Chapter Text
"Will that be all today, Mr. Freeman?"
Gordon looked over his purchases on the counter, listing them off in his head (pointless, it was one item). He had really just come to get some soda for his co-worker Dr. Coomer (lord knew he drank it like a fish did water), but he couldn't resist the bag of flamin' hot Cheetos that were strategically placed next to the cash register. Smart marketing technique, damn them. He tossed them onto the counter to sit next to Dr. Coomer's 24 pack of soda. "Yeah, that should be it."
Hearing the rustle of potential food, the dog (that Gordon hadn't noticed previously) poked her golden head up from behind the counter, ears quirked. She was laying in a cushy blue dog bed, a sweet looking golden retriever. The heart-shaped tag on her neck read 'Sunkist'. Gordon smiled at that, he hadn't expected a tiny convenience store in a rinky-dink seaside village to have a dog. He'd have to stop by more often. Then again, lots of small-town businesses were pretty lax on those kinds of things, right? This wasn't like a 7-eleven or anything. It was probably locally-owned.
The cashier nodded, swiping the chips under the scanner. Gordon had recently been transferred from Black Mesa's main base, something about higher-than-average amounts of alien gunk being found in the water? Honestly, Gordon figured it was probably just higher-than-average amounts of regular-ass human pollution, but he wasn't going to tell anyone else that. Getting paid full-time to just sit around, occasionally looking at some seawater-chemical interaction in a glass vial? Sign him up! He'd had plenty of worse jobs, this would be easy.
The guy bagged up his items (which kind of just made it more difficult to carry, honestly. Was this guy new here?) and handed them to Gordon with a wave. "Have a nice night! Be safe!" Wow, this guy's smile seemed to light up his whole face. He and the dog really were kindred spirits.
"I will, thank you," Gordon responded with a small nod, pushing the door open with his hip. He fumbled with his keys for a moment while walking to his car, before giving up and placing the shopping bag on the hood of his car.
The return drive back to the research site was only about 10 minutes, maybe a little less if he lead-footed the gas pedal a tiny bit. There wasn't exactly a lot of traffic to worry about. Gordon spent most of the drive listening to the fuzzy radio, which warbled in and out of static. There seemed to only be one station within range, and the further he got from town, the harder it was to make out what song was playing. A few minutes out he gave up and switched the radio off completely. Maybe he'd download a few songs to his phone next time, if only to make the drive seem shorter.
-
He pulled up to the facility, if you could even call it that. It wasn't much more than a glorified box, an officey-looking building, which seemed to have been dropped off haphazardly onto the beach, connected to a long metal dock (it kind of resembled a catwalk) that balanced over the water. Gordon didn't exactly know what the dock was made out of, but it looked like it was on stilts, with two levels that lined up with high tide and low tide, roughly. Sometimes you'd have to get down on all fours to dunk the vial in the water, unless you wanted to walk down underneath it on the sand, but nine times out of ten you'd end up with more sand and water in your shoes than you'd think possible. Honestly, it was worth the sore knees to not deal with that bullshit. At least the breeze was nice, and there was some cover from the ocean waves due to a large rock formation which towered out of the water, creating a sort of... gulf? Small bay? Maybe a lagoon. Whatever.
Gordon balanced his shopping bag on one arm and knocked on the door of the lab with his free hand. Yes, he had a key card, but it was in his wallet and he didn't feel like setting everything down to dig it out.
After about a minute, he knocked again, a little more insistently, and he heard what sounded like someone startling in their chair, a vague note of surprise and the scrape of old chair wheels on the floor. Sounded like Dr. Coomer fell asleep again, Gordon wasn't surprised. Paperwork got pretty boring out here.
It had only been, oh, a week? Of monotonously repeated water testing for Gordon to realize that this 'experiment' (if you could even call it that) was going to be a complete waste of money for Black Mesa. Seriously, they were testing ONE site, it would make infinitely more sense to test the water over a large area, or maybe have multiple sample sites. But no. It was as vague as 'test the water at this site every 20 minutes, combine it with this chemical as soon as you can, make sure it's roughly this acidic, check the salinity, etc. etc.'. Good thing Gordon had a book to read, and sudoku on his phone. He wasn't really one for puzzle games, but hey, it passed the time.
The door was slid open, and a sheepish looking Dr. Coomer appeared before him. "Hello, Gordon! I ah, I'm not exactly sure what happened, but it seems as though I dozed off a bit while you were gone. Not to worry, though! I grabbed the sample at 12:20 am sharp, and readings are exceedingly normal!" He smiled, showing off his clipboard, which had several numbers written in specific places, and in the notes section, it read 'this water boring as fuck -Dr. C'
Gordon laughed at that, digging in his plastic grocery bag for the soda to hand to Dr. Coomer. He then remembered it was a 24 pack and not individual soda cans, and instead placed it on the counter. Gordon quickly snatched the Cheetos out of the bag before he (or the Cheetos) could get in the way of the good doctor and his soda, and shrugged on his lab coat.
