Physics of the Crowbar

Redrock Crawl

Lambda.

Was it worth all this? Or was it already another graveyard?

He needed to cross the dam, enter the door, take a tram line and another lift, cross the new wet bio lab and the old animal testing chambers and then, somewhere past the biology loading docks, he'd find the freight entrance to Lambda.

Black Mesa was coiled like a serpent through the red desert rock from its oldest cold war tail chamber to its bright new shiny fangs. The chasm in front of him with its grey cement slab of a dam had been brainstormed as a "community benefit" project to control flash flooding and provide reliable irrigation to the tiny desert civilian town on the flats to the west. In reality, it provided Black Mesa with its own fresh water source, nuclear cooling ponds and wastewater lagoons. Very little of it trickled out into the sand again. Research laboratories, storage and containment and old forgotten maintenance access crisscrossed the channel, through tunnels, tubes and flooded waste chambers.

He inched out onto the dam. His feet expected it to shake like the pipes over the silo had. Wind tugged at his suit and kicked up ripples on the reservoir. He had the automatic up and ready, just in case the yellow and black door across from him opened with unfriendly intent.

The very lack of resistance was disconcerting. Someone ought to be shooting. This was a choke point. Where were they?

But he had to continue. Move forward. He checked above both sides; no sniper nests. He checked below the rail; no enemies on cables ready to spring up. Move forward.

It's a trap. Move forward. His side ached as his back stiffened in anticipation.

The heavy WHAP WHAP WHAP of the chopper blade almost covered the sound of its high-caliber gun. It rose like a vulture over the canyon rim and came straight at him.

His mind sequenced together -security camera, loading dock, down-wind, ambush- as his body took the only path off the dam. He had a moment of open air as the bullets traced across cement above him, but few gunners could track terminal velocity.

Water closed over his head and poured into the suit through cracked seams and buckled plates. The lining held, but compressed against him. He fought to keep air in his lungs as pressure around his chest increased.

Internal blood loss detected, the suit said as fragments of rib bone moved out of place.

Then stop trying to kill me! He shouted back at it as he fought for the surface. The chopper followed him; the water rippled the splayed mushroom pattern of air displacement as it hovered. The gunner wasn't firing; conserving ammo, or hoping Freeman would surface and make an easy confirmed kill.

He fought the water and the suit until he reached the edge, where sheer red rock met water and grew slick with algae and scum. Control. He wanted air badly. His ribs stabbed and his vision went dark. Control. He inched up, face upturned, until only his nose and mouth were above water. He gagged against the heavy pond scum but made himself breath through clenched teeth. The scum was wet and cold and told his body he was still drowning; his nose closed reflexively as water trickled in.

Control. Breathe. The body obeyed. The pounding in his chest receded. The suit adjusted to the water weight and the nanocarbon relaxed its stranglehold. He clung there and counted heartbeats until the helicopter moved up, then away. He held as it returned, moving slowly up and down the water channel. It passed four times.

On the last pass, the gunner spat a tantrum of bullets down the channel and along the red rock sides. Freeman froze as rock shards pattered into the water around him, but the chopper moved away and silence returned, save for the lapping of water on rock.