Repurposed 11.0

Interval 11.0 – Gods and Monsters
December 3, 2013
0600, Alabama, Former USA
Exact Location Unknown



"Why are we not gods?"

The question was swallowed up by the morning, but it lingered in some ears.

Paxton turned, and repeated himself, "why are we not the Gods that our makers promised us we would become?" Obviously a rhetorical question; even if it wasn't, he was not going to let anyone else put in a word here. His voice was deep, a growl under it, a rusted, blackened, serrated knife of a voice. Melissa didn't remember when it had changed, she could hardly remember him in any other light just now. Though his tone might put some on edge, to Melissa it was music. The poetry he would speak late at night mirrored his movements and his face, sleek and taut and guarded.

He always had that effect on her, making her go all poetic: he was a god to her anyway. Or at least, when she was like this, biologically speaking. Ready for him to swoop in like Zeus (as a bull or a swan or a snake or more likely just a blinding supernatural presence – which was what his mind joined with hers felt like) and take what was rightfully his. If she dwelled on the myths, her appreciation of his godly qualities only increased (because he was strong like a bull, graceful as a swan, flexible as a snake). Her temperature increased, anyway. Blinking away that crazy tumble of thoughts, Melissa briefly cursed her brain, for listening so closely to her uterus at a time like this.

But then, she had other, more intellectually compelling reasons to be watching him, they all did. Early in the morning, just before dawn, he paced like a panther and rattled his cage. It was a cage he'd grown sick of – they had escaped from it, but found a new one. A whole zoo in fact, as they traced the path of freeways and neighborhood streets beyond their old home. It was not a zoo with animals, nor a cage which could be seen. Whatever had set him off started the night before, some casual comment by Melissa had put him to thinking. And when Paxton started thinking, doing was shortly to follow. Or, at least, fighting.

"We were made, born," he spat the word out as a curse, "to become gods among men. With all the science at our creators' disposal they built us, to give them what the world alone could not."

Perhaps because most of them were telepathic, or maybe because he was accessing more and more different aspects of his powers, Paxton's words were drawing the group into his mind: what he remembered, what he thought, what they knew, what they'd seen. All became one, filtered through him and given back to the rest with a unique spin. In a way, he was emulating his own keepers once more: reviewing and replaying memories, picking the right ones, disregarding others. A good refresher course for them all; more a manner to reaffirm that they were and always had been a pantheon above the mortals that created them.

Cricket, sitting beside poor horny Melissa, thought he was just showing off. When wasn't he? But she allowed the intrusive visions. There might be a test later, she smirked to herself, and she wouldn't want to fail a pop quiz.

They had been born: some to normal parents, but many to surrogates that had their memories wiped of their pregnancies' existence, and a very few to the same mothers that bore their genetic codes. Their infancy was uniformly white-masked faces and sterile rooms, unfocused eyes being tested and ears being checked. Their toddler-hood, often benign enough, for some was broken up by a terrifying, agonizing, visit to the Icarus facility; tubes and needles and bone saws and drills being wiped from their own memories even as the lacing of bio-carbon was making its way through their young, half-formed bones. Their childhoods, dominated then by Enrichment Center dorm rooms, GLADOS's encouragement sessions, droning instructors, subliminal brainwashing and training, blossoming powers being worked out.

Some of them had never known anything else of adults save for the sterile touch of a genetic engineer's hands or nurse's gloved and masked presence. Others, like Rex or Lydia or Eden and Chet, had outside contacts that allowed them to share completely foreign events with the group: shopping at a mall, sitting by a lake fishing, attending a funeral for a family member they'd never met. They had been raised together, these children. They supported one another when their adult keepers would not, or could not. They shared everything, in a way they were another experiment completely above and beyond the Origin project – who would they become, when they were not raised among the rest of Humanity? But it left them woefully unprepared for some aspects of life; curious but suspicious, able to perform tasks that only their subliminal training had given them. Some mistrusted their own instincts, because those instincts went so against their crèche upbringing.

Paxton scanned the horizon, hands clasped around the charred beam above his head, perhaps waiting for a signal from the sun to continue. His own memories flooded back and therefore into his companions: when was the first time he'd actually seen the sun?

And then… then came the endless attacks from Alma. He wasn't alone in being victimized by her, she was indiscriminate and brutally terrorized or even sometimes murdered doctors, visitors, children, at will. No one could stop her: not even Genevieve Aristide who wanted to issue a termination order. There were too many involved with the creation of Alma's Vault as well as the Origin program itself years and years earlier, that dissuaded her from that unethical course of action – and into others equally distasteful for those involved. Alma, after all, was the star prodigy of that program, and her genetics formed the basis for not just Paxton and his brother Geoff, but for at least half a dozen others in the group. She was never used as a mother again after Paxton was born, and not even he could say whether that was good or bad.

A steady stream of new faces appeared in their minds: children being added to the Origin success list. By the time the core group's eldest, Isabella, was ten, the Enrichment Center cared for and educated almost one hundred children brought to work by employees. Only a portion of those interacted with these, their special projects. The Paragon students. Some of those present at this morning's sunrise gather were only barely ten years old, having been little more than toddlers themselves in the era Paxton was recounting. Of course, by the time Paxton was ten… Everything went to hell.

It was in Hell that most of those assembled had spent their formative years. A Hell dominated by an insane artificially intelligent monster, and fearsome beasts from other worlds who attacked on sight and with horrific results. An adolescence that drove some to the brink of madness, others to hide away in shame, a few to strike out and find a Heaven they could call their own. But it also forged a kinship: a family, a network… A pantheon. For they were special indeed. Special enough to defeat the nightmarish creatures of metal and flesh. Strong enough to claw their way out of the belly of their beast, and greet the world that had changed in their absence. Apocalyptic horsemen bearing the Armacham brand on their banners attempted to drag them back down and they refused to go; the pantheon fought both for their freedom and their home.

