Author's Notes:
Like I said, I am determined to finish this thing. It just might take me a while.
I greatly appreciate the comments I've already received; I'm really glad people have been enjoying this version of the story.
Out of all the chapters, this is probably the most different from the game. There is a a LOT of good, suspenseful material in the game, a lot of great set pieces, but insofar as I am trying to make this more of a character piece on Gordon, and SuperChocolateBear has already provided wonderful versions of those game action scenes, I've felt it was necessary to cut quite a bit of them, and do a fair amount of changes in order to tell the story that I want to tell. I hope you enjoy this finished piece, or at least find it thought-provoking!
Please let me know what you honestly think in the comments! And once again, thank you all for reading!
3
Route Kanal
It was a cold morning, and the air was starting to bite Gordon's exposed face as he moved through the train yard. It was a maze of rusted sheet metal and stained iron, paved with weed-infested gravel. The early sun was still low in the east, painting one side of the train cars in stark yellow and the other in hard shadows.
Gordon's mind was abuzz:
Breen knows I'm here, somewhere.
So he didn't know before.
Which means he's not in direct contact with the civil protection; he doesn't normally know who they are hunting in the city at any particular time.
Which means there might be miscommunication between them; they might not put together that my "specs" - whatever those are - are linked to Gordon Freeman.
So maybe Breen will tell them to redirect efforts to finding Gordon Freeman, not knowing they have his specs already - my specs. Specs that can identify me through fifty feet of concrete…
Because if they figure that out, then I do not see how I can make it through this city. I can't use the underground railroad if that's the case: I would put everyone else in danger.
But I have no other way out…
He found car 76 at the furthest end of the yard. There was the lambda symbol, spray painted in ugly yellow-orange; it was overlapped by graffiti of a machine gun on the left, and on the right, the black outline of an Overwatch guard clutching a crying infant.
After a moment of searching, Gordon found a door in the brick wall just opposite the car. It was metal, with a faded sign saying "Keep Out". The lock was broken; it swung inward like a saloon door. Before him was a steep staircase descending into an unlit tunnel, dark as a throat.
After a few moments of fiddling, he found that the H.E.V. suit was equipped with a flashlight on the chest panel. He began his way down.
The staircase led him to a service tunnel made of damp brick. It quickly became a monotonous rat maze: the walls were marked by nothing more interesting than broken circuit breakers, burnt out light bulbs and occasionally, a surreptitious arrow painted in the corner of a wall, guiding the way through.
Suddenly, Gordon realized that there was a faint glow other than his own flashlight. He shut his off to check; sure enough, there was another light stirring from somewhere deep in the maze, creeping around the corners. Gordon made his way towards it; each bend in the hallways brought him another shade from shadow into light -
There was a scream, and a despairing cry, "Help me!"
Gordon halted.
"Stop! We didn't do anything!"
Overwatch radios.
Gordon rounded a corner. And there was the source of the light: a single working bulb hung from the ceiling in a long corridor. At the end was a metal stairwell. And in the middle were two civilians: a man and a woman, cowering from two Civil Protection agents. Gordon arrived in time to see one of the guards crack their baton across the man's head, leaving him bleeding and unconscious on the ground. The woman was horrified, blocking her face for fear of another blow.
The agents looked at Freeman.
"You! Stay where you are!" one snarled, striding towards Gordon, baton in hand.
"Who is that?" the other guard asked.
"It's one of those idiots dressed up like the 'Free Man' -"
The guard clicked their baton and roughly jabbed it into Freeman's chest plate. The suit absorbed the shock like a taut iron cord being flicked by a six year old.
Gordon saw, in a sudden flash, Ms. Rosewater and her fiancé from accounting - they were gunned down by a startled marine.
He felt a terrible surge of neck-straining adrenaline.
Kill them before they can kill you.
He seized the sparking end of the baton with his free hand and yanked the guard towards himself. He reached down, stole the pistol from their holster as they violently shoved him away.
Gordon immediately swung his crowbar like a baseball bat. The two-pronged end caught on the eye socket of the guard's facemask, wrenching the whole helmet sixty degrees clockwise around their face. Something inside the helmet cracked and the guard screamed. Gordon swung again, and let the weight of the iron bar come down like an ax on the back of the guard's head, knocking them to the ground.
The second guard had drawn their pistol and was aiming.
Gordon aimed his stolen gun -
- he felt the trigger on his forefinger -
Both of them fired at the same time.
Two bullets smacked into Gordon's suit, ricocheting off with sharp rings. The suit's inner charge absorbed the shock.
Gordon missed once, then grazed the guard's shoulder, then hit them right in the eye lens, shattering it.
They screamed. They dropped their gun. They were compulsively reaching up to their smashed eye.
Gordon fired twice more, splitting through the guard's hand and cracking their helmet. They flailed and collapsed in a seizure. Then Gordon aimed at the first guard and put three bullets through their eye sockets. Some blood flecked up onto Gordon's armored calves.
The first guard lay still now, quietly dying. The second kept twitching for another thirty seconds before settling into rigor mortis.
Gordon began to understand what he had just done.
He knew he didn't have time for these old moral dilemmas, no matter how bitterly they welled up in his mouth. But he could not stop his arm from shaking. His fingers grew lax for a moment; the muscles quaked like a tree branch in a howling wind. and he almost dropped both of his weapons.
In order to ignore it, he set to work searching the bodies for ammo clips.
"Are you…the Free Man?"
Gordon looked up at the woman. Her eyes were wide and her whole body was shaking. She was trying to help patch up the man.
Gordon, almost imperceptibly, nodded.
