I do not own any of the concepts, characters, creatures, or ideas present in the Half Life series-they belong to Valve.

Note that this takes place about eight years before the events of Half-Life 2. Rated T for later violence and mild language.

...I would appreciate some feedback, it's a work in progress and will probably need revising later.


Lauren didn't know how anyone could sleep riding on a relocation train. It was uncomfortable and claustrophobic, rattling her teeth because the ride couldn't even bother to be smooth. True, she was absolutely exhausted at this point, up since three in the morning and keeping herself on edge for every subsequent moment, and it probably would help if she got in a few hours of rest, but the metal seats were cold and hard. It just baffled her that she was the only one awake.

Maybe they were better at adapting than she was. She'd been moved around so many times that she [now had a system for figuring out how long she could expect to stay somewhere before getting shunted back again], and had still never gotten used to it. Some of them looked a little younger than her, too. It was probably easier to adjust to an unyielding surface when you couldn't remember the feel of a pillow, or even a cushioned seat.

Although a part of her thought that the back pain would give a hint at what you were missing.

How long had they been traveling? She hoped this wasn't one of those things where you think they're just shipping you upstate, and then you find out that they moved you all the way over to Russia while you weren't paying attention. She didn't think so. Someone had said they were headed for City 23. Wherever the hell that was. It was probably still on the continent at least, not a huge gap between that and 9.

The length of the trip had still reached that point where resting her legs had become an entirely unbearable practice. They creaked as she stood, striding over to one of the windows and trying not to think about how low the ceiling was, how close together the walls were. The train was going at that peculiar speed where the world outside wasn't a blur, but it was fast enough to frustrate the eyes when they tried to focus on anything. The sun had moved to the opposite side of the sky since they'd set out, and was the only indicator of time passing.

In the distance she could catch a glimpse of a group of the large, tripedal Striders trudging along towards a destination of their own, black silhouettes against the approaching evening. She wondered if they had the capability to mind walking the whole way, or resent the hunter-choppers that were smugly flying overhead—maybe they were as mindless as the soldiers that the Union pumped out each year.

They were outside though. It couldn't have been all that bad.

Was it her imagination, or did the train just lurch? Face paling, she stumbled back to her seat and tried to imagine a nice, bright field with chrysanthemums and swaying trees. The thought instead put dead grass in her mind, so she moved all her focus into staring at her worn out shoes and not further emptying her stomach on them.

"Are-are you okay?"

She looked up, a female passenger awake and staring at her in what must have been some approximation of concern.

Lauren wasn't used to much more than apathy or mania from other citizens. "I-It's-I don't-I don't like riding in-in trains." She hated the way her words stumbled over each other, the way this girl kept staring at her like she was some fragile, scatterbrained nitwit that had drunken too much Private Reserve at once.

"Oh." She had pinkish blond hair; a curly mess that somehow still looked nice haphazardly sprawled about on her head as it was. Lauren's own was always tangled and often the color of muddy straw. Maybe if she ignored her, this sleeper would stop paying attention. She withdrew into her trembling limbs to stare off into the far side of the train car.

Did it just rattle again? No, it was her imagination; it was just because she was tired, just because her nerves were-

"Did you feel that?"

This time, when the train shook it almost threw Lauren off her seat, and she couldn't suppress a terrified shriek. At once there began a cacophony of mutters as everyone else was brought from their own sleep, wondering what had just happened, why they had been robbed of their rest, they needed all the energy they had to deal with the CPs at the next station—The lights flickered and she tried to pull herself into as tight a ball as she could.

The car rocked her back as the rest of the train launched itself off the rails, and before her head cracked against a metal wall she was able to get one more glimpse of other terrified faces before everything went black.