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Somewhere close by but muffled by a wall or some other barrier or perhaps just the ringing in Alyx’s ears were voices. Not friendly voices but Combine soldiers. The helmets they always wore affected their speech, making them all sound basically the same, especially from a distance, and thus easy to identify even when one couldn’t understand their exact words.
Them being so close was bad. Alyx needed to move. Hide, run, find a weapon and fight, whatever it took to not fall into their hands. Far easier said than done though when her body felt almost as if it were magnetized to the cold concrete beneath her, making any movement a struggle. Her head, filled with fog and the start of what was likely to be a wicked headache, made the idea of just lying here and letting herself drift off again seem almost appealing. But she hadn’t made it this far just to be caught napping by the Combine.
Biting back a groan – any sound was potentially too loud if Combine were in the area – she forced herself to roll first onto her side. From there it was a bit easier to push herself up to his hands and knees, allowing her to sit up and look around.
It was dark and she was surrounded by rubble. Up above past the walls surrounding her was the sky, only a few stars visible through the perpetual smog of City 17. She was in a hole in the ground made of building rubble. How had she got here? …
The Vault! She’d gone into the Vault! And then… It was like remembering a dream, already fading from her mind. She grasped at it, closing her eyes, trying to remember. … Gravity had been weird. Furniture on the ceilings and walls or perhaps she’d been on the ceilings and walls. It was hard to remember the specifics. That wasn’t what was important though. She’d made it to the center. It hadn’t been Gordon Freeman inside but instead… but instead… She couldn’t remember. Her mind, the headache setting in, making her head feel like the fogginess had turned to acid, came up utterly blank.
More Combine soldier voices, though thankfully further away this time, had her flinching and scrambling to scoot back further into the shadows. Now clearly wasn’t a good time to sit and think. She needed to get in contact with Dad and Russell, they might know something. Reaching up… the headset was gone. A quick look around revealed it wasn’t laying anywhere close by either. Damn it.
Next she checked her guns. … All gone as well, no sign of them anywhere. Her multi-tool (or the Alyx if that was the name she wanted to go with) was also missing. She could make another one without too much effort, she had everything about it written down and backed up in every way that was possible after all, figuring out how to make it had been the hard part, but… it had been her first big solo project. The first major thing she’d made without help. Being able to keep her first working iteration would’ve been nice even if she planned to improve it in the future, making later versions hack faster, work on more stuff and all that. Losing it hurt more than she would’ve thought.
No time to dwell on that though or the fact that she was weaponless in a hole in the ground surrounding by Combine with no outside guidance. To top it all off her head hurt like hell. It could never be just one thing going wrong, could it?
She still had the Russells though, that was something. Pointing at a nearby small piece of broken off concrete, the mechanical parts of the glove vibrated slightly, indicating she had something in its sight. A quick flick of her wrist and the piece flew her way – good, they still worked, thus she did indeed still have something even if it wasn’t a lot – an easy catch after how much practice she had with these things. Hopefully she wouldn’t ever have to give them back. Maybe if she could make her way out of this and back to Russell’s lab, she’d have a case for having earned keeping them.
First step was getting out of this hole. On the surface easier said than done but upon closer inspection of the walls, there were plenty of irregularities in the rubble that could serve as hand and footholds. She just had to be careful to test them before trusting her weight on them. Falling would not only hurt but would also be loud. If she was caught in this hole she was good as dead already. No use dwelling on the danger though.
Taking a deep breath, she stood. Her legs wobbled a bit beneath her but nothing seemed to be broken or particularly injured. So she found what looked to be the easiest path up and started climbing. Alas there was no way to avoid the loose bit of rubble she inadvertently sent rolling down, making an uncomfortable amount of noise. Hopefully if anyone heard they’d mistake it for just normal rubble settling noises.
Near the top she stopped. Breathing as shallowly as she could, she strained her ears, listening for Combine chatter or boots. … Talking and heavy boots could definitely be heard now alongside the crackling of fire but nothing that sounded like it was immediately nearby. Before that could change she scrambled up, out and to the first bit of cover she spotted. Plenty of rubble meant there was lots of that around at least.
