Disclaimer: I don't own Half Life.
(A/N: As always, I owe Hhgbh a lot of favours for beta-ing once again. Maybe I could send him a cheque in the mail?)
The Black Mesa Incident
Chapter Nine: "We've Got Hostiles"
Alarms were bad things. It was something that had, strangely enough, been drummed into Gordon when he was going through training courses and the like. Hell, even before he was old enough to read (which was roughly in diapers), Gordon had known that blaring noises and flashing red lights meant 'Go Away, This is Bad'.
And yet, here he was, a pistol holstered by his side, and wielding a shotgun called Martha with a crowbar tied to the top of it.
And he had been such a quiet boy.
Well, there was that time he had built a propane powered tennis ball cannon and smashed five windows, wrecked two cars, and knocked three people unconscious in the middle of the street, but everyone assumed that was just a freak accident.
He crept through the corridor, thankful for a fully lit room, despite the flashing lights. No little things could jump out at him here and scare the daylights out of him.
A scientist leapt out from around the left corner, instantly disproving that theory. The white haired scientist didn't notice Gordon, instead intent on banging on the window of an office in front of him.
"For God's sake, open the Silo doors! They're coming for us, it's the only way out!"
He backed away from the window, horrified. "Oh my God, we're doomed!"
Almost falling over, the scientist ran away from Gordon, still not noticing his presence. He ran straight down the corridor. Without warning, an explosion claimed the scientist, blowing him to pieces.
Gordon stepped forward, his hand outstretched in a futile gesture of assistance. He slowly went forward, his eye catching in the office window that was on his right. There was nobody inside. At least, not anymore. An open air vent at the back of the small office showed blood splattered everywhere.
He waited for the wave of nausea. None came. Still feeling slightly numb, Gordon looked around the room, and saw a huge reinforced door behind him. On it, in giant white letters was written 'Silo D'.
The missile silo was presumably for launching observation satellites and the like. But why did that scientist want to get in there so badly?
Beside the silo door were two recharge stations for his HEV suit; one for his health, and one for the electrically hardened armour that surrounded the suit. The more current poured through it, the more the charge could repel. Gordon hadn't come across any before now, so he decided to take advantage of it.
While he put his hand on the recharge socket (as had been banged into his head in countless training sessions) Gordon wondered if it was a good or bad thing that he was becoming less and less fazed by the carnage around him.
Being a scientist, he had a rudimentary knowledge of medicine. And rudimentary meant rudimentary. Hell, even Barney knew more about it than him. So the sight of blood wasn't something he was used to, although he could handle it. He certainly wasn't prepared for the sheer amount he had come across in the past few hours, though. Who could be, except for a trained Marine or the like?
His suit made a negative sounding noise, and Gordon checked the Heads Up Display at the bottom of his vision. His suit, and his health, were now at one hundred percent. Although how the suit knew when he was exactly one hundred percent was beyond him. He understood the scientific principles behind it, of course, but psychologically it was quite a different conundrum.
He shook his head and continued on, not looking forward to getting past the exploded remains of the scientist down the hallway.
One particularly large scorch mark covered one side of the corridor, while the other was pasted in a hard, flaky, deep red colour.
Dried blood.
Maybe it was the fact that it was from a distance; that was why Gordon wasn't being affected by the blood. But when he could see it, touch it, smell it…
Well, at least the thought of it wasn't making him ill anymore.
Even though he hadn't had much experience with weapons outside of the training room (and the aforementioned tennis ball cannon), Gordon recognised what had happened in the corridor; a trip mine.
Which means that there were people here, laying traps.
It wasn't surprising. He was pretty sure that Harv downstairs would be doing the same thing right now if he had any trip mines.
Gordon turned around the corner and entered a large storage area. The huge, expansive area was refreshing, to say the least.
He stopped short of entering the large room and looked down. A small red laser lay within a few millimetres of his extended foot.
A laser trip mine wasn't unheard of, either. Although…
Green eyes scanned the room from behind the protective lenses of Gordon's thick-rimmed glasses.
There.
A portably weapons turret was placed in the center of the room, facing the corridor that Gordon now occupied.
His breathing shaky, Gordon took a step away from the red laser before slowly taking one big step over it.
Then the other foot…
He made it, and fell over in relief. He wasn't sure what kind of sensors the turret had, so he decided to opt on the side of caution and crawl beneath it. Of course, if it activated and he was on the floor trying to get past it, then he wouldn't be able to move fast enough to stop himself from being blasted away.
