1
Point Insertion
I didn't see you get on."
Gordon Freeman blinked. He was on a train. The G-man was gone.
Before him in the train car, gripping a vertical railing, was a man with bark-brown skin and ebony hair, dressed in a faded blue shirt and pants, not unlike a nurse's scrubs. He had glanced with genuine interest at Gordon, but it soon faded and he returned to staring gloomily out the train window.
It was several more seconds before Gordon became aware of his own body: how he was also standing up, gripping a vertical railing, and wearing the very same style of cheap blue scrubs. He noticed another man on the train, hunched over in his seat, dressed likewise.
Gordon looked out the window. He couldn't see farther than thirty feet, where his view was blocked by a long and tall brick wall, crowned with a chain-link fence and barbed wire, which were silhouetted by a gray dawn. Above it, he spotted some reds and pinks and even splashes of yellow enlivening the drab clouds, like the faded graffiti that ornamented the inside of his train car; but otherwise, everything seemed oppressively muted, both in sound and sight - nothing beautiful to look at, and nothing to hear but the rumble of the train wheels.
It was surprisingly difficult for Gordon to think straight. Everything was too surreal. Everything was too fast. There were too many leaps of reasoning necessary to understand his current position. He'd had no time to really think, to plan farther ahead than just the next hour, to think about anything other than his own survival. For someone like Gordon, this was like being unable to breathe. He had been submerged in danger and fright for nearly twenty-four hours straight. Too much information, too much to review, too much to analyze and absorb. Where could he possibly start?
The train whistle howled. Trains, Gordon thought absently: This all started on a train of sorts, didn't it?
He had worked at Black Mesa Research, an extensive government funded complex nestled in the harshest desert crags of New Mexico. He was a newly hired Research Associate under Dr. Isaac Kleiner. It had only been four months since he moved onto the base. He had an apartment to himself, one that was silent, clean, and open: where he could think. And at night, when the residential areas were all dark, he could see the arms of the Milky Way splayed out across the bejeweled globe of space. A mind could stretch out there.
Gordon could not recall being more relaxed and at ease than when he worked at Black Mesa. There, he didn't have to talk to anyone he didn't want to. There he could retreat into silence and thought for as long as he wanted. There he was in constant, routine, comfortable contact with a few, good, understanding friends. He had food, a comfortable bed, books and time. And most importantly, there he finally had the materials, the technology, the human resources and encouragement to not just theorize, not just fantasize, but make his dream reality. There he was not just studying the teleportation of visible matter - at Black Mesa he was making it occur.
He remembered the first successful experiment: flowing zero-point radiation through a three-inch cube of super-cooled Darmstadtium, which triggered a space-time undercurrent that subsumed a single iron shaving from measurable reality for six and a half seconds, before it reappeared five feet away, in the exact spot predicted by Freeman's calculations. Dr. Kleiner was ecstatic. Dr. Vance had never been prouder. Barney Calhoun started calling him a witch, and joked that they needed to burn him before it was too late.
He remembered being thirty minutes late to work one day. The facility was very large and mostly underground: transportation was by tram and metro. There had been an accident in the chemical research centers, causing tram delays. Several of them were stopped together on parallel tracks in a station, waiting for the way forward to clear up. The windows were not tinted; passengers could see each other through them. Which is how Gordon, looking into the tram next to his, first locked eyes with the black suited skull faced government man.
The man smiled. Gordon looked away. That was it.
Traffic resumed and he arrived at Anomalous Materials.
Gordon could still hear his coworkers' voices…
"Mornin' Mr. Freeman. Looks like you're runnin' late."
"Hey, Mr. Freeman: Dr. Vance told me to make sure you headed down to the labs as soon as you got into your hazard suit."
"Go right on through, Mr. Freeman. Good luck in the barrel today."
"Ah, Gordon. Here you are. We just sent the sample down to the test chamber."
"Breen asked us to boost the Anti-Mass Spectrometer to one hundred and five percent; bit of a gamble, of course, but we do need the extra resolution."
"Administrator Breen is very concerned that we get a conclusive analysis of today's sample. I gather they went to some length to get it. It could be the material you have been looking for, Gordon, to teleport something a bit bigger than iron shavings, eh?"
"I'm afraid we'll be deviating a bit from standard analysis procedures today, Gordon."
"But if you follow standard insertion procedure, everything will be fine."
"The possibility of a Resonance Cascade scenario is extremely unlikely."
"We've assured the administrator that nothing will go wrong."
"Gordon, we have complete confidence in you."
The crystal touched the ray on May 16th, 2009, at 8:58 am.
For two interims of approximately seventeen seconds, Gordon was in their realm, somewhere among the billion suns that glinted in the Milky Way. A realm of monsters: a realm of toothed flora and eyeless fauna and green waters that clung to his hazard suit like saliva. There were black hairs springing from the purple, coral ground; they were massaging two-legged, star-faced moles that slobbered burning radioactive pus. There were pit bulls with compound eyes for heads, and semi-circles of crusty hunchbacked bugs burbling in an alien tongue.
After his first visit, he found himself two feet above the floor on the opposite side of the room. He had been transported.
After a three second respite he was in their realm again. Afterwards he reappeared five feet above the chamber floor, across the room. His drop nearly impaled him on a broken metal beam.
As he fled, he found Dr. Ashwell dead in the chamber's airlock, his blood spattered across the floor. Dr. Vance was in the Spectrometer's computer room, coughing from smoke, tending to Dr. Kleiner, whose leg was bleeding severely.
"Please, get to the surface as soon as you can," Dr. Vance had told him, "and let someone know we're stranded down here!"
But then they began coming: the beasts from the other world. Freeman spent thirty-four seconds in their realm, and they spent twenty-four hours in his.
There were alien spiders, big as garbage can lids; he remembered finding one clamped down on Bill Guthrie's head, filling him with green slime, turning his chest into a gruesome mouth…
"No! No, no! Get it off me! Get it off, get it off-!"
Hunchbacked, bipedal monsters with four red, bulging eyes, and hands that could summon thunderbolts from the air…
"Soldiers have arrived, and they're coming to rescue us."
The touch of a dry, fleshy rope, a monster's lure wrapping around his neck, dragging him upwards to where undulating maws drooled: the living stalactites that grew from the ceiling…
"I killed twelve scientists and not one of 'em fought back. This is not what I signed up for."
