AN: Heyo! Hope you've been enjoying the story so far, and hope you have fun with the latest chapter. A few notes at the end of the chapter, but for now, read on!
Forget going undercover in Civil Protection, this was insane.
First off, it was dark down here. Darker than any sewer or tunnel—no matter how buried or dank or dirty—ever had any business being. Barney wiped the sweat from his face in the seconds between one headcrab leaping for his face and the next, firing with the same sort of practiced routine with which you tended to tie your shoes. Green splattered against his face, and only the good sense of his reaction time saved him from an eyeful of what he could only assume was alien blood. He hated headcrabs. That much hadn't changed in the last few years, but the blood—red or green—had become something of a bland wash of color to him. The horror no longer seemed to register with him in the way it might have before, well, before everything.
Couldn't think about that now, he mused idly as he shot another headcrab zombie point blank and heard the sharp connecting thud of Gordon's infamous crowbar meeting its target. The zombie fell in a shambled heap, headcrab falling away to reveal the man beneath, or rather, what had been a man once underneath. Barney tactfully avoided his gaze, choosing instead to scan the surroundings of the dark tunnel for more headcrabs or any of their unfortunate meat-suits moving in the darkness. Not for the first time that day, he thanked every lucky star still in heaven for the flashlight built into Gordon's suit. Without it, they would have been helpless to the unseen onslaught of scrabbling, scampering variants of the headcrab zombies, followed by their slower, more traditionally zombie-like cousins. Even with the flashlight, he still yelped once or twice from surprise alone as they just appeared from the shadows like the world's dumbest jack-in-the-boxes.
Gordon quirked a sudden eyebrow at him, and it occurred to Barney that he might have said that last part out loud.
"Serves the—look, 'jack-in-the-box' just works, okay? Works fine as a metaphor." Barney growled.
Gordon nodded sagely at this, quickly turning his face away as he clearly tried to hide laughter. Say what you would about him not being a talker, Gordon's sense of humor was even more utterly wrecked than his own, and Barney almost envied the other man's ability to so easily find some dark sliver of humor in the situation. Considering they were stuck underground, fighting through infested tunnels of actual, honest-to-goodness zombies and whatever other alien critters had decided to make a nest down here, it was hard to find something to laugh about. And yet he did.
Then just like lightning, Gordon's smile disappeared, and an expressionless look came over his face as he stepped over several piles of debris to join Barney and continue their path down the tunnel. Off over to their right, a scuffed metal door stood mildly in the weak light of a singular flickering bulb. In a fair fight, the small flashlight in the HEV suit would easily beat out the sad excuse for a light source before them, but Gordon gave Barney a quick look before switching his flashlight off. He had a limited charge to the suit, and it made sense to save power whenever he could. Still, the lack of a crisp white beam of light to guide them through the door made Barney uneasy. He preferred to fight in the daylight where you could at least see what was attacking you, thank you very much.
They'd been travelling for at least two hours, but they hadn't made much progress during that time. For one thing, they were on foot, at least until they could make it to their transportation contact roughly two miles away through heavily blocked roadways. For another, they were still trying to avoid attracting too much Combine attention, so they were forced to detour through the various underground tunnels that even the Combine wouldn't poke their heads into. For increasingly obvious reasons, Barney though as he fought off the urge to shiver and they entered the weathered metal door.
They entered into the even smaller passageway to find themselves within a stairwell with rusting metal guiderails and creaking metal struts. Not wanting to test the limits of the old metal, they gingerly made their way up, neatly killing two barnacles on the ceiling before they came to another door. This one led them to sunlight and relatively less dank surface air, and Barney eagerly took in a deep breath away from the horrors of the dark. Gordon, meanwhile, was scanning the old highway pavement that bordered the exit of their stairwell. Shielding his eyes from the bright sunshine as he was, Gordon's expression was difficult to make out, but Barney could have sworn that he saw the other man frown, his face contorting in a vague expression of displeasure.
He didn't know what Gordon saw—whatever strange instance of Combine or other threat that made his mouth curl downward into what might be considered a sneer. He found it cryptic enough trying to figure out what downright crazy thoughts tended to run through Gordon's head, given the man's actions.
Surely it would be safe to make it the rest of the way to their transportation contact on the surface, surely. Surely they wouldn't have to go back down there again, not after all that… Barney looked to Gordon, and slowly, slowly, Gordon shook his head and pointed back to the stairwell, to the darkness that lay just below it. Barney let out a groaning sigh, then slowly, slowly followed Gordon back down.
Correction: he didn't hate headcrabs, he hated travelling with Gordon. That's where the headcrabs seemed to appear most often.
