Chapter Text
The thing is, Gordon should know better than to run off on his own during a fight. This has not turned out well for him in the recent past (clones, soldiers, amputations) – so he's not sure why it would start now, and that means that separating himself from the rest of the Science Team is stupid. But maybe he's got a terrier somewhere in his family tree, because when he sees the headcrabs leaping away down the corridor, he lunges after them, eager to hone his aim with his new arm. Gun? Arm. Whatever.
“Look out, Gordon!” Dr. Coomer bellows from within a knot of headcrab-controlled scientists who swipe at him as he punches through them. “Hotted boobs in your area!”
Gordon waves back at him as he runs, angling the gun-arm down to fire a hail of fingernails (apparently) at the fleeing aliens. He glances up and sees the flash of black in the shadows of the hangar the headcrabs are trying to escape into, but he's probably got just enough time to – there.
The first headcrab explodes into green goo, and the second races away at an angle, then screeches and changes course, leaping right back toward Gordon, who mows it down with a triumphant shout before turning his aim up toward the ceiling.
A shadowy shape flashes overhead, and Gordon frowns. Is there only one of them? The strike-team soldiers have always been encountered in packs before, but maybe they're trying something new.
Gunfire still rattles from down the hall where the rest of the Science Team is fighting the remaining aliens. Gordon isn't sure how this is his life, now, but he's trying not to think about it too hard.
“C'mon, c'mon – where the fuck are you?” He turns slowly, eyes darting between light fixtures and metal beams. She could be anywhere. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
He only has a moment to regret calling out when something that's huge and shadowy and definitely not a female strike team member drops from the corner of the room and sweeps toward him at an impossible speed, edges billowing like a cloak, hot orange eyes glowing in its center. Gordon only catches a glimpse of it before the single hind leg kicks out and latches onto the chestpiece of the HEV suit, knocking the breath out of him even as it yanks him off his feet and flings him against the opposite wall, where he tumbles and lands with a clatter and a pained yelp.
It slams down on top of him, the size of it blotting out nearly all the light in the room as it batters at his body with animal strength and predatory intent. The flexible mesh at the joints of the HEV suit tears easily under its assault, and Gordon finds a tiny part of his brain that isn't screaming in panic wondering idly if the ends of its limbs would be classified as claws or talons. Claws could sink easy as butter through the reinforced panels over his stomach, but it must take talons to dig into his guts and wrench his spine out through his belly – or at least, that's what it feels like is happening.
This line of thought ends when his vision is abruptly half-obscured by a flap of skin falling over his eye. The creature has torn loose a section of his scalp, and Gordon realizes quite abruptly that it's killing him. Something kick-starts deep in his lizard hindbrain and he takes a gasping breath, blood bubbling in his lungs as he gets one knee up and manages to pull the gun-arm free of the creature's grasping hind limb, wrench his elbow around, and turn the gun on it.
Even half-blind, he has to close his eyes. Light flares from the barrels firing under the awful cloak of darkness the creature forms with its – wings? Fur? Gordon can't honestly tell, but the muzzle flash is terribly bright in the enclosed space of blood and fear, and only when he feels the creature's grip loosening does he dare to squint his one good eye up at it.
Looking doesn't help much. The thing is blacker than black, so dark that it looks like a cutout in the space around it. He can see eyes, but they keep moving as he shifts his aim to follow them, so maybe they're eye-spots or something like that. It felt like the creature had eight limbs when they were all clawing at him, but he can only see three, like the peeper puppies – until a long, slender limb, previously unseen, emerges from the center of its mass to reach out and slash across Gordon's throat.
He jerks backward, choking, but he keeps his fist clenched as he falls so the gun-arm stitches a jagged rip through one side of the creature. It gives a horrible screech and collapses half on top of Gordon before lurching up and slashing at any part of him it can reach as it scrabbles to turn and kick off the ground. It staggers up into the air and lurches crazily between the rafters, at least one limb hanging limp and viscera gleaming across its body, leaving streaks of imperfection on a form that was clearly made to blend into any shadows, anywhere.
