Gordon squints against the sudden glare of light ahead. As he adjusts, his hand drops from his eyes, revealing… another dirty hall. He doesn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t this: stale air, bare concrete floors, rusted barrels and wooden pallets stacked in the corners, and a curved aluminum semi-circle of a roof, like somebody’s sliced a giant dryer hose in half and strung it up above their heads. This was supposed to be a big deal, right? For hours, all anyone’s been trying to get him to do is make it to Black Mesa East. Couldn’t they have at least come up with with some exciting new assets?
A side door opens behind him as he slowly approaches the middle of the hall, and the guard from earlier emerges, chest thrust out. “It’s an honor to meet you, Dr. Freeman,” he says, attempting a salute. It jostles his helmet, and he hurriedly rights it.
“Might wanna tighten up those straps,” Alyx tells him, a wry smile on her face. Like it’s a running joke.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s nice to see you too, Alyx. Here, I’ll take you down to Dr. Vance. If he knew I was keeping you waiting…”
He chuckles good-naturedly, then walks ahead, briefly looking back at Gordon to make sure he’s following. It takes Gordon a moment to catch on.
At the far end of the hall, a niche buds off the left wall, and laid into it is a plain brown security door, with deep, corrugated ridges along its front, a small sliding panel at eyeball height, and no visible handle. Instead, it’s wired to a control panel, much the same as all the doors leading up to this point. Sweat starts to bead under Gordon’s collar. There’s something unnerving about all the security theater, something that makes him feel like he’s being led into a bank vault and any misstep on his part would mean half a dozen security guards pinning him to the ground, guns in hand. Or, like, maybe they’d just lock him in and let him starve. Either way, it’s not a reassuring thought.
The guard keys in the access code, and the door slides open to the muffled sound of a hidden pneumatic system. Behind it lies a room split in half by a chainlink cage, guarding a long, brightly-lit access tunnel that descends into the far distance, as well as the generator that powers the lights overhead, purring like an enormous mechanical kitten in the corner. And, for some reason, a truck. An old-timey, broken-down thing. Gordon’s not fully certain how they even got it down here. Or why.
That’s not their destination, though. Instead, he’s directed to an elevator just past the barrier, its entrance grated off by criss-crossed diamonds of iron like it’s been plucked straight out of the 40’s. And, judging by the wizened groan of pulleys and gears when the guard pushes the ‘down’ button, that might not be an exaggeration.
“Glad to have you on board,” the guard says. “We could really use the help around here.”
“Help? Oh, yeah, of course. Gordon helpin’,” says Gordon, haggard. “If you need to hit some shit with a crowbar, I’m your man.”
That gets a snort out of him. “Me and the boys down in Security got that covered. But it’s your brain everybody wants to pick, Dr. Freeman. Not mine.” He knocks on the side of his helmet for emphasis.
At that, Gordon blurts out, “What? Why?”
“You were at Black Mesa, Gordon,” Alyx says. She comes around his side to better look him in the eye. “There’s not a whole lot of theoretical physicists to go around… especially not ones with firsthand experience of the Resonance Cascade.”
“Right,” he says weakly. “So, what, no more hitting things? I dunno, I’m having a hard time believing I’m about to jump into, like, Spreadsheet Simulator all of a sudden.”
Alyx and the guard share a look. He’s getting awfully fucking tired of all the meaningful looks people keep having around him, like there’s a silent conversation about him that he’s not privy to. He knows that the guys down in Haptic Feedback like to have a little laugh at the eggheads in Anomalous Materials, make them feel good and stupid every once in awhile, but this is getting to be a bit much.
“No more hitting things. Unless you wanna go out back and play some baseball with Dog,” says Alyx, shoving her hands into her jacket pockets with a smile.
“Oh, shit, a dog? I love dogs!”
The elevator lurches and rattles into position, its protective grate splitting in two before sliding neatly out of sight. It doesn’t look like any elevator he’s ever used before, with a single flickering incandescent bulb fixed to the ceiling, its steel beams painted lima bean green and arranged like he’s stepping into an observation deck, except all the protective glass has long since been smashed out of its fixtures. Or, Gordon suspects, it was never there in the first place.
He runs a gloved fingertip over the waist-high barrier as he steps inside. “This doesn’t seem very OSHA-compliant.”
“We’ve been making do with what we got,” the guard tells him. “Just stand clear if it makes you real nervous.”
Gordon takes him up on that offer, moving smack dab into the middle of the carriage. With Alyx at his left and the guard at his right (and seriously, he’s gotta ask the guy’s name, they’ve been talking long enough that it’s getting awkward referring to him as “the guard” in his brain), his stomach lurches as the elevator begins its slow, noisy descent.
They pass by layer after layer of cold, hard stone, damp crawling on its roughly-hewn surface, somehow making Gordon feel more claustrophobic than if he was sealed into a ordinary, windowless box heading down the shaft. And then an opening emerges, a window into another world: a residential area behind the same type of protective gate, lined with rows of single beds and floor-length lockers. There’s a couch, a plywood table, painted white and crowded with benches, and a Vortigaunt, deep in thought as it ponders its next move in a game of chess. Neither it nor its companion so much as look up as they pass.
“My dad’s been working on a more reliable kind of teleportation technology,” Alyx says, breaking the silence. “Like what we tried to use to get here. But with less, uh, mishaps.”
She grins and nudges Gordon with her elbow, prompting a little laugh from him. “Well, it got you here in one piece, right? I mean, I’m assuming all your bits are where they’re supposed to be.”
Alyx raises both hands and wiggles her fingers at him. Yep, that’s all ten. Her hands are sheathed in fingerless leather gloves, nails clean and clipped short, and Gordon can’t help but pay particular attention to it. His ears burn with an acute embarrassment.
“Mm-hm. All my bits accounted for. I’m a little worried about you, though,” she says. Her hands drop back to her sides, and she gestures at his middle, at the gaping fucking hole in his undersuit. “Hopefully it wasn’t the teleporter that bit you like that. I don’t think my dad would be very thrilled to hear that.”
