IX.
Neither Gordon nor her father visited her dreams that night. The rocky caverns typically setting the stage in her mind drowned in obsidian seas. She wasn't aware of having a consciousness within their currents, let alone a presence substantial enough to ripple them.
This darkness felt familiar. If it could even be recognized as such. It did not hold the warm connotations of home, but it was cold and it was quiet and it was free. The empty gaps between quarks held entire universes of unexpressed potentiality. Nothing disturbed the balance of the cosmos.
Like a pebble bobbing to the surface, a smooth white object emerged in the darkness. It began small and grew more with each outward pulse of the light that glittered within its core, effusing streams across its many prisms as it spun.
The pebble blossomed to the size of a comet, then a dwarf planet, before exploding into a gas giant wrapped in intriciately striated ribbons of blue, white, and gray.
Eons passed. Stars flitted toward the planet and entered orbit, attracted to its light. Supernovas burst in impossibly bright silence around it. Cosmic radiation swirled and dissolved in showers of stardust.
On the surface of a milky pond, life emerged. The correct particles collided, and something unformed grasped its first avaricious breath. That virgin exhalation fed the clouds, igniting a chain reaction that would continue for millennia.
Particle storms arose, as did noiseless lightning. Violent cataclysms wracked the planet's epidermis. Crystalline boulders forged inside the mantle now found themselves thrust above the surface. These acted as lightning rods, attracting the electricity the storms generated and inducting them through their incredibly dense structures.
The air surrounding these crystals began to repeat the same patterns, weaving the same cloud formations over and again. Time translation symmetry broke in a rare but bizarre pattern. Anything that touched them disappeared.
Life cowered in fear of what it did not understand and hid itself away. Cells gestated within protective pods. The slowing of telomeres bestowed upon them the gift of time, as well as subsequent gifts. Ions passed through potassium gates trillions of times, each iteration giving birth to thought. Thought produced idea. Idea constructed civilization.
Life found that it was far more amenable to survival to remain inside the pod than to risk exposing its most valuable organs to the mercy of its enviroment. And eventually, life learned to evolve, to extend its senses beyond the boundaries of the cell membrane. Electrical impulses raced faster, life outpacing glia.
It felt familiar.
Life manipulated thought. Thought manipulated matter. The gas giant harnessed its light to erect cloud-piercing towers. Networks wove sophisticated colonies across its wispy surface. Steel veins bulged along the outer strata; occasionally a clot of light could be seen speeding along one. Civilization thrived in areas once dominated by swamps of methane pockets. Life proclaimed its transcendence over the elements.
We observe, she said in a voice not belonging to her.
Energy burned and resources depleted. The clouds began to slow, producing rarer sparks. Life consumed too much, too fast, and deemed itself superior while the planet grew darker upon each rotation. The stars hushed to a simmer, dwindling into pits of ash. Information was lost inside the black holes that formed and evaporated.
The universe stretched in all directions.
Impossible distances away from the gas giant, time lost meaning. There, a small blue planet drifted on the misty arm of Orion's spur. Human life pulsed and wondered at itself.
On that planet, nestled in a clay desert, sat a concrete box.
Wait.
Stop.
Why are you showing me this… ?
Because you must understand what he did, he who fell from Enlightenment. Why he must learn the lessons of the flesh. As will you.
I haven't seen him.
You have. He wore human flesh when he approached your father, and his human voice spoke lies to spite us. He hid inside dreams as a means of passage. As will you.
What do you mean?
Humans are such blind creatures.
A pity.
In Black Mesa, the crystal was pushed into the receptacle. The crude mechanism called the Anti-Mass Spectrometer rejected the sample and overloaded. With a high-pitched scream, the gate finally opened, allowing the borderworld to pour through.
In Black Mesa, these small, amoebic creatures panicked. They allowed their primitive instincts to override reason. Their fear spread, like a strain.
Smoke. Sirens. Glass and blood.
You did not die in Black Mesa.
"Alyx."
Her father's voice.
"Open your eyes, baby."
You were born.
Over the night her hand had curled into a fist. Wrinkled paper drooped with the loosening of her grip when she roused, Dad's old postcard to Gordon scrunched and damp. The stamp's tiny Labradoodle smiled at her and fluttered to the ground.
She subjected herself to the painful but necessary process of pushing herself up. As cold and stiff muscles wracked her Hunter wounds, she desperately wished for the comfort of a fire. The tent had been far too thin to protect them from the tundra's ravaging winds; her fingers were toughened to the foreknuckle, too numb to flex into working shape.