Stephen could have asked her a hundred questions in that moment. He would have too; he wanted answers and Michelle—Chell's singular statement was not nearly enough to make him understand. He could understand her well enough in a fairly literal sense—there wasn't much you could miss about "apology not accepted". But he struggled to understand the source of the sort of boiling hatred he saw clouding Chell's eyes. He'd never been on the receiving end of that glare—ever—in his limited experience. And they'd spent quite a lot of time together once they'd properly introduced themselves. She was nice company, even if they just sat drinking coffee, never saying a single word.
Nice company that was currently glaring at him as if he'd been responsible for personally trying to murder her dog or something.
He opened his mouth to ask another question, then paused. Caroline's voice was rapidly growing on the other side of the room where the communications array was located. He glanced at the older woman and quickly caught an expression of intense frustration.
"—I would like to know as much as you—" Caroline was saying angrily, and her shoulders drooped slightly for how confrontational her tone sounded.
Stephen's gaze snapped back to Chell, who was no longer looking at him. She seemed to prefer instead to look at the gun in her hands, restlessly polishing it long after it'd already been cleaned.
"Listen, Chell I—no, look you're angry with me. I can tell that much. But please," his voice cracked a little, and he paused, flushing with embarrassment as the woman suddenly looked up at him again, "please help me understand. What—"
The explosion rocked them off their feet, rattling the teeth in his head and forcing Chell to her knees. They stumbled up into the sudden haze of dust, and Stephen coughed as it found its way into his lungs. Chell dragged him down as shots punctuated the dust in the space he'd just been. Humming arrows with an alien blue glow embedded themselves in the wall behind them, clicking faster and faster in a way that translated across all worlds: boom. Returning the favor, he gripped Chell's arm and guided her swiftly away from the wall even as another explosion pelted their backsides with chunks of concrete.
"—Caroline, get away from there!" Rovetta was yelling somewhere amidst the smoke, but it was all Stephen could do to cough and keep running, Chell in tow. He glanced behind him and saw Chell scrambling for her handgun, raising it in a steady arc and firing just over his head. A Combine soldier's mask cracked from the shot and fell away, spraying Stephen's nose with something wet. He recoiled, and this time, Chell was the one who grabbed his arm and led them to safety.
"—get your hands off me!" Caroline was screaming somewhere, and Stephen raised his head, trying desperately to catch some glimpse of the older woman. She was struggling—that much was clear—but he couldn't see much beyond her angry face and something smoking and smoldering behind her. If only he hadn't put his gun down—his thought was cut off. Something vaguely blue whistled just under his nose and thudded into what had to be the final surviving crate from the initial explosion. The thrumming of the blue arrow-like devices quickly hastened and Stephen credited only his raw instincts—poor as they were—to his life-saving dodge and roll. He came up gasping and quickly scrambled behind a pile of concrete rubble, trying to find some shred of cover until he get his hands on a weapon in some form or another.
Chell, meanwhile, quickly took aim and fired a blue portal beneath the foot of a creature that was nothing more than a hazy shape in the dust-choked room. An orange twin appeared on the wall, and the connection between the two quickly caused the creature to stumble. But then she pulled a trick that he'd never seen from her in all the time he'd seen her use the portal gun: she flicked the little middle switch that cut off the portals. While the creature's leg was still inside, caught between the wormhole entrances. There was a horrible crackling, echoing snap, as if the universe had come down hard with a cleaver on some cosmic chopping block, and the creature roared in pain-soaked confusion. Chell didn't hesitate, switching hands and drawing her handgun to fire again and again with deadly precision. Stephen winced at the sound but kept his eyes wide open. He could hardly close them after seeing what she'd just—well, perhaps for the best.
One of the Combine soldiers fell to the floor, and he scuttled across the ground in an awkwardly crouching crabwalk to snatch up the fallen figure's weapon. He checked the clip; the electronic readout bar was half-full still, and he began to fire alongside Chell, laying down what he hoped was helpful cover fire. At the very least, he could distract the rest of the Combine soldiers in the room and allow Chell the freedom to make her shots. Given she was the better shot between them, he felt it apt to leave the sharpshooting to her.
As the dust slowly, slowly began to clear, Stephen poked his head over a pile of rubble and caught sight of several more Combine soldiers descending down the main stairwell to the base. To their right, Caroline was crouched below the smoking remains of the communications array, her expression grave. She must have destroyed the array to prevent Combine eavesdropping, and something in Stephen winced at his hard work being so easily burnt to a crisp. Drastic times called for drastic measures, however, and Caroline understood this clearly enough. The older woman suddenly caught his eye and gave him a grim nod as she lifted a gun all too similar to his own and carefully angled the butt of the gun against her shoulder to steady it.
Iron-willed as she clearly was, Stephen knew with a sinking feeling that she wouldn't be able to shoot her way out against the cluster of soldiers quickly coming her way. Uneasy but unable to simply sit by, he snagged a tied off corner of Chell's jumpsuit as she readied her next shot. True to his expectations, she ducked back down and glared at him with unbridled irritation. He held up his hands in a silent, placating gesture and swiftly redirected her attention to Caroline with a nudge.
