CHAPTER 2: A RAW LETTER DAY

Gordon and his companion, who by this time was essentially immune to further psychological trauma, proceeded down a concrete hallway, before being confronted with a dead end.

"Bollocks, not again. We'll just have to….wait…."

Gordon paused as his highly attuned nose detected a scent. And without further pause, he drove his fist through the solid concrete, creating a person sized hole which he proceeded to walk through. He approached a vending machine in the next room, and ripped it from the wall. The hidden doorway he revealed was walked through, and within Gordon found himself in a sizeable laboratory.

The bald man within looked shocked to see him.

"Great Scott! Who are you, and why are you covered in such quantities of hemoglobin?"

Gordon payed him no mind, and walked across the room to another large door with a keypad, which he drove his fist into. The keypad ostensibly admitted him access to the room, where a high-tech, orange suit sat contained within a glass case. Gordon paid the suit, nor the case, no mind. He instead seized a small, head sized alien creature sitting above it. The creature struggled, but Gordon ended it's life by squeezing it within his large hands. He turned to the camera and enunciated clearly into it.

"Roight, now this is an unexpected surprise! The crab has long been a staple food in certain parts of the universe but today we are afforded the pleasure of trying one, fresh! Now, in order to properly prepare a crab, you must first shell it."

Gordon ripped the headcrab skin off in one fell swoop, and devoured the remaining mutilated carcass in one gulp.

He then walked directly through the wall, into the outside air once more, leaving a puddle of alien blood and the fainted body of whatever scientist that was behind.

As Ramsay walked through the solid brick wall, shattering it to bits which bounced harmlessly from his seemingly impervious skull, he gazed up at the citadel, the looming, blue alien structure which seemed to stretch for miles up into the heavens, in stark contrast to it's dilapidated surroundings. Power cables, each of them meters thick, stretched down to substations throughout the city, deriving power from the citadel's alien dark matter reactors.

Within the highest floor of this building sat one Wallace Breen, and at present he was engaged in a perplexing discussion with a masked humanoid figure on the other end of a video-conference. This figure was the commander of the local Overwatch garrison, a synth Trans-Human force composed of augmented "volunteers." And this commander was informing the supreme commander of Earth, for of course it was Breen, about the anomaly which had taken place in the city only minutes before.

"Affirmative. Subject not contained. Multiple containment squads and Airwatch unit

de-serviced. " came the report.

This meant very little to Breen. The Civil Protection force comprised the most amoral amongst the population and he cared little for their survival. But something else in the report had troubled him, deeply.

"And the target destination?"

"Guardian One reports target destination as the Citadel."

This would not do. Breen had seen the superhuman feats that this man, if that was what it was, was capable of. To say nothing of the savage dismemberment of several of his squads, or the fact that he had seemingly flown to take down a gunship with his bare hands. No, he thought with a shiver. He must not be allowed to make it here, no matter the cost.

"Analyze target patterns to compute possible objective." ordered Breen.

"Affirmative. Recalling Guardian observation system transcripts and analyzing subject movement patterns."

Breen clacked his fingers against the surface of his ornate walnut desk as he waited for the report. Such anomalies were not uncommon in this new world. After living through not only the incident at Black Mesa, but also the subsequent portal storms and several face-to-face encounters with the new alien occupiers, anything seemed possible. But what could motivate this man? Did he wish to kill Breen and depose the already unstable government? Destroy the citadel?

Breens thoughts were interrupted.

"Analyzation of target vectors indicate that target prioritization is acquisition of acceptable sustenance."

"Food?!" Came Breen's incredulous answer.

"Affirmative. Recalling Guardian system playback…"

A shot of the Man and his skinny accomplice at the main train station appeared. The Guardian surveillance system used an advanced lip-reading algorithm to simulate spoken words. And the words that appeared as the blonde scotsman spoke were:

"We're gonna take a quick tour through the city and try out some of it's culinary wonders before we make our way to the citadel and have a wondrous dinner with Doctor Breen, and the Combine Earth Administration!"

Breen's face paled. He had seen the horrors this man was capable of committing in the pursuit of food. He certainly did not want to be in the presence of this man. But an idea crossed his mind. He had been monitoring a rebel cell in the local canal system for some while now. Perhaps, he could kill two birds with one stone….