The Freed Men

[dæmon]

I've decided to post a story that has been sitting on my hard drive for over a month now. I don't think many people read this forum but it seems a waste not to post it. I've re-written my original story, and as before, all the descriptions and enemies are based on the bink videos or screenshots on this site.

Below is the first part:

The heavy breathing is misting his gas mask. The shoulders move up and down vividly, his head darts from face to face, panicking. A ring forms around him and they force him to his knees. His comrades lie smeared across the walls and floor, distorted in twisted heaps, sprawled over tables. The soldier nearest draws a pistol; they shout at each other, voices fading in echoes.

I do to him what they do to us!

He might have information!

You are gesticulating wildly.

He wasn’t supposed to survive!

We can’t take prisoners!

We kill him - we become them!

The pistol swings towards him, a hand grabs for the arm. It is too late - he can’t –

Jo jolted back into consciousness. Has she even been asleep? The dream recurred nightly, but this time she had viewed the perspective of the dead soldier. Piotr had executed the prisoner after an arduous fight through the carcass of a hostel, where five warriors fell. The masked enemies had suffered heavier fatalities, although that hardly comforted her. They had once been peaceful citizens, but the irresistible march of the invader had combined them into its limitless ranks. Now they carried out daily acts of wanton cruelty, torture and killings on any who dared to violate the orders from the citadel, but Jo remained uneasy at the shooting of those few who surrendered. A cure had to be possible, to return them to their true state.

Her comrades slept deeply around her, using old rags as blankets, huddled together to conserve warmth. Only three of the seven originated from the city, the others had chanced across the desolate, ruined terrain of their homelands, heading for one of the last known bases of concerted human resistance. Tom came from the smouldering London, Lee from a fishing village in China, Jo and her compatriot, Mike, the infested United States. In the eyes of the Combine, they all looked the same and only desperate fighting kept them from its bio-mechanic grasp.

Lying motionless, her eyes wandered the brown capillaries of damp rot that meandered across the ceiling, gnawing at the fading white paint. Distant machine guns chattered and explosions thumped. Somewhere a gun ship whirred over the fray; complemented by the crackles and pops of the ubiquitous fires that blazed in the streets, spewing billowing plumes of smoke which hung over rooftops, smearing the sky with flakes of ash. Yet the routine cacophony of war did not perturb her these days. Only the vile cawing carrion birds disturbed the chill of the night.

A flat-footed tramping sounded in the street below, stopping irregularly as if the person had difficulty moving in the piles of rubble and debris that littered the road. Fearing a wounded civilian might be down there – soldiers rarely ventured into the open – she scrambled for her weapon and crept to the frameless window. Concealed in a dark corner she craned her neck to peer at the ruins.
“Don’t,” Piotr’s soft voice whispered off to her left, “Don’t disturb it.”
He moved closer, but his large dark eyes remained sunken in shadow. Dark patches formed around his dimpled mouth as a nervous smile twitched, and collected in the thick scar on his chin. A factory machinist before the invasion, he had joined the resistance after his family had disappeared a few days into the battle. Jo knew that although he yearned to find them, he felt his search was in vain. He had been shot four times, miraculously escaping each time with flesh wounds. He now showed a chilling ruthlessness toward the combined soldiers, killing any who crossed his path.

The person in the street crunched loudly through shards of glass.
She gave him a questioning glance - It?
He shook his head, and motioned for her to move away. Jo glanced at the pistol strapped to his leg, and shuffled back along the wall. It could only mean an alien, but this one had sounded so human. She had only seen dead aliens, rotting under the scorching sun or riddled with bullets. Everyone preferred them that way, as the strange creatures stirred a visceral fear unlike anything a terrestrial animal could elicit, yet Jo remained curious to see a living specimen.

Unable to sleep she wandered the hostel, testing each step in case the floor collapsed. Civilians had taken shelter in the building, grateful for the protection from the resistance soldiers. Several conversed in hushed tones around a fire, their shadows dancing on the walls. Jo paused outside their room, listening. Often the civilians inadvertently provided useful intelligence about enemy positions and movements, but also maintained a plentiful supply of rumours.

“Any news on how the attack is going?” one asked.
“We are very close to the tower here; I think they will reach the walls any day now – maybe even tomorrow.”
“Yes. Those bastards’ days are numbered. They force my young son, you know, to run errands behind the lines. He says these days they are jumpy, on edge, they know that the freed men are coming.”
“Who are the freed men?”
“My son says, the enemy, they are afraid of the free men. They have good weapons, good tactics, they fight for their cause by choice. I think they have surrounded the city, they will enter the battle when the resistance opens a path to the tower walls.”
“I hope so . . . I wonder what sort of weapon would break those walls. . .”

 

[Stigmata]

:O That's some good stuff you've got there. Can't wait the month until the next part

 

[63]

/me like it! lol, the only reason I came in here, is because I thought it was the HL2 General section

 

[dæmon]

Jo left them speculating, not wanting to crush their optimism. No remaining human force could encircle the city, and the resistance drive to the citadel had deteriorated to skirmishes for individual buildings. Many had simply given up, not seeing the point in fighting impossible odds. Worse, the “freed men” was in fact just one man, the scientist Freeman who appeared in the city just a few days past. Jo failed to see what good another scientist could work, but if his mere presence worried the enemy, she welcomed him.