Now, they could go wherever they wished to. But then? The world conspired to prevent them, they scampered between their Enrichment Center shaped hole in Hell, and a much larger and more predictable layer of the abyss, Black Mesa. Even then… Too many lives had been lost to the vultures that picked at them, they were trapped. Eventually though, as the world began to rot, the vultures took wing, and even the carrion birds turned their backs on them.

"Someone's been at the library again," Cricket whispered, blinked to clear her mind. She mentally suggested that even though she knew he felt protective and clearly proud of them all, enough to consider them a pack of little gods, maybe – maybe? – Paxton needed to remember that not everyone had read all that flowery mythology he was so fond of, and wouldn't understand nor appreciate the metaphors he presented them.

There was a momentary check in the swirl of images in their minds, an almost wistful mental sigh of lowered expectations. Paxton toned it down a notch but continued where he'd left off.

Later on, unattended and no longer restricted to their birthplace, they'd left the Enrichment Center to explore, found things that both intrigued and disappointed them. But in the process they had located, quite nearby and quite by accident, the Armacham corporate medical center which had been used to create Paxton's Replicas. The Medusa facility it was called. And this time, Paxton couldn't be blamed for having crammed a mythology lesson down their brains: that really was what it was called. (Cricket gave off a riotous laugh at that slightly jibing under-thought, and caught Paxton's smirk as he turned away from the group.) Not everyone present on this chill morning knew this story, Paxton indulged himself as well as them, with those memories.

It had been Chet Green that found it. At least one long-ranged telepath would accompany him on these scouting jaunts, along with one of their energy-creators or a Vortigaunt for defense. He would take a day or two to sift through what he could find with his powers. He couldn't do it often, they really didn't want to burn him out on it.

The young man had no idea what to expect when he picked up what looked like a calculator from the ground in the middle of that courtyard they'd set down in. Unfortunately for him, Chet's power was reliable – always happening the same way. Unfortunately for him, his power incapacitated him nearly as badly as Alma's attacks could harm Paxton. He would be flooded with memories, directly and clearly seeing through the object he touched. A babbling that rose to a shrieking, exhausted crescendo came from his mind and mouth, when he picked up that small numeral-decked piece of broken plastic and hesitantly touched it with his bare hands.

That was what the long-distance telepath was for. To help sort out that tumbling mess of memories.

Where had it been created? The plastic object was molded and assembled distantly, China? Hong Kong? Shipped with hundreds of others just like it, handled carefully by gloved fingers and cold machines. Taken out by a woman who tossed it into a box with bubble wrap. Shaken around through a series of airports and traffic hubs. Unloaded by a strong-muscled man, handed to a flirty woman. Installed into the wall by a simple-minded but nimble-fingered attendant. Programmed by a hotshot kid – and then used by a stream of people that never seemed to end. Familiar yellow-lit tubes passed by it with regularity, guided by equally familiar faces that peered at its fading numbers to gain access to the chambers beyond it. Broken, worn out at last by the endless trickle of stubby fingers and painted fake nails and jabbed pencil-ends. Unscrewed by a less nimble, more bitter technician. Tossed out with the garbage. Almost made it to the main waste pickup area, whittled its sharp-cornered way out of the thin plastic trash bag, fell unseen into a corner. There it sat, for many weeks, perhaps even months, a blur of people going by it. Shaken again as the Event and further explosions and motion tossed it around the dirty brick trash enclosure and onto the broken marble floor of what had been a lobby. Buried, uncovered, sniffed at by houndeyes.

Chet passed out, as he usually would – but no one blamed him. Even the telepath with them was duly worn out by that discovery.

It appeared that Armacham had attempted to obliterate the entrance to the place with bombs and rubble even after the Portal Storms had their way with the building. The location was merely another large pile of broken walls and haunted chambers to anyone else. But to their eyes, their minds, and their powers, the Paragon students knew where to look for a hidden panel – a replacement for this one, in fact. Knew how to get down under the mall-like courtyard in the center of the complex. Knew, in point of fact, that their own creators had been here many, many times before. Whatever was in there would be important to them, too.

Unlike the abandoned hospital above ground, the facility below worked, when the power was fully restored to it. Because their storage units were self-sufficient, powered by a variety of chemical and radiological batteries, none of the clones within had died in the years since the Synchronicity Event. But neither could Paxton actually feel them – they weren't 'activated' yet, and were barely even what their strongest empaths or telepaths would call 'alive'. Until they were chemically primed for it, and then Paxton's mental energy could spark their brains, they were effectively pieces of meat in a human shape. They also weren't all his, some were older, created even before he was born for a multitude of other Armacham distribution purposes. All of them, though, were Icarus treated – they would be of far greater use than the others before.

If only the teens could open them, disgorge them, wake them up. Their first foray was a disaster there: prying open the stasis tank nearly caused an explosion, and did damage beyond repair to the Replica inside. It had taken days of searching through the rubble of the rooms and corridors surrounding the Medusa itself (a deep, cylindrical room with layer upon layer of flexible tubes, each ending in a clone's stasis tank – snake heads, the image of it was not lost on its designers) to locate instructions on how to activate them without them just up and dying. Another two days more of dedicated studies to figure out how those instructions could be carried out without the necessary pass codes. Those codes had been lost to time: never recorded on paper, anyway, and clearly changed numerous times for security reasons. And without Chet – who was still in a state of raw shock being tended by Sandy back at their impromptu base a few miles away – they were unlikely to be able to guess at the codes to input onto the complicated control panel near the Medusa's mouth.

Paxton was so furious he could barely move, staring at these – his own form, his clones, his army – and being unable to do anything about it. He had stood before the great head of Medusa and shouted, with his mind and his voice, demanding that the chambers open. Not coincidentally, that was the first time he burned. His hands, gripping the metal railing of the nearest catwalk, didn't just crush the bar: they melted it.