The constant crackle of a Geiger counter. Smashing alien heads to a pulp with a crowbar. A bouquet of giant scorpion tails, with swords for stingers…
"The military's idea of containment is to kill everyone associated with the project."
People he knew slaughtered by both alien monsters and human marines…shooting another human being dead to protect himself…doing it over and over…
"So, who is this guy: Freeman? They say he was at ground zero?"
Bullets glancing off his hazard suit's armor, and blood spattering on its lambda symbol…
"All I know for sure is he killed Rod and Hanks, and I'm going to send him to hell for it."
Rockets. Fire. Screaming lights.
"Repeat: we are pulling out and commencing airstrikes! Forget about Freeman; he'll burn with the rest of them!"
Sirens…sirens…sirens…sirens…
Gordon remembered the last words he heard from Barney Calhoun: "Can't talk now, but catch me later, I'll buy ya a beer."
From Isaac Kleiner: "Why didn't Breen listen to me? Why didn't he…why…?"
From Eli Vance: "Let someone know we're stranded down here!"
Those were only his closest friends; they all would have died when the military began aerial bombing the facility. And just after Gordon had been trying so very hard to spread his wings, to let go of the past, to let go of all his anxieties and insecurities and all that psychological waste; he had been getting to know his team, the staff…he'd been talking to people…only to never hear them talk again…
…All because he pushed the sample into the beam…
Matthew Ashwell: "We have complete confidence in you." Killed in the barrel chamber airlock.
Bill Guthrie: "Heaven save me from this paperwork." Transformed into an alien monster in his office.
Rupert Godwin: "Top of the morning to you, Dr. Freeman!" Alice Maheswaran: "If you could get those reports to me by Monday, that'd be best." Emmett Kyle: "You know, you ought to talk more. It's always a pleasure when you do." All three were killed in the control room by a lightning blast.
Christina Rockwell: "Don't shoot! I'm a scientist! I work for Black Mesa -!"
Wallace Breen: "Have a pleasant afternoon, Doctor."
Andrew Weatherbee: "What if the world finds out what we were doing down here?"
Their faces flashed before Gordon's eyes, one after the other, repeating their last words, and within their skin, like reflections in glass, he saw the Anti-Mass Spectrometer, and a bearded, tacit Research Associate in a hazard suit pushing the crystal into the beam.
He ran over Weatherbee's last words once again: "What if the world finds out what we were doing down here?"
What indeed? Evidently they would call in the military. It was an understatement, of course, to say that Gordon Freeman was confused by the marines' orders to kill everyone on the premises. And as far as he could tell, it would also be an understatement to say the marines themselves were just "confused". Everyone was confused. No one was being told the complete truth, especially not Freeman. He had known that Black Mesa was involved in defense research for the U.S. government, so the covert operations were not a surprise per se; in fact, it explained how the Hazardous Environment suit could save Gordon's life in a war zone: it was retrofitted military equipment. But it also explained how Freeman never discovered that for two years Black Mesa Research had been successfully teleporting researchers to the aliens' world.
"Get into the teleportation labs," an unknown doctor rasped to him, as he bled out on a laboratory floor. "You're not… authorized to know about those…but I can see…you already know…a great deal more than any one man…is supposed to…"
Alien soldiers stored in vats. Giant spiders trapped in glass tubes. Bug-eyed pug dogs kept in metal kennels, and four eyed hunchbacks neatly dissected into separate jars. Teleporters. Alien weapons, Another world. Their world.
"You have no idea how popular you are over here in the Lambda complex," Dr. Tess told him, while Gordon tried to patch up the old woman's bloodied arms. "Your little space-time sublimation technique changed everything: it was going to reduce our costs by eight-five percent!"
This was what Gordon's research had been for, all without his knowledge: to improve travel between worlds, to aid neckbeards in their meddling with foreign ecosystems. Black Mesa, trafficking in samples and advances stolen from other worlds. That was why there was so much security. That was why their safety courses were so intensive. That was why the specialized hazard suit issued to Gordon was retrofitted, experimental military armor. Because behind the highest security clearances, Black Mesa was recklessly exploring ecosystems utterly incompatible, utterly lethal, to Earth's.
"Quite a few handsome specimens were collected from the border-world and brought back this way…uh…before the survey members started being collected themselves, that is. Anyway, 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. I hate to say this Gordon, but you must kill it."
"Yeah, you'd better kill it."
"Of course, you owe us nothing, Mr. Freeman. But you've come this far. You know as much about these creatures as anyone."
"Enough to know that if you don't wipe it out, there won't be much for you to come home to."
Gordon's eyes were bitter.
"There already isn't, friend."
In the present, on the train, Gordon's knuckles were white as they nearly tore out his hair. The other two passengers remained silent, though they gave him some odd looks. Freeman didn't notice.
No matter where…no matter what…I destroy everything…no matter my intentions, I destroy everything and everyone…I destroy…
Tears were welling up in fat globules and rolling down his cheek, staining his clothes. Freeman was miserable.
The scientists had teleported him to the other world, via a terrifying, crackling portal ripped out of the thin air. Gordon didn't say a word as he leapt into it. He said almost nothing to these people he didn't know, the people he was "saving"; no, he was running away from them, to a new quietude, a new planet, however hostile and horrible it was. He was going where he didn't have to talk to anyone, where there was no one he knew, no one to bother him, no one to be hurt by him. No one to care about. No one to die.
The Lambda science team said they had a plan to get him back. Gordon resented these lies. The military didn't surrender in these situations, they retreated and then bombed. Airstrikes were going to decimate the facility from the face of the Earth. And Gordon could see it in these scientists' faces: they knew they were going to die, they knew it, probably, far better than him. They were only sending Gordon over to protect the rest of the planet: when the bomb-smoke cleared, the portal would still be there unless Gordon succeeded. But either way, he was not coming back.
Good, he thought. As far as he could tell, Earth was a lot better off without him around.
Gordon leapt into the portal, and everything went neon green and then black and then green again…
And then he saw it.
