You knew it was coming, but you are caught off guard once again. There just isn't a way to habituate your human body to this unnatural halt of continuum, this unravelling of the manifold. It will always bring a chill and adrenaline, no matter how many times you go through this ordeal.

"Well done," you hear his disembodied voice coldly speak. "Well done indeed, Mr. Freeman."

Another oscillation and he is just beyond your paralyzed form. He applauds you slowly, just three lethargic claps as he closes the distance.

"With all the... meddling... that has soiled this endeavor... I am pleased that my employer's ever so sought for conclusion has come to termsss."

The destruction of the Combine empire. No sooner was the final blow struck that this government man was upon you. His organization must have been waiting on their haunches.

"Come back," Alyx had said upon your lips. "Please."

Back then in that moment you had regarded her with sad eyes. She knew, by then, that puppeteers loomed overhead. She had seen the shadows of their hands as they pulled. They had cut the strings of her father, after all. You took her hands down from your face, squeezed, and told her that you would try. After all, that's what you had been doing this whole time, since the very start of the Resonance Cascade. Try, try, try. This was your only life Gordon, as far as you knew. You wouldn't go down without a fight, even if you could not put down your weapon as long as you lived. It had been foolish though, to anticipate for the end of this war as if it was coincident to the end of your strife. For the world, yes. For you, a highly prized asset: this was only your first job.

"My employers see no more opportunity on thiss planet… indeed not even in thiss universse." Your boss gestures grandly, and the background begins to fade, like it was all just a stage set this entire time. "I have also been... reprimanded… for expending resources on 'unnecessary' personnel… but I understand that in businessss there is no guarantee to see… eye to eye." A wicked grin, one he makes no attempt to mask as human. "I trusst that you know thiss well, Dr. Freeman."

A flash, and you both are in a familiar oblivion again. The Terminal. Pinpoints of light streak past, ones you had always assumed to be stars, but now you are not so sure. Galaxies? Universes? Singular atoms? Whatever scale this is, as always in the presence of such casual display of omnipotent power, you feel so very, very small. Despite the fact you feel control of your body once more, you don't run. You don't rush him and try to claw his eyes or strangle him. By now, you know you are past the event horizon, and no effort on your part can provide escape.

The Government Man watches the rays of light dart past, eyelids drooped and the faintest angle of a smile upon his thin lips. He seems to have allowed you this reverie, as once your attention turns to him he takes in a shuddering breath. "After all this time, I am pleased to say that you do have a choice in the matter… no unwinnable battles or illusionsss this time. Rather, you can depart with me and continue to lend aid to future venturesss when and where I dictate… or... you can deservedly retire to the hard-fought freedom of your planet. In the latter case, I still require a replacement for your posssition… in the form of Miss Vance."

The mention of her name is like a vice on your heart. You want to laugh, to cry. Only a forceful exhale escapes you. Of course. Of course it comes down to this.

He takes in another labored gulp of air, and it dawns on you that he has not done this to breathe. He never has. This creature (or is corpse more applicable?) merely requires the air to vibrate vocal chords as a means of communication. "I know the options I have given you throughout your employment have been none too satisfying… but you understand that is the nature of… thiss field of work. Either way, I ressspect your decision. Choose carefully, for it cannot be rescinded. This is a one-way ticket, Dr. Freeman."

A portion of space slides away like a tram door, light pouring from within. "This will be your only chance of exit."

You regard him with intense eyes and a set jaw. It's hard to feel selfless, when he can see the tiredness that betrays your unwavering gaze. You shake your head in a negative, and realize mournfully it is the easiest decision you have made since you decided to go into work late that fateful spring morning.

He responds with a smirk. Then everything is gone, and only darkness remains. "Very well," his icy voice echoes from beyond. "I'll be looking forward… to your new assssignment."

You go to sleep and never wake up human again.

So many different worlds, yet it all seems the same. A struggle under oppression. A proxy war for resources. Young lives extinguished, interrogation rooms freshly abandoned, machines ripping flesh, skeletons of cities dusted in the ashes of war. You've seen so much death and sentient beings in mourning that you have no sympathy left. You dash through the flames, strike down the enemy, and then are gone. Each new job is the equivalent of your fight to save your world, your race from the Combine. The actions you take hold the same magnitude of preserving millions of lives and entire cultures and yet there are so many more out there and it's all the same. Torture. Genocide. War. All routine.

