-=Chapter Nine: Accumulation=-
Airspace over Poland, 7:25 PM
"He'll be there in about an hour or so, the man explained through his radio. You should be able to arrive before he does. Unfortunately, I cannot assist you, as I am about to partake in a rather vicious battle with the man whose lies intentionally led you to your death last year."
Shephard gritted his teeth. From what he'd seen, that guy wasn't one to mess around with. On the other hand, the man helping him also had his fair share of ostensibly divine abilities up his sleeve, telepathic communication being one of them. Shephard guessed that this same telepathy was how he was able to contact him via the radio strapped to his combat webbing. He didn't know for sure, but he could guess that there was only one radio between the two of them and it was his.
"So it was Rostock in Germany, right?" he asked into his radio.
"Correct," the voice answered. "Make sure you are there, otherwise I cannot be sure as to when you will have your next opportunity to kill him."
"Don't worry," Shephard chuckled, looking down at the destroyed buildings of the Polish city below him, "I'm not one to be late to an appointment."
—
"What's our ETA?" Barney asked Gordon, who was listening to the pilot telling him. They were flying in Helix One, over the beautiful mountains of Slovakia. Beside their Hunter-Chopper was the Russian Mil-Mi8, its cockpit having been hastily repaired after Barney and Colonel Baxter landed it with a shattered windscreen and stacks of bullet damage.
"About an hour and a bit," Gordon answered. "The city's up north of the country, so yeah."
Barney nodded, leaning back in his seat. "Gordon?"
"Yeah?"
"Did you finish your beer?" Barney inquired casually, grinning.
Gordon rolled his eyes. "Almost. There wasn't much left when we left."
"Nice?"
"It was alright. Thank goodness it was cold today, made it a little bit cooler when I had it."
Barney smiled. "Great. Finally don't have that hanging over my head."
Gordon patted him firmly on the back. "Even if you hadn't, I would've forgiven you."
"Really?"
"Of course," Gordon laughed. "It's not like I was expecting you to actually conjure up some lager for me in these oppressed times."
Barney shrugged. "Fair enough."
—
"This is unexpected," the Siberian general muttered as he wrapped himself in a thick fur coat that had been salvaged from an invaded town in the country he'd been stationed at the past few years.
"We're lucky that we got this much warning," the German general added as he loaded his USP Match pistol and flicked on the safety, "usually Dr. Freeman appears without warning and without mercy."
"Is everything ready?" the Romanian Brigadier General asked his Siberian superior as he hurriedly armed himself with an MP7, fixing the red-dot sight mounted on the picatinny rail.
"I have asserted to that," the Siberian general nodded crisply. "We need to leave before they arrive, so there is no possible way they can see us doing so."
"Agreed," the Swedish Lieutenant General nodded also, having just entered the small briefing room. "The chopper's waiting outside."
The others nodded in affirmation, heading out. "How many are coming with us?"
"Six of the best, plus both pilots," the Swedish general replied. "Regardless, the people of Earth are going to tremble in fear once they see the might of our Advisors and their planning."
"This is the final culmination of the past year's efforts." The Siberian general declared as they headed for the helicopter, waiting for them on the concrete roof of an evening-lit building. "The Advisors will be pleased."
"Indeed," the Brigadier general nodded, climbing into the cabin with his fellow officers. "If I may, what is our destination?"
"The Advisor Council Chambers in Switzerland," the German general answered. "Apparently, they require a formal convention involving the four of us, especially you, Brigadier. The Advisors were specifically intrigued by your theories concerning the Fissionist Gmen assisting the Resistance."
—
"This way," Lawrence gestured for the group to follow, clutching the USP 9mm in his hands as if it were a baby. Out of the seven people with her, Alyx was one of the few ones actually holding a weapon. She'd been given the honour of wielding the only submachine gun they'd managed to get their hands on, but they were pretty lacking in the ammo department so she had the gun set to semi-auto.
They were in what looked like some kind of open office area, full of computers and desks that looked ridiculously out of place in a military barracks. It seemed more like something you'd find in a CIA building from the nineties. Fortunately, it seemed empty and if that fact ever changed they had a lot of places to take cover.
"I'm guessing this is where they get their intel from?" someone whispered.
