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The Last Days of Wallace Breen - Our Benefactors/Dark Energy - Episode 11 [FINALE]

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Breen stood up from his desk and wandered over to the tall narrow windows that looked out over the city. This had been a terrible week. After years of hard work and dedication trying to appease the Combine overlords and quench the rebellion, a week ago he had managed to capture the elusive leader Eli Vance. But it had all fallen apart with the explosion at Nova Prospekt.

Breen had known Eli as a respected researcher back at Black Mesa, but the Combine invasion, though they both survived, had driven them apart. Eli and the former senior research lead Isaac Kleiner had disappeared, with rumors of their works of rebellion surfacing every few months. Shortly after the 7 hour war, Breen had been installed as the puppet leader of the world, and after establishing the citadel base in City 17, had worked to bring peace with the combine, and to improve earth using Combine technology.

But not all was peaceful. Breen had watched as the Combine mining operations sucked the earth dry of its precious resources, and the waters became deadly, and filled with leeches. The Combine were heavy-handed, and tightly controlled the reproductive activities of the populace, forcing mass sterilization through suppression fields, and restricting all human breeding to designated farms. The water treatment plants added small amounts of carisoprodol to the drinking water to keep people complacent.

It was a tenuous peace, and while Breen didn’t like it, he saw no alternative. The Combine had defeated the combined military powers of all the world in only 7 hours after all. Granted, the invasion force had left earth after conquering it, but the remaining contingency was still capable of quashing any open rebellion, and the full force of the Combine empire would be only mere hours away via the giant portal. The only hope for the salvation of humanity was in keeping the status quo. And keep it he did.

Until this week. This ill-fated week. Breen had been seeing things again. One day in his office, he even thought he saw Gordon Freeman, a junior scientist from Black Mesa who had disappeared following the Black Mesa incident. At the request of that one slimy spook, Gordon had been the one in the test chamber all those days ago. These and other street rumors had forced Breen’s hand before he was fully ready, and he was paying the price.
 
What had begun as a joyous occasion with the capture of Dr. Vance had turned sour. It turned out not only was Freeman back, but he immediately drove a whole army to Nova Prospekt to retake Eli. If he had his way, Breen would have executed Eli right then and there, but the Advisors wouldn’t let him. Too valuable, they said. Eli had been developing local teleportation technology – something that the Combine, in all their technological prowess, had only dreamed of. Yet all was not lost. With the help of Judith Mossman, Breen had managed to teleport Eli away from Nova Prospekt. But a tremendous explosion in the teleporter room at Nova Prospekt had blown a crater the size of Manhattan into the side of the prison and the surrounding countryside. That’s not the sort of thing you can hide. The rebellion was outraged by this, and had begun full-on guerilla warfare.

It was hopeless and Breen knew it. No matter how many Combine the rebels took out, there were a hundred times that waiting in the wings. The senseless violence had worn on Breen. He had managed to convince the advisors that everything was under control – if he didn’t, the invasion force would have returned and exterminated the human race. Yet the control was slipping. The rebels didn’t know how close to the precipice they were standing, and only Breen stood between them and oblivion. Still they continued fighting. Was life as a slave so bad that they preferred no life at all?

Despite the setbacks, things were looking up. Elite troopers on the southeast side of the city had managed to capture Alyx Vance, daughter of Eli. This could be a useful piece of leverage against the stubborn ideolog. Even more, just a few minutes ago, Gordon Freeman had been spotted near the base of the Citadel, and proximity sensors had been going off on the lower levels. As long as they could capture Freeman, all would be well. The uprising would end, one way or the other. Yet security camera footage showed Freeman storming through the halls. The cameras were destroyed nearly instantly. “Probably some EMP device,” thought Breen, “He is a physicist after all”.

One thought still chilled Breen though. He remembered back to seeing Gordon in his office just a few days ago. That look in Gordon’s face was one of freedom and independence. He didn’t look like someone who had been under the thumb of the Combine – indeed, he looked nearly identical to how Breen remembered him from back at Black Mesa. Yet not identical. That Gordon had a sort of innocence about him. This one had a hint of fire in his green eyes – the look of a man who had seen or done something terrible…and survived.

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