Repurposed 4.0

Interval 4.0
May 17, 2006
0300, Black Mesa, NM
Black Mesa Research Facility / Specific Location Unknown


Corporal Shephard was not having a particularly good time, slogging through Black Mesa. His Osprey, along with the rest of his squad, had been shot down. He'd been chased and …shot at? Was shot the right word? By those weird hoof-footed aliens. He'd been nearly killed by the facility itself – who the Hell let these people continue working on shit when there was goddamn toxic waste spilling out everywhere? Half the time Shephard didn't know whether the shit he was walking over was caused by the disaster earlier, or if, more likely, it had been there for days or even weeks.

And what was with the endless series of bottomless pits? Who designed this place anyway? If he lived through this, he'd have to lodge some reports to the right authorities, or something. Because this place was a deathtrap waiting to happen. It was only a matter of time before something big like this – what did that scientist guy call it, a 'Resonance Cascade'? – happened. They drew their cards, this time they got a crappy hand.

Adrian Shephard would have given anything to be playing a crappy hand of poker, just then. He'd let his mind wander, foolish of him, and he'd almost walked into a trap. It was, on examination, a trap that one of his own might have set. There were probably dozens of Hazardous Environment Combat Units on site here, his squad hadn't been the only one in the air. Nor had it been the only one shot down by aliens, either. The thing that came flying by their chopper when they'd just barely entered Black Mesa's airspace?

The Hell was going on? Big orange manta ray thing. Flying like it was nothing. Squatted over the other Osprey and let loose a fart of epic laser light or something. Down went Tango Bravo.

Yeah, it was a crappy hand all right. Once he'd managed to get out of the building looking for the crash site at the LZ, found the radio that the scientist told him about, they were already pulling out? Fuckers – he was already on the surface, but they weren't going to head back to that crash site… No need, no survivors, they thought.

Adrian dismantled the trip-mine, took it off the wall, and set it in his pack with the others he'd been collecting. It was like a trail of bread crumbs. Only much, much messier.

He'd taken his gas mask off, retained his helmet. It was getting too hot for the mask, and though he'd wandered through some locations where he might have had to use it, he wasn't dead yet. The night was young. There was still time for that. Besides, walking through waist-high shit hadn't done him in. Maybe he just couldn't smell any longer. He probably stank to high Heaven.

He ran his gloved hand through his light brown hair, mopping up the sweat from under his helmet. Though he'd been in training for this kind of mission shortly before deployment, Adrian never once thought that he'd be sent to 'hazardous environments' like his own goddamn country. Was this even normal? He didn't know what normal was, any more. He'd seen too many bizarre animals appearing out of thin air, bursts of bright green electricity dropping them into the halls or practically on top of him. Where were they coming from?

The two-legged grey-green skinned fellas, they were easy to dispatch. They had lightning coming from their weird two-fingered hands, and they spoke some kind of gobbledy-gook that Shephard recognized as language, but he'd be damned if he could understand it. It wasn't like any language he'd been briefed on, anyway. They were aliens. They didn't speak English like in the movies. And then there were those gator things – squid-headed motherfuckers that spat acid. Good aim on those things, too. But they went down just like anything else. Then those goddamn … rope-tongued things hanging from the ceiling? One of those left what looked like an acid burn across his shoulder where it had latched onto him. Started pulling him up…

He felt a little bad about shooting those dog things, though. In a way, they were almost kind of cute. For a dog that had a face full of insect-like eyes, three legs, and ran around in packs that could pulverize you with their 'barking'… Yeah. Cute.

Those other things… Turkeys with fangs. Plucked turkeys, walking around on skittery spider legs, leaping on you any chance they got. He almost laughed. Turkey would be real nice about now. Maybe he could spit one and roast it.

Adrian shook his head. He was tired. Damn tired. He had encountered a handful of other Marines, and in the process of getting the hell out of dodge, they'd uniformly gotten killed or lost. He was bound and determined to get out of this mess alive, but he was so exhausted from all the running and getting shot at…

Adrian pulled up to a halt near a storage room of some kind. He heard a distinct clack-clack sound, feet, shoes on metal. Light, soft, stealthy. He wouldn't have heard it with his gas mask on. Something was following him. Or some one, at this point he couldn't be sure.

He'd gone through almost all his ammunition in the last horrible firefight with three of those electric-slinging aliens and one bigger one that might have been a cousin to them. So now he was left with a couple options: grenades, one of those trip mines, his knife… The back of his mind whispered, or just let them come at me and end it.

It wasn't that odd that he'd have some kind of suicidal thought after all this bullshit.

It was odd that it wasn't in his own voice. It was a woman's voice. Whispered. Seductive, almost. Well fuck you too, he thought as hard as he could. That ain't gonna happen.

He decided to move more carefully through the area. Clinging to the cinderblock wall, the Corporal inched around several shipping containers, trying not to let his gear catch on anything as he went by. He froze and held his breath when he heard more of those footsteps, a strange fzzzt of electricity, and then abrupt shots from a combat rifle.

