"So, um, are things going to be weird now?" Lara asked as they carefully and quickly navigated the shower together.

"They don't have to be," Eric replied. "Why, do you feel weird now?"

"I'm still not sure what I feel. I'm kinda...frazzled, from that wakeup call. But right now? I pretty much just feel good about last night." She paused. "I mean, you know, the sex. I'm a little more, uh, everything else is more of a mixed bag."

He chuckled. "Yeah. You'll get used to that."

Lara went silent for a moment. "Do you think I have what it takes to make it out here? Like, in the field? As an agent?"

"Yes," Eric replied, "but it's a little more complicated than that."

"I figured it would be."

"But short answer: yes, I think you have what it takes, provided you get better about risking your life."

"What? You risk your life all the-"

"I know, but that's not the point." He sighed and shook his head, then killed the water. "Come on, dry off, we need to figure out what's going on."

"So what is the point?"

"Know when to risk your life. And other people's lives," he replied.

"Oh."

They dried and quickly dressed in fresh uniforms. Once they had their weapons back into place, they stepped outside of Eric's quarters. And right into chaos. The whole outpost was abuzz with activity now. Dozens of people were running around and a lot of them were apparently preparing for all out war.

"Shit," Eric muttered and began leading Lara through the pandemonium. A moment later, they ended up in Sally's office. She sat at her desk, eyes bloodshot and dark. She was puffing away on a cigarette. "What the hell's going on?"

"The Combine took Black Mesa East and Gordon Freeman might be dead. Eli Vance has been captured," she replied succinctly.

"Well shit," he muttered.

"Dead? That can't be right...I mean, right?" Lara asked.

"No idea. Have plans changed?" Eric asked.

"No. Radek's already waiting by the south exit. Grab whatever you need and," she pushed the case from before across the desk towards him, "get this to Delta Lab as fast as you can. Then you two will be their problem."

Eric chuckled. "Well, I'll miss you too, Sally."

She looked up from her desk. "Sorry. I'm...it's been a long night." She looked at the closed door suddenly, then back to him. "I think this is it. I think we're finally doing it."

"The uprising?" he asked. She nodded. "God, it's been so long…"

"Yeah. This is probably the end."

"Of what?" Lara asked.

"Us. The Resistance. Or the human race as we know it. They've been doing it slowly for twenty years now." She sighed and stood up suddenly, then walked around her desk and hugged him tightly. "There's a good chance we won't see each other again."

"I know," he murmured, wrapping his arms around her. "Whatever happens, I really did care about what we had."

She laughed softly and pulled back, looking at him fondly. "I know, Eric. That's your true appeal."

"What's that supposed mean?" he replied.

She gave a good-natured sigh and shook her head. "You always mean it, Eric. You slept with more than a few of my friends and coworkers. We talked. They always told me the same thing: if it was a tryst in a closet, a one-night stand, or a short-lived relationship, you always genuinely cared. Each time. And that's worth more than, well, a lot of things. So." She leaned in and kissed him, then stepped back. "Good luck, kick ass, don't die."

"Right back at you, Sally," he replied.

She nodded, then looked at Lara. "Rift...don't go too hard on your dad. He's going be a huge pain in the ass when you get back, but he really does care. He lost your mother a long time ago and he never got over it. I don't think he'd survive if you died, too...sorry for being so blunt, but now is no time for discretion."

"I...appreciate it," Lara replied, looking a little surprised and lost. "I'll keep it in mind."

"Thank you. I hate the guy, but he isn't a bad guy. Just an annoying ass." There was an urgent knock at her door. She sighed. "Go on, get out of here. Faster the better."

He nodded. "Bye, Sally."

"Bye, Eric. Lara."

They opened the door and stepped past the woman waiting to speak with Sally. It took them a moment, but they managed to make their way to the armory. He loaded up on ammo for his pistol and SMG, grabbed another pair of grenades, and double-checked that Lara hadn't forgotten anything. From there, they found Radek waiting for them by one of the more subtle exits.

"We are ready to forge a path through the subterranean darkness yet again," he reported.

"Perfect," Eric replied.

He spun the wheel and pulled open the secured door. The way beyond was dark and empty, a plain room of metal and concrete and trash. Eric shined a light in it briefly, then stepped through. Once he'd cleared it, he waved the others in and then secured the door behind them.

"Where are we actually going?" Lara asked. Eric sighed softly. "What?!" she snapped. "I can't know everything all the time!"

