When the Combine took over Earth, there were places they didn't really bother with. The Xen incursions of the prior four years left parts of the world depopulated, and frankly, without the resources the Universal Union was most interested in, those places just weren't worth the bother. It would be wrong to say human civilization flourished in those places. Flourishing implies the ability to reproduce and continue. But it managed, more or less. Some people just don't know how to lie down and die.

They weren't Resistance, exactly. That would require them to be actively engaged in the fight against the Combine. But in the southernmost reaches of the Rust Belt, the people in the places where Earth's extraction industries had once been and gone? They kept right on living. Not the way they used to; it was too dangerous now, between Xen wildlife and the occasional lazily roaming synth. In the tunnels that used to be the mines, or under the buildings that had been mills, they kept on going. When the opportunities arose they took to the surface for as long as they needed, and they gathered or hunted or raised what they could. It was a hell of a situation to be in, but hell, they hadn't had it easy before. Why should now be any different?

That was the thing about the Rust Belt survivors. They had long, long memories. And they were good at getting old things to keep working long after they should've logically given up the ghost. Generators, for example. Electrical lighting. Radios. You never knew what might be coming your way; if the Combine got angry real fast, or if the Resistance actually made a move, you wanted to know. Who knew. You might need to throw in with them if that was what it took to be left alone.

Or, you know, you might pick up on Combine reports about the destruction of the Scab. And if you listened real close you'd hear that the Resistance stole more than they destroyed. Score one for humanity, right?

. . . did they just say that? Did they just say to keep an eye on the sky for the helicopter with the Marine in it? Since when were there any of those even left? And where was that son of a bitch going?

. . . well, long story short, the survivors had long, long memories, and Tim Hutchence wasn't the only man with good reason to be mad as hell at the prospect. Either someone was lying, or someone had been laying low for a damned long time, and either way there was at least one survivor who'd lost family at Black Mesa twenty years before. And he was going to get some answers, thank you very much.

Some time ago, between Scab Labor and Making Tracks. . .

"Stop that, Tim."

Tim Hutchence made a face. "I'll scratch if I want to," he said. "Who died and made you a medic?"

The other man, a tall, horse-faced fellow with shoulders long hunched by habit, poked him in the shoulder. "Bug juice didn't cure it. You should take it more seriously."

"Seriously, ten Boom. You're sabotage, not medicine."

"The medics are busy," ten Boom said. "I'm here. They're not. And you're scratching. Stop it."

Tim rolled his eyes but dropped his hand. "All right, all right… not like I had my hand under the bandage or anything…"

"Tim."

"Sorry." Tim leaned back against the corrugated metal wall. They hadn't pulled back out of the Scab's ruins yet. The shed was all the shelter they had for the wounded. And there were plenty of those still unaccounted for; the few medics he had under his command were digging through the rubble to find them.

A thought occurred to him; he glanced over at ten Boom. "I'm not hearing anything overhead. Did that Marine get a landing site after all?"

ten Boom nodded. "Worst landing I've ever seen," he said, "and he threw up after- but yes."

Tim snorted. He'd had cousins in the Corps, several of them. That Shephard kid brought up way too many memories. If it weren't for that ID card the kid was carrying, Tim would never have believed him anything but a fake… and there wouldn't've been air support against those gunships, and half his people would be a lot worse off than just pinned down by rubble. Tim didn't have to like him to admit that Shephard had been valuable.

He also had to admit that from here on out, his Resistance cell was going to be running small, covert ops at ground level, at least until they decided what their next strategic move was. There were a lot of opportunities now, between knocking out the Scab and just having all the extra equipment they'd managed to take. And, well, while that hunter-chopper had saved their lives, it probably wasn't going to be as much use hereabouts as it could be elsewhere…

"Jan." ten Boom glanced his way again. "Question. If it was up to you, what would you blow next?"

ten Boom's eyebrows rose a moment; then he shrugged. "The old Johnstown line. The Combine have razor terminals east of there, big ones. I worked on them years ago-"

"You worked on everything."

