Note: This chapter assumes familiarity with the characters and events of Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and Half-Life 2: Episode 2. This chapter occurs shortly before the beginning of Half-Life 2.


Part III

Chapter 39: Progress

With every ounce of passion I speak till my lungs both billow out

I'll give you something to hope for.

And the only thing that brings me back is love.

And the only thing that brings me back is love.

And the only thing that brings me back is—

("Progress" by The Dear Hunter)


Judith chewed on the end of her pencil. She shifted her weight from her elbows and then stared up at the array of security camera screens, though her eyes were not focused on them. She glanced back at her papers and then pushed her sleeves past her elbows, not wanting to smudge one of her few nice shirts with more graphite.

God, this lack of computing power sucked. Calculating orbits by hand sucked. Though she had trained in physics, orbital mechanics had never been her strong suit—her doctorate studies had been done on particle physics. She had always said she felt more comfortable doubling down on understanding how things worked on Earth rather than the great beyond. But she had not known back then what was going to happen. Perhaps she should have taken that undergraduate astrophysics elective.

It wasn't like there were textbooks on orbital mechanics lying around for her to reference—and if there had been, they'd be in Russian. She also wished she had some references for computer programming. It would have been nice if she could create a simple program that could (in addition to calculating and printing out orbits) calculate the locations of the low Earth orbiting satellites relative to the geosynchronous satellites. That was the part she was doing by hand.

She scratched out a few lines of dates and positions, and moved over a couple of sheets to circle some other ones. She moved from left to right, going from satellite to satellite until she got to the end and realized that she had a few sheets missing. She leaned back to get a look at all of the sheets and counted them mentally. Yes. Three sheets were missing.

As She got up and pushed in her chair, she glanced again at the security footage. All clear, so far. Black Mesa East had thankfully been quiet lately. They had chosen a good location for their base, and they had done an excellent job maintaining a low profile, and hopefully they would hang on to that low profile for as long as they could. Other places could be abandoned much easier than a stronghold of science like this.

Judith pulled open the door just far enough to poke out her head. She leaned against the door frame and twisted her golden bracelet with her other hand. Her thumb ran over the engraved letters. Progress.

Everything seemed to be clear.

She lightly closed the door and walked across Black Mesa East until she was standing in front of their large printer. It had certainly seen better days, if the baked-in ink stains and yellowed plastic were anything to go by. Plus, it wasn't as though they could go to their local office supply store and buy more ink or toner cartridges. The resident vortigaunts had a method of refilling the existing ones with an ink substitute from some Xen fauna, but she didn't know the specifics. She did not care as long as it allowed her to still print things out.
She looked at the tray.

Empty.

How wonderful. Great! Perfect. Fantastic. Just what she needed. It was a good thing she had walked across the place just to come pick this up. Not like she was in a hurry or anything.

She ducked around the area by the table, looking to see if someone had filled a cardboard box with unclaimed print jobs, as if she was back at one of her old universities. But nothing seemed to be in sight. She frowned. She did not have time for a scavenger hunt. Honestly, though if her papers weren't immediately visible, then it wasn't likely that she would find it anyway. Oh well. She would just have to print it out again.

Judith bit at the inside of her lip and then picked at the bunched-up shirt around her elbow. There wasn't any availability on the computer schedule for another day or two, so she wasn't going to be able to print until then. Working on the orbits would have to wait.

Unless...

Perhaps if she could convince someone currently on a computer to allow her to hop on for a moment— she broke off the thought and frowned. As much as she would like to do that, she had to remember she was on her security rotation. The longer she spent away from the camera feeds, the higher the chance of getting caught. She grumbled to herself and then sped back to her post as casually as she could.

She twisted open the door to the security closet and closed it quickly behind her, giving an exhale—partially from exhaustion and partially from relief. She turned back toward the desk and jumped. "Eli!" she said, placing a hand over her heart.

He sat in the folding chair, legs pulled in. His prosthetic leg was propped up against a bar welded between the seat legs. A small stack of papers sat in his lap.

Her surprise gradually faded as her heart beat slowed down. "I didn't see—I didn't expect—" she started, and then cleared her throat. "I hope I haven't kept you waiting long," she tried. "I had to step out for a moment." She considered adding that she had left to use the bathroom, but she remembered from her training that having an overly-specific excuse was a sure sign of a lie.

Eli pressed his thumbs together, nodded his head in understanding.

A part of her, as always, was glad to see him. But this was unexpected. Perhaps there was bad news. "What's going on?" If he needed her help, then they had no time for pleasantries.