Chell's face hardened, but for once since he'd interacted with her, it wasn't in anger.
"You're the puzzle-master around here," he whispered, "so what's the plan?"
Barney was well out of breath when they made the final sprint inside their contact's base. He and Gordon scrambled inside the door, hearing the phantom whirrs of dropship motors and buzzing of Combine radios. But there was silence.
"Sweet mercy," their contact spat into the dirty floor, "pardon me boys, but you both look like hot—"
Whatever colorful language the elderly man had prepared for them was cut short as Gordon hastily shut the garage-style door to the shack. It shuddered into place with some protest and Gordon leaned against it heavily, though his face betrayed very little beyond the sweat rolling down his temples. Like Barney, he was clearly worn out to anyone with two working eyes, and if you really wanted to put it bluntly, looked like a steaming pile. Despite the interruption, their contact rolled on without missing a beat.
"Bah," the contact waved his arms around wildly and let his hands fall to his toolbelt, fingering the wrench there with a nonchalance that seemed to be customary of the older survivors of the war, "who cares what an old man has to say, you hotshots have places to be, eh? Let's get you set up then."
"Thanks," Barney offered, but the older man just waved another arm with seeming irritation.
"Words don't do jack," he grunted and quickly drew a tarp off of a vehicle hiding in a corner, "just hit them where it hurts and we'll count it even." He quickly unscrewed the cap to the car's gas tank and began to fuel the vehicle. "Didn't want to use the fuel unless you actually made it—gas is precious rare these days. Should only take a minute."
Perhaps calling it a car was an exaggeration. What sat before them was what Barney could only really call a buggy: an open-frame vehicle whose chipping yellow paint looked like it had been through at least a dozen scrapes before it'd gotten to them. Still, the fact that it was still standing despite earlier adventures seemed to attest to the vehicle's ability to keep rolling, so Barney would take it. It wasn't as if they had an entire selection to choose from.
The contact hocked another loogie into the dirt and screwed on the cap simultaneously. He slapped the side of buggy and grinned a partially toothless grin as he looked Barney right in the eye.
"Go make trouble."
As Gordon came around to take the wheel, Barney returned the contact's grin.
"Will do." Then the door opened, and they were off like a shot.
Chell readied herself, winding her muscles tight for action, waiting for just the right moment to strike. For all that her anger burned against this man—particularly in such forced close proximity, he had a good point. This wasn't just about her and the enemy in front of her. This was bigger than her—something that included her and Caroline and Doug and however many escaped prisoners waiting behind the door just behind her, temporarily protected by the concrete debris blocking the main passageway. For better or worse, for all that she hated it, she was holding a line—the line—and if she wanted any of them to live then she'd better hold it with white-knuckled fists and an AI-killing sense of determination.
So Chell offered the man a single, comprehending nod, bared her teeth, and counted the seconds. She would need to get Caroline out of the line of fire before she could properly take out the current squad of soldiers—that much was clear; even if she trusted her own sense of aim enough not to confuse her targets, the soldiers had already made it clear that they had no such limitations. It didn't matter to them who they shot first, so long as the end goal had both of them dead.
She needed to portal Caroline over to them, but that would take a few seconds at least and it would draw attention. Which meant she needed a distraction. Which meant, unfortunately, she needed the aid of the man crouching next to her. For the briefest second, she crushed her eyes shut, trying in vain to block out the thoughts that had begun running through her head, free and wild. Reduced to asking for help from a friendly moron again, are you? Why don't you just call it early this time and say "apple", huh?
She opened her eyes. Enough. She glanced at the man and met his gaze, pointing to his gun and then to the soldiers. He seemed to get the idea and offered a tenuous grin.
"Right, you need me to keep them busy?"
She hesitated, but they didn't have time. She nodded, and he gave her a smile.
"As you wish." He mouthed, sporting a grin that somehow still managed a jaunty carelessness despite the situation, then threaded his wiry hands into handle and opened fire over the top of their makeshift cover. Chell wasted no time and began placing portals the minute she heard the frantic sounds of the soldiers responding to fire. There was no time to inform Caroline of the plan, so Chell opted for the fast option: drop Caroline through with a quick blue portal right underneath her feet. The woman gasped in surprise, but once Chell caught her coming out the other side, Caroline managed to get her bearings and right herself in space. She crouched shakily beside them but gave Chell a careful, decisive nod.
"How many?" She whispered, and Chell glanced at her, then at the man next to them. He nodded and quickly ducked down to reload, moving to let Chell take his place. Chell darted her gaze over the top of their makeshift barrier. Taking aim, she fired twice at bobbing, blurry white face masks before the sharp whizzing sound of incoming fire forced her back down. She held up three fingers to Caroline as Stephen added:
"She's right: about three or four left. But the real problem is the—"
Blue shafts flew past their noses and landed in the wall behind them, forcing them to duck their heads against the incoming blast. Heat and dust rolled over them in a skin-prickling wave and Stephen coughed, struggling to continue his sentence.