"No, but this is the kind of information you need to cement in your mind before we head into potentially dangerous territory, Lara. What happens if we get separated? What happens if Radek and I die and you're on your own? You need to know where to go and what to do."

"Fine, then tell me," she growled.

"We will scout on ahead," Radek said diplomatically and padded out of the room.

"We are going to Theta Station. It's in the basement of an old hospital in a dead zone of the City where Combine usually don't go. Do you know where it is?"

"Yes," she replied, "I at least know where that is."

"Good. Listen, this thing here," he tapped his chest, where the case rested in a zipped, protected inner pocket, "is the mission. If I die, you take it and get it to where it needs to go. Which is…?"

"Delta Lab," she replied. "I'm not stupid, you know."

"This isn't about being stupid or smart, Lara. I'm not insulting your intelligence, I'm reprimanding your irresponsible slip up. I'm not doing this for my own ego, I'm doing this for your safety, and to impress upon you just how crucial this thing is. This is thing is worth our lives."

"You don't even know what it is or what it does," she murmured, though now she looked less angry and more worried.

"I know that it's been coded as Platinum Black. I know that the people who invented the coding system were literal geniuses who have a single goal: stop the Combine to save the human race from extinction. I walked away from the Resistance six months ago for personal reasons and tragic events that were basically beyond anyone's control. Even in all my grief-stricken, suicidal rage I could see that, at the end of the day, it wasn't incompetence that caused what happened to happen, it was just bad luck. I still trust them. Mostly. You need to take this seriously. You need to be present in the right now. Because this is what it means to operate out here as an agent."

Eric fell silent, waiting, staring hard at Lara. She stared back, and he saw a number of emotions wrestling for supremacy on her features. At last she said: "I understand."

"Good," he replied, relaxing slightly. "Any questions?"

"Just one...what did happen? Why did you walk away?"

Eric felt something clench and burn somewhere deep inside of him, and from Lara's immediate change in expression, she knew that she had fucked up.

"I. Don't. Want. To talk. About it," he growled.

"Shit, okay, sorry. I-nevermind. Sorry," she replied quickly.

"It's fine. Let's go."

He marched off after Radek and she followed silently behind him.

For a time, they moved in silence.

The underground was an unforgiving place but, for the most part, it could be easy enough to pass through. In his time fighting the Combine, Eric had come to learn that it was a bit of a paradox. The more dangerous the situation was aboveground, the more Civil Protection was running around like crazy, the less dangerous it typically became underground. The wildlife had learned, for the most part, to go to ground and stop hunting when chaos was happening.

And today was as chaotic as Eric had ever seen it. Or, at least, that was the impression he was getting. So they moved down derelict concrete tunnels and rusted out metal pipes, vacant of life save for the occasional headcrab or barnacle. As time went on, Eric began to get the sense that Lara was sulking, and he found himself relenting.

He liked her, and more than most of the women he got close to. She had something, some quality that he was still trying to zero in on, (much as it worried him, given what happened to the previous woman he had liked more than most everyone else). And that was where some of the intensity of his instruction had been coming from.

He wanted her to survive. And survival was hard out here.

As they reached roughly the two thirds mark, which was a fairly secure storeroom at the back of an old water treatment facility, he came to a halt.

"Let's rest here for a bit," he said.

"This sounds like an acceptable plan to us," Radek replied, and padded off deeper into the room to begin poking through a pile of seemingly random stuff that had accumulated.

Lara didn't say anything as she took a seat in one of a pair of chairs still in sturdy enough shape to support the weight.

Eric sat beside her. "Hey."

"You don't have to apologize," she said. "I'm not mad at you. I'm just...I feel weird. Conflicted. I've been going out into the field, off and on, for a few years now. But this was the first time I just...went out on my own."

"What actually prompted that? Because you definitely seem smart enough to know how insanely dangerous it is."

She sighed heavily. "It was a lot of things. Anger. Stress. Being treated like a 'girl' just because everyone thinks I'm a goddamned daddy's girl."

"Does everyone think that, or do you? And you were trying to prove yourself wrong?" he asked.

She pursed her lips and glared at him for a moment, then seemed to really consider it. "That's some of it," she admitted, "but less than you think. I know what you're getting at, but it's just as much to prove him wrong. Only it's not even that, either. Not everything's one thing or the other, you know."