She spoke again: "Th-thi-this is…it w-was a st-station on the underground railr-r-r-oad-d-d…" she managed, "But…Overwatch found…they f-fo-f-found us out-t…they're hitting all the s-stations…we lost contact with them…t-they're gonna…they g-g-gonna…"
There was a horrible metallic shriek. The woman gave a yelp and jumped. Gordon jumped as well, but quickly realized it was just the guard's interior radios. A monotonous female voice called out through them: "Units 543 and 545, report status. Reinforcements needed at enemy station 03…"
Freeman went back to work. He found an extra clip and traded it into the pistol. He tossed the empty aside and moved to the other body. Another two clips in its belt. He removed the whole thing and strapped it around his chest, hooking extra ammo to it. Like Rambo, he thought, with black humor.
"P-please…help…" the woman said.
Gordon looked up at her again. It was very difficult for him to concentrate on so many things at once. Trying to communicate with another human being, much less show compassion, was rather inimical to the cold-blooded murder and looting he felt he had to commit.
I didn't even try to talk to them…
I didn't even see…
Are they both men? Is one of them a woman?
What's under those masks?
What if one was Barney?
Or a young kid?
Who was that one marine I killed back at Black Mesa? I shot him in the face with his own gun. I don't even know how I did it. I think he was bleeding out anyway and I got lucky.
And those two men I blew up with the explosion gel and that makeshift laser tripwire. It was almost fun to make that thing. It was a puzzle I solved. And it felt so satisfying when it worked. Except that meant there would be those men's body parts…scattered all over the place…but I had to do it because if I didn't they would have killed Dr. Rosenthal…
"Free Man…?"
He refocused and shook his head violently. "Do you know how to jam the drones?" He asked.
"Wh-what-?"
"The drones. They can see through fifty feet of concrete, can't they?"
"What -? Uh…only if they h-have specs on you…I…I'm very confused…"
"There is a possibility they have specs on me. Is there any way to negate that?"
"I…the next station of the railroad," she managed, "…go over the tracks and into the canal, and go down a mile…you'll see arrows and symbols if you look…but down there is a train car, big and red and there are people who can help you with the drones in there…"
Freeman nodded.
"I'm very…please," she continued, starting to shake all over. "I love h-him…J-J-Jeff-Jeffrey…I don't k-know if h-h-he's dead…we were gonna…"
She began sobbing over the body.
Gordon just stared for a few moments, trying to process it.
"Do you have medical supplies anywhere?" he said.
"B-back at…the station we…over the hall…yes, yes we do…but he might be…I can't…"
Gordon seized the second guard's gun, checked its clip, set the safety on, and tried to hand it to her. She was confused, so he firmly gripped her wrist and forced it into her palm. "Have you fired a gun, before?"
"N-no…I'm just a…technician…"
"I was just a scientist. Look at me now. You know my story? The Vortigaunts told you?"
She nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks.
"Then here's your story. You're going to carry Jeffrey, single-handed, out of this place. Find him medical supplies, patch him up along the way. What's your name?"
"Miranda…"
"Miranda, you're going to live, and so is Jeffrey, and when you see that citadel go up in fire and brimstone, then you and Jeffrey are gonna get married and bang each other like Mount Saint Helens and have seventeen children or whatever. You follow me?"
"Uh…I…I don't know about…he may not…and that's a lot of kids…"
"Nah, it'll be seventeen. Mark my words."
She wiped her face. For some reason, she was laughing as well as crying because it was just so very darned silly of a man like Gordon Freeman to say. "Thank you…thank you for saving us…" she managed, "I don't think I really believe you're here…"
"I don't know if I can either," Freeman replied.
"Ha." She smiled. "The guards…they'll be looking for you now…"
"I can handle them," Freeman responded. "Get going."
He was running up the metal staircase. Near the top, a guard emerged through another service door.
"Cody? 543? What's your status-?"
BANG, BANG.
They yelped through their mask, and rolled heavily down the steps.
BANG.
The third bullet split the helmet; they went still. Gordon took their clip and kept running. The radio broke into a shriek behind him as the Overwatch called out for its lost.
Gordon arrived on the sun-bathed surface. The morning sun was peering out from behind the iron citadel. Its light was burning up the clouds and inflaming the edges of buildings with a brilliant glow. As Gordon stepped up into the sunlight, he scattered a small flock of mourning doves that were pecking at lost newspapers and trash.
He was standing on a sort of train service platform; it was separated from the actual railroad by a barbed-wire fence. There were some gnarled, leafless trees curling up from urban soil plots to his far left. To his right there were several large, bright orange, metal barrels lying about.
Urbanity rose up all around. Buildings, buildings, buildings. Gordon retained some of the claustrophobia he had in the tunnels.
He thought: Civil protection is raiding the underground railroad.
How did Barney not know? Isn't he undercover?
Did they find him out? I don't know how civil protection works…
He found a door in the fence and stepped through onto a rusted scaffold. It had a ladder down into a ten foot deep, fifteen foot wide trench. Its bottom hosted a pair of steel tracks: they extended at least a mile in either direction before turning out of sight. Across the way was another scaffold, about ten feet down to Gordon's right. It had a ladder as well, and also led beyond the fence: to a line of half demolished one-story buildings.
On the wall of the closest one was a faded lambda symbol.
Gordon scrambled down into the trench and across to the other ladder. He began climbing up -
There was a metallic snap, a clang, and the bottom half of the scaffold broke loose, clattering noisily to the ground. The sound echoed dully town the trench.
Gordon looked up at the remaining scaffolding. It was a good six feet above his head.
He ground his teeth.
He heard, somewhere in the near distance, the heavy thumping of a passing helicopter. It was joined by a deep, rolling ambulance siren from further away. Then the kettle-whistle roars of a train…the relentless chugging of its wheels…
Gordon looked to his left, down the railroad track. A train was cruising towards him at twenty miles an hour.
He hustled back up the first scaffold. As he climbed back up, he noticed two drones passing overhead, silhouetted against the rising sun. They looked like blood swollen gnats drifting in a sunbeam.
How do those things work? Can they see me? Do they have wide camera lenses?
The train whistled again and Freeman compulsively stopped his ears. The lumbering machine was making a steady racket on the tracks. Gordon could barely think.
One of the drones was descending. It was going to do a closer sweep of the area.