From her new hiding spot she could get a better look around. She was a couple dozen or so meters away from where the Vault had crashed to Earth. Still lit up in places and on fire in others, it was the strongest light source in the area, making it impossible to miss. It was crawling with Combine troops. Some going in, others standing guard or patrolling around it.
He’d no doubt intentionally dropped her far enough away from it and in a dark hole so she wouldn’t be in immediate danger of capture. Which was great but couldn’t he have dropped her in Russell’s lab instead or at least a little bit further away. … Wait, ‘he’? Yeah, that felt right. It had been a ‘he’ or what her mind wanted to interpret as a ‘he’ based off who even know what assumptions because she couldn’t remember a face or anything else. Just that she’d met and freed someone and it hadn’t been Gordon Freeman as she’d hoped and expected.
Shaking herself off mentally and physically, she got moving. She had a big advantage in that they’d expect to find her in the Vault and thus shouldn’t be looking for her out here for a while yet. They might even assume her dead or swept away by the being the Vault had been made to contain if they couldn’t find her thus freeing her of their attention. As long as she could manage to get out without getting spotted anyway.
The Vault being the center of attention made getting away from it top priority. So as much as the destroyed building she was in would allow, she headed in the opposite direction. She moved slower than she would’ve liked, especially as the last of the lethargy left her body, leaving her with a headache and adrenaline, urging to her to move quickly. But she couldn’t afford to risk running into a patrol meant to keep people away. So she had to pause and listen before turning any corner, ready to run and hide if she heard anything coming her way.
Just when she was thinking she might get away easy, heavy boots had her scrambling to hide behind a partially collapsed wall. She held her breath, palm pressed over her mouth as the boots came up to and paused right on the other side of it. Had they found her? Were they waiting for her to try to bolt or was she about to get dragged out and killed? Or worse brought to Nova Prospekt to be tortured and have her brain sucked? She’d kill herself before that happened.
Just when she was about to explode with tension, the boots finally moved again, blessedly going away in the direction she’d come from. Thank goodness. She waited until they were gone entirely before daring to move even an inch.
From there it wasn’t long before she was out of the building and on the streets of City 17 at last. It was way past curfew thus she was still in danger of being caught and found out. But this was far from the first time she had to move through the city past curfew. So basically she was home free. A huge relief.
Now all she had to do was find her way to Russell’s lab. Easier said than done when she’d never been to this part of the city before. But the Citadel, large and horrid as it was, should help her keep her bearings.
~
The sun was raising by the time she was stumbling into the yard behind Russel’s lab at last. Everything was exactly how she’d last seen it; a mess. The door was locked from this side of course, the windows bordered over to make the building look abandoned. She knocked a few times but… got not response.
She was tired enough that the dusty old couch in the corner with a funny little garden gnome sitting upon it looked inviting. Tired as she was though, she wasn’t quite that desperate yet. Instead she clambered up to the balcony. The window was locked too so she knocked on it.
No response.
Damn it. What if the Combine had found them? … But surely there’d be more signs of a struggle if they had. Unless they’d come in from the front and dragged them out the same way. Ugh.
She knocked again. “Russell, you there? Dad?” What was she going to do if…
“Alyx?” Oh thank goodness! A moment later Russell was opening the window, just a little at first for a peek before throwing it open. “Oh wow, it really is you.”
“Yep, sure is. Where’s Dad? Please tell me he’s still with you and didn’t do something stupid like run off to try to rescue me or something.”
“He’s still here. It took a bit of persuasion but I managed to convince him to stay and send a drone out to look for you this morning instead. Luckily we don’t gotta do that ‘cause here you are. Welcome back. He’s asleep on the couch. I was sleeping too before your banging woke me up.”
“Sorry ‘bout that. But uh… wake him up and then unlock the door so I can get in. And then we can talk about what happened in the Vault.” Because Dad’s last message as the beam took her indicated he might know something about the someone she’d freed and thus could perhaps jog her memory about him and hopefully what he’d done or said to her. “Also uh… before you do that, I didn’t die but I do still owe you a gun.”
