IV.


Moisture clung to his lashes, carrying the fresh scent of pines bleeding early autumn sap.

A pair of feet splashed through thickening puddles. Their gait flew lightly enough to blend into the rain.

Uriah rounded a corner before slowing at a fork in the cave. He paused to study the bioluminescent worms orbiting the walls. Glow pulsed from their soft, pale bodies, offering subtle guidance from nesting furs of algae and moss.

Uriah passed beneath a natural arch. Larvae chittered within the dim cave, singing a fragile melody as they weaned nourishment from their peaceful surroundings.

Natural constellations strewn throughout the darkness. It was beautiful, he thought, and suffered a flash of shame that such beauty would have gone neglected would were it not for their circumstances.

The next marker was said to be a pond fed by a downward-flowing stream. He presumed it ended here, as water burbled from a rocky cleft in a soothing hiss, broadening into a shallow pool that lapped at Uriah's ankles. From there twin ventricles presented themselves: a blue beam flickered in the left, beckoning him.

They knew they'd arrived when a group of Vortigaunt attendants greeted them in solemn chorus. Stooping in a practiced bow, Uriah let Kleiner off his back, depositing him on a seat of flat rock. "Rest here," he instructed. "I shall check on preparations."

His knuckles popped as he pried them from Uriah's muddied shoulders; they further cracked as he rubbed his wireless rims on a corner of his shirttail. Although he counted himself luckier than most that he did not suffer inflamed joints at his age, considering this terrible weather, there were still limits his body protested. Clinging to Uriah's back during a mountain ascent in the driving rain strained him a bit more than usual.

While Uriah conferred with the others, he took the opportunity to slide off one shoe and wring out its excess water. He turned it over with cold, slippery mud coating his fingers. Disappointed to learn the stitching had come loose, he probed a ragged seam, then refit his foot with a light sigh.

Water seeped inside his loafers, suctioning the balls of his heels. Old things had unraveled many times before this, of course, and had to be laboriously hand-sewn back into working condition—but circumstances did not permit them to bring attention to themselves by stocking up on better resources. It seemed a quaint consideration, to think twice of lacing boots or zipping up a windbreaker, but someone was bound to question why.

Still, one couldn't forgo exercising due caution. They had left the base one by one to avoid rankling suspicions. Sokolai departed Maria's quarters first in order to hunt the antlion heart necessary for the ritual, giving her the excuse that he sensed the early arrival of City 14's wayfarers to soothe her misgivings about letting him out in the rain. Dushan followed an hour later under the guise of "assisting" his partner, only to carry Gordon discreetly through an unused back entrance.

The clock ticked two in the morning when he and Uriah agreed conditions quiet enough to leave White Forest themselves. Lightning left the sky pale and scarred. Ozone hovered over the ridge, leaving a crackled taste on his tongue.

Guilt churned his stomach well into the night. It pumped his heart full of dread when he finished reprogramming Gordon's equipment to continue producing steady vitals for the next eight hours, allowing them to detach his diodes without issue. But he found his resolve replenished in the fact that he wasn't attempting this alone. Excepting a small scare when a comm tower operator swung the beam at a sapling Uriah rustled, they managed to escape posthaste. Fortuitously enough, Xenian wildlife also eschewed them.

He gazed along the northern wall where Sokolai and Dushan carefully arranged a flat slab for Gordon to lay. The surface raised several inches above the pool surrounding them. A linen sheet hung from the bier's sloped corners, its folds already sagging from oversaturated air. The portable oxygenator stationed at Gordon's side hissed, tucked under his slender arm for safekeeping.

Uriah wadded his stained lab coat and offered the bundle to Dushan. "Place this beneath the head of the Freeman. His skull remains tender. We must take care to protect the matter that dwells within."

Despite their best efforts to shield him from the elements as Dushan carried him up the mountain, Gordon's makeshift cot filled with wet leaves; the torrent had ripped them from the elms, along with small pieces of brush and bramble.

That wouldn't do. Gingerly he treaded through the pool, knelt beside the young man and began picking them off, wiping the dew from his brow in between. On his cheeks, droplets lingered like tears.