"Barney?" Her voice cracked, a hoarse, pathetic wisp. Her neck twinged as she glanced toward an empty patch of snow. Crushed floes filled the vague blue outline where he'd slept.
Alyx crawled through the tent flap, stood and stretched the small of her back until her vertebrae popped. If she had to guess, dawn had yet to break. The sky was still dim, weighed down by a heavy cloud cover, but at least the horizon remained clear of hail. Hopefully the weather favored them today.
She jogged down the hill, where Barney stood scanning the area with a pair of binoculars.
"Please tell me you weren't out here all night."
"Fifteen minutes."
"You're such a liar." She pushed the canteen into his chest and took the binoculars from him. The landscape unfurled an empty terrain before her lenses. "Nothing?"
"Nada." He took a swig of cold cocoa, grimaced, pointed the neck toward a dip in the ridge. "Thinkin' maybe we should head east. I don't like the looks of these clouds."
"Anyone ping the receiver?"
He clicked his jaw.
"Barney."
"Might've been Mossman." He downed the rest of the canteen to stall for time, knocking out the last few drops by slapping his palm against the container. "I don't know."
"Mossman?" She lowered the binoculars. A thousand scenarios flashed through her mind, none of them palatable enough to speak aloud.
"Yeah. Calling for the cable guy, said the TV here sucks. Nothin' but snow."
She was too tired to smile.
Wounded feelings masquerading as hardened instinct warned her not to lean on anyone too deeply. She trusted Gordon to remain strong; now he lay comatose several hundred miles south of here. She admired her father's calm strength before that damned letter snatched it away. What cruel karmic joke could she expect at the end of giving Barney her hand? Trust seemed like an investment not worth the painful dividends it paid.
Still. Barney was her friend, if nothing else. They hadn't exactly had a choice in the matter; not like she was a real prize compared to her father, either. It'd take a miracle to get them the hell out of this ice-ridden wasteland, much less march them toward their destination. The Borealis waited, as equally distant to them as Gordon's room.
"All right." Digging in her coat pocket, she flipped out the utility knife, its serrated edge catching the sunrise's anemic gleam. "We've got some ground to cover, so we're gonna tie the tent cord around our wrists. The second anyone starts shooting, you cut it and we bound." A flick of her wrist closed the blade, and she tossed him the nicked handle. "The Combine aren't gonna stay where snow's jamming up their communications, so if we hug the lee side of the ridge, we should be able to avoid them."
"Can't hear our guys if we're ridin' blind, too."
"One problem at a time, Barn."
A look of disappointment felled his face as he waved the canteen over the snow. No more cocoa. Shame.
He had only one question, probably the most pertinent.
"Hail?"
She kicked in the tent poles, collapsing its thin skeleton into a pile of canvas. "C'mon. Time to get the crap beaten out of us."
The military designed bounding for the purpose of advancing with your partner through volleys of enemy fire. In theory, the technique was simple. You ran a few feet, hit the dirt, and provided cover to let your partner gain a little more ground. Then they hugged the soil and you got up. Repeat as necessary.
It did jack shit out in the open fields, however, when the bullets raining down dropped vertically and at the discretion of nature rather than a trigger finger. At the very least, trigger fingers paused to reload.
"Jesus, Mary and fuckin' Joseph," Barney shouted as hail pounded the tent canvas they stretched over their ducked heads. No need to wonder how deep his blasphemy would fling them into hell. The hail intended to carve them a path all the way down.
"Shit!" He tore off her end of the cover by slamming his back into the snowdrift, nearly toppling her over.
She reasserted control with a sharp tug on her end. "Don't do that!"
"Fuckin' hurts!"
"I know!"
He panted, gathering enough breath to holler over the deafening waves. "I don't see no ridge anymore," he yelled, "so we gotta be on our way toward the station, right?"
"No idea. I'll have to check the map."
"Oh, God dammit—"
"Curl up and tuck your head in," she said. "It'll pass soon enough."
His startled yelp became muffled as she stuffed his head down and yanked her parka over him. Hungry for flesh, ice stung, slapped and bit every inch of her exposed skin. Pellets filled the empty crooks in the knapsack when she planted it between her knees.
As predicted, the hail ameliorated over the course of the next several minutes. She raised her head when it stopped, squinting toward the break in the clouds. A few gathering clouds threatened more precipitation, but dispersed at the beams that managed to overcome them. Sunlight leaked through, gold-white puddles spotting the snow.