Once he'd drained himself of that anger, Melissa had softly suggested that he find out the other way. But even though he hadn't gone into another rage at that idea, they couldn't easily find any suitably preserved people who knew how to do it, that he might ingest. Paxton was clearly relieved at that. It wasn't something he did lightly. And they also couldn't risk finding the wrong person – too confusing, having to sort through someone else's memories and ideas at all, let alone those of someone who may not even have the information they needed. It was shameful enough for Paxton to have to resort to the ferocious cannibalism that Alma had imposed upon him, he didn't need the added embarrassment of soaking up the janitor instead of a scientist. In a way he envied Chet: all he had to do was touch something to learn its secrets.

Martin was called in from the miles-distant Enrichment Center. He came through in the end: his ability to reprogram a half-decade-dead computer system earned him Paxton's undying (read: sudden, intense, and equally momentary) adoration. And so when at last they had, just over a year ago, reactivated the facility and opened up the first clone – it responded to him as though it had been waiting for Paxton. Which it had been, they all were. They were clad in the Icarus basic black under-skin, and there was pallet upon pallet of uniforms, armor, weapons nearby. Each one looked uncannily like Paxton, but distant as well – they were not people, no matter how much they could look the part. No emotion played on their rugged faces, faces which were then covered in durable cloth, protected by helmets, locked away and never changed nor observed again.

Paxton could have popped them all open like sodas at a party – at the very least, they hadn't allowed him to do that, and he didn't fight it. He settled for ten, one full ring of the snake-head holding cells. There were hundreds more, and a second Medusa that had no man-shaped tongues in its empty mouths on the other side of the facility.

The laboratories back at the Enrichment Center still contained Origin's collection of genetic samples. The devices here … could very well put them into full production. And Melissa knew how to use those samples, above and beyond her own internal manipulation of them. For once, her subliminal training and having been allowed to watch, even participate, at the Center as the genetic engineers mixed their newest creations might have a use.

Paxton was insufferable for another week, though that was because he was so happy it was ridiculous. His old set of Replicas had slowly been whittled away by attrition: GLADOS's predictable violence and the never-ending stream of headcrabs or other alien life at first taking their toll. But later as well: because Armacham didn't feel like giving him enough at once to actually become dangerous to them or make himself an army.

Though they still maintained contact once the first Events had subsided, it was only after the Paragon students succeeded in breaking out of the Center themselves. But Armacham had other things to deal with that left them a low priority. It was true that instructors and doctors had been sent back in, taking up where the now-dead ones had left off. It obviously struck a nerve with some of them that the kids wouldn't allow them free run of the facility, even to repair it. In fact there were portions which were outright forbidden to them – and Paxton's soldiers stood guard at the entrances of those locations, preventing Armacham from learning of the Enrichment Center's newest secrets.

Armacham's board allowed this, perhaps even pretended to ignore it. But over the years after the Event, their feeding him a few Replicas at a time was making him more and more sullen. Perseus, the training which Paxton had been halfway through when the Event blew everything to hell, was on indefinite hold – no one was buying into world wide wars any more. His skills were no longer needed out there. Much more emphasis was being put on building and engineering and safety. Soldiers? Well, they were keeping to real people for that these days. In fact the Armacham folks weren't really sure where his Replicas were getting all the live ammunition, and it worried them.

However, his perpetual hoarding of the Replicas had its benefits. Portal Storms still swept through the area, in addition to numerous natural storms. Hurricanes that progressively ate away at now-unattended levees and shores, flooding was wide-spread, keeping them hunkered down in the Enrichment Center or Black Mesa for several years. Years in which the rest of the world was moving on, and leaving the Center farther and farther behind.

There were always at least six Replicas in stasis, while a few others were active and on watch. One of the old, storm-battered Armacham transport trailers had been floated down into the wide break in the Center's structure, by Isabella before she left, to make sure they had access to the stasis tubes within. The tubes that had been scattered in Cave's storage area were all broken, useless, once they found them.

The original forty Replicas (give or take after that first loss) had come in handy for assisting the ELLs in rebuilding, after each of those storms. Though truth be told, by the end of the second year, there were only eighteen left. Sandy had been called upon several times to heal them, and finally she'd chided Paxton to 'take better care of his toys'. When a nine year old girl with pigtails and a mean glare in her eye stared down Paxton Fettel, he did what she demanded.

Their finding of the Medusa meant that he could be a little more relaxed with that effort. Not much: it'd become ingrained in him to actually watch out for their safety, instead of blandly throwing more of them at a problem until it got solved. Thus with his own army virtually assured at whatever moment he wanted it, there were other ideas that could demand his attention. The Replicas would keep watch, they always watched. Everyone from the Paragon project felt safe with them watching. The kids remembered that first day: when they went limp and unresponsive.

When at long last Armacham simply threw its collective hands into the air and gave up on the kids and the Center, there would be no more Replicas from them officially. The kids had been very careful about how they moved around the ruins, what they discovered being kept from Armacham as best as they could. And what they didn't know wouldn't … well potentially would hurt them. Medusa was theirs now and the pantheon was bent on keeping it.

It wasn't much to look at. Nor were any of their other haunts. The Enrichment Center's above-ground areas were in shambles, some places cleared away by Armacham in the vain hope that they might bulldoze and rebuild. That rebuilding never got done for them. Even the crater which had been formed on the first day of the Synchronicity Event had never been completely renovated, though the power plant was brought back online after considerable repairs. Below ground, the children had done their best to maintain and, with expert help from folks moved in from Black Mesa on occasion, improve the stability of the structure well enough to withstand whatever might hit it in the future. That was five years ago.

