-=Chapter Twenty Eight: Fruition Part Two=-

White Forest, 12:17 PM

"Dr. Magnusson, Dr. Freeman is on the line," one of the radio operators announced from the control room adjacent to Silo 1, where Gordon and Alyx had reunited with Dr. Eli Vance mere hours before his passing. "And by the sounds of it, he's not going to be back here for a while."

Dr. Magnusson, the pessimist inside him firing up, scrambled over to his intercom. "Patch me through to him," he ordered sharply, "I want to hear it straight from his mouth."

"On it, sir."

A few moments later, the intercom was alive with newfound war ambience, the mechanical chatter of gunfire everpresent in the background as Dr. Freeman spoke: "—owhere and landed in the courtyard. The Gman's taking care of them for the moment, but we just saw a few of the dropships take off and fly closer to the building. There's also two units of soldiers flanking both sides while the Gman's distracted, seeing as there's about eight or so dropships hovering directly above him and it looks like the gunners are going to fi..."

"Dr. Freeman, are you saying you've been attacked?" Dr. Magnusson demanded.

"Ah, yes, Dr. Magnusson," Dr. Freeman answered, somewhat surprised to be talking to Magnusson now, "Belgian forces, landed about ten minutes ago."

"That's when you last contacted us."

"Well, they were probably only fifty kilometres out when I ended the call."

"Son of a bitch," Magnusson muttered, his grouchy nature returning like it had never left. "Dr. Freeman, should I send reinforcements?"

"Uh, we should be OK..." Gordon admitted, "the Gman's just been attacked, though — enemy rocket gunners in the dropships above him." A quiet chuckle crackled through the speakers, "poor bastards, he jumped onto one of them and now he's pulling it apart in midair."

"How many enemy soldiers are there?"

Freeman exhaled loudly, the hot air hissing static through Magnusson's intercom, "I don't know, two thousand?"

Magnusson snorted. That was less than a sixth of what White Forest held off the year before. "How many men do you have?"
"The general tells me he only brought about a hundred men," Gordon explained, "so we're tight for soldiers. I'm glad to have the Gman, let me tell you."

Something exploded on the other end, the blast sounding tinny and screechy through the outdated comms system. "Oh, shit," Freeman growled, barely audible over the ambience of screams and intensified gunfire, "I've gotta go, Magnusson. Don't worry about us; I'll call you guys later!"

The transmission ended abruptly, silence reclaiming the office in a split second.

"Do you want to do anything?" the radio operator asked his superior anxiously.

Magnusson sighed, pressing the button on his intercom again, "no... I trust Dr. Freeman's capabilities, and his discretion. If he says that they'll be fine, then they'll be fine."

"Alrighty, sir."

The intercom went quiet once more.

The explosion that Dr. Magnusson had heard from one and a half thousand kilometres away was the sound of a high-explosive rocket propelled grenade slamming into the back of the Palace of Nations and blowing a sizeable hole in the wall about ten metres from where Gordon and company had been standing, next to the right wall of the room itself.

Seeing as Dr. Breen was the only one unarmed in the immediate area, Gordon and the French general immediately hoisted their weapons and slid slowly over to the smoking hole as gunfire from the small number of nearby guards echoed from over by it. One of the soldiers exploded as the two moved over, his body torn into pieces by a super-fast burst of heavy gunfire from a dropship that seemed to be flying straight for them—

Gordon's eyes widened. "General, get down!" he yelled, shoving the general to the ground as he himself dived to the plaster soiled carpet, the other soldiers also realising what was about to happen and throwing themselves to the ground too.

Two of them narrowly escaped being flattened. One of the troopers and the remains of his bloodily diced comrade, unfortunately, did not. The dropship flew nose first into the hole, the wider sections of its body ripping apart the rest of the cowering wall in a cascade of white dust and flecks of plaster. The wing segments tore into the adjacent room, pulling half of the separating wall from it place and spreading the large chunks that remained all over the expensively carpeted floor.