Half out of his mind, Gordon keeps shooting after it until he can't hear its raspy screeching over the sound of the gunfire and his arm is burning hot up to the shoulder. Acrid smoke rises from the barrels as they spin down, and when he lets the gun fall, it hits the battered cement floor with an echoing clang that reverberates through his skeleton, neatly pinpointing what feels like several broken bones. Ribs, mostly, Gordon thinks as he paws frantically at his head with his good hand, pushing the dangling flap of scalp out of his face and cupping what's left of his palm across his neck. It doesn't help much – his left eye has been glued shut by blood. Hopefully it's his own. He's certainly covered in enough of the creature's from when it half-collapsed onto him – there's ichor that's such a deep red color it's nearly black seeping into the torn sections of the HEV suit, dribbling across the metal, soaking into Gordon's hair, his beard, the bubbling rip in his throat. He licks his teeth, tastes metal and rot, and isn't sure which is his and which came from the alien. Because that's what it has to be – some kind of uncatalogued Xen creature, as alien as all the others. Too bad Gordon won't get to hear what Tommy decides to name this one – he's pretty sure he's going to die in the next minute or two. He's absolutely sure he caught a glimpse of yellow fat and the bulge of internal organs shining through great tears in the sliced-up torso of the HEV suit, and on top of that, no one can lose this much blood and live.
The stupid thing didn't even need to slash his throat.
Distantly, he's aware that it's not just his own gun that's fallen silent – he can't hear any shooting from down the hall anymore. He struggles to draw air into his shredded lungs, oxygen fighting for space and drowning in blood as he tries to call out. All he manages is a raspy croak, and it sounds so much like the creature that he falls silent, terrified that the alien is returning to finish him off.
Instead, footsteps approach, hurrying across the hangar, then slowing as they draw near.
“Hello, Gordon!” Dr. Coomer says cheerily. “I see the tits got you. It happens to the best of us, my boy.”
“Gordon Titman,” Benrey's voice says flatly from behind the Science Team.
“I thought Gordon was more of an ass man,” Bubby says, picking his way daintily through the viscera splattered across the floor.
“Gordon Assman,” Benrey says quickly.
“Yes, that's what I said,” Bubby replies tersely, then adds, “Jesus Christ, Gordon, how many of them were there?”
“Are – are you okay, Mr. Freeman?” Tommy leans over Gordon's face, his worried expression blocking the overhead lights. Gordon flinches, and Tommy jerks back. “O-oh, sorry. Do you – would you like Dr. Coomer to help you up – to stand up?”
Gordon had learned that Tommy's bland friendliness has limits when he'd been crouched, armless and bedraggled, staring wildly into the eye of a storm of dead copies of Dr. Coomer, and the only thing Tommy had done was reload his gun and reluctantly offer Gordon a soda with an expression of vague bemusement, like he wasn't sure why Gordon wasn't on his feet already. He's giving him the same look now, waiting for him to get up and get moving again, not sure why he isn't jumping to attention and heading off across the hangar, not sure why this is affecting him so much.
“Nnnn,” Gordon says, foamy blood bubbling through his clenched teeth. His throat vibrates under what's left of his palm – he's pretty sure one of the creature's talons bisected his hand between the ring and middle fingers, splitting it down to the wrist. At least the HEV suit's metal parts mostly held up under its claws; they're the only thing holding his body together right now. If he tries to sit up, he's pretty sure he'll end up with a lapful of intestines.
“What's that, Gordon?” Dr. Coomer leans closer. “I can't hear you through all the blood!”
“Nnneed...h'lp,” Gordon manages, tongue heavy and sticky in his drying mouth. Something feels wrong with his teeth. The overhead lights are too bright and he lets his eyes fall closed, the skin of his brow taut with pain. There are burning lines of agony etched nearly everywhere on his body, and they're all starting to throb in time with his too-fast heartbeat. He's got to be bleeding out before their eyes – why is no one going for a med kit?
“...too far to go back his lab,” Tommy is saying. “We could – um, we could try -”
“-at even did this?” That sounds like Bubby. “Can't see anyth...”
Their voices are fading in and out, and Gordon's pretty sure that's very bad.
“...blood trail?”
“-n't have time. Let's -”
“- can you...me? Gordon? ...don?”
“Hey, what happened to your face?” Benrey's voice says clearly, almost in his ear, but it's too late. Gordon's gone.
Remarkably, he wakes up. Unremarkably, he's still lying in a pool of gore, the blood now tacky, deeper puddles surfaced with a rubbery skin as it dries. Gordon shifts and groans as every single muscle in his body screams at him, with an extra demonic chorus from the joints of his gun-arm.
