#abscessofaperture

Now, they were forced to seek refuge instead of going out to fight; only doing so when it was absolutely necessary now. Or at least, until they replenished their lost numbers. But that wouldn’t be for a long while.

However, in the meantime, the last remaining survivors thought it wise to station themselves in an abandoned lodge within one of Michigan’s forest preserves. With traps set up all over the place, it made for a convenient temporary base. Even though they wouldn’t hold out here forever, it did them well for the time being.

But eventually, supplies ran low.

With so many survivors held up in one place, it made it difficult to keep everything rationed and long-lasting; and because of Earth’s severely limited resources, most people often had to go hungry or thirst for nights on end. And drinking combine-issued water was completely out of the question, no matter how desperate someone was.

Don’t drink the water. They put something in it. To make you forget.

No one dared touch the water.

Instead, Chell volunteered to go scavenging.

Sent off with nothing but loaded weapons and a half-empty aluminum bottle of water, she would have to survive on pure adrenaline and will-power alone. But being forced to live in these conditions was nothing new to her.

She was used to it.

—

After hours of trekking through the forest, Chell had finally stumbled across a water stream far up North.

What seemed like nothing but a hopeless cause hadn’t been as hopeless as she thought after all. Again, her persistence paid off, and now she would be able to reap the benefits.

If the water was even drinkable.

Chell kneels at the edge of the small water stream, testing the cool water with her hand to briefly check for any discrepancy in quality. The last thing she wanted was for her hand to come back with obvious signs of infected waters, but her worries were mostly eased when it came back clean.

Well, as possible as it could be, given the circumstance.

She swings the backpack over her shoulder and reaches for the water bottle inside, twisting the cap off and submerging it into the water.

With the bottle partially settled, she could only hope in the midst of doing so that it wasn’t as lethally contaminated as the other water sources were in the area. Honestly, some of them weren’t even water anymore – just rivers of toxic sludge. Radioactive with whatever substance alien life emitted. It was effective in irreversibly polluting Earth’s natural wildlife, and it undoubtedly created a problem for all the refugees that tried to survive outside combine territory, making it impossible to scavenge for real sustenance anymore.

Instead, what humans got was a disgusting mouthful of headcrab.

They were more common in the outskirts of towns; where forests and abandoned mountain ranges merged. They were places often times overrun with headcrabs and other unmentionable horrors. A place where the lesser fortunate of her kind perished by a most horrible fate if for a second, they let their guard down.

But Chell knew better than to make that same mistake.

The water rippled around her hands as she lifted the bottle from the current and twisted the cap back on shut. Even though she wasn’t feeling dehydrated yet, she knew the risk still lingered. The long trek by foot to reach the resistance camp several miles away was, with every chance, bound to be riddled with delays and dangers on the way; and this reserve in the meantime, would hold her over until she got there to restock up on supplies and notify others of the accessible water stream to harvest from.

Quickly, she shoves the bottle back inside her bag, zipping the closure shut and swinging it back over her shoulders. She spends a moment adjust the thick straps more comfortably against her back, but with every second spent idling near the river, she started feeling uneasy.

The barest sound of footsteps crunching on gravel confirmed her suspicions and she immediately stilled.

She was being watched.

Instinctively, her hands reach for the AR2 rifle holstered against her back. She swings the weapon into her arms and presses it tight to her shoulder, readying a finger on the trigger. And with little hesitation, she bolts up from the ground in a swift maneuver and whips around, expecting to come face to face with a hostile entity.

She didn’t expect to see nothing there at all.

With a hitch in her breath, her face twisted up in mild distress, the rifle in her grasp briefly faltering at the revelation. That wasn’t right. There was definitely something here. She could feel it.

If it were an alien being, it wouldn’t bother concealing itself from view. Not once have they ever used logic to precede a human being. Most of the time, all they did was lash out without worry of consequence. And by all means, they did. They held nothing back. But she knew the moment she turned, she wasn’t dealing with one of them.

This presence was intentionally evading her sight. It visually recognized her presence, and hid.

A cold-sweat chill ran up her spine. With little to go on, Chell automatically assumed that whatever was out there was a threat. Unless proven otherwise, she was automatically drawn into high-alert for suspected combine malefactors. She wasn’t being paranoid – Just prepared for any worst case scenario.

For all she knew, she could’ve just walked right into a trap.

While the combine were sometimes slow to catch up with a resistor, they weren’t stupid. They were entirely capable of devising strategic ambushes. Often times, that was how they caught a majority of their most difficult captives in the first place. If the unsettling feeling was anything to go by, then Chell presumed they were probably sweeping the area in hopes of catching more stray resistance members to “cauterize and expunge”.

In any which case, she refused to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Chell reluctantly drew backwards in the opposite direction, following the gut instinct to get out of there. All the while, her rifle remained upright in her grasp, finger ready on the trigger.