-1Disclaimer: I don't own Half-Life.
(A/N: Many thankful thanks to hhgbh for beta-ing!)
The Black Mesa Incident
Chapter Twenty Six: Lambda Core
The doors loudly separated, finally locking in place with a loud clang. A Black Mesa van sat on a freight elevator in front of him. A control booth beside it drew Gordon's attention, and he walked over to it, only then fully feeling the limp in his left leg. The ache in his neck was pretty vicious, too, but it was nowhere near as distracting.
A lone handle beside an emergency stop button was all that adorned the control panel in the yellow booth. Gordon pulled it down and lightly jogged out and onto the elevator. It started up surprisingly quietly, although the consistent drone of the gears as it descended diagonally quickly diluted the light relief. Yellow lights travelled over his head now and again, casting an amber spotlight across him at regular intervals.
The elevator brought him down into a room full of towering crates, some big by design and others stacked upon each haphazardly. Gordon could make out some moving shapes around the maze of boxes, and quickly recognised them as the crab creatures. He slipped the crowbar from his thigh and held it at the ready.
As soon as the platform reached its' home, one of the crabs leapt at him. Gordon slashed it out of midair with the pointed end of the crowbar, tearing into it and tossing it limply across the room. He walked on, keeping an eye on the three or so of the creatures cautiously making their way towards him. Gordon ducked a flying leap at his head from the left, and followed the crabs' trajectory until it landed on the floor. He stabbed the straight end of the crowbar through it. Another leapt at him, and he swung the crowbar without dislodging the dead crab.
The corpse flew across the room as Gordon hit the crab diagonally down, slamming it into the floor.
And then there was one.
It seemed to contemplate turning around, but it was all a complicated, scheming ploy to make him let his guard down. The creature went for his head, and Gordon ducked and swung the crowbar straight down in a whooshing arc. The crowbar impaled the creature to the floor beside its' brethren, a quiet gargle all that escaped its' mouth…belly… thing.
His glasses began tickling his nose, so he removed them to give it a good scratch with the back of his gloved hand. While he scratched, he had a look around the now-blurry landscape. He could make out the red shape of a ladder leading up to a platform ahead of him. A green blob which he took to be a crate sat up there as well. But he couldn't see a door…
His nose now relieved, Gordon put the glasses back on. Ah. There was the door. Slipping the crowbar back into its' home, Gordon sidled his way through the crates and up the ladder. He stopped as he reached the empty green crate. It looked ominously military like.
Gordon groaned and closed his eyes. More soldiers? He only had a crowbar, for God's sake. What the hell did they think he could do. But then again, he noted with only the barest hint of smugness, he had just blown up a tank. He puffed air out from between his lips like a horse and shook himself down before walking to the automatic door. It slid open with only the barest of whispers.
All he could hear in the cramped corridor beyond was a steady humming. It was actually quite comforting; it reminded him of the Anomalous Materials lab, monitoring the readings of the anti-mass spectrometer with Dr Kleiner while Dr Magnusson stood over them, tutting disapprovingly every five minutes. Magnusson had treated them badly enough normally, but after the incident with the casserole…
Actually, Gordon hated the humming, and he wanted it to go away.
A dead scientist greeted him after the second or so turning, and Gordon had to back up to avoid stepping on his head. The blonde hair was soaked with blood, of which there was a lot. And recent, Gordon couldn't help noticing. The automatic door in front of him obviously didn't bode well, then.
He looked down to the stunned looking scientist. "Sorry."
With that, Gordon stepped over the body and to the door, which slid open startlingly fast. The humming was louder in this room, although he couldn't tell why. No machinery, just container after container after container. Gordon hadn't seen many of these around the facility before today. But now it seemed that every corner he turned there were these huge shipping containers everywhere. Always in the distance, too. Until now, of course. Now they were stacked up on top of one another to make this huge, imposing towers of rusted red and blue. Handily, they also prohibited most of the light from above from getting to him.
Although he could make out the barrels with the big triangular yellow symbol of fire on them. He made a mental note of how they would kill him and started off to the right, since that was all the containers in front of him would allow him to do. There was only the tightest of gaps between the container and the wall on the left, and Gordon figured the military would probably like nothing more than to find him wedged between a container and a wall.
A familiar tapping noise came to his ears, echoing around the warehouse.
Gordon's eyelids hovered halfway shut. Oh. It was them again.
On cue, a lithe form popped out in front of him. He dashed back and squeezed himself between the wall and the container as she fired, the bullets popping little clouds of dust out of the wall. As before, the soldier lady darted out of harms way, just in case Gordon was carrying something other than a tool designed for opening boxes. Gordon blew out a breath, and then immediately hissed it back in again when he noticed the crab creature down beside him. He shimmied out of the gap as fast as he could manage, only just reaching safety when the thing leapt at him.
Gordon reached out and grabbed one of the front claws with his hand, and it wriggled helplessly in his grasp. He was about to slice his crowbar through it when he heard the tapping again. With a cocked eyebrow, he looked down to the crab creature writhing irritably in front of him. Still holding the creature, Gordon backed up to the container, hiding himself just on the corner.
The tapping became louder. Louder… louder…
The woman leapt out again, obviously expecting him to be further away, and certainly not expecting him to be wedging a crab alien down on her head. It clamped down eagerly on her head, and Gordon winced as she stumbled around, trying desperately to pry the thing off. He rushed forward and slammed the blunt end of the crowbar down on the back of her barely exposed head. She collapsed to the ground limply, and Gordon crouched down beside her. As precisely as he could manage, Gordon swung the crowbar and tore the creature off her. It rebounded off the container before it landed on the floor with a dull thump, dead.
Gordon inspected her face. The material of her balaclava had been ripped to shreds almost instantly, and her goggles broken. Amazing, really, what those things could to in a few seconds. Not good, but amazing.
More tapping brought Gordon's attention back to the maze of containers in front of him. He checked that the woman on the floor was still breathing before standing up, crowbar down by his side. There was a 'corridor' going straight down in front of him through the containers, with gaps on either side every now and again to allow for other 'corridors'. At the far end, Gordon could see two groups of the explosive barrels planted opposite each other.
A black figure popped out of one of the corridors on the right, and Gordon darted back around the container for cover. Interestingly, he didn't hear the distinctive pop of her silenced weapon; all he heard was a light clanking noise. He poked his head around the corner and saw a grenade happily hopping along the floor like a flat stone on water. Flicking his head up and down to check where the woman had popped out, Gordon ran around the corner and hit the grenade croquet style, sending it scuttling along the ground down the 'corridor'.
