"All right, come on, move, move," Eric muttered as he made his way through the crowded space. "Actually," he paused, looked around, "dammit. Hold on. Watch the hatch and stay quiet."

His mind was a confused thing, like a powerful beast that had once prowled the wilderness and stalked with ease, roused from a long hibernation and thrown into danger without warning. He'd prepared for this, in a way felt it inevitable, and had spent two years in this horrifying new world. Two very, very long years.

And yet still he felt like he wasn't fully ready for the event now that it had found him.

But that thought roused him a bit more and he crossed the room, moving through the crowd, to a slim locker in one corner. How many times had he not felt ready for what lay ahead of him? How many times had he been thrown into chaos?

Too many.

'Ready' was relative, and often unattainable. That was the truth of most situations. You could, and should, prepare as much as possible, but more often than not, you'd never really feel ready if you still suffered from the human condition.

And he did.

"Everyone take one," he said, passing out backpacks that he'd stuffed in the locker. "Grab everything that looks useful. Food, medicine, clothes. We aren't coming back here."

He passed out all that he had, and had only been able to gather eight total. For the most part, the Combine didn't want you to be able to carry a lot of gear and equipment. Not unless you were flying their flag, and even then, it wasn't like they let their people be particularly well-equipped. He kept one pack for himself and moved over to his special work area. There, he secured the headcrab poison. Lara appeared at his side.

"I need a weapon," she said.

"Here," he replied, passing her the pistol he was holding and then a trio of magazines. He snagged his own custom pistol and the weapons he'd set aside. He also grabbed his knife and attached the sheath firmly to his belt, and then his crowbar, too. He finished shoving some spare clothing and as much food as he could into the pack, then zipped it up and slipped it on. Then he turned and faced Lara, studying her.

"What?" she asked.

"I need a painfully honest and unbiased answer to this next question," Eric replied.

"I'm listening."

"How good an agent are you?"

She hesitated a few seconds, thinking about it. "I'm a very good shot. I'm quick on my feet and I've got good reaction time. I know how to fight. I'm an expert with technology. But I'm inexperienced and sometimes make rash decisions."

He nodded. "All right. I'm trusting you to help me get them somewhere safe. Their lives are in your hands."

She looked uncomfortable. "Eric-"

"Their lives are in your hands," he repeated, firmly. "Unless you leave right now, this is a reality you need to live with and adapt to."

Lara's frown deepened but she looked at the other people crowding the small space with them, then slowly returned her gaze to his own. She nodded once, tightly.

"Then let's go."

He moved through the group and got to the hatch on the other side. Opening it up, he waited and listened, then determined there was no one down there waiting for them. He returned his attention to the group.

"All right, everyone, I need you to listen very closely. We're going down into the sewers now. Lara and I are going to escort you all to the nearest Resistance outpost. Once we get there, I'm going to convince them to get you all out of the city. It's going to be...well, it won't be easy. The sewers are very dangerous. You all need to be prepare to fight if it comes down to it, but unless it truly does, let me and Lara handle the situation. We need to move fast, and we need to move quietly. Should take us about fifteen minutes give or take to get there. You'll be following me. Be prepared to stop at a moment's notice. Lara's going to watch our backs. Questions?"

He looked around at the others. They stared back at him grimly. There was fear there, to be sure, but he saw more determination than fear. It enlivened his spirit and gave him a shot of something like hope. They'd grown up, grown older in this godforsaken world for twenty years while he'd gotten to vacation through most of it in some weird stasis. They were ready for this. Or as ready as they were going to be.

"Okay, let's do this."

Eric opened up the hatch again and slid down the ladder. He took a quick look around to make sure nothing lurked, then motioned for the others to join him. While they came down one by one, Eric took the opportunity to check down the sewer tunnel they'd need to traverse. He jogged down to the next intersection and scoped it out. Nothing, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. Looking back the way he'd come, he saw Lara coming down.

She made a quick gesture to him, one that both conveyed that she was secure and ready to move, and ignited in him an extremely intense hit of nostalgia.

Eric nodded tightly. "Let's go, people."


The first ten minutes of the trip were uneventful.

The route to the station was burned into Eric's memory. He'd made it most of the way there often enough, and had actually gotten within sight of Upsilon Station a couple of times over the past few months. It had actually almost gotten him shot once when someone out on patrol got a little close and noticed him hanging around. Mostly he'd charted the route because he knew something like this was inevitable.

He'd always feared that he'd have to take a whole group of people with him, but he'd hoped that it would have been him having to finally flee.

Eric held up his fist as he approached an old pumping station room. He kept it up and was grateful for the hush that fell and was maintained.

A sound had come to him, but it was so faint he wasn't sure if he'd actually heard it.

He slowly waited, frozen, still as a statue, listening intently.

The sound came to him again, a faint rustling. He uncurled his fist, flattening his hand out and pushing it back towards the group: wait.