Eli raised his head to look at her. "Judith," he said, lifting the papers in his lap. "What are these?"

She paused for a moment. "Oh, just a pet project," she said. "I know the rocket launch is a ways out, but I thought I'd brush up on my planetary science. The more studied people that we have around here, the better. And you know me." She gave a light, pleasant laugh. "I'd never turn down an opportunity to learn more physics."

Eli sighed.

Judith's smile faltered.

"What are you doing with printouts of scheduled positions of three Combine satellites?"

Ah. So that's where her papers had gone. At least they weren't lost, and hadn't gotten into anyone's hands except for Eli's. Hopefully. That was a relief. "It's part of the research I'm doing," she said. "I learn best when I have a project to work on, so I'm looking for any gaps or potential vulnerabilities in the Combine communications array."

"You took this information directly from the Combine's internal network. I can tell." He pointed at the official symbols that acted as the header and the footer of the printouts. "It's not from our own observations."

Judith's lips tightened into a flat line.

"I didn't access their network from here, if that's what you're worried about," she said. "I'm not stupid."

"It is still dangerous," said Eli. He dropped the papers onto the table with the other ones.

"It's all right. I used an encrypted storage device and downloaded the information the last time I was in the city, and then printed it here. There's nothing to worry about."

"And what would you have told someone if they caught you in the middle of downloading that information?"

"The same thing I told you. I'm learning more about orbital mechanics and am looking for any potential weaknesses or vulnerabilities in their satellite array. Of course, they would assume that I was looking into it to help them."

"Enough of that. What are you really working on?" Eli said. "You wouldn't put yourself—or us— at risk just for a pet project."

Judith did not speak.

Eli leaned forward to further study the papers, and then he looked back up at Judith. At this point his expression had changed from kind-eyed to the hardened one necessary for a resistance leader. "Tell me what I'm looking at," he said, and this time it was not a question.

Judith exhaled. "I didn't want to give you any more information than what's strictly necessary—safer for you, you know. But they are satellite orbits," she said. "I'm looking for a way to get a message to the upper peninsula of Michigan," she said.

"And why do you need Combine satellites for that?"

"There aren't enough pre-Combine operational satellites left on Earth," said Judith. "We can use the still-functioning ones, in theory, but it's not guaranteed." She went on a tangent on what she had learned about the history of old satellites and other space equipment and space junk and about how even after, say, NASA, moved on to another mission, it didn't mean that their object in space didn't work anymore but that they had just stopped supporting it. Amateur groups were often able to gain access and control them, to an extent. So it was possible the resistance could garner control of them as well, if only briefly. Then, she continued, "But the coverage isn't good enough to get a message from here to there." She pointed her fingers, then dragged one finger around an imaginary globe. "And that is where the Combine technology comes in."

Eli listened patiently, but then winced. "How can you get a message from one satellite to another? I thought all they did was send messages back and forth to stations on Earth."
"I'm taking that into consideration," said Judith. "I talked to Doctor Kleiner, and we both agreed that it would be possible—theoretically— to transmit data between the satellites with minimal— if any— time spent bouncing to relay stations and back. Lamar had some ingenious theories on signal hopping and other wireless forms of data transmission that we haven't fully explored even to this day. Perhaps her research can help us."

Eli frowned. "Lamarr…?" There was disbelief in his voice.

It took Judith a moment to figure out the misunderstanding. "Oh!" She gave a short laugh that was almost a bark. "I'm talking about Hedy Lamar. You know, the incredible scientist. Also an actress, I guess. The namesake for our Lamarr. Way ahead of her time." She raised a hand to her mouth and shook her head. "Goodness, to think I was talking about a headcrab…" She let that moment linger, enjoying the silly image of a headcrab scientist before she continued. "Anyway," she said, "I think it's possible, but only with the assistance of the Combine satellites."

"Judith—" Eli started, a warning tone in his voice.

"I'm still working out the orbits, but I need to do this. I just have to find a time and date that would minimize the message's uptime and minimize the usage of the Combine satellites."

"And how are you figuring that out?" he said, though a part of Eli already knew the answer to that. He looked down at the papers on the desk.

"I'm— I'm not taking up much computer time, I promise," she started, raised palms facing Eli. "I know what a valuable and limited resource it is. I've been signing up for slots at night as to not interfere with more urgent calculations, and then grabbing whatever slots that pop up during the day where no one signed up or someone cancels, since otherwise that computing time would be wasted. And I'm doing as much as I can by hand."

