I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! Did ya miss me? I'm back in the groove, and I'm working on 6 right now. The update chapter is gone, simply just doesn't fit in. Updates on my profile page. Enjoy this surprisingly long chapter.
Chapter V. Tricks & Traps
Gordon sprinted down a catwalk, while three soldiers fired at him from below. They missed, and Dr. Freeman disappeared around a corner.
"Damn it! He got away!", yelled a nearby soldier. They all holstered their rifles.
"Who is that guy?"
"Hell if I know. But he's with the science team, probably."
"I just ran him through the database. His name's Gordon Freeman. PH.D, Theoretical Physics, University of Innsbruck."
"We care why?", an annoying soldier burst.
"Black Mesa Delta Science Team."
"I knew it! Chalmsford, patch a message through to H.Q about Dr. Freeman."
"Roger. H.Q, we have a high-level threat. An armed member of the science team wearing some orange suit of armor. His name's Dr. Freeman."
[Roger, Cpl. Chalmsford. Attention all units, keep an eye out for Dr. Freeman. You'll know him when you see him.]
"Let's move. Maybe we can catch up with him."
"Actually, let's dig in. The path he's going leads right here, to the express surface elevator. Let's simply dig in and lay a trap when he comes here."
"Alright. We'll lay a pressure-plate released grenade bouquet right to the left of the ramp leading to this area. Hopefully, he'll run right into it. We'll just see how durable that armor of his is."
Meanwhile…..
Barney picked up a shotgun from a dead scientist's corpse. He sighed, took a minute to rest, and then climbed up the ladder. Two soldiers were talking. One of them threw a very fat security guard down the hole the dead scientist was in.
"Man, these civvies are getting heavy."
"Why do we get the crap jobs? Just because Shepard's team failed to make it, we get the boring crap?"
"That's how it looks. Well, let's get on with it."
Barney snuck around the next corridor as they threw another dead security guard down the hole. He fumbled around to pick up his radio.
"Hey, Gordon. It looks like they lost a few squads before they even landed."
[Good for us. But, I think the ones that did make it are more than capable of silencing the facility. Dr. Cross and Dr. Green are working with Keller to reset the dampening locks and close the rift. Then we'll deal with the soldiers.]
"You do that, and I'll work on getting out of here."
Barney shut off his radio and went into the steam tunnels. The opening closed behind him. He pulled out his service pistol and swam through the flooded section, a clicking, growling noise echoing throughout the place.
Elsewhere…
Cross, Green and Keller were in a small staging area.
"So, what's the plan?"
"The dampening fields have gone critical and need to be reset. Dr. Green will elaborate."
Dr. Green got off of her seat and spoke as clearly as possible.
"The actual procedure of resetting the dampening locks is very simple. There are two secondary locks and one primary conduit lock. Resetting the secondaries opens up the Primary lock. Then, simply reset the primary lock. The locks are reset by turning a simple valve in front of it. Getting to the locks will be the hard part. The facility is crawling with aliens."
"Right. Where do we begin?"
"Right here. From here, we work our way through the offices, then into maintenance, where the lock valves are."
"One last thing, Drs. The system is under extreme pressure from the rift bearing down on it. When the locks are being reset, prepare for intense resonance activity in the area. Before you go, I want to test your suit radios."
Dr. Keller rolled over to a console and spoke into a microphone, which transmitted over Cross and Green's suit radios.
[Test, Test, Testing. Test. Excellent. Now, I can be in contact with you no matter where you are in the facility. Good luck."
Dr. Cross and Dr. Green strolled into the building, blasting a clueless zombie in the process.
"Okay, let's stick together, and try to find those displacement valves."
"Right."
Barney walked down the hallway to find a dead end, with a broken ventilation section drooping out. Smirking, Barney pulled out his crowbar and smashed open the vent, then crawled into it. It was an unbelievably tight fit. He had to squirm and squeeze to move.
"Man, now I know what a TV dinner feels like."
