Chapter Two: Swamp Fever
Desmond Miles opened his eyes and felt an amused smile form on his lips when he saw Adrian Shephard pacing to and fro at the end of his bed. For the last few years Shephard had a tendency to worry. His once stoic and hardheaded nature had been replaced by a gentler more anxious attitude which Desmond found infinitely amusing. He sat up slowly in bed letting a monstrous yawn and stretching as best he could. It'd been more than two years since Golgotha and still his bones and muscles ached as if he were in his seventies as opposed to his fifties. He slipped his legs to the side of the bed finally rousing Adrian's attention.
"You're not going to stand up are you?" Adrian asked rushing to his friend's bedside.
"I don't need your help," Desmond chuckled brushing the General away, "I've been feeling much better this past month."
Shephard watched as the old man lifted himself from the bed and took his first tentative steps of the day. Old man - Desmond did look old though Shephard knew it was the work of the insidious Pieces of Eden. Desmond walked into the bathroom and emerged several moments later with different clothes on. Shephard cringed when he realized the old assassin's shirt was on backwards but he kept his mouth shut realizing there were more important things to discuss.
"Time to go back to bed I think," Desmond said panting and taking a seat on the bed, "What brings you here so early in the morning? Sure you aren't here for just me."
"It's your son," Shephard announced thinking Desmond would be angry, "I tried to stop him but he insisted on going. He's lost somewhere along the Virginia coast."
"How I envy his youth," Desmond replied absently, "I wish we had an Animus, with the bleed through I'd be back out there in no time."
"Sir, with all due respect, what should be done about your son?" Shephard asked trying to snap the man out of his trancelike gaze.
"What can be done about him?" Desmond asked, "Nothing! He's always chosen his own path Shephard. He fights for our cause in his own way."
"He's going to get himself killed," Shephard growled grimly, "He's losing the support of the people, we all are."
"What?"
"The people are restless," Shephard explained looking out the window at the bustling streets of City 12, "They thirst for change. All that's changed is that now we are more vulnerable, now we have children, babies, and pregnant women."
"The Combine cannot be defeated overnight," Desmond said.
"Looks like your old friend is here," Shephard said pointing to an entourage of armed individuals storming down the street, "And he brought more of his Templars with him."
"Give Vidic my warmest greetings," Desmond joked.
"And why can you not give them yourself?" Shephard asked turning a confused expression on his old friend.
"Perhaps when I'm feeling more up to it," Desmond replied with a wink, "I'm a bit tired now, my old bones are aching," the old man got a distant expression in his eyes, "Don't worry about Julian, Shephard, he'll find his way home."
The Antlions scattered as the towering titan crashed over the sand toward the tree-line with gears twisting and mechanical brain pulsing. The search had already begun once the target had been made clear. The mechanical creature slipped amongst the trees following a trail of footprints he'd found. They were faint, ever-so-faint and though he didn't know it they were the footprints of an assassin. He lost them several feet in, the trail seemed to vanish. The robot sat on the floor of the forest with its shoulders despondently slumped. Something just ahead of him began to move, a shadow speedy and quick but clearly human shaped slipped ahead of him luring him forward.
A metallic hand pushed aside one tree trunk while bending another out of the way. The orange-red light at the center of his face plate lit up as he came into the clearing. His face panels drooped when he saw the signs of a struggle, the bullet casings and holes in tree trunks and bodies of Combine soldiers. The trail would be a hard one to find but this was no routine tracking, this was Alyx who was missing, Alyx who might need him at her side. The sandy soil beneath his knuckles soon turned to mud as the robotic pet made his way toward the swamps and away from the coast. He turned then thinking that he heard something from behind him, the snap of a twig seemed to betray the proximity of something sinister. His infrared eye aperture zoomed studying the tree line for signs of heat but everything looked cold. He switched visual spectrums but still nothing seemed out of place. Finally Dog turned back toward his original target, back toward the swamp, back toward Alyx.
"He's taken the bait," a shadowy figure said stepping down from the treetops, "He cannot resist finding her."
"He loves her," another feminine figure said but the eyes of her sisters cut her idea down.
"He's programmed," another one corrected leaping down beside them, "A guardian. Little does this hound know he will be the death of her."
