AUTHOR'S NOTES:
Tadadada! A truly quick update this time!! Surprised you, didn't I? Well, this chapter is. rather LONG. Unfortunately, this is one of the cases where quality gets lowered in favour of quantity. My writing was not too careful, and even sloppy, this time around. I'm afraid my grammar was especially affected. And I really don't have the patience to correct everything this time. Sorry people, please accept my apology for this.
Thanks again to my reviewers. I note everything you guys write to me, just FYI. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I'm not very well educated in literature. After all, writing is just one of my hobbies. That's why I don't know what "onomeatopia" means. (and Microsoft Word spellchecker apparently doesn't know either.) my guess is that it is some form of writing in literature, like metaphors and anaphors and stuff. I'll try to seek this out in a encyclopedia, promise.
As usual, I sincerely hope you'd enjoy this chapter! (after all, what other purpose do stories have anyway, right?)
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CHAPTER 8
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Although the olives tasted somewhat sour, the cheese was excellent.
Shepard took another bite from his sandwich. Delicious!
Numerous Apache, Cobra and Osprey helicopters could be seen in the distance, flying this way and that, kicking up sand from the ground. Shepard's squad was sitting on rocks in the field, all eating their rations.
Shepard looked up, his eyes meeting the perfectly blue skies. It was so hard to believe that underneath this beautiful sheet of glowing blue, such horrible events were taking place. A lot of good men were already dead, either by the aliens or by Freeman's hands.
Well, little could be done about the aliens, as their mysterious teleportation techniques gave them nearly complete control of the battlefield.
Freeman, on the other hand.
"Sir! Requesting your attention, sir!" a private interrupted his thoughts.
Shepard nodded his head.
"Freeman was sighted in the old office complex, level four. Patrol squad number 14 reports he was accompanied by 3 other men, one of which was a security guard, another wore scientist's robes, and they couldn't identify the fourth" the private stopped to take a deep breath before going on. "Squad 14 reports that they got away. No casualties to either side, although some property was destroyed."
Shepard waved his hand. In Black Mesa, where danger lurked behind every corner and air duct, the destruction of some ultra-expensive government toys was not an issue.
Shepard believed that the taxpayer's money, although it shouldn't be wasted on its own, wasn't as important as the lives of American soldiers and citizens; at least those who weren't responsible for all this mess - unlike Freeman and his fellow scientists.
"Level four, you said?" Shepard finally responded. "At ease, private. SQUAD!! ATTENTION!"
The soldiers leaped to their feet, unfinished food rations falling to the floor.
"Freeman was sighted by a friendly patrol in one of the old office complexes. These former offices are located underground and were abandoned years ago in favor of more modern, and well defended facilities." Shepard eyed his squad. Each and every one of them was a veteran, even though most were demoted to privates at the administrator's demand. Shepard often wondered how could this guy with no name have so much influence, both in the military and civilian authorities. But it wasn't his job to question his superior's decisions. "What do you think of Freeman, soldiers?"
"Freeman must DIE!!!" came the unanimous response.
"If you see Freeman, what will you do?"
"SHOOT!!!"
"If he shoots back, what do you do?"
"SHOOT!!!"
"If he takes cover, what do you do?"
"GRENADES!!!"
"Do we use lethal methods?"
"YES!!!"
"Do we have mercy?"
"NO!!!"
"Good! Remember all your friends and buddies who died by this man's bullets. He is a traitor of our great nation America, and we cannot allow him to leave, and to take more innocent lives of good troops!" Shepard paused. This wasn't the first time he went through this long tirade with his squad, and it won't be the last.
With the casualty level in Black Mesa, moral tended to break apart in such speed that without constant encouragement, soldiers might've deserted and escaped.
And that was something the military couldn't afford to happen.
"Let's go hunt some lab-rat filth, soldiers!"
"Aye SIR!!!"
As he and his squad started to walk on their way to the destination, Shepard smiled. This squad was indeed loyal and well trained. No rookies here.
He was going to give Freeman the fight of his life.
---
"Now what!?", asked Rosenberg.
