PART 3: The Soldiers

"Riiingg, riiingg!" He touched the button on his temple.

"Snake, this is the sergeant."

"Sir!"

"I'm assigning a partner to you. You may not recognize his armor, but he's a class of soldiers known as ODST."

"What does that stand for?"

"It doesn't matter right now. He's going to assist you on the infiltration mission."

"Right. His name?"

"His name is Isaac Orion."

"Orion. Like the starbelt."

"Yes. He'll be meeting you there soon."

"Right. Over and out." As soon as Snake got off the codec, he heard something behind him. As he turned a figure in black armor came up and pulled out a knife, Snake quickly countering it with his own. After doing several CQC moves, the figure dropped to the ground in a crouch. Snake knew this as the stealthy soldier's sign of being allies.

"Isaac Orion. You must be Solid Snake."

"Yeah. You're my partner, right?"

"Yes." He got to his feet, shaking Snake's hand. He undid the latches and pulled his helmet off and scratched his short, dark-ground hair.

"There they are!"

"Get 'em!" The two turned to see several soldiers dressed in full white outfits and gas-masks heading at them quickly.

"Move!" Snake commanded. The two sprinted several yards down the dirt road they'd come in on, climbing quickly, high into the foliage on either side.

"Where'd they go?" one soldier asked.

"Keep moving," the other said. They continued down the road and the two dropped from the tree moving stealthily toward the complex.

"What are we here for?" Isaac asked.

"It appears that these people have begun making what they call 'Dark Bombs'. It uses a highly concentrated form of unknown dark matter that no one knows how it reacts, except that it absorbs any living thing that comes into contact with it."

"I see. And we're going in to destroy the Dark Bombs?"

"Yeah." Snake pulled a cigarette from his pocket. "Smoke?"

"Nah, expensive habit." Snake shrugged and took a deep drag.

"Our plan of attack is to head down the hill nearby to a riverbed. After that, we'll enter one of the sewage tunnels and from there head into the maintenence shafts around the building. We can reach the mainframe of the facility through one of these shafts and activate all of the Dark Bombs from there. After that, our main concern is leaving."

"Got it."

"Ready?"

"Yeah."

"Let's move."

PART 4: The Silent Assassins

He went over the objectives again in his head. He was to take this new recruit, this Freeman, with him into the base to disarm what he was told were called "Dark Bombs". Hardly anyone knew what they were made of, or contained, but the US government needed them.

So they sent out their finest. A Splinter Cell.

So Sam Fisher and Gordon Freeman quietly moved through the maintenence shafts of the peculiar facility. They had to get to the mainframe room and get the codes to disarm the bombs, so they could successfully disarm and retrieve all bombs in the base. He had told this to Freeman, only to find out that he was a mute.

The two moved silently, Freeman with his strange, large orange gun, and Sam with his silenced pistol. Finally, they reached a vent in the cieling. Looking down, they saw the glowing monitor of the mainframe.

"How are we going to get in, it's bolted tight..." Freeman tapped Sam's shoulder and raised his orange gun to the vent and pulled one trigger. The vent convulsed and pulled itself free from the shaft, attached to the gun by a stream of orange light. Freeman dropped it and climbed through, shortly followed by Sam.

Sam began typing things on the computer, then used his Opsat to hack through some security.

"Got it," Sam said, downloading the security codes to his Opsat. At that moment, the door behind them opened. The two turned, raising their rifles, as did the two in the doorway.

Freeman pressed Sam's gun down. He looked over at the man, then back to the two in the doorway. One, a man encased in black armor, minus the helmet, the other a man in camoflague, a bandana, smoking a cigarette.

"Welcome to the party," Isaac said.

"So you're breaking in too?" Snake asked, observing the ripped vent.

"Yes. My name is Sam Fisher and this is Gordon Freeman. He's a mute. We've been instructed by the US government to come and retrieve the Dark Bombs before they can be used to claim lives."

"That's weird," Snake replied. "We were told by the government to come and destroy them."

"When were you given your orders?" Sam asked, checking the message in his Opsat.

"It was 4:52, April 27th. Two days ago."

"...that's when I recieved mine."

"So we were both ordered to do two different tasks by the same group?"

"Something seems wrong here..." Isaac commented. Suddenly, there was an explosion, and the four dropped to a crouching stance.

"WARNING: Dark Bombs unstable. Explosion eminent. Starting self-destruct sequence. 5 minutes remaining."

"Damnit," Isaac said. "We have to move now!"

"Right," Sam said. Suddenly, the white soldiers rushed down the hallway.

"Freeze, intruders!" the Combine soldiers said.

"Damnit," Snake said. "I don't have time for you." He tossed his cigarette pack at them and started running for the vent. As the Combine soldiers looked down, they realized it wasn't a cigarette pack.

As the four began climbing through the small tunnels behind the walls, they heard the explosion and screams of the several soldiers that died behind them.

"3 minutes and 30 seconds remaining," the computer told them.

"Damnit," Snake said. "It's going to take us a while to get out. Maybe longer than we have."

"Shut up and keep moving," Sam replied. "The main room is up ahead, we can enter there and make a run for the hanger."

"Right." They reached the maintenence chamber.

"A plain wall?" Isaac asked. Gordon Freeman leveled the Gravity Gun to the wall and squeezed the other trigger, knocking the wall outward onto several Combine soldiers.

"There!" Sam said, gesturing toward the helicopter not too far from them.

"1 minute remaining," the computer commented.

"I think it skipped a few updates..." Isaac commented quietly.

"Move!" Snake said, rushing forward, spraying Combine soldiers with his automatic rifle. Sam fired rounds into the heads of the soldiers with perfect accuracy, Isaac fired burst rounds with his Battle Rifle, and Gordon Freeman took the soldiers and threw them at each other with the Gravity Gun.

As they piled into the helicopter, Sam and Snake climbed into the front seats to find a Combine soldier. He was holding a purple-blue grenade.

"Say goodnight," he said, pressing the button. The grenade exploded, showering all five in the dark, unknown liquid. All five saw a flash of bright light and then nothing.