Malebolge

Gordon has seen this place before. Once, briefly, long ago, a portal opened at the top of the Citadel, the better to bring Dr. Wallace Breen across. The sky Gordon glimpsed then was a vile, lurid shade of red, the vista punctuated by the looming skyward spines of Combine architecture. It was a moment's glance buried swiftly by the need for battle then.

There will be no burying this now.

The sky- what can be seen of it- is just this side of fire, and Gordon has no doubt that it looks the same from horizon to horizon, forever. But there are things slipping through it, tiny specks seen from ground level that resolve to things much, much bigger, skywhale synths and mockeries of birds and other vessels and half-living things he can't name. And on the ground there are the roots of Citadels and smaller buildings- oh, yes, mile-high towers, more than one, some half-opened as the one in City 17 had been, some fully.

And there are things among them that he almost recognizes, striding through the endless shadows.

"We've 'ported in as close as we can," he says tersely.

(There are only humans and trolls here. The Vortigaunts declined to participate. One of them said to Gordon that they would be taking measures at home against 'unforeseen interference'.)

(Gordon appreciates the thought.)

"We're aiming for the direction of greatest spatiotemporal distortion, since that's what the Overmind exists for. Current bearing from this location is two o'clock. Let's move."

Before the things making the electrical crackling sounds that almost resemble speech come this way.