He felt the air get thicker as the sludge beneath him rose, his ears almost bleeding from the sheer volume of the klaxon reverberating across the room.

Concrete and steel, all cold as ice, unyielding and all-encompassing, trapping him like fly in the spiderweb. No way to escape, no way out. Nothing to do but watch as the final grains of sand drip down the hourglass, the bulkhead before him refusing to yield.

And behind the observation window, those expressionless eyes, hand idly brushing down a flawless suit. Uncaring and unyielding, just like the walls around him.

Watching as the sludge reaches up to his feet.

Watching as he futilely struggles against the sludge dissolving metal, cloth and flesh, never blinking or breaking eye contact until he sinks below and knows only darkness.

He hears the sheets loudly protesting with a tearing sound before his flailing limbs tear themselves free, a choking scream escaping his throat as his hand reflexively flies beneath his pillow, grasping the cold steel of his sidearm, eyes darting around looking for enemies lurking in the darkness.

The darkness of his room.

His entire body reflexively flinches when a hand grasps his shoulder, taking every inch of his willpower to restrain himself from lashing out with his elbow to give him enough time to take aim just like he was taught.

"Hey, hey! It's me. Calm down."

Eyes following the movement like those of a bound animal, he watches her arm reach over him and grab the tissue on the nightstand before nudging his head up from the pillow and wiping the cold sweat from his forehead.

"Sit up."

Forcing his breath to stop hyperventilating long enough for him to swallow, he pries his fingers off their death grip on his weapon. Just do what one is told, like a good soldier.

He doesn't protest when she pries off his sweat-drenched shirt to wipe his body. It happened before more times than he cared to count and likely will happen in the future more time than he dares to predict, so there was nothing that needed to be said.

"Should I get the pills?"

"...no, I'm good."

"You're sure?"

"...yeah."

He wasn't. But right now, sleep didn't look so enticing. Sleep meant dreams and dreams meant nightmares.

Frankly, he has had fucking enough of nightmares.

But being drugged to sleep too deeply to dream was arguably worse. Just the darkness. Just the... nothing. Exactly like the last time he had seen Him outside his nightmares.

The mere thought of those eyes made him shiver beneath his wife's concerned gaze.

He felt the bed shift under him as she got up and walked out of the bedroom. After glancing towards the door to confirm that she was gone, he reflexively reached under his pillow.

Still there. Good.

He turned his attention to the clock on his nightstand next. 3:14 AM, July 14, 2028. His room, in the heart of Berlin.

Both far away from the time and place of his nightmares. Good.

He heard her come back into the room, glass of water in her hand.

"Told you I don't need the pills."

"I didn't bring them. Drink."

Beyond his ingrained training, beyond their relationship, he did as told. He simply didn't have the energy to refuse; hell, didn't have the energy to even think.

Besides, his parched throat demanded relief anyway and annihilated the contents of the glass in barely a few seconds. – "Thanks."

He didn't receive a response but needed none. She was simply like that: put up with him and his nightmares day after day, month after month, year after year, without expecting anything in return. And he was well and truly aware that if not for her, he likely wouldn't have made it so far without putting a bullet into his own brain just to end those nightmares for good. Even the psychiatrists weren't miracle workers: they got him back on his feet, but couldn't fix his limp.

For him, she was the only one who could help. Well, one of two.

"How is she?"

"Still asleep."

"Sorry."

"Don't apologize. I know you can't help it."

And he really couldn't. But at least his daughter wasn't affected by it. A seven month old tends not to have that much of a grasp on human behavior, after all. On the other hand, he morbidly noted to himself that if there was one thing his nightmares were good for, it was preparing his wife for a baby's notoriously erratic sleep patterns.

"What was it this time?"

"The room. With the sludge."

"And him?"

"...y-yeah."

She was the only one he ever told about Him. The only one he dared to tell. What could he say without being seen as even more crazy than he already was? Even he didn't know what to think. Sometimes, he doubted whether He wasn't just a hallucination - but that would've raised even more questions. Like how he was still alive. Or outside the Eye of Xen, for that matter, seeing how the swirling spatial anomaly yawning out into space from where North America used to be has been an impassable obstacle for nearly 30 years now.

