Chapter Eighteen: Ontogeny
Julian kept his sharp eyes on the horizon as the blur of the pacific ocean passed beneath the chopper. He glanced away for a moment checking the fuel gauge once more and finding himself baffled by the fact that they still had half a tank worth of fuel. They'd been flying essentially non-stop since they'd departed Hunter's Fall. The fatigue had begun to weigh on Julian in the last hour but despite his exhaustion he kept his mind alert. Thus far they'd been unmolested in their journey toward the Starseed Temple with only one sighting of a Combine vehicle and that had been a Strider that looked no bigger than an ant from their present altitude. Despite their good fortune Julian knew he would have to put down soon if for no other reason than for food and water.
"You had to forget the supplies bag didn't you?" Theta prodded at Cheng.
"Can't you see he feels bad enough?" Alyx argued shooting a critical glare in Theta's direction.
In any other moment Theta would have seen Alyx's very logical point. After all Cheng had left the supplies behind in the confusion of their flight from Hunter's Fall. The supply bag was likely still sitting behind a steel table in the hub of a room that they had been hunkered down in. In the madness of their firefight to escape that possible tomb it was hardly surprising the timid scientist had forgotten the supplies.
For Theta, though, this was not an ordinary or calm moment. Her insides roiled with anger and a boiling sea of self-loathing that she seemed ready to project onto everyone around her. She knew in her heart that it was her own failure which had brought on these mood-swings, her own inability to protect Hunter's Fall and her cowardly decision to flee rather than to sink into oblivion alongside her brave comrades. The guilt was swelling within her higher than any of the waves on the ocean surface below and for the life of her she could not cure herself of it.
As Theta grew quiet Alyx grabbed her hand and held it gently. Rather than react negatively as Alyx had expected Theta seemed unresponsive to the contact. Alyx rose a few minutes later and entered the cockpit taking up the seat beside Julian.
"Things are pretty tense back there," she remarked looking at the man for signs that he was as fatigued and distressed as the rest of them, "How are you holding up?"
"Fine," Julian replied flatly, "I've just been wondering..."
"What?" Alyx asked.
"What in the hell we plan on doing with the crystals once we get them," Julian responded, "We don't even know what we're dealing with, I mean we all know what happened when Black Mesa got hold of this stuff. We might end up doing more harm than good if we're not careful."
"Don't worry, I know a man who's handled the stuff in the past," Alyx reassured him, "You just get us to the temple."
Emil Nemico adjusted his heads up display shifting it into the infrared spectrum to detect heat. He could make out the faint heat pattern following certain grooves along the golden sphere he now had in his possession. It was as if residual heat energy had scorched the Apple but only along certain seams of the strange device. He began to twist and turn the Apple and heard it click and clack but each time he tried to solve the puzzle he found himself unable to. He sat in his room, a temporary quarters amidst the smoldering rubble of Hunter's Fall, and ran his fingers over the Apple again and again trying to decipher it's secrets to no avail. Finally in a fit of frustration he tossed the infernal thing against the wall hearing it hit the concrete floor with a heavy thud.
He knew that his business in Hunter's Fall was all but complete -the Apple was his after all. It was his, he realized then walking over to the sphere which had fallen dead rather than rolling. He picked it up and held it in his hands and then looked down at his synthetic armor. Already the stab wound he'd suffered in the chopper had healed. Indeed any and all of his wounds, even full on bullet wounds he'd sustained during the combat to take the base, had healed almost fully leaving behind only a slight residual pain and stiffness.
Despite his victory and seeming good fortune he still felt the victory hollow, watching Julian and the others fly away to some unknown location. They had not simply been fleeing the battle, he'd realized, for they could have done that with the convoy that had fled earlier. In his brief time aboard the chopper Emil had managed to place a tracking device on it thinking to follow it. Yvolslog had shot that idea down soon after he'd informed the General of his clever deed. Instead the alien beast wanted him and his group to stay there in Hunter's Fall until the General himself could hold the Apple in his tendril like appendages.