"Yes. Well." ten Boom shrugged. "The line from here to Johnstown. The western lines, to City 23 and the rest of the west, those are bigger- but cut the rail to Johnstown and it will give the impression we plan to move east, to take the terminal and hack the razor network. They'll waste time reinforcing their supply lines while we go after industrial sites."

Tim nodded. "Sound thinking," he said. "Mind if I send someone else to do it?"

ten Boom's expression took on a faintly injured cast.

"We've got to do something with that helicopter. I need you and your squad for our move into the Rust Valley. Let Shephard and that Aperture girl do it and buy you and yours the time to get busy."

There was a long, thoughtful silence. Then ten Boom nodded. "All right," he said. "It should work. I'll go and find him."

"Good luck."

"Don't scratch while I'm gone," ten Boom warned him, and ducked out the door.

Tim closed his eyes and wished the day was over. It was a sentiment he'd echo again in a few hours' time, when the Marine would send back his frantic radio message about the call drawing every single unassigned Combine unit north to White Forest, and about who he'd rescued from the razor trains.

Not that it would make time pass any quicker either way.

The Bar patrons were right about one thing: pretty much the instant Shephard crossed the midpoint of the steps leading upstairs, he stopped being an eight foot tall blue-purple alien thing in armor and started being a human in fatigues again. Yeah, he wound up with his face in the stairs, but it was his face and he got to curse about it without cutting his tongue to ribbons, which, all in all, he considered a net plus. His bunk was exactly where he'd left it, too. That was a big plus. Milliways tended to move it around without warning. He patted the doorframe, murmured his thanks, and headed into the shower. He'd spent a good portion of the afternoon running the lake as fast as his bizarrely bent and hoofed alien legs would allow, just to see what he could accomplish with them, and now his human body was outright exhausted. He barely bothered drying off afterwards. By the time his head hit the pillow he was already asleep.

"On your feet, Corporal."

It was one of those voices you did not disobey. It was a voice dead men would not disobey. Shephard was saluting before his eyes were even open. "Sir."

He came awake properly, suppressing a yawn, as the other man returned the gesture. His eyes fell on the white feather in the band of his bush hat, skipped swiftly down to the stripes on his arm, the service insignia on his chest-

"Permission to pinch myself, Gunny?" Shephard said in a strangled voice.

"Granted." Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock's face wrinkled in a momentary smile. "Although I can tell you right now it won't make much difference."

"After last time, Gunny, I don't much feel like taking chances." He pinched the back of his forearm as hard as he could, biting back the swearword that rose into his throat. "Still there?"

"Sure am."

Shephard let out a massive exhale, nodded. He didn't remember seeing any headcrabs in the Bar, and he sure wasn't in nearly as much pain as he remembered from the Borealis, so...

"You can relax, Corporal. This is the real thing." The older man cocked an eyebrow at him. "Temporary. But the real thing."

"Last time-"

"Was a pretty by-the-book hallucination. The part with the Smurfs should've tipped you off." He shook his head and added, dryly, "Really, Corporal? Smurfs?"

"Ain't my fault I got that kind of shi- stuff in my head, Gunny." Shephard winced. "Question, though-"

"Yes, Corporal, I am in fact currently dead," Hathcock answered. "And yes, I am in fact physically present, through means I am not currently at liberty to disclose beyond 'Milliways'."

Shephard nodded silently. He'd just spent the day as a four-jawed backward-legged eight foot tall space alien. Bringing one of the greatest snipers in Corps history back from the dead and letting him into Shephard's room was absolutely nothing by comparison.

"I'm not the only one, either." The other man hesitated, as if weighing his next words. "Matter of fact, Corporal..."

"Gunny?"

"I'm led to understand you've set yourself something of a career goal, Corporal," Hathcock said. "Redeeming your unit's honor and reviving the rest of the Corps. Am I correct in that understanding?"

Shephard fought the urge to shift uncomfortably under that gaze. "Yes, Gunny," he said instead, and drew himself up a little straighter.

"That's what I thought." Hathcock didn't quite sigh, but he suddenly looked as if he'd like to. "That's a pretty tall order, Corporal. For anyone."

