The vibrations made him sit up. Then he walked outside the rooms of the deepest level for the first time that week.
It must have been a tremendous disturbance to make the iron pipe above his bunk shake, and now it positively sang. The whole ventilation system hummed with the reminders of the world above, suffering a year's worth of deterioration in the process.
Miljan decided that his proximity to the citadel was the cause. He had never operated this close to downtown, where the checkpoints closed in like the center of a web. Naturally, he was only here because of Ion. The fallout shelter that contained her treasure trove had also yielded a folder full of maps, displaying similar shelters around the city. This vault, or rather the deepest floor of it, had been his home for an increasingly unquantified period of time.
His home was hidden, it was impenetrable, it was beautiful. With his wealth arranged lovingly at forty meters deep, he felt less and less need for all the tiers above him. They were clean—he had spent a week combing every cubic centimeter of space for any life form whatsoever—but they were also nearer the sky and unimportant. So long as he kept the ponderous doors outside his sleeping quarters shut, he could be sure that he was safe. Upstairs, a wall might cave in and admit a headcrab, a wire might short out and electrify a railing, a bacterium might ooze through a keyhole, but none of that could ever shake the mortal certainty of the fourth floor.
Today, however, he stood poised at the upper limits of the second story, one short elevator ride from the shallowest level of all. Roused by the vibrations, he considered ascending, and undoing the lead panels to uncover the clear viewing port in the blast doors, but there was no telling who could be looking back at him by chance.
Yes, that was wise. What went on outside was not any concern of his. Better to return home. His curiosity was simply a byproduct of his sober state, a novel sensation now that he had reduced his daily alcohol intake. Miljan had calculated the day of his last happy hour quite accurately, yet had erected mental walls against applying that arithmetic to the water and food supplies. There were material reasons for visiting the surface, and he often resolved to do so. Always, however, he dissuaded himself by reflecting on the hours of work it took to dismantle and reinstall the camouflage outside the blast doors.
And besides, there was no need to expose himself to the city and jeopardize all the life that surrounded him here, keeping him company. The sunlit world was dead and never coming back. Ten years of his life weighted his chest, a leaden epitaph. He imagined that he could remember every minute of planet Earth, inventing memories of himself at six months old.
Miljan returned to his forty-meter womb and sank into the pile of crates and rice sacks. He breathed deeply, eyes shut tight as he returned their embrace.
.
.
.
Iskander looked at the pile of dull concrete cubes that made up the apartment building and stuffed his hands in his pockets. He did not want to cross the street and go in, but standing behind the shelves of this storefront was getting old. The housing block was a rather loosely-regulated place that Miljan had frequented, making it one of his primary trading posts. A very large Israeli presided there, having cowed the other opportunists so that commerce and not collaboration was permitted.
The city was in a frantic state now, with scanners in a steady airborne matrix overhead and APCs tearing down both sides of streets with no regard for patrol schedules. If Iskander could pass through the apartment without any hassles, the interior of the city block would beyond would provide cover almost to Ioanna's theater. A healthy dose of paranoia was all that was required to see him there.
Stepping into a cramped space full of untrustworthy people at such a time was making his instincts revolt, however. Miljan could have hoped for a welcome, but he was insure of his reception if Shalit were not present.
Well, nothing for it. Iskander fast-walked into the street as helicopters rattled overhead. The citadel had been launching projectiles every few minutes, large canisters that made their way to the horizon in lazy arcs. Perhaps being among other people was a good idea, as scanners were always slow to pick faces out of a crowd. He reached the entrance steps at a sprint, hearing electric motors coming down towards the junction. The glass panel in the door had been papered over with twenty-year-old old periodicals. With the wind of onrushing APCs on his neck, he snatched at the handle and slipped sideways through the crack.
Immediately, he stepped onto someone's foot. The lobby was packed with people, lucid, talking people. Iskander stood pressed against the metal knob of a mailbox, too stunned to close the door as the Civil Protection vehicles whistled by outside. His knee was butting into the intense conversation of three Drinkers seated on the floor beneath him. More residents occupied the stairs, looking down on the proceedings with bleary eyes and listless postures that betrayed their recent water intake. All of it was nearly unheard-of, and Iskander inched along the wall, unsure of what to do but make for the rear entrance.
"Hello there! Alexander, is it?" Shalit's vivacious bulk emerged from a circle of other men, and he beckoned at the rat.
"Something like that, Iskander responded, looking first at Shalit's mustache and then at his feet. He had done good business here in the past, but everything about this building seemed unsafe right now.
"Never seen you just drop in like this. Is Miljan with you?"
"Afraid not. He's busy with things over at Varnaya Place." There was what seemed like an entire village watching him now, and his every movement and expression betrayed his flightiness. Couldn't they see him squirm and grimace? There was the door, and the courtyard beyond.
