Chapter 1: Nobody rides for free

She was cold, no... she was numb... Alyx Vance had been floating in an empty void for, she didn't know... It could have been days or weeks. It was so dark she couldn't tell if her eyes were closed. She sighed thinking to herself as she floated in the void.

The previous day or at least the last day she had remembered before this had been wild. She had trekked through City 17's quarantine zone to rescue her dad after he got captured by the Combine's Overwatch division. After an adventure through subway tunnels and derailing his transport train she caught up to him only to realize that the Combine were keeping a survivor of the black mesa incident in stasis. Dad thought it was his friend from Black Mesa, Gordon Freeman. They were wrong.

Whoever it was... it wasn't human... they looked human but... the way he talked it was like he had an alien accent? like some otherworldly being had been put in a human skin suit and wasn't comfortable in it. For thanks of his rescue he offered he what sounded like a wish. He had not been able to grant her wish of removing the Combine from Earth as it would effect his employers plans. He did offer something she didn't know she wanted. She hugged her knees curling into a ball sniffling. She had been shown the moment of her fathers death, then given the chance to change the future and save him. Preventing his death from happening had come at a high price though.

She wanted to cry, she had been angry at first but now she was blinking back tears. The alien man in a suit had then offered her an employment opportunity she couldn't refuse. After their deal he had left her alone suspended in this void. She just wanted to go home and see her dad. She missed bantering with Russel as he guided her through the quarantine zone, telling her jokes and about what life was like before. She tightened her grip hugging her knees to her chest. She missed Dog, and she had just finished upgrading him too. It's not like he would need food, he was a robot after all. Hopefully Barny or Dr. Kleiner would keep him company. She wilted a little more, she would miss her adoptive uncles.

She sighed and uncurled, she was exhausted. She had gone through so many emotions, her mind felt like a frayed rope. Bouts of rage and desperation had turned into bordom and depression. She wasn't dead, at least she didn't think she was dead. She continued to wait, the void drifting her forward. She froze. Wait, she thought. She was drifting forward, this was different.

*CRACK*

*ZAP*

Her heart thumped as the sound of thunder echoed around her, "Hello?" she strained her voice cracking from the lack of use. The void around her transitioned to a starfield, particles of light slowly flowing by her.

"Goood morning Ms. Vance." An all too familiar voice echoed around her. The sound of invisible footsteps materialized and he started to circle her. He faded into reality slowly circling her, he was wearing the same old world suit and tie. Pale complexion and sharp fluorescent green eyes framed his clean shaven face. Like a wolf he continued circling her. "I hope these accommodations haven't been too... harshhh, I must apologize-"

"I wan't to go home!" She snapped cutting him off.

He paused and glanced at her a look of pity crossing his face. "That would be... unwise... Ms. Vance." His stride continuing he crossed his arms behind his back.

Rage flared in her eyes her tongue about to lash but her mind went blank.

"You will let me finish." He said coldly his stride coming to rest in front of her. "Like it or not more then one... world... restsssss on what you do next. Besides, If you go home now what's to prevent that infection of yours from spreading?"

Her mind cleared and she shook the haziness away processing what he said. "Wait, what infection?" She asked.

He grinned. "That was quite the trek through the quarantine zone you had, that poor creature... Jeff you called him?" A sneer crept across his face. "Crushed him in a trash compactor! Ha, nasty bit of work, you do know how to get thingsss done." A wild and excited look crossed his face. "Poor blind creature... Nasty miasma he let off hmm? He even had a hazard suittt! you had nothinggg to protect you..."

Her mind raced back to the distillery, remembering the Combine hazmat team dead on the floor, the biomas covering the walls and the only survivor infected with some Xen parasite. Images of the monster with its split head stumbling blindly through the bowels that building filled her mind. The thing hunting, listening for prey. The mental image of it spewing spores and vomiting black bile making her shutter. A pit of dread started in her gut, the sinking cold feeling started to overtake her. She gulped. "How do you know anything about that!" Her mind starting to race grasping for strings. "That guy Larry was living in there fine." Her attempt to comfort herself was not working. It felt like the warmth of life was being drained from her leaving her cold and alone.

He ignored her. "Quite a place to be just be... walking around? They don't call it a quarantiiiine zone for nothing Ms. Vance... Hm?" He started pacing back in forth in front of her. "I am not per se against you Ms. Vance." He faced her clasping his hands in front of himself. "How about we make a deal that is... mutually beneficial?"

She swallowed clearing her throat hugging herself to try and ground herself. Her voice wavered. "How do I know you are telling the truth." Suddenly she started coughing, spores spewing forth from her throat. her skin started to crawl as her vision started to darken. She could see her arms form the spore spewing cysts and she started to panic. "Stop it! please stop!" She started hyperventilating. Her breath cleared and the spore cloud faded in front of her, her arms were normal. Slowly calming she grimaced. "Fine, of all the things you've done from teleportation to time travel... you can fix this cant you?" She let out a sob "What do you want?"

