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"Okay, come on, stop-" Gordon sighs, exasperated, at his gaggle of companions refusing to stay on task and just wandering around doing nothing important. He wants to keep moving, damnit, this is not the time to inspect alien corpses or try eating them. He doesn't know what's going on. He does, however, hear a new voice somewhere ahead of them screaming and firing a gun.
Rushing to meet whoever this survivor is, Gordon spots someone who does just look exactly like him, except in a labcoat and not an HEV suit. He is shooting at a small horde of headcrabs, hitting almost all of his shots. Gordon takes out his own pistol and starts shooting all the ones the new guy misses. The labcoat guy jumps and spins to look at him, also pointing his gun straight at Gordon in the process.
"CAREFUL with that, jeez," Gordon complains.
The guy lowers his gun, looking back at the hallway for a minute to make sure it's clear. He then walks right up to Gordon and kind of leans against him. "I'm glad you're here. Of course you're still okay!"
Gordon looks back as his companions come piling into the room after all. "Yeah, uh. Sure."
Shoving himself right between Gordon and the new guy, Benrey stares directly at said new guy. "Passport?"
The new guy stares back for a moment, then nods and pulls one out. "Sure? I don't know why you need this?" He looks slightly over Benrey's shoulder and at Gordon. Gordon shakes his head in return and looks at the passport himself, but he's having a hard time making out the words on it.
Benrey, it seems, has no such issues. "Felix. Good name. Everything checks out, let's go!" He runs off, hands empty, into whatever the next room is. Gordon laughs at him.
Felix cozies up to Gordon again, firmly placing him between Felix himself and the probably insane scientists. It's a good move, even if Gordon is a little uncomfortable with this guy he's just met getting all close and personal with him. "Personal space, buddy?"
"Oh, sure. Sorry."
"No problem, just, uh. Arm's distance, maybe?"
Felix makes some kind of noise that could probably be interpreted as a mixture of a whine and a huff, but he does back off. Now within full view of the rest of the lunatics in this place, he shuffles in place. "So," he starts. "Unlike Gordon, I've got some decent firearms experience."
"Hey-" Gordon interjects, before being interrupted himself.
"Gordon is the best at gunplay out of anyone I've ever met," Bubby lies.
Felix, however, seems to believe this, and shrinks in on himself slightly. Gordon sighs, feeling a bit bad for the guy. He did seem to be holding his own against the headcrabs, which is better than most scientists in this place. "You can come along," he only slightly reluctantly says to Felix.
That does get him to perk right back up. "Well, good! I was going to follow you anyways. Pick off all the stuff that wanted to ambush you. You know."
"Uh, sure?" Gordon has no idea what this guy is getting on about. He takes a quick inventory of everyone present. Benrey is still off who-knows where.
"Come along, Gordon Two!" Coomer calls, cheerily, moving on before Gordon can, Bubby and Tommy hot on his heels.
Felix is dead still for a moment, turning on an axis to Gordon. "I'm going to shoot him if he calls me that again." Gordon laughs uncomfortably and keeps moving, the rest of the Science Team, and now Felix, trailing behind him.
---
There is a giant armored lizard monster. Three of them. They're kind of... Eh, no, he's not doing that. Anyways. "So," Felix looks at the weirdos behind him. "I'm not going into the silo."
"Then we're leaving you behind," Bubby says plainly.
Felix blanches. "No, you're not! I just don't feel like running past that thing for no reason! We don't all have to go down there to turn shit on!"
"Just send one person at a time." Benrey proposes. "Go as far as you can, die, switch off with someone else."
"Perfectly logical!" Coomer crows.
Everyone in this building is insane. Felix stares at Gordon, hoping for him to interject with anything, but he seems a bit distant at the moment. Weird. It's up to Felix, then! He clears his throat. "Uh, no? Bad plan, that ends in people dying."
Benrey wilts. "Yeah, yeah. Better plan in the works. Don't worry, I'm on it."
"Hey, uh, it's fine?" Felix backpedals. "We can just... Yeah, make a better plan. Sure." Oh god why does he have to deal with people.
"Look," Gordon sighs, blatantly exasperated and pinching the bridge of his nose, "We're all going. Not negotiable." Oh, now this is familiar. "It's better to stick together. Splitting up gets people killed."
It's just like Gordon to assume he knows better than everyone else and try to boss them around. Who, exactly, was the one that almost got fired over messing around in the AMS chamber? Hang on, when did Gordon tell him about that..?
Coomer snaps Felix out of his contemplation with a cheery "If we split up, there is a slightly better chance of that beast not eviscerating all of us! The clear solution is to split into four groups, that way we outnumber the beast and only three groups get their shit wrecked!"
Felix turns to glare at Coomer. Someone whispers something to the reception of a couple snickers. Benrey nods sagely. "Oh yeah. No other option."