But then again, if he-
A green burst of light in front of him took the decision out of his hands. One of the 'headcrab' creatures popped out of the green light and landed on the red laser.
The turret came to life with a high pitched whine and practically tore the headcrab inside out with a hail of bullets.
Gordon scrambled to hide behind a wooden crate, hoping the turret didn't detect his movements.
It did.
Within a few seconds, the box was in pieces, and Gordon was running to take cover behind another crate. He landed with a thud, hoping that this box would hold against the bullets. He took a quick moment to glance at the orange and black marked crate he had taken shelter behind.
It was marked 'Explosives'.
In a move so fast it surprised even him, Gordon turned and kicked the box away, towards the turret. As if on cue, it exploded, blowing the turret across the room and into the wall on the other side. It fell on its side, sparks flying from all directions as it died.
Gordon collapsed onto his back with a huge sigh.
He sat up, looking around the room. Something caught his eye in the distance, behind one of the large green storage crates on the other side of the room.
For a reason he didn't quite comprehend, Gordon crawled over to the strange shape, which began to come into focus as he slowly made his way over to it. It occurred to him about halfway there that it would be faster to walk, but for some reason, he felt safer crawling.
Must be all the air vents.
It was a black boot. A pretty thick one, come to that. Gordon made his way around the crate, and saw the dead body of a heavily armoured soldier lying before him, blood still trickling from his slit throat.
And there was the nausea.
And the vomit.
Questions filled Gordon's spinning head. That looked like something done with a knife. Were the soldiers here to save them or not? Why had this one had his throat cut? Was he trying to do something the others didn't like? Did a security guard do this because the soldier was trying to kill him?
An open doorway on the other side of the room somehow focused Gordon's addled brain.
One thing at a time.
First: Collect Martha.
Second: Get through door.
Third: Get to the surface.
Fourth: Ask questions.
Steps one and two were easy enough. Step three led him through another fire door and narrowly past two more turrets. Whoever put them here definitely didn't want anyone getting past. Something else Gordon had learnt: blue laser trip mines were explosive.
Two scientists stood beside a fire door, both looking too petrified by the inactive turrets to go on.
One, a black scientist whose nametag identified him as Johnson, was practically caked in sweat. Even the underarms on his lab coat were drenched.
"I can't believe this. Who would put these here?" he asked Gordon frantically.
He wasn't listening, though. Gordon's attention was attracted to a walkway at the top of the room the fire door led to. There, stood on the walkway, was the man in the suit.
Without so much as a nod of acknowledgement, he straightened his tie and turned away, walking out of sight. Careful that he didn't trip any red or blue laser trip mines, Gordon scrambled past the two scientists, their pleas for help blocked out by Gordon's rabid curiosity.
He was responsible for this. Gordon knew it. And he would catch the bastard and make him pay for all he had put Gordon through. He scaled the ladders leading up to the walkway at almost superhuman speed. His foot reached the walkway the man had been standing on.
"Don't leave us here!"
It was the other scientist, a middle aged woman, who let out the plea.
Gordon froze. He closed his eyes and sighed before turning to look down at them.
"Do you want to come along?"
She almost nodded, but Johnson stopped her. "No. You go and get help, and we'll wait right here."
She looked at him in amazement. "Are you mad? We've got to get out of here! Those turrets weren't put up by us, you know!"
"No, they were put up by Black Mesa Security! They have our logo on them."
"Oh, and it's unheard of that they might have taken them from our storage supply depot?"
"Who are 'They', Thorpe? The government? A government conspiracy, perhaps? Oh, yes, very likely."
Thorpe shook her head and rolled her eyes. "Do what you want, Michael. I'm getting out of here."
One step forward was all it took. Gordon thrust out a hand. "Stop."
She looked up at him questioningly, both herself and Johnson behind her looking equally horrified. Gordon silently pointed downwards.
Her breathing shallow, Thorpe slowly looked down and saw a practical maze of blue laser trip mines.
Looking at the complexity of it from above, Gordon wondered how he was able to circumnavigate them all so easily.
Barney had always said he was a lucky bastard. That was probably it.
"It'd probably be best if you stayed here."
Numbly, Thorpe began to nod, but then shook her head defiantly. Slowly, she made her way through the lasers. Although he protested (rather loudly), Johnson soon followed. After what felt like a few hours, they finally reached Gordon's walkway.
Thorpe smiled at him, breathless. "Thank you for waiting."
But Gordon was already gone, intently pursuing the suit and briefcase man.