The train was starting to pass him by.
Car after car after ugly car…
Freeman decided.
He leaped from the scaffold and landed heavily on the train's roof, then immediately leaped off again, crashing onto the other scaffold, nearly sliding off of it at a newly gained twenty miles an hour.
The scaffold shook violently but did not break. Gordon hoisted himself onto the stable concrete of the other side. After a few deep breaths, he began moving again.
He ran into the lambda-marked house. There: an arrow was carved into some wood next to a door across from him. He approached it, and found himself staring down into another trench, running parallel to the first. He couldn't tell how deep it was, because ten feet down it was filled with brackish water and slime, with floating plastic and cardboard and fly-filled tires. It did not smell, however: it was not sewage, but an abandoned canal.
Through the old canals…
The train exhumed another whistling roar that filled the air like thunder.
Gordon tossed the crowbar into the drink ahead of himself, holstered the pistol on the strap near his hip, and lowered himself down the edge into the trench. With his body fully extended, he let go. He splashed into the canal like a boulder, though it was only three feet of water and two feet of mud. He found the crowbar with his foot, and managed to pass it up to his hand without getting his glasses soaked. His feet had sunk a good foot into the bottom slop, leaving him up to his chest in water.
Disconcerted but determined, he began making his way down the canal, striding against the water and sludge.
The water fluctuated in depth, but never engulfed his neck or head. Regardless, it was exhausting to move in both the suit and the water. Gordon had to pause many times, leaning against the trench walls to catch his breath. But after a mile, he was finally rewarded: the waters grew shallow and turned into a slimy trash-heap beach, where an old, rusty red train car sat enthroned as lord of the junkyard.
Gordon heaved himself across the beach and began examining the car. He found a ladder leading to its roof. On the roof, an unlocked hatch: he opened it and slipped inside.
It was a cramped safe station: a map on the wall, a dirty carpet, a desk with a television, a machine gun and a pistol and several makeshift boxes of advanced technology to boot. There were two figures tending to those boxes. One was a man with a brown-blonde goatee and short brown hair. He wore civilian scrubs underneath a stained leather jacket.
The other figure was a Vortigaunt.
Naked, hideous, sending compulsory chills up Freeman's spine. It smelled like formaldehyde.
The brown-haired man jumped, startled at Gordon's entrance, but the Vortigaunt offered no discernible reaction.
The three of them stood awkwardly for a moment. The man was grasping for something to say, Freeman was waiting for him to say it, and the Vorigaunt, as far as Freeman could tell, was contemplating the carpet's pattern.
Finally: "Guess those sirens are for you, huh?" the man said.
Freeman simply nodded in response.
"Good thing you found us," he continued. His accent had hints of German. "You're not the first to come through by a -"
"This is the Free Man," declared the Vortigaunt suddenly. "The Combine's reckoning has come."
Its voice croaked and growled like a smoker speaking through a phlegm-clogged nose. The sound came from a flap at the bottom of its marble-eyed head, but the flap did not move in time with the words: it simply waved like a cuttlefish's fins. In front of the flap, Gordon could see four translucent fangs retracting like stalactites. Gordon could also see his reflection in the alien's bloated, red eyes. He remembered how they ruptured like ripe grapes when you smashed them; the outer membrane imploded and green slime burst out.
The citizen, oddly, did not look overly surprised at the Vortigaunt's revelation. He only looked apprehensive. "Well then," he said, almost sadly. "The Free Man, yes? Gordon Freeman?" He stared at Gordon's H.E.V. suit, as though he wanted to reach out and touch it, to feel if it was real.
Gordon was distracted. He was looking at the television screen in the corner.
The G-man's face was on it. He was looking straight towards Freeman.
Then it flickered, and he was gone.
The rebel citizen was still talking, rather feverishly now. "Commander Calhoun sent a bulletin out to the whole railroad just a half hour ago; he said a V.I.P. was making his way through, someone critical to the resistance…but y'know, I didn't think…I always thought those stories about the Free Man were…those guys who told them were nuts, crazy…I thought you were crazy Neb…"
"This one knows you thought as much," replied the Vortigaunt, gesturing vaguely towards itself.
The man laughed. It sounded strange and sad to Freeman, and it made him nervous.
"Look," continued the man, "we're just a lookout for the main station right around the corner. Head there as fast as you can and they should put you on the right foot…at least, their radio will let 'em know where to dispatch you…and y'know, just keep following the arrows…"
"The drones have my specs," Gordon said. "What can you do about that?"
The man was somewhat taken aback. "I…uh…well, crap. Neb, you got anything? He is wearing metal of some kind…"
The Vortigaunt answered: "This one is able." It stepped closer to Freeman, green sparks dancing across its long fingertips -
Gordon drew his pistol. It was a miracle he did not unload half of its ammo into the Vortigaunt's front eye.
The Vortigaunt halted, but gave no other indication of surprise or fear.
The citizen, however, was terrified. "Whoa! Whoa, whoa, there! Put the gun down! Put it down now!"
Gordon's heart was pounding so fast it was painful.
He put the gun down. But he did not take his eyes off the alien.
"You asked for help, man!" the rebel citizen stressed.
Gordon watched his warped reflections in the alien's eyes.
"He's just gonna give you a jolt," the citizen explained, exasperated. "It won't even sting. Neb, you're gonna…give him one of those charge fields…?"
"No," the Vortigaunt replied. "The Free Man has one already. The suit artifices its own charge, through electric blood. But this one can make that blood to dance differently."
"That sounds like it would hurt, Neb."
"It will not."
Gordon twitched.
The Vortigaunt raised its hands again. Strange electricity appeared over its head. Then it brought the hands down and pointed its palms at Freeman. The lightning formed into static-charged balls that flowed into the hazard suit's chest plate. Gordon felt the suit grow a bit warmer around his skin, but that was all.
The Vortigaunt lowered its hands, and the electricity dissipated. "That is all these can spare. The drones shall not see you through walls, but open air remains dangerous."