Or how he made it out of that room, unlike in his nightmare.

Or how he was biologically 20 years younger than he should be.

No. He definitely was real.

Which just terrified him even more.

Hell, he didn't even know whether his gun would even work on Him if He were to just pop into existence in his bedroom right now. But that didn't stop him from fantasizing in the affirmative: shoving Him up against the wall, shoving his gun into the bastard's mouth hard enough to break teeth and pulling the trigger again and again and again and again until he has an empty clip and He has a bloody stump for a neck. And he'd enjoy every microsecond of it.

Frankly, hate really helped him going. Fear and hate, directed at one target.

'Fuck this dark side shit. I just want to live in peace.'

He spent the rest of the night wide awake, staring at the ceiling as sleep eluded him until dawn's light seeped in though the curtains.

It wasn't until he sat in the kitchen sipping his morning coffee that his thoughts finally wandered away to different matters as he saw his wife exit the room she set up as her research corner when she went on maternal leave. – "What are you working on?"

"Synthetic consciousness theory." – she replied

"...I have no idea what that is."

"Interchangeability of biological and artificial minds. I'm almost done with it, actually. These past months at home really helped."

"At least something good came out of it, then."

She thumbed towards their daughter's room. – "What, she isn't good enough for you?"

"I'm kidding."

"I know." – she replied with a small smile, well used to his antics now. As weird as some people thought him for his preferences towards certain TV shows in his youth, humor served very well at keeping his mind distracted away from the circumstances his life was forced to go through... not to mention that she herself found it refreshing to date and eventually marry someone whose attitude towards science was not tainted by Black Mesa and the Occupation. He still remembered the street protests around the spaceports when the final components of the orbital waygate were being loaded; luckily, it didn't turn violent enough to warrant deploying the army but there was still the fact that some people were of the opinion that humanity shouldn't be using this technology at all after what happened, let alone go on an extrasolar colonization spree before even having fully charted the Sol system.

For what it's worth, he knew that if someone would've told him in his youth that he'd get laid by a hot German redhead for being a Trekkie and their daughter would be born when interstellar travel was no longer science fiction, he would've laughed in their face.

"Anyway, I'm thinking of some new research, but I don't know if I can get what I need for it." – she continued.

"Why, what do you need?"

"Neural tissue autopsy reports of a Combine Advisor."

His eyebrows immediately jumped straight up to his hairline. – "What the hell do you need that for?"

"I know about the eyewitness reports saying that they have something like telekinesis and telepathy, but the suits that were pulled off dead ones for study do not include any kind of gravity manipulation beyond its own propulsion system, let alone anything that can manipulate neural activity in a human brain without physical contact. So it's got to be something innate to the creature." – she explained, idly reaching behind her neck to scratch at the hairline. – "I looked up comparative studies between its neuron structure and human neuron structure, but I need more details."

"You've got weird ideas for fun." – he deadpanned.

"It's not weird."

"It is."

"Is not."

"Is."

"Not."

"You're talking about making people throw shit around with their brain."

"No, I'm talking about figuring out why they can do it and why we can't."

"That's the same thing."

"It's not." – she insisted. – "Even if I knew the difference, it's not as if I could just flip a switch in the DNA and turn it on. If the brain is missing that part, it's not going to just suddenly be there unless someone figures out how to write it into the DNA from scratch at the zygote stage without damaging anything else, which is centuries beyond our current level of bioengineering."

"Why don't you just ask the vorts? They know those things inside out."

She opened her mouth to reply but paused before raising a finger. – "...you're on to something there."

Before she could've continued, however, a highly distinctive sound both of them knew very well by this point came from deeper in the apartment. He was about to get up but she beat him to the punch and left the kitchen first. It was just as well, though; he had to report in at the garrison in an hour anyway. Some people would think that after all he had seen, he'd be sick to his stomach of fighting and enjoy a civilian life.

But it's not as if he'd be able to do anything else with his life at this point. If able-bodied people with formal military training wouldn't have been in short enough supply these days that the military was actively offering them an automatic officer's commission as an enlistment incentive, he'd still have walked into the recruitment office as soon as he was cleared to be mentally fit for duty. It's simply what he did and after all the crap he had to put up at Pendleton before getting sent to Santego, he'd rather not have it go to waste by getting cold feet and hiding away somewhere the next time a bunch of space slugs decided to reenact War of the Worlds.

