'Where is my Mom? Take me back to my Mom!'

A black void punctuated by darting points of light whirled around the two of them. Alyx could scarcely tell which way was up, or which way they were heading. She would have reached out to hold the limp hand of the man who was with her, that is, the hand not holding the briefcase, but she neither liked nor trusted him. Nonetheless, some unseen force seemed to keep the two of them together in the abyss.

The grey-skinned man, who had heard her outburst, regarded her with something that came close to puzzlement, as if he had never interacted with a child before. Though it also may have been true that he rarely interacted with human beings at all. Ignoring her caterwauling, he said:

'Telling you, Miss Vance, that I am about to leave you in a safer place would be an outright lie. Your world, like so many others I have seen, is no longer what anyone could call safe, and perhaps never will be again.'

Alyx interrupted him: 'Take me to my parents!'

The briefcase-holding man swallowed loudly in a manner which seemed to express irritation. He continued:

'I have no doubt you will see your father again. He has a talent for survival which, as has become clear to me today, many of his colleagues lack.'

A rattling gasp.

'I watched you earlier today do your best to avoid the – ah – creatures, which have begun to make this world their home, and, it seems to me you may share some of your father's talent.'

Alyx started to feel that she understood less and less of what this man was talking about.

She said: 'If you know my Dad, if you knew where he is, then take me to him.'

'I am afraid you misunderstand the situation, my dear. Your father's journey is not quite over yet, but I hold that it is highly likely that you will see him again. Until then, I will pluck you from the facility and leave you in the company of several…scientists, among whom you will be relatively safe, for now.

'Recovering you from the overrun facility was not something I did lightly. In fact, several others opined that liberating you from Black Mesa would be a wasted effort. But I nonetheless feel you have potential. Do not disappoint me, Miss Vance.'

It was not just the man's odd diction that confused Alyx. She had no idea who he was supposed to be, how he knew her father, or where her mother had suddenly disappeared to. She also had no clue where they were supposed to be, and she was becoming more and more distressed. She did know, however, that she was afraid of this man.

'I'm going to tell my Dad that you took me away from my Mom', she said with forced, childish veracity.

'Oh, I don't believe you will, Miss Vance. In fact, I don't believe you will even remember you saw me today.'

Suddenly the darkness around them and the darting white specks of light began to fade, and tangible shapes began to materialise around Alyx. The grey-skinned man with the briefcase also began to disappear, along with Alyx's awareness and memories of him.

The young girl began to see human shapes around her, almost all in lab coats like her father's, though one or two of them wore the armour vest and helmet of Black Mesa's Security Force. Almost everyone was sullied in some way, either with dirt and dust from the New Mexico desert or with green blood splattered on their clothing.

Now she could feel the heat of the sun on her skin and the pressure of her feet on the red gravel. Alyx's mind was still clouded over and she could not have said where she had been a moment before, though she was certain she had been talking with somebody. She couldn't have said who.

Presently, the fog in her mind dissipated and she found herself at the back of a crowd of walking people, not quite in single file, but close to that. Alyx found herself walking, keeping up with the group.

'I've never been so happy to see the sun', said someone. 'To be above ground again. I was certain the last thing I would ever see would be the striplights in one of Black Mesa's corridors.'

Another said: 'There are worse things you could bite the dust seeing than one of the facility's corridors. Didn't you see the monsters roaming free down there? Didn't you see what they did to our colleagues? You couldn't walk two steps without bumping into the corpse of a member of the science team.'

'Right, yes', replied the original speaker who had evidently not had the same experience of the Resonance Cascade as his companions. 'But at least the nightmare is over now. Did you hear the rumour from those who work at Sector F? Someone is trying to eliminate the rift linking Earth with the other world by closing the gap from the other side.'

'You mean Gordon Freeman? I came across him when he was passing through the Biodome Complex. Apparently, he was heading towards the Lambda Complex, the part of the facility that deals with teleportation.'

'If anyone could step over the gap between Earth and the alien world it's Gordon. That man is a storm, a one-man army.'

'It's the hazard suit', chimed in a skeptic. 'That's how he made it through the facility alive without a scratch from either the military or the alien hordes.'

Another said, incredulously: 'You can't seriously put all Freeman's fortitude down to the radioactivity-resistant suit he was wearing. That man has a natural talent for survival. HEV suit or no, it takes real guts to go up against several times his number of soldiers and leave them all dead and bullet-ridden.'

'Serves the bastards right. I don't care if they were under orders. Those grunts opened fire on scientists running to them for protection. Savages.'

Because the science team members were just as nervous as they had been from the first moment they realised their lives were in danger that morning, they continued to chat briskly to alleviate their apprehension. The conversation continued on the subject of Gordon Freeman:

'If anyone was to forge a path through the facility without holing up in a hiding place like we did', said another scientist, 'you'd think it would be a security guard with one of the pistols they're issued, but it was one of us, a member of the science team.'