"There you go," the citizen agreed. He seemed anxious for Gordon to leave. He unlocked and opened a sliding door on the side of the car, and peered out to the right and the left. "You have no idea…no idea…the stories they tell about you," he said. Then he looked Gordon straight in the eye. "They'd better be true."
Freeman was irritated at that, and stared him right back, almost with menace. "I never made you a promise," he said.
The man smiled sadly. "Fair enough."
Gordon continued. "I was told that all of your stations were under attack."
The citizen hesitated. "False alarm," he said quickly. "Got cleared up ten minutes ago. Only a couple of stations were hit -"
"We serve the same mystery," the Vortigaunt interjected.
"Neb, I told you not to interrupt me."
"It does not matter any longer."
Gordon stared at them both.
It wasn't a false alarm. They both know the railroad is being raided. They're letting themselves get captured to give me more time to escape. They're going to try to occupy as many soldiers as possible…
"Hit the road, Jack!" the man barked. It was unexpectedly commanding.
He knows I know.
What had the French man said before? Back in the apartment building?
Nous avons déjà choisi, ami. That was French. It had to be French…We've already chosen, friend.
Gordon hopped from the train car and continued on his way, angry and bitter.
Gordon wondered why there was so much trash in the canal. It wasn't ordinary trash: it was industrial grade, as though entire buildings had been slain like dragons, and their innards shoveled into the city's wet cracks. It was sharp and therefore dangerous, especially because everything was made slippery from the slimy waters that were still trying to trickle through the canal. Water got caught in secret pools, or trapped in spongey mattresses and mud that sucked at his boots. Fortunately, there were paths carved through the junk. Sometimes there were even tunnels of copper wire and broken concrete. If he looked hard enough, he would find the graffiti arrows and the lambda symbol, showing the way.
The sun was more-or-less in the height of the sky now. It would have been hot if the air and the gross waters of the canal were not so cold. He looked up, and saw the sky was mostly free of clouds. Apartment buildings, brown and beige and brick-red, rose up like gigantic dominos on either side of the canal. As he looked, he wondered when the man and the Vortigaunt would be captured or killed. He thought he heard gunshots at one point, but he couldn't tell precisely where they came from. He could also hear the Overwatch woman's voice, calling out from megaphones from somewhere behind the buildings. Now and then he heard something like an ambulance, and the faint thumping of a helicopter.
Occasionally, he would startle a crow, and it would flap away with a few hoarse croaks. Beneath his boots, he realized there were denizens living in the mud pools: mostly frail minnows and pepper-black tadpoles. There were small swarms of flies and gnats, but they never landed on Freeman, but seemed to take pains to move away from him, not unlike the crows. The only thing as large as the crows were sluggish mudpuppies that clung to the underside of metal beams, gazing at Freeman with lazy eyes.
As he passed underneath a low concrete bridge, he startled a crow. It leapt up to fly, but ran immediately into something. The thing was long, thin and pale. It hung from the ceiling. It was the gray-green color of a decomposing tongue. When the crow hit it, an adhesive took grip, tearing the crow's feathers as it tried to escape. The remaining length of the tendril reached up like a flailing worm to embrace the crow and hold it tighter. Then the whole rope was jerked up by degrees, a foot at a time.
Freeman looked up: there, on the underbelly of the bridge, was a familiar monster. The rope was its tongue. It was one of the predatory stalactites he met in Black Mesa. It looked like something turned inside out, its tendons, laced in fat, bulging and throbbing. Its base was plastered to the concrete by a spray of dried adhesive, but its main body hung down like a tubular fungus. The tongue was being gulped back into its gaping, four-fanged maw, the sinister face of a hookworm.
The mouth enveloped the crow and then closed.
Gordon moved on, shuddering.
He made it another hundred feet before -
Overwatch radios.
Freeman halted and ducked down underneath a slab of concrete. He peered out from its edge, to see if any Civil Protection were on the walls above the canal, looking in. But that wasn't where the noise was coming from. It was further ahead, around the corner where the next station should be. Gordon approached, always keeping himself hidden behind debris.
Finally, he could see around the corner. In fact, it was two corners: that is, a sunny corridor in the canal that extended to both the left and right, forming a top line of a "T" intersection. The corridor was filled with a foot of grubby water, and the far wall was lined with five-foot-high scaffolding. He could hear the Overwatch radios from further right, but could not catch glimpse of them from his current viewpoint.
There was the sound of splashing footsteps.
Gordon turned to his own right and saw, half blocked by a trash pile, a giant, iron-grated drainage pipe. The footsteps emanated from it. Gordon armed himself -
A civilian appeared in view, hurdling out of the shadows. He slammed up against the grating, and without so much as a nod to Gordon, began feverishly unscrewing one of the bars.
A fake bar, Gordon thought. That drainage pipe is a secret passage. It leads into the safe station -
There was a gunshot and the man's forehead burst open.
Blood flew everywhere - Overwatch radios echoing down the pipe -
Gordon was frozen for a moment.
- what it looks like inside the helmets when I shoot them. That's what I do to them, isn't it? The body is just a sack of tissues, isn't it? Look, there's the bone. I can see the -
The dead man slumped to the watery floor: his face dragged against the false bar.
Gordon thrust his pistol between the pipe's grates and unloaded the entire clip into the darkness: seventeen bullets in all.
There were shouts and swears and a scream and the piercing cry of a radio.
Gordon finished unscrewing the bar and slipped inside the passage. He turned on the flashlight. Two civil protection agents were sprawled and bleeding halfway down the pipe. A third disappeared around a corner at the very end.
As Gordon collected their ammo and added it to his Rambo belt, he noticed they were still alive. His instinct was to finish them off, but he stopped himself. There was an inner conflict: security or conscience. If he let them live, they might get up and attack from behind. But if he killed them -
- in the end, he did nothing. And he could not come up with a rational reason for it. He simply threw their guns away and moved in on the last guard.