"I'm aware of that, Gunny. I don't know that I've got much of a choice. Job's got to be done."

"Mm." Hathcock put both hands behind his back. "About that."

"Gunny?"

"I'm not sure if you know what you're getting into, Corporal. Or what you've got to bear up under."

Shephard started to open his mouth, started to say something about the flack he'd already caught from Ms. Vance and the others at White Forest. Then he stopped. Something in his visitor's look suggested that that wasn't what he meant at all.

"Corporal, if you're genuinely serious about picking up where the Corps left off, you'd better be prepared to see it through to the bitter end. Starting with understanding just exactly who you're making yourself beholden to."

"I already know that, Gunny. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't."

Hathcock shook his head. "Maybe. Maybe," he said. "But this isn't the kind of thing we can trust to 'maybe'. Or to bad motivations, either. Answer me this, Corporal, as honestly as you can. Who or what are you doing this for?"

There was a brief, irritated instant in which Shephard almost said to spite every motherfucking dog bastard shit who ever gave us hell. It brought with it the flash-memory of his Osprey's last moments over Black Mesa, and the last time he ever saw any of his fellow HECU members alive; he swallowed. "Doin' it for the men we lost, Gunny. Black Mesa, the Xen invasion, the Combine... all of 'em."

"Mm." The other man nodded. "Good answer. I hope you mean that, I really do."

"Don't know how I ought to go 'bout provin' that I do, Gunny."

"Good thing I do, then, isn't it." Hathcock gave a drawn, mirthless smile. "I'll make this simple, Corporal. You hold your position, right here, right now, just as you are. You hold that position until I tell you to stand down. Simple enough test, isn't it?"

'A simple test' from a man with three stripes on his sleeve did not happen, in Shephard's experience. They were no more simple or easy than they were escapable. His jaw clenched a moment before he nodded. "Whatever you say, Gunny."

"Good." Hathcock stepped back, gestured sharply to the nearby shadows. "Send 'em in, boys."

Shephard braced himself, waiting for the attack he was sure was coming. All that happened was that a lone uniformed figure stepped out of the shadows- a figure Shephard remembered with a sudden, cold burst of shock. "Corporal Stephen Bahl," the pale man said, "Hazardous Environment Combat Unit. Goose 3, May 16th, 2001."

Bahl saluted; Shephard stared, only returning the gesture out of reflex. As Bahl stepped back into the shadows, Shephard looked wordlessly to Hathcock.

Hathcock lifted an eyebrow briefly. "Problem, Corporal? A man ought to know what he's fighting for."

There was motion in the shadows again. Shephard turned back to find another familiar face- "Corporal Patrick Deupree, Hazardous Environment Combat Unit. Goose 3, May 16th, 2001."

He saluted, stepped back, and was replaced by a third, dark-skinned figure that Shephard knew all too well. "Sergeant Harrison Tower," the other man growled. "Hazardous Environment Combat Unit. Pit Worm's den, May 16th, 2001."

As Tower vanished into the shadows Shephard looked to Hathcock again. "Gunny? Why?" he whispered.

"'All the men we lost', Corporal," said Hathcock quietly. "'Black Mesa, the Xen invasion, and the Combine'. You're the only one alive who can speak for them all, so you'd better be able to bear up under that."

There was a long, long silence.

"... all right," Shephard finally said, and turned back to face the next approaching dead man.

It was about to be a very long night.

The first thing Shephard notices for certain is that he doesn't seem to be sweating any more. It's a stupid little thing, but when you're struggling for every bit of free motion you can manage, even a small change in your conditions will get your attention.

The second thing he notices is that the struggling isn't so necessary any more. And the third is that there's only about half the people in the infirmary now that there were a little while ago. He sits up, blinking, and makes a face at the gungy feeling covering the inside of his mouth.

"That was some fucked-up shit just there," he murmurs, flexing his fingers largely because he can. "Who've I got to thank for it gettin' cleaned up?"