Something box-shaped sat in the fields a few meters north, unattended. Alyx tugged on the cord, spurring him to follow her, their steps hushed as the shape grew concrete: a Berkut with the driver's door flung open. The engine ticked as its headlights blinked, sparkling the motes twirling in their path.
No sign of footprints led either to or from the vehicle. Except for speckled holes where hail had burrowed, the snowdrifts surrounding the cabin were clean. Barney's jaw jutted a little as he tipped his head toward the suspension. She ducked to inspect the gas pan for anomalies.
In the Ukrainian precincts, Metrocops clandestinely attached explosives to civilian vehicles on a surprisingly common basis, despite Overwatch's disdain for car bombs as as an uncouth guerilla tactic. More often than not, they inflicted unwanted collateral damage in an effort to repress insurgents and maintain order by striking fear in civilian hearts. Investigations seldom strained themselves over citizens' welfare, however. As long as the major forcefields went untouched, higher-ups didn't bother.
"Careful," Barney said, frowning at a memory as she skimmed her fingers along a pipe. According to him, CP's typical punishment for arson entailed a disgustingly light detention sentence, after which the offender was free to walk the block.
Not that the slap on the wrist discouraged offenders. Once, on patrol, he'd seen one such bastard whistling along Kirova Street. Two days prior, the man had tossed Semtexinto a former bakery while citizens awaited rations and washed out its innards. Because the rations truck had arrived late that morning, it was detemined that not enough 'commodity' had been lost to warrant the man a harsher sentence.
He'd found it a necessity to crush his hands into fists as he watched his fellow cop spinning his baton with nary a care in the world. Otherwise, he said, he might have confiscated the damned thing and beaten him raw.
Sliding along frozen steel, her fingers eventually bumped a smooth, flimsy surface. "Barney? You're gonna want to take a look at this." Picking from the outermost corners in order to keep the volatiles calm, she unpeeled the silver strip of duct tape gluing the small bag and plastic wiring to the transmission. C4. Resistance grade.
"Aw, jeez," he said over her shoulder. "You think one'a the guys taped it on?"
"Maybe. The transmission's half-gutted, so it looks like whoever was driving tried to lay a trap for the Combine." She made it a point to emphasize their barren surroundings. "Problem is, there's no Combine."
"Or Resistance," he said. "High and dry. Munitions ain't that sloppy."
"I know." She straightened, C4 in hand.
"Where the hell are we?" Barney ruffled his cowlick. "You'd think we'd have run into somebody by now, but so far we've found bupkiss. What we do find is a dud somebody didn't mind lettin' turn into an ice cube. Either they bailed, or something plucked them up—"
"The tracks, though? Why aren't there any tracks?"
"You're askin' me?"
"Well… " She deliberated. "I'll check the Berkut for more traps, but if there's any gas left in the tank, I think we should use it."
He looked at her as though she'd sprouted a second head. He rubbed the back of his neck, planted his other hand on his hip. "You sure? It's been out in the hail all night. With or without the powder keg, that junker's probably minutes to blowin' up."
She opened her mouth to reply when she snapped her head abruptly toward the west, toward a Combine soldier with his back turned, speaking into his vocoder. An exchange of guttural tones, growing on the wind. She ducked behind the Berkut's passenger side, dragging him down beside her.
"Razor Six reporting to Winder dispatch: requisition of nonstandard transport in progress. Request instructions on protocol."
"Ascertain biotics. Contain where applicable."
Heavy, crunching footfalls approached the vehicle and stopped. Her molars ground to the root as she watched oil-black jackboots root themselves in the snow. Neither of them dared to breathe. It was just as likely their pounding hearts would betray them, but dread denied them a single puff of air.
Barney flipped out the hunting knife, raising the cord tied around their wrists.
She nodded.
"Scans report possible volatiles. Clarify priority, Winder."
"Requisition is mandatory."
"Copy."
The cord snapped under the knife.
Separated, they parted quiet ways. Barney crept on his hands and knees around the vehicle's bed, approaching the soldier from behind, while she slipped her hand under her boot to withdraw the Hunter pincer buried between her sock and calf. The biggest danger their friend presented was his ability to alert other units of threats in the area. Engaging with bullets didn't necessarily guarantee silence. Sever the signal at the source, and the cavalry stood none the wiser.
