literature

Repurposed Interval 21.15 (3 of 4)

Deviation Actions

lethe-gray's avatar
By
Published:
1K Views

Literature Text

Interval 21.15 (3 of 4)


“Well...” she began, got Gordon’s attention back with a flick of her hair from her fingers, “it’s true that the Vortigaunts did come here, but by the time you’d been to Xen they didn’t have much choice. The Resonance Cascade as well as other factors started poking holes in the barrier. They weren’t the only things coming through them, either.”

Gordon, still half-upright, nodded as he said, “I remember, there were other things... dogs, whatever those spitty-lizards with the tentacle heads were? They were on Xen too.”

“Yes, and other creatures from more distant worlds came too, after the disaster. Over time, let’s just say the ripples kept spreading.” Melissa offered Gordon several images, things that she’d heard shared around camp fires by rescued Outlanders. Looters in supermarkets who didn’t make it past the headcrab aisle. Packs of houndeyes that even now roamed the streets. Creatures similar to those Gordon had fought – including the huge fish-like ones that Black Mesa scientists claimed had appeared in the Mariana Trench – in natural bodies of water or in ocean-side aquarium parks... These odd memories were weaker, less vibrant to Gordon’s mind. He wasn’t sure quite why, but had the suspicion that he knew: Melissa hadn’t seen those things with her own eyes.

That moment of realization prodded Melissa to pause in her narrative, if only for a moment. “Oh, some of those things appeared in the Enrichment Center, too,” she said. “Mostly the headcrabs and smaller things. If there were bigger ones I think they ate each other before we got to them.”

“Well good for them,” Gordon said, and Melissa laughed, helping him to sit up properly, with his legs dangling off the side of the table.

“Better them than us, anyway,” she continued. “While we were still underground in the Enrichment Center, trying to get in contact with...” she gave a little nervous laugh, “well, you’re going to have to realize that us kids survived... But almost none of the adults. When GLADOS flooded the Enrichment Center with neurotoxins, there were... a lot of casualties.” Before she could stop her mind from doing so, she’d shown him the briefest of images – she would have to ask kallah-vahh to remove that one if he could, of Paxton and the trio of partially-eaten scientists in that room. Gordon, perhaps tactfully, perhaps because of the sheer volume of horror contained in that one image, reacted only with a slight widening of his eyes. “So we had to learn from scratch how to make transmitters and use the communication center, and all of that without the outside world knowing it.”

“Why would you... um, need to hide?” Gordon asked, trying to clear his mind a bit of his own accord. One thing that rang clearly through his mind into hers was why would a school have neurotoxin available at all? The volume of that smelly impression he’d gotten earlier came wafting back Vortally to him, clearly Melissa remembered it far too well.

“Armacham and the government wanted us dead,” she said flatly. “Us and Black Mesa, we were deniable to them. Someone was going to order an orbital strike on us,” she glared over her shoulder, but returned to her more typical smiling and patient self soon enough. “But we survived anyway, like you did on Xen, and we made contact. With Black Mesa, I mean.”

Gordon perked up: because now he knew he recognized those faces he glimpsed in his mind’s eye – Alyx and Eli! So she’d survived, and Gordon breathed a sigh of relief at that, even as he realized he was getting used to seeing other people’s memories. Alyx featured strongly in the sequence of thoughts that Melissa offered the man. Her guardian DOG, Martin and the girl working on electronics, and finally the moment of truth: seeing that grainy, static-shot image of Eli on the screen. It was a moment of collective elation on both sides of that screen, and Gordon was nearly brought to tears over it himself.

“The Vortigaunts helped us do that.” Melissa considered Noah, Hazy, and numerous other Vortigaunts that had shaped her life. Their strange, alien faces felt more safe and comforting than almost any adult’s had in her pooled memories. “Understand that they’re highly telepathic and they always have been. They had words for the things we could do with our own powers. Armacham called us psychics, I think the technical term they came up with was ‘telesthetic’ or something. But we call ourselves Vortal. They understood us in ways that our Keepers couldn’t. I can help you learn the language later, if you want.”