As a small gift from God, the soldier lady took that moment to jump out of her hiding spot and aim her weapon at him. She only had enough time to look down at the grenade sliding into place in front of her before it exploded, setting off the explosive barrels behind her. Gordon lifted a hand to protect his eyes from the light, the heat feeling oddly pleasant on his face.
He waited until all he could hear was the faint crackling of fire, then lowered his arm and continued on, exploring the entire room. After checking behind every container, he came across a rather tall corridor completely blocked by crates. His crowbar was lifted at the ready before he had even reached them. Within a few satisfying - if exhausting - minutes, Gordon had smashed his way through the crates and was walking up some metal stairs, his shuffling boots echoing loudly.
It took him up to a walkway that ran all around the warehouse, overlooking the containers below. There was a corridor behind the wall running parallel to the walkways. Since he had had enough of falling from great heights for one day, Gordon slipped into the corridor and started walking. After a few turns a small platform elevator, barely big enough for three people, welcomed him down to the floor below.
It only let off a hiss as it descended, the hydraulics well maintained. As soon as it touched down, Gordon heard a rather throaty alien growl. Instantly, his crowbar was up and ready, held like a sword in front of him. He ran through the small corridor and into the huge arching tunnel that ran from right to left in front of it. The right blast door looked melted and warped, so Gordon opted for the one on the left. Besides, there were explosive barrels stacked up all around the right-hand door.
And Gordon didn't like being near exploding things. They tended to explode.
He reached the huge metal doors, the yellow safety lines down the middle scarred with use. Gordon glanced around for some way to open it when they flung themselves open, sliding off to the sides. One of the armoured creatures stood towering above him, and brought back a meaty hand to slam down on him. For a moment, Gordon almost back-pedalled out of the way, but instead swung the curved edge of the crowbar into the creature's muscular belly. It landed with a squelchy thunk, prompting the creature to grunt roughly.
It just seemed to make it angrier, and it lifted both arms to crush him. Gordon whirled the crowbar around in his hands and drove it up through the creatures mouth and out the back of its' head. Yellow blood spilt out in a rather large splat, coating the crowbar and the front of the HEV suit. Only a low gurgle emerged from the creature as it slumped to its' knees.
Just as Gordon let out a breath, the now familiar noise of a teleportation event exploded into being behind him. He turned to see another armoured alien, this one stood at the far end of the tunnel. Near the explosive barrels.
Gordon smiled his disturbing smile. The smile that indicated that he was enjoying this on some primitive, animalistic level. He grabbed the arm of the fallen alien, clutching onto the insect firing claw. Reaching underneath, he felt for the familiar trigger 'gland', aimed, and squeezed. Five squeaking darts fired out and hit the pile of barrels to the creatures' right. The blast blew it across and into the other wall, where it hit some more barrels and caused them to explode too.
By the time Gordon could open his eyes again, there was very little left of the creature except for its' sizzling armour.
Another teleportation noise sounded behind him, followed by the same alien growl. He turned, dragging the alien corpse with him like a scarf made of animal fur. Crates stood on either side of a ramp in front of Gordon that lead down to a dark archway. The wall the archway was built into held a small platform on the right-hand side, a window and door barely allowing a view into the room beyond. The alien seemed confused at first, but quickly recognised Gordon as an enemy and fired. Gordon just stepped back around and used the alien body for cover before whirling around and unleashing a torrent of buzzing darts himself.
It continued like this for a few volleys before the creature, exhausted, bleeding and breathing heavily, just collapsed backwards and died.
Without looking up, Gordon reached for the crowbar and yanked it out of the alien's mouth above him. He walked on, trying not to think about how cool that move had looked. Somehow, it felt wrong to do cool things without Barney around.
Gordon stopped walking. It had been some time since he had thought about anyone back at Anomalous Materials. His work family. Kleiner, Eli, Barney, Breen, Magnusson… he was missing them all. Well, perhaps not Breen. He always had seemed too smarmy for Gordon's tastes. Not that he said such things out loud. Normally he would just avoid talking to him.
But the others… it occurred to Gordon for the first time that he might not see any of them again. He might never again race Barney to Dr Kleiner's lab when he locked himself out of the office. Or take silent enjoyment in the fact that he was the only scientist in the facility to be invited to the security guard poker night. Or sit around listening to Eli describing in microscopic detail the cutest thing Alyx had done that day. And yes, even Magnusson shouting obscenities at him through the speakers of the test chamber so loud that his ears rang for two days.
Life as Gordon Freeman knew it was over. There was no going back. And this was only just occurring to him now.
A beeping from up above him made him blink into a frown before casting his gaze in that direction. A small walkway coming out of the wall held a view through a window of a white, sterile room. Gordon walked to the walkway on the right hand side of the room and climbed the ladder. The beeping noise had been someone punching in the access code for the door from the other side.
Gordon stepped through, and almost struck the scientist standing next to the doorway when he cleared his throat. The dark skinned scientist ducked slightly, hands up.
"I apologise, Mr Freeman…" he said, sounding extremely tired. The lines on his face didn't seem to add up to a lot of rest and relaxation. When Gordon relaxed the crowbar, the scientist continued.
"…But I couldn't open that door until I was sure you had scoured the area. This is the last entrance to the Lambda Complex," he said, punching another code into the control panel beside the door. It slid shut compliantly. "Every other has been sealed off to contain the invasion. When we realised you might actually make it here-" the stunned way he said this made Gordon scowl a little, "-we drew straws to see who would stay behind to let you through. Obviously, I drew the short one." As if to accentuate the point, he reached into his pocket and produced a short straw, holding it entirely too close to Gordon's face.
Gordon leaned back slightly, his cockeyed gaze firmly set on the straw as it poked towards his glasses. Finally, the scientist put it back into his lab coat.
"My colleagues are waiting at the tip of the Lambda reactor," he said, pointing down the room behind him. It went off to the left, where Gordon assumed there was a door. "Waiting for you, I mean."
"Me?"
The scientist nodded, balding head shining in the harsh white light. "The reactor is shut down right now, but you can activate it on your way up. You'll have to flood the core anyway to get into the teleportation labs."
If Gordon's eyebrow had been cocked before, now it was going through the roof. The word 'teleportation' was on the tip of his tongue when the scientist spoke again, rather quietly.