“Hello, Gordon! Long time no see!”
Gordon rolls his head from where it's propped against the wall to squint at Dr. Coomer, sitting cross-legged a few feet away. The rest of the group is splayed out on the cement in the normal uncomfortable-looking ragdoll poses they adopt during naps. Bubby is twisted like a pretzel and snoring like a chainsaw. Gordon sips in a cautious breath, then frowns and breathes deeper, genuinely shocked that he can breathe at all, let alone with such a reduction in pain.
“We brought you several med-kits, Gordon, but you appear to be doing just fine on your own.” Dr. Coomer gestures and Gordon rolls his head painfully in the other direction to see a handful of battered first aid kits piled up next to him. Two of them are open, gauze and bloodied wipes spilling out. The others are closed – either empty or untouched.
Gordon tilts his head and carefully looks down. The rips in the HEV suit fabric look even worse with lengths of white gauze wrapped around his torso, and Gordon huffs out a laugh at the sight of several band-aids bridging some of the tears, as if the Science Team weren't sure where the suit ended and Gordon began. He can't exactly blame them. He isn't very sure himself right now.
“How...long?” His voice is thick and raspy, and he struggled to swallow and immediately regrets it when he remembers what kind of substances were probably in his mouth. Oh well, too late now.
Dr. Coomer understands the question, anyway. “You've been asleep for nearly two hours, Gordon!” He shakes his head in recrimination. “We could have been halfway to the Lambda Lab by now, you know.”
“S'that where we're goin'?” Gordon rasps. “Thought that was...Darnold's lab.”
“Of course not, Gordon. That would be ridiculous.”
Gordon huffs again, raising his left hand and turning it this way and that. Whatever was in the medkits was good shit – he can see the rip down the length of the glove, but the skin underneath has healed up nicely already. There isn't even a mark where he'd caught a glimpse of tendons and a white slice of bone before.
“What kinda drugs did you guys give me?” he asks, then has to cough weakly to clear his throat. Some water would be nice, but he doesn't remember seeing any actual water bottles for the last few days.
“Drugs? Just say no, Gordon.”
“What?”
“Drug-free is the way to be,” Dr. Coomer intones.
Gordon snorts. “You sound like a D.A.R.E officer. I meant what did you give me to – fuck, speed the healing up, I guess? I thought I was a goner.”
Dr. Coomer stares blankly at him for a moment. “We just patched you up, Gordon.”
“You just – my guts were hanging out,” Gordon says, shifting himself higher so he can set his shoulders against the wall and tug at the gauze over his torso. Abruptly, he remembers the creature's parting shot and his hand flies up to his throat. There's more gauze under his fingers, and it feels like someone has tied a bow in it over one shoulder, like a 50's schoolgirl. Gordon plucks furiously at it. “My throat was slit – you had to give me something! I couldn't – Dr. Coomer, people don't just heal from that in two hours!”
“Nature is beautiful, Gordon!”
Gordon gives up on the bow and forces his fingers under the edge of the gauze. The skin of his throat is sticky with dried blood, but no matter how he scrubs at his neck with his fingertips, he can't find the slightest raised edge of a healing cut.
“What the fuck,” he mutters to himself as he puts his hand down and shoves himself into an upright position. His muscles still hurt, but it's a deep, healing ache, not the shrieking agony he'd felt when he first woke up mere minutes ago. “This doesn't make any sense. This makes zero sense. What – do you know what attacked me?”
Dr. Coomer's mustache twitches. “We thought you ran afoul of the lovely ladies of the night, Gordon.”
“Ladies of the – what, like prostitutes?”
“Of course not! These are highly-trained professionals, Gordon.”
“It wasn't the strike team,” Gordon explains, glove slipping in the blood by his hip. He starts to bend a leg up to try for some more stability, but quickly aborts that motion when his stomach rebels as the movement and he has to pause to hang his head, squeezing his eyes shut as he focuses on not retching. “It was an alien,” he groans. “Some kinda big – dark thing.”
“Whuh?”
Gordon twitches and looks up to see Benrey sitting upright, his legs crossed as neatly as Dr. Coomer's when a moment before he was sprawled on the hard concrete floor, to all appearances dead asleep.
“What?” he responds.