“I... uh... yeah, maybe later. But... okay, so they’re good guys now?” Gordon scratched the back of his head idly as Melissa nodded, and wished he had his glasses to fiddle with. At least with his fingers free of the HEV suit’s stiff gloves, he could do that without breaking them. He wondered if she saw the embarrassing memory in his mind of the first day he’d put on the suit and tried to clean his glasses after. Melissa glanced around the room, ducked down to scrabble through a small box, and handed them to him. They were in sorry shape, but they still helped him focus. If not his eyes, then his attention. He had no idea how familiar that seemed to the third person in the room. His words stung that third: “I’ll have to find time to apologize to them, then,” Gordon muttered. “I did an awful lot of damage over there...”

“More than you can imagine,” came that harsh voice from the darkness. “Yet... They will forgive you, for those whose Vortal cords you cut, if they believe it necessary,” kallah-vahh whispered. “You are not entirely to blame for those whose cloth had yet to be woven, becoming unraveled.”

Gordon updated his prior thoughts: that was the creepiest and most cryptic, yet probably correct, thing he’d ever heard, even if he didn’t understand it all.

Melissa interrupted the silence. “In the meantime though, outside, Armacham had started building safe cities, or at least reinforcing places that they thought were safer than others, and charged people admission. The countryside, the suburbs, those hard to patrol places got pretty much uninhabitable. People flocked to the Cities, it seemed like the best thing to do for safety’s sake.” She sighed, “it left the Outlands to the wildlife and the Vorts, to the poor or undesirable, and to us.”

Here she paused, and gave a sweet but sad smile. “We had a few years when things almost got back to normal. Armacham did send people and food in, they wanted to keep track of us. We had instructors and whatnot, the PHEAR guys were way more fun than the teachers. After a year of living through GLADOS’s tests, it was hard to learn to trust people again. There were a few that understood us, they’re still around.” Gordon caught images of faces, brief but enough that he would probably recognize them if he saw them again. Stern-eyed scientists, interspersed with smiling urban-armored soldiers. He sensed a change in the maturity of her views, she’d grown up a little since the first glimpses he’d seen. Was he sensing her opinion on things as well as the visual and tactile images?

Her voice brought him back to the narrative. “Armacham tried to monitor us the whole time. But behind their backs we... well.” She chuckled, that smile turned impish. “We built a teleport device.”

“Wait... what?” Gordon exclaimed, excited, “you... kids, built a teleporter?!

“Well, I didn’t, but Alyx and Martin and Jay and the rest. We had help, you know? After we got a secure line to Black Mesa, the folks there helped us make our own. I mean, don’t ask me how it works, because I don’t know. It involves two kinds of devices and science that even I don’t understand. I’m a genetic engineer, not a theoretical physicist.” Her tone implied that she’d attempted to grasp the concepts, and that she mocked herself frequently about it. Apparently she’d sensed that cusp of elation and familiarity in Gordon’s mind. He deflated a little, he’d have to track down those kids and ask them, if they still lived.

“The Portal Storms ravaged the countryside intensely for many years,” Melissa gave an image of the rippling, Vortally-visible wave which was capable of such destruction. Buildings, roads, anything in its path might be flung hundreds of feet into the air, bent around itself in a twist of energy, destroyed outright, or simply vanish into another space entirely. “People wanted to get somewhere safer than an already-broken building like the Enrichment Center. There was one Storm that really hit us hard, the power got knocked out again and Armacham decided that it wasn’t worth fixing. So when most of the instructors and other scientists pulled out, and left us alone, they thought we would just curl up and die.”

“They... didn’t... take you with them?” Incredulous, Gordon let his eyebrows knot over his glasses – it felt so much better with them on.

“We didn’t really want to go,” Melissa admitted, with a shrug, “but they didn’t offer, either.”

“That’s pretty brutal,” Gordon muttered. “I mean, kids! Who does that to kids?”

“Genevieve Aristide,” Melissa said darkly. It almost felt like she was about to add something, but held both her mind and tongue. “She and the board of directors apparently didn’t have time for us any more, they were too busy rolling in money from the Cities.”