Emil felt so strange. Here he was granted power, the ability to heal, to move faster than any ordinary human warrior and yet he was forced to use these abilities in service to a cause he did not understand or agree with. On top of it all he was now holding the Piece of Eden, the Apple that had swayed both Adam and Eve. Wasn't this was Emil Nemico always dreamed of? Power and, thanks to the Piece of Eden, influence. He thought back to what General Urwel had told him after his transformation, that he had been given only the illusion of free will. Yet here he was holding the Apple with no constraints on his behavior apparent in his mind. A happy feeling grew in him as he fantasized about using the Apple to crush the slug-like General dead, or perhaps to torment him for eons, for his race were long-lived indeed.
The former Templar stepped from his room and merely looked at the nearest Combine soldier. Emil watched as the orange flames of the Apple danced around the soldier as he was lifted into the air and tossed into the nearest corridor wall at high velocity. The sickening crack of armor and bone against the wall resounded throughout the corridor bringing a similarly sickening smile to Emil's mechanical visage. Perhaps there was no way for Urwel to influence him at such distances, perhaps it was no illusion, perhaps he was now actually free.
He struggled to clear his mind of the torrent of emotions that now flooded him so that he could focus on directing the energies of the device. With a powerful march he walked out into the ruins of Hunter's Fall and lifted the Piece of Eden high. In uniform fashion all the nearest Combine soldiers swayed their heads in his direction and one-by-one fell into formation around him bowing their heads as if they looked upon a god, With a soaring elation burning inside him Emil Nemico focused on the other Synth assassin's hoping to similarly influence their minds as well. To his amazement even their mechanically inclined mental faculties bent to his will and were soon kneeling beside the others. Emil turned to the Strider's and Hunters thinking for sure that they too would be immune to his controlling influence. Yet soon the creaking towering behemoths and spry synthetic predators had gathered to his call.
"Now," Emil spoke to his enthralled throng, "You are going to do as I command."
Emil found the nearest Combine computer terminal and attuned his own HUD to it quickly bringing up a display that showed the stolen Hunter-Chopper's coordinates. As he had suspected Julian hadn't set down anywhere near City 12, or any other Resistance installations that the Combine knew about. There was the possibility, of course, of Resistance bases the Combine had no knowledge but in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? Emil Nemico felt a sharp sense of hunger for the fight ahead. He set aside his hatred for the Combine and the General that had so perversely transformed him, in fact in that moment he embraced his new self.
"Who knows General Urwel," he muttered aloud to himself as he ordered his Combine soldiers into action with a mere thought, "By the end of this I may have to thank you... before I kill you."
Julian lay basking on a beach as the last rays of the sun warmed his skin. The sound of rushing ocean water just a few dozen feet away from him created a gentle but powerful ambiance that was already working it's magic on him. He could hear the others carrying on, splashing and laughing as they played in the waves. He'd sent them off to go spear fishing even going so far to lend Allison one of his new Xenian blades. Even with his eyes shut he could hear that the blade was proving fruitless as it sliced so cleanly that the fish always slipped off of the blade after it impaled them. Between that and Alyx and Theta's continuous splashing he was quite certain that they'd probably go hungry as far as fish were concerned.
No matter, Julian thought as he drifted in the abyssal arms of sleep, there were plenty of coconuts on this deserted island.
Alyx and Theta hit the sand together laughing and rolling in a heap of Cathartic joy and pent up passion. Theta had been a brooding and angry mess, a balled up heap of guilt and self-loathing, since the battle at Hunter's Fall. The sheer intensity of her emotions had overwhelmed her but at last she'd managed to clear her mind and let other more positive emotions momentarily erase the desperation and guilt. She passionately pressed her lips to Alyx's as they rolled before Alyx finally came out on top with Theta's hands grabbed tight on Alyx's soggy bottomed jeans.
Alyx was silhouetted against the setting sun lighting her sexy olive eyes as the two reveled in the feeling of being alive after enduring so much hardship – being alive and in love. Alyx had never indulged in love, never so much as gave it a second thought despite her attraction to Gordon before he'd once again disappeared from the planet. She wasn't going to make that mistake again, she decided as she pulled off her top and let Theta lather her sweaty sea-water covered torso in kisses. Alyx felt a bit odd in so open a place though, the island had barely two dozen trees, but one glance at Allison and Julian, both asleep from sheer exhaustion, and Cheng, who was similarly slumbering propped against a tree some twenty yards away, gave her the go-ahead.
