Half-Life: The Novel Chapter 2
Nov. 17th, 2010 05:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sagesariaChapter Two: Unforeseen Consequences
Bweeeeeeee! Bweeeeeee! Bweeeeeee!
Gordon opened his eyes slowly as the alarm system awoke him. His head pounded, staring straight ahead at the Anti-Mass Spectrometer, now finally shattered to pieces. Sparks still flew through the air, but the green glow had ceased, now leaving only the red emergency lighting. Nothing seemed unusual about the destruction, no more weird voices and nobody else with him in the room, which made Gordon wonder if the alien world he saw seconds before was simply a dream when the shock knocked him unconscious.
Instinctively he brought a hand to his face, checking that his glasses were still there, and still intact, and looked over to find the blast doors finally open, seemingly wrenched apart by the destruction of the test chamber.
He staggered to his feet, a light-headed feeling passing briefly; that shock in the face was a hard blow. Slowly he guided himself along the wall, making sure he had control of his limbs before breaking into a quick jog to the door. The floor was cratered and cracked under his feet, pieces of the Spectrometer blown everywhere. Gordon cringed as he reached the blast doors; one of the two posts at the door lay sprawled on his back, clutching a bloody spot in his midsection, a pool of blood spilling around him. It made him instinctively pat his hazard suit down to check for damages, thankfully finding none. He stepped carefully through the half-open doors and knelt next to the man, pressing a gloved hand to his carotid artery on the neck. No pulse. The second doctor was nowhere to be found, and Gordon could only hope that he had made it out alive, unlike his colleague. His thoughts immediately went to the ones in the control room. He sincerely hoped that Dr. Kleiner at least wasn't in the room at the exact moment the window got smashed through; nobody could have survived that.
Unfortunately the next door was not open. Crap. They always insisted on retinal clearance to open the door from the inside. Damn Black Mesa's overcomplicated security. He loomed over the retinal scanner, looking it over for any sort of hint of an emergency override. It sounded a scrambled, incoherent message when he touched it; clearly the computer was damaged, unsurprisingly. Then a clear message followed; "Authorized personnel." While trying to figure out if that was the whole message or just a piece of it, perhaps meaning "unauthorized", a chunk of the device broke off with a snap and the door slid open, struggling at first, opening and closing indecisively, then finally snapping all the way open, giving Gordon room to step through.
On the other side, the second scientist, very much alive, knelt over the body of a security guard who must have come running when everything started, desperately attempting to perform CPR. Shit, where was Barney in all this? Gordon thought. Leaving him sadly to do his work, Gordon turned down the hall to more destruction. Two more dead bodies lying under the revolving emergency spotlights. The alarm was louder here, he noticed, and all through these lower floors sparks rained down from the ceiling where the lights had shorted out, cables dangling dangerously close to eye level. The computers that were planted against the wall had been shaken from their posts, some of them tipped over, and as Gordon passed, one sparked with another explosion, falling forward and crushing one of the bodies who lay in its way.
This was bad. To say the least, anyway. For all the safety precautions Black Mesa had taken and trained their workers with, they never taught a single emergency contingency plan for when shit hit the fan like this. Management was either amazingly careless, or amazingly cocky, Gordon couldn't decide which. He guessed now that the best course of action would be to see if the others upstairs were alright, and get them and himself to the surface, before anything worse could happen, like the whole facility collapsing.
He hurried down the hall to the elevator. Thankfully it was still intact, though the glass door in front of it had certainly seen better days. Carefully he pried the side of the door that didn't have a column going through it open, sliding it aside to run into the elevator. He certainly appreciated the irony, but alas there were no stairs to take in case of emergency at Black Mesa. They were lucky to essentially not exist to the rest of the world, as this certainly wouldn't have passed any safety protocols.
The elevator worked, thankfully, and rotated up to the next floor, and as the intact doors slid open, he saw Eli leaning over his partner, who was injured. He could overhear them as the doors opened.
"Why didn't they listen...we tried to warn them..." Eli moaned despairingly.
"I never thought I'd see a resonance cascade, let alone create one..." his partner added, clutching the bloody patch in his lab coat, just below the ribcage. He appeared to have gotten stabbed with a large shard of glass from one of the three globes on the opposite wall which typically only held contained balls of plasma.
"Eli!" Gordon called, "Are you guys alright?"
Eli stood up immediately at the voice, a glint of relief in his eyes.
"Gordon, you're alive! Thank God for that hazard suit."
He couldn't help feeling the same way, but he said nothing. Eli looked down at his injured partner.
"I'm afraid to move him and all our phones are out. Please get to the surface as soon as you can and let someone know we're stranded down here."
Eli could get out of the room any time he wanted; he had access with the retinal scanner he now headed for to let Gordon through. But with his companion injured, just leaving was clearly not an option. The two of them walked across the room, and as Gordon passed the three generator globes, there was a loud twanging sound, similar to one that Gordon now remembered hearing with those flashes of green light in what he still wasn't sure wasn't just a dream. He looked in the sound's direction, and suddenly in one of the two globes that hadn't shattered, there was a little creature. He stopped, doing a double take at the animal; he had never seen it before in his life. If he had to describe it at a glance, he would say it looked similar to a crab, brown in color and with only four legs that protruded from the four corners of its flat, single-column body. The top of its body was more off-white, and its skinny legs red and claw-like. It didn't seem to have any eyes, but also seemed to be aware of its surroundings, as it skittered quietly around the tube, clawing at the glass as though to attempt to get out. Curious and yet apprehensive, he risked a closer look. The creature screeched and hurled itself, hissing, at the glass. Gordon jumped back in case the little thing was heavy enough to break through, and while it didn't, he still got a good look at the creature's underside; a hole the size of someone's head, closed with a sort of biological valve. That must have been the creature's mouth. Gordon shuddered to think what it ate.
"What is--" he started to ask, but Eli was already down the hall, waiting for him. He hadn't seemed to notice, or at least comment on, the creature in the tube. Sparing one last wary glance at the thing, he followed.
The glass on the door to the control room was broken, which would have been more helpful if there was a handle one could reach through and open. Eli silently opened the door for Gordon. He took a look into the control room to see the damage. Blood spattered the walls, but remarkably none of the computers were damaged and only one body sprawled on the floor. The body was not Dr. Kleiner's. He sighed inwardly.
"Are you sure you'll be alright by yourself?" he asked Eli, still wary of the crab-like things in the domes.
"We'll do what we can. Just hurry back."
Hesitantly, Gordon nodded, "Just be careful."
Cautiously he stepped into the control room. The shattered glass from the window crackled beneath his feet, and he kept a wary eye on the leftover hole where it once was; the Spectrometer was still aggressively sparking outside, and could very well go off again any minute.
Perhaps he shouldn't have said that, as he suddenly jumped back to avoid an arc of electricity that bolted through the window, barely missing him as it struck the computer on the other wall, shattering it instantly. As the arc broke Gordon took the chance to dash across the room, ducking into the corner by the other door, next do a tape reel computer that was remarkably out of reach of the incoming lightning that now struck another panel across from the window. With this, Gordon's regrets about letting Eli stay behind diminished; this was clearly the more dangerous way.
He stayed crouched in the corner, deciding to see if he could wait it out. Another bolt struck across the room, blasting apart yet another panel of equipment. When yet another streaked inches away from where Gordon hid, making his scalp tingle as it shattered the glass door a few paces away, he decided it wasn't worth waiting and sprinted out the wrecked door, down the empty hallway.
As he turned the corner there was another twanging sound. A green light flickered above a broken pipe in the ceiling, and from it fell another of the little crab-like creature. Gordon froze, instinctively backing himself against the wall. The critter scurried along the floor, making some soft squeaking noises. Gordon stayed pressed against the wall, doing his best not to move, staring unblinking at it. Maybe if he stayed very still it wouldn't take notice him. It crawled slowly toward the hall, approaching him. He tensed, fighting the urge to flee. It crawled up to him, chittering as though it were sniffing the air. A pause, and then suddenly it leapt straight up in the air, its gaping pale maw aiming straight for Gordon's face. That was when he ran, raising an arm to knock the little creature away with the back of his hand with a squeal. He dashed across the room, finding strength thanks to his hazard suit to jump over the broken ducts that had collapsed to the floor, and forced open the half-broken glass door to the next hallway.
The next room was dark and glowing red with emergency lights. Another alarm was sounding here, its honking sound echoing through the deserted hall. The laser tubes lining the wall had been punctured by the falling debris, and now a beam streaked across the hall, burning a line into the other wall. The laser beam trailed back and forth, destroying two computers in its path that were barely still intact. Gordon groaned. This was starting to turn into a funhouse. Only minus the fun part. Determining that the beam was going to remain moving back and forth at eye level, he crouched down onto his knees, keeping his head low as he crawled under the oscillating laser. He could feel its heat against his back, but it never came close to him. Just in case he kept low to the floor, under the laser tubes. Crawling slowly, he attempted to keep his eyes averted from the dead security guard crumpled on the floor, when another panel of the tubes blew apart, sending another laser beam in Gordon's path. This one had a wider path, creating almost a geometric pattern in the wall as it trailed back and forth, burning through another broken computer on the left wall. Gordon stayed as far back as he could without coming across the laser behind him, and when the timing was right he scrambled to his feet and darted under the beam as it almost grazed the ceiling before moving back down to the floor.
On the floor just before the next door out was some sort of reddish stick. Gordon got closer, taking a good look. A crowbar! Gordon immediately grabbed it; he had a feeling that he was going to need something to keep those little crab things away; he certainly must not have seen the last of them. He paused a moment to look over his newfound weapon. The handle was wood, and the metal tip was jagged and polished; it must have been fairly new. He tested the weight; it could certainly kill someone if he swung hard enough, but it wasn't so heavy he couldn't carry it for a while.