“You said it was a, uh, alien,” Benrey probes. “What's – what kind?”
“Nothing we've seen before,” Gordon hangs his head again. Strands of hair that are stiff with blood brush against his jaw. “This one could fucking fly.”
“Ah, like the manta rays we saw outside?” Dr. Coomer asks, but Gordon is already shaking his head.
“Not – not like a ship. Just one thing – had three legs like the peeper puppies and – wings, or skinflaps like a flying squirrel or something. Black as hell, too – I could barely see any details on it, even with the lights in here. Orange eyes.” He frowns. “Wait, sorry – there was another leg in the middle of it. It used that to slash my throat.”
“I hope you appreciate Benrey's bow-tying skills there, Gordon,” Dr. Coomer says cheerfully, and Gordon squints over at him to reply when he's struck utterly dumb by the look on Benrey's face.
The thing about Benrey is this, Gordon's pretty sure: he doesn't care. He could not give less of a shit about anything going on. It mostly feels like he's tagging along for something to do, like otherwise he'd just be sitting bored somewhere, so this is better than the prospect of that nothing. Even when Gordon was getting his hand cut off by soldiers, and afterward as the group slowly reunited, Benrey had only shown the slightest emotion, mostly vague confusion and minor shock at the amputation. He's laughed like a maniac, sure, and he seems excited any time they find a vehicle to ride, but that could go back to his general lazy attitude in regards to everything they've been dealing with.
So all in all, it's quite jarring for Gordon to look at Benrey and see him wearing an expression of abject terror.
Gordon actually looks around in case the creature has returned, but there's nothing behind him but the scattered medkits. Benrey is looking at him, reacting like that to him – or, no, to his description of the alien that attacked him. “What?” he says sharply. “Do you know what it is?”
“I – I have to go...somewhere,” Benrey stutters. His gaze flicks up and across the hangar, then he gets to his feet and powerwalks straight out the same door they came in from.
Gordon blinks after him. “What...the fuck was that about?”
Dr. Coomer just shrugs. “Perhaps he doesn't approve of your drug use.”
Gordon sighs. “You just told me you didn't even give me any drugs. Which is impossible, again – there's no way I would be this together without something from the medkits.”
“As I told you already, Gordon, nature is beautiful! Youngsters these days don't appreciate their youth. When I was your age, I could walk off a broken leg in no time!”
“I...don't think that's true,” Gordon says slowly, eyeing him suspiciously.
“You don't know my life, Gordon!”
“Okay, I'll give you that,” Gordon groans, struggling into a crouch, then slowly standing up. His limbs shake a little, but his legs hold him up and he's able to take a few unsteady steps away from the puddle of gore he'd been sitting in. The HEV suit itself is still washed in dark streaks and splatters of dried blood, but he's not even going to think about trying to wipe it off until he determines if the suit itself is even salvageable. The charging stations should be able to fix the internals, but he's not sure if they can repair the connective mesh at the suit's joints. At least the alien was ineffective at cutting through the metal parts, but the whole suit is still battered as hell, with pale streaks where the creature's claws scratched through the paint.
Gordon has just settled his back against the wall in preparation for a slow slide down to take a seat again when Bubby's snoring cuts off. He rockets to his feet and kicks Tommy in the same motion, making Gordon flinch.
“Oh, good, you're up,” Bubby says as Tommy sputters to awareness. “Can we get moving now?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Gordon rubs at his gauze-wrapped torso. “I need a minute here -”
“You've had hours,” Bubby says. “And besides, you look fine to me.”
Gordon just stares at him through a curtain of bloody hair.
“Alright, fine, you look gross as hell. Maybe take a shower or something.”
This time, Gordon stares at him through a curtain of bloody hair while gesturing out with his left hand, displaying the complete lack of showers in this hangar.
“I don't understand why you have to make everything so difficult, Gordon,” Bubby says. “I'm sure we'll find something to clean off with if we get moving.”
“Y-yeah, we oft- we always do,” Tommy adds, and Gordon remembers his face covered in a mask of blood.
“Fine,” he sighs. “But I'm probably gonna drop in the next five minutes, and then we'll have to actually rest.”
“I feel very well-rested,” Dr. Coomer says, popping to his feet.
Gordon squints at him. “Did you even sleep?”
“I got over sixty winks, Gordon!”