“What? No,” he snorts, “that was a— God, I think it was a helicopter? They were shooting some real weird shit at me. Like… man, I’m not even sure if it hurt. It’s hard to remember.” Gordon places a hand on the exposed bandages, then winces. It might not have hurt then, but it hurts now, that’s for sure.
Alyx bites her lip, concerned. “We’ll have to get that looked at,” she murmurs.
Behind her, the entrance to the previous floor disappears, subsumed by rock, then another appears a short while later. This one reveals a kitchen, commercial in design, with shining stainless steel lining its walls and floors. Shafts of wan fluorescent light cast two aproned Vortigaunts into soft relief, where they’re hard at work chopping vegetables and keeping a careful eye on bubbling pots. They’ve also got tall white chef hats on. Gordon chuckles, caught off guard.
“Nice hats.”
Alyx looks at him. “What’s wrong with the hats?”
“Every chef’s gotta wear a hat,” the guard pipes up matter-of-factly.
“Do they have to wear the hats?”
“No, they just like to,” Alyx says. “It’s a professional thing.”
“You’re telling me those Vortigaunts are professional chefs.”
Both of them round on him now. “They’re certified,” the guard tells him, arms folded, like this is a completely normal thing to say.
“Oh, yeah, okay, they’re certified. Of course,” Gordon says. He throws his hands up in the air. “Why wouldn’t they be?”
Further down, the third floor contains yet more Vortigaunts, these ones in a cramped, dimly-lit hall, framed on both sides by strange octagonal machines that jut from the walls. The fleshy wrinkles of their alien bodies stand out, suddenly awash in harsh green light, as they collectively summon spheres of crackling energy, molding them between their hands and blasting them at some kind of energy receptacles on the machines’ fronts.
“What are they doing?” Gordon asks. He keeps his voice low, worried they’ll overhear.
“They’re recharging our power supplies,” says Alyx. “Those batteries supply power to the entire complex. We used to get power from the hydroelectric station, but, well… You saw what happened to it. It’s been getting harder and harder to maintain control over the grid.”
“Wow. What can’t they do, huh?”
“Just don’t ask ‘em to tell any jokes,” the guard says. “I dunno what kind of humor they got on Xen, but I don’t think it translates too good.”
Alyx rolls her eyes. “Can you guys give it a rest?” She then turns to address Gordon directly. “Look, I know it’s been a long time since you were out of stasis, but things have changed,” she tells him, unexpectedly serious. “The Vortigaunts aren’t your enemies anymore. They practically worship you, Gordon. And they’re just as much a part of the Resistance as we are, so you should keep that in mind before you talk about them like they’re not even human. Paul.”
“Jeez, sorry,” the guard - Paul - says, wincing.
Gordon tamps down the thought that they’re not human, technically, because he’s feeling pretty dressed down at this point and doesn’t wanna make it worse. So he just rubs the side of his arm and says, “Yeah, uh. I guess I’ve got a lot of shit to get used to.”
As he speaks, the elevator drops past the generators, and the low ceilings of the floors previous are replaced with one much higher, high enough to accommodate enormous, futuristic machines dangling from the roof and belted onto the walls. Monitors with fluctuating readings, heat maps, illegible spreadsheets and video feeds occupy every available surface; between them lie floor-length tubes of mysterious fluids, glass cages flickering with amber light, elaborate chemical installations gently bubbling away in fume hoods. The floors are old vinyl, a speckled shade of blue, swept clean and kept free of the odds and ends he’d seen at Kleiner’s lab, but still stained with years of footprints that scrubbing simply couldn’t get out, it seems. All of Black Mesa East speaks to the same: a determined effort to keep something old and worn as clean and functional as possible, under the circumstances.
And in the center of the room stands Dr. Vance, with a woman and a Vortigaunt at his side.
Chainlink fence cordons off the upper portion of the room, allowing a full view of the sprawling laboratory before him without the temptation of hopping out the side of the elevator and dropping to the floor below, pancake-style. Eventually, the carriage settles into place with a satisfying thunk.
“Dad, look who I found,” Alyx calls out, the smile returning to her face.
“Alyx!” He steps forward to meet them, beaming, and wraps Alyx in a warm hug that she eagerly reciprocates. Then he places his hands on her shoulders and examines her at arm’s length. “You nearly gave the old man a heart attack, running off like that.”
She groans, but not in an annoyed way. More like ‘fond’. “I can take care of myself, Dad. It’s the other guy you ought to worry about… You won’t believe the mess Gordon was about to walk into.”
“Hey, I can take care of myself, too! I just— It would have taken a little longer, that’s all,” Gordon insists.
The Vortigaunt stares at them, unblinking, then shuffles off to fiddle with a generator in the back.
Dr. Vance turns his eye on Gordon, and his smile comes much warmer than Gordon thinks the situation warrants. As if he’s looking at a long-lost son, and not just some guy he used to work with at the top-secret crystal factory. Makes him tense up a little. The guy’s got on a vintage Harvard T-shirt, as if to remind Gordon that, yes, this is one smart cookie. In case the sprawling lab around him didn’t make that obvious. Up close, and without the barrier of an old, fuzzy CRT display between them, it’s easier to make out the lines around his eyes, the veins in his gnarled hands. And the prosthetic leg, too. He’s not sure he caught that before.
“Gordon Freeman,” he breathes. “Let me get a look at you, man! My God, you haven’t changed one iota. How do you do it?”
He claps Gordon’s arm, overly familiar, and Gordon stiffens under it. “I dunno,” he says awkwardly. “I just kind of woke up like this. Uh, Dr. Vance. Sir.”
What the fuck was that? Why is his first instinct to start talking to this old dude like he’s a fucking drill sergeant? He wants to start over and try again, save himself some embarrassment. And he would, if he could just hit the right button. Instead, however, his hands just twitch at his sides, fumbling for something he can neither see nor feel.
Dr. Vance holds him there a moment, eyes searching him. “Oh, c’mon, Gordon. Don’t talk to me like you’re fresh out of your post-doc,” he grins at last. “It’s Eli! Now, let’s see… The last time I saw you, I sent you up for help after the resonance cascade. I never thought it would take you this long to get back to me!”
“Did you?”
