"All right, you have to tell me who the hell you are after that display," Lara said as they hurried away from Upsilon Station, racing down another anonymous, derelict sewage tunnel.
"A little busy here," Eric replied.
"Come on, Eric! That guy reacted like you were Gordon goddamned Freeman!" She paused. "Wait, y-you aren't him, right?...I thought he wore glasses…"
Eric heaved a sigh as they hooked a sharp right and came into a sunlit tunnel, the roof overhead long since collapsed. He cast a nervous glance upwards after securing the most immediate area, wary of more Manhacks or looming guards.
"No, I'm not Gordon Freeman," he replied. They kept running, jumping over broken slabs of concrete and dirt-encrusted cinderblocks.
"Then out with it!"
Eric let out a sound of frustration. What did it matter now? He'd made his choice and she was going to find out one way or another.
They ducked through a low opening that was at some point bashed into a brick wall and he took a quick survey of the immediate area beyond, finding a dimly lit storage room that had long since been cleared of anything but dusty old shelves and empty barrels.
There. That was the door he wanted.
He'd been all over this network in the past and had it mostly memorized, but he had to admit that after six months places like this sort of ran together in his mind's eye.
They stopped before the closed double doors.
"Fine," he snapped, "I'm Bishop. You happy?"
She stared at him, her face pale.
"There's no way," Lara whispered harshly. "I heard you were dead!"
"I mostly was," he grunted. "Now pay attention, we've got lives to save."
"Yes, fine, but I have a lot of questions."
"Has anyone ever told you you're really annoying?"
She let out a short bark of laughter. "I think the list of those who hadn't would be shorter."
Eric sighed again and then opened up the doors. The second he did, he heard gunfire. Shouting. The distinct sound of bullets ricocheting off metal surfaces. The cold, mechanized voices of Civil Protection as they laid into the Resistance.
As he did a final, almost automatic check over his pistol once more, Eric felt a rage blossom somewhere deep within him. It was old and powerful, almost primal in its intensity, less of a thought or even an emotion and more a tsunami that blotted out his own internal sun, threatening to consume him. He fought for control.
He had tasted this particular rage when they had raided his apartment, forcing him into his current predicament, but he had still been somewhat numb then, still waking up, fumbling slightly as he fought for pure survival and that of his tribe.
But they were gone now, safely out of sight and out of mind, and there was just Lara to consider, and she was a fighter.
Being back in this situation…
It was like tossing a match into an ocean of gasoline.
The tunnel they were in terminated in a T junction. All the sound was coming from the right, but as they approached, Eric suddenly froze.
Heavy boots were falling to the left, getting closer.
Backup.
He took aim, his body relaxing as he finished slipping fully into the role that he had spent years carving for himself, as he finished becoming this thing he'd shaped himself into. This thing of blood and murder and speed.
The first Combine soldier that appeared he tracked with his pistol, which was already leveled perfectly at head height. Didn't want to squeeze the trigger too early or the others would turtle up, fall back and make this more complicated.
When the second two appeared behind the first, that was when he double-tapped.
The lead soldier rag-dolled, his titanium white helmet snapping to the side in a spray of blood, bone, and brain matter that painted the gritty tunnel wall. The others reacted quickly, but not quickly enough, skidding to a halt as their leader went tumbling.
Eric didn't give them a chance, already shifting aim and popping off four more quick shots in rapid succession.
Every last one hit and they joined their leader, the trio now a heap of bodies and armored limbs at the right threshold of the junction. Sensory information was fed to him: no more were coming from the left, and the sound of conflict did not falter from the right. They hadn't heard.
"Jesus," Lara whispered as he hurried forward and then peered around the corner.
He ignored her, seeing a perfect ambush situation. A quartet of Combine soldiers were up against a makeshift wall that had been erected at the end of the tunnel: one of the points of ingress into Tau Station. Two were firing through a doorway in the center, while the other two were shooting through holes they'd found or made.
Moving fast, Eric crouched and scooped up one of the MP7s that had been dropped by the dead Combine. Hands like quicksilver, he freed a trio of magazines from their ammo belts by touch alone, his eyes never leaving the four guards some ten meters away. With less thought and more instinct, he launched his assault.
