Adrian was used to watching the world around him. As a marine, he was drilled into watching his surroundings and identifying dangerous situations, threats, or potential problems. So when he saw the infamous Gordon Freeman and the girl, who he learned was Alyx Vance enter the cafeteria, he knew to start watching.
Alyx moved like a caged animal. She was wound-up tight and ready to unleash her fury on anything that looked at her funny. He'd seen it before.
It a few hours after he woke up in Black Mesa and joined up with one of his fellow marines who had been left behind as well. The man had been beyond angry. His eyes had been wild, seeing potential enemies behind every corner and driving headfirst without thinking.
In the end, Adrian had been helpless to prevent the man from charging into a black-ops ambush. Their bullets had turned him into swiss chess, yet he kept fighting. He'd been able to take down two of their numbers before a round took him square between the eyes.
Adrian didn't want to see that happen to anyone else, and unless someone could reign this Alyx girl in it would happen again.
Doing his best to ignore the emotions radiating off of Alyx, Adrian found himself staring at the back of Gordon Freeman's head. It was the second time that had happened with the first happening back at Black Mesa.
'It's ready! You must go now, Freeman!'
The sight of a man in orange armor running full speed into a floating green ball of energy and disappearing. A scientist crying out in pain as the platform he is standing on collapses. Floating aliens with bulbous heads shouting in anger at their lost pray and turning towards Adrian. The soldier running around the room in a panic, being teleported to a strange alien world after blindly jumping into a second ball of energy.
Adrian found himself flicking the pad of his thumb over his index finger again as he became lost in the moment of deja-vu.
This was the man that had killed countless marines and aliens alike. The man who was said to be an 'Opener of the Way.' Someone that was messianic in the eyes of the people.
What a tool...
Yet Barney once caught the man using a security guard helmet in place of a bowl for oatmeal because the guy had been awake for three days straight and wasn't thinking. One time he even got stuck in an air vent because his lab coat got caught in a fan, and Barney had to cut him free.
It was hard for Adrian to place the two sides of Gordon apart. Especially when the group entered into a meeting room, and Adrian watched Gordon sit down on a small sofa, his expression sheepish, unlike the hardened warrior people claimed he was.
What. The. Fuck?
Barney stood next to Adrian, watching the scene play out, Alyx was standing next to the couch with her arms crossed but clearly on the defensive. Chell stood over Gordon, her eyes like ice.
Gordon winced at something unseen and began to look around the room to avoid Chell's gaze. In the process, he caught Adrian's eye. There was a flash of confusion as if just noticing the fifth person in the room. Adrian made no motion to greet the man.
There was the tightening of Gordon's jaw as he forced himself to meet Chell's stare. "Do you know about the Borealis?" He finally asked.
Chell narrowed her eyes at the man before shaking her head. "No. What does that have to do with anything?"
Gordon was fidgeting with his hands, clearly distracted by something. "It was a ship designed by Aperture. W- w- we-," He paused to take a deep breath and compose himself. "We destroyed it. Alyx and I. While there, we activated a security system."
As he talked, Adrian could see Chell tensing up and taking a half step back.
"The system… It, um, it spoke to us. It- She put a piece of herself in my suit and stuck around-"
"She's in your suit?" Chell asked, her face turning even angrier. Adrian could swear the temperature dropped in the room a few degrees with how Chell spoke.
Gordon shrunk in on himself even more, and Alyx looked ready to step in. The only thing that stopped her was Gordon giving her a shake of his head.
"Yeah… She is. She says hello, by the way. She's surprised to see you alive and found your voice. She also mentions something called a… companion cube?"
Gordon's stutter was acting up the more he spoke. Barney frowned at the man, knowing he was trying his best in this interrogation, but he had his limits. Being in a situation and forced to talk under a stressful environment was not one of Gordon's strong suits.
But her silence was deafening. Chell's hand reached up to her chest and tightened it into a fist over her heart as she tightly gripped the fabric. As the material tightened under her grip, Adrian could make out the shape of something circular hidden beneath the surface.