As he approached, the guard rounded the corner and began firing. Three shots rang against Gordon's armor. He could feel the H.E.V. deflection charge beginning to strain.
Gordon raised his plated arms up to protect his face and barreled down the pipe.
BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG -
- all deflected, but each shot hit him harder -
- the crowbar was in Gordon's left hand and -
He swung it as hard as he could. The guard jumped back just in time, stumbling and falling on their back. The crowbar smacked against the wall of the pipe with a horrible metallic clang. Then he swung again and smacked the guard in the shoulder. Something gave way under their uniform, and they screamed. Gordon hated the sound. Then their inner radio began shrieking and it nearly made Gordon dizzy. He hit the guard again and they fell silent.
Gordon realized that around the pipe's corner, it emptied out into a room. It was a long rectangular box, furnished with dim lightbulbs, damp couches, and a scruffy table with a homemade radio. Gordon could hear, "Station twelve: come in. Station twelve?" But nobody answered: three rebel citizens were strewn dead on the floor. There were bullet casings everywhere. All three bodies held pistols, still warm in their hands.
Gordon approached the radio. Within a few moments, he accessed the channel that was calling.
"This is Gordon Freeman," he said.
There was silence for a full minute.
"Station twelve was raided," Gordon continued. "I came late. Four are confirmed dead. I knocked out three civil protection in the area."
More silence. But finally, "Who is this?"
"I told you: Gordon Freeman."
"The Gordon Freeman -?" Another voice interrupted over the radio. "You're the V.I.P. Calhoun was shouting about, yeah?"
"I assume so."
There was some deliberation on the other end of the call. Gordon thought he heard his name a few more times. Then, "You're inside the station twelve bunker, yeah?"
"I am."
"Alright: you need to get to the docks, alright? That's where we are. We got a motor boat here; it'll cut your journey to Black Mesa East in half. Now, you wanna get on the roof and scurry on over the scaffolding on the right. That'll take you to a large pipe. You go down into a filthy sewage box, then take the pipe on the right, follow that to a big fat tunnel until you're in the sunshine again. Then you follow the canal to the right - I know, Jeff, I know, 14 and 15 were evacuated, that's why I'm taking him through the yards…what do you mean…? That soon? - Alright, scratch that, you wanna go left until you see a service door with a big red lambda drawn all the way around it. Down in the sewers you'll find a small safe station with a radio, we'll guide you from there."
"And what if they get killed before I get there?" Gordon asked. His voice was a little hoarse.
There was a pause. Then, "They won't get killed. Don't worry."
"What if you get killed?"
"Don't worry, we're secure here -"
"You're an idiot," Gordon snapped.
Silence.
"…What?"
Gordon was suddenly shaking with rage. "If you don't evacuate your station, you will die," he said.
"What -? We need to be here when you -"
"Get out of there," Gordon repeated. "Get out of there, or so help me I will kill you myself when I get there. You don't even know me. Why are you doing this for me? You all think I'm some martyr? You think you'll get to heaven if you risk your lives for me? The Free Man? I am sick to hell with people dying for the guy who got them into this in the first place. Get out of there!"
There was silence on the other end. Gordon was breathing heavily. Beads of sweat began to trickle down his nose. Every muscle in his body was tensed to keep him restrained. He felt like he felt when he hugged Kleiner: like he was collapsing, a collapsing star. He wondered vaguely if he would become a black hole.
He abruptly turned the radio off. Then he shot it three times. It didn't make him feel any better.
He looked around at the bloody human bodies.
Why?
There was a ladder up to the roof of the safe station. Gordon tossed an empty pistol up before him. He heard a muffled cry - "grenade?!" - and the scuffle of boots. Gordon swung up the ladder, peered out over the roof, and caught fourth and fifth civil protection guards scrambling away. Gordon shot one through the leg and they fell off the roof into the slime below. The other ducked behind some trash and out of sight.
The roof was a concrete slab. It was ten feet over the canal, and ten feet below the city streets. He saw that the scaffolding ran from the right side of the roof, down the canal, over a massive pile of trash and sludge, and underneath a city bridge, before it disappeared from view.
There was a strange sound in the near distance: a squealing, robotic alarm. Gordon looked up to see what it was.
There was a drone.
It was twenty feet away, hovering in the air, its large cycloptic eye staring at him while it sent out the alarm.
Gordon shot it five times: it began smoking and spin tailed gradually into the canal. By the time its sparking wires touched water, Gordon was halfway down the scaffolding, nearing the bridge underside.
There were gunshots behind him. The fifth guard had reappeared from behind the trash, and was trying to hit Gordon.
- Gordon was under the bridge -
- The soldier's footfalls rattled the scaffolding behind him -
- A shot rang against Gordon's armored back; it felt like an eighty-mile fast-pitch -
- Gordon leaped from the end of the scaffolding into a drainage pipe, and began sliding down -
Gordon crashed into a foot of septic soup.
He was in a ten by seven foot tank. A pile of sludge dominated one corner. The only light came from another pipe to Gordon's right: sunlight glowed faintly from it, accompanied by a cold breeze.
Gordon's glasses were spattered with brown and green, and he had dropped everything else: the crowbar, the gun…where were they? He felt around in the dark…there, to his right. He grasped the crowbar tightly in his gloved hand. But the pistol…where did he drop it?
The soldier slid down the pipe and smashed into the water just behind Gordon.
Gordon sprang to his feet, hardly able to see through his glasses, and only armed with the crowbar. He tried to swing while the soldier was down, but they rolled out of the way and raised their gun at Gordon's face -
BANG.
Gordon was deafened by the noise, and its thousand-fold echo. The guard had aimed too fast: their arm was at an awkward angle, and the bullet merely brushed Gordon's shoulder armor and shot into the hill of sludge behind him.