"Looks like the place I used to work in," another man agreed, smiling haughtily.
Alyx ignored the comments, and instead watched the two doors at the opposite end of the room. Soldiers could come streaming from either side of the room and that would make things very difficult for them.
"Alright," Lawrence nodded at the door on the left. "That way."
The group ran through the centre of the room, rows of small cubicles on either side of them as they headed for the door. As they were approaching the end of the aisle, however, the door on the right was thrown wide open as a soldier in dark-grey Overwatch body armour slammed his shoulder into the door, yelling garbled orders to his men and taking aim at the escapees.
Without pause, the prisoners dived to the floor. Those without guns made no attempt to fight back because that was an utterly stupid idea so instead they just hid themselves behind some desks a few rows back.
Alyx decided now would be a good time to use fully automatic fire, since the soldiers were staying pretty close together. After throwing herself behind a desk one row back and moving it in front of the cubicle entrance she stuck her head up, rested the gun on top of the desk and opened fire on the soldiers. Very quickly, they decided sticking that close together was a bad idea since three of them were ripped into by the high-velocity small calibre bullets. Some soldiers tried to take cover on the far right side of the cubicles while others just ran back behind the door, aiming their smallarms around the corner and firing in the inmates' general direction.
Ducking down behind the makeshift cover provided by the desk, Alyx took the chance to check her ammo. About fifteen rounds left. That wasn't very helpful, since in total that meant she had about forty five. There were probably a lot more soldiers than there were bullets, at least the amount required to kill them.
Slotting the magazine back into the pistol-grip magazine well, she recocked the gun and poked her head up momentarily. A few soldiers were now inside the room itself, shooting at the cubicles. She quickly pulled her MP7 up and returned fire. One guy went down, two bullets in his side, while his comrades realised that things were getting serious and they instead opted to take cover once again.
Alyx knew she was going to run out of ammo soon and that the soldiers probably had enough munitions stashed away somewhere in the building to supply them for a few months. In other words, things weren't looking good for her or the other prisoners.
Ducking down again, she waited as a few short bursts of gunfire sounded from both the soldiers and the inmates, before she took another look...
...and instantly saw a gigantic hole appear in the floor, along with a signifying explosion of plaster flecks and fine white dust that blasted out across half the room. When Alyx looked again, she immediately saw a man in a blue suit dragging himself over the edge of the hole onto the old — and now very white — carpet.
Alyx's eyes widened. "Gman?" she asked the man incredulously.
Suddenly, an identically dressed other pulled themself into the office area and bodyslammed the first man in a way that seemed almost comically exaggerated. The first man then threw the second man off of him before climbing frantically to his feet and charging at his opponent, sending them both crashing through a thin, painted cubicle wall just a few metres from Alyx.
Alyx took the opportunity to look around for a way out, since the sudden appearance of two men beating each other up had been an excellent distraction. She looked at the back wall of her cubicle, the one closest to the wall on the left side of the room. It wasn't very high, so she quickly ran up to it and pulled herself over it just as a burst of gunfire erupted from somewhere over on the other side of the room.
Alyx landed gracefully on her feet, just as the two suited men crashed through the cubicle wall behind her, one of the two slamming the other into the left-hand side wall with a reverberating crunch of cracked plaster. The man that hit the wall then pulled himself from it and grabbed his adversary by the shoulders, throwing him back into the middle of the room.
Since there wasn't really anything Alyx could do, she simply focused on escaping. It was nice as a distraction to her enemies, but now the fight was distracting her from concentrating whenever something else inevitably broke as a result of the brawl.
The enemy was expecting her to head straight for the left door. So she decided that going around to the other side of the room would be a better strategy, plus she'd get some more soldiers out of the way. She turned around and ran back to the other end of the room as the firefight continued down the front, before she rounded the corner and headed over to the other side of the room. After reaching the far right corner of the room and spotting four soldiers crouching down in the aisle she was now in, she allowed herself a tight smile before opening fire on them. Since it was only about twenty or so metres away she got all four of them before they even realised where the bullets were coming from. After that, she ran toward the bodies, ducking low in case anyone decided to take cover there too.
She was interrupted about halfway down, however, by two men crashing through another cubicle wall mere metres in front of her, before falling to the floor in a flurry of swift blows to each other's faces.