He smirked and the world around her faded into what looked like a passenger train car. "Wonderful, please take a seat." He gestured to a table near a window.

Hesitantly not breaking eye contact with him she made her way to the table and sat down. Breathing deeply she blinked back her tears. "So whats the catch for you to fix this?"

He sat down across from her and clasped his hands and grinned. "Nobody rides for free, hm?" His expression got serious. "I have an rogue investment, I neeeed you to reclaim. A doctor Julian Kintober was supposed to prepare a hidden colony but in my... confinement... it seems to have gone rogue to... detrimental effect? on the indigenous species." He swallowed. "I want you to help reclaim the potential lossst colony and repair the relationship between your species and... the indigenous Mobians..."

Her heart skipped a beat, Alyx slowly leaned back in her chair "There's some place else we can go... even to just recover?" The realization shocked her.

He met her gaze. "There is. However as I said previously, it is at risssk. The man appointed ambassador for his technological prowess has crowned himself king. He ravages the natural resources similar to how the Combine currently ravage Em... Earth..."

She frowned getting serious, "Ok... few things, who is this Julian guy and where did you get him from? Can't you see the future? How could you miss this if he is destroying your plan?"

He frowned and looked out the window, "Those who tread on other universes, especially multiple parallel ones become hard to observe." He glanced at her, "Aperture Science and their employees crossed many thresholds. Dr. Julian used to work for them, I met him after he defected to Black mesa. We struck a deal, the life of him and his nephew Colin for being the technological ambassador to Earth." He shifted in his seat. "There was an error in our, sight... when choosing him. There should have been another man there but he never showed up..."

She looked down her face scrunching. "I vaguely remember my dad told me about him from his time working at Black Mesa... he sounded awful..." She looked at him. "So... if he has been as bad as the Combine..." She took a breath wincing. "What exactly do you want me to do?"

He tilted his head. "Simple Ms, Vance. I want you to deliver a message for me... Prepare for unforeseen consequences... It would do good to work with the local Mobian insurgent group as well. after that... prepare the way for your former kin... they wont be too far behind..." He got up looking out the window. checking his watch he put his free hand in his pocket

She looked out the window and noticed the Xen like landscape they were flying by, there were giant blue crystalline structures scattering the nebula in front of her. "I guess its good to know there is hope for us if we can get away from the suppression field..." A nagging thought hit her. Her head snapped to look at him. "Wait what do you mean by former kin?"

He cleared his throat. "My err, employers have authorized something... unusual... to fix your growing... problem and to help you better relate to the local populous. You will be given a new body they will trust more then a human. We... fear they would kill any human on site at this point."

She could hear what he was saying but she couldn't move or speak but the pit of dread started to return. His image started to stretch in front of her, in fact everything was stretching. She got up feeling dizzy.

"In a multiversal sense it will still be your body, just... Mobian? instead of Human?" He echoed. "Use the chance well Ms. Vance. Your former kin depend on your success." He started to walk away a door forming in front of him. He looked over his shoulder. "Play your cards right Ms. Vance and you may see your father again very soon." He walked through, the door of light closing behind him. The world continued to spin.

*SLAM*

Her head cracked against the back of an adjacent table in the train car, sprawled on the ground she groaned, her vision starting to black out. rolling over she clutched her gut. "Oh man..." She wheezed, her ears starting to ring. "That doesn't feel good at all." A sharp pain pierced her stomach, she spasmed. Clutching her gut she vomited on the ground.

The ringing in her ears grew as she grasped for something to pull herself up. She blacked out. Opening her eyes, it was dark. She was still in the train car but the sky outside was no longer a beautiful nebula, it was a sickly red haze. Her vision slowly focused as she got to her feet and wobbled. Something felt different. She shook her head the haze muddling her thoughts. the memories slowly started to trickle back, the alien mans solution to her sickness surfaced and the sinking feeling returned.

Looking down at her hands she was still wearing the Gravity Gloves but her fingers poking out between were covered in a thin fur and her nails were pointier. "Oh no, oh no no no." she examined her arms and it was covered in the same dark orange fur. feeling her face it felt different too. "Ok Alyx this could be worse you could be Jeff 2.0 or something." She examined herself. "Well at least you still got two arms and two legs."