He prayed they were doing the right thing. He disliked the thought of deceiving the rest of White Forest, Arne and Maria in particular. It would be well within their rights to rebuke them for breach of trust, though he would gladly shoulder responsibility for all blame. Yet if medical intervention alone could save Gordon, it would have done so by now. Saving the body at the expense of the life it housed threatened to condemn him to the contractor's eternal control.

He tensed as a Vortigaunt asked Uriah a brusque question in their native tongue. There were five of them; their scuffed electronic braces marked them as City 14 refugees.

The lead Vortigaunt shouldered Uriah aside to glower at him, prompting the others in the pack to follow suit. Seething ember eyes, coupled with low, forbidding growls, sent a fresh wave of chills flurrying down his spine.

"Who is he?"

"A friend of the Freeman," Uriah said, gripping his arm in a placating gesture, "and thus, our ally."

"He must leave. These rites shall be endangered should it peer through his eyes."

"It looms close," a second Vortigaunt added.

"Yes," said a third. "Too close."

"The human is weak," said the leader vehemently, overlapping their voices. "Are you prepared to sacrifice the Freeman because he cannot deny the interloper? The fear in his heart will open the cage and permit the darkness passage."

"What shall tether Freeman, then?" Uriah challenged. "His bonds to us are themselves weak. The Isaac Kleiner is our last hope to reach out. He presides with us; let there be no more quarrel over this matter." He spoke with a rare assertion that compelled them to stand down, however begrudgingly, and moved on to the next order of business. Strange; Arne's mannerisms rubbed off on him more than expected. "Where is the heart?"

"Here." Covered in shining films of blood, Sokolai carried the organ toward the group. Although its host was surely dead, the guardian's heart pulsed with an effervescence that filled the cave upon its every shuddering beat. Delicate blue light illuminated snaking artery and vein, melded to the ventricles as if carved from glass.

"A fine specimen," Dushan appraised.

"It was not easy. She did not want her cords cut." The glow seeped through Sokolai's claws as he passed ownership of the heart to Uriah, who thanked the guardian for its sacrifice and cracked the heart upon the rock.

Radiant blue powder poured in a fine spray, which he sifted over his companions, then inundated Gordon's slumbering body. Twinkling stars, the particles dissolved to wisps by the time they fluttered onto his chest.

"Guardian blood, flow back into the void from which all life springs. Give us clarity to part these false veils of separation. Dissolve the chains shackling us to our mortal flesh; show us the true face which lies behind the Freeman's mask."

"Illuminate us," said Sokolai.

"Let the Vortessence speak through us."

Light spread over them in nets. They gathered as one, joined in the shimmering of their bodies.

"The beast has begun his hunt."

"His many eyes watch within spaces the humans cannot perceive. It is there he hides, obscuring the path from us."

"Where does the path lead?"

"We do not know."

"Our hearts darken. What more shall we endure?"

"We are made to suffer."

"With humans we commiserate our plight."

"The extract—"

"The extract."

"For far too long have the Shu'ulathoi avoided retribution. No longer."

"The Freeman brought with him a hope, now dwindling. Let us wander this darkness until we find it again. There must be no other recourse."

"The Resistance is all."

"The Freeman must live."

"R'iit." Uriah opened his central iris wide, revealing a startling sky blue. "We begin. Join us, Kleiner."

The Vortigaunts began to chant in their sonorous tongue as they wove this living light over the infirm patient. Skin and subcutaneous fat dissolved; beneath their orbs, patches of Gordon's internal organs showed through.

Awe raised his hands. He expected to see what he always had: the hands of an old man, pink, bitten skin scarred and speckled from years of living in Combine rule. As the light pulsed through, he witnessed their inner mechanisms, down to the smallest winding capillary. Tendon and ligament colluded in perfect rhythm as he flexed his fingers; he felt the thrill of red blood cells rushing away from his quaking fingertips.

Kleiner swallowed back the hot stone rising in his throat. He felt at once insignificant and luminous, as though some greater force had painstakingly crafted this organic machinery which had worked faithfully to keep him alive for seventy years.