Now, Paxton paced and snarled. He wasn't throwing a childish tantrum like he might have a few years before. Now, he was a magnificent seventeen-year-old, grown into a man's body made lean by circumstances. Those circumstances, he addressed. "The world has changed," Paxton said, throwing his arms back, "look at it, it is destroyed." He ground his jaw around, a jaw perpetually shaded with stubble that he daily attempted to keep under control, unlike his brother who often had an angular beard. "Their lives were destroyed, so they moved their lives into giant Armacham-built Cities for protection. Spending money that has no meaning, on lives that have even less. They cower, wait for the next headcrab or creature to fall into their laps, pretending that the walls of the City will keep out the dangers. Pretending that life goes on like it did before. Blind to the fact that it has changed forever."

He never dealt in falsehoods. Paxton's words bit down into those assembled, they knew he was right. They'd been the ones left behind in that desolate rubble-filled wasteland called Fairport – them and the poor people who couldn't afford those safe City haven entrance fees. Everything went to pieces when the one really big Portal Storm had hit it. It was like this around the world, now. They knew this because they finally cleared the artificially imposed 'dead zone' of communications over the Center, and watched the world's infomercials about it.

Armacham's 'generous' offer to help build the Cities had been well-received. Their profits soared directly after the Portal Storms hit. Now, there were walled, sometimes even domed arcologies that dotted the entire planet: some where major cities had already been, others where it was easiest to attract a population from the surrounding rural areas. Those rural areas were ghost towns, if that, now.

The Portal Storms could not, however, be stopped by walls or wishful thinking. Several of the smaller Cities sustained damage from them. The storms were a roiling mess of pure energy, what the Vortigaunts called nach'hallam tahh gulallibah, a wave in the fabric between worlds.

Most of the Paragon group actually understood what those words could mean even if they could hardly pronounce them; their normal refugee companions might not even try to decode them. The Vorts eagerly spoke to those who would listen, and those whose Vortal inputs were budding – telepaths always had an easier time with the Vortigaunts than others. They taught: where the dimensions overlapped, where Earth and Xen or any number of other worlds rubbed up against one another, these Portal Storms were a reflection of friction between them, a destructive wave of motion on either side. As though flattening out a sheet on a rumpled bed, the universes were trying to sort themselves out, and failing.

Ever since the Nihilanth, the Vortigaunts' captor, had been destroyed, apparently, these rumples kept getting more and more creased. It had been trying to bore a hole between the universes. When it died, its energy snapped back and forth, literally like folding a sheet down to a bed. A sheet that could be re-woven directly into the one next to it. Soon, either the worlds would mix together, or they would flatten out again; so close, but still separate if a little bit thin in places. Thankfully, after the first few years, it appeared to be the latter.

That did however mean that in the intervening time, plenty more unusual wildlife got snapped up from its spot on whatever exotic world it had been, and zapped to Earth. It worked in reverse, as well. They'd lost one girl to an orange-colored ball of energy that seemed to do exactly what the green ones did here: took her… and put her somewhere else. There was no way of discovering where she'd gone, of course, it could have been anywhere. So they had to be on the lookout for those as well, early on. They'd subsided first, but there were still the rare moments when a bright green light brought with it a newcomer.

Not everything survived the trip, animals and plants alike had been dropped into the Enrichment Center's area – dead. Because they couldn't breathe, or the ground was toxic to them, it didn't really make any difference. If the refugees couldn't eat whatever it was, they let it rot or used its bones or armor in whatever way they could.

Paxton sensed his point getting farther away than he liked. He didn't need to relate his own interaction with Vorts and wildlife, this morning – or perhaps he did. His take on them was admittedly a bit different than most. He didn't see the Vortigaunts with the same awestruck eyes as some of the kids. But certainly not as the faintly antagonistic observers the Vortigaunts themselves seemed to wish he'd perceive them. He'd never quite understood it, it had always been an undercurrent in his mind, around them. They didn't trust him, he had only the faintest inkling of why. Maybe if he could tap into that wide-eyed wonder... He could let the others' minds drift for him. He'd see what came up, as always utilizing everything at his disposal. But first he had to guide them there.

Paxton ground his head around, relieving some aches. There was one strong ache that wouldn't go away as easily, one that was biding her time in a tall building's penthouse. "They live in their Cities," the one of which he spoke was known to be nearby, he didn't have to add that. "Thinking that they are safe. But we're left here, in this wasteland, forgotten. Abandoned to our fates."

Cricket leaned over and whispered to Melissa who sat with her bright eyes focused on nothing but Paxton, "is he ranting, proselytizing or just whining? He seems kind of bitter this morning." Cricket's less than subtle sarcasm wasn't lost on her friend.

Melissa chuckled, and whispered back, "I think this is his version of a pep-talk, I heard some of it last night. He does try to get to a point. Don't worry. The hive-mind is probably giving new brains to help him, I think he's working out the details now."

Indeed he was. When it was just Paxton, he thought circles around pretty much everyone there. Sometimes, it had been Pax and Geoff – two sides of anything, seen in an almost Vortal mix of mental and physical. With a more subtle pull, as he used this morning, Paxton could alight on each mind, not commanding any, but drawing from all. If Judith had still been anywhere near them, she would have given that little neck-clutching worried look, and muttered something about privacy issues or sharing secrets. But Paxton didn't steal peoples secrets unless he needed them, and these people were all his friends, his family. His pantheon. They deserved their privacy, and he gave it to them if they asked. He didn't kick down closed mental doors, he knocked first. Most of the time, anyway.

Paxton had let the sun rise behind him, and cursed what he saw below them. Fairport had been fully abandoned even by Armacham's troops, though at that, only recently. The downtown districts still visible as half-broken spines, jutting up like tribal warnings, surrounded by a sprawl of cracked, burnt skulls, the shells of residential homes, ashen streets like skeletal arms. Grooves had been worn down in places where a Portal Storm had dredged up large sections of streets underneath it, as though they were made of mud. Bodies of the dead had been left for years, most had been eaten by the new wildlife – or even the existing life. There were still reminders that this was a sudden, unexpected event. Bodies they'd found were hunched over stoves, sitting in offices, on the toilet. Dead from the shockwave, dead from starvation, asphyxiation, crushing, or the rare psychic injury from Alma's original attack. Many more were dead from headcrab attacks, houndeye predation, or simple petty murder for the sake of another's survival.

