Half Life and Portal Crossover Fan Fiction

Aurora

By Kraven Ergeist and Shibata Kimiko

Chapter One

A/N: For Doug's backstory, read the comic "Portal: Lab Rat", available on the Portal website in the Downloads section. It'll clear up a lot of stuff!

Gordon held a finger to his lips, indicating silence as he pressed his back to a wall, peering around the corner. Beside him, Alyx stood with her pistol at the ready, nodding, with a fierce look in her dark green eyes. Ever since her father died, Gordon noticed Alyx had been…colder, more distant. Perhaps it was the weight of leadership of the resistance on her shoulders. Or the burden of her father's dying words, lingering on her psyche. Or maybe it was just the fact that, with her and Gordon away from White Forest, leadership fell to Barney. While Kleiner and Magnusson were technically his senior, they were pencil pushers, not leaders. Barney had seen his share of combat, and the Resistance trusted him. And so she trusted him.

The question now was did she trust herself anymore?

Alyx had been a mess after what had happened to her father. By the time things had settled down, Gordon hadn't been sure she would have come with him to the Borealis. He could manage on his own, of course, but he trusted Alyx. It was always easier plunging headlong into danger with someone he could rely on as implicitly as her. As loathe as he was to put her in harm's way, he definitely felt safer when she was around. And he had to admit, she could take care of herself, at least, for the most part.

Especially now, after they had landed. The Borealis was in a sad state. Having ported seemingly into midair, it now lay lopsided against a snowy mountain face, its cargo littering the icy terrain in a hopeless tumble of crates, broken boxes and twisted metal. The only reason it was still more or less upright had been because its landing had sunken it several feet into the hard packed snow and ice. Getting inside had been tricky – more than once, Gordon found himself wishing Dog had been able to come along to help clear away things that his gravity gun couldn't handle. But his and Alyx's absence would strain the Resistance's manpower enough as it was without losing Dog too. And besides, he was sure that Dog would have exceeded the helicopter's weight capacity by a severe margin.

Undeterred, the two of them had made their way into the wreckage, hoping to find some trace of Judith or any clue that might point them to where she had gone. They hadn't run into any Combine or head-crabs, but then again, neither had they found any trace of Dr. Mossman.

Until Gordon had heard something around the corner of what had once been the galley.

Peering around the metal bulkhead, he aimed down the scope of his crossbow, trying to figure out where the noise had come from. It sounded close, and small – possibly a person, possibly an animal. He couldn't make anything out from the angle they were at, but he could see signs of activity – open boxes, open cabinets, containers of food scattered about the tables.

No question. Someone was there.

He nodded to Alyx, who nodded in return, her brow set in hard lines that didn't suit her normally sincere and playful face. Losing her father had forced her to grow up, he was slowly realizing. He had admired her since the day they had met. She was strong, dutiful, steadfast, and never seemed to lack for a positive outlook. But that was slowly changing. They had spent the helicopter ride largely in silence. Not a single humorous word had left her lips, and it was clear to Gordon that Alyx thought of herself as a leader now, someone in charge of thousands, who couldn't afford to make any more mistakes.

It was a mindset, Gordon knew, that promised an unhappy and dogged life, following by an early, stress induced grave. He would have to do something about it later. But at that moment, he was more concerned about who they had stumbled upon in the Borealis' galley. Stumbled upon being the operative word. As the two of them approached the dining area, they came into sight of a strange looking box on the floor of the mess hall, the cabinets overhead open and empty. If Gordon didn't know any better, it almost looked like someone had used the box to reach the top shelf. The box was perfectly cubic, with jutting edges that looked like shock absorbers. He had seen several such blocks across the ship, usually demarked with Aperture Laboratories logos on all sides (Black Mesa's former competitor certainly had the brand loyalty game in its pocket, Gordon reflected). What made the block strange was the pink heart shapes that lay marked where the logo usually sat.