"I can tell you have a rough history with her-"
Chell let out a mocking laugh as GLaDOS did the same in Gordon's ear.
"-but we could use your help. I don't know the full history you have with each other but, we need to get to Aperture as fast as possible. Alyx and I… We destroyed the Borealis, and it caused a hole- a rip in the universe. If we don't close it, the Combine could use it and destroy us all," Gordon explained. As he talked, the nervousness that caused his stutter to worsen became less pronounced as he gave way to urgency. He had to break through to Chell. She knew Aperture and could help them. All they needed was-
"No," Chell said
"What?"
"I said no." Chell shifted to place a hand on her hip. "I'm not going back there! I almost died trying to escape that place, and besides… I'm not wanted. She told me not to go back."
Gordon paused as he diverted his eyes and furrowed his brow. Adrian assumed he was listening to whoever was in his suit. He heard stories of the Hazardous Environment Suits. They were pitched to the US Military, but they were deemed too bulky and expensive for troops, so they went with the Powered-Combat Vests. Although they didn't cover the body as well as the HEV, the PCV benefited from not talking or detailing every scrape or injury to the user.
Dwelling on injuries would lead to panic, and panic would lead to destruction for a marine. A soldier was designed to work as a team and carry on at all costs. If there are too many distractions, then the mission couldn't be completed effectively.
Even now, the voice in the HEV seemed to be a distraction that was ruining the mission for Gordon.
Gordon sighed as he looked towards Chell again, "She says she is willing to make an exception."
Chell glares down at Gordon. "I'm not going back. There's nothing you can say that will convince me."
With that, Chell turned around and walked out of the room. Alyx attempted to go after her, but Adrian blocked the way. "Just wait. The more you push against her, the harder she will fight back."
Gordon looked to Adrian with a frown, his eyes fixated on the vest he was wearing. It was so familiar, but he couldn't place where from. He removed his glasses to clean them off to get a better view as he was sure he'd seen it before.
Gordon didn't realize it, but his hand was slowly tightening around the crowbar as he continued to look at Adrian.
The hunk of metal fell to the ground as Adrian was the one to slip out of the room and follow after Chell, claiming he would try to check on her.
Chell stormed into her room, relief that it was empty of her roommates. The portal gun sat on the bed, where she left it, along with a small pile of things she had collected since arriving on the surface. The other plates from the companion cube, the ichthyosaur tooth, a broken coffee mug handle, some bits of wire, pliers, and some miscellaneous bullets.
Without thinking, Chell picked up one of the bits of wire and began to wrap it around her fingers into corkscrew shapes, unwinding it, then wrapping her fingers again in the opposite direction. The repetitive action allowed the rage she was feeling to ebb away, and the emptiness of the room made Chell realize just how alone she was.
It was the first time she had been alone since before she met Crow and Apollo. Just over a week of traveling, and she was missing their presence. Being alone was actually starting to be the worst thing for her despite wanting nothing more than that less than two weeks ago.
Chell sat on the floor with her eyes closed and her back resting against her bed as she continued to toy with the wire when she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. It was accompanied by that feeling she had in Aperture when the cameras would follow her every move. The feeling of being watched.
Looking around, the world around Chell had faded to a black void. There was no sound of people chatting in the hall or the gentle hum of machinery and fluorescent bulbs. The smell of sweat and grime didn't permeate the air. There even seemed to be a lack of temperature if that was even possible. It was like she was in a state of being both dead and alive within the confines of the darkness that surrounded her.
Then her eyes landed on Him…
He stood a few feet away with an expression that said he'd been waiting to be noticed as if he'd been there the entire time, and it wasn't strange for someone to be wearing a pristine suit in the middle of an old Cold War-era bunker. The slightly bored expression shifted into that smug grin she'd seen him have when he'd be skulking around corners.
Although it seemed he was done with corners and finally decided to stop hiding.
"Miss Bishop… It is wonderful to finally speak face to face," he said.
