III.
There was a photograph on the wall. No color, faded sepia tones, which captured a day at the facility when most of the Anomalous Materials team had gathered for a shoot that would serve as the centerpiece for an employment brochure.
Later, Eli scraped away the Administrator's face with a Swiss knife. After all he's done, he said between drags of the blade, he don't deserve to keep it.
When he finished dumping the scraps into the wastebasket, Kleiner sealed the gesture by crossing out the Administrator in red pen.
Wallace Breen, too, had once known the truth. He used it to sadistically prick barbs into Eli's psyche, lording his weaknesses over him. While Kleiner normally deemed it disdainful to celebrate death, even that of an ostensibly awful human being, there was no denying the Administrator's demise had closed another door on the truth. Of the researchers who posed in the lobby, one of two survived to tell the tale.
His thoughts kept circulating Uriah's admission. As much as he was loath to admit it, it made sense considering Eli was the Vortigaunts' first and deepest collaborator. But their silence… Suggested more. They knew something of grave importance. If the truth must soon be disclosed, so much more lay at risk than the memory of the recently departed.
Each second that ticked by whittled Gordon's chances. Did his desperate need for hope keep him from fully acknowledging the possibility that his death loomed beyond the threshold of their control? His rational side kept begging the question, what might happen if the scouts failed to reach Smolensk. If indeed his time had come… Couldn't they grant him more dignity, more peace, than the Combine spared Eli?
Prolonging his suffering to alleviate their consciences would be immeasurably cruel. But their smiling faces belied their capacity for survival at any cost. Wearing a solemn expression, Gordon alone seemed to foretell a dark future. The more he studied them, the less he knew the intent behind them.
"We thought," he whispered, "we were changing the world."
He turned to face Gordon.
Alyx scrubbed her palms while leaning on the crutch of her empty shotgun, breathing in the scant warmth the friction generated.
Freezing down here, but at least the wind's died down.
This deep in the crevasse, the gales that had rocked the surface quieted. Gentle snowfall flurried a velvet black sky. Gazing up at glassy walls of ice, she would have thought the scene beautiful, if not for her sheer solitude within it.
Alone, in a fifty-foot ditch with an injured leg bound to painfully awaken at any step.
She reached out and trailed her gloved hand along the wall's ribbed surface. She tried making a mental topography by touch. Cold cushions of mist obscured the jagged path ahead. Some twelve meters north, the ravine twisted in a sharp left turn and pinched off the sky, nearly knitting the surface together.
Alyx directed an anxious glance toward the sky, her breath dissolving before her lips. Quarry climbed too steep and smooth an ascent to scale without equipment. Although she didn't like it, her best chance appeared to be pressing forward, keep calling for Barney even as ice cruelly mimicked her in echoing peals.
The stock puffed decisively in the snow with every step she took. She mounted a drift with a wince and a grunt, only to stop dead in her tracks.
The name vanished on her breath.
"Gordon."
She had no reason, no theory or phenomenon at her disposal to explain how he stood nestled between the cavern walls. Silent, suited, his angled edges quieted as the clean white glow of the flashlight's beam eclipsed them.
Her cracked lips struggled to part. Her mouth too full of silence to voice coherent thought, her mind buzzing useless white noise.
A numb, dreamlike fear filled her, broken only by the salient crunch of a step taken forward.
She approached him in soft, silent repose, apprehension and disbelief fighting every foot she sank in the snow. Briefly she entertained the notion that she might be dreaming him while lying on the crevasse floor, though she dismissed it on grounds that Gordon's presence felt different from Eli's: where her father's presence maintained a nebulous air, however necessary, she sensed a clarity of purpose behind his presence.
Gordon waited. Unexplained, inexplicable. As if conjured into material reality from thought and snow haze.
She crept closer, her heart rising to a throb in her throat. It was too dark to discern his expression—if he was just as bewildered as she was—his eyes hidden behind thick reflective lenses.
The flashlight continued to blink in, blink out. Ice swam around them in waves of light and darkness.
Cold breathed on the hairs coating her nape.
He stood, a statue of flesh and blood encased in the HEV's exoskeleton.
Slow, viscous dread slithered through her veins as she stopped. Reached out with halted breath insufficient to stir the flakes twirling down. Probed a questioning caress along the lambda. Was it real? As real as the bristle a glove made on shaven metal could be.
Steel pulsed through cotton into skin. A living thing. His heart, buried beneath layers of Kevlar, padded mail and welded plates, emerged to the surface, matching the throb in her frostbitten fingertips.
She withdrew her hand. The lambda's four swift, decisive strokes normally represented a symbol of reassurance and strength; she didn't know why touching them now filled her with an animalistic terror she found herself at a loss to reconcile with the sight of the Resistance's savior.