The briefest glimpses of a ruined city tore Gordon’s heart. Seen through those yellow eyes and fed into his mind, Gordon watched as families were destroyed, lives ended barely as they’d begun; history was erased, museums and libraries went up in flames. A stark outline of a church featured in her memories; a sanctuary of sorts, but not for prayer. It felt strange to him that six billion people had been reduced to half that by those storms and the ravages of disease, panic and weird imported wildlife. Stranger still that he had grown up on a street very similar to the ones which Melissa and her band of teenage friends looted on a regular basis. Sometimes he’d idly thought about where he’d loot if the world ended. Now he knew.

Gordon felt something nagging at the back of his own mind, not from her memories, and not the elder man’s impressions. There was another shoe left to drop, that was very obvious. Melissa confirmed that suspicion quickly enough.

“And then the Combine came,” she said, voice a whisper that echoed faintly and was swallowed like the light into the depths of the room.

It was like a horror movie, not that the rest of what she’d been relaying to him seemed anything less than that. Swarms of dark alien craft – or were they animals? – crawled out of holes in the skies. Notably one near her location, one seen through many eyes, Vortal and otherwise. Melissa caught herself before skipping ahead, as she thought on those first days. Before they’d taken down that Advisor, before they had been inside the Citadel.

“Thousands of troops, probably millions, gathered together,” Melissa said, “apparently there was a resistance put up by those with the military left over from before the Portal Storms, but that lasted all of seven hours.” Through her mind’s eye a shocking headline rolled across a television screen: New York, in utter ruin. Many other images, ones which she didn’t seem to truly comprehend, followed; city by city, country by country. Places Gordon visited or meant to one of these days... gone.

She glanced down, blinked at the clipboard she’d been using earlier, picked it up and hid behind it for some kind of security. Gordon wanted to join her there. “We didn’t really see any of that at the Center. I’m... sort of glad for it too.” She gave a little chuckle, “actually I should say they didn’t see it at the Center, I was sent off with the other women and children to Black Mesa for safety.” Her yellow eyes gazed back to Gordon, from behind a few strands of honey hair. “If things had gone differently before then, Paxton would have been out there with his troops, too, but... Thankfully Armacham had left us alone by that time.”

It was pretty clear to Gordon that whoever this Paxton was, he was important to her. However the image trickling through the Vortessence at that moment was of dozens of uniformed, helmeted men. So he was from a military family maybe? He’d ask later. The ‘huddled masses’ of her friends and the other refugees that had clumped up while the invasion was going on left a weird sensation in Gordon’s mind. Melissa had blinked and looked away with a faint blush on her cheeks. “We all just sat tight and hoped that they didn’t start targeting everything on the ground. They hit most major urban centers, the Cities and whatever looked big enough to be a threat, but left a lot of the Outlands where we were living alone. Black Mesa was being ignored, we were pretty safe there. There’s nothing around it anyway, still.”

“Yeah I noticed that when I moved in,” Gordon said. He shook his head a little and urged her to go on.

“The Universal Union, as they call themselves, put down stakes... literally,” Melissa continued glumly. The shocking image from her mind threw Gordon for a loop. “It’s called a Citadel, they are their bases of operation. They appeared overnight, drilled into the ground as deep as they are high. Nearly every City has one, and some places where there aren’t any people too.” A stake, that was exactly what that thing looked like! Black, or no... Blue, blue like the walls here? Where exactly were they?

The Mystery cleared his throat (gently? amused? or guiltily?), as Gordon started to look at those walls with more scrutiny. “I assure you that any similarities are purely coincidental,” he said. But even then, no one in the room was positive he meant it.

Gordon thought on the lingering image of that huge tower. How could it possibly stand so tall? Even if it did go that far down under the ground, what kind of structural integrity did it have? What was it made from that it didn’t just bend? There were support lines, but they appeared to dangle downwards, that might help in a breeze... He gulped back a guilty realization that he was admiring the alien architecture of their new masters.