It's been a long three hours for the crew packed into the helicopter buzzing its way towards the last known coordinates of Dr. Mossman and her team. For the passengers, it's been a time of constant intrusive noise and turbulence, both physical and emotional. For the pilot, it's been twenty minutes of deciding on a name for the craft (Pringle Runner, not after the potato chip but after a set of rapids near Albright called the Pringle Run), and two hours and forty minutes of trying very hard not to let anyone see just how terrified the experience has left him.

They're getting mighty close to the island now, though, so Shephard's bringing the helicopter down some. "Fair warning," he calls out. "I'm gonna come in as low as I can before cruisin' in to our island. Last thing we want is to get seen."

The Shephard household had a rule when Adrian was growing up, and that rule was: whatever money you made at a job outside the home, you shared some of that with the family. Made sense, really. Wasn't a lot of money to go 'round at the time, between one thing and another (which is to say, between five children, three of them born within two years). If everybody chipped in, nobody had to cough up too much. Easier all 'round, really. Of course, it made for a few problems, one of which was that 'old enough to work' and 'old enough to drive' tended to overlap a bunch. There might've been guys in the county who made enough money on their own to buy cars before they graduated, but Adrian wasn't one of 'em. The best he could manage was a rusting-out hulk of an old Buell motorcycle that a man at the church in Terra Alta was trying to get rid of, and then, one by one, the parts to get the thing working. For a year and a half, if he wasn't at school, he was busting his ass at the sporting goods store on Main Street, and if he wasn't there he was in the garage, battling the thing into working condition.

That kind of experience leaves a mark. Shephard's a country boy, there's no denying it, but he's also got a deep and abiding fondness for garages and things with motors that dates to that part of his life. That's why he's in the Milliways garage now, wandering up and down the aisles full of more cars than he's ever seen in one place in his life, and thinking. They're going back soon, deploying to active duty. Which, not a problem. He'd be in the wrong line of work if he wasn't willing to deploy on a moment's notice. The problem is what they've got him doing. If the Resistance has a helicopter pilot who isn't him, nobody's told him about it.

There's a total of three things in this world that Shephard's afraid of, and flying's one of 'em.

Some men are born pilots. Shephard's known guys like that. Two of them died when the original Goose-7 Osprey got shot down over Black Mesa. He's never understood guys like that, just stood back and watched from afar while they worked their miracles in the cockpit. Having to do their job, now, and do it better than they did... yeah, that's not reassuring at all. There's got to've been a mistake somewhere. Something's got to be wrong. This can't be what he's supposed to be doing.

If Alyx Vance were one of his commanding officers in the Corps he'd've found a way to ask respectfully if there weren't someone better suited to the job, but he can't do that under the circumstances. He already knows what the answer'd be. There's someone else he reckons he can ask, though, and the way he sees it, the good Lord's just as likely to hear him down here among the machines he knows as He is anywhere else that Shephard might be. Which is why Shephard stops with his fingers just barely touching the hood of an Aston-Martin (probably cost someone more than all the cars in Rowlesburg combined) and closes his eyes a moment.

Lord, You know what You're doing. I don't. I think we're both pretty clear on that. I need to ask You a favor, and I'm really sorry for that, since I know I've asked a whole lot of You lately. I'm gonna keep it down, I promise. There's just something I need to know before we go on any further. I'm not real comfortable with this whole 'pilot' thing. I'll do it if I have to, though. That's what I need to know, Lord. Would You mind just letting me know, just a little, whether this is really what You want me doing? I don't even care how, just give me some kind of hint or sign or something whether I really need to be in that cockpit or not? It's not much of a prayer by his standards, but it'll have to do. He lifts his hand away and keeps going, and at the next intersection of aisles in the garage, he turns left instead of right.

There are a lot of different vehicles under Milliways, it happens. Mal Reynolds could tell you not all of them have wheels- but not all of them have starship engines, either. Rotors'll do quite a lot of 'em just fine.

The first shape Shephard makes out for certain in the semidarkness is a great hulking blue-black beast with a minigun's barrels protruding from the front end; he half expects to catch sight of Roy Scheider in the cockpit. The second is far slenderer, with a severely plain black paint job (save for the word Tiger painted in white on the left-hand side) that reminds him briefly of the hunter-chopper he and Chell stole. And as for the third, it's all smooth lines and curves where the others are angles, dark above and pale below like a sea fish. He'd know it anywhere-

Shit my fuckin' ass, Lord, but is that one on the end Airwolf?!