Barney pitched himself at the soldier in a wild scramble, sacking him. He locked the man in a firm submission hold and wrenched his arms behind his back, opening an opportunity for her to destroy the mechanism responsible for reporting death signals to Overwatch.
By the time the soldier registered enough danger to thrash his limbs in a panicked reflex, she'd pounded the pincer through the mask's compressor, reducing his scream to an electronic squawk. Placing the majority of her weight on the butt, she forced the blade downward, cutting through the meat of the throat.
His cry murdered. An aborted snatch for oxygen. The body's gasp achieving freedom moments too late. No matter which was the real phenomenon, her stomach knotted at the odor she unzipped; she repressed a shudder, jamming her knuckles to her crushed lips as the gurgle of an exposed windpipe rankled her nostrils.
The corpse slumped, breaking a patch of snow into floes as Barney stepped aside. Alyx knelt on her good leg, trying not to focus too deeply on the carrion. It was one thing to shoot at soldiers gunning for you and declare the day's business over. Almost frighteningly easy to pat yourself on the back and blind your conscience in sooty clouds of gunpowder.
Yet another to go around slitting throats. Her hand trembled a little as she wiped the pincer on her thigh and sheathed it inside her boot, where moist, clotted tissue pasted the metal to her ankle. Apprehension grew inside her for the fact that they'd gutted a man with such fluidity and cold calculation that no words were required to carry out the task. They needed him to fall dead silent, in more ways than the phrase intended, and acted accordingly, inflicting the unceremonious but brutal death the Combine would likewise bestow on them if given even an ounce of opportunity.
Saliva curdled alongside the viscera in the corpse's throat, the natural byproduct of warm organs coming into contact with icy air. An air pocket trapped underneath several folds of skin rushed to surface on the torn windpipe.
Her only consolation was that the work was as quick as it was grim. Barney crouched beside her and grasped the corpse by its shoulders.
"Halt, Razor Six. Cease your activity." Dispatch from the dead man's mask froze them both. "Communications report failure code six-one-three. Confirm your status."
They stared at one another, at an impasse. Reaching down, he pried the mask from the corpse and raised the vocoder to his mouth. "Status is firm." And squeezed his eyes shut.
The other end remained skeptical. "Maintain your position. Performing diagnostic." His breath escaped his flaring nostrils in ragged streams, in and out, out and in. Jesus, she thought, he was trying not to hyperventilate. "Razor Six, Overwatch cannot access your craniodata. Return to base and await instruction."
"Understood." The moment the feedback cut out, he added a disgruntled mutter. "Dickhead."
He stifled his panting with a bit lip as they stood. Bent posture, shuffling his weight from heel to heel, gauging his foothold to mitigate a potentially deadly plunge. She didn't like how he continued to study the mask in his hands. She could tell a hazardous idea had sunk tenterhooks into him. That he was calculating the risk.
Don't. The plea twitched her soundless lips, stillborn. Whatever you're thinking, don't—
He pulled his jacket over his head.
She turned.
Gradually the rustle of clothes morphed into plastic slapping snow. Piece by piece, the dead man's armor shed its exoskeleton. He picked it apart, disassembled the most important plates and molded them to his body. The breastplate enveloping his chest clicked various latches. She couldn't help but wince at the leathery pull of the abdominal pads, the small grunt he emitted tucking inside them.
Shame radiated heat through the wind-lashed skin of her cheeks. Her head sagged from her neck like a lead balloon. She tucked her arms under her breasts, scrunching the downy folds in her parka, and rubbed her biceps. It would have been insulting to call her averted gaze an act of etiquette rather than what it truly was: cowardice.
How often had her father partaken of this? A voluntary shielding of the eyes from the process that transformed a good man into another cog in Combine machinery.
After a time, Barney released a broken sigh.
"'s okay. You can look."
She turned hesitantly.
"You don't have to do this."
"Don't really wanna." At least he answered honestly. "Can't find this place on our own, though. I figure if we deliver this thing, it might lead us to the weather station. Probably Mossman, too, if we're lucky."
Maybe. Maybe not. She deliberated the possibilities, kicking a scuffed toe into the snow.
"Time to get a move on," he encouraged, his words a gentle nudge. "Dispatch is gonna send a follow-up soon. I don't want us sticking around for that."
"Are you okay?" Alyx looked up, having summoned the courage to ask. "Like this?"