And yet, for as wondrous this machinery was, as much a miracle it all seemed that something so inconsequential as matter could have formed something so cohesive, so intelligent—it was so fragile. Flesh shed its life so easily that it ended in careless bursts of violence, by human foible and human stupidity—and by the indifference of the universe at large.

The more he gazed upon Gordon, the more he wanted to weep. Uriah's bright claws lingered on his skull, and his eyes rimmed with moisture as he witnessed the fracture threatening Gordon's very existence.

He chanced a step, afraid of breaking something so delicate. However, a pleasant, honeyed warmth like sunlight spread through his chest, filling him with such peace that his shuddering ceased, and his footfalls grew more assured.

Soon the others pointed at him with coaxing drones. A glimmering green thread protruded from his heart. More threads emerged painlessly, weaving toward them. The orbs glowed brighter the closer they approached.

The spectacle shattered in an instant. Dushan shoved him out of the way at a bolt before it lashed out and carved a nasty gash where he stood. The threads thrashed and screeched, a brilliant knot spitting electricity at everything it saw fit to receive. A microcosm of a disaster he'd never wanted to repeat unfolded. Something was wrong here— Something—

Kleiner cried out from a sudden blast of pain that ripped through his head. He doubled over, clamping his temples.

The Vortigaunts hissed with gnashed teeth. "Vile creature," Uriah shouted at the walls, "powerless without your tricks!" He clutched Kleiner by the shoulders, setting him upright. "The Kleiner must persist—"

(II can't)

"Persist," Uriah ordered. "We cannot lose him!"

Threads snapped and fell as if cut, reeking smoke. He sank to his hands and knees, letting the slickened stone push into his palms. Swirling around him in disturbed crests, it felt like spilled blood, cold, viscous. His body sagged, as heavy and foreign to his mind as stone.

Breathing hard, he struggled to stand—his balance knocked down on the next attempt. Pain stabbed into his elbows as his palms absorbed the shock of the blow, splashing water onto his sleeves. It was as though an invisible hand clamped around his nape and forced him onto his knees.

(you're toying with us, you damned cretin)

(it won't work)

The threads crackled while below, at their feet, the pool ran black. Dark clouds burst into clear waters, pustules bleeding through cracks in the cavern walls. Stones dislodged from the ceiling and rained down, cracking themselves upon the slab, smashing the oxygenator into a worthless plastic heap, bruising their flesh. They whipped their heads at a warning grumble as the cave heaved and shook.

"One thread remains."

"Tie it! Quickly!"

An intense, burning agony seized him, tearing a scream from his lips. In the next few excruciating moments he could do nothing but curl into himself, an instinct left over from the womb.

He didn't know how long he braced himself in this position. Gradually, the pain subsided. The Vortigaunts' panicked shouts faded into a cold, encompassing silence. The smell of moss-furred rocks fled his nostrils, replaced by more familiar milieu. Nonetheless, he retained a bodily quaver as he pried his hands from his clenched eyes, allowing glimpse of paint on corrugated steel.

Not the lambda; a disability symbol, one he hadn't seen since—

"No," he whispered, probing the sign with tremulous fingers. His gaze rose, his horror growing in tandem. The painted steel plate met the rounded legs of an upholstered seat. He grasped the chilled poles welded to the floor and climbed to his feet.

A lifetime ago, he took a certain amount of comfort in the tram's routine. The Black Mesa transit system followed the same daily network throughout the facility. He could never be lost when one docked nearby.

Divorced from the facility, he sensed as though he were moving within a dream, an incomplete reconstruction of the past. Gone were the rails, the humming fluorescent bars guiding the path ahead, the announcement system informing passengers of the day's comings and goings… It hurtled in smooth, utter quiescence, not through cavernous labs and rugged canyons tinged red by sunset, but through darkness without beginning or end.

He pressed against the window, bewilderment crushing the fearful cry building in his lungs. Light streaked past at unimaginable speeds. Neither departure nor destination. No other passengers to break solitude's primal dread—except—one sitting with folded hands at the very end of the cabin, watching light flow in the void beyond.

