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1. Regretful
“In hindsight, maybe he never had a chance,” Gordon says thoughtfully. “He was as caught up in all this weird cascade inevitability bullshit as we were, you know?”
They round a corner into the circus-tent-turned-temporary-chemistry-laboratory. Tommy tilts his head, propellor comically askew.
“So uh… what you’re saying is… if I see Benrey again, you want me to forgive him unconditionally?” he asks.
“You think we’re going see him again?” Gordon asks, equal parts doubt and wistfulness. Then shakes his head and steels his expression. “What am I saying? We’re obviously not, and even if we do you shouldn’t just—”
“Do you want me to forgive him right now?” Tommy asks.
He points across the room, to a spot between two gas burners and a dozen pita breads, where Benrey is, impossibly, standing.
Tommy waves. Gordon’s expression flits through every stage of grief, before landing firmly on anger. Benrey lopes over to them – same stupid helmet, same vacant stare – and sidles up to Gordon as if no time as passed. As if there’s not a severed limb and several murders between them.
“Hey, bro,” Benrey says, his voice soft and distorted. “I, uh, I’m sorry. I fucked up big time.”
“No,” Gordon says sharply, abject denial.
“No man, you gotta listen. I fucked up, like, I Leeroy Jenkinsed that shit. We used to be best friends. I wanna… uhh… friendship more. I wanna go back to the mud and the sand. I want that sweet sweet forgiveness. Please? I’ll do anything… I’ll give you any number of PSN months, just. We could be good again.”
“No,” Gordon says again. He draws the minigun and fires seven shots; Benrey is dead by the third.
2. Compliant
They’re eating lunch in Coomer’s office. Gordon steers the conversation, as always, back to Benrey.
“Maybe my dad was controlling him the whole time,” Tommy says morosely. “He, uh. Sometimes he hijacks other people if he thinks it’ll make me happy.”
“Tommy, that’s immoral,” Coomer says. He’s slurping at what appears to be a whole, uncooked tuna.
“It’s worse than immoral,” Tommy says, “it’s OSHA-noncompliant!”
A figure approaches, sits down, opens a lunch box. Every member of their little group embarks on the same face journey: hope (Bubby?), disappointment (of course it’s not Bubby), and bemusement (wait, Benrey??).
“‘Sup,” Benrey says. He takes out a cupcake and eats it wrapper-first. “We, uh. We having lunch?”
“Hello Benrey,” Coomer says. “Yes! Lunch, an abbreviation for luncheon, is a meal eaten around midday. We used to eat lunch in a group with Doctor Bubby. During the 20th century, the meaning gradually narrowed to a small or mid-sized meal—”
“Can I have your soda?” Tommy asks Benrey, who nods and hands it over.
Coomer is distracted from his Wikipedia lecture by the prospect of free food.
“Ooh,” he says. “Can I have your sandwich?”
“Huh?” Benrey says, sounding distracted enough that Gordon momentarily lowers his weapon. “Oh. Sure.”
“Can I have the container?” he asks. “And the rest of the food in it?”
Benrey acquiesces, with a perfunctory muttered “Baby Feetman, forgot to bring his own food, what a loser”.
Gordon receives this gift, sets it on the ground, and immediately raises the muzzle of his right arm threateningly. Nobody else notices.
“With such generous gestures, I think you’re well on your way to earning our forgiveness,” Coomer says.
“Are you just giving stuff away?” Tommy asks.
Benrey looks blank for several seconds, and then makes an unnecessarily sloppy sucking noise at his lip.
“Do you want me to, uhh… do you want me to give stuff away? Like, huh, gameshow time, the Price Is Benrey? You wanna get all up in my stuff?”
“Yeah!” Tommy says. “Can I have your boots?”
“Uh huh.”
Security guard footwear should clash horribly with the rest of Tommy’s outfit, but somehow the mishmash aesthetic suits him.
Benrey tucks his socked feet underneath his knees. Coomer munches. There is silence for a moment, and then Gordon shatters it.
“Benrey, do a handstand,” he commands.
Benrey complies.
“Say ‘Benrey sucks ass’.”
“Benrey sucks ass,” Benrey parrots, then glares. “Benrey also hates Gordon.”