"No," the leader, a strange gangly man who seemed otherworldly and stood two feet taller than any of them, interrupted, "She is to be taken alive. You may harm her body but we need her mind to be functioning."
Jara sat in the back of the Hunter Chopper wondering where on Earth Allison had learned to pilot it. The young assassin didn't care all that much but the silent flight had taken several hours and Allison seemed entirely absorbed in her own thoughts. Jara, for the most part, was still worried that they would be court marshaled when they returned to City 12 for commandeering the chopper at the point of a sword, her own sword. She looked at her kris now, the curved blade gleaming in the sunlight.
Allison stared out at the horizon and adjusted their altitude slightly. They were getting close now she knew and only a few more minutes of flying would see them reach the Virginia coast. She knew her actions were hasty and perhaps even stupid but she had grown tired of Julian's self-destructive tendencies. Even when he came home with broken bones and bruises she was still the one to pay the price, emotionally. She'd spent too many nights in a cold bed wondering if the man she loved would return as a corpse. Enough was enough - it was time to put her foot down.
"We're here," Allison announced, "I can see the Ocean. I'm taking her down."
"You sure this is the right area?"
"These are coordinates Shephard gave me. He said the prisoner Julian was looking for was somewhere around here but they were moving her so it wasn't exact," Allison explained, "Oh shit!"
Allison's eyes went wide when she saw the metal monstrosity. She armed the pulse gun and began firing off rounds but the Strider barely flinched. It was too late now - the massive Synth was directly in the path of the chopper. She tired to pull up but it wouldn't be any use. Allison turned to Jara and shouted for the woman to bail out of the doomed craft. The Chopped was spinning out of control as they fled the cockpit and desperately tried to pry the door open. Jara managed to wedge her sword in and get the door open. The sand was still nearly sixty feet below them but there was no choice left open. Out they leapt toward the shore beneath them. The crash of metal tearing into metal blared in their eardrums like a deafening tempest as the Hunter Chopper impacted the Strider. Allison watched the explosion of twisted metal and felt shrapnel cut at her skin as the Strider and Chopper exploded and both began to fall to the sand.
Allison hit first followed by Jara who had attempted to land in a roll. Both women miraculously remained conscious although both had also suffered several lacerations due to shrapnel. They rolled down the incline they were on but soon realized their good luck was about to run out. Combine soldiers rushed towards them alerted by the violent explosion that had rocked the entire area when Chopper hit Strider. There must have been a dozen of them but luckily all were standard Overwatch. Jara was first to her feet and brought her blade to bear knocking aside the nearest soldier's weapon before driving the curved blade right through his armor and into his heart. The young female assassin leapt, avoiding rounds of fire now emerging from the other soldiers, and grabbed the MP7 of her fallen foe and began firing back.
Allison tried to get to her feet but found she was entirely out of breath. Her eyes refused to focus as she fumbled to find her gun. It was laying half buried in sand some twenty feet away. She scrambled to get to it but found her path blocked when a winged insect rose from the sand beneath her feet. She tried to swat the creature away to no avail. It came swinging with sharp blade like limbs that she narrowly avoided. An epiphany flashed in her head and she lifted her arm out toward the creatures. She squeezed a trigger that sat in her hand and watched the Antlion fly backward pushed by a pulse wave of energy from her gauntlet. Whispering quiet thanks to her late friend Michael Cameron she grabbed her gun from the sand and slung it over her shoulder.
Allison remembered that the suit had another weapon built into it. She opened up her other gauntlet checking to see if ammunition remained in the form of throwing knives. Six knives were left. These knives were specially designed to fly straight as arrows and serve as bolts for the gauntlet's built in crossbow system. She rushed over to Jara who was trying her best to stay out of range of the Combine's bullets. Allison took aim at the first soldier and watched as a knife buried itself into his neck toppling him into the soldier beside him and alerting them to her presence. They turned toward her now only to be repulsed by the Pulse Gauntlet. They scattered into the air several of them flying so far they splashed amongst the breaking waves on the shore.
Jara emerged from cover now emboldened by Allison's rousing success and took out the last two soldiers. The two women had little time to celebrate their victory, the beach was alive with movement and the sand beneath their feet told of imminent invasion. With Antlions in hot pursuit they headed toward the forest reaching the tree-line with no time to spare and having to swat down a few bugs with bullets and pulse waves before being able to continue.