There's a pause.

... sorry, sir, You know how I get. Guess that's my sign. Thank You, sir. Amen.

He might be down here a while.

Shephard ducked out of the base this morning to make a fast run to Milliways. No offense to Freeman or the people who make decisions around here, but he's not about to leave base defense in the hands of one civilian, no matter what civilian it is. Thank God that General Rogers was there, that's all he's saying... and that, upon checking, someone refueled the helicopter.

Shephard hates that thing with all his guts, but they need air cover if they're going to pull through a Strider battle. He's been briefed. If it comes down to his sensibilities versus the survival of the base, well, he's just gonna have to throw up and make like he likes it.

So he'll be flying today, but he can't do that without a gunner, which is why there's a rapping on the wall of the women's dorm and a hoarsely whispered "Chell?".

The remains of his hastily bolted dinner (headcrab jerky soaked in hot water and eaten in a corner of the base where he wouldn't be asked to make conversation) behind him, Gordon dusted off his hands and started making his way back towards the sleeping quarters. Whatever else the other rebels might be doing tonight, he was entirely too tired to want much more than sleep. He had a feeling Alyx felt much the same way. Might as well get some rest before that Combine data packet got cracked, or before the Combine forces themselves showed up.

About halfway there he made a detour. Men's room. Some things were more important than sleep.

Gordon had just finished at the urinal when the door slid open. He ignored it. Nobody needed a greeting in the men's room at this hour, frankly, and given that the other man didn't stop he figured they both felt the same way. It wasn't until he looked up from washing his hands that he realized the man who'd just zipped up wasn't dressed like any Resistance member Gordon had ever seen. As a matter of fact, he was wearing fatigues- the urban camouflage fatigues of the HECU Marines.

There was absolutely no way this could be happening. Absolutely none. And so he stood there, staring, until the other man looked at him with rapidly widening eyes. When he finally made a squeak of sound it was in response to the fact that Adrian Shephard had just hauled off and punched him, hard, before saying "Now we're even, Freeman," and stalking out of the room.

The chopper's made good time, for all that Adrian's periodically had to circle around, double back, or otherwise divert from his planned course. He's thrown off his pursuers or left them in pieces on the ground, and he's taken down a dropship or two (one he considers a confirmed kill, and one he thinks might've made it out alive- but no way in hell will it survive much longer). For a novice pilot, he's been doing pretty well.

They're coming up on the White Forest base, though. That means he's going to have to land soon, and he doesn't like that prospect one bit. "Hey, you two," he calls over his shoulder. "Buckle up if you can 'n hold on real tight if you can't. We're gonna need to do some fancy dancing to let these folks know we ain't a hostile if we're gonna land anytime soon."

The soldiers of the Combine do not know fear. That was taken away from them. Most of them thought little of it before and think nothing of it after. They have no use, no need for fear; one more weakness that the human species had, that was all. It means nothing.

They do not know many other things. Pain, for one. To them the sensation of pain is replaced by a knowledge of damage and functional impairment. The nerves that would otherwise carry the signal have been overridden and put to other uses. Uncertainty, for another. Doubt is replaced by percentage assessments of probabilities.

A thing they do know is anticipation. Their assumption into the forces of the Universal Union did not take that away. It was much too useful a tool, the human capacity to consider chances and feel some preliminary measure of reward for contemplating the possibility of successful result. Left in place, the human capacity to extrapolate positive and negative outcomes, and sample the eventual response thereto, was a far more powerful means of ensuring the Overwatch forces' obedience for far fewer resources than virtually any other option. So while they cannot fear the consequences of failure, they can know them and avoid them; and they can know the consequences of success, and allow the contemplation of that reward to boost their own efficiency and guide their actions.