He squirmed along into a dark section, and pulled out his flashlight, which made it considerably to move. When he turned it on, a Headcrab latched onto his helmet. He screamed and flung the creature off before impaling it on the crowbar. He sighed, put his now-slightly-cracked helmet on and moved to the end of the vent.
It opened up into a parking lot. A van lay in the middle of the empty lot, the engine obliterated by weapons fire. The driver was slumped over dead on the ground, face first. He was a security guard. The passenger, a scientist, was still in the car. A bullet in his head, slumped on the bloody glass. Barney shuddered, then looted the guard's corpse. He picked up a spare helmet and took the car keys and a .357 Magnum Revolver. It was still warm. Opening the trunk yielded 2 boxes of revolver ammo and a box of shotgun shells.
He walked into an old hallway, with peeling hard wall and mold everywhere. Suddenly, he heard gunfire. 3 soldiers were opening fire on a scientist, blasting him into a cabinet. Barney angrily raised his revolver, and dropped two of the soldiers with head shots. The third ran away through a door behind him.
He quickly rushed over to the scientist. Blood was dripping from his wounds, and his eyes were rolling around.
"Sir, are you alright? I can deliver first aid."
"Never mind. I know you tried to help, but those bastards did their damage already. If you planned to leave through the train yards, forget about it. The military has blocked off the area. They're capturing everyone and shooting them, or taking them here for *questioning*."
His voice suddenly became very hoarse.
"If you want to get out of here…..find Dr. Rosenburg. Maybe, if you can find him, you can get out of this place."
He bowed and expired. Barney grimly picked up the dead soldiers' M4a1s. When the last soldier appeared, he dropped in a hail of lead bullets. Barney dropped the spare and pocketed several clips. He walked into the train yards, M4 fully loaded.
Meanwhile…..
Gordon walked down a ramp, and stopped right in front of a bundle of grenades tied to a pressure plate. Noticing the obvious trap, he carefully untied the grenade bouquet and grabbed the grenades. He stepped on the pressure plate, and the three grunts from earlier jumped out at him.
"You're dead!"
Unfortunately, they failed to realize the current situation. Gordon pulled all of the grenade pins, and tossed the bundle into the middle of them. Despite their best efforts, they were shredded by the scattering grenades. Two died from the blast, and another's leg was broken. He screamed in pain as Gordon scavenged ammo off the bodies.
The mortally wounded soldier raised his sidearm, tried to squeeze the trigger, and fell unconscious. Gordon didn't even look back and stepped into the elevator, sighing.
He simply hummed a theme, to the tune of "Still Alive". Suddenly, the elevator reached the top, and the whine of a bomb was distinctly heard as it struck the enclosure the elevator was in. The building shook, and the windows shattered, scattering glass shards over the floor. Gordon carefully walked around the shards. He carefully peeked around the corner. The area was blocked off. 5 Soldiers were the patrolling, the obvious way out was blocked by an electric fence, and an Osprey flew overhead, deploying troops in front of and behind the fence. A lone bunker lay on the other side of the small holding area. The grunts were talking, rifles still in hand.
"So, do you think they got him?"
"No. Their radios are dead. He'll come through here."
"I don't get it. There was like, 6 guys between the science labs and here. How could he have gotten past them."
"I don't know, but he's like Rambo or something. Nobody can put a damn bullet in him."
"By the way, he's wearing a special armor suit. Aim for the head, or don't bother."
"Quiet down. Look around."
The soldiers spread out and covered the area. Gordon carefully snuck around to the bunker. Suddenly, they caught sight of him in front of the bunker.
"Squad, its Freeman!"
The soldier reached for his gun, but he was full of bullets before he could unshoulder it. He quickly dropped 3 other soldiers with his M4.
The last one hid behind a stack of crates. He pulled out his radio, and punched in some numbers. Gordon looked up and saw a slow-dropping bomb. He rushed into the bunker. The bomb struck the ladder leading into the bunker, ripping it off his hinges, and throwing Dr. Freeman down the shaft to the bottom. The HEV suit clicked on.