Gordon nods decisively, countenance grim.
“Benrey, take your gun and shoot yourself in the head,” he orders.
Benrey complies.
“I don’t think that was n—necessary,” Tommy says, as they gaze at Benrey’s fresh, bloodied corpse. “He wasn’t a threat to us.”
Gordon shrugs, wholly unbothered.
“Gordon, he was doing everything we asked of him,” Coomer points out.
“Yeah, that was the problem.”
Coomer hunches his shoulders, sucks another piece of flesh from his fish.
“But we could have asked him to do something about that blasted tube,” he says, sadly.
3. Rabid
Tommy finds the next one down by cybernetics.
“I saw Benrey near mixology,” Tommy reveals. “When I was, uh, heading that way for a casual walk.”
“Lucky you, getting to take walks,” Coomer says. “They haven’t let me leave my office since the Handy-Dandy Coomer Cloner Mark II prototype went missing.”
“That’s because they think you stole it,” Gordon tells him.
“Preposterous.”
“Is it though? You hate your clones. The entire reason they’re trying to make new ones is that you slaughtered the last batch.”
“Oh yes, quite true. But why do they think I’d steal the prototype, instead of pulverising it on the spot with my mighty fists?”
Gordon chuckles.
“Good point,” he admits.
“A casual walk for no reason,” Tommy continues, unaffected by their banter, “of which the proximity to mixology was random and unintentional.”
“Okay, buddy,” Gordon says, interrupting Tommy’s monologue before he paints them all into a conversational corner. “Let’s go retrace your steps so we can find Benrey.”
“Are you going to be nice this time?” Tommy asks. “You always say you’re gonna be nice and then you get all mean and slaughter-y.”
“I don’t know. I can’t answer that until I see him.”
When they reach Benrey, he is angrier than he’s ever been before. Blood on his clothes, frothing and raging and spitting terrifyingly coherent threats. He gets his hands on a particularly foolhardy scientist and immediately tries to rip his arm off.
“Benrey?” Gordon asks, voice dubious.
Benrey snarls, and starts describing a vividly painful way that Gordon should die. Then he grabs another scientist and starts snapping necks.
Tommy kills him. Outright, headshot, no hesitation. He was too close to mixology.
4. Brilliant
The fourth time is well after midnight, when Gordon sneaks into the Black Mesa restricted zone for a visit.
“Hi,” he says, leaning against the rail, avoiding the proximity alarms. “You doing okay in there?”
Bubby scoffs, and a few tiny bubbles drift upward from his mouth. He’s still fully clothed, despite being permanently suspended in liquid, and his lab-coat floats out behind him dramatically.
“I don’t have to answer that,” Bubby declares, folding his arms.
Gordon grins crookedly. It’s nice to be reunited with an old friend, even if the circumstances are bleak. Even if there’s another person with whom he’d much rather be reunited.
“Coomer says hello.”
“Does he? I don’t see him here.”
Gordon runs a hand through his hair, surveys the room. Alarms and sensors litter every surface. The containment walls are a sturdy blast-resistant polymer, three feet thick. There are no bootboys to bribe, no bars to break. The tube hatch is guarded by a formidable artificial intelligence, custom made and smarter than even Bubby himself.
It’s an inescapable prison.
Black Mesa is nothing if not punitively, zealously protective of their intellectual property.
“He’s been trying to figure out a way to rescue you,” Gordon says, quietly. “The whole Science Team is working on it. We haven’t abandoned you.”
“You should.”
“What?”
Bubby shrugs.
“Look, I’m a lost cause. The Black Mesa suits are never going to release me, not after what happened during the cascade. Tell the Science Team to find a more achievable project to occupy themselves.”
“You want us to just give up on you?”
“If you try to help me, you’ll just find a way to fuck it up.”
Gordon looks furious for a moment. Then he shrugs, dusts off his hands with exaggerated nonchalance.
“Fine, but I’m not breaking the news to Coomer. I’ll sneak him in here, and you can convince him yourself.”
Bubby hisses, baring his teeth like a cornered rat.
“Asshole,” he pronounces. “How dare you—”
“Whoa, cool computer!” Benrey says, stumbling gracelessly into both the room and the conversation. “You could play so many Heavenly Sword on this.”