She had not met the man, only his armoured suit in the stores room; while the Quartermaster had his back turned. The mundane task of acquiring her equipment had passed without event, but as she gripped the door handle, she felt a faint hum through a door to her right. She slinked through into the side room and closed the door silently. A line of glowing blue batteries lined a rack of shelves from one end of the room to the other, which ended in another door.

A suit of armour unlike any Jo had ever seen leaned against the opposite wall, attached to a modified generator unit via three thick plastic nozzles. Enthralled, Jo stepped closer and marvelled at the thickness of the armour, and puzzled over the meaning of the lambda symbol on the chest. The shoulders, elbows and knees joined with thick, mesh-like material allowing for plenty of manoeuvrability. The suit gave all round body protection, and a nearby helmet completed the outfit. It had clearly saved someone’s life many times, for the armour showed chips, scratches and dents, even faded burn marks, in many places. She rapped the chest with her knuckles, but rather than feeling cold metal, her hand bounced away, full of pins and needles.
Footsteps outside the door halted her investigation, and she managed to sneak out the second door unseen.

On returning to the converted garage room that her team had commandeered as a barracks, she found the usual confused atmosphere. It was unwise to inhabit any single building for more than a few days, so the ‘sergeant’ of the group, Mikhailov, had only pinned a few notices to an old shelf. As a city native, and the most experienced fighter, he took command of the other six who formed the group. A taxi driver in his past life, he used his detailed knowledge of the city streets to outmanoeuvre the enemy, and still wore his frayed taxi cap in battle. He often found devious routes through the ruins that the enemy neglected to defend, and rumours told of his expeditions to the citadel wall itself. That day he looked particularly troubled and severe, his ordinarily roguish face scrunched up in confusion.

“Would’ya like a cuppa, Jo?” the cockney asked as she entered.
“Please.” The Englishman had a prodigious ability to make tea even at the worst of times. Where he found it in the city, she did not know. He had worked in a tour-boat business on the Thames once, and managed to ferry several hundred people across the Channel in multiple, dangerous voyages after the Combine reached London.

The others lethargically cleaned the working parts of their weapons; Lee, a natural expert in their usage, demonstrated to the youngest member, Ivan, how the parts slotted together in a sub-machine gun. Lee had been a postmaster in real life, Ivan a part-time shop assistant. Mike had been a mechanic, and in the current situation found ingenious uses for any piece of scrap metal. Jo put her long black hair up in a ponytail to keep it out of her eyes, and sipped her tea. She had finished an International Relations degree a few weeks before the order came to abandon the USA, the irony of which the others never let her forget. It would have led to a promising career, particularly after the unexplained nuclear explosions in Arizona two years before, causing an international crisis over how it had happened. The US government refused to release the reasons for the blasts, and other governments took great offence. Then the aliens struck, and the whole situation spun into turmoil.

“What’s wrong, Damek?” she asked. Mikhailov’s head snapped up, coming out of a trance.
“I’ve received these orders for the group, but I don’t know who gave them, or when they came. I woke up earlier, and there they were, nestled amongst my clothes. And if that wasn’t just a mystery, the mission it gives is implausible.”
“What is the mission?” Lee asked.
“Better not be another bloody barricade,” Tom put in.
“The biggest barricade of all, my friend – whoever sent these orders wants a hole blown out of the citadel wall.”
Uproar followed, everyone talking at once. The barricades set up on the perimeter of the citadel possessed an alien strength that no human weapon could destroy. The guerrillas resorted to capturing them and holding the position for as long as possible against Combine counter-attacks. The citadel walls were far larger, whilst their most powerful weapon was Mike’s rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

 

[-JeZ-]

Good stuff! Keep it coming!

 

[Brian Damage]

Very, very good. I am impressed.

 

[dæmon]

“I know, I know,” Mikhailov repeated, “I’ll make enquiries, but the orders look legit. Anyway, this is the most plausible plan I have seen. Apparently, there is a weakness in the mechanism of the outer wall, which if we exploit, could disable it for several days. With the wall out of action, they will have to retreat closer to the citadel, giving us time to regroup. Imagine the drop in their morale, how stupid will it look that the wall is stuck?”
“But only for a few days?” Lee asked.
“That’s right, but it could well save the Resistance. Groups are folding all over the city and worse, some are deserting to the Combine. If we group for just a few days, we can get back on track. It also mentions… someone will attack the engine room. What does that mean? I don’t know, but it sounds good for us.”
Jo shook her head. What sort of maniac would issue these orders?
“How, exactly, do they suggest we destroy this mechanism?”
“He says that there is a vulnerable section on the southern side. The wall is very close to the buildings down there, giving us plenty of cover. Also… the route he gives leads to an enemy storage depot, full of uniforms and such. We will disguise ourselves with those to approach the wall. He has cleared us to take explosives on this mission, which we place at each end of a section of the fortress. Just as the wall rises we detonate, which should jam it in place. That means other sections will stop as a safety precaution, until engineers repair the fault. Needless to say, timing needs to be perfect.”
Several of them exhaled heavily. This was as close to a suicide mission as they would ever get, advancing to the centre of it all. The tower lived, an alien structure amidst the crumbling European architecture, responsible for everything. Enormous pistons rhythmically slid up and down, completely oblivious to the slaughter hundreds of metres below. The structure itself had few guards, as the Combine was confident that nothing could destroy it. The problem was getting near it.
Mikhailov left the room to collect the explosives, and on returning, he gave them each two satchels packed with some deadly concoction. He also had a present for Jo – the M29 assault rifle coveted by Combine and Resistance soldiers alike. The others looked on enviously, stuck with sub-machine guns and shotguns, but Jo had proved herself a crack shot, and the telescopic scope was her reward.
“We go in via the sewers. You know how they hate the sewers,” he chuckled.