She took stock of her surroundings, her eyes landing on a restroom sign on the end of the train cart. Dashing forward she skid on her sickness on the floor. Catching herself mid stride she reached the restroom. Slamming open the sliding divider her eyes darted to find the mirror. Stepping in she reflexively pulled the door shut hard. "AHHH!" She cried as it slammed shut. She crumpled forward feeling like someone had lit her spine on fire and punched her in the lower gut. Dazed she looked behind herself only to notice a fluffy orange tail extending from her. It was caught in the door she had just slammed. Blinking back tears she maneuvered back to open the door, and pulled her tail gently from the frame. Her tail was the same orange fur but it was a bit longer, the end transitioned into a deep black. It had a bent shape right at the point of impact, The kink was at the color transition point too. That couldn't be good. It felt like it was on fire. Wincing she touched it and twitched with pain... not really knowing what to do she could at least tell it shouldn't be bent like that, even if it was just near the tip. She took a deep breath and *POP* "GRRRR!" The guttural cry came from her throat as her knees buckled. catching herself on the sink she examined her new tail, it wasn't fully straight but it looked better...

She had a tail... She closed her eyes and shook her head grabbing her face, she needed to ground herself. Panic attacks weren't aloud, where she was from panic attacks got people killed. She hugged herself dipping her head, closing her eyes she took deep breaths. She was safe for now and she was human enough, at least she was still a biped. She focused on her senses as she winced, she could smell the old metal around her, she could hear wind outside straining against the container.

Alyx steeled herself facing the sink, her eyes still closed. "Don't freak out, don't get mad or depressed just..." A terrifying thought struck her mind and she wavered and cringed. "What if dad doesn't believe its me... what if..." Her grip on the sink intensified straining the bolts holding it to the wall. "No don't think like that he wont stop loving you!" She grit.

Steeling her nerves she opened her eyes and looked at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She had a short muzzle and her ears had migrated to the top of her head. They were now poking out from behind her bandana keeping her black hair out of her eyes. Her eyes looked the same, maybe a little bigger. For the most part she looked like a humanoid animal, or at least like one of the picture books she had grown up with. She started to cool off. "So this is a Mobian?" She questioned. Getting closer she poked one of her ears only to watch it flick back. She had a mix of dark orange and black fur, from what old books about earths native fauna she remembered she looked like some sort of bipedal fox.

She was still wearing her Black Mesa hoodie and leather jacket on top, she still had the same jeans and rugged backpack. Russel's gravity gloves still adorned her hands and his headset was around her neck. She took it off examining it, turning it in her hands, it didn't look like it would fit where her ears were anymore. She put it back around her neck, she was going to miss Russel. She could hear faint static out of the ear-cups. Maybe she could re-purpose the radio circuitry. Pausing she gathered herself, "Ok lets figure out where this is and where to go." She muttered.

Exiting the restroom she looked out the train car's window, a heavy haze outside was tinting the sunset a deep orange. "The pollution here seems worse then back home..." She muttered. Her dad had told her of how the old cities would have orange sunsets from all the carbon fuels burned. The Combine had never been a fan of fossil fuels, they used dark matter reactors for most of their energy needs. The Combine loved to drain the oceans of water and take the natural resources though. She shook her head. "Back on track need to focus!"

She exited the passenger car into what looked to be an old train graveyard. In the distant city skyline she could see smoke stalks spewing black soot. A bitter scent was in the air and a humidity clung that made her new skin itch. "This place may be more toxic then the quarantine zone back home..." She mumbled. Hundreds of dilapidated cars were stacked around her, a few hundred meters in front of her was a wire fence.

Kneeling down she swung her back pack down and opened it to take stock of what she had. First she found her self made multitool, clicking it open the holo projector came alive on showing the micro-reactor inside was undamaged. She still had her upgraded pistol with what looked to have 18 in the magazine and 6 magazines of 9 rounds each. Her shotgun had 10 rounds with 5 in the mag. She had 4 Combine syringes full of Xen healing water and... A combine med station antlion grub pack... that could not get out... She would need to deal with that thing or risk the whole ecosystem here... She shuttered thinking how the antlions had killed most of Earth's animals. She also found her Combine liberated sub compact AR2 dark matter pulse rifle with 8 full 30 round magazines. She heard a clink and saw 2 bottles of the vodka she had grabbed for Russel at the bottom from the distillery.

Rifling through her bag more she found her grenades or lack there of fragmentation grenades and abundance of Xen spore pods... She winced, they weren't the parasite but she had to get rid of these somehow... Burning them probably wouldn't do anything more then setting them off. Slinging her bag back on her back she started to hunt through the random garbage looking for something to contain the pods. Managing to find a plastic barrel with its lid intact, she carefully loaded the spore cysts in and started to seal the top.

*CRACK*

She flinched as thunder started to rumble in the distance, it started pouring rain. Her breath calming she continued to seal the container.

"HAULT MOBIAN!" A robotic voice echoed.

Alyx froze her head darting towards the sound. A tall blue bipedal robot stood just meters away, its wrist leveled towards her. The barrel filled with dangerous spores the only thing between them.

