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Vortal Incarnation [Chapter 1]

Observation Terminated

Next Chapter (TBA)

Summary: Gordon Freeman declines the G-Man’s offer and faces the consequences of those actions. Twenty years later, a vortigaunt with some of Gordon’s personal effects shows up outside of the City 17 train station, and it only goes downhill from there.

Chapter Summary: N/A

Word Count: 3,972

Ao3 Version

Notes: If I had a nickel for every time I wrote a story about a guy named Gordon Freeman turning into an alien…you know the rest of the meme. One of a handful of Half-Life related projects that has been bouncing around in my head for at least a month now. The rest will possibly get releases while I’m working on this and Metamorphosis, or they might not, we’ll just have to see. Notes are hard rip. This project is also one of two AUs in which Gordon is a vortigaunt! I’ll see about getting something written up for the other…maybe…possibly.

Between binding himself to a man he couldn’t trust, and certain death…he unfortunately would have preferred certain death. After all…he’d gotten lucky with everything else these past two days…either he got lucky again, or his luck ran out. It was a significantly more trustworthy gamble than whatever the man in the suit had prepared.

At least, that’s what he’d told himself when he backed away from the door of the tram and politely declined the strange man’s offer.

“Well, it looks like we won't be working together.”

The words, etched with sparsely concealed disappointment and anger, now repeated in Gordon’s head like a scratched-up vinyl record while he lay crumbled to his side in a pool of his own blood. He was almost totally blinded. His glasses had shattered spectacularly and gotten into his eyes. One side of his vision was totally gone while the other was blurry and red. It was either a miracle, or another sign of his “luck,” that he wasn’t dead from the head trauma he was suffering from.

The HEV suit was utterly destroyed. He could feel the breastplate split in so many parts that it scratched at his exposed fingers if he brushed against it with more than the faintest touch. His legs had lost their feeling long after the suit’s morphine supply had run dry and long before he’d finally tripped up and fractured something from his dominant hand from the impact.

The aliens he’d been confined with had seemingly decided against the use of their biological weapons in exchange for chasing him around with the vague threats of violence just long enough for him to finally lose his footing; after that, they’d gotten their anger out in any way possible short of an actually painless death. Gordon figured that if they were smart enough to hold grudges, they would obviously want to take their sweet time tormenting him over the loss of their leader.

He’d heard them snarling between themselves in conversation, likely debating how else to prolong his suffering, but that had been so long ago now that he wasn’t sure if the silence was them quietly relishing in his pain or from his ears being destroyed without his knowledge.

Gordon had to wonder if he was even still alive at this point. He wouldn’t have to wait long for an answer.

His confirmation that his body hadn’t failed him quite yet came in the form of something flipping him onto his back and dragging his body along the ground. It wasn’t the big guys, this felt like something closer to his size, like those alien slaves with the lightning powers.

He seemed to guess correctly as he now heard a group of the worker species chatter in their strange tongue while they took Gordon away. He would have fled the moment he heard them if he had the strength for it, having rapidly learned to jump for cover at the first sign of their presence; he didn’t even have the strength to jump out of his skin, now.

For a moment, he was sure he heard one say “Free Man,” but perhaps he was imagining it from all the exhaustion and blood-loss.

Consciousness began to slip from him, but he tried his damndest to keep himself awake, despite the pain that coursed through his body. He knew if he let go now, he likely wouldn’t wake up. He doubted that anybody was looking for him, or would find him if they were, but he felt compelled to veer away from the clutches of death regardless.

As strong as his will was to live, however, the same could sadly not be said for his body, now catching up with all of Gordon’s injuries.

As his heart gave up, a voice spoke to him. It was a guttural voice that didn't belong to anyone he could remember, but for some reason it felt familiar and like he’d heard it very recently. He hadn’t time to ponder where or when he’d heard this voice, only the time to hear its one message to him:

“The Free Man will live.”

And as the last syllable escaped the lips of this familiar stranger, so too did the final breath of Gordon Freeman.