“Don’t touch the AI interface,” Gordon snaps. “You’ll set off the alarms, and we’ll get into trouble.”
And sure, Gordon has been in trouble before. He’s used to trouble. He’s practically a delinquent, and definitely a criminal. But things are different now. Bubby is vulnerable. Bubby is back in the possession of his handlers, and Gordon will be damned if he’ll give those megalomaniac bastards an excuse to take their shitty tempers out on Bubby tonight.
Bubby floats over to the edge of the tube, peering at the newcomer with interest. Gordon looks only at Bubby, wondering if his smartest friend is going to be fooled, the same way everyone else has been fooled.
“Gay baby jail for Bubby,” Benrey chants. He presses a few buttons, and squints at the admin screen. “Whuh oh. This is, uh, advanced shit.”
“Yes, it’s unassailable,” Bubby tells him. “Now please leave before you Gordon everything up.”
“Hey! Since when did my name become a synonym for failure?”
“Not just any failure. Catastrophic failure,” Bubby corrects, bobbing jauntily up and down.
Gordon leans in, fuming, and Bubby leers. For a few moments, they are both too consumed by the argument to notice Benrey’s continued interface-related experiments.
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Gordon contends. “I’m the one who got us out alive after the cascade!”
“Really? I seem to remember you being the one who caused the cascade.”
“Okay, that was an accident. And I might add, an accident that you helped cause!”
“Well, at least I got out with all my limbs intact,” Bubby says haughtily, waving his arms and legs as if to demonstrate his point.
“Yeah, well, at least I’m not stuck in a tube, pining for someone who won’t visit because I refuse to talk to them!”
Bubby tries several times to set Gordon on fire.
“At least I can turn into a car!”
“That’s not a rebuttal!”
“Neither’s that!” Bubby retorts
“Yes, actually it was. I was pointing out the flaw in your argument, that’s a classic textbook-definition rebuttal.”
“Well, you smell like bug piss,” Bubby says. In a fluid motion, he slides down to the bottom of his tube and is expelled through the hatch. “And your hair is stupid. Either commit to a ponytail or don’t, mullet bitch.”
Gordon stares, mouth agape.
“You’re out,” he says, quietly.
“Well you’re an ugly… wait, I’m what?”
Bubby stops jeering and looks down at himself. He’s sitting on the floor, in a puddle nutrient-goo. The tube is empty. Bubby is free.
“You got, uhh, you got like eight minutes,” Benrey says, pressing several spots on the touch-screen. “I created a virtual machine to generate Bubby-in-tube feedback, but the system is uhhh. Adaptable. It’s Melinda, and I’m Chip. You gotta fucking run, bro.”
“Oh my god,” Bubby says, getting shakily to his feet, aided and abetted by Gordon’s hand under his elbow. “This feels like a dream. I… I don’t quite know what to say to you.”
“Say I’m smarter than you.”
“No,” Bubby says, and flees into the vents.
Gordon reaches out and awkwardly pats Benrey’s shoulder, trying not to shudder.
“Thanks,” he says.
Benrey licks his lips.
“Hey. If we like, if we survive this, do you want to uh. Like, sunshine, ice cream. Dating sim real life?”
“No.”
“Wanna be friends?”
“No?”
“What do you want, Mr Fussyman?”
Gordon smiles weakly.
“Hey, you’re probably the smartest person I’ll ever meet.”
“Uh huh.”
“I bet you know the answer to every question.”
“Uh huh.”
“Okay. So then, tell me, riddle me this. Where is he? Where’s the original?”
Benrey finally turns away from the screen. He meets Gordon’s eyes and shakes his head.
“I uh. No can do.”
“I figured,” Gordon says.
“I’m gonna stay here until everything goes to shit, okay? Gonna uhh. Be a hero. Hold off the guards.”
“I’m kinda sorry to hear that,” Gordon says. “But I won’t stop you.”
And he leaves.
The fourth time, he doesn’t see Benrey die until days later. After he’s gotten Bubby safely out of the facility. After Black Mesa went on containment breach red-alert. After they released some of the security footage, to ‘jog people’s memories’, and Benrey is in the corner for just a second before getting gunned into oblivion.
