Chapter Text
Benrey hadn’t been with the group in a while, not that Gordon was worried about him or anything, but when he’d finally split off from the rest of the science team to try and cover more ground while looking for the next nearest exit, he stumbled upon him almost immediately.
The security guard sat nonchalantly, his legs dangling off a crate that was surely filled with some kind of hazardous material, if every other item he’d seen in the last few days was any indicator.
“Hey.”
“Great,” Gordon huffed, “You’re here.”
“You, uh, you shouldn’t be back here,” Benrey said, as if he hadn’t even heard Gordon’s comment.
“What? Because I don’t have my passport?”
“So you admit it.”
Gordon sputtered. “Admit-- I’ve been admitting it! I’ve never denied it! I just don’t want you getting in my way!”
“I don’t think they want you to be here.” His flat tone grated on Gordon’s nerves. The same conversation they seemed to be having every five minutes, and now he was trying to invoke his higher-ups as if that made any difference.
He gestured with his hands exasperatedly. “I’m only here because I’m trying to survive! Maybe this is slightly above my pay grade, maybe I didn’t bring my fucking passport, but I think they’d want me to do what I had to do so I didn’t actually die.”
“Then why’d they put you in the line of fire, bro?”
“Huh?”
“You were all up in that thing. The test thing. Face right up in it. Why?”
“That was my job.” He crossed his arms, feeling suddenly defensive.
Benrey clicked his tongue dismissively. “Yeah your job is to be right up near the thing so whatever happens to it happens to you?”
“I-- they needed me to--” he tried to explain before being cut off.
“They were using you like a guinea pig, huh? Guinea Pigman. Oink.”
“Guinea pigs don’t--” he stopped himself short, assuming his clarification would fall on deaf ears. He could be a pedantic nerd at the best of times, but that didn't win friends an it sure as hell didn't get him anywhere with the immovable object that was Benrey.
“I thought you were a, uhh, PhD big brain boy, huh?”
“I- I am, I went to MIT--”
“And you were really putting that to use huh? Push one thing into another thing.” he pantomimed the push where he sat, and Gordon scowled back at him, unamused. “I could do that. You could-- put the thing on wheels or whatever and then no one has to do it.”
“What, so you think they wanted something to go wrong? So it’d-- affect me or whatever. They gave me the suit to protect me, so--”
“Yeah, the suit with all the trackers. They chipped you, bro. Like a dog.”
Gordon ducked his head at that, unable to keep eye contact. He could feel his face heating up with embarrassment. He’d been feeling stupid enough for not realizing that the suit had been housing trackers, and he didn’t need it dredged back up like this. Didn’t need to be compared to a damn dog.
Benrey kept speaking, seemingly unbothered. “I’m just sayin' it’s fucked up. Did they even tell you, uh, what you were doing? Or did you just go along for the physics smart boy content?”
He exhaled, trying to calm down and steady himself. “They kept me in the dark for a lot of it, but that’s-- it’s fine, it’s normal. Everything was on a need to know basis. I’m just-- I’m just a guy, I’m normal. They wouldn’t want anything from me.”
“Bro, they fuck with everybody. You saw the Bubby prototypes. You saw the Coomer clones. Everybody.”
He swallowed hard, finding his voice suddenly failing him. Even when he spoke again it came out quieter and more cautious than he’d wanted. “...They didn’t do anything to Tommy.”
“HA.” A sharp laugh escaped Benrey so quickly it startled him. “You don’t even know what the fuck Tommy's deal is.”
He shifted uncomfortably, considering what kind of things could have been to poor Tommy. The kid-- well actually he was nearly a decade older than him-- didn’t deserve that. He shivered just coming up with possibilities in his own head. He decided to change the subject slightly, turning back to Benrey. “Did they do anything to you?”
He was quiet for a few seconds, before he hesitantly spoke up again: “...they would if they could."
Gordon was curious now, despite himself, he could curse his science-oriented brain for latching on to any excuse to investigate something he didn’t understand. He pressed on. “You call it the Black Mesa sweet voice. You-- if you’re not from here... Why is it named after them?”
Benrey shrugged. “Bunch of-- bunch of dumb baby idiots. Think they get to name things just for seeing them. Thinking they’re fucking Chris Columbus discovering it.”
“So what’s it really called?”
“Huh?”
“Is there another name for it?”
“Not everything-- not everything has words for things. Sometimes things are just things. Why're you asking so many questions, bro? This is-- you’re distracting me. You shouldn’t be back here. I know you’re just here to steal stuff.” His tone seemed to rise in alarm.
Gordon relented. “Alright I’ll drop it. We gotta keep moving anyway.”
“Or you could just stop.”
“I can’t stop. Look, I know this is all fucked up, I know there’s mysterious shit going down, but we still have to get out of here. And then we leave all that behind.”
Benrey broke eye contact again, his voice barely above a mumble. “...Yeah just-- just don’t be all upset when the things that have to happen end up happening, okay? Don’t cry about it like a pissbaby when you get there. Cuz I tried to stop you. I was being nice.”
He sighed loudly. “Yeah, yeah you were being nice.”
“You should have just gone home and got your passport.”
He actually thought about it-- what would have happened if he had just turned around and walked out that morning. How he knew the test was risky but rationalized to himself that anything worth doing would be, and that the people who hired him, whoever they were, must know what they were doing. How he wanted to feel useful, and smart, and proud of himself for being the one to do it. How he’d showed up late, like always, because he woke up with another headache, and was bad enough at keeping a schedule on his own, and a thousand other excuses, and being rushed made him nervous and eager to please, to comply. How he saw the goddamn computers explode and figured it wasn’t any of his business. How he fucked up, how he might have brought on the end of the world. How it all could have been avoided.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think you might be right.”
Benrey looked him up and down, seemingly as surprised by the agreement as Gordon was to say it. He waved a hand as if to dismiss the entire conversation. Clean it out of the air like shaking an Etch-A-Sketch. “Whatever. It’s whatever. Some things have to happen. Just-- you can stop. You know? So more things don’t happen.”
“I really can’t--”
He was interrupted by the sound of Bubby yelling from the next hallway. “Gordon, come on, I want to go home!”
Coomer’s voice followed soon after, “Gordon, we’ve found a path! We’ve got to get a move on if we’re going to reach the Lambda Lab!”
“Yeah, I’m coming!” He called back, already making his way towards the doorway. He turned back to Benrey. “Are you coming along?”
“Yeah, I have to follow you.” His expression was back to being vacant, his voice back to being emotionless.
As he turned around to walk, Gordon could hear him muttering to himself under his breath, sounding almost annoyed: “...has to happen.”