Gordon smacked the gun from the guard's hand, and it splashed in the drink. Gordon tried to swing the crowbar again, but his perception was all wrong and the guard was already lunging forwards at Gordon's knees - Gordon toppled forwards -
- now the guard was on top of him - they grasped at Gordon's scalp and were forcing his face under the water - Gordon inhaled some of it and choked -
He kicked and struggled - he was trying to smack the guard with the crowbar, but he couldn't reach his hand backwards. He couldn't breathe -
Gordon buckled with all his strength - he got a breath of air. The guard was knocked off balance. They tried to reassert themselves but Gordon had managed to turn onto his back. The guard shoved their hands into Gordon's face to strangle him, but Gordon bit down on their fingers; as the guard howled Gordon smacked them with the crowbar. Once, twice, three times -
Gordon was on his feet again - the guard was in the defensive. Gordon was wailing on them.
- seven, eight, nine -
The crowbar was heavy.
The guard was limp in the water. Their helmet was cracked and blood oozed from it.
Gordon fell to his knees and sneezed flecks of mud and blood.
Somewhere, he heard the beating of iron wings.
He removed his hazard suit gloves. He used his bare fingers, still dry from in the suit, to clean his glasses as best he could.
He steadied the guard's body against the tank wall. He fumbled with their mask. With some tinkering it began to loosen.
What am I doing to them? Gordon thought. I cannot do anything violent if I do not know the effects. It wouldn't be right. It isn't right.
Soon he had the helmet off.
He yelped and reeled back. The helmet splashed into the water.
The guard was not human. Not anymore.
They were pale as worms. Their skin was dripping wet with moisture. The eyes were glazed over with a milky mist. The ears were replaced with cauliflower scars. The nose was flattened against their face, and their cheekbones were sunken. They had no hair: just twenty dozen blue veins bulging underneath the scalp. Where Freeman had bludgeoned them, the skin was lacerated, and red blood dripped down their face. The lips were chapped, and the mouth was curved in a hauntingly contented expression.
They were not breathing. The gashes were severe. Gordon felt nauseous again as his mind worked overtime. He slumped down deeper into the sludge to catch his breath. He did not have long: the area would be swarming with Civil Protection soon, thanks to the drone.
He searched for the pistols. After a minute, he found one. He replaced the ammo, but didn't test it: he didn't want to go deaf in the tank. Instead, he clamored up into the second pipe and continued on towards the sunny world again. The sunlight was harsh and blaring, but the breeze was chill and refreshing. Gordon set off at a tiring jog.
The thunder of a chopper continued in the background. It must be close, Gordon thought, slowing his pace as he neared the tunnel's wide exit. He saw it lead back into the canal, but instead of water there was damp earth, and instead of trash there were struggling weeds and withered wildflowers.
Thunder of wings…that's loud…too loud…where is it? Can it see me -?
The helicopter appeared.
Not twenty yards from where Freeman stood. The metal beast was longish, and made of sharp grey steel, its choppers racing round and round like an industrial sawblade: they were deep and loud, like cannonballs hitting sand. Freeman could barely stand it. The chopper dropped downwards like a dragonfly, catching itself just above the canal trench, and then carefully lowered itself further between the walls, until the whole drainage tunnel was naked under its floodlights…Freeman was caught in the open.
The beast seemed to regard Freeman with its two tinted windows, like a bug's compound eyes.
Freeman saw two black prods sticking out of its underbelly.
It has guns, he thought.
He ran as fast as he could. He couldn't turn back: he was a sitting duck in the tunnel. So he ran underneath the behemoth and towards the intersection.
To the right was a dead end: to the left a junk pile. He ran left.
He heard something like an electric shiver: the chopper was doing something -
Freeman slid down a decline slathered with muck, gaining speed like a rollerblader - he leapt forwards and crashed into the mud near a heap of metal beams and plywood.
wumwumwumwum - the guns were charging -
He kicked at a rotten board and the structure collapsed halfway around him, shielding him with a wall of sheet metal, as -
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG BANG BANG
Machine guns rained lead on his new shelter. Hundreds of bullet indents appeared in the steel walls, nearly crumpling it like paper. Gordon scrambled out of the back of the pile and kept running.
There, underneath another highway bridge: a staircase and a service door with a red lambda symbol…
Electric shiver - wumwumwumwum
Gordon ducked behind another pile -
BANG BANG BANG BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG -
Bullets shredded the junk metal. A few penetrated all the way through and nearly hit him, spattering earth and roots into his face.
Run.
He was on the staircase. He was running for the door -
- Electric shiver -
He swung it open -
- BANG BANG BANG BANG BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG -
He was through the door. He was rolling down a wet spiral staircase. Bullets chipped the stone walls and knocked the door from its weak hinges. But they could not penetrate far enough to hurt Freeman.
He picked himself up. He began running through another labyrinth of corridors. He followed the lambda symbols. He wondered deliriously if it was just a strange cycle: if he would run across Civil Protection beating on a couple, and he would save them, and then jump the train, and then - and then -
He had to stop for several minutes, heaving breaths. The armor was feeling heavy. He slumped against a wet stone wall, beneath a dim lightbulb, and slowly sunk to his knees, then onto his side.
The world looks strange from here, he mused vaguely.
He tried to get a song stuck in his head. Something from the past, to calm himself down. A little respite. Just a few moments. One of his old favorites, his few favorites:
There lived a certain man in Russia long ago,
He was big and strong; in his eyes a flaming glow.
Most people looked at him with terror and fear,
But to Moscow chicks he was such a lovely dear.
Gordon remembered how his fellows at Black Mesa reacted when they realized that was what he was playing in his headphones while he worked.
"Figured a guy like you would be listening to Mozart or something," Barney joked.
"Who needs Mozart when you've got Boney M?" Freeman quipped. "Disco's the new brain food."
In fact, he detested most disco: it was just the top hits that he liked. They were catchy, they were carefree, they had a familiar melody, and perhaps most important, they were simple but assertive, meaning he could get into their rhythm and beat. He would listen to I Will Survive a hundred thousand times in a row while he worked out quantum equations. Sometimes his colleagues would catch him bobbing his head a little to the beat. They thought it was hilarious, probably because Freeman gave them so little teasing-material to work with.