Eric began walking down the tunnel as he took aim. He sent the first volley, a burst of metal death that chopped into the back of a soldier and sent him screaming and smashing forward into the wall. The others reacted quickly, two of them turning back, the last one either too caught up in the moment or trusting the others to handle whatever it was that was happening.
Too bad for him.
Eric fired off a second burst, breaking into a jog now, and stitched a jagged line of bloody eruptions up the front of another guard. That ominous flat-line tone sounded as he crumpled into a heap on the filthy floor. Bullets shrieked past him, some within scant centimeters, as he pressed his assault, squeezing the trigger and emptying the rest of the magazine into the third guard, the only one facing him now.
He went down, limbs twitching wildly in a darkly comedic dance of death.
The MP7 was dry.
The final guard was now turning to face him, realizing something was wrong. Eric threw the submachine gun as hard as he could as the man raised his own MP7. A few bullets sprayed out but went wide, into the tunnel floor or walls as his own gun smashed into it and destroyed the man's aim. He was fast, drawing his shock stick, but Eric was faster.
Feeling his seething fury threatening to blind him, he reacted on instinct as the guard tried to use the baton more as a cudgel than a shock stick. The frightened Civil Protection guard brought it up and then down, and the baton's rod hit painfully but directly into Eric's waiting palm. Wrapping his fingers around it, he yanked hard and caught the man off balance.
The soldier shouted in shock, the distorted sound so familiar to him by now, as he was pitched forward. He went sprawling on his stomach and tried to scramble back to his feet as Eric tore the baton from his hand.
He didn't get the chance.
Eric brought the baton up, now holding it with both hands, and smashed it down onto the back of the man's helmeted head. He grunted, a sound of pure pain and overwhelmed shock, going flat, his body knocked temporarily offline. Eric moved to make it permanent, repeating the action again, and then again, and then twice more, screaming as he heard the helmet break and then awful, wet cracking sounds as his skull came open and blood sprayed his face.
Breathing heavily, he shot to his feet, shaking his hands to get the excess blood off and then wiping impatiently at his forehead with the back of his sleeve. He could hear more gunfire, but there seemed to be less of it. As he peered through the nearest hole in the wall, someone shot at him. The bullet pinged off something metal nearby.
"Friendly fire!" he shouted, drawing his pistol again. "Friendly fire!"
"Sorry!" someone snapped back.
"Lara!" he called after he looked in and saw that the only remaining incoming fire seemed to be coming from a single alcove across a low concrete room on the other side of the makeshift wall. "Up here!"
"Coming!"
She raced up and joined him. He pointed back the way they'd come. "Watch our six." She nodded tightly. "Friendlies incoming!" he called and moved through the doorway into the central chamber. The second he did gunfire peppered his position. He dropped into a crouch and opened fire reflexively the second he saw he had a clear line of sight. Two Civil Protection officers were visible in the alcove, one armed with a pistol, the other an SMG.
He emptied the magazine putting them and then a third one who appeared behind them down, spraying the old stone walls with their blood.
The gunfire cut off with the sound of the flat-line tones and he could faintly hear radio chatter through the nearest Combine corpse's helmets.
"Is that it?!" someone called.
"Newman, Thompson, check north access. Emma, see about the pipe." The man speaking, a dark-skinned guy decked out in full Resistance tactical gear wielding a shotgun, looked at Eric. "You two, we clear from that side?"
"Lara?" Eric asked, glancing back.
"Clear," she replied.
"All right. Lucas, Nina, Falcon, start packing everything up. Cerner, check for wounded. Splice-"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm on it," a tired, irritable, faintly familiar voice replied. In the flurry of activity that was now happening, Eric spotted a rail-thin, pale woman crouched over a dead Combine officer, digging into his helmet. He vaguely recognized her.
"All right, who are you? I figured Upsilon would send backup but I know everyone at that station and I don't know you two," the man said.
"I'm Bishop," Eric replied, figuring there was no point in hiding it now. Several heads turned as he said that, including Splice. They locked eyes for a moment and abruptly he recalled why and how he knew her.
She just smiled a little smile and went back to what she was doing.