The manhole cover sat securely in the middle of the road. Mikhailov peered up and down the road; the others panned the windows, seeing nothing. Mikhailov motioned Ivan forwards to lift the cover. Bent double, equipment clinking, he scurried into the open.
He tugged at the heavy disk, finally pulling it aside, the metal squealing ominously. Dropping it with a thunderous plunk that hung in the air, he tensed as if an animal caught in headlights. No shots rang out, the road was clear.
Mike and Tom dashed out and crouched alongside Ivan. One holding each arm, they lowered him headfirst into the sewer. He swivelled in all directions, looking for danger.
“It’s clear,” his muffled voice confirmed.
“Let’s go,” Mikhailov ordered.
They emerged from their hiding places, bounding onto the street. They all descended the ladder onto a walkway of slabs running alongside a trail of filthy motionless water. Heavy fighting at the main sewage plant had damaged the sewer system extensively enough that the waste lay stagnant apart from occasional popping gloops. Moss and lichen flourished in the cracks between slabs, and a slippery thin film of water over the walkway threatened to plunge them in at any moment. Jo shuddered at the mere thought of it, no matter how shallow the filth was.

All flicked on their flashlights, the meagre glows straining to pierce the darkness. Dripping echoed in places but they saw nothing in the first half hour. Mikhailov led the way, steering through the gloom. Below ground, the battle seemed eerily distant, although they were walking directly below it. Dust and silt rained down from the roof as shells exploded, once a water pipe burst, sprinkling them with ice-cold water. If they moved through a silent area, she worried that the echoes of their footsteps made far too much noise, and would attract some vile beast that inhabited the sewer.
An eternity later, they rounded a corner to see a slant of light glistening down from a large crack in the roof. A deep, enthusiastic voice boomed above – an enemy propaganda vehicle was close by.

“Come forwards, resistors! Surely, you all realise that your current situation is untenable! Why die for the whims of some mad scientist? The Citadel means you no harm; we desire peace as much as you do! Surrender now, and live to see the fruits that our combined efforts shall achieve!”

“Can you believe that shit?” Mike muttered, during a brief pause.
The voice continued, this time without the cheery twang.

“Unfortunately, as you well know, should no negotiations take place, you leave us little choice but to eradicate any opposition, to ensure the safety of your collective brothers and sisters who have, ah, ‘seen the light.’ As a gesture of our goodwill, we shall cease-fire until midnight tonight, after which time you will force us to resume hostilities!”

This evoked a string of curses from all of them, and they passed quickly on. The Combine attempted such stunts daily, the “cease-fire” in fact time to position their troops and vehicles in flanking positions. Many pockets of resistance had fallen foul of the trap, mulling over whether to change sides.

Two tunnels later, Mikhailov raised his hand – stop. All flashlights clicked off. Jo heard a soft scraping rattle behind them, soft feet pounded along a metal walkway. Whatever it was streaked quickly away, the rattle lost to the rumbles above. Still, Mikhailov did not move.
Jo pinned her ears, listening intently. Soon, splashing and the characteristic clomp of the Combine boot became audible. The sergeant peeked around the corner, and then suddenly darted back.
A brief set of hand signals indicated eight enemy soldiers approaching. He motioned them back along the sewer corridor, arranging fire positions. Mike and Lee slid into the sewage, which proved to be only knee-deep.
“When they enter the T-junction,” Mikhailov whispered.
Jo hurried to find the range, ready to fire an explosive round at the foe. Already she could hear the slightly metallic rasping of the masks they wore. So much for the cease-fire, she thought.
Seconds later, the combined regulars stomped obliviously past the end of the tunnel. They waited until five were in the killing zone, and opened fire.

 

[dæmon]

The enclosed walls of the sewers multiplied the weapon blasts tenfold. Instantly her ears were full of a dull ringing, completely deaf to everything else. All five enemies slumped down. The other three offered a few token shots before fleeing. Mikhailov rose and hurtled after them. Jo scrambled, balancing carefully, disorientated from the ringing. Mikhailov charged around a corner, shouting at them to do the same. Gradually the violent splashing of their quarry filtered into her ears, spurring her on to move faster.