“Yeah, I don't know what that means.”
“Why – where's Benrey?” Tommy interrupts, peering around.
“He took off,” Gordon waves toward the door. “Ran off a while ago.”
“He ran?” Tommy's voice spikes up at the end, and he's frowning.
“Well...no, he powerwalked or something, I guess. I don't know. He left. Again.”
Tommy turns to Dr. Coomer. “Dr. Coomer, did you see -?”
“He did indeed powerwalk off, Tommy. He didn't approve of Gordon's drug use.”
“Wh- Mr. Freeman, you're using drugs?” Tommy's attention snaps back to Gordon, who suppresses the urge to rip his own hair out.
“No, Tommy, I'm not using drugs,” he snaps. “I was asking about the fucking medkits, because I was really fucked up by that alien, and I wanted to know -”
“Alien?” Tommy interrupts.
“I thought the special forces got you,” Bubby adds.
So now Gordon has to explain, again, just what it was that attacked him, even though he still doesn't exactly know himself. But his description of the creature doesn't seem to ring any bells for Tommy or Bubby, even though Tommy and Dr. Coomer exchange a few looks as Gordon describes what happened.
“That, um, that sounds really scary,” Tommy offers. “But I don't think I know what it is.”
Gordon waves a hand and straightens up from where he'd slumped against the wall. “It doesn't matter, I guess. If it was poisonous, it would have killed me already.”
“Venomous, Gordon,” Dr. Coomer corrects him.
“I gave you a shot, anyway.” Bubby points at the discarded wrappers around the second medkit, which do include the cylindrical shape of an EpiPen injector.
“I don’t think those do anything if you’re not having an allergic reaction,” Gordon says.
“It made you better!”
“I just don’t think that’s true,” Gordon says plaintively. He should be used to them by now, he really should, but this is bugging him because it’s...well, it’s him. His own body this time, and far more than his hand: his entire torso was torn open. Wasn’t it? But...maybe the hand thing is the template he should be working off of. At least they waited for him to heal up this time, instead of leaving him to find his own way back after losing a limb. He supposes that’s an improvement.
And they’re still waiting for him, technically, even though Bubby is complaining loudly about how slow Gordon’s being, so he drags himself off the wall and slouches after them as they take off across the hangar. Gordon glances back, once, but there’s no sign of Benrey. He glances up, once, but there’s no sign of the alien creature, nothing in here but the slow drip of blood.
Getting back into the claustrophobic corridors is a relief. Their footsteps echo unevenly off the walls, clattering and cacophonous. Gordon doesn’t remember it being this loud before. His vision grays out a few times, to the point that he has to stop walking and lean against a corner at one point until the static clears from his eyes. The suit feels heavy and light at the same time; he’s not sure if he’s losing feeling in his limbs or if he’s got nerve damage from the attack.
“Come along, Gordon, we mustn’t be late!”
“Pretty sure we’re already late for everything,” Gordon mumbles, but hauls himself upright and staggers after Dr. Coomer.
“There’s a charge station over here,” Bubby calls from an adjacent corridor. “Would that help him speed up?”
“Look, Gordon! An HEV charging station! You can use this to recharge your suit!”
“Thanks, Dr. Coomer,” Gordon groans, his vision whiting out again as he stumbles toward the station. He ends up misjudging how far it was and thudding into it before he can blink the spots out of his eyes.
“Look out, Gordon!” Dr. Coomer cries. “An HEV charging station!”
Gordon waves the gun-arm vaguely in his direction in acknowledgement and shoves his other hand against the control panel. It whirrs to life and the suit beeps in response. Gordon leans his head against the wall and closes his eyes. His head is pounding now from the too-bright lights and the loud echoing voices of the Science Team and probably dehydration and blood loss, to boot. He rolls his head and squints one eye open to glance down the hall, but he doesn’t see the glow of a health station. The contents of the medkits will have to tide him over until they find one. He wishes he’d grabbed some of the painkillers, but then he’d probably get harassed for his ‘drug habit’ again, so it probably wouldn’t have been worth it.
There’s a crash from several doors away, followed by an unholy sound of slurping that Gordon has grown all too familiar with. The suit beeps, and he glances down to see that the charging station is depleted, and the suit’s only at 75%. Oh well, better than nothing.
