Repurposed 15.2

Interval 15.2
April 20, 2017
Inconclusive time stamp, Xen
Exact Location Unknown



The place hadn't changed at all, in Paxton's eyes. Though perhaps… he did see it more clearly. After all, his actual eyes were there this time. Why here anyway? But he knew the answer to that: he'd come here by instinct, and whether he liked it or not, it was part of him. He'd known that they wanted him to go there for some time, he'd caught faint whispers in his dreams about it. Whether that meant they were actively watching him and prying into his subconscious but not willing to coerce him fully, or he was able to ignore their pleas, he wasn't sure. He'd managed to ignore it this long, why not continue?

Paxton spent a reasonable amount of time standing next to the reception platform, on this floating chunk of spongy rock, just mustering up the courage to move any farther. Most of his actual fear of the place had been whittled away over the years since meeting Noah, as the Vortigaunt would weave tales of adventure and hunting done there. Now it was more just a very strong avoidance, as Mel would call it.

Melissa wanted him to get over all this. Though she never said anything directly about it, he knew she agreed with Wilson on this, and way too many other issues. Whenever that arrogant jackass came around there was always some serious shit-storm on the way. Less so, or maybe just a more subtle pile of dangerous crap when his elder, the 'Mystery' showed up.

They pissed him off. So much.

Perhaps they rankled Paxton so much because any time they showed up, it felt like the tenuous grip on his own identity was being assaulted in a way that Alma never tried to. He'd never liked the ambiguity of the name that the Vorts had given him, but he did at least finally know that vahh was Mystery and that the older man was the Mystery. How did a bunch of Vorts know where he'd come from, and he never had?

Perhaps, and slightly more likely, they angered him because Melissa got all starry-eyed in their presence. That Wilson might, and easily could, simply take her from him, even knowing that he wouldn't be harming her – just… Bugged the crap out of Paxton. Since she'd probably go right along with it.

The fear that tore into the pit of his stomach and the ache in the back of his mind at the sudden absence of his Sanctuary made him think that Melissa thought too highly of them. Paxton considered that they'd manipulated her mind to get her to think that way. Another reason to be angry? Or, it was just as she'd said: another reason to resent them. Because he knew they hadn't done anything to her that she didn't want them to. At the very least, Wilson had been civil enough to back off most of the time.

Paxton wasn't too happy that the bits of his 'family' that decided to show themselves off had to be so damned weird. But then, if Xen was part of him and his instincts… That meant he was pretty damned weird too. All this went through his mind quickly enough, he'd have to get moving at some point and he was stalling as best he could.

His experiences on Xen were long forgotten in any specific, conscious way. He wouldn't know one slice of the place from another. However, that didn't mean that his body had forgotten it: it was like his legs were frozen to the spot, suddenly weighed down… and he knew there was less gravity here. Then he reconsidered: his body was stupid, kee dee ha-tsah mah indeed. His body hadn't been here with his mind until now, really.

Finally he stepped forward, and realized that when last he'd been here, he hadn't seen any of these signs of Human habitation. So perhaps he was on yet another island he hadn't run across before. He did know that he'd actually arrived on a different one from that which he'd collapsed on, before. There was that one massive leap he took – he remembered that more clearly than anything else, because he often wished he could emulate that kind of distance when jumping on Earth, if only to prove his brother wasn't the only one who could. He continued to walk away from the pyramidal platform unit. Now that he could walk, perhaps he could start thinking about something other than how pathetically scared he was.

There was a flashing light on the console near the teleporter platform, and Paxton pressed the button under it, indicating he'd arrived safe and sound. He hoped they realized it was time to turn the thing off, because something in Paxton's gut told him he wouldn't be using it to return. He would certainly have felt more safe and sound had either Noah or Melissa been there. Hell, he wouldn't mind Geoff's presence either, easily imagining his brother leaping from one craggy rock to another in the light gravity. But Geoff didn't need to be disturbed, and Paxton let a silly, proud smile pass over his thin lips. About goddamn time, he thought.