Alyx would've shot one of them to help the Gman, but the problem was... they were both the Gman! Perfectly identical in every way, shape and form, apart from one having a cut near his left eye.
For a few moments she was confused, before her brain started working as she quickly moved away from the fight. If two Gordons were made... then is it possible that these are the two Gmans?
One of them was the man who had come with the deceased Gordon Freeman from another timeline altogether. The other was the one who had employed the Gordon Freeman she had grown up hearing about and known for the past year.
But apparently, something must've happened with the latter. After all, the Gman she knew was the one from the other timeline, since he told them last year that he intervened when he changed the past. She had never met the Gman that put her Gordon in stasis... but why?
Alyx decided to leave the questions for later, when everyone was back at White Forest. Right now, she needed to make sure she stayed alive long enough to ask those questions when the time came. She quickly made her way back behind the rows of cubicles, out of the fray. Gunfire was still coming from the front of the room, so that meant the soldiers were still there.
What am I going to do?
—
Shephard climbed from the helicopter, walking to the edge of the red-roofed building he'd landed on. It gave a clear view out at the New Market, where the Resistance helicopters were no doubt going to land. Getting his rifle out, Shephard got on the ground and lay prostrate at the edge, checking his ammo before resting it on the edge. It wasn't the best choice, but he was only about a hundred metres from where the helicopters were probably going to land so he had a fair chance of hitting Freeman even with his M4A1.
Something on the side of his rifle glinted in a flash of light reflected from somewhere to Shephard's left. Since it was getting dark Shephard frowned and checked the gun. There was something engraved on the rifle, near the selective-fire switch.
Crudely scraped into the metal was a single word: Irony.
Shephard frowned. Where was that from? Then he stopped and thought about what had happened the past few hours. Where had he gotten his rifle from? He didn't have it when he was at Inferno Abyss...
Shrugging, Shephard readjusted the stock pressed against his shoulder. It didn't matter. What did matter was that Freeman came on time, before it was too dark. Otherwise he didn't know when he'd get his shot at him.
Come on, Freeman... Shephard thought to himself, I wasn't late, make sure you aren't either.
—
The two helicopters landed in the middle of the New Market area, rebels jumping from the cabin to the plain concrete on the ground. The place was gigantic, but it was rather empty, only a few toppled lightposts here and there to fill the huge gaps. Then again, it had been used as a marketplace before the Combine came, so it was understandable that the place was mostly empty. They probably used it for their own purposes anyway.
Gordon descended from the cabin, checking his shotgun was loaded up with all eight shells the internal mag could hold. Barney jumped off beside him, looking up at the sky and sighing deeply. "Nice night, eh?"
Gordon nodded slowly, looking around as the rebels started making their way north. To the east was a pair of train-tracks that stretched the entire length of the marketplace and beyond in both directions, before the tracks curled off to the west as it connected with a road further up. The barracks were near this bend and crossover with Lange Street, as it was known, near the old Ristorante La Fortana.
Heading off with the rebels, Gordon and Barney quickly joined up with them as they headed over to the railway beside the market. It looked as if it hadn't be—
Tufft!
A gunshot echoed out around the group, the crack of a bullet a split second after. In the dim light, Gordon spotted the muzzle flash of a rife coming from somewhere to their left, up on a building on the other side of the marketplace. Ducking down, Gordon scanned the roofs for someone.
"There!" he pointed at a silhouetted head poking over the edge of a red tiled roof. "Combine sniper,"
Barney squinted. "Doesn't look like a Combine soldier... looks like he's got a bigger mask or something on, see, there's this bit sticking o—"
Another gunshot interrupted his comments, forcing them to duck instinctively. "How're we gonna get him?" Barney asked, looking at Gordon.
Gordon gritted his teeth, glancing down at his shotgun. Not exactly sniping material. In fact, there wasn't really anything he could use to take this guy down.
So, without another word, Gordon rushed back toward the helicopters. "Gordon, what're you doi—" Barney called after him, before being interrupted again by a third gunshot.
"I'm going to get whoever this is myself!" Gordon called back as he climbed into Helix One once more. The last few people were just leaving it, wondering who it was making those gunshots. Gordon ushered them off toward the other rebels, who were now heading for the barracks. As he was climbing into the cockpit, Barney called out after him. "Gordon!"