Perhaps it was because they were alone in this desolate crevice in the earth's icy womb, and even in the throes of mirage, she knew his real self dreamt comatose on a bed some three-hundred miles south of here; or else she became too aware of her dreams, enough to recognize when she grappled with some new manifestation since her father had taken his leave. Any minute now she expected his stoic facade to crack open into an Advisor's—
"Gordon," she whispered. "How… "
His eyes betrayed no answers in between slivers of illumination. It seemed after an eternity passed he broke her gaze, lifting them with great effort. He turned his head a degree toward the right.
Alyx followed. Listened. Between the wind's distant shrills, a voice softly called for her.
"It's Barney," she said, "thank God, he made it. He'll be so happy to see you."
She gauged his reaction behind a light smile. Her dreams didn't have to taunt her. She could test them just as much as they tried her. An illusion would crumble at the intrusion of reality; the real deal would maintain his verisimilitude.
He closed his eyes with parted lips, his brows knitted together. Whether in pain or concentration, she couldn't tell. She pressed a hand to his cheek to corral his focus, but the coldness of his flesh gave way to smooth ice.
Nothing was there.
" …Gordon?"
Standing before him, clear as day, fully-armored in the HEV suit. The plates bore patches of congealed blood, battered and dented. Limestone powdered his hair, smeared his skin an ashen hue.
Kleiner began shaking his head. "How is this… "
He flinched, struck dumb, as the HEV issued a warning in its high robotic drone. Major fracture detected.
Kleiner could do nothing but watch in numb fugue as blood and cranial liquid traveled a slow descent along the left side of his brow where the gash began, curling toward his ruddy earlobe before letting the droplets fall to stiff carpet.
Vital signs dropping. Seek immediate medical attention.
Fluid surged in a more voluminous gush. Gordon winced, exhaled a forced breath.
And dropped to his knees.
Kleiner rediscovered the life in his legs, urgency overriding his horror, and flew to brace his student's shoulders. "What are you doing? Oh, dear, you shouldn't have gotten out of bed. You're terribly hurt… "
He cradled Gordon close while the latter swayed into him. He felt visceral enough, though heavier than could be expected, even encased within the suit.
Perhaps he felt safer ensconced inside its fortified rivets and plates… The physical feat, he thought, was near impossible, given his bedridden state an hour ago. How had he crawled out, descended the silo, and armored himself without attracting notice?
He made to call for Sokolai and Dushan when Gordon clutched his knobby wrist. His sleeve bunched together.
Gordon pointed with a gloved finger.
"The photograph?"
When he looked at the frame, he found every face therein scratched out. Before the questions could spring from his lips, a sudden and conspicuous absence replaced Gordon, with nothing to tell he'd been there except for soiled prints grasping his cuff.
"Kid? Where are ya?"
"Down here," she shouted. "Barney!"
Jogging footfalls crushed the snow. He had a flashlight, and he traced its watery beam across the gap until it trickled down to her. "Jeez-us, you took a tumble down the rabbit hole, didn'tcha?" Wiping a hand down his mouth, he added regretfully: "I don't have the ice axe. Must've left it back in the cave."
"Hold on a minute, okay? I'll find something."
"Don't go too far. It's damn dark out here."
Frosted in a layer of accumulating snow, the dead Hunter sparkled under the beam, catching her attention. At least the piece of crap might be useful for something. She anchored her good foot on its carapace, grasped a pincer and wrenched backward with a grunt.
Three short pulls bent it a slight degree; several more yielded nominal progress. The muscle surrounding her Hunter wounds hissed vindication for the corpse. Eventually the strain forced her to squat on her haunches, blowing out labored breaths.
She ran a palm along the synth's flesh, pushing on its thick amphibian skin in several spots, testing where resistance pressed back. Of the damage the Hunter sustained from its fall, of course the pincer had to stay put.
Still, she thought as she gave the joint a wriggle, maybe a concentrated application of heat could expand the flesh surrounding the socket and let it fall out.
Alyx looked up with a sincere hope Barney could still hear her. "Hey up there," she called, "you got any flares?"
His reply was audible, thank God. "Uh, just two or three. Where are you?"
"Walk about a yard north."
A standard road flare hit the snow a couple of feet beside her. She wasted no time tearing the cap with her teeth and ignited the fusee on the synth. Glaring red-white light leapt from the wick. She crept cautiously forth while it hissed in her grip; intense heat grazed her cheek as the calcium phosphate started to burn.
"Careful," Barney warned. "Don't be startin' no bonfires, yeah?"