Before Dr. Vance - or, uh, Eli - can respond, the blonde woman next to him gives him the same treatment: the wide-eyed, incredulous stare, the hand brought hesitantly to the mouth. Like they’re looking at an apparition. For a second, he almost believes it’s real.
“Doctor Freeman? Gordon Freeman? Is that you? You’ve made it here this quickly? I’m amazed,” she says.
Her voice is husky with age, not emotion, and some wretched twist in his brain makes him blush when he hears it. ‘MILFs in VR’ wasn’t something he was expecting to have it bad for, but, well, you learn something new every day. She doesn’t look half-bad, either - trim, well-kept, deceptively youthful despite the clear evidence of age lining her face. Man, Craig’s good, he’s gotta admit. This is beyond Kane and Lynch 2. Years beyond.
“I’m Dr. Mossman. Dr. Judith Mossman.” She extends a hand to him, and he stares dumbly at it before realizing she’s trying to shake his hand. “I’ve been hearing about you since long before the Black Mesa incident. Ah, Black Mesa! I do so envy you, working with Eli and Dr. Kleiner when they were at the top of their field.”
“Nice to meet you, uh. Dr. Mossman? Judith? Yeah, so, I’ve got, like, a million questions, Judith, and I’m hoping that you guys can set me straight. Because I’m gonna be real with you, if I don’t get some answers - or at least, like, a nap - I’m going to McFucking snap,” he laughs, voice pitching up sharply - it's all sheer unhinged anxiety.
Alyx steps in, placating the sudden alarm on Eli and Judith’s faces by saying, “IIII don’t think Gordon’s slept in awhile. And he could really use a medic.” What Gordon doesn’t notice is her silently mouthing afterward, “So cut him some slack.”
“Okay, Gordon,” Eli says slowly. “Come on and have a seat. We’ll fill you in. And don’t worry - you’re safe here, alright? We’ll get you out of that hazard suit and back into your lab coat, where you belong.”
Something hot and wet wells up involuntarily behind his eyes. If he were feeling a little less sleep-deprived and a little more in touch with his own body, he’d properly identify it as ‘tears’, but Gordon’s convinced that his vision’s starting to swim out of pure exhaustion, so he just stares straight forward and locks his knees to keep himself from falling over.
“Yeah, okay,” says Gordon. He obediently follows them all to a desk, the closest thing there seems to be to a round table in this particular room, and they gather up chairs around it, letting Gordon have the first of them.
“So. Welcome to the lab,” Eli starts, hand sweeping out in a broad gesture. “It’s not Black Mesa, but it’s served us well enough. We’ve been waiting for you for a long, long time.”
“How long is ‘long’?”
“Twenty years,” Alyx tells him. Not for the first time, he recalls.
“MIT graduates are few and far between these days,” says Judith, with a dry, quiet laugh. “With a physicist of your… accomplishments, we should be able to make significant headway in our research.”
Gordon blinks, suddenly dizzy. “Research? I think you might have the wrong guy.”
“Don’t be modest, Gordon. Your work with manifolds was ahead of its time.” Eli leans back in his chair and folds his hands behind his head. “Izzy might as well have framed it, with how often he ended up making use of it.”
“We’re closing in on a reliable local transport technology, something the Combine still hasn’t mastered,” Judith continues. “Eli thinks their portals are string-based, much like our Calabi-Yau model, but they’ve failed to factor in dark energy equations. They can tunnel through from their universe, but once they’re here they’re dependent on local transportation. If they knew what we’re doing with entanglement—”
“Oh, listen to her! I’ve never seen you so excited to talk about this,” beams Eli.
She rolls her eyes, but can’t hide the smile that’s been blooming on her face. Alyx rolls her eyes, too, but Gordon gets the feeling she’s doing it for entirely different reasons.
“It’s just exciting to think we’ll finally get to work together, that’s all. I’ve heard a lot about you, Dr. Freeman.”
“You guys gotta stop calling me that. It’s giving me the heebie-jeebies.”
“Very well… Gordon.” She takes a deep breath and re-centers herself. “Where was I? Oh, yes. Dr. Kleiner compressed the Xen relay far beyond anything he imagined at Black Mesa. We’ve figured out how to use Xen as an unexpressed axis, effectively a dimensional slingshot, so we can sling around the borderworld and come back to local space without having to pass through.”
The gears in his head take their sweet time to churn, but churn they do. “So you’re saying… we work on this new transporter, we get to - to teleport wherever we want, whenever we want. And the Combine can’t,” he says slowly.
“Basically.” Alyx crosses one leg over the other.
“And… then we win?”
“That’s the plan,” Eli grins.
“There’s a few intermediary steps, of course. We’ve been recruiting defectors from City 17, organizing a proper militia… This moment has been a long time coming,” says Judith. “Oh, but I’m getting ahead of myself. We need to get you some civilian clothes, get you down to the medical ward… Let me finish up some work and I’ll see what I can dig up. I’m sure Eli will be happy to fill you in on the rest.” She stands and clasps her hands together, her head bowing a little. “It’s been a real honor, Dr. Freeman. I’m looking forward to working together.”
“My pleasure,” he says faintly, watching her leave.
When he turns back to Alyx and Eli, father and daughter both, their smiles have faded from optimistic to strained. Alyx glances first at her father, then at Gordon, and says, “So… that’s the good news.”
“Oh, God. Don’t tell me there’s bad news. I’m so sick of bad news, man.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Eli says carefully. He works his mouth from side to side, as if searching for just the right words, then continues, “We’ve been looking at our records from the day you arrived in City 17. We’re monitoring all kinds of data - seismographs, communications, disturbances in the electromagnetic fields… Something happened when you came here, Gordon. And we’ve been trying to puzzle out what it was, what the ramifications are.”
“Well, yeah, I coulda fuckin’ told you that,” he says before he can even think about it. Then, abashed, he follows up with, “My bad. I got a— Got a real bad habit of swearing, and I kind of feel like I shouldn’t? Right now? I’m getting some serious teacher vibes, is all I’m saying, and I know you’re not gonna put me in detention or whatever, but…”
The way Eli stares at him makes him trail off and stop talking.
“I’m not gonna stop you. I’m not your father,” Eli says.
