H λ L F - L I F E: Bishop's War✔️

CHλPTER 20: Beneath

For the first few moments after the lift hit the bottom and they got out of it, Eric was more reactionary than anything else. All he could think of was putting distance between them and where they had come from, with some vague but overwhelming knowledge that they could still be in immediate danger, all of this overlayed by the vision of Bower getting shot in the face point blank, like a goddamned gif looping again and again.

"Where?!" he snapped as soon as they were back in that initial room.

"Ahead," Laidlaw replied, gasping for breath.

And then they were off again. They moved for a ways down a lengthy concrete tunnel, running at first, then slowing to a jog, following Laidlaw's instructions each time they reached another junction or the direction they were going ended.

They kept this up until he heard Maria say, "Wait, wait. Stop! We can stop."

And he skidded to a halt, assault rifle raised. He could barely see anything in the dim light of the room they now found themselves in. A cursory examination of it indicated it had once been used for some kind of industrial purpose, as the far left wall was taken up by a row of enormous metal vats with instrumentation panels attached to their bases, and then later had been repurposed for storage, like half of Black Mesa, as a line of shelves and a few piles of dusty crates took up the right side of the room. There was, he realized, actually no other way out than the way that they had come in through. Well, a good a place to stop as any, he surmised.

"Goddamn," he whispered as he staggered over to the nearest wall and sat down with his back to it. "I just...that..."

"That was a bit much," Maria said as she sat down next to him.

"Uh-huh," Li murmured. She just sat down in the middle of the floor.

Laidlaw said nothing. Instead, he began silently patting down his various pockets. First, he fished out a battered pack of smokes, second came a battered silver Zippo. His hands shaking, he patted a cigarette out, put it in his mouth, then lit up.

He snapped the lighter shut, took a deep pull on the cigarette, then let out a formless cloud of smoke in a long exhalation. "God, that's better," he muttered. Cigarette hanging from his lips, he looked around. "Anyone want a smoke?"

"No," Li murmured.

"I'm good," Maria replied.

Eric considered it for a long moment. He'd smoked off and on throughout his adult life, but he'd basically given it up a few years ago. With a sigh, he rose to his feet and walked over. "Yeah, I'll take one. Could use it after that. What brand is that?"

"Yeheyuan," Laidlaw replied as he passed Eric a cigarette.

"Never heard of it," he murmured.

Laidlaw lit the cigarette, then replaced the pack and the lighter in his pocket. "They're a custom brand, hard to find. You gotta order them special."

"Huh." He took a pull on the cigarette, then nearly dropped it as he started coughing. "Damn, there goes two years."

"Five for me," Laidlaw said with a sigh. "I was five damned years clean until last month. The pressure started piling on and I just...got another pack sent here. Then three more." He shook his head. "But if we're gonna die anyway..."

"We're not gonna die," Eric said, but he said it with less conviction now than ever before.

"We're probably going to die," Maria said.

He sighed. "Regardless, we're not giving up."

"Where do we go? What do we do? Everything just blew up in our faces, like everywhere else I've gone since hitting dirt..." Li asked softly.