'Not only that, but I heard from somebody from Anomalous Materials that it was Freeman who started all this. Everything began in the test chamber housing the anti-mass spectrometer. Dr Freeman pushed a pure sample of exotic matter into the spectrometer and the result was today's complete catastrophe.'

'So you're saying all this is Freeman's fault?'

'No. If it wasn't him handling that sample it would have been someone else. The real guilty party was whoever brought in that crystal. I'll warrant they knew exactly what they were doing. This whole crisis was planned, and God knows how all this is going to end if Freeman fails to close the dimensional rift.'

'Do you think whoever brought the crystal to Black Mesa intends for Earth to be overrun by hostile aliens, or something we haven't yet foreseen?'

'Who knows. We can't look into the minds of those who sent these monsters. They could be infinitely more intelligent and cold-blooded than any of us. All we can do now is hope that Dr Freeman can put things right.'

A hopeful voice spoke up: 'And if Freeman manages to close the portal then the aliens will be stranded here, right? They will have nowhere to run and the military, as much as I resent what they did to our colleagues, will wipe them out?'

'Perhaps. Most of the aliens, though dangerous, seem to me to be nothing more than aggressive animals. So yes, the army will wipe them out, unless Dr Freeman fails in his mission.'

One outspoken security guard and the head of the group turned to his compatriots and said: 'I want to know more about this Freeman guy. Where did he come from and where did he get the training to outclass all those disciplined soldiers?'

There was no response. A great many had heard of the man and rumours of his exploits surged through the surviving members of the science team, and one or two of the physicists had come across Freeman as he had passed by their hiding places, but few had known him from before the inception of the Resonance Cascade. As far as rumours were concerned, he had already gained a reputation for being a quiet, reserved sort of man. This rumour was greatly overshadowed, nonetheless, by his more famous characteristics: his capacity for survival and his prowess in a firefight.

'How about the other physicists in Anomalous Materials?' the security guard continued.

A scientist spoke now: 'The ones in charge of the experiment were Guthrie and Backman. Like so many of us, I heard they were killed. One of our number ventured down, closer to the test chamber, to see who had survived. The corpses of Guthrie and Backman were found in the observation deck, torn apart by a beam which originated from the chamber. Everyone else in the Anomalous Materials team seemed to have fled, including Doctors Vance and Kleiner who were in charge of the data processors.'

Alyx had been listening all the while at the tail end of the advancing group of guards and scientists, not making a sound. Hearing the first part of the conversation, and observing how small the group of surviving scientists was, she had started to fear the worst for her father, who had been working in the deepest and undoubtedly the most dangerous part of the facility. Upon hearing that he had left Anomalous Materials along with Isaac Kleiner, she let out an exclamation of relief. She was sure her father was looking for her.

The noise she made caused a dozen heads to turn and look at her in surprise.

'Was…was this child with us a moment ago?' stuttered a bewildered scientist.

'She wasn't here with us when we reached the surface', said another, more certain.

One kneeled, lowering himself to her height, and asked softly: 'Where did you come from? I heard all the kids and teachers had been evacuated hours ago. Did you get separated from them?'

'No', said Alyx. 'I came here by myself.'

That was not entirely true, but Alyx could not remember how she had made her way here. Her memories were a muddle, like a dream half-remembered after waking up. Had she been talking to someone? A man with a briefcase? It didn't matter now.

The kneeling scientist really didn't want to have to ask the difficult question, but the day of the Resonance Cascade had been hard on everybody.

'Where are your parents?' he asked. 'Are they…did they…'

Alyx tried to remember.

'I left my Mom in a room with lots of boxes. There were monsters everywhere. They were coming towards us.'

Alyx, casting her mind back to the last time she saw Azian, realised for the first time what her memories meant, and tears began to well up in her eyes.

'After that', she sniffed, 'I don't remember.'

She crouched low onto the dust of the New Mexico desert, letting out loud, racking sobs.

All attention was on her. Each scientist abandoned the chatting they were doing to stave off their fear, instead feeling a deep sense of pity for the little girl, and an anger directed towards whoever had caused the crisis.

'Can you tell us your name, my dear? Have you got anyone else to look after you?'

Alyx looked up at the physicists and guards who now crowded around her, her face puffy and tear-stained.

'I'm Alyx. Alyx Vance.'

A surprised and knowing look passed among some of the science team members.

One exclaimed, forgetting for a moment the sombre circumstance: 'But you're Eli Vance's daughter! I was just about to say before we noticed you, I met a scientist from Sector G, who spoke to Dr Kleiner from Anomalous Materials, who told him that Dr Vance is alive and looking for you. That is, the last time he was seen.'

A security guard spoke. 'I don't know how this kid got here, but we have to take her back.'

'Back!' blurted a scientist. 'We can't go back. We've been walking for hours in this heat. We must be close to the local town by now.'

