LIFE SUCKS
...okay, maybe it ain't that bad. I just wanted to get your attention with the misleading title on this page, and it clearly worked. Now read about me.
I was once your typical Combine conscript jarhead, right, like most dudes in the shell crater that was once Toronto. What's funny is I went from killing aliens for the good guys (usually by stomping or stabbing. Cheapasses that conscripted me were almost outta guns!) to killing aliens for the bad guys - who were nicely settling in to their new planet. I sometimes took orders from things that weren't human, sometimes from lucky humans that got to be 'officers', and sometimes even from weird telepathic voices in my head that I could never find the source of but the others heard, too. I was rusty as shit with the old MG yanked from the week old carcass of a UN peacekeeper (hadn't shot a gun in my life), but all was fine and dandy and headcrab-killing-go-lucky until our squad got the every-so-often-order of killing a passing-by family of five that just so happen not to be total Dr. Breen asskissers. War wasn't cool, never was, and it slapped me in the face. Hundreds of millions were dead by now, guys in my unit are dying in horrible ways right in front of me, and I've been separated from my little bro for months.
Then one day they kicked me out! You'd think I woulda been pissed - robbed of a career, but I was on fucking cloud nine... 'cause the day I was in line to board a boat out of Ontario, I just so happened to glance left and down the street and saw three of the guys I patrolled with step on an improvised xen acid bomb. If I hadn't been kicked out, I woulda been dissolving to the bone right with 'em. Got me questioning if God was real that night. I think I prayed once or twice, too.
A few weeks of a weird boat sickness I had the entire journey later, I landed in a place called 'District 47.' District of what? Hell if I remember. Architecture was typical Balkan eurotrash style. All I remember was that it was a shithole and the sky looked creepy and also made creepy sounds - perks of an extradimensional invasion. There, I was your usual sad sulking survivor reeking of body odor, ash, and definitely hazardous alien fluids, swinging a pickaxe and clearing rubble for table scraps, 'till I met two others just like me. Separated from close family, pretty much my age, same humor, and becoming my brother and sister from other mothers. Made the most of our time there, bonded over shitty childhoods, got our hands on a bag or two of kush (and sometimes some whack ass crystal from other dimensions), and became your typical back-alley rejects - and we embraced that title, by the way.
All good things come to an end, they say. And it did. First time I learned about their little relocation program was when the three of us were kicking back in the shelter. Still remember the topic of discussion: who'd win a boxing match between Dr. Breen and Cave Johnson. Heard some whitemask go all stupid and robo-like, "Yo Reed, stand up. Now." Wrapped his lanky little gloves around my arms and hauled me off to another vessel of transport (think it was aerial) as the two greatest and only best friends I ever had got pinned against a wall and searched. I almost expected to hear shots after I rounded the corner.
Repeat the fucking process every few months again and again. I learned to stop making friends as the years went on, and now I just hit forty. Wish I had the fucking cash to spend on a midlife crisis.
Had no sense of purpose if I'd keep getting wiped all the time. Never knew how my family was. Never knew what to do. Got so depressed over that stacking up over the years that when I landed in City 8 that I almost took a nosedive off the bridge by the metro street - you know the one. Decided enough was enough. Joined the masks so I wouldn't get shipped off again (was too pussy to rebel). Yeah, I coulda joined sooner, but like I said - midlife crisis. Don't judge me! Put my coupons in the bag! Got drunk off the power, sometimes off the booze I stole. Crawled out of my little depressed sad shit shell. Life was... better.
All I ever wanted was to have a set career for the rest of my life and bond with the like-minded along the way, and I finally got it and thensome - wasn't all peaches and cream, though, still ain't. Far from it, but it beat being a deadbeat waste of oxygen living off of questionable drugs and the weird relationships with even more questionable peeps.
Then one day came where I saw two really familiar faces, and the reunion wasn't all hugs and good laughs.
Guess I forgot how people change over the course of two decades.
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