The stern lines bracketing his mouth softened. "Yeah," he said, sweeping his arms out to show her how negligible he deemed the harm. "Just a bad costume's all." He scratched at the tear in the throat, rubbed off the red crust coating gloved fingers. "Might have to keep my head down."
The mask nudged his boot. Bending down, he picked it up, swept the slush off the plastic alloy. His terse smile went unreciprocated.
"Barney… "
"C'mon." He stowed into the cabin. "Combine are waitin'."
Alyx poised in a stationary crawl on the Berkut's bed, a motionless cargo tucked under canvas.
Her heart thumped a strong beat against the floor's ribbed folds. At least she had that going for her; she preferred to remain optimistic that it'd remain pumping, even though the alternative grew likelier the closer they approached Combine territory. He'd told them five minutes; naturally, they expected a quick delivery. She clenched her fingers around the stock of her SPAS-12 and chewed at a scab she'd gnawed into her bottom lip.
Barney did his best to keep the drive even, but this particular Berkut plain sucked at its job. She wondered if whoever taped C4 to the gas pan had also gutted the transmission the Resistance lauded as butter-smooth sailing, runs like molasses but bulldozes like a dream, because reality, as usual, proved eager to disappoint. Every time the damn thing hit a crevice, the bed leapt up, causing the floor to punch its unforgiving steel bolts into her Hunter wounds. Not a whimper could flee her lips, either, or else she could count on using them to kiss their flimsy cover goodbye.
The next jolt knocked a fresh blow into her stomach, painfully snapping her incisors into her tongue. She swallowed back the salty rush that welled up with a grimace.
The canvas flickered at one corner, its exposed gap allowing her thirsty lungs to lap at a merciful trickle of fresh air. Hard to breathe this tightly packed under the tarp. The soldier's freshly spilled blood stuffed her nostrils with a rotting-meat odor.
Forearms aching, she pressed her cheek to gelid metal and mentally reviewed their plan. Checkpoints were seldom manned by heavy gunners. Once their Trojan horse rolled into the loading bay, she'd lunge for the pintle mount and pick off the first wave.
Best laid plans. Thick chains churned on ancient pulleys, raising the bay door inches at a time. She waited, fists clenched, until the weight in the cabin lifted. Gears cranking, the door opening, shutting, immuring the snow and cold, Barney exchanging perfunctory words with people he hated most. Go. Go.
She ripped off the cover and lunged for the pintle mount. The bed bobbed under her feet as she lunged for the handles. Slamming them together, she swept the mount in a clean line, mowing down the first few soldiers who greeted Barney. He dashed for the side of the bay, toward an emplacement barrier for cover.
A crash door flung open on its hinges, allowing stragglers to spill out. Angry bullets snapped teeth at the Berkut's chassis. She ducked the rounds that buffeted the frame, weaving her head in between swinging the pintle. Kickback trembled her wrists.
The stock seared in her hands. She coughed back the whiff of smoke her nostrils caught. "Rifle," she shouted through bursts.
Barney punted a rifle-wielder into the line of fire and snatched his AR2. A flare surged alive in the hand of his partner, its smoking eye glowering in the soldier's fist.
He hurled it overhand. It flashed through the darkness and, like a hammer striking an anvil in a burst of sparks, hit the canvas behind her, catching the material on fire. She couldn't stop to snuff the flames, instead only half-heartedly applying her boot while aiming for the pyro before he could burrow behind cover.
She peppered holes along the wall and caught him with a slug through the kidney, drawing a livid string of Russian curses. Grasping the wounded unit by the mask, Barney hauled him into the cabin, slamming the door onto his kidney until the body stopped twitching.
That done, Alyx stamped the hungry flames down to a harmless smolder. The canvas' plastic burned and popped, its edges curling around the cindered hole. Singe charred her sole in a sickening melted rubber smell.
Teeth crushed to the gums, she lurched again for her place of safety, the mount. She cracked her knuckles over the handles, prepared to shoot anything that dared rush them.
Eerie silence flowed through the next few minutes; when the last death shrill faded, the ticking of a clock filled the air. The room loomed, cavernous, smoking, empty.
Barney sprinted over to her as she jumped off the bed.
"You okay?"
"Yeah."
He nodded and grasped the sides of his mask, clenching his fingers around the plastic. He decided against it at the last possible second, withdrawing his hands with great delay. Each of his hard exhalations popped sparks from the vocoder. "Forgot how hard it was to breathe in this thing."
