Gordon Freeman

To it as simply as possible, the rebel's face does this:

O___O

"....okay then!" he finally manages. "No wonder you didn't want to do that underground..."

The other side is open, at least for the moment. The Combine are mostly busy inside the buildings in the area. Which is fine with the rebel, because as they push along and stay out of sight a scrawny twentysomething woman with a lambda on her arm darts out of an alley. "Aloysius! Am I ever glad to see you- we've got sniper sign!"

"Huh boy," says Aloysius, glancing over at his two companions. "How bad?"

"A good five or six of them, all strung out along one block- it's the dormitory complex on Linden. Alexi's pinned down on the other side of the street."

"Guess they figured they'd better not leave anything to chance. Linden Street's the most direct route to the Citadel from here," says Aloysius.

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raptorcanaria

Dinah keeps her eyeroll as subtle as possible. She fought off an insurgence of zombies with just her bare un-superpowered hands, and they're complimenting on her lung capacity. She says nothing, however, until she hears about the snipers, then glances towards John.

"Do you still have tranquilizers?"

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He pulls the lightweight, white gun out of his belt holster, and loads it, and cocks it.

"Yes, I do. What are you thinking of doing?"

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raptorcanaria

Rubbing at her now scratchy throat, Dinah glances towards the other two, wondering if they'll actually think this crazy.

"If I give them something to aim at that isn't you, do you think you can take out five or six snipers?"

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"Definitely. If we can find a way into one of these buildings... it'll be easy. Much easier than trying to take them out while they're shooting at you. And these guys... I don't even want to think what it would be like, with all their technology."

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"Getting in's not a problem," says Aloysius. "Follow me- I'll show you where we've got to go."

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"Okay," John responds, gun above his shoulder at the ready, just in case, and gets behind the rebel. "Lead on."

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Linden Street is some distance away, but Aloysius knows the route well enough to snake his little group through without being spotted. (Or perhaps not; the occasional rocket thunders into the ground close by where they'd just been.) Eventually he ducks into the slightly recessed shelter of an emergency door. "Just around the corner," he says, "there's a fire exit. Can your flux capacitor jimmy a magnetic lock at all, or is this going to need explosives?"

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"Yeah, it can, I think. Where's it at?" John's undone complex locks before. Shouldn't be too hard.

[[Wondering if John would actually be able to unlock the Combine locks. He's done a lot of stuff, but the finer control is difficult for him. Plus, they're much different than magnetic locks.]]

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[[Up to you. There's nothing wrong with a little property damage to get in, and the Combine aren't used to building things to resist psychics and metahumans, that's all I'm saying.]]

"A yard or two down. The lock's on the outside- you can't miss it."

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[[This is true.]]

John runs down the hall, keeping low to the ground just in case, and he sees the lock. He raises his hand, and focuses on it, feeling with his mind the mechanisms controlling the lock. He drops the focus, and walks back to the group.

"I can unlock the door, but I can't permanently unlock it, only hold it open. One of you is going to have to open the door while I'm keeping it unlocked."

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"I've got it," says Aloysius. "Ready whenever you two are."

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"Alright, come on."

John walks down the corridor and brings up his hand, focusing again on keeping the mechanism in the lock open. "Alright," he grunts from the focus of speech and TK at the same time, "Open it. Now."

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Aloysius lunges forward immediately and shoves the door open with one shoulder. This is because he needs the other hand for his gun, in case the Combine left anybody behind. Thankfully they didn't; the area's merely what you'd expect of a former fire exit stairwell, all graffiti and badly-cleared-away trash.

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John drops his hand, and grabs his gun out of its holster, holding it out as he walks through the door. He's not taking any chances. It's not shoot to kill, not with Dinah around, but he's certainly not going to rest on his laurels.

"Which way now?" he asks, quietly.

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"Up," says Aloysius, equally quietly. "They usually stick the snipers on the third floor and higher. Gives them a better angle of fire in case anybody wanders down the street."

His gun's at the ready as they head for the stairs.

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John nods curtly, and begins winding his way up the stairway, checking at each landing that the way is clear, and for the floor number. When they reach the third floor, John runs up a little ways longer--the fourth and fifth floor doors are available, but any stories higher than that are blocked by a large chunk of collapsed roof.

John goes back down the staircase quietly, and opens the door slowly, back to it, gun entended. No one in site, he steps through, holding the door open with his right hand to keep from creating excess noise because of a door opening and shutting.

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Aloysius eases through the door as close to silently as he can manage. He's not used to the sort of stealth that seems to come naturally to John, though he has the right idea.

The dormitory must have been built by the least imaginative architects ever: a central hallway running the length of the building, with glass-fronted doors (some still intact, some not) on either side of the hallway about every twenty feet or so. Up ahead some distance, a few of the doors on the streetward side have sagged open a few inches.

Well. Sagged may not be the right word. not with the bloodstains and burn marks on the floor.

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John sees the bloodied doors, but quickly scans the room for security cameras rather than head in immediately. Seeing none, he makes his way to the disfigured doors silently, fingering the trigger. He then leans back against the hallway walls, peering around the door without exposing himself.

Just because they're facing the street doesn't mean they're obvious.

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This was a residential area once. The people who lived here are gone now, to varying degrees, but their possessions mostly remained behind. It's amazing how effective a worn-out couch and some ancient, decrepit tables can be at sheltering someone who doesn't want to be seen.

Mind you, the paff! of a single bullet being fired, and the low croaking of "Necrotic neutralized" being spoken through a Combine vocoder, make it pretty plain what's on the other side of the furniture barricade.

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John takes advantage of the couch to shuffle to the open side of the door, shimmying in and then crouching until right before the couch, when he stands up--

whe-whe-whe go the darts as all three stike post-human flesh where the skull meets the next.

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The sniper doesn't even get to send off a startled signal to his comrades, but only slumps to the floor, knocking his emplaced gun wide of any possible target.

(This is not an area normally prone to necrotics. This is an area of citizens and rebels. There is no guidance laser. People would notice.)

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John reloaded his gun, cocks it, and backs out just as slowly.

He does the same thing for every other room with a sniper in it, smooth as clockwork, and then comes back to the rebel. "Floor's cleared. Don't know if there's anything you want from here: ammo, health."

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