Feeling safer, if ever so slightly, he tested the door. It was locked. If there were any retinal scanners on this side of the door they weren't anywhere in sight, and the only ones alive on this floor were stuck back in the computer room. Gordon wondered if the crowbar was here because someone attempted to pry the doors open. If they had, it clearly didn't work. He instead decided an easier, though a little more dangerous method, and swung the crowbar as hard as he could at the glass covering the door. It shattered immediately on impact, and Gordon winced as a shard grazed past his hand, cutting through the glove.
"Beep beep...minor laceration, detected." declared the robotic messenger of his hazmat suit. Yeah, no shit Sherlock. As he climbed through the frame of the shattered door he checked his hand. Indeed it was only a minor laceration, bleeding quite a bit, but there didn't seem to be any glass embedded in his skin. He checked the room to see that it was clear before occupying his free hand by applying pressure to the cut, the least he could do before finding a first aid kit somewhere around here, surely there WAS one.
The generator room was barely stirring, with main power source cut out. The trip across the room was uneventful. The elevator at the end of the hall seemed to still be operational, though the button pad gave off several sparks, and once again there was irony in the warning sign above it; In case of fire, do not use elevators. While there wasn't any fire to speak of, it was certainly close enough, but again, there wasn't any other choice, it seemed. Gordon hesitated a moment before pressing the call button, wishing he could remember if the gloves protected against electricity.
But pressing the button only resulted in a loud crash from the floor above that shook the room, and the alarmed screams of two men that were unfortunately in the elevator as it plummeted past the closed doors. Oh, FUCK! Gordon froze completely, helplessly watching the flying shards of rubble that resulted in the elevator crashing fatally to the bottom floor.
Gordon could only stand there in shock, almost too afraid to look down at what he had just done. Great, just what he needed to add to this day; he just killed two people. He tried not to over think the fact that it could technically be more since he was the one who pushed the cart into the Spectrometer. Shit, now what?
He clenched his fists, reluctantly determining that he couldn't do anything to help them now. He still needed to get out of the building. And that meant he still had to get through the glass doors to the elevator; he could see the maintenance ladder just inside the shaft. He decided to trust his suit better than his comparatively unprotected hands, he chose to give the door a hard kick, which effectively broke through the glass and this time did no physical harm.
Gordon felt a little dizzy as he craned his neck to see how high the ladder went. At least climbing up to the rotors gave him some experience in long climbs, and some upper body strength. Setting the crowbar between his teeth, he gripped the handlebars of the ladder carefully, hoisting himself up for the long climb. He was close to the top when suddenly he heard something in the room at the top of the elevator shaft; gunshots. Not just gunshots, but some sort of unnatural squealing sound. Gordon tensed, quick to get the crowbar back into his hands as he balanced carefully on the latter, dropping himself onto the lip of the elevator shaft into the next room.
A security guard was there, shooting at something out of Gordon's line of sight. He approached carefully, not wishing to startle the armed man with the gun. Whatever the guard was shooting, it was clearly what was making that awful noise. Slowly something staggered into view. One of the scientists? But his lab coat was covered in blood and torn in several places, revealing what seemed to be organs or muscle somehow still barely intact in the body, and the arms protruding from the lab coat were shriveled and mangled. But even more disturbing was the massive brown mass that made up the head; for a moment Gordon concluded that the creature wasn't human at all. It screeched and fell backwards onto the floor when the guard started, seeing Gordon out of the corner of his eye, and set his aim on him.
"Whoa, don't shoot! It's just me!"
The guard held for a moment, then lowered his pistol.
"Man, am I glad to see you, Gordon." he stepped toward him, taking a wary glance at the dead creature, "What the hell are these things? ...And why are they wearing science team uniforms?"
Gordon took another good look at the dead thing on the ground. Finally he figured out what was so familiar about the creature's appearance; its head looked exactly like the crab creatures he'd been running into. He didn't have to think long to figure out that it probably WAS a crab creature, he decided to mentally refer to them as "headcrabs," as he determined that it WAS indeed a member of the science team he was looking at, judging by the nametag pinned on his collar. He shuddered and decided instead to focus on the guard.
"Eli and his partner are trapped downstairs," he said, "The phones are dead and one of them's hurt."
"You don't expect me to head down there, do ya? It's gotta be a death trap!"
Oh for the love of--really? Aren't you guys supposed to be here to help us?
But Gordon held his tongue and sighed.
"Well, we have to do something, I can't just leave them down there!"
"If you get to the surface there might be more survivors who could help."
Great, another addition to the "what ELSE could go wrong?" list.
"Fine. But come with me; you're the one who's got a gun."
A second lab-coated monster was coming down the other hallway now, and that seemed to be the deciding factor in the guard agreeing to come along. He followed Gordon the other way, running around the circular fork in the road to the ajar door, stepping carefully over a dead guard. The guard seemed rather repulsed at the idea, but he followed without saying any word of protest, just a nervous and uncomfortable expression at the sight of his dead coworker.
The next hall seemed empty at first. One dead scientist seemed to glow red from the glow of red lights in the grate-covered window to the right illuminating the pool of blood around him, and a small crater in the wall gave Gordon the impression that it was the facility's shaking floors that killed him. But if he'd investigated more carefully he'd see that he wasn't bleeding from the head, but from the chest, like the others in the building thus far. He and the guard continued, and as they turned the corner two more of the headcrab-ridden bodies were staggering mutely down the next hallway, passing by another one who was seated against the wall, possibly already dead. Gordon quickly ducked into the corner, crowbar at the ready, and the guard with him took the cue, aiming down the hall and firing multiple shots their way. They squealed in pain as they continued to head down the hall; it took several shots for the first of the two to finally fall down dead. The stream of bullets seemed to be constant, like an action film where the hero never, ever ran out of ammunition. But Gordon noted instead that the guard was merely reloading his gun at an unbelievable rate. He supposed the guy wasn't on the security team for nothing.
The second one finally died, but Gordon was wary of the one against the wall. It hadn't moved since he spotted it, but it didn't seem to be totally lifeless; while it wasn't breathing, there was enough of an indication that it COULD still be alive that it made him uncertain.
"Stay back a second. Watch my back."
He stepped cautiously toward the slumped body, crowbar raised. It still didn't move as he got closer, as slowly as he could manage so as not to potentially startle it awake if it was alive. He hoped he wasn't about to kill some innocent as he was finally close enough, and quietly, he slowly raised the crowbar high above his head, finally jerking it downward onto the beast's head. There was a gurgling death rattle from the headcrab head and the scientist's body slouched forward as brown pussy fluid that one could only guess was blood splattered everywhere at the blow. With a quick wrench Gordon pulled the crowbar out again, and at a glance at the hole he made in the headcrab's body he discovered, with some horror, that whoever this man used to be, his head was now completely gone. Gorgon quickly averted his gaze, pressing a hand gently over his mouth as he struggled not to vomit.
It was with some effort that he finally continued, rather slowly. The guard followed much further behind now, clearly as freaked out as Gordon was finding himself. They went up the ramp, noting the broken and crooked door to the computer lab as they turned the corner, finally back in the lobby. The PA system beeped to life as they reached it; clearly someone was still alive in the facility.
Beedoop, beedoop, "Attention: Sector C science personnel, please report status immediately."
Sounds like most of the damage was confined to Sector C too, then. Assuming that was the only announcement; it was a little hard to hear over the alarms in the lower tunnels. There was an alarm sounding here, too, not as obnoxiously as the ones below, and a red alarm light circled around the room, highlighting everything in red. The guard was the first to rush over to the front desk and press the switch under the computer monitor that shut the alarm off. In the silence that followed, the room was returned to its dull grey hue from the concrete walls. Gordon stepped carefully over the dead scientist in the doorway and went straight for the security panel on the wall by the doorway that went to the tram tunnels. It looked broken. He tapped on the control panel a few times, yielding no results. He cursed under his breath, but decided that trying for the trams probably wasn't that good an idea anyway. He looked around the room, noticing a broken vent leading into the computer room.
He looked to the guard, who was now examining the computer; it was still on, but still bluescreened.
"You think you'd be ok here a while?"
"Well sure," the guard said a little sarcastically, "Nice open area where anything could drop in at any moment."
"At least it's got power and hopefully communication." Gordon said rather harshly, "Listen, just see if you can call someone and get some damn help down here. I'm going to see if I can find another way out."
And without batting an eye he began to duck into the vent, barely shorter than he was as he crouched.
"Well just be careful, Freeman! We don't need another body down here!"
He didn't make any acknowledgement that he heard him, getting his crowbar ready as he climbed through the tunnel. Another computer blew up as he entered, falling forward and crushing a headcrab that Gordon hadn't noticed prowling in the corner. While the alarm in the lobby was off, the light in this room was still spinning in alert. Gordon tread carefully through the room, wary of even more dead bodies occupying the cramped space, and across the room he spotted a short duct to another room, which he immediately ran for. He and Barney had often had races to see who could reach Isaac Kleiner's office first when he frequently locked his keys inside, and during these contests Gordon always looked to the duct system for shortcuts, which easily gave him a sporting chance against his security friend. More equipment sparked and exploded behind him as he clambered on top of a few fallen machines into the short tunnel into the next room.
This room Gordon had never seen before. Or if he had he couldn't recognize it now; it was in shambles, with whole pieces of the ceiling shaken loose and giving him a short platform to catch himself on to shorten his jump to the floor. He sidestepped carefully through the fallen rubble, including some metal piping from the broken ducts above him.
In the combination-sealed office ahead of him he saw some movement, and quickly dashed to the window to observe. A scientist was standing in an attempt to defend himself from a headcrab that crept menacingly toward him from a corner of the room. They stared each other down for a moment before the scientist, backing away slowly, shoved a file cabinet over to crush the little thing. It worked, but the victory that the man celebrated animatedly (though if he was shouting anything Gordon couldn't hear through the soundproof glass) didn't last very long as a second one, which had been hiding behind a piece of rubble, leaped up from behind him and latched onto his head. Thankfully the lights in the room shut out before Gordon would be forced to witness any more of the no doubt gruesome spectacle.