"You didn't bring marshmallows, so you're not invited." Pinching her lips together, she carved the flare in tight orbit around the socket. Once the Hunter's tough outer layer cracked open, the rest unraveled with ease. The subcutaneous alloy bubbled and burst, a waxy mixture of flesh and fiberoptic cable puddling into formless goo. The pincer rim seethed a glowing white.
She stepped back and brought her heel down. This time the stubborn appendage cracked off the joint like a dry twig. No muss, no fuss. The stump's jagged edge turned orange as it cooled, and smoke ribboned into the cold.
Alyx hauled fistfuls of snow onto the blazing corpse, which sizzled into a blossoming of water and smoke. She coughed back its greasy peals. As her rubber sole stuck to the pincer's severed edge, she rolled the pincer under her boot for several minutes in order to plunge it into a safe temperature range. Nothing like scorching her hand to cherry the experience.
Slowly, the heat wafting through her palm lost its teeth. She quickly staked the pincer into the ice to form the first foothold. Nature again reared her noncompliant streak, however, and glanced the blade off the fold.
Barney swung the light in her direction. "Aw, jeez, you're really gonna climb this?"
She stabbed again, forming a hole the size of a nickel. An impatient huff escaped her as she yanked it out. She needed to deepen it without losing its grip. "You know any other way up?"
"Well, I think there's a harness in the pack—" Provisions jangled together. "Only twenty feet." He tossed it down to show her. As expected, the silver buckle stopped about thirty feet short, gleaming as it tapped against the ice, a virtual brass ring dangling just out of reach.
Alyx rubbed her calf. The plasma burn she'd sustained began to rouse, prickling as it rubbed her makeshift tourniquet. Not awake enough to harrass her yet, but not quite as deadened as before. She gelled it with more snow rather than risk a dangerous flare-up. She could close this gap with sufficient focus. Wouldn't be easy, mind, but she'd scaled worse.
"Listen, Al?" Barney asked. "When you get halfway up, wrap it around your shoulders and I'll help haul you the rest of the way."
"Right. See you in a few minutes."
The flare did a decent job of uniformly hollowing out the crater until the wick fizzled out. Chiseling, gouging, scraping, she continued to deepen the hole. Melted ice soaked through her gloves and stung her fingers raw.
The pincer finally held on the last decisive pound of her gun's stock, and she receded with bated breath, sharing Barney's anxious glance. One down, a thousand to go.
"Easy there," Barney warned as she grasped a nook that appeared grippable. "No need to rush."
The ascent was painfully slow. The pincer creaked from the strain, and it was difficult to keep from smearing off such smooth ice.
Alyx seized hold of a shelf several inches from the buckle. She grabbed the harness and prepared to wrap it around herself when a flash compelled her to look up.
Gordon flickered in his place.
Her hands slipped.
"Al!"
Panic flooded her system. Hurtling— Fingers scrambled— For another grip— Had to stop it— Stop—
She relented her instinct to lock up and let smear training crush her knee to her chest. Friction ground between the grooves in her rubber boot and the ice, slowing her plunge, and caught her from diving into freefall at the last minute.
Gordon. Every inch of her shaken body echoed his name. Gordon. Her heart pounded so wildly she felt it pulse in her gums. Gordon.
Barney's shouts bounced off her wool-filled ears, growing faint while the rest of the compromised shelf crumbled down around her, coating her downturned head in a snowy spray.
Straining for breath through clenched teeth, she redirected her focus on the present by looking down. At this angle, her ankle wrapped around a narrow jutting and rolled outward. Weight pushed on her tingling calf with increasing pressure.
She tried to sidle it free, wriggling her hip very slowly, only to slip again and suffer a bright stabbing pain as her kneecap popped, awakening her injury.
"Damn it!" she cried out as the nerve throbbed painful waves over her knee. Of all the crappy luck—
Barney ducked from the rim, taking the flashlight with him. "Shit, that's it, I'm coming down—"
She snapped her head up. "Don't! I don't need you getting yourself hurt, too!"
Despite the seething in her leg, she grit her molars and accelerated the rest of the climb. Her limbs burned down to the tendon, as though they'd tear by the end of it, where, inhaling air denying her the full privilege of oxygen, she staggered over the edge and crushed her forehead into the snow. She clamped her arms over the back of her neck and stayed there for a moment, enveloped in a protective coccoon, clenching her eyes shut to keep out Gordon's image.
"Hey, relax. You did it." Barney steadied her with a hand on her shoulder. "You okay?"
He tilted his head as Alyx knelt trembling, head downcast. After a minute she nodded, gave a slight sniff and wiped her nostrils on a corner of her sleeve.
"Heh," he said, "stupid kid," and swarmed her in a hug, taking her off-guard.