Their world: spires that looked like dinosaur spines, on floating meteors of porous concrete lost in a disorienting globe of constellations robed in a nebula of orange and pink and green and deep, deep blue…Floating platforms made of coral and rock. Muscular plants that teleported him. Daggered arms of flesh trying to stab him. Scavenging weapons and supplies off the corpses of human explorers, their bodies littered around on the gnarled, levitating plateaus, or inside the bellies of hollow, fluid filled boulders. Their faces were unrecognizable, but their specialized hazard suits, the same kind Gordon wore, were very recognizable. Each one was a haunting premonition of what would happen to Freeman. Things like that require sanity as a toll.
And then began the baleful groans, distant as a dying echo, yet close as the whispers of a lover, sending chills up Freeman's spine, making him turn left and right to find it, but he soon realized that it was speaking directly to his mind:
"Freeman…"
It was the voice of the being that held the portal open by sheer alien will. And it whispered, over and over, nearly unintelligible:
"…their slaves we are their slaves…the last…I am the last…you are man…he is not man…for you he waits…for you…the truth…you can never know the truth…Win…you cannot win…"
The whispering being was a stone gray, half dissolved fetus, floating in a cavernous womb of rock.
"Freeman…I am the last…"
Its head opened like a flower to reveal a spherical core of glimmering energy and tissue, sensitive to conventional weaponry.
"For you…he waits…"
Indeed, when the being was dead, the G-man was waiting.
"Gordon Freeman, in the flesh. Or rather, in the hazard suit - I took the liberty of relieving you of your weapons. Most of them were government property. As for the suit…I think you've earned it.
"The border-world, Xen, is in our control, for the time being, thanks to you - quite a nasty piece of work you managed over there. I am impressed.
"That's why I'm here, Mr. Freeman. I have recommended your services to my, eh… employers…and they have authorized me to offer you a job. They agree with me that you have limitless potential.
"You've proved yourself a decisive man, so I don't expect you'll have any trouble deciding what to do…If you're interested, just step into the portal and I will take that as a yes…Otherwise…hmm…well…I can offer you a battle you have no chance of winning. Rather an anticlimax after what you've just survived.
"Time to choose."
There Freeman stood, with the dark-suited government man, on a brink of time and space. Another portal had opened up before him, with the G-man gesturing subtly towards it.
Freeman could see galaxies dancing in the portal; yes, he could see the stars, the beautiful, cold, lonely, unconcerned stars. Glowing out in the deepest fathoms of space; if you got too close to one, you got burned alive, but at a safe distance they provided light and warmth. A safe, unreachable distance…
The G-man stared expectantly.
"Do I get dental?" Gordon suddenly replied. And before the G-man could answer, Freeman had stepped through…
The sky disappeared beneath a high vaulted ceiling as the train entered its station. New shadows fell over the car; its internal lights flickered on, emphasizing Gordon's reflection in the window pane.
Subject: Gordon Freeman.
Male, Age 27.
Ph.D., MIT, Theoretical Physics.
Research Associate, Anomalous Materials Laboratory, Black Mesa Research Facility, New Mexico.
Status: Hired and deployed.
He grew up in Seattle, Washington. He had no dependents, no girlfriend; he was the only child of two highly capable parents, raised on the bleached Seattle coast.
He had a gaunt face, with short black-brown hair on his head in an even carpet and on his face in a stern Van Dyke beard. His eyes revealed nothing because they sought to reveal everything; as a result, his face was prematurely aged from his tendency to constantly scowl in concentration and focus. Almost as if to temper this off-putting severity, he wore thick rimmed prescription lenses, the frame wrapping around the back of his ear. But they were of no avail against his naturally threatening appearance. He stood a little more than six feet tall.
Gordon Freeman: scourge of the military, tamer of worlds, one man army. Now employed by the G-man. Now back on Earth, apparently, to perform a job, which would "become apparent as he moved forward naturally", and which required his newly discovered skill set as a superhuman war machine. Not that he thought of himself as a particularly good war machine: as far as Gordon was concerned, without his "hazardous environment suit" he bled as easily as anyone else. But the G-man was not an idiot, and this was the agreement. To be inserted into space-time, anywhere in the universe, and removed as needed. It would be clear to him on each occasion what he was expected to do.
The train finally squealed to a halt.
"Well," sighed the black man as he stepped off onto the platform. "End of the line."
The other man stood up and followed him out. But Gordon hesitated - he didn't know if he wanted to get off yet. The train seemed safe enough, and he still needed to think.
But then he heard a familiar voice echoing through the train station.
Out of curiosity, Gordon stepped onto the platform. Discarded cans and Chinese takeout boxes littered the tiled floor. The train station was unsettlingly empty. Perhaps only fifteen total passengers exited from various cars and slowly shambled past Gordon. And up above them, retrofitted into the wall, was a giant, rectangular monitor displaying the white bearded, harsh, strong, but trustworthy face of Gordon's old boss: Dr. Wallace Breen, Black Mesa administrator.
"Welcome," he said with comfortable charisma. "Welcome to City 17. You have chosen, or been chosen, to relocate to one of our finest remaining urban centers."
Gordon was transfixed and utterly bewildered by this. It was like being in a hyperreal dream. It did not help when he was temporarily blinded by an obnoxious flash of light. He stumbled back from it, almost colliding with a gloomy woman walking behind him. As his vision cleared, he saw a hovering drone, shaped like a mechanical eyeball a foot and a half wide. It was analyzing Gordon and taking photographs. There were several other drones, drifting like fat mosquitos around the other shambling citizens, who did their best to ignore them.
"I thought so much of City 17," continued Dr. Breen, "that I elected to establish my administration here, in the citadel so thoughtfully provided by our benefactors. I have been proud to call City 17 my home. So whether you are here to stay, or passing through on your way to parts unknown: welcome to City 17. It is safer here."
Everything was almost unbearably surreal for Gordon. For as far as his mind could be concerned, he had last seen Breen some forty-eight hours ago, passing by him in the hallways in Black Mesa: that energetic, ambitious, kindly fellow in his mid-thirties…Now he looked about fifty, with greying hair and wearied eyes, but that same comforting expression and twinkling eyes. His mind couldn't process it. He knew it was Breen, but it was like viewing Breen in a movie; Gordon could not ascertain any meaningful relationship with him anymore.
He was stirred from his rigorous reverie by a loud commotion to his left, and a heavily distorted, robotic voice saying:
"First warning: move away."
Gordon turned with ever renewed surprise towards the source. He saw the exit from the station was behind an iron bar fence passable by a turnstile door. Citizens were making their way, one at a time, through to the other side. But one of them, a shorter, balding man, was held up by a masked and armored guard that was confiscating his suitcase.