5. Tommy
Having Bubby back means three things. First, it means Bubby is sleeping on Gordon’s couch, because Bubby is too much of a coward to move in with Coomer like he’s supposed to. Secondly, Coomer is sleeping on Gordon’s other couch, because he won’t leave Bubby’s side, and Bubby is perfectly content with that.
And thirdly, it means that Gordon has someone else who sees the truth. Bubby can perceive the same lie that Gordon has been seeing since that first encounter at the chemistry laboratory.
Honestly, it’s a relief.
“One of the facsimiles came to the house today,” Bubby says, over a dinner he cooked, for which the recipe can be summarised as ‘find five edible things and char until unrecognisable’.
“Been a long time since I’ve heard that word,” Coomer says. “Fax (short for facsimile) (Bubby is back Bubby is home everything is right in the world again), sometimes called telecopying or telefax is the—”
“Not a fax,” Bubby says, flapping a hand at him. “A facsimile. One of the fake Benrey clones you all keep meeting.”
Coomer does not appear to hear him, lost to happy Wikipedia-related recollections. Gordon, on the other hand, is listening intently.
“Finally!” he blusters “Everyone else keeps acting like ‘oh, here’s the real Benrey’ when that clearly isn’t the case! I mean, none of them are right.”
“Fake as a foam penny,” Bubby confirms. “And they each seem to have some stupid, baby, shit personality quirk. It’s like the seven dwarves of Benrey.”
“Any idea where they’re coming from?”
“I suspected Mr Coolatta—”
“Yeah, that’s a good hypothesis.”
“—until I saw today’s facsimile,” Bubby finishes.
Any elucidation of this baffling statement is interrupted by Tommy rushing into the kitchen, with Tommy hot on his heels.
Wait, what?
“Look who I found, Mister Freeman,” the first Tommy says, jubilantly. “My long-lost identical twin.”
He gestures to the second Tommy, who is in fact Benrey in a lab coat with a colorful hat glued to the top of his helmet.
“Oh no,” Gordon says in distress. “I can’t handle this. I’m gonna have an aneurism.”
“Hello Tommy,” Coomer says. “Hello, Tomrey. Would you like to join us for some blackened lettuce and a Wikipedia article or two?”
“Don’t talk to the Benrey,” Bubby chides. “He isn’t real.”
“No, I’m not hungry. I have something important news to tell you,” Tommy announces.
Benrey is gazing around like he’s never seen the inside of a house before.
“You, uh,” he says to Gordon. “You got neopets? You got one of these?”
He brandishes a fake passport, which has been edited so that all text and pictures are replaced with soda facts and stickers.
“Get the fuck out.”
“But I’m just like Tommy! You like Tommy.”
“I don’t like you.”
“We could be buddies. I could tell you about, uh, how your cornices are in violation of the building code. I could make you an immortal dog. Or maybe like… steal you an immortal dog? You like theft, doncha Mister Freeman?”
Gordon and Tommy shoot him at the exact same time.
“It was self-defence,” Tommy says. “He was threatening to kidnap Sunkist.”
Gordon turns his back on the body. He’s so tired of this already.
“I get it now,” he says to Bubby. “I agree with you; I don’t think G-man would make an… an abomination like that.”
“My dad can do anything,” Tommy says. “But there’s a lot of stuff he won’t do. Like protect you from a military raid on your home.”
Gordon spins on his heel.
“What raid?” he asks. “What are you talking about?”
“The security cameras from Bubby’s escape showed Benrey’s face at the uh, at the crime scene. And it is a known HR fact that you and Benrey are friends, Mister Freeman.”
Gordon touches his fringe for a moment.
“They think we’re friends?” he asks. “Wait like, close friends? I mean, I know we’re not, but HR is about matching people,” the color rises steadily in his cheeks, “like to jobs and positions and teams and managers and other people… and HR thinks I match with Benrey?”
“Gordon, you just shot him,” Coomer says, ever the occasional voice of reason.
“Who cares about any of that,” Bubby says, from the living room where he is throwing his worldly possessions into a suitcase. “I have to get out of here.”
“We’ll figure out a way to hide you,” Gordon says, in his most reassuring voice.