"You're not authorised to know about those…" It sounded like he begrudged Gordon knowing such information. "But," he sighed, looking Gordon up and down, "I can see you already know far more than any one manis supposed to."
That was true enough. Even now, he was still discovering new things. Like his ordinary life being well and truly over whether he survived this thing or not.
"I'll… activate the retinal scanner and let you through."
Gordon straightened his glasses and followed around the corner. He waited patiently as the scientist stooped forward and put his eyes to the lens, occupying himself with an impromptu inspection of his blood soaked crowbar. Red and yellow had sort of congealed to make an orangey splatter pattern on certain parts. Mostly the ends.
The scanner bleeped happily and the door opened. Gordon nodded to the scientist.
"Thank you. Are you sure you don't-"
The scientist waved a hand. "I'm irrelevant now. All our hopes are on you, Mr Freeman."
Now that sounded like a recipe for the end of the world.
"Oh! And once you reach the teleportation labs, you'll need to remember this sequence of numbers: two, four, and seven. I would explain why, but enough time has been wasted. It will be clear when you reach the lab."
Gordon was tempted to ask, but instead of saying anything, Gordon just cocked an eyebrow and continued onwards to the corridor that ran off to the right. To be honest, he was happy enough without any companions. He knew that once this was over every person he had met and lost in the past few days would haunt him in the most terrifying ways, so the less people who tried to help him the better.
At the far end of the corridor he could see some elevator doors, but before that was another door. Finding it far too tempting to ignore, and feeling somewhat safer here, he went to it. It slid open and allowed him inside.
Somehow he spotted the scientist in the corner of the room straight away, avoiding any false alarm mishaps. He was tapping away absently on a control panel, although what kind of work he could still be doing after all this, Gordon had no idea. Two small closed off archways in the wall made Gordon curious, but the large signs saying 'WEAPONS TEST AREA' quickly cleared that up. This was a firing range. Two platform stood, one for each archway. On the one closest to the scientist, there was backpack-sized device with a hose coming out of it. All kinds of advanced looking attachments and devices clung to the back. The scientist sighed and wiped a hand over his slicked back hair.
"Were you in weapons research too?" he asked, concentrating on the lambda symbol on Gordon's suit. "I built the Gluon Gun," he said, gesturing to the device, "but I just can't bring myself to use it on a living creature." With a look that seemed a mix of disdain and admiration, he spoke again to Gordon. "You don't look like you have any problem killing things." He gestured for Gordon to take it.
While he wanted to make some kind of protest, the fact was that Gordon didn't have much of a problem killing things at the moment. And while another scientist would have liked nothing more than to debate the morality of the amount of death he had caused over the past two days, Gordon didn't have the patience for it. They needed him in the Lambda Core, so that was where he was going to go. And it looked like the Gluon Gun could help him. So, without any kind of acknowledgement of the scientists' distaste, he strapped himself into it.
He felt like a Ghostbuster.
The hose ended in an angular funnel, through which Gordon assumed laser-like hellfire would erupt when he needed it. A thick handle protruding from the side of the funnel held a red button at the base. So simple, yet Gordon was almost afraid to touch it, so instead he just tucked the hose into the allotted bracket on the backpack.
With a small nod of gratitude to the slightly appalled scientist, Gordon stepped out and went into the elevator. It took him down the turquoise shaft without complaint, stopping at some glass doors below. They too slid open silently, almost in awe of him somehow. Gordon stepped outside. The floor on which he stood overlooked a pool of water below, two walkways crossing vertically over it. He could see that the path he stood on offered him two ways down; an entrance on the left-hand side of the room, and one on the right.
As he walked to the open corridor on the left hand side, Gordon noticed a gurgling noise from a corridor just beside him. He slowly unhooked the Gluon Gun and whirled around the corner. Two electricity aliens stood over a dead scientist, conversing in a fluxing voice over the body like it was a water cooler. Gordon pushed the red button. The backpack made a noise like five vacuum cleaners working at the same time, and the hose ejected a spiralling shaft of blue light towards his enemies. One touch from the blast turned the right-hand one to a yellow cloud, evaporating it on the spot.
Its' companion looked from the cloudy remains, then back to Gordon.
Gordon smiled. "Oh, look. A new toy."
When all that remained of them was slowly falling yellow dew, Gordon looked down to the now calming Gluon Gun. His throat suddenly felt dry. This weapon was truly terrifying. Good, but terrifying.
The corridor in front of him branched off to the left and the right, the former signposted as 'AUX.TANK REACTOR ACCESS' and the latter 'MAINTANENCE STATION'. Maintenance sounded pretty good to him right now, so Gordon went in that direction, Gluon Gun once again safely tucked away on his back. Two staircases went down below him, and Gordon had to swing his leg around a little to avoid the bruised pain in his thigh. Below was a small room, a scientist and a security guard inside.
They both turned upon hearing the door of the room slide open. The security guard seemed fairly neutral, only offering a slight nod to Gordon. On his right, however, the scientist almost instantly looked down his nose at him, as though instantly assured that he was well above Gordon. But his attention wasn't really on the people. On the wall, a HEV and first aid charging station awaited him.
"Freeman, isn't it?" The scientist shrilled as Gordon passed him. Without a word, Gordon unhooked the cable from the HEV station and plugged it into the necessary socket on his side. With an affirmative beep, the suit started charging, the humming almost drowning out the scientist behind him.
"You'll need to activate both pumps to flood the reactor, and then that access pipe down there will take you to the core!" He pointed out of an observation window into a room beyond. Gordon only quickly glanced out before returning to the HEV station.
"Time is short!" the scientist insisted, running his hands through his unconvincing comb over exasperatedly.
"Mm-hm," Gordon nodded, going onto the first aid station once the HEV had been exhausted. He watched with no small measure of satisfaction as his Heads Up Display flickered back to life, informing him of his ever improving health. He felt it, as well. Energy he hadn't felt in some time made his fingers tingle and his hair stand on end. The first aid station darkened, make a negative electronic growl when he attempted to use it further.
He turned back to the scientist and security guard. "Flood the reactor, you said?"
A loud groan escaped the scientist, who flung his arms up into the air. The security guard beside him smiled. Obviously he had seen this kind of thing before.
