Disclaimer: We don't own Half-Life. If only we did. This would all be canon, like, right now.
Sidelines
Day Seven by Super Chocolate Bear
It was strange, the thoughts that went through one's head when they had just woken up. Sometimes it would be 'what the hell is that?' or 'not right now, come back later' and occasionally (and embarrassingly) 'how did that get there?'. But right now, all Louis Griggs could think of was how flat his pillow felt. Not that these things usually bothered him that much. But when you were twenty one years old, the little things mattered. Whether the acne had flared up overnight or the hair had decided to become some kind of strange upside-down 'Q' shape.
But right now, it was the pillow. Rolling over in his (still single) bed, Griggs noted from the wallet-shaped lump in his back pocket that he had gone to sleep in his clothes again.
He hated when that happened. Luckily he had taken his shoes off, so that was good. But damn, jeans weren't built for sleeping in. Especially when they had the smell of old cigarettes and spilt beer on them.
"Lou? Are you planning on getting up before lunch?"
Ah. His ever present mom. Was it completely impossible for her to be out once, just so Griggs could wake up in the morning and pretend he wasn't twenty one years old and living with his mother? Not that there was anything wrong with that, or so he had been told; but still. Living. With. His. Mother.
"Lou?"
Scrunching up his face, Griggs rolled over and buried his face in his flat pillow.
"I'll get up in a minute," he shouted, which through the pillow admittedly sounded somewhat like 'Arghumphlargumblarr.'
"What?"
With a loud groan, Griggs lifted his head, feeling his unshaven chin scraping against the pillow. "I said 'I'll get up in a minute'."
"It's just there's something on the news I think you should see."
"Why?"
"Well… just come down."
"What is it?"
"It's… hard to explain, really."
"Mom, it's not hard," he moaned, hefting himself out of the bed and up into a sitting position. "Did someone I know die?"
"Louis Steven Griggs, that is a horrible thing to say."
"Okay, sorry. So… natural disaster?"
"…sort of."
Griggs buried his face in his hands, rubbing eyes as he did so. "How can it be 'sort of' a natural disaster?"
"Well it-" he could hear the indignant sigh from where he was upstairs, which was quite an accomplishment on her part. "Look, I'm not going to relay the whole thing to you from downstairs. Just come down and get some breakfast."
"'Just come down and get some breakfast'," he muttered, doing a whiny impression of his mother while flapping his hand around like a duck's beak.
"Less cheek, young man."
She was uncanny sometimes. Whenever he was asking her to fetch something from the kitchen it was like she was in a soundproof booth. But if you were saying something negative about her or cussing or anything she didn't approve of… damn, she was like Superman.
After tossing his wallet back on the bed (and grumbling when it cleared the bed and fell down the other side), Griggs wandered to the bathroom, somewhat reluctant to look in the mirror. Nature was calling pretty insistently, so he took care of that first before inspecting his usually okay visage in the mirror.
He nodded in approval, running his hand over his chin like Indiana Jones contemplating the Golden Idol. After clapping his hands on his cheeks to wake himself up a bit, he headed for the stairs, thundering down them at a fair pace.
"Quieter, please! It's like living-"
"-with an elephant," he finished, speaking with her for the final part of her well rehearsed little speech.
"The fact that you can finish my sentence says something about how many times I've had to tell you, doesn't it?"
Griggs didn't want to bother answering, so he kicked his shoes off beside the front door and wandered into the kitchen. Stepping on a wet patch with only socks on, he let out a groan.
"What did you spill?"
"Nothing mom, jeez…"
"Was it the milk?"
"I didn't spill anything!"
"All right, no need to get snippy."
Biting back the instinctive response boiling in his throat, Griggs yanked a cupboard door open, retrieving the only box of sugary cereal he could ever convince his mom to buy. It took him a few minutes to get a spoon and pour some lovely cold milk all over his cereal (after checking to see if it had expired or not, of course). That done, he wandered in a half-asleep daze to the living room, where his mother sat on the sofa, mug of coffee clutched between her hands.
"Try not to spill any of it," she said, never taking her eyes of the TV.
Griggs eyes flashed over the screen before he concentrated on the bowl in his hand. A news channel. Great.
"You got me up for the news?" he muttered, relaxing back into the armchair that sat at an angle from the sofa.
"It's important news," she insisted. "You remember that nuclear explosion in New Mexico a week ago?"
"No."
She continued without pause as though he had never spoken. "And the day after this bright blue flash knocked out everything for miles around?"
"No."
Again, it was as though he hadn't spoken. "And there were all these rumours of monsters and aliens and things like that?"
"No."
He looked at the widescreen TV. He had done everything short of threatening his mother at gunpoint to buy the damn thing. Then again, he had never liked guns. The whole idea of them scared the life out of him, so holding one… the idea made him shudder sometimes.
On the TV, three stuffy men in suits sat around discussing the stock market and shares in some Aperture Science thing. Thrilling stuff, really. Definitely worth being forced out of bed for.
"Well, there are reports of more storms heading out from New Mexico."
He looked at her in mid-munch. "That's why-"
"Chew your food and swallow first."
With a glare, he did so, thinking in retrospect that he probably didn't chew enough as a large lump of sugary snack forced its' way down his throat.
Able to breathe again, he returned to berating his mother. "That's why you woke me up? Bad weather?"
