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"Major lacerations detected. Vital signs dropping," Informed a monotone voice, after three short beeps. A long, metallic clang rang out on the cold floor, echoed down the long, dark hallway like a requiem bell, masking the sound of quiet panting.
With a ragged breath, Dr. Gordon Freeman wobbled, stuck out an arm in the dark to catch himself on the wall. Another series of beeps.
"Blood loss detected. Seek medical attention."
If only. Hand trembling, he hesitantly prodded the gash, and involuntarily jerked it back again with a choked gasp. The pain burned deep, but it needed some sort of pressure. He gritted his teeth and tried again.
Pull the band-aid off quickly, it won't hurt as much, his mother had always told him.
Still shaking, he speedily pressed a hand to the wound, feeling its slick texture despite the thick, chemical-resistant gloves on his hands. Fire blazed up and down his side, the corridor tilted sickeningly, and it wasn't for a dozen more agonizing heartbeats that he realized that he had screamed. As his breathing steadily slowed, Gordon listened to the low hum of Black Mesa underneath his heavy breathing and the pulse pounding in his ear.
"Morphine administered."
Leaning heavily on the lifeless metal wall, Gordon breathed a sigh of relief as the pain in his side almost instantly faded into the background like the thrum of the facility. Now that he could think clearly, there was something else he had been wanting to do.
Gordon turned, still keeping a careful hand on the wall, and stared curiously at the corpse of the strange creature with green liquid pooling underneath it. Judging from the substance's appearance, its consistency wasn't dissimilar to the blood from his own injury. With a furtive glance up and down the corridor, Gordon crept toward the creature.
Even with the ceiling literally crashing down around him, even with his own blood slowly seeping into the stiff fabric of the HEV suit, even with the end of the world as he knew it, Gordon still couldn't help the morbid curiosity that drew him closer to the thing that had tried to kill him moments ago.
Despite having run into many of them, Gordon hadn't truly gotten a chance to examine the creatures until now. There had always been more than one that had hurled glowing, green orbs of compressed energy at him, or slashed at him with its claws, or tried to shove him off a ledge. Speaking of which, the thing he was looking at had three arms, two connected to its low, stooped shoulders, and a single, smaller limb in its chest.
Out of habit, he adjusted the stained and battered glasses, which were still miraculously balanced on the bridge of his nose. It didn't help clear the spatters of blood (alien and human), dust, and other debris, but it made the situation feel a bit more normal. More like the carefully controlled climate of the labs, or his classrooms back at MIT.
Its skin was green and wrinkled, and Gordon was vaguely reminded of some of his favorite childhood characters. Except, E.T. had befriended Elliot, not tried to blast him into oblivion with his space lasers, and Yoda had taught Luke Skywalker the ways of the Force, not shredded him to chunks with razor-sharp talons.
Then there were its eyes, of which it had way more than generally allocated to creatures other than insects. At least, he didn't think it was insectoid. These things could be distant relatives of prehistoric fruit flies for all he knew. It had one, reddish eye in the center of its face, like a cyclops, and three smaller eyes on either side of that.
It certainly wasn't anything he, or anyone else in this doomed facility, had ever encountered before. At least that's what he assumed at first… so many strange things had been happening in the hours — or had it been days? — since the accident that he wasn't sure of anything anymore.
Barney would have told him it didn't matter anyways. They were the enemy; as long as they were the enemy, it didn't matter what they were. But Barney wasn't here. For all Gordon knew, Barney was… best not to think about it. Barney was resourceful and competent. Hopefully he had already found a way out of this deathtrap.
Gordon shook his head; he was getting distracted. Maybe it was the exhaustion, maybe it was from blood loss, either way he didn't have time to stand around staring at a dead alien. There were people who were counting on him, whether they knew it or not— his colleagues, those marines who kept trying to kill him, maybe even humanity itself. If someone didn't take out the portal punched into the fabric of time and space or whatever, who knew what would happen?
So, Gordon turned, slowly let go of the wall, and took a tentative step forward— clang. His foot hit something, sending it skittering away across the floor. In the dark hallway, he could just make out what it was.
Pressing his hand tighter to his side, Gordon took another slightly shaky step and bent stiffly to retrieve the long, thin, hooked object off the floor. Its once red paint was now hidden beneath a crusted layer of greenish, puss colored slime and blood.
Hefting the crowbar experimentally, Gordon peered up and down the hallway once more. The dim emergency lights flickered down the long corridor, casting unsteady shadows in the darkest corners of the room.
There has to be a first-aid station down here somewhere. With a long sigh, Gordon shifted his grip on the crowbar, pushed his glasses up his nose, and started down the hallway.