WHERE HAVE THEY COME FROM – THE LOST (AND POSSIBLY LAST) CHAPTER
You heard it. This is the incomplete chapter 10, which was written more than half a year ago. Since, as you could guess, I have (currently) lost interest in writing I am very unlikely to continue this, and releasing the unfinished chapter is the least I can do. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as (you've said you) enjoyed the other chapters. Oh, and please don't hate me .
CHAPTER 10
Doom eyed the strange new alien creature, placing it right in the middle of his pistol's sights. He wasn't sure whether to shoot it or to simply move on, because it didn't look very threatening. But Doom learned not to judge a creature by its looks – and now he was cautious. He waited for Freeman and Calhoun, who were several minutes behind him, to arrive.
Shortly, he heard the steps of his teammates behind him.
"Well, what do we have here?" asked Freeman, looking up at the creature Doom was pointing his gun at. "Why the hell are you aiming at a Barnacle?"
"I don't know what it is, so I opted not to take any chances. Just tell me what it does, would you?"
"Waited for the 'Xen alien experts' to arrive, huh?" Freeman asked, doing a 'quotation mark' motion with his fingers.
Doom rolled his eyes and half-groaned half-growled in response. Sometimes Freeman really knew how to be a pain in the ass.
"OK, don't get mad at me" Freeman said quickly. "This thing is harmless, as long as you don't touch its sticky tongue".
"What, this rope thing?" Doom waved his head in the direction of the tongue.
"Exactly. It'll strangle you, drag you up, and devour you in seconds. Yummy. Now, let's move on, we're almost on the surface now, I can feel it".
The two moved out, with Calhoun, still pale from the shock of losing a friend, dragging himself after them.
As they kept going onward, more and more Barnacles could be seen, hanging down from the ceiling until it was littered with the things.
"Hmm", doom pondered. "Their tongues are very tightly grouped together. It won't be easy to pass through…" he suddenly jumped and whirled about as he heard gunshots right behind him.
Freeman was shooting at the Barnacles one by one, causing some of them to drop to the floor, causing others to vomit blood and half-digested human-looking tissue.
"Next time, WARN ME before opening fire!" Doom said through gritted teeth.
An observer could possibly misjudge Doom as being a coward for nervously jumping so suddenly. He would be mistaken, of course. Doom's reflexes were honed to their peak by years of surviving the horrors of LA, and a sudden noise in the dead city usually meant bad news. Therefore, it's not surprising that Doom acted the way it was. His sharp perception and cunning reflexes were the ones to blame.
Now, after most of the Barnacles were dead, the path was clear for the three to go on.
-
Only fifteen minutes have passed before they reached a door, which opened up without the need to resort to violence.
Behind the door was a really large room – a hangar of some kind, even though it was empty of airplanes. Daylight was pouring in from high-placed windows, illuminating the swirling masses of dust, which could be seen in every direction they look at.
"Hell, we're out" Calhoun whispered behind him.
The others didn't hear him, as they were busy at cautiously exploring the room.
They knew they've reached the surface, but they were still far from either Lambda section, or the end of Black Mesa. And who knows what other horrors await them at the surface? Are there things here, more horrible than anything they've seen so far?
For several minutes, everything was quiet.
Doom and Freeman took point, looking around the piles of old machinery that was scattered around the place. Calhoun paced slowly behind them in depression, pretending to guard the rear.
But Black Mesa once again proved itself as a place no sane man would ever like to visit. Even at its surface, its dangers kept haunting everyone who was foolish enough to lower his guard.
It all started with the loud explosion of sound, as Doom's shotgun suddenly spitted its deadly fire, making a rather large hole in a nearby pile of airplane replacement parts.
Freeman and Calhoun looked about, surprised.
"What are…" Freeman started to say, but Doom shouted, "Get back!", and started shooting and pumping his shotgun wildly, hitting nothing but harmless walls and machinery.
Freeman and Calhoun tried to see what Doom was shooting at, but saw nothing. They watched, wide-eyed, as Doom suddenly swung his shotgun a lot closer to the position of the two, and opened fire again.
Freeman and Calhoun scurried for cover.
"ARE YOU MAD?" Freeman shouted at Doom, but to no avail. It indeed appeared as though their companion has finally succumbed to the stress and pressure of Black Mesa, and lost his nerve.
'But it can't be…' Freeman thought, as he remembered the heroic stories Doom told him, about living for years in a world of terror in its purest form. 'Of all of us, why Doom?'. For him, Black Mesa should've been like a picnic compared to what he endured before!
There, admittedly, was another possibility. Freeman already knew what happened to people who were careless enough to allow a Headcrab to grab at their scalp. They become possessed. Although Doom has clearly never been assaulted by a Headcrab in such a way, Freeman had to seriously consider the possibility that something else, some new kind of life form, possessed Doom, forcing him to shoot in the direction of his allies and friends.
He was half-correct.
Doom stopped shooting, and the two carefully got out of their cover, weapons pointing at Doom, though the safeties were still on.
"What?" Doom asked, seeing the weapons pointing at him.