[Warning: Moderate Leg Fracture Detected. Treating…]
The suit delivered generation fluid into the broken section of bone and muscle, which quickly sewed the muscles and bone back together, and absorbed the leftover bone shards. Gordon quickly clambered to his feet, a little shaky. The general stimulant in the generative fluid woke him up.
[Med Systems are GO.
Medical Reserves: 80%
Primary Power: 50%
Auxiliary Power: 75%
Internal Integrity: 95%
External Integrity: 80%
Biological Stability: 100%
Thank you for using the HEV Mach 4 Protective System.]
Gordon walked down the hallway and found a wall-mounted Health Station and HEV Power Recharging Station. He quickly recharged and refueled the suit, and opened the maintenance vent.
Suddenly, a bomb blew open the top of the vent, sending shrapnel and fan pieces flowing down the vent. Gordon climbed down to the end of the vent. An Osprey dropped 4 soldiers into the vent. One of the soldiers saw Gordon duck away into the next section of vent shaft, and followed him in. The soldier attacked and sent Gordon onto the ground with the butt of his rifle.
"Heh. That was easy. H.Q, I got him."
[Good. Bring him back to the storage rooms, and find a good place to let the bastard rot.]
"Roger, H.Q."
Gordon reached into his suit's inventory and pulled out his Shotgun. Before he could even ready it, the soldier kicked it away. It slid a couple of feet, landing just short of a giant vent fan.
"You're mine, you miserable bastard."
Gordon head-butted the soldier, cracking the glass lens of his helmet. The soldier dragged him over to the fan, picked up Gordon's shotgun, and blasted him point-blank in the chest with it. The suit's armor activated, absorbing most of the lead. Gordon pulled out his crowbar and delivered a swift whack to the head.
It connected, shattering the helmet and splitting his skull open. Warm blood oozed out of the hole. The soldier half-consciously dropped Gordon and slumped over into the fan. The ultra-fast rotations pureed the poor soldier, splattering flesh, brains and clothing everywhere. The soldier's M4, along with Gordon's Shotgun, fell through. Gordon hugged the ledge until he was out of reach of the fan, then simply vaulted down under it, grabbing the soldier's ammo and his shotgun.
Gordon climbed through a ventilation shaft, until he found himself in the security office he passed by earlier. A scientist cowered in a corner.
"Ah! Oh, it's you, Dr. Freeman, isn't it? I knew they couldn't get you. So much for the government. Their idea of containment is to kill everyone associated with the base. Judging by your suit, you were part of what went wrong, correct?"
"Yeah, I was in the test chamber. What now?"
"The only people who can end this catastrophe are the staff in the Lambda complex. An old decommissioned rail system is embedded in Silo D. Use it to reach the industrial areas, then go across the base to reach the Lambda complex. I would have told you sooner, but the transit system was out. You can trust Lambda. You can trust all of us. Good luck."
Gordon simply nodded, then opened the silo door, grabbing two boxes of shotgun shells from the security office before leaving.
Meanwhile…
Barney carefully peered around a corner. 6 soldiers stood guard over three storage containers. One was empty, but two had living beings inside. Barney snuck into the manifest control office opposite the doorway. When he flipped the switch, he saw signs of a struggle. Bloody handprints were on the wall, and overturned tables and small boxes littered the floor. Behind the overturned table were two dead scientists. They had made a final stand, but in vain.
Barney checked the boxes. Inside the boxes were 3 boxes of shotgun shells, 2 cartons of revolver ammo, and 4 M92 Centrifugal Grenades. Barney quickly grabbed them and loaded a grenade into the M4's attached M203 Grenade Launcher. When he stepped outside, 2 soldiers were waiting for him. They kicked him back into the control office and closed the door. Another one joined them. Barney quickly devised a scheme.
He grabbed some packing wire and a M92 from his collection, and rigged a trip-wire bomb at the area where the hallway widens out into the room. He then carefully reached over and flipped the light switch. The M92 was placed to the corner of the doorway.