But the horrors didn't end there. Gordon noticed some flashing lights from the next office down the hall. Cautiously he stepped forward to investigate. The flashing came from a malfunctioning computer monitor in the far right corner of the large office inside, giving off a rapid white strobelight pattern. Through the flashing that made his eyes hurt trying to look around the room, he saw in the swiveling office chair in front of the computer sat another headcrab-infected scientist. Only this one was worse; it wasn't simply sitting still in the chair. Its whole body twitched wildly in unpredictable spasms that Gordon could only imagine was an acute epileptic seizure. His skin crawled at the spectacle, wondering if the reaction was from the human body, or the alien parasite, or even a little of both. Gordon chose very quickly to continue on his way.
"Damage control team to Sector C immediately." announced the intercom.
Down the hall and to the left he went, past the sign that read "Sector B: Coolant Reserves. He'd never been allowed in Sector B; something about not having the proper training. But the resonance cascade waiting for no one, so he took a peek around the corner. The security guard posted there lay in the corner, across from a dead headcrab scientist, slumped in the other corner, a mass of blood. Gordon moved slowly to get closer, wary of the dead creature, he mentally started to call them zombies, as their patterns certainly matched the walking dead of horror films. The guard was still alive, but only just, when Gordon bent down to check on him. He attempted to say something, but it only ended up being a strangled sound in the back of his throat, as if he was trying not to throw up. He reached his hand out to Gordon vainly before crumpling further to the floor. Gordon shook his head sadly, getting quiet sick of seeing death every other step he took, and after a moment of silent respect, he made a grab for the guard's pistol that lay on the ground just below his limp arm.
He took a quick moment to look it over, finding the safety off and a full clip in its magazine. He didn't know too much about guns, at least not the various types available and all the technical jargon one might have to know to get into a force, but a few days off visiting Barney at the shooting range and trying a few rounds himself taught him enough about how one worked that he could use it to protect himself today. Clicking the safety on he found a place to pocket it in his hazmat suit, just within reachable distance if he needed to whip it out, which he automatically assumed he would, given how this day was going.
He crawled through the broken glass of the airlock door, shards crackling under his feet. He could hear a strange sort of chirping sound just beyond the second door, which hung barely even half-open with one side of the twin sliding doors ajar. Now he guessed was a good time to have the pistol ready, and he pressed the seemingly operational switch for the door. The door did open, but it was as indecisive as the first door out of the test chamber back in Sector C; it swung open and shut rhythmically, and Gordon risked a quick jump past to get through.
There he found the source of the chirping sound; another small alien creature was standing in the hall to his right. This one, at a very quick, squinting glance, would look almost like a little dog, but with only three legs and a thorax shaped almost like a Christmas ham, yellowish green in color much like the headcrabs, and on what Gordon assumed was the front of its body was a face of what must have been hundreds of black eyes in one great cluster. But in the way it moved, leaping on its three legs and wagging its hind slightly, there was a sort of canine behavior. It emitted a high pitched noise when it spotted Gordon, a sort of metallic siren-like noise, which made Gordon jump back, uncertain what to expect. When it stopped it made a sort of huffing sound and there was what from this distance looked like a gust of air, but suddenly behind him the glass pane from the equipment against the wall shattered. In the few seconds Gordon took to take aim with the pistol he hypothesized that that was actually a sonic blast that the creature emitted, what with that awful noise it made. He could even see the waves blasting out of the creature's body. As he started to shoot at it, lining up the shots as best he could, a sphere of green light appeared in the hallway, emitting two more of the creatures.
In the few minutes of chaos as he fought to dodge the incoming sonic waves and get the little things out of his path, he couldn't help a slight twinge of guilt. He had no way of really knowing whether they meant any real harm or not; he'd probably just scared the poor things. Could one blame the snake for biting when you step on its tail? But survival instincts were clearly starting to kick in at this rate, and sadly that would mean lashing out at threats.
Once the halls were quiet, save for the constant squeak of cranes in the distance, he continued down the leftmost path, reloading the pistol just in case. The metal slope clanked under him as he descended, and as he turned the corner he froze again. There was the man in the blue suit again, standing on the upper level of the next room, staring down at him. He adjusted his tie rigidly, glowering down at Gordon with a look that he wasn't sure if it was disapproving or just serious. They stared at each other for a long time, Gordon could feel his body trembling meeting those cold green eyes.
"Wh-who...who..." he started to stammer, but suddenly there was a crash and Gordon had to divert his attention to the two dog-like creatures that had apparently broken through the glass of a nearby storage area. Shooting them down quickly he took another look up at the railing above, but the man in the suit was gone.
This was getting a little creepy. Whoever that man was, it was becoming obvious that he was following Gordon, and from the stoic gaze he had set on him, he was clearly observing him. So what the hell did he want?
Gordon shook his head and continued down the hall, trying to shake the image from his mind. Whatever the man wanted, he vowed to beat the answers out of him next chance he got.
He entered the next hallway, the mess of blood predictable on the walls, as was the dead scientist propped sadly against the wall to his right. There was another zapping sound from behind a metal door just in front of him, followed by a heavy banging on the door, creating giant dents in the metal. Gordon ducked behind one of the convenient barrels in the hall; whatever was back there, it sure sounded big. There was another bang and another dent in the door. He swore he could hear a voice. If it was saying anything in English, it wasn't intelligible through the gurgling voice that spoke, which Gordon now recognized it as the same voices he heard muttering to themselves when he was unconscious in the test chamber. With a final BANG! the door shattered to pieces, falling to the floor in a pile, and instantly Gordon recognized the creature that emerged; it was indeed the red-eyed alien that he saw in the pool of green light. He remembered that they didn't seem to have a problem with his presence, so he risked a slow, cautious approach out from behind the barrel to get a better look.
But as he did, it suddenly exclaimed something in its own language in either an alarmed or aggressive-sounding tone and shot its hands up in the air. Before Gordon could react a sudden singeing shock hit him in the chest as the creature shot a bolt of electricity from its clawlike hand. He doubled over in pain, his skin tingling from the electrical shock as he groped half-numbly for his gun, making a quick draw to shoot the alien in the eye, killing it in one shot. It took a few minutes for feeling to return to his arms, and when it did there was still a burning feeling from the shock to the chest; even with the hazmat suit that still hurt like hell. Gordon concluded that he'd been electrocuted quite enough today and kept the pistol ready, noting the amount of ammunition he had left for it.
The door behind the alien creature was a dead end, as was the other path down the hall, leading only to a garbage container that he thought he heard some sort of movement in, but decided that it was just his imagination and didn't investigate. So now how was he going to get out of here?
In the middle hallway was a gated off tunnel. "D-475KL", the blue sign above the gate called it. On the other side of the bars he could see a hole in the floor; some sort of maintenance entrance? He could probably access it from the maintenance hole on his side of the gate. He took a quick glance down to test this idea first. Below was a series of tunnels with some blue water that looked about ankle deep or shallower. Whatever this water was, he hoped it wasn't the sewer that he was looking at; the last thing he needed was to be slogging through that kind of a mess. A headcrab crawled idly around in the water, almost treading on it like a pond slider. That crab was what worried him; he should probably preserve on ammo but he certainly didn't want it lunging at him while he was trying to climb into the drain.
The answer to how to move forward was given to him in the headcrab suddenly spotting peering through the whole and it leapt at him, it must have been about ten feet that it jumped. Without thinking Gordon grabbed for the crowbar and the next thing he knew there was a pained squeak and a splatter of yellow blood, and the now dead headcrab fell back into the pipe, sinking into the water. Waiting a moment to see that it really was dead, Gordon began to lower himself into the pipe slowly, grasping the edge of the manhole as he climbed down.
His feet hit the water with a splash, and as he hit the floor he started to regret this decision; if he could find the other manhole, he wouldn't be able to reach it from here. He never had a good high jump, even without ten pounds of bronze armoring his body. Well, no turning back now. He trudged slowly through the water, watching the surprisingly well-lit tunnels with caution. Maybe he could at least find a ladder around here, or something he could climb on.
At a fork in the path he looked to the left path, where he could see another grate in the ceiling. That must have been the way out. Now how to reach it. On the other path was the valve for the pump's lock. His first thought was to try to open it and maybe he could float to the top and open the grate from there. It looked like the only way, and he hoped it wasn't going to turn out to be a reaaaaallly stupid idea.
He took off his glasses and tucked them into an inner pocket of his hazmat suit. Everything had a blur around it now, but he could see just enough that he might manage this. Slowly he got a firm grip on the two sides of the valve wheel, and with a deep breath he flexed, slowly forcing the rusty wheel to turn. It squeaked and groaned from the exertion, and finally the flood gates began to open. The rush of water echoed through the chamber as the incoming flood was already up to Gordon's waist. In only seconds it raised to his shoulders, and he took a hasty breath of air before the water submerged him completely, scrunching his eyes tight as he ducked under.
The heavy suit managed to keep him from staying afloat all the way to the top of the pipe as it flooded entirely, but he was buoyant enough to swim. All he had to do now was find that open grate. And hold his breath long enough to do so. He kicked himself forward, finding it thankfully easy to propel himself through the water. He certainly hoped this suit was waterproof as well; no reason it wouldn't be, but given how the day had gone so far one never knew. The water was murky, but he could see just enough when he attempted to open his eyes. Unfortunately the exertion of swimming with the heavy equipment on his person was making it hard to keep going under water long enough to reach the open grate. In some desperation for air, he swam straight up from where he was, finding another grate that must have also lead to the other side of the room. Praying, he pushed on it. It gave and wasn't very heavy, and he pushed it roughly aside and gratefully surfaced with a gasp of air, pulling himself up back onto dry land.