"I know...keep going," he replied.

"I think what most of it was...was me needing to prove to him that I can handle myself. And I needed to prove it to myself, too. The thing is, I get it. Most of what he says is true. The world is a savage, dangerous, brutal place and I could die horribly. Or get into a situation where I wish I was dead. And that's terrifying. But...I can't just sit there, locked up in a building, running errands and prepping for something that might never come. He wanted me ready to defend myself, but not to actually, you know, do anything with that. And...so I left. And I knew it was going to be a dice roll. I did. I just...getting your guy killed, I wasn't ready for that."

Eric nodded grimly. "I understand...I can tell you a few things that might make you feel better. But they might not. If you want to hear."

She gave him a measured look, then slowly blinked and sighed softly. "So long as it's the truth, and you're not just trying to make me feel better, then yeah, tell me."

"It's the truth, that's why it might not make you feel better. It depends on the kind of person you are."

"Oh, so, what? If I'm a good person I'll feel one way, if I'm a bad person I'll feel another?"

He laughed. "It's rarely that simple, Lara." He returned her measured look. "You don't have to get defensive. The advice I'm offering, it comes from a place of giving a shit. I'm not trying to push you one way or another, I'm not trying to attack you. Do you believe that?"

She was quiet for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah, I do...sorry. Keep going."

"Okay. So, first thing, the guy who died? His name was Baker. He was...not long for this world. Because he was kind of a dumbass. A hothead. In truth, it was a miracle he hadn't gotten himself killed yet. It was bound to happen eventually."

"You can't know that," she murmured.

"You're right. I can't know it for sure. But given my experience, I can read certain situations and a lot of different people, and he...let's just say, with his personality type and the world we live in, well, he was kind of doomed. Second thing...the life of an agent...it isn't a life that you live for yourself. Not in the broader sense. I take happiness and pleasure where I can find it, but I walk out the door every single time knowing I might need to die to make something happen. And I don't just mean that it's risky, I mean I might need to sacrifice myself for everyone else, because ultimately that's what we as agents and operators do. What we as Resistance fighters do. That needs to be the why of why you step out of your shelter, not because you have something to prove."

She shifted in her seat and frowned, slowly looking down at the floor.

"He speaks truth," Radek murmured, and they both looked over at him. "The Bishop is rare among your kind. He understands sacrifice for the whole on a more...mmm...intuitive level than most others. He does not just understand with his brain, or only with his heart, but with both in unity. More than that, he understands the balance."

"What balance?" Lara asked.

"Between sacrifice and self." He raised one gnarled hand and swept it around. "You see the horror of the Combine. No one holds the true knowledge, but it is believed that the Shu'ulathoi, what you call the Advisors, found their origins in a sacrifice of the self for the greater good. Down this path lies all you see before you." He touched his chest. "One of the first things Vortigaunts learn is how to keep their sense of self while living in unity within the Vortessence. Our unity is more literal, and thus it is easier to handle. Humanity's unity is not demanded by your very nature, it must be achieved, and can be broken far more easily. Humans can become convinced that they can exist on their own, entirely in isolation, and fail to realize that they must find a balance, a way to live with their own...Humessence, without losing their sense of self."

"It isn't easy," Eric muttered.

"That's...I've never really thought of that, but at the same time...I understand it?"

Radek nodded sagely. "Your mind understands this. It craves the balance, but the ability to appropriately communicate this to your self by your mind is not always...eh...up to par? Is the phrase?"

"Yeah, that's right," Eric replied. "And yeah, it's hard. Vortigaunts experience reality in a different way than humans. It's kind of the difference between...looking around as you take a walk down the road and being plugged directly into a network of high tech satellites."

"That's quite the difference," Lara said.

"Yeah. That's why we struggle, and also why Vortigaunts sometimes struggle to communicate with us."

"Mmm...yes...it is, eh, difficult, at times. We struggle with articulation, and we try not to be insulting. We still have some difficulty with the concept of 'being condescending'."

Eric chuckled. "True...so I've got a question I've been meaning to ask, Radek."

"Ask."

"You didn't seem too surprised when we met again. Which I was willing to take in stride, because it seems hard to surprise a Vortigaunt, but...then I started remembering these dreams I had a few times. About you. And they were always really vivid. And they felt somehow...different. Almost like I wasn't dreaming. Almost like it was real."

Radek shifted slightly on his feet. "Ah, yes. I was...checking in on you."