The two guards scrambled to their feet as the finely ground dust settled, not even bothering to dust off their conspicuously contrasting dark grey fatigues as they backed away from the crashed Synth.

Fortunately for the occupants of the room, the underslung troop carrier had collapsed the floor and was now halfway into the roof of the room below, whatever that room was. The door opened inwards, and the first soldier almost ran into the thin floor that was at chest height right in front of him. Realising that the only way out would be to pull himself up and crawl out between the floor and the underside of the dropship itself, he proceeded to do so and was met with an almost fatal wave of gunfire.

The two remaining guards — who had just opened fire on the hands that had exposed themselves — slipped over to the side of the troop carrier, their steps silent on the soft, plaster covered carpet.

One of the guards pointed at a pocket of his webbing, which contained one of the Overwatch standard-issue MK3A2 concussion grenades. Before the other guard could reach for one of his own, the first raised a hand to his neck and silently made a slitting gesture, signalling not to use them.

It made sense, seeing as a grenade could easily be thrown straight back out and that could cause all sorts of complications. Bullets, on the other hand, could not be returned to the sender unless the ricochet gods commanded so and that was a point in its favour.

The first guard readied his rifle, inching over to the very edge of the troop carrier embedding in the floor before he shoved the muzzle in the doorway and opened fire, spraying the interior with a relentless onslaught of pulse rounds. The soldiers inside screamed as the powerful kick of the energy slugs crashed into their bodies, thumping their corpses and making them dance as they swung and spun like puppets on strings.

The soldier who had been about to pull himself out of the carrier had thrown himself to the floor, looking down from the roof of the room below and noticing a crème plastic desk behind a thick plaster separator directly below him. Desperate to survive, he pulled himself over to this barely wide enough gap and tentatively pulled himself through, falling head first with his arms outstretched onto the desk below, landing with a heavy thud.

His comrades were not so fortunate as to survive.

The guards, having dealt with the threat and unaware someone had escaped, returned to the side of their commander, administrator and long-time enemy.

"There's only one staircase leading to here," Dr. Breen explained grimly, looking at the gigantic Synth now lying lifelessly on the floor, "and they've so conveniently blocked it off." He shrugged, smiling with a tinge of optimism. "Well, I assume they weren't expecting they would fall through the floor upon collision. Now we're safe from the enemy."

The group, having been blocked off from returning the way they'd come, headed through to the next room, which consisted of quite a nice array of furniture including a large desk made out of various synthetic materials and a collection of large chairs.

Gordon, noticing that Dr. Breen didn't even have a sidearm, reached for his revolver. He paused, however, his hand hovering above the holster, and he looked up at Dr. Breen. "You alright with a revolver?"

The French general interjected, "Don't worry, Freeman, I'll give him my sidearm." He offered the USP Match's grip to the elderly administrator, who accepted it somewhat hesitantly. "You know how to operate a handgun, don't you?" the general asked, though he was pretty sure his leader knew at least that much.

Frowning at this apparent underestimation, Dr. Breen pressed the magazine release, slid the loaded magazine into his hand, pulled back the slide of the pistol to check it was empty, reloaded the magazine and pulled back the slide again. "Yes, I do," he replied, a little irritated.

"Right," the general nodded, hoisting his own pulse rifle.

"So what do we do now?" Gordon asked, eager to do something constructive.

"Well... I don't have any plans, to be honest." Dr. Breen admitted, somewhat dishearteningly. "I assumed the general here did."

The general shook his head. "Other than fight off this attack, I can't see much we can do."

Gordon cocked his head, eyeing the general. "Fight off the attack?" he repeated, shaking his head. "General, we've only got around a hundred and fifty men here."

"What do you mean, Freeman?" the general inquired, interested in the physicist's thoughts.

"There's at least two thousand soldiers out there," Gordon reminded the group. "They outnumber us twenty to one! Sure, we've got the Gman, but he's a little busy right now."