Gordon returned to his feet. He felt a little better - almost at home, he thought dryly.
He tried a different song.
They left a trail of crime across the U.S.A.,
And when one boy was killed, she really made them pay.
She had no heart at all, no, no, no heart at all…
Freeman turned a corner, and then halted. The way was blocked. There was a hastily constructed wall of plywood and sheet metal, put up in the corridor, to block off a room beyond. Light shone through the cracks. Gordon, after a moment's examination, set to work dismantling it. With the crowbar he splintered and pried apart the wood slabs that held things together, until there was enough of a space for him to squeeze through.
On the other side were dead bodies.
Gordon shut his eyes and took a deep breath. Yeah, just like home, he thought. Ha ha.
Four rebels total: he couldn't tell who was manning this safe station and who was passing through. There was a white couple, middle-aged, an elderly Hispanic woman, and a young black man, no older than twenty-five. Gordon couldn't make out their faces very well, because they were all mutilated beyond recognition by deep cuts and lacerations. The blood was still fresh.
"I told you so," Gordon said out loud.
The room was tall, with scaffolding providing access to a second level where there were mattresses and boxes of belongings. At least, that's what Freeman surmised was the case before everything in the room had been dismantled and turned into the blockades. The most intact thing in the room was the radio, lying in the corner, but its side was cut open as if by a sawblade. Gordon still tried turning it on, but in vain. He bit his lip and shut his eyes to think.
I've got to get to the docks myself, now…and avoid whatever killed these people.
They knew this threat was coming. They blocked off the entrances with whatever they could grab.
They've been manhandled, that's clear. But by what? There are only those little holes in the barricade.
So something smaller than a half-foot across got in, but something strong enough to kill all of them.
Something that kills by lacerating the face.
Wish I had a helmet.
He glanced around the room again. Then, gingerly, he began to search the dead bodies for supplies, clues, anything.
He noticed that the black youth had his hand in his pocket. An odd way to die, Gordon thought. He drew it carefully out and found the boy's fist tightly clenched. After a few moments of forcing the stiff fingers open, Freeman discovered blood stains smeared across the palm to form:
L L R S
Freeman thought, Left, Left, Right, Straight.
He checked the other bodies, but found no similar clues or messages.
He sighed deeply as he gazed at the dead youth. "Quit dying for me," he said. "I mean it. It isn't right."
Gordonripped apart the other barricade and moved carefully down the hallway. He listened, he watched, he smelled - everything he possibly could. His throat was tight, his palms sweaty, but his eyes were cold as ever. They cut through everything they gazed upon. Nothing would escape them.
He thought he heard a faint buzzing, but it disappeared before his ears could get a bead on it.
Water occasionally dripped from the damp ceiling.
Ma Baker - she taught her four sons - Ma Baker - to handle their guns…
The lights were few and far between, but Gordon did not want to turn on his flashlight. As long as he could see a light somewhere down the hallway, he was comfortable.
He noticed a red blip in the distance, in the darkness. Gordon halted.
It blinked on, off, on, off, and didn't come on again.
…beep…beep…
Gordon waited until the sound faded away.
It came from the red light. If Gordon had breathed any louder, he wouldn't have heard it.
Carefully, carefully, he began moving again.
A minute later, he spied the first intersection in the corridors, several hundred feet ahead, underneath a dim light.
Carefully, carefully…
He was twenty feet away from it now. He stopped, still wrapped in shadow.
He took one bullet from his stash, and placed it between his thumb and forefinger. He then flicked it out across the lit intersection. It made a jingling ruckus as it rang against the stone floor, down the straight path.
…beep…beep…
Something appeared from the right corridor of the intersection. It was floating midway between ceiling and floor, not unlike the drones outside; but this was a much smaller machine: a metal gnat, with a carapace on its back, and two dark prongs sticking out from underneath it like legs. It had two red, glowing eyes, one on top of the other, and was continually emitting the beeping noise like a steady heart monitor.
It investigated the noise, staring at the little bullet on the ground.
Gordon threw another bullet over the gnat and further down the hallway. It worked: the gnat floated after it. Gordon quietly moved around the left corner.
The coast was clear for now: there seemed to only be the one robot. But as he neared the next left, he noticed, behind him, the droid hovering in the intersection light, seeming to look all around before continuing on its journey down the corridor after Gordon.
Gordon was in shadow and silent, but the droid was drawing ever closer.
Gordon peered around the new left corner. There was another droid slowly patrolling the hallway.
Gordon turned towards the first droid, and tossed another bullet.
It didn't even turn. It kept moving, straight for Gordon…
It got wise, he thought, as his hand went for his crowbar. Fine.
CRACK - he rapped the crowbar as hard as he could against the droid - SMACK - the drone smashed against the stone floor, sparking and fizzling as it rebounded into the air and tried to regain balance -
- CRACK CRACK - it was done.
But behind him, out of reach, the second drone had arrived.
Click -
It's carapace flicked open like beetle wings, revealing a small central axle with two six-inch long razor wires attached to it. The wires drooped down for a moment, limp, but in another moment they were being spun by the axis, and in another moment they blurred into a sleek, humming disk, thin as paper -
CRACK -
At the same moment, Gordon and the sawblade machine had lunged for each other: he was not sure what happened, but he heard the crack and the drone went ricocheting off the left wall, retreating back into the hallway. Gordon felt something warm dripping from his ear and ignored it, approaching for another swing. The droid reared up into the air, tried to evade, got terribly close to Gordon's other ear before - CRACK - SMASH - sparks and a little warning chirp as the machine started smoking from inside.
Gordon heard four clicks behind him. Five feet away, blocking the hallway he came from, were four more droids, four more spinning disks.
Gordon ran.
Right, right, right, right…
He turned at the first right.
The buzzing of hornets was behind him -
A heavy door -
- he rammed it open and rammed it shut -
He turned.
