The darkness began to fade.

Sounds came to him, cold and lonely.

His senses were scattered, his mind reactivating slowly. Everything felt distorted and distant.

The first thing that he truly became aware of was the fact that it was raining. Cold droplets pelted his exposed skin, accelerating his reinsertion into his body.

Something had happened.

Something terrible and stomach-churning, but his mind refused to cooperate.

The moment he realized that he was standing, Eric staggered and collapsed into a puddle. It splashed as he hit, making him even colder and wetter.

His other senses finally began to divine coherency from the input they were receiving.

It was raining, and he now lay sprawled in a back alleyway. The walls around him were wet brick, old, crumbling in some areas. Sprayed with graffiti in a language he vaguely recognized but couldn't read.

Something stank, like old garbage and rotting meat.

"I apo-lo-gize for the...abrupt awa-kening, Mister Bissshhhop."

Eric jerked as a wave of cold fear shrieked through his marrow, jolting him into a sitting position, his body ready for action.

Yes, action…

There had been a lot of that, hadn't there?

In his mind's eye, he saw strange creatures going down under gunfire. The flashing of muzzle flare. Dead bodies. Blood-splattered hallways.

Turning to face the strange voice, he found himself looking up at a dauntingly familiar man in a crisp blue suit.

"What-what's happening?" Eric slurred, struggling to his feet, his mind still grappling with the situation. He felt drunk or drugged, a fog of uncertainty hanging over everything.

"I'm af-raid I cannot hold-you any...long-er. But a man-of your...tal-ents, will do fine...I bel-ieve. Hmm. Yesssss. Good luck."

As Eric finished staggering to his feet, fighting for control, for coherency, the man snapped out of existence. The effect was so sudden, so abrupt, that it caused him to wonder if he had been hallucinating.

But no, he had seen this man before, he was sure of it. Absolutely positive.

Ahead of him was the end of the alleyway. He saw a pile of old garbage bags and errant cans and bottles scattered across the rain-slicked, cracked concrete. A brilliantly harsh light glared down on the road beyond the mouth of the alley.

Somewhere distant, sirens were blaring. Sirens unlike anything he'd ever heard before. Overhead, lightning split the sky and thunder cracked and boomed, making him jump.

Where was he?!

None of this was right. He struggled to remember what had happened, where he had last been, as he started making his way down the alley. As he raised his arm to steady himself on the graffiti-stricken wall, he saw a pale blue sleeve. Pausing, he looked down at himself. He was wearing some kind of jumpsuit.

What had he been wearing before?

"Armor," he muttered, slowly looking back up at the street ahead. "I was wearing armor...I was in a vehicle. We were driving."

He had flashes of memory. Being in a vehicle with other people…

They had been fleeing.

Fleeing from…

"Black Mesa," Eric whispered.

He shivered in the rain as the memory of the nuke going off came back to him in a flash. And then being in a mysterious floating tram car, and then here.

Where the hell was here?

Why was he in different clothing?

Where were the others?

He tried to remember what the strange man had said, that government-type looking bastard with the dead eyes and the false smile.

Something about how he could only save one of them. And apparently Eric had been that one.

A wave of horror, anger, and wretched, agonizing sorrow washed over him as he realized the ones he had fought and bled alongside, the people he had gotten so close to escaping with, were dead. They were dead and gone.

He stopped again as a disturbing familiar odor hit him. Looking around, he soon found the source of the stench, and panic began to replace fear.

A headcrab. There was a dead headcrab just beyond the pile of garbage. And not recently dead, either. It had clearly been there for quite awhile.

Eric swallowed and looked around shakily. Where was he and what had happened that a headcrab could die and be left so casually out in the open long enough for it to begin decaying?! It was an alien, a creature from another dimension!

He had to be missing something.

Continuing his journey down the alleyway, his legs becoming steadier as the fog dissipated from his mind, he heard a vehicle getting closer. A moment later, a strange, angular car shot past. It was of a design he had never seen before.

So much was happening so fast. He kept going, he had to see what was beyond the alleyway, had to get some notion of where he was and what in the name of God was going on. It was a genuine struggle to fight back against the panic that was welling up within him.

And then he was there, at the mouth of the alleyway, and he found himself staring out into a large city square ringed by old, decaying structures.

Only...something wasn't right. He saw a few more of those weird trucks situated in the city square, as well as several very tall pieces of strange metal erected like monoliths. One of them sported an enormous screen, while the rest all held those extremely powerful lights he'd been seeing the result of. Squinting, he saw a vaguely familiar man on the screen.

"I thought so much of City Seventeen that I elected to establish my administration here. In the Citadel so thoughtfully provided by our Benefactors…"

"City Seventeen?" Eric muttered, looking around.

A humming sound caught his attention. He looked around anxiously, as it was getting closer. Abruptly, a hovering metal...something floated into his field of vision. It focused on him with a small red lens and a light snapped on. On the heels of that was the pop-flash of a camera.

"Shit!" Eric snapped, covering his eyes as he stumbled away, back down the alley.

He had to figure out what had happened.

He had to know.

Somewhere out there in this strange, rainy City Seventeen, there had to be someone who could help him…