And then he saw her. The orange jumpsuit was black and brown from use, its top half tied about the waist (despite the arctic cold, the ship interior was well insulated, and surprisingly warm on the inside), leaving only a graying white tank top with an Aperture Laboratories logo across the chest, and what looked to be another blue undershirt beneath that and dark gray spandex leggings under her jumpsuit. On her feet were durable looking white boots, with shock absorbers that looked like they had been based on similar technology to what Dr. Vance's prosthetic leg was designed from.

The girl was sitting on the table, the usefulness of the attached picnic table style benches seemingly lost on her, and bent over with a fork, shoveling beans out of a can and into her mouth like a starving person. One look at her bare arms and gaunt face revealed that she was bordering on malnourishment, and her dark hair was sweaty and unkempt, hanging about her gray, frantic looking eyes.

"Freeze!" Alyx said before Gordon could do anything, pointing her gun at the girl.

The girl looked up, startled. She didn't move. She had a mouthful of food, a drop of sauce clinging to her lower lip as she stared back at them, befuddled. Her eyes were wide, and Gordon wasn't sure if she was about to attack them or bolt.

Evidently, the latter.

"Hey!" Alyx yelped as the girl took off in the other direction. "I said freeze!"

Gordon scrambled over skidded tables that bunched together at odd angles on the sloped floor, as the girl took off down the galley. She had the heart adorned weighted storage cube under her arm, he realized, which he thought odd, as well as disquieting. He had run into a few such cubes, and they had required the use of his gravity gun to even move. How strong was this girl? And what was in this box of hers?

She rounded a corner that went back down the incline of the hallway, Gordon and Alyx hot on her heels. The hallway was dark, and they could hear the sound of her gasping breath, her voice high and terrified. He switched on his flashlight and saw her running flat out, not in any way slowed by her burden.

"That was an Aperture Laboratories jumpsuit," Alyx huffed as she strode to keep pace with her partner. "She might be an employee…"

Or someone in the wrong place at the wrong time…Gordon thought, but he didn't give voice to his thought.

The girl reached an intersection, and grabbed a bar on the wall allowing her to swing herself around ninety degrees to keep running, but the sharp turn caused the storage cube to fly out of her hands with a dull clunk. She froze, turned around to clamber for the cube, and tore back off down the hallway once she had it at a dead run, her voice ragged and gasping.

What's in that storage cube…? Gordon wondered. Whatever it was, it seemed to be important to her. An idea formed in his head as he rounded the corner. He judged the distance she had gained from them and took aim with his gravity gun.

The girl suddenly turned around with a gasp as the cube flew out of her hands, tumbling backwards towards her pursuers, before leaping into the air to fly towards the man in the glasses, and hover ominously before the barrel of the gravity gun.

She stared in incomprehension for just a moment, before she ran back towards the pair, a look of desperation on her face.

"That's far enough!" Alyx called, leveling her gun at the girl.

She didn't even react to the threat, and charged at Gordon with outstretched arms. Gordon held his hand up in front of Alyx, who blinked and held her fire. He raised the gravity gun to point it at the ceiling as the girl reached them, holding the peculiar storage cube over his head and out of reach.

The strange girl reached for it, jumped for it, Gordon nimbly keeping it out of her hands, all the while Alyx kept her gun aimed at her, mistrusting. But the girl in the Aperture Labs outfit made no effort to hurt them apart from laying her hand on Gordon's shoulders to better reach the strange cube.

"Ahh….ahhh!" she cried as she leapt for it. There were tears running down her face, her voice choking on sobbing gasps with each jump. There was a look of desperate panic on her face.

"Hey, hey, take it easy!" Alyx called, lowering her gun. "We'll give you your cube back, we just need to ask you a few questions."

As if to confirm, Gordon lowered his gun, bringing the cube within reach. The girl grabbed onto it franticly, pulling on it to try to yank it away from the pair, but the gravity gun was still powered on, and the cube barely moved, unable to escape the gun's gravity field.