"Well, a good afternoon to you nonetheless. You're a worldly man, so I know you cannot have come here for no reason."
That was a pointed remark. Iskander swallowed.
"So what news have you brought us, Xander?"
"Well," he stammered, "what have you heard so far?" Stall, stall, and shuffle sideways toward escape.
"Nothing definitive. We have all seen the citadel. The city has not crawled like this since the last of the spetsnaz gave it a try." Even more people were listening now, drawn in by the baritone that ruled the building. "All I know is that the CPs have their sights on a pretty big fish. If they haven't already landed it. You cannot fight back and get away at the same time; you would know that best."
People around the room shook their head, and some even voiced outright denials. He had never seen anyone contradict Shalit so openly, and some of those nearest belonged to his clean water crew.
"That seems a fair bet," Iskander ventured.
"Of course, some of us here are of a different mind entirely. I say that they are using their old world brains too much, thinking like this is some chapter of the Bible. You will set us straight, won't you my friend?"
He was sure that being called friend by such a man entailed certain expectations beyond simple good will. Iskander maneuvered to put bodies between himself and Shalit, fully aware of how silly that was.
"I... really regret disappointing you." Perhaps he was overreacting. What would Shalit really have cause to do? But the crowd still closed in on him like the earth over a grave. "May be, could be that I was on hand at the start of the trouble. There was a miscount next door to Fugee Freight, and a chase of a struggle afterwards. Ion told me that."
That list bit just sort of slipped out. The crowd rippled a little, and Shalit's face became unreadable.
"You don't say... Talk much to Ion, do you, Iskander?"
That little detail had earned him the right name. He began to sense that now the citizens regarded him as possibly threatening.
"We keep each other appraised, at least when we run across anything of consequence." Iskander's chin lifted a little, and he felt free to push forward to the door. Really, he did not need to bluff. He was on the way to the theater to meet her, after all.
"You are a man of unusual acquaintances, my friend. Do keep us in mind if you learn anything of greater specificity. We live such uneventful lives here."
"And I trust you will do the same," he answered. "I can only be one place at once."
"Give my regards to Miljan, and tell him we must drink and recollect somewhere."
"I hope to see him soon."
"Safe day to you, Iskander."
"And to you, Shalit."
The Drinkers parted before him now, despite the fact that their headman was far from fully convinced. The back door was only connected to its lower hinges, and he left it tilted and ajar as he stepped out into the deck at the building's rear. More unfamiliar emanations from the citadel reverberated around the expansive yard. Perhaps half a dozen five-story residence halls formed the borders of the block, hemming in a triangular space that was divided between sheds, gardens and parking lots. After passing through here, Ioanna's theater was easily reached through a series of alleyways and a covered second floor walkway.
He started forward, plotting his course from cover to concealment. Gradually, it dawned on him that it was only marginally less noisy and populated out here than it had been in the lobby. Drinkers lined the balconies of the south-facing walls, the citadel that was there every day of their lives suddenly an entertaining spectacle. A large group of men stood around an open fire in one of the fallow gardens, roasting houndeye meat (not appetizing but a predator of more tasty animals) and chattering in Hungarian. Their activity and indeed their very presence was illegal, but that did not seem to matter today. Iskander realized that nothing he had seen earlier was so strange to him as this city block. There was a consistent buzz of conversation, curiosity, even excitement. He recognized a definite atmosphere, that was it, an atmosphere of something. Used to hushed streets and oppressive silence, Iskander was badly put-off now that there was something resembling a city again. People lived here. For a few moment it would feel like it.
He stepped over a short brick wall and paused before a tin garage. There was some new graffiti near the corner; paint was running down through the grooves in the metal. It appeared to be a large upside-down letter Y. Done in bright yellow, there was something familiar about it.
A dropship swooped low overhead, appearing to swim through the air with its moaning engines and ululating extremities. The black troop carrier crate slung underneath was an exceedingly rare sight, for Overwatch units almost never entered the city. Iskander took it as a sign to move on. The sky was clearing up as dusk approached, and an easterly wind promised to bring in the pollutants that made for a brilliant sunset. He felt instantly more comfortable as he stepped from the relative safety of the residential block and into the CP-haunted emptiness of the neighborhood beyond. The irony was not lost on him.
Twenty minutes saw him to the theater. Emerging from the orchestra pit, he found the space to be much more ominous when lit with natural light through the collapsed roof. There were all sorts of unfriendly shadows, and far fewer hiding places.
"Ahoj, rat!" came the call. Ioanna leaned against the railing of the elevated gallery, looking down on him with a grin. "Glade you could make it. Come up here from around back."
He ran into three spiderwebs and four missing floorboards on the way up. Ioanna had moved so as to place the lighting equipment between herself and the sky-filled hole.