The three soldiers soon kicked down the doorway, guns readied to fire.
"Freeze!"
The room was damp and dark. The soldiers carefully set moved over to the light switch. A bloody handprint was next to it.
"Here's the plan: When I turn the lights on, spray the place. I know he's in here. Don't bother with explosives."
The soldier flipped on the light switch, and a tripwire snapped, sending the centrifugal grenade flying at them, fully armed.
"Son of a….."
The grenade collided with them and exploded, shredding the soldiers in 3 seconds. Two died, while another was gravely wounded. He coughed up blood, and tried to load his shotgun. Barney sighed, kicked the gun of his hand, and broke his helmet off. His face was somewhat unshaven and sweaty.
"Finish it, you punk!", the desperate soldier screamed.
"No. You aren't worth it. I'll cut you a deal. You don't bother trying to capture or kill me. And I let you live. How does that sound?"
"Yeah, then you leave me here, alone. To die."
Barney grunted, then gave him 12 shotgun shells, and a couple of med kits.
"I'll let you go, if you don't kill the rest of my squad mates."
"You mean the others outside the office?"
"Yeah. I don't care about the others, though. I don't like the idea of silencing the facility. I was just following orders…..ow."
"Hmmm. Any ideas?"
"Sure. We'll lock them in the empty storage locker. Give me a minute."
The soldier applied the med kits to his broken legs and carefully got up. He pulled out his radio.
"We got that security guard. He's in the other storage cabinet. Why don't you guys go give him a work over."
[Laughing All right. Let's give him a good thrashing.]
He turned off the radio. The soldier leaned up against a wall, then sighed.
"You'd better hurry. It's a matter of time before they figure it out. Here, take these, you might need them."
The soldier handed Barney 5 MKII Frag Grenades. The paint was somewhat withered, but it was in good condition. Barney pocketed the grenades.
"You know, part of me tells that you're just a sneaky bastard, but my moral side says that you're a desperate man seeking a way out. Which side is true?"
"The moral side. You should come with me."
"What? No! I'm not going to shoot my comrades!"
"I mean to open the storage lockers. I'm looking to find a scientist by the name of Dr. Rosenburg. Do you know where he is?"
"I might tell you after you deal with the rest of my squad mates. Take this, and lock the container when they go inside. Now go."
Barney took the padlock and key, and walked into the storage area. The 3 soldiers walked into the empty storage container.
"I don't see him."
"Lt. Rick, you had better not be shitting me.'
"If he isn't here, then where is he?"
"Right behind you."
The soldiers turned around to see Barney close the door on them, and lock the door. Thy furiously banged the steel door, to no avail.
"Damn it! We're stuck here, until a welder arrives. I can't believe we fell for that!"
Lt. Ricky walked up to Calhoun and handed him a keychain with 3 keys on it.
"Here you go, Calhoun, per agreement. This will open the holding containers for the scientists. I guess I'll join you. Just give me a weapon, and I'm with you. During our struggle, my weapon got broken."
"Fine. Take this."
Barney handed the Lieutenant a M4. He greedily loaded and cocked the gun. Barney smiled and started walking away, when he heard something from another storage container:
"Hello? Is anyone there? Help me!"
Barney hurried over, and unlocked the container. A wounded and scared scientist with crutches walked out.
"Man, you look like you had a rough time. Are you Dr. Rosenburg?"
"No, I'm not Dr. Rosenburg. But, you'll still help me, right?"
"Yeah, I guess. Come on."
Barney and the others went over to a blue storage container. Inside were 6 frozen vortigaunts. One of them thawed, then stared at Barney, angrily.
Barney slammed the door closed as it fired an energy bolt.
"Okay, we've spent enough time here. Try not to scout ahead. The other soldiers might shoot you. Just stay close."
"Roger."
It's just me, but I think I'll cover the whole damn series...Let me know what you think by a review.
Update: I think Chapter 6 is almost done. Remember: The latest updates are always added at the end of each chapter in bold. See you shortly.