SECTOR A PERSONNEL TRAINING FACILITY

BLACK MESA RESEARCH FACILITY

NEW MEXICO, USA

MAY 16TH, 8:12am

Gordon Freeman pulled a pistol from his waist, firing off three shots.

He spun, firing twice in a different direction.

He quickly reloaded the gun, then turned, pointed the gun, and fired once more.

There was a ding and Gordon holstered his weapon. The hologram of Gina Cross flickered into life, congratulating him on his excellent work on the Hazard Course.

He was only at the Hazard Course because he needed to get used to the Hazardous Environment suit.

And he only needed to get used to the HEV suit because of his job.

Gordon Freeman was a theoretical physicist at the Black Mesa Research Facility, in the Anomalous Materials department.

The Anomalous Materials team was doing an "extra special test" today, thanks to a supposedly extraterrestrial sample supplied by an unknown benefactor.

Of course, someone needed to actually place the specimen into the machine, and so after many days of careful thought they'd chosen him, the plucky young theoretical physicist, to be the one to push the trolley into the Anti-Mass Spectrometer.

They being, well, who knows? Gordon guessed Doctor Breen, the Administrator, or maybe the Board of Directors.

But it didn't really matter. The point was, he now needed to get acquainted with this damn suit and the test was scheduled for 8:30am.

There was no possible way he'd be on time.

Gordon had been relocated to Anomalous Materials after joining the Black Mesa Science Team a few months previously – he hadn't been involved in any large experiments like this one, more just small routine things and lab work.

He'd made a few friends in the staff since he'd joined, and he would have quit long ago if it weren't for them. Hell, one of the only reasons he'd agreed to deliver the specimen was that Isaac Kleiner and Eli Vance were monitoring the equipment.

Isaac Kleiner was, in most senses of the word, Gordon's mentor. When Gordon had been a new recruit Isaac had showed him the ropes, introduced him to people and made sure he was comfortable, amongst other things.

He was a middle-aged man with thinning brown hair and wore large glasses. He had no wife or children, and as far as Gordon could tell, he didn't want them.

Kleiner had imparted a great deal of knowledge to Gordon, mostly about the sciences but also about the various extra-terrestrial items that had been found near the facility.

He speculated that the items were not coming from space, but through little rifts in space created by the Science Team's tests involving intra-dimensional portals.

Regarding the Portal Projects, as they had been tentatively named, Kleiner believed they were rushing too much, trying to beat their competitors rather than doing the research and perfecting the calculations.

Eli Vance could probably be best described as Isaac Kleiner's best friend. They'd known each other for decades and shared the same opinion about almost anything.

Vance was a man with dark skin and a bearded face. He had deep brown eyes, a trait that continued throughout his family.

Isaac was the godfather of Eli's infant daughter, Alyx, whom Gordon had met a few times when he was at Eli's apartment in the Level 3 Personnel Dormitories.

Eli's wife, Azian, was a very kind woman, and beautiful too. Most of the older men on the A.M. team envied him, and people would regularly make cracks that Azian had only married Eli for the money.

This was untrue, of course – the pay at Black Mesa was very average.

Both Vance and Kleiner were both in their mid-forties, as were most of the members of the Anomalous Materials team, making Gordon the youngest in the department.

Gordon's 'best friend' at Black Mesa was Barney Calhoun, a security guard. He was a nice guy if you met him sober. Otherwise, well…Gordon winced, remembering Barney's promotion party - Calhoun had been promoted to the Blue Shift, having been on Red and Orange Shift previously.

Gordon had met Barney on his second day at Black Mesa. He had taken the wrong tram and ended up in Sector G instead of C, where Barney was doing his patrols. He had helped Gordon out and they'd stayed friends since.

Kleiner had also taken a liking to Barney when he first met him. Calhoun was something of a Conspiracy Theorist, a very strange trait for someone who worked in a top-secret government facility.

Kleiner also enjoyed theorising about extra-terrestrial life, and things that the government hid from them. He, Barney and Gordon had spent many a late night in his office in Sector C, discussing alien life and the like.

They also had another favourite topic – the Benefactor. A strange man in a suit had been seen all over the facility, in top-secret areas, in meetings with Senior Members of the Science Team, even on the Personnel Trams.

They had come to the conclusion that he had supplied most of the supposedly extra terrestrial items that the A.M. team studied, but that only lead to more questions.

Where did he get the alien objects? Why did he give them to Black Mesa? Who was he?

For these questions, all they could do was speculate.

It was most likely that he was a contact of Wallace Breen, the Administrator, and had been paid a hefty sum for his contributions.

Dr. Breen was a Yale graduate in his early fifties. He had started at the facility when he was in his thirties, slowly working his way up the corporate ladder until he became the Facility Administrator.

Previously, he had been a member of the Anomalous Materials team, but that was long before Gordon's time.

However, he still considered himself to be a 'member', and for any photographs taken of the current team, Breen was always there at the back of the group.

Neither Eli or Kleiner liked Breen very much – Isaac disagreed with his morals and his ways of the running the facility, whereas Eli Vance just disliked him as a person. Isaac couldn't really say he disagreed with Eli – Breen was a bit of a dick.