Inhibitions were out of the question here at the edge of life where any breath might be your last. As she basked in the afterglow with Theta beside her and the moon rising she marveled at how beautiful the stars truly were. Alyx felt herself reliving her life this time with no Animus required. Every memory, the bittersweet to the beautiful, flooded her in those moments. She was startled from them by the faint snoring of her mysterious lover, with a gentle kiss to Theta's lips Alyx lay her head on the sand and fell asleep.
Emil Nemico watched the last remnants of the American continent pass beneath him as they soared through the air in the Hunter-Chopper. Three Combine Gunships were in tow each one following the direct psychic commands imparted to them by the Apple. Amazingly the former Templar had not lost his concentration once since they'd departed Hunter's Fall almost fifteen hours earlier. He found himself growing fatigued however the suit was pumping a constant supply of adrenaline into him to keep him both conscious and aware. It seemed that his synthetic nature was actually allowing him to use the Apple without the drain it would have had on an ordinary man.
He'd been watching the location of Julian and the Hunter-Chopper closely following it's journey across the Pacific before the blip had mysteriously stopped. This had given the mechanical man pause and made him second guess his decision to follow after the assassin, but only briefly. Soon, he assured himself, he would have his revenge on the would-be savior of humanity and indeed upon the entire Assassin order. The Templars, he thought, would have no choice but to let him back in but this time as their leader. The Templars would take back the world and bring the human race from the brink of extinction into the fiery phoenix personified.
The sun was already setting as the shore of the Pacific Ocean became visible. Soon.
Shephard sat alone in a darkened room. It was not his ordinary cell, he knew, for despite the darkness he could sense the shape of the room and the way the air swayed despite the still silence. It was bigger, much bigger. He thought, for a moment, that he could make out the dark shapes of figures standing at the far side of the room. Guards perhaps standing in front of the door, no doubt they could see him in the darkness far better than his eyes could perceive them. Perhaps they weren't even there, he second-guessed himself, and were merely flashes of memory created by his fractured psyche. One too many Animus sessions had a way of breaking the mind in a way that even Shephard's despair could not break him.
The disgraced General sat and thought and let his thoughts try to fill the emptiness of that prison. The hollow feeling he got when his lungs took a breath was almost too much to bear. His ghostly visit from Desmond had momentarily stolen the weight of his failure from his shoulders but now, stuck in this room for hours on end without even a visit from an abusive Combine soldier, he felt truly empty. Even sadness could not find a foothold within him – he was just, indifferent.
His eyes refused to attune to that darkness and yet even then he thought he saw something moving in the shadows. At last, after six hours of darkness, a bright light flew on casting him into darkness as his eyes reflexively shut. The surprise was overwhelming and Shephard soon heard the shuffling feet and felt someone slam into him tackling him to the ground. Seemingly defenseless Shephard took blow after blow from the obviously Combine attacker as his eyes began to attune to the blinding light of the room. The blurred shape was becoming more substantial as the pain of repeated stun-baton blows to the side became more and more real.
Had this been any ordinary Resistance soldier the attack would have worked and left the soldier a defenseless victim. Adrian Shephard was never defenseless. Even as that stinging baton shocked his side he reached up his hands and grasped the armored throat of the Combine Elite tight with his strong hands. The armor wouldn't give of course but the Elite made the obvious mistake of trying to break the man's grip manually with his free hand. Shephard let go of the man's neck and grabbed quick for the weapon punching it out of the Combine soldier's hand. Once again the soldier made a mistake, he went chasing after the lost baton instead of continuing with his fists. Shephard grabbed the man from behind and brought him down hard to the steel floor of the cell. The General then slammed his elbow with all his weight into the back of the soldier's head until he heard the Combine visor snapping and the grunts of agony from the now clearly wounded soldier. Shephard continued slamming the Elite into the ground even as a puddle of blood formed around his head.
"Combine piece of shit," Shephard spat.
Only then did the General become aware of the six other Elites in the room each just on the fringes of darkness. These, however, were not wearing helmets, they had faces, familiar faces. Shephard recognized each one of them as soldiers he had trained, known or fought beside in his time at City 12. They were the brave defenders, the warrior citizens, those he believed unbreakable. Here they were broken before him, taken and reshaped into something obedient and horrible by the Combine. He'd seen this type of soldier before of course, it was something the Combine was more and more commonly doing as their mind-control techniques improved. Still as they advanced on Shephard with batons at the ready he could see their faces twitch as if some internal conflict remained within them. Perhaps it was just his imagination but he could have sworn he saw one mouthing "kill me, please" just before he lunged at Shephard.