His voice was grating to Chell's ears. It wasn't synthetic and clipped like GLaDOS's had been before her morality core was destroyed. Instead, it was as if someone was trying to talk who didn't fully understand how to form the sounds. The grammar was there, but none of the flow of conversation.
She tried to get up, but an invisible force was keeping her pinned to the ground. Chell tried to wiggle her fingers and toes, but they refused to cooperate either. All she could do was blink at the man and school her expression into one of anger. It was the easiest thing to feel at the moment.
"No need to get up on my account," he chuckled at his little joke. "This conversation won't take long."
The longer she sat in place and focused her ire, a memory was bubbling to the surface. She had seen the man before. Not just on the ship or in the forest after saying goodbye to Mel. It was before that… It was at-
Black Mesa… He was the man she bumped into when leaving Br. Breen's office the day he offered her the Aperture position.
"It has been some time since I've set my eyes on you. Although promising, you proved an obstacle that needed to be removed…"
As he spoke, images began dancing in her vision. She could see the man and Dr. Breen talking together with her employee id picture in a file on the desk along with photos from the servers rooms in Sectors C and D of Black Mesa.
The images faded to Chell arriving at Aperture and the man watching her while hiding in a crowd of people nearby.
"But you have come a long way and shown to be able to survive against incredible odds."
More visions. Chell's first fight with GLaDOS, the rooftop battle with the vortigaunts against the zombies, how she took charge of the rebels when they took control of the Aurelia.
"You've performed so well in fact, my employers wish to extend an offer to you…"
If she could, Chell would spit on him.
"I sense hesitation on your part, so you do not have to give an answer at the time being… But you will do something for me."
Chell didn't want to do anything he asked.
"You will go to Aperture Science, or I shall ensure a demise that is far worse than anything that could happen within those halls…"
As he said that, another vision swam in Chell's vision. It was of an older man with dark skin, white hair, and a prosthetic leg. He was crouching on the ground, but Chell watched as he grabbed a steel pipe and swung it in a wide arc upwards into the side of a sizeable grub-like creature. The creature cried out in pain before a mechanical claw attached to the side of the beast grabbed the pipe and threw it aside. The man was then knocked down and pinned to the ground as a shower of glass and metal swirled around the room from some strange energy radiating off the creature.
Through the debris came a second grub creature, and it plucked the man from off the ground. All the while, Chell could hear a female voice calling out to him. They kept yelling for him to run and crying out curses at the floating grub creatures to let her father go. A quick glance to Chell's left revealed the voice to be Alyx only without the green vest. That's when Chell realized the man at the mercy of the grubs was wearing it.
Chell could only watch helplessly as the other grub lifted Alyx's father into the air, and a long tentacle-like tongue snaked its way out of a tiny mouth.
"Close your eyes, honey! Don't look," he yelled out to Alyx before the grub's tongue struck out with enough force to pierce the back of the man's skull. Chell wanted to look away, but she was unable to even as the first grub turned its attention on Chell and Alyx.
She was pulled away from the vision as the suited man took a few steps closer and loomed over her. "I await your choice, Miss Bishop," he said before walking away and into a white doorway of light that suddenly appeared in front of him.
The moment the light seeped back into the world, Chell found herself overwhelmed and almost threw up right there on the floor. She managed to keep everything down, but that didn't change what she saw or what she felt. The anger, disgust, and horror of it all. It was too much, and Chell didn't know what to do.
A few moments later, Adrian walked into the room to see Chell on her hands and knees, looking as if she was on the verge of collapsing. He rushed forward and began to look over her for injuries. "Are you alright?"
Typically she would have lied and said she was fine, but she couldn't do it anymore. Instead, she shook her head. "No. I'm not."
She thought back to how Alyx had snarled in the cafeteria...
'My father gave up his life fighting against these bastards!'
"What's wrong? What do you need?"
Chell struggled to stand up, and she was pleased that Adrian was there. Reaching out, she grabbed the portal gun and grimaced, "I need to go back."