"Please," the citizen said. "It's all I have left -" But the guard shoved him roughly to the ground.
"Move it," the guard snarled. It was as tall as Freeman, and its full-body uniform sported what looked like several layers of Kevlar armor. Its voice sounded like it was passed through two consecutive walkie-talkies. This was made believable by its full-head helmet: bone-white and bug-like, with two insectoid eyes as visors, and a sinister gasmask for the mouth. Guns and equipment were strapped around its waist and back, and it held a menacing black rod in its hand, sparks occasionally flying from its tip.
The citizen stumbled back to his feet. "Alright, alright, I'm moving! Jeez…"
There were guards everywhere, now that Gordon looked. They stood in shadowed corners, or paced slowly on the fringes of a herd, like stealthy cattle drivers. They all hosted the same armor and the same equipment.
As Gordon pushed through the turnstile himself, he saw a woman clinging to the fence, calling out with restrained hysterics: "Were you the only ones on that train?" Gordon's relative generosity of attention encouraged her, and she turned to him, tears in her eyes: "Overwatch stopped our train in the woods and took my husband for questioning. They said he would be on the next train - I'm not sure when that was…They are being nice and letting me wait, though."
Gordon stared at her blankly. He did not know what to say. The woman was disconcerted at this tall, silent man, who stared through her like a train window. Too many options were flooding his mind: what to say, what to do, and he was running out of time, she was looking nervous. Ah, and so many unpleasant outcomes…but suddenly a thought occurred to him, that filled him with nearly euphoric elation. I'm not really here, he thought strangely. I'm leaving at any time. I don't have to care so much anymore. I don't have to destroy myself. I'm a star, a distant star...there can be a thousand years between myself and the people I warm…
Already, he was walking abruptly away from the poor woman. He felt a weight lifting at his realization. He was finally alone. He could, without attachment, without consequence, view the whole world as a scientist, as a detective, never involved more than he wanted to be, figuring things out, saving lives without loving them; yes, this was right. This was what he had always wanted to be…
The guards are the "Overwatch", he thought to himself, almost giddy with the joy of understanding and solving. They're alien; the masks are life support. They aren't Xen aliens, because those didn't need life support. So maybe they were in the same star system, and the ruckus caught their attention. So did killing the alien beast not solve anything? Did the portal remain open anyway? And did they conquer the Earth? Because people look so hopeless; they'd be making more of an effort to escape, but there's nowhere to escape to. Maybe a resistance movement, but…
Gordon almost walked into a table and the man sitting at it. The table looked like it had never been cleaned, and it was possible its single occupant never had either.
The occupant whispered to Gordon frantically: "Don't drink the water. They…they put something in it to make you forget." His eye twitched and he looked hurriedly around himself. "I don't even remember how I got here."
Freeman said nothing and walked away. He did not want to talk. He wanted to think. He needed to think and not do anything anymore for a while - but now he was standing before a glaring monitor of train departure and arrival times, with an arrival-security queue to his right.
A man was muttering to himself as he paced back and forth beneath the arrival-departure screens: "Always full but they never arrive…never departing but always full and they never arrive…"
Gordon Freeman sat down at a table in the corner and put his head in his hands, trying to block out the world just for a little bit. It would take some time for him to fully adjust to his secret ghostliness and truly not care anymore.
The Overwatch contracted out to the G-man, who opened the portal for them to come through, by giving us the crystal and pushing us to examine it in the Anti-Mass Spectrometer. The G-man and the administrator, Dr. Breen, pushed us to it. And now Dr. Breen is ruling this alien dystopia. So Dr. Breen was in on it. He and the Overwatch made a mutual deal with the G-man. But the G-man has his own agenda, because he let me get through to Xen to kill the being and let the portal close. Somehow the Overwatch got it open again and apparently took the Earth…but…the G-man has his own plans, and I'm his trump card…
"Dr. Breen, again?" said a nearby voice. "I was hoping I had seen the last of him in City 14."
"I wouldn't say that too loud," warned another voice. "This is his base of operations -"
"Move along!" shouted an Overwatch guard as it stepped into the room with three cohorts. "No loitering; you go through security to your assigned relocation route. Now move it."
The pacing man suddenly lost it.
"Where's my wife?! Where is my wife?!" he screamed at the guards before one jabbed him in the gut with an electrified rod and he collapsed in a shivering heap. A nearby woman screamed and people began hurrying to the chain-link security queue.
Dr. Hamish gunned down with a high powered machine gun - it happened in a flash before Gordon's eyes - a flashback. But then he was back in the train station, one hand gripping the table until his knuckles were bright red and white, the other reaching for a weapon that wasn't there. Kill them, he thought, his inner voice nearly drowned out by his unbearably furious heartbeat. No time for questions, you have to kill them or they'll kill you.
This was a kneejerk reaction. Gordon knew, rationally, that he needed to stand up and walk with the other civilians. But instinctively, emotionally…well, now he was left breathing too quickly, his heart threatening to crack his ribs: it took him rather longer than the others to get to his feet, and he could tell this did not go unnoticed by the Overwatch, even as they were busy dragging their stunned victim away.
In line, Gordon watched as one by one, the blue clothed citizens stepped from the front of the queue into an open space, were padded down by several Overwatch guards, photographed by a floating drone, and apparently analyzed by a wall-mounted camera on a robotic arm. Each citizen's scrub tag was scanned, and they were directed brusquely through one of two exits: forward or to the left.
As one man walked through the left exit, the chain-link gates before and behind him shut automatically, trapping him in the atrium. An obnoxious buzzer sounded, and another robotic camera, mounted to the fence, came alive and focused intently on the man's frightened face. Then, an Overwatch officer entered the atrium through a thick metal door in the wall. It motioned for the citizen to follow it inside. "You, citizen: come with me."
"What -? But, wait a minute, where are you -?"
"Get in here!" the officer repeated. Its radio voice peaked with the shriek of a microphone.
"But…me?"
"I said MOVE!"
In he went, and the door slammed shut. Next human, please.