Dr. Coomer thanked him, boisterously, before grabbing the bulky package like it was nothing, carrying it in one hand back into the 'paperwork office' as they called it. They had worked out a system, Gordon would go out and get the water sample, bring it back to the lab. He'd run all the tests on it, repeating the numbers out loud to Dr. Coomer, who would then diligently write them onto the spreadsheet. Any and all comments were usually made by Dr. Coomer, usually along the lines of 'yep, same shit as always' and 'it's water, what do you expect'. At first, Gordon was a little worried about what the higher-ups might think about comments like that, but they hadn't received any grievances or whatever, so maybe Black Mesa really didn't care about this experiment. It wasn't up to Gordon to question the validity of Black Mesa's endeavors, though. He's just here to get paid. And test the water, apparently.
Gordon looked over the various machines in the main room, still holding his bag of Cheetos. He was still pretty new with all this water-testing tech, but most of them were pretty straight forward, put this much water here, and you get some numbers. Maybe add some of this chemical to it. Basic stuff.
He decided he was going to have the chips later, so he put them in a spare empty drawer, checking the time on his watch. Half-past midnight. He could probably fit in a round of sudoku before he had to go out and get the sample again. He was working on solving them faster, but he had only downloaded the app like a week ago, so he was still pretty rusty. He had plenty of time to improve, assuming this... 'experiment' lasted. Were there actually traces of alien materials in the water? Gordon had his doubts.
He had almost finished his sudoku puzzle in the amount of time before the sample, but the clock hit 12:39 and he made a noise of disappointment before clicking his phone off and grabbing some disposable gloves and a little glass vial. He wrestled to put them on as he opened the door leading to the dock (Black Mesa insisted on this specific brand, and they had supplied only medium gloves. He was a large-handed man, dammit).
The sound of the ocean immediately greeted him, as per usual, along with what, alarmingly, sounded like a lot of water being displaced, rapidly. He looked up sharply and saw the end of a white-capped wave of water settle out, right near the end of the dock. That seemed... a little more vigorous than a normal ocean wave making its way to the shore. Gordon approached cautiously, peering into the water from a distance. For a secluded beach, the water had always seemed a bit cloudy and dark, and that was doing him no favors in deducting what exactly had made that. Had some kid jumped off the end? Was it an animal? The latter seemed more likely, considering how far they were from the town. He had to take the sample on time, mysterious-wave or no.
Gordon walked stiffly over to the end of the dock, his eyes not leaving the spot where the movement had been. As he approached, he noticed what seemed to be... color, in the water. It was a reddish hue, surprisingly very bright, concentrated into a single bead-sized orb. Gordon raised an eyebrow at it. That seemed like something worth taking a sample of. He dipped his sample tube in the water, collecting it along with a bit of seawater. At the disturbance, it seemed to dissipate, fading and mixing with the seawater in the vial. Strange. But exciting!
Momentarily distracted, he peered at the vial, digging around in his lab coat pocket for the proper chemical to mix it with. He added the needed drop to the vial, and nothing happened for a moment, so Gordon held it towards the light cast by the lab, and swished it around a little bit. The vial exploded into a dizzying array of lights and colors, switching from bright blues to pinks to greens to colors Gordon didn't even have names for. Gordon stared at it in shock, holding it right up to his eyes, mesmerized. He had never seen this before, what kind of chemical reaction was this?
Gordon was shocked out of his fascination by a grating noise behind him, something which could have generously been called laughter, and he whipped his head around so fast his ponytail hit him in the face, which made matters worse when he stumbled, both held vials dropping from his hands. Gordon swore, and valiantly tried to catch them before they fell out of reach. The seawater-chemical mix (which was still creating a disco-effect) he caught by dumb luck, but the other one he ended up spiking directly onto the metal catwalk, where it shattered instantly. The volatile chemical spilled onto the dock and down into the ocean, where it reacted accordingly, and Gordon was momentarily blinded by the explosion of visual stimuli. The chemical seeped into the ocean, mixing with the cloudy water, extending out and out until the entire bay was lit up, god, he could see straight to the bottom. Gordon squinted through the colors, hoping to god there was nothing living in the water here. That shit had to be mega-toxic. He scanned the water for any wildlife, not seeing any until he focused near the cliffside and -
Oh, god, what was that.
A giant serpentine form, who knows how long, practically motionless until Gordon laid eyes on it. Despite the colors assaulting his vision and the distance between where he was and the cliff-side, Gordon swore he saw its acid-yellow eyes narrow, and before Gordon could react, with a quick flick of a tail fin it was hidden behind the rocks.
Gordon stared after it, breathless. Nevermind what his boss was going to say when he found out Dr. Freeman had just wasted a month's worth of water-testing juice. He had just pissed off some kind of giant sea creature.
Fuck.