"Gordon." His hand flew to cover his heart. They did it. Praise God, we've found you.

He stepped forth, his lips full to spring with proclamations of relief and surprise, but Gordon remained motionless, quelling whatever enthusiasm sparked his spirit.

"You shouldn't be here." His Adam's apple dipped, his voice beaten down into a whisper. "He won't let you go."

Kleiner sank into the seat across from his pupil. Stuffed padding creaked under his weight, same as it had so many years ago. Just a memory… Why did it feel so real, then, so threatening to be alone in reunion?

Even though Gordon offered no answers, hints of reality persisted. Kleiner's fingertip retained a smudged burn. His loafers squeezed his soles until they throbbed, having absorbed too much water. Perspiration and rain painted damp residues over his clothes and flesh.

The problem was that Gordon retained markers of reality as well, from a slightly different time. Limestone powdered his cheeks; blood and cranial fluid dried on his split hairline, caking the lenses of his glasses.

Gordon poised his left arm on the window. Small, feverish twitchings palsied his index finger. He'd been observed doing such while comatose. The medics speculated his tic must have emerged as a kind of sense memory, left over from his experiences infiltrating the Citadel, where his quick use of the zero point energy field manipulator proved the difference between life and death.

It wasn't so, he realized, for he instead rubbed at a nick in the window. Formulae scratched into the glass spilled over the pane. Within the restless markings his mind encircled itself, unable to reach a solution.

"Gordon… " Kleiner looked down with growing apprehension. His own scorched index finger twitched in faint synchronicity with his pupil's. He wrapped it inside his fist. "What is this place?"

"Incubation," he said. "Tucked safely away until you're needed again."

Silence.

And then—

"When he first put me here, I mistook the lights for galaxies. My hypothesis has changed since then." He withdrew from the formulae, contemplating his reflection as it broke between the variables. "We're crawling along a synaptic pathway of immense proportions. The black leap between thoughts. Moments behaving like neurons, potential connections in need of activation. So much dwells in the interim… " He hung his head. "So much hides."

"I'm sorry," Kleiner said. "It had to be done, despite the risks." He laid his own hand atop Gordon's to quiet its incessant tapping. Now was not the time for hesistation. "There's something you must know, however. Before it's too late… "

"I know."

"You do?"

Heaviness burdened his sober nod. "I've been able to peer into my employer's mind," he said. "Only briefly." He swallowed. "Just… glimpses… are enough to drive one mad."

The strength resistance must have demanded of Gordon in this state weighed his shoulders with melancholy. "Then you must know that telling you the truth, bringing it to your consciousness, is the only means of breaking the contract." Could he do it? Hurt his beloved student to free him? He had to. "That's the reason he had Eli killed. To maintain control over you both through the enforcement of his silence."

"The connection was only half broken," Gordon replied quietly, "since I've been incapacitated. He's still using me to look for her." He traced a lambda. "I keep trying to warn her, but she doesn't understand the signs. Neither did you."

Fear, rising again. "Is she in danger?"

"She's just out of range… though not for much longer," he said. "Frankly, it would have been better to… "

He trailed off, leaving that thought to their mutual silence.

"He claims freedom is just an illusion," Gordon said, and watched constellations blaze past. "More and more I struggle not to believe him." He sighed. "For what little it's worth, it wasn't Eli's fault. I was the one who stepped into the portal. It's kept her alive for this long; I just wish we knew to what end."

At that, he rose, compelling Kleiner to follow toward the exit.

"Don't be so eager to sacrifice your freedom. Fight for it with everything you have. You won't realize its significance until he's got you encaged."

The tram door slid open with a pneumatic sigh, revealing the void that lay just one wayward step beyond its threshold. The darkness blinked, and the shrieking knot of their threads coalesced into a portal. The cave, crashing down. Vortigaunts running. Carrying their bodies into thunder and rain.