Shephard knew that this was all being done to break him, to drive him further into the Abyss of despair, to force him to give up information that would be useful to the Combine. They underestimated Adrian Shephard. He would kill all six of these soldiers if he had to and while he would be lying if he said it didn't hurt him to do so he would also be lying if he claimed that death was worse a fate than what these six had suffered.
Shephard felt the shock of those horrid batons but the true sting was in having utterly failed these six men, five men, he realized as the last soldier stepped fully from the shadows. Shephard nearly gave up at the sight he beheld, the sickening turn of his stomach mimicked the flip-flops his mind was going through at that moment. Surely no one as strong-willed as her could ever be turned against him. He could not deny the simple truth of who was in front of him though. He managed to get to his feet as the zombie-like remnant of General Amber Cartwright charged toward him with a mix of bloodlust and confusion on her once indomitable face. A wave of revulsion, of absolute hatred for the Combine, shot through him like a bolt of lightning as he dodged her baton and launched a devastating right hook into the side of her head.
"You deserve better than this!" he shouted in frustration as they all came on, "You deserve better than me!"
Julian awoke with a start sensing instinctively that he was now moving. His eyes darted to and fro and his hands instinctively went one to his sword and one to his silenced USP. He found himself huffing and puffing deep sighs of relief when he realized that he was aboard the Hunter-Chopper with Cheng, and Allison beside him. Alyx was flying the chopper and following the map they'd drawn up in their haste. Theta was in the co-pilot chair. Julian noted how her expression had changed so drastically in so short a time. He was happy that she had found a connection and one that seemed to go back to her very earliest memories, memories unlocked by the Animus.
The assassin turned his almond eyes to Cheng who looked quite nervous sitting there grasping his seatbelt tightly.
"Kinda makes you wonder doesn't it?" Julian asked the man.
"What?" The man inquired as it being startled out of deep thought.
"Why the Combine put harnesses in these damn things," Julian joked, "Do they really care about safety?"
Cheng simply shrugged. The safety protocols of the Combine Empire were about as far from his mind as possible.
"I'm sorry," Cheng said absently, "I failed to keep the Apple safe."
"I trust that you did manage to keep the others safe," Julian asked and Cheng's eyes lit up and a smile at last emerged on the man's face.
"The Chest, yes, buried deep in a bunker," Cheng remembered, "Though I don't know that we will ever be able to recover it after the Combine are through at Hunter's Fall."
"As long as the Combine can't get their hands on it," Julian said.
"They'll never know it's there," Cheng assured him, "The Auditore family secret will be buried beneath Hunter's Fall until we care to dig it up."
"Land!" came a shout from the cock-pit, "but we're running pretty low on fuel."
"We could always procure more local transportation," Julian theorized.
"Does the Resistance even stretch to this part of the world?" Allison found herself asking.
"If not I'm sure the Combine does," Julian replied with a smirk, "They'd be glad to provide us with a new vehicle, or maybe just some more fuel."
Emil Nemico knew he was catching up to the assassin and his little band of rebels. The synthetic assassin had left behind the Drop-ship and all the soldiers he'd originally brought with him and was now clinging the top of a gunship. These synthetic creatures were far easier to control with the Apple than he'd initially thought and the squad of soldiers he'd had with him had been particularly hard to keep control of for such a long period of time. With this synth Emil found he could even go into a sort of sleep-mode and still maintain his telepathic link. He'd been flying without pause and the Pacific Ocean was now gone from beneath him.
The infamous blip of Julian's Hunter-Chopper was now no more than a hundred miles ahead of his position. Emil shut most of his brain functions off trying to bide his strength. He knew that the assassin had a sort of resistance to the Apple and that when he at last engaged Julian in combat it would likely come down to who was the better warrior, the man born an assassin or the man built as one.
Despite their initial clumsy attack the six former Resistance soldiers gathered around Shephard in a more organized fashion now. Their batons came in one or two at a time as if testing his ability to defend. Shephard had little real defense other than to try to stay out the way which was becoming increasingly hard as they herded him from place to place in the squalid cell. Three of them lashed out at once then, two from the front and one he heard coming in from behind. Shephard tried to hunch down and back himself into the soldier behind him thinking that he might hoist that one into the other two with the help of that soldier's momentum. No such luck, the soldier dead stopped and side-stepped Shephard's backward tackle and jabbed his baton into the General's ribs. Shephard felt his muscles shudder as his body was wracked with pain.