Eric looked at him more directly. "You just said 'I'."

"Yes. When checking on you, it was in my capacity as my self. It was an I action. I wanted to make sure that you were well."

"What if I wasn't?" he asked, genuinely curious.

"Unknown," Radek admitted. A moment of silence passed. "Are you angry? We understand that humans have a need for privacy, and that this manner of investigation may be considered a breach of that privacy…"

"I'm not mad, Radek. I'm grateful. Having people who care about you...is an extremely vital thing." He got to his feet. "But we should probably keep moving."

"We are in agreement," Radek replied.

"Yeah," Lara murmured, standing as well.

Eric raised his fist. Behind him, Radek and Lara froze.

Something was wrong.

They were almost to Theta, making their final approach through an old brickwork tunnel some twenty feet below the surface. They'd just run into a few headcrabs and one particularly unobservant zombie and, besides two times when they'd ducked into a hiding spot because of what sounded like a lot of activity going on above the surface, it had remained an uneventful journey. Right now, though, something felt off.

Making a quick gesture to tell the others to remain still, Eric then crept forward. The sense of wrongness grew, as pervasive as toxic mold. He stopped and dropped slowly into a crouch, staring at the doorway that rested at the end of the passage. It was closed and there was light leaking around the edges. Eric slowly reached out and placed his hand flat against the wall, then the floor. His frown deepened as he saw a shadow break the light.

Something was wrong about the way it was moving, and given the level of activity Theta Station should be experiencing, he should have heard, if not felt, something.

But there was nothing.

Finally, he waved the others up.

"What's wrong?" Lara whispered.

"I think someone attacked Theta Station and then left. Saw a shadow that moved like wildlife," Eric replied softly, still staring at the door. "We might be walking into a kill zone."

"We are ready," Radek replied.

Lara nodded tightly. "Yeah, I'm ready to do this."

"All right. Nice and easy. I could be wrong. I'll go in first, you two watch my back."

Both of them responded affirmatively and they moved forward. Once they had gained a certain distance, Lara and Radek stopped. Eric got up to the door. Waited. Listened. He heard a strange noise that was familiar but he couldn't quite place. Then he heard a groan and he could place that immediately.

"Zombie," he said.

He tried the handle. It popped open and a corpse that had been laying against it spilled out into the hallway. Beyond, he spied several zombies and headcrabs, and a single bullsquid waddled into view. There were a lot of corpses around.

"Shit," he muttered, and opened fire.

Eric backed up to allow the others access as he stitched a bloody line along the back of the bullsquid's oddly shaped head, splitting it open and killing it in a spray of greenish gore. The headcrabs and zombies immediately began coming for him, groaning and making their strange little sounds. He switched targets, turning one headcrab into so much chewed up alien meat. A burst of green lightning shot by him and hit a zombie squarely in its face, flash-frying half the attached headcrab and dropping the unholy thing.

Between the three of them and the bottleneck they were working with, they managed to mop up the lingering alien wildlife and zombies now inhabiting what had once been Theta Station. As they reloaded and the monsters stopped coming, Eric listened intently. All he could hear now was the dripping of blood.

"Watch my six," he muttered, and headed inside.

What had once been the subbasement of a hospital had become a slaughterhouse. As he looked around, it became immediately obvious that Civil Protection was the culprit here. Bullet holes tattooed the walls and blood painted them. There were easily a dozen corpses scattered across the main area, perhaps closer to two dozen. Not enough of them were Civil Protection. Eric slowly scouted out the location, hunting for signs of life beyond what they'd just killed. Most of the doors leading out of the central area were opened.

In fact...all but one. It was shut firmly. He walked slowly over to it and listened. Something shifted beyond the door. Stepping closer, he tapped out a quick all clear sign. The response was both immediate and not what he had been hoping for.

A shotgun blast blew out the door.

"Friendly fire! Friendly fire!" he yelled as he fell back, hoping that it wasn't some Civil Protection asshole who'd stayed behind for whatever reason. Although they usually didn't use shotguns.

"Who the hell is out there?!" a voice demanded.

"Resistance! I'm with the goddamned Resistance! You were supposed to have been told we were coming. From Sigma!"

There was a long pause. Finally, he heard some muttering. Then, "What's your name?"

"Eric Bishop."

"Thank God," the survivor muttered. "Okay, we're coming out."

