V.
08/28/21
Almost twenty years to the day Alyx disappeared in City 17, Gordon Freeman arrives.
Our friend's got a twisted sense of humor, I'll give him that.
08/29/21
It took a hiccup in Kleiner's teleport and a destroyed hunter-chopper—my God, the thing was smoking in pieces in the shallows—but Gordon finally knocked at the door.
Son looks so harrowed, so lost. Alyx makes him a little more comfortable, I think, so I'll let those two get settled in for now. I'm hoping he'll be able to get acclimated here. When the buzz has died down, we can work on putting some old business behind us.
08/31/21
He's maintained closer contact than usual since Gordon returned. I expected him to keep an eye on his assets. What I didn't expect was for him to be this brazen, speaking to people out in the open.
Folks have inquired into the suited man they've spotted on the shorepoint or traveling from the trainyard. They wonder if he's a long-lost refugee from Black Mesa. I hate that I have to say he's a 'colleague.' He's no more our colleague than Breen was.
He must be planning something if he's grown comfortable with being seen. Recently I've had this nagging feeling that he's waiting for something. Waiting to see how this unfolds.
09/7/21
It isn't a good idea, not without concrete evidence, but Judith won't hear a single misgiving. According to her, she'd been combing through Breen's personal servers when she came across plans to extract it from intradimensional orbit.
Breen bought into a lot of crackpot ideas. I don't find it hard to believe he'd concoct a fairy tale about some ghost ship to please his superiors. Anything to stay on their good side.
She's determined to find it, come hell or high water. I should've known. Sometimes there's just no talking to her.
I hope she doesn't feel she has anything to atone for.
I regret asking if she was ashamed to stay.
09/8/21
Alyx, Gordon.
Be safe, you two.
09/9/21
Kleiner tells me we must have developed a slow teleport, which explains the week Alyx and Gordon lost between Nova Prospekt and the uprising in City 17. He seems fairly excited about the prospect of more research. Myself, I'm not so sure.
Of course, we don't have another twenty years to spend investigating the theoretical underpinnings. I already know the answer. They survived because the fabric of spacetime surrounding them has been tampered with; the rules no longer apply to them as stringently as they would anyone else. Otherwise their atomic continuity should have been scattered, torn apart. Combine portals are too finely-tuned to allow for that kind of fluke.
I have few doubts Gordon will be wondering about that, even if he senses that he, at least, has been displaced. He's asked me about that before, in his own roundabout way. He knows who's watching him. But I fear my answers won't explain Alyx's subsistence. He'll have questions.
09/10/21
After twenty years, all I have are speculations. The common denominator seems to be that the ones he chooses are mentally suppressed: unconscious, traumatized, asleep. There must be some kind of forced inhibition at play. For the longest time, I thought I'd dreamed the whole incident with Alyx at Black Mesa.
I believe Judith's safe, at least for now. Breen being the garrulous man he was, he undoubtedly would have told her everything. Thank God he went down before he got the chance.
Barney knows nothing.
Kleiner… It's hard to say which way the pendulum swings. Izzy wants to believe me for my sake, I think, and to keep the peace. But it isn't as though I haven't given him probable cause for doubt with my own half-remembrances and foggy interpretations. He's a smart man. He'll parse the truth if he hasn't already.
That leaves Alyx and Gordon.
This might be my last chance. I've got to tell them the truth as soon as they touch base at the outpost. There's no guarantee it'll free them from him, but anything to frustrate his efforts has to be better than sitting idly by, watching them flee from that damned Citadel.
Gordon deserves his freedom. Alyx deserves to know. Pleading for their forgiveness would be an insult; my own feelings have to be shelved in this matter. If hating me means they and the world will be safer for it, then that's what has to happen. Whatever anger they'll have must go toward protecting the Resistance.
Lord, anything but this. I still have those nightmares of Black Mesa. Hearing him whisper those cold, mocking words in my ear. "Everything has its price, Mr. Vance."
When I asked what it would cost to protect her?
"Her love."
Don't smile like you've won, you smug bastard. We're just getting started, you and me.