"SURRENDER TO BE ROBOTICIZED OR FACE LETHAL FORCE." it said as the rain began to pour. Leaping back it opened fire grazing her leg and hitting the barrel. She managed to slide behind a nearby concrete barrier. In the heat of the crossfire the plastic barrel lit up igniting the spores inside throwing the robot meters away. It landed in a trash heap.

"UHHHG!" She clenched her teeth as the she could smell the seered hair feeling the skin burn on her thigh. She grasped for the Combine antimatter rifle only for it to refuse to unlock. "Of all the times for this to break!" She seathed then cold realization hit her, Russell had told her these were genetically locked to the original user, new body meant new genes.

Her ears twitched towards the sound of the robot in the distance, "WARNING, FAIL- FAILURE TO COOPERATE WILL RESULT- RESULT- RESULT- LETHAL- LETHAL- FORCE." It's synthesized voice glitching as the sound of scraping metal against stone drew near.

Wanting to end this quickly she grabbed for the shotgun and opened the break, the modified side magazine inserted the rounds into the main magazine. She closed it cycling the action to load a round. She looked around the barrier to see the robot split at the torso crawling towards her spot, she also noticed the spore cloud looming over where the barrel had been. She groaned. "Come on! I was trying to prevent contamination!" She snapped, her frustration bleeding through. She noticed the robot stop crawling to aim at her, She slid back behind the barrier as the sound of blaster fire lit up the concrete divider.

"CALLING- CALLING- BA BACKUP-" It droned as the sound of the scraping picked up.

Her heart jumped at that and she clutched her wounded leg and rolled out from cover. Lining up her shot *BOOM* the head of the robot exploded. She crumpled to the ground, blinking tears from her eyes and clutching her head. Her ears were ringing harder then they ever had. She was used to gunfire but this was ridiculous, she felt ill. Gathering herself up she limped over to the robot or what was left of it. It was human sized, what was left of its head showed it had a red vizor for an eye on what used to be a domed head. minimal armor protected the joints, she didn't see the legs. winching and kneeling down she grabbed the hand that seemed to be shooting lasers and turned it over. Maybe she could make a weapon with it, her guns worked but they seemed too loud for comfort. Grabbing her backpack she put her shotgun back and pulled out her 1911 pistol. Glancing down she also picked up and stowed the now useless combine rifle, maybe it would come in handy if she could hack the lock.

The ringing in her ears was starting to subside, glancing around she made sure there weren't any more robots. Examining the joint she lay down perpendicular to the arm to avoid shrapnel. Preparing herself for the headache she winced and pulled the trigger of her pistol. *BANG* twitching violently from the new ringing in her ears she pulled herself up on her elbows and grabbed for the now severed arm. Shoving it in her bag she got to her feet. She needed to find or make a different weapon.

Steadying herself her head was still ringing. She slung her bag on her back. Starting her way towards the fence, she debated on using a stimpack injection. Biting her cheak she powered on, she didn't want to waste a injection if she didn't need to, It felt like it was just a burn. As she moved her adrenaline slowly numbed the pain to a throb. She began to run towards the fence separating the junkyard from the city. On the other side there looked to be an old industrial district, tall factory buildings filled her vision. Carefully she scaled the fence making her way over. With warehouses on both sides she trudged forward. She needed to find where she was or some place to sleep for the night.

Chapter 1 end

Authors notes: Hey anyone who is reading this, hope you enjoy this. This is more just ideas that have been bouncing around my think space for a while. I do not know how many times iv re-written this in different forms. There aren't enough SatAM fanfics or Half-life fanfics so I wanted to correct that. Thought hey what would happen if the freedom fighters met the resistance? Anyways... this is more just putting stuff down on type and maybe giving back to the community that has entertained me since high school. Hope it brings you some joy. I do not have a set update schedule as work is work and life are things that happen. I hope to continue though... Comments even negative ones that are constructive are appreciated but not necessary. let me know if my grammar needs work, I am gifted more in technical writing then creative. I apologize for wrong use of commas or other punctuation. I use text to speech and "if it sounds correct" for editing and I guess this story is practice. Currently I have 4 chapters trying to be around 3k words each and I am editing / rewriting and of course writing new chapters.

Authors notes 1.5: I came back to this and did some more editing. I need more practice in that and I am still working on getting a good workflow. sorry for the 20 or so hours it wasn't correct and I hope there isn't anything else glaring.

Authors notes 2: This next part is across the whole work. please do not re-post to other sites without explicit permission. This work does not intend to infringe on any copyright, this work does not make any sort of money and if anything is intended as keeping fan communities alive online. If either Valve Software or SEGA want this taken down off the website then full permission is given. I own no characters and fan characters are fan characters so I don't care this is a hobby. Please support the official release.