Gripping his pistol with both hands, he crept forward. Sounded like a headcrab up ahead. Eric got right up to the threshold that looked into the old pumping station. It was a two-story affair, the upper level metal catwalks. Pipes along the walls, the ceiling. Bulky, blocky machinery squatting to either side of him, a whole section of wall studded with cracked, dirty meters and dials. A vent broken open. Lots of places for the little bastards to hide.

He waited, listening…

There.

It was to the left. He heard the soft chirping, clicking sound they sometimes made and heard it wandering around. Eric leaned around the corner and scoped out the situation quickly. There it was. He spotted movement in the shadow of a large pipe sticking out of the wall, aimed, and fired off a quick shot. There was a brief, high-pitched shriek and a spray of that familiar yellow-green blood. And then a few other warning sounds as other headcrabs in the area became alerted to his position. He cursed softly and swept the area with his gaze.

Eric nearly got flashbacks to Black Mesa, his time down in waste disposal where he'd first met Watts. God, Watts...Vanessa...so many dead.

Maria.

He still dreamed about her, sometimes. For some reason, the memory-altering shit they laced the water with seemed not to have touched his Black Mesa memories. Or at least the ones of him surviving that hellish nightmare.

Or, shit, maybe they had and he just didn't realize it.

Two more headcrabs came stalking out from behind one of the big pieces of machinery. He aimed and fired, popping off three shots in quick succession and splattering more blood across the rusty old equipment. As he prepared himself for more, he suddenly heard the sound of something getting closer. Something a bit bigger, feet slapping against the concrete. It was coming from an opening to his right, between two of the pumps.

It, too, sounded familiar…

"Aw shit!" Eric snapped as his old friend the bullsquid waddled into the room. It spotted him immediately and hocked a big gob of its acidic goo. He ducked it and heard it splat wetly on the wall behind him, then put four rounds into the dark green creature. It shrieked and squealed and then died, collapsing into a heap.

He waited, listening still, and relaxed when nothing else came. After checking out the room in a bit more detail and reloading his pistol, he called the others in.

"Ugh, I hate these things," Lara muttered when she saw the dead bullsquid.

"Yeah, bullsquids, hate 'em," he replied. "That acid hurts like a bitch."

"Bullsquid...who came up with that name?" she muttered.

Eric almost said 'I did', but just shrugged instead. Although the weird things with the tentacle-mouths had been all over Black Mesa, they were rare nowadays. Not that he was sad to see them go. Same with the Houndeyes. The barnacles were still goddamned everywhere, though. Same with the headcrabs, and their fun variants.

"How close are we?" Willie asked.

"About three quarters of the way there," Eric replied. "But this is hostile territory now. So be even more cautious than before."

"Great," Mary muttered.

He looked at her, appraising her and the others. They looked rattled, but still had that determination on their faces, in their stances. Everyone nowadays, damaged or not, had steel in their spines, in their nerves, in their souls. They weren't unbreakable, everyone had their limit, but he figured they'd probably last long enough to get out of City Seventeen, provided they survived. But that would be out of his hands soon, probably.

"This way," Eric said once everyone had joined him in the dusty, derelict room. He led them down the passageway the bullsquid had come out of.

It was another harrowing bout of tunnel terror, moving through the dark, cramped confines of the sewers that ran beneath City Seventeen in a wild proliferation. Twice more he had them stop and put down a half-dozen headcrabs when they tried to couple with his face and turn him into just another screaming, mindless zombie.

And then, suddenly, he turned a corner and found himself staring down the barrel of a shotgun.

"Freeze!" a woman snapped.

"Friendly! Icepick!" he replied automatically.

The woman, a hard-faced brunette with a scar down one side of her face and eyes of gray steel, faltered, then slowly lowered the shotgun. "That challenge is six months out of date."

"I've been gone awhile," Eric replied. "Countersign is Phoenix, if it helps."

"It does," she muttered. "Only agents know that." She frowned and looked past him at the others who had frozen up behind him. "What the hell is going on? Who are you?"

"I'm a former Resistance member in a really bad situation. I need to speak with Captain Birdwell," he replied.

"Captain Birdwell has been dead for two months," she replied grimly.

"Shit. Well, I need to speak to whoever's in charge. It's important."

The woman was scrutinizing him closely, likely she was trying to figure out who he was. Abruptly, she seemed to give up. "Fine, how many you got there?"

"Ten altogether," he replied.

"Great. Come on, follow me."

She led him and his group down a hallway that looked more like an industrial zone than a sewer. The hallway terminated in a reinforced doorway with a hatch that had clearly been added in long after the initial construction. She banged on it, twice fast and then three slow. The hatch spun and the door opened. Two guys with SMGs waited beyond.

"What the hell-Shelly, what's this?" one of them asked.

"I don't know, but he's ex-Resistance and they look desperate. He wants to talk with Holt."