"Calm down!" Alyx said, holstering her gun as she stepped closer. "We're not going to hurt you. Just take a deep breath and talk to us."

Nothing she said seemed to get through to the girl, who continued tugging desperately, trying to dislodge the cube from its imprisonmen, even as Alyx stepped around Gordon to place a hand on her shoulder.

"Hey…can you understand me?"

The girl didn't stop tugging on the cube trapped in Gordon's gravity gun, desperate to pry it loose. Alyx fixed Gordon with a helpless look and stepped back, blocking her exit. Gordon nodded and released the gravity well, and cube came loose as though it had never been stuck. She only needed a step to regain her balance, but she saw the two figures trapping her escape, and she crouched down facing the wall, the cube held tightly in her arms, eyes shut tightly.

"Jeez…what happened to her?" Alyx wondered out loud, eyebrows knit in concern. "She's acting like she just broke out of an insane asylum…"

Gordon slung his gravity gun over his back and bent down on one knee. The girl wasn't crying anymore, but her cheeks were flushed and damp from tears, and she clung to the cube like a security blanket, something familiar to cling to, shaking and trembling. He could see fear and confusion in her eyes, and she was hyperventilating.

"How'd she even get out here?" Alyx was looking up and down the hallways. "If she's the only one here, there'd probably be enough food for her to have survived here for this long, but this place doesn't show any signs of being lived in. It looks as if she just got here. But how? And from where?"

That was something Gordon wanted to know as well. He recognized the signs of recent hibernation – pallid complexion, brittle hair, malnourishment…where had she come from? And what had she gone through while she was there?

She jerked suddenly when he placed a tentative touch on her shoulder, and he was taken aback by the intensity of her eyes. They were a pale gray blue, a fiery look that seemed to consider everything it saw, cunning and calculating despite her apparent lack of sense. He stared back, unblinking, his own deep green eyes matching her gaze. She clung possessively to the cube in her arms, her face taking on a challenging look.

"Muh…muh…" she mouthed, her lips trying to form words. But her eyes were intent and direct. Gordon could see intelligence behind those eyes. But for something was prohibiting her from speaking. She was making syllables, and showed signs of recognition. What had this girl gone through? Had she never been taught how to speak?

He set his hands down on his knees, relaxing his posture. Whoever this girl was, she wasn't a threat. Their eyes remained fixed on one another, the defiance leaving her gaze. She blinked a few times, as though suddenly seeing Gordon for the first time. She turned her head to inspect him curiously, her lips pursing together in a rather endearing sort of pout.

"Hi there…" Alyx leaned down to get a closer look at her. "My name's Alyx and this is Gordon. What's your…"

Before Alyx could finish, the girl shied away from her, edging closer to Gordon, a look of mistrust in her eyes as she stared back at Alyx.

Alyx held her hands up defensively. "Hey…I'm not going to hurt you…"

The young woman didn't appear convinced. Gordon exhaled sharply to mask his laughter.

Alyx's face softened. "Hey…I'm sorry…I know I said some mean things back there…"

She extended a hand towards the girl and she cringed back, now huddled against Gordon for protection.

"Don't be afraid…" Alyx cooed softly, extending her hand. "I'm sorry if I scared you…I just wasn't sure who you were…"

This didn't seem to comfort the girl at all, and Alyx gave up, sitting down on both knees, clasping her hands together in her lap.

"The truth is…" she murmured, looking down at the floor. "I was just as afraid of you as you are of me…"

The girl blinked, looking curiously at Alyx, who was now even lower to the ground than she was. Still clutching the strange cube in one arm, she crawled on hands and knees towards Alyx, who looked up at her with hopeful and sympathetic eyes.

Slowly, the girl reached out her hand, hesitating, before extending her arm out to Alyx Vance. Alyx smiled weakly, offering her hand just as slowly, and their fingers touched.

"What's your name?" Alyx asked.

