H λ L F - L I F E: Bishop's War✔️

CHλPTER 21: Escape From Black Mesa

"So do you even have a guess as to what we're walking into?" Eric asked as they all waited for the elevator to finish coming down. They'd finally tracked it down, and had only run into a handful of zombies and headcrabs on the way over.

"I give fifty-fifty odds that it's either some abandoned warehouse that they forgot to label when they updated the maps...or a top secret laboratory doing some kind of crazy ass research," Laidlaw replied.

"That's...there is such a wide difference between those two things," Maria said.

"Yep," Laidlaw agreed grimly.

Eric sighed heavily. The elevator abruptly settled into place. After a second, the doors slid open. And revealed a nightmarish interior.

"That's a bad sign," Li said softly.

There was a lot of blood on the walls, and several Black Ops corpses.

"Great," Eric muttered, then stepped inside. "Let's do this if we're gonna do it."

The others followed him aboard the lift. He quickly began patting down the Black Ops soldiers, managing to appropriate a new sidearm: another .357 six-shooter Magnum revolver. Despite everything, it oddly made him feel better to have it, especially because he managed to find about half a dozen quick-loads. They gathered whatever guns and ammo they could scrounge as the elevator ascended, then Eric had them get up against the walls. Tense silence passed as the lift ascended ever upwards.

Abruptly, it settled into place.

"Carefully," Eric whispered, and then the doors opened.

He peered out and bore witness to a visage of bloody carnage. Whatever the room beyond might once have been, it was now a necropolis. White tiles and high-tech machinery was covered in blood, and he immediately caught sight of over a dozen corpses spread out in random poses, broken by death. There was a mix of Marines, Black Ops, and shock troopers and pit drones. They had had one hell of a shootout, it seemed.

Somewhere ahead, he could hear some more fighting.

Slowly, Eric moved out, clearing the room with a sweep of his rifle. Nothing lived in the immediate vicinity. There were three doors, one in each wall besides the back wall they'd come out of. Two looked smaller and less important, the one dead ahead seemed like the main entrance. It was closed and that's where the sounds were coming from.

"Maria, check the left door. Li, stand guard. Laidlaw, find us a map," Eric said.

They all responded tightly and headed out to complete their tasks. He broke right and checked out whatever lay beyond that door, finding only a simple break room that was also trashed. It looked like a shock trooper had gotten into a brutal, close-quarters fight with several zombies. Once that and the other room (a small bathroom) were clear, he moved over to the main door. It was a pair of metal doors, the kind that slid into the walls, with small windows built into them. Peering cautiously through one, he caught sight of several shock troopers moving around, and a lot of dead Black Ops. Well, great. The troopers didn't seem to realize they had company.

Eric moved away from the door to join the others. He wanted to lock it down, but he also didn't want to accidentally open it, so he just left it as it was for the moment. "We've got about half a dozen shock troopers in the next lab," he reported.

"Great," Maria muttered.

"I have a way out," Laidlaw said. They gathered around at the workstation he was working at, studying the screen. "It's pretty straightforward, surprisingly. So, there are three more rooms in this laboratory, which appears to be some kind of advanced weapons testing lab."