“The Combine, the Vorts call them Ulathoi,” Melissa said as she started to walk around the table, “they’re our true enemy. They’re everyone’s true enemy.” The way she said it, so emphatically, made Gordon wonder not just how they’d affected everything, but how she knew that. “We thought they were just here to gut the whole planet and leave it a smoking ruin, but they stopped short of destroying us entirely. They made a deal,” she said in an odd tone, “with Aristide. I don’t know exactly how any of that happened,” she did pause significantly to listen for any signs from the Mystery that she was over-stepping, “but she arranged our surrender. And for that, she was put in charge of everything. Because running the United Governments wasn’t enough for her I guess. Don’t let me get started on her.” Melissa tried to be flippant, failed; whatever she was thinking about, Aristide was clearly a nasty piece of work. There went that faintly turquoise-colored tint to the mental air. This Aristide person, Gordon had heard of her in a distant manner, distant because he’d chosen Black Mesa as his technological aspiration.

But Melissa’s attitude regarding the woman wasn’t so pleasant – Aristide was synonymous with Armacham, second-generation from what Gordon remembered. The girl had been in this ‘Origin’ program and still had their logo on her tank top, but that seemed to be where her alliance ended. Gordon tried recalling more, but felt he was missing something. Obviously Aristide would have been the one signing his paycheck had he taken that job over at the Enrichment Center. She was their CEO? One of their board members at least. And now she was what?

Gordon sat with a bit of a tilt to his head, taking it all in. “United Governments... Kids with psychic powers building teleporters… Alien invasions – two of them. I mean... wow.”

“So that’s… mostly what you’ll need to know has gone on.” He tilted his head with curiosity, and Melissa took a look at that clipboard in her arms, ground her jaw a little. “Doctor Freeman, I... there’s more, and it gets... a bit personal.” Her voice dwindled, “you have to understand that I’m going to be using a power on you in a moment, and it’ll probably make you uncomfortable, but there’s a good reason for me to use it.”

His eyes widened a bit. She’d already taken measurements and prodded his muscles, carefully examined his eyes and ears, what was left? She hadn’t taken any more tools out from their trays nearby, so she wasn’t going to pull blood from him. What had she meant? Oh! “A power, like your psy... Vortal power?” At least they couldn’t accuse him of not having paid attention.

“Yes,” she replied. Gordon was pleased with himself, he wasn’t entirely out of it any more. “It would be best if you just relaxed. I couldn’t get any proper readings while you were still in stasis, but now that you’re awake...” He wondered what kind of readings could be gotten without tools? Was she going to read his mind more deeply, test his senses or mental acuity?

She ran her fingers through her hair, and for all the world it looked to Gordon as though her eyes were glowing as brightly as that Xenian crystal he’d pushed under the Anti-Mass Spectrometer. They looked him over like spotlights, it felt like she was seeing right through him. It felt, Gordon realized with a weirdly strong pounding to his heartbeat: he could feel her looking at him. Well it had certainly gotten his emotions and body going, this test of hers.

It was a bit unexpected, then, that she kept coming nearer to him. When she pressed her lips onto his, Gordon was so surprised that he couldn’t even move. Plus: he was hardly sure whether to respond in kind or just what. Gordon’s mind raced. What had she said? She was a genetic engineer? God she was gorgeous. What did this have to do with...

Regardless of his inner monologue, the kiss was brief enough. She pulled away gently, and thankfully he had yet to respond with an embrace, though both his hands were splayed and half-raised. He realized a moment later that that would have been utterly out of line. When he noticed her licking her lips he got a bit concerned again.

“I can sense DNA, Doctor Freeman,” she explained in a bit of a daze. “And while I can just look at you or even touch you, chemical interaction is far more... direct. And the… second best way to get that is through the lips.” She blinked and gave him a vividly covetous smile: “now I know why the Vorts were so attracted to you.”

“Uh...” was all Gordon got out, before he heard an amused snort come from the suited man nearby.

“Not like that, ha-tsah mah,” she shot at the Mystery who continued to chuckle quietly even in the face of her snarl, “why they respect you so much, why they saw you.” Melissa slid over to the table’s edge, hopped up and sat beside Gordon, placed her hands on her lap and stared at them while she spoke. She’d grown fond of wearing her old jeans again – took the heat from other young mothers that couldn’t fit into theirs so soon after their own pregnancies. She seemed completely oblivious to Gordon’s sudden and growing interest.