The huge steel blast door looked very, very massive. Unfortunately, it was blocking the party's way. A way that, judging by the inclination of this corridor upward, led to the surface.
"Maybe we should try explosives?" suggested Doom.
"Well, I've got a few satchels here." said Freeman, indicating an inner pocket in his HEV suit, "but not nearly enough to topple this thing."
"Shouldn't there be some activation switch or something?" asked Calhoun. "There must be a way to open the doors from the inside!"
"Of course, Barney." Said Rosenberg. "We're looking for a small panel, approximately. here!" Rosenberg opened a small plastic section of the wall, revealing a panel in the wall. It contained several light indicators, all of which weren't currently glowing, as well as a keypad with numbers.
"Crap." Doom cursed. "It needs an authorization code. and there's an eye scanner here too." Doom was as pessimistic as ever.
"Well, I'm working in Black Mesa for years now." Rosenberg said, a proud gleam in his eyes. "Many years ago, I was one of the supporters of this entire operation! I'm familiar with many places in the facility, although only now do I recognize our position. so many years have passed since I've last been in this place." He shook his head slowly, as if remembering. "This is surface exit 5-Alpha-13, or 14 perhaps." Rosenberg straightened his glasses on his small nose, then lifted his finger in triumph. "The code is 749384!"
He was now smiling.
"The scanner will recognize my eye pattern, and let us pass. My clearance is level 11, there shouldn't be much problem."
"Ah, but there is one." Freeman chimed in. "This panel is dead!"
"Wh-what? Let me see!" Rosenberg pushed Freeman out of the way, and tried typing the code. The light indicators, which were supposed to be glowing with green, remained dark. "I can't believe it!!"
Rosenberg looked as if he was about to cry.
He tried the eye scanner, but it was also quiet.
"The marines. they've probably sabotaged it to prevent escape." Doom concluded.
"Well, I guess we're screwed after all." Calhoun sighed. "Let's turn around."
Will they ever be able to get out of here?
"Wait! Wait a minute!!" It was Rosenberg. He was shaking excitedly. "I remember there's an override station nearby! Come with me!!"
He started to run down some side corridor, the others trying to keep up behind him.
"Rosenberg! Be careful, dammit!!" Calhoun shouted.
If some slave decided to teleport in front of the defenseless Rosenberg at this moment, it'll be all over for him.
Rosenberg did not listen.
After a minute, Rosenberg stopped, all panting and sweating.
"Well, I'm certainly not in shape today." he managed to say when the others stopped next to him.
"I can see that", said Doom. For him, this run was barely uncomfortable. He almost didn't feel tiredness.
After another minute of rest, Rosenberg pointed to an unremarkable hatch in the floor.
"It's there! I'm sure of it!"
The hatch was flat and round. It somewhat reminded Doom a sewer entrance in a city.
"Where will this hatch lead us?" asked Freeman. He wasn't going to put his and his allies lives to unnecessary risk.
"Well, it's not that I've been there before," said Rosenberg with diffidence in his voice, "I've only seen the blueprints for this section of Black Mesa, and it was quite a long time ago. but I think there's a short corridor that ends with a control cabin." He looked Freeman in the eye "This station was built here for cases just like this, where the mechanism of the door or the panel malfunctioned, and quick access was needed. I don't think this chamber contains anything but the override controls."
"I don't like this!" grunted Doom. "If the military goons sabotaged the blast doors, they could've known 'bout this place here too. It may be an ambush or a trap."
"You're right." Freeman said, closing his mouth to a thin line. "That's why you should stay here with Calhoun, while I get down with Alex to watch over him while he works over the controls. You would be able to warn or assist us in case the marines drop by for a visit."
"Sounds good to me!" Calhoun interjected. "Good luck you two!"
Doom simply nodded, agreeing to Freeman's plan.
Freeman approached the hatch and tried to remove it, but it was quite heavy. With Doom's help though, it was successfully removed, revealing a ladder which went about four meters down into the well-like pass.
Freeman climbed down first, followed by Rosenberg.
It was dark, but Freeman used the flashlight built into his HEV suit to light the way. They started walking through the corridor, which made a sharp turn to the right after 10 meters, and another turn, this time left, after 15 more meters.
