Physics of the Crowbar

Flesh Resonance

Old blood marred the shiny white walls. The soldiers had become complacent; despite their body armor, they died easily.

"He's alive! The bastard's still alive!" a radio on a dead man hissed as his cohort retreated around the curve of the hall.

Oh yes, he was supposed to be dead, wasn't he? Ambushed. Shot. Compacted into bits. Sludge to water the desert. Their data was incomplete. Their experiment had failed.

He looked at the goggled, masked faces shooting back at him and felt no kinship.

The laboratory wing's front entrance was an atrium of heavy glass and pale grey cement, domed and skylighted to give a feeling of wide-open space and, subliminally, limitless possibility. And it was sealed from the inside. The retinal scanner beside the door blinked a mocking red light at him and blatted a denial; he knew it wouldn't work, but he tried anyway. He'd need a live body with the right clearance or a lot of explosives. One of the two ought to be lying around.

He scanned the area and considered the floor plan he'd come through. The building appeared sealed, with its shiny walls and security doors. It offered few hiding places. But it was Black Mesa, and that meant it was built on the bones of something older. If he could access it through the waste containment system, there would be other forgotten rooms, maintenance halls and quiet dark places where Black Mesa's less picturesque staff performed essential duties.

He opened a utility door by prying the door jam back with the crowbar, hoping for a survivor, and found a sanitation closet with its OSHA-mandated eyewash station and mop sink. New laboratory wings had their benefits, like greater oversight and a requirement to conform to code.

He washed his gloved hands free of sewer residue and alien fluids. Then he washed his glasses and did his best to wash his face. He used half the roll of rough brown paper towel to get the worst of the gunk from his hair and neck. The soap was a bland bulk pearlescent stuff scented with artificial lavender but the smell was viscerally familiar; every morning upon arrival, the small ritual of washing before donning the HEV. At day's end, wiping damp glove sweat from his hands and face. He watched the sewer oils and suds circle the mop drain and felt some of the otherness wash away with it. Reentry into civilization, into the human side of the equation. He was alive again.

In the next containment chamber, he found soldiers teasing an armored alien in a cell. They made rude gestures at it and spoke a language it couldn't comprehend. He broke the containment seal from a distance and let it have its revenge. When it turned on him, he killed it. It probably didn't know the differences in human factions. If its sole experiences with humanity had been first on the business end of Black Mesa's curiosity and then the military extermination efforts, no wonder it shot first and asked questions later.

Across its body he saw the suit repair station he'd been searching for. He plugged in and felt the suit thrash around him, realigning and repairing the underlay and plating. It tightened over his ribs, then complained about his increased heart rate. It pressed into the bullet wound, now a knot of tender scar tissue, and told him about his minor blood loss. When it settled and sat correctly again, he closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the cool orange box on the wall. It ticked off his heart rate, lowering to acceptable levels, and told him his blood pressure was normal. Stabilization. The body wanted safety, and his was placing its instinctive trust in the orange shell around him. How small his world had constricted, to where the only "normal" was the scent of cheap soap and sensation of the energized carbon fiber on his skin.

The box had been built to repair the suit components in use in that wing, not a whole suit, and his extensive repair drained it quickly. But it moved with him now, not against him, and the knee and hip joints balanced properly and helped distribute the weight of the back and chest plates.