“How are you going to hide me? Does your dinky little arm gun have a shrink-ray function? Are you hiding an invisibility potion in that stupid suit?”
“Huh,” Gordon says. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea.
6. Benrey
“A potion of invisibility?” Darnold asks, eyebrows knitted together. “By tonight? No, I’m afraid that’s impossible.”
The shelves behind him are filled with empty health potion jars, which is enough to bring Tommy scuttling out of hiding.
“Are you sick?” he asks, worriedly, leaning perilously close. “You can’t… you’re not allowed to…”
They wait for him to finish his thought, but he doesn’t. He just averts his eyes and grinds his teeth in silence. Such is the effect of Talking To Darnold.
Gordon shares Tommy’s concern, in principle if not in magnitude. The head of mixology has been their cavalry more times than Gordon can count on one gun-hand. He’s one of the few scientists allowed to work independently, a genius just modest enough to escape the notice of cloning programs, and someone to whom they owe a great debt.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” Darnold says, waving his arm, and shifting his weight as if he plans to conceal the thousands of empty jars behind his five foot frame.
“Do you have a partial cloaking potion?” Coomer asks. “Or perhaps a shrinking potion?”
“No,” Darnold tells him. “Our funding has been cut. All I’ve got is curly potion, potion that makes olives, and of course, my top-secret make-everyone-in-Black-Mesa-forget-something-ever-existed potion.”
Gordon and Coomer blink at each other, processing this information with identical swiftness.
“Wait, can you modify that last one so people forget Bubby ever existed?” Gordon asks, dubiously. It can’t be this easy.
“Sure,” Darnold says. “I just need some of his DNA and—”
Coomer picks some hair off his shoulder and hands it over.
“—okay, I just need to give you the antidotes. Then I’ll fire up the generator to aerosolize the Bubby Forgettin’ Potion to the whole facility.”
Gordon puts the suspiciously gumball-shaped antidote pill under his tongue, and then nearly swallows both of them when the generator backfires in a shower of sparks.
“Darn it,” Darnold says. “He’s using all the power for that stupid modified Coomer Cloner. Please wait here for a moment.”
With this cryptic message, he crosses the room – pausing to gather two full health potions from a mini fridge – before sliding open a hidden door and poking his head into the room beyond it.
“Stop hoggin’ the electricity,” Darnold admonishes. “You shouldn’t be charging that thing up anyway. If you use it again it’s gonna kill you.”
There’s the clink of bottles being placed on floor, and then Darnold returns to them.
“Sorry,” he says. “Our department is renting out our unused rooms to try and earn some extra funds. You know how it is. Anyway, the potion is circulating through the air as we speak. Soon nobody will remember… whoever it was.”
“Thank you,” Coomer says warmly.
“You’re really handsome,” Tommy blurts out. “Uh, I mean. Thank you.”
Gordon does not express gratitude. He stares into the middle distance, muttering to himself.
“The prototype,” he says slowly. “Of course! It was designed to clone Coomer, but it’s a brand-new untested model. Make a few changes and you have a machine that spits out two-dimensional clones with whatever personality modifiers you want.”
“Oh, you know about that?” Darnold asks. “That thing is busted, anyway. Each use takes a tremendous toll on the original. If they’d used it even once on Doctor Coomer, he’d be dead.”
“Thank goodness for petty theft,” Coomer says soberly. “Come on, Gordon. Let’s go home.”
Gordon squares his shoulders and reaches for his crowbar.
“I’ll meet you there,” he says firmly. “Doctor Darnold, I’m afraid I need to evict your tenant.”
“Gordon, property damage is wrong,” Tommy says. “Especially in the mixology department.”
“Violence is unwarranted,” Darnold tells them, deliberately not looking at Tommy. “I’ll gladly get the door for you. He doesn’t pay rent and he keeps drinkin’ all my health potions.”
The secret room turns out to be a repurposed bathroom, with video game consoles strewn across the sink and a mattress squeezed into the space beside the shower stall. And Benrey, lying limply on the mattress, the prototype clutched in his pale hands.
“Look, Gordon,” Coomer exclaims. “Another fake bitch.”
“Not this time,” Gordon replies. “This is the real bitch. This is the real, original Benrey.”