There, the corridor opened to a chamber that Freeman estimated to be approximately 15 on 15 meters large. Small red lights were glowing faintly in the walls and ceiling, brightly enough to allow Freeman to turn off the flashlight.
Upon first glance around the room, the two scientists immediately noticed two things.
One was the large operating console that stood on the far side of the room,
The other thing was half-a-dozen sleek automatic sentry-turrets that were spread all over the room. A dimly glowing maze of crimson laser beams could be seen in the masses of dust swirling around the room, waiting to be triggered by a passing shadow.
"Damn. I guess the soldiers have already been here." Freeman whispered the obvious.
The lasers were just everywhere. Freeman watched these sharp red lines, and had the fleeting impression that a whole separate generator was needed to power such a large quantity of coherent beams.
And each and every one of them was linked to those 6 turrets.
For now, the turrets were dormant, but a slight touch of one of the lasers will be enough to awaken the deadly machines. They will rip apart everyone in sight, until their motion scanners tell them their target is dead or neutralized (in most cases the former), after which they'd fall asleep again, waiting for the next trespasser to wake them up. The experimental technology for these sentry turrets was a recent one, and was not yet revealed to the public. In fact, these merciless sentries were developed and tested right there, in the Black Mesa facility, before entering service in limited quantities. The availability of these useful tools to the US military branches was not going to be limited for long though, as other factories besides Black Mesa were starting to produce the high-tech components needed for their construction.
"What are we going to do!?" Rosenberg was on the verge of panicking. His hands were trembling. He knew there could be no escape when the turrets are triggered - everything that breathes will be shredded into tiny chunks within seconds.
"We have to escape Black Mesa, to get out to the surface. We just do. Do you remember any alternative exits apart from the blast door nearby?"
Rosenberg shook his head, eyes still full of horror.
"That's not good. That means we'd have to pass through that maze without triggering any laser, you'll do your stuff with the controls and then we'll turn back. again, avoiding any touch with the lasers."
Rosenberg looked at the laser traps, randomly crossing each other, and gulped. The free spaces where a man's foot could step were small and far between. Even more lasers crossed the air at 1 meter height from the floor, making any attempt to cross to the other side ultra-hazardous at best.
"I. I think I'll wait here." Rosenberg managed to say.
Freeman cast a harsh look upon him.
"No, really. I could guide you from right here, so you could activate the override sequence yourself! I'm so clumsy that I'm likely to trigger the alarm and doom both of us anyway!"
Freeman nodded tiredly. After all, if Freeman triggered the alarm, at least Rosenberg, standing so close to the exit, will have a chance to escape.
And so, Freeman started to slowly make his way across the deadly field made of light. He would twist his body to pass below, above and between crossing beams, showing an impressive degree of flexibility and balance.
Freeman was progressing very slowly. After 15 minutes, he made ¾ of the way to area around the console, which was clear of laser beams. His muscles, though, were aching horribly. He was sweating uncontrollably. Merely several meters behind his back, Rosenberg watched Freeman move, mesmerized, with held breath.
When he was very close to the console, Freeman felt he could drop from exhaustion any second, but kept going, gis attention never wavering from the beams.
And he made it.
Collapsing before the console, he took a full minute restoring his muscles to proper functioning.
Then he stood up, approached the console, and asked Rosenberg for instruction.
Rosenberg complied, and Freeman carried out each separate procedure carefully, just as instructed.
When he finished, green indicators flooded the panel. He did it!
He turned around and prepared himself mentally for the long trip to the other side of the room, when.
BWHIIZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
In an almost blinding green flash, an alien slave teleported into the room. He appeared just below the ceiling at nearly 4 meters above the floor, and landed, of course, right in the middle of the crimson maze.
*WHAAAAAAAAAM*
*PEEP!**PEEP!**PEEP!*
The turrets unfolded their 6-barreled machine-gun emplacements simultaneously, making beeping noises to warn all potential friendlies nearby.
"RUN, ALEX!!!!!!!!!" Freeman bellowed uncontrollably.