"Bullshit, Bishop's dead," the leader replied, but he didn't seem certain.
"Consider me resurrected," Eric replied.
The man stared at him for a moment longer, then finally looked to Lara, who'd moved to join Eric. "And you?" he asked.
"Lara Rift," she replied, apparently following his lead.
"What the fu-what is today?! First Gordon fucking Freeman comes back and-"
"Wait, he's back?" Lara asked.
"Yeah! It's been all over the network, the Citadel has been going nuts and Civil Protection is coming down like a hammer trying to find him."
"He's here? In City Seventeen?" Eric asked.
The man nodded. "Yes. Pretty sure, anyway. It's absolute chaos out there, but something has them going apeshit." He studied Eric for a long moment, still as a statue among the frenzy of activity around him. "If you really are Bishop-"
"He is," Splice said without looking up from her work. She'd moved onto another corpse and was making quick work of the helmet. She was pulling out the radios, he realized. "Trust me, I know. I wouldn't forget him."
"You're sure?" the leader asked.
Splice laughed. "Yeah, I'm sure. We know each other very well."
"I, uh...all right," he said, hesitating when he looked at Eric and goddamn if he couldn't feel some heat rushing to his cheeks. Jesus, how long had it been since he'd blushed? Apparently his emotions were back in full swing. All of them. "You back with the Resistance or what?"
"Yeah, I'm back," Eric replied.
"Good. Then I got a job for you. We're tearing up some of the outposts, consolidating and covering our tracks, but we haven't been able to leave. There's something we need, something absolutely crucial that was entrusted to our outpost."
"What is it? Where's it need to go?" Eric replied.
"I don't know, some piece of tech, small. Splice knows more. She led the team that received it. It isn't here, though, it's elsewhere. I was hoping to keep holding the fort until the team we sent to get it came back but it's getting too hot and they aren't responding."
"They're probably dead," Splice said.
The leader sighed. "Yeah, probably."
Eric considered it. He looked at Lara. "If you're doing this, don't even think of leaving me out of this," she said.
"You are weirdly insistent about risking your life," Eric replied.
"I'm not sitting around on my ass or skulking through the shadows running back home to safety while people are getting slaughtered out here," Lara replied. "That's the entire reason I got the hell out of there and-what, why are you looking at me like that?"
Eric looked back to Tau's leader. He was rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. "So...technically speaking I'm under orders to have you escorted back to Delta Lab. Your dad is pissed."
Lara rolled her eyes. "Of course he is. I'm not going back until I'm good and ready."
"Okay, just thought you should know. I'm not exactly inclined to try and make you do something like that, or waste manpower and resources when we're already as screwed as we are. Especially if you've got Eric goddamned Bishop as your bodyguard."
"He's not my bodyguard, we're partners," she replied.
"Is that what we are? Because the impression I've been getting is that you're more of a sidekick or tag-along than anything else."
"You can piss right off with that," Lara shot back immediately.
"Will you do it? We're on a timeline here," the outpost leader asked.
"We'll do it," Eric replied.
"I'm going too," Splice said, getting to her feet. "This is too important to leave to someone else, Parkhurst." She crossed her arms and stared intently at the outpost's leader.
He frowned, rubbing his jaw for a moment as he stared back at her, then grunted. "Fine."
"Get your people packed up and out of here. We'll meet you at a secure location with the device," Eric said.
"Planned fallback location is Lambda Station, you know it?"
He nodded. "I know how to get there."
"The heat's on and we're going to have to go aboveground to get this thing," Splice said, picking up an SMG from a nearby table and checking it over, then shrugging into a backpack of supplies. "So we should wait for dark before surfacing."
"How likely is it to be found?" Eric asked.
"Pretty unlikely. Provided they failed to retrieve it. If they got it and then died with it, well, then it gets a lot more complicated."
"All right. We'll get as close as we can underground, then wait until dark, grab it, and then head back into the underground and make our way to Lambda." Eric made a face and rubbed at his cheek. "Anyone got a fucking towel or something?"
"Here," someone else said, tossing something at him. A wet washrag.