The late nights and early mornings and everywhere-in-between slots at the computers had been making her think of the last times that she regularly used computers at such odd times. It had to have been back in her undergraduate days, when Chell was still a baby. Instead of finding an overnight babysitter, it had been easier and cheaper to just bring her to campus. Computers had been so new then, and the prospect of a home computer had been financially unfeasible. So she would sign up for the unpopular times to use a university terminal. There were rarely any other people there after 3am. By then the night owls had called it quits for the night, and the people who stayed after that tended to not be particularly social and did not mind that Judith kept the overhead lighting to a minimum to let the baby sleep better. The fans and hums of the computers had acted as a sort of white noise machine for Chell. All Judith had to do was to try to make sure she didn't go too long between typing-sometimes she would just press a few keys over and over while working so that she didn't drop off into silence and then accidentally wake up the baby when she did start typing again. The fact that there weren't many people around at that hour of the day also meant that it wasn't so intimidating when the baby began to cry, as infants inevitably do. Though the university hadn't been particularly accommodating to a new mother such as herself, she hadn't let that stop her. She would not let a child get in the way of her academic ambitions.

She had never pictured herself missing those nights. Obviously, she hadn't been getting enough sleep then. She was no doubt a road hazard when she was driving home from campus. But sleep deprivation was already a part of parenthood, as she had heard from every person who had ever had a child and every person who had ever spotted her with Chell. So why not at least attempt to make the most of those sleepless hours?

But in late nights and early mornings and everywhere-in-between moments at the work stations at Black Mesa East or at White Forest, she found herself missing the stuffy warmth of those ancient computer labs and the glow of the screens and sitting hunched over a keyboard but with a foot idly rocking the bulky baby carrier. And when Chell had been even smaller, sometimes she had kept her in one of those slings, especially on the nights where she had been fussy and didn't want to sleep. Her chest ached at the memory.

Working at the computers at night at Black Mesa East felt so much different. She was alone, for one. There was none of that sense of sleep-deprived camaraderie between herself and the other undergraduates. There was none of the joy of learning for the joy of learning. The work done for the resistance was much more serious.

And she wasn't sure if this was just because she was older now, but staying up so late or waking up so early was a lot harder than she remembered. She had taken to sleeping in shorter shifts throughout the day. A bit odd, yes, but she was doing what she had to do. It was better than not sleeping.

A comment from Eli brought her back to the present. She looked over at him, realizing she hadn't registered what he had said. She searched his eyes for a clue, but he had his arms folded and seemed like he was awaiting an answer. "Come again?" she said.

"I said, I'm worried about you," said Eli. "You're not getting enough sleep. I can see it. We can all see it."

"If I could get through college and countless full-time jobs while raising a child, then I think I can handle a few missing hours of sleep here and there." But she could not deny how exhausted and irritable those missing hours had left her, and that irritation was something she wasn't as skilled at hiding. She made sure to spend a moment staring at the wall of security cameras which could have been still-life paintings for all the activity she saw.

"You weren't even watching the security cameras. You're supposed to be watching them."

"Well, then it's a good thing that I'm on good terms with our resistance leader," Judith said, a little bit of teasing in her voice as she tried to diffuse the situation. Eli did not laugh and her smile slid back to a thin line of an expression. "It's not like anything ever happens here. I still check them. Often enough."

When he still did not seem satisfied, she jumped into her next question. "Anyway, I'm going to need you to ask Alyx something for me. I'm really going to need her hacking skills to piggyback off of those Combine satellites. I promise I would do this myself, but you know her. The second I open my mouth to ask for help she'll say no before I've even finished the question. But if you ask her to do it, then I know she'll say yes."

Eli's hands were clasped tightly together. "No."

Judith hesitated. "But you know she'll say no to me, and there isn't another person here with her skill-set. I need her help and she will just want to argue. Eli, please."

"No," he said.

Judith folded her arms, then nodded once. "All right, I can respect that. You're right. I really should ask her myself if I want to build a stronger relationship with her." She tapped her writing instrument against her lips. "I'll have to think about how to best approach it. At least I have some time. First I have to confirm that it's even possible to cover the gap between here and the upper peninsula. Going across the North Pole would be ideal, but I doubt there's enough infrastructure… anyway, once I figure that out I can talk to her about the hacking aspect. "

"Judith, I wasn't talking about Alyx. I'm talking about all of this. I can't let you do it."