The Portal Storms had shocked and worried everyone that was fortunate enough to have been outside their path. They did their destruction haphazardly. Whole towns had ceased to exist in their wake. No one could predict where or when they'd come, nor how big or destructive they would be when they did. Everyone around the world was on edge.

Plus, the Vortigaunts had come. Plenty of them were rounded up and killed. Religious persecution hounded them to an extreme: they were a challenge to everyone's religion. They had to be purged, they were Satan's tools or they were proof of whatever the prevailing area's belief thought was evil. Obviously there were people who didn't agree with these slaughters. Some of them were lined up right along side the Vorts. Eventually though, things calmed and more rational minds prevailed. Science would explain what theology could not. They could become valued members of society. They could barter their way in with 'work in trade', since they lacked money. Most called it slavery, in any language. Vouch'harrah, in theirs.

But they were not universally welcomed into those Cities, and thus most had come to remain outside, in the wilderness. Many of those herded the bizarre new wildlife as though they had never done anything else, disdaining the urban ruins and reverting to a simpler way of life. Some brave Humans followed them, like many of those gathered around Black Mesa. Few ran herds of antlions in this part of the countryside, but out there it was like the Wild West all over again. Only with insectoid cattle, glowing Vortal 'eggs' and larva posing as chickens, houndeyes as herding dogs. Exotic though they all were, however, they were still prey, possibly headed for domestication in the distant future.

As for the rest of the Human population of the world, however, it seemed best to do what Armacham instructed them to do. To adopt a strategy which Paxton referred to as 'prey behavior'. On that, he elaborated with a weirdly incongruous question. "Why do zebras have stripes?"

He caught his flock's question: Were there any zebras left? No one present had ever seen one, been to a zoo which still had live animals, or even had a pet before those houndeyes Jamie trained…

"Because that way, when the lions come to feast," Paxton said while offering the group an image of something he'd seen in a nature video: thousands of these things, striped like Houndeyes, almost, but where was their color? "It's harder to see the individuals. The mass of the herd will survive, even though some get picked off." He continued to pace, looking like he could leap at any of the others who watched him – from what they thought of as a 'safe distance'. He certainly looked the role of a lion, stalking from above.

His brother was even higher up. While Paxton wore a path among the exposed beams of the broken walls in the large church, and his 'congregation' of Paragon folk (they couldn't call themselves 'students' any more after all – were they a tribe? A village? A mob? Paxton preferred pantheon the more he thought about it) sat on the tile floor or in what was left of a pew or two, Geoffrey perched himself on the edge of the broken roof, watching. He did that most days, now. Watching from some high vantage point. Waiting for something, other than his brother, to come into his gun-sights.

"We are the lions," Paxton said, face alight with passion. Or perhaps, alight with his very flashy pyrokinetic ability. "We are the gods, they are merely mortal prey."

"I know you don't like eating them, but what would you do with them, if you caught them?" Geoffrey abruptly said from above, one of the few times he'd ever interrupted Paxton when all eyes had been on him and not in private later on. He saw a gratifying wave of stiffening bodies, and heard the faint gasps from each of those below. Of course he questioned Paxton. That was what they did. To pass the time, to challenge each other, to grow more skilled… Or merely just to fight, get rid of their excess energy, and stave off the desolate, desperate boredom that had claimed two of their number from suicide earlier in the year.

Paxton, to his great credit, did not launch an attack directly at his brother for that insulting and very public reminder. But he glowed, it was not just the sun warming his back. This cold morning, he was the only hot object anywhere near: he could burn with the heat of the sun if he got angry. He didn't. Instead, as suddenly as he'd begun to burn, he stopped. His posture relaxed, his face softened. Most others followed his gaze upwards to the ruined rooftop. Geoffrey was their gargoyle, perhaps their guardian angel staring down, his predatory silhouette replacing the cross which had fallen years before. As usual, his rugged face was all but unreadable.

"I don't want to catch them," Paxton said, almost with disgust in his tone. "I want them to see us. Through the bars of their cage, their pretty gilded cages. To know what they are missing in us."

"You want to be their god," Geoff stated, and once more, like his brother, he did not deal in falsehoods. Geoff's plain and rather unemotional tone always underscored his brother's passionate one, "wasn't that your point?"

"We are not gods if only because our keepers and our creators tightened the choke-chains on us whenever we tried to be," Paxton said, hard, with his teeth gritted. It was his point, what was Geoff getting at? "And then they tied the chains down, pounded in the stake, and left us here like dogs in the rain."

"They abandoned us, I know." Geoffrey said. His voice was different from his sibling's, still quite low but not as grating as Paxton's, and he hardly used it any more, after Bella left anyway. "They're afraid of us, brother," oh how rare that had become, to hear Geoff refer to Paxton that way. Whether he used the word ironically, spitefully or not, only he knew. "And they have good reason to be."

Paxton's hands became fists, glowed once more. Ash fluttered down from them, it disturbingly reminded some of the older kids of how Alma's presence would have been noticed, in the Vault, just before she sprang. Or just after she'd killed someone who wandered into her domain.

They were all waiting for this, would there be a fight? Some of the younger teens, those who had been children when the Synchronicity Event occurred, let their imaginations run wild with that. It was a good thing there weren't any of the assortment of stronger empaths like Constance or Mike around: they might have spurred a fight on even if the pair weren't ready for it. Geoff and Pax fought frequently enough – both physically and with words. Usually, the latter preceding the former. But this time, it was different. Paxton's fiery hands relaxed, cooled. He descended to the floor of the church in an easy, seven-foot-down step, thought the better of grasping the already-burnt beam he'd been walking along.