Next, she heard exclamations and cursing, human sounds converted into reptilian hissing. Thundering on, the rasping sounded more defined, almost agitated. Slightly ahead, Mikhailov collided with something. Jo skidded on lichen, her head crashed against a padded Combine suit. Hand to hand fighting broke out, knees, elbows, fists and feet flailing in all directions.
“Goooo baaack! Goooo baaack!”
“What the bloody hell?” Tom yelled.
Jo glimpsed an electric blue glow shining off the sewer walls. Her heart froze, the elbow lock she had around the masked face slackened.
“Get out! Get out! Run, damn it!” Mike roared.
Lee seized her by the shoulders just as a spear-like tentacle reared from the sewage, hurling itself at the enemy soldier. He barely had time to scream as it sucked him under. A second tentacle shot out and caught another soldier, who let out a dull cry of amazement before he too disappeared, whipped below the surface. The third scrambled after them, unarmed, terrified at whatever had claimed his comrades. Piotr noticed this, and a moment later, the soldier was floating, face down.

The exit to the sewers was a rusted ladder bolted to a brown brick wall in a cavernous, dank room. A smashed turbine lay toppled in the middle, destroyed purposefully by the Resistance to flood one of the lower levels and so block an alien entry point. It also closed the main route for combined soldiers moving between the citadel and old prison block outside the city. Jo peered upwards but could not see the ceiling, shrouded in a deep grey mist that drifted to the floor. A shallow layer of water coated the concrete floor, each step sending waves trailing off into the fog. The clammy atmosphere coiled itself around them, creating a trapped sensation. There was no way of knowing what crept in the emptiness of the room, waiting for one to break from the group.
Something brushed her shoulder, but before she could react, it swept away toward the ceiling. She put a hand to where it had touched and felt strong sticky saliva. It took some effort to pull away. She pressed ahead to Mikhailov.

“There’s something in here,” she muttered, pointing to her shoulder.
He examined it for a minute, brows furrowed.
“Everyone down!” he called out. All crouched on their knees.
“Did it come from above?” he asked.
“Yes, I mean, it sounded like it was up there.”
A violent splashing shot through the gloom. She turned wide eyes on Mikhailov, who spat.
“Okay! Let’s move and stay alert, people!”
They crept on, spinning around to glance in all directions. The wild splashing continued, turning Jo’s legs to jelly – something is out there!

The sense of exposure began to overwhelm her. During her three weeks in the city, she had plenty of camouflage, hidden in dark corners and piles of rubble. Suddenly the Kevlar armour weaved into the resistance clothing seemed very thin and inadequate, surely unable to stop any bullet or alien weapon. Her eyes darted chaotically up, down, left and right. It’s behind me!
Lee froze as she spun at him, weapon up. She sighed deeply and moved on, now embarrassed as well as nervous. The mist began to thin, and she could see the ladder no more than fifty metres away. The splashing seemed to be all around now, the sound of scraping claws and whimpers frighteningly close.
“Stay alert people! Pack hunters! Timid, though. Fire a shot if any come close and they will retreat. The little bastards.” Mikhailov added.

The infrared scope on the rifle revealed dark shapes scurrying around close to the ground, but the mist obscured their features. They chirped at each other, moving together. Somewhere above a soft scraping paced in circles. The group moved in a single fire column, shooting irregularly when the shapes came close. The mist swirled as each blast lit up the tense expressions on their faces.
Suddenly Ivan let out a muffled cry and began choking. All spun to look at him, watching in terror as a red snake tightened around his neck and pulled him off the ground.

“Cut him down! Cut the tongue!” Mikhailov yelled, charging forwards.
Ivan was rapidly turning purple, spluttering at the mouth and desperately clawing at the creature around his neck. Lining it up with the scope, she fired two shots and a deep belch rumbled down. The tongue whipped violently at her, savagely shook the boy, within her grasp. She was close enough to see his bulging eyes, blood bubbles bursting at his lips. She grabbed, but the tongue slurped away out of reach.

“Help meeee!” the poor boy gasped as he disappeared into the gloom. A sickening crunch followed by a splatter of blood was the last she saw of Ivan, but barely had time to recover from the shock before a pig-like creature bounded up, showing her reflection in a hundred eyes. Water swished as more of the creatures appeared, instantly squatting and emitting a high-pitched shriek.
“Shoot them! Shoot them!”
The mist curled as everyone fired, revealing more of the creatures shrieking in the darkness. They fled at the danger, but several who had breached their perimeter continued to shriek. One emitted a vibration that catapulted three soldiers through the air like rag dolls. A huge wave washed off in all directions, but Jo barely felt it. The force of the alien blast had numbed her senses; she tasted blood where her gums had ruptured in several places. All the soldiers sported horrendous nosebleeds and dilated pupils, completely dazed. Jo fumbled and dropped her weapon, but Mike recovered quickly and drove the remaining creatures back into the mist.