“Each of us in the Pantheon have genetic markers for our abilities,” she stated. “Geoff is really strong and fast; Sandy is a healer; Tina’s a Vortal conduit; and I can sense genes. Most of us have telepathy and empathy. You know, the whole psychic powers package deal.” The image that drifted through her mind and into his, perhaps unconsciously, was oddly of a pamphlet showing many of those people she called her friends, still as children; that would follow, since they had grown up outside the influence of the company that created them.

Gordon nodded, “so those things are genetic?” She nodded, looked happy to have the chance to talk about it, similar to the way he’d gotten excited about their building a teleporter. But she knew he was as much at a loss about the details of her profession as she was of his; if he needed more she’d elaborate. The images she displayed to his mind were growing familiar to him: people of varied descriptions in snapshot-like action poses. Some were burning. A couple seemed frosty. One or two of them flew. They had a pantheon. How cool was that?

“Some of us are stronger than others, it’s all a matter of those genetics and how well they were designed.” Then to Gordon’s crooked eyebrow, she added, “almost all of us were designed. I think I can count on one hand the number of us in the project that were born outside the facility. I mean, they’re out there; Lydia came from Maine, and Zonie’s folks were normies from Arizona. Armacham was exploiting their knowledge of genetics and bringing in as many people as they could to fuel it. They had big plans, they were making a huge profit marketing us. We would have been sold off or maybe rented, anyway. Spies and entertainers and …everything.” The way she said it left a bad taste in his mouth.

Who did that to kids ran back through his mind. Melissa smiled weakly at that.

“So because I can sense those genetics... I’ve become kind of –”

Obsessed?” The Mystery interrupted, and outright vanished when she shot her caustic outpouring of Vortigese at him.

Concerned,” she corrected, but had a good strong blush on her cheeks, “with making sure that... That what the Combine did to us, the Human race I mean, won’t be the death of us all.”

“...What did they do?” Gordon asked. He wasn’t going to like it, he could tell by the expression on her face. She turned her eyes away from his, staring at her hands.

“On New Year’s day three years ago, everyone that was left near the Citadels was sterilized. To the point that they can’t even be used with more conventional genetic engineering tools.” She sighed, “I have all the subliminal training and even the hands-on experience I need to use those tools, we even have them at the Center and our other locations. But it’s meaningless, without healthy, fertile people to donate, women that can successfully carry to term. Millions of people left on the planet,” she glanced back up at Gordon, “and none of them able to reproduce. There are so few of us between the Citadels, there were still people left out of that attack, including the Pantheon. All of us were spared.”

As he thought on it, realizing regarding some of the memories that still lingered from her own mind, that those kids now had children themselves, Gordon blinked. “And... I... what? I fit into this picture how?” He started to get uncomfortable again when he realized the kiss wasn’t the part he was supposed to be concerned about.

“Aside from the whole didn’t get sterilized in the suppression field thing, you mean? I’m not really sure,” Melissa said. “Now that I’ve had the chance to look your genes over, it’s weird. Even though you don’t seem to exhibit any specific traits, no single tags for any given abilities, your baseline Vortal properties are incredible.” Gordon had to stop himself from puffing up his chest in a gloating posture: she thought he was incredible. Melissa gave the briefest chuckle, adding with a strangely distant look, “I think... that you’d essentially enhance any given gene combination.” Her hands almost appeared to be putting puzzle pieces together, invisibly.

“A Vortal, genetic battery,” the Mystery, no longer invisible but still off where Melissa couldn’t easily take a swing at him, suggested quietly and without humor, “indeed, that is worth looking into. Your survival may have hinged upon it as well. It may have given you just… enough of an edge to anticipate and respond to the dangers you… encountered.”

Gordon still wasn’t convinced that it was all that important in reality, “but if I can’t do anything with it, what’s the point?” Honestly, he’d like to do fancy tricks with his brain; he’d never gotten over the fact that he couldn’t produce lightning from his fingers, or wave his hand and tell his dad that this was not the missing tool he was looking for...

Melissa tilted her head sweetly, “I think that it probably means you’re the most useful breeding stock in the world just now, Doctor Freeman.” She paused just long enough for Gordon to try to speak, and then added in an absurdly chipper tone, “so at some point pretty soon I’ll want some proper samples of that genetic material you’ve got there.” She went so far as to pat his crotch, “I could help if you want.”