Be that as it may, Gordon can’t shake the feeling that he’s done something wrong, anyway. Maybe it’s the Harvard shirt. You can’t swear in front of a dude who went to Harvard. (MIT is a different story.)
“We found something in the Xen crystal measurements, Gordon.” Alyx takes over, doing her best to move past the awkward silence. “It’s similar to what my dad found just after the Resonance Cascade, and to the disturbances we see after we use our own teleporters. But the thing is…”
Gordon waits for her to continue, but she just bites her lip, uncertain. Impatience takes over. “What? What is it? I already know I got, like, snapped over here, like fuckin’ Thanos. That’s not news. So why are you all being so cryptic?”
“It wasn’t just you,” Eli tells him. “There were three anomalies. Two shortly before Barney spotted you coming off that train, and one after.”
He blinks, then lets out a long, aggrieved groan, his head dropping into his hands. He doesn’t fucking care, man! He doesn’t want any more plot, he doesn’t want any more game! He wants to know why the fuck he can’t log out and go home! It’s been days upon days of nothing but running and fighting and arguing and none of this shit matters to him! When are they gonna let him out? When is Craig gonna let him out?!
Gordon’s throat twinges. It’s only then that he realizes that none of that was an internal monologue. It was, in fact, painfully external, and he peers up through his fingers to find the two of them with their hands near their mouths, a shared familial quirk of surprise.
“…Okay, Gordon,” Eli says, slow and cautious. “I hear you. We’re gonna find out how to… how to get you where you need to go. But I think we should get you checked out before we—”
“No!”
He jerks his head up and sits upright, spine straight as a board.
“I don’t need to see a fucking doctor, alright?! Stop jerking me around! I need! To go! Home! What don’t you understand?!” It’s all spilling out of him, bright and hot and ugly, a foaming pyroclastic flow that he couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. “I’m not fucking crazy! I’m not! I know it’s a game! I don’t care how convincing you guys are, I don’t know what Black Mesa’s fucking end game is with this, and you know what? It doesn’t matter! I’m not crazy, because Benrey’s fucking here with me!”
Gordon swings his arm out, gesturing to where Benrey should be, but in his total fucking meltdown, Gordon’s forgotten that he isn’t. He left. He threw a bitchfit at Gordon and left. That doesn’t fully deflate him, though - he simply rebounds on Alyx, animated afresh.
“You saw him! Didn’t you?!”
She rears back, eyebrows drawn together. “…I did.”
“Oh my God, if he was here right now, that’d prove everything,” Gordon moans, despondent. His fingers card through his hair, leaving his ponytail a ragged, frazzled remnant of what it once was. “He’s— He’s— I don’t even know how he got here, a fuckin’ glitch in the system, I guess, but he’s— Benrey’s the one fucking thing keeping from from going full-on, pants-on-head insane right now, and I think that might actually be the most deranged thing I’ve ever said. Which is saying a lot.”
That vivacity springs to life in him again, and he hops out of his seat, gesturing wildly.
“How the fuck do you think he ran off with the airboat?! That gate was closed! Solid! Cerrado! How’s that for fuckin’ high school foreign language requirements? Anyway, uh, newsflash, he just noclipped through the goddamn thing, because he’s a video game guy from the video game that I was in! God, where is he? Why can’t he ever be here when I need him?!”
“I don’t have a good answer for that one,” Alyx says carefully. She gets to her feet and reaches a hesitant hand out toward his elbow. “But we’re on your side, okay, Gordon? We want to figure out what’s going on just as much as you do.”
Eli nods in agreement. “Something strange is afoot, no matter which way you slice it,” he mutters.
Gordon lets out a short burst of laughter, but there’s no humor in it. “No fucking kidding!”
“Tell me, man. What do you want us to do?” Eli fixes him with a steady gaze, and leans forward to put his hands on his knees. “I may not know how to turn it off for you, but we’ll do what we can.”
“I don’t know,” he snaps, “I don’t know! Fuck! I just - I - I’m running on empty, okay, and I haven’t even had a chance to eat or sleep or take a piss or— or anything! I just want out!”
Alyx’s hand drops down to take his own, her touch gentle and warm, even through the glove. He blinks at her, taken aback. “Sleep sounds like a good idea. Don’t you think?” Her other hand covers the top of his, enveloping him.
“Yeah,” he says, uncertain.
“I bet Dr. Mossman’s got a bed sorted out for you already. She’s nothing if not efficient,” Alyx smiles. There’s something dry to it. “I’ll see if she can’t bring your lab coat up to the medic’s. We’ll get that HEV suit off of you, take a look, and then you can sleep as long as you want. Pain-free. What do you say?”
She’s— she’s charming him, Gordon thinks wildly. Talking him down like he’s a mental patient. Worse, though, is the fact that it’s working: his mouth snaps shut, his hands stop clenching into fists. His hackles slowly, slowly start to drop.
“Okay,” he starts. “That’s - we can do that. Uh.” Gordon’s eyes drop down to their hands, then back up to her. “Are you hitting on me? This is a weird fucking time to be hitting on me. I mean, not that I mind—”
She bursts out laughing at that, cutting off his neurotic spiral.
“C’mon, Gordon. Before you start giving my dad any ideas.”
“What do I got to do with any of this?” Eli says, hands raised in front of him.
“Wait, what?”
He’d love some elaboration on what’s supposed to be going on, here, but Alyx just starts tugging on his hand, leading him away. Eli stays seated at his desk, though he does call after them, “I’ll make sure Judith heads your way.”
She doesn’t keep holding his hand for long. Just long enough to get him out of the wooden double doors in the back of the lab, opening to an L-shaped hall. He can’t help but feel a little disappointed. And confused. Optimistic, too, but also frustrated, and tired, and a million other things all jostling up together under his chassis. Above all, however, the whole thing’s left him drained. So he trails after her, the dull thunk of his boots on linoleum echoing through the empty space. There are no windows down here, no light save for that from the long, cold fixtures above, with their intermittent flicker; the chipped teal of the waist-high paint on the walls looks unfathomably dark, like the depths of the ocean.
“It’s not far,” comes Alyx’s voice, rousing him from his thoughts.
Gordon mumbles something in response, though even he isn’t certain what. Her urgency’s gone, and now she accommodates Gordon’s downright-leaden pace instead, never straying too far.