Between his responsibilities with the Resistance and his duties as a Civil Protection Officer, Barney Calhoun was a very busy man.

He didn’t particularly like his Civil Protection job, but he was good at it. He’d had to do some unsavory and cruel things to keep himself away from suspicion, but the illusion of unshakable loyalty had given him a good reputation with his coworkers at City 17’s primary train station. Anything he said could be trusted, and anything he wanted to ‘handle’ was his to take.

A sigh escaped his throat as he stood idly in the interrogation room he was sharing with one of his morally bankrupt coworkers, whom he had mentally codenamed as ‘Snitch’ with how quick he was to rat out any civilians he thought were acting out of line. Barney had heard somewhere that Snitch had his brain surgically destroyed by the Combine; he was willing to believe it, if only so he didn’t have to consider the possibility that a human could naturally decline to that point of cruelty…that he could possibly decline to that point as well…

Barney focused his attention to one of the monitors in front of him to see a passenger train arrive at the station. There was nothing noteworthy about the new arrivals that he could use to warrant one of his ‘surprise interrogations’ for recruitment, such as a history of legal but subtly rebellious behavior, but that thankfully meant Snitch wouldn’t be pulling anybody aside for a petty excuse to beat the shit out of them, either. No interrogations also meant no excuses to get Snitch out of his hair, unfortunately, so he’d have to listen to the man brag about how he was probably going to get promoted soon.

After a couple of minutes, there was a knock at their door.

Snitch opened the spy hole to see another of their coworkers, turning to look over at him after they had shared a brief exchange between themselves.

“They need some more hands next door.”

“Go for it.” Barney told him.

“Not gonna join us?”

He shook his head.

“You’re going to fall behind on your quota if you’re not careful.”

“It’ll get done.” He assured with feigned cruelty. “I’ve got my ways.”

Snitch shared a glance with the other officer before sliding the spy hole shut and backing out of the room.

Precious seclusion at long last.

He cut off the cameras in the room and pried off his mask with a loud, deep sigh while he watched the passengers of the last train file through the station.

“This shit was much more tolerable in Black Mesa…” He told himself.

One of the monitors pinged him about his room’s lack of camera feed, which he quickly acknowledged and hand-waved as being part of the room’s regular maintenance routine, which wasn’t far from the truth. This room didn’t agree with something about the Combine’s camera setup and was prone to spontaneous blackouts; to the frustrations of the almighty space empire, the only solution that seemed to work was turning the cameras off at semi-regular intervals, so that was now a permanent maintenance requirement for this room. So…one point for the glorious fickleness of machinery!

He smirked a little over the inkling of freedom he got from such a strange little coincidence. He didn’t have anything to report to the Resistance today, so he would hold off on calling Doctor Kleiner for now. The man was busy anyways and wouldn’t have appreciated being distracted. Instead, he would monitor some of the cameras that lined the outside of the train station. They were there to catch anybody trying to sneak in or out of City 17 through the train station, but nobody had tried anything of the sort for years now.

Monitoring that area was still a requirement, of course. Due to the lack of commotion behind the building, Barney’s computer was oftentimes the only one listed as checking these cameras when he popped in on them, not that he actually used them to check for humans. He spent more time getting a dopamine boost from watching crows meet up than he did looking for people trying to sneak around, but he was technically following protocol when nobody else was so this somehow earned him popularity points with his peers. One point for…laziness, he supposed?

“I bet you guys haven’t even noticed the world’s gone to Hell…” He said when the first camera caught a small murder of the little black birds. “Lucky little fuckers…”

Somebody knocked at the door again, Barney took this as a hint to put his mask, and the cameras, back on.

He opened the spy hole to Snitch.

“I’ve finished cycling them, they’re online again.” He huffed, knowing his coworker had only been sent back to nag him about the cameras.

“Yeah, yeah.” He looked behind Barney at the monitors. “Birds…” Snitch scoffed.

“As always.”

