Here's chapter TWOOOOOOO! Have Gordon POV!
"The Freeman must awaken."
Gordon struggled to process where the words spoken to him had come from or who they belonged to.
To be completely honest, Gordon struggled to process much of anything. His heart pounded within his ears whenever he tried to open his eyes, and he kept hearing a static-y noise in the back of his head that kept him from being able to focus on any of his other senses…
He knew people were talking around him, but it all came out muffled. He barely succeeded in prying open one of his eyes to figure out his surroundings…blobs of brown and dark red and bright blue came into the sliver of vision his body would allow before he had to close it back off. His sense of smell was useless, always had been when he woke up in the morning, so there was little point in focusing on it. His mouth tasted like…he wasn't sure what that taste was. His sense of touch was…well, he definitely felt cold, it was the only sense that he could pin-down with utmost certainty. He even shivered a bit once he processed the sensation.
Somebody must have noticed the temperature's effect on Gordon, because he quickly had something draped over his shoulders…Gordon immediately recognized the material when he pulled it tighter around him: a lab coat.
Of course! He could recognize the feeling of that fabric from anywhere. But…
For some reason, it felt like a lifetime had passed since he had last worn one, which didn't make sense because he always wore one to work everyday (he even wore it underneath the HEV suit, because an hour of discomfort from having his coat under there was better than having to undress and waste time with getting that stupid underbody-swimsuit-thing on). Why his body felt like a stranger to the lab coat was beyond him, but at least it provided some warmth for his…wet…form…
He was wet. His whole body.
Just. Completely drenched.
Why was Gordon wet?
He hated that. He hated getting wet. And he also really hated how uncomfortable the word 'wet' sounded.
Hold on, somebody was talking again. He couldn't make out anything, his ears still felt too much like they were made of cotton.
Somebody gently pressed his back to get him walking somewhere, he didn't dare try to take anybody's hands while he was still quivering from the cold. Hopefully nobody was bothered by that…he'd hate to be an inconvenience.
The pressure against his back ceased, which Gordon took as his cue to stand still for a while. It gave him time to wonder…where was he? What was happening? He remembered, in his rush at being late for work again, hitting his head against the door frame of his apartment. Maybe he got a concussion from the impact? Was that how concussions worked? He had a sneaking suspicion that he was missing something.
Suddenly, he was pulled back to the present by a tingling within his very veins, just as quickly gone before he could fully understand where the sensation had originated from.
His legs felt weak, and he fell backwards onto what felt like a wall to keep his balance. Noise surrounded him. As he took his time to breathe, his ears started to clear up, picking up the sound of…birds. Lots of them.
He forced one of his eyes open again, this time with much more success. He was surrounded by concrete and the backdrops of many buildings, at least he was pretty sure they were buildings with his slightly blurred vision. He could quickly tell that the birds around him were crows, and they did not like him.
Gordon pushed himself away from the wall once he felt strength return to his legs, allowing himself to walk around a bit to better assess the situation. The architecture seemed…well, given how messed up Gordon's memory was right now, he could only settle on 'Somewhere European' at best until he could get the static out of his head. He readjusted the way his lab coat sat on his shoulders before stumbling around more in a dazed state.
A door slammed against a nearby wall, immediately grabbing his attention. A stranger in a heavy, black outfit and a skull-like mask pointed at him.
"You-!" They paused, then pointed at the door they'd come through. "Come with me."
Gordon didn't have much time to react, the stranger having walked around and promptly shoving him inside. It was cold as shit outside, so Gordon was grateful for that, kinda…
More masked strangers, who Gordon could only assume were security guards of some sort, were inside the building, looking at him with an oppressive sense of judgment. Has he done something wrong? He didn't even know how he got here, nevermind what sort of punishable offense he may have performed.
They stopped at a door, his intimidating escort exchanging a hushed conversation with another guard on the other side.
The second guard shuffled aside, allowing the first to lead Gordon into a room that was…was…was that blood beneath that chair???
"…Need any help with this one?" The other guard asked, much to Gordon's concern.
"Nah, I'm good." Said the first.
The second guard left, leaving Gordon with an absolute stranger. He did his best to betray the fear coursing through him, which was surprisingly easy when his body was barely functional from whatever sleep had overtaken him.
The guard mumbled something about "privacy" while they did something to cut off the nearby cameras. Finally, they…pulled off their mask, letting out a deep sigh. "We're safe to talk for a little bit…"
Gordon was, admittedly, taken aback. He was expecting torture with how roughly he was being handled.
The guard, masculine if he had to judge by the voice alone (his one eye still wasn't doing much for him), seemed to expect a response of sorts. Not too surprising, most people expect somebody that can talk…not a legally deaf and mute man.