It has come to the point where you are not only homesick of Earth. Now, you will find any place in your original universe home, alien body or no; in the Milky Way or on the very margin of the macrocosm. You would be at ease in the crushing, pinprick mass of a black hole. To merely exist in spacetime- composed of any combination of the periodic table of elements you could recite since you were seven- any of it would feel familiar compared to the universes you have tread, composed of strange matter and weaved into a fabric of existence beyond temporal and spacial recognition. Like the sad end of character in a Harlan Ellison story. Even Xen, what had first seemed to be an eldritch dimension, would be a welcome sight.

You haven't bothered to attempt to find a lingua franca with creatures you mimic. Soon enough you will be molded into a different actor on a different stage. Any Earth language you knew would be incomprehensible to alien ears, that is if your current body could produce any semblance of a human sound anyway. Nonetheless, it's not as if you had relied on words before; from being a mute child prodigy to a posterboy of a rebel resistance with no rallying speech at hand. It is just you and your thoughts. Instinct drives you in combat, but at the quieter times you have nothing to do but to either make sense of the uncanny world around you or fall back to familiar human ideas.

However, your boss still appears to you as a human, confoundingly and agonizingly. Is it to taunt you? To remind you of what species you once were, if the myriad of bodies you donned eroded your memory to the point where you had forgotten what a human being looked like? Or perhaps this the most ergonomically efficient way to appear, as you yourself hardly stayed in one body long.

Which then brings up the question of whether your human form still existed, hanging naked in some interdimensional locker. It could be just like you left it. Or would it resemble an old man by now? Pale and emaciated from decades of dormancy. Empty and soulless like a trophy; an animal carcass on display. You doubt it would ever be yours again, even if it was in storage. The other possibility is that it was completely gone, disintegrated and recycled into the universe from whence it came. Back to stardust. Somehow, this hypothetical is more comforting.

It is agonizing to think about home in particular, but remembering Alyx is the fuel that keeps you going. In the squalor of ghettos and restless lulls before gunfights, you have come to the realization that you and Alyx had traded lives. While the first half of your life had been peaceful, her's had been under a violent regime. A constant battle. Now, the endless struggle was yours alone, while she had been given the chance of a normal life. You had the opportunity to enjoy childhood and youth, and she the prospect of raising a family and nurturing the future. Together, a whole life lived. The seeming eternity of your agony did not seem in vain, knowing that. After all, you could never subject her to a continued life of fighting just so you could rest in the post-war world. Your interval of suffering through Black Mesa and the Combine was not equal to the pain of her life up to that point. It would not have been a fair trade. Yet… would you not have done this for her regardless?

Alyx had been a hostage to force Eli's hand, and was so easily placed into the same position for you. Was that always the intention? To swiftly make pawns of homo sapiens through their social nature? Take offspring from parents. Take female from male after decades of sexual dormancy. To misconstrue something as sacred and complex as human emotions into animal instincts seemed like something your Employers would do. They had done so to the Vortigaunts, hadn't they? Even the scientists at Black Mesa had, viewing their dissected bodies under an unflinching and unfeeling lens. Their status as a telepathic communion of people had only been revealed by sympathy in the ashes of the Seven Hour War.

Still, it's painful know you had such similar reservations about humanity. Just a young boy, only speaking to teachers. At MIT, where Professor Kleiner was your closest friend. Then Black Mesa, after years of study in something as disconnected from society as theoretical fucking physics, and getting drunk with Barney and actually really finally talking about yourself and caring about other people and for once being content to listen to them as they told you about their day. What would that lonesome, autistic child prodigy think of you now, Gordon? Throwing away the chance of survival, what no sane person would do. Pathos over logos.

But in truth, you had been fighting for your survival. Throughout all of Black Mesa as a matter of fact. Even after that, where your goal was to survive long enough to experience some aspect of the peace you knew before the apocalypse. However, there came a point where you were happy to fight for something besides your life for once. You remember that feeling clearly, ascending the Citadel at sunset and looking miles below to the shelled out remains of a city that was still somehow- despite everything- illuminated with life. Disassociated from everything around you except that goal to exist and resist.