He was gone. A stairway turned abruptly left in front of Gordon and turned around halfway to the ground, like a fire escape in an apartment building. At the bottom of the room in front of him, Gordon saw a grated door in front of a supply elevator.
The surface.
A soldier stood beside it, semi-automatic weapon held at the ready.
Thorpe and Johnson bumped into him, Gordon's boots making a loud noise against the metal surface of the stairs.
The soldier's head whipped up, taking aim with his rifle.
Instinctively, Gordon took cover. Johnson, however, was nowhere near as cautious. He couldn't thunder down the stairs fast enough. Thorpe stayed behind with Gordon, her hand on his shoulder as they both watched.
"Rescued at last! Thank God you're here!" he said happily, coming to a stop in front of the elevator, and the soldier.
"I bet," the hulking soldier replied, his voice muffled by the mask he wore. He shoved the rifle into Johnson's stomach and fired, blowing several holes through him.
"Oh my God, Michael!" Thorpe tried to get up, and Gordon pulled her straight back down again with an assurance he didn't feel.
The solider opened fire on the metal platform on which they were crouched, the bullets easily denting the comparatively weak metal. Gordon shoved Thorpe back onto the walkway and kicked back himself, landing on top of the hysterical scientist.
"Oh My God, oh my God…" she repeated, tears making her words sound like little more than burbled noises.
Gordon wished that he could comfort her. But the sound of heavy footsteps quickly marching up the stairway attracted his attention to the platform before them. Getting to his feet, he pulled Martha from off his shoulder and took aim, pumping the shotgun to be sure it was ready.
The marching slowed to an agonisingly measured creep upon hearing the noise of Martha loading.
The bespectacled scientist tried to control his breathing, but it didn't really work. Sweat dribbled down into his eyes, and he desperately tried to blink it away. He wanted so much to take off his glasses and wipe his forehead.
More footsteps. Louder this time.
Silence.
The soldier jumped from around the corner and fired at Gordon, hitting him in the stomach.
Gordon fired off one inaccurate shot from Martha before falling on his back. But at such close range, it was enough.
The spray of bullets from the shotgun ripped into the soldier, and while they didn't penetrate his body armour, the force of the impact blew him over the edge and down the two stories below him. Gordon didn't hear him hit the floor; he was too busy tenderly holding his stomach as he got to his feet. The suit's electrical charge may repel the bullets, but it certainly didn't stop the pain. It felt like he had been kicked in the gut. Several times.
He put an uncomfortable hand on Thorpe's shoulder.
"Do you know any medicine?"
She looked up at him, eyes bleary from weeping. "W…what?"
He grabbed her by the shoulders, hefting her to her feet. "Do you know any medicine?"
"I… some, but-"
Without waiting for another word, Gordon yanked her along, running down the stairs at breakneck speed. He shielded her still frantic eyes from the sight of the dead soldier at the bottom of the stairs. He would have had to fall at the foot of the stairs.
Gordon frowned. Did he just make fun of a dead person?
Johnson was on the floor, already surrounded by a pool of his blood. Gordon looked at Thorpe.
"Can you help him?"
"I… I don't know. I'll try, b-but… you need to-"
He nodded, pointing to the elevator. "-get to the surface. I'll bring help. I won't leave you here." The first smile he had allowed since the resonance cascade appeared on his face. It was an accomplishment, regardless of how small it was. "I promise."
She nodded, but was quickly distracted when Johnson made a strangled gurgling sound, blood burbling from his mouth.
"Just go, please!"
Without further delay, Gordon pushed the button next to the supply elevator, waiting for the grate to open. It did so, and he stepped inside, readying Martha again. He reached for the button to go up, briefly considering going back to get the dead soldiers' semi-automatic rifle.
One glance at the dying Johnson changed his mind.
He pushed the button, and the elevator rumbled to life before slowly ascending.
Voices echoed down the short elevator shaft, almost drowned out by the all encompassing sound of machinery at work throughout the facility.
"Don't shoot! I'm with the science team!"
A deafening blast of machine gun fire was the only response. Gordon slammed his back to the wall, cocking Martha in a disturbingly instinctive way. Slowly, the elevator gave way to the room above Gordon. He was facing the wall, the corridor going to the left ahead of him.
After another mechanical grunt, the elevator stopped, and the gates slid open for Gordon.
Random blurbs of radio chatter trickled into Gordon's ears, but for the most part he had no idea what he was doing. It seemed like they hadn't noticed the elevator. That was good.
Gordon took deep breaths as quietly as he could, his gloved hands protectively nursing their way up and down the weapon they held.
