Hƛlf-Life 2 (Feat. Indigo)

Route Kanal

Route Kanal

“Route Kanal, eh?” I smirked as I strutted through a short, tunnel-like thing. I easily smashed a large wooden box with my heavy crowbar, letting its weight do the work. That’s when I remembered; I never did charge my suit back at Kleiner’s lab. Oops.

The tunnel came to a sharp drop-off, and one of those floating Combine robots came up and took my picture. I laughed and knocked it upside the . . . well, the face, I guess. It exploded in a shower of sparks, and I hopped down to the ground below.

I was apparently in a train yard, considering there were a lot of the machines parked where I was. A Combine on a building saw me and pulled out a pistol as another shot a flare into the air, revealing my location. I cursed loudly as a bullet sunk into the armor on my shoulder. It didn’t seriously hurt, but I still got shot. I ran over to a train car and hopped in. It was surprisingly small, and I had to stumble over a pile of boxes to get to the other side. I whacked the other doors open with my beloved crowbar and hopped out onto an empty set of train tracks.

Out of nowhere, a train bellowed and began zooming towards me from behind. I yelped and rolled under the parked train I had previously jumped out of as it sped past. After the new train passed, I made myself count to ten before sprinting across the tracks to the next parked train, and slipped between two cars. I crawled inside another one, and there was a ladder leading to the roof of it. I climbed it gladly and hopped across a few other trains to a fence.

“Booyah, mother effers!” I shouted as I jumped down and landed on the top of the fence, only to stumble and fall to the ground on the wrong side. I hooked my crowbar in my belt and climbed the chain-link fence, muttering heatedly.

Once I finally plopped to the ground, I took out my crowbar again and broke some more boards, jogging through a ghetto doorway. It led to a dark staircase, and I turned on a built in flash-light in my suit. I smiled and strutted down the stairs, coming face-to-face with a “DANGER: ADMITTANCE TO AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY” sign.

“Like that’ll stop me,” I snorted, making a right through a short tunnel. The ground was littered with trash, and a Combine health unit thingie was attached to the wall. I poked my finger in a small, blue hole, and nothing happened. I buzzed my lips and poked at different parts of my suit, looking for a wire or something that could connect to it.

“If only Kleiner had read that manual,” I muttered as I tested my wrist guards for anything. To my surprise, a chunk of the armor lifted, and a short wire protruded from it. I tugged on the orange wire, and it extended. Without further ado, I plugged it into the small hole that my finger had previously occupied, and I automatically felt better. It was kinda weird.

I shoved the wire back into my wrist guard and snapped the hatch-thing closed when a lady’s voice rang out, “Help me!” She sounded like she was crying.

“Who’s there?” I ran down the hall and turned right to find a strange scene. One Combine was pushing some dude against a wall, threatening him with a pistol. Another stood guard with a police baton. The lady who had called out was cowering against the opposite wall, watching in horror as the Combine prepared to hit the citizen upside the head with his gun.

“Stop! What are you doing?” she sobbed.

“Oh, no you don’t!” With all of the force I could muster, I wound up my arm and chucked my trusty crowbar headlong towards the combine with the gun. To my surprise, my aim was true, and the crowbar hit only one of the masked patrollers. He hit the ground and didn’t move. The second Combine zapped his baton and began charging towards me, yelling into his radio. I ducked around his swinging arm and sprinted down the thin hall towards the fallen Combine. I looked around for the gun, but it was already in the dude citizen’s hands, and he was shooting aimlessly at the combine, trembling with fear.