The other two who had rushed his front didn't stop, they too hit his body with their batons. Shephard grabbed the one by the shoulders and shrugged off the pain as he hurled that one into the others. At least he could physically overpower them, he thought, as they picked themselves up off the floor. Then he saw the beaten and broken General Cartwright amble toward him with a snarl on her face. All of a sudden all five rushed him and shoved in their batons driving him to his knees where General Cartwright slammed her foot into his face and laid him low.
Shephard got up a few seconds later even though they'd surrounded his form with their batons at the ready. He leaped at the nearest one who side-stepped him, but that soldier wasn't the target, the corpose of the first soldier he'd killed was. Shephard grabbed the corpse and lifted him over his head tossing the dead Elite at the six friends. In desperation Shephard ran for the baton that he'd knocked from the hand of the first soldier, it was in the darkest farthest corner of the large rectangular room but he finally found it and snapped it into his hands. His enemies were fast on the approach and to his surprise seemed undaunted, even uninterested, in the fact that he now held a weapon. Indeed this was born out by his first strike, which, despite offering a good five second shock to the face of the nearest soldier, did little or nothing.
Shephard gave up on the electricity of the device after that and instead focused on using it as a club. It hurt him gravely to have to bludgeon some of his former soldiers, and Amber Cartwright one of his dearest friends, but their heads were the only thing exposed to danger. It was done intentionally, he knew, just to break him. Adrian Shephard was broken only in the sense that the situation had stirred his ire against the Combine a hundred times more. He found himself bashing in the skull of one of the soldiers only a few seconds later.
He felt the shocking power of the batons of the other five but ignored it. He was feral now, possessed of only anger, an indomitable rage that had surged to fill the emptiness within him. It was that same rage he'd shown Desmond's ghostly in his cell. He bashed aside one soldier with a powerful shoulder ignoring the contact of that enemy's baton as he delivered a punch to the armored belly of the next soldier. He swung around to meet Amber's attack from the rear knocking aside her head and drawing a loud CRACK sound as he hit her as hard as he could. She lurched to the side and he pursued her catching her in his arms and watching in her dying breaths as an expression of relief grew on her familiar face.
With that expression burned permanently into his mind, and anger without end burning within him Shephard stood to face the other four.
"Come then," he demanded, "I shall set you all free."
Even with the rays of the dawning sun not yet cresting the horizon Julian's eyes could make out the shapes in the trees head. The familiar silhouettes of Combine soldiers on patrol. He knew not how far they were from the nearest Combine base but from their brief aerial survey of the area this seemed the only Combine outpost for miles of unending Siamese jungle. They were, however, fairly close to what used to be known as Laos and that meant the location of the Starseed temple.
Rather than putting the chopper down nearby the assassin had been dropped off in the canopies of the trees several miles from the Combine outpost. He'd encountered two patrols including the one he was now watching. The Combine Empire had long arms indeed to be this deep into the jungle. Julian had to wonder if there were even citizens to corral out here or if the Combine might be this far out due to Resistance activity. The idea of Resistance this far away from the nearest Citadel made a smile appear on Julian's lips.
The assassin listened close as the ground began to rumble gently. With silent feet he climbed the nearest tree to catch sight of the approaching vehicle. He was pleased to see a a jeep come rolling around a bend in the jungle-trail with two Overwatch in the seat and a mounted gun in the back. Apparently the Combine out here were left with some more indigenous technology, he'd already noted several wielding M4s and M16s rather than AR2s and MP7s. There were twelve in this patrol in all. Only twelve.
Julian used the remaining shadow of the early morning to his advantage as he flanked around the back of the patrol's temporary encampment. At least three of the soldiers were still asleep, at least four of them were merely in Civil Protection armor rather than the standard Overwatch. He slipped behind the camp following one soldier who seemed to be collecting firewood. Firewood? Julian found himself wondering if Combine soldiers got cold at night as he slipped behind this one and stabbed through his armor with one of his gauntlet blades. He couldn't muffle the soldier's screams of course but he noted that the voice of Overwatch dispatch didn't alert the others as well. Were these Combine soldiers off the grid? Were they, perhaps, rebels?
