Gordon's room was on the 'top' floor of the dormitory wing, which itself was buried beneath the ice. He had a worn single bed in one corner, and a charging setup for his suit in the other. Various weapons were stacked up in his closet, along with the few clothes he possessed.
On the wall were several dozen photos. Some were clear, others blurry, but each had special significance to Gordon. They had been taken with the chest camera of his Hazard Suit, the controls for which he would accidently brush once in a while. In fact, he had almost forgotten that they existed, until Dr Kleiner had taken the time to retrieve the memory card in the chest plate during routine repairs.
The first few were unidentifiable streaks of grey and white, followed by pictures of Kleiner's bespectacled face looming large in the fisheye lens. Then, pictures of the inside of the lab, clearly from when Gordon had worn it for the first time. Sometimes, faces stood out from the blur. That woman who had given him the airboat. Father Grigori, waving a shotgun in his direction. Out of all of these pictures, however, Gordon had hidden two underneath a loose ceiling panel. The first was of Alyx and Eli at White Forest, with her father gently punching her on the shoulder, laughter etched across both of their faces. Someday, Gordon hoped to have the nerve to give it to her, but so soon after the death of Eli was not the right time.
Gordon had been tempted to destroy the other picture on several occasions. The blurry outline of a man, silhouetted against a white rectangle of light. Dr Kleiner had deleted the picture, apparently without noticing it, but a Vortigaunt had printed it in secret and passed it on to Gordon.
The base tannoy crackled into life. "Dr Freeman, report to the command centre." With a sigh, Gordon slung his legs out of bed, pulled on his parka and stepped out.
Despite being around nine o'clock in the morning, the base was fairly quiet, as most personnel were scheduled for night shifts. Gordon walked swiftly down the wide corridors, nodding at others as they passed. A small group of newly arrived rebels stopped him to shake his hand, but he still managed to arrive at the command centre, the deepest part of Kraken Base, in good time.
The map room was crowded with people, and Gordon waved away those that offered him their seats. Alyx was leaning against the wall on the far side, and he moved to join her.
"Okay, Good morning everyone." The speaker was a tall, grey-haired man named Carter, who had become the de facto commander of the base.
"As you know, Alyx is now back with us, and the Borealis is under Resistance control. So far, we haven't seen any attempts by the Combine to take it back, and according to scouts and radar the large concentration of Combine forces near to the ship has dispersed, although we don't know where to."
"This brings me to the second piece of news. Last night we intercepted a bunch of radio transmissions on an unsecured channel at our White Forest listening post. It sounds as though the Combine are performing troop reshuffles worldwide, including something to do with re-structuring Civil Protection forces. That's all we've got at the moment on that one, but for now we're just waiting on our spies in the capitals to tell us what they're really up to."
"You might have noticed that security has increased around here again, both internally and externally. Last night some kind of Combine space plane dropped into the atmosphere in the general area of Kraken base. Now, we know that these planes do drop in and out of orbit, but this time it hung around much longer than normal. I've ordered the long wave radio array shut down for the next day or so, and tonight we're gonna pile a few more inches of snow on top of the exposed sections of the base. As for internal security, I've heard a lot of rumours flying around about us having captured a Combine soldier. This is the case; however this has not compromised the base or your safety in any way. The synth is confined to the lab wing and will remain there for the foreseeable future. Any questions?"