Mikhailov appeared, tugging a stunned Lee behind him. Tom and Piotr splashed into sight, resting on their knees and breathing hard.
“What happened to Ivan?” Piotr whispered.
“Jo? Did it… did it take him?”
“Yes. Oh, I almost had him. It took him up there.”
“Then we can’t help him now. Come, we have to move on.”
“Ohhhh, huuuumannnnssssss!”
“Jesus Christ! What the hell was that?” Tom spun around, waving the shotgun at this new terror prowling in the dark.
“Ooo! Heh! Heh! Heh!”
“Ca ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

 

[Brian Damage]

Hmmmmm... I wonder what... or who... they're going to meet next...

 

[-JeZ-]

Vortigaunts(sp)?

 

[Brian Damage]

Rhetorical (sp?) question...

Your spelling was fine.

 

[dæmon]

"What is it? What is it?” Lee cried, suddenly awake, eyes wide.
The serpentine taunts drifted in from all directions, human, yet alien. Unlike combine soldiers, these voices sounded natural to their owners, not a mechanical distortion. They were all motionless for a moment, wide-eyed gazes turned on each other.
“Make for the ladder, and quickly.” Mikhailov said, unsettled.

More tongues swished about as they ran forwards, but the pack hunters had dispersed, leaving the prey for the newcomers. Their pounding feet and rattling claws were the same that Jo had heard earlier, and rapidly closed in.
“Fire at will,” Mikhailov breathed, slowing to reload.

The shadow swept in from the side and a muscular arm swiped at the whole group. Three clawed fingers barely missed them, the force enough to blow Jo’s hair from her forehead. A brief gasp, seven weapons turned on it. Before anyone fired, the creature sprang up into the mist with its powerful legs.
Cackling coursed around them again, but this time directed at the attacking creature. It replied with angry hissing, and stole across the ceiling. Snarling and thumps echoed as two of the creatures apparently fought each other. The humans did not wait to hear what happened next, and broke out in a full sprint for the ladder.

Mikhailov and Jo waited at the bottom as the rest clambered up. Another shadow pounced heavily, landing and slashing in one movement. Damek grunted as a long claw tore his forearm and pinned him to the wall. The creature, human in shape and size, reared back for another blow but Jo managed to slam the stock of the rifle between its neck and chin.
She screamed as it turned its ugly face to her, growling through the respirator mouth. Cables snaked out from the eye sockets, ending with small, glowing orange lenses for sight. White fibre masked the rest of the head; muscles bulged all over its body.

The claw rose and she waited helplessly for the blow, but Mikhailov used his other arm to grab his pistol, firing several shots into the head. It slumped with a hydraulic wheeze and the two humans bolted up the ladder. Mike slammed the manhole cover down and tipped a filing cabinet over it to prevent the creatures following them further.
“What the **** were they?” Jo cried, trying to blink away images of the mechanical face.
“I’ll be damned if I know,” Mikhailov sighed, “but they looked to be in an advanced state of combination.”
An uneasy silence fell on them at that. Jo pondered the disturbing image, the machine gradually modifying the biology until all human characteristics had vanished.
“But those are the first I’ve seen,” the taxi driver assured them, “and I’ve been here a long time. There could not have been more than, what, four of them? Piotr, see to my wound, then we have to carry on.”

They had emerged in the old factory warehouse mentioned in their orders, close to the Citadel walls. The grinding and humming of the great black structure reverberated around the room, gently shaking the blanket of dust and grit that covered everything. The yells of engineers drifted down to the squad, as final preparations took place for the next citadel expansion. So close to their goal, the impossibility of the task became blandly obvious. Perfect timing would be required to detonate the explosives at the very moment the wall rose from the ground, and that was if they reached the structure at all.

Human patrols here were rare, but sentries still watched high up in their sniper nests for suspicious activity. Combat scanners buzzed over the rooftops and bio-mechanic vehicles trampled through the ruins. Mikhailov set them in observation positions and began searching the warehouse for any useful equipment lying around. The supervisor’s office lay wrecked, the door creaking gently on one hinge. Bullet holes peppered the window and its wire mesh covering lay torn nearby. Someone had recently drained the PCV charging unit, the status screen blinked red. She noted that they had neatly replaced the charging nozzle before moving on.

Damek returned with a large cardboard box in his arms, kicking another along with his feet. Both bore the inverted C-shape that served as the Combine logo along with alien numerals, but no other markings.
“Here are the uniforms!” cheered Mikhailov, as if lusting to wear one.
He fished out polythene bags, hurling them at each soldier. Jo tore hers open, excited despite herself at the opportunity to examine one not spattered with blood or scorched with bullet holes. Damek had given them the combat fatigue edition, which came in a surprising multitude of components.

First, a remarkable soft, glimmering set of overalls, the cloth of which appeared moulded, rather than stitched together. Valves at the wrists and ankles tightened as they sucked in air, sealing their bodies within the material. Next, heavy-duty socks, so thick she could barely feel her feet within them. Liquid suspended inside allowed her to stroll around easily as the liquid matched the contours of the floor.
“These guys sure know how to make good socks,” Mike laughed, tilting on the lip of a stair, allowing the liquid to balance him.
Flame-retardant jacket and trousers, then the wiry fabric outer layer, complete with military insignia. She had feared the uniform would be stiff and heavy, similar to the piles of old coats her mother forced on her as a child before letting her play in the snow. Yet the alien material rippled with her movements, offering minimal resistance. The boots however, were heavy with metal toecaps, collars and heels, and she was soon grateful for the socks. Rubber trouser twists wrapped the hems up nicely and thin foamy gloves almost completed the outfit. They helped each other strap on the ceramic-lined bulletproof vests, mottled in urban camouflage colours.