"The Combine is still pretty heavily in the area," Allison noted seeing a Drop Ship high in the sky, "They must be looking for Julian."
"And the escaped prisoner," Jara reminded, "Looks like this is turning into a swamp."
The two of them were quickly up to their shins in mud. Despite it only being April the bugs were buzzing proudly and loudly as they made their way deeper into the swamp searching for Julian. Both women questioned the wisdom of any of this and Jara wasn't even sure Julian would have gone into the swamp but they pressed on anyway running on wishful thinking alone.
"Shh... What the hell is that?" Jara asked stopping Allison in her tracks.
"I don't see anything," Allison whispered back but she soon did see it, it was hard to miss in fact. The robotic behemoth moved trees aside and ripped apart roots and vines that threatened to impede its feverish movements.
"That thing is tearing apart the whole swamp," Jara noted, "Probably looking for someone."
"We can't let that thing find Julian!" Allison exclaimed and Jara's eyes scolded her for being so loud, she whispered, "We need to follow it."
Jara nodded her approval though she wondered if they would be able to keep pace with the infernal machine. It seemed to have an unending supply of energy as it penetrated into the swamp with ease that neither of them could rival. The female assassin knew it would be nigh impossible to beat this behemoth to Julian but, as she stopped to notice the path it carved with broken branches, torn vines and bent trees, at least it left a very noticeable trail.
Julian felt weak at the knees as he pulled his legs from the mud and trudged onward. Despite being trained to step lightly over terrain of almost any kind the mud of the Dismal Swamp was almost impossibly thick and diabolically deceptively deep. Alyx seemed to be having an easier time of it, even her prison issue boots were more inclined to this sort of terrain than Julian's traditional assassin's boots which were designed for climbing. The assassin normally would have taken to the trees, there were an abundance of vines and branches to ease his travels, but he wasn't feeling up to it. The cool spring air seemed so unnatural in lieu of the humidity of the swamp and Julian found himself feeling weaker and weaker as he sloshed through another sludge hole.
Alyx walked beside him keeping her eyes on the swamp around them. They knew the Combine would be looking for them both. Alyx was already a heavily wanted escaped criminal and she knew that Julian too would carry a hefty reward for whatever Combine scumbag managed to capture them. Gunships had been passing overhead regularly forcing them to lie low - another reason why Julian could not take to the trees. Alyx wasn't sure what was wrong with the assassin. She'd encountered him before when he'd assisted her and Gordon Freeman in regaining the contents of the Borealis, although it ended up being Julian who saved the day and Gordon who disappeared, yet again. But Julian didn't seem to be himself, lethargic and slow was not the way of an assassin.
"We'll rest here for a while," Alyx said sympathetically, "You look awful."
"Just what every man wants to hear from a beautiful woman," Julian joked lying himself against a nearby rock and shivering.
"You're burning up," Alyx said with her hand to his forehead.
"You're not bad looking yourself," Julian chuckled with a yawn.
"There's something you're not telling me," Alyx accused looking him over before finding a blood stain on the inside of his assassin robe. She had him strip off his robes armor and undershirt revealing the wound he'd sustained against the Antlion. It was swollen and red and thick blood oozed like syrup from the wound, "Jesus fucking Chris, this is infected. How long were you planning on keeping this a secret?"
"It's just a scratch," Julian barked but his tone lost its bite, "I'll be okay, we just have to keep moving. Once we get out of here then I can worry about myself."
"If you say so," Alyx conceded, "Oh shit, gunship!"
The two of them ducked down to the mud as the massive Synth's shadow passed overhead. The sinister hum of the gunship slowly faded allowing them to look up. Alyx went out and quickly found whatever she could for them to eat which consisted of a handful of mushrooms, the only kind she could find that she knew were safe, and some wild onions.
Julian struggled to get moving at first but soon enough he was keeping pace with Alyx once more. He knew he was hurt and he knew that if he got any worse he would be no use to Alyx. In fact even in his present state he felt like more of a liability than an asset to her. She kept glancing back over her shoulder more concerned with his well being than her own security or the risk of being found by Combine patrols that were still sweeping the swamp. They kept walking through the sludge cutting away at strong vines that choked the water and made it hard to walk or lay coiled along the ground waiting to snare the unsuspecting traveler.