For a moment, he considered simply hiding until the situation blew over.
A quick glance below him brought back the memory of Johnson's evisceration at the hands of the soldier.
He pushed up his glasses and whirled around the corner, holding his shotgun at the ready.
One soldier was stood directly in front of him, his hulking back to Gordon.
Gordon wondered what to do. Was he excused from the whole 'honour' thing if he shot him now? In the back?
With a bored groan, the soldier turned around, solving Gordon's dilemma for him. Before the soldier's brain even registered Gordon, the scientist had fired at him. The spray of bullets ripped through his head, sending a far too long trail of blood and gore down the corridor behind him.
His radio crackled to life.
"Shit! We've got hostiles!"
Gordon understood that. Left with little else to do, he quickly moved over the body of his victim and down the corridor, which opened up into another large warehouse of a room. Metal walkways ran just above Gordon's head and around the room.
A rifle poked its way over walkway in front of him, pointing down at Gordon's face. The soldier wielding it hesitated for just a moment before firing.
With a speed that surprised him, Gordon dove forward and underneath the walkway, cocking Martha as he went. He pointed the shotgun upwards, aiming for where the soldier would be. He fired.
One.
Reload.
Two.
Reload.
Three.
Reload.
The red shotgun shells rattled to the floor with a hollow noise that seemed far quieter than it had when Harv had used the weapon.
His breathing was erratic. He didn't dare close his eyes to try and calm himself. For God's sake, he was being shot at. That entitled him to feel anything but calm.
Gordon felt a little better at that revelation of logic.
Martha ready, Gordon got to his feet, his legs quivering as he did so. He readied himself to slowly edge his way out from under the walkway. A quiet tapping noise behind him drew his attention around, where he saw a small pool of blood falling, the source of said blood coming from above him.
With a bit more assurance, Gordon poked his head out the other side of the walkway and came face to face with the soldier. Or face to boot, depending on whether one found that sort of thing amusing or not.
Gordon didn't.
Something about the dead body disturbed him. That was, besides the obvious 'it's a dead body' factor, which Gordon had adapted to remarkably quickly. It was that adaptation that worried him the most. The way he had gone from lowly scientist to clumsy killer was difficult to deal with, to say the least.
And worse, he seemed to be getting better at it.
It was a relief and a worry at the same time.
Some stairs leading up to the walkway attracted Gordon's eye, and he made his way over warily, almost constantly circling on the spot to make sure there were no other surprises waiting to make an entrance.
Finding none, he walked up the stairs and onto the walkway, wincing as he eventually came to the dead body and stepped over it. He stopped.
Ahead of him was an open secure fire door leading out onto another walkway in a darkened chamber. Gordon remembered them from his Hazard Course training. If the fire alarm button beneath the glass box beside the door was smashed, the metal fire door would contain the area from further damage.
In theory.
To his left was a green army supply crate, presumably with ammunition. Normal, unmarked crates surrounded it, stacked around it like they were guarding it.
A voice in the back of Gordon's head sounding suspiciously like Harv advised him to check inside. He did so, finding that the box was almost empty except for some grenades and some 9mm clips. At least, Gordon thought they were 9mm. He didn't really know what he was doing.
Loud footsteps echoed off the metal walkway. Gordon quickly dropped himself into the ammunition crate and closed it as silently and quickly as he could.
Which wasn't much.
In the close, warm darkness of the crate, Gordon could only hear and feel his own breathing. It sounded far too loud in his ears.
"Oh, shit…"
"What the fuck happened?"
"Check the area! Go!"
Without another word, the soldiers went on their way. All Gordon could hear was the shuffling of boots and the slight tinkling noises of the various zips on their fatigues.
A crate near him groaned in protest as it was pushed aside. Gordon's fingers seized up around Martha.
Another crate slowly moved.
With a shaking hand, Gordon slowly pulled his crowbar away from the shotgun.
The crate opened.
"There's a dead civvie over here! Think he did it?"
The red beret wearing soldier above Gordon was looking in the direction of the voice as he opened the crate. He hadn't noticed Gordon yet.
With a firm grip on the crowbar, Gordon slammed the sharp end into the back of the soldier's neck, felling him with one blow.
Unfortunately for Gordon, the soldier managed to scream loudly before falling either unconscious or dead. Gordon didn't have time to figure out which as the crates around him were ripped to pieces by machine gun fire.
Keeping his head down and allowing his HEV suit to take the brunt of the attack, Gordon shot towards the fire door. He slammed the bloodied tool into the glass, hitting it against the red button beneath at the same time.