He paused there to catch his breath, snorting water out of his nose and struggling to get the rest out of his ears, which still made a somewhat sloshy sound when he turned his head. He already started to feel cold; while the suit stayed insulated, there was still a wet feeling at the wrists and around the collar, and now his gloves were soaked through. He extracted his glasses to put them back on, finding them with some spots of water droplets on them, one with some sort of microbe swimming in it that he quickly brushed away before he thought too hard about how many of those might be in his hair by now.
Shivering slightly now, Gordon continued, hoping the gun in his hands still worked after getting wet. The next room, past a broken pipe that leaked thick green sludge into the drain below his feet down to the water he had swam in before, was the freight elevator. Gordon would have felt more glad to see it if it headed up to the surface. But as long as he was stuck down here, he would just have to take it wherever it would take him. He looked around, noting a switch at the top of the railing around the elevator. He guessed that that was what controlled it. It must have been a heck of a run to get to it though; someone probably operated it from the top while someone else rode it. But he didn't have that option, so he decided to try making a jump for it from the top. But then he realized that it wouldn't even be directly under him until it was too far a fall if he tried that. Maybe he could run for it, he thought. He climbed up the stairs, finding another blood-spattered body of a security guard. While it seemed sacrilegious, he hesitantly reached out to him to take some ammo clips from his vest; Gordon was certain he'd need them more than the guard did now.
The lever to the elevator was worn out, but it didn't seem at all rusted. It barely even squeaked when he grabbed the handle, pushing it forward. Behind him the elevator clicked to life, metal scraping loudly against the gears. Quickly Gordon ran down the stairs and made a swift jump onto the falling platform, landing harshly. He wobbled on his feet as he landed, losing his balance from the shaky descent, and quickly leaned himself back against the conveyer that moved the lift; without handrails it was best to stay against the wall to avoid falling off; it was a long way down that even with the protective equipment would kill him instantly if he hit the ground from this height. Assuming he missed the crushers at the very bottom of the lift; this must have been the garbage block, and somehow it seemed reminiscent of action films where the hero would be stuck in a factory, fighting through obstacles that no real facility would own. While this crusher served a purpose, it was still rather unnerving to be heading its way.
The lift shook and creaked as it went lower and lower to the storage floor, taking its sweet time in doing so. Gordon considered taking a seat against the back edge of it to rest a while, but just as he was thinking that something whizzed past the corner of his eye. He looked up; headcrabs were falling from the ceiling! They must have come from the open ducts he noticed upstairs...why didn't he think that those could be a danger? He pressed as well as he could against the conveyer, clutching the crowbar. Most of the crabs, in an attempt to jump from the slide onto him, flew right over his head, instead falling into the pit below and into the jaws of the disposal unit. But a few of the smarter ones managed to get a hold on the very edge of the lift and lunge back at Gordon, who swung the crowbar as hard as he could to knock them away like large, fleshy baseballs.
He jumped off to the left of the lift as soon as he was able to, making a break for the hallway straight ahead, not wanting to confront the doglike beast that appeared in another green flash above the wooden crates to his right. But he stopped quickly when a bigger flash appeared in the way of the catwalk he was about to cross. Whatever dropped out of that portal, he didn't see it before it crashed through the catwalk, breaking it in two as it fell into the black pit below. It must have been heavy, whatever it was. And now he didn't have a way across. At least not an easy one. The half of the catwalk on Gordon's side was still sturdy, and he stepped carefully on it, trying to think. He had to reach the door on the other side somehow. Hesitantly he decided on the metal pipes that lined the walls. They were thick enough to stand on, though the lack of grips would be a problem. Assuming of course that they were strong enough to support his weight to begin with.
The creature he left behind him chirped and chattered, getting closer and encouraging him to make a hasty decision unless he wanted to confront it. The noises it made really did sound almost like a dog's yapping, he noted in the back of his mind. Hoping he wouldn't instantly regret this, he made a short jump across the catwalk to the pipe. It held, but he waved his arms frantically in the air a moment to balance on it.
He climbed carefully over the pipes, tempted to go on all fours to have a chance at getting a grip on the pipes if he slipped. Edging along the edge of the pipes, pressing against the wall and forcing himself not to look down, he found the generator boxes in the corner, acting like a short staircase even higher up the wall. He continued across the pipes at the top, soon reaching a platform at the end that was just above the broken edge of the catwalk, by the tunnel to the next room. He had enough room to stand and get a slight running start to jump to the tunnel, landing rather roughly. The suit didn't protect against the repercussions of high jumps; Gordon could already feel the shock through his knees that was bound to give him problems later in life.
The catwalk he found down the tunnel was also broken, and below was a river of murky, filthy water. A musty smell permeated the hall. Gordon stepped carefully out to the broken catwalk to get a look at the surroundings without falling in prematurely. Behind a crate on the other side of the room, chasing down a small herd of headcrabs, was a much bigger creature than Gordon had seen so far. He recognized after a moment; it was the same gator-like creature that he saw in the portal at ground zero. Perhaps that was what had fallen on the other catwalk behind him that broke it. He took a moment from his post to watch it. Perhaps the initial description as a gator wasn't right. Its long bipedal body ultimately was better defined as a squid, as that is what it would appear to be if it were underwater and didn't have any legs.
Suddenly it snorted, seeing him on the catwalk above. It made a sharp "Tu!" sound as if it were spitting something, and Gordon ducked just in time to avoid a ball of green goo that flew his way. It hit the wall behind him with a splat, followed by a sizzling sound. He looked back to see the hole that was being formed in the wall where the goo hit. Well shit, just what he needed; giant squids that shot corrosive acid. He never did like squids; they always made him anxious as a kid when he went to the aquarium with his family.
He thought fast, trying to figure out the best course of action. The water looked deep enough to swim in, or at least duck into briefly. He certainly didn't like the idea of jumping into a filthy river, but another acidic ball was coming his way, so without much thought he took a quick few shots at it with the pistol before jumping, barely missing a ropey cord dangling from the ceiling as he fell gracelessly into the water.
The creature wasn't moving when he resurfaced carefully to take a look; he must have killed it with the shot he got off when he jumped. He climbed onto the ledge, deciding now was as good a time as any to rest a minute. As he leaned against the wall, stretching his tired legs out, he looked up at the cable he brushed past when he'd jumped. It stretched all the way down into the water from the high ceiling; Gordon craned his neck, squinting to see the base of the cable at the top.
He should have expected by now that everything in this facility now was an alien creature; indeed now before his eyes was a red glob of mass that attached itself to the ceiling, dangling the long cable from the top of its body, assuming that it was the bottom that it hung from. Adjusting his glasses to get a clearer look in the distance, it looked kind of like the barnacles that one usually found on the bottom of boats. The pale cord extended from the side dangling down, Gordon hypothesized, was the creatures tongue, likely "fishing" for prey below. To test this idea, since he had enough clearance from the thing to try, he found a stray rock of concrete, about the size of his hand, which he threw at the tongue touching the water. As soon as the rock collided there was a zipping sound. The tongue lashed about a moment, slowly drawing itself into the barnacle on the ceiling. Stretchy red jaws opened wide, stretching themselves around the concrete block, swallowing it whole. So he was right. Gordon wondered what else it could eat and how strong its tongue was, but decided against finding out and made a note to avoid them in the future. Though he wondered how easy that would be, as upon a closer look it turned out that there were several of them lining the ceiling of the drain.
Slowly he got back to his feet. The door behind him let to a tunnel of rusty, metal-plated walls illuminated by bluish green lights that stung his eyes when he looked up at them. The hallways were narrow and turned sharply like the turns of a hedge maze. But it was short enough of a venture before he reached a huge room. A black pit loomed below a line of dangling crates suspended from the crane above. The crane appeared to lead into another tunnel across the seemingly bottomless pit. And of course it was the only way to move forward. This was turning more and more into a movie script with every step. Gordon sighed, ascending the red ladders up to the top of the crane. It was a slightly treacherous climb; if he lost his balance and fell backwards there were no guard rails on the edge of the platform he could catch himself on. Ironically there were rails around the very top, where he didn't need them anymore.
No doors to be seen. So from what he could gather the only way to go into the next room was by jumping across the crates like a Mario game. They certainly looked strong enough to support his weight, as did the cables holding them up; the trick would be to time the jumps right so that he didn't overstep and thus plummet to his death. And the added step of climbing over the rail before even making the first jump didn't help his racing heart at all; he was entirely fed up with risking his life over everything at this point. At least the suit gave him some improved jumping ability.
The crates rocked violently with each jump. He clung to the oily cable for dear life, looking down as little as possible and hoping that the grease lubricating the ropes wouldn't cause him to give out at the worst possible time. He made his way slowly, nervous at the slight draft that seemed to constantly drift up from the pit that made the room hiss as the sound rattled the metal plates in the walls. He nearly slipped on the second to last jump, a patch of dust puffing into the air from under his foot. He wrenched himself flush against the cable and grabbed onto it as tight as he could, grappling with his arms and shutting his eyes tight, waiting for the dizziness and panic to pass before he dared to move. It passed slowly; he could feel his body shaking now from his shot nerves and the exertion of the climb down.
Finally he made it to the bottom, letting himself land ungracefully and hard on all fours to the floor. He lay sprawled on the cold concrete floor, recomposing himself. He could feel his heart pounding against the ribcage of his suit.
"Beep, beep, beep, caution: Elevated heart rate detected."
Well no shit, Sherlock. At least it didn't announce he was fibrillating. Gordon just sat still for several minutes, focusing on controlling his breathing again. His hands were slick as he slowly, gradually pushed himself upright again, lubricant smearing across the floor.
Thankfully, as he finally got himself back onto his feet, the following hallway was only that; a hallway. It was long and twisting with several doors, and one ladder to the next level up, flooded with its red lights again, but it was a long, quiet venture with no interruptions from enemies or destructions, giving Gordon enough time to shake the nerves off before he finally found the freight elevator. A little hesitant to touch it after what happened last time, he pressed the call button. But this time there was a hiss of air pressure and the doors slid open.
It was a roomy elevator, with metal walls and mesh floors. He stepped in gratefully, pressing the button inside that closed the doors and began the trip to the next floor up.