Tommy examines a few of the Sweet Voice orbs still lingering in the air, and makes a worried noise under his breath.
“Teal to teak means really weak,” he announces. “He’s uh. He’s pretty messed up, Mister Freeman.”
“Yo,” Benrey says, without moving. “What are you doing in my apartment? You uhh... ready for round two? You wanna fight me again, little scientists?”
“Nope, but I’m ready to hear why you keep making shitty copies of yourself,” Gordon says, “and sending them to torment us.”
“Wouldn’t… uhh… I wouldn’t have to if you weren’t so pernickety,” Benrey says reproachfully. “I bet you spend days on character creation screen, like a fussy little toddler.”
“This is in no way my fault!”
“Why did you have to ruin everything? Why couldn’t you just pick a fake Benrey clone to befriend? Then you and he could have been so uh… so, so, so happy… and I would have been able to rest. But you just kept murdering and refusing and complaining. Wah wah wah. They were all real good. Smart, nice, sad. I even made an evil one in case you wanted to feel righteous. But noooo, you got standards higher than the Icy Tower. Fucking get over yourself, Fussman.”
“I never asked for your shitty army of caricatures!” Gordon snaps, throwing his arms in the air. “You can’t just send a bunch of… of fake people after me and expect that I’ll like one of them.”
“Forcing people to feel things is wrong,” Tommy says, gravely. “I had to explain that to my dad. No editing personalities!”
“Exactly!”
Benrey smirks.
“So you admit you’re uh… just unreasonable,” he says. And he’s smiling, but there’s a sharp edge of defeat to his words. “There’s no version of me that you’ll accept, High and Mightyman. Huh? Huh?”
“That does seem kind of cruel, Gordon,” Coomer interjects. “The man is dying. Maybe permanently. Repeated use of the prototype has destroyed ninety percent of his cell structure.”
Gordon sits down on the least-stained corner of the mattress, next to Benrey’s head.
“I didn’t say every version was unacceptable,” he protests, folding his arms across his chest with a dull clang.
Benrey grips the cloner with unsteady fingers.
“I’ve got enough juice for one more,” he says, pausing to lick his lips. “What’ll, uh. What’ll it be. What’s your order, sir?”
“Can I take a closer look?” Gordon asks, leaning over. “What are the options?”
“First you gotta promise,” Benrey says, clutching the prototype protectively against his stomach. “You and him. The uh, the sand—”
“—and the mud,” Gordon finishes, tiredly. “I promise.”
“Promise you’ll be, uh, at least as much friendship as you are with Darnold.”
“That’s not fair,” Tommy declares. “Everyone unequivocally loves Darnold, he’s perfect.”
“Uhh…hmm… at least as much friendship as you are with Coomer, then.”
“Done,” Gordon says.
“Whuhkay,” Benrey answers, extending his hand once more. “These are the personality sliders. We could do a combo, like uhh. Dumb and amicable. Or uh. We could overclock the generator and make him hotter? You want supermodel Benrey? I’m dying either way, might as well leave a good-looking not-corpse, right?”
Gordon frowns.
“Hold it up a little higher, please,” he says. “What’s the dial with hex codes?”
“Eye colour.”
“An important trait,” Coomer says sagely.
“And these numbers?” Gordon asks, and then adds, huffily. “This is a big decision, Benrey, and you’re shaking like a leaf. Can you be helpful for once and just hand me the prototype so I can read the labels clearly.”
Benrey shrugs, says “shoe size”, and relinquishes the cloner to Gordon.
Gordon immediately throws it into the nearest toilet, and fires after it with his overheated gun until the whole stall is a smoking mess.
“Thanks,” he says, cheerfully.
For a moment, the others are frozen in shock. Then Benrey gets angry.
“What the heck, Feetman? That was… I worked so hard for so long and so hard… you just uh… you just fucking took everything away. Again. I hate you. I hate you!”
He curls up into a little ball of seething exhaustion, arms folded weakly, expression murderous. Gordon is unperturbed.
“I think you made a mistake,” Tommy says nervously. “You could have had a fully customised Benrey pal, Mister Freeman. Maybe one that dispensed soda. Or dogs!”
