Chapter Text
Half-Life: Extinction
A brilliant light plumes over the horizon in the vast New Mexico desert. An ear rupturing noise booms across a radius far greater than the blast itself, putting it in no uncertain terms that the final cataclysmic stroke has been made in a portrait of utter disaster.
The Black Mesa Research Facility is destroyed.
Barney Calhoun, former security officer for the underground complex, looks out at the distant spectacle from the safety of a derelict warehouse. Miles away from the site, he and the scientists he’s escaped alongside are still close enough to be treated to the sight of a cacophonous final note of their traumatic ordeal. The weight it adds to their narrow escape left most at a loss for words.
For Barney, four words come to mind.
“Son of a bitch…” He whispers out in disbelief. After living through what he has, he wonders how shocking this should be to him.
He’s brushed with death countless times on his winding trek through Black Mesa, though perhaps what’s finally made him stop and reflect is the fact he’s finally been given the time to do so. And even scrapes with extraterrestrials and bloodthirsty soldiers can’t quite compete with the sight of a genuine nuclear detonation.
Thinking on that brings a question to his lips “That’s not gonna… get to us, is it?” He asks, addressing the scientists beside him.
A sudden answer signals Dr. Rosenberg’s entrance. “We’re comfortably outside of its range, Calhoun,” He reassures with confident authority. “Believe me, we had most certainly prepared for an eventuality like this.”
Barney releases a quiet sigh, easily trusting the word of the senior researcher. “Okay, good…” He turns to look at him, a weak smile on his tired face. “I made it through that place just fine without so much as a lead apron, but I don’t like my chances with that.”
The doctor seems a bit bemused by this joke in the face of such a grisly fate, but it isn’t the first piece of gallows humor he’s received from his unlikely assistant over the course of this. He offers a mildly confused smile.
“I presume the blast woke you up?” Rosenberg asks.
Barney gives him a sarcastic expression, but not without an affirmative nod.
“Ah, good, we’re only waiting on one more.” He fails to explain what he means, continuing on. “Do you feel any need for medical attention? This old building is nowhere near as readily equipped as our facilities, but we’re making do with rudimentary supplies.”
Barney responds with a dismissing wave. Sore and scarred as he may be, he’s no worse off than the scientists. “I’m good, doc. Just needed a little power nap.”
Rosenberg nods. “Right then. If you’d like something…” He briefly glances at the billowing cloud through the window. “Else to focus on, we are currently attempting to contact any others who may have survived using emergency frequencies. It only seems right to try and band together with as many of our peers as we can, seeing as we’re…”
“Up the same shit creek?” Barney suggests.
Rosenberg briefly deliberates before he concedes. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
Barney smiles at the response, before the gears finally turn in his weary mind and he processes what was said. Survivors. Peers. The smirk is wiped from his face as the realization hits. “Shit…” He mutters, knitting his brows, thoughts of Gordon, Dr. Kleiner, Eli and his family stirring in his head.
The thought of contacting them gives him the resolve to snap out of his stupor, and he looks back up to the scientist, already starting off in the direction he came from. “Good call, doc. I got buddies in there, I’m with ya.”
Dr. Rosenberg moves quickly to walk ahead of him, turning to face him apologetically. “Calhoun, you must know that… I cannot promise you-”
Barney raises his hand, cutting him off. “Yeah, yeah, I know… just tryin’ to be a little optimistic here.” Try as he might to manage that, after what he’s been through, it’s more likely fear or denial.
Ever polite, Rosenberg makes no attempt to suggest this, simply nodding gravely in reply.
After a tense silence, the scientist stops in front of a door in the hall. “I hope you won’t mind if we check in on a couple of colleagues briefly-we’re still waiting for one to come to.”
Barney nods, grateful for the chance to move past this thread of conversation. “Sure… say, the guys you worked out this escape plan with are back there, so who are these two?” He asks, recalling the same comment from earlier.
The older man stops short of turning the door handle, looking to Barney to answer him. “Doctors Gina Cross and Colette Green, from Sector C. They were…” He frowns, eyes falling from Barney as he expresses no small displeasure with the words he must utter. “Present when this whole mess began at those testing labs.”
It’s no secret to anybody that Dr. Rosenberg holds a great deal of guilt for the events of the past few days. The machine that initialized it was of his own design, and when he’d gotten word of the unusual strain they intended to put his equipment under, he couldn’t act in time to prevent the experiment.
He shakes the expression off his face, giving the man in front of him his complete focus once more. “As for how they found their way to us, we’re not completely positive. You recall your brief time sent into reflux by the teleport, yes?”
Barney thins his lips into a line as he recalls the experience. The fuzzy blur of green that whisked him to and fro in the massive facility, the tingling, numbing sensation of the spotty teleport, the sort of paralysis that made every small movement a herculean effort. He just nods. He definitely recalls that.