"Yes, they do," Paxton said, tilting his head, he spared a glance across those who had gathered to watch the sun rise – they hadn't really come there to watch him preach, after all, but if he acknowledged that he didn't show it on his sharp face. "They fear us because we survived this. Without their help. Without being in their precious Cities. And if a group of innocent young children," his eyes flashed as he rolled them with a shake of his head, "can survive for years without help, that damages their credibility, doesn't it. Aristide knows where we are, and she has let us remain alive. Not wasting ammunition or bombs on us, but not giving us any clean water or food or supplies. Because she thinks that some day we'll all just curl up and die."

"And if she doesn't think that?" Geoff said, casually jumping the twenty-odd feet down to the ground as easily as Paxton had gone a third of that distance, a plume of grit from the exposed drywall and roof shingles following him. Moments later, the entire corner he'd been on came down in a clattering pile behind him. He ignored it, didn't even flinch or dust himself off. Who would notice more dirt on an already filthy camouflage jumpsuit? Others were a little nervous and scampered away from the nearest walls. The place was coming apart, they wouldn't really be able to use it as a gathering spot much longer. Particularly not if another storm – of any kind – came. There looked to be one brewing between the brothers.

"Why would you think otherwise?" Paxton said, assuming a more girded posture. "She's the one who put the stake in the ground with our leashes on it." He glanced away, "that's what one expects a chained animal to do, is it not, to die?"

Geoffrey had walked to within arm's reach of his brother. He was just barely taller, built a little more vertically where Paxton was broad-shouldered. They would never be so different that they didn't resemble each other – brothers by the look of their facial angles, their noses and lips, the cut of their jawlines. But Geoff had adopted longer hair, the beard on his chin, preferred wearing darker and more subdued colors. Paxton's appearance was far more cleanly cut, his actions almost always seemed more plotted out and careful where Geoff's flowed with an easy confidence. Seeing them standing side by side, many present were reminded of why they followed the Fettel brothers. No one could possibly refuse their power – physical, mental, or charismatic. It wasn't just in Melissa's eyes that they looked like gods.

Geoff blinked once and said, "or, because you expect it to try to escape. Or if you can't be there all the time to watch it. Or to punish it when it does try something you didn't want it to do." It was just about the most they'd heard him speak in months, all at once.

A very long pause was punctuated by the distant yipping of a group of houndeyes in the streets. Jamie's pack, hopefully.

Though nearly everyone watching them had some form of telepathy or empathy, they didn't see the subtle exchange between the pair of young men's minds. Never severed, never cut, but so delicate a thread wove between the two even now. Paxton had not yet tried to meet his brother's more vibrantly blue eyes, narrowed as they were in calm challenge. When he did bring his steel-grey eyes to meet Geoff's, there was a light behind them that Geoff had long missed. It wasn't just agreement: it was vaulting far beyond what he'd tried to express. It felt good, he remembered this: when he and Paxton were one. It was like the oldest memories they had, shared experiences, long forgotten pathways that they'd traveled together because they could. Paxton always had a gift with words, where Geoffrey spoke with economy. That sometimes left the elder brother unable to convey some subtle points, points he knew and wanted to express. He handed those points off to Paxton, and Paxton so reliably ran with them.

"'To die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man; but to counterfeit dying, when a man thereby liveth, is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed. The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have sav'd my life.'" Paxton quoted carefully, and then added in his own tone, "I had forgotten, but you didn't. Thank you for reminding me. I would have hoped I'd learned that lesson." Lesson? Which lesson was he – "We will curl up and die, brother."

"That's the idea, you little brat." Geoff said, his own cold blue eyes more piercing than ever; and oh how the others cringed: if anything could set Paxton off, something like that would. But they smiled at each other, no one but Paxton could have seen the gathered, happy lines forming around his brother's eyes. Geoffrey added in a mutter, "leave it to you to bring some dead poet into this."

Paxton even chuckled, and slapped his hand around Geoff's shoulder a moment later. "I don't think you've ever liked listening to me 'spouting nonsense poetry'," Paxton said.

"It's hard to miss, you never stop." Geoff walked off, smiling, the sound of collecting his rifle and knife easily heard over the gentle wind, less easily when Paxton began to laugh.

Paxton ignored the stares that were coming from the gathered teens. For someone who so enjoyed being the center of attention, and more enjoyed being right all the time, at that moment he didn't seem to care if anyone had been watching him get schooled by Geoffrey. Instead, he turned to look at the sun as it bled its orange light over the jagged points of the city. He was content and filled with a familiar, nearly-forgotten calmness that contact with his brother's mind had brought him.

The rest of the group stretched life into their arms and legs, started their day more or less as they'd intended to do, with or without Paxton ranting at them. He'd released them all from his mental network moments before Geoff and he shared their own commune, and they had hardly noticed. That bond with his brother would always be more important to him than he let on, and he jealously guarded it.

It was reasonably clear that some of the younger teens were disappointed by this sudden, boring end to the discussion. They hadn't ended up fighting, there was not going to be any entertainment this morning: Paxton wasn't going to burn the place down. But they were aware on some level that a decision had been reached, and that the decision that Paxton and Geoffrey had just made was important. Perhaps Melissa would explain it to them later.

She would tell them: Aristide did indeed expect them to die, and they had not died. But once they did, or appeared to, she would no longer be watching them so very carefully. Aristide's people had been able to cut their power at times, place snipers in strategic locations, or take down bridges that had somehow remained intact after the Storms, to isolate them further. All of which were her quaint way of asserting her dominance over her belongings. Belongings that had ceased to entertain her, stopped being profitable. She had no more use for them. Aristide would have preferred them to be snuffed out more officially. But then, killing children was never, ever good for public relations. So now, she just waited for the inevitable.