"—the real problem is that thing over there." He ducked his head and wiped his brow anxiously on the dusty collar of his jacket, smearing grime across his forehead. "We don't have much room to avoid it down here, and if we don't take it out soon—"
Another explosion cut the rest of his words off, but he didn't need to finish the sentence. Chell already had a pretty good idea of what would happen next. Like lightning, her heart pounding in her ears, she popped up and placed the portals again under the creature's feet. It screeched and avoided the glowing blue and orange ovals, clearly having learned from its unfortunate predecessor. Instead, it rambled menacingly towards them at a clipped pace, utterly unhindered by the piles of rubble underneath its feet. Chell staggered back on instinct and tried to fire again, but this time, the creature beat her to it. A grunt of surprise and pain escaped her throat as the creature threw her against the wall behind them. Her vision blurred for a second then sharpened, beat back for the moment by that ever-familiar sense of get up, you have to face this because no one else is here to do it for you.
She shot again and again relentlessly. Her thoughts had fixated on the creature she dueled, determined with every fiber of her being to make sure that it died and stayed dead unlike everything else that seemed to want to kill her. Dodge, roll, fire. Duck, skid, shoot. The creature was growing impatient with her antics, she could tell. It jittered and shook with a vengeance as it struggled to pin her down. It clearly possessed enough intelligence to realize that at such close-quarters, its explosive ammunition would just as likely kill itself as it would her, so it held back. But it was obvious that the creature much preferred the flying bombs to whatever dance they were engaged in now. It roared, and Chell caught a glimpse of what was going to happen and she moved. The created threw caution to the wind and lunged wildly at her, paying so little attention to where she was firing her portals. Chell fired quickly and without hesitation; the creature seemed to hang in space for a second, processing what she'd done, before she clicked that unfeeling center button and the portals closed with the sharp, otherworldly snick of flesh and blood being cut. The beast, defeated, gave a horrible bellow of exhausted rage and gave out in a quivering pile on the floor.
Chell rose to see Caroline and Stephen staring at her. They looked relieved, but there was another sort of emotion hiding in their eyes. She didn't have the energy to investigate and instead walked over to Caroline without a word or even a gesture. The older woman gave her a faint, worried smile, and quickly glanced towards the entrance to the resistance base, checking for reinforcements. They stood there in silence for a blissful moment, waiting and listening.
Then—and they all couldn't suppress a groan at this—they heard the telltale roar of another one of the nasty creatures. For the first time in her life, Chell felt something approaching true mental exhaustion. Her weary, unrested body aside, her mind had never betrayed her like this with such violently persistent feelings of exhaustion and sheer refusal. She was well aware that now outside of that place, she no longer benefited—or suffered—from the constant aerosolized presence of adrenal vapors, driving her every action with coursing adrenaline. Now, she had only her limited human stores of energy to rely on, and without food or even a chance to sit still for more than an hour, she could feel a fresh wave of bone-deep weariness settling over her like a heavy blanket.
For the first time since she could remember being awake, there was doubt in her mind. Doubt that they would make it out of this, no matter how stubbornly she refused to let this beat them. For the first time, Chell felt the fear she'd always kept at bay worm its way into the recesses of her heart and shiver through her entire body.
They were coming. And there was very little she could do about it.
Caroline, Stephen, and Chell stared down the entrance—Chell and Stephen holding their weapons ready and Caroline grabbing the nearest thing on hand, which happened to be a small revolver, fallen from one of the many wrecked storage bins. They stood in a tense trio, awaiting the increasingly loud sounds of equipment clacking and footsteps approaching and radios buzzing with action. The sounds that joined this chaotic cacophony, however, are what made the three of them pause in their tracks. Chell opened her ears, listening intently.
A radio abruptly cut off with a high-pitched whine. Chell perked up and glanced at Caroline, who gave her the barest hint of a hopeful look in return. They'd fought enough of these soldiers by now to know exactly what that sound meant. Whoever was up there was fighting against the soldiers, not with them. Had someone come for them? Had this "Eli Vance" character that Caroline had been talking to earlier really come so quickly for them? Or was it yet another threat disguised as a friend? She couldn't help but glance at the man next to her at that. If she'd learned anything at all, she would know better than to fall for the offer of an amicable partnership again; a shared enemy meant nothing at all, after all, at the end of the day. It certainly didn't keep a partner from stabbing you in the back—
Focus. She chastised herself in a brisk mental tone. Whatever came down that stairway, she had to be ready for it. Whatever that might entail.