A bullet struck the back of Gordon's leg, hitting him with the force of a thrown brick. The scientist fell through the doorway and onto the walkway, both Martha and the crowbar slipping from his grasp. Heavy footsteps behind him made Gordon turn around. He wished he hadn't. Two soldiers were running towards him, resembling two charging bulls.
Well, bulls with sub machine guns.
Gordon assumed that they had surmised that their bullets couldn't penetrate his suit, and were coming to finish the job up close and personal.
A quick glance upwards told him that the fire door was still coming down. It was about a quarter of the way down.
With instincts he didn't even acknowledge, Gordon pulled out his Glock pistol and fired his last shots at the first soldier, hitting him in his left kneecap once and the other twice. He fell forward screaming, tumbling to the floor in a heap.
The other soldier didn't even stop to check on him. He reached Gordon before the scientist could reload, kicking the pistol out of his hand.
The fire door was halfway down now. A firm hand grasped him by the ankle and pulled him into the path of the heavy metal door so that his midsection was in the middle of the doorway.
"Being shot is too good for you, fucker." His words were distorted by the gas mask he wore, the reflective green eyepieces making him seem more alien than the creatures Gordon had been killing for hours.
Door almost to his belly now. Think.
Desperately, Gordon looked up at the walkway in the chamber. Ropes dangled seemingly uselessly from the ceiling, their source obscured by the darkness that engulfed much of the room.
With a quick movement, Gordon kicked the soldier in the chin and grabbed the rope with his hands. For some reason, it felt slick in his gloved hands. He wrapped it around his wrist for better leverage and pulled.
The soldier's hand remained steadfast on his leg, which was slowly being pressed down on by the metal door above it.
Suddenly, the rope yanked him up and away from the door, pulling the soldier's arm underneath the fire door as it clanged into place.
The dismembered forearm maintained its' grip on Gordon's ankle before he frantically kicked it off.
Gordon thanked God that the doors were sound proof. He didn't want to even think about the kind of pain the soldier was going through.
He frowned. The rope was still going up. Still shaking, Gordon tried to unwrap the moist rope from his wrist. It almost felt like…
Saliva.
His head whipped up, and he mentally activated his flashlight. Above his head was some small red organism about the size of a barrel that had latched itself onto the roof. It looked like a mouth in the ceiling, with teeth both on the inside and the outside. The grey rope that Gordon clung to for dear life not a few seconds ago protruded from the center, pulling him towards it.
The tongue was still wrapped around his right wrist, and Gordon panicked as he felt warm, sticky saliva on his short cropped hair.
Without a thought, Gordon threw his right arm into the creature. Even through the suit, Gordon felt the creature's teeth trying to penetrate the electrically charged shield of his HEV suit.
Something akin to a baby voicing its' displeasure at bad food emerged from the creature as it bit its' own tongue.
The creature released him, and Gordon smiled.
His smile quickly disappeared as he looked down. The walkway was three stories below him.
Faster than he would have thought possible, Gordon landed with a firm, solid clang on the metal.
The walkway didn't give an inch.
A series of quiet beeps came from the HEV suit, echoing in the darkness around him.
"Warning. Minor fracture detected."
Gordon groggily turned his head until his nose was pressing against the cool metal. "Minor…?"
He didn't want to know what the suit considered major.
Slowly, Gordon crawled his way around the walkway, picking up all the weapons he dropped and collecting them up as best he could, occasionally stopping to sit in a ball on the floor and hold his bruised body. He just thanked God Barney weren't here; the security guard would have kicked him in the ass and told him to stop complaining several times by now.
If the situation were reversed, Barney would be far more vocal about his complaints, and Gordon would lend a hand to his friend, naturally.
The way he was feeling now, though? He would probably kick him.
In ten minutes, the weapons were collected up.
As he moved on into the adjoining corridor, Gordon thought about how nice it would be to kick something without it trying to eat, shoot, or stab him. An almost fond sigh escaped his lips.
The corridor moved up like a ramp, another military crate awaiting him at the top. On the wall at the end was a sign that read 'Cargo Elevator Access'.
He felt like turning back and letting the tentacle monster eat him. With a sigh, he checked his weapons (even though the majority of the checks were simply things he had seen done by Barney or in action movies; he had no idea what purpose they served), stealthily cocked them, and moved on up.
Radio chatter came in from the right. Gordon dropped to the floor and continued forward on his belly, keeping Martha in front of him so she wouldn't clatter noisily on the floor.
