Goggles and the Tears: Chapter 35

Booker, Goggles, and Anna returned to the lab, and the soldier declared, “Okay, we’re all set. Now we have to hunt down the proper time period, and obviously we have someone to light the way to it, right?”

 “As much as I can try,” Anna answered with a bit of hesitation.

 The door they’d come through had since shut, but Anna simply opened a new one with a simple swift thrust of her hands, enveloping the whole lab and thrusting the group, bomb and all, to a new segment of the Door network. This time, the segment opened into a stark white void with floating black tiles weaving around like the walkways from before. Now they could see that in the distance, Goggles and Marie Delacroix were walking together along some of the paths. This confused him, though, as Goggles never really had a bond like Elizabeth to that woman.

 He voiced this confusion, “That’s weird, am I looking at some alternate universe where Delacroix was with me along this whole adventure?”

 “Who knows? It could happen,” Anna suggested.

 The black tiles formed into a concise bridge, with Anna gesturing with her hand, “It’s this way.”

 “Let’s move, then. No time to waste – no pun intended,” Goggles commanded.

 The whole group made a powerful stride down the bridge, towards a stark doorway glaring from the other end of the bridge inside this whiteness. As Goggles looked over the side, he saw himself and Delacroix walk past below them on another bridge perpendicular to where he was standing, but when he looked closer, it almost seemed like Marie Delacroix was one of those psionic ghosts, and yet talking to him as if she was always with him like Anna and Booker. He listened in on a conversation between the two. Delacroix was doing most of the talking.

 “Mon pétit, I have a bad feeling about this: what if we are actually walking into another one of SHODAN's schemes? Consider the implications: we both require each other, as we need the help of SHODAN to undermine the Many and she needs ours to exert her control over Xerxes. But as enter our... final match, SHODAN's very last move is to reboot the game: did she plan out her move in advance? Looking at our fading grasp on the situation, I fear that her goal had always been to just outlast every other player in this infinite match.”

 That statement sent a chill down the present soldier’s spine. Did SHODAN know that these people were coming this way? Was that why Anna was always flickering in and out of existence? God, when will it end?

 “Um, Goggles, are you okay?” Alyx interrupted his thoughts.

 “I’m fine, I’m just a little nervous, is all,” he shrugged it off.

 As they neared the door, asked Gordon, “Dr. Freeman, I’m a little surprised at you about this: How did you come up with so many theories about reality?”

 “Like I said, I’m a theoretical physicist with degrees from Innsbruck and M.I.T. What else did you think I would’ve done whilst fighting for my life, again and again?”

 “I don’t know?” Goggles shrugged.

 “Everyone knows that a scientist’s job is to try and make sense of the world around him, but everywhere I went made no physical sense. And nobody else noticed things were up?”

 Booker just coughed, and Mjolnir groaned a little from the pain of still hauling the crates of explosives behind everyone else.

 “But I’ll give those Lutece people credit: They sure know how to prove me wrong. Well played. Even that other guy in the suit wasn’t that bizarre.”

 The door lead to a new set of pathways and towers, except these ones were enormously tall and covered in sharp, dark blue metal. The sky was an unhealthy shade of orange, and the walkways were jagged slabs of steel with sinister-looking handrails lined with jutting metal protrusions.

 “Oh God, I hate this place!” Gordon moaned.

 “Me too,” Alyx cringed.

 “What?” Booker inquired.

 “It’s...well, it’s based on the Combine Citadel, mixed with what looks like their homeworld. If I was actually there and not in this...mock-up, I would just scream, big-time,” Gordon elaborated.

 “I would love to hear you scream, Doctor!” a distinctive electronic voice taunted from the other end of this bridge.

 “Crap, not again!” Goggles snarled.

 Ahead, several bridges formed to intersect this one, and on them emerged a group of markedly green women accompanied by a squad of Combine soldiers.

 “Get out of my f*cking way!” Gordon shouted before throwing a grenade at the soldiers in front. But just as he threw it, something sucked it in and threw it back in his face!

 Gordon shrieked, Booker caught it, and threw it back into the air just before it exploded into pieces of shrapnel.

 One of the green women levitated into the air, the same futuristic pseudo-Chinese caricature Gordon and Alyx saw in their alternate future, smiled, and declared, “Th-th-throw down your weapons, and I shaaaal n-n-n-not return fire.”

 “Says the freak who’s surrounded by people who’ll shoot on command!” Gordon yelled.

 Booker quietly suggested, “Let’s just keep moving and ignore her. I’ve had enough shooting.”

 The refugees continued their precession along this catwalk, ignoring SHODAN’s demands. Just as the soldiers began to aim their guns and fire, Anna suddenly opened a Tear under them, dropping them to who knows where. With them gone, Goggles could see other versions of SHODAN, maybe two or three dozen of them, on the intersecting bridges. Some were powerful bulking robots, others slim androids like the one they fought in Columbia, several were humans turned to cyborgs, one in front startlingly looking like Rebecca Siddons – although with a very weird hairdo reminiscent of the face full of cables SHODAN usually sported when not in a body; and a couple more clones as huge, lumbering hybrids of man and machine. Goggles didn’t need another monologue from that AI to understand what was happening.