"How long were you out here for?"
"No clue." She accepted his hand and rose in unison with his grip and her crutch. "God, I was worried that fuckin' thing took you out with it. Must've wanted blood when you gave it that smack, 'cause it just pounced after you like a bat outta hell."
"We got separated, then?"
"Must've," he said. "That's when the ice caved under."
He deigned another glance down the crevasse, probably measuring its depths, before dismissing it with a head shake. The anxiety etched into his knitted brows told her he wasn't lying. She had no idea how long he may have wandered along the rim, lost and alone. Barney hated being alone.
Pushing herself up on her crutch, Alyx lurched ahead. "Everyone's headed for the weather station. We ought to rejoin them before the Combine catch up." But a hand caught her by the shoulder.
"Not on that bunk leg, you ain't."
She shifted it protectively toward herself. "It still works."
He snorted. "Don't think I haven't heard that one before. How bad you got it, Grandma?"
"I can stand just fine. It's just to keep from the agitating the muscle."
"Answer the question I asked, huh? Can't ignore plasma like bullets. That shit gets infected like—" He snapped his fingers.
"You're acting like my leg fell off. I got nicked."
"Yeah, that's what everybody says. Next thing y'know, that tiny little nick's swelled to three times its size and you're draggin' a dead log."
"Easier to just say I'd be a burden."
"That's not—" He sucked in a breath, screwing his lips tight. "I swear to God, when we find the station I'm puttin' you in the timeout corner 'til you learn to stop saying crap." Barney sensed something in her quiet, and squinted vainly into the wind. "Hey… Y'see something?"
No; the figure in the distance turned and vanished under a gust of snow, shrouded by murky white depths. He left neither trail nor footprint. It was as if he'd never been there, yet Alyx shivered all the same, certain his mirage was as much a dream as the frigid gales stinging her cheeks.
Speak.
She couldn't.
"We need to start covering ground. If the station's nearby, one of its electromagnetic transmitters should ping our receiver. If not, well… " She tugged on her hood. "Can't say we didn't try."
There was cold, and there was this. A chill so deep it infiltrated the flesh to rob it of warmth, biting every pore as if spiteful that it couldn't soak through bone. The saliva in her mouth crackled and calcified.
Hugging her arms around her core, Alyx ducked her head, shielding it from a gelid gust that tore at the fur on her hood. Her nostrils stuck, as well as her trembling lips. Blood pounded between her temples in a deep, insistent throb. Caffeine withdrawal was a bitch for sure, but none more so when coupled with an empty stomach.
Her legs sank thigh-deep in the snow. Pushing through the fattening drifts required the twisting efforts of her entire body, and at times felt about as conducive as wading through a hostile white sea. She tried to console herself with the thought that every step forward, no matter how small, shrank the gap between here and the weather station.
"You doing okay back there?"
"Still got a pulse," Barney hollered. "Ain't regrettin' that one bit."
"Hang on a little longer; we'll pitch the tent once the wind dies down." Oh, God. "You did bring the tent, right?"
"Wh— Yeah, I brought the tent! What, you think I'm gonna make us camp out in an igloo?"
"Should've stopped at 'yeah.'" She shivered as the Hunter pincer tucked inside her boot rubbed along her ankle.
Down came the snow, blanketing the tundra in every direction, coating stumped trees and an eroded ridge line slithering underneath the belly of cloud cover. In the meantime, their receiver crackled white noise. Her fears writhed within its snarls.
Regardless, they trudged on, through a conspicuous lack of snowmobile tracks and APC tread.
They finally pitched the tent when they agreed their legs refused to carry them another step. The sky paled from utter black to a foreboding charcoal gray due to the setting sun refracting the last of its rays. Encrusted stars peeked timid askance through rends in the clouds; she hoped it signified a thinning in weather. Luck refrained from hailing on them thus far, but in the Arctic there were no guarantees. They made camp under a steep overhang just in case.
Following on the heels of the crevasse, she and Barney developed a shared aversion to talking. There really wasn't much to say. Not without risk.
Their spirits had drained ounce by ounce; now they couldn't muster much energy to poke fun at the piss-warm sludge that passed itself off as mixed cocoa, sharing swigs from a tepid canteen.
Thoughts of Gordon bobbed toward the surface no matter her diligence in pushing them down. Seemed like there was no avoiding them. Each time the upturned flashlight sputtered its ray on the sewn ceiling crease, she returned to that moment she nearly fell. But she could brute-force that mental door locked just for a little while longer.
