Physics of the Crowbar

Cold Storage

Cold storage. Of course.

Freeman hated cold storage. The place was built like a medieval fortress, byproduct of being hurriedly expanded in Black Mesa's period of rampant pharmaceutical research and development, then abandoned in the years following their shift to nuclear, metamaterial and crystal resonance research.

Old biological samples, temperature-sensitive metamaterials, forgotten projects and unclean petri dishes, and the odd crate of cafeteria hot-pockets dotted the frost-encased shelves. The floor was slick with a layer of microscopic ice crystals. His breath fogged in the air and on his glasses.

He wondered what the temperature change did to his gun. The crowbar was more obvious, the metal becoming colder by the second. He felt it through the suit glove, and he felt the cold creep in through damage cracks and latex joints.
But the only way forward was through. He tried to remember the layout for the cold storage warrens as he brushed through the smudged plastic strip curtains, and tried not to breathe too deeply. A man screamed and charged past him. He spread his feet wide to keep from slipping on the floor. The man was not so lucky; he went down and caught his forehead on a shelf. Yellow goo splattered over the man's white-coated back, produced by –

Freeman shot the organism before he registered it as a new alien species, a two-legged acid-spitting blob. He stepped over its body, moving quickly around the partition, shotgun ready. It was alone in its lair, but it had dragged several more bodies into the alcove behind protruding refrigeration ducts. He retrieved ammunition from the stiff frozen body of a security guard and moved on.

Was the acid spitter naturally immune to the cold? Was it intelligent enough to store the bodies for future consumption?

I am not a biologist! He reminded himself, and gripped the shotgun more tightly. If he started to wonder too much, he might hesitate. Information was seductive like that. He prodded the fallen man, but acid had already eaten through the white of his lab coat and blue cotton shirt and glistened wetly on reddening flesh. The man's pulse slowed as he watched; in seconds, it was gone.

He knew cold storage had multiple access points, reflective of both Black Mesa's intellectual separation policy and budget cuts. One centrally located freezer was cheaper than multiple lab-specific units; just give everyone their own access point and sample coding, and make the place so cold no one would stand around and discuss work inside. So he knew the icy maze had an exit. Somewhere.

A crate exploded beside him and he hit the ground, shotgun up and firing. Another acid spitter fell limp in the splinters, its yellow payload bubbling out across the floor.

He swore as he got up, silently and colorfully. The spitters were smart.

In the next chamber, huge slabs of lab-grown meat hung from ceiling hooks. Not even the aliens were eating them, which said something about Black Mesa's foray into culinary chemistry. He explored further, tempted to put his left hand on the wall and defeat the maze by process of exhaustion. Where were the other doors?

Yes, there was one.

Its lever was cased with ice. He wasted precious minutes chipping it off, every breath painfully cold, and found the door locked securely from the other side. The lever wouldn't even budge.

He whacked it with the crowbar as hard as he could, and regretted it as the sound rang through the steel-plated walls.

"Are you there?" someone whispered.

A stack of ancient produce boxes, their contents long since destroyed by frost, moved a fraction of an inch. He trained his shotgun on it, just in case the spitters had learned how to talk.

But just one thin, white-skinned hand, fingertips blue with cold, emerged. "If you're human, please help me!" the scientist cried. "I can't take this any longer. I'm going to die in here!"

Freeman scooted the boxes away with his foot. The man crawled out from under the shelf. He was old, but the cold aged him further. His body shivered uncontrollably and his teeth chattered. "I thought I'd escape them here. No idea they liked the cold..." he shoved his fingers in his armpits and hugged himself, rocking back and forth. "So cold. I've been hiding for hours. Has help come yet?"

Freeman shrugged, and wondered what on earth he was going to do. The sense of fellow humanity with this lone begging scientist was growing, but he tamped it down. Survival with this man in tow would be impossible. He looked up and around, searching for inspiration, and saw a vent.

He pointed to it.

The man saw, nodded, and lowered himself back down in defeat. He sat crouched on the cold floor, rocking back and forth. "I'd never make it up there. I can't feel my hands and feet. You'd better go on without me. I'll just stay here. At least I can sleep soon, and then it'll be over."

He hoped the man was right. Death by hypothermia seemed tame compared to death by acid, or dismemberment, or parasite, or electrocution...

The vent was not clean.