Gordon had only met the Administrator a few times, but he was pretty sure that he already agreed with the two older scientists.

Every time he'd seen Breen the man had been acting,

A) As if he was God

B) As if he was a God

C) As if every other staff member was below him, or

D) As if he was above every other staff member.

Gordon was pretty sure Breen didn't even bother learning anyone's names.

Gina Cross's hologram was speaking again, congratulating him on completing the Hazard Course.

Gordon descended a nearby staircase, boarding the nearby orange electric-rail train that would take him to the Level 3 Dormitories.

As the vehicle rattled off on its electrified rails, Gordon realised something.

Where do I take off the Hazard Suit?

AREA 8 TOPSIDE DORMITORIES

BLACK MESA RESEARCH FACILITY

NEW MEXICO, USA

MAY 16TH, 8:38am

Barney Calhoun stumbled out of bed half-asleep; his alarm clock ringing like it was the end of the world.

He pulled on a pair of grey trousers and a light blue button up shirt, and then checked himself out in the mirror.

Not too bad.

His black hair was spiked up with gel, and his brown eyes heavy after a short sleep.

It was his second day on the Blue Shift, but he'd spent most of Day One with a splitting headache, so he was regarding this as his 'real' first day on Blue.

He went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth and quickly doused himself in deodorant to hide the fact he hadn't showered.

Barney checked his watch. It read 8:40am.

Damn. He was going to be late AGAIN.

He opened the door to his small condo in the Area 8 Dormitory Compound, and walked a short distance to the tramstop.

Soon enough, a tram rattled along to the stop, its door sliding open. Barney quickly boarded the tram. Strange…he was the only one getting on.

The tram door slid shut and Barney began his journey to Sector C.

He had to be at the Area 3 Medium Security Facilities by 9am to gear up, and then do security checks and patrols from then until 10pm.

It was going to be a long shift.

He scratched his neck and yawned – the tram's automated voice had begun speaking, narrating his tram ride through the facility.

He sat down on one of the benches and listened to the voice speak. It was saying something about the weather.

"…current topside temperature is ninety-one degrees, with an estimated high of…"

The tram descended into a tunnel ahead, a sign above it with BLACK MESA PERSONNEL ENTRANCE written in large letters.

The tram shuddered through the darkness, Barney squinting to see anything. After a while he saw a light in the distance. The tram moved towards it and came to a stop, the carriage changing rails.

A few clicks and whirrs and the sounds of sparking electricity and the tram was off again, turning a corner.

A few scientists milled about in a fluorescently lit hallway. A guy left the laboratory at one end of the corridor and said something to the group. They all ran back into the laboratory and manned various consoles, pressing buttons urgently…

The tram rounded another corner and Barney lost sight of the scientists.

He approached a small white control room situated on a ledge with a metal catwalk jutting out from it: The Area 9 Security Checkpoint.

A fat guard walked up to Barney's tram, chewing on a donut. The guard's name was Otis Laurey. He was Canadian, and had worked there for almost a year. He was quite irritating in both voice and manner.

Barney looked lazily out the window as Otis approached him.

"You're on Blue Shift now, eh? Looks like you're in for a long day! Have a good one, Calhoun." Otis moved back towards a console and pulled a lever.

The tram moved downwards through a pit, the automated voice speaking about safety or regulations or something. The tram came to a halt and spun 180 degrees, then continued its journey into Sector C.

Barney arrived at the Level 3 Personnel Dormitory and paused at the tramstop, the doors opening with a whoosh.

A scientist approached the tram, exiting the sliding glass doors of the Personnel Facility. Barney recognised him.

"Hey, Gordon!" he called over at the man.

Gordon Freeman looked over at him, and smiled slightly. He had brown hair and a small goatee, with glasses perched upon his nose. He was wearing a lab coat, with a shirt and tie and black trousers.

He entered the tram and the doors slid shut. Gordon sat down next to Barney, and the tram jolted back into life.

"I just did the Hazard Course. Jesus, that HEV thing is wild. Barely felt any pain and had fire spewing out of tubes right next to me."

Barney nodded, "Yeah. Protects you a helluva lot more than the friggin' battery-powered helmet-and-vests we get."

"Excited for your second day on Blue Shift?"

"Not one bit," Barney said, and smirked. The tram stopped at a small platform, a sign next to the door reading AREA 3 MEDIUM SECURITY FACILITIES.

The tram doors slid open and Barney exited the tram, stepping onto the platform and swiping his pass on the detector next to the door.

It beeped: access denied.

"Have a good day!" called Gordon as the tram's doors slid shut and it rounded the corner, pulling Barney out of sight.

Gordon settled into his seat and checked his watch.

8:47am.

"Damn," muttered Gordon. He was late for work.

Again.

A/N: I won't promise anything, but I sure as hell will fight to make sure that this fic doesn't become dead. I'm a massive HL fan, by the way, so I'll try to do this as faithfully as I can. Just a note for further chapters - some things don't match up necessarily with actual canon, and that's fine, because I'm just going to be tweaking tiny little things here and there.

Please review and favourite if you liked it, insult me if you didn't, and I'll have a second chapter up pretty soon for you.

C21