Finally, she reached the most apprehensive item. The dual-filtered respirator sported matte orange lenses and an extremely tough rubber casing, covering the entire head. An earpiece and microphone plugged into her ear, as Damek moved around bolting the clamps at the back of each head. Adrenaline coursed through her as she looked around at the disguises. The respirator hissed and growled as she breathed, distorting her sounds in a similar way to the enemy grunts. The lenses dulled the colour of everything, but diluted dark shadows to light grey patches.

“Tune into channel s-s-seventeen, it’s-s-s a clear frequency,” someone said.
She adjusted the microphone dial, and with each twist, heard shouts, screams or mumbling as the enemy communicated in the battle.
“H-hello?” she stammered, terrified that the enemy would hear her.
“Hello Joe,” Tom answered, “pretty nifty comms they’ve got here.”
“Are you sure this is safe? Someone might be listening,” said Lee.
“Speak as little as possible,” growled Damek, “we can’t recognise each other like this anyway.”
He motioned to the destroyed office and they trampled through the warehouse after him. He clattered around until he found an old pen and notebook, and began scrawling:

Speak only when abs. necessary. Can’t risk enemy listen.
Rear door 15m from cit. wall. Blind to sniper fire.
MUST place exp. 20m apart under gears.
Esc. route via engineer truck

He led them to the rear door, pointed out the gear shafts and battered old truck the engineers used. The warehouse would shield the truck from the blast, allowing them a hasty escape. Everything hinged on nothing spotting their departure, leaving Jo sick with fear that damaging the wall gears was the easiest part of the mission.
They retrieved their packs and removed the satchel bombs, and one at a time Mikhailov sent them out to position and arm them amongst the tall, humming gearboxes. By luck, or some other twist of fate, the engineers above did not see or hear them scuttling around the base of the wall. Jo thought they should surely hear her desperate breathing as she crammed the explosives inside the target, but they raised no alarm.
“Very good,” Mikhailov sighed, his voice drenched with relief, “now, we wait.”

 

[Brian Damage]

Guess we were wrong :E.

Great stuff. Lots of thought put into it, I can see.

 

[dæmon]

The respirator seemed to breathe for her as the hours crawled by and they lay hidden, waiting for the citadel to bite another chunk out of the city. The overalls’ alien technology kept her body cool whilst her head sweated uncontrollably in the tight mask. She could not ruffle her hair to relax the sensational itching and became increasingly distracted. Only the low whine of an approaching enemy vehicle stopped her from giving in and yanking the mask off by force.
“Enemy APC incoming at five o’ clock!”

The door jarred on its hinges before creaking slightly open. A faint blob of shadow appeared and then a clang as its owner collided with the door a second time. A hovering robot buzzed inside and instantly ascended to the rafters. A series of blurred flashes indicated it was snapping photographs. Jo held her breath lest the machine detect the rasping of her mask. She knew of the scanner, the mobile camera force used by the enemy to keep citizens in check. The scientists had managed to convert a captured machine into their own surveillance device and she was aware of the danger they presented.
Jo chanced a peek upwards and saw that it was in fact a combot. A modified scanner, the combot’s primary use was zooming above guerrillas during battle and firing at them to distract their attention from the front.

The machine was looking at the empty uniform boxes. The iris flashed red and the combot was gone.
“It knows we’re here,” she gulped, struggling to find her voice.
No sooner had she spoken than the monotonous oscillating buzz of the citadel alarm filled the air.
“Mike, get the RPG ready,” Mikhailov whispered urgently as the armoured carrier lurched closer. The corrugated metal walls trembled as the heavy engine growled outside.
“Come, Mike, we shall take it out.”
The driver and mechanic moved to the open door. Jo dared not blink as Mike raised the launcher. A spurt of flame and smoke issued as he fired. A metallic scream as the armour bent and ruptured. Dust and rubble pattered against the warehouse wall.
“Let’s go! Let’s go! Be ready to detonate!”
He led the way to another exit and rammed it open with his shoulder. Two engineers were scrambling desperately into their truck. Jo grabbed one, slammed him against the warehouse. A rifle butt collided with his head. Another masked face gave her the thumbs-up. Mike gunned the engine.
“Get in!”
“Detonate!”
Jo fumbled for her detonator as she dived on the open back of the truck. A series of booms deafened her again as everyone else set off their charges. She finally found the trigger and clamped her thumb down. A column of dust spiralled into the air as the truck sped away. Had they damaged the gearboxes?
The truck fishtailed as Mike drove wildly through the streets. She could hear Mikhailov shouting directions. Two combots appeared and rained leaden fury down on the truck. They returned fire with no hope of hitting the robots. The bots peeled away and were lost to the rooftops.
“Someone is missing!” Lee cried out.
She glanced around and saw a splash of red along the side. Only four soldiers remained in the back.
“Who fell out?” she asked dumbly.
“The rest of you will be joining him shortly!”
“What?”
“Surrender now resistance scum!”
“**** you!” she screamed back. The rest also threw insults at the Combine voice.
Mike slammed on the brakes hard at the next crossroads. The sudden halt almost threw Jo over the hood of the vehicle.