True to her word, after another bend in the hall and a quick jaunt up some stairs, Alyx opens a door with a thin, rectangular window, much like a hospital door, into what Gordon’s trained eye can discern as a hospital ward. Funny how that works out. It’s smaller than the lab, housing maybe a dozen beds, all dull brass and creaky springs, with most unoccupied. A greying man with a tight-fitting cap attends to a patient, doling out medication, but the rest simply lie curled up on their sides and groan occasionally.
“Stomach bug,” Alyx murmurs before Gordon can ask. “It’s been making the rounds.”
The other attendant - a Vortigaunt dressed in an approximation of scrubs, which hang loosely around its upper body - catches his eye and shuffles over, with the same awkward, stilted gait of its peers.
“The One Free Man graces us with his presence,” it says, its voice harsh and grating, with all the grace of trying to hammer a screw into a wall for lack of a power drill. It spends only a moment searching Gordon’s face before dropping its gaze to the gash on his abdomen. “The journey has been fraught with peril. We have felt it, yes…”
A gnarled, three-fingered hand hovers over the bandaged wound, just shy of touching it. Gordon half-expects the Vortigaunt to start working its magic, but nothing happens, save for a slight narrowing of the Vortigaunt’s massive red eye. Its teeth click against one another.
“Well, I sure hope you didn’t feel this,” Gordon says, gesturing loosely at himself.
The Vortigaunt grunts. “Strange,” it mutters. “The flow of our mind-link is weakened here. What matter of weaponry could have obscured the Free Man from our sight?”
Gordon shrugs, feeling awfully helpless. “I dunno what to tell you, man. It was some kind of helicopter. Made the worst fucking noise I’ve ever heard when it was shooting at me. But, like, Benrey said that he and some guy fixed me up, so… Oh, jeez. Please tell me they actually fixed me up.”
That only gets him another grunt and a tug at the edges of the bandage. Gordon sucks in a sharp breath of air through his teeth. It’s not reassuring in the least, and only becomes less so when the Vortigaunt starts talking to itself, a low muttering about structural integrity. His heart leaps into his throat before he figures out that it’s talking about the suit and not, like, his body.
“There you are,” comes a voice from the other side of the ward; Gordon looks up to find Dr. Mossman striding in, a set of clothes in her arms. Her heels click on the tile floor.
“Oh hey, Doctor Mothman— Mossman, Jesus, sorry.”
She smiles thinly. “Please, call me Judith. I’ve brought you that labcoat… I imagine that you’re eager to get into civilian clothes at last.” It’s only at this point that she acknowledges Alyx with a sidelong glance, and says, “Alyx, I thought you were back on watch.”
Alyx folds her arms, a defensive stance. Gordon’s hairs stand on end as a sudden chill descends upon the conversation. “I’ve been relieved for the day so I could show Gordon around. Besides, somebody’s got to get his armor fixed up,” she says.
“I’ll have the repairs well in hand. After all, you’d be needing this, wouldn’t you?” Judith reaches underneath the clothing and pulls out a small toolbox, dotted with rust and emblazoned with the Black Mesa logo. “Somebody left the disassembly kit unattended in the back rooms. Hard to imagine how one could get him out of the suit, were it to go missing…”
“Are you accusing me of something?”
Judith raises her eyebrows. “No, not at all. I’m simply lending a hand. Sometimes I think you deliberately misunderstand me, Alyx.”
“Hey, uh,” Gordon interjects, “I don’t really care who does it, but can somebody please get me out of this fucking thing? No offense.”
They both blink at him, like they’ve forgotten he was even there until he spoke. “None taken,” Judith tells him. “Two sets of hands should make the work go faster. I’ll start with your arms, and Alyx can take your legs.”
Alyx’s mouth opens, then closes, her eyes narrowing in lieu of a response. “The faster we can get this over with, the better,” she grumbles, quiet enough that even Gordon has a hard time hearing her.
She kneels at his feet and takes a screwdriver from Judith, and they both set to work carefully unscrewing the orange shell of his armor. It’s not like Master Chief’s full-body suit, after all - it’s mounted on him in pieces, clamshells, guarding his most vulnerable bits while leaving his joints free to move. There’s a surprising amount of emphasis being put on the whole drawn-out process, he thinks. Watching a cutscene of Iron Man getting suited up is cool the first time, but now, with two hot girls crawling all over him in the most clinically-disinterested way possible, it just feels unnerving. Tense. And, terrifyingly, like he could pop a boner at any moment.
Baseball. Wade Boggs. The weight of the legendary bat in his hands at the Slugger Museum. Anything to keep him from having to explain this one to whichever bored intern is monitoring his vitals.
It’s distracting enough that he’s stripped bare before he realizes it, and he’s left feeling strangely naked in just the skin-tight bodysuit. Like they’re getting a good eyeful of his giblets, even though the reinforced fabric is more than thick enough to give him a Ken doll type of situation down there. So long as his dick behaves, anyway.
“You’re all set,” Alyx says, clapping him on the leg before standing again. “I figure we’ll take all this stuff back to the lab and leave you to it.”
Judith nods and pats the clothing she’s left next to Gordon. The lab coat sits on top, a remarkable shade of white, given its origins. “Do come speak to us in the lab once you’ve had a chance to rest, won’t you? We have much to discuss.”
They both smile at him, warm despite their earlier chilly attitudes, and take all the pieces of the HEV suit in hand before heading back from whence they came. Alyx even manages to heft the entire chestpiece over one shoulder. Impressive. In their stead, the Vortigaunt returns, gesturing at him to turn around. It doesn’t occur to Gordon why - he just does it, having accepted that he’s to be handheld through all this shit until the game decides to spit him out somewhere he can catch a break - until he feels the zipper on the back being pulled down.
Thank fuck Judith’s not doing that to him.
Off comes the bodysuit, and underneath Gordon’s stuck in the same grimy underoos he started with. His tank top’s even been rendered with a bloody, crusty hole torn through the side, accounting for the the same torn through himself.
He rubs the back of his head awkwardly. “Sooo, you can do your whole Vortigaunt thing now, right? No need to get a look at my eggs and sausage?”