"Anyone alive down there?" A voice called, unfamiliar to Chell. Directly undermining the question, the body of a recently dispatched solider slid down the steps in a lifeless heap. "Aww jeez." The voice continued, seemingly to itself.
A pair of feet stepped into their line of sight, and Chell quickly took aim, just to safe. She tracked the rest of the figure as it came into sight, finally settling her sights on the head of a man in his mid-thirties or early forties who came into the room similarly prepared to shoot. He caught sight of them and raised his hands up, gesturing friendliness despite his weapon. There was a smile on his face, but it seemed strained, and his eyes were wide.
"Great, you're alive! We need to move."
In all honesty, Barney wasn't quite sure to expect of Dr. Tieger when he met her in person. If he met her in person. Because to be quite frank, he was well aware that Gordon was the exception when it came to the average scientist's ability to survive post-alien-invasion scenarios. Besides that, Gordon, Eli, and Kleiner had all had the additional advantage of relative youth on their side when they first escaped Black Mesa—something both they and Dr. Tieger clearly lacked now. And despite the speed he and Gordon had managed overall, despite the urgency and determination with which they'd set out, he couldn't fight the sinking feeling of dread in the bottom of his stomach as they drew close to Redwood.
As they parked the buggy off under the cover of a small copse of trees, they could already see some evidence of the Combine's presence. Strafing along the line of shrubbery, Barney couldn't help but follow every violent rift in the earth with an unsettled gaze—every little chunk of churned up earth, wet with something so dark he couldn't discern a distinct color. Gordon pulled out his weapon of choice, and Barney could hear the click of the safety being released behind him as they steadily approached the distant sounds of conflict.
The minute they came around last bend of trees, it was as if the world had burst into flames. Barney ducked on instinct as a series of Hunter fletchings went soaring over their heads and lodged in the side of a doomed pine tree. He didn't have to look to know that Gordon scattered at the same moment Barney did; they split, and Gordon shot him a quick nod with that inscrutable expression of his before taking off after the Hunter. Barney didn't envy him, but then again, his own task wasn't exactly a cakewalk all by itself: he needed to find Dr. Tieger—ideally before she got killed by one thing or another—and hopefully track down the other members of her group as well. If he remembered her words correctly, she'd mentioned coming with multiple scientists. He was no egghead, but he figured that the general principle of "the more the merrier" generally applied to the scientific workforce, especially considering recent graduates from MIT or anywhere else were running a bit dry these days. He allowed himself a short, wry grin, then focused his attention to the situation at hand.
Just to his left lay a low, squat concrete building with chipped and scored outer walls and a giant, hollowed-out crater for a front entrance. From the number of Combine soldiers barreling down the main stairway, he could only assume that this was the main base. Normally, the entrance was covered by trees that would have provided a decent amount of physical cover and camouflage, but a few incendiary blasts had reduced the thick forest cover to a blackened shell of charcoal. It was still smoldering from the blasts, even as Combine rushed through the thick swath of smoke to murder whatever might still be moving down in there. Barney felt a brick drop to the bottom of his stomach, though he went through the automatic motions of flanking the main Combine group to take them out efficiently regardless. He knew that the chances of Dr. Teiger surviving the initial blast or the invading force that followed were dropping lower and lower by the minute.
He ducked behind a chunk of concrete and sucked in a quick breath. Take a deep breath, get your bearings, don't let the adrenaline get to you. He could hear the fuzz of a Combine radio no more than a few feet away, so in a single fluid motion he popped up from behind his cover, aimed for the head, and took the shot. He was rewarded with the familiar sound of the radio death whine. Shots rang out, dinging the top of the concrete where his head had been a few seconds ago and taking out a chunk of concrete in a miniature explosion. Trying to ignore the very pertinent thought that it could have been his head just then, he eyed his next target and fired. The first shot grazed the solider, and Barney cursed as he fired again. If Dr. Tieger was still alive at this point, she soon wouldn't be if he couldn't get a move on. The second solider went down at last in a heap, but not before he alerted three others to Barney's presence.
Ducking and weaving in a wild zigzag, he suppressed a growl of frustration and proceeded to take out the remaining Combine soldiers. He knew the true threat lay within the building, where Combine soliders and any remaining rebels would surely be embroiled in a fierce firefight in tight quarters. Not only that, but he still wasn't sure that the Hunter that Gordon had gone after truly was the last of them—there could easily be more hiding somewhere just out of—
A roar interrupted his thoughts. Speak of the devil, Barney thought dryly, ducking behind concrete debris for the second time that day. To his horror, the creature seemed to home in on some remaining life in the cratered entrance chamber and lumbered the uneven ground with an ease that was frightening to watch. He jumped up as the creature fired one volley of fletchings, then followed them in to get more up close and personal. No—if Dr. Teiger is still alive, it can't just—
The creature screamed in frustration, and he heard sounds of gunfire. Then, there was an anguished groan—no remotely human—and a huge crash. As if the Hunter that had so triumphantly gone charging in had been just as quickly laid out like the lightweight kid in a schoolyard brawl. Good G—who on earth is in there? He'd ever only heard of Gordon and people similarly equipped being able to take out a Hunter single-handed. And somehow, he highly doubted that Dr. Teiger—steely as she came across on the communications array—had the training or the instincts to take one down. No matter how good a shot or tactician you thought you were, combat was a very different thing when you came down to it in the moment. When the wrong move or the wrong instinct really could mean the difference between life and painful death.