She gave him the usual withered look, as though she were tired of making this point. To be honest, she probably was. "It's current events, Lou. You've got to pay attention to these things or the whole world will pass you by."
"Mom," he groaned, rolling his eyes. "I'm twenty one. The way I figure it, I've got plenty of time to think about current events when I'm older."
"You never know when things can end, Lou."
"Wow, mom, what a cheery thought."
"You know what I mean."
They sat in silence while one of the three men on the TV - a man with almost no hair and thick rimmed glasses - spoke of political ramifications for America, and what the President should be thinking about right now.
"So," Mom said, looking over at him with her customary 'let's be friends' smile. "How was your night out?"
"It was okay," Griggs mumbled, stirring his cereal and watching the soggy shapes swirl around. It beat talking about his sad-sack of a love life with his mom. His mom. This couldn't get more embarrassing.
"How did things go with Miranda?"
It was amazing how she could sound concerned and cocky at the same time.
"Could we not talk about it?"
"Oh, I'm sorry honey. She probably wasn't right for you anyway."
He groaned. "Just so you know, that never helps."
Smiling, his mother went to speak again when the TV interrupted her. A male reporter who Griggs vaguely recognised was speaking from… well, he couldn't tell where hell he was. There was just grey, swirling clouds behind him. And not the harmless 'light showers' kind of clouds, either. These were angry, pissed off clouds that looked like they could explode.
"This is Ryan Sellers, report-" The sound and picture froze, only occasionally moving forward with screeches and stutters accentuating every movement. Digital static. Lovely stuff.
Finally, Mr Sellers returned.
"-have gotten worse, and have grown bigger. The wind alone made it almost impossible for us to erect the mobile satellite to send this report. I-"
Someone from behind the camera seemed to point something out to him, and he turned his head. His head whipped back to the camera, looking horrified as he lurched towards it.
"The-"
A wall of bright blue suddenly appeared onscreen, forcing its' way towards the camera until, finally, the picture vanished.
The news anchor's slightly panicked voice came over the blocks of digital mess.
"Ryan? Ryan? Ryan, are you there?" He paused for a moment, and the picture returned to the anchorman, who seemed paler than before, even under his orange makeup. "Well, we seem to have… lost the picture for the moment. We'll do our best to get Ryan back as soon as possible. For now, let's-"
Griggs had tuned him out, looking to his mother, his cereal forgotten. "Mom, was that the same thing as before?"
She nodded blankly, concerned gaze on the television.
He frowned, forcing himself to watch the screen. How the hell had he managed to ignore something like that? Wasn't this panicking the whole country by now? Hell, he wouldn't be surprised if the rest of the countries in the world were crapping their collective pants right about now.
Turning back to his mother, he opened his mouth to speak again when the anchorman suddenly returned.
"It appears we have the signal back. Ryan, are you there?"
The picture changed to some rocky landscape, a tall forest in the distance. The camera was on it's side, and nothing was moving. Aside from the wind, there wasn't much of anything to be heard.
"Ryan, can you hear me?"
For an eternity, there was nothing. The silence hung in the air as neither Griggs, his mother or the anchorman dared say anything.
A hand suddenly crashed down on the dusty ground in the distance, just to the left-hand side of the camera. Slowly, and with an agonising moan to boot, someone slowly dragged themselves forward. It wasn't Ryan Sellers. Judging from the cap turned backwards on his head, he was a member of the camera crew. Perhaps the cameraman himself. Whoever he was, he certainly had a destination in mind as he crawled across in full view of the camera.
As his legs reached the halfway point, a puff of dust came up from the ground beneath his limp feet. He didn't seem to notice, but Griggs certainly did. The cameraman moved a little more, and another puff of dust accompanied him. After the third, the ground behind him practically exploded, and the vague shape of something twice the size of a dog and four times as pointy emerged. There was the occasional glimpse of a yellow, pointy limb and a green wing before whatever it was latched onto the cameraman by the ankles.
With a blood-curdling scream that made Griggs' eyes well up, he was dragged back into the ground, scratching and clawing as he went.
The news channel let the picture linger for a few moments longer before returning to the studio. The anchorman, having gone from airbrushed brown to sickly white in the space of a few minutes, was at a loss for words. He patted a stack of papers in front of him, straightening them up in a move clearly more out of habit than a deliberate act.
"We'll… come back after this."
It suddenly cut to a soda commercial, the happy smiling people chugging away seeming almost insulting to what the people all around the country had just seen.
His mouth dry, Griggs licked his lips and swallowed hard. Afraid to look, his gaze gradually travelled across the room to where his mother was sitting. Her eyes too, were afraid to leave the television, her hand over her mouth in constant shock.
"…mom?"
His voice was incredibly weak. He cleared his throat.
"Mom? Are you okay?"
She shook her head, almost imperceptibly. "Oh my God…"
It wasn't something he usually did, but he knew it was right at this moment. He set down the bowl of cereal and sat down next to his mother, wrapping his arm around her.
"I know."
"But…" She took a loud sniff. "The storm is spreading, Lou. That's what they said. They said it was spreading out in all directions."
Spreading?
He looked to the TV, where an irritated owner tried to get her cat to eat its' food.
So those things could be coming to his house. They could be coming to Miranda's house. To the mall. To Benny's Sandwich Bar. All these little normal things…
Suddenly, the world was all that smaller to Louis Steven Griggs.