Gordon looked out a nearby window, spotting the Gman jumping onto the roof of another dropship as the one he had just been on exploded in midair, sending out a wave of giant shrapnel in all directions, some of the pieces crashing into the ground and spewing up geysers of soil and dirt.

"So, what? You want us to bargain with the enemy or something?" the general asked, trying to get something out of the distracted Dr. Freeman.

"Well, I doubt that would work," Gordon admitted. "I suggest we retreat."

The general scowled. "Dammit, we weren't expecting such a large-scale attack so soon. That's the only reason we were going to retreat in the first place, because we were safe for a while. If we retreated now, the enemy would overrun the building and release the Advisors, and there'd be no end to the chaos they'd cause if given free reign."

"So why don't we destroy them?" Gordon demanded.

"If anyone goes into that room, there's an extremely high chance that their brain will freeze, explode and liquefy in the space of half a second!" the general snapped, rubbing the forehead of his mask with his arm. "It's not like there's some kind of killswitch, the Advisors would never have allowed something like that. They'd have seen it as a big fat incentive to commit insubordination."

"So we can't kill them individually..." Gordon muttered. "Why can't w—"

The door on the other side of the room flew from its hinges, enemy soldiers storming into the doorway and opening fire on the occupants. In the split second they had to frantically throw themselves behind the closest pieces of furniture, Gordon and company returned fire.

Fortunately for them the doorway was very small and completely exposed, plus there was a wall directly behind it. Multiple barrages of gunfire assaulted the vacant doorframe, spraying the pitiful souls standing there with lead and pulse slugs. Blood squirted everywhere, like some kind of high-pressure sprinkler system on overdrive, staining the carpet with relentless torrents of the stuff and painting the wood of the doorframe dark crimson. Eventually, the enemy backed down and left the corpses to lie atop one another as a morbid pile of death in the doorway.

Gordon, breathing hard, thumbed the reload button of his rifle, the automated device cycling the munitions capsules. "They're still there," he hissed, moving quietly from the wooden desk he was crouching behind over to the door they'd just come from, reaching for the handle.

Taking a quick look back at the blood spattered doorway, Gordon was about to get to his feet and head back through to the dropship-occupied room when a soldier poked his rifle around the corner and sprayed a burst of pulse rounds into the room, one of the slugs hitting his square in the shoulder.

Yelping in pain, Gordon dropped to the ground, his sudden exclamation giving renewed confidence to the hostile soldiers, two of them throwing themselves into the doorway and ducking down behind their fallen comrades, spraying the room with gunfire once again.

One of the guards was riddled with shots, having made to move closer to the doorway a moment after the enemy who had shot Gordon had stuck his rifle inside the room. He fell heavily to the floor, little strings of blood flying from his wounds as he hit the ground.

Gordon, impatient to get to safety, pulled a grenade from his webbing and pulled out the pin, pressing down the safety primer with his thumb as he cautiously poked his head around the corner of the desk. One of the soldiers spotted him and opened fire, Gordon pulling his head back in sharply. Now aware that their attention was on the spot his head had just been, he quickly crawled over to the other side of the desk, which was up against the wall. Resting against the wall, he calmly tossed the explosive over the top, into the doorway that he was pretty sure was directly opposite where he was right now.

Sure enough, the explosive flew into the doorway, bouncing off the wall behind the soldiers and rolling up to them, just lightly tapping the sole of one of their boots.

Then it exploded.

Within the tight space between the other side of the far wall and the separator wall in the next room over, the concussion grenade's power was extremely concentrated. The blast tore limbs off, shredded flesh and muscle and peeled away exposed bone matter. Clothing that didn't get blown off caught fire, the hard plastic of the soldiers' masks melting and fusing to the pale skin underneath. The two soldiers in the doorway simply split in half at their abdomens, their lower spine shattering inside them and their torsos flying from their eviscerated waist, flying into the room they were attacking and bouncing across the carpet, leaving a thick trail of blood and smothered viscera that now resembled baby food in their wake.

