Sorry guys that you had to wait a few months to get this, I've been very busy in real life.

*****************************************************************************************************************

Alone in the Dark: part three

"Hey!"

Where did that come from?

"Wake up!"

Was someone speaking to him? Gordon tried to open his eyes but found it surprisingly difficult. This was strange; he could barely remember where he was or what he was supposed to be doing right now.

"Oh. Guess I have no choice, huh."

Choice? What choice? He was still trying to wake up to see who was talking to him, where he was and what this 'choice' thing was, when he suddenly felt this weird sensation on his cheeks. Is someone slapping my cheeks? By about the third time he felt the weird sensation, everything came back to him and he managed to open his eyes. There was a woman perched over him with a look of surprise on her face.

"Took you long enough, now could you please let go of my arm?"

Her arm? He looked to her right arm and saw that he was holding it ... rather tightly.

"Any time now, please ... I don't have all day you know." And as to emphasize it, she tried to pull her arm away.

"Oh, sorry," Gordon said to her, quickly letting go of her arm. He tried to sit up, but she put her hand on his chest and pushed him back to the floor. He found it surprisingly difficult to resist her as a wave of nausea hit over him. He was glad that she had pushed him back down; otherwise he would have just fallen down again like an idiot. Something he tried to avoid but was often unsuccessful at, much to the amusement of a certain person whose name begins with a B.

"You got hit pretty badly on the head. Just try to lay down for just a couple more minutes. That magic suit of yours should do the rest." She stood up and walked away from him. Gordon closed his eyes again and massaged his temples with his fingers.

The last thing he could clearly remember was the zombine with the exploding grenade in its hands. It must've thrown him back against the wall and knocked him out cold. His hand moved over to the back of his head. It still felt a bit sore and he could feel a crust, but the throbbing pain was already slowly disappearing. Guess that magic suit of his was indeed doing its job.

He tried to sit up again, and managed to do it without feeling any nausea or having a woman's hand trying to push him back down again. He looked around, but everything was blurry. Blinking did nothing to clear the picture when he suddenly realized: my glasses! Slightly panicked, he started feeling around him on the floor; maybe the girl had put them somewhere near him.

"Looking for these?" The sudden question coming from behind took him by surprise, which he was able to mask, or so he hoped.

"Yeah ... thanks," he said when she handed him his glasses back. He examined them closely, hoping that the blast hadn't damaged them. Luckily they didn't even have a crack, which was rather amazing considering all the things he had put them through. Putting them back on, he could now clearly see his surroundings. He was in a medium sized room packed with crates. In the far right corner he could see a radio and a television screen, with a sleeping mat next to it. He sort of already knew the answer when he asked: "Where am I?"

The girl had started rummaging through some of the crates and didn't immediately answer him. When he was about to repeat the question, she turned towards him with some pulse rifle ammo in her hands. She threw it at him which Gordon aptly caught.

"This is an old hideout, a part of one of the first attempts to build the underground escape route. It's still safe; don't know how long that will last though, with all these zombies and antlions out there." Gordon nodded; this was probably the place that he and Alyx had also been looking for on their way to the surface.

He tried to stand, confident that nothing would hold him back. But he hadn't counted on the dizziness. Putting both his hands on a crate for support, he closed his eyes for a few seconds and felt the dizziness slowly disappearing. He let go of the crate and stretched his arms behind his neck as though he was just shaking off some sleep. The only thing that reminded him of his unfaithful encounter with the wall was a slight headache but he could live with that. He knew that he wouldn't have to support it for long.

"How long was I out?"

"Oh, only for about ten minutes or so." Ten whole minutes? He shook his head, thinking about Alyx and where she could possibly be.

"I guess you want some more ammo for that arsenal you're carrying?" She asked while nodding her head in his general direction. Gordon absentmindedly nodded, still thinking about Alyx. "Most of these crates contain medical supplies and rations, but some of them still have some ammo." She waved her hand at some crates in the far west corner. "Take a look in there; those might have what you need." She returned her attention to the crate she was rummaging through. "I'm Sally, by the way."

Gordon was just about to say 'I'm Gordon' when she beat him to it. "And you're Gordon Free-man," putting the emphasis on the last syllable of his last name, with a mocking undertone as though trying to imitate the Vortigaunts way of speech. "I knew who you were from the minute I saw that orange suite; kinda hard to miss."

The more the girl was speaking to Gordon, the more he became intrigued with her. This was not your ordinary citizen turned rebel after he and Alyx had blown up Nova Prospekt.

It was very easy to tell apart those that were already with the resistance before Nova Prospekt, and those that had joined after the rebellion really got into the open. The latter were still timid, didn't dare take initiative and needed someone to look after them and tell them what to do, while those already in the resistance knew exactly what to do, when and where. The girl was without a doubt a member of the first group.

The crates she had waved her hand at, didn't have anything special, though: two mags for the SMG, a pack for his shotgun, and some pulse rifle ammo, but the rest it was as empty as all the other crates he had passed in this god forsaken underground maze. But at least it was something. Way better than just the 30 rounds of pulse rifle ammo he had only a dozen minutes ago.

He sat down on one of the crates and began filling up the shotgun. The girl was going from crate to crate, sometimes swearing, sometimes 'ahah!'-ing. As he looked at her, he just knew that he had seen her somewhere before. Maybe it was just a Deja-vu feeling, or maybe he had indeed seen her somewhere else before. The problem was that in the past few days he had met so many rebels, he forgot their names and faces as soon as they were out of sight.

"I guess that's all," she said to no one in particular as she stood gazing at a crate with her hands set on her hips. It reminded him of Alyx … Alyx …

"Have you by any chance seen or heard Alyx down here?" Her head turned towards him with a surprised look on her face.

"You mean Alyx Vance? She was with you?"

"She was, yeah. We got separated two levels down, about .." he tilted his head upwards, calculating how long he had been out with how long he had been looking for her. " … 25 minutes ago." She seemed to be thinking, walking back and fro.

"Well, before I rescued you from the mad clutches of a zombine." She was apparently taking pride in it. "I heard some gunshots. By the sound of it, it was only a small handgun. I thought it was one of those Civil protection traitors who was down there, so I didn't investigate further. Besides, every member of the resistance was ordered to go to the train station."

Gordon clicked the last magazine on his scavenged ammunition belt and stood up from the crate. "Could you show me where that was?"

Sally threw him a look of surprise: "You're going after her? I doubt she's even still alive with all these antlions, zombine and occasional combine around here. It's madness." She shook her head but when she saw the determined look on Gordon's face, she seemed to soften up a bit. "I suppose you know what you're doing." And with that said, she took the shotgun in her hands and pumped two shells into the loading chamber.

"Follow me."

to be concluded

*******************************************************************************************************************

okay, I think I will get a few angry looks now :-P. to be honest, it was just too long ago that I had posted something, and I wanted to give you this, to show you that I am working on it, albeit slowly. next chapter will definitely be the last in the 'Alone in the Dark'-arc, and this is a promise.