"Hey," The guard spoke, "are you…can you hear me alright? Nod your head two times if you can."
Gordon tilted his head. Now that he thought about it, did somebody give him hearing aids while he was unconscious? He'd never been able to hear this well from his left ear before, and his right ear was hearing just as phenomenally now.
Wearily, Gordon nodded twice at the guard. This situation just kept getting weirder.
"Okay, are you able to speak?"
Could he? Given how weird this was getting, he wouldn't be surprised if somebody had given him functional vocal cords as well. He would prefer not to find out right now, however. So…no. No he could not.
"I see, sorry about that…Do you know where you are, or how you got here?"
No again, unfortunately.
"Alright." The guard crossed his arms. "I'm gonna do what I can to get you to connected with people who know you, okay? Just gimme a second…"
He got close to Gordon's face, seeming to make a mental note of something before walking circles around him to continue his assessment.
Gordon stood around awkwardly, curious to know what this man would ask him next.
"Is it okay if I check your pockets?"
His pockets? Well, he seemed to be a guard of some sort so…that wasn't a particularly weird thing to ask. All of his pants had pockets, after all, and so did most of his shirts for work!
Although, the fact that Gordon's skin didn't feel like he'd been soaked in a lake anymore but could definitely feel a draft around the room…he was now feeling very self-conscious and actively choosing to not look at himself.
Instead, he simply nodded and decided to focus his attention on the guard in front of him. It seemed to do him well as the man started to come into focus. The man looked to be in his forties, and a very handsome member of his age group for that matter. He also looked…strangely familiar…
Did he know this man? Surely not. He'd remember a face like that.
Except…he was certain that he had, but couldn't pin down why.
A migraine came unto Gordon, images appearing in his mind: the test chamber, Barney locked out of a door, a computer exploding, Eli looking at him with a mixture of fear and relief…
He clutched his head from the pain.
"Woah, hey now!" The guard pulled him over to a chair. "If you're trying to remember something, let's take it slow…I'm sure it'll come back to you naturally…"
Gordon complied, and decided to lean back on the chair. His muscles all relaxed as he did so. Had they really been that tight? What had Gordon been up to?
The guard searched the breast pocket of his lab coat…pulling out a very stupid-looking tie.
"Heh, I hope you're just holding this ridiculous thing for a friend."
Gordon chuckled quietly. He wished it was just being held onto for a friend. He hated that stupid tie, and so did everybody else at work.
"I haven't seen a tie like this in a long time…" The guard said, seeming to reminisce over it. Had this guy worked at Black Mesa? It was a massive facility…if this guy really had worked there, it wouldn't surprise Gordon if maybe he had seen this guy in passing. It didn't explain what he meant by having not seen such a tie in 'a long time,' though. The ties were issued to everybody, yes, but Gordon was of the understanding that they were a very recent inclusion, having replaced some other, equally-ridiculous ties before he was hired.
He got part of an answer as the guard looked over at the opposite side of his coat's breast, clearly recognizing it as he whispered something under his breath.
Another migraine came, a flash of radioactive-green light, accompanied by the sounds of people crying out in fear and pain, pierced itself into his memory.
The test, oh dear god. The test!
He raised up a hand to try and communicate.
He was supposed to be getting to the surface.
He was supposed to be letting somebody, anybody know that there were people who were injured and dying and-
"This has already come to pass. That battle, for you, has long since been won…"
It…it was the same voice that had woken him up, or at least a similar one. Gordon couldn't make heads or tails about where it was coming from, but it felt like it had come from his own brain. The words, for now, put him enough at ease to lower his hand before he could attempt communication with the guard.
Said guard frowned before searching through one of the jacket's side pockets…an ID. Gordon's ID!!!
The guard looked at the ID, fixated on it. He almost seemed ready to cry…
"Gordon Freeman…" he sighed with a longing tone.
Yes, that was his name.
"…what?" The guard seemed confused, which made Gordon confused. That was his ID, right?
He looked at it…yeah, it was definitely his. He looked back at the guard now and replicated the stoic expression in the photo. God, it was such a bad picture of him. Gordon had always looked better in group photos…
The guard looked at the ID again. Gordon maintained his expression, but he couldn't help but squint a bit in annoyance. Was it really that hard to match somebody's face with their ID?
A horrified expression began to creep onto the guard's face. "…Gordon?"
He nodded in affirmation.
The man's eyes widened, he hurriedly looked through the last pocket in his jacket and pulled out…
His glasses.
But…no, that couldn't make sense. They were clearly his glasses but the lenses were in terrible condition. But also, if those were his glasses, then how was Gordon able to see so well right now, even with only one eye open? Had whoever that had given Gordon new hearing aids given him new eyes as well??