"Well? She asked, still half smiling.
"Hello. 'Well' what?"
"Did you feel it? On the way over. By God, Iskander, it's positively electric out there."
"I think I may know what you mean."
"Damn right you do. You wouldn't even call them Drinkers now."
Iskander sank into a duct-taped seat and accepted the dried fruit that she offered.
"Do you know what's going on, though?"
"No one knows exactly, but what's going on isn't the point. The beauty of it is that people actually care. They really want to know."
"But you don't? Know, I mean."
"Not for sure..." He could tell she disliked not having all the answers. "There are all sorts of stories, some farther-fetched than the others."
"For fuck's sake, Ion, tell me your favorite."
She pitched a chink of hardened peach at him.
"One reliable report I have heard was of fighting around the canals. I mean major gunfire, with chopper flying support. It never stayed in one place, and I think one reason everyone's so riled up is that the CPs weren't obviously winning."
"Not winning..."
And that simply doesn't happen, as you well know. They don't do standoffs; if anyone ever gets suicidal and armed, they crush them posthaste."
"So it must be the Resistance?"
"I don't think so, Iskander. They would never carry out an operation like this, not with their preparations f—" She bit her tongue and cast him a sharp glance. "Anyways, a group of rogue insurgents is possible, but unlikely. Really, all signs point to a fugitive, or collection of them, with balls the size of headcrabs."
"In that case we know it can't be your people," Iskander laughed.
"Oh, but the Resistance is involved. The fighting seems to be following the Underground Railroad, or at least certain stretches of it, and that means trouble for some of the stations. Their sentries are ready to make themselves scarce at a moment's notice, so they should make it out alright. I hope."
"I'll agree with you there. Those Railroad types can be pushy with the real estate, but they're a more decent sort, on the whole."
"Your praise is too grudging, given the work they do, but—"
She stopped, interrupted by the sound of a slow, ominous gong from outside.
"Breencast," she snapped. "And an unscheduled one. They must be getting serious about this."
Ioanna took off away from the stage, Iskander close behind. She kicked her way past a stuck door and scrambled up a wooden ladder, dislodging cupfuls of dust at each handhold. They reached a stone cupola an peered over the lip. A large digital display screen was attached to a faced opposite them, with Breen's stern, grandfatherly face shimmering on it.
"...confirmation of a disruptor in our midst, one who has acquired an almost messianic reputation in the minds of certain citizens."
Ioanna hissed softly.
"His figure is synonymous with the darkest urges of instinct, ignorance and decay."
"Sounds like my kind of guy," Iskander quipped.
"Some of the worst excesses of the Black Mesa Incident have been laid directly at his feet. And yet, unsophisticated minds continue to imbue him with romantic power, giving his such dangerous poetic labels as the One Free Man, the Opener of the Way."
"No. Shit," Ioanna whispered.
"Let me remind all citizens of the dangers of magical thinking. We have scarcely begun to climb from the dark pit of the evolution of our species' evolution. Let us not slide backward into oblivion just as we have finally begun to see the light. If you see this so-called free man, report him."
Free man. Was that familiar?
"Civic deeds do not go unrewarded, and contrariwise, complicity with his cause will not go unpunished. Be wise, be safe. Be Aware."
The old man's face winked out, and Ioanna released a heavy breath.
"Jesus tits, Iskander, what happens now?"
"Are you serious? You're supposed to be telling me that! What the hell was Father Turtleneck going on about anyways?"
"He means," she said with an annoying weight of emphasis, "that Gordon Freeman has returned. Hell, that Gordon Freeman exists."
"Oh, fuck, are you telling me that the revolution is going to get kicked off because of a bad pun?"
"You've never heard of him, have you?"
"I grew up underground, remember?"
Ioanna dropped below the parapet of the cupola.
"Well, get down out of sight or you never will find out."
Iskander's feet kicked in the open air for a few seconds before they found the landder.
"Dr. Freeman is, or was, as it turns out, a superstition of the prewar days." She dropped down a rung every four of five syllables. "You know of the whole Black Mesa thing, don't you?"
"Mineshaft, remember? I got the short, sarcastic version once but never bothered checking the facts. It's one of those delicate topics, you know?"
"I know. Well, Freeman was a physicist at Black Mesa, as were several of the Restistance leadership. They keep that to themselves, though."
"How wise."
"Anyways, after the Incident, while everyone was running headlong for the cities, a number of high-ranking scientists, Breen among them, became public figures as consultants to the U.N. I was in the U.K. At the time—"
"Where?"
"England? Bad teeth and tea?"
"Oh," Iskander lied.
"I lived there and watched a lot of American news. These analysts had a blank check for organizing the response to the portal storms, but spent a lot more time covering their own asses. Part of that meant scapegoating, and Freeman got a double dose of it. Deliberate sabotage, subsequent attacks of security forces and eventually a nuclear attack on the facility."