You have stopped counting how many assignments you have had. Stopped counting suns and moons rising, if there were any. There is no point in quantifying how long you have been employed when your contract is indefinite. Death could be a welcome escape, if not for the fact you knew you had a replacement. Of course, there was always the chance Alyx was considered null in the agreement, but it was not worth the risk. Hell, as your memories blur together and time becomes meaningless, you begin to wonder if you've already died before, and just have been picked up and placed anew with each dead end.

Sharp pain rouses you back to this unreal reality. A lingering enemy soldier as struck you, but you return fire to its center mass, where you learned this species vitals lied. It shudders and falls to jungle's ground, oozing viscous blue blood. The flesh-like forest around you quiets for a moment, then the sound of rumbling firepower continues in the distance. Your wound has already resealed itself, and you decide to begin on to the source of the discordant fighting. You rouse from your makeshift dugout, place one limb in front of the other-

Sparks.

You feel like you are being electrocuted. Like every fiber of your being is vibrating to a specific oscillation. It is one-of-a-kind sensation, one you have felt before. In Victory Mine, melding with the Vortessence and watching Alyx's skin become translucent under glowing claws. The world lurches and you are back in nothingness, all darkness. But you see no Vortigaunts; you have been called back to a meeting with your boss. Something is amiss. He stands before you, eyes wide and fists clenched. He scans the oblivion, as if he can see through the inky black beyond to something you cannot. The unnatural neon viridian eyes snap to you widly.

"No," he speaks gutturally, faint snarling noises just barely trailing out from the back of his throat.

Your confusion is remedied when you finally sense what he does.

It's her.

Alyx.

You don't see her, but you feel her, with your entire being. She is there, enveloping you completely, warmth like sunshine, the texture of human skin, the smell of fresh dirt, and cold mountain air. Embodiment of Earth, of home. Sensations you thought you would never once again experience. God, to feel home again. Your senses are tenfold, overwhelming. It is pure ascension, and indeed you have left your corporeal alien husk behind. You are intangible and she is lifting you up away from this hell, like an angel.

The government man has abandoned English and lets loose a cacophony of unholy alien screams and snarls, seeming to emanate from his entire form.

Veils are being pulled away as you escape the confines of your mortal brain, convoluted dimensions unravelling and linking. It all becomes clear, how you managed to escape.

Vortal entanglement, what had made you had so malleable as to be inserted into a myriad of points and bodies, guaranteed you would expire coterminous to your other half: Alyx. Beyond time and space, via the unified existence that is the Vortessence. A loophole that had been overlooked, as this bureaucrat before you has realized.

Other presences ebb into the plane, surrounding the unhinged man in the suit. He squirms and writhes, his human disguise unable to translate such desperate movements and rips the skin, the suit. Before whatever inside can escape, his employers fire him. His flesh melts like wax and gargles his screams. There is no blood, it is like a corpse being eviscerated, white skin peeling and chunks of muscle sloughing away. A strangled cough and the mass of pale meat and torn cloth is still.

Odd how he had worn the body of a man and a suit to appeal, yet in his demise he seemed the most human.

The employers seem unaware of you or Alyx. Or perhaps you are beyond even their power, and they simply leave. You both do too, faster than light, and everywhere at once. You are formless yet you feel infinity and her beside you, dreamlike yet with clarity; more pure than any human sensation, like your old body was a filter for an unfathomable existence you only could now submerge yourself into. And despite being not fixed to Earth or a body, you feel so at home. At the start of everything. At the end of everything. Always on the precipice of euphoria. Brushing electrons and waterfalls of color. Embracing nebulae and lying in the fields of a thousand worlds teeming with nature. Despite the horrors and pain you have witnessed, Earth sprouts with life, as do a billion other planets and realms, existing regardless. Loved ones, dead and alive, at peace and in acceptance. They tell you everything was, is, and will be okay. There is one last thing to do, she says, and it seems like you've already done everything anything but

you two get closer

so there is no

distance and

you both

become

one

.