"There, there!" the scientist enthused, pointing a trembling finger out of the observation port. Gordon walked to it and looked out. It was a swimming pool, or at least very close to one. He followed the troublingly thin finger to a small, thin tunnel in the wall at the bottom of the pool. Above it, in fairly plain letters, the words 'CORE ACCESS' gave him a pretty good idea of where to go.
Nodding, he stood up to his full height, looking down on the scientist, who he only just now realised was rather short.
"Activate the pumps, you said?"
Another loud groan from the scientist accompanied some pulling of what little hair he had left, also giving Gordon the knowledge of why he had so little hair in the first place. He headed out of the room, but paused when the security guard asked if he needed any help. In truth, he probably did. But if he was going to be sure of one thing, it was that no-one else was going to die before his eyes. So with a polite shake of the head, Gordon went back up the stairs and to one of the walkways he had observed earlier.
The two platforms that overlooked the pool of water below led off to different corridors, one orange and the other blue. Since the orange of his HEV suit had served him well, he went with that first. A collapsed corridor stood in his way, but he managed to wriggle through with little difficulty. Well, quite a bit of difficulty actually, thank to the Gluon Gun.
Beyond the awkward debris, Gordon found himself at a door that he assumed would lead him to one of the pumps he needed to activate. The door slid open, and Gordon stepped through.
And immediately ducked back inside again. Three of the bear-sized, armoured aliens awaited him inside, gathered around the pool of water in the middle of the expansive room. The door slid shut, intercepting their buzzing darts before they reached him. Gordon reached back for the Gluon hose and readied himself.
"One… two… three."
He took a step to the door and watched it slide up agonisingly slowly. One of the aliens had taken to standing just in front of the door, and Gordon let out the tiniest of yelps as he back-pedalled, firing the Gluon Gun as he went. Within a few seconds, the alien was gone in a puff of yellow moisture. The other two, no less deterred by this incredibly new weapon they faced, took aim. Two more pushes of the red button, and they were gone too.
Gordon smiled. This gun, he liked.
A ladder on the other side of the room led up to a walkway high above his head that, in turn, led to a door. Although the Gluon Gun didn't exactly make for ideal climbing conditions, it still didn't take Gordon long to make his way up. Only from the walkway did he notice the red and silver structures in the deep pool of water below, most likely connected to the generator in the room beyond in some fashion. For a change, only a few of the small alien crab things awaited him in the control room. He thought for a moment that he might conserve the Gluon Gun. With a shrug, he blasted them to nothing.
The sizeable generator had a simple red, pull down lever in the middle of the control panel, which Gordon slammed down with relish. It thrummed to life, lights flashing and fading in and out of view.
It only took him a few minutes to get back to the walkways leading to the two corridors, and even less time to reach the door of the blue passageway. Once again, he came across a rather intimidating amount of armoured aliens. That is, intimidating if it wasn't for the fully charged HEV suit and Gluon Gun. The room mirrored the first, and Gordon had no trouble activating that pump and making his way back to the maintenance room where the security guard and scientist awaited him.
The scientist's face was red to the point of a meltdown. "Don't linger, Mr Freeman! You've turned on the pumps! Now take the access pipe, flood the core, and get on up to the labs, without delay!"
"I was just… checking if it was working."
"Well, that's very good! Waste more time explaining your motives to me!"
The vicious manner of his words actually made Gordon stumble a bit as he made his way out. As he went up the stairs, he noticed that the security guard was following him.
"Um… I really don't think you should come."
"Oh, I'm not. I know what that thing is, and I know I'd just be gettin' in the way. I was jus' gonna say that I wouldn't go swimming with that thing if I were you." He summoned Gordon closer conspiratorially. "I heard that some guy sweated too much while he was wearing it, and it blew up."
Gordon's heart sank. "So water-"
"And Gluon Gun's don't mix." He paused. "Sorry."
All the bespectacled scientist could manage was a resigned sigh. "I'll leave it by the pool."
The security guard nodded. "Okay. And good luck."
Gordon just nodded and moped all the way back up the stairs and to the Auxiliary Reactor. He heard alien growls coming from inside and felt a pang of sadness. Never again would it be this easy to get past some giant, bloodthirsty aliens. He would miss the ease.
He waited for the door to slide open halfway before ducking underneath and unleashing blue, twisting fury on the creatures. Once he was sure that there were no aliens waiting in hiding to pop out and pull his head off, Gordon carefully removed the Gluon Gun and left it beside the door. He walked to the water, the white tiles and light blue reminding him of the Black Mesa swimming pools at the gym.
It also reminded him of the time that Barney had tossed, of all things, a watermelon on his head while he was doing laps. Apparently it was the special in the canteen that day. Barney had found it hilarious. Gordon had not.
One hand on his glasses, Gordon jumped in. He took a moment to get his bearings and adjust the water on his eyes before he swam straight down. On the way, he passed by the observation window with the scientist and security guard inside. He offered a little wave on his way down, but that just seemed to annoy the scientist further, who vehemently stabbed a finger to the access pipe.
So Gordon swam. The light started to fade around him, and all he could see was a faint yellow and green tint coming from up ahead. Eventually, just as his body started to tell him that he needed to breathe in order to live, Gordon reached the room beyond and surfaced. The room was a large cylinder. The centrepiece of the room was a thick metal yellow tower, extending up to the top of the room. Power literally thrummed from the core and through the water, making Gordon vibrate slightly. Walkways ran around the circumference of the room, making three levels overall. But the nearest ladder was far too high for him to reach.
Gordon took a breath and submerged again. On the walls on either side of the core at the very bottom of the pool, Gordon could see two pipes with cranks beside them. The words 'COOLANT ACCESS' above them pretty much determined his next course of action. Going first to one, then the other, Gordon turned the crank and watched as water rushed out of the pipes in a jet stream, quickly raising the level of the water. Gordon sprang out of the water and paddled to the ladder, which was now within reach.
Sparks flew up ahead, the sound of stray electricity and the smell of burning metal doing nothing to calm his nerves. He looked up. Bolts of yellow and green electricity sprang out of the core at various levels, gradually rotating around like the blades on a fan. With a resigned intake of breath, Gordon heaved himself up onto the walkway above. It took some timing (and a lot of painful shocks to his ankles), but Gordon got the hang of hopping over the bolts as they slowly travelled his way.
