up several stories, for a solid half hour now. He'd lost his Special Forces allies in all the fighting and had a fair number of close calls. Cooper had ended up going down until a hail of fire from a squad of Gen Inc soldiers that managed to get the drop on them. Then Wilson had been impaled through the chest by a huge Walker that had lumbered out of an alcove and surprised them.
He'd gone through about half of the bullets and fuel he'd gained at the armory just keeping his ass alive as the base tore itself apart.
"Stay back," Blake said.
They'd come up to what Nuzzi identified as the top floor, into a maze of offices. Mercifully, they had been mostly empty, with only a few corpses for decorum. At the end of a long corridor, a large pair of doors awaited them.
Blake held his MP-5 up and ready as he approached the doors. This could be it, the final showdown. If he took out Graves, he'd strike a serious blow against Gen Inc. Blake reached the door, hesitated, then opened it up. When nothing immediately bad happened, he stepped inside and swept the area with his eyes and gun barrel. The large office was vacant.
"It's clear," Blake called after checking out any potential hiding places.
The walls were lined with filing cabinets, potted plants and pictures. A huge, polished wooden desk dominated the center of the room. Behind it was a series of floor-to-ceiling glass panes that showed the bleak, shrieking wastelands of Antarctica. Nuzzi came in and took a seat at the desk, booting up the computer.
"Let me see what I can find out," he murmured as he set to work.
Blake began looking over the desk. It was scattered with all manner of things: pens, pencils, folders, half-dead cigars, empty tumblers that smelled of booze, lots of office equipment, a pistol with some bullets scattered around it.
His eyes caught on something: a folder with big, bold red text stamped across it. Reaching out, he turned it so that he could read it. OPERATION: BURN. That didn't sound good. Blake opened it up and began reading through the report.
"Oh shit...we've got a problem," Blake said.
"Yes we do," Nuzzi whispered in growing horror. He jumped up out of his chair suddenly, knocking it to the floor. "Graves has wired this place to blow. We've barely got half an hour...we'll never survive on the surface, we need to get back down to the tunnels."
"But that's the problem," Blake said, holding up the folder. "He's had his men planting fire-bombs down there, all through the whole network of tunnels. They're going to burn out every living thing down there, including MacReady's operation."
"Then we have to hurry," Nuzzi said.
"Wait...can we warn everyone in the building?" Blake asked.
Sighing, Nuzzi moved back to the terminal, typed in a few commands and then straightened up. Overhead, a speaker crackled to life.
"Warning. Emergency charges armed. Occupants have...twenty nine minutes to evacuate the premises before detonation," a female voice warned.
"That should do it, now let's get the fuck out of here," Nuzzi said.
Blake concurred as he readied his MP-5. This time, they managed to locate and unlock a stairwell not far from Graves' office with a keycard Nuzzi had located in one of the desk drawers. It cut down on their travel time considerably. By the time they managed to return to the ground floor, just five minutes had passed.
Stepping out of the stairwell, Blake cursed and ducked, shoving Nuzzi back, as someone opened fire on him and bullets whizzed by. One of them passed close enough to his face that he could feel the heat and displaced air. Feeling the press of time, he shouldered his SMG and spit out a few well-placed bursts, gunning down a pair of men in white camo gear who were trying to stop him. He waited a few seconds and, when no one else came to investigate, beckoned Nuzzi on.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
"This way," the scientist replied, turning left in the broad corridor they'd come to and heading off. Blake hurried to catch up with him.
As much as the stairwell shaved a lot of time off their descent, they kept running into hostiles, though more often than not it was Thing creatures. Blake had to wear them down with gunfire and then hose their malformed, decaying bodies with fire. He wasted precious seconds stripping any corpses he could find of fuel and ammo, and by the time they reached the very lift that Blake had been captured in, less than five minutes remained.
"You sure this is a good idea? This is where they gassed me," Blake said, hovering uncertainly outside the entrance to the lift.
"Yes," Nuzzi said, exasperated and nervous, "there's no one left to gas us, now let's go!"
Reluctantly, Blake joined the scientist on the lift. Nuzzi pressed the down button and the lift began to descend. Long seconds ticked by. Blake could feel the sweat standing out of on his skin, could feel his heart hammering in his chest, his nerves screaming in his body. The lift continued to descend. Blake had questions for Nuzzi, but couldn't bring himself to ask them. If they didn't make it out of here, it wouldn't really matter anyway.
The elevator stopped abruptly just as the voice on the intercom informed them that they had only two minutes left.
"We need to get clear of the blast zone," Blake said, switching to his flamethrower. In the intervening time since the office, Nuzzi had armed himself with an MP-5. The two hurried into the open area beyond. It looked like the Walkers he'd been chased by earlier had wandered off. He began to head back the way he'd come, but Nuzzi called him in the other direction.
"What's over there?" Blake asked.
"A tram, it can take us much of the distance, I hope," Nuzzi replied, heading off.
Sighing, Blake hurried after him. They descended into another maze of debris. "I don't know if you've noticed, but most of this place is clogged with crap like this."
"No, the tram is a special cargo line, built inside the inner wall, its own separate tunnel. It's much more likely to be intact, and even if it can't take us the whole way there, there's at least a good chance that it can shave a fair portion of time off our trip."
"Fine," Blake replied, feeling the tension mount.
They moved through the disorienting proliferation of debris as quickly as they could. Blake tried to keep track of how much time they had left but was too worried and too busy looking for enemies to do so with any accuracy.
Abruptly, they came up against a wall.
"Here!" Nuzzi said.
Blake spotted a door and the pair of them quickly opened it, move through and shut it firmly behind them.
Right before the blast erupted, Blake wondered idly if the bombs in the biological research facility would also trigger the bombs that had been set for Project: Burn.
A shockwave ripped through the area. The corridor they were in trembled and shook, the lights flickered, dimmed, died and then came back on as the shaking grew worse. It drove columns of dust from the ceiling. Somewhere nearby, a pipe burst, releasing a wave of steam into the air. Then, suddenly, all was still.
"We made it," Blake murmured after a few seconds.
"So far," Nuzzi replied. "Come on, we still have a lot to do."
They set off.