There is much to anticipate in dropship 3A-C31. The reward set for expunging standard anticitizens is considerable. The reward for mass cauterization is even greater. The soldiers in 3A-C31 have been subsumed into a direct action against the primary critical nexus of anticitizen infectious activity. Successful debridement of the White Forest site will open up multiple pathways to the complete destruction of all residual resistance pockets. For this, the reward will be beyond imagining.

So they wait. And they anticipate. And when the radio receivers in their helmets crackle into life, they sit up straight as one, awaiting their orders.

What they receive is something else.

"-workin', Calhoun? Okay then-"

A human voice. Male. Uncontrolled, unmodulated, unmodified. Resistance signal? On this frequency?

"This is Corporal Adrian Shephard, United States Marine Corps, speakin' to you sumbitches in the dropship up ahead. Me'n my crew've been tailin' you a good little while now 'n you ain't called for backup or air support, so I figure that fuckin' bug you're ridin' in can't see us."

The soldiers in 3A-C31 do not bother to look at each other. They would see nothing useful by it. They do, however, move to ready their firearms and rappelling gear; they may have need of them shortly.

"I just wanted to tell you one thing: this is for Tower 'n Jackson. You fuckers ain't from Xen, but you'll do anyway."

"Chell, target that dicklicker's ass and fire."

Adrian Shephard likes to think of himself as a pretty adaptable man. Throw him into a strange situation in a new environment and he takes to it quickly, under just about any circumstances you could care to name. Mama Shephard saw to it that all her kids grew up like that. It's served her middle child well in all kinds of places and situations, whether it involved a flood almost wiping out his hometown when he was a boy, or being thrown into basic training straight out of high school, or waking up in the belly of an underground research facility after a plane crash. Shoot, even going from escaping that facility to the middle of nowhere twenty years after the fact wasn't all that hard to adapt to, with his upbringing and training.

But there are some things he's just not prepared for, and while he tries to deal with those as best he can, the usual coping mechanisms don't always work so well. He's had to suppress his dislike of flying before. Getting shot out of the sky over Black Mesa turned that dislike into a fear, which he could cope with, but now-

Well, now he's got to use a helicopter, which is pretty much the flying machine that most wants to kill its passengers as far as he knows. And even better, he's got to pilot the damned thing, because of his two current companions one is too incapacitated by head injury and drugs to even sit up straight and the other one's never so much as been behind the wheel of a car.

They didn't exactly cover this in Basic. You'll excuse Shephard for singing quietly under his breath to try and keep himself on an even keel. It's a long way to wherever it is they're going and he can only read about a third of the navigational instruments in front of him.

"...clear blue skies over Germany
Came a roar and a thunder men had never heard
Like the screamin' sound of a big war bird.

Up in the sky, a man in a plane
Baron Von Ricthofen was his name..."

Outside the bugs might still be screaming. It's hard to say. The humans operating the floodlights came forward to grab Chell and Adrian as soon as they saw them- well, to grab Chell. Shephard almost got shot, because when the antlions are swarming and the bullets are flying, a gas mask looks an awful lot like a Combine full face helmet.

Someone saw what they were about to shoot in time, though, so Shephard avoided that fate. They're inside now, being led through the narrow corridors of some sort of concealed base. 'Led' is the operative word, as Shephard is still trying to recover from having floodlights turned on while using his mask's night vision functionality.

"So," says the human closest to Chell, a dark-skinned woman with her shotgun slung over her shoulders. "What's your story, anyway?"

The church basement full of headcrabs turned out to have a small supply of canned food stashed away, although a few of the older cans had to be discarded (Adrian gave Chell a few quick lessons on botulism, what caused it, and why it was bad). The last building they searched had some ammo that was suitable for the Desert Eagle, but rounds for Shephard's main gun were nowhere in sight. He did, however, locate the remains of a sporting goods store. Nearly all the good stuff had been taken long ago, but there were arrowheads left in a few places, and a number of aluminum and fiberglass shafts, some vanes, and a tube of glue that hadn't gone to rot or dried up. He kept them all, along with a hatchet they managed to turn up.

"Gonna have to see if we can't find somethin' to turn into a bowstring," he mutters as they continue on their way the next day. "I dunno if any of these Xen oogieboogies've got sinews I can use, but it's worth a shot."