Julian had little time to question his decision to attack when the other soldiers rushed toward the screams of their companion. He slipped into the shadows but knew that, at least for the advanced optics of the Overwatch, the shadows would only do him so much good. He pulled out his silenced USP and flanked around the jeep which was now abandoned save one soldier who had the hood up and was peering down at the engine. Julian fired off a shot at the soldier's head amazed when the Overwatch didn't drop immediately.
"He's over he-" the soldier managed to blurt with a fair amount of volume before catching on to the fact that he had a bullet to the brain.
Julian thought to leap into the jeep and drive off then but the remaining ten Combine were already upon him firing their weapons. How Julian wished he'd kept the HEV suit in those moments of cowering behind the jeep. He saw a solution however and pulled a grenade from the Combine soldier's corpse tossing it in the direction of the nearest enemy. The resounding thud sent dust everywhere and woke every jungle animal that was still asleep. Birds and beasts of all kinds cried out and Julian dove into the jeep grateful that the grenade wasn't the only thing of use he'd looted from the corpse as he turned the key and drove off into the jungle.
Emil Nemico watched the Hunter-Chopper carefully searching for any signs of the assassin and his friends. For nearly twenty minutes he kept his eyes transfixed on the area focusing his enhanced vision on every shadow and every crevice as the sun began to peak over the horizon. When at last he was satisfied that they had abandoned the chopper he stepped off of the gunships back and bid the creature farewell. He knew that being stranded in the jungle wasn't ideal but the strain of keeping the synthetic flying-machine under his power had become too much for the synth-assassin. He hadn't the strength to both catch up to and kill Julian Miles and keep the gunship under his power. Besides, he told himself, it seemed as if Julian and the others were now on foot.
The prints were faint for the assassin, almost non-existent, but the others would prove much easier to track. He found their footfalls soon enough and began to follow their path with his feet moving almost faster than he could discern their trail. He could almost taste the vengeance that was at hand. In that moment he wondered if he would ever experience the sensation of taste again. It would be worth it, he told himself, the entire transformation, every decision, every mistake, every right or wrong turn, all of it had led to this. All of his struggle in City 12 to gain prevalence amongst the Templars, amongst the soldiers and citizens that fought for freedom. His failed rise to power just before the invasion of City 12. His capture and metamorphosis from man into machine. All of it would culminate in him becoming the savior of humanity, the leader of humanity, the god of humanity.
He found their camp thirty minutes later near to a brown-green rushing river. He stood on a rocky outcropping on a ridge above the river but his eyes could see their heat signatures. The assassin was absent, he noted as he scouted their camp, he realized that they were likely seeking new transportation. The only road, more of a trail really, was some hundred yards from their riverside camp and although there was no guarantee Julian would arrive by land vehicle Emil decided to await the assassin in the trees just above the road. Once again he felt a smug smile emerging on what might be considered his mouth. That feeling left him when he heard the familiar song of bullets whizzing past him. He dared to look down at the camp and saw Alyx Vance crouched with her machine-gun aimed up at the ridge.
"I should have pulled you out of the chopper with me," Emil spat as he grasped the Apple tight, "But no matter, none of you stand a chance."
Emil held the Apple high and tried to sway their minds to serve him. Unlike the Combine who had bent so easily to his will however none of them seemed ready to bow before him. Cheng, the scientist he'd once manipulated, did stumbled forward toward the ridge but Cheng wasn't as strong-willed as the others and also wasn't strong enough to use to kill the others. Emil abandoned the idea of controlling them and began dodging bullets as Alyx's pulse rounds drew dangerously close. Emil wasn't sure how she managed to be so accurate with those things, he'd never liked them in any but close quarters situations. He slipped down the ridge from tree to tree and boulder to boulder until he was sure they'd lost sight of his rapidly moving form.
He focused his energy watching as Alyx was lifted into the air. She struggled to get free but it was of little consequence. Emil thought he might crush her then and there. As a display of power he concentrated on her weapon which, even with his ocular enhancements, at this distance were but a dot. He grabbed the gun and pulled it from her tenacious grasp crushing it's steel frame into a ball with but a thought. Emil knew the others were searching for him but he cared little, he could stop them too. A rush of godlike power coursed through him as he reached out for Allison, the only other one who stood near enough to Alyx to be visible. The need for line of sight frustrated him but it was a limitation he would have to live with as he levitated both women helplessly into the air.