The knapsack's provisions spread on the ground before them. Fifteen shotgun shells, eighteen pistol rounds, the pincer, a utility knife and two fusees. Considering how badly a single Strider gutted their outfit when they wielded far superior fare, surveying these resources made her feel, as Barney would say, as though they were blowing pea shooters at a dropship.
Sitting cross-legged, Alyx loaded four shells into the SPAS-12 and laid the stock across her thigh, repressing a wince as her calf smarted. God, she'd pawn her entire useless leg for a decent semiautomatic right about now.
"You know how many slugs are left in my Magnum?"
"Four," Barney said, with a jostle to the knapsack, "and a fistful of loose ones if you wanna bundle 'em up. Dropped the box on the way outta the cave. Sorry."
She didn't care. "We should probably pool our buckshot. My gun's not working right."
"Shouldn't have plugged up the barrel." Better that than shooting her arm off.
"Actually," Barney said, "I changed my mind. Hot potato." He tossed her his SPAS-12 in favor of the pistol lying beside her ankle. "Go wild."
"Hell's wrong with yours?"
"Couldn't hit a Hunter in the ass if I jammed it up its crack."
"Right, so I get both junk guns. Makes sense."
"Duct-tape that shit right up and it's good as new." Barney jammed in a fresh clip and tested the sights by aiming at the buttoned flap. "You got a plan for how we're gonna meet back up with the others? Probably at least fifteen miles off-track by now."
Truthfully, the best she had right now was to keep boosting the hell out of the signal and pray one of the radio operators would pick up. The next rendezvous point swam within a radius of twenty or so miles. That, of course, had been accounting for the fact that they'd be traveling in a terrain vehicle or on a snowmobile, covering ground at a much faster rate than the old-fashioned way.
"When I do, I'll let you know." She plopped onto her back, slinging a forearm over her face. "How the hell did the Combine find us?"
"Like usual," he said. "Ran right into their ugly mugs."
"That's the thing, though, you don't smoke your enemies just by 'running into' them. They knew enough to assume formation and hide behind a Strider. I'm just wondering how they knew." Closing her eyes, she listened to her heart beat against the icy rock. Then an awful epiphany jolted her awake. " …Oh my God."
"What?"
"Judith's hailing frequency."
"What about it?"
She lurched upright. "When Gordon and I went into the Citadel to stop the dark fusion reactor, I went hunting through their mainframe. They were programming the servers to self-destruct to keep her message from falling into the wrong hands. She'd encrypted hailing frequencies in the carrier wave."
Barney rubbed his nape. "You're, uh. Throwin' a lotta babble at me there, kid. In a nutshell?"
"It means they knew exactly where we were because I was trying to use that frequency to refine her location, but I forgot to… mask the codes.
"There wasn't any time," she said, more to herself than to him, "I mean, Dad died right as we were heading for the chopper, and… It must have slipped my mind." Oh, Jesus. All of this happened because I didn't— "Barney, they knew we'd stolen that info, so who else would have come here? Who else would try to… How could I have been so stupid?"
"Hey, wait a second. Sounds like it coulda been a mistake—"
"A mistake?" she asked, affronted. Tell that to the four men who'd died. "You don't get people killed and think saying 'My bad' is gonna cut it for them, do you?"
His gaze sank to the ground. "No." Barely whispered. "Course not."
Alyx cupped her brow, pinching hard on the fold of skin creasing the bridge of her nose. "They deserved… " Better. She stayed like this for a second or two before cradling her arms over her torso, unable to look anywhere but at their pitiful inventory. Things got any worse, they'd have to switch from bullets to prayer. The latter worked just as well. "If the Combine are giving us this much grief right now, imagine how destroying the ship's gonna go."
"Ship's a hill of beans compared to the Citadel."
"Maybe," she said. "But this time we don't have Gordon backing us up."
Barney wisely decided to sidestep another potential minefield. "Why'd your old man want to blow the ship, anyhow?"
She paused to recall the horror creeping into her father's expression at learning the truth of the Borealis' existence. Pale and strained. It was as though he, too, had glimpsed a ghost caught somewhere inside those flashing screens. "He didn't want the Combine to get ahold of it before we did."
"You think it's a good idea? Wrecking their toys only makes 'em ornery."
She sucked in her chapped bottom lip. "Whatever's aboard is important enough that it's got them scrambling. It could be a weapon, or something we've never seen before. Only Judith knows, but we can't access our full range of options until she tells us what we're dealing with."
"Then we wait," he said, "take it one step at a time. That's how we got here, and that's how we're getting outta this."
Silence descended upon them, signalling the end of the conversation. Alyx snatched the utility knife from the provisions and began to whet the pincer in long, meandering strokes.
Barney slid to the ground. Giving her a long, guarded look, he whispered, "Takin' my shift in two."