The afternoon dragged on and Julian slowed considerably. He kept assuring Alyx that he was fine although the woman knew better. The assassin couldn't keep up and his chills only worsened when the evening breeze swept through the swamp and the clouds brought a light drizzle down penetrating the canopy of the trees to strike the tried twosome.
Finally the sun began to set and Alyx found a place that was sheltered by very dense tree cover and built a makeshift shelter out of intertwined branches. Julian could barely walk now. He collapsed beneath the branches and stared up at them trying desperately to focus his dizzy feverish mind. His vision blurred slightly as he turned to see Alyx trying to start a fire. He mumbled something about there being no need to risk the fire and no way to keep it going if it truly did start to rain. Alyx smiled gently and told him to get some rest.
The assassin stared up at the branches above him and felt bile rising in his throat. His mind refused to sleep, refused his calls to rest and plowed right through just as he had forced himself to plow through the swamp. Splotches of darkness leapt before him followed by patches of color that soon formed themselves into shapes. He recognized one shape as that of the Apple of Eden, now lost to him and in the hands of the G-Man. He reached his hands out as if to grasp the Apple but he found it was nothing more than a phantom. He saw something else then, a pulsating light, red, alive, beating. He reached for the light too but this time someone stood in his way. A Combine soldier, like some strange ghost, stood before him, he waved it away searching for that pulsating red light but now the G-Man stood in his way. He waved him away and watched as the red light transmorphed into Allison, her blue eyes filled with tears. Julian felt fatigue overwhelming him and even the incessant fever of his mind could not resist sleep's call anymore.
"He's slowing down," Jara noted catching sight of the mechanical hound for the first time since nightfall.
"Maybe we're getting close," Allison replied with an exhausted sigh.
"How can you be tired at a time like this?" Jara asked, "The adrenaline of the hunt should be keeping you awake and alert."
"I'm alert!"
"Shhh... down!"
Jara grabbed Allison and pulled her to the ground. The female assassin thought for a moment that her instincts had been wrong. She watched the trees around them looking and listening for the telltale signs of something moving. She could have sworn she'd heard the motions of a nearly silent something amidst the trees. Her suspicions proved correct when one of the creatures fell into the mud below. There were six of them that she could see, each feminine in figure and standing about five and a half feet tall. They were adorned with black armor that had a strange polish that seemed to shift the light and act as camouflage. So long as they were in motion they would remain nearly invisible. They had masks over their faces, some sort of helmet likely with a digital heads up display inside. Jara watched them as they moved off following the trail that the robot had left.
"Who the hell were they?" Allison asked when it was safe to whisper once more.
"Not sure," Jara replied, "But we need to get to Julian and if they are following this robot than we must be on the right track."
Julian felt the warmth of the still smoldering fire as he opened his eyes to the first light of morning. It was still fairly dark but already a pre-dawn hue filled the sky and birds filled the air with their songs. Alyx sat nearby working on breakfast and the assassin offered her a smile of gratitude as he sniffed the air and stretched. She stood up but still found himself a bit dizzy. He propped himself up against the nearest tree and tried to clear his head of cobwebs in preparation for another day of travel. He got into his boots armor and robes and sat down beside Alyx.
"Feeling better?" she asked handing him a bowl, it contained a few shreds of vegetable material and more mushrooms.
"A bit," Julian admitted noticing that she'd done better stitching on his wound and had cleaned it, "Thank you for this."
"You saved me from the Combine," she replied, "I saved you from your own bad sewing. You should have sterilized the needle you know."
"I was bleeding to death at the time," Julian said, "Didn't seem important. What is it?"
"The birds have stopped," Alyx answered grabbing her Pulse Rifle and making sure it was loaded, "Something isn't right."
Julian sprung to his feet when an eight foot tall robot burst through the foliage toward him and Alyx at breakneck pace. He lifted his XM-8 cursing himself when he remembered he was out of ammunition for it and fumbling to find the Pulse Rifle he'd taken off the dead Combine soldiers who'd been guarding Alyx. His eyes went wide when instead of attacking the massive mech Alyx stood up and rushed out to meet it with a warm embrace. Feeling a bit envious that the big bucket of bolts got more affection from Alyx than he did he ambled over to them with a perplexed expression and an itchy trigger finger.