They're still in fairly open country, at least compared to the dense forests they'd been traveling through before emerging into the weird three-legged thing's range. This must've been farmland once. The trees're too young and the soil too good (Adrian dug up a sample to have a look) for their sparseness to indicate a disaster; they're just new. There was a time when this was human country.

The winding, recessed strip, for that matter, is too regular to have been a streambed. Yes, it turns and twists in places, but no real watercourse puts up with being very straight for very long. There's always something variable to it. Once upon a time, this was a road- a small, poorly paved road, but a road- and it went somewhere.

Shephard is dead silent as they make their way down the track. Even the hissing of his breath through his mask is muted.

Adrian and Chell have been traveling for several days now. It's become more and more obvious as they go just why nobody's out here in the wilderness any more. The Xenian wildlife's been much more in evidence as the forests've thinned out: headcrabs, bullsquids, purplish croaking one-eyed things, packs of small chirping dog-creatures with one end full of eyes and a powerful sonic attack. There's still Earth wildlife about, but what doesn't fly tends to be furtive and fleeting at best.

It's made Adrian cranky and taciturn. He grew up a country boy, and while he might be on the conservative side in a lot of areas, you don't go poisoning nature or letting things go in places where the local life isn't adapted to what you're releasing. That's just not right. At least there's been plants to forage. Autumn's coming, but late summer vegetation's still in evidence, and there've been edible fungi to be found. And bugs. He's had no problem eating those and offering the plants and such to Chell. Or the bugs, if she's shown willing, but he really doesn't expect her to go for those. Civilians and city folk generally don't.

At any rate, they've finally emerged from the densest part of the forest and into what looks like it might've been farm country once. The trees here are farther between and definitely young, and something that's either a dry streambed or the remains of a road can be made out up ahead...

Corporal Shephard's had plenty of time to think over the course of his hours on sentry duty. That patch of skyglow in the northwest looks pretty real to him; it might just be their only crack at finding a population center. He hasn't seen any signs of industrialization during his travels up until now, either human or Combine. Fair Chance was a subsistence community at best, and they were scared of him, anyway. He's got no orders, no Corps, no country-

No, that's not true. It comes down to this: America exists so long as one Marine is left alive to defend her, and by God, it looks like he's that Marine.

Kind of daunting. But it's still something.

Anyway. Staying here's not gonna do him any good. Going back to Fair Chance with Chell's not gonna help either. Even if whatever's causing the skyglow is Combine-held, it's at least something; if there's even the slightest chance of human community, he needs to join up with them and find out what's going on. Finding other people who can fill him and Chell in better than the Fair Chance folks wouldn't hurt, either.

They'll move once there's enough light for Chell to see by, then, but they've got to prepare first. Priority: go hunting for whatever water source that bullsquid came out of. He needs water. So does she. Both of them are going to need other supplies too, as long as they're at it. At least it's late summer or so. The plants around here're similar enough to the things growing around his old Preston County stomping grounds that it's almost enough to make him homesick. More important than that is the fact that it means he's got a good chance of finding them edibles.

Once Chell is awake, anyway.

Shephard comes awake three and a half hours after he laid down for his nap. It's a talent of his- he hasn't needed an alarm clock to wake himself up in years. He yawns, sits up, and stretches both arms over his head.

"Mornin', Chell," he says, though it's still dark out. "Situation report?"

1. He's from the town of Rowlesburg, in Preston County, West by-God-SMILE-when-you-say-that Virginia. This is, to put it bluntly, holler country. The major industries in the area are coal and lumber. Mostly coal. There's farming in the area, and white-water rafting on the Cheat River (class IV and V rapids nearby), but Rowlesburg is a small town (we're talking six hundred people, total) in an economically slow area- or was, before the Combine came.

2. He's the third of five children and the middle of the three boys: girl, boy, Adrian, girl, boy. The last two were a pair of fraternal twins born about a year after Adrian, which is part of why there were only five kids in the Shephard family instead of six; that many very young children in the house at once put Mrs. Shephard off having any more kids at all, ever.