Gordon was trying to control his breathing, and bring his heart-rate down. They may not know what to do with me, he thought. I don't know if the G-man forged documents for me or something. But they likely won't, and that means they'll fall back on standard procedure. They'll take me into the back room if there's a problem. They'll be doing things there and they'll need equipment for it. Distractions I can use…
It was Gordon's turn; he was called forward. Two Overwatch guards felt roughly around his whole body. They had no regard for privacy or sensitivity, making Freeman cringe a moment. Either they did not understand the details of human anatomy or, more likely, they did not care.
One swept a scanner over Gordon's scrub tag. It made a metallic beep.
"Move it," the guard said, gesturing towards the left exit with his baton.
Gordon stepped through into the atrium -
The doors slammed shut. The buzzer rang out. Flashes emitted around him as several pictures were taken by the robot cameras.
"Don't move," growled an officer on the other side of the cage.
Gordon stood more-or-less patiently. He willed that his eyes be cold and defensive, matching the insectoid stare of the officer's mask. His fingers twitched at his sides. His heart was drumming a deep bellied beat that almost interfered with his hearing.
"You, citizen, come with me."
Gordon turned and walked through the opened door after the officer.
He was now in a long ugly hallway, lined with metal doors and a harsh cement floor. Plaster walls with peeling paint and dried mold lacing the ceiling corners: it was almost toxically musty as a result, with stinging traces of salt and iron in the air. Each door had an eye slot, and one was open. Through it Gordon could hear a man's voice, the same man he saw taken earlier. "This must be a mistake," he was saying. "I submitted a standard relocation coupon just like everyone else…" But someone unseen shut the eye slot, cutting off the sound.
Meanwhile, Gordon's guard had knocked on a door further down the hall. It opened and the guard gestured roughly for Gordon to enter.
Inside was a large metal desk with several accordion binders and an electric lamp. There were two lonely filing cabinets settled against the walls, and to the far end, a wide, bulky computer system and control panel hosting black wires and blue, number-filled displays. And in the room's center, beneath a harsh incandescent light, was a red padded dental chair. Black grits and crimson blotches stained the tiled floor around it.
"Will you need help with this one?" said the guard who had opened the door.
"No, I'm good," replied the other. The door slammed, and Gordon was alone with just one guard.
Gordon saw the bucket at his best option.
"Back up," the guard snarled as he passed by Gordon to the computer setup.
I bet they can't breathe without those masks, Gordon thought.
The guard, with unbelievable negligence, was facing away from Gordon and working on the computer. "Yeah; I'm gonna need some privacy for this," it said, and several lights turned off on the computer: surveillance cameras. "Now," it continued, turning around and casually taking off the counterfeit Overwatch mask, "about that beer I owed ya -"
He could not finish the sentence, because he was smacked full in his exposed face with a tin bucket. And there was Gordon, leaping onto the desk with the small metal chair, ready to beat the Overwatch guard to a pulp -
When he saw the revealed face.
"It's me, Gordon!" shouted the fake Overwatch guard. "Barney, from Black Mesa! For the love of Mike, don't hit me with that thing!"
Gordon did not put the chair down, but stood stock still on the desk for a moment, trying to process this turn of events. It was Barney Calhoun.
Gordon Freeman collapsed into the red dental chair, trying to keep his breathing under control. Barney stood beside him, wiping a drool of blood from his bruised nose and looking incredibly concerned. "Jeez, Gordon: I'm sorry to scare you like that, but I had to put on a show for the cameras. I've been working undercover with Overwatch civil protection…the last time we talked I promised a beer - y'know, you were pretty uptight then - so I see not much has changed."
Gordon said "…just been a bit of a rough day."
Barney couldn't help but laugh at that. "It's been a bit of a rough sixteen years."
Barney, even without the mask, wasn't immediately recognizable to Gordon, having aged as much as Dr. Breen: sixteen years. Although still the same short, stocky build, he looked more tired and hardened than bouncy and energetic. Still the same dark brown wolfish hair, but it was finally beginning to thin, and shades of gray were emerging in his locks. And his face, handsome, if square, had grown far more leathery and beaten.
"So I guess you're not dead, then," Barney said, grinning again, quite uncontrollably, his voice laced with joking jollity. "'Cause I heard that you jumped into an alien portal to kill all the bad guys, and were never seen again. That's normally a 'ride off into the sunset' moment, isn't it? Bad form to return all of a sudden: that's Jesus' thing - makes you look pretentious."
"I…guess so," Gordon said, affording a false smile, while in his mind, over and over: He's not dead…My friend isn't dead…I though they all were…
Meanwhile, Barney knew Gordon well enough to accept his terse, if only preliminary, answer. For Gordon, a smile, especially a false one, was as good as a paragraph. "Alright, listen, you've got some major explaining to do, but I can't take too long right now or civil protection will get suspicious. I am way behind on my beating quota - I radioed Dr. Kleiner through the control unit while putting out the cameras. I know he'll want to see you. But then you're gonna need to high tail it out of here to his lab -"
A feed appeared on the control monitors: video of a sort of warehouse laboratory. A somewhat shrill but well-enunciating voice came from off screen. "Yes, Barney, what is it? It had better be good; I'm in the middle of a critical test."
Barney stood up before the monitor. "Yeah, yeah, sorry doc: but look who's here!"
An older, bony and mostly bald man in a dirty white lab coat and gray tie stepped in front of the feed, staring back at Gordon through thick black glasses. He watched the man's eyes widen and his mouth spread into an almost comical smile; Gordon knew the voice, face, and excited expression quite well, and he couldn't help but smile again himself.
"Great Scott! Dr. Gordon Freeman! Why, I expected more warning!"
"Yeah, you and me both, doc," Barney answered. "I caught this joker about to board the express train to Nova Prospekt!"
"Well good grief, Gordon, you will certainly have much to tell us…eh…good heavens - Gordon, are you alright?"
Gordon was in a cold sweat, and his hands were starting to shake. He could hardly sit up straight in the chair. They don't know…they don't know what I've become…I want to hug them…but I can't…I'll burn them…
" - um, Barney," Kleiner continued, greatly concerned, "what do you intend to do, exactly? He would be safest here at my lab -"
"I'm thinkin', I'm thinkin'," Barney said, biting his lip, glancing at a separate feed on the monitor.
"Alyx is around here…eh, somewhere," Kleiner suggested. "I'm sure she would have an idea of how to get him here safely. Or, at least get him here."