Convinced the threat was now gone, Gordon got slowly to his feet, staring at the disgusting lumps of meat that had once been the torsos of two Overwatch soldiers lying not a metre from him. The other three got to their feet also, looking at the body parts with repulsion.

"They're inside the building," the general whispered, shaking his head. He sighed, looking at the gore dripping from the charred doorframe. "They'll be more soldiers that way, and we can't go back through the way we came."

Gordon turned back to the doorway they'd come through, looking back inside. Turning on his heels, he headed back through, looking at the giant hole beneath the crashed Synth's troop carrier. "Reckon someone could squeeze through that gap?" he asked as the general stopped beside him, gesturing toward the split plaster and loose threads of carpet that had once been the floor.

The general shrugged. "I don't see why not." He snorted, nodding at the large hole the synthetic creature had smashed through, "it's a better idea than dropping the five storeys between us and the ground."

Gordon smiled at the dry comment, looking out the yawning hole a few metres away. "Guess you're right," he agreed, moving over to the side of the dropship and kneeling down beside it, examining the gap between it and the intact remains of the floor. "Yeah, it should be wide enough," Gordon nodded to himself, putting both arms in as a rough measurement. He stood back up, looking at the general. "You coming?"

The general took a moment to think about it. "Look, all three of us need to stay alive until the Combine can get us out of here, and the earliest they're coming is the middle of next year. I want to fight like you wouldn't believe, but running right into the fray isn't going to be good for my chances."

Gordon shrugged. "I'm doing it."

"Yeah, but I don't have a suit like you... or any of that mental augmentation your Gman pal was talking to us about."

Having heard the Gman talk briefly about the subject before, Gordon didn't bother asking for details on the matter. He just nodded confidently. "Guess you're right," he agreed lightly, "so what are you and Dr. Breen going to do?"

This time, the general shrugged. "Set up some defences here, use the furniture in the next room as a barricade for whoever decides to come mess with us. Hey, we'll brainstorm some ideas as to how we're going to fix those Advisors up right."

"As in, kill them." Gordon added.

The general nodded slowly. "Exactly."

Gordon smiled, extending a hand to the general. "You know something, general?" he asked the officer as they shook, "you're not so bad."

The general laughed, gripping Gordon's hand tightly, "likewise, Dr. Freeman."

Gordon nodded, turning back to the gap he was about to slide himself through. "See you later, then." He muttered, sitting himself down and sliding his legs into the gap

"I don't doubt it," the general replied heartily, watching Freeman eagerly while silently anticipating something worthy of a good laugh to happen.

Carefully holding onto the ledge he had been sitting on, Gordon slowly and cautiously lowered himself into the gap, realising all too late that he needed to let go of the ledge and fall the two metres to the floor.

"Come on, Freeman," the general coaxed jokingly, laughing from above. "What are you waiting for?"

Gordon, scolding himself silently for his lack of foresight, let go of the ledge and fell the two metres to the ground. Granted, it wasn't that high, but the fact that he had been gripping the ledge in what was one the most awkward ways possible hadn't exactly helped.

Fortunately he only felt the force of the impact for a few seconds afterwards, much to the expectant general's dismay. "Oh, come on, Freeman, where was the entertainment in that?"

"I'm here to blow Combine heads off," Gordon answered coolly, "not to amuse them."

And with that, he unslung his pulse rifle and took off out of the general's sight.

If there was one word that could be used to describe the end result of a Fissionist operation in the field, it would be destruction. The entire courtyard had been redesigned to highlight the annihilation that war painted like a muddy child in a spotless white room, the key pieces of the artwork comprising of disfigured metal debris, upturned dirt and moist soil along with brightly glowing spot fires and smouldering grass.

