Half-life: Invasion

Hour 4: Hunted Down

Icarus waded through the sewage, the sewers were nearly pitch black. He heard a slow metal clanking, as if footsteps.

He looked around, misjudging the clanking's origin.

The clanking grew closer.

Icarus felt sick to his stomach.

The clanking sounded as if it was behind him.

He darted backwards. He felt as if his weapon's trigger weighed twenty tons.

A shadowy figure emerged slowly from under the sewage in front of him, only visible were three orange dots of light. It faced him, the sludge sliding off of it, making apparent it was wearing a cloak.

It pointed something at him. The room was suddenly cascaded with green flames. Icarus scrambled up to the walkway as the flames moved towards him. The creature screamed at him as if in pain, spewing fire from its weapon.

The blaze licked at the walls as the creature turned slowly, half of its face lit up from the flames to reveal it was completely metal.

It spewed more fire his way.

Icarus ran around a corner, seeing a pile of burning bodies of HECU Marines, including a dogtag on a pole sticking in a marine.

Icarus pulled the dogtag off.

'Pvt. Sven Dagfinn.'

He looked behind him. It was right next to him. It slowly pointed a finger at him, its hand shaking as it suddenly grabbed him by the throat, lifting him up.

He kicked the creature off and fired his assault rifle into its body. The entire creature detonated, the head landing in front of him.

He took the head and put it in his backpack.

He continued down the way, reloading and gripping his rifle.

There was a pile of burning bodies. A dogtag hung from a pole stuck into a marine's body. The tag read:

'Pvt. Sven Dagfinn.'

His brother somehow got into this mess, but he never told him that they were related. He took the secret to his grave. His last family member had been killed. Icarus shed a tear, but he remained strong. He had to fight in Sven's honor. His son's Honor, Mia's honor. He fastened the dog-tag to his rifle and slung it.

He saw a vortigaunt wounded, but alive. It seemed to motion him over.

"Come here, human." It said in its gruff voice, strangely in English this time.

Icarus instinctively pointed his gun at him.

"There is no need to be weary of me. You can see I am no threat to you."

Icarus lowered the weapon.

"Yes...?"

"I want you to bear a message. For me. For us all. Your kind has killed many of us. But you have freed us as well. My message... Let us not fight one another. For too long... We'd rather cut one another's throats, than communicate. Let us become brothers against the Combine. Xen... Had a similar oppression as you will face. Give my message to your brethren, friend..."

Icarus lifted the Vortigaunt. He had to find some medical help for him.

He climbed up the ladder, pushing aside the cover.

A few Marines peered at him from above.

"We heard an explosion down there. You alright?" A medic asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine." He said emotionlessly.

"Why are you carrying that Vort?" The medic asked him.

"They're not evil. They're our allies."

"You're crazy." The medic responded.

"It is true." The dying voritgaunt stated.

"I suppose we need all the help we can get."

The vortigaunt passed away over his shoulder.

Icarus put the dead alien down. He looked ahead. He saw a suited man for a brief second, but the man vanished from thin air. Icarus rubbed his eyes. He must be seeing things.

"You should come with us, we've regrouped at Delta." The medic said after a while.

Icarus followed them to Delta. Delta was lightly defended, only a few emplacements around.

A few stealth bombers flew by, dropping ammunition boxes.

An uncountable amount of alien spacecraft flooded overhead, past them.