Arrogantly Emil Nemico stepped from cover and walked casually into their camp. Soon he stood just beneath Alyx and Allison.
"You shouldn't have interfered," Emil said in his metallic voice, "My quarrel was with the assassin."
"I am an Assassin," Alyx replied proudly.
"Trained by them perhaps," Emil said waving his hand dismissively, "but not one of them."
"What does the Combine want with us?" Cheng asked thinking he might negotiate on the behalf of the helpless women.
"It's not what the Combine wants anymore," Emil shouted, "It's what I want!"
With that he brought Cheng down into a bow forcibly.
"I am your god," he told Alyx and Allison, "kneel before me!"
Emil heard the footsteps behind him but he kept his attention focused on Alyx and Allison. He made them believe that Theta's surprise attack would indeed maintain the element of surprise before he turned around and, with orange flames covering her body, sent her slamming into a nearby tree. She wasn't dead, he knew, he hadn't planned on killing her, instead she was merely knocked out.
"You sick bastard!" Alyx growled as she squirmed. For her insolence Emil sent her too against the same tree and she fell in an unconscious heap on top of Theta.
"Now," Emil remarked to Allison, "You and I are going to have some fun until your little boyfriend comes back."
Emil brought Allison's beautiful face in close to his mechanical visage with malicious intent growing even more sinister as the seconds elapsed. His attention was drawn away by a sound, a distant rumble that he knew was that of an engine. He thought that perhaps it was Julian come to spoil their fun but as the vehicle, a jeep marked with clear Combine markings, rounded the nearest bend he could make out only a solitary Combine soldier as the driver, an Overwatch. The soldier came to a stop and seemed puzzled at the scene he had come upon.
"I'm a bit busy at the moment officer," Emil joked resisting the urge to kill this soldier for interrupting him.
"I'm sorry sir," the soldier apologized in a muffled voice, "I'm part of a patrol that was attacked."
"Attacked?" Emil asked his mind thrilled by the possibility of news of the assassin's whereabouts, "By whom?"
"I barely saw the guy, I've never seen someone move this fast, he was wearing this strange robes... somehow I managed to get a shot off and drop the stupid bastard but not before he took out my whole team."
At that announcement Emil took the risk of dropping Allison to the ground and releasing the Apple's grasp. He felt a sense of weakness, fatigue, as Allison fell, as though using the Apple for so long with barely any intervals of rest had stressed even his enhanced body to it's limits. Still if the assassin was dead Emil could move on to part two of his mission, becoming the savior of humanity to replace Julian and his Assassin Order.
"Show me the body," Emil demanded.
The Combine soldier climbed into the back of the jeep and uncovered the body dressed in full assassin robes. As he neared the jeep the deception became evident but by that time it was already too late. Julian, disguised as the Combine soldier, was already firing off the mounted gun. Emil didn't know how many hit him, a dozen, perhaps two dozen rounds, before he managed to half-stumble half-sprint to safety. He tried to use the Apple to enact revenge on Julian, on Alyx, on any of them, nut Julian's fire kept him suppressed as he slinked off into the jungle licking his wounds.
How had he fallen for so obvious a trick? Emil cursed himself as he hid behind three very large boulders half way up the ridge. His synthetic blood ran free of his body. He wasn't sure if it was due to his use of the Apple or merely the amount of damage that heavy machine gun had done but he felt far too weak to retaliate. He listened as Julian sped off in the jeep with the unconscious Theta and Alyx, his beloved Allison and the scientist Cheng.
"I am a god," Emil growled, "I'm better than this."
They were all dead, their faces finally no longer haunting him, their lives of torment at last at an end. Shephard sat in a crumbled heap half laughing half weeping on the floor of the cell with six of his friends dead at his hands. The guards, the real guards, entered then and from the way they brandished their guns they appeared to expect a fight. Shephard had none to give them.
He'd already fought for them. He'd already given them exactly what they wanted, a fight, a bloody battle against his former allies turned against their will into mortal enemies. As they dragged the General back to his cell he continued to laugh and tears continued to stream down his face. Let them try to break him, he would just hate them all the more. His friends deserved better, each of their six faces demanded that he stay strong. Let them try to break him, he laughed as he lay on the cold steel in his cell his muscles shaking with spasms from repeated beatings by those horrid batons, let them try.