In the middle of this canvas of devastation stood the virtuoso, manifest in all his creative glory and observing the yield of his cataclysmic talent: a dirty, bloodstained man in a suit jacket and tie.

Smiling thinly through the specks of grime on his face, he started on his way back through the trail of ruin caused by his hand. High above him stood the Palace's colonnade, towering and impressive even through the faint smokescreen swirling into the bright azure of the midday sky.

As he passed through his forsaken handiwork, his business-style dress shoes treading lightly on what little grass remained undamaged, he looked up at the roof of the main building, smiling to himself as he thought about the discover whoever was up there would make.

A hideously mutilated body and gallons of blood to boot never made for a pretty picture, no matter where you were from.

Passing what could be called the edge of his canvas, the boundary of his artwork on the easel that was the courtyard, he could see the stairs leading up to the colonnade and a few pieces of contributing art from the guards that had preceded him...

And one little detail that didn't fit with his artistic vision.

The Gman's remaining eye widened, realising immediately who this blotch of paint on his masterpiece was.

His duplicate, having apparently pulled himself off the roof, was dragging himself down the stairs toward him.

The door slammed open, bouncing off the wall and almost hitting the bespectacled man running through in retaliation. Gordon, his pulse rifle hoisted high and adrenaline pumping through his veins, hurriedly scanned the room for anyone. Just like the last rooms he'd barged into, it was entirely vacant. Apparently the soldiers hadn't made much progress yet.

Pausing briefly to catch his breath, Gordon moved over to the window on the left side of the room and peered out at the courtyard. He was nearly directly in front of it, and that meant he was almost back at the main hall where he'd broadcast with the general.

That hall was also right in front of the Conference Room, and the Advisor chamber tunnelling deep into the ground below.

Gordon could see the Gman walking back toward the colonnade, and the gigantic trail of destruction he'd left in his wake. There's enough scrap metal smouldering in the courtyard to build a small airliner! He thought to himself incredulously — while smiling, despite himself.

Eager to get his attention, Gordon was about to smash the window with the butt of his rifle and call out to him, but he noticed that his Fissionist friend had stopped what appeared to be a few metres from the colonnade, judging by what he could see. Apparently, something was wrong.

Curious to know what the Gman was seeing, he ran for the door and charged through, running into the adjacent room — empty, as he had expected — and, without even breaking his stride, bore down on the final door between him and the main hall with almost palpable ferocity, smashing it open with his shoulder.

And then the roof exploded.

It was absolutely breathtaking, and that wasn't only in the literal sense resulting from the insurmountable shower of plaster dust and ground-up masonry that forced Gordon to hold his breath and shield his eyes. Watching from the fourth floor, Gordon gazed at the titanic slab of circular stone, spanning about the same length as a single-storey house and around half the thickness, as it simply broke off from the beautifully embellished ceiling and came crashing down into the middle of the room, splitting into multiple chunks of rock and plaster and leaving a colossal hole gaping open in the roof. Sunlight flooded in from outside, providing adequate lighting replacement for the dozens of shattered globes now scattered across the plaster coated floor. Multiple soldiers poked their heads in over the edge of this newly created opening, giving Gordon a vivid flashback to that day thirteen months ago when he had fiercely defended the secondary silo at White Forest from the attacking Combine forces.

The only difference was that there were no Advisors up there on the roof this time. Relieved by this knowledge, Gordon focused on the matter at hand: enemy soldiers right above him, possibly outfitted with rappelling equipment so that they cou...

...and there we go, Gordon thought to himself as the first of multiple thick black ropes were thrown down into the hall, the ends dangling barely a metre above what little of ornamental terrazzo hadn't been veiled by the huge chunk of masonry now lying in the middle of it.

Gordon hurriedly checked his rifle ammo, satisfied by the complete thirty rounds remaining in the munitions capsule, and braced the stock against his shoulder, lining up the sights with the tops of the rappelling ropes as the few soldiers up top saw him readying his weapon and backed down.