Voices swirled inside its eye. The Vortigaunts' cries transformed into those of Alyx, of Eli; then of friends and colleagues long dead. Their pale echoes faded on a distant tide, but they touched upon a vein still alive beneath the years, and released a dormant sadness from the bottom of his chest. Inches before him, separated by crackling energy he could have reached out and grasped: Black Mesa, unscarred by disaster.

"Run."

Kleiner stood bathed in the portal's green glow, unable to obey that soft command, to commit a single limb to forward advancement.

"Gordon… " He turned toward his protégé with moisture accruing a warm, blurring mist in his vision. "I cannot."

The voices turning inside the portal's well evolved into screams. Wails of despair stretched thin by the vastness of space echoed in all directions, unanswered except by gunfire. The portal continued to swirl, ruffling their hair, rippling a powerful tide of charged particles. Silence reigned between streaks of light.

How readily one gilds the past in an effort to preserve it. Black Mesa may have once stood as a bastion of scientific progress, but their denial of human limitation and their blind obedience to authority eradicated any such glittering promise. Their hopes culminated in a massive, ash-filled grave in the middle of the desert. There was no returning to the hubris that came before. To follow that same path was tantamount to killing what precious little remained of this planet.

Still Gordon insisted.

"This isn't a matter of willpower," he said, "he isn't something you can hide from. You need to put distance between us to weaken the connection. Take the Vortigaunts and leave me on the mountain. Get as far away from me as you can manage."

Staring into equally green eyes filled with unknowable terrors, he began to grasp the phenomenon's cyclical nature. Left alone, Black Mesa would happen again. Perhaps not in this unremarkable arm of Orion's spur, on a miraculous accident called Earth, where life fought to hoist itself free from blood and soil, and failed more often than not to find meaning in the struggle. Perhaps not here on a tiny rock drained of resources, rendered garbage by extraterrestrial parasites.

Somewhere out there, surely… To someone else lost inside the wide gaps of darkness that whisked past, the horrors that occurred here would happen again. And they would continue until the last light extinguished in that horrid man's grasp.

Gordon lunged forth, digging gloved fingers painfully into his shoulders. He knew his pupil could easily overpower him if he so desired. One swift shove to hurl him into the portal could cease his resistance. But he faltered. Bless the boy, he hesitated.

"Gordon," Kleiner said, "do you wish for us to let you expire?"

"If that's what it takes, yes!" he shouted. "Damn it, why won't you run?"

He pounced on him with trademark speed. However, Kleiner wrapped both hands around each side of the jamb, enduring with whatever strength his aging limbs allowed, waiting for Gordon to yield. He didn't care that the strain of holding fast left bruises on his shoulders. The only way to face Eli's tormentor would be together.

Gordon punted on his shoulders, hissing curses through clenched teeth as he attempted to force Kleiner through the portal. Go. Go. Light swam tantalizingly close, breathing ionized particles on his nape. Tendrils reached forth and danced in the periphery, as if to beckon.

Grim realization settled in; tears streaked down Gordon's soiled cheeks, cutting clear trails through the grime. The portal dissipated, and the door locked. He crumpled to his knees with a soft, shuddering sob.

"It's all right." Kleiner gathered him in his arms, carefully stroking his matted hair. "I won't let you go. Not again."

How touching.

Gordon disappeared; he embraced nothing. In the span of a blink he found himself paralyzed, unable to will his muscles to flee, to look anywhere but into scorching, merciless pale blue eyes, whose irises stormed about black-hole pupils like quasars.

Emaciated fingertips rose until they steepled together. Were it not for their fluid motion, he may as well have been an embalmed corpse dressed for viewing. Stepping further into the light reflected a white-gray pallor. The veins that crawled across his temples and claimed his skeletal hands were empty of blood.

Whatever inhabited that body wasn't human.

He had never heard his name. Had never caught passing glimpse of him around the bustling corridors of Sector D Administration. Yet in that suffocated moment twenty years later, recognition blazed through his mind, setting his neurons alight.

"I know you."

The soft reverence with which Kleiner whispered this pleased him, for a smile stretched over his mouth.

Hello, Doctor.