“Nice to know your years of experience are paying off…” The venom in his comment could be heard through his mask’s voice filter. “You should accept those promotions, you know. You could be getting compensated big time to watch birds from the fucking Citadel by now.”

“Do you want in, or not?”

“What’s wrong?” Snitch chuckled at Barney’s attempt at deflecting. “Scared of a few body mods?”

“Do YOU want to be the one that gets ‘bird-watching duty’ in my absence?”

The man backed away from the door and shook his head. “Hell no. Nobody else here would be caught dead checking those cameras.”

“I rest my case.”

“Enjoy your birds, you fucking weirdo.” Snitch pointed at him before turning tail towards the front end of the building. “You’re wasting your time.”

Barney, wanting to get the last word in, decided to tease the man before he left. “One of these days, there’s gonna be something other than birds out there, and I’m gonna be the one to find it.”

“Like hell you are. I’m going to harass citizens near the rations dispensary.”

“Not even going to pretend to be modest today, I see.”

“Fuck you.”

With Snitch gone, Barney let out a small laugh and returned to his crows. He switched through the cameras a few times. Some had more crows than others, but definitely no people.

After a couple more minutes of flipping through, Barney had more or less gotten his fix of corvid shenanigans for the day. Just before switching the screen to someplace interior, he noticed something…odd.

There was a blind spot beneath every camera, just small enough that one could never hope to fully utilize it to evade being caught during surveillance. There was something hiding in one of those blind spots, and it was driving the crows crazy.

Barney fixated on the blob of movement at the bottom of the screen, switching screens to see if any of them had a better view.

Soon, the blob moved further away from the wall and into a clear shot for Barney to process what he was seeing.

There was a vortigaunt outside.

How the hell did a vortigaunt get all the way over here? He didn’t think they were teleportating in from Xen anymore, but maybe he would need to double check that?

The vortigaunt was…wearing something. It looked like…was that Uriah?

No, no it couldn’t have been.

It was stupid for Barney to assume that any vortigaunt wearing a lab coat was Uriah.

And obviously it wasn’t him, because while the lab coat this vortigaunt was wearing was draped over his shoulders, it was obviously fitted for a human. Barney couldn’t speak for any other vortigaunt scientists, because he didn’t know any others, but he knew for a fact that Uriah had his coats modified to fit his longer arms. So at the very least, Barney was pretty sure this Vort wasn’t somebody he knew.

But that just led to more questions about who this was and where they’d come from…

Kleiner said something about trying to get that teleporter of his working not that long ago, hadn't he? With how spontaneously this guy had shown up…were they connected to that project somehow?

Had Kleiner taken some poor vortiguant from Black Mesa East or White Forest and made them the subject of a test? It was morbid to think the older man would haphazardly throw something alive into that machine after the last time but…then again, Last Time had involved that cat…

Barney shuddered.

He wasn’t going to rule out “test subject” as a possible answer for who this vort was.

Upon further investigation, this guy didn’t even seem to be aware of his surroundings. He not only seemed clueless of where he was…he seemed clueless of how he’d even gotten here.

Barney saw that…and the first thing that came to mind was when he escaped Black Mesa with Doctor Rosenberg and had experienced that “Harmonic Reflux” thing. Yeah, Barney had known he jumped through a portal the first time, but getting caught in the reflux made him so disoriented that he very nearly forgot how he’d gotten to the places he’d ended up. If it was that bad for Barney after only a couple of bad teleports…how bad would it be if it was that vortigaunt down there?

The Kleiner test subject theory was becoming more likely…

Of course, this guy could have also just been drugged or something by the Combine.

He’d have to go outside.

That vort may have been safe right now, but if they started wandering into the city, they would definitely be captured and tortured, and Barney simply wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he let that poor fella be taken into custody.

He slowly reached over to cut off the cameras again, then hesitated. No, that wouldn’t do. He needs to wait before cutting off the cameras, to keep it realistic.