"I can't believe it's really you," Alyx said petting one of the creature's face panels, "Julian, allow me to introduce Dog."
"You know this robot?" Julian asked taking a closer look at this marvel of mechanical engineering.
"Know him? I built him, I've been adding to him since I was little," Alyx explained, "But I'm not sure what he's doing all the way over here."
"Maybe he hitched a ride," Julian reasoned, "He must've missed you something fierce. Honestly I never thought a robot could be both cute and terrifying at the same time. Than again I said the same thing about women, until I met you."
Suddenly Dog began twitch. The robot let out a high pitched whine as if trying to warn them before finally splashing into the mud below. Alyx knelt to help him but found his circuitry was somehow stalled. Even his power source was now cool and lifeless. She felt a surge of sadness and anger turning with angry eyes to search the trees for signs of their enemies. Julian too readied himself. The assassin extended the blades in his gauntlets and reloaded his Pulse Rifle. His sharp eyes studied the area and soon enough a burst of pulse rounds emerged. Using Dog as cover the two of them stood their ground firing off in the same direction as they were being shot from but the offending rounds never came from the same place twice and their enemies remained seemingly invisible.
Julian studied the situation and gunfire came from everywhere. He managed to stay one step ahead of the pulse rounds and, soon enough, identify the patterns of fire. There was more than one enemy for sure although he couldn't pin down the exact number. He used his instincts, honed to perfection, to predict the next move of one target. He fired off several rounds leading the target by just enough to see the rounds strike and to actually catch sight of his opponent. The rounds wounded the figure and it fell from the trees and lay still for a moment before standing up. Julian saw the armored assassin lifting a gun and reacted quickly shooting the weapon from the enemy's hand before leaping away from more bullets.
He turned to a new source of sound - someone else was entering the clearing. His eyes went wide when he saw Jara enter the area and begin firing off an MP7 at the nearest Combine assassin. The rest of them were becoming visible to him now even when moving their fastest he was beginning to pick them out, their uniforms seemed to shoot the light away allowing them to pass almost unnoticed. Almost. The six of them now stood on the ground fully out of ammo. Each of them pulled out a sword from a sheath and stood with blades raised high. They froze in place as if waiting for some kill code to come through from on high but no such call for action came down instead a sickening cackle filled the clearing. Alyx's eyes went wide at the sound for she recognized the voice.
"Surrender is always an option Alyx Vance," the voice, mechanical and deep, announced, "The Combine will not allow you to escape so easily."
"We won't let you take her!" Julian shouted watching the tall figure emerge from the trees to stand before them. It was ugly and Julian was almost certain that it wasn't human. With huge powerful arms that hung down impossibly far and gangly digits it slopped through the swamp toward them. Its mouth was shrouded behind a device of some sort that appeared to be welded to the creature's mouth as if to help it breathe or perhaps to translate into English for them - for certainly its speech sounded artificial and alien.
"The Combine wants you as well Julian Miles," the creature said, "And it shall have you."
"Who does this asshole think he is?" Julian asked stifling his anger with several calming breaths and eyeing the alien up.
"They call him Theron, he's a bounty hunter working for the Combine," Alyx explained before turning toward her enemy, "What's the matter Theron, still jealous that you weren't the one to catch me the first time?"
"If I had been the one I assure you that you would not have escaped," the creature cackled, "I catch for keeps. Do you like the way I used your precious pet against you? Don't worry about him my dear, he's been struck by a mini-EMP that's all, he'll recover in no time... of course you'll be long gone before then."
"Plan?" Julian asked looking to the others.
"Let's fuck this guy up," Allison suggested.
"I can see why you love her," Alyx quipped.
"Take them!" Theron shouted, "Take them all alive!"
Theron's thugs sprang into action swinging their swords towards the group. Julian rushed the one he'd injured earlier hoping it would be easy to get the upper-hand on her. Despite having several bullet wounds on her torso the Combine assassin quickly reacted to Julian's initial attacks deflecting his gauntlet blades with relative ease and even trying several offensive maneuvers of her own. Julian was slow, despite his skill and despite his razor instinct he was still injured and still sick. The Combine assassin swung her sword in for the kill but Julian side stepped the blade and it sliced through the bark of a tree harmlessly. The next swing came quick but Julian leapt over it grabbing onto a tree branch above and using it to swing himself over his enemy to land behind her. She jabbed in with his blades managing to slice her shoulder before she could spin around and stop him from ending her completely.