Noticing the rivulets spreading around them, he groaned, taking certain pains to scrub his bloodstained heels on the floor. She'd only seen him like this a handful of times. When he slipped into the armor. It was as if he lost sight of the world around him. What came after—an inevitable side effect of gaining proficiency in the business of killing—
That—
That didn't bear thinking about.
At the console gatekeeping reinforced doors, her EMP refused to start. She rapped the tool several times against her palm; at times the wiring fizzled out due to the bursts of electricity it produced. The in-field remedy she applied, usually, a small physical jostle to encourage them to fire again. But the point was moot. Dead.
Well, if that isn't just peaches, as her father would say. "Dammit," she said, recalling how the cold had killed the RPG-7's targeting system as well, "frost got you, too," looking up as Barney strode past her. "What're you doing?"
He unrolled his cuff and pecked at the skin around his outer wrist. "Dumbass chip," he muttered, "moves around on me. Hell'd it run off to now? ...There." He pinched the fold of skin in place and held it up for the laser reader to decrypt, toe bouncing an impatient tap on reinforced steel. "Can plunk a three-mile-high steel prick smack dab in the middle of the city, but God knows we can't have chips that read the code right the first time around."
His Civil Protection clearance. "Why do you have that?" she asked. "I thought you dug it out."
"Wasn't keen on cutting myself up again."
"That thing melts, it's gonna leak alkaline into your bloodstream."
He dismissed her warning with a nonchalant shrug. "Can pop it out anytime. Never know when you might need it." She quashed her retort by sucking in her chapped bottom lip and tucking the EMP back into her pocket. She was loath to admit as much, but she didn't enjoy conversing with him while he bore the mask. Coming from the vocoder, his chattiness sounded uncanny.
Good thing it didn't last long. Between sighs that sounded like garbled static, the reader finally registered his data. Doors swished open.
"Heh, look at that. Open sesame."
He congratulated himself in a histrionic bow and dipped inside, leaving his dour retinue to follow. After they wrapped up things here, she'd have to have a long chat with him.
Indigo steel effused an icy blue afterglow. She'd expected a small console to grace the decor, perhaps, something meager to monitor daily comings and goings, to match the inherent emptiness of a room of dubious purpose.
Instead they encountered a hoarde. Weapons partitions stacked three walls from floor to ceiling, their forcefield barriers deactivated and their supplies ripe for the picking. Ammo belts dangled from hooks in supply closets. Pneumatic caches boasted explosives: from cannisters and satchels to heavier fare, chemical concoctions brewed in a lab. Suddenly the Resistance's car bomb seemed like an adolescent attempt compared to this fare.
Barney risked lifting his helm for sake of soaking it in. He appraised the supply with a low whistle. "Damn. Looks like they were gearing up for a riot in here."
Striding over to the rifles partition, he hefted one from a wall mount, brought the sights to eye level, wheeling the crosshairs around the room.
The half-dozen recharging stations bolted to the eastern wall reminded her of Gordon, who'd crawl through a minefield to replenish the HEV. He celebrated payday if he staggered into a charger with just one hit of juice left. The overcharge such stations bequeathed him when he breached the Citadel rendered him skittish. Judging from the droning hum they emitted, she understood why.
Most other partitions turned up empty, the weapons therein already claimed by their users. She passed a hand along the smooth metal of each slot, and reached in to gladly claim the portable grenade launcher nestled like a serendipitous gift in the last. Lithe and sleek, it measured about two feet long, with a ribbed grip and a visor attached, locked for optical access. All it needed was a cute red bow on top. Happy birthday to me.
Baby weighed a little more than she appeared. She hefted the launcher over her shoulder and pressed her temples into the thick padding rimming the visor.
Light pricked her eyes. A turquoise holographic screen sputtered to life, allowing an evolving compendium of statistics to scroll past: target coordinates, wind speed and direction, backblast spread, arc course correction, ordnance weight.
Blinking twice in rapid succession cycled imaging through various modes. Cartesian coordinates melted into the impressionistic blots of infrared, then swept toward radar.
The fourth mode was the most unfamiliar to her. It sharpened into crystalline collections of triangles mapping the surfaces of objects. She tested it with a quick swipe of her hand, which flew past the black field like a skeletal bird. Had to take a guess, it might have been a counter-stealth measure, pulling the cover off targets taking refuge in smoke, darkness, or precipitation.
Her brows tightened on the rubber padding. Just what they needed: blind Combine donning glasses.