“While you were away, we believe a similar phenomenon brought Cross and Green to our location, each of them in quite a dire state…” Rosenberg says with a dour expression, casting his eyes to the floor once again. “We have no idea how this came to pass. When they’d appeared our only thoughts were of saving an additional two people from this disaster, we merely hoisted them into the back of our vehicle and planned to tend to their injuries once we arrived here. We’d ask them ourselves, but…” The doctor’s hands fidget at his sides, he sighs softly as he looks at the door in front of him. “Dr. Green has so far been uncooperative, and Dr. Cross, last we checked, is still… yet to stir…”
The two share a brief look, expressions of concern for their respective colleagues mirroring one another. Rosenberg always displays guilt for the devastation wrought by the experiment, but for these two women, those whom he had seen at ground zero, a mere matter of minutes before it all started, he seems exceedingly mournful. Barney only nods with empathy, giving the doctor space to walk through the door.
Dr. Gina Cross lies limp on a medical bed with Dr. Colette Green kneeling on the floor beside her. Each of them have been stripped of their damaged hazard suits-the charred and bloodstained suits of armor lay in pieces on a table nearby-leaving the pair in the athletic underwear designed to be worn underneath.
Apart from their clothing, they’re also coated in bruises, scars, dried blood-the red of their own, as well as some sickly alien yellow-bandages liberally applied to many areas on their bodies, and yet a great deal of injuries the past two days have earned them remain clear to see.
Despite being the conscious one of the duo, Colette doesn’t look a whole lot better than her partner, mostly due to the dour, tired expression on her face. She’s hunched down to lean on Gina’s bedside, resting her head and arms on the surface, staring blankly at her partner.
She doesn’t turn to look at the door, eyes fixed to Gina’s unconscious face, her messy hair, undone and falling to her bare shoulders, her chest as it rises and falls in a gentle rhythm, the only reassurance she’s still with them. All in all, Colette’s almost just as motionless; live and lucid, but sharply focused.
After a few moments, Dr. Rosenberg clears his throat. “Dr. Green, I’m not sure you should be… up and about so soon.” He speaks with a great deal of remorse, understanding as well as anyone what drives her to disregard this. Riddled with bruises and scars as she is, Colette is worrying about Gina.
“I’m fine.” She pipes up, her tone hostile and defensive. As she finally turns to look at the two, her expression shifts to a decidedly disgruntled glare. After giving the doctor his due, her eyes shift to the figure behind him. Despite his wear and tear, she recognizes the haggard face atop a vestless blue uniform and huffs derisively. “Oh joy, a security guard. We’re finally safe.” She scoffs.
Barney’s brow furrows, though he’s more confused by the comment than he is insulted. “Well gee, great to see you made it out too, ma’am.” He dryly replies.
The two effectively jog their memories of each other with this terse exchange. Barney recalls a vigorous researcher working engineering in Sector C, one of the dedicated HEV suits along with Gordon and Gina. Colette recalls a particularly mouthy security guard with an infamous bar tab, miraculously a friend to a number of her peers on the Anomalous Materials science team.
Suffice it to say that at least one of them has a less than flattering opinion of the other, and she’s not taking his intrusion kindly.
Dr. Rosenberg interjects, clearing his throat. “Dr. Green, this is Officer Barney Calhoun,” He says, slapping a hand onto the man’s shoulder, eliciting a slight wince of soreness. “He was instrumental in our escape from the facility. We owe him a great deal.”
The endorsement doesn’t quite ring for Colette, who merely cocks a brow at the former guard. “Well I’ll be damned… one of you clowns quit pissin’ around long enough to do your damn job?” She coldly questions, glaring judgmentally at him.
“For the love of…” Barney huffs out a sigh, throwing his hands up in exasperation as the doctor finally gets some rise out of him. “Is anyone ever gonna tell me what security guards did to the science team? I feel like I’m in highschool half the time; you still not over getting picked on or something?”
“Please, calm yourselves!” Dr. Rosenberg raises his voice, stern but pleading expression on his face. “This is not the time nor the place for squabbling like this! We may have made it out of there, but there is still work to be done,” He asserts, stepping close to Gina’s bedside.
He quickly turns to Colette. “Have there been any changes in her condition?” He asks, not affording the two any dead air with which to inject their commentary.
While Barney proves calm enough to recognize the doctor’s point, Colette hasn’t taken the interruption to heart. She scowls at the question. “Gee, what do you think?” She looks to her partner, frustrations mounting on her face.
Rosenberg gives a resigned nod. “Right…”
“She’ll get back up,” Colette says firmly, not looking away.
“Dr. Green, your hazard suits failed , we were lucky to pry you out of them. You’re lucky to be alive,” Dr. Rosenberg says, an apologetic expression on his face. “We… must prepare for the reality that-”
“She’ll get back up, damn it!” Colette whips her head around to look at him with grit teeth, clenching her fists and clutching the bed sheets. She’s fiercely opposed to the outcome he’s implying, what it would mean after all they’ve been through.
They made it out. Against all the odds.