The two guys looked at each other, frowning. They were in a small receiving area, what might once have been a storage room that had been mostly cleared out. "Fine," one of them said, "you, come with me, everyone else, in here now. Don't move, don't cause any problems, just stay quiet and let us sort this out."

Once they got everyone inside, they resealed the hatch and Eric was led deeper into the outpost. The Resistance guard led him down a concrete corridor and into another small room that held a random assortment of things. Sleeping bags, tables, chairs, crates, cabinets, shelves, everything stuffed in wherever it would fit. Four people were trying to catch some sleep scattered around the room. The guard led him through it quickly, into another, larger room that was more abuzz with activity. Eric felt that same sense of nostalgia as he looked around.

Three people were eating and talking quietly, two were playing a card game, one sat at a table, talking quietly and quickly into a radio with a big pair of headphones spray-painted hot pink cupped over his ears. He recognized a trio of people sitting around waiting as Citizens who were probably on the run, looking for a place to lie low as they got out of the City. One man sat by a table, cleaning a submachine gun.

"Captain Holt," the guard said as they came to stand behind him.

The man sighed heavily, hunched over his weapon. He picked up a piece of it and raised it up, to a light overhead, studying it intently. "What is it, Murph?"

"Got a, uh, guy here who wants to see you."

A pause. "What? A guy? Just some guy?"

"Shelly let him in."

"Icepick," Eric said.

"Phoenix," Holt replied almost automatically. He put down the part he was looking at and turned around in the stool he sat on. Eric found himself looking at a burned out, tired-eyed man who was probably only a few years older than him but looked fifteen years beyond that. His brown hair was cut short and stuck up in several places, and he looked like he hadn't slept for a few days. Eric vaguely recognized the man and was sure they'd fought together at some point. "Your callsign's a little out of date, pal...what's your name?"

"Eric."

"Eric what?"

"Doesn't matter."

"Uh-huh. All right Mister Doesn't Matter, who the hell are you and why shouldn't I eject you from my outpost immediately?"

"I was with the Resistance six months ago and I...need help. I was running an apartment and we got compromised. Civil Protection is after us. We got away and they didn't follow us, but I've got eight people who need to get out of City Seventeen and get relocated somewhere safe."

Holt laughed. "Tall order…" He ran a hand over the lower half of his face, scrutinizing Eric closely. Eric knew he looked fairly different behind the beard and hair he'd grown out over the past several months. "I know I know you...ah hell. I don't have time for this. City's buzzing like a damned hornet's nest recently. Look, man, I'll make you a deal." He stood up and walked over to a map on the wall. "We've got some sick people here, we need antibiotics."

"Great," Eric muttered. Antibiotics were very difficult to come across outside of Combine dispensaries and 'clinics'.

"Don't worry, we've got a few emergency stashes. But there's been a lot of extra activity in the area recently, so we've been figuring out how to get there. So, you hit these two locations, come back with the caches, and I'll begin the process of getting your friends out of town. Best I can do."

"I'll do it," Eric replied. "Let me just go get my friend to help."

"All right."

Eric headed back through the outpost and rejoined the others, who were all looking at him expectantly.

"What's happening?" Mary asked.

"I'm cutting a deal with the guy who runs this place," Eric replied, looking around at them slowly. "Lara and I are going to go get something for them and after we've gotten it, they've agreed to get you all out of City Seventeen."

Lisa, ever the pragmatist, stepped closer. "And where exactly are we going?"

"There's secret Resistance settlements in the White Forest outside of the City. In truth, the journey will be extremely difficult and dangerous. Getting out of the City is the hardest part, but the Resistance knows what it's doing. They've been at this for years, they have a system. But...once you actually get to where you're going, I think you'll like living a lot more. So, for now, just...wait here. I'll be back as soon as I can."

They all murmured responses as Lara moved forward to join him, and he led her back through the subterranean outpost.

"So, I guess I got voluntold to do this, huh?" she asked.

"You really complaining?" he replied. "From what I remember you were always looking for excuses to get out from under your dad's thumb."

She grabbed his arm and stopped him. He looked back at her. "So you do know me," she said.

"Yeah, I thought I mentioned that."

Lara stared at him, her expression hard, and he could tell she was trying to place his face once again. He shook off her hand.

"Come on, we have to do this now."

She sighed and followed.

"Lara Rift? What the hell are you doing here?" Holt asked as they approached.

"Special assignment," she replied.

Holt frowned, staring at her, leaning his head back a little. "Well that's obviously bullshit, but I've seen you shoot, so I'm not exactly inclined to turn away help."

"Appreciated. What are we doing?"

Eric pointed out the two spots on the map. "We gotta go here and here, grab some meds, come back."

"And then what?"

Eric was silent for a few seconds. "I don't know," he admitted.

"Hey," Holt said when they turned to leave.

"What?" Eric replied.

"Who are you? Really?"

"Nobody."

Holt looked at Lara. She shook her head. "He won't tell me."

"Huh. All right, get going."

Eric and Lara headed for the exit.