What remained of the door opened up and two people in Resistance outfits appeared. A man and a woman. The man wore typical soldier getup and the woman had the red cross on her beanie. They both looked haggard and wretched, but still basically intact.

"Sorry," the woman said, "we've been trapped in there a long time."

"Understandable," Eric replied, peering into the room they'd come out of. It looked like a storeroom packed with all sorts of random crap. "How'd you survive?"

"We were already in there when it happened," the man replied awkwardly. "We were, um…"

"We're a couple, we were having sex and then sleeping," the woman said. "We've got a little cot set up behind all that crap in there. It's really the only place we can go to get privacy. We were asleep when the attack came. At one point they did come in and check it over after the attack. Pretty much luck they didn't check hard enough or hear us. We ended up waiting for a long time because we didn't know if they were still around, and by the time we worked up the courage to check, these assholes had moved in," she muttered, kicking one of the dead headcrabs.

"Okay, one last question: why did you shoot at me?" Eric asked.

"Before we went for our 'nap', we got a transmission from another outpost that Civil Protection had somehow had access to our network and internal information. Station locations, old codes, maybe even new ones. We were warned to be on the lookout for out-of-date codes, which yours was."

"That makes sense," Eric muttered. "Goddamnit," he said, looking around at the death and destruction, "I always knew something like this was going to happen."

"What do you mean?" Lara asked.

"When I ran infiltration of the Combine, I became increasingly convinced that they knew a lot more than they were letting on. Namely, where our stations were and how to hit them. I never found anything definitive, but it made too much sense."

"Given everything that's been happening today, good chance you were right," the woman replied grimly.

"Why wouldn't they just hit a station as soon as they learn about it?" Lara asked.

"It's a lot easier to control or destroy a whole group if you make them think they're getting away with stuff right under your nose," Eric replied. "Why take out one station when you can instead study it? See who comes and goes? Where the exits and entrances are. What kind of material comes in and out. See where the people who leave lead you. I'm sure they discovered four other stations each time they learned about one just from studying it."

"That's...actually really smart," she murmured.

"Yeah. Okay. We need to get the hell out of here," Eric said. "Unless you two have somewhere pressing you'd rather be, I'd like you to come with us. We're making for Delta, and it was to my understanding that we could take the mine tunnel to cut the trip short. That's why we're here."

"We'll come," the woman said after glancing briefly at her companion, "but that tunnel...we lost contact with them last night. We sent a few people to check out the outposts that are there, and they never came back either."

"Great," Eric groaned.

"It's getting too dangerous to keep going through the City, even under it," Lara said. "I can't help but feel like we keep getting lucky, and our luck is going to run out."

He considered it for a moment, then shook his head. "Let me think about it. For now, all of you, secure this area, sweep it for guns and ammo and whatever else you can find. I'm going to go check out the entrance to the mine."

"You know where it is?" the man asked.

"Yeah. I've been here a bunch of times," Eric replied, walking off.

He moved through one of the other doors, followed a blood-slicked corridor, stepped over a few corpses, and then passed through another, smaller antechamber. He hated how common these scenes of death and destruction were becoming. Finally, he found the door he was looking for. It was shut firmly. He opened it up.

A descending stairwell awaited him. He reached over and flicked on the light. It came to life, then began flickering. Eric hesitated. It almost seemed like a warning. He sighed and shook off the bad feelings, descending the stairwell, keeping his eyes firmly on the metal door that waited at its bottom. Reaching it, he put his hand to the metal.

It was cold but that was normal. After hesitating for a moment longer, he pulled open the door and aimed his pistol with its flashlight on inside. A derelict stone tunnel with old wooden support beams awaited him. He saw footprints in the dirt, relatively fresh. Three sets walking away. The team they'd sent. There were no other signs of life.

Eric listened closely, then sniffed the cold air gently blowing in. It brought with it a scent of death and spilled blood. More of the same, but what did it mean? That mine had always freaked him out, even if it had normally been relatively safe. Finally, he shut the door and marched back up the stairs.

"Any improvements up here?" he asked.

"Not really," the woman replied. "We just found out the main entrance is mostly collapsed. We checked the other auxiliary entrance and there were a lot of headcrabs out there, and what sounded like fighting further on."

"So it's a risk either way," he muttered. "All right, if we're risking our lives regardless, then we'll take the mine. It should be shorter, anyway. Grab whatever you can, we've got ten minutes to clear out of here."