 “I’m sorry, this road’s closed, I need you to detour to Bleakwood Avenue!” Gordon tried to flavor a combat scene, readied his AR2, and let it rip, but the clones wouldn’t budge despite the plasma bullets and even an energy pellet that had no effect at all. “I said this road’s closed, you need to go around!”

 “I...don’t think SHODAN’s listening, Gordon,” Alyx alerted her companion.

 Gordon lowered his gun and sighed, “Come on, is there no end to this harpy?!”

 “There’s....there’s just no escaping her, is there?” Anna gasped, fearing she’d be exploited again, a disturbing contrast to the enthusiastic taste of power she received not 10 minutes ago.

 Goggles took a good long look at all the people in front of him, thinking about what got them this far and why, what they had to suffer through to get here. Everything they’d done, they’d done against immeasurable odds. So now, he figured...it was time to take a very, very big risk. No way in hell should they be turned back now! Not on his watch!

 Goggles turned to face SHODAN and her clones, held up his hands and stated, “Hey, I surrender!”

 His colleagues and even some of the clones were shocked at that proposal, but the one who hovered just smiled and replied, “Very good. Do-”

 “On these terms,” he interrupted.

 Figuratively gritting her teeth, SHODAN answered, “F-F-F-Fine, what is it?”

 “You let the girl be, you leave my colleagues to their business, and I offer my body to you...for whatever twisted desires you have for me.”

 Many of the SHODAN clones and her prime form smiled, saying, “Goooood, I already have...I already have...I already have many plans, and I know j-ju-just the place for a speck like you!” She hovered back down to ground level and summoned one of her clones.

 “SHODAN Beta-zero-five, standing by,” that clone reported to its leader. This being appeared to be a half-dead human stuffed inside a hi-tech white space suit or diving suit, with strange black strands weaving across its surface like how tar leaks from the seams in concrete tiles. Glowing bluish-white spheres protruded from it like some kind of alien cancer.

 As that presumably cybernetic version of SHODAN stepped forth, a bridge leading to the left towards a door in one of the Citadels contrasted with an automated door that looked more akin to those in a submarine.

 “Wait, I need to say a few words to my colleagues,” the soldier demanded.

 “Then hurry, my patience is dwindling,” SHODAN Beta-05 grumbled.

 Goggles looked back again, and Gordon was the first to step forward. He asked with as straight a face as he could, though failing, “Dude, are you seriously giving yourself up to this...crazy-ass AI? After we just fought her off, again?”

 Goggles leaned close and whispered in his ear, “It’s a compromise. Take this,” he fished out the key to the clock and stuffed it into Gordon’s right hand, covering it in such a way that SHODAN wouldn’t see it. “Arm the bomb, then get your asses back to your time zones. I’ll be fine.”

 “Yeah, right, before she probably rips those cameras out of your skull and maybe mind-wipes you, for good measure! I’ve seen enough sci-fi movies to know how this sh*t works,” Gordon retorted with heavy doubt.

 “Well, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

 “But why? Just...why?” Alyx pleaded.

 “I have to say, Gordon had a point, you really are a good leader in combat,” Booker pointed out while wiping his mouth.

  “Without you...what can we do by ourselves out here?” Anna stammered.

 “You realize, you won’t get shot anymore if I go. We don’t have to keep spewing lead for at least a while. And I’m sure all of you have gotten sick of shooting by now, right?” Goggles stated.

 The men and Alyx all agreed.

 Anna noticed a slight shift in tone in the soldier’s voice, and suspected that he had something else besides having someone else arm the bomb up his sleeve, but said nothing.

 “Are you sure this is the right thing to do?” she warned with a dark tone in her voice.

  “If it’ll make SHODAN leave you guys alone once and for all, then yes. I’m sorry,” Goggles hung his head.

 “Well...good luck. Thanks for getting us this far,” Booker solemnly finished with a thick handshake.

  “I don’t know what’s worse: Watching your own father get stabbed in front of you, or a good leader and friend leave and possibly end up mutilated, but if it’s for the greater good, well...I respect you for that...Goggles,” Alyx sighed.

  “Like they say, see you starside,” Mjolnir 54 added.

  With a heavy heart, Goggles turned around and walked away towards SHODAN Beta-5. The others continued on, led by Anna as a guide in this network, across a bridge leading the opposite direction from this door, hopefully towards the Lutece Labs.

 Goggles whipped around to glance at SHODAN prime and demanded, “You’ll keep your word, or it’s more explosives for you!”

 SHODAN said nothing, just watched the other refugees leave with their precious cargo untouched.