"Get some rest," she whispered back. She'd have a lot to wrestle with tonight, and didn't particularly want to involve an audience.
Luckily, his exhaustion agreed. He tucked onto his side, pillowing his cheek on his wrist. "Two," he murmured, "on the dot," held up double digits, and yawned.
As evening drew near for White Forest, a heavy rain swept in to wash the hills of dead foliage. Rivulets glided clear, winding trails down oil-smudged window panes. Thunder growled in settling limestone, shaking the base to her bones. The hush that normally soothed him now pricked the hairs on his arms to a fine point.
The shuffle of loafers on concrete floors turned into flat, full-heeled clacking that garnered looks from passerby. Kleiner navigated the halls with a briskness that surprised them—others often teased he seldom walked quickly unless for research purposes.
There was ample reason for their curious glances. He indeed had books tucked under his arms. Alhough the stack consisted of notebooks rather than weighty academic tomes, the content therein was no less significant. Crammed within their yellowed pages were Eli's journals, dating back fifteen years.
Perspiration beaded his upper lip. After Gordon vanished, he'd stormed into his old friend's office to feverishly hunt every scrap of information those journals offered—for what? Anything, anything to verify what had unfurled before his eyes.
He clung to the journals until their spines bent and creaked. Clutching Eli's words like a life raft, feeling like a man who had been heaved into the ocean wholesale and frantically treaded water in his grasping lungs.
Years ago, he'd mistakenly believed it all a byproduct of Eli's grief and stress. It certainly soothed the anxieties surrounding the alternative: a figment of the imagination; a jagged shard of a memory his mind had created to protect itself from the trauma of losing his wife and the immense pain of amputation. A role to fill the mold of a difficult tragedy. A man in a pale blue suit.
He hadn't the luxury of tests, controls, or peer-reviewed studies to properly assess this phenomenon. The only source he could trust came directly from Eli. The only other witness, who'd had time to reflect and theorize. Somewhere inside these pages, he'd hidden the key to releasing Gordon. An assumption fraught with danger, he knew, but if what Uriah said was true—
He opened the door to Gordon's room and froze altogether.
The three Vortigaunts ceased their activity in an instant. Sokolai straightened blankets on the floor beside the empty bed, while Dushan coiled tubing for a portable oxygenator.
Uriah cradled Gordon in his arms, his wires straining as they spilled onto the floor.
Kleiner could hardly breathe when he said, "Put him down."
Faint green ribbons caressed the sky.
Sleep claimed Barney after a time but eluded Alyx. She crouched just outside the meager tent where he lay softly snoring.
Her breath escaped in white curls as she gazed heavenward. Her mind buzzed too much to whet the pincer for much longer, so she stargazed, moving her lips to match the shape of their names. She sat beneath their fragile light, contemplating the dissonance between their quiet beauty and the horrors they had bred.
The Combine had emerged from those stars. Somewhere out there, in the unfathomable cradle of space, a parasitic race of conquerers razed civilizations. While on Earth, human beings wondered at these constellations, grasping for what dwelled beyond reach, other species had cried their dying breaths in silence.
In their supreme arrogance, the Combine assumed this planet would be no different. But the human spirit, once wounded, snarled and bit back.
She had to let the Resistance keep believing that.
Within every star flamed a nuclear reactor, a black hole waiting to unleash its destructive potential. It was only distance and time that wove the illusion of beauty. Up close, you could see there was no intelligent design to be found in suffering. No meaning to be divined from blood.
Death proved a horrifyingly banal occurrence. Like sleeping, like eating, both monstrous and mundane in its ease. Anyone you knew could be gone tomorrow. Stepped on a hopper mine. Shot by a stray bullet. Swallowed poisonous fumes. Tortured. Wrong place, wrong time. Over and over again.
Some grew so weary they decided to take the terror of living into their own hands, just to wield some semblance of control. You can rule my life, but you can't take my death. Of all the deaths that accrued over the years, those that ended willingly affected her father the deepest.
And it was because he knew. He'd known the losses he'd exchanged for her. Her survival demanded everything from him, including his innocence.
Her braced shoulders softened. Eli had once been unaware of the horrors lurking in their future.
When she was a toddler, he carried her to the Black Mesa observatory. In hindsight, it was a little strange to think he'd once been the more robust of them. But carry her he did, laughingly on his shoulders to Sector F's Astronomy wing, up curved sandstone steps into the vast, open dome where the cosmos sprawled before their marveling eyes. There they watched the stars for hours, a man and his child equally mesmerized by the beauty of the universe.
Her dimpled hand greedily clutched the constellations he named. Stardust painted his kindly face blue, his teeth glimmering twin pearl strands as he laughed. Go on, baby, he urged. Pick one out and I'll get it for you.