He stepped back towards the door, keeping an eye on the screen to make sure the vortigaunt didn’t go anywhere, then bolted into the hallway and out the back.

The back door was heavy and slammed loudly against the exterior wall. Crows scattered everywhere as Barney approached.

“You-!” He said with a commanding tone, pointing a finger at the startled and confused alien. He paused, trying to remember what the ‘correct’ term to use was while in-character since vortigaunts hardly counted as citizens in the eyes of the Combine. His mind failed him, and he decided the ‘formality’ wouldn’t matter here.

“Come with me.” Barney motioned towards the door he’d just come through and then walked around to shove the vortigaunt inside.

He ignored any questions he got from his coworkers as he kept pushing the vort forward into his interrogation room…which was locked.

Damnit.

Barney knocked at the door, the spy hole opened in front of him.

“Where the hell did you run off-?” Snitch started to whisper before seeing the ‘detainee’ he was dragging along. “Son of a bitch.”

“…Told ya.”

“Just get the hell inside.”

The spy hole slid closed, the door swung back open, and Barney’s new friend was escorted into the interrogation room.

“…Need any help with this one?”

“Nah, I’m good.”

Snitch didn’t complain. He and Barney didn’t get along, but he still respected him enough to take what he said at face value. As such, he stepped out of the room once more.

Barney mumbled to himself while cutting out cameras, and then pulled his mask off.

“H’okay…” He sighed, “we’re safe to talk for a little bit…”

The vort drearily looked at him. Either his suspicions that they were drugged were correct, or they weren’t much of a talker.

“Hey, are you…can you understand me alright? Nod your head two times if you can.”

They tilted their head, as if trying to process the question, before awkwardly nodding their head twice.

“Okay, are you able to speak?”

They waited a bit before shaking their head.

“I see, sorry about that…” He was terrible at reading VSL, so getting the vort to sign for him was off the table for now. “Do you know where you are, or how you got here?”

They took significantly less time to answer this question, shaking their head again for both questions.

“Alright. I’m gonna do what I can to get you to connected with people who know you, okay? Just gimme a second…”

Now that Barney was up close with them, he at least had a better idea of this guy’s distinguishing features. If they were part of the Resistance, maybe somebody would be able to recognize them from his description and explain what happened to them that way. It was worth a shot…

The first thing Barney noticed was the eyes. They kept their three, secondary eyes closed at all times; whether this was a preference or a result of the vort’s condition was yet to be determined. He was also able to note three specks of yellow in the iris of their main eye that formed a vague triangular pattern, which would prove especially useful for identification. Along the back of their neck were the remnants of some fins or external gills, apparently vortiguants had those in abundance during youth and they were supposed to fall out during adulthood. Barney rarely saw any vortiguants that didn’t have at least a few of those frills somewhere on their body, but they were usually frayed and fragile. The frills along this vort’s neck seemed pretty healthy, suggesting to Barney that maybe this one was on the younger side.

Their abdominal hand fell limp, but it didn’t seem to be broken, at least. In fact, this vort looked about as healthy as he could have imagined a vortigaunt to look, which shouldn’t have been possible if they had been on Earth for a while.

The vortigaunt, unfortunately, kept their lab coat tightly wrapped around them using their two primary hands, making it difficult for Barney to find any notable birthmarks or tattoos. He didn’t want to be intrusive by asking them to undress just so he could find out, so…

“Is it okay if I check your pockets?”

They nodded again, this time pausing to squint at Barney. Did this vortigaunt…know him somehow?

The vort suddenly winced and clutched the side of their head.

“Woah, hey now!” He pulled them aside to a nearby chair. “If you’re trying to remember something, let’s take it slow…I’m sure it’ll come back to you naturally…”

The vort leaned back in the chair, the tension in their shoulders notably diminished once they did so.

“There we go, just relax. Now…let’s take a look…”

The breast pocket was searched first, with Barney able to find a rolled up tie inside, stripped with red and black.