"But," Judith said. She hadn't planned on talking to Eli about her plan yet, since it was still in the research stage, but she had thankfully at least considered some talking points to push things in her favor. "I'll encrypt the file to look like any other packet of Combine information. I'll even upload it in the city, bounce it back and forth around the city, so that it can't be traced back here or to me. And the Combine satellites—I only plan on using them as relays. I won't let them store the information for any longer than absolutely necessary. They'll delete the information as soon as it successfully passes to the next location."

Eli shook his head. "The risk versus the payoff—it's too high." He gave a long exhale. "You know Aperture went offline shortly before the Black Mesa Incident. Some of our people went there, but we lost contact. No one knows what happened."

"But that place is built like a fortress," said Judith. "I've seen it myself. They have to still be down there." She had a hard time accepting the idea that something catastrophic, along the lines of Black Mesa's Resonance Cascade, could have wiped Aperture off of the map. She also couldn't accept that Combine occupation could have hit them as badly as they had hit the rest of the world.

"If they are, then they have to have been smart to make it this far. They would have had to make themselves invisible to the Combine and do everything they could to not advertise their presence. What makes you think they would accept a transmission like this? They might not even be listening."

Judith didn't have a reply for that. Whether or not they received her message, she felt like she still had to try. "I've been considering that, and I have an idea. I remember hearing that Aperture had their own corporate radio frequency, somewhere beneath the lowest range. Don't ask me why. I was surprised to hear that radios even worked down there. Maybe they've got a radio tower somewhere? But, if I can manage to broadcast it on that channel, then they're much more likely to hear it. All I've got to do is remember that frequency. Maybe Dr. Kleiner remembers."

"Even if they do get your message, why would they even want to help us? Aperture has always hated Black Mesa. If they know about the Black Mesa Incident, then they probably hate us even more. We're probably the last people that they want to help."

"It's different now," said Judith.

"Who knows if Aperture even cares about the occupation? If they've been holed up down there this entire time, I doubt they want to get involved now."

"But now we have a common enemy."

"Black Mesa got us into this mess, and Black Mesa will get us out of this mess. We don't need their help."

Judith scoffed. It didn't sound like he was worried that Aperture didn't want to help them—it sounded like he was afraid of getting their help. Which was ridiculous. Black Mesa had always been the best. At everything. Granted, that was because they had bled Aperture dry, but still. Was Eli afraid that Aperture would upstage them? Get all the glory for saving the world? Or was there a sort of personal responsibility element to this as well?

"Come on. Be reasonable," she said. "Our chances aren't getting better as time goes on." For some people, like Alyx, who were just children when the world went to hell, this was the only life they knew. How long would it be before people began to forget the old world, therefore forgetting everything they had lost? The youngest generation—their last generation— wouldn't necessarily know what they had lost, since they had grown up without it. She continued, "This isn't some petty rivalry anymore. We need to work together and if that means we have to be the ones to extend the olive branch, then so be it. If we're going to win this thing, we need something big. Something decisive. And the Borealis has that. We've been making great progress on our own short-range teleportation, but it's too slow," she said. "Eli, if we can make contact with Aperture, it could be a game changer. With their experiments on large-scale long-range teleportation—" she said, almost laughing with excitement. "We could send them back. This twenty year nightmare could be over."

"We don't know for sure that that technology is any good. We don't know if it's worth the risk."

"Of course it is. It worked once. And if it worked once, then we can make it work again. I'll reverse-engineer it myself if I have to."

"But you haven't even seen this technology demonstrated. None of us have. We have only heard about it secondhand, and that isn't enough. We can't verify its accuracy or the technology's effectiveness."

"Which is why we need to contact them. So we can learn more."

"We can't take a risk as big as this on potentially faulty information. "

Judith frowned. "Are you saying you don't trust my information?"

Eli took a moment to weigh his conversational options, trying to figure out how to proceed. "Of course I do," he said, slowly. "I trust that you have accurately remembered everything you were told. You're good at that. And you take notes. It's just—your daughter's account—"

"Are you saying that she lied to me?" Judith could feel herself jumping to conclusions, becoming a bit more snappy, but she couldn't help it.

"No, no." Eli shook his head. He held up his palms. "Not at all. Not on purpose. I just worry that she may have…exaggerated… certain details." He had a bit of a grimace on his face and looked down, ducking to avoid the steel beam of Judith's gaze.

"And why would she do that?"

"Judith..." He made himself meet her gaze, trusting that she knew what he was trying to say. But she didn't seem to be following. He didn't want to have to spell it out.

"No, really. I want to know."