Gordon's wondering had to wait as the guard asked him once more, this time with hope in his voice…
"Gordon??"
He was beginning to believe this was more than just an issue with his ID.
It did not stop him from confirming his identity once more, much to the tearful relief of the man in front of him.
"Oh……my god, it's…you're…" he laughed a bit as he returned the glasses to his pocket.
Why was he laughing? Did they know each other?
"I guess it has been a while, hasn't it? It's me, Gordon. It's Barney…"
Barney?
Barney??
No…no way…
Gordon shot out of his chair to hug the man.
Dear god…Barney…he looked so much older now.
"How did this happen?" He asked as they separated.
Gordon could ask the same of him! People didn't just age 20 years overnight, after all.
"I mean it, how did…" He gestured to Gordon vaguely. "…THIS happen?"
He didn't…understand the question here. Was there something wrong with him? Maybe he got disfigured during the Resonance Cascade and that's why he didn't match his ID?
Barney could read his confusion and seemed to wince in thought over something. "I'm gonna take it you DON'T know what's happened, then."
He really didn't, no.
"Okay…I'm just…" He looked around, took in a deep breathe to collect himself, then looked at Gordon. "So for starters…it's been twenty years since Black Mesa."
Oh. Shit. That alone explained a lot, actually. Maybe he wasn't disfigured, just old. Perhaps he'd been in a coma. But that still didn't explain how he got here and why his hearing and vision were completely changed.
"The look you're giving me suggests that this is new information. So uh…next couple of parts. We're currently someplace where I THINK Russia used to be. Also Earth is kinda under new management, and these new guys messed it up pretty bad while you were gone."
New management?
Visions of alien invaders came to him, then a vision of a chamber in the Lambda Labs, and finally an alien world…but Gordon had been sent out to stop the invasion, hadn't he?
"It's a long story," Barney sighed, "I'll catch you up on the details later."
Well, now Gordon was anxious to know if he'd killed the wrong alien leader.
"And lastly…uh…" He contemplatively bit his lower lip. "Well…shit…how do I say this without being completely blunt?"
Barney wouldn't be acting this weird if Gordon just looked older. Looked like disfigurement was back on the list of possibilities.
Sighing again, Barney looked him in the eye. "Can you promise me you won't panic?"
With how weird Barney was acting? No. He could not.
"Well, at least you're honest." The man laughed nervously. He slowly reached over to one of Gordon's hands and pulled it into view-
That wasn't his hand.
He was fully aware that his nervous system was receiving inputs of pressure from the hand in front of him being held within Barney's, and that when he told his brain to close his hand around Barney's that the amphibious claws before him did so, but that was not his hand.
It couldn't be.
He looked to his other hand, a mirror image of the first, and following the length of the arm to his shoulder, clearly draped with a lab coat. His vision was drawn to his chest, hairless but sprouting a third, smaller arm from the center of the breast area. His legs were digitigrade with almost hoove-like digits, the sight of which made Gordon feel unsteady.
He compulsively opened his other eye…eyes…to see better. He had four of them now, and not in the way he was used to, either. They followed his vision like normal eyes, but the field of view provided from having new and unfamiliar ocular receptors was immediately overwhelming. He closed all his eyes and tried to cover his mouth to keep himself from hyperventilating.
His heavy breaths pressed warm air onto his chest, causing him to realize that his mouth was much closer to his chin than it should have been.
"Gordon, it's okay." Barney said with a forced calmness, "Just try to steady your breathing. Freaking out isn't going to help us right now-"
He wanted to scream.
He could not be allowed to scream.
Because he knew that if he screamed, the voice coming out, even if he'd never had one before, would not belong to him.
Nervous heaving sounds sputtered from the back of his throat, doing nothing to alleviate the ever-growing desire to scream at the horror of what he had become without his knowledge.
And then the ever-prevalent static in his head, while never ceasing, began to formulate into…into words and questions, conversations…observations.
"The Freeman appears to be in a state of panic. This was to be expected."
"It will take much time for the Freeman to become accustomed-"
"His mind has awakened and his body has opened itself up to the Vortessence!"
"His safe retrieval shall bring much rejoice."
It wasn't static. It was voices.
Millions, maybe even billions of voices overlapping so heavily that it was comparable to the sound of white noise. Most spoke in a tongue he couldn't understand, but they were definitely voices. It was an almost hypnotic melody of commotion within his mind, his horror briefly overridden by wonder…
A pounding noise shook Gordon out of his trance.
"Shit, Gordon!" Barney ran towards a door in the back part of the room, swinging it wide open.
