Thick sewage sprayed about as Erik toppled backwards, taken completely by surprise. "Holy... God... Jesus!" were the words he managed to form, while a large lump collected in his throat. His PDA slipped from his hand and shattered across the nearby wall. Modified with an impact-resistant airtight covering, only the thumb-sized memory block survived. He hoped he would remember to recover it.

The Combine Metrocop, as their species sometimes identified themselves, took two steps backwards and raised its MP7 personal defense weapon. It, as gender was impossible to discern, pulled back the weapon's slider, pushing a small yet extremely deadly metal slug into the barrel. Erik lost control of his bowels. Nobody noticed.

"On your feet, criminal!" came the warbling, digitalized speech from the Metrocop's translator. Still frozen with fear, Erik hesitated. Taking a single step forward, the Combine ordered again, "Citizen, obey or you will be terminated!"

Realizing what was about to happen, Erik hurried to comply. He stood himself on legs that seemed curiously nonexistent, and terrified though he was, he knew he was making the best choice possible. Even if he was taken into the Index, and summarily to God-knows-where, he still had a chance to fight.

The soldier grabbed Erik's shoulder and roughly turned him about, then patted him down for weapons. Finding the 9mm sidearm, the Combine ejected the full clip and slipped it into its equipment belt, and dropped the pistol to the floor. A synthesized order to "Start moving!" barked out from the Combine's translator, and Erik began to walk.

He marched down the sewer. But not fast enough it seemed, as the soldier's weapon stock was jabbed sharply between Erik's shoulder blades. He let out a yelp of pain, and crumbled to his knees.

"Increase your pace, criminal!" the alien ordered him, and before Erik could rise, pushed the felon's face into the sewage for good measure. In the Combine's eyes, the petty criminal deserved more punishment than he received. But any more, and the Combine would be demoted to the dishonorable position of Runner. The soldier shuddered at the memories of that rank, but the pleasure of torturing the human just a little bit more pushed those memories aside.

The Combine's boot, after what seemed like an eternity, was lifted from the back of Erik's head. His lungs screaming in protest, he managed to roll himself over and let the air rush into his deflated lungs. He took a deep breath, and worked his way to a standing position, still gasping for breath. "Burn... in hell... you... BASTARD," he spat at the Combine's face.

What amounted to rage began to build in the Combine's mind. The last word of the sentence had no Combine equivalent, but the first four words were not lost on the soldier. It moved to crack the MP7 down on the human, but stopped itself short. Demotion would be too much, would destroy any chance the Combine had of becoming a Metroleader, and instead chose to let the insult slide. There would be more opportunities to get revenge, and those opportunities would involve no punishment to the soldier. For now, the only thing that mattered was getting the human topside, and into the capable hands of the Indexers.

Once Erik caught his breath and began again toward the lighted sewers, he heard a faint crackle of static, and knew the soldier was alerting nearby Combine, or announcing Erik's capture. Or both. His spirits plunged even deeper than before. He now had no hope of escaping now.

The pair followed Erik's path from the dumpster, but in a move that half- surprised him, he was ordered along a different route. Rather than move east to the hidden entrance, the two marched down a wide but completely dark sewer, interspersed with smaller pipes that drained sewage into the passage. Erik swallowed loudly as he realized why they changed routes. Shit, we're going into the Control Zone! Past the walls that ate away at the city was an area completely controlled by the Combine. Most humans who were taken inside to the Index were, from what he had heard, shipped off- world, and those who remained were enslaved by the aliens. It can't get any worse than this, he thought to himself, and nearly vomited in fear. The soldier clicked its barrel-mounted tactical flashlight on, and a beam of light cut through the darkness.

After nearly an hour of walking, what amounted to a small army of Scanners, with an additional five Combine surrounding Erik and his captor, had collected nearby. Quietly buzzing through the adjacent sewers, the Scanners were, true to their name, constantly scanning for the presence of life forms. It was hardly worth the fuel to check for humans, but the Scanners were here to scan for other life forms. As of yet, Erik had never seen any creatures other than the Combine soldiers, but he had heard... stories... of them. Horrible stories that made him truly afraid of them. Headcrabs, bullsquids, controllers,hydras... The list went on, and for each new story he heard, he had become more paranoid, always checking the shadows for anything. His eyes darted left and right, continually searching for movement in the drainpipes.

The lead soldier's radio hissed with static, its sound-insulator broken, and words of a vaguely-human but alien tongue reverberated off the cold steel walls. Once the transmission ended, the leader flashed a set of hand signals, and the soldiers immediately stopped. And waited.

Erik opened his mouth to speak, but a voice stopped him short. "No talking," was the Combine's order. And they continued to wait.

And wait.

The soldier to the left, of which only the glowing red eyes were visible, seemed to look at Erik longer than any of the others. That's odd, he thought, and something began nagging at the back of his mind. It was something about a Combine soldier, but he couldn't put his finger on it... As he racked his memory, he looked straight at the soldier. It stared right back, and Erik noticed something different about it. But before he could figure it out, he heard the sound of metal scraping metal, and a dim column of starlight shot down just ahead of the group.

The beam of light was cut to pieces as a Combine soldier stepped into the manhole and descended down the ladder. A second figure, likely another captured human, followed it down the ladder. A second Combine followed the prisoner, and pulled the manhole cover back, cutting off the only natural light in the passage.

It was then that Erik realized there was not only something different about the soldier on his left, there was something different about the sewer. Something had changed since they had stopped. He looked around, and heard nothing but the static hiss of closed-circuit radios. Nothing, he thought...The Scanners are gone!

At that moment, the soldier off to the left deactivated its tac-light, and splashes of running feet sounded in the smaller connecting sewers. They were getting closer. The Combine on the left clicked its weapon's safety off. Erik thought he heard a muffled laugh.

The splashing got closer, until several muscular, avian-legged life forms moved into the main sewer. One put its hands together, and a large ball of what looked like electricity formed between them. The Combine soldiers' armor and equipment began to rattle, and seemed to be attracted to the ball of electric charge. The life form's hands moved apart to accommodate the growing charge, and then clapped. Blue threads of electrons shot out in all directions. All of the tac-lights immediately flashed off. The faint hiss of the Metrocops' radios disappeared, as did the dim glow of red eyes.

Suddenly, small bolts of lightning flew from the other aliens' locations. Some shot wide, hitting the damp steel walls and firing sparks in all directions. Other bolts managed to find their targets in the darkness, burning holes through all but one Combine soldier as their weapons fired blindly, strobing the sewer with light. While collecting a charge, one of the new life forms managed to absorb several 9mm slugs, until an either skillfully-placed or very lucky shot obliterated the front of its skull. It toppled forwards, and with the very last of its energy attempted to stop its fall with its hands. The charge that had collected had somehow remained between the alien's hands, and the instant it reached the liquid waste covering the floor, Erik's vision went black.