Bweeeeeeee! Bweeeeeee! Bweeeeeee!
Gordon opened his eyes slowly as the alarm system awoke him. His head pounded, staring straight ahead at the Anti-Mass Spectrometer, now finally shattered to pieces. Sparks still flew through the air, but the green glow had ceased, now leaving only the red emergency lighting. Nothing seemed unusual about the destruction, no more weird voices and nobody else with him in the room, which made Gordon wonder if the alien world he saw seconds before was simply a dream when the shock knocked him unconscious.
Instinctively he brought a hand to his face, checking that his glasses were still there, and still intact, and looked over to find the blast doors finally open, seemingly wrenched apart by the destruction of the test chamber.
He staggered to his feet, a light-headed feeling passing briefly; that shock in the face was a hard blow. Slowly he guided himself along the wall, making sure he had control of his limbs before breaking into a quick jog to the door. The floor was cratered and cracked under his feet, pieces of the Spectrometer blown everywhere. Gordon cringed as he reached the blast doors; one of the two posts at the door lay sprawled on his back, clutching a bloody spot in his midsection, a pool of blood spilling around him. It made him instinctively pat his hazard suit down to check for damages, thankfully finding none. He stepped carefully through the half-open doors and knelt next to the man, pressing a gloved hand to his carotid artery on the neck. No pulse. The second doctor was nowhere to be found, and Gordon could only hope that he had made it out alive, unlike his colleague. His thoughts immediately went to the ones in the control room. He sincerely hoped that Dr. Kleiner at least wasn't in the room at the exact moment the window got smashed through; nobody could have survived that.
Unfortunately the next door was not open. Crap. They always insisted on retinal clearance to open the door from the inside. Damn Black Mesa's overcomplicated security. He loomed over the retinal scanner, looking it over for any sort of hint of an emergency override. It sounded a scrambled, incoherent message when he touched it; clearly the computer was damaged, unsurprisingly. Then a clear message followed; "Authorized personnel." While trying to figure out if that was the whole message or just a piece of it, perhaps meaning "unauthorized", a chunk of the device broke off with a snap and the door slid open, struggling at first, opening and closing indecisively, then finally snapping all the way open, giving Gordon room to step through.
On the other side, the second scientist, very much alive, knelt over the body of a security guard who must have come running when everything started, desperately attempting to perform CPR. Shit, where was Barney in all this? Gordon thought. Leaving him sadly to do his work, Gordon turned down the hall to more destruction. Two more dead bodies lying under the revolving emergency spotlights. The alarm was louder here, he noticed, and all through these lower floors sparks rained down from the ceiling where the lights had shorted out, cables dangling dangerously close to eye level. The computers that were planted against the wall had been shaken from their posts, some of them tipped over, and as Gordon passed, one sparked with another explosion, falling forward and crushing one of the bodies who lay in its way.
This was bad. To say the least, anyway. For all the safety precautions Black Mesa had taken and trained their workers with, they never taught a single emergency contingency plan for when shit hit the fan like this. Management was either amazingly careless, or amazingly cocky, Gordon couldn't decide which. He guessed now that the best course of action would be to see if the others upstairs were alright, and get them and himself to the surface, before anything worse could happen, like the whole facility collapsing.
He hurried down the hall to the elevator. Thankfully it was still intact, though the glass door in front of it had certainly seen better days. Carefully he pried the side of the door that didn't have a column going through it open, sliding it aside to run into the elevator. He certainly appreciated the irony, but alas there were no stairs to take in case of emergency at Black Mesa. They were lucky to essentially not exist to the rest of the world, as this certainly wouldn't have passed any safety protocols.
The elevator worked, thankfully, and rotated up to the next floor, and as the intact doors slid open, he saw Eli leaning over his partner, who was injured. He could overhear them as the doors opened.
"Why didn't they listen...we tried to warn them..." Eli moaned despairingly.
"I never thought I'd see a resonance cascade, let alone create one..." his partner added, clutching the bloody patch in his lab coat, just below the ribcage. He appeared to have gotten stabbed with a large shard of glass from one of the three globes on the opposite wall which typically only held contained balls of plasma.
"Eli!" Gordon called, "Are you guys alright?"
Eli stood up immediately at the voice, a glint of relief in his eyes.
"Gordon, you're alive! Thank God for that hazard suit."
He couldn't help feeling the same way, but he said nothing. Eli looked down at his injured partner.
"I'm afraid to move him and all our phones are out. Please get to the surface as soon as you can and let someone know we're stranded down here."
Eli could get out of the room any time he wanted; he had access with the retinal scanner he now headed for to let Gordon through. But with his companion injured, just leaving was clearly not an option. The two of them walked across the room, and as Gordon passed the three generator globes, there was a loud twanging sound, similar to one that Gordon now remembered hearing with those flashes of green light in what he still wasn't sure wasn't just a dream. He looked in the sound's direction, and suddenly in one of the two globes that hadn't shattered, there was a little creature. He stopped, doing a double take at the animal; he had never seen it before in his life. If he had to describe it at a glance, he would say it looked similar to a crab, brown in color and with only four legs that protruded from the four corners of its flat, single-column body. The top of its body was more off-white, and its skinny legs red and claw-like. It didn't seem to have any eyes, but also seemed to be aware of its surroundings, as it skittered quietly around the tube, clawing at the glass as though to attempt to get out. Curious and yet apprehensive, he risked a closer look. The creature screeched and hurled itself, hissing, at the glass. Gordon jumped back in case the little thing was heavy enough to break through, and while it didn't, he still got a good look at the creature's underside; a hole the size of someone's head, closed with a sort of biological valve. That must have been the creature's mouth. Gordon shuddered to think what it ate.
"What is--" he started to ask, but Eli was already down the hall, waiting for him. He hadn't seemed to notice, or at least comment on, the creature in the tube. Sparing one last wary glance at the thing, he followed.
The glass on the door to the control room was broken, which would have been more helpful if there was a handle one could reach through and open. Eli silently opened the door for Gordon. He took a look into the control room to see the damage. Blood spattered the walls, but remarkably none of the computers were damaged and only one body sprawled on the floor. The body was not Dr. Kleiner's. He sighed inwardly.
"Are you sure you'll be alright by yourself?" he asked Eli, still wary of the crab-like things in the domes.
"We'll do what we can. Just hurry back."
Hesitantly, Gordon nodded, "Just be careful."
Cautiously he stepped into the control room. The shattered glass from the window crackled beneath his feet, and he kept a wary eye on the leftover hole where it once was; the Spectrometer was still aggressively sparking outside, and could very well go off again any minute.
Perhaps he shouldn't have said that, as he suddenly jumped back to avoid an arc of electricity that bolted through the window, barely missing him as it struck the computer on the other wall, shattering it instantly. As the arc broke Gordon took the chance to dash across the room, ducking into the corner by the other door, next do a tape reel computer that was remarkably out of reach of the incoming lightning that now struck another panel across from the window. With this, Gordon's regrets about letting Eli stay behind diminished; this was clearly the more dangerous way.
He stayed crouched in the corner, deciding to see if he could wait it out. Another bolt struck across the room, blasting apart yet another panel of equipment. When yet another streaked inches away from where Gordon hid, making his scalp tingle as it shattered the glass door a few paces away, he decided it wasn't worth waiting and sprinted out the wrecked door, down the empty hallway.
As he turned the corner there was another twanging sound. A green light flickered above a broken pipe in the ceiling, and from it fell another of the little crab-like creature. Gordon froze, instinctively backing himself against the wall. The critter scurried along the floor, making some soft squeaking noises. Gordon stayed pressed against the wall, doing his best not to move, staring unblinking at it. Maybe if he stayed very still it wouldn't take notice him. It crawled slowly toward the hall, approaching him. He tensed, fighting the urge to flee. It crawled up to him, chittering as though it were sniffing the air. A pause, and then suddenly it leapt straight up in the air, its gaping pale maw aiming straight for Gordon's face. That was when he ran, raising an arm to knock the little creature away with the back of his hand with a squeal. He dashed across the room, finding strength thanks to his hazard suit to jump over the broken ducts that had collapsed to the floor, and forced open the half-broken glass door to the next hallway.
The next room was dark and glowing red with emergency lights. Another alarm was sounding here, its honking sound echoing through the deserted hall. The laser tubes lining the wall had been punctured by the falling debris, and now a beam streaked across the hall, burning a line into the other wall. The laser beam trailed back and forth, destroying two computers in its path that were barely still intact. Gordon groaned. This was starting to turn into a funhouse. Only minus the fun part. Determining that the beam was going to remain moving back and forth at eye level, he crouched down onto his knees, keeping his head low as he crawled under the oscillating laser. He could feel its heat against his back, but it never came close to him. Just in case he kept low to the floor, under the laser tubes. Crawling slowly, he attempted to keep his eyes averted from the dead security guard crumpled on the floor, when another panel of the tubes blew apart, sending another laser beam in Gordon's path. This one had a wider path, creating almost a geometric pattern in the wall as it trailed back and forth, burning through another broken computer on the left wall. Gordon stayed as far back as he could without coming across the laser behind him, and when the timing was right he scrambled to his feet and darted under the beam as it almost grazed the ceiling before moving back down to the floor.
On the floor just before the next door out was some sort of reddish stick. Gordon got closer, taking a good look. A crowbar! Gordon immediately grabbed it; he had a feeling that he was going to need something to keep those little crab things away; he certainly must not have seen the last of them. He paused a moment to look over his newfound weapon. The handle was wood, and the metal tip was jagged and polished; it must have been fairly new. He tested the weight; it could certainly kill someone if he swung hard enough, but it wasn't so heavy he couldn't carry it for a while.