The memory squeezed her heart. She burrowed her head in her knees and wondered if somehow, somewhere, he also held her in his thoughts.
Thoughts that quickly fell from orbit, from stars and smiles to charred corpses and vengeful Hunters. Toward bleak future instead of halcyon past. Soldiers could accost the rest of their outfit. Gordon could die, as could Judith. She and Barney could freeze wandering blind in this barren landscape. Possibilities of failure counted more numerous than the stars themselves.
"We need to talk." Ice misted on her pursed lips. "We ran into some trouble. Didn't take long… I just hope to God the others made it ahead of the Combine, but that's probably what the guys were hoping for when the Strider tore us to shreds." Bitterness seeped in her voice as she erased the lambda she traced, crimping her hand into a fist. "A Strider, Dad. That's all it took to send us running."
Emboldened by her candor, Alyx raised her head. "Tell the truth," she implored her father. "Was the thought of being hated so horrible you had to die? Because… " She bit her lip. "Honestly, I'd rather yell at you than thin air."
Ribbons danced.
"It should have been clear the first time you asked: I'm not going to speak for you because those aren't my secrets to tell. In fact, I hate them. I hate that you left me to hold everything together when it's about to fall apart, and I think I reserve the right to be angry about that, Dad. Is it so much to ask for some time? Leading us was supposed to be your thing. I'm just a mechanic you taught how to shoot."
We're so small down here, Eli said. He shifted his daughter on his shoulders. I wonder if somebody out there's wondering about us right now, just waitin' for a friend.
"You were scared I'd never look at you the same way. But you know what? That wasn't your call to make. You didn't trust me not to hate you, and that's what hurts. Letting me know would have changed a lot of things, but not that."
The ribbons pulsed, drawing her mind toward him; it took her entire will not to scream.
Her breath wavered. "When you keep asking me to speak, it feels like you're asking me to keep up this awful cycle. And… Is it always going to be like that? Leading people to their deaths, trying not to feel too guilty about it?"
Snow crumbled to a fine powder in her palm, trickling through the gaps in her fingers. Easy for her to say: she was being just as cowardly hiding the truth as he had been evading the consequences of speaking it.
Hell, why was she running straight to her father to bend his ear like he was alive?—like he could listen?—when days ago she'd pushed him away? To keep from thinking about something even worse? The lambda had pulsed under her hand, yet she chose to argue with ghosts.
Try as she might to pretend otherwise, she was only speaking to herself, fighting an idea of her father no more rooted in reality than her childhood daydreams that the family photo trapped Azian Vance. Both her parents were dead. Here there were just the stars, the dark silence residing between them.
Her calf twinged.
Alyx crept her way back into the tent, taking care not to disturb Barney while she curled into a ball. She tucked the knapsack under her arm to cushion her head, with the feeble hope sleep descended swiftly, when the zipper puckered. A small rectangular card peeked through the teeth and fluttered unceremoniously onto the snow.
She turned with languidity. Picking it up, she brushed her thumb across its surface to clear the frost.
A wrinkled postcard. The front's laminated photograph showed a smiling collection of staff in the Anomalous Materials lobby: Dr. Kleiner, her father, even Breen with his face oddly intact.
No Gordon.
The facility's logo stamped a white emblem in the lower right corner. Black Mesa Research Facility. Santa Fe, New Mexico.
She'd seen these before. In the old days, Dr. Kleiner had a surplus of the things crammed in his junk drawer and used to scribble stray thoughts on them. Had her father borrowed one?
Maybe; this particular card was old, used. It weighed featherlight in her hands, and she feared it might crumble if she breathed on it. A Labradoodle stamp adorned the back, as well as her father's neat script addressing Gordon Freeman, Sector C. Room 217.
Sorry if this seems a little forward, he began, but do you know Izzy Kleiner? He tells me you were one of his brightest students. Why, he can't stop talking about the wunderkind, top of his class at MIT, interned with the entanglement team in Innsbruck. I got so curious I had to see the new hire for myself.
My name's Eli Vance. I'm with AnMat as well, but they have me working in the computation wing. Maybe when our schedules loosen up, Izzy and I could give you a tour of the composite labs. I saw you walk past them earlier today and you looked a bit lost. This place can be a real maze if you're not used to it.
Oh, and in case no one's told you yet: welcome to Black Mesa.
Alyx pressed the card to her heart, letting it rest there. Incongruously hot tears pricked her corneas. Suppressing them with a hard swallow, she tucked the card back into the envelope.
"Good night, Dad."
"Put him down."