"Thanks," he replied, catching it and rubbing his bloodied face down. When he finished, he saw that Parkhurst was staring at him in a speculative way. "What?"
"Eric Bishop," he muttered. "I heard a lot about you. I just...thought you'd be taller."
Splice laughed as she finished loading up a pistol. "He always got that."
"Jesus Christ, I'm six one, how much taller do I need to be?" he muttered as he tossed away the rag. He turned around and headed back to the initial corridor he'd killed those guards in.
"What are you doing?" Lara asked.
"Getting more ammo. I suggest you go do the same while we've got the opportunity."
"So…" Splice said as Eric led the two women down another anonymous, decrepit tunnel at her direction, "you two together?"
"That's, um, a really forward question," Lara replied.
"What difference does it make? And no," Eric said.
"Okay, just, how this conversation plays out...let's just say that there are certain things I wouldn't say to you if you were his girlfriend. Although if you're Doctor Rift's daughter then that means you've been part of the Resistance for most of your life and you should pretty aware of him and his history," Splice said.
"Oh my God, Splice, you haven't changed at all. Not even a little. You still have no idea what subtlety is," Eric muttered.
"I know precisely what it is, Eric, I just don't care about it."
"All I really know is that he pulled off a lot of crazy missions, killed a lot of Combine, and saved a lot of people. And he left under...uncertain circumstances," Lara said.
"There was nothing uncertain about it," Eric muttered grimly. "And I don't want to talk about that."
Splice grew somber for a moment. "I am sorry about that, Eric. I actually cried over that."
He paused, briefly, at an intersection in the sewer tunnels, and turned back to her. He'd never known Splice to cry. Not once. "Thanks," he muttered finally, and then headed right. He had a decent idea of where they were going.
"So what were you not going to tell me if I was his girlfriend?" Lara asked.
"Eric's a whore."
"Wow thanks, Splice. I don't remember you complaining," Eric replied.
"I'm not complaining now. I certainly wasn't complaining then."
"So you two were together before then?" Lara asked.
"If by 'together' you mean I took turns with my best friend pogoing on on his co-"
"Why are you being this ornery?" Eric asked, grateful that he was leading them and they couldn't see how red his cheeks must no doubt be.
"I missed you," Splice replied.
"And this is how you show it?!"
"Yes. I'm also kind of grumpy you never found your way back to me, plus I had to put up with Mandy bitching about you for weeks after."
"I had places to be! It's not like I ran away, and I told you it wasn't forever-"
"I know that, but you know Mandy. She was unrealistic. She was sure you'd fall in love with her...you really didn't pick up on that?"
"No, she was apparently great at lying or acting or whatever, because I really believed her that she believed me that the whole 'this isn't serious, I'm gonna have to leave at some point and I don't know when or if I'll be back' was real...how is she nowadays?"
"Far as I know, good. The stress kinda got to her six months ago and they ultimately relocated her to White Forest. She's in one of the civilian settlements now, helping run things."
"Maybe Mandy can compare notes with Mary," Lara said with a small smile.
"That your latest squeeze?" Splice asked with a laugh.
"We were together," Eric replied. "Hold on," he said suddenly, raising his fist. They both immediately fell silent and became still. They were near the end of a low, dim, damp tunnel that opened up into a broader chamber. He thought he'd heard something. After a moment, he jogged lightly forward, SMG out and ready.
Peering cautiously into the chamber, he scoped it out. He saw a few dead headcrabs and a few dead zombies, their bodies pelted with bullets. Either Resistance or Civil Protection had been through recently, or maybe just some skilled scavenger like him. But, he determined after a moment, whoever it was, they were gone now.
"Okay, come on. Which way now?" he asked.
"Far left tunnel should take us most of the rest of the way there," Splice replied. "So what'd you end up doing?"
"Short answer is: I set up an apartment building to try and make life less miserable for wayward Citizens," he replied as they crossed the large chamber. The sun, now gray as its light was filtered through a heavy cloud cover, painted the area in a pallid luminosity.
"Huh...well, better than what I was envisioning."
"What were you envisioning?" he asked, a little reluctantly.
"I thought there was a decent chance you were dead. Or waging a more secret and personal war against the Combine."