The girl seemed to hesitate at this. She withdrew her hand and fiddled with the jacket bound around her waist, tugging at a tag and holding it out for Alyx to see.

Alyx read it aloud. "Subject #1498…"

A noise of disappointment resounded in Gordon's throat. It was as he'd feared. She was an Aperture Laboratories test subject, just as much a victim as they all were. That would go a long way towards explaining her childish behavior, as well as the signs of having been in hibernation. She seemed to understand English even if she couldn't form the words herself. But that still didn't explain what she was doing there. Aperture Laboratories had been shut down for years as far as he knew. And they were miles from any facility where she might have woken up from. And like Alyx had said, she couldn't have been living on the Borealis this whole time, or they would have seen traces of her presence.

Unless…maybe the Borealis had hibernation containers of its own, and by some coincidence, she had survived and been woken?

Coincidence…right. She wakes up just as the two of them arrive at the Borealis? Way beyond coincidence. Even if she had arrived by some other means, her presence here was suspicious, even if she herself was innocent. From the look of her, she had no motivations beyond survival, and keeping hold on that storage cube of hers with the hearts on it (had that been part of her testing, he wondered, to try to establish an emotional bond with an inanimate object?). But that didn't mean that she hadn't been sent there for some reason, either by someone (or something) within Aperture Labs, the Combine, or…

"Uh - hey!"

Without a warning, the girl sprang to her feet, taking off again down the hall, her strange little cube in hand. After Alyx had bent down to get a closer look, the girl had seen an opening and made a break for it.

"Why won't she talk to us?" Alyx grumbled, lurching to her feet, her eyes on the girl's retreating form. She was about to give chase, when she felt Gordon's hand on her shoulder. She turned and looked at him, and he shook his head.

Alyx began to understand.

"Ok, Gordon…we'll let her come to us when she's ready…"

The two of them turned and made their way back to the galley.

xxxxx

They saw evidence of the girl here and there as they continued exploring the recesses of the Borealis. A peeking head here, a scamper of feet there. It made Alyx nervous at first, but once she saw her a few times, she was convinced that they hadn't stumbled into a Combine trap.

They had run into plenty of those before.

Alyx had barely slept since it happened. It didn't seem fair – that she survive the Citadel, that she practically come back from the dead after being attacked by that Hunter – only to have her father savaged in front of her. At night, she had but to close her eyes and see the maggot-shaped bodies of the Advisors hovering over their paralyze and flailing forms while her father bravely stood his ground and fought them off with nothing more than a metal pipe.

Then, the thing had descended upon him, seizing him in its spindly metal appendage, making her watch as it plunged the blunt end of its tube-like proboscis into her father's spinal column and…

She shuddered back into reality and felt the urge to take her jacket off.

"Is it just me, or is it getting warmer the father down we go?"

Gordon looked at her as she shrugged her jacket off her shoulders. He blinked and looked around. He was sweating now that he thought about it. Tentatively, he placed a hand on the rusty metal bulkhead, and he felt heat radiating from the metal. He nodded at Alyx.

"This thing still has power!" Alyx blurted, coming to the same realization. "After this many years, this ship's reactor is still running? What kind of engine did Aperture Labs put into this thing?"

Gordon didn't have an answer for that.

The two of them pressed onward, into the lower levels of the container ship. It was definitely getting hotter now. They were coming close to what would be the boiler room – at least, if this had been a conventional container ship. Knowing Aperture Laboratories, they had probably used some kind of experimental nuclear engine, or something equally unsound.

What they came upon was beyond all expectations.

"That's…" Alyx gasped in disbelief. "That's a dark energy reactor!"

Gordon could not refute her. Though smaller than the one at the Citadel, small enough to keep on a container ship, the slow, rhythmic pulse of the barely visible energy suspended between the outstretched, rotating prongs within the tiled chamber was unquestionably a dark energy reactor.