He was afraid that Rosenberg would freeze from fear, but the little man complied, running clumsily towards the exit.
On the way Rosenberg tripped. Fortunately, the turrets were still busy turning the slave into a strainer, so he used the 2 additional seconds he had to get up and keep running. He managed to clear the room in time.
Freeman did not see Rosenberg's miserable attempts at survival, as he himself was already diving for the only available cover - the console.
By this time the slave was mutilated enough so that it could no longer be discerned from, for example, a bullsquid. The turrets sensed movement at the console's direction, and turned to neutralize the intruder.
Freeman managed to squeeze his body, along with the large HEV suit, between the console and the wall, just before the first volley of bullets danced upon the metallic floor where his head was a second ago. He tried to protect his head with his hands, and prayed that no bullet will ricochet in his direction. None did.
Fortunately for Freeman, the console was just wide enough to cover his entire body, though he wasn't sure if the tips of his boots were visible to the turrets on the other side. That was the reason that after the initial burst of bullets, the turrets stopped firing. After all, they could not detect Freeman, neither by the motion scanner nor by infrared imaging.
Freeman lied very still, waiting for the turrets to become dormant again, for the constant beeping to stop, for the machine guns on the turret's tips to fold in. He wasn't sure how long will the turret's alert status be active. It all depended on their programming.
-
*BANG**BANG*
Still closed.
What the heck happened?
Rosenberg was breathing heavily, fearing the worst. Freeman was probably dead, not 20 meters away from his location, and he was left all alone. Not only that, but the entrance hatch through which he and Freeman got down here was tightly shut. Rosenberg tried to open it, and when he realized he couldn't, he started to bang on it, hoping his friends up there would here him and get the hatch open to help him.
No such luck.
For the first time since the beginning of this horrible day, Rosenberg started to cry. He promised himself before that he would fight the horrors of the Resonance Cascade like a man, but now he could no longer hold on his tears.
What is he going to do??
He quit attempting to force the hatch open, and got down from the ladder.
Everything is silent. No gunfire could be heard. The turrets weren't firing on anybody.
Either Freeman managed to somehow escape, or, more probably, he was already dead.
Rosenberg wipes his tears and braces himself together. He would just have to survive alone.
He tries to call forth the memory of the area's blueprints, to find an exit from this place. Wait a minute. wasn't there something about air ducts placed somewhere around here?
Yes! Now he could remember. The management had questioned the need of placing air ducts in such a rarely-visited, almost maintenance-oriented chamber. Rosenberg couldn't remember the engineer's and architect's answers, but he was pretty sure the air ducts were somewhere around.
He looked around in the darkness, giving his eyes even more time to get used to the darkness.
THERE!
He saw a small dark rectangle shape near the floor. He checked it out, and discovered that it was indeed either an air vent, or a maintenance tunnel. It was locked, but Rosenberg got out his small pistol. Although his puny self-defense weapon was useless against the kind of monsters roaming Black Mesa, it was still a gun, and it was still perfectly capable of piercing an iron lock with a single shot.
BOOM!
The job is done.
Rosenberg squeezed himself through the tight opening, and disappeared into the choking darkness.
-
When Freeman and Rosenberg disappeared into the hatch in the floor, Doom and Calhoun did not expect them to take all that long. After all, why should they take more than 5 minutes max to turn a few switches, and press a few buttons?
But after 10 minutes have passed, they started to worry.
Their concern tripled when they started to hear marines, somewhere not too far. They closed the hatch so it will not look suspicious, hidden themselves in cover and waited, weapons raised.
When they started to hear multiple gun fire and explosions, they both cast puzzled look at each other. All that mess sounded like a serious battle, not a simple encounter with one or two slaves. What the hell was going on there!?
"Calhoun!" Doom's deep voice called.
"What?"
"We have to warn Freeman and Rosenberg, in case the soldiers will get closer."
"You're right. I'll go"
Calhoun didn't bother to ponder about the perfect consensus created between him and Doom. He started to approach the now closed hatch, with Doom right behind him to help lift it, when the sounds of gunfire started to weaken, and were gone in seconds.