"Get in here. We can't let anybody see you wandering around, you'll stick out like a sore thumb…"
He listened without question, his terrible legs carrying him inside some sort of storage room.
"Try to see if any of the boxes back here have space for you to hide in, and keep quiet until I come find you."
With the door closed behind him, Gordon was now alone to scrounge around for a hiding spot. He was quite thankful that this new body, as horrifying as it was, was strong enough to pry open some of the boxes he found with so much ease. Most of them had labels written in a language Gordon couldn't understand, so of course the one to stand out most to him was a wooden container that was left completely unmarked. This had been the fourth box he had searched, all the others were tightly packed with suitcases or miscellaneous items that Gordon wouldn't be able to remove without causing a ruckus; this box by comparison was mainly filled with…straw, which was what one would normally expect to find in a shipping container if they were carrying something fragile. But there didn't seem to be anything especially fragile inside, just a bulletproof vest of some kind and a…set of familiar-looking black-and-white camo.
Images of the soldiers Gordon had to fight flashed into his memory.
Why did Barney have a box with this stuff inside? There was clearly more space than was necessary…enough for Gordon to slip in and hide underneath the uniform and all of that straw.
Gordon couldn't afford to be picky right now with how worried Barney sounded about his safety, so into the box he went!
It would be difficult enough to maneuver into the box without making much noise, but it was more so now that Gordon was actively aware of his alien body. As he clumsily tried to perfect getting the lid of the box back on, another voice spoke to him.
"The Freeman's cover is too shallow. A quick glance will spell his doom."
He processed the comment. His feet were pressed against one wall of the box while his back sat against the opposite side. It was comfortable…but the voice was correct to say that he would be seen if the box was opened for any reason.
He decidedly shuffled around some until he was decently buried beneath the straw and the other items.
Just in time, too.
He heard the door open.
"Your confidence in my disloyalty is offensive."
"A mandatory search was requested."
"I have nothing to hide."
"The inactivity of your camera feed exceeded its required blackout time."
"You know I don't like the cameras to see my dirty work…"
"Overwatch requires searches like this for any nonstandard activity. Visual and audio inactivity, noncompliance with uniform code, suspicious transmission feeds…you should know this by now."
Silence overcame the room, followed by the crunching of wood boxes being pulled open.
Gordon slowly took in breath as the sound traveled closer to him, filling his new lungs to capacity when the crunching came from just above him.
A hand sifted through the straw around him, paused, then sifted again before whoever outside the box gave up.
"Has Overwatch confirmed an origin for this unlabeled cargo?"
"Negative."
"Understood. Your station appears to be uncompromised, as you have stated. I will make appropriate communications about-"
The rest of the conversation occurred out of earshot. Gordon let out a relieved sigh while he tossed around to his side and waited for Barney to come back.
The temptation to sleep so he could ignore his new body was powerful, but he urged himself to stay awake until he was safe. If there was one thing he had learned while fighting for his life, it was that rest could not be assured without absolute confidence in one's safety. He'd let his guard down once, and it got him thrown into a garbage disposal.
He wasn't letting that happen again.
Unfortunately, that meant the alternative was to get comfortable with his new body. Undesirable, but necessary.
He moved some straw aside to look at himself again. Gordon had good reason to narrow down the possibilities of what species of alien he'd become down to one very particular species from his journey: the alien slave. The details all matched to what he'd seen, right down to the mottled skin and how approximately human-sized he was compared to the short list of other upright species he'd seen.
Gordon couldn't help but fixate on what Barney had said about Earth being under 'New Management.' He hadn't seen any other aliens so far, but the fact that everybody acted so suspicious around him…it seemed pretty obvious that, enslaved or not, he wore the face of the enemy. Gordon messed up with killing whichever thing was in charge, the aliens took over Earth in his absence, and now he looked like one of them.
It was…god.
It was terrible to think about, if that really were the case. All that effort, just to kill the wrong guy. He was a traitor to either species in this case, too internally human to comfortably live as one of the aliens and too externally alien to live among his fellow man.
"Gordon, hey!" Barney's voice called out. "I got those guys outta my hair for a bit, we can talk again."
Gordon couldn't move his body, far too ashamed to show himself. Barney must have been putting his job at risk just to save him. He didn't deserve such a good friend.
"Gordon? Oh god, please don't be outside somewhere…"
He worked up the strength to sit upright and push open the box he was hiding. His vision was obscured by tears, but he could tell the man was about to climb up the nearby ladder.
"Gordon, thank god. I was worried you had-oh…" Barney frowned. "Hey, don't…it's okay, we're going to get you somewhere safe. Come on." He helped pull him out of the box and wiped away some of his tears. "I've got ways to contact people without being detected, and I think I know somebody that will be very happy to know you're alive."