As GLADOS had expected them to die, but they outsmarted – and outlived – her too. They had looked dead to her eyes that one fateful day, but they were still alive, weren't they.

Life of any description went on regardless of who commanded it. In City 47, what used to be Atlanta, Georgia, that meant shuffling papers on desks in offices. Repairing radio towers for the unending news reports to go out over, street cleaning and patching of holes made by those creatures in the sewers. Recording of music to entertain and pacify. Policing and taxing the good people of the City, collecting of salaries.

There was collecting to be done in the outlands between Medusa and the Center as well. Water, preserved food, clean clothes, batteries. For years now, the kids of the Enrichment Center had been living on nothing more than hand-me-down clothing that had been around in the facility and food that had long gone stale. Though Armacham had restocked their major food supply early on, they hadn't done so again. Once outside the place, the kids discovered that looters had combed through most of the area's stores years and years before, leaving very little more than what they could find within the burnt-out homes and apartments still standing. They'd traded their blue-white Armacham Enrichment Center jumpsuits for whatever they could find that fit: whether it came from a storefront, a broken closet, or the back of a long-dead corpse.

There was hunting to be done. Jamie and his packs of alien dogs handled much of that duty. But everyone who could, or had the inclination to, would go out to locate fresh meat of whatever kind they came across. That the meat was ready and willing to hunt them back had been the obvious problem, but they learned to deal with that. When to steal a kill from a wild houndeye, or use a barnacle to catch birds. On a regular basis, those Black Mesa ranch round-ups would be shared with the Center's inhabitants.

There was also killing to be done: some spare survivors had been hit by headcrabs and turned into those zombie creatures. Stumbling around looking for their own next meal, unfortunately those things could wait it out for years without a bite. They would suddenly groan to life, lift themselves up on those twisted remains of hands, with their gaping chest-maw of rib-teeth at the ready. They absolutely terrified people, particularly empaths or those who tried to telepathically communicate with the person. What they found was not a person any longer. They came in different types – some slow and ungainly, some fast and seemingly nothing more than animated skeletons, some piled high in a hunchback form, scattering their 'offspring' skittering around with poisonous bites.

The individual headcrabs weren't so bad, in fact some seemed to be content with consuming melons or biting into other animals. They kept the rodent population down in the Center, and Dr. Kleiner had some as pets in his lab at Black Mesa. But once they'd commandeered a human host, they had to be killed outright wherever they were found. Them, and the bullsquids which had decided that sewers just like the extensive network found under Fairport were ideal breeding grounds. They would come up out of the streets, or even just start spitting through breaks in the ground or open manholes if they could see motion. Their acidic spit clung, burned, ate through clothing and even armor. Bullsquid unfortunately gave very little nutritional value – the gooey green spit gland was the only thing they could harvest from those things, and even then the Vorts were the only ones who could handle pulling it out of them.

The survivors couldn't be out alone at night, not when there were creatures that could easily detect them. So the day time, even though still dangerous, was a better choice for their activities. Mapping out the area, noting changes in the landscape if another Portal Storm hit, which buildings had collapsed or been made safe. Hardly the expected activities of teenagers, but ones which were necessary, and ones which the group enjoyed doing. They didn't have the luxury of coffee shop chats, dance club parties, or even a relaxing day at a park. Their behavior was seen as odd by those who had been left in the city, survivors that had been used to those very things. Odd, but very, very useful now.

A few of the 'normals', the non-Paragon folk that had been rescued by the Enrichment Center's group, would be aided by those with powers on their own mapping and foraging trips. It worked pretty well all in all, though there were persistent complaints by the normal elders – anyone over thirty, and not originally from the Center in other words – about being dragged around by a couple of teenagers.

The Vortigaunts helped with hunting and guarding, occasionally restarting a generator or energizing a battery, plus the mundane tasks of cleaning and cooking. Martin was one of their better teachers on that end, he could whip up a headcrab stew that might have been five-star material. He, however, was back at the Center overseeing the installation of the newer replacement Portal generators with Alyx. And Alyx had helped them so much here in the Outlands too, she was a natural at urban exploration just as much as she'd been able to make her way mostly-safe through GLADOS's trapped rooms.

In the Outlands, however, not everyone had things to do this day: most of the youngest children were required to be near their adult keepers. The teens of either Paragon or normal type spent time with the remaining instructors in the makeshift 'schools' still trying to learn more about the world which had collapsed around them. Some, though, were simply going to laze about doing nothing all day anyway. Melissa and Cricket had been on barnacle patrol recently, they were going to be slackers for a while. Plus, Melissa was getting into her phase, and unlike their protected Enrichment Center days, she could no longer afford to go off and be alone in some disused office to ride it out. She had to be in a safe area – distracted as she was by thinking about anything male and Human, she would be easily tracked, captured, killed, or eaten.

That she would regenerate quickly enough to rise and make herself scarce moments later, was not really the issue. Long before, as she realized how these moods would affect her, Melissa had begged her friends to watch over her when she was like this. They complied. She acted as their den mother anyway; the queen of her Hive, if Paxton and Geoff were her kings. She'd frequently enough been the only thing stopping Paxton and Geoff from killing one another when they were seriously fighting, or from damaging others if they raged enough. She could take both a strong hit from Geoff's fist or a burning glare from Paxton – and make either of them feel guilty enough for having done it that they stopped whatever fight they were having, most of the time. Though she wasn't apt to want to teach the younger kids, she was quite able to help explain things to them, such as the discussion this morning. Organizing things and people was something she excelled at, even now.

Melissa was valuable in another extremely important way as well, the very reason she got like this once a month. The same reason she hated herself for not becoming pregnant a few days later. She resented her design team's work: the ideal vessel for the next generation of Origin subjects. She'd finally located and read her own dossier: it looked like someone had been in the process of making it into a sales brochure.

