Ian stood up from his mattress and crept quietly towards the closed door that separated the hallway from the room that was once a living room. He had been sleeping until a rumble of nearby thunder woke him from troubled dreams of the Seven Hour War. Those were memories he wanted to forget.
The reason he got up was to get fresh air. It had been hot and stuffy inside the 45th Apartment building and though he could just open the windows, he wanted to feel the rain fall on his face and run down his skin to give him a natural shower, a shower he badly needed.
As Ian neared the white door, he saw a bright white but blue tinged light shine under the door and slowly move away. It was one of the apartment's Civil Protection units patrolling the hallway just outside the door with his flashlight on. The Metro Cop's footsteps creaked on the wooden floorboards and seconds later they faded away down the hallway. Opening the door right next to a Civil Protection Officer could be seen as a threat. Ian continued forward to the door and silently opened it. He stepped out into the hallway and as he closed the door behind him, the lock clicked shut and the Metro Cop spun around and marched towards Ian. "Citizen." It quietly barked, "You shouldn't be out of your room until 6:30 am."
"I'm just getting water, I'm thirsty." Ian lied to the Metro Cop. Ian had only once drank water from the Breen's Private Reserve vending machines and it was when he had been beaten by a Metro Cop when the apartment he had previously lived in back in City 13 had been raided. The raid ended with no contraband for the Civil Protection and some injured innocent people. The wounds he had gotten that day became infected and the energy used to fight the infection and heal his wounds had left him weak and dehydrated. Luckily, rebel medics had taken him in and cared for him while he healed. Unfortunately, they had no more water and were forced to pass around cans of the medicated water, healing their patients at the terrible cost of memory loss. What ever the Combine had put into the water cost him the first ten years of his life. Only fragments of that time still remained.
"Alright, you can go." The CP said with boredom. He had probably been hoping for some action, Ian thought.
As he walked down the hall to the stairwell, the Metro Cop followed close behind as if to usher him but stopped when Ian reached the stairs. Light from the windows on the stairwell dimly lit the dark area but Ian could have gone down the stairs in near total darkness due to the fact he had been walking the stairs for close to 20 years.
Since there was little to do when the Combine invaded Earth, Ian had taken up the hobby of knowing every intricate detail of the 45th Apartment building. First it was counting all the steps from the ground floor to the fifth floor, which was always locked with an electronic Civil Protection thumb scanner door lock. After counting the steps, he had taken to finding more details of the stairs. Steps 3, 4, 5, 12, 13, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 squeaked, step 40 had a deep gouge in it while 7, 8, and 9 had some sort of odd stain he could never figure out what liquid it originated from.
He descended the stairs and came out into the lobby. Across from him but several feet away was the laundry room and that is where the vending machines were but he had no intention to drink its contents. Between the stairs and the laundry room was a waiting room furnished with two worn, brown couches and a beat up television set on a table parallel to the couches. Between the waiting room and the laundry room were the doors to the building and Ian opened them and left the building. The rain poured harder now and the sky lit up with a spectacular display of lightning. Ian lifted his face up to the sky and closed his eyes as water pelted his skin and washed dirt off of him. He smiled but then opened his mouth to drink the falling rain. The last time he had drunk rain was 15 years ago and the rain now tasted different some how. He thought it could have just been caused by the instant decrease in emissions releases into the air since the Combine were eco friendly.
Ian held up his arms to the sky and lowered his head. He was entirely soaked now, his blue clothes a darker color from the rain and water dripped off his short hair. As the rain let up a bit he opened his eyes and did something he should have done before he walked outside, scan for Metro Cops. There was one stationed across the square at what used to lead into the old arcade and office building but was now a small Combine Nexus. This Cop, he noticed, wore a rubbery black trench coat and had a thicker mask over its head but had glowing red colored eyes compared to the traditional blue or no color. The CP seemed to not even care he was standing there. As Ian lowered his arms the Metro Cop put its gloved hand to the left side of its mask and seemed to straiten up and nod in agreement. It lowered its hand and turned its head to face the apartment building. It crouched and ran to cover behind the barrier on top of the stairs leading to the nexus. Seconds later, two more trench coat CPs ran out of the doorless entrance to take cover behind the barrier with their guns raised. In the distance, the Combine P.A. system loudly droned. "Attention community. All citizens in local residential block, assume your inspection positions."
