Gordon Freeman allowed his foot to ease off the accelerator pedal of his makeshift buggy. He sighted a column of black smoke rising steadily into the air approximately half a mile away. Steeling himself for another encounter with a Combine patrol, he toggled the switch that gave power to the tau cannon mounted to the chassis of his buggy. The copper coils began to buzz with radioactive energies, building and storing electricity for the electromagnetic projector.
As he rolled up on the seaside house, once a homely abode now derelict and in disrepair, there were no Overwatch sentries to greet him. Instead, the horrific stench of burning flesh flooded into his senses, putrid and overwhelming. The Combine was not currently present, but they undoubtedly had paid this place and its former occupants a visit.
Gordon climbed out of his buggy with a combat shotgun in hand. Keeping the weapon leveled and at the ready, a precaution that had served him well so far. As he approached the now smoldering source of smoke, the revolting smell became even more abhorrent. His growing suspicions were confirmed as emerald eyes caught sight of charred corpses. Their flesh had nearly completely sloughed off, leaving nothing left but blackened skeletons. Little remained of identifiable features had been twisted into grisly rictus grins by the flames.
Freeman turned away from the sight, resisting the urge to vomit. Unfortunately, these horrific scenes had become frequent and familiar to him now. He passed through the shattered doorway into the coastal house. The story of a final struggle for survival told by upturned furniture and spent shell casings. Blood that pooled on the floorboards was turning brown, now sticking to Gordon's armored boots.
Something on the mantelpiece caught Freeman's attention, something out of place amidst this house of banal horror. It was a small photograph, framed and placed proudly, of a family of five. Pictured were two parents, a grandparent, and two children. One child was an adolescent while the other could not have been older than ten.
Gordon sighed heavily. His thoughts turned away from mere survival and the tasks at hand, back to his home and his family. The crushing reality that they had not survived pervaded him, inundated him. Soon his thoughts multiplied to consider the fates of thousands of families. Then on to millions of people, billions of dead.
Freeman's breathing intensified, growing increasingly more rapid and ragged. The dam of his mind had broken then burst, pouring out an ocean of unwanted thoughts that churned and frothed like raging black waters. His vision blurred at the edges as tears filled his eyes. He staggered towards the exit, lurching as if an unseen weight pressed into his shoulders.
He collapsed next to a gnarled tree overlooking the ocean. Waves lapped rhythmically towards the shore, which was marked by the presence of a beached fishing trolley. Gordon sobbed quietly into his hands, muttering apologies to everyone, and no one. At that moment, Gordon Freeman was merely a twenty-seven-year-old young man that three days prior, had looked forward to a promising career and life. Now that life was destroyed along with so many others. All caught in a swell of darkness brought forth by an unknowable and uncaring universe, left to drown in the abyss.