The Vortigaunt narrows its eye. “We do not understand.”
“You know. My, uh, my— Okay, you know what, never mind. Stupid question. Insane question, actually. There’s no way they put my actual dick in here. That would be… crazy…”
Gordon trails off, dread trickling down his scalp. No way. They wouldn’t.
“Hey, actually, can I have a moment? Just to check something?”
Understanding is clearly not dawning upon the Vortigaunt, but it simply shrugs at him, ducking behind the rattling curtain and drawing it shut to give Gordon a bit of privacy.
He squishes his thighs together. There’s an awfully familiar weight between them. Craig did not give him a full-fledged cock and balls, Gordon thinks desperately in an effort to convince himself. And, with a slow, trembling hand, he lifts up his waistband to check.
That’s dick.
That’s balls.
Not only that, he comes to find as he tugs his waistband down properly to get a better look. They’re the same familiar shape, the same familiar size. Left nut hanging a little lower than the right, like always. And there’s that spot on the underside of his dick, the weird little birthmark he’s had as long as he can remember that not a single sexual partner has remarked upon until he’s brought it up.
That’s his dick. Rendered at a level of detail that not even Craig should be able to accomplish.
Gordon screams.
“Is he okay?”
“The One Free Man will live to see another day. Many others, in fact.”
Alyx looks over Gordon’s prone body, where he’s been tucked under a thin blue blanket and now sleeps fitfully. “That’s not really what I meant,” she says.
He looks so much smaller like this: stripped of that big, bulky HEV suit, clothes left untouched at his bedside. Not that he’s small, exactly, what with his feet dangling off the edge of the bed, but still. At least they’re finally making good on that promise to let him get some rest.
“His mind is frayed,” Kelley says, unusually blunt. “Disconnected… For a human metaphor, it is like a length of rope. The All-Seeing Eye connects us thus. Where the Free Man holds his end, it has been… severed. The ends fraying apart. Someone - something - has tied him back to ours, but…”
“But it’s not quite the same, huh,” muses Alyx. You can tie a rope back together after it’s been cut, but the disconnect is obvious. The fibers are split. And too much tugging might unravel the whole thing again.
“The metaphor is insufficient. A weakness of the human communication.” Kelley breaks eye contact with her. “His body has been healed, but we cannot speak for the rest. We will send for the Eli Vance once he wakes.”
She takes the dismissal for what it is. You can’t take the bluntness too personally, she thinks. At least it’s an improvement from the usual vagueness and mysticality of Kelley's peers. Maybe that’s why Barney and him got along so well.
A pang shoots through her as she returns to the lab. They’ve still not heard any word back from Barney or Dr. Kleiner, and the sad fact is that Gordon’s arrival is the best news they’ve had in… days, really. Weeks. And they only had a brief moment to pick his brain before everything went to hell.
Her dad’s at his desk, leaning back in his chair, the papers spread over his desk not ones pertaining to string theory or quantum thermodynamics or anything of that nature. Instead, it’s covered in photographs. News articles. Scientific papers whose only commonality is Gordon’s name on the front. He holds a picture between his fingers, a snapshot of Gordon, Dr. Kleiner, and himself, decades of wear lingering at the edges. Alyx doesn’t say anything as she approaches him, and simply rests a hand on his shoulder. He looks back at her with a tired smile.
“Hey, honey. All good?”
“Yeah. I think Gordon had a panic attack, or something like that. Kelley's got it under control, and it looks like Gordon’s just sleeping it off.”
Her dad makes a low noise of assent. “Good to hear. I worry, you know.” His eyes drift back to the photograph.
“Yeah, I know.”
She leans over his shoulder to get a better look. It really is the spitting image of the man she brought back with her: young and tall, long hair pulled back, almost cartoonishly out of place next to the other two men. Gordon’s stiff, his arms rigid at his sides, but he beams back at the camera like it’s the best day of his life.
“Tell me about him,” Alyx suggests, voice quiet.
“Mmm. What can I say… He was quiet, awful quiet,” Eli starts. The warm rumble of his voice is comforting, just like it was when she was a child asking him for a story. “Awkward, too. He wasn’t like a lot of the good ol’ boys you’d see comin’ out of Harvard, coasting on old money… he was a bonafide nerd.” He chuckles, and she snorts along with him. “You know the type.”
Alyx hums in agreement.
“But goddamn, when you got him to loosen up… He could crack you up like nothing else. You’d never expect it by looking at him. I think that’s what made him so funny - he was never tryin’ too hard at it. Just sitting there at his desk, laser-focused, and then he’d say something so unbelievable it’d make you spit out your drink,” her dad says with a fond smile. “Oh, and the things he used to get up to with Barney…”
“The way you say that has me worried.” She matches his easy smile.
“I ever tell you about their little race?”
“Maybe? I don’t remember a whole lot, though.”
“You’re losing it in your old age, honey,” he grins at her. “It comes for us all… Anyway, it must have been over twenty years ago, now. Izzy locked himself out of his office, and Barney’s the guy you’d call to get yourself back in.”
She leans on him a little. “I take it this happened quite a bit.”
“More than you’d think, my dear. More than you’d think. All we’d have on our minds is the next big breakthrough, and that doesn’t leave a whole lotta room for anything else…” He raises his eyebrows, like he’s sharing a secret with her. “You know why most of the guys in AnMat didn’t have girlfriends? Hard to remember little things like ‘date nights’ and ‘anniversaries’ when you’re this close to finishing an experiment you’ve been working on for eighteen months.”
Alyx’s eyes drift to the one framed photo among his collection of old memories, a black-and-white photo of himself, Alyx, and her mom, from Before. She’s seen it a million times before, the one persistent fixture on his desk, but now it brings a question to mind. “Seems like you managed to do pretty okay for yourself, Dad.”
Something falls in his face, his smile taking on a bittersweet character. “I wasn’t perfect, that’s for sure. Lord knows I tried,” he says.
She rubs her thumb on her shoulder, a comforting gesture. At least, that’s what she hopes. “So, Dr. Kleiner got locked out…”
“Ah, yes. Gordon took it upon himself to join in, challenging Barney to a race to see who could get it open first. It’s the wildest thing - that big ol’ boy, hoofin’ it up and down the ventilation shafts like it was nothing! I don’t know how he managed to get in there before Barney, but you’d swear he’d done it a dozen times before.”