Cautiously, Ian backed into the doorway and six normal Metro Cops ran out of the building towards the apartment complex, stun batons raised and electrified. Ian turn and ran up the stairs without tripping on a single one yelling, "Get up it's a raid!" Several times.
As he did, he heard people yelling and doors slamming. On the fourth floor, there was a door leading to a bridge which stood over the west road heading out of the square. The hallway as dark as he turned into it, the blue walls making the darkness worse. He ran down the hallway, and when he was about halfway down he heard a Metro Cop's blaring radio and its urgent response through its vocoder. "11-99 officer needs assistance!" The blue eyed Civil Protection officer from earlier that night marched towards him with its stun baton out and electrified.
Ian backed down the hallway as the Metro Cop approached him. The lights in the entire building lit up in an instant as the advancing Combine officers turned on the power to the building. As he backed up, he walked into one of the two apartment doors on that floor and opened it and fled inside. He fell back onto the floor and crawled away from the doorway as the officer burst in with its USP Match 9mm Pistol at the ready in its left hand. The Civil officer stopped and leveled the gun in both hands when it saw the room full of frightened civilians. "Assume your inspection positions. Anyone failing to comply will be judged."
Everyone standing or sitting leaned against the wall at the order with their hands and arms by their heads. "On your stomach civilian with your hands behind your back." The Metro Cop barked. Ian flipped around and did as he was told, fearing for his life. He could no longer tell what the officer was doing until he felt a painful weight dig into his spine, it was the soldier's knee. Ian shouted in pain. Almost as suddenly as the blue eyed cop knelt on his back, something wooden cracked and the officer screamed in pain which caused it to fire the 9mm out of reflex. The officer fell unconscious to the floor and Ian turned around to see one of the blue clad civilians holding a broken, wooden chair. Out of shock she dropped the chair remnants and was unable to move until realization struck her that the had attacked a Civil Protection Unit.
"Thank you." Ian said quietly to her. She. Only nodded in response. He quickly snatched up the gun and offered it up to anyone in the room. "Anybody know how to fire a pistol?" The room was quiet. As he ran to exit the room, he heard an officer blaring over its radio, "Shots fired, requesting back up immediately!"
Common sense told him the officer or officers coming down the hall would have their guns drawn because of the shot. Ian had also been a police officer who had only been a year on the force before the Portal Storms or the Seven Hour War occurred and from that short time he had training in pistol shooting and what to do if in a fire fight. His tactics would have to change if he wanted to take down trained soldiers from an alien government.
Ian hid behind the door for several seconds then turned the corner. He shot the pistol the instant he saw the two cops. His first bullet missed by inches while the the second and third hit the first in the chest. His forth missed and he was forced to return to cover in the room. The healthy CP fired two shots and they missed, embedding themselves in the wall at the end of the hall. The single advancing cop rounded the corner but was shot in the face, blood splattered the blue wall and the whine of the flatline filled the air, followed by the voice of the Overwatch operator. "Nearby units, proceeded to contain 4th floor. Code; Isolate, Interrogate, Pacify."
Looking out of the room to see if the coast was clear, he noticed the CP he had shot in the hall was now face down in a spreading pool of blood. Ian ran to the door leading to the bridge and friend he handle. Locked. He swore loudly and turned to go back down the hall. As he did, a lone Metro Cop charged in at the opposite end of the hallway with its USP Match raised in front. As Ian leveled his own pistol to the cop, the cop fired three bullets, one grazing Ian's left arm. He screamed in pain but fired several shots into the enemy's torso. Ian pressed on his wounded arm with his hand that still held the pistol. His left arm's sleeve was now dampening with the spreading blood and he took off to the stairs.
As he reached the stairs he could hear the stomping boots of the Civil Protection running up the stairs. If he went down the stairs he would be shot dead on sight. There was only one other option. Ian switched hands for the pistol and grabbed the dead cop lying on the ground's arm and pulled it up the stairs to the fifth floor. It was time to see that was on the mysterious fifth floor.