Speaking of—
"Don't move! Deserter and anticitizen pending arrest—"
"Not gonna happen, buddy." Barney grunted, shooting in time with nearly every other word. A stray bullet clipped him on the ear, and he shrunk back, stung for a minute by the sharp pain and the warmth running down his neck. For that, he took down the last solider with a strike that was a bit harder than necessary. To be more precise, he knocked the Combine solider out so forcefully that the man drooped over the first three steps with his nose planted firmly into the concrete.
Barney took a chance and yelled into the silence of the blown out entrance.
"Anyone alive down there?" He shifted to the next step as he said it, unfortunately causing the lifeless solider at his feet to shift and slide down the steps with all the grace of a sack of potatoes. "Aww jeez." Barney hissed to himself, awkwardly stepping over the limp body and picking his way into the former base.
The sight that met his eyes was incredible. A relief, to be sure, but also incredible. Three figures still stood in the aftermath of the explosion—two women, one man—all spattered and stained with blood to varying degrees. The younger woman appear to have caught the worst of it; standing as she was behind the divided corpse of the Hunter he'd seen earlier, the young woman stared back at him with eyes devoid of emotional expression. She was pointing a handgun at his head without hesitation, and just in front of her, a little to the left—
Dr. Caroline Teiger. Alive.
He grinned, though he could feel the expression strain the taut muscles in his face. "Good, you're alive. We need to move."
There was a brief pause, as if the three in front of him couldn't quite believe what they were seeing. The man on the left actually adjusted his cracked glasses as if it would help. Then Dr. Teiger gave a loud, undignified whoop, laughing as she ran close.
"Sweet glory—Mr. Barney Calhoun. I can't tell you how happy I am to meet you in the flesh at last." She came and shook his hand so enthusiastically that somehow he couldn't refuse it. "Goodness, just look at me. We have time for reunions later. For now, you're quite right, we need to get moving."
Chell wasn't much one for talking, as he soon found out, but her spectacular aim made up for it easily. You'd have thought she'd spent her whole life doing nothing but shooting at moving targets from the way Chell nailed solider after Combine solider with perfect, clean shots through the head. He wasn't doing so bad himself, strictly speaking, but there was a sort of cold, economical feeling to the way Chell killed. At least Gordon had the good sense to give you an awkward thumbs-up to let you know there was some kind of silver lining to be salvaged—even knee-deep in toxic sludge and surrounded by headcrab corpses. Chell just stared at you, as if to say, yes, what next?
Yet for all that, Dr. Teiger had vouched vehemently for the younger woman's ability, and though Barney was already dubious of any former Aperture employee, he trusted Dr. Teiger. In any case, his sister had always been the better judge of character of the two of them. So, when Dr. Teiger laid out a plan of attack, he hadn't wasted time arguing; he could see the logic in her plan: divide their forces in order to divide the Combine's attention. Dr. Teiger would lead the rest of the former Aperture employees—Dan and Stephen, if he'd heard their names correctly—to the buggy and make sure it was in good shape for travel while the remaining escapees would make their way to the nearest base in the opposite direction. Meanwhile, he and Chell would do their best to locate Gordon and get him out of whatever sticky situation he might have gotten himself into in their absence. Speaking of—
"We need to make our way over to that shed!" He shouted to be heard over the roar of gunfire and Combine radios whining their high-pitched death tone. Chell glanced up at him, then over at the building he was gesturing to. He and Gordon had passed it not long ago since arriving, and Barney had a bit of a running suspicion that if there was a confined area absolutely swimming with headcrabs and their meat puppets and you were missing one Gordon Freeman, you'd best check there first. Perhaps Gordon could fight his way out of impossible situations through sheer luck alone, but Barney swore it was almost like the man went looking for trouble. Barney had lost count of the number of times Gordon had gone trekking through old human sewer systems and canals, long-since contaminated.
At least Chell didn't seem to have the same proclivity towards trouble, he thought somewhat belatedly, as she fired a glowing shot under their feet and another towards the shed. Barney felt every follicle on his scalp prickle with unease as he tumbled and rolled through time and space. Seconds later, he found himself on the ground, staring up at the same shed they'd been a good half-mile away from moments earlier. Behind them, on the wall of the shed, rested a glowing orange oval peeking out at the view they'd just left behind.