Feeling safer, if ever so slightly, he tested the door. It was locked. If there were any retinal scanners on this side of the door they weren't anywhere in sight, and the only ones alive on this floor were stuck back in the computer room. Gordon wondered if the crowbar was here because someone attempted to pry the doors open. If they had, it clearly didn't work. He instead decided an easier, though a little more dangerous method, and swung the crowbar as hard as he could at the glass covering the door. It shattered immediately on impact, and Gordon winced as a shard grazed past his hand, cutting through the glove.
"Beep beep...minor laceration, detected." declared the robotic messenger of his hazmat suit. Yeah, no shit Sherlock. As he climbed through the frame of the shattered door he checked his hand. Indeed it was only a minor laceration, bleeding quite a bit, but there didn't seem to be any glass embedded in his skin. He checked the room to see that it was clear before occupying his free hand by applying pressure to the cut, the least he could do before finding a first aid kit somewhere around here, surely there WAS one.
The generator room was barely stirring, with main power source cut out. The trip across the room was uneventful. The elevator at the end of the hall seemed to still be operational, though the button pad gave off several sparks, and once again there was irony in the warning sign above it; In case of fire, do not use elevators. While there wasn't any fire to speak of, it was certainly close enough, but again, there wasn't any other choice, it seemed. Gordon hesitated a moment before pressing the call button, wishing he could remember if the gloves protected against electricity.
But pressing the button only resulted in a loud crash from the floor above that shook the room, and the alarmed screams of two men that were unfortunately in the elevator as it plummeted past the closed doors. Oh, FUCK! Gordon froze completely, helplessly watching the flying shards of rubble that resulted in the elevator crashing fatally to the bottom floor.
Gordon could only stand there in shock, almost too afraid to look down at what he had just done. Great, just what he needed to add to this day; he just killed two people. He tried not to over think the fact that it could technically be more since he was the one who pushed the cart into the Spectrometer. Shit, now what?
He clenched his fists, reluctantly determining that he couldn't do anything to help them now. He still needed to get out of the building. And that meant he still had to get through the glass doors to the elevator; he could see the maintenance ladder just inside the shaft. He decided to trust his suit better than his comparatively unprotected hands, he chose to give the door a hard kick, which effectively broke through the glass and this time did no physical harm.
Gordon felt a little dizzy as he craned his neck to see how high the ladder went. At least climbing up to the rotors gave him some experience in long climbs, and some upper body strength. Setting the crowbar between his teeth, he gripped the handlebars of the ladder carefully, hoisting himself up for the long climb. He was close to the top when suddenly he heard something in the room at the top of the elevator shaft; gunshots. Not just gunshots, but some sort of unnatural squealing sound. Gordon tensed, quick to get the crowbar back into his hands as he balanced carefully on the latter, dropping himself onto the lip of the elevator shaft into the next room.
A security guard was there, shooting at something out of Gordon's line of sight. He approached carefully, not wishing to startle the armed man with the gun. Whatever the guard was shooting, it was clearly what was making that awful noise. Slowly something staggered into view. One of the scientists? But his lab coat was covered in blood and torn in several places, revealing what seemed to be organs or muscle somehow still barely intact in the body, and the arms protruding from the lab coat were shriveled and mangled. But even more disturbing was the massive brown mass that made up the head; for a moment Gordon concluded that the creature wasn't human at all. It screeched and fell backwards onto the floor when the guard started, seeing Gordon out of the corner of his eye, and set his aim on him.
"Whoa, don't shoot! It's just me!"
The guard held for a moment, then lowered his pistol.
"Man, am I glad to see you, Gordon." he stepped toward him, taking a wary glance at the dead creature, "What the hell are these things? ...And why are they wearing science team uniforms?"
Gordon took another good look at the dead thing on the ground. Finally he figured out what was so familiar about the creature's appearance; its head looked exactly like the crab creatures he'd been running into. He didn't have to think long to figure out that it probably WAS a crab creature, he decided to mentally refer to them as "headcrabs," as he determined that it WAS indeed a member of the science team he was looking at, judging by the nametag pinned on his collar. He shuddered and decided instead to focus on the guard.
"Eli and his partner are trapped downstairs," he said, "The phones are dead and one of them's hurt."
"You don't expect me to head down there, do ya? It's gotta be a death trap!"
Oh for the love of--really? Aren't you guys supposed to be here to help us?
But Gordon held his tongue and sighed.
"Well, we have to do something, I can't just leave them down there!"
"If you get to the surface there might be more survivors who could help."
Great, another addition to the "what ELSE could go wrong?" list.
"Fine. But come with me; you're the one who's got a gun."
A second lab-coated monster was coming down the other hallway now, and that seemed to be the deciding factor in the guard agreeing to come along. He followed Gordon the other way, running around the circular fork in the road to the ajar door, stepping carefully over a dead guard. The guard seemed rather repulsed at the idea, but he followed without saying any word of protest, just a nervous and uncomfortable expression at the sight of his dead coworker.
The next hall seemed empty at first. One dead scientist seemed to glow red from the glow of red lights in the grate-covered window to the right illuminating the pool of blood around him, and a small crater in the wall gave Gordon the impression that it was the facility's shaking floors that killed him. But if he'd investigated more carefully he'd see that he wasn't bleeding from the head, but from the chest, like the others in the building thus far. He and the guard continued, and as they turned the corner two more of the headcrab-ridden bodies were staggering mutely down the next hallway, passing by another one who was seated against the wall, possibly already dead. Gordon quickly ducked into the corner, crowbar at the ready, and the guard with him took the cue, aiming down the hall and firing multiple shots their way. They squealed in pain as they continued to head down the hall; it took several shots for the first of the two to finally fall down dead. The stream of bullets seemed to be constant, like an action film where the hero never, ever ran out of ammunition. But Gordon noted instead that the guard was merely reloading his gun at an unbelievable rate. He supposed the guy wasn't on the security team for nothing.
The second one finally died, but Gordon was wary of the one against the wall. It hadn't moved since he spotted it, but it didn't seem to be totally lifeless; while it wasn't breathing, there was enough of an indication that it COULD still be alive that it made him uncertain.
"Stay back a second. Watch my back."
He stepped cautiously toward the slumped body, crowbar raised. It still didn't move as he got closer, as slowly as he could manage so as not to potentially startle it awake if it was alive. He hoped he wasn't about to kill some innocent as he was finally close enough, and quietly, he slowly raised the crowbar high above his head, finally jerking it downward onto the beast's head. There was a gurgling death rattle from the headcrab head and the scientist's body slouched forward as brown pussy fluid that one could only guess was blood splattered everywhere at the blow. With a quick wrench Gordon pulled the crowbar out again, and at a glance at the hole he made in the headcrab's body he discovered, with some horror, that whoever this man used to be, his head was now completely gone. Gorgon quickly averted his gaze, pressing a hand gently over his mouth as he struggled not to vomit.
It was with some effort that he finally continued, rather slowly. The guard followed much further behind now, clearly as freaked out as Gordon was finding himself. They went up the ramp, noting the broken and crooked door to the computer lab as they turned the corner, finally back in the lobby. The PA system beeped to life as they reached it; clearly someone was still alive in the facility.
Beedoop, beedoop, "Attention: Sector C science personnel, please report status immediately."
Sounds like most of the damage was confined to Sector C too, then. Assuming that was the only announcement; it was a little hard to hear over the alarms in the lower tunnels. There was an alarm sounding here, too, not as obnoxiously as the ones below, and a red alarm light circled around the room, highlighting everything in red. The guard was the first to rush over to the front desk and press the switch under the computer monitor that shut the alarm off. In the silence that followed, the room was returned to its dull grey hue from the concrete walls. Gordon stepped carefully over the dead scientist in the doorway and went straight for the security panel on the wall by the doorway that went to the tram tunnels. It looked broken. He tapped on the control panel a few times, yielding no results. He cursed under his breath, but decided that trying for the trams probably wasn't that good an idea anyway. He looked around the room, noticing a broken vent leading into the computer room.
He looked to the guard, who was now examining the computer; it was still on, but still bluescreened.
"You think you'd be ok here a while?"
"Well sure," the guard said a little sarcastically, "Nice open area where anything could drop in at any moment."
"At least it's got power and hopefully communication." Gordon said rather harshly, "Listen, just see if you can call someone and get some damn help down here. I'm going to see if I can find another way out."
And without batting an eye he began to duck into the vent, barely shorter than he was as he crouched.
"Well just be careful, Freeman! We don't need another body down here!"
He didn't make any acknowledgement that he heard him, getting his crowbar ready as he climbed through the tunnel. Another computer blew up as he entered, falling forward and crushing a headcrab that Gordon hadn't noticed prowling in the corner. While the alarm in the lobby was off, the light in this room was still spinning in alert. Gordon tread carefully through the room, wary of even more dead bodies occupying the cramped space, and across the room he spotted a short duct to another room, which he immediately ran for. He and Barney had often had races to see who could reach Isaac Kleiner's office first when he frequently locked his keys inside, and during these contests Gordon always looked to the duct system for shortcuts, which easily gave him a sporting chance against his security friend. More equipment sparked and exploded behind him as he clambered on top of a few fallen machines into the short tunnel into the next room.
This room Gordon had never seen before. Or if he had he couldn't recognize it now; it was in shambles, with whole pieces of the ceiling shaken loose and giving him a short platform to catch himself on to shorten his jump to the floor. He sidestepped carefully through the fallen rubble, including some metal piping from the broken ducts above him.
In the combination-sealed office ahead of him he saw some movement, and quickly dashed to the window to observe. A scientist was standing in an attempt to defend himself from a headcrab that crept menacingly toward him from a corner of the room. They stared each other down for a moment before the scientist, backing away slowly, shoved a file cabinet over to crush the little thing. It worked, but the victory that the man celebrated animatedly (though if he was shouting anything Gordon couldn't hear through the soundproof glass) didn't last very long as a second one, which had been hiding behind a piece of rubble, leaped up from behind him and latched onto his head. Thankfully the lights in the room shut out before Gordon would be forced to witness any more of the no doubt gruesome spectacle.