That blush made its appearance on his face in a moment, but Melissa slid off the table, gave a cat-like stretch, and apparently hadn’t realized that such a thing was harassment-suit material. Gordon then recalled that the world had gone to shit, there were no more lawsuits; also that he hadn’t had a proper girlfriend in well over two years (or was it fourteen now?), and the survival of the Human race might be at stake. Parts of him decided it was a great idea.

While she was busy trying to push her hair into a knot, it appeared Melissa realized what she’d just said and done, possibly with the added bonus of Gordon’s embarrassed thoughts bursting through her mind. “That didn’t come out exactly right,” Melissa said with a riotous laugh, “I mean, I can hook you up with whoever you want, with those genes.” She paused, saw his expression as well as the one on her elder’s face, and added, “in the lab!”

“And you tell me I’m creepy,” kallah-vahh said with an impish grin, from his dark-corner comfort zone. “She is our resident genetic hoarder. Her collection is infamous.”

Melissa shot off another growling batch of words, some of which Gordon was starting to recognize. He just swallowed and blinked, and wondered whether the world had gone completely mad in addition to the invasions and disasters. That theory wasn’t dented much, what with the devil in a black suit and mind-reading genetic engineer in the room. Gordon felt as though he had been dropped into an already-moving roller coaster. Gordon was used to being the weird one in a room. At the moment, it seemed that he was the only normal one there.

Even so, Freeman began putting evidence together in his mind, he never stopped doing that. He wasn’t much liking what that evidence was telling him. “Well... what happens next?” Gordon asked, still trying to shake the imaginative ideas about breeding that had formed moments before, as well as making a valiant attempt to block those thoughts from being read. Concentrate on pancakes. Pancakes are great.

“I think you should try walking on your own, now, if you feel up to it.” She turned back to see him eyeballing his toes and flexing them as a distraction to what she’d told him minutes earlier. “I’d like it if you’re fully up to speed physically as well as mentally when we go back to Black Mesa,” she added, holding out her hand. “But right now we’re not in any rush. And I’m sure that your friends there will have plenty of stories to tell you themselves. Just understand that some of the Pantheon lives at Black Mesa, and you’ll probably see them doing strange things. So feel free to stare, there’s no need to worry about it. We’re used to it.”

He grunted and nodded, and thought (about pancakes) that he probably wouldn’t be seeing anything weirder than her kissing him. She giggled, but didn’t verbally add any further commentary. She knew how weird it would be. Melissa allowed herself the luxury of imagining his genes as paired up with numerous Pantheon women. If he could read her mind, he might be a bit more wary – or perhaps, more enthusiastic about the prospect.

With far more confidence than he’d shown earlier, Gordon managed to reach out and take her strong hand within his, and ever so slowly lowered himself to the floor. It was chilly, but he could ignore that in favor of balancing on those damnably wobbly legs. It didn’t take much work to get him to attempt the first few steps with her expertly steadying him, and the next few without. He still ached, but it was fading quickly with activity. He was very glad to have his glasses back, without them he might have been a bit too dizzy or unable to make out obstacles.

While he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, getting more strength back in his ankles and knees, Gordon looked around to the blue-graphite colored surroundings, up at the still-nebulously-white ceiling. “So,” he tried to act casual instead of terrified, “if this isn’t Black Mesa, and it’s not one of those Citadel things, and I don’t think it’s your Enrichment Center,” he nodded at Melissa, “where are we?

The silence was impressive.

Freeman hazarded to look from one to the other of those strange-eyed people in the room. Gordon watched both their faces as best he could. Melissa glanced over to her elder, as he walked closer. Gordon’s first inclination was to think that he wasn’t going to get any information. Melissa’s worried smile meant that whatever it turned out to be, it wasn’t going be what he expected. The grim expression on the man’s face was telling him the same thing: it was either none of his business, or he ought to have understood already.

But soon the scientist then considered something else. He wouldn’t want to play poker with this guy. Expressions did show on his lined face, just so slightly and carefully disguised that he would be all too adept at misleading his opponents. He wasn’t being grim, not with that faint squint and a momentary flex to his lips. It looked for just a moment as if that briefly seen smirk was a challenge. But did he welcome it, or was he delivering it?