Another Marine, most likely about to be dead. There was another sound, a whizzing, almost like bees or a hornet, the sounds of impact, and a wet thud. Very definitely dead.

He hazarded a glance around the corner, and there was another of those big alien things, it had some kind of weapon anchored on its arm, and the buzzing projectiles from it spun into the air. Tracers, almost. It hadn't seen him, wasn't aiming for him. He took that opportunity to head closer to the stairwell on the left.

The buzzing got louder, he heard impacts on flesh like before. At first he worried that it was shooting at him now, but he felt nothing. He could have made it to the door at the top of the metal stairs, if only for the black-clad body that suddenly dropped from the ceiling and into his path in a brief haze of electrostatic energy.

"Fuck!" He couldn't even control his mouth now, "the fuck is going on!?" He spun, this had been that thing's target? It was still shooting, the little darts whizzing around objects and impacting nearby into the wall. Small chunks came flying out of it, throwing dust into the air. Adrian tugged on his shotgun, pumped it and emptied it into the beast. It fell, but he was pretty sure that it would have had to be injured already if it only took three hits.

Ah, no, that would be because of the other black clad individual, who suddenly appeared in a spot of blue-white crackling energy. But she… he knew it was a woman by the hips, didn't look too good. He glanced down at the black-ops that had been killed on the ceiling, another woman. Who sends women out to do this shit?

But the other one, in the middle of the room, she didn't move. Just stood there for a moment, looking at the strange hulking alien that was now bleeding a greenish gunk onto the cement floor. It looked to Adrian as though she was as exhausted as he. He took half a step and she looked up sharply, but didn't raise her weapon – if she even had one. There was the rifle on the Marine, some yards away from her, Adrian saw it as he walked very carefully and slowly down the stairs again.

His own shotgun now empty, the situation seemingly not warranting a reload, he placed onto his back, snug in its special clip. By the time he approached the dead alien, Marine and black-ops lady, she'd sunk to her knees and looked to be crying. It could be a trap, it probably was a trap. He kept going. Today was just one of those days. Why not. She didn't appear to have any visible weapons, so …

She reached up and pulled off her helmet. Weird thing, very snug, almost insect-like. The armor itself was something he'd seen advertised in a Guns and Ammo magazine not too long ago: it was an Armacham suit of some kind. Two weird tube vent things on the back, special finger-hooks on the gloves, slight padding on the upper body, looked like Kevlar on the legs.

Still the woman sat, helmet in her hands, but Adrian noticed she wasn't looking at the alien. She was in fact looking at the Marine just beyond. Her voice was almost husky, weird coming from a girl that seemed very slender and not at all mature enough for it. "Did you know him? Was he one of your squad?" She said, not looking up.

Adrian furrowed his brows, "I… I don't think so, my squad was killed practically before we got here. Does it matter? You gonna kill me or what?"

With that, she looked up at him, the faintest of smiles on her face. "You're the one with the guns, you tell me."

He opened his mouth, nothing came out. He shrugged, knelt by the fallen Marine, and looked for the dog tags. If he'd been pulling them off his fallen comrades up till now, he'd have been weighed down to immobility.

"It'd be more practical if you took his ammo," the girl said. "I can't use it. But we'll need it."

"What's this 'we' shit, sister?" Adrian said, glowering at her while forcing himself to take yet another fallen man's precious ammo.

"This 'we' shit is that I don't wanna die down here, just like you don't. Whatever the hell happened here is a mess; they sent us in to clean up after you, it must be big. Very big. Corporate big." She shook her head. She had short, dirty blonde hair. Sharp little nose, tiny little lips. "So if you want to get out of here, and I want to get out of here, let's do that, and worry about what our bosses will think after we get out alive."

She stood, tucked her helmet under one arm, and extended her hand to him from where he knelt.

She was right, of course. There was no point in fighting. And at any time she could have clipped his head off with those weird metal bits on her hands, or feet now that he looked. He took her hand, she was strong – she almost lifted him off his feet without straining. There was no name tag on her uniform, he noted that as she was reading his own.

"Corporal Shephard," she said, looking up at him. Big brown eyes. His weren't so big and were less brown and more green. "Are we heading that way?" She nodded toward the door he'd been trying to reach. He didn't want to take his green eyes off her brown ones.

"We are, …?" He gave a little nod and grunt, and she laughed. He swore it was actually music to his ears. He noticed that he hadn't stopped gripping her weirdly two-fingered hand – big fingers, ninja fingers. But she chuckled at that and shook his hand instead, allowing him to gracefully back out of that stupid embarrassing moment.

"Renee Hart," she said. "Armacham sent me, there aren't many of us left either. But I don't know if my choice will be a popular one. If we… If we start encountering any more of my guys," she started up the stairs, "you let me take care of them. You're way too slow to take us down."