But the horrors didn't end there. Gordon noticed some flashing lights from the next office down the hall. Cautiously he stepped forward to investigate. The flashing came from a malfunctioning computer monitor in the far right corner of the large office inside, giving off a rapid white strobelight pattern. Through the flashing that made his eyes hurt trying to look around the room, he saw in the swiveling office chair in front of the computer sat another headcrab-infected scientist. Only this one was worse; it wasn't simply sitting still in the chair. Its whole body twitched wildly in unpredictable spasms that Gordon could only imagine was an acute epileptic seizure. His skin crawled at the spectacle, wondering if the reaction was from the human body, or the alien parasite, or even a little of both. Gordon chose very quickly to continue on his way.
"Damage control team to Sector C immediately." announced the intercom.
Down the hall and to the left he went, past the sign that read "Sector B: Coolant Reserves. He'd never been allowed in Sector B; something about not having the proper training. But the resonance cascade waiting for no one, so he took a peek around the corner. The security guard posted there lay in the corner, across from a dead headcrab scientist, slumped in the other corner, a mass of blood. Gordon moved slowly to get closer, wary of the dead creature, he mentally started to call them zombies, as their patterns certainly matched the walking dead of horror films. The guard was still alive, but only just, when Gordon bent down to check on him. He attempted to say something, but it only ended up being a strangled sound in the back of his throat, as if he was trying not to throw up. He reached his hand out to Gordon vainly before crumpling further to the floor. Gordon shook his head sadly, getting quiet sick of seeing death every other step he took, and after a moment of silent respect, he made a grab for the guard's pistol that lay on the ground just below his limp arm.
He took a quick moment to look it over, finding the safety off and a full clip in its magazine. He didn't know too much about guns, at least not the various types available and all the technical jargon one might have to know to get into a force, but a few days off visiting Barney at the shooting range and trying a few rounds himself taught him enough about how one worked that he could use it to protect himself today. Clicking the safety on he found a place to pocket it in his hazmat suit, just within reachable distance if he needed to whip it out, which he automatically assumed he would, given how this day was going.
He crawled through the broken glass of the airlock door, shards crackling under his feet. He could hear a strange sort of chirping sound just beyond the second door, which hung barely even half-open with one side of the twin sliding doors ajar. Now he guessed was a good time to have the pistol ready, and he pressed the seemingly operational switch for the door. The door did open, but it was as indecisive as the first door out of the test chamber back in Sector C; it swung open and shut rhythmically, and Gordon risked a quick jump past to get through.
There he found the source of the chirping sound; another small alien creature was standing in the hall to his right. This one, at a very quick, squinting glance, would look almost like a little dog, but with only three legs and a thorax shaped almost like a Christmas ham, yellowish green in color much like the headcrabs, and on what Gordon assumed was the front of its body was a face of what must have been hundreds of black eyes in one great cluster. But in the way it moved, leaping on its three legs and wagging its hind slightly, there was a sort of canine behavior. It emitted a high pitched noise when it spotted Gordon, a sort of metallic siren-like noise, which made Gordon jump back, uncertain what to expect. When it stopped it made a sort of huffing sound and there was what from this distance looked like a gust of air, but suddenly behind him the glass pane from the equipment against the wall shattered. In the few seconds Gordon took to take aim with the pistol he hypothesized that that was actually a sonic blast that the creature emitted, what with that awful noise it made. He could even see the waves blasting out of the creature's body. As he started to shoot at it, lining up the shots as best he could, a sphere of green light appeared in the hallway, emitting two more of the creatures.
In the few minutes of chaos as he fought to dodge the incoming sonic waves and get the little things out of his path, he couldn't help a slight twinge of guilt. He had no way of really knowing whether they meant any real harm or not; he'd probably just scared the poor things. Could one blame the snake for biting when you step on its tail? But survival instincts were clearly starting to kick in at this rate, and sadly that would mean lashing out at threats.
Once the halls were quiet, save for the constant squeak of cranes in the distance, he continued down the leftmost path, reloading the pistol just in case. The metal slope clanked under him as he descended, and as he turned the corner he froze again. There was the man in the blue suit again, standing on the upper level of the next room, staring down at him. He adjusted his tie rigidly, glowering down at Gordon with a look that he wasn't sure if it was disapproving or just serious. They stared at each other for a long time, Gordon could feel his body trembling meeting those cold green eyes.
"Wh-who...who..." he started to stammer, but suddenly there was a crash and Gordon had to divert his attention to the two dog-like creatures that had apparently broken through the glass of a nearby storage area. Shooting them down quickly he took another look up at the railing above, but the man in the suit was gone.
This was getting a little creepy. Whoever that man was, it was becoming obvious that he was following Gordon, and from the stoic gaze he had set on him, he was clearly observing him. So what the hell did he want?
Gordon shook his head and continued down the hall, trying to shake the image from his mind. Whatever the man wanted, he vowed to beat the answers out of him next chance he got.
He entered the next hallway, the mess of blood predictable on the walls, as was the dead scientist propped sadly against the wall to his right. There was another zapping sound from behind a metal door just in front of him, followed by a heavy banging on the door, creating giant dents in the metal. Gordon ducked behind one of the convenient barrels in the hall; whatever was back there, it sure sounded big. There was another bang and another dent in the door. He swore he could hear a voice. If it was saying anything in English, it wasn't intelligible through the gurgling voice that spoke, which Gordon now recognized it as the same voices he heard muttering to themselves when he was unconscious in the test chamber. With a final BANG! the door shattered to pieces, falling to the floor in a pile, and instantly Gordon recognized the creature that emerged; it was indeed the red-eyed alien that he saw in the pool of green light. He remembered that they didn't seem to have a problem with his presence, so he risked a slow, cautious approach out from behind the barrel to get a better look.
But as he did, it suddenly exclaimed something in its own language in either an alarmed or aggressive-sounding tone and shot its hands up in the air. Before Gordon could react a sudden singeing shock hit him in the chest as the creature shot a bolt of electricity from its clawlike hand. He doubled over in pain, his skin tingling from the electrical shock as he groped half-numbly for his gun, making a quick draw to shoot the alien in the eye, killing it in one shot. It took a few minutes for feeling to return to his arms, and when it did there was still a burning feeling from the shock to the chest; even with the hazmat suit that still hurt like hell. Gordon concluded that he'd been electrocuted quite enough today and kept the pistol ready, noting the amount of ammunition he had left for it.
The door behind the alien creature was a dead end, as was the other path down the hall, leading only to a garbage container that he thought he heard some sort of movement in, but decided that it was just his imagination and didn't investigate. So now how was he going to get out of here?
In the middle hallway was a gated off tunnel. "D-475KL", the blue sign above the gate called it. On the other side of the bars he could see a hole in the floor; some sort of maintenance entrance? He could probably access it from the maintenance hole on his side of the gate. He took a quick glance down to test this idea first. Below was a series of tunnels with some blue water that looked about ankle deep or shallower. Whatever this water was, he hoped it wasn't the sewer that he was looking at; the last thing he needed was to be slogging through that kind of a mess. A headcrab crawled idly around in the water, almost treading on it like a pond slider. That crab was what worried him; he should probably preserve on ammo but he certainly didn't want it lunging at him while he was trying to climb into the drain.
The answer to how to move forward was given to him in the headcrab suddenly spotting peering through the whole and it leapt at him, it must have been about ten feet that it jumped. Without thinking Gordon grabbed for the crowbar and the next thing he knew there was a pained squeak and a splatter of yellow blood, and the now dead headcrab fell back into the pipe, sinking into the water. Waiting a moment to see that it really was dead, Gordon began to lower himself into the pipe slowly, grasping the edge of the manhole as he climbed down.
His feet hit the water with a splash, and as he hit the floor he started to regret this decision; if he could find the other manhole, he wouldn't be able to reach it from here. He never had a good high jump, even without ten pounds of bronze armoring his body. Well, no turning back now. He trudged slowly through the water, watching the surprisingly well-lit tunnels with caution. Maybe he could at least find a ladder around here, or something he could climb on.
At a fork in the path he looked to the left path, where he could see another grate in the ceiling. That must have been the way out. Now how to reach it. On the other path was the valve for the pump's lock. His first thought was to try to open it and maybe he could float to the top and open the grate from there. It looked like the only way, and he hoped it wasn't going to turn out to be a reaaaaallly stupid idea.
He took off his glasses and tucked them into an inner pocket of his hazmat suit. Everything had a blur around it now, but he could see just enough that he might manage this. Slowly he got a firm grip on the two sides of the valve wheel, and with a deep breath he flexed, slowly forcing the rusty wheel to turn. It squeaked and groaned from the exertion, and finally the flood gates began to open. The rush of water echoed through the chamber as the incoming flood was already up to Gordon's waist. In only seconds it raised to his shoulders, and he took a hasty breath of air before the water submerged him completely, scrunching his eyes tight as he ducked under.
The heavy suit managed to keep him from staying afloat all the way to the top of the pipe as it flooded entirely, but he was buoyant enough to swim. All he had to do now was find that open grate. And hold his breath long enough to do so. He kicked himself forward, finding it thankfully easy to propel himself through the water. He certainly hoped this suit was waterproof as well; no reason it wouldn't be, but given how the day had gone so far one never knew. The water was murky, but he could see just enough when he attempted to open his eyes. Unfortunately the exertion of swimming with the heavy equipment on his person was making it hard to keep going under water long enough to reach the open grate. In some desperation for air, he swam straight up from where he was, finding another grate that must have also lead to the other side of the room. Praying, he pushed on it. It gave and wasn't very heavy, and he pushed it roughly aside and gratefully surfaced with a gasp of air, pulling himself up back onto dry land.
He paused there to catch his breath, snorting water out of his nose and struggling to get the rest out of his ears, which still made a somewhat sloshy sound when he turned his head. He already started to feel cold; while the suit stayed insulated, there was still a wet feeling at the wrists and around the collar, and now his gloves were soaked through. He extracted his glasses to put them back on, finding them with some spots of water droplets on them, one with some sort of microbe swimming in it that he quickly brushed away before he thought too hard about how many of those might be in his hair by now.