“Heh, I hope you’re just holding this ridiculous thing for a friend.” He joked, getting a silent chuckle from the disoriented vortigaunt. “I haven’t seen a tie like this in a long time…”

As he rolled the tie back up and returned it to his owner, Barney’s gaze was drawn to a familiar angular emblem on the opposite breast of the coat…

“Black Mesa.” He whispered.

The vort, seeming to regain a hint of cognizance, raised a hand to possibly sign something, but they quickly seemed too lost to form anything and instead clutched their lab coat once more.

Barney frowned. A jacket this pristine couldn’t have come from Black Mesa, not after 20 years.

He pushed further thoughts to the back of his mind, figuring that everything would make sense once this vort was, at the very least, identified.

He checked the pocket closest to him this time, it was stretched from an attempt to fit something larger than was possible for the fabric and space provided, but the only thing inside was an ID, also Black Mesa issued if the pattern from the jacket and tie was anything to go by.

Barney pulled the card out with interest, hoping the card’s owner might lead a hint to somebody in the Resistance, maybe even somebody Barney knew.

He gave pause upon seeing the photo, having to will himself to read the name next to it:

Gordon Freeman, Ph.D

The picture, of course, had a youngish man with a dorkily stoic face staring back at him, dark green eyes almost glowing with a hidden sense of mischief.

Barney sighed and used a free hand to wipe away the tears that pricked at the edge of his eyes.

Was it wrong for him to still be grieving? Twenty years was a long time to have your best friend be dead. He knew the vortiguants talked on and on about how ‘The Free Man will return’ but it was hard to believe them when the only thing Barney could see when he thought of that name in connection to those words was his best friend being dragged away by a pair of armed troops, bragging about how they were going to hide the body.

Hide the body.

His best friend’s body.

There was a picture in Kleiner’s lab with Gordon’s face on it, very grainy and nearly impossible to make out who was who, it had done nothing to replace the image of Gordon’s unconscious form for the past 20 years. Looking at the ID Card in his hands, however, pushed away the dread of that mental image; Gordon had always been so careful with his stuff, or even with stuff he had been entrusted with, and whoever had held onto this little piece of plastic had done well to put just as much care into keeping it pristine as Gordon himself would have. It was a perfect picture for Barney to reminisce over, any worries about where and when Gordon died were secondary to the flood of emotions Barney felt seeing a clear glimpse of his best friend during life.

He didn’t know if this was supposed to be a sign from the vorts, or a gift from them, or whatever…but it was relieving to look at.

“Gordon Freeman…” he sighed longingly.

Curiously, the vortiguant looked at him attentively.

“…what?”

They looked at the ID, then back at him, trying to mirror the stoic expression on the card.

Barney pursed his lips, looking at the ID again, then at the lab coat.

They looked at him expectantly.

No.

No, no, no.

There was…no way.

“…Gordon?”

There was NO way in Heaven, or Hell, or Earth, or Xen, or wherever the fuck the Combine came from…

The vort nodded.

Eyes widening, Barney checked the lab coat’s final pocket, immediately finding something plastic that formed a thick frame. He pulled it out.

Glasses.

Not glasses for a vortiguant, although Barney was sure they existed, but for a human. Black rimmed glasses. The glass itself looked like it had been shattered long ago, but the frames were completely fine.

“Gordon??” He asked again, desperation and hope welling up in his throat.

They…he tilted his head in confusion, but nodded again regardless.

“Oh…” the air caught in his throat as he put the glasses back into Gordon’s pocket. He had to control his breathing just to make sure he didn’t scream or burst into tears from the revelation. “…my god, it’s…you’re…” Barney couldn’t help but let out a short laugh.

Gordon Freeman was a vortigaunt. He didn’t know how, but he was. How could he not laugh?

Gordon squinted, once again trying to recognize him.

“I guess it has been a while, hasn’t it?” He didn’t wait for his friend to try any sort of reply “…it’s me, Gordon. It’s Barney…”

#READ THISSS ive been chatting with anons about this for a while im SO hype

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