Melissa could detect genetics in Humans, psychically seeing them not as abstractions but in very real images: what portions of genes came from which parent, how each of those interacted... She could easily sense those genetics 'visually', but more so chemically: getting a whiff of someone's sweat, touching them or even tasting them gave her direct, vivid knowledge. More than any of that though, she was, and the brochure made sure to point out the details: Able and willing to adapt her own ova to her partner, to keep herself alive in order to bring to term, to subliminally or perhaps chemically coerce her partner to defend her. She'd spent hours every month cursing her creators for those things, because she was their cheap alternative to machinery. Right at the moment, however, she reveled in it.

Still watching Paxton, who was apparently sending some of the Replicas down to collect whatever the houndeyes had killed earlier, Melissa enjoyed the view. The view, as her ovary-addled mind saw it of course, was a bit narrower than the city-wide landscape from the gutted hall of a church that Cricket gazed at. It was more Paxton's ass, how he looked in those cargo pants, snug dark tee-shirt and motorcycle boots, how well he carried himself while pacing up there, and when would he come down here and fuck her silly.

Melissa cleared her mind, tried not to stare into the sun: Paxton had vanished to join his brother or his Replicas hunting. With him out of plain sight, and the wind no longer carrying his delicious scent to her, her hormones got mostly under control once more. It was a good thing that Constance wasn't around, or Lynne for that matter. Either of them always complained when Melissa was like this. They were apt to accidentally broadcast it to those around her and that had led to one or two extremely awkward mornings-after.

She'd often considered just getting pregnant and staying pregnant in order to prevent these rollercoaster rides of emotional instability. But then, there was no one left to extract a fetus from her when she started to show... Not like before. It wasn't like she'd have been the first of the Paragon girls to do it, but she knew that unlike Lynne or Dolores, she wasn't ready to be a mother. However, pregnancy seemed to be about the only thing Melissa wanted, needed, or would be thinking about – for the next couple days anyway.

Cricket could tell even without mentally spying on her, that her friend was having one of those nasty-ass thoughts about a Paxton Sandwich with a Side of Geoff, but decided against bringing that up. It would just make Melissa frustrated – more than she was already anyway. She already knew that Melissa didn't respond to other girls to help her through the mood swings, and besides, they were in a church.

Everyone else had wandered off, some heading back to the Center; Kitty and Jared, along with two Replicas, were making their way over to Medusa to relieve the other pairs who stood watch there. Soon the day would be brighter if not warmer, but it would still be yet another boring morning for these two left in the church.

Cricket sighed, played with turning herself invisible in waves, and thought the better of trying to climb what was left of the crumbling church walls. Her ability to go vertical or even upside down had always worked best on walls and ceilings that weren't weakened to the point of crumbling. She zapped back to visible when she thought of something. "He'd have made a great politician, do you think folks would have elected him?" That elicited a snorting laugh from her friend. Melissa seemed a bit delirious on her hormone high.

"No, no that…" Melissa waved her hand around in amusement, "would not be good." She then pushed her fingers across her eyes, dust was coming from the fallen roof tiles that Geoff stirred up. But she was also grinning at the thought of what Cricket had said. It was so crazy. So. Crazy.

"But why?" Cricket added, "he speaks so well, everyone always listens to him. I don't think—"

"He'd make a good leader." Melissa said, grinning. "He is a good leader. Very charismatic, very capable – and I'm not saying that because I'm me," she quickly qualified her words. "He keeps his promises, he doesn't lie… He listens to people, he respects their wishes," Melissa smirked and Cricket realized she'd overheard her early plea before Paxton's ranting got the better of him. "Politicians… all they ever did was screw things up for the rest of the people around them, and making out like bandits in the process." Melissa pondered. "I mean, if he was like a politician? That's like saying a headcrab makes a good hair accessory. He'd use everyone in his path, use them up like the Replicas."

"He already does that," Cricket reminded her, and Melissa's sun-yellow eyes rolled and looked away. "It's totally true and you know it." Melissa shrugged, Cricket pouted. There was always a hint of Paxton on her mind, anyway. Not her fault: Melissa had allowed Paxton to see and feel through her body ever since she could remember. And he'd forced himself through others trying to perfect his skills without the Replicas at times. It was a useful, but not very pleasant, expression of his ability; a stronger version of the one he'd used for the last hour to hive-mind them into his memory space. Even Cricket had been the focus of his intense mind once or twice so she knew that there were vestiges of the young man anywhere he went. Melissa liked to think she still had some kind of objectivity when it came to Pax, but Cricket saw straight through that nonsense. Very selective memories, that girl had...

Cricket sighed, "well anyway … it was a good rant. I liked it. Nice effects, too." The redhead sent off a jolt of electricity from her ever-present Icarus armor's fingers, to punctuate her words. "He'll make intellectuals of those kids somehow." Melissa chuckled at that.

"I liked the ending, I thought it was funny," Melissa said with a broad grin on her full lips. She drew her knees up, swaying. Off in her own world, Melissa looked to be thinking of which ways she might best be discovered and with any luck ravished, when the mighty hunters got back from the streets. Clearly, she had some obscure side-tracked idea about the 'sermon's' ending, Cricket once more didn't seem to get what she'd meant when she said it. Cricket pondered it, rolled the words around in her mind, but came up empty.

Cricket wasn't known to be the deepest thinker of the group. But then she was also greatly underestimated by her peers because she enjoyed goofing off and dancing or pranks. The redhead took that moment to zap Melissa's ear, causing her kinked hair to fluff up – that was funny – but Melissa was so enrapt in her own thoughts that it hardly made her jump.

Melissa leaned back, and without looking at Cricket beside her said, "I was wrong. I haven't heard it before."

"The dying-saving-your-life thing, something about valor…?" Cricket said, "I know I've heard him quote it before, but he never tells us the plays they're from. How is that funny?"

Melissa chuckled. "No, I mean… Paxton actually letting his brother get the last word in."