Shivering slightly now, Gordon continued, hoping the gun in his hands still worked after getting wet. The next room, past a broken pipe that leaked thick green sludge into the drain below his feet down to the water he had swam in before, was the freight elevator. Gordon would have felt more glad to see it if it headed up to the surface. But as long as he was stuck down here, he would just have to take it wherever it would take him. He looked around, noting a switch at the top of the railing around the elevator. He guessed that that was what controlled it. It must have been a heck of a run to get to it though; someone probably operated it from the top while someone else rode it. But he didn't have that option, so he decided to try making a jump for it from the top. But then he realized that it wouldn't even be directly under him until it was too far a fall if he tried that. Maybe he could run for it, he thought. He climbed up the stairs, finding another blood-spattered body of a security guard. While it seemed sacrilegious, he hesitantly reached out to him to take some ammo clips from his vest; Gordon was certain he'd need them more than the guard did now.
The lever to the elevator was worn out, but it didn't seem at all rusted. It barely even squeaked when he grabbed the handle, pushing it forward. Behind him the elevator clicked to life, metal scraping loudly against the gears. Quickly Gordon ran down the stairs and made a swift jump onto the falling platform, landing harshly. He wobbled on his feet as he landed, losing his balance from the shaky descent, and quickly leaned himself back against the conveyer that moved the lift; without handrails it was best to stay against the wall to avoid falling off; it was a long way down that even with the protective equipment would kill him instantly if he hit the ground from this height. Assuming he missed the crushers at the very bottom of the lift; this must have been the garbage block, and somehow it seemed reminiscent of action films where the hero would be stuck in a factory, fighting through obstacles that no real facility would own. While this crusher served a purpose, it was still rather unnerving to be heading its way.
The lift shook and creaked as it went lower and lower to the storage floor, taking its sweet time in doing so. Gordon considered taking a seat against the back edge of it to rest a while, but just as he was thinking that something whizzed past the corner of his eye. He looked up; headcrabs were falling from the ceiling! They must have come from the open ducts he noticed upstairs...why didn't he think that those could be a danger? He pressed as well as he could against the conveyer, clutching the crowbar. Most of the crabs, in an attempt to jump from the slide onto him, flew right over his head, instead falling into the pit below and into the jaws of the disposal unit. But a few of the smarter ones managed to get a hold on the very edge of the lift and lunge back at Gordon, who swung the crowbar as hard as he could to knock them away like large, fleshy baseballs.
He jumped off to the left of the lift as soon as he was able to, making a break for the hallway straight ahead, not wanting to confront the doglike beast that appeared in another green flash above the wooden crates to his right. But he stopped quickly when a bigger flash appeared in the way of the catwalk he was about to cross. Whatever dropped out of that portal, he didn't see it before it crashed through the catwalk, breaking it in two as it fell into the black pit below. It must have been heavy, whatever it was. And now he didn't have a way across. At least not an easy one. The half of the catwalk on Gordon's side was still sturdy, and he stepped carefully on it, trying to think. He had to reach the door on the other side somehow. Hesitantly he decided on the metal pipes that lined the walls. They were thick enough to stand on, though the lack of grips would be a problem. Assuming of course that they were strong enough to support his weight to begin with.
The creature he left behind him chirped and chattered, getting closer and encouraging him to make a hasty decision unless he wanted to confront it. The noises it made really did sound almost like a dog's yapping, he noted in the back of his mind. Hoping he wouldn't instantly regret this, he made a short jump across the catwalk to the pipe. It held, but he waved his arms frantically in the air a moment to balance on it.
He climbed carefully over the pipes, tempted to go on all fours to have a chance at getting a grip on the pipes if he slipped. Edging along the edge of the pipes, pressing against the wall and forcing himself not to look down, he found the generator boxes in the corner, acting like a short staircase even higher up the wall. He continued across the pipes at the top, soon reaching a platform at the end that was just above the broken edge of the catwalk, by the tunnel to the next room. He had enough room to stand and get a slight running start to jump to the tunnel, landing rather roughly. The suit didn't protect against the repercussions of high jumps; Gordon could already feel the shock through his knees that was bound to give him problems later in life.
The catwalk he found down the tunnel was also broken, and below was a river of murky, filthy water. A musty smell permeated the hall. Gordon stepped carefully out to the broken catwalk to get a look at the surroundings without falling in prematurely. Behind a crate on the other side of the room, chasing down a small herd of headcrabs, was a much bigger creature than Gordon had seen so far. He recognized after a moment; it was the same gator-like creature that he saw in the portal at ground zero. Perhaps that was what had fallen on the other catwalk behind him that broke it. He took a moment from his post to watch it. Perhaps the initial description as a gator wasn't right. Its long bipedal body ultimately was better defined as a squid, as that is what it would appear to be if it were underwater and didn't have any legs.
Suddenly it snorted, seeing him on the catwalk above. It made a sharp "Tu!" sound as if it were spitting something, and Gordon ducked just in time to avoid a ball of green goo that flew his way. It hit the wall behind him with a splat, followed by a sizzling sound. He looked back to see the hole that was being formed in the wall where the goo hit. Well shit, just what he needed; giant squids that shot corrosive acid. He never did like squids; they always made him anxious as a kid when he went to the aquarium with his family.
He thought fast, trying to figure out the best course of action. The water looked deep enough to swim in, or at least duck into briefly. He certainly didn't like the idea of jumping into a filthy river, but another acidic ball was coming his way, so without much thought he took a quick few shots at it with the pistol before jumping, barely missing a ropey cord dangling from the ceiling as he fell gracelessly into the water.
The creature wasn't moving when he resurfaced carefully to take a look; he must have killed it with the shot he got off when he jumped. He climbed onto the ledge, deciding now was as good a time as any to rest a minute. As he leaned against the wall, stretching his tired legs out, he looked up at the cable he brushed past when he'd jumped. It stretched all the way down into the water from the high ceiling; Gordon craned his neck, squinting to see the base of the cable at the top.
He should have expected by now that everything in this facility now was an alien creature; indeed now before his eyes was a red glob of mass that attached itself to the ceiling, dangling the long cable from the top of its body, assuming that it was the bottom that it hung from. Adjusting his glasses to get a clearer look in the distance, it looked kind of like the barnacles that one usually found on the bottom of boats. The pale cord extended from the side dangling down, Gordon hypothesized, was the creatures tongue, likely "fishing" for prey below. To test this idea, since he had enough clearance from the thing to try, he found a stray rock of concrete, about the size of his hand, which he threw at the tongue touching the water. As soon as the rock collided there was a zipping sound. The tongue lashed about a moment, slowly drawing itself into the barnacle on the ceiling. Stretchy red jaws opened wide, stretching themselves around the concrete block, swallowing it whole. So he was right. Gordon wondered what else it could eat and how strong its tongue was, but decided against finding out and made a note to avoid them in the future. Though he wondered how easy that would be, as upon a closer look it turned out that there were several of them lining the ceiling of the drain.
Slowly he got back to his feet. The door behind him let to a tunnel of rusty, metal-plated walls illuminated by bluish green lights that stung his eyes when he looked up at them. The hallways were narrow and turned sharply like the turns of a hedge maze. But it was short enough of a venture before he reached a huge room. A black pit loomed below a line of dangling crates suspended from the crane above. The crane appeared to lead into another tunnel across the seemingly bottomless pit. And of course it was the only way to move forward. This was turning more and more into a movie script with every step. Gordon sighed, ascending the red ladders up to the top of the crane. It was a slightly treacherous climb; if he lost his balance and fell backwards there were no guard rails on the edge of the platform he could catch himself on. Ironically there were rails around the very top, where he didn't need them anymore.
No doors to be seen. So from what he could gather the only way to go into the next room was by jumping across the crates like a Mario game. They certainly looked strong enough to support his weight, as did the cables holding them up; the trick would be to time the jumps right so that he didn't overstep and thus plummet to his death. And the added step of climbing over the rail before even making the first jump didn't help his racing heart at all; he was entirely fed up with risking his life over everything at this point. At least the suit gave him some improved jumping ability.
The crates rocked violently with each jump. He clung to the oily cable for dear life, looking down as little as possible and hoping that the grease lubricating the ropes wouldn't cause him to give out at the worst possible time. He made his way slowly, nervous at the slight draft that seemed to constantly drift up from the pit that made the room hiss as the sound rattled the metal plates in the walls. He nearly slipped on the second to last jump, a patch of dust puffing into the air from under his foot. He wrenched himself flush against the cable and grabbed onto it as tight as he could, grappling with his arms and shutting his eyes tight, waiting for the dizziness and panic to pass before he dared to move. It passed slowly; he could feel his body shaking now from his shot nerves and the exertion of the climb down.
Finally he made it to the bottom, letting himself land ungracefully and hard on all fours to the floor. He lay sprawled on the cold concrete floor, recomposing himself. He could feel his heart pounding against the ribcage of his suit.
"Beep, beep, beep, caution: Elevated heart rate detected."
Well no shit, Sherlock. At least it didn't announce he was fibrillating. Gordon just sat still for several minutes, focusing on controlling his breathing again. His hands were slick as he slowly, gradually pushed himself upright again, lubricant smearing across the floor.
Thankfully, as he finally got himself back onto his feet, the following hallway was only that; a hallway. It was long and twisting with several doors, and one ladder to the next level up, flooded with its red lights again, but it was a long, quiet venture with no interruptions from enemies or destructions, giving Gordon enough time to shake the nerves off before he finally found the freight elevator. A little hesitant to touch it after what happened last time, he pressed the call button. But this time there was a hiss of air pressure and the doors slid open.
It was a roomy elevator, with metal walls and mesh floors. He stepped in gratefully, pressing the button inside that closed the doors and began the trip to the next floor up.
