Author's Note: So yes, I have finally become a Half-Life fangirl. This is what happens when I become a Half-Life fangirl.

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Take Your Son/Daughter to Work Day. An almost ritualistic common practice among offices and facilities. Their rival had one, and that was common knowledge. And so, why shouldn’t they have one?

Nervously pulling his daughter back into the seat on the tram as the air glowed green due to the waste that was passing below them. “C’mon, Alyx, stay away from there,” he urged, the parental paranoia that afflicted all new fathers filling him. If she were to contract radiation poisoning, he didn’t know what he would do.

“Are we there yet?” Alyx sighed, frustrated with the long ride from their living quarters to her father’s workplace. Dog, who was three feet high and sitting at her feet, nudged her knee, urging her to cheer up. She smiled at him.

“Almost, honey,” Eli replied truthfully. He could see the dock where they would stop. Sector C, Anomalous Materials. His Sector. His area of expertise.

The tram pulled to a halt with a resounding thud. The security guard approached. “Hey there, Doc. Right on time. And look, you’ve even brought us a little guinea pig for all those experiments!” he teased, kneeling down to Alyx’s height as the door opened.

The little girl was frightened. “My daddy wouldn’t let me be in an experiment! He says that there are aliums where he works!” she responded back loudly, getting up and hiding behind her pet. The guard chuckled.

“Alright, alright, we won’t use you. But you gotta promise to fight them when your old man can’t do it anymore,” he told her, going along with the youngster’s imagination.

Her eyes widened. “Oh, Daddy, can I? Please, please, please?” she begged, giving her father a pair of puppy dog eyes that she knew he simply could not resist.

Eli found himself grinning in spite of himself. He never expected his daughter to be quite this gullible. “Not until you’re older,” he answered.

The guard’s laughter was drowned out by the disappointed groan of the little girl. Rolling his eyes, her father ushered her and her Dog out of the tram. “Now behave you two,” he began. “Daddy’s got a very important project today. I can’t be watching you every second in case you find some trouble to cause.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth when the doors to the Black Mesa Research Facility Sector C lobby opened and his daughter raced through. “INEEDTOGOPOTTYI’LLBERIGHTBACKDADDYDON’TWORRYDOGWILLKEEPMESAFEBYE!” she shouted as she left his side.

Rubbing the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger, Eli realized that this had been a very bad idea.

- - - -

She counted. There were 17.

17 lockers. Starting at the door, going clockwise, they belonged to Casali, Coomer, Birdwell, Jones, Guthrie, Riller, Teasley, Bailey, Johnson, Freeman, Wood, Bond, Backman, Laur, Stelly, and Laidlaw. Her daddy knew Mr. Freeman, so she walked right up to the locker. “Dog, will you get the handle?” she asked, not quite able to reach it herself.

The robotic dog jumped up on his hind legs and opened the locker without a problem. “Hey, look, Doggie! It’s me!” she squealed in delight, pointing to the picture of her after birth, which was sitting at the top corner of the highest shelf. There were two books, one by Marc Laidlaw.

Nothing interesting here.

“C’mon, Doggie, let’s go find something else to do,” she said, closing the locker and heading out into the hallway. Following her nose, the little girl was led to the first room on her left. A break room! There were two scientists in there, one fiddling with the soda machine, and the other reading a paper.

The delicious smell that had beckoned her was coming from the microwave. A casserole! “Yummy,” she said to herself, unnoticed by the two men. But the microwave wasn’t on very high. “C’mere, Dog, give me a lift.”

After being hoisted up to the counter, she pressed the “High” button. Several times.

After a splat alerted the entire room to her presence, Alyx knew she was in trouble. Hopping down from the counter, she made a run for it, Dog hot on her heels. “Sorry, ‘scuse me!” she apologized quietly as she accidentally bumped into someone who happened to be walking in at the same time.