And then he waited.

Of course, the enemy wasn't entirely comprised of idiots, and that was unfortunate for Dr. Freeman. About ten seconds after he'd lined up his sights a gun barrel pointed in from above and began spewing bright flashes of fire from its muzzle, multiple resonating ricochets forcing Gordon to cringe and duck instinctively at the sound of high-velocity slugs colliding with metal and wall nearby.

Gordon backed into the doorway right behind him, growling under his breath through gritted teeth at the situation. Taking a second to calculate the chances of him getting hit while whoever it was up there sprayed inaccurately at him and the even more unlikely scenario of the highly improbable bullet impact being fatal when he was wearing powered armour, Gordon rolled his eyes, shrugged his shoulders and broke into a run.

Despite being entirely aware that luck was merely a relative conception of positive coincidence, Gordon couldn't help but feel his had dried up a bit when he felt something crash into his shoulder and spray hot sticky blood all over the railing nearby. The impact reminded him that he wasn't exactly sure what he was trying to accomplish other than to stop the people shooting him from getting into the building, but he kept running anyway. Besides, the soldiers probably had no idea they'd hit him, unless someone was watching.

Afraid he might have jinxed himself, his head snapped up and looked at the bright hole in the roof, thankful that nobody's nosy head was looking down at him. The soldier up there had stopped spraying and was probably reloading, but Gordon was out of his range anyway so it didn't really matter.

Gordon reached the back wall of the hall, the side opposite the colonnade he and the Gman had been ushered through a few hours ago. They had been on the bottom floor then, and he vaguely remembered going up two flights of stairs not in the main hall to reach Dr. Breen's office, which was located on the third floor.

The staircases here in the main hall were up against the back wall, where Gordon was right now. There were two of them, one on either side that led down from the fifth floor all the way to the second floor, where they stopped and joined into a single staircase leading to the first floor, directly opposite the three sets of double doors on the other side of the hall.

Gordon took another glance up at the hole in the roof before he bolted down the stairs, taking them almost three at a time as his legs pounded the steps and his rifle bounced around uncontrollably in his hands. As he approached the second floor, he spotted soldiers running out from somewhere over to the left side of the room, behind the staircase. They spotted the huge piece of roof lying on the floor and immediately they looked at the sky, hoisting their own rifles.

These guys are friends, Gordon realised. Shit, I was two seconds away from shooting them!

Gordon, watching as a few of the soldiers opened fire on the roof, called out to them. "Hey!"

The troopers snapped their attentive heads around, noticing the physicist standing at the top of the second floor staircase. "Dr. Freeman!" one of the soldiers yelled back, waving his hand as an affirmative greeting. "You here to help us?"

"Actually, I was wondering if you could cover me," Gordon admitted, nodding at the doors to the colonnade, "the Fissionist Gman is out there and I think something's wrong. Mind if you keep the guys up on the roof occupied while I run across?"

"Sure thing," the soldier nodded, raising his rifle.

Gordon nodded his thanks, looking up at the roof before he bolted down the stairs and across the middle of the room, onto and across the large concrete slab of disembodied roof — which, having caught a fleeting glimpse of it, boasted a rather large blood splatter around the middle. When he was about two thirds of the way across gunfire erupted from above him, which was quickly met by the scampering of feet and retaliative fire from behind him. Gordon heard the bullets hit their mark, and a few moments later he heard a dull thump signalling a body had fallen to the floor.

Looking back at the soldiers, he waved and smiled. "Thanks!"

The soldiers waved back as Gordon spun back around and headed out onto the colonnade.

The Gman slowly circled his twin, cautiously making step after step toward the other set of stairs leading inside. His doppelganger was about as agile as a snail that had undergone crude frontal lobotomy, but that didn't mean his destructive capacity would be in any way suppressed and that was why the Gman had to keep a wary eye on his twin.

Unfortunately, he only had one left.