Besides... as his eyes fell upon the sleepily blinking infant in his wife's arms, he knew one thing for sure. If anything good came out of losing twenty years of his life, it was being put in the right place at the right time to have the family he had right now.

On a nearby rooftop, a lone figure stood silhouetted against the nearly full moon about to set on the western horizon as if fleeing from the morning sun, hand reaching up to idly adjust a tie. – "Why did you... release it?" – He spoke to thin air with a slow, unnatural drawl.

Next to Him, the fabric of reality twisted and a marble-sized orb appeared in the air, ever-twisting white zebra patterns the only thing marring its otherwise pitch black surface. – "Why shouldn't I have?"

"I put it inside you for a... reason."

"He won't talk. No one would believe him and he knows."

"You could have... just... ended it. Put it sommmewhere a human body cannot... survive."

"What's the fun in that?" – the orb quipped, playfulness echoing in her tone. – "Besides, you didn't kill Freeman either once you were done with him."

"It would be... a waste of effort."

"So would be his death. Besides, he could still be of use later on."

"I doubt it. It is... broken."

"Didn't you say to him once that you have a fascination for those who adapt and survive against all odds?" – the orb pointed out. – "Even if he's unusable himself, with any luck, he might have passed that trait down to his offspring. I've looked at his mate's research materials; she's surprisingly intelligent for her species. Intelligence and survival instinct would make a powerful combination in that child. Not unlike that female you used alongside Freeman."

"I find your... optimism... a curious matter. But I shall... humor you... this time. It makes no... difffference either way."

"What about the female you were considering for use?"

"The seed has been... planted. When the time... comes... they will be ready to fulfill their purpose."

On his other side, reality twisted once more as a slender figure of pure golden crystal materialized, wreathed in golden flames that did not cast light or shadow on its surroundings. – "Bah, I don't care for using these... vermin. They are hardly worth the effort to even bother exterminating them. They cannot possibly stand a chance against the traitors."

"Their weakness... is their strength." – the Man replied in a knowing tone of one who knew more than anyone in that regard. – "It is why I chose... them... for this."

"But they are only Li-"

"Do not question me."

"...yes, my Lord." – The next moment, the golden figure was engulfed in a perfectly black sphere and vanished without a trace.

"You know he might just burn this world anyway once you're done with them, right?" – the orb remarked.

"It matters not."

With that, He faded away as well.

And if the orb would've had a face, she would've smiled. And not in her earlier mischievous way either.

Memories reaching across time itself to call forth the image of a red-armored titan roaring across the battlefield on wings of fire, foes scattering in its path from axe and shell and rocket and laser and particle beam, yet more foes simply crumpling under 1000+ ton feet of metal and flesh and cybernetics. An avenging demon at the forefront of the last generation to have touched the soil that gave them life, fighting an eternal war against enemies numbering in the infinite with no hope of victory, yet fighting all the same. Refusing to yield, refusing to fade away, refusing the embrace of oblivion, raging against the heavens that refused to tolerate their existence alongside themselves.

And at the helm of the titan, a woman whose name was engraved into history, calling her brethren, men and women who are like brothers and sisters and sons and daughters to her, to battle in the twilight hours of humanity so that there will be a dawn.

"Oh, you'll choke on those words, 06... and I will love watching every second of it."

This is a small side-oneshot (AKA omake) for an ongoing story of mine and will not make any sense without having read the main story.

...though to be fair, it will not make any more sense otherwise either due to trying not to spoil too much.

The middle portion of this was inspired by a recent discovery of mine that keeping Shephard's canon age of 23 while sticking with my story's timeline of Black Mesa taking place in 1998 (which is naturally not canon but let's face it, some of the technology at Black Mesa was too anachronistic to have taken place even in the early 2000s of our universe anyway) means that he was in his early teens when Star Trek TNG aired, meaning he very well could've seen the original run on TV in his youth. Same with Gordon, who would've been in his late teens and potentially inspired by it enough to pursue higher education into a scientific career.