“You are correct, Doctor Freeman,” that man said while casting his gaze as well as his long hands carefully around, “this is none of those locales. It is my own creation, Vortally powered.” He said it as though he was admitting to owning that new car that was in the best parking space, or gotten the raise that someone else in the department hadn’t. Proudly, but with a hint of shouldn’t you have already guessed?

“So this...” Gordon wasn’t sure what to call it. “Room? Lab?”

“Construct,” kallah-vahh supplied, Gordon nodded.

“This construct’s got no doors,” he noticed, but for whatever reason didn’t seem inclined to panic about that. What he did want to do was explore a little, get his bearings. Over the last two conscious days of his life, it had often been that feature, his curiosity about his surroundings, that kept him alive. He’d been able to notice details like trip-mines and nearly-silent assassins in nearby rooms that way. However, he wasn’t quite up to the task of creeping around the edges trying to sound out the thickness of the walls, and was fairly certain that wouldn’t have helped anyway. “If there’s no doors, there’s only one potential way to get in and out, and that’d be teleportation.” It made perfect sense to a guy like him, he’d become involved with the whole of his scientific career because of it.

He didn’t see a physical teleport device in the room anywhere, though he’d gotten a strange sense of approval when he mentally connected seeing the suited man near one of those bursting balls of energy, and then not seeing him: he was able to teleport, wasn’t he? Gordon didn’t see a door or windows, but he also couldn’t make out details of the corners or more distant features; his assumption was correct, in that there were none of those things. If it was, as the still-unnamed man in the suit implied, powered by his own energy, that could lead to a huge variety of complex issues.

If only Gordon knew: Paxton had wondered those things not so very long before. If only Paxton was there, he would admit that Gordon would be far better at comprehending the science of it all, where he’d been more philosophical about it.

“I wonder if it displaces matter, or… moves through it somehow, out of phase with the molecular resonances… Is it...” Gordon’s mind wandered. He spoke quietly, knowing that even if he didn’t give those thoughts voice, this pair would hear them anyway. “Floating in space? Is it in that... that Xen place? There’s no windows, can’t tell what’s outside... If there’s even an outside...” Gordon began to pace around the table, occasionally balancing himself after a distracted wobble.

Melissa began to speak, but kallah-vahh raised his fingers slightly, and she held her tongue. Together they watched as Gordon let his mind and feet wander. It was more than clear to Gordon that at least the man was listening in on his thoughts, and that was to his advantage just at the moment. His mind did ring with a question that he needed answered: is there even an outside? Gordon’s brilliance was clear – he, virtually alone among so very many Humans, comprehended what he was considering.

Kallah-vahh waited until he knew Gordon could see the very slight shake of his head.

“No outside, only an inside,” Gordon spoke freely still, not loudly. His thoughts on the matter were hit and miss: it could all be an illusion, hit. It could be all in his own death-addled mind, miss. It became obvious that he was not just spouting things at random; Gordon was observant enough that he caught the slight nod or glance away indicating the direction he could go next.

So it would be twenty questions, huh? Gordon thought. He wasn’t quite as prepared as he would have liked, when he felt that sharp and pervasive Vortal voice enter his mind.

Ask the right questions, Doctor Freeman, and I will answer you as truthfully as I can. I should like to know just how clever you really are.

Gordon wasn’t positive, but that sounded like approval? The quality of the voice hadn’t changed any from its more normal sound… Maybe the word he was looking for was felt? Was he feeling approval through his mind? He just had to accept that, it was pretty freaking weird, but it was all he had to go on.

Okay, he thought, it’s a matter of narrowing things down. Which things? There were so many options. It wasn’t the first time in his life that Gordon felt his mind was a bit of a curse – being able to understand so many pieces of information, seeing a big picture was possible, but sloppy as hell. He really didn’t even know where to start.

But either way, Gordon knew he was missing some vital information. “Okay... but what am I missing?” Gordon asked. It was a fairly vague question. It wouldn’t get him very far, but maybe – just maybe – he’d get lucky and they’d feel compelled to give a less-than-useless hint. He pushed his glasses up to the top of his nose, wondered once more how they hadn’t been lost, wished they weren’t fuzzy with the broken lines on the one lens.