Paxton gazed around, sorting out ground from shrub from … whatever that thing was: it was moving, rooted into the ground though, and far enough away that it wasn't a problem as long as he stayed clear of it. He was pretty certain one of those tendril-like tree things had nearly speared him when he was here before.

It smelled funny here. It really did; Xen stank, actually. It smelled as though things had died and never been moved: it reminded him of the early days at the Center when those bodies had collected and just sat for weeks and weeks. He had to guess that the stench came from the ground itself, because there was nothing visible that looked dead enough to smell like this.

It was the sound, though, that brought more of his memories back. Distant echoing calls from above drew his eyes upward: out there in that endless, bizarrely colored sky, there were elegant creatures that reminded him of manta-rays he'd seen in books. Schools? Flocks? Flocks of them drifted around, he wondered if they were peaceful – and then remembered Shep's description of one of them, or something similar, that blasted helicopters out of the sky over Black Mesa. There were other noises familiar to him: houndeyes barking, the chittering of headcrabs. Nothing was close enough to him to make him worry directly, but Paxton reminded himself that even though he'd grown up and the place wasn't nearly as outright terrifying as it had been before… There were still plenty of things that wanted him dead, here.

A cave had more equipment gathered in front of it, off to the left of the teleport platform. He headed toward it, wishing very much that he had had the luxury of bringing one of his Replicas with him. They'd set up a couple Replicas with stasis pods to store them at Black Mesa for the rare occasions when he had to go there. He wouldn't be completely without his extra eyes and hands. But here he was utterly bare, mentally speaking. He didn't care for it. It made him jumpy, having to glance over his shoulders every few seconds. He was used to there being other eyes watching him, and it wasn't because of vanity.

He'd tried to wean himself off of using the Replicas at all times, in the past. It hadn't worked, and besides what was the point? If he didn't have the Replicas he'd want to be using actual people, and they didn't like that too much. It was what he had been made to do, anyway. Animals wouldn't work, he'd tried that too. He never once attempted it on a Vortigaunt, it just didn't seem to be a good idea. Not that he believed he couldn't do it, but that they already considered him a kind of pariah and he had no intention of giving them more evidence that he should be shunned.

But here, he couldn't really sense any life – though Jamie would certainly have argued there. He was somewhat surprised that there were no Vortigaunts or anything around, no intelligent life, nothing with a self-aware consciousness.

Except there was. It touched his mind gently. It played tag with him, but he wasn't in the mood. He was pretty sure he should have taken them up on it, that game they offered him. But right at that moment he was still just trying to settle his nerves. He'd get to it when he felt more comfortable. And if they knew what was best, to avoid him outright refusing to deal with them, they'd let him be. Because he could just as easily walk right back to that teleporter platform and send a signal to head home straight off. The scientists had briefed him about many contingencies on their way into the chamber. He knew how dangerous it was around here, they'd told him how dangerous it really was. The Vortal sensation retreated, for the moment.

He glanced into the cave, noted that the back end of it had collapsed and there was an HEV-suited scientist's long-desiccated corpse under the glowing rocks they'd been trying to pry loose. A collection of those rocks were next to the wall, brightly casting yellow-orange light into the otherwise dim area. Paxton realized that he could see them with his mind as strongly as his eyes. They were kind of interesting, an excellent distraction. He didn't feel like he was in any great hurry, so Paxton hazarded to touch one. It tingled, almost in the way that Martin's gentle electric field felt on shaking hands. He realized a moment later: the damn thing was probably strongly radioactive. Terrific.

Those crystals, apparently, ran the Relay portal. Paxton, in his desperate attempt to distract himself and become more calm, thought about the technical aspects he had all but ignored in years past. These things came from another universe. Obviously – obviously – there would be some kind of way to trace them back to their origin point. The scientists counted on that, in fact. Good for them. They had clearly tried to collect the things, which was dangerous even without the wildlife attempting to eat the explorers (as this particular dead scientist proved aptly). They'd then had to transport them back to Black Mesa. Experiment with them to find out what worked best, equip them into devices capable of handling the energy, tune them to frequencies – blah blah blah.