“What have you done?!”“But I just-”

“What in the world have I ever done to you, Freeman, to deserve this?”“But I didn’t-”

As she rounded the next two corners, the girl sighed in relief. So she didn’t get caught after all! Now she wouldn’t be a pain in the neck for Daddy. Speaking of, she thought. “Maybe we should find him,” she suggested to her companion, who beeped in response, following his master closely.

Taking another right, the girl found herself staring down the hallway and into a room. There was a glass window that allowed her to see. It was just like any other office, but it had two people in there. Two people fighting. “That’s not good! We gotta put them in Time Out!” Alyx exclaimed, pulling something off of her belt. It was the multitool that she snuck out of her daddy’s desk before they left.

Using the tool to open the door a fraction of the way, Alyx found herself watching the scene.

A white haired scientist was fighting vehemently with a man in a blue suit. The scientist kept shaking his head doubtfully while the man in the suit kept silencing him with a hand gesture and nodding reassuringly.

“We don’t know what will happen!” the scientist exclaimed finally.

The suited man silenced him once more. “Eeeverythi ing will be jusst fine,” he assured him with a note of finality before turning around. The one thing that Alyx noticed the most was how this man talked funny. It spooked her. Maybe… maybe…

“Hey, are you an alium?” she asked loudly. He looked at her and smiled. It was really creepy, and she began to inch out of the room.

He fixed his tie and knelt down to her level. “You sssseem like an aw fulllly bright lit. tle. girl,” he said to her.

That was it. Alyx knew when strangers were nice and when strangers definitely very, very bad.

Grabbing Dog, she raced out of the room, only to collide face first into something hard, knocking her backwards. “Owchies,” she hissed, rubbing her face. It was only then that she noticed that what she collided with wasn’t a ‘what,’ it was a ‘who.’

“Mister Freeman!” she exclaimed. “That man back there! The one in the suit! He’s an alium, Mister Freeman, I just know he is! And why are you dressed like a big ol’ bumblebee?”

Gordon Freeman smiled awkwardly to the girl. “Alyx. I should have known it was you; you know, that casserole got me in a bit of trouble,” he said, gently taking her by the hand and guiding her toward their destination: Eli.

“That’s not important right now, Mister Freeman!” Alyx shouted, tugging in the opposite direction. “That man was an alium and we have to help Daddy fight hiiiim!”

Laughing, Gordon simply led her and her pet away, to their utter dismay. Alyx was so disappointed, in fact, that she refused to say another word to the man until they reached her father.

“Now, Alyx, tell Mister Freeman thank you for finding you,” Eli instructed.

Alyx pouted. “No! Daddy, he didn’t find me, he dragged me away from the alium I found! I was gonna fight him for you but Mister Freeman wouldn’t let me! Now they’re all gonna take over the world, Mister Freeman, and it’s all your fault, so I won’t say thank you, not once!”

Eli sighed. “Sorry about this, Gordon. You’re already late.”

“It’s not a problem,” Gordon replied, scratching the back of his head. “I’m just afraid she’s gonna be mad at me for a while.”

Alyx let out an annoyed, “Hmph!” and stormed to the other side of the room. They were gonna talk about grown-up things, and she knew it. She’d much rather play fetch with Dog using one of her shoes.

After a few tosses, Mister Freeman left, to her delight, and she decided one more toss would be good. “Ready Doggie?” she asked before throwing the sneaker as hard as she could.

Dog couldn’t catch it in time. Instead, it almost went straight through the doorway. Only, something blocked it. “Uh oh,” she whispered, abandoning her shoe and running to hide behind her father. “Daddy, look! See? I told you! It’s the alium!”

The man in the blue suit approached, adjusting his tie once more. The shoe had ruffled it out of place. “Doc tor Vanceee,” he began simply, and the man held his daughter tightly behind him. She was still able to peek around his arms and get a good look at the ‘alien.’ He looked as creepy as he sounded. “Prepare for unforeseen concequencess.”

Before she knew what was happening, her father shielded her vision, and the alien was gone. Dog dropped the shoe he recovered in front of her, and she tied it quickly. “Daddy,” she said. “I don‘t think that‘s good.”

Eli swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat. He knew that this day had been a very bad idea.