Had he known kallah-vahh more than merely in passing, he’d have recognized that hesitant, superstitious, almost unconscious glance around the room: checking. “I’m afraid I cannot tell you.” He then paused, got a deviously happy look on his face that Gordon did recognize. “I’m sorry, I misspoke. I may not tell you.”

That actually made a considerable difference, to Gordon’s scientifically-sharp thoughts. While it opened up a can of worms the size of those radioactive waste barrels he’d blown up by the dozen as he fought through Black Mesa, it gave him a narrower focus for his future questions. Being specific as to can or should, that was something his ethics classes tried to get across. His mother would do things like that too: play word games with him (straight out of the thesaurus) because she felt his concentration purely on science was going to hurt him in the long run. He’d used her thesaurus, well, one of them, as a counterweight to a ballista he’d constructed when he was nine. She never quite forgave him for that.

At once, Gordon realized he knew a bit more about the situation, and almost couldn’t contain his sense of loss. He had to believe his mother was alive. He felt beyond a shadow of a doubt that most of the people he’d gone to MIT with were dead – and more, Innsbruck was gone. He knew that from the crawling news feed about Europe that faintly flashed through his mind, via Melissa’s memories. She didn’t understand the place names, but she’d seen them, and thus he knew.

So much for narrowing down that field of questions. Something else jumped into his throat, along with the taint of bile from his long-empty stomach. Something she’d said, and had been confirmed: all of this was that guy’s fault. How? Why? And what the Hell was his name? Gordon didn’t feel like playing twenty-questions to get at the answer; he wanted an explanation, and he knew that wasn’t going to be easy to hear, or to extract.

“No, Doctor Freeman,” kallah-vahh said darkly, “the explanation might be easy enough if you find the right person to ask. The difficult item you want from me is an apology.” Freeman glanced up, tried not to glare, because the look on that guy’s face was pretty clear: pained, bitter. “And ironically enough, I am more than happy to give you that. It’s one of the few things I can offer.” He sighed, “all will become clear to you in the course of events yet to come, Doctor. You may learn from your more trusted friends the things I am… liable… not to speak.”

The way he said that struck the scientist: what an odd choice of words. Gordon thought on that for a moment, then brought his focus back to the older man when he drew in one of those harsh breaths. “But for what has affected you, I am sorry. I will…” he tapped his long fingers together, perhaps nervously, “make the effort to locate your parents’ trail, though I can’t say whether that will be enough to alleviate your distress.” He lowered his head, frowned, while still gazing with those turquoise eyes at Gordon’s, “they may not be alive, but if they are… I can give you the promise that you will be reunited with them.”

It wasn’t really the thing he had expected to hear, but Gordon’s heart gave a little flutter. Or was it something more? Ever since waking up in this weird construct, being poked and prodded, kissed and confused, Gordon had a growing feeling that he did understand things deeply, more so than he consciously realized. When he trusted his gut feelings, he asked the right questions. When the girl had drawn her eyes over his genes, he felt it. Now, something big had just happened; it was a good thing he was lucid enough to grasp it. No, that wasn’t the right word. He was Vortal enough.

The look on Melissa’s face was an odd one: how she stared at her elder, definitely confused, but also impressed. Gordon would have to just let all that wait. For the time being, he was tired enough to look around for a chair, and found none. So he ambled back (ambled, as opposed to strode, as distinct from crawled – somewhere among those words, Gordon heard his mother’s voice, laughing) to the exam table and leaned on it. “Um… thanks?”

The elder man looked defeated, drawn down in attitude as much as Gordon’s body was in physical exhaustion. Was it seriously that hard to pull an apology out of someone – who had just claimed he was happy about giving one? He also looked relieved. Why? What could it all mean? Well, Gordon’s thoughts mashed up some chocolate pancakes and threw in a side of hash browns at that.
Bits and pieces of brilliant minds. Gordon *is* important, in many ways, to the future of this world.

Reconciling many difficult issues, and making promises. Vortal promises.
© 2013 - 2024 lethe-gray
Comments0
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In