Gordon frowned. 'She'?
He reached the end of the corridor and carefully, carefully poked his head around. Another walkway lay before him, this one running around the length of the pale grey room in front of him. The radio chatter was coming from inside, below the walkway.
Nervously, Gordon glanced around the corridor and at the military crate before moving on. He paused, and looked back to the crate.
Grenades.
Interesting.
Hoping he had stumbled across a good idea, Gordon snatched up as many as he could, and pulled out the pin of each one and threw them systematically into different corners of the room, hoping that his throwing arm was good enough to make sure they ricocheted off the walls and covered a good area of the room.
Gordon threw himself back down the corridor and covered his head.
There was silence for a moment, even from the radios.
"Shit!"
The incredible din would have deafened Gordon if not for the unique way his head had been totally concealed and tucked away in his arms. He was pretty sure he looked ridiculous, but when all he could hear of over a dozen grenades exploding was a few very loud thuds, he didn't particularly care. He'll tell Barney he ran down a corridor with the explosion following him.
A dead silence followed.
The scientist hauled himself to his feet, the HEV's morphine administration system slowly doing its' job on his bruised and battered body.
He crept around the corner, no longer on his belly but still hunched over, his fingers clenched around Martha like she were a lifeboat.
Gordon frowned. 'She'? Again?
Acrid smoke wafted up to his nostrils, making his eyes water beneath his thick rimmed glasses. There was another smell mixing with the smoke, and Gordon tried not to think about it.
Inch by inch, he edged his way to the walkway and peered over the side. Two soldiers were lying on the ground, their machine guns tossed away haphazardly as they were blown away. One had a leg missing.
And Gordon was the cause of it. There was another soldier back there, behind that fire door, without an arm. Gordon had done that, too.
What the hell was he turning into?
His thoughts drifted back to the dying Johnson, Gordon's last mental image of him bleeding to death on the floor, Thorpe crouched over him and desperately trying to keep him alive.
Gordon's jaw set, and he set off around the walkway to the stairs that were beneath him. He would have to go around the perimeter of the room in order to get to them.
The sudden roar of machine gun fire made him drop to the walkway.
Gordon gripped Martha and tried to look over the sides of the walkway without actually putting his head in any danger.
He pushed his glasses up his nose.
Something landed between his legs with a metallic thud. He didn't even have to look down to know he had to jump. Gordon scrambled to his feet, grabbed the guardrail of the walkway, and tossed himself over, aiming for one of the larger crates beneath him.
The grenade exploded behind him, and Gordon felt the heat searing the back of his head as he easily fell through the wood of the large crate and into the polystyrene packing material within.
No gunfire followed. The soldier must have thought Gordon was blown up. He tried to move around in the crate without making noise. The loud squeak of the polystyrene curls around him did their best to foil his well prepared plan. He stopped moving, hoping the soldier didn't hear anything.
The sound of a machine gun being cocked was instantly recognisable.
Gordon put his head down and covered it with his hands. Bullets rained through the thin wood of the crate, lashing at his back like paintballs being shot through a cannon.
Light poured in through the bullet holes in the crate, and the polystyrene poured out. Gordon, wincing at the pain of the onslaught of bullets on his HEV suit, prepared Martha. He checked his Heads Up Display.
HEV power was at sixteen percent.
He was at eighty.
Funny. He didn't feel like he was at eighty percent.
The bullets stopped, and Gordon heard a machine gun clip clatter to the floor. He turned with Martha and burst through the polystyrene, slamming into the soldier stood in front of the crate and ramming him into the wall behind him. He tried to grab a hold of Gordon, but he had spent too much time slipping out of the hands of schoolyard bullies to allow himself to be caught by such a clumsy manoeuvre. Gordon backed up, took aim, and fired.
There was nothing left of the soldier's head after that.
Without stopping, Gordon looked around the room. There, on his left, stood the cargo elevator. A sign beside it read 'Surface Access'. The two sweetest words in the English language.
Gordon slapped his palm onto the button, and the gate in front of the heavy duty elevator slid open. He stepped inside and pressed the button with the arrow pointing upwards. In the warehouse above his head, Gordon could see sunlight pouring in, reflecting brightly off the metal struts and supports in the elevator shaft.
The elevator started moving.
And then Gordon remembered.
He had just shot someone's head off. Again.
Strangely, he didn't throw up. He didn't feel nauseous. He didn't even feel guilty or angry. He was numb. There was nothing there.
He had killed a possible seven men and wounded two others, all in the space of twenty minutes.