He made his way up to the top walkway where a door to the corridor beyond awaited him. A steady stream of yellow lightning drilled into the door, which remained almost unmarked from the onslaught. Every few minutes, the bolt would stop for just a handful of seconds before reactivating. Standing just beside the door, Gordon waited patiently for the bolt to subside, all the while having to jump over another bolt of electricity as it rounded the core. The yellow bolt faded, and Gordon ran to the door, which opened as leisurely as it pleased. He eventually had to crouch and scramble underneath. Once fully it open, the door gradually realised that its' user had already gone through, and slowly started to close. He breathlessly waited for the door to close while he lay against the wall.
Eventually, it did close, and Gordon heaved himself to his feet.
The corridor turned a sharp left corner into another, where some open elevator doors welcomed him inside. The elevator itself, however, was well and truly broken, judging by the fact that the control panel was sparking and buzzing. The metallic groans coming from above didn't exactly inspire faith in the thing, either. And so, Gordon climbed up on top of the elevator and latched on the nearby emergency ladder, taking it up to the top floor, where he hoped the teleportation labs would be.
After making the difficult jump from one end of the shaft and through the open doors (it involved an awkward manner of pushing off from the wall with his legs while turning in mid air before grasping onto the ledge on the other side - or, in simple terms, difficult), Gordon walked onward down the corridor and found himself stood next to a window. Inside, he could see a small control booth, the body of security guard nestled in the corner with blood streaked up and down the walls.
He didn't really want to think about it, so he continued on. The corridor went off to both the left and right, although the former simply seemed to end with a strange little gap in the corner of the wall, barely big enough for one person to stand in. On the right, the corridor stretched on for quite a distance, doors on either side seeming to hold more promise. But, curiosity got the better of him, and Gordon walked to the left. He managed to shimmy his way into the 'alleyway', crowbar nudging irritably against his leg.
What he saw inside pulled the breath from his lungs. A green room, lit from underneath by a latticework walkway below. A platform on the far side of the room, level with the window that Gordon now looked through. Inside stood the man in the suit, briefcase by his side, lit from behind by a glowing orb of green energy. Gordon couldn't move within the tight confines of the 'alley', and could only stare as the man straightened his tie, turned, and walked into the orb. And in a flash of light, he was gone.
Gordon just stood and stared, waiting unblinkingly for something else to happen. For the man to reappear, for the orb to explode or fade, or something. But that was all. Just a fleeting glimpse of the man responsible for all this. Gordon didn't know that for sure, of course, but… somehow, he knew. That man had started all of this. And once this was over, Gordon was going to find him and get, at the very least, an explanation.
A automated announcement over the speaker brought him back out of his internal musings, the words stilted and slow like an answering machine.
"Warning. Unauthorised organic force detected in teleportation lab."
He shimmied out of the alley and into the corridor. After a long breath through his nose and out through his mouth, Gordon pulled out his crowbar and walked down the corridor. The doors were all locked, only letting out an intrusive negative noise whenever he approached them. A huge metal pipe ran along the ceiling of the corridor, an occasional curved protrusion jutting out, crank attached. A similar crank stood in the wall on the left, and Gordon stopped to run a hand over it. That incident with the man in the suit had affected him. Hell, it wasn't even an incident. It was just a frustrating, fleeting glimpse of something he knew was important. All of this just seemed to so petty compared to that small taste.
A low growl from around the corner at the end of the corridor attracted his attention, and Gordon approached it with crowbar at cautiously raised. When he rounded the corner, he came face to face with three armoured aliens, all of them stood in a row in the cramped corridor before him.
He turned and ran, hearing their large footsteps thundering away behind him. His feet skidded as he tried to stop at the crank, and he managed to turn with one mighty thrust. Steam burst from the pipes above the aliens' head, and Gordon could only squint as the mist hit his eyes and fogged his glasses. He took the loud thumping of the aliens falling to the ground as an 'all clear' signal, and turned he crank back. The intrusive hissing of the steam ceased, and Gordon cautiously headed out into the cloud.
After tripping over a scorched alien corpses, Gordon eventually cleared the team and walked down the now clear corridor. Another locked door on his left read 'LAB', but one further on and on the right, reading 'CORE', seemed to hold promise. It slid open compliantly and revealed, finally, the teleportation labs that Gordon had been more than mildly curious to see.
The room in front of him contained two of the same orbs that Gordon had seen the man in the suit entered earlier. Was that how he managed to disappear so easily? He had access to these things? Gordon tucked the question away along with his crowbar and returned his attention to the orbs. They floated in place on slightly raised platforms, pulsing with energy. Gordon desperately wanted to touch them, to go through and feel what it was like. He suspected he had already been through the process back during the resonance cascade, but still… the scientist in him wanted so badly to experience this with a keen, neutral eye. Teleportation was what he had joined MIT for. It was why he got his PhD, and why he unrelentingly pursued a placement in Black Mesa. Ever since he had seen the first experiments during his time at Innsbruck University.
And now, here he was. Within arms' reach of his scientific dream. He shook his head and looked to the larger room beyond the one in which he stood. A yellow metallic tower stood in the cylindrical chamber, towering above him. At three levels, one in front of him, one just above and another above that, the tower was hollowed out. Three entrances to the hollowed out area were visible to him, each of the numbered. Three sets of platforms rotated around the core, allowing access to the portals contained within. Floating in place in midair, parallel with each of the three levels, Gordon could see a portal that would allow him to gain access upwards. So. Three levels, nine portals, and some portals that would let him get up.
What was it that scientist had said? Two, four, seven? Yes, that was it. Two, four, seven. Well, Gordon hoped that was it.
The chain link fence in front of him prevented him from simply stepping out onto the rotating platform in front of him, so Gordon stepped to the portal closest to him. He noted that the portal next to the core for the first level was yellow, as were all of the others above it. So, yellow portals were the exits, green ones the entrances. Gordon watched as the platforms below him rotated around the core, eventually passing beneath the yellow portal.
Gordon stepped into the green orb in front of him. Noiselessly, green flashed around him. Suddenly, he was inside the chamber, standing on the rotating platform as it travelled around the first three entrances to the portals. Gordon smiled deliriously. He had just teleported. Just like that. Still grinning, he looked up and checked where the platform above him was in relation to the next portal he would be coming from. His gaze fell to the numbers of the portals in front of him. Two was quickly coming up.
He checked up again. It seemed like it would work out. Seemed.
He waited until the platform was opposite number two and jumped forward. After another green flash, he was standing a whole floor higher, looking down on the spot he had just occupied. He laughed and shook his head. This was mind-bending.