"Yeah, well, as long as he stays away from checkpoints, we should be okay…"
"You lost the HEV suit, though," Kleiner noted towards Gordon worriedly. "Are you injured at all…? Barney is he in any condition to travel…?"
Gordon abruptly stood up from the chair, sucking in a breath. "I'll be fine."
Barney interrupted. "Listen, I gotta go doc. I'm getting word from Erikson that the heads are surprise inspecting right now -"
"Oh; very well…But Gordon?" Kleiner smiled broadly. "Good to see you."
The feed switched off. Barney began hiding and erasing certain features from the monitors while talking. "Okay, Gordon: you're gonna have to make your way to Dr. Kleiner's lab yourself - it's just around the…well, it's pretty complicated, actually…"
There was a loud, strong knocking at the door, and Gordon could hear the muffled rasp of Overwatch voices from behind it.
"That's what I was afraid of…!" Barney snapped. He ran to one of his filing cabinets and shoved it out of the way. Behind it was a door, bolted shut with a large, black spiderlike device fixed to the wall. Too quick for Gordon to see, Barney unlocked it and pushed the door wide open, revealing a spacious storage closet. Gordon hurried inside.
"Alright, just pile some stuff until you can reach the window up there. And just head for the plaza outside the train station. You can't miss it. I'll try to meet up with you there to take you to Kleiner's -"
The door shut.
Gordon could still hear the Overwatch soldiers banging on the door - did they force their way in? I can hear their radios -
He didn't stay longer to check. He'd had his respite; he was in danger mode again. He shut out everything else before he went insane; so many emotions, so many whirling thoughts and things going wrong…but nothing mattered right now, nothing could matter right now, except the next objective. He could reevaluate when he got there, but right now…He scrambled up a ladder onto a second story shelf and heaved several wood boxes towards a high sitting window. No time to look for weapons. He couldn't carry one with him anyway.
He heard commotion from the other room. Heart pounding again, he threw open the window and climbed out. He was in a small yard enclosed by high stone walls. It was an eight foot drop to the ground. Gordon aimed for a crate.
CRASH.
He tumbled as best he could, but the bruises on his palms smarted. The crate was half rotten and had broken under his weight. He wondered if the Overwatch heard him. And then he stopped wondering, because he didn't have time to wonder. He flew open the only available door in the yard and found himself in a storage basement, lit by dim lights illuminating a metal staircase. It led up to a door that opened into an empty corridor, back inside the train station.
Just as Freeman pulled the basement door closed, an Overwatch guard rounded the corner at the end of the hallway, halting at the sight of Gordon.
The guard radioed something unintelligible.
Gordon eyed the corridor for tools: some cans, a plastic wrapper, but right next to the guard he noticed an overflowing trashcan, likely never changed in sixteen years - there had to be something in there he could use to -
The guard used the tip of its baton to knock a can out of the dumpster and onto the floor.
"Pick up that can," it said.
Gordon remained frozen as his brain loaded a response. He finally moved forwards, squatted down, picked up the can and put it back in the trash.
He heard a rhythmic measure emit from the guard. Gordon realized it was laughter. "Okay," it said, "you can go."
As Gordon passed him by he thought, Alright, maybe these guards aren't alien. Maybe they're all, or mostly, human volunteers. Thugs on a power trip?
He wandered through empty, spacious chambers. Somehow, it was hard for Gordon to associate them with their function as a train station because of how empty and unused it was. Occasionally a fellow citizen shuffled past him, sometimes a group or trickle, but no one talked, joked, or showed emotion. They could feel the insect visors staring at their necks, the batons occasionally sparking as a reminder. The biggest group of citizens that Gordon saw was a queue of ten people in the ticket lobby: they were receiving new sets of scrubs from an automated dispenser. On another screen looming above them was Dr. Breen's forthcoming face displayed in high definition.
"…to address the anxieties underlying your concerns," he was saying, "rather than try to answer every possible question you might have left unvoiced. First, let us consider the fact that for the first time ever, as a species, immortality is in our reach. This simple fact has far-reaching implications. It requires radical rethinking and revision of our genetic imperatives. It also requires planning and forethought that run in direct opposition to our neural presets…"
Gordon was filing Breen's words away; it registered as too much for him to ponder on now. Instead, he continued through the room, his eyes darting to keep track of the guards. They seemed uninterested in him, but Gordon was not comforted. Eventually, he saw a citizen walking towards a set of double doors and pushing them open. Gordon followed her outside into the plaza…
…and halted.
A monolith rose from behind the cityscape, erected into the clouds, like a titan's sword piercing the sky to bring down a flood. It was a gray and cobalt shaft, mechanical and threatening as the barrel of a military shotgun. It was a metal mountain impaled into the city's center, hazy in the distance, the morning sun gleaming to its right. It had a hundred black cables, barely visible silhouettes, curling down from the tower's base like squid tentacles into the city below.
"…I find it helpful at times like these to remind myself that our true enemy is Instinct…" Breen continued from another screen: this one was mounted to an old city monument, an Egyptian-style monolith, in the center of the spacious plaza. Thick telephone cables ran from the screen to the surrounding buildings, mimicking the tentacles of the tower behind it.
"…Instinct was our mother when we were an infant species. Instinct coddled us and kept us safe in those hardscrabble years when we hardened our sticks and cooked our first meals above a meager fire and started at the shadows that leapt upon the cavern's walls…"
The plaza had once been a roundabout in the city streets, but all was restricted and blocked off by harsh cobalt gates jammed between the hollow shells of shops and apartments. The gates' openings were protected by a watery blue energy field, through which citizens, silent and downturned, would enter and exit, making the scene like a chamber in an unusually empty ant farm.
"…But inseparable from Instinct is its dark twin, Superstition. Instinct is inextricably bound to unreasoning impulses, and today we clearly see its true nature…"
Gordon slowly walked forwards. His mind had been swallowed by the tower - all else seemed meager detail. He could not understand how something so big and yet so artificial could withstand its own weight. He had not seen anything so tremendous even on Xen…nothing so purely imposing…
"…Instinct has just become aware of its irrelevance, and like a cornered beast, it will not go down without a bloody fight…"
Gordon heard, from across the plaza, a guard's radio gargle. It broke the spell of the edifice on Gordon, jerking him back into the danger zone. What was he doing? That's right, he was looking for Barney. Or waiting for Barney. He didn't have a plan, though - he wasn't expecting me. Barney is not reliable right now - he's trying to salvage his cover. I can't wait too long; everyone's moving and military governments do not like loitering.