There's no reasoning with these people. They're all insane, Felix is absolutely going to have to go through that room. He's gotta do it quick. He stalks up to the entrance to the silo, takes a deep breath, and sprints towards the closest exit to the room, screaming the whole way. Part of this process involves just plain dropping ten feet, which miraculously both fails to harm him and forces the things inside to take a minute to find him again.
This isn't to say that they don't do so quickly, they do in fact catch up to him with little issue, they just also fail to catch Felix, on account of him being slightly faster. And perhaps on account of the shouts of dismay from the rest of the Science Team distracting the things, but he'd rather place all of the credit on himself. It makes him seem more reliable if he can clear this unaided.
Once he's out into relative safety, he legs it to the airlock and catches his breath. He can hear the things clanging around in the silo from here. There's barely any actual material keeping him apart from that thing, which is a horribly unsettling thought he will just abandon right now, thank you. Eventually he also hears the Science Team making their way to him. He bows once they're in sight, which no one really responds to. Rude.
The bullsquid outside goes down easily to a couple bullets from him, though, so maybe some cool points are still on the table..? Nah, no one was looking. Maybe he can just be content with knowing that he saved one or two people from an unpleasant face full of green slime. Pfft. Who is he kidding? There's nothing special about that.
"Oh no..." Benrey says, monotone, wobbling precariously on the edge of one of the rails. How did he even get up there?
Felix rushes over and offers a hand. Benrey waves him off and tips over the edge and into the goop at the bottom of the silo with his final words being a lackluster "Warm down here." Felix sighs. He's lost his loyal minion. Benrey is fine. He died, but he's fine. That's just what he's like. The rest of the team has moved on, so Felix runs after them. He doesn't want to be left behind in this place.
---
"Mr. Freeman? Can I talk to you for a minute?"
"Uh," Gordon takes a moment to make sure no one will die without his immediate intervention. They're usually fine, and that does seem to be the case now, what with them tearing through anything that walks in front of them. "Yeah, sure thing. What's up?"
"I do- I don't know how to say this nicely, so please don't hold this against me."
"Sure thing," It can't be that bad.
Tommy sighs deeply. "Can you get your brother to stop talking about his dick all the time? It was funny for a- for the first time, but not now."
What best describes the state Gordon enters for a few seconds could perhaps be termed 'bluescreening,' if he weren't the sole flesh and blood person in the entirety of Black Mesa. He does shake himself out of it, even with the lingering specter of all the uncomfortable jokes from this seemingly random guy were meant to be from his brother hanging over him.
Weakly, "I can ask?" Tommy nods. "I don't know if it'll work, though," make something up so if it doesn't work no one pins the blame on him, "Felix isn't exactly, uh. He doesn't like doing what I ask him to do?"
"That's okay! I just- He's more likely to listen to you than any of the rest of us."
"If you say so." He kind of thought Felix was some joke NPC, in all honestly. A dev getting weird and sticking some intolerable character into the game for whatever reason. Alright, intolerable is overselling how bad he is, but he's not the most pleasant guy to talk to. Fun enough, just not for long conversations. He does eventually make his way to Felix, though, during a relatively quiet moment. Relatively, because Benrey and Tommy are loudly chatting about some sitcom. Probably a sitcom. Gordon never caught the name.
Felix spins a quick semicircle to the conversation happening just out of his reach and then back to Gordon when he puts a hand on Felix's shoulder. "Hey! What's up?" He says, perky.
Sighing, Gordon dives right on in. "You've gotta stop making all those jokes about your... You know. Or at least tone them down a bit, they're making everyone uncomfortable."
"Oh." Felix sighs dramatically. "I can't have anything around here." There's a deep humor in his voice, so Gordon is pretty sure he doesn't mean that seriously.
"Whatever!" Gordon laughs. "Just keep them to a minimum, yeah?"
---
Felix drags Coomer away from Gordon. "What was all that? Out there, with the fucking- Nothing out there? I mean, we're in the middle of nowhere, but there's still stuff!"
Coomer looks back at Felix, meeting his eyes with what is most certainly intense pity. Felix can't stand it. "We are in the middle of nowhere," Coomer says, something between grim and sad, "and that is all there is." Uh?
Promptly meandering back over to Gordon, Coomer says something loud and cheerful, but Felix is a bit too far away to hear it. He goes back to the group anyways, and enjoys watching Gordon try to corral the group into not getting sidetracked at every little thing. Felix would never get so caught up in shit that didn't matter. He's a professional.
When they launch the rocket and Bubby comes back perfectly fine, Felix is a bit relieved. Bubby surviving space and falling back exactly where he went up is a little weird, but he guesses that's just tube baby benefits? Felix isn't a biologist. He feels a bit silly for being worried anyways.
Eventually everyone settles down to go to sleep, gathering in some big pile together. Felix thinks these things are cozy. He likes curling up with people next to him. It's warm, it's nice to have people on the outside of the pile that'll notice and deal with threats before he does, all around a good time.