Teleportation, plain and simple. He shuddered on instinct.
"Good G—what in the world did you just do?" He asked, irritated that a wheeze entered his throat as he said it. Chell stared at him blankly for a moment. Then, she tapped the device in her hand.
"You're telling me you teleported us half a mile with that flimsy thing?"
Chell seemed to bristle at the descriptor, but she helped him up without comment. The portal, meanwhile, snapped shut with a sudden spray of sparks that didn't look stable at all, causing even Chell to jump a little.
"See what I mean? Flimsy." Barney began, but he was quickly cut off by moans coming from inside the building. Chell tilted her head, her expression shifting to mild confusion. "Ah, shoot. Don't suppose you can get us up there?" He gestured to the roof of the building. Chell turned her gaze to the roof; Barney knew it was highly unlikely that the entirety of it was still intact, but what little there might be would give them a good look at whatever Gordon was facing down below. Maybe they could even pick off a couple of the headhumper zombies from above if they—
Chell was already off, suddenly poking her head through a portal just behind him with her face emerging far above him on a small cliffside to his left. He stumbled back a little; forget experimental cats sent through teleporters—this woman was going to lose her head to the metaphorical snapping back of time and space as it bucked being so rudely bent out shape. Chell didn't seem to grasp her own mortality, however, and she leapt free of the portal set high on the ledge with ease, shooting towards the ground the way you tended to do when gravity was a thing. Problem was, she did this with the casual attitude of a woman drinking her morning coffee, shooting a new portal just under her feet so that her new destination was no longer the wall next to him, but rather—
"Sweet mercy." He whistled, and he watched with no small measure of appreciation as Chell catapulted across the gap and onto the roof the shed, using the momentum of her fall to propel her. He laughed at the sheer absurdity of it for a second, but his laughter choked off quickly when he felt himself falling through another portal with no forewarning. Chell caught him, flailing, on the way out, and they swiftly set themselves flat against the roof to disperse their weight across the flimsy surface.
Below, Gordon was clearly in the exact pickle that Barney had worried about. Surrounded by a good chunk of headhumper zombies, Gordon was clearly doing his best to beat them off despite a seeming lack of ammunition. If the SMG lying on the floor several feet away was any indication, he'd chosen to ditch the weight in favor of striking hard and fast with the only weapons in his arsenal that didn't require ammunition: the gravity gun and the infamous crowbar. From the littered wreckage and fallen zombies, Barney guessed that the former had been used to great effect—at least until Gordon had run out of things to throw. Now, he was down to a crowbar that could only do so much.
Barney silently cursed, wishing he'd brought something more substantial at long-range. He knew Chell had a handgun, but he highly doubted that it was enough to take all of the headcrabs out, even if she was an excellent shot. At point blank range, maybe she could do some serious damage and he'd be able to use his own gun as a bonus, but he just didn't see how they could get closer without adding to the situation of "trapped by zombies"…
Unless—and he glanced at Chell. Her eyes flashed, darting down to the floor of the building far beneath them, then jumping back to his own gaze. He hazarded a nod, and she took aim. He primed his weapon, and Chell shot a portal before him and another down below. Despite the seriousness of the situation, he grinned like a kid in a candy store. With the portals linked from the roof to the side of the wall, reaching the headcrabs at point blank range was easier than shooting fish in a barrel. He snatched a look at Gordon and caught something that might have been a grin, but the portals snapped closed an inch from his nose and they kept moving.
In a matter of minutes, there was silence, unbroken by the moan of a single zombie. Barney looked down through the slats of the roof, peeking at Gordon through the broken panels. From this distance, he couldn't make out the other man's expression, but from his relaxed posture, he could guess that Gordon was smiling.
"Figured you could use a hand." He yelled down to Gordon, who gave an inscrutable thumbs-up. Barney turned to Chell, who was watching him, equally unreadable. "We'd better get down there. Can you hook us up with a ride?"
Chell didn't hesitate to place the portals. The portals, on the other hand, were clearly feeling temperamental because they didn't hesitate to crash closed again in a spray of sparks. One of the sparks caught on Chell's jumpsuit, and she looked as surprised as anything to see her jumpsuit start smoking from the heat. She beat the spot violently, then turned to whacking her gun, as if it might respond by resolving whatever mechanical issues it had all on its own. When she looked up again, the result was clear. They'd have to make their own way down. For some reason, Chell's next instinct was to glance at his shoes, then at her own. If he didn't know better, he might have thought she was comparing shoe sizes.
"Out of commission, huh? Suppose Dr. Vance and Dr. Kleiner will have to take a look at it when we get back. Oh," and he took the liberty of tapping her shoulder to emphasize his point, "word of advice: keep it away from Dr. Magnusson if you're attached to it at all. Trust me—I speak from experience when I say if you hand your weapon to Magnusson, you'll be tweaking it all day long trying to get it back to normal."