“That’s not the story I’ve heard,” Alyx chuckles. “Barney told me he’s the one who got there first, not Gordon.”
That prompts a full-belly laugh out of him, a knee-slapper. “Oh, did he now?”
Eventually, the laughter between them dies down, and a comfortable silence settles in its place. Eli sets down the photo, picks up another. Repeats the process. There aren’t many to go through, but Gordon looks the same in all of them, dressed in the same white lab coat and rounded glasses. The same shy little smile.
“…Can I ask you something?”
Eli glances at her. “Shoot.”
“Do you think…” She trails off, uncertain how to word the question. After biting her lip, she continues, “What do you think happened to him?”
“What do you mean?”
“He just, he seems kind of… different. From all the stories. It almost seems like he’s not even the same guy.”
At that, Eli lets out a long sigh. He doesn’t respond immediately. Instead, he closes his eyes, deep in thought. Then he says, “I don’t know, honey. To be honest with you, it worries me. I don’t know what happened to him, all these past years… I’ve got my suspicions, of course, but he wasn’t exactly forthcoming about any of them. Maybe after he wakes up, he’ll be in a better spot to talk.”
She opens her mouth, then thinks better of it. Then she opens it again. “I know this is gonna sound crazy, but… I wonder if there’s something to it. All the stuff he was saying, I mean,” she says, hesitant.
Her dad turns fully in his seat to face her. There’s no judgment in his eyes, just curiosity. “What makes you say that?”
“We found those - those discontinuities, right? In the crystal readings? And we know that Gordon showed up on his own. I mean, he didn’t even bring up his friend when we met him. He just started talking about a bunch of other people we’ve never heard of.”
Eli makes a noise in his throat, an invitation to continue.
“What if we’ve been thinking about it all wrong?” Alyx wonders. “We’ve been assuming he and his friend Benrey showed up at the same time, and that the third reading must be somebody else. But what if… What if Benrey caused the third anomaly? And we only learned about him when Barney called us because he wasn’t here when Gordon arrived?”
“Then that means… this third person snapped into being at the same time and place as Gordon,” he muses. The chair creaks under him as he leans forward, elbows on his knees and hands folded under his chin.
“Or maybe they snapped out.”
His eyes meet hers again. There’s a new spark there, an exciting one. “You think he might have… switched places with somebody?”
“It’s just a guess,” she says. “But it’d explain why he’s so…”
“Different,” Eli finishes for her.
“Exactly.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” he mutters. “That man works in mysterious ways.” She doesn’t get a chance to ask who he’s talking about - she suspects it’s not Gordon, not anymore - before he barrels on, an almost paranoid muttering. “I can’t fathom what it is he’d get out of this… but it’s an intriguing idea. Very intriguing.” With a newfound vigor, he gathers up all the memorabilia on his desk into a loose pile and drags out his keyboard. “I’m going to take a look at the data again, see if there’s anything I missed. But honey, I think you’re onto something.”
The excitement’s infectious. Alyx finds herself bouncing on her heels. “You want a hand?”
He waves a hand dismissively. “No, no. Not unless you’re really itchin’ to, anyway. You need some rest, first and foremost. The Vortigaunts have got you covered ‘til tomorrow, so why don’t you go and get some shut-eye?” When she opens her mouth to argue, he cuts her off, saying, “We got time now, Alyx. It’ll be here in the morning. I promise.”
She might be stubborn, but he’s the one she picked it up from in the first place. And it is starting to hit her. So Alyx takes his advice, though sleep doesn’t come easy, endless what-ifs rolling around in her mind.
When she wakes, Gordon’s already in the lab, staring down a mug of something that’s not quite coffee, but close enough: dark, warm, and vaguely electrifying. It’s never been to her tastes, but then again, she was never around to get a taste for the real deal. For those that were, she supposes it’s a kind of comfort.
He looks up at her, somehow more visibly tired than he was when he first walked in. Adrenaline will do that to you. He hasn’t opted to put on the lab coat, not yet, but the clothes Mossman sourced for him - a loose green henley and a pair of plain, oil-stained khakis - fit him well enough. Impressive, given the short notice.
“Hey,” he greets her, voice muted.
“Hey, yourself.” She pulls up a chair across the desk from him and leans her elbows on the swathes of paperwork before him. “Already up and at ‘em?”
“Huh? Oh, I dunno what any of this stuff is. It’s not mine. I’m just thinking,” he says. His eyes drop to the surface of his drink, like he’s scrying those reflective black waters for answers.
Alyx gives him a moment, but when nothing further is forthcoming, she starts, “So, I heard you had kind of a moment yesterday.”
The tips of his ears immediately turn pink. “Fuck, does everybody know about that?”
“It’s a small base. News travels fast.” She shoots him a little smile.
“Yeah, well, go ahead. Laugh it up. Gordon Freeman’s used to it,” he mutters. Something catches him by surprise as he says it - his eyes widen, and he rears back. Then he settles back into the comfort of his stormy attitude.
“I’m not judging. Honestly, I’m just glad to see you’re doing better,” Alyx tells him. “After everything you’ve been through, I’d be more surprised if you weren’t freaking out a little.”
That gets a weak laugh out of him.
“You talk to my dad yet?”
He shakes his head. “Just Dr. Mossman. She brought me coffee. I think.” Gordon takes a sip from his mug, then grimaces. “Can coffee go bad?”
Alyx snorts quietly. “It’s not exactly coffee, but you’ll get used to it. Or so I’ve heard,” she says. She leans back in her chair, stretching her arms out behind her. “Think you’re going to be alright?”
“That’s a really loaded question,” Gordon says, with a laugh on the edges. “I’ll, uh, I’ll keep you posted. Oh, hey, speak of the devil,” he trails off, looking up - Alyx spins in her chair to find Judith entering the lab, aiming a perfunctory wave Gordon’s way. Both of their mouths flatten upon making eye contact with each other.
“Gordon. Alyx. Glad to see you awake at last.”
“You’re up early,” Alyx fires back, hackles good and raised already.
