Skidding to a stop, Gordon set the turret back up on its feet and reset it's firing mechanism by pushing down on the small antennae at the top. While it came back online, he fired several rounds of pulse fire into the chest of a soldier that attempted to charge down the hall. Then the second soldier appeared and Gordon curled into a ball beneath the turret as the tinny voice sounded and fired bullet after bullet at the soldier.
He waited for the tinny voice to bid its victim goodbye before taking off running once more. He had to push his glasses up his nose from the sweat pooling across his face several times already, and the fear of them falling off was present with every fall and slide he had to perform. At one point, he had to catch them mid-air after they slid entirely off his face while taking a sharp turn to avoid gunfire.
Gordon was not only going blind with nearly every sharp turn or stumble, but he was exhausted.
His breathing was getting ragged, but the Combine soldiers were like ants. They never stopped moving, and when one fell, it seemed there were three more behind it. Gordon and Alyx had fought through wave after wave, but they showed no signs of slowing down. It was too much.
Not only did he have to remember the layout of the ship on the fly, but he was having to set turrets back, and return fire at the same time. A few times he accidentally doubled back right into the line of fire of soldiers. It was worse than the time he had to use Combine turrets at Nova Prospekt. It was worse than attempting to shoot the turret controls back in Black Mesa.
As Gordon gained his breath, he heard the ringing of more gunfire then silence. The silence stretched out for nearly a full minute before a crackle from unseen speakers broke it. "Congratulations. You fended them off for the time being, but I can feel them mobilizing for another push," GLaDOS said.
Gordon's shoulders sagged as he shuffled his way down the hall. The HUD display in the corner of his glasses indicated his health was in the seventies while his suit was down into the sixties. He needed to rest and juice up the energy soon. He met Alyx as he arrived back at the security room, she looked just as tired as he felt. Dark circles under her eyes, sweat making her headband darker than usual, and spatters of brown blood on her clothes. The blood was too dark to be hers, that made his mind settle at the sight. He didn't want to see her blood again.
The look of fear in her eyes as the hunter skewered her. How the blood seeped from her prone form. The way her breathing became ragged while she was laid on a table in the middle of a mine…
"Her heart has stopped!"
"If we lose her, we lose all!"
He had been in a panic when he had heard that. The idea of getting the damn extract from the nest then hearing that she could be dead before he even reached her sent him clambering out of the elevator even before it could open. He had wasted no time in offering up his hands to the vortigaunts if it meant saving her life.
He had felt a pull on his body the moment he had touched the vortigaunts. It had been like he was floating in a fog despite his feet being firmly planted on the ground. Alyx's body would arch off the table like a marionette on strings.
"We weave the Freeman's life hers."
Then He showed up. Gordon thought He was going to be taken away again, but no. Something much worse. He had turned his attenion on Alyx and revealed that He had saved her from Black Mesa. Then He instructed her to say those damn words to Eli.
"Prepare for unforseen consequences."
She woke up then nothing else mattered in that moment.
Gordon suppressed a shudder at the memory before slumping down against the nearest wall in the security room. Alyx does the same a few feet away, her pistol still gripped, although limply, in her right hand.
He watched her for a few moments, his eyes flickering over her clothes but settling on the spot where she had been impaled. Her life was bound to his according to the Vortigaunts. Did that mean if he died that she would as well? He nearly lost her once, but he couldn't do that again. Not after losing Eli. She was part of the only family he had left. He wouldn't let her die. Neither would he allow Him to take her away.
"Normally," GLaDOS started as the humans settled in, "I'm not so polite to squatters. In fact, I'm ordering you both to rest. I can't have those frail human bodies collapsing in the middle of a crucial moment."
Gordon rolled his eyes.
Then she giggled, "You're not test subjects after all."
She hummed a few notes of some song, but Gordon didn't pay any mind. His eyes were growing heavier with each passing moment. As much as he wanted to stay awake, it was a losing battle. Not even ten seconds later, he was asleep with his chin resting against the rim of his suit.
Fifteen minutes later, GLaDOS scanned the room. Both humans were in a state of sleep that would enable her to work without waking them. She internally smiled as she began to ping the strange suit Gordon was wearing. She knew it to be an HEV Suit, but she wanted to know more. No. She needed to know more.
The suit had some form of wireless system as she could sense the dark energy ports located in the left forearm and chest piece. It may take some time, but she could hack her way into the suit and get a better idea of how it worked. And by time, she meant sixty seconds.
After fifty-seven seconds passed, GLaDOS spoke softly to herself, "Oh, I am good…"
The suit itself was an exciting piece of tech. Able to monitor vitals and provide a mixture of painkillers, medication, and adrenalin to lessen the pain but keep the user on their feet. It seemed a more complicated version of her adrenal vapors, but to each their own it seemed.