"She—you know how hard this must have been on her. Look at it from her perspective," he said. This was not an outlandish request. He knew that Judith had to have an idea on just how hard this would have been for Chell, based on the countless nights he had listened to her go over her actions, head in her hands, over and over again, as if she picked it apart finely enough she would be able to fix it. Like an error in a math problem or proof. Once she definitively identified the problem, perhaps she could arrive at the correct solution. But the past didn't work like that. He said, "She was scared. She missed you. And I think she would have done anything to make you happy."

Judith was quiet.

"Look, I know this isn't what you want to hear. But it's been twenty years," he said, switching to a more gentle tone. I think you already know what happened. "We've all lost people. Every single one of us. And it hurts. You know I lost my dear Azian," said Eli. "But without that, I wouldn't have met you." He reached out a tentative hand and touched it to her shoulder, but Judith shrugged it off. "You've got to know when to move on. You've got to think about how you can best honor her memory. And that's here, with us."

"But this is about honoring her memory," Judith said. " Don't you understand? The Borealis was the last information that I got from her. I have to use it. Otherwise—" she cut herself off, unable to complete the thought. Otherwise all of this—her work in the resistance, the mistakes she was so desperately trying to rectify—it would all be for nothing. If she abandoned this potential technological lead, then it would just be like abandoning Chell all over again. She would be throwing away the last part of her daughter that she had.

It had all been so stupid. All of it. Such a huge risk, and for what? A fast-tracked career in the sciences? Those jobs didn't exist anymore. Academic prestige? A doctorate meant nothing now. Yet even if the Resonance Cascade hadn't happened and even if humanity had never lost the Seven Hour War, it still would have been a mistake. This had been the most painful realization from the past twenty years. A job from a well-respected company, her PhD—it could never love her back. It could never replace the importance of human connection.

"God, I just—" She leaned forward, putting her head in her arms. If she couldn't do something, anything, to turn her suffering and past pain into something useful—if she just had to live with her mistakes—she wasn't sure she could go on.

She had spent years going over possibilities and outcomes and probabilities. She knew that Chell was most likely not among the survivors of the invasion, but she could never fully accept it. She knew in a detached sense what was going on with her—disbelief, bargaining, refusal to accept, all the other stages of grief—but knowing this information did not change how she felt. She couldn't put a scientific finger on it, but she just felt it deeply that her daughter was still alive.

"Just let me reach out. If we don't hear anything back, then I'll stop."

Eli paused, his expression dark. But before he could answer, they heard half of a knock on the door as it was twisted open.

Alyx pushed her way in, a severed security camera hanging from one of her hands. "Mossman! There's another camera out."

"Not now, Alyx," said Judith.

She made a motion with her arm as if warning Judith that she was about to toss it to her, but then realized it was not just Dr. Mossman in the room.

"Oh! Hey Dad. I didn't know you were in here," said Alyx, brightening slightly. Then she turned back to Judith.

"You have got to get this camera fixed. Remember how I've been warning you?"

"Alyx."

"For weeks now? And remember how I told you this camera was on its way out but you refused to put in a request for a new one?"

"Alyx, please. Can we do this later? I'm kind of in the middle of something."

"No way." Alyx continued on, undeterred. She waved her hand and the camera swayed, dangling by the loose cords. "You've ignored me every other time I've brought this up."

"I said—"

"And now it's broken. Completely."

"I said— Not now, Chell!" snapped Judith.

Silence.

The narrow security closet was starting to feel especially small, even with Alyx in the hallway. Judith avoided looking at either Vance.

When she eventually looked up at Alyx, she found that the woman looked confused, yes, but she could see hurt in her eyes. And suddenly it wasn't Alyx's eyes anymore but Chell's eyes, as if somehow Judith had been teleported into the past.

Judith felt herself grow heavier, and somehow more anxious and somehow close to tears as well. She took a moment to gather herself before she spoke again. "Alyx," she started. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you. You are right—that camera does need to be replaced, and right away. Thank you for bringing it to my attention." She made a motion with her hand and reached it out as if to accept the broken camera.

But Alyx didn't move. Instead she frowned, looking between Eli and Judith. "Who is—?"

"Honey, maybe you should come back later," said Eli.

Alyx shook her head. "No. I want to know. Who's Chell? I've never heard that name before."

Eli laid a gentle hand on Judith's shoulder. This time, she did not push it away.

"My daughter," said Judith.