"What the heck." Calhoun started to speak, but never finished the sentence.
The ground shook, and from behind the corner of the large corridor that led to the blast doors (and the direction of the gunfire they've heard), a huge bluish-green shape appeared, making strides about 3 meters wide each.
The single red eye focused on the horrified humans, their useless weapons pointed at the towering giant.
"Not you!" Doom cursed under his breath.
Calhoun just stood, mesmerized at the inhuman nightmare-in-flesh.
The wicked white teeth of the creature made a clamping sound. He was going to have them for supper.
Finally, after the longest 3 seconds in both men's lives, the giant acted.
Its large trunk-sized right foot rose high into the air.
THUMP!!!
A bright red charge, emitting a high-pitched sound, shot from the enormous foot. It was aimed at Doom. He and Calhoun dodged to different sides, and the red charge collided with the wall, blowing a hole the size of a small car.
Freeman and Calhoun did not wait for the dust to clear; they immediately dove into the hole in the wall, the edges of which were glowing red from the heat.
Although they were reluctant to leave Freeman and Rosenberg behind, without even telling them what happened, they were totally preoccupied with escaping the lumbering death that punched through the wall, which broke apart easily.
They ran on, blindly, the gargantuan nature's atrocity hot on their tracks.
"Catch this, sucker!!"
It was Calhoun.
Doom didn't know the brave security guard had any other weapons than the Glock he demonstrated earlier, but now he witnessed how Calhoun threw a grenade behind his back, spitting and shouting curses toward the monster.
The grenade went off with a sound that was muffled by the creature's foot. The hot fires of the explosion licked its side, but it didn't seem to be hurt, as it kept closing in on them at the same pace.
"Ha! Take THAT, bitch!!!"
Another grenade went off, this time closer to the creature.
The effect of the explosion on the giant, or lack thereof, seemed to be the same as before.
More curses and more grenades went flying into the air. The explosions, powerful enough to turn a human being into a burnt-out-smoking-rag-holed-with-shrapnel, was doing almost nil to the cyclops. At best, it was merely delaying it a bit.
The two men kept running. They were so far from the area of the hatch now, that they couldn't recognize the place they were running through at all.
The living green mountain with razor-sharp teeth kept pursuing, causing destruction and havoc on its way.
-
Rosenberg crawled forward, on and on. He twisted his body through the tight labyrinth of tunnels, in a complete blanket of darkness. He couldn't see a thing; there was no light for his eyes to adapt to.
His pulse, already racing, quickened its pace even more. His heart was pounding so powerfully, that it almost seemed to shake the entire vent.
Rosenberg didn't know that he was claustrophobic, but he had found out about it the hard way.
Crawling, on and on, without an end. He imagined the cool walls of the vent to be alive, they kept constricting more and more until he could hear his bones crack in his imagination.
The complete darkness and tightness of space kept driving him mad. He felt as if he was swallowed alive. And the worst part was, that he was lost. He couldn't turn back even if he wanted to, because he did not even remotely have the needed space to turn his body to the opposite direction.
Lost. Forever. The thought was unbearable. He started to moan with fear, when suddenly, his eyes, which in this darkness were very sensitive to light, picked up a slightly brighter turn in a yet another crossing.
His heart pounded loudly, this time with hope, as he happily crawled toward the source of light.
Yes! It's getting brighter!
He was confident that after the next curve of the tight passage, he would be able to discern the exit from this network of vents.
But he wasn't destined to find out.
*SCREECH!*
Rosenberg's heart missed a beat, as he felt something cold, soft and moist clamp on the top of his head.
He started to draw a breath for a last scream of horror, when a sharp pain went all the way through his head to the spine.
Darkness, way darker than his surroundings, enveloped the screaming mind of Alexander Rosenberg.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
[a tired sigh] well, this chapter was freakin' long, wasn't it? I've written it pretty quickly and without too much attention to details. THAT's the reason for the low quality of my grammar and writing. I apologize for it again. I think I know how it feels to read something that is written in a strange way that does not conform to the rules of English, but there's little that I can do about it.
As usual, reviews will be appreciated.