Alyx stared down at the core through the pane of glass the separated the companionway from the deadly radiation within.

"This…this changes everything…" she breathed, a look of horror on her face. "If the Combine got their hands on this...everything we've fought for, everything we've gained, every single victory…" Alyx's face was the picture of stupefaction. "It would all be for nothing!"

Gordon put a hand on her shoulder and gestured to the reactor's controls.

Alyx nodded, realization dawning on her face. "…But if the resistance found it first…we'd be able to strike back against the Combine! Every world, every dimension they've taken control over…they'd be at our mercy!"

Alyx manned the controls fervently.

"We have to get in touch with Dr. Kleiner! White Forest needs to get a team up here as soon as possible! We can-"

Alyx was interrupted by a sonorous alarm. The core began to fade into an unnatural shade of blue, and its pulse began to grow larger, increasing in rapidity.

"What the –?" Alyx stammered, typing away furiously at the controls. "It's funneling power…it's…oh God…Gordon! It's opening a portal! If the Combine start coming through here…"

Gordon inhaled sharply and withdrew his gravity gun, ready to act.

"Where is it…" Alyx searched through the ship schematics. "Where is it…there! On the floor above us! Get up there and try to hold off anything that comes through! I'll see what I can do to shut this thing down!"

Gordon nodded and hurried out of the control room towards the staircase. After several flights, he emerged onto what appeared to be a solid sheet of plexiglass. Beneath it, the ship's dark energy reactor was visible, and in the center of the room, a rotating energy disc turned, suspended in above an energy conduit. The disc was rimmed in blue and was big enough to drive a car through it. Gordon studied the field in suspicion. This did not look at all like Dr. Breen's portal. Had Aperture Science developed the technology simultaneously with Dr. Kleiner?

Then, the whole ship began to shake.

"Gordon!" he heard Alyx's voice over the ship's announcement speaker. "The heat from the reactor must have melted the ice! We're tilting! Hold onto something!"

There was nothing to hold onto! He ran towards the staircase he had arrived on, but his feet were beginning to skid as the ship turned on its side, and he began to slip towards the portal! He lunged, reaching for the railing…

Missed!

He hit the floor and skidded on his stomach, grabbing at the floor for purchase.

"Gordon, are you alright up there?" Alyx's voice called out in alarm over the speaker. "I can't see anything!"

He began to slide down the incline, his HEV suit offering little friction against the smooth plexiglass, his arms and legs outstretched to catch anything to slow his fall, when…

Out of nowhere, the girl in the Aperture Laboratories jumpsuit leapt towards him from above, skidding on her stomach, grabbing his arms in hers. She pulled, and he held on. Their combined weight slowed their descent to a halt. The ship's seemed to have found purchase somewhere, and it remained in place, listing at about forty-five degrees, Gordon and the girl hanging precariously over the portal, still rotating ominously.

"Gordon, please!" Alyx's voice sounded desperate. "Give me some sort of sign!"

Gordon looked up at the girl. There was a strange look in her eyes, like she wasn't sure what she was doing here or why she was helping him. Whatever her reasons, he was grateful.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the heart-adorned cube. The girl had notched it against one of the stairs leading back down to the reactor. The ship was shaking under its recent disturbance, and the storage cube began to shift loose. It creaked and wobbled precariously, until…

It fell.

Tumbling down the sharp incline of the listing ship, the strange storage cube bounced and skidded towards the portal. Chell looked back, her eyes widening in horror. She let go of one of Gordon's hands to reach for it…

Missed!

Gordon reached out for it. He didn't know why he did – perhaps because he was curious as to what was inside of it, or why it was so precious to the girl. Perhaps he just wanted to repay her somehow by saving it. Whatever the reason, the massive weight of the storage cube in his arm tore his body loose from the floor, taking the girl with him.

"Gordon!"

The two fell, flailing and tumbling into the portal, the dark energy fuelling a passage across dimensional space to the mysterious unknown.