It took a moment for Alyx to process that information. She had never really considered Judith Mossman to be a person with any sort of human connections (outside of the ones within the resistance). So a part of her had just felt like Judith Mossman had just sprung into existence one day as a fully-formed particle physicist. "I didn't know you had a daughter," she said. Thinking of Dr. Mossman as a person with a past, with a family just felt wrong. "Is she—did she—?" Alyx asked, trying but failing to find a phrase that showed sensitivity.

"They…lost contact," said Eli.

"Oh. That must have been hard for you," she said, and then was unsure how to proceed. "Was it around the time of the Seven Hour War?"

"Yes," said Judith.

"No," said Eli, at the same time.

Eli and Judith looked at each other for a moment, then back at confused Alyx.

"It's complicated," said Judith. She had lost touch with Chell before all of those events, but the Seven Hour War had made their disconnect permanent. That war had been when the majority of people lost contact with friends and loved ones, so it was convenient to allow others to believe that was what had separated them. Judith didn't want to lie to Alyx, but she remained embarrassed by the truth. "I don't like to talk about it," she said.

There was another pause while Alyx came up with an appropriate and respectful response. "Do you think she's still out there somewhere?" There was a little bit of hope in Alyx's voice.

"Yes," said Judith, with unwavering faith. "Absolutely."

"Then I hope you find her one day."

"Actually," Judith said, "I've been working on that in my spare time. I have a potential lead, but your father doesn't think it's a good idea." Judith knew that she was incredibly overly-simplifying things— almost to the point of deception— but she also knew that Alyx was a weak point for Eli. It didn't feel good to manipulate him like this, but she couldn't pass up this opportunity that had been handed to her. Especially when her earlier appeals had failed.

Alyx turned to Eli. "Why not?"

Eli shifted, feeling some discomfort. This wasn't playing fair. "It requires sending a message to the Aperture Science facility back in the United States."

"Aperture? The mortal-enemy-of-Black-Mesa Aperture?"

"Yes." Judith didn't offer up any additional details.

"So why won't he let you do it? Seems straightforward enough."

"It would require briefly utilizing the Combine telecommunication infrastructure to transport the message," said Judith. "There's no other way to get the message all the way over there."

Eli's expression was tight. "It's too risky," he said.

"Really?" said Alyx, noticing she actually felt genuine sympathy for Judith. "She has a chance to find out more about her daughter and you're telling her no? What if things were reversed, and it was you trying to find me? Would you still think it was a bad idea?"

"It's a lot more complicated than that. We just can't afford the risk of being discovered right now. Maybe if our position stabilizes I'll reconsider."

"Come on, Dad," said Alyx. "You've got to let her try." It would be cruel to not let her try. And despite Alyx's misgivings with Judith, she could not deny that the woman was sharp and careful. Judith would put her whole self into making her mission work and she would undoubtedly cover her tracks.

Eli gave a loud exhale, and then slowly rose to his feet. He kept one hand on the back of the chair. Bringing Alyx into this argument and pitting her against him had been a dirty move, and he'd have to talk to Judith about that some other time.

"Fine," he said, then looked toward Judith. "But you'd better clean up your act here. This has to come first."

He left the room, leaving just Judith and Alyx.

"Alyx," said Judith. She felt something in her heart. It wasn't that she didn't care about Alyx, but the two of them had never gotten along. She had never seen Alyx stick up for her like this. Especially with Eli. "Thank you," she said. Her words were heartfelt.

Alyx stared at Judith, wondering if she should ask her if she was feeling ill. This was not the normal kind of thing she would say, but then again there had been lots of strange new information in this conversation.

Judith looked down, and then raised her gaze to meet Alyx's. "I'm—" she broke off, wringing her hands. "I know I've never told you this, but... you are a very smart and very capable young woman. And you are very much your father's daughter." She paused. "I never got to meet your mother, but…I think she would be proud of you. We're all proud of you, and I think you should know that."

Alyx took a step back. "Thank you," she said. She rested a hand on the door frame. She was quiet for another few moments, and then leaned through the doorway to set down the broken security camera. "Just—let me know if there's anything I can do. I want to help. Even if Dad's not fully on-board."

"I will. Thank you, Alyx."


Author's Note:

The title of this chapter comes from a detail I learned early on when writing this fic, which is that Judith Mossman's HL2 model has a golden bracelet with the inscription Progress on it. I was also introduced to the song 'Progress' by The Dear Hunter at some point and the two things connected in my brain and have remained inseparable.

I actually wrote a draft of this chapter in 2019, but it was only about a thousand words. This one is about six thousand words, and I've been chipping away at it since June of this year (2021). I am much happier with this draft.