He pushes himself off the wall – something he’s doing far too much of in the last hour or so since they left the hangar – and follows the sounds of the Science Team raiding a vending machine. His arm itches like hell where the gun connects, but he’s trying not to think about it too hard. Instead, he scratches at the gauze over his torso, which is also itchy. Actually, most of him is itchy. Maybe the charging station had a virus or something? At least it does seem to have rebuilt some of the mesh around his joints.
“Hello, Gordon!” Dr. Coomer crows as soon as he steps into the breakroom. There are already half a dozen cracked-open cans laying on the floor, and Dr. Coomer is still crouched among them like a fucked-up gargoyle. Bubby is eating a granola bar and glaring at a workplace violence training poster on the wall, and Tommy is talking to Benrey in the corner of the room.
Gordon does a double-take at the same time Benrey looks up and meets his eyes. He sees the guard’s head jerk back, like he’s shocked by something, but he doesn’t say anything or change his unsettled expression.
“Oh, great, Benrey’s back,” Gordon grumbles, deliberately turning away from him and limping over to the vending machine. He reaches through the broken glass and tries to grab a bag of chips, but his fingers falter and he fumbles it. As it thumps to the bottom of the machine, he quickly snatches up a different bag and spins away, hoping no one noticed that.
“Mr. Freeman, you don’t look so good,” Tommy says tentatively.
Gordon grunts at him and sets about trying to open the bag of chips with one hand. He’s got to hold the gun barrels just so to pin down a corner, and then pinch at the top seam to get enough tension to rip the bag. But his fingers are still prickling with pins and needles, and the bag slips from his grip three times in a row before he stops and glares up at Tommy. His hair still hangs in lank, ropy strands that are gummed together by his own blood and the ichor of the alien creature, and he feels sweaty and feverish enough know he’s probably pale and shaking visibly.
“You look fucking terrible, Gordon,” Bubby adds, and in a fit of pique, Gordon flings the bag of chips at him. Infuriatingly, he catches it, and even more infuriatingly, he easily tears it open and begins eating the chips inside.
“I wonder why that could be,” Gordon drawls sarcastically, sitting heavily down on the bench.
“Gordon, you can use SODA for big pits – like that belly of yours! You must be hungry,” Dr. Coomer says, dropping an open can on the table in front of Gordon. “Healing up is hard work. When I walked off my broken leg as a young man, I ate fourteen pizzas in one sitting!”
“Wow, that – that’s a lot of pizzas, Dr. Coomer,” Tommy says.
“He’s lying,” Bubby remarks from across the room, now surveying a poster advertising some holiday party that’s too ink-stained for Gordon to make out what holiday it even is. “It was only thirteen pizzas.”
“Thirteen is an unlucky number, Bubby!”
“That doesn’t change the facts.”
“I don’t think any of those things are facts,” Gordon mutters, taking a swig from the can Dr. Coomer had placed in front of him. It’s flat and tastes oversweet, but it goes down smoothly and soothes his dry throat, so he drinks the whole thing.
He’s trying to figure out if it’s worth the effort to stand back up and see if there’s any food he can get into one-handed when the hairs rise on the back of his neck and he twists around without thinking. Immediately, he hunches over and whines, sore muscles pulling in his abdomen, something deep inside feeling like it tears. His torso itches fiercely, and he drags his legs around the end of the bench and glares up at Benrey, one arm wrapped around his stomach.
“What the fuck do you want?”
Benrey had taken several quick steps back when Gordon moved, but now he stands with his back to the vending machine, his face very still as his gaze flicks over Gordon’s messy appearance.
“What happened to your eyes?”
“What?” Gordon squints at him, then reaches up to adjust his glasses – which, miraculously, have remained unbroken through this whole hellscape since the resonance cascade. “What’s wrong with my eyes?”
“They’re glowing,” Benrey says flatly.
Gordon gapes at him. “No, they’re not.”
“Yuh-huh.”
“What – what the fuck.” Gordon leans around Benrey and catches a glimpse of his reflection in the shattered glass of the vending machine. It’s not a good mirror – the lights in the room are too bright – but it’s enough to see that there are two bright green spots on his face’s reflection, right where his eyes should be. “What the FUCK?”