And he couldn't even bring himself to feel nauseous.
He was a disgusting excuse of a human being.
The deafening thrum of a helicopter's blades filled the air. A high pitched whine followed. The pitch of the whine rapidly fell until an explosion sounded in the distance. The elevator shook from the explosion.
He reached the warehouse floor, and the gate opened. Gordon slumped to the metal elevator floor, a hopelessness replacing his sorrow. Even the surface wasn't safe any more. What was the point now?
Strangely enough, his brain didn't reply. He was all tapped out, mentally and physically. The surface had been his purpose. He had used that purpose to justify everything he had seen and done; it allowed him to ignore the atrocities around him and focus. But now… what was there?
He stared at his gloved hands, and a random memory from the night before rolled into Gordon's mind. At Eli's house, about to have dinner. And baby Alyx grasping his finger, looking up at him with those curious, innocent eyes. He wondered how Alyx was doing right now. If she was safe. If Eli had managed to get out of the lab and find Alyx and Azian.
The final words of his good friend echoed in his head.
"Just be safe out there, all right?"
He remembered Harv's ever present grin faltering. "Don't forget we're down here, all right?"
He remembered Johnson, bleeding to death on the floor.
If he stopped, they would never get out. He had to keep going. The military weren't going to help them, but Gordon could find someone who would. It was an incredibly slim, snowball in hell's chance… but it was worth it.
Barney's voice chimed in on Gordon's inner conflict.
"Anythin's better than watchin' you sit around and mope."
With a sudden thrust, Gordon was on his feet. He tightened the strap holding the crowbar to Martha, cocked her and the Glock, and pushed up his glasses.
He stepped out into the warehouse with a newfound assurance, wincing slightly as the hot New Mexico sun glared through the open loading door on his left.
Said assurance disappeared as another bomb dropped, exploding out of Gordon's sight, but making the warehouse tremble nonetheless.
Bullets zipped past him, one barely grazing his nose. He ran back into the shaft and put his back to the wall. Whirling around, Gordon fired Martha blindly into the light, checking the area as he did so. There was what looked like an electrified fence running the right side of the loading bay, and presumably the left as well. A guard tower stood halfway between the fence, which had curled barbed wire on the top.
Gordon wondered whether the HEV suit could handle being electrocuted as he took cover from a further shower of bullets that embedded itself in the wall opposite him.
He closed his eyes and mentally checked what he had just seen. There were no doors, and no visible ways for him to get over the fence. The only thing he could do was run out into the open and hope there was a door, pipe or vent that could take him back down into the facility. And from there, he could find some other way to the surface that wasn't compromised. He sure as hell couldn't go back with soldiers coming after him; the elevator was far too slow. They could just throw a few grenades down on him and watch him explode into tiny pieces.
He took some short, sharp breaths before he leapt to his feet and, with his head down, sprinted out of the shaft, out of the warehouse, and into the blinding sun.
Good God, the heat.
The bullets bruising and knocking him every which way didn't help either, of course, but Gordon was becoming accustomed to them. The heat was new.
Stacks of military crates were dotted around the loading area. Although he could sure as hell hear it, Gordon couldn't see the helicopter, and he wasn't about to waste time looking for it.
A small bunker stood in the middle of the loading grounds. With a door. A sweet, lovely, beautiful door.
A heavy hand clapped onto his arm, twisting him around. With a yell, Gordon swung Martha into his face, smashing through the monstrous gas mask and knocking him to the ground.
The HEV suit beeped. It was out of power. Gordon quickly checked the display as he ran towards the bunker. He was at sixty seven percent.
The whine of another bomb sounded above him. He slammed shoulder first into the door and let out another yell as he fell down the small shaft before him. As he slammed into the hard stone ground, he noticed the ladder. In a display of defiance and stubbornness, Gordon put a limp hand on the bottom rung of the ladder.
An explosion sounded above him, caving in the bunker at the top of the ladder and sending chunks of debris down on him. Gordon rolled out of the way, letting the avalanche of rocks and cement hit the ground, sending a churning cloud of dust into his face.
He sneezed.
Irritably, he pushed up his glasses and wiped them with his black gloved hands.
Just made the smudges worse.
With simultaneously shaky and angry movements, Gordon pressed down on his knees and forced himself to his feet, heading down the darkened corridor he was now in and towards the light. Gordon surmised he was in a maintenance access tunnel, which would hopefully lead him to the ventilation system. And where there was ventilation, there were ventilation ducts.