“Daddy long legs! Heads up!”
Jo had heard of the legendary Strider, but never seen one at any distance. The two bearing down on their position now seemed terrifyingly tall, with the macabre malice only a combined vehicle presented. The ground trembled slightly with each stride, and despite appearing precariously balanced, they moved with a certain grace. The six remaining soldiers bundled out of the truck and scurried for cover.
A similar horror to what she had felt in the sewers clenched at her chest, but this time coupled with helplessness. Her weapons were pitifully small and insignificant compared to the cannons slung under the Striders. This time she had no enemy soldier to take the blow for her.
One Strider suddenly stretched out to collapse to half height and the enormity of the abdomen became clear. The other remained fully extended, and in one swift movement positioned itself directly above the squad. Both rotated their cannons. They remained poised for a moment as if perplexed that the enemy was dressed in Combine uniform.

“Move! Move!” It sounded as if they had all screamed at once.
The Combine voice laughed savagely.
“You won’t be ****ing that!”
The Striders, blocking access to surrounding buildings, opened fire with a terrible ripping sound. The air rushed and beat all around as heavy shells cratered. Half-aware of her wild screaming she sprinted. Directly alongside, a bullet shot straight through Mike. Anyone hit by the Strider collapsed in silence. No sound emanated from the rest of the squad and she feared the worse. She tripped in the rubble and crawled desperately in no particular direction.

Her head rested against a cylinder, cold and harsh amidst the warm dust. Dully she registered it as Mike’s RPG... the RPG! Carrying on with them all dead was pointless but she did not want to die pressed helplessly to the ground. The Striders were scanning now; in a second, one would register her as alive. Checking that a grenade was in the launcher, she activated the guidance laser. She stared for a moment, adjusting her aim. The grenade would hit the cannon where it joined the abdomen. Confident, she squeezed the trigger.

A curious mewing drifted down the pipe, unlike anything she had heard yet. It seemed almost benign but Jo did not trust any sound in this city, least of all something hidden in the darkness. The respirator lenses could not pierce it so she gratefully loosened the clamps and took it off. The blaze still raged, blocking out all other sounds from above. She knew the air to be thick with scanners desperate to locate the fugitive. Gun ships circled high above to warn off any approaching guerrillas. Soldiers darted back and forth, battling with the flames.

Jo had not expected such an explosion. As the grenade reached the Strider it suddenly swung directly downwards, and by chance, it streamed into the cannon. It did not explode immediately, the cannon only belched smoke, but the legs gave way and the Strider collapsed onto the nearest building. The other sounded alarm and Jo witnessed some sort of... vortex glide through the air and brush her arm. Already crouching, it spun and stalked quickly away.

The downed Strider smashed through the roof, sending bright orange sparks up in a fountain around it. The force of exploding ammunition hurled Jo to the other side of the road. A vast dust cloud swamped the area as bricks and mortar crashed down. In a revoltingly biological way, its legs began to spasm as the circuitry failed, but Jo did not stay to see whether it stood back up. She jumped into a crater caused by the explosion, and on hearing approaching armour, scuttled into the shattered end of a pipe – tentacles or not.

 

[dæmon]

She flicked on the flashlight and panned the beam ahead. A small pale dome supported by thick, muscled legs sat ten metres away. When the light fell upon it the creature slowly turned, revealing large red claws, but the body remained a pallid cream colour save for occasional brown blemishes.

It bucked and beat its claws against the pipe. Jo held the beam on it, frozen, curious. The creature mewed again and scuttled forwards. It stopped, beat its claws.
Then it leaped at her. It had razor sharp teeth on its underbelly, a tangled mass of gore and hooks. It hit the top of the pipe and fell fewer than ten centimetres from her head. Her rifle met it and expended half a magazine. Foul smelling gas and intestines burst out, splattering all over her face and sides of the pipe. She choked at the intense ammonia smell, and batted the corpse aside.

Hurrying along the pipe, she kept her flashlight on in case any other alien beast took her by surprise. She was moving away from the Citadel, but the area would be teeming with combined soldiers within minutes. Off to her left came echoes of a person stumbling around in a connected pipe. It ceased abruptly with an exclamation and thud as they fell. Her pace quickened but suddenly the pipe dropped and she tumbled over. After a swift fall, she found herself on a metal walkway overlooking a large pool of various blue hues, radiating a gentle humming, more a vibration than a sound.