But he would be damned if it wasn't fun.
Gordon repeated he process he had done before, this time waiting for portal number… four. Yes, that was it, four.
Oh, crap.
The platform reached number four, and the everything above seemed to collate properly. So, he stepped in.
And stepped out with one foot hitting air. Gordon slipped and scrambled for the steadily leaving platform, only just managing to get both arms over the ledge. Gradually, he managed to heave himself back up. He looked over and saw another room, just like the one below, waiting for him, two portals included. Gordon had to admit, this was an ingenious security system, especially since it was probably improvised. Not something he would have been able to think up, anyway.
He supposed that was why he had been assigned to Anomalous Materials, not here.
Gordon waited for number seven to roll around. Number eight tried to entice him in, and Gordon was sorely tempted to just leap in. But he had things to do, people to meet… Number nine was nowhere near as inviting, the usual pacified green replaced by an angry, pulsing red, sparks flying in every direction. Then came seven, and Gordon jumped through.
Gordon landed in the room he had spied from inside. With the same amazed smile, he turned back to the core, looking to the spot he had just jumped from.
Teleportation. What a concept.
With a look akin to a puppy watching its' master abandon it, Gordon backed out of the room and towards the door. He hoped this technology wasn't abolished when this was all over. Of course, it most definitely would be, but hopefully some radical country that didn't care for United Nation decrees would take it up. Because it was simply amazing.
The door slid open, and Gordon turned around, heading into the darkened corridor beyond. Both ends of the corridor that crossed in front of him had collapsed, the scorch marks indicating it was deliberate. In front of him, a small indentation in the wall allowed just enough room for one person to enter and climb up the ladder inside. Gordon clambered up, hearing the door to the teleporter core close shut as he left it behind.
He climbed up into an equally dark corridor, the wall on the right one only allowing him to go to the left. The corridor ended abruptly at the far end, some metal crates stacked up there. As he walked to them, a horrifically loud metallic groaned echoed through the corridor, making the whole room shake. Gordon almost lost his footing, but a steadying hand against the wall kept him stable until the shaking subsided. He took a breath and continued on.
Gordon came to a stop at the wall, and looked to his left. Two enormous glass doors awaited him, leading into a room with some crates at the far end, as well as three empty HEV suit compartments. He walked to the door and ended up triggering some security device, because a loud negative beep coincided with him reaching within a few metres of the door. Inside the room, a security guard and a scientist quickly darted around the corner, the former with his weapon at the ready. The security guard ran to a crate just in behind the doors, reaching down and pulling out a shotgun. He lifted it with wobbly arms and aimed it at him just as the security guard behind him lowered his handgun.
The bespectacled, bald scientist behind the glass shook his head and dropped the shotgun with a look of disgust. He walked around the crates and to a control panel in the wall beside the doors. They slid open without complaint, and Gordon entered.
"Gordon Freeman. You've finally found us," the scientist said, his relief evident from the grin hidden by his thick black moustache.
The security guard, a blond man, looked Gordon up and down with an icy blue gaze. "So this is the guy." He holstered his weapon. "We thought you'd never make it."
Gordon didn't say anything, instead waiting for someone else to elaborate. The scientist behind him cleared his throat as he walked around Gordon, heading to the empty HEV compartments.
"This," he said, gesturing to the crates scattered around the compartments, "is the supply depot for our first survey team. Quite a few handsome specimens" - there was a measure of satisfaction in his voice which made the security guard's expression foul considerably - "were collected from the border world and brought back this way…"
Gordon himself was just feeling completely lost at this point. So that meant the crystal samples he had been working with day in and day out since he first arrived with Black Mesa were from an alien world? An alien world these people had been visiting for God knows how long, too. He didn't just feel lost. He felt used.
Any look of achievement the scientist once held faded, replaced instead by an awkward embarrassment. "…um… before the survey members started being collected themselves, that is…" He brought his head back up to look straight at Gordon, his tone gaining confidence. "We suspect there is an immense portal over there, created by the intense concentration of a single, powerful being. You will know it when you see it." He walked to Gordon slowly, and gently clasped onto his shoulder. "I hate to say this, Gordon, but you must kill it, if you can."
"Yeah," the security guard snorted, "you'd better kill it."
Although he tried to maintain a neutral expression, Gordon's mind and heart were racing. They expected him to do it? But he had already done so much… seen so much… he just wanted to rest… God, how he wanted to rest.
The scientist seemed to sense his reluctance, and backed away to give him some room. "Of course, you owe us nothing, Mr Freeman. But you've come this far. You know as much about these creatures as anyone."
His security guard companion nodded, arms folded. "Enough to know that if you don't wipe it out, there won't be much for you to come home to."
The scientist bristled at the comment, visibly discomforted by it. "Yes… so… if you're willing, my colleague is waiting for you at the main portal controls. He will open the gates for you, Mr Freeman. Do hurry."
Gordon's participation practically a given at this point, the security guard nodded to two open doors on the other side of the room. "Don't forget to gear up. And I'll cover you while you're waiting for that portal to warm up."
A cocked eyebrow emerged from behind Gordon's glasses. "Cover me?"
The scientist nodded. "Yes, Gordon. This thing is not only sentient, but intelligent, too. It is likely that it will recognise you as a threat and attempt to stop you crossing over."
Gordon's cockeyed expression gave way to frown as something drifting around in the back of his head suddenly clicked into place. "Wait… what about the rocket? The one I launched last night?"
This prompted an awkward look between the scientist and security guard, and Gordon watched it intently.
"This… creature, Gordon," the scientist began, hand kneading away in his lab coat pockets, "It is… incredibly powerful. If the portal created by the resonance cascade had simply been a freak occurrence, then the satellite you launched would have closed it without incident. But this creature is keeping it open from the other side. Now our only choice is to send someone over to kill it. And with the military hardly trustworthy, we were forced to look to a more… local source," he said, his wry smile wrinkling his moustache into a straight line.
Slowly, Gordon nodded. What else could he do? If he said no, they would all just wait around until the complex came tumbling down onto their heads of aliens killed them. Or even the military. Gordon wouldn't put it past some determined left-behinds to try and force their way into what they saw as the impregnable Black Mesa stronghold. Besides… an alien world. If nothing else, he was going to an alien world.