Along with the aforementioned vitality monitoring, the suit could survive quite a lot. Heavy impact resistance, fire resistance, protection from mild and some harsh acids, radiation resistance and non-absorbing as well… There really were some nice upgrades to the current model compared to the model she had last seen. The Mark One she had seen had a risk of spontaneously injecting the user with too many painkillers and cause an overdose, but the current model kept the user aware at all times. It's a shame the toll it still took on the subject.
Getting an idea, GLaDOS sent a file to the suit and forced it open past the firewalls and tamper-proof protocols. They were child's play to her. Getting the file running and installing it into the subsystem of the suit was the prize because she was leaving a piece of herself in the suit to continue monitoring him. She'd be able to watch him at all times and get a better idea of how the suit worked while in a combat or other hazardous situation.
It was all for science, after all. It would also allow GLaDOS to focus her main body on the facility. There were still groups of them trying to get in, and she needed to keep them locked out. She'd already sealed the elevator shaft, but there were other entrances to Aperture that needed monitoring.
The data she was already getting on the suit was interesting. If Black Mesa was able to make something like it, she pondered what a real partnership between the two facilities would birth. Not like it could ever happen after what they did in the past. According to her own investigation, the corporate espionage had been conducted up until she took over the facility. If she was to keep their secrets and advance the understanding of the sciences, she couldn't risk anyone else barging in and taking credit for her work.
Still, the possibility of a long-term partnership was tempting. It's a shame it could never happen.
In White Forest, Arne Magnusson was tinkering with one of the Magnusson devices. He believed the dark energy homing device he created was installed correctly and just needed time to work with the rest of the systems. His readings, with the use of his pink energy output recorder, indicated it would work as expected, so all he had to do was test it. They needed a way to protect the base in case of strider attacks and to prevent destruction from the planchets of hunters. He'd seen how effective they had been to destroy his work during the last attack.
He was reattaching the casing when Dr. Kleiner burst through the door with a rather wide grin on his face. Oh great… Now what? Magnusson thought.
"You won't believe what I've intercepted! With the scrambler that Barney and Adrian managed to attach at the base, we are receiving updates on Combine broadcasts and security updates just as we imagined," Kleiner said with glee.
Magnusson rolled his eyes and scowled. The man just couldn't say anything without circling around the entire subject. "Get to the point, Kleiner."
With confidence in his step, Kleiner strode across the room and slammed down a grainy photograph on the table next to Magnusson's tools. It was blurry due to the old printer that Kleiner used and the type of ink used, but the features of the picture could be clearly seen.
The background was only a mass of muddled shapes, but in the center was a woman with unkempt hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was wearing a civil protection jacket with a pink heart barely visible through the fabric, but she lacked the armband of a rebel. Her eyes are wide and mouth slightly agape as if caught by surprise, but her face was clearly shown.
Magnusson stood transfixed on the picture for several seconds. He almost didn't hear Kleiner.
"I've been keeping tabs on the Aperture situation, and I have reason to believe this is who we saw in the satellite images! Look here!" Kleiner pointed his finger down in the corner where half of a strange white device could be seen. There was a black tube protected by glass and a white domed top. "Based on the reports we collected and stored back in Black Mesa, that device matches the description of the Aperture Science temporal wormhole technology!"
Kleiner continued to stare. No. Nothing could come out of Aperture. It was a deathtrap, he had said so himself the day Kleiner had discovered the strange energy readings coming from the Michigan Peninsula, but faced with that face.
"Magnusson, are you alright?" Kleiner asked. "You look pale."
He took a step back and shook his head. "I'm fine."
Kleiner reached out and put a hand on Magnusson's shoulder. "Are you sure? You can tell me if something is bothering you."
"I said I'm fine!" He snapped at Kleiner, and the bald scientist recoiled as if he had been bitten.
Nothing was said between the two for the longest. The two men stewed in silence before Magnusson sighed, "I apologize for that. I just need to go for a walk."
If he weren't so shaken, he would have basked in the shocked expression on Kleiner's face at the apology. Instead, he said nothing and slowly walked out of the lab, his hand still gripping the picture.
He didn't have anywhere in particular he was going, but he allowed his feet to wander and take him where they would. He was but a passenger in his own body.
He walked to the rocket launch control room, still holding the picture. He continued outside to an overhang looking out over the mountains and gripped the railing for support as he looked at the sky where a swirling vortex of pure energy once resided only two weeks prior. He never let go of the picture. It was a lifeline.
He still held the picture in his hands, the edges wrinkling with the pressure he was applying to it. It wasn't possible, but the answer was staring at him with a surprised expression and opened mouth from the center of the photograph. He tried to tell himself it wasn't true, but even that wasn't holding up to the proof. He tried to convince himself that it was fake and that Kleiner was attempting to play a prank as he continued to stare at her.
In the end, he shoved the photo in his pocket and closed his eyes to the truth. There was no scientific reason for it to be true. How could she still be alive? How did Chell survive?