The Overwatch patrolling the edges of the plaza were all beginning to look in Freeman's general direction.
Not good. Very bad.
Freeman began walking at a casual pace to his right, the only path he could see without an energy gate. It was a wide alley where the wind sweeps all the discarded papers and cardboard boxes of the city. There were only two other citizens passing through this way, both a good distance ahead of him.
Freeman suddenly noticed it was rather chilly in the shade of the buildings. There was only a slight breeze, but the morning wind gave him goosebumps under his thin scrubs. He rubbed his arms for some warmth.
As he did so, he passed by an apartment that Overwatch were apparently searching - one guard stood watch at the door, inscrutable behind its gas mask. Gordon glimpsed other soldiers behind it in the apartment lobby, but they weren't tossing the place…no, they were rounding people up…there were several people in scrubs, facing the far wall of the lobby with their hands on their heads…
The guard's head turned to follow Gordon as he passed by. Kill him, Freeman thought. Kill all the guards. Save those people. His mind's eye saw a gunshot hitting marine Kevlar. He saw machine gun fire tear a marine's face apart. One of the security guards was hysterical because his friend was eaten by…
He shook it off as best he could. He had no HEV suit. He bled easily.
Around the corner, at the end of the street, there was another security gate, with a black light-weight tank parked in front of it, and two guards watching the civilians pass through. Behind the gate, a two-story tall, three legged alien behemoth tramped by - a Daddy-Long Leg in a green and blue exoskeleton. It had a mini-gun for a proboscis, and its footfalls rattled the nearby window glass.
Alright. Alien pack animals. Alright.
The guards turned and looked towards Freeman, who turned, casually as he could, into a narrow alley. There in the crack between buildings there was some pathetic ivy and untrimmed grass making a go of it. Gordon passed through quickly to the next street, To his left, he could see the giant armored bug lumbering further into the city. There was also another security gate and armored tank; a citizen was up against the wall, his body shaking - another was on the ground -
One guard turned and looked towards Freeman who promptly walked the other way down the street. As he did, he realized a floating camera drone was following him, occasionally flashing pictures of the back of his head.
The narrow street ended in a small, enclosed block of apartment buildings. The cement sidewalk was strewn with autumn leaves, and the city trees were morbidly bare. Wild grasses sprung up sparingly in the confined yards, amongst the rusted metal and decrepit plastic of an abandoned playground. Two citizens stood on their apartment's porch, looking down the street at a pair of Overwatch officers guarding another raid on a residence. One of the citizens was saying, "This is how it always starts: first the building, then the whole block."
The other: "But, they have no reason to come to our place."
"Don't worry, they'll find one."
They both turned towards the approaching Gordon. They both shook their heads at him in dismissal, and one thumbed down the street to the left of the Overwatch, at an open apartment building door. Gordon wasn't sure what they thought he wanted, and considered asking, but he realized they would have already spoken if they were comfortable with it. There was a drone following him, after all.
The drone flashed another picture of Gordon's back, so he began a brisk walk down the sidewalk, straight towards the door, and thus straight near the guards. If he turned around and went the other way they'd be suspicious. So now he was a citizen. A regular citizen. He was just returning to his innocent residence, nothing new.
He passed a swing set, monkey bars, a play merry-go-round, a slide…How stark, seeing it so empty. Kids can't play outside anymore…
The drone did not follow him into the open apartment building. The hallway walls were cheap, old, thin, and painted salmon. They were attacked by slews of rotting posters rendered indecipherable by time. Soon he found himself in a tiny atrium furnished with a cardboard box, a set of double doors, a wood staircase in a square spiral upwards, and an elevator bolted with a spider-lock. None of it was terribly important to Freeman. It was all just detail.
He thought he heard sounds of distress. He went up the stairs.
On the second floor, halfway down the hallway, a small team of Overwatch soldiers were knocking roughly on a door. A civilian was poking her head out from another room to watch. Suddenly, one of the guards kicked the door open and the team flooded in. There were sounds of screaming and violence. And one guard remained outside, standing in the hallway, staring Freeman and the other citizen down. Then slowly, it followed its comrades in, while the curious woman ducked back into her apartment like a mouse to its hole.
Freeman thought about continuing up the stairs, but saw another guard on the floor above him and thought better of it. Instead, he sought refuge with the woman in her apartment; she had left her door unlocked, and Gordon simply walked in, to no one's apparent objection. The apartment had four rooms: a kitchen, a living room, a bedroom, and a bathroom. He counted over fourteen people inside. Three women, all over thirty, were bundled together in sleeping bags on the kitchen floor. Two forty-year old men sat at a wooden dining table. A young man, possibly twenty, was squatting against the wall. A fifty-year old woman was washing scrubs in a clotted sink. Another five citizens were in the living room: a young man and woman stood by the windows - the same woman looking outside earlier - and three men were lounging on the couch, two elderly, and one probably a little over seventeen. They were watching a makeshift television set, currently broadcasting Dr. Breen's white-bearded face and charismatic voice. Gordon could glimpse two more citizens in the bedroom: a thirty-year old man comforting a sobbing woman of similar age.
No children.
The only greeting he received was: "Oh! I thought you were a cop." Otherwise, no one was speaking. They all could easily hear muffled shouts from the neighboring apartment. The tension in the rooms was strung as tight as a tripwire.
"…thank our benefactors," Breen was saying from the television, "for giving us respite from this overpowering force. They have thrown a switch and exorcised our demons in a single stroke. They have given us the strength we never could have summoned to overcome this compulsion. They have given us purpose. They have turned our eyes toward the stars…"
Gordon blinked at this. No children.
One of the citizens by the window was saying: "Look at them down there."
"You see? I told you they'd be coming for us next-!"
"Just this once, I hope you're wrong."
"Let me assure you," Breen continued, "that the suppressing field will be shut off on the day that we have mastered ourselves - the day we can prove we no longer need it. And that day of transformation, I have it on good authority, is close at hand."
Gordon's eyebrows scrunched together and his eyes shut. No children anywhere. A couple crying in the bedroom. No one younger than sixteen. Suppression field…
From the window, he saw a tank-car had pulled up onto the curb below. Overwatch were approaching the building's doors. The man and woman both swore and shut the blinds.