'Then keep going, but the right thing to do here, and we all know it, is to go back the way we came and reunite this girl with her only remaining family.'

'All of us returning together is pointless. Most of us aren't even armed.'

'Then how about this: let everybody do what they think is right. If we're splitting this group in two, then there should be armed guards in both groups.'

In the end, the group divided itself more or less evenly. Most of the scientists who had seen enough of Black Mesa and its newly arrived denizens for a lifetime chose to continue their trek across the desert to where they believed was the closest town to Black Mesa, Encino. The second group was mostly made up of armed security guards. The first one who had spoken and suggested they split up was apparently a higher ranking guard. His word, and their own integrity, were enough to convince them to return back the way they had come and aid the helpless child in finding her father.

One of the few physicists that accompanied Alyx and the small group of security guards was the one who had heard the rumour started by Dr Kleiner. According to this rumour, Kleiner and Vance had made their way out of the depths of Anomalous Materials in the wake of Gordon Freeman, who had dealt with most of the creatures from there to the surface, and then towards the Lambda Complex. Dr Kleiner had been left in the care of some soldiers who had been given orders contrary to their original commands to wipe out all living things in Black Mesa, human or otherwise, and who were now pulling out of the doomed facility, instructed to "forget about Freeman."

That was the last time, they had been told, that Kleiner had seen Eli Vance, who had ventured back below ground in the direction of the dormitories to look for his family.

'Is that where you came from?' asked the lead security guard. 'The dormitories?'

Alyx was holding the hand of this man, looking up into a weathered, kind face which was framed by a glossy helmet.

'I was in the dormitories for a while', she said, thinking back. 'But then my Mom found me hiding behind a dumpster. There were monsters moving around for a long time, but then they disappeared, and she came.'

Tears sprang to the little girl's eyes again as she spoke of her mother. She hadn't seen the moment of Azian's death, she had no memory of what followed it, but she knew well enough that many people had died that day because of the monsters, monsters that had been surrounding the two of them. Why should her mother have been spared when so many others had died?

'Your father is headed to the dormitories because he probably believes you and your Mom are holed up there. He doesn't know that the place was both evacuated, and is probably now infested with aliens.'

This flat explanation was not how the guard would usually speak to a little child, but he had to be frank. The girl had seen enough horrors today to make her grow up rapidly. That's what violent catastrophes did to young people. They forced them to confront the hard facts of life whether they were ready to know about them or not. Nobody would gain anything by coddling them, trying to shield them from the terrible things that lurked around every corner.

'Once he finds out that you aren't there he'll most likely climb up the nearest stairwell to the surface.'

The guard didn't voice the other looming possibility, that Eli Vance would have perished at some point during his search. The man was no Gordon Freeman. He had no HEV suit and most likely no preternatural ability to best any obstacle he came across. At least, the guard didn't think he did.

'I went that way with my Mom', said Alyx with firmness.

'Then you remember what the surface looks like at the top?'

'I think so, but the way we came collapsed as we got through.'

The guard grimaced. That would make things harder, but surely Dr Vance would find another way through.

The guard wondered if he was doing the right thing by escorting Eli Vance's daughter back to Black Mesa. Which was worse, he wondered: leading a little girl back to a monster-infested facility to find a father who was quite possibly dead, or leading her away from that facility and her only surviving family to a distant town which might be just as overrun as their point of departure.

He supposed it didn't matter now. He had chosen the former. He would want to get back to his father if he were in her shoes.

The group, which was composed of five guards and one member of the science team, was much quieter than the larger group had been when they were walking away from Black Mesa. Before, part of the reason for their volubility had been the elation that they had made it out of the facility alive and were headed to somewhere safer. Now, the thought that they were moving back towards danger made them subdued and grim. But their leader was correct. They were doing the right thing in bringing Alyx back.

It was high summer, late June, and the sun shone down on the party without pity, despite the fact it was late afternoon. It had been a long day for everybody who had been at Black Mesa, either scientist, civilian or soldier. Everybody who had survived, that is.

As the group started to near the facility, all adults therein noticed something was different. When they had left, just a few hours ago, there had been noise in Black Mesa, irregular and often baleful. There had been short bursts of gunfire almost every few seconds from the soldiers who were still beset by teleporting-in aliens. They had been fighting a losing battle. They were better armed than the creatures from the border world, but the aliens had greater strength of numbers, materialising at random points all over Black Mesa incessantly. Now there was an eerie silence, so the battle for Black Mesa seemed to be over.

The small group passed by a red and white barrier gate which had been one entrance for cars and trucks entering this side of the facility. There was a booth to its left. Now, of course, it was unmanned. They could see much smoke rising in the distance, and as they put some distance between themselves and the entrance, crumbling walls became more and more common. The bombers that had been flying overhead a few hours ago had done their work, and now the skies were clear.