Alyx continued to test the weapon by wandering a few steps around the room, lips pressed together as it scanned every inch of the room for potential targets. This weapon was designed to kill with a hard and decisive stroke. There was no way they could leave here without destroying the other prototypes.
"Hey," Barney snapped, "watch where ya point that thing. Gonna take someone's head off if you keep screwin' with it."
Right. Listen to Mr. Gun Shy over here, like he wasn't playing chicken with the razor train himself, collecting satchels just for the hell of it. She grabbed the bag he'd had in his hand, tossed it into the grenade cache and closed the lid, which locked with an automated hiss.
"You know we can't blow these until we're out, right?"
"We can't carry them back," she said, "so wrecking their armament is the next best thing. They'll have a nice surprise waiting for them when they come after us."
"At least check what the hell you're blowin' before you hit the button, c'mon." He cracked the lid, peered inside. "Shit," he cursed, "white phosphorus." Lowered it. "Stuff fizzles down to the bone. They must really want us dead."
Not before a great deal of suffering. She weighed a cannister in her hand, turning its slick shell over. The seed of a dangerous idea began to germinate in her mind.
"Ask dispatch what they're using these charges for."
Barney's scowl tightened. For a moment she believed he'd outright refuse. But then he pressed a finger to the vocoder and said, "Razor Six to dispatch: request inquiry." He gave the model number, heard the answer, nodded, mouth shut as a closed casket. "Figures. They're aiming to turn the tundra into a minefield. Keep our guys from covering too much ground."
All the more reason to cut off their supply before they could weaponize it. She pointed at the remaining satchels. "I've got an idea. Pick up the rest of the planters."
"Shit, I ain't gonna like this, am I?"
"Depends," she replied. "Combine think you talk the talk. Let's show them you can walk the walk."
She pivoted and activated the room's mainframe computer before he could protest this contingency of hers. Key clatter drowned out his grumbling complaints.
Since Barney's clearance had already admitted them in, the mainframe believed 'Razor Six' was requesting access to topographicals. It didn't take much legwork to draw up a working map from the databanks. She stepped back as a holographic map ignited in the air before them, outlines burning the suggestion of shapes in blue neon.
"This layout… " Rotating the map with a flick of the wrist, she gestured toward its center. The map revealed a pile of cocentric rings stacked atop one another, with dozens of smaller radial corridors shooting off in all directions. "Look at that cloister in the middle, half a kilo down. They're sitting on top of a huge electromagnetic superconductor. That definitely wasn't here before."
He sidled closer, squinting at the glowing contours. "What're they using it for?"
"Not sure," she trailed a thumb along her chin, elbow in palm, "but if I had to guess, it probably has something to do with the Borealis. No way they can juice that thing up on regular generators. They'd have to have put down some kind of power source somewhere. Not to mention a cooler and a vacuum." She paused. "They could be trying to figure out the best time to pull the ship out of orbit."
"Hell'd they need to know that for?"
"If it was hard to catch," she said. "Extracting it while it's transitioning will destabilize its set resonance. And… the rift from that might cause another cascade, only… "
This time we won't last seven minutes. Her father's face, a bloodless, haunted mask.
"Well, God damn," Barney said, "you mean the ship might not even be here?"
"Or else it's here for a short window of time."
They each took a moment to process the implications. However, such theoreticals could only captivate their interest for so long before the more immediate situation demanded their attention. While Barney gathered extra satchels, she scrolled through the map for information on Judith's whereabouts.
Ground floor was Subsector Alpha. Sectors and subsectors rippled outward from the superconductor's center, with narrow passageways connecting larger arteries to the heart.
It came as a surprise to neither that the subsector reserved for prisoners was designated Lambda. What surprised her more was the lack of data it produced. Combine detention centers updated prisoner status at least once per half-hour, but none of the cells in Lambda reported a prisoner, let alone updated their status. If Mossman wasn't in the holding area, where else could they have taken her?
Alyx surveyed the possibilities. The first—the bleakest—Judith was dead. Her corpse hooked into a pod and shipped elsewhere for processing.
That was unlikely, considering she was the last to gather any leads on the Borealis. Neurochemical methods of extraction, as barbaric as they were, often took days before any useful information emerged. Ordinary run-of-the-mill soldiers would not be assigned to oversee such a lengthy and arduous process.
The second: she'd been moved to a specialized chamber not listed in these records. Perhaps the databanks had yet to update her current location.