"Special news bulletin," said a female voice from the television. "Special news bulletin: man wanted by civil protection for the murder of three innocent citizens. He is very dangerous - privilege increases are offered for his live capture. He was last seen in the borough of North 5th and Second South. Please report any information to -"
Gordon left the room before anyone could look twice at him. It was his own face posted on the television: his eyes screwed tight against the flash of a photo-drone.
He was met in the hallway by one of the guards from the raided apartment. Freeman, as casually as he could, turned around and started up the staircase again. The staircase guard had left; the only one in sight was behind Freeman, following him at a distance.
From outside, a bass siren began blaring at regular intervals.
"Hey you!" called a human voice. "Hey, in here!" Gordon was at the third floor and a fellow citizen was waving him over to his apartment. Gordon quickly followed, hearing the guard's footfalls on the stairs below -
"Civil protection is after you, friend. Saw you on the news. Head for the roof - there are pathways that can link you with the underground railroad -"
The chatter of Overwatch radios grew terrifyingly close, so the man shut the door and used a makeshift bolt to lock it. "Run as fast, but as quietly, as you can. There's a friend up ahead who can help you out, a young woman with a red streak in her hair. Follow the wooden ramps to the next building over -"
Something nearly broke the door down behind them. The man cursed under his breath and said: "Run! Get yourself out of this city, friend -"
The door splintered in the center. Blue lightning flared for a few seconds. There was a hole in the door now - Freeman was seeing red and green lightning…he was in the barrel chamber, his hand wrapped around something, he assumed a crowbar, he was going to slam it into the head of a monster - defend Clara Erikson from attack -
"RUN! DON'T HELP ME - RUN!"
Freeman suddenly realized he had grabbed a large slice of wood and was brandishing it like a knife. The Overwatch were almost through the door.
"RUN!"
Freeman ran. There were other citizens in the apartment - they had weapons and a few even had guns. No…they aren't going to die just for one guy…one guy they don't know…?
There was violence and screaming behind him. Gunfire.
There was another door. He burst through and was in a hallway. He saw no Overwatch to the right or left, but someone was standing beside him with a baseball bat. "Nous avons déjà choisi, ami," the man said. "Vive la résistance, eh?" He finished with a sardonic laugh, and gestured roughly down the right hallway.
Gordon was running again. Running for a staircase - but Overwatch were marching up from the lower floors and Gordon saw the bright sparks of their batons. He flew up the steps, nearly stumbling over his feet, as their garbled voices snarled behind him. On the next floor he saw another door open and another citizen gesturing sharply - "Get in here, quick!" - and Freeman was rushing through another room, up more stairs, with the Overwatch and their destruction in his wake…He burst up through a trapdoor and found himself in a moldering but spacious attic. He saw windows further ahead, one already open, leading outside onto the rooftops. He rushed across the creaking wood floor and dove through the opening, managing to tumble across the brittle rooftop, scraping up his arms and palms. And now he was on a giant's staircase: rooftops of varying heights, crammed together, with thick wood boards serving as ramps between them. As Gordon ran, he heard the chatter of Overwatch behind him in the attic.
There was a gunshot. Gordon thought he heard a loud insect whizz past his ear. In surprise, he slid behind a brick chimney, taking cover. He breathed deep. Another bullet clipped the chimney's edge, shattering its aged mortar and leaving a small dust cloud in the air…the sky was still overcast. There were patches of blue. The wind was cold on the rooftops and the menacing tower brooded over the city…Focus, Freeman. Focus…The next board was twenty feet away, straight through the soldiers' line of sight. But to his left, within ten feet, and with more chimneys in the way, was a cement ledge wrapping around the side of an apartment. It was thick enough to walk on, and it would put a building between him and the Overwatch.
He bolted for it.
A bullet flew past, just as he swung around the corner.
Now he was clinging to the wall, shuffling as fast as he could along the ledge to a neighboring building. He was at least thirty feet up. The ground, far below, rocked precariously with vertigo.
Gordon saw a soldier exit from a building just below him. Its back was turned to Gordon as it listened to its internal radio.
Gordon shuffled even faster. There was an open window, only ten feet away from him now.
The guard turned, stared at Gordon.
It drew a pistol.
Gordon was three feet away from the window.
It was aiming.
He was scrambling over the window's sill…
Three shots echoed through the street.
Gordon was through the window. He collapsed into an empty attic room. His left leg felt like it had been rapped with a baseball bat in two places. Dull aching…and his head was dizzy…
"No sweat," Barney was saying in his memory, "You're a doctor, not a soldier. It won't really start hurting until about a minute after, as the adrenaline wears off. So get something wrapped around to apply pressure. Your shirt will do fine...though that's all just assuming you aren't in that super hazard suit getup. Bullets don't get through that thing easy…"
Freeman saw his left leg was hit in two places. The scrub pants were spattered with blood, and the wounds looked like worm holes in a crab apple. He instinctively clutched at the surrounding skin to sooth his ringing muscles, but drew back when his warm blood began flowing -
I miss that suit. I really miss that suit.
Gordon was ripping his scrub shirt off and wrapping it around the wounds to stop the blood. His dark red fingerprints stained his white undershirt, while a sharp, intolerable pain began to spread through his leg, into his groin and stomach.
The siren continued to ring up and down the street, now joined by an artificial female voice sounding from a loudspeaker: "Attention residents: miscount detected in your block -"
Gordon was on his feet, gripping a neglected work table for support. He limped his way towards a down staircase, glancing over dusty supplies for a gun, a wrench, a crowbar…
"- Cooperation with your civil protection unit will result in high privileges and reward -"
Nothing worth using. Not in his condition. So he made for the staircase, trying his best to lower himself down them slowly - the wood moaned under his foot falls.
"- Failure to cooperate will result in permanent off-world relocation."
The wood stairs snapped under his weight. He fell six feet down to the next floor on a pile of shattered splinters. Through the walls, he could hear the garble of several Overwatch soldiers…he seized a sharp piece of wood and tried to brace himself against the wall, limping pathetically into a neighboring hallway.
Doors on either side of him broke open. There were the squid masks, white as bone -
Freeman stabbed one of the officers in the neck, just under the helmet. The last he saw was blood spray-painting his hand -
- before a rod pressed Gordon in the small of his back -
- his muscles lost control -
- and everything ached -