Gordon points down at Benrey’s sulking form.
“I want this one,” he says.
His three companions share a long, baffled glance.
“What?” Tommy asks.
“What?” Benrey echoes, eyes narrowing further, lip curled, anticipating a punchline.
“I want this Benrey,” Gordon says. “The original. The actual Benrey.”
“Are you sure?” Coomer asks. “Gordon, this is the version that tried to kill us. And cut off your arm. And… and didn’t save Bubby from the tube.”
“Oh yeah, he’s a jackass. But he’s our jackass, and he’s real. And he’s been tying himself in knots trying to do some stupid shit to make us like him.”
This seems to convince Coomer utterly.
“Friendship is beautiful,” he says. “You know, I’ve quite lost count of the number of times Bubby has tried to kill me. And yet, now we’re best friends.”
“No, you’re not,” Gordon says, rankling instantly. “If you were best friends, you wouldn’t be still staying in my living room. Best friends don’t need a chaperone.”
“I think there’s safety in numbers,” Tommy says, missing the point entirely.
“Bbbb.”
Benrey is staring at Gordon, eyes wide, hands pressed over his mouth in an attempt to stem the tide of coloured orbs streaming past his lips.
“Oh god, so many Sweet Voice balls. Tommy, what’s he saying? If he’s talking about fucking passports, I swear…”
“They’re just feelings, Mister Freeman.”
“Gordon, emotional expression is perfectly normal.”
“I know, I know. Tommy, which feelings are they showing?” Gordon asks.
“Uhh, there’s a lot here. Doubt… stress… relief… hope. I think those are the main ones.”
Hope. Gordon looks down at Benrey, finally letting himself smile.
“You got anything to say about this?” he asks.
“Bbbb. Bbb bb bbbbb.”
“Yeah okay, buh it is,” Gordon says affectionately. He grabs arm, pulls Benrey to his feet, and then catches him bridal-style when he tries to fall back down. “Ready to get out of here? My apartment has been turned into a free camping ground. We’ll get you your own couch and everything.”
“I didn’t know we could live with you!” Tommy says, with childlike enthusiasm. “I’ll… I’ll… I’m going home to get my things and Sunkist and I will be right over.”
“Okay, wait, I didn’t mean that you—” Gordon says, but Tommy has already jogged out the door and across the mixology lab, and vanished down the hall.
“Uh, bye?” Darnold calls after him. “It was good to see you again.”
“Sorry about all that,” Gordon tells him, as he and Coomer file out of the destroyed bathroom and into mixology proper. “Thanks for your help. We’ll take this one off your hands now.”
Benrey squirms, wraps his arms around Gordon’s neck and holds himself in a more upright position, face-to-shoulder.
“I’m not gonna lie to you,” Darnold says. “I did manage to extract over twelve immortality potions from the one Sweet Voice particle that floated in here, and I greatly appreciate that. But your buddy still owes fifty thousand dollars and seventy cents in rent and assorted damages.”
“Well, I’ve got a deal for you,” Coomer trills. “I’ll give you a PlayCoin. At current exchange rates they’re worth over fifty thousand dollars and eighty cents.”
Gordon is about to admonish Coomer for trying to scam their main ally, but is distracted by a quiet voice against his ear.
“Hey bro.”
“Hey Benrey,” he says comfortably. His arms are starting to hurt, but the rest of him is wholly at peace.
“You want to uhh. You want to come to my place this weekend? We could, uh, Super Mario and chill?”
“No,” Gordon replies. “You’ve got to focus on getting healthy again, man. Recovery first, then date. Okay?”
Benrey cuddles closer, mashes his smile against Gordon’s neck.
“’Kay.”
Coda: Brilliant Redux
Two months later, Darnold shows up on Gordon’s doorstep: a leather suitcase tucked under one arm, a kite under the other, and arms overflowing with an enormous bouquet of gerbera daisies.
“I heard you were offering free accommodation,” he explains.
“I’m not,” Gordon says, raising his voice over the cacophony of furniture cooking and perfect dog barks behind him. “Actually, you know what, come in. You’ve earned it. We’ll get you a couch.”
Darnold seems satisfied with this. He sets down most of his things, but makes no move to cross the threshold.