“You broke it?”
“Worse, lost it. Presumably its floating around in the Vault somewhere along with the rest of the loose stuff I was carrying. Next time I go to a place with weird gravity I’ll be sure to secure my weaponry better. In the meantime though, I do still have my pack and in my pack I have…” As she spoke she pulled her backpack around to her front, allowing her to unzip it and pull out the bottle of vodka she’d barely managed to stuff in there alongside all her ammo. “… this!”
Russel perked up as he reached for it. Holding it by the neck, he turned it so he could examine the label. “Ooh, I’m not familiar with the brand personally but according to my old web archive, this is supposed to be pretty good.”
“Good enough to make up for the gun?” She did feel kind of bad about losing it even it had become more her gun than his. With the option to give it to Gordon Freeman gone she’d have returned it with the caveat that after how much she’d upgraded it, she was entitled to borrow it whenever she wanted.
He looked back up at her. “Uh… much as it pains me to say this, don’t worry ‘bout the gun. I’m just glad you’re all right. You are all right, right? What happened in the Vault? You said it had weird gravity. What kind of weird?”
“I’ll tell you same time I tell Dad.”
“Right, yeah of course. Let me just…” He started to duck back inside before popping back out. “Thanks for the vodka. I appreciate it. We can drink some of it later to celebrate your victory… I think it was a victory, right? Or at least we can celebrate you returning alive which is victory enough. Now, I’ll go wake your father and uh… open the door downstairs to let you in. See you in a bit.” He ducked back inside and closed the window once more.
After zipping closed her pack and swinging it back around onto her back, Alyx climbed down from the balcony. Tired as she was she did so a bit more carefully than she normally otherwise would’ve. The last thing she wanted was to have made it back safely only to rush and fall in her exhaustion causing her to break her neck or something.
Upon reaching the ground and heading to the door she only had to wait a few seconds before it opened and Dad stepped out. Despite having apparently just been doing so, he didn’t look like he’d slept. Likely he hadn’t for long as he’d probably stayed up worrying about her.
“Alyx! Thank god you’re okay.” He pulled her into a hug.
She clung to him harder than she’d expected herself too. Her eyes even misted up a little. But gosh it was a relief to see, hear, and feel him again. It felt like it had been… not a long time but… Well, last time she’d seen him, he’d barely survived her rescue attempt with the train. Yeah, that and the fact that she’d barely made it out of her own dangerous situation was why it was such a massive relief to see him alive and well again.
“You are okay, right honey?” Pulling back, Dad looked her up and down, checking for injuries.
“As okay as I can be.” Which wasn’t very but she was alive and so was he and that’s what mattered most, right?
She apparently didn’t do a good job of sounding nonchalant enough to brush off his worry as he was still visibly concerned. Before he could express that though, Russe.l leaned in. “Uh we, and by that I mean you two in particular, probably wanna lay extra low for a few weeks, wait for the heat to die down a bit, so probably best to hop inside.”
“Honestly, laying low for a while sounds nice.” Alyx led the way inside and Russel closed and locked the door behind them. As he turned from it, Alyx stepped towards him, opening her arms in offer of a hug because hugs were nice and she’d gladly take another one. He thought about it for a second or two before lightly shaking his head ‘no’ and lifting a hand in offer of a high-five instead. She accepted it, lightly slapping his hand with her own, careful of the Russells’ (gloves) fragility. “Thanks for helping me through all that. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“It was a pleasure. Or not a pleasure, it was actually quite stressful, but you know what I mean. Let’s go sit and talk. Tell us what you saw in the Vault.” Russel turned and headed further in, trusting them to follow.
“Unless you would rather rest first,” Dad said as they did indeed follow.
“Nah, talk first.” She needed to know who had been in that Vault. And she needed to share what little she remembered before she forgot it too.
Russel had to drag in a third chair from his messy storage area but once he pulled it in, they all had a place to sit around his little table. Alyx ended up sitting at the head of it, both of them looking at her.