"Yeah?" Gordon poked his head back out the cabin, spotting his friend.
"Don't worry, buddy," Barney smiled reassuringly. "We'll get her home safe."
Gordon chuckled softly. "Don't I know it," he answered, saluting informally at Barney.
Barney grinned, saluting back. "See you when I see you, Gordon!"
"Same here!" Gordon called back as Barney headed off. After that, Gordon made his way into the cockpit and strapped himself in, looking up at the roof. The sniper appeared to have realised what he was doing.
Gordon gritted his teeth, firing up the chopper. "Oh, no you don't." He grunted, his brain slowly conceding to the possibility that he was still being followed by Shephard.
—
"Shit!" Shephard yelled as the Hunter-Chopper opened fire on the roof, sending chunks of red tiles clattering down the sloped roof and flying past his head as he ran for his helicopter. He'd landed it on a levelled out part of the roof just behind the pointed red roof he'd been up on.
Gordon watched as he clambered into the cabin of the identical Hunter-Chopper waiting on a level rooftop, undoubtedly stolen from the same Ukrainian base Gordon had gotten his from. After a few moments of turret gunfire, he let up as the chopper slowly ascended into the sky.
Growling under his breath, Gordon swung the chopper around to face Shephard's one, descending so that he was level with it. He could clearly see that it was indeed Adrian Shephard sitting in the pilot's seat, looking over at him every so often to check where he was.
Air-to-air combat wasn't what Hunter-Choppers were built for. They didn't have any AAMs or other air-to-air weapons, since they were solely used as air support as was demonstrated by their deployable mines and high fire-rate pulse turret. That meant Gordon couldn't do anything to hurt Shephard in the chopper.
In the chopper...
Gordon hit a button on the dashboard, keeping the Hunter-Chopper at even altitude as he grabbed his SPAS-12, ran into the cabin, pulled open the left-side cabin doors and opened fire on the right side of Shephard's helicopter.
Needless to say, the buckshot didn't do very much to the Hunter-Chopper other than scare the piss out of its pilot. He then realised that Gordon wasn't manning the chopper and that he was standing very close to an open doorway...
Shephard swung the chopper across suddenly, turning it on a slight angle as it leaned over to the right and slammed straight into Gordon's chopper!
Losing his balance, Gordon was thrown to the floor of his chopper's cabin. The impact had knocked some things over, and even sent a few submachine guns plummeting to their doom. Quickly getting back on his feet, Gordon noticed that one of Shephard's cabin doors had swung open due to the impact, so he made the split second decision to run through the cabin, dive at the last moment and throw his shotgun inside as he grabbed onto the edge of the door's slide frame.
Pulling himself inside, Gordon scrambled to his feet as he moved over to retrieve his shotgun, before Shephard himself charged from the cockpit and scooped it up off the floor, pumping the action — and ejecting an already loaded shell in the process — and firing at where Gordon had been. Where he was when Shephard fired was somewhere to his left, preparing to wrestle the gun off him.
Without a second thought, Shephard swung the gun around and started to cock it again before Gordon rammed into him, sending him crashing into the seats against the back of the chopper. The shotgun bounced on the floor before stopping against the closed part of the cabin doors, since only the left part had been thrown open by the earlier impact.
Shephard, who was reasonably closer to the gun, dived for it at the same time Gordon did. Both of them landed in a desperate pile on the ground, struggling to grab the weapon.
Shephard slowly gained the upper hand, since Gordon had been both a little slower and further from it to begin with, and he wrestled with Gordon to get back on his feet. When that didn't work, he tried to pump the action but Gordon grabbed his arm and twisted it roughly. Shephard yelped in pain, looking at Gordon from behind his masked eyes before slamming the hard forehead of his gasmask at Gordon's face. The hard blow came in contact with Gordon's nose, breaking it in two different places and splattering blood all over the dark brown mask.
Recoiling in pain, Gordon tried weakly to hold Shephard off, but he just wasn't strong enough now that his nose was so damaged. Shephard was finally able to stumble to his feet, unbalanced and uncoordinated, and fire another shot at Gordon. The shot was terrible, going completely wide and even sending half the shot out the open door. Grunting in frustration, Shephard once again threw himself at Gordon and instead tried to shove him out the open door.