Benrey darts sideways and clips through the wall as Gordon lurches toward the vending machine. Gordon is semi-used to his alien weirdness and ignores it as he staggers closer to the broken glass and peers into it. Sure enough, his irises are currently glowing a vivid, toxic green. They’re throwing enough light to cast a slight neon glow on the underside of his brows, and he realizes as he looks frantically at his reflection that some of the vision problems he’s been having in the last half hour or so have actually been the emerald glow glancing off the inside of his glasses.
“What the fuck is going on?” he whispers.
“Having trouble deciding what you want, Gordon?” Dr. Coomer asks from right beside him.
Gordon makes a strangled noise and straightens up sharply, wincing at the pain of healing muscles moved too fast. “Dr. Coomer,” he rasps, “how long have my eyes been glowing?”
Dr. Coomer peers up at his face, then beams brightly, his own eyes crinkling at the corners. “Every young boy must go through puberty sometime, Gordon!”
“Wha – that’s not an answer! What the hell, man, I’m not – I’m not going through puberty,” Gordon wheezes. “This is a new thing! Right?”
“Gordon, you look normal!”
“Tommy,” Gordon pleads, turning around and waving. “Tommy, please, c’mere and tell me this is new.”
“I dunno,” Tommy says from across the room. “I’m not – I don’t remember.”
“Bubby –”
“None of us are spending any time gazing into your eyes, Gordon,” Bubby snipes, crumpling up the empty bag of Gordon’s chips and dropping it on the floor. “You’ll have to ask Benrey for that kind of information.”
“Where is our good friend Benrey?” Dr. Coomer asks, looking around and peering under the closest tables like Benrey was a dropped penny or something.
“He ran off,” Gordon says, distracted again by the reflection of green light on the inside rims of his glasses.
“He ran?” Tommy repeats, voice quavering.
“Well, he walked through the wall.” Gordon waves a hand at the empty space kitty-corner to the busted vending machine. “So yeah, basically, he ran.”
His vision is still fuzzing at the edges, and he blindly reaches into the vending machine and pulls out some health bar, ripping it open with his teeth. Then he pauses and blinks down at the open package in his hand. Why didn’t he think to do that with the chips? He shakes his head and sinks his teeth into the granola bar, which is crumbly and gummy at the same time, but tastes like there’s enough sugar in it to actually keep him going for another hour or so. Plus, it feels really nice between his teeth. Really...really nice.
“Gordon, why are you sucking on that?” Bubby asks, and Gordon twitches and bites through the bar, his teeth clicking. For a moment they feel strange, like they don’t fit together quite right, but when he extricates them from the granola bar and runs his tongue over their surface, nothing feels wrong.
“Shut up,” he mumbles through his mouthful, then takes another hasty bite. Tommy is standing at the open doorway, gun up and looking down the hall. Dr. Coomer crushes another empty can and slings it into the vending machine, and Bubby drifts over to the door from the other end of the breakroom.
Gordon scratches at his throat, then his stomach. He wants to rip the gauze off and get underneath, but he’s got an irrational fear that the gauze is all that’s holding him together. Even the stupid fucking bow in the gauze on his throat – isn’t there a scary story about that? Some woman who asked her husband never to untie the ribbon around her neck, and when he did, her head fell off? Gordon feels like that, a bit, like he’s on the verge of falling apart at the seams. His teeth ache, and even though he’s got food and drink in him, it still seems like there’s something missing.
Quickly, he glances through the vending machine, making a face when nothing looks very appealing. He’s craving...something. If he could only figure out what, maybe it would help hold the rest of him together.
“Grab and go, Gordon! It’s time to vamoose!” Dr. Coomer calls, then he and Bubby rocket out of the doorway like racehorses from a starting gate. Tommy bounds after them, and after casting one last mournful look at the busted vending machine, Gordon follows.
The bit of food and rest and soda must have done him good, because he can keep up better now than before. The itching is slowly subsiding everywhere except at the base of his gun-arm, where it’s getting worse. Shooting makes it feel better for a second, so Gordon shoulders his way through the group to shoot at the two packs of headcrabs they encounter as they navigate the hallways. There’s a niggling sense of something in the back of his head when he sees the alien creatures, but he dismisses it as the general horror those things incite.
His teeth still ache.
At some point Benrey joins them again, though he stays farther than normal from Gordon. He does watch him carefully, which Gordon knows because every time he glances at Benrey, Benrey is already looking straight at him with an expression of wary distrust. He doesn’t look away, either. No fucking shame.