“Yes, well, duty never waits. I’ve been monitoring security feeds across City 17, trying to get in contact with Isaac, but no such luck… We lost access to a great many of them when we lost Barney, and restoring that access is easier said than done—”
“Wait, lost? Is he— is he dead?” Gordon sits up straighter. “Nobody told me he was—”
“No, no, of course he’s not dead,” Judith reassures him, chuckling demurely. Alyx’s eyebrows shoot up to her forehead, and she stops in her tracks, amending that to, “At least, not that we know of. Given the circumstances, I’m choosing to remain optimistic… After all, you’re here, are you not, Gordon?”
He makes an uncertain noise. “I-I mean, I guess? If you say so. I’m just not sure if I can grapple with the weight of another dude’s fucking mortality right now, you know?”
Suddenly, before Alyx can pry any deeper, a radio on a nearby table starts to crackle and hiss as a red light on its front panel flickers on. “Central Command, come in,” comes a distorted voice over the speaker. “I repeat, Central Command, this is a Code Orange—“
Alarmed, Judith rushes over and picks up the receiver, a squat black brick of a thing attached by a spiral cord. “Dr. Mossman speaking.”
“Yeah, uhh,” starts the man on the other end, dropping the military cadence for a more laid-back tone, “we got somebody comin’ in outside the airlock? Screamin’ down here in a fuckin’ airboat—”
“Language, Security.”
“Sorry. Uh, well, we got one bogey, so far as I can tell… ‘n’ we weren’t s’posed to have anybody else comin’ this way. I don’t think.”
Gordon perks up, eyes flashing. “Airboat? Did he say an airboat?”
“Seal the doors,” Judith orders, with a voice like a gate slamming shut. “Nobody’s getting in or out of this complex until—”
“Wait!” Gordon nearly trips over his own feet in his rush to get to the receiver. “Who’s on the boat? What’s he look like?”
Judith stares at him like he’s grown a second head, caught too off guard to speak as the security guard tells him, “Well, I think it’s a he, y’know, uhh, I reckon he’s got some kinda helmet on—”
“Oh my God, that’s Benrey,” Gordon gasps, “that’s Benrey, that’s my— He’s with me! He took the airboat! You gotta let him in, man!”
“Excuse me, Gordon, but that call is not up to you—”
He’s already up and out of his chair, spilling a bit of his drink on the desk in his haste. He jams the ‘up’ button for the elevator like the doors will open faster the more he presses it. For a brief moment, Judith’s shellacked demeanor cracks open, a glimpse of genuine shock and fury visible in the widening of her eyes, her mouth, before she slams it shut again. Alyx stands, too, because she suspects that if Judith gets him alone, she’s going to kill him. Or at the very least make him regret it.
The iron grate slides shut, shuttling Gordon to the surface before they can join him. Judith pinches her brow.
“Stand by,” she orders the guard over the radio. “Do not allow anyone past the airlock before I get up there. No, I do not care if he’s Gordon Freeman or if he’s the second coming of Christ, it will wait.” With that, she firmly slots the receiver back in its caddy. Alyx has to admit, she’s surprised at the restraint - part of her expected Judith to slam it.
“Never a dull moment, huh,” Alyx grins at her. It gets a quick twitch of the brow, but that’s all.
The journey up to the ground floor is an awkward one, Judith’s foot tapping insistently as they wait for the elevator to return. And then for the elevator to head back up. Despite this, Gordon’s not too far ahead of them, having taken a wrong turn and doubled back, so they catch him in the observation deck above the airlock, slapping his open palms against the glass. The guard shrugs haplessly at them.
“Benrey!” he shouts down.
“gordooon,” comes the muffled response. True to the guard’s word, a man in a helmet stands in the middle of the airtight entrance, dressed in the same uniform Alyx had seen the day before.
“Well, that’s the guy,” Alyx says, glancing back at Judith.
“What on Earth?” She steps closer to the glass herself and peers through it. “Is that— No… No, that can’t be. Nobody’s used that logo in years…”
“I told you, he’s with me! He’s real!”
Alyx leans against the wall, arms folded. She’s not so much judgmental as curious when she asks, “Didn’t you say he cut off your arm?”
“He what?” Judith’s eyes dart between the two of them. Alyx thinks this might be the most confused she’s ever seen her. It’s delicious, honestly.
“It’s - It’s complicated,” Gordon stammers hotly. “Trust me, I’m just as confused as you are about the whole thing, but just - just trust me, okay? He’s the one fucking thing that can prove I’m not crazy!”
Judith brings a hand to her chin and focuses back on Benrey. There’s a familiar look on her face: one of deep, deep thought, rapidfire mental calculations behind the shield of her eyes, the furrow of her brow. Alyx can’t say she has any horse in this particular race, other than a lingering curiosity. And that, too, starts to flare into something more active: he really does look suspiciously Barney-like, doesn’t he? Even from here, the resemblance is striking… and she can’t help but wonder.
“Bring him in,” Judith says at last. Her expression is unreadable.
The guard signals his assent and hits a button on his console, starting the decontamination process. When all’s said and done, the maw of the massive vault door slowly yawns open, and there on the other side stands Benrey, small and disgruntled.
Gordon rushes to meet him, nearly tripping over himself. Delight, or something close to it, sparkles in his eyes. “Oh my God,” he says, words falling out all at once, scrambling to grip Benrey’s shoulders and shake them for all he’s worth, “where were you, you fucker, you just fucking left—”
“what? what do you care—”
He’s cut off by Gordon abruptly squeezing him in a big bear hug. Alyx swears she can even hear Benrey squeak, like a deflating balloon. Then Gordon shoves him back just as quickly, holding him at arm’s length. Benrey stares at him, eyes wide.
“I’ve been losing my mind,” Gordon says hoarsely. His hands fly off of Benrey’s shoulders like he’s been burned. “Losing my fucking mind. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. But you know what? None of that matters anymore, because you’re here, and everybody else can see you, and you’re not just some manifestation of my masochistic fucking imagination, and do you know how much of a relief that is? It’s like Margaritaville in here, baby!”
“Before you start opening any bottles, Gordon,” steps in Judith, voice cold, “we need to talk.”