His nod seemed to energise both the security guard and the scientist, the latter of whom walked over to the other side of the room while Gordon explored the storage cupboards. Inside, he found grenades, shotgun ammunition, handguns, revolvers… even a crowbar, which made Gordon smile. Looking down at his own worn tool, he realised that he wouldn't really want to trade it off for anything. Along with the HEV suit, it had been his constant companion all through this mess, and had comforted him even in his loneliest, most desperate moments.
Good old crowbar.
Instead, he scooped up a handgun that was snugly nestled in a holster and strapped it to him. Then, with a brief pause, Gordon removed the handgun and slotted the revolver into place instead. It was the Barney thing to do, he decided. Looking around, he found another belt with three grenades slotted into the relevant holes, and wrapped that, too, around his waist. He picked up a box of .357 bullets for the revolver (which he assumed was the right ammunition) and a box of shotgun shells. Gordon wordlessly left one storage room and entered the next.
There, he found something that made him smile like he imagined an action hero would. A belt that went diagonally across the chest, designed for shotgun shells. With more than a little relish, he slipped the shotgun shells into the relevant slots and wrapped it over his shoulder and down under his arm. He even found a pocket on the handgun belt to put the box of revolver ammo.
Still saying nothing to his newfound friends, Gordon wandered out of the storage room and to the shotgun the scientist had earlier discarded. A box of shotgun shells sat in an open red box beside it, and Gordon loaded it up. He heard the security guard walk up behind him, but didn't stop loading.
"You ready?"
Gordon finished loading and turned around.
"Oh. I'm ready."
With a smile, he cocked the shotgun. Martha was back, baby.
The security guard seemed well aware of the coolness of the gesture and smirked appreciatively. The scientist at the far end of the room, however, was lost on such matters, and instead pressed some buttons on a nearby control panel. The wall in front of him opened up like one of those secret compartments in spy movies. Inside, a small jetpack-looking device sat on a pedestal, lit from above like an antique on display. He recognised it instantly from the training sessions at Black Mesa.
"This, Mr Freeman, is a Long Jump Module, created expressly for navigation in the world beyond. I certainly hope you received Long Jump training, because once you are in Xen, you will need it." He picked up the module and turned to him strap-side first.
Gordon walked over and let him slip it on him like a butler.
"Xen?" he asked over his shoulder.
"Yes. Xen with an 'X'. It seemed like a nice name at the time." The scientist, now finished strapping him into the machine, patted him on the shoulder. "I would advise you to practise the Long Jump before crossing over."
It sounded more like a friendly tip than life-saving advice.
The scientist padded over to another control panel beside some immense metal blast doors. He punched in a code and they roared open, revealing a scanner area before the corridor beyond. Gordon started forward when his stomach, in protest at his sudden movement, grumbled loudly. He exchanged a sheepish glance with the scientist, who just smiled and fished around in his pockets for something. Finally he found it in his right coat pocket, bringing up something wrapped in foil.
"I brought it as a quick lunch. But I lost my appetite as the day went on."
Gordon cautiously took it. "What is it?"
"Tuna sandwich."
Looking down at the foil, he frowned. Gordon hated tuna.
He unwrapped the foil and ate the sandwich in two seconds.
With that done, he started once again for the scanner. It whirred as Gordon walked over it, his weapons setting off a slight bleep. He looked back to the pair for confirmation that he was okay to proceed. The security guard, now stood right behind him, impatiently nodded for him to go on.
Gordon walked into the corridor and followed it off to the left, where two more metal door awaited him. These slid open as he approached them, revealing the teleportation chamber beyond. He almost tripped over his own feet as he wandered, slack-jawed, into the enormous room. The sheer scale of it… breathtaking.
Four enormous stone pillars stood around an enormous pit in the ground, curving inwards like focus points towards a yellow and silver cylindrical structure in the centre. A indented circle in the ceiling held a bright white lens at the middle, which Gordon assumed had at least something to do with the process.
"Hello, Freeman! I'm up here! Practice your Long Jump if you must, but hurry up!"
Up in the higher left side of the room, a yellow walkway sprouted horizontally out of the wall, ending with a control panel with a glass booth in front, stopping just before the huge pit. A figure in a lab-coat walked from the door at the far end of the walkway and to the control panel. His voice carried surprisingly well in the huge chamber.
But still, Gordon did as he was told. He looked around and saw the doorway through which he had entered had slammed shut, sealing him to his chosen fate. He blew out a shaky breath. No turning back now.
Gordon started walking forward, trying to remember his training. It was crouch, then jump forward. Crouch, then jump forward.
Silently mouthing the words to himself, Gordon went along with the stages. He walked, crouched, then jumped-
An almost inaudible hiss from the module threw him forward. With a grunt, he swung his legs forward, the hiss fading as he landed. It was an odd experience, using the Long Jump Module. Because no matter how fast you hit the ground, your momentum always just stopped dead, and with no ill effects. That he knew of.
He looked back to the impressed looking security guard, who was only now just catching up with him. The guard opened his smiling mouth to say something, but the scientist above interrupted them. Gordon's view of him was blocked by yellow pillar in the middle of the pit.
"All right, I can open the portal now. The process is complicated, and once it's begun I must not be interrupted, or I will have to start all over again. Don't enter the beam until I give the okay! Understood?" Gordon opened his mouth to reply, but the scientist continued on. "I will begin."
He looked over to the guard, who smiled, shrugged and offered Gordon his hand. "I'm Andy Wilder."
"Gordon-"
"Freeman, yeah, I got that. You're becoming quite the legend around here."
Gordon's look was obviously dubious, because Wilder just laughed. "Do you, uh… know where you're standing?"
"Standing?"
Wilder looked around as he spoke. "Yeah, there's a platform you need to jump from… ah. There it is," he said, pointing just in front of him. He looked to Gordon, smirking. "Guess you picked the right place to jump to, huh?"
"That seems to be happening a lot lately."
The security guard ignored him. "If you jump from that yellow and black striped platform there," he said, pointing to a piece of the floor that seemed to jut out into the pit from where they were standing. "That yellow thing," he said, pointing to the yellow structure in the centre, "will come down soon, and there'll be this little pedestal thing. That's where the portal will open up."
Gordon nodded. The pillars started moving away from the centre, the noise reverberating all around the chamber. Gordon took one last look around before focusing on the task at hand. Off to the right, a red ladder led up to an observation deck. Oh, to be the crew monitoring these experiments…
Behind him, directly in line with the yellow and black striped platform Wilder had pointed out to him, was some closed metal blast doors. Gordon wondered what scientific wonders were beyond that door. Wonders he would probably never see again.
