The Jeep traveled along the winding mountain road, eventually coming to a stop halfway up the slope.
There was an alloy door here, seamlessly integrated into the side of the mountain.
The door was buckled outward, its edges torn as if it had been breached from the inside.
The mist was also diffusing outward from this opening.
Sephirot stepped forward, reaching out to bend the metal edges back, widening the breach significantly. Without the slightest hesitation, he was the first to crawl inside.
Andre, Clancy, and Amanda followed behind him; the three of them exchanged glances, their expressions filled with trepidation and hesitation.
The silent old lady standing nearby stepped forward.
She looked at these timid young people and shook her head: "You youngsters don't even have as much courage as an old woman like me."
With that said, she followed them through the opening.
The moment they stepped into the interior of the facility, the pungent smell of blood hit them full force.
However, compared to the thick fog outside, the mist inside the base was actually much thinner.
The entrance was a junction of three paths; directly ahead was a corridor ending in a vertical elevator shaft.
Inside the corridor were numerous makeshift sandbag fortifications, with firearms and shell casings scattered everywhere across the floor.
The corpses of soldiers and monsters were piled together, the blood dried and blackened.
Clancy fought back the nausea in his stomach as he raised his camera, recording the Hellish scene.
Sephirot scanned the battlefield before him, his gaze pausing as a corpse slumped in the corner caught his attention.
The corpse's head hung low, clad in an orange hazmat suit with a large hole torn through the chest.
Beside him lay a fallen crowbar, and next to that was a fleshy, four-legged creature resembling a turkey lying belly-up.
Sephirot stared at the crowbar, sensing its material was quite unique, and prepared to step forward to pick it up.
The moment he bent down, the corpse suddenly reached out and grabbed Sephirot's arm.
"Ah!"
Seeing the corpse suddenly spring to life, Andre, who was following behind Sephirot, let out a terrified scream.
Sephirot looked back at Andre.
The man in the hazmat suit struggled to lift his head, his visor smeared internally with blood.
"Out of control... bottom floor... the device... must cut the power... or destroy it."
Before he could finish his sentence, his head slumped to the side, and the hand gripping Sephirot fell limp. He went completely still.
"He's... he's dead?!"
Andre stammered.
Sephirot expressionlessly removed the man's visor and checked his breathing.
"You just fainted; why did you have to tilt your head like that?"
He was somewhat speechless. He casually pocketed the crowbar and then searched the man's person.
He pulled out a black-and-red metal card printed with a barcode; it appeared to be an access card.
"Aha! A 5.56mm assault rifle, my favorite!"
The old lady's loud laughter echoed from behind them. Sephirot stood up and turned around to see the old lady holding a rifle, proficiently pulling back the bolt and checking the magazine.
Seeing everyone staring at her, the old lady raised an eyebrow.
"What are you looking at me for? In my youth, I served in the military. This thing is much more useful than the wooden sticks you're holding!"
Andre gave an awkward smile.
Sephirot continued further inside, reaching the elevator at the end of the central passage and looking down.
As expected, the elevator car was stuck mid-air, and the protective glass was shattered across the floor.
Retreating back to the entrance, Sephirot looked at the two corridors branching off to the left and right. "Left or right? You guys pick; my luck is rather poor."
Andre looked at the two eerie hallways and pointed to the right.
Sephirot stared at him for a moment, nodded, and headed toward the left.
The left passage contained many rooms, most of which were tightly shut, with blurred signs posted on the walls.
Sephirot pushed open a door left ajar, revealing only ordinary office desks and scattered documents inside.
"In a typical base, the first floor is usually for administrative offices, used for logistics and dispatching."
The old lady held her gun at the ready, scouting the surroundings; the current atmosphere made her feel somewhat like she had returned to her youth.
"To prevent secrets from leaking, the laboratories and quarantine zones are usually on the lower levels. Let's find an emergency staircase."
Sephirot nodded and searched along the passage for a while, eventually finding a jammed fire door.
With a swift kick, he forced it open, revealing a staircase leading downstairs.
The layout of the second basement level was completely different from the first, emitting a stench like rotten eggs.
There were no rooms here, only a large hall containing dozens of glass Petri dishes arranged in neat rows.
Soaking in the cloudy liquid of these containers were the corpses of various bizarre creatures.
Some monsters had upper bodies that split open with arms shaped like sharp blades, while others held fleshy larvae that resembled facehuggers.
A small number of the culture tanks were shattered, their contents long gone.
Sephirot did not stop to examine the corpses; instead, he halted before a terminal that still had power.