His duplicate was in an awful state: there was a giant bone jutting out of his neck, the skin sliding up and down it as his spine moved while he dragged himself along the soft grass, not to mention his eyes were dried chunks of pale mush pasted to the walls of his rib-impaled orbital bones and everything from his lower abdomen down was missing, save for a squashed intestine dragging along behind him and a few strings of moist quivering tendons.

Despite all this he was somehow able to belligerently claw his way toward the Gman, who he was somehow able to sense through some form of sensory perception other than his nonexistent vision.

The Gman, though formulating some sort of plan in his mind, honestly had no solid idea what to do. His twin might be anticipating he make a sudden move of some sort, or he might just be waiting to launch an attack. Either way, the Gman couldn't really brace himself for the impending attack because he wasn't sure when it was going to happen.

Moving ever so slowly, the Gman put his foot on the first step of the right-side staircase, keeping his unwavering gaze steady as he did so. Suddenly, he heard footsteps coming from somewhere up on the colonnade. Hoping his duplicate was oblivious to the matter, he made no physical reaction to the faint sound.

The footsteps stopped a few moments later, but still the Gman held back his desire to look at who it was.

Then his doppelganger's body was riddled with pulse rounds, his eviscerated torso spasming from the bombardment and his arms waving limply around in the air. The Gman then broke his gaze and snapped his head up to see the attacker, who he was less-than-surprised to find was none other than Gordon Freeman.

That was when his twin made him move.

He rolled out of Gordon's range so that his body was pressing against the concrete elevation the colonnade resided upon before reaching up and grabbing onto its edge. Without so much as a pause he hoisted himself up and over, swinging what remained of his body up with stunning agility.

The Gman, now observing his duplicate was almost identical to a superhuman paraplegic — except for the fact his paralysed limbs had been crudely amputated — realised that Gordon was pretty much gone unless he did something in two seconds. In a desperate effort to save the handpicked saviour of the Earth, the Gman threw himself up onto the colonnade and dived onto his doppelganger, bodyslamming the crawling mess of a body and grabbing a tuft of bloodied hair on the back of his head. Without a shred of remorse, he slammed the creature's head down into the concrete, absolutely obliterating any facial characteristics one would associate with a human being and replacing them with ones people would compare to a face gone through an industrial fan.

His face wasn't just squashed, it was flattened, like a grape under a hundred-kilo weight. The cartilage in his nose was thrust violently back into his skull, puncturing the middle of his frontal lobe and spraying a feral clear liquid out into the spreading pool of blood under his lifeless head. His cheek bones, his jaw and even the front of his cranium were completely destroyed, shattering inside his head and flattening along with every other part of his face. The two rib bones in his eyesockets were thrust even deeper into his head, stabbing his brain with identical bloody points.

If someone had laid a spirit level on the red mush that had once been his face, the bubble would have rested in the exact centre. It was perfectly flat, incorrigible in its horizontality, and the Gman simply let go of his hair and stood up, brushing himself off and shaking his head. "You could have been killed, Dr. Fre—"

A bloody hand lashed out at the guardian, interrupting him midsentence. Gordon jumped back in shock, staring in horror as the faceless, legless, offal-trailing carcass tightened its grip on the Gman's leg, grimy nails drawing blood that ran down his leg and pooled around his shoe.

And for the first time for as long as Gordon could remember, the Gman lost it.

His eyes thinned spitefully, his face contorted in rage and his teeth gritted in unadulterated fury. Wrenching his leg back in an attempt to free himself of his duplicate's grasp, he instead only succeeded in pulling it closer. As his other hand waved around, blindly trying to grab his other leg, the Gman raised his leg and slammed the thick sole of his shoe down on his hand, smothering it and reducing it to disembodied pulp.

After that, he raised the bloody sole once more and stamped on his twin's head, crushing the already mutilated skull completely and leaving a gigantic dent in his head as if it had been an apple and he had carelessly dropped it.