What purpose that served, Alyx couldn't ascertain. The Combine hadn't anticipated anyone breaking in, hence little need to mask that information. Neither was it their style to waste resources relocating their prisoners to 'better' quarters. Until something new pinged onscreen, she could dismiss the notion.
The third: she simply wasn't here. Perhaps the Combine had detained Mossman in Lambda for a time, but later transported her to a different compound.
Which, of course, would land her directly on her ass back to square one. Although this appeared to be the most plausible scenario, it also seemed unlikely on the basis of convenience. Transporting prisoners in bad weather only risked losing them to it.
Drenched in the monitor's glow, she gripped the panel with both hands and stared hard into the console's blue-bathed keys. As much as her gut insisted Mossman was trapped somewhere in the compound, she had to set aside her feelings for a more logical course of action. Occam's razor suggested the digital breadcrumbs led somewhere: might be a good start to follow them.
"We should be okay if we stick to the maintenance tunnels." And don't kick up an avalanche. The Combine tended to eschew such areas whenever they could, preferring the solidity of their own infrastructure. At any moment, cheap Soviet bloc construction could relent and crumble.
Of course, that risk was the price they were going to have to pay for stealth.
"Meet you back here," she said, pointing to subsector Beta, their current location. "If she's here, Judith would be high-priority, so they should have put her somewhere toward the central hub. I'll look for her there. Meanwhile, you set charges here, here, and here." Spots of light pulsed where she tapped them, indicating vital load-bearing supports. Blow them and it's lights out.
Barney stared at the screen. He didn't have much to say, no wise quips to impart before they split. He merely nuzzled the mask to his face, picked up the bundle of satchels and set off to do his job. His footfalls echoed a hollow clack, gnawing at the edges of her conscience.
Lviv Bakery, he once said, stank to high heaven for weeks afterward. Human flesh dipped in chemicals and set alight. Of course the arsonist didn't care. Of course he knew they'd spare the rod. He was whistling showtunes when he passed me by, that sick son of a bitch.
Footfalls. Shiver and jingle of spurs. She stalked their noise like a shadow, felt in the periphery, yet unseen.
Every now and again, the soldier she ghosted would freeze. He'd swing his light over a patch of grate or crumbled wall, causing her heart to skip a jagged beat. Then he'd resume plunging ahead as if nothing happened. And so she crept along, in the spaces between.
She strafed the wall with her shoulders hunched, limestone grain pricking a little at her parka's fur hood as it scraped along. The launcher's harness strap dug into her collar.
Slipping through devoid halls, she turned the corner, nearly lost it to a sea of limestone blocks. The thin shadow standing at attention before a large, grate-protected window. Immobile, its pose catatonic.
Alyx gripped the harness until her knuckles drained of blood. Her tattered breath scraped the silence as her adrenaline-pumped heart banged against her ribcage, clamoring to be set free.
Breaking through her trepidation, she knocked on the glass and prayed the sound loud enough to revive her. "Judith," she called. "I'm going to get you out. Just sit tight and I'll hack the lock—"
A flash of illumination killed her thought, stopping her cold. Sconces flickered, carved abhorrent shapes in the shadows.
"Judith?" Alyx approached the window, drawing a hand over her mouth at the last second. "Oh, my God."
Chills swarmed her body. Light ticked in several more erratic flashes before flooding the cell and bringing Mossman into full view.
It had been one thing to speculate on her whereabouts—when she remained just an idea, a half-hearted, diluted hope that somehow the odds had favored her and helped her evade capture. That was when Judith had floated a grainy collection of pixels somewhere within the files of a stolen hard drive. Here, reality faced her with devastating clarity.
Dried blood clumped in her scalp, dying her crown a darker russet than her natural auburn. Her plastic clip had shattered, freeing her hair to tumble down in beraggled strands laced through with tortoise-shell shards.
A knobby seal caulked her left eye, which retreated so far back into the concave of its socket that Alyx feared it might have been forcibly compressed, if not crushed. It lacked eyelashes.
Contusions raised lumps along her jaw. A savage tear ripped her jacket collar open, exposing her from earlobe to clavicle, barely missing the jugular in its path. White sores encrusted the corners of her mouth where, she suspected, saliva had pooled. Blood and mucus leaked from her nostrils, speckling her cream-colored sweater underneath.
Gazing upon her rescuer as her surviving iris slowly welled with liquid, Judith parted anemic lips, revealing teeth steeped red in swollen gums, and said one word in a pitiful croak.
"Eli."