Blood splatter told him he wasn't the first human to attempt it. Parasites hunkered in the shadows and clawed at his elbows. He beat them off and was relieved to find emergency power packs for the suit on a dead security guard. The guard had tried to escape the vent and been cornered, and had taken his own life before parasites had gotten to him. Freeman admired his bravery, emptied his utility belt of anything useful, then moved on.

The power packs gave the suit's internal system enough of a boost to start repairing itself. Its nanotechnology was effective and functional; miles ahead of civilian and military tech, but still energy-hungry and slow. The suit rippled organically around him. He paused in the dark confines of the vent and resisted the urge to rip it off. The back of his mind insisted the thing had become alien, biological, dangerous.

No. He gripped the crowbar in both hands and hissed as the suit's repair function slid over the burned flesh on his side. The speed-healed scar tissue was only a thin outer layer over the underlying trauma. The suit did as it was programmed, knitting lose plates back together and reconnecting damaged joints, without any care for the thing it protected. He winced when it repaired holes left by the parasites, and as it extracted bits of itself from the scar tissue, he had his answer- yes, the speed-healed flesh was growing around the shrapnel.

Now he had a new choice. Repair the suit, at the cost of reopening old wounds.

Blood loss detected, it informed him.

No kidding, he thought, feeling warm liquid seep into the suit lining yet again.

The vents dropped him into the refrigeration system's maintenance access room, where a very old, dusty human skull grinned disconcertingly back at him from the top of the duct work.

How long had that been there?! It certainly predated the barnacles infesting the place.

And then he was back on the civilized side of the wall, in a brightly lit corridor with only one dead body and a scattering of aliens. He had a disconcerting moment of déjà vu – were the corridors starting to look familiar, or had he been here before?- if he'd made one giant loop in the HVAC system he'd-

No. He took a slow, long breath and watched a surprisingly competent security officer, crouched over the body of his dead comrade, kill a puppetted scientist before it eviscerated another man. The man stood, careful not to disturb the dead body.

Freeman was struck with the dueling thoughts of respect for the man's levelheadedness and skill, and disappointment that he wouldn't get to strip the body's service belt of ammo. The security guard wasn't going to leave his dead friend's side.
"Head for the surface and tell them we're down here," the guard said.

Freeman nodded.

For the first time in decades he regretted his silence. He couldn't explain to the guard that there was a scientist slowly freezing to death in cold storage. There wasn't any point, he reasoned. The guard was poorly equipped to handle a duct crawling with parasites or a cold-room with ambushing acid spitters and the man under the shelf hadn't been in any shape to climb and yet-

-he looked back at the guard, into his bloodshot grey eyes and tear-stained face, and hoped they'd both get out alive.

He nodded once, sharply, and headed up the stairs.

And hit the far wall hard, his body reacting to movement in his peripheral vision. The cement block wall ahead cracked, buckled and crumbled, and through the wreckage stepped a parasite-headed human body.

It had battered its way through an eight-inch-thick cement block wall.

He shot the parasite off, caught movement, turned and fired into a second one. The third he pulled up and shot wide at the last moment, catching a glimpse of upraised palms. "Don't shoot!" the terrified researcher pleaded.

He hauled the man up and shoved him back towards the stairs, hoping he'd catch the hint and join the other survivors.
The corridor ended in an elevator shaft.

A shaft with no elevator.

A shaft vanishing into the dark dozens of stories below.

With a ladder on the far wall, painted a nice bright helpful safety yellow.

He gritted his teeth, wedged the crowbar through the shotgun strap and double-checked his sidearm holster. He paced back from the door, counting his steps. He'd long-jumped once, in college, because he could. He'd landed on his shoulder and dislocated it.

If he fell, he'd die.

He imagined the dusty turf of the track field extending across the darkness. Only one way forward. Only one way up. His palms itched and his fingers twitched, imagining impact with the ladder. He'd have only a breath to grab it and hold on. The impact would fling him against the far wall. He might lose weapons. He checked the crowbar again and knew he was stalling.

It would be just like Black Mesa, to be more deadly than the aliens infesting it. But he'd survived board meetings, budget cuts, crystal insertions and too many variables. He'd survived a tear in reality and he'd stood on an alien world. He could make one freaking jump.

Do your worst, he thought, and then wondered what the psych profile for talking to buildings was.

He ran and jumped.

Far above him, someone screamed.