HALF LIFE: FULL LIFE CONSEQUENCES [REWRITTEN!]

CHAPTER ONE: CHAPTER 1.

John Freeman, the less-popular and younger brother of Gordon Freeman, had been working at his office job all day. He had grown so tired of the daily 9-5 that by now he was just mindlessly spamming the space bar, making an endless void of white text in place of what would otherwise be an important document.

He was just about to start stimulating his incredibly bored mind with a different key when he caught a glimpse of a new email that had been delivered to his embarrassingly named address of XX_JohnFreemanz_XX69@gmail.com . His bright green eyes darkened, and his expression grew alert as he read it over again, again, and again.

His older brother was in trouble.

The email had been a sudden cry for help. Apparently, the man's workplace was under attack, by aliens and monsters, no less!

John stopped to ponder things for a second. Firstly, aliens weren't real right? They couldn't possibly be. Aliens were just something the sci-fi genre and N.A.S.A. made up for more revenue. Yet, the more-caring, less-dismissive side of John refused to let his brother down.

Besides, Black Mesa had always been a strange place. Alien invasions were not completely out of the question.

The brown-haired man shot up from his swivel-chair so fast his leg got caught on his computer plug and he ended up yanking it out of the wall's socket with such force that the whole monitor ended up crashing to the floor.

He heaved his shoulders in shame and stood still for a few seconds. Another day's work gone... He thought wistfully before readjusting his posture. Crap! I gotta get out of here fast if I don't wanna pay for that!

John rushed away from his office cubicle with the same clumsy stride he had used almost everyday of his life. He avoided a rather nasty tumble whilst making his way down the building's stairwell by sheer dumb luck, only stopping to catch his breath on the wooden bench that had been erected in the parking lot to commemorate some office overseer he wouldn't remember nor care about.

Then, after avoiding future hospitalization, John got up and trudged over to his motorcycle which he had parked here earlier this morning, or perhaps a few years ago if none of this was real and he was actually, genuinely trapped in an endless hellscape not unlike purgatory.

Maybe the existence of aliens wasn't up for debate after all.

He noticed that he, or at least presumably he, had draped a change of clothes over the seat, but he simply threw them off and sat down in their place, still wearing his dress shirt and tie. Whatever, he could always come back for them later, right? That didn't matter. There were far more pressing issues that John Freeman needed to be worrying about at the moment.

Last names had to have a meaning behind them. Everything did, right? Though John never understood the significance of "Freeman" until today. As the breeze blew through his hair and he grasped his bike's handlebars in preparation to save his sibling and totally kick ass, he truly felt like a Free Man.

Today was the day John Freeman was going to live up to his family name, and it was going to be so fucking awesome.

And so, he drove off. Wary, cautious, and breaking just about every speed limit law in New Mexico. The bland landscape of the state led John's gaze to the sky momentarily, where he noticed that it was a pale orangey hue, indicating that it was quite late. Damn. So I'm not missing work for this after all. Come on, Gordon! Out of all the times you could've gotten into life-threatening trouble you pick when I'm finally off the clock? Jeez!

No, No. Calm down, John. Someone needs your help, and you need to stop being an asshole about it.

He took a shaky breath, slowing himself down by something short of three miles per hour. "It's...it's a good day." He began. "It's a good day to do what has to be done. By me. To help my brother. To stop...an alien invasion." The last part came out a lot more fearful than he would have liked.