A small cubby-hole on his right revealed both HEV and Medical recharge stations. Further on the right was a vent cover. It was like a small Christmas in the middle of… well, in the middle of being the subject of a military hunt.
Within a few minutes, Gordon was recharged and crawling through another dark, cramped ventilation duct. Of course, he wasn't expecting a ventilation duct to be spacious, but…
He turned a corner, and the grumbling thought was pushed from his head when he came across a grate. Cautiously, he peeked over and through it. Two soldiers stood below him.
"I killed twelve dumbass scientists, and not one of them fought back! This sucks."
Gordon continued on his way, knowing that the constant noise of loading machinery and conveyer belts combined with the near constant radio chatter would drown out any minor noise he would make in the thin metal duct.
After a veritable labyrinth of twists and turns, Gordon saw some light at the end of the vent. He crawled over and prepared Martha. Poking his head around the corner and into the light, he realised he was in the empty office he had seen when he first arrived in the loading section.
Which meant this vent was… Gordon lifted his hand and saw the blood glistening on them. A shake of the head was all he could afford as he crawled out of the vent and into the small office. He could see the armoured 'Silo D' door from earlier.
A scientist stood in the corner of the room went unnoticed until he spoke.
"Well-"
Gordon cocked Martha and pointed it at the scientist, startled. The bald, moustached man put up his hands, staring at the weapon.
Martha fell.
"Sorry."
The scientist relaxed. At least, as much as someone could relax in such conditions.
Gordon noticed a box of shotgun shells before him and began loading Martha, not entirely sure what he was doing. Trial and error led to him to the correct way of inserting the cartridges.
His new companion continued on. "Well… so much for the Government. Their idea of 'containment' is to kill everyone associated with the project." He cocked his head to the side as he took in Gordon's attire. "Judging from your Hazard Suit, I'd say you were part of what went wrong. Is that right?"
A pause in the reloading ritual was Gordon's only response at first.
"Is there a way to stop this?"
"Well… if there's anyone who can put an end to this catastrophe, it's the science team in the Lambda Complex at the opposite end of the base."
A frown crossed his brow. "With the transit system out, I couldn't tell you how to get there. But there's an old decommissioned rail system somewhere through here; beyond the Silo complex."
He began pacing the room, lost in the moment of epiphany. "If you can make it through the rocket test labs, you might be able to worm your way through the old tunnels to whatever's left of the Lambda team. You can trust them."
He looked back at Gordon.
"You can trust all of us," he added quietly. Slowly, he walked over to the other side of the room, where a switch hung from the wall, 'Silo D' painted above it in red letter. The scientist pulled it down, and the huge door that could be seen through the windows opened agonisingly slowly.
A light hand fell on his shoulder. "Good luck."
Gordon faced him. "You can come with me."
The way he shook his head made Gordon uncomfortable. "I have to stay behind to close the Silo door behind you and destroy the switch. If the military manage to follow you to the Lambda complex, all of this would have been for nothing."
"I'm not going to leave you to die."
"…You have to."
After a brief moment of consideration, Gordon nodded and left the office, heading through the silo door into the expansive, dark corridor beyond. He gave another nod to the scientist, who turned and pushed the switch back up. With a great yawning noise of metal slowly grinding against metal, the silo door came down, plunging Gordon into pitch darkness.
He sighed, and pushed his glasses up his sweat covered nose.
Contact lenses would definitely have been a good idea.
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(A/N: This one certainly took a while. I think you can chalk that one down to the situations Gordon comes across in this chapter being so very similar and me trying to make them at least a little bit different. Gordon fights the military, crawls through vents, fights the military, fights the military, and hey! Fights the military. So I had to cut little bits here and there, all the while making sure Gordon met a Barnacle for the first time. Love at first sight, or what?
A lot of inspiration for the fights came from having a sudden binge of action movies like Die Hard and The Terminator. I'm not sure if they came off well, though. Although I'm proud of Gordon's little emotional breakdown midway through.
Reptailion121: Apologies, but I won't be including Point of View, since it's not an official game, and I find it somewhat difficult to get inside the head of a Vortigaunt and really appreciate his… ahem… point of view.
On a related note, before anyone starts asking, I was going to include Half Life: Decay here as well (it's about two female HEV wearing scientists and takes place from before the Resonance Cascade to just before Blue Shift ends), but I remembered I'd never played it. And really, the story that occurs in it is secondary. Gordon's ex-girlfriend from the prologue is named after one of the characters, though (Gina, for the memory impaired)! That's something. Right?
Uh… anyway, review!
Next Chapter: Captive Freight)