"...it was complicated," he replied.
"How'd you two meet?" Lara asked when a few seconds of silence passed.
"I used to be stationed at an old cannery out on the coast. Big outpost, well hidden. I'm really good with tech, so I got myself a nice job fixing stuff or building stuff that most other people couldn't. Eric needed a place to lay low for a bit after a particularly big job against the Combine, and they figured he could use the opportunity to train recruits. My friend Mandy was a part time guard, part time chef, and she just immediately swooned over him, and was fretting about how she was going to approach him, and I finally had to see this guy who was just so hot for myself, and well, she was right. And so I said I was gonna jump him."
"Can't imagine that went over well...and you two are friends?" Lara asked.
"Yes. For the record, we have shared before. I have no idea why she isn't more confident, she's by far the more attractive of the two of us."
"It really depends on who's looking," Eric replied.
"Yeah and when I saw the way he looked at me when I came into the room, I knew I had him on lockdown. Mandy and I already shared a room, so it was pretty easy to just pull him into it."
"This is all just fantastic conversation, but what is this thing we're going after?" Eric asked.
"I'm surprised you aren't more interested in bragging about your sexual exploits. Normally the guys I know won't shut the fuck up about them." He remained silent as they moved down the long tunnel. "All right," Splice continued, "whatever. It's a motherboard from a Combine computer. I don't really know the specifics of why we need it or how we got it, but I know that we went to a lot of trouble for it. Someone from the inside managed to make a damaged one slated for repair disappear, got it to a runner, who passed it along until it ended up in my hands. I was supposed to bring it back but things got too hot when I actually had my hands on it, so I hid it in a junkyard. Whatever it is, it's considered Platinum Black Priority."
"Goddamn, I've never even heard of that priority," Lara muttered.
"I have, only twice though, and I never knew what exactly it was referring to. Just something that the old Black Mesa science staff has been working on. I think it has something to do with satellites, but they wouldn't ever say," Eric said.
"I did once hear something about high Earth orbit in relation to a top secret project, so maybe so," Splice murmured.
"I guess it doesn't really matter," Eric replied. They reached the end of the tunnel a few moments later and came into low, rectangular room made old, wet brick with bundles of piping and cabling running along the walls.
Splice pointed to a crumbling stairway to the left. "That's how we get up to the surface," she said. "There's a ladder that leads to a shack pretty close to the junkyard."
"All right," Eric said, looking up at vent grille built into the ceiling, trying to judge how much daylight was left. It was too difficult, though, with the cloud cover and how crazy today had been. "You still keep the time?" he asked, looking at splice.
"Yep," she said, raising one hand and checking a wind-up watch worn upside down, so that the face was over her inner wrist. "About two hours until nightfall."
"Great," he muttered. "I guess it's not a bad time to catch a nap."
"Here," Splice said, walking over to one of the doors in the right wall and pulling it open with a loud creak that made both him and Lara wince. "There's a little nest in here I learned about. We can hide here."
They followed her inside and found a small room with a pair of old mattresses and a table occupying it. Besides a simple box of supplies and an old storm lantern on the table, there was nothing else.
"This'll do," Eric said, taking off his pack and setting it at the foot of one of the mattresses. He set his SMG and pistol carefully on the concrete floor beside it, then sat down. "One of us should stand watch, the others should sleep or at least rest," he said.
"Would it be rude to ask if I can get some alone time with him?" Splice asked.
"Seriously? Now?" Eric asked.
"Oh what are you complaining about?" she replied. "Besides, it'll help you get to sleep faster. I seem to recall you falling asleep pretty fast after, most nights."
"Bullshit," he said immediately. "I seem to remember a lot of long conversations in the dark with you and Mandy after."
"Yeah, conversations that you fell asleep in the middle of. You have any idea how many times I had to take your cigarette from your mouth or your hand because you fell asleep?"
He sighed heavily. Lara cleared her throat. They both looked at her. "I don't mind, you two should catch up," she replied, and slipped back outside, closing the door behind her.
"Interesting," Splice murmured, shrugging out of her pack and setting it next to Eric's.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing. Take your shirt off," she replied as she began unbuttoning her pants.