“I’m gonna go fly my kite now,” he says. “Please give the flowers to Tommy. I didn’t get to say goodbye last time he visited the lab.”
“And you,” Gordon puts the end of his gun against his mouth, in an attempt to hide his smile, “you thought because of that, you should buy him a bouquet the size of an unsheared sheep?”
“I used a potion to make them pet-safe and flame-resistant,” Darnold answers.
“I can’t decide if this is adorable, or if you’ve just completely misunderstood the catchphrase ‘say it with flowers’. Because that’s only supposed to be like… when you have something significant to say.”
“I’mgonnagoflymykitenow,” Darnold says, and dashes off into the yard.
“Oh okay, it’s adorable,” Gordon says, grinning at the orange-and-yellow arrangement. “I’m going to enjoy delivering these.”
He crosses through the kitchen on the way to the basement.
“Bubby, don’t,” he says, without looking up. He doesn’t need to know the specifics of Bubby’s current task to know that it needs to be stopped.
Coomer immediately leaps to his defence.
“That was pretty mean, Gordon.”
“Yeah, I’m mean now.”
Coomer ponders this for a moment, then says:
“I’m so proud of you, Gordon.”
After a cursory, failed effort to find Tommy, Gordon retires to the beanbag where Benrey is diligently gaming.
“I’m torrenting the, uh, the Kane and Lynch soundtrack,” Benrey says, dark eyes fixed on the screen. “Gonna play it real loud when I’m sick of your cringe-ass voice.”
In lieu of a response, Gordon simply steals the helmet. He slides it onto his own head, and presses a kiss against Benrey’s cheek.
Benrey freezes, controller tumbling from his hands, face suddenly obscured by an onslaught of multicolored bubbles. Gordon can read them all, surprise and bliss and unease. They’ve been friends for a while now, but this is the first time he’s made a move for anything more.
“Hey,” he says brightly. “Do you remember the second fake clone? The uh, the very subservient one?”
“Uh… hhh… oh yeah, Kai Two.”
“You gave them names?”
“No, I uh, called ‘em all Benrey so we’d be confused all the time. Of course I gave them names. Kai One, Kai Two, Nasty Kai, Kai Four, and Raven.”
“You… you called the Tommy clone… Raven?”
“Duh! He was my favourite.”
“Cool, cool,” Gordon says. “Well, did you know that on the day Kai Two joined us for lunch, he gave away his boots.”
“Aha, what a loser.”
“You’re not grasping the point here. He was identical to you, and he was shoeless. In front of me. That means,” Gordon leans in dramatically, “I got scans of your feet.”
The Sweet Voice orbs turn a uniform colour: intrigue. The flush on Benrey’s face looks strange against the dark shadow permanently cast over his brow.
“Did you keep the scans?” he whispers.
“You bet.”
Honestly, it doesn’t even feel creepy any more. It’s just one more alien custom for Gordon to learn. Like skeletal minions and two o’clock shadows and occasionally getting stuck in walls.
Benrey pounces on him, shoves the brim of the helmet down over Gordon’s eyes, and kisses him on the mouth. And it’s worth every moment he ever made Gordon talk about feet.
And then Tommy bursts into the room.
“Mister Freeman,” Tommy says in a rush. “We have to uh, to go back to work. There’s a virus at Black Mesa.”
“That’s not our department, buddy,” Gordon says, gently setting Benrey back down. “Let the technical team handle it.”
“Yeah, but this one is sentient. And way too smart for the programmers. It’s causing a lot of trouble, and it says it will only speak with Gordon Freeman. That’s you.”
Gordon raises his eyebrows, gets up from the floor.
“Shit. Is it some kind of alien code from Xen?”
“No, they say it uploaded from the um, the restricted zone interface. Calls itself…uh… Kai Four. Talks exactly like Benrey.”
“Oh no,” Gordon says. “He didn’t die, he digitized himself. Shit. Shit!”
“I think uh. I think it’s out for revenge,” Tommy says. “What do we do?”
Gordon drags his hands down his face. He goes still for a moment, before turning to Tommy with a wide, feral smile.
“Gather the rest of the Science Team,” he says. “We’ve got work to do.”
end