Iskander whistled.
"Of course, the U.S. government was doing a horrendous job of handling things, their advisers had no clue, and the public was in no mood to believe one word they said. Most people had their own, crazier explanations for the events, and as it turned out, such views were entirely compatible with the loud protestations of a few crackpot scientists. These fellows were spreading all sorts of horror stories from Black Mesa wherever they went, and chief among them was that Gordon Freeman had been framed."
"This fellow's starting to sound like a regular folk hero," Iskander remarked. "'cept for the scientist part."
"Not only was he framed, he was the only reason that half of them got out alive. Interpol had a warrant out for him, but you had a whole crew of Black Mesa survivors insisting that was pointless because Freeman had died performing a crucial operation that had spared the world from a brutal invasion."
"Gee, that sounds familiar, doesn't it?"
"There's the rub. Fed-up people in their millions believed the heresy about Freeman, but that became somewhat irrelevant when 99% of them died in the actual brutal invasion."
"You seem to remember this well."
"The 1% don't tend to forget."
"You must be at least forty, then." Iskander peered into Ioanna's face, trying to see past the mask of her broken nose.
"Practically a pensioner, yeah."
"So how do people still care about Freeman, if the world he saved went to shit?"
"Well, that's somewhat inexplicable, barring the obvious hope for a repeat performance."
"Old Breenscreen certainly feels the heat."
"In actuality it all comes down to the Resistance. When the scientists took their leadership role, it got out into the ranks that Freeman might have survived the Incident. Or so some of the top brass believed." They made their way down to the stage , and Ioanna began the long climb to her loft. "Naturally, this inspired the notion that he would return."
"And do what?"
"What wasn't important. The expectation of his return was enough to fuel some actual proselytizing among the citizens. It became a sort of go-to ideology for the Resistance. The leadership didn't particularly like it, but eventually bowed to its persuasiveness and exploited it to deflect attention from their own affiliations with the Incident—riding on the coattails of someone who had been redeemed from his Black Mesa past."
"And none of that bothers you?"
"I am a pragmatic woman, Iskander. I know that I fraternize with the people who destroyed the world, however indirectly. And I will admit that the cultlike adulation of Freeman's name is slightly unnerving."
More dropships passed by, and the roof shook, dislodging a few more bits of ceiling and dropping them into the third row.
"But then again, the war pretty much put paid to all the organized religions..."
"Aye, it certainly cured my cousin of his piety," Iskander interjected.
"...and Freeman is a sort of substitute, an irrational and distant savior."
They reached the rafters hideout, and Iskander sat on the lip of the platform while Ioanna rummaged about in the fold folds of piled curtains.
"Every day I see more and more reason for associating with these heroes."
"Don't be sarcastic, Iskander. I intend to disabuse you of that prejudice tonight. Come with me to the laboratory you so happily supplied with power and see all my reasons for yourself."
"What? Ioan, what in hell would I want to do that for?"
"The distant savior is not so distant anymore, my rat. You survive by statying on top of things, and things are about to change."
"They may change for you," he retorted," what with your Railroad dismantled and the Breenies cracking down twice as hard. But in case you forgot, my entire purpose here is to bug out so I can live through times like these, not going and trying to swallow the stun baton. Going anywhere a near a Resistance outpost right now is just... I'd rather open a coffee shop outside Fugee Freight."
"Our goals can still coincide," Ioanna said softly. "I can still get you out of the city if you cooperate, and with all the important work to be done along the way, I might be able to send you off with twice the resources."
"If I cooperate... meaning what, exactly? The terms of your assistance have changed." Iskander panted both feet on the ladder and stood, so that his torso extended a meter above the hole in the floor. Her face grew cold.
"Like you, Iskander, recent events have forced me to take my time here altogether more seriously. I cannot be in the business of charity, but it is with your best interests at heart that I urge you to come with me and learn enough to make a fair judgment."
"You are giving me an ultimatum," he said flatly.
"Please, this isn't some sort of conscription. I know your opinion of the Resistance, but I have certain commitments, and if what you saw today isn't enough to change your opinion... Well, I;m not expecting you to become a revolutionary, but at the very least I will be extremely preoccupied these coming days. Whatever your decision, you must tag along, otherwise my prior engagement will leave no time for you."
"Yet I have all the time in the world to wait. You saw to that." Iskander began to descend. "When things calm down, I'm sure you'll know where to find me. I think my time would be better spent seeing if all this noise has flushed out Miljan." To his surprise, only silence followed his words, and silence escorted him to the floor. The sky beat down on him from its perch on the ceiling. He turned his back on the shadows all around and dropped into the orchestra pit, on his way to whatever rathole first presented itself.