And that wasn't even what Aperture had done with the hand-held devices they created. Alyx had once tried to explain how they worked, and for the first time in his life Paxton admitted that he had absolutely no idea what the girl had said. Something about black holes, and that was where he stopped listening. That she then hooked one of those up to the already complex Relay system Black Mesa used, only proved that she deserved every ounce of praise and adoration she got – and more particularly from his brother.

Paxton's sense of urgency had gone, it was replaced with a curious thought.

There had to be easier ways to teleport.

There were easier ways to teleport, he realized.

Martin did it, Damon did something like it, with his shadow-walking. More relevantly though, Alma had done it, he'd even seen her do it. It stuck in his throat that the last thing he wanted to do was emulate her, but… Rather than endanger himself by leaping across the ridiculous amounts of space between islands here, teleporting would be the best way to go about meeting up with Wilson and the Mystery.

Paxton supposed that this was why he'd been summoned here in the first place: to learn how to do what they did. To do that, didn't necessarily mean he had to have things explained, of course. He'd have preferred it though. Discussing things in a nice civilized manner, maybe in a nice civilized place, so he could ask questions and get nice, civilized answers. Paxton realized that they wouldn't give him those answers even if he beat it out of them. And Melissa would have warned him yet again, not to fight with Wilson. Ever.

Fine. He wouldn't try the physical approach no matter how tempting it became.

But he could get to them, to even start asking those questions, if he knew where they were. That would be the first step.

He knew how to sense for minds, he'd been able to do that literally all his life. Strong Vortal minds were easily visible in other conditions, however here on Xen it seemed those crystals were casting interference and making him doubt what he saw. How very clever, he thought. Because the challenge of being here in a place that scared the life out of him wasn't bad enough; that he didn't really know quite what they expected of him or where they even were; and now this, making that struggle even harder? Sure, he enjoyed a good challenge. But then, he enjoyed playing chess with Zoell too, and that was challenging.

He couldn't easily ignore the crystals' distinct energy signature, while looking for minds, but he wasn't ready to make any ridiculous assertions that the crystals were intelligent. They were clearly Vortal, plenty of them were around: if only the scientists had his senses to locate the purer deposits. They were everywhere.

But that wasn't of much use just now. Harvesting bizarre alien crystals wasn't on his list of things to do in general let alone right now. Paxton chose to use another sense, the one which allowed him to trigger skills and sense through bodies, slipping into his Replicas with part of his mind while other parts were otherwise occupied.

His Replicas were made, by and large, from his own unaltered DNA samples, and he could locate them with ease. Paxton himself had been made from the unnamed (Paxton always gave a slight chuckle at that, they chose to name him, but not his 'father'). Wilson, in turn, from the eldest of them, whose name still escaped even Paxton – though Melissa spoke his title easily, he'd never tried pronouncing it in Vort, never known it in English, and wasn't certain he wanted to know what it really was.

But he knew they were here somewhere, and because they shared what Mel had assured him was a considerable amount of genetic similarities, he logically surmised he'd be able to at least find them if not inhabit them. He leaned against the wall of the cave, just at its entrance, and cast mental tendrils into the distance. Unlike Melissa, he wasn't really able to distinguish parts of DNA, but he knew he had to find someone like him. Out there.

He glared at the horizon, such as it was. The islands that Xen held did float, bobbing slightly. Paxton concentrated on filtering out those annoying crystals. Just look for the brighter bits, just look for something to hold on to. There? Something? His Vortal 'fingers' grasped at nothing but he was sure he felt a snag. It was annoyingly like trying to find his brother, when Geoff wanted to remain hidden: they could probably disguise their minds from him, maybe better than Geoff. Absently he pulled out his gun and shot the headcrab that had been trying to sneak up on him. The shot was loud, echoed, maybe they heard it too.