An enemy soldier slouched against the wall breathing heavily, the casing of his respirator torn open. She yanked it off to reveal Piotr. A large gash on his forehead had drenched his face and neck in blood. He blinked at her wearily and shook his head.
“Bastards hit me five times . . . I still going.”
She hurried to tend to his wound and ripped clumps from his combat jacket to form a makeshift bandage.
As she worked, he whispered, “Tom is dead.”
“Did any others survive?”
He merely shook his head and focused on the ceiling. She felt herself inexplicably relaxing as the vibration from the liquid rolled through the walkway, almost as if it had healing qualities. She glanced down, wondering whether it might help clean the wound but before she could do anything a clatter of running steps bore down on them.
“Hold it right there!”
Instantly the relaxing sensation evaporated as she glared at the newcomer. A member of the field police stood over her; he bore all the insignia of a combined soldier, except for his human voice. He clamped a sub-machine gun securely into his shoulder, so she had no chance of fighting him off. The police evoked more hatred than ordinary combined soldiers, for they were volunteers rather than conscripts.
“Get up bitch! Pick that wreck up with you! You’re under arrest!”
She did this silently, a stream of curses racing through her mind. She feared arrest more than death in the city, knowing what awaited any captured resistance. Grimly wondering at the tortures that awaited her before the ‘cure’, she felt with horror Piotr’s hand trailing down her leg towards the pistol.
“Don’t!” she whispered fiercely, but his mind seemed made up.
“I didn’t say speak!” He punched her hard enough in the face to knock her down; Piotr stumbled to the walkway barrier.

Four things then happened in the same second.
Piotr spun wielding the pistol wildly with no hope of hitting the guard.
The guard replied with curses but his aim was dead on - Piotr tripped back into the blue liquid and disappeared.
A blinding green flash lit up the room and the guard collapsed, his heart monitor wailing as he died.
Crisp footsteps paced along the walkway as she blinked dots out of her vision.

 

[dæmon]

A strong slender arm pulled her up and positioned her against the wall.

“Good evening, Miss-s Turner,” a chilling male voice said. As her vision returned, she saw a tall pale man wearing an immaculate blue suit. His gaze passed straight through her, but held her attention completely. He exuded a feeling of control and although unarmed he terrified her. He tilted his head up, raised his eyebrows and peered at her down his nose.

“I must admit it was not you I - expected to meet down here, Miss Turner. I have been, observing the progress of Mister Mikhailov for several days now but, following his unfortunate pass-s-sing; it appears you are the most resilient in this… t-talented squad. I am most impressed.”

Jo stood flabbergasted, trying to fathom how this suit knew her name. She had never heard any mention of him before.

“As you can appreciate during this... troubled time, a great deal demands my attention. So listen carefully - I’m only going to say this once. I - require the most skilled soldiers for a - a particularly difficult task to aid Mister Freeman. No doubt, you have heard of him during your time here. Indeed your previous mission revolved around his activities. By de-stroying the gearboxes, our… adversaries’ efforts have been set back – for a time.”

The barrage of information stunned her even more but she feared to interrupt him.

“You are one such soldier, Miss Turner, so - should you wish to honour my offer of recruitment, just step into the portal and I will take that as a yesss,” he paused with a guttural swallow, “otherwise – well - my only other option is to leave you here to fend for yourself. Rather, disappointing, after what you’ve just survived.”

Jo still did not comprehend what he was saying but could already hear soldiers sprinting along the tunnel behind her. The blue-suited man swept his arm and a crackling green ball of electricity appeared in mid-air.

“Time to choose,” he said softly, his piercing gaze now focusing on her.
She froze, uncertain at what to do. Could this be a trap? What might this ‘portal’ do to her? The footsteps stormed closer.
“It’s time to choose.”
She stepped in.
An icy blast numbed her entire body as everything went black, only the thudding of her heart and frantic breathing told her she was still alive. The voice pressed in all around her.
“A wise choice Miss Turner! He will meet you up ahead.”

Subject: Turner​

Status: Recruited​

In transit to assignment.​

 

[Brian Damage]

I like, I like!

Some of the old, some of the new.

Oh, I think that paragraph with the mewing in the pipe is a little out of place. Should be lower down.

 

[jabberwock95]

Great Stuff!!
The gman is perfect, 'unarmed yet terrifying'. He always is!
I like the gman being against the combine, fits in with my personal theories. Keep up the good work!

 

[dæmon]

I forgot to move the headcrab paragraph down a bit Brian; I cut a section and that part ended up in the wrong place.

I copied the G-Man's speeches from Half Life, Opposing Force and the bink videos on purpose, as at the time I thought it was a good idea to paste them together. Reading it again, I'd say I've exaggerated his stutter too much though.

The earlier parts have far too many commas which I didn't notice when I posted them. I'm not sure yet whether to give Munro a polished version to put on the site, but if I do then a lot of those will be removed.

Thanks for the comments, this one is finished for now

 

[jabberwock95]

Ahh, shame. I wanted to see what the special mission 'to aid Mr Freeman' was. Sounded like fun. Oh well, I hope you decide to carry on with it in the future.

 

[dæmon]

Freeman's mission is mentioned when they get the orders, to attack the "engine room". A very old screenshot in the UK PC Gamer (June 2003 -might have been concept art) showed a big room full of huge pistons and platforms. Their mission is to destroy it.

I don't want to write it though, otherwise Freeman will have to speak, and we can't have that