God, how was he even going to get back? Was he ever going to get back? Would he die in an alien world, surrounded by unfamiliar surroundings? Would anyone even care?
The yellow structure in the centre came apart slightly with a hiss, and lowered itself, revealing the pedestal in the centre to which Wilder had referred. There was a flash of light, and when Gordon opened his eyes, a beam of energy was firing down from the lens in the ceiling, hitting the pedestal.
But that wasn't what had attracted Gordon's attention. There were things floating in the air. Three of them, in fact. Bulbous heads, like upside-down pears, with a dangling, impossibly thin body hanging below it. The heads pulsed and throbbed, occasionally opening slightly, revealing a golden light inside. They formed a triangle in front of him.
The one on the left put its' hands together for a few moments before flinging them apart. A yellow orb of energy shot out towards him.
"Watch it…" Wilder cautioned.
Gordon ducked the blast, and it exploded loudly on the ground behind him.
"Whoa!" Wilder yelled. He looked down to the scorch mark, and then back to Gordon. "Seriously, watch it."
But Gordon's eyes were locked on the creatures. The left-hand one once again opened fire, this time unleashing a volley of four orbs on him. Gordon ran forward, shotgun in hand. Three of the orbs only just missed him, exploding against the ground behind him with a resounding bang each time. The fourth skimmed his back and hit the ground, managing to knock him off his feet. Gordon turned the fall into a forward roll, ending up on his back and pointing his shotgun up at the attacking creature.
The distinctive pop of a handgun going off attracted both the attention of Gordon and the alien above him, drawing their collective gazes to Wilder. He was firing random pot-shots at the alien above Gordon, obviously thinking him in distress. Heedless of the two others, he went unaware of the golden orbs shooting towards him until they collided with his right arm. Gordon got to his feet and started running. The appendage exploded on impact, throwing him back against the wall, a trail of blood following him. He lay against the wall, screaming.
Gordon skid to a halt, looking from the writhing guard to the three aliens. He watched as the middle creature turned and headed towards the scientist on the walkway. Determination setting his features, Gordon ran for the observation platform. Grasping the shotgun by the barrel, he climbed up the ladder and hopped up to the platform. Keeping an eye on the creatures, particularly the one closing in on the scientist, Gordon ran to the ledge of the platform, leaping onto one of the pillars.
He slipped slightly, but managed to regain traction long enough to clamber to the top of the pillar. Now on a level playing field with the creatures, he could now see them up close. And they weren't pretty. Glowing yellow eyes and small, fanged mouths… genuinely the stuff of nightmares. Gordon was only too happy to shove a shotgun in their faces. One was close enough on his left to take out with one shot, the metal pellets ripping through the bulbous head like fruit. With a shrill cry, it tumbled through the air to the ground.
The second was now just on the other side of the scientists' booth, who was now looking rather nervous as he feverishly tried to concentrate on the teleportation. Gordon cocked the shotgun and fired. The first blast caught the creature one the side of the head, sending it whirling back like a top. He reloaded and fired again, this time killing it and sending it, too, to the ground.
The third, this one the same creature that had been attacking him before, floated around the teleporter, too far away for the shotgun to reach. Gordon kept his left hand on the reloading mechanism of the shotgun and pulled out his revolver with the right. Trusting his instincts, he aimed and fired. The recoil from the small weapon was immense, and he almost ended up hitting himself in the face. But his aim was dead on, puncturing the creature's head and sending it diving to the ground.
Gordon looked over to the scientist, whose bearded face he could make out much more clearly. The teleporter was making a lot of noise now, and he struggled to make himself heard over the whirring din.
"We're almost there, Freeman! Get yourself in position!"
Gordon nodded, turned, and slid down the arched tower, landing on the ground running. He instantly ran to the bleeding Wilder, who was lying next to the metal doors opposite the platform.
"Are you-?"
He heard another shrill cry from above, and saw two more of the creatures floating around the teleporter and over to him. No, three… four.
Suddenly, for a brief second, all the noise and light in the room seemed to be drawn towards the pedestal. Then, with a brilliant flash of light, a golden-white portal awaited him, ready to take him to this new world… this 'Xen'. The scientist's voice rang out from across the chamber.
"It's ready! You must go, now!"
Gordon looked back to Wilder.
"Go…" he whispered harshly, his pale skin and sweaty brow making him seem all the more desperate.
The doors beside Gordon opened up.
And a soldier stepped through, M4 rifle uniformly held in front of him. His gasmask hid any expression, but even Gordon could tell he was alarmed. The soldier spotted him. And suddenly, in a moment of complete instinct, both he and Gordon brought their weapons to bear, standing before one another with weapons shoved in their faces. He could hear the screeching of the creatures as they closed in on them. Through the green lenses of the gasmask, Gordon could see the soldier glancing at the aliens.
"Hurry up, Freeman! I can't keep it open forever!"
The scientist sounded desperate. Very desperate. He and the soldier stared at each other a moment longer. Gordon started to squeeze the trigger. Then the soldier did something very unexpected. He turned his rifle and opened fire on something just behind Gordon. He turned and saw one of the aliens flop down onto its' back, hot bullet holes scorched through its' head.
Gordon whipped his gaze around to the soldier, alarmed.
His only reply was a wry nod towards the portal. A nod that said 'I think you have somewhere to be'.
He glanced back to the portal, and then to the soldier.
Gordon nodded, turned and ran. Machinegun fire roared out behind him. A soldier's farewell to a soldier killing scientist. The aliens screeched in horror as they died and watched their quarry make his escape.
The last noise Gordon heard was the screech of an alien, an explosion, and the scientist wailing.
Then flashes of green.
Then nothing.
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(A/N: I hadn't originally planned on having Gordon and Shephard meet, but this seemed like such a good idea, I couldn't pass it up. Unfortunately (and completely coincidentally), BlindAcquiescence pulled a similar stunt in his story 'Half-Life 2: Shephard's Epic'. Just so no-one thinks I stole the idea or anything…
Anyway, this chapter ended up being far longer than I intended, mostly due to the chapter in the game being longer than I remembered. But, in the end, I think this is one of my favourites. I loved the mental image of Gordon armed to the teeth. Very cool, I thought.
But anyway, enough of what I liked! Review!
Next Chapter: We Are Not Alone)