Gordon pauses by a window into a dark lab and takes a longer look at his reflection. He looks absolutely hideous, bloody hair and smears of blood still all over his skin and the HEV suit. His skin is, in fact, pale and sweaty, with spots of red high on his cheekbones, his freckles standing out sharply. Definitely feverish, then. Great. He’ll need to find a health station soon for sure.
And of course, there are his eyes. His eyes were always a striking shade of green, but they were still a natural human eye color. Now, they’re a poisonous-looking shade of chartreuse, and unmistakably glowing. The luminance makes his face appear gaunt and skeletal.
“I look dead,” Gordon mutters.
“I’ve never felt more alive, Gordon!” Dr. Coomer yells from around a corner, and gunfire erupts a moment later. Through the echoing retorts of the handguns, Gordon can hear the shivering cries of the peeper puppies charging up.
Something happens, then. All the static and fuzz that’s been plaguing his vision comes back at the edges of his view, narrowing until he’s looking through a tunnel. His pulse pounds in his gums, and his teeth throb in time with his heartbeat as he turns his aching neck to stare at the end of the corridor just as a peeper puppy bounds into view, skidding to a stop when it sees him. It shudders and begins to make a charging noise, then falters and cowers in on itself, a thin whine bouncing off the walls instead.
Gordon moves.
Some time later, there are noises around him. He snarls and curls tighter around his prey, kicking his feet to get his back to a wall. Where is his nest? Why isn’t his food safe? What’s –
“That’s disgusting, Gordon,” Bubby says, and Gordon falls back into his body as if from a great height.
He jerks and freezes, blinking back into himself with effort. He’s sitting on the floor at the end of the corridor, his back firmly set into the corner where the walls meet. His knees are up in front of his chest and his arms are wrapped around something warm and pulsing, something he’s got his teeth sunk into up to the gums.
Hold on. What the fuck?
Gordon flings the peeper puppy away and it flops wetly to the floor, obviously dead. Bubby steps back with an exclamation, but Dr. Coomer is leaning closer, clearly intrigued. Gordon puts his hand up to his mouth – the sensation of his teeth coming out of the alien’s skin was weird, like they were too long or there were too many of them. For a moment he thinks he feels something with his tongue, extra points behind his lips, but then it’s gone. He can taste the alien blood on his tongue, and it should be disgusting, but right now it reminds him of the soda – flat and disappointing, but soothing on his throat all the same.
Swallowing thickly, Gordon stares up at the Science Team, a terrible thought crossing his mind.
“Guys...am I turning into a vampire?”
“Don’t be absurd, Gordon,” Dr. Coomer scoffs, straightening up and tugging at his lab coat’s lapels. “Vampires aren’t real. Clearly, you’re suffering from scurvy.”
“I’m – what?”
“Yes, I’m afraid I was expecting it. You’d better find some oranges, Gordon! Next thing you know, your teeth will be falling out!”
And with that, the three of them seem satisfied, trotting down the hall while stepping over and around bullet-riddled peeper puppies. Gordon stares blindly after them, then looks at the closest corpse. The peeper puppy he’d been holding, had been – drinking from, is a shade lighter than the other dead aliens. Did he do that? Gordon swallows again, and somehow, it doesn’t feel gross. It feels right.
He drags himself to his feet again, and it’s easier to get up than it was earlier. Maybe he’s still healing. But before he can start to follow the rest of the Science Team, that same hair-raising feeling from the breakroom dances across his skin and he looks to the left, back down the hall they came up – and straight into Benrey’s face.
Benrey looks slowly from him to the dead peeper puppy on the floor, then back. Gordon waits for him to say something stupid, to ask if he killed it, but the guard looks conflicted.
“What?” Gordon finally snaps, wiping a hand across his face and wincing when the HEV suit’s glove gleams wetly with alien blood. He resists the insane urge to lick it off. “Come to ask what’s wrong with me now?”
“No,” Benrey says. “I think I’m, uh, figuring it out.”
Then he saunters past Gordon, around the corner, and through the maze of dead aliens to follow the others.
Gordon blinks after him, completely befuddled – not least by the fact that, for the first time since he found out Gordon was attacked by the alien creature with the glowing eyes, Benrey didn’t look afraid of him.