you stared ahead blankly at the wall of the break room, a long-forgotten bag of Spicy Doritos in front of you. your mind felt blank as you wondered what to do for the day. wander around Black Mesa? or maybe you could go bother some scientists for their phones so you could play some mobile games? so many things to do, but so little ti-

"hi, y/n!"

you jumped a bit at the sound of tommy's voice ripping you from your thoughts. shoving a Dorito in your mouth, you waved at him with a lazy smile and watched him grab two Dr. Peppers. he sat next to you and slid the can over to you.

"how's sunkist?" you asked idly. his eyes lit up before he talked about his service dog animatedly, waving his hands around while you nodded and made passive comments, just wanting to listen to him talk.

finishing the - now lukewarm -  can of soda, you glanced at the clock and stopped tommy from talking as the two of you got up to remind him about the experiment today. "oh! i almost for-forgot! thank you for th-for reminding me!" you nodded and jabbed your thumb at the exit of the break room. "im gonna meet you there, i've got some stuff to do."

tommy waved goodbye to you as you walked out and clipped through the wall to go to the test chamber. as you clipped through, the game reverted to its original low-poly map rather than staying as its ai-fooling realism. you stopped short to survey an interaction between benry and another scientist in a hev suit. something in you made you make sure to remember him; it seemed important. you moved on to reach the test chamber and stepped out of the wall to give the game time to catch up.

once the game reverted from its low-poly state, you stepped inside the room and greeted dr. coomer and bubby. "hello, mx. y/n!" coomer exclaimed happily while bubby mumbled 'hello', more focused on pushing random buttons on the control interface. tommy walked in behind you and followed you to the window where you noted there was only one mic.

you idly chatted with tommy once again before hearing a loud, "WHAT THE FUCK?!" that made you hiss at the sheer volume of the exclamation. everyone looked to see the scientist in a hev suit, gawking at benry. you waved at benry while he sweetvoiced back a greeting. "TOMMY!" you flinched at your friends volume, but watched as the said male turned to look at benry. "TOMMY!" tommy chuckled under his breath before taking the mic. "h-hi :)" benry sweetvoiced happily while you were keeled over with laughter.

once you calmed down you took the mic. "hey." the scientist in a hev suit perked up at your voice. "uh, is-isn't that your coworker over there?" he pointed to benry. "yeah, what about it?" his face twisted into confusion while a knowing grin rested on your face. "he's inside the test chamber!"

"yeah, to stop you from stealing anything." benry turned to you. "he doesn't have his passport!" you raised an eyebrow. "he doesn't have his passport?" you heard murmurs from the others behind you before tommy took the mic. "y-you don't have th- your passport, mr. freeman?" the supposed 'mr. freeman' patted his face a few times before answering back frustrated. "i don't! i didn't even know i needed that until 30 minutes ago!"

"alright, alright, how 'bout i calm him down before we start the experiment. that okay?" everyone nodded in agreement and watched as you opened the observation window and jumped down to the inside of the testing chamber. freeman gawked as you walked up to him and spit blue sweet voice right in his face. he sputtered and tried to swat away the blue raspberry flavored balls. "wh-why are you down here?! you don't even have a fucking-" he stopped and exhaled through his teeth, muttering a few comforting words to himself before turning from you and loudly exclaiming. "fuck it! we're gonna have a death at the workplace today!" you watched with amusement as he climbed up the ladder to calibrate a few things.

you heard bubby yell. "acceptable losses,  gordon!" snorting at the exclamation, you noted that the scientists' name was gordon. it seemed to fit him well, you thought before idly wandering around the bottom floor.

"wait!" you looked over to benry and watched as he sped towards the ladder and climbed up so fast you worried he might've no clipped through the roof. deciding to stay below, you waited for gordon to come down so you could mess with him a bit more. you watched him descend and teleported next to him to quiz him on random topics that came to your mind. "so, uh, what's your name? huh?" he jumped at your appearance before sighing exasperatedly. "it's gordon. gordon freeman." you pretended to form an 'o' shape with your mouth as you jogged to catch up with him. "didn't take you as a gordon person. i thought your name was like, wayne or uh, barnabus or something."

he snorted at your assumptions and shook his head. "no! no, but uh, where did you get the barnabus from? it's,,,like the most far off thing i've ever heard." you shrugged and stopped at the sample he was supposed to push into the center area. a bad feeling started to form in the pit of your stomach as you recognized the sample as xen material. you panicked a bit, but you hoped benry would notice and try to distract gordon from pushing the sample in.

your friend arrived next to you and seemed to acknowledge the xen material also. gesturing your head towards gordon, he seemed to have got the hint and started questioning his actions. "what- what are you doing? huh? p,,,plannin' on stealin' that?" while gordon was distracted you no-clipped back to the observation room and started to try and turn the machine off discretely.

but it seemed you were too late as tommy started giving instructions and gordon started to move the cart. already knowing how this is going to end, you stepped all the way to the back of the room and braced yourself for the explosion.

you heard shouts from the science team and watched with surprise as bubby jumped out and into the failed experiment. everyone clambered back to you and waited for the eventual loud explosion. you heard gordon yell one last thing before everything went black.

this is what i was working on :]