But he wasn't satisfied with that. Raising his leg a third time, he brought his shoe down again, the sole connecting with the dented skull and bursting it open, the sides simply giving way and flattening, the ears spouting out torrents of blood and clear fluid as they too depressed like the thin skin of a deflating balloon. Shards of cranium jutted out of the crushed skull, one of the ribs the Gman had shoved in the pitiful duplicate's eyes poking through out the back of his head.

The hand released its grip on his other foot, and the Gman swiftly bent down, grabbed the disfigured, faceless skull by its gushing ears with one hand and the spine-impaled wrinkled neck with his other and ripped his head clean off, tearing the weakened skin of his neck off entirely and pulling what remained of his damaged spinal column out of his body. The entire thing simply slid out of his decapitated neck like a bony snake shedding an oversized skin, surprisingly without too much spilling of blood. Had Gordon not blasted his waist into oblivion during their last encounter, the huge snake of vertebrae would have been slightly longer.

Then the Gman threw what some might call a trophy over the edge of the colonnade and let go of his undeniably dead doppelganger's neck, leaving the drained corpse to fall to the ground with a dull thud.

Looking at this hideous mess, the Gman turned to see if Gordon was alright. Spotting the physicist a few metres behind him, he realised his eyes were fixated on the mess he had created beneath him, "Dr. Freeman..." the Gman began, trying to rectify the fruit of his anger, before Gordon fell to his knees and threw up all over the colonnade, bright green stomach acids pouring out all over the concrete.

Heaving weakly, Gordon looked up at the Gman, his eyes thin and his nose twitching. The Gman, without saying a word, ran over and helped him to his feet, "I apologise," he muttered remorsefully. "I allowed myself to be surmounted by my emotions... I wish you did not have to see that."

"No..." Gordon whispered, his voice shaking. "No, it... it's OK. He would have done that to me if you hadn't stopped him."

The Gman didn't try anything further to justify his actions, other than to help Gordon steady himself in silence. "Had you not come, Dr. Freeman," the Gman started slowly, "I may not have had an opportunity to stop him, and for that I am grateful."

Gordon spat a glob of vomit diluted with saliva onto the ground. "S'alright," he mumbled, the words joining into a single syllable on his tongue. "Ugh, man, that was bad..."

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah, yeah," Gordon nodded slowly, straightening up a little and blinking. "How about you?"

The Gman almost laughed. "I have sustained no injury demanding intervention on my part."

"Good." Gordon smiled thinly. "So, you're going to help us kick these Combine assholes back to Belgium?"

The Gman nodded, returning the smile. "Absolutely."

And with that, they walked back inside and returned to the fray.


Uh, yeah... sorry to disappoint everyone who was waiting for the conclusion, but I realised after I'd published the last chapter that there's at least two more chapters to go, possibly even three, and the epilogue. Of course, I hope nobody reading wants me to hurry up and finish the damn thing... besides, half this story was talking, so I'm trying to make up for it with what could be two epic battles... and a satisfying conclusion.

Partially off topic, I'm sorry if I just turned the entire universe off with that last bit. Believe me, I'm not really a psychotic maniac with a craving for excessive gore, I just have a knack for writing the stuff and I like to do things differently from everyone else (if that hasn't become obvious yet). Besides, there's much worse stuff out there, it's just nobody's put it into written words before.

Completely off topic, if you haven't seen Inception yet... why the hell are you reading my crap? No, seriously, get off your computer or mobile or whatever you're reading this from and buy a ticket before the damn thing stops screening. If you like this, then you will LOVE Inception. A suggestion, though: don't go with friends, unless you don't usually buy heaps of food from the supermarket beforehand and share it around during the movie. You have to pay pretty close attention to everything in the beginning and it will make sense in the end. Me, I had to pass food back and forth a line of like eight friends I was in the middle of without taking my eyes off the screen, so fortunately I didn't miss anything, but I wouldn't recommend anyone try to replicate the situation.