In the new room, there was a family of long tongues hanging from the ceiling. They served gaping maws, plastered onto the metal above him: monster stalactites, at least twenty of them, infesting the ceiling, some grown together, all dripping globules of hormonal slime. The room smelled like rotten meat and eggs. There were half digested animal bones scattered across the floor like dead leaves.
There was the sound of a straining buzzsaw from behind the door. To Freeman's horror, he watched few sparks of white fireworks sparkle and pop from sections of the door - the wire blades were gnawing through it.
Quite the predicament, Gordon thought.
He took the remainder of his ammo, reduced it all to single bullets, and began tossing them among the fleshy ropes like he was feeding the pigeons. The tongues reacted with excitement, wrapping up and around the irritants like chameleon tongues. Gradually, a little path began to appear for him, as the tongues curled up and out of his way to further examine the possible food.
As the first of the tongues finally realized the con, and gradually went slack again, the little droids had together sawn a square hole through the door and were entering one by one. But Gordon was already across the room and out of immediate danger. He watched, not without a grim satisfaction, as the little devices halted before the tongues, seemingly perplexed.
One tried to slip between them. The disk cut through one of the tongues like it were a rotten noodle, but from the laceration spewed a web of sickly yellow pus, at first viscous, but it quickly dried into a mozzarella glue that gunked up the machine. The blades were powerful and sharp - they continued to cut, but the cuts only made more liquid spew, and within two more tongues the droid was all but defeated, its rotors sputtering as it hung like a fly in a web of alien guts.
The associated tongues began retracting, each trying to drag the machine more in its own direction.
The other three machines continued to hover, watching the whole ordeal. One accidentally drifted too close to a tongue, and was snagged in an explosion of goo that, within half a minute caused its blades to spin at half the speed.
Gordon grinned. Knew it.
Behind him was a spiral stone staircase, leading up. He began mounting it, more-or-less in a state of relief. He approached a heavy iron door at the top, and with great care, pried it open -
wumwumwum -
He jerked back -
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG -
He fell backwards down the steps, nearly cracking his head, as the rounds blasted open the door and ripped the opposing stone wall to shreds. The old stone caught the bullets, preventing ricochet, but the air was filled with a cloud of irritant dust.
He had caught one brief glimpse of the outside: he was emerging perpendicular to a section of canal with shallow, grubby water. He could go left or right: straight he didn't catch clear sight of, because a helicopter, hovering low, had blocked the way.
He almost threw up - it was a strange sensation, as his mind was oddly calm and calculating, but his body was shaking from the stress, and the realization that he was trapped: drones and monsters behind him, and machine guns forward. And he knew it would not be long before soldiers came tramping in after him.
He retraced his steps. There was no indication of an alternate exit anywhere between the tongues and the outside. There was, however, a single barrel in the corner, with a warning label on it. The same he had seen only hours before at the train station: a hazardous materials container.
He absently noticed that the several mutilated tongues were trying, ineffectually, to divide and devour their mechanical spoils, which struggled pathetically in their grip.
How is there that much goo in that much space? he wondered, looking at it. It didn't just spray, it expanded significantly…that's not how those monsters were in Black Mesa. It didn't expand, it just sprayed…what's different…?
An idea.
He shot a tongue nearby him. It recoiled, and an explosion of goo spattered around the room and drooled from the wound.
That's an absurd amount, he thought, examining it. These things are mostly muscle; there's not enough room for this much goop in that much space…it's expanding somehow…but why?
He leaned in close and breathed out. The goo instantly began to expand by several inches, almost touching Gordon's nose before he pulled away.
Warmth? Heat? Carbon Dioxide?
He spat on the goo.
He reeled back from the chemical reaction. The goo exploded, stretching so fast and so far it became a thick acid-yellow fog that filled most of the room and made it difficult to see. Gordon's eyes watered from it. He blinked a tear onto another bit of goo. It expanded even more and he began coughing, and laughing his voice out in delight.
Moisture, he thought. Black Mesa was in a desert. This is a sewer. And if my body water can do that, then…
"We've got him trapped in that sewer passage."
"Man-hacks found him out down there; they kept us informed on where he was going. He managed to slip past a patch of - what did you call them again? Barnacles? - Just more homicidal alien freaks, who knows what species grow down there - no! I don't know! But listen, by then we'd got the chopper just outside the door. He's not going anywhere, don't worry!"
"Do not get cocky. This guy is dangerous. Captain Mau followed him into a sewage box, and Mau didn't come out."
"What, he killed Mau?"
"Hey Jack, I just got word: ground troops found Mau's brains bashed in there."
"Like I said, Vicki."
"You lost me at the part where he killed Captain Mau."
"That's what I said."
"But…CaptainMau was enhanced! He agreed to stage one changes! Mau was a monster -"
"And so is this guy. Do not underestimate him."
"Roger that. We're moving in."
"Hold up. Man-hacks say he's moving back up towards us. Pull back, we might have a chopper shot."
"Are you sure -?"
"I said pull back!"
"What's going on - the door is opening -"
"He moves fast -! C'mon, charge the guns - I want him shredded before he can fire a single bullet."
"Wait, he hasn't come out yet - I think he retreated out of sight, but the door's open."
"What -? What is that?"
"He threw something -"
"It's filled with something yellow -"
BOOM.
The entire width of canal was engulfed in thick yellow gas. A pressure wave nearly knocked the helicopter out of the sky. Panic reigned over the Overwatch radios.
"What happened?"
"Was that a smoke bomb? It's huge!"
"Where is he?"
"Hold your fire! You might hit a comrade!"
"Where was he going? Check all doors -!"
"Where are the doors?"
"Where would he run? Where is he going? I can't see a thing!"
BANG, BANG, BANG -
"I said hold your fire, maggot!"
"That wasn't me -"
"Where's Frederick? Frederick, do you copy?"
"…"
"Who is this guy?"
"I got word -"
"What?"
"It's Gordon Freeman. It's actually him -!"