The hard tone he employed startled him, but appeared not to affect them in the slightest. Dushan calmly resumed coiling; Sokolai smoothed out more linens. A slow, shameful heat crept through his throat and fanned upwards toward his cheeks. And so he dared say nothing more, relenting the silence to the chipping tick of the electrocardiogram.
Uriah blinked several times. He gazed upon Gordon with regret clouding his central iris, then rumbled a sigh with lowered shoulders, as if to clear his throat.
Dread raised his hackles as he transferred the patient to Sokolai's care.
"Kleiner… "
"All of you." He sheathed the doorknob in his fist. "I will not let you out until you comply."
Uriah raised a single claw. "What is it you fear?" he asked. "His passing? He quickly approaches the void."
"This isn't right," he said. "You and the others have known the truth almost as long as Eli himself, yet you chose not to disclose it. There must have been a reason. You must have known where it would eventually lead."
He turned the lock until it clicked.
"Is it fair, Uriah, to say this conjecture is accurate?"
"It is."
"Hence," he said, "it ought to be equally fair to say you know what our recourse should be."
Thunder growled.
"It isn't as though I also prefer to feign ignorance. For years, I've watched that man torment Eli. I won't see Alyx and Gordon endure a fraction of what he suffered." Focused on Gordon, he adjusted his hold on the journals. "So please, I beg of you: put him down."
"We cannot."
"Uriah… " He fumbled for words. What could he say? Were he Magnusson, he could easily persuade the Vortigaunts to heed reason, but he suspected they'd gathered here precisely to bypass him. That left him with the unfortunate job of intercepting them. It was too much to allow them to break trust with the rest of the base and place Gordon at risk. "I'm sorry, but this isn't a discussion to be had. For his health, please leave him in the bed."
"Then you must prepare to depart the Freeman, as you have done with Eli Vance."
Slowly, his grip on the knob eased. "Is… " His pinching throat jailed his words. "He… really that far gone?"
"Our fears are soon to become reality. Without direct communion with his Vortessence, we risk losing him, and thus, all hope he brings."
Sokolai spoke with great solemnity. "Until the Eli Vance opened our eyes, we believed it our inexorable fate to suffer. He taught us it was not such a grave sin to hope for more. His cause ennobled our lives, if only as sacrifices flung into a pitiless void. We drew comfort from his faith in the Freeman."
"But that faith," Dushan said, stroking the back of Gordon's head, "it wavers."
"His strength ebbs," Uriah said. "It is too much to ask of anyone to renew these rites. Yet the creature that holds the Freeman in its grasp will use him, as it once used us, to shed unimaginable amounts of blood. Like the Shu'ulathoi, its desires shall never be sated."
His mind reeled for answers. "Why him?" he asked of the young man nestled in the cot, scarcely breathing. "Why must he shoulder these burdens?"
"The creature's ways remain a mystery, even to us. It would be easier to ask what manner of darkness inhabits the great abyss."
Their collective gazes followed as he cracked open the top notebook, letting it rest on his elbow, and traced a ginger path along Eli's faded penmanship.
"The books reveal nothing that is not already known. We knew the Eli Vance, and the Freeman. We know you as well. Your heart sees something your mind wishes not to name. You, too, have outgrown these false hopes." Uriah grasped his shoulders. "Be warned, Kleiner. This path is a dark road of sacrifice, leading the wayward into depths of even greater despair. To tread it will cost everything."
Upon the Vortigaunt's gentle nudge, he lowered his arms. As reluctant as he was to part with them, he shed his load, placing the notebooks at the foot of Gordon's bed, one at a time, like offerings, skimming a fingertip along the top cover. Some tribulations demanded more than knowledge offered alone. Some things required faith.
"I know."
He knelt beside the cot.
For so long, he'd let fear rule him body and mind. The Combine needn't have lashed out when innumerable terrors kept mankind shackled to shadows of its own making. Fear of suffering, fear of retribution, fear of losing life and humanity—these plagued the species more efficiently than any predator could aspire to.
What a squalid prison for love to languish. Even so, love found a way to survive. It managed to struggle through cracks in the cell, determined to flourish in the darkest recesses. It would survive because it could wait, fed by hope for the smallest flicker of sunlight.
It was Eli's love for his daughter that compelled him to make his selfish choice, the culmination of which lay dying before him, for a short-lived flicker of joy he found in her. It stood to reason, then, that that selfishness could only be offset by a selfless act, borne also of love.
The solution was here, he thought, as it had always been, not locked inside his dear friend's journals but beating within the chambers of his own heart. And it was disastrously, magnificently simple.
Squeezing Gordon's cold, slim hand, he looked up.
"Take us to the mountain, Uriah."