On the console's screen was an encrypted log, the interface stamped with an icon consisting of three intersecting circles.
Sephirot committed the pattern to memory, intending to investigate it after returning.
He took out the metal card he had looted earlier and swiped it through the console's card slot.
"Beep."
With a soft chime, the log was unlocked, and lines of cold text scrolled across the screen.
[Biological Code: X-89, Headcrab]
[Description: Body size similar to poultry...]
...
[Biological Code: X-42, Houndeye]
[Description: Tripodal canine creature...]
...
[Confidential Document Update: Testing]
[Commence the first round of testing on twelve live specimens, including X-13 and X-42...]
...
[Test Record: Otherworld Biological Fusion Failure][Test Results: Target body underwent severe cellular decomposition; load-bearing capacity extremely weak. Unable to serve as a stable vessel for descent.]
[Analytical Conclusion: Organisms from Subspace lack a certain human quality; zero malleability. Must attempt to expand the spatial rift and locate other organisms for testing.]
[Additional Observation: Environmental Dependency]
[Test Record: All Subspace biological samples must remain within the abnormal fog surging from the spatial rift to maintain vital signs.]
[Compositional Analysis: None for now.]
[Detachment Reaction: Once removed from the fog, or if samples are exposed to the normal world, targets develop rejection reactions leading to instantaneous cellular failure and sudden death.]
Sephirot watched the screen, his brow furrowing deeper.
These lunatics... not only were they using humans as vessels for demon descents, but now they were targeting Subspace creatures?
He recalled the red seal on the demon core inside Myers's head.
That technique was something an ordinary person could never master; it was highly likely the work of a sorcerer.
However, this method of artificial sealing was extremely inefficient.
One had to consider that humans with an innate talent for exorcism were rare, let alone those who possessed the gift but might go their entire lives without ever encountering anything related to the craft.
"So, they want to use Subspace creatures to create an assembly line of vessels capable of hosting demons?"
But even if these otherworldly creatures could truly serve as vessels for demons, how would they evade detection by the Council of Angels?
Sephirot was somewhat puzzled.
There was, however, some good news.
The experiments in this base were clearly failures, and as long as the rift was closed and the fog dissipated, the monsters that had escaped the base would die.
"Stop filming! Clancy! Do you have a goddamn death wish?!"
From behind him came Andre's breaking, panicked roar.
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TL NOTES — CROSSOVER GUIDE
Some references in this chapter come from source universes that may be unfamiliar to some readers. The notes below provide the context needed to understand them without leaving the page.
SOURCE UNIVERSES
Half-Life — A landmark first-person shooter game by Valve. The player controls Gordon Freeman, a physicist working at the Black Mesa Research Facility, a secret underground research complex buried beneath the New Mexico desert. During a routine experiment, an anomalous sample triggers a catastrophic "Resonance Cascade," tearing open a dimensional rift to an alien realm called Xen. The facility is immediately overrun by Xen creatures flooding in through the rift, while the military arrives to contain the incident by eliminating all witnesses. In this fanfic, Black Mesa and the Arrowhead Project are one and the same: the military base responsible for the dimensional rift that released the mist and its creatures.
CHARACTERS
Gordon Freeman — The protagonist of Half-Life, a theoretical physicist employed at Black Mesa. His signature equipment is an orange HEV environmental hazard suit and a crowbar he uses as his first weapon. The man in the orange hazmat suit with a crowbar that Sephirot finds unconscious is a direct reference to Gordon Freeman. In the game, Freeman survives the Resonance Cascade and fights his way through the facility; here, he appears critically wounded and barely conscious.
CREATURES
Headcrab (X-89) — One of the most iconic creatures from Half-Life. A small, crab-like parasite roughly the size of a large bird. Headcrabs leap at human targets and latch onto their heads, taking control of the host's body and transforming them into zombie-like husks. The biological code X-89 appears in the base's research logs.
Houndeye (X-42) — A tripodal dog-like creature from Half-Life's alien dimension Xen. It hunts in packs and emits devastating sonic pulse attacks. The biological code X-42 in the logs, described as a "tripodal canine creature," matches the Houndeye precisely.
PLACES
Black Mesa Research Facility — The secret underground research complex at the center of the Half-Life universe. Officially described to outsiders as a missile defense research base, it is in reality a cutting-edge scientific facility conducting highly classified experiments, including research into alien materials and inter-dimensional physics. The three-intersecting-circles logo Sephirot notices on the terminal is Black Mesa's emblem.