3. His father ran a pretty successful satellite TV business, since cable TV doesn't run out to the hollers and people will do a lot to get decent television. His mother was a stay-at-home mom with a serious vegetable garden bordering on a small farm, a couple of chickens, and some beehives. The veggies and the chickens were for feeding the family. The beehives were for selling honey- and for shipping bees to farmers around Preston County who needed an extra boost of pollinators.

4. When the Cheat River flooded in 1985 (a century flood that wiped out the nearby town of Albright), Adrian was six years old. He has some vague memories of National Guardsmen helping evacuate people and working with the townsfolk to save as much of the town as they could. The Shephard family was mostly spared- nobody died, and the house had been built on high enough ground not to get inundated- but the beehives and a chunk of the farm went down hard. It took a lot of work to make up for that come spring.

5. Adrian's older sister and older brother both went to college; state school, and on multiple small scholarships each (academic and sporting alike), but still. Adrian probably could've gone to college himself, but he really wanted to get out of Rowlesburg and start making a name for himself as soon as possible. When the Marine Corps recruiter turned up at the county high school he jumped at the chance, and had the full blessing of his entire family. Military service is something of a tradition for people who want to get out of Rowlesburg, and it's generally understood that sooner or later they come back. Adrian figured he'd probably do that eventually.

6. Adrian is an accomplished swimmer and outdoorsman. He's not that fond of organized sports other than hockey and rugby; he feels most of them are too tame. Yes, that includes football. He likes hunting, though. Something like half the meat in the Shephard family freezer at any given time was wild-caught, either by him or one of his uncles. His father had no particular love for hunting, but was deeply fond of fishing, and took each of his sons out regularly when the fish were biting.

7. Adrian would've liked to learn the violin in high school, but never got the chance, as the instrument was expensive even to rent. Drums, on the other hand, were not a problem, and he was in the marching band in high school. Had he gone to college there would probably have been a band scholarship in it for him. He's good on drums.

8. Adrian dislikes politics intensely, on the grounds that most politicians wouldn't know life on the ground if it bit them. Nevertheless he's a registered voter, though he's generally favored third-party candidates. He voted Nader in the 2000 presidential election because he wanted the mining companies in the Rowlesburg area to clean up their act, and he didn't trust Al Gore to do the job. He regretted that decision after the fact. (ETA: Shephard is of the opinion that if they were still around he'd probably vote for the Bull Moose Party, but he'd prefer they not have that plank about limiting naval armaments and that they put an actual antitrust plank in the platform. He also admires Teddy Roosevelt's attitude towards conservation: wildlife and wilderness are resources to be managed so that they can be used. Essentially, preserve wildlife so that there'll always be enough to shoot at.)

9. He's a Kinsey zero and gets intensely uncomfortable dealing with visible or open indicators of anything higher on the Kinsey scale than that, but he won't talk about it or give people a hard time about it if he can avoid it. He'll just change the subject, get out of the conversation, or otherwise attempt to avoid the person in question. If people start asking him about it his response essentially consists of "Did I ask? Did I indicate I wanted to know? No!" and the like.

10. He's a Methodist. His family usually went to the Corinth United Methodist Church in Terra Alta.

To the ears of someone accustomed to the sounds of a human city in their heydays, or the sounds of Milliways, it's quiet. There's no machinery to be heard anywhere, no engines of any kind. There's no music trickling through the background. There's no sound of human speech.

To someone used to the sounds of wilderness, it's only moderately quiet. Insects are going more dormant as evening draws on, and birds are still twittering to one another, though they're one by one roosting and dropping off to sleep. Tree branches and undergrowth chatter in the occasional breeze, the last gasps of anything like summer before autumn gets its chance to shine.

And the fire hisses and pops, crackling gleefully in its little pit. That's probably the first thing someone newly awakened under the late evening sky will notice in the little clearing, unless it's the worn and torn burlap underneath them, or the former saplings stripped down to poles on either side.

The only other human in the clearing doesn't even figure into it; he's on the other side of the fire, holding still in his camouflage fatigues and dark green vest, and isn't likely to be noticed under the best of circumstances. At least, not just yet.