Tonight, though, Felix leaves the pile early, once he's pretty sure everyone else is asleep. That does seem to be the case, as only Tommy really stirs at all when he leaves. Weird, really, that Gordon isn't moving any. Breathing, yeah, but he's always been a light sleeper.
It's probably fine. He's exhausted, like everyone else in the Science Team. Doesn't matter right now anyways. Felix worms his way out of the pile, walks past Benrey's pile of lemons(?) and re-enters the rocket launch site. There's a ridged pipe on the side of the room, and, testing it, Felix finds he can easily climb it.
He has to see what's out there. Coomer got a bit fucked up by whatever he saw, and Bubby was completely fine, so maybe it was just something specific to Coomer? Maybe Bubby didn't see it? Whatever the issue is, Felix at least wants to be aware of it.
With a hefty and final push upward, Felix looks out past the cliff edge.
⠀
⠀
⠀
He climbs back down. Felix gets back into the Science Pile and takes a deep breath. Someone else in the pile moves around, and eventually Coomer drags himself out from the bottom.
"What did you see?"
Felix opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. Eventually manages, "It's just the desert."
Coomer pats him on the back, sympathy-nothing on his face, and crawls back into the pile. His deafening snores are plainly fake for a time, then seem to start in earnest. Felix stays awake for a while longer. It's quiet, tonight. He doesn't think there's any bugs.
"It's just the desert," Felix insists woodenly, to no one at all.
---
Finishing crossing the crushers, Gordon steadies himself on the platform he lands on. After a moment, some background noise he'd barely noticed cuts out. Confused, Gordon looks around. "What was that?" In the hallway ahead of him, the only route forward, Felix, Benrey and Bubby are standing in a tight group and staring at him, not saying a word.
He hazards a question. "What's, uh- What are you three doing?"
"Nothing," Felix says, slowly.
"Can't anyone go five minutes without you bothering them in this place?" Bubby snarks as well. "I'm pretty sure they can't."
Benrey just shrugs. Felix sighs. "Look, just don't worry about it, okay?" He sounds unbelievably weary. It's not like him at all.
"Are you okay?" Gordon asks him anyways. "You know you can talk to me?"
"Drop it."
So he does. They keep walking, fighting, doing inane puzzles. Felix seems more like himself, and Gordon takes a minute to himself to reflect that he genuinely does care about this guy now. At first it was just enjoying having some slightly more sane company than the rest of the party, but he genuinely thinks pretending to be this guy's brother has endeared Felix to him.
It's a strange feeling. Sure, he likes all of the Science Team, even Benrey, but Felix just has a charm to him that the rest don't, really. Or maybe that's Gordon attempting to forget all the dick jokes and accidentally forgetting other unpleasant things about him too. It could go either way, easily.
Surface access is opened up after the black ops are dealt with, and Gordon hesitates to go in. The game has been pretty normal so far, but maybe the ambush would be different? He's not sure, but it would be cool for it to have some kind of visuals in VR, or directional sound. Everyone pushes him to go into the ambush, though, so he guesses they've got a bit of direction for the matter?
Gordon enters the room and the lights go out. There's shouting everywhere, so Gordon shrugs and joins in, doing his best to sound like he's in pain.
"MY BALLS!"
It is so hard to not laugh at that. Of course that's where Felix would get hit. The level transition kicks in and Gordon takes a deep breath. Onto the next chapter.
---
He's not really sure why he knows Gordon is going to be crawling out of this pipe in particular. All Felix is sure of right now is that through this pipe is where his brother has to come through. Sliding out of it and into the puddle of dubiously filthy water below. Felix shakes a bit. Everything's just been wrong since he tried to look past the curtain.
Gordon has been weird. Everyone else in the group was weird to begin with, but Coomer got worse, somehow, and Bubby got meaner. Felix doesn't know what to do. Nothing makes sense, it's not working right, it's just all awful. He takes a deep breath and keeps staring at the pipe. Any minute now. He hasn't gotten tired at all, without someone telling him he should get some sleep.
He could stand here forever and nothing would change, would it?
But Gordon does come tumbling out of the pipe, and Felix rushes over, despite his reservations, to help him onto his feet. Gordon sags into him, saying something incoherent about his arm hurting. And, God, half of it is just gone. Is that his fault? He didn't know the military would do that, it can't be. He just wanted to know what would happen. He has to pull himself together.
Felix makes sure Gordon is standing on his own. It's not hard. Basically the instant Felix lets go of him, Gordon is upright and more or less still. His face isn't moving. He's not terribly expressive at the best of times, but surely he'd be... Felix doesn't know. Wincing? Cringing? Screaming in pain? His hand is gone.
"Gordon?" Steel yourself, Felix. You can do this.
Still perfectly still, "Yeah?"
"You're not my brother, are you?"