Taking a deep breath, she rested her arms on the table. “I don’t remember much. I got pulled up by the tractor beam or whatever. And then I was in a room and had to go through like… a hotel or, I guess it was an apartment complex once upon a time, right? After that there was a big shape in an even bigger room that was making gravity weird… I think. Or maybe I saw that first and then went through the rooms because gravity was weird in them. Things were stuck to walls and ceilings or maybe that was me and it was just a perspective thing. I don’t remember and most of it probably isn’t important anyway. What is important is the person or thing I freed in the center. It wasn’t Gordon Freeman. I have absolutely no idea who he was only that I freed him and… and we talked about something. I think he’s why I don’t remember almost anything about what happened in there.”
Dad’s brow furrowed in worry as she spoke. He took a breath to speak but before he could, Russell beat him to it. “Yep, sounds like the G-man.”
With a different kind of frown, Dad switch his gaze to him. “‘G-man’?”
“Yeah, you know, thought I’d try giving him a name so we don’t gotta talk about what he looks like or whatever every time we mention him. And the way you described him made him sound like some sort of secret government agent type guy. Which obviously he isn’t or if he is, it isn’t a government we know. But that is what he looks like so it should do fine for a name, right?‘G’ for government and man because… he’s probably not a man actually, huh? Even if he does look like one. ‘G-person’, maybe.”
“Let’s go with G-man,” Alyx said. “Something tells me he doesn’t care how we refer to him and that’s the easiest to say. What can you tell me about him?” This she directed mostly at Dad because he was clearly the one who knew stuff.
He let out a heavy sigh. “Not much unfortunately. He was in that Vault though. And we believe he might’ve orchestrated the resonance cascade but we’re not sure.”
Alyx couldn’t help but gasp at that. The resonance cascade was second only to the Combine’s invasion in importance to Earth’s history. It’s the thing that had drawn their attention here in the first place. And she’d been in the same room – if it could even be called a room – with the guy who made it happen – or at least her Dad had enough reason to think he might’ve made it happen. She’d have killed him if she knew… or tried and probably failed. Or heck, maybe she had tried and just didn’t remember. … Probably not. She couldn’t remember anything about their meeting but that didn’t seem how things had gone down.
“I was also pretty sure he didn’t work for the Combine,” Dad continued. “This proves it. They wouldn’t have locked him up if he was their ally. What he wants though I don’t want to know. Freeing him is less than ideal but… I suppose its too late now. I’m glad you’re safe. When I found out he was in there when it was already too late to stop you going in I… I feared that he’d… I’m glad your safe.”
“Me too.” She was lucky to be.
“You sure you remember nothing about him? What he said or did? He wears a suit, carries a briefcase…”
“He has… blue eyes?” She interrupted.
“You remember?” Russell sounded almost excited but well, that was Russell.
“Sort of… maybe.” She closed her eyes and pressed her hands to the sides of her head. That description, though generic, was familiar. The eyes in particular had been piercing, inhuman. But the harder she tried to press into what little memory that image conjured, what he’d said to her, what he’d shown her, what he’d offered, all… just made her headache worse. It had faded to a dull ache on the way here but now it was like she’d just had a nail hammered into the top of her skull.
Eventually she had to give up and open her eyes as she looked back up at the two of them. The overhead light was too bright. “I don’t remember. I don’t think he wants me to. Sorry.”
Dad’s hand clenched into a fist on the table. He didn’t let that frustration show in his voice though. “You don’t need to be sorry, sweetie. Long as you’re okay, that’s what matters most.”
That… didn’t feel like what mattered most. Something important had happened in the Vault between her and the G-man. Whatever it was was going to come back into play eventually. Hopefully not anytime soon but who could say on that? Likely when the time came she’d remember. At which point it would be too late to do anything about it. For now though… “I’m tired. Maybe after a nap I’ll be able to remember more.” Probably not but it was worth a try and she was so tired she couldn’t keep going for much longer regardless.
Russell stood. “We could probably all do with going back to bed. None of us have got much sleep lately.”
Dad nodded as he stood as well. “Rest it is in. You’ve certainly earned it.”