Chell twitched a little, but she nodded that she'd heard him—even if she hadn't, he could tell she'd listened from the way her fingers curled protectively around her portal gun. Barney stowed his weapon in its standard-issue holster, clipping it into place even as he began scouring the roof for a good place to get down. The building roof was all but caving in as it was, but beyond that, it was mostly one level all the way across. Except, of course, for a single slanted portion which was conveniently on the other side of the largest hole in the roof. Barney was already dubious on how well the roof would hold them when they were just walking—never mind jumping with their respective full weights, driving down on the concentrated square area of their feet. He suppressed a shudder. It'd be ironic, at the very least, not to die of headhumpers or their meat suits, only to come to an undignified end as a messy splat on the floor.
Still, they weren't exactly doing Gordon much good stuck up here on a roof. Or doing the resistance much good either, come to think of it. No time like the present, Barney thought grudgingly, tamping down his internal cringing at the task ahead. All that's left is to—
He sprinted and leapt, crossing the hole easily and coming down into an awkward roll on the finish. For a few seconds, he lay still as a rock buried deep in mud, his limbs spread out as he listened for the groan of metal giving way. Crinkling sounds and the fluttering of some small components caught his ears, but the roof under his back stayed solid as it ever was to begin with. He looked up, and Chell waved at him, then pointed to the ground. Then she made to jump.
Barney shot to his feet, still wary of the roof's integrity, and he ran to the edge. "Hey! Chell, what are you doing?"
She shot him a confused look, then jumped with no more ado. He barely kept himself from yelping at her sudden and disastrous descent, because, well, even if he'd only just met her, she was a good shot and she'd held his back. With the Combine cracking down so harshly, that was sometimes hard to find, and some morbidly practical side of his brain was already thinking Boy, I'll miss that kid. Shame she couldn't stick around.
Except Chell stood on the ground, unharmed. She didn't even look very bothered by it, which was perhaps the most infuriating thing of all. How on earth did she pull off a ten-foot jump without so much as twisting her ankle? I swear, you give the mute kids some fancy science equipment and they go and lose their minds.
"How did—never mind, just stay put and I'll come join you in a sec." Barney hollered at her, offering an awkwardly taut smile. He couldn't see Chell's face from here, but he allowed himself the optimistic thought that she'd smiled back like a human, instead of staring like the odd, emotionless sort of duck that she seemed to be.
Barney nearly choked on his heart leaping into his throat again as he made his way down the slanting roofline, skidding slightly on slipping patches of rusted metal that slid to the edge and floated down. A lot more lightly than he would, if he didn't pay attention. At the edge of the slanted roof, he spotted a bush about four or five feet down and figured that, in the absence of time, it would work just fine. Chell was waiting for him as he brushed off stray twigs and leaves from his escapade.
"Hey," he caught her arm, then let go at the venomous look she flashed at him before fading back to icy indifference, "listen, don't scare me like that, alright? Broken bone is a death sentence out here, alright."
Her face softened. Slightly. Then she thumped her boot and reached down to bend the springy sort of heel back. It snapped back into place with an out-of-place twang, and she met his gaze again.
"Magic boots, huh?" Barney grumbled. "G—I hope they don't give Gordon a pair of those. I don't want to imagine the trouble he'd get into with them."
Chell simply shook her head, and he filled in the words for her silence: come on, let's just go.
"Alright, alright. Let's break Gordon out of…whatever this was supposed to be. Much as I might grumble about the guy, he's actually alright. Figure you two oughta get on like a house on fire together, so let's not keep him waiting."
Together, they approached the old building's side door (it was looking more and more like an old warehouse, Barney thought) and with the combined force of their kicks, they brought it down. It occurred to him, in that moment, that they looked like a bunch of stereotypical action figures, as the door came crashing down, sending fantastical clouds of dust billowing up like movie set smoke. It was all very dramatic, he supposed, when you were looking at it from Gordon's perspective.
Speak of the devil—a familiar silhouette loomed in the smoke, coming closer. Chell tensed next to him, and he turned to see her steadying her handgun and aiming it at the shadow's head.
"Hey—hey! Relax, it's just Gordon. We got the zombies, trust me." He addressed the figure, knowing full well it wouldn't answer back, not here. "Hey Gordon! Come meet my new pal, Chell. I think you'll like her."
AN Cont'd: Another chapter wrapped, and this one was a bit of a doozie to write. Still, it didn't feel right to split it into two chapters since I didn't want to leave too much of a cliffhanger. Anywho, if you enjoyed, please feel free to leave a comment with a review or your thoughts. Reading comments is a nice highlight, and I try to respond to all of them if I can. Also! Just as a quickie: this chapter is illustrated, and you can view that illustration on my tumblr ( LittleInkling64) or see it embedded into the story on ao3.