Jara lifted her MP7 and fired at the nearest Combine assassin. The creature moved so quickly Jara could scarcely keep up let alone keep hitting her with the bullets. Finally Jara's enemy reached her bleeding from a dozen wounds but still somehow breathing. The wounded warrior lifted her blade to strike Jara down. Jara had to move quickly, she unsheathed her sword and tried to plunge it into the Combine assassin's chest only to find the armor too quick. Deftly dodging several sword swipes from a second Combine assassin Jara decided to take a more direct approach with her first enemy and this time stabbed her in the head. The Combine assassin twitched and fell to the ground. Jara barely had the time to free her blade before the next of the bounty hunter's assistants was upon her. Jara avoided the first few swipes but soon felt the cold steel of another blade against the back of her neck. With an assassin in front of and behind her she felt utterly trapped.
Allison turned to help Jara but found she had her own set of assassin's to worry about. The two armored women rushed at her now swinging their swords with abandon. She lifted her gauntlet attempting to fire knives at them. The first projectile glanced off the armor of a Combine assassin while the second struck one of them in the leg with little effect. These weren't ordinary women - they were Synths or at the very least their genetic structure had been altered to make them better killers. A feeling of dread filled her mind. Perhaps, like her, they were composite clones, made up of the genetics of many different people. She used her other gauntlet then firing off the last of her pulse rounds sending one of the assassins flying across the swamp to crash into a tree. So violent was the impact that the assassin's spine shattered as did the sapling she ran into. Allison Rogue wasn't out of danger yet but she was out of weaponry. She tried to fire her MP7 but the assassin cut it in two with her blade and pressed the point against Allison's pale throat.
Alyx was fighting her own battle, trying to hold her on in a fist fight against Theron himself. The creature was strong however but she knew that he would have to hold himself back in order to fight her and keep her alive. She danced around him keeping just out of reach and then moving in to strike to great speed. The bounty hunter was no stranger to speed however and often Alyx got hit. For every two punches she landed he landed one with greater force and tenacity than ten of her own. She felt utterly helpless and that feeling only got worse when Theron grabbed her by the hair and turned her to see her friends. Jara and Allison were at the mercy of the assassins and Julian, although still fighting, was clearly running out of adrenaline fast.
"You have lost," Theron gloated, "You are mine. I'm sure the Combine has wonderful rewards for me. Perhaps I will see my homeworld again."
"Is everyone there an asshole like you?" Alyx asked spitting in the alien's face and drawing close enough to his armor to catch sight of his wristband where several interesting buttons and controls sat.
"Send in the Drop Ship," Theron demanded over the intercom, "I have the prisoners."
Julian soon surrendered when he saw that the others had lost. He felt utterly exhausted and utterly defeated as the Drop Ship emerged overhead. He watched as it hovered there and wondered if he would spend his last days as a Combine prisoner. Perhaps they'd put him back in an Animus or perhaps they would just end his life. His worry for himself gave way to his worry for Allison. She'd spent her entire youth being experimented upon, being tormented by the Combine and their insidious methods of torture. Anger swelled within him. He looked to Alyx and saw something in her expression that told him they weren't about to get on that Drop Ship.
Alyx Vance leapt into action. She grabbed Theron's arm pulling it toward her. With her hands bound in cuffs she struggled to find the button. There it was, marked with a symbol that could only mean one thing. She wasn't sure it would work, after all a Drop Ship was no ordinary machine, but she had to hope. She slapped the button. At first she believed nothing happened, her heart sank lower in that instant than it had since the death of her Father Eli. But then something did happen. The Drop Ship began its descent, it was crashing. She grabbed Julian by the hand and advised them all to grab on to each other as the bounty hunter and his band of assassins looked skyward to see a Drop Ship about to hit them. Theron cursed his luck and cursed the woman who had become the bane of his existence as the Drop Ship crashed down on his head.
The four companions escaped, still bound and bruised, rushing west. They had to put as much distance between them and the Combine as possible. Even if Alyx's quick thinking had killed Theron they wouldn't be home free. As they emerged from the swamp to be beneath clear skies, they wondered if they would ever be home free and if they would ever free their home.