The two fought on the floor again, though Shephard got the jump on Gordon a lot quicker this time. Violently, he shoved Gordon toward the doorway, but the scientist was able to push one of his legs against the closed door in an attempt to hold S—
Boom.
—
The office was destroyed entirely. The cubicle had been reduced to thin plaster detritus, while half the walls had crumbled from countless oppression from the brawling Fissionists.
Both of the original fighting sides had retreated, back into the adjacent hallways they'd come from. The office area was the Fissionists territory now, and no-one was going to get in their way for fear of being ripped to shreds.
Both of them were battered, bruised and bloody. Both of them were leaving more blood on the ground than a man with the world's worst nosebleed and the floor was now irreversibly stained with the red stuff. Computers had been smashed, desks broken in half and thrown at each other and even cubicle walls had been used as melee objects against each other.
The room looked in the condition one would find a commercial property while it was being built. There was white plaster everywhere, as in there was more of it than the carpet. Not only that, but it was splattered with thick pools of blood, a few Combine bodies and hundreds of empty bullet casings.
Alyx could hardly watch it. It was really getting out of hand, they'd both lost more blood than three people in total, they'd taken dozens of blows that would be fatal to a normal man and they were still fighting.
They were stuck there. Lawrence had gone looking for another exit, but he hadn't come back et so they still didn't know about that.
The other inmates just watched in silence, wondering who the hell these people were.
Alyx looked at the roof pleadingly. Please, Gordon, get here soon!
Suddenly, one of the walls began to crack. A huge split appeared in the right side of the room, along with a sickening cracking sound. "Shit!" someone yelled, running back in the direction of the cell blocks, "it's gonna collapse!"
He was right. The roof caved in a few moments later, after Alyx and the other prisoners had run after him. A thick cloud of plaster and general dust blew past them, blinding Alyx and forcing her to her knees as she wheezed. She dropped her MP7, covering her mouth and jamming her eyes shut until the smell of plaster had left her irritated nose. She gasped, blinking her eyes as she looked around at the other wide eyed prisoners. Someone helped her to her feet.
Looking back at the now cut off are—
Boom.
—
...
T-Minus One...
At the time, I had no idea there was a countdown in progress, somewhere inside the barracks.
...
Nobody expected it to happen. We probably should have, since there were so many in the world that is was almost impossible they weren't ultimately used by the invaders against us. The intricate toys of decadent superpowers as defence against each other... so many articles of fiction having prophesied what they would eventually do to us... their warnings now ringing true...
Nuclear weapons had been used against us... and they hadn't been the objects of salvation as they were intended to be. They were no peacekeepers. They were strategically used by the Combine to destroy us.
I was too close to the epicentre to think these things before my body was reduced to ash and all sense of being had been whisked away in the heat.
The Combine found a nuclear weapon.
And they had detonated it... because they knew that I would come... they knew I would come for her... to save her...
All I did was give them what I wanted.
I cannot do anything now. I am gone, my body obliterated and blown away in the searing winds. But now...
"Gordon?"
...I guess that someone else will have to rise up and save the human race...
Ruins of Rostock, 8:03 PM
He's gone... of course.
The Gman bowed his head, looking around the burning landscape on which he stood. The city of Rostock had been reduced to rubble and apocalyptic fires in the wake of the nuclear blast, the evening sky now overcast with horrific red clouds.
His other self had escaped, evidently. Taken his chance to run when the bomb exploded. Whatever survivors there might have been, the fallout would have taken care of them by now. Not him, though. Radiation wasn't an issue for him.
It was such a tragedy that it was to everyone else.
The Combine... they sacrificed themselves to destroy the Romanian Resistance.
Only a small segment of it had been killed, of course. But the casualties included Dr. Freeman, Ms. Vance and Mr. Calhoun. That was the worst part of it.
They planned this...
Where had they gotten a nuclear weapon from? How long had they planned this? What was the next step?
He needed answers to these questions.
Sighing deeply, he took one last look around the burning debris that had once been the German city. Right now, though... he needed to rectify the problems the Combine had now created.
—
-=END OF PART I=-