They were moving. He'd tagged them back and they were playing hide and seek now. Would it have made a difference if Mel had been there? If they'd used her, as she claimed they wanted to, for bait? Her mind was so easily spotted, for him at least, that would have been far too simple. Of course, if she were posing as bait for them, he wouldn't even need to seek her mind out. He'd just follow the swearing.

"It would be so much easier to get angry," Paxton muttered, "is that what you want? Because I'll do that, and regret it later."

But his path was never the easy one. He suspected they were laughing at him. He'd had these powers all his life. He'd just never bothered to learn to use them. And now it took goading, dream-induced trickery, threatening his girlfriend, and a half-sane old Vortigaunt to get him out here.

Paxton realized that if he were them, he'd be laughing too. With that, he caught hold of one of them, probably Wilson, and mentally anchored his Vortal claws onto the man. Moving or not, Paxton didn't care. Step one was complete. He had his goal, but now he had to reach it.

It would be the first time he would do this, could be the last: it might kill him. It might merely make him learn he had limits.

Fuck limits, he thought, smiling slowly. He'd risen to the challenge, he'd almost forgotten how good that could feel. There you are.

How had she done it? He wasn't sure. Didn't matter. When he'd first begun to burn, it had been in anger, like his mother had done. But that was years ago, and now and he'd done it for effect more often than any kind of actual need to be on fire. Because it looked good. He suspected that Alma managed to skip through space for that same reason: because it unnerved the people she chased after. She moved instantly, perhaps during the saccade of eye motion, leaving a trail of ash and anguish behind her.

How had they done it? He'd never seen either the Mystery or the unnamed teleport. But Paxton knew that they could. Instinct would have to do, there. Again though, he strongly suspected that they moved while unseen. Perhaps there was a visual component to it, disassembly into atoms, even a portal-like compressing of space.

Which method would he choose? Make a new one, he thought with another flickered grin. It was difficult, concentrating on that anchor as it moved abruptly from one location to another trying to lose him. Paxton's limits of distance wouldn't be reached here – somehow he knew that. And perhaps Wilson didn't count on his ability to jog his perception between thirty or forty Replicas within a split second. That was certainly how he was keeping track as Wilson went jaunting across Xen.

He didn't need to worry much about how he would improbably move through space, but wasn't sure how much effort it would take. He didn't want to waste energy, certainly didn't want to wind up tired out and gasping for breath when he did arrive.

Waiting a few more minutes in preparation allowed Paxton to determine a pattern to the distant anchor's motion. It almost felt like a fishing line might, a grappling hook and a long slender Vortal rope that was being jostled between a half-dozen points in space. He paused just long enough to predict the spot nearest to his current position. He hadn't noticed his hands clenching, but when his fingers spread again it was with a dramatic motion and to a floodgate of energy while willing himself away.

Speed had no meaning, he wasn't moving. It felt exhilarating, terrifying, good.

Most of the world seemed to pass through his vision. It was all red, orange, golden. It sounded like the flapping of wings, thousands of them. He arrived in a burning, flashing mass of ashes, and seemed to instantly reassemble himself without a hair out of place. The flames surrounding him were darker than his usual, a rich blackish shade of crimson instead of his typical brighter blood-red.

He noticed that right off; the flames outlined his form as he checked his own limbs for solidity just-in-case. He wasn't out of breath, but he certainly felt the effort that it had taken, it caught up to him as the pyrotechnics died. Paxton realized that he no longer smelled the odd and pervasive scent of the place, and hoped fervently that it wasn't because it had become part of him, while teleporting through it. That would be hideous, if he smelled like Xen. He'd never smelled it on Wilson, though, and if that man's vanity was any evidence, he assumed he'd be safe. Once his assessment of his own physical condition was done, Paxton finally took a look at the big island that he'd come from and tried estimating the distance to it, failed to do so because there was just about no indication of scale out here.

He did notice how small this distant floating island was, that he now stood upon, a moment later.

And a moment after that, Wilson arrived.