For a moment he was puzzled, but then he realized how he must've looked, shooting frantically around him for no visible reason.
"I see. You need explanation", he said. Without other words, he started walking in their direction at a determined pace, still under the weapon sights of the closest people to friends he had in years.
Although Freeman and Calhoun were positively freaked out, their concerns have turned out to be for nothing, when Doom stopped in place about half the way to their position.
Then, he lifted his foot forward, and stomped on the floor, hard.
Calhoun and Freeman's eyes went round when they heard a strange soft thump, as Doom's boot hit something solid before reaching the floor.
Looking closer, they could see the outlines of something lying on the floor. This thing looked insubstantial, like a cloud of the thinnest vapor, or a play of the sunlight on the swirling dust. It was almost impossible to notice, unless you knew what to look for, and when to look for it.
"This thing is called a Spectre", said Doom in a quiet voice, confirming that the something was very well existent, and lying there, under his boot. "It is a Demon. From my world" Doom looked directly into Freeman's eyes very seriously, then shifted his gaze at Calhoun.
The two now realized, that these almost invisible 'Spectres' must've been the ones Doom was shooting at. It was still hard for them to digest that this kind of monster could be real, but to see is to believe. Well, not exactly to see, in this case.
"There are two more bodies over there" Doom pointed at a certain direction, were bullet holes could be seen decorating the walls.
"Uh-huh" Freeman said, not believing he could have ever doubted the sanity of this man even for a second. But what were the monsters which Doom kept telling them about doing here?
"G-guys?" Calhoun broke the uncomfortable silence. "We should get out of here before more of these things, or worse, come out!"
He made sense, and the two headed for a doorway that appeared to be leading outside. Although they gave up on exploring the rest of the hangar, they were still alert for any noise or indication of alien presence.
But the hangar was empty of monsters. Little did they know, that the reason for this was because the monsters waited for them at the other side of the door.
After Doom shot the lock of the apparently jammed door, and opened it, they were greeted with sunlight, the smell of blood carried by the wind, and several loud growls.
Fireballs and pink Demons rushed out to greet them, and the three had to take action with their guns. Soon, the monsters were dead.
"Imps and Pinkies" Doom muttered, before they had the chance to ask.
It was already obvious to Freeman and Calhoun which world they came from.
Five muscular, monstrous humanoids, with brown fur and white tusks coming out of various spots in their bodies, were lying dead on the earth, making good company for the three monstrous dead pinkies, pink blobs of flesh, yellow teeth and muscular limbs.
"What the hell are these things doing here?" Freeman expressed everyone's thoughts aloud.
Doom simply sighed, and started walking without a word, forcing his two companions to follow.
Although he appeared to be only mildly concerned, in fact his head was exploding with questions waiting to be answered.
How did the creatures got here? What was their purpose in being here? These were the first two questions.
Possible answers, Doom reflected, were that they've used the same gate he did, and that, since they weren't too friendly with the Xen creatures in his own world, it was possible that they were here to kill them.
But then other questions popped up.
How did they build that gate? For what purpose? What other potential surprises could be expected from the Demons? How did they hope to fight the Xen by attacking the occasional monster roaming Black Mesa? Did the US Marines know about them? Who is winning the war (if there is one) between the Demons and Xen? Who started this "war" and why? How many demons could fit through that relatively small gate, and whether there were more of its kind around? How did the Demons hoped to get back to their dimension? Through analogical gates hidden somewhere in Black Mesa?
These were only some of the unanswered questions boiling in Doom's mind. And they were important ones too. They could directly affect his future in this, or his own world.
But he kept these thoughts private, for the time being. No need to concern his friends without good reason. They've endured enough as it is.
-
They were on the right path. He could feel it.
Shepard walked forward silently in the midst of his heavily armed men, pondering about Freeman, the man who made the impossible commonplace, when something went wrong.
Shepard and his men knew there was something coming when small pieces of the ceiling started falling on their heads. One of the largest ones fell on a trooper's helmet, knocking him unconscious. As everyone took cover, they could now feel the ground shaking, low thudding sounds echoing in the distance, but always approaching.
"Oh dear…" Shepard heard one of the younger privates say with a shaking voice, and rolled his eyes.
A low roar now echoed down the large corridor, when suddenly, a large red dot – an eye! – appeared towering above their heads.
Panic gripped the men as they opened fire on the monster, bullets and grenades bouncing off its heavily armored blue-green hide.
"Oh God, no! God, no, no, nonono ARRRGH!" a soldier screamed when he was lifted of the ground and dropped into the humongous maw of the gargantuan.
"Cover!" someone screamed, as more grenades were hurled at it, exploding but only managing to take off chunks of the surrounding walls. The huge jets blared into life, and several men were instantly incinerated in the cleansing fire of the beast.
Shepard sighed. It appears as if his men were incapable of handling a single larger Xen creature. It appeared as if he'd have to handle the situation himself – soon, he was about to prove that the Administrator has not chosen him for nothing…
With these thoughts in mind, Shepard cocked his rifle and began striding purposefully towards the monster…
-
To be continued?