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Private Notes
As the game begins, Barney Calhoun rides the tram from the Area 8 Topside Dormitories on the surface, into the underground sector of the Black Mesa Research Facility. Along the way many new details about Black Mesa are revealed; Calhoun passes a laundromat and several fast food outlets, suggesting that the facility is very self-sufficient and probably houses many of its workers. While Calhoun is locked outside the door to Area 3 Security Facilities, he is passed by Gordon Freeman riding in another tram heading towards Sector C in a scene that mirrors one in the original game, in which Gordon Freeman sees a guard locked out of a door on the inside of a tunnel.
As a seemingly normal day at work starts, Barney Calhoun visits security headquarters, including a shooting range and a surveillance room where it is possible to see Gordon Freeman again on camera heading towards the HEV Storage Area. Calhoun is then sent to help some scientists with an elevator; along the way, he witnesses many incidents foreshadowing the resonance cascade, such as a pair of scientists vainly trying to fix a supercomputer. He also sees the G-Man passing by in a tram. After repairing the elevator, the resonance cascade occurs; the elevator is jammed, the cable snaps and sends Calhoun and two scientists plummeting down the shaft as chaos breaks out around them. As the elevator collides with the bottom of the elevator shaft, Calhoun falls unconscious.
Barney Calhoun regains consciousness at the bottom of the elevator shaft to the sight of a houndeye eating the body of a fellow security guard. The two scientists in the elevator are dead, and so Calhoun sets off through the industrial waste areas of Black Mesa to try to find help. Along the way he gains an insight into the scope of the disaster and sees a pair of marines dumping corpses into a sewer opening, thus discovering that the military is trying to cover up the disaster rather than evacuate surviving personnel.
Barney Calhoun reaches the surface and encounters the HECU. He manages to fight through them and reach Dr. Rosenberg. He and a team of fellow scientists were trying to escape until the marines caught them.
Calhoun rescues some scientists who have been locked in railway cars in Black Mesa's classification yards. One of the scientists, Dr. Rosenberg (who is also a character in Decay), advises Calhoun that the entire facility is surrounded by Hazardous Environment Combat Unit Marines intent upon killing all base personnel to cover-up Black Mesa's research into extradimensional exploration. The only way to escape, Rosenberg explains, is to use an old prototype of the Lambda Complex teleporter; if it works, they can reach an obscure entrance to Black Mesa which (hopefully) has been overlooked by the Marines.
Barney Calhoun and Rosenberg reach an older part of the Black Mesa Research Facility where a disused teleporter system is being reassembled by scientists. To make the teleporter completely operational, Calhoun is forced to travel to Xen and activate a device to allow teleportation to happen. Notable in the older part of the facility is older-looking models of health and HEV chargers and the use of hand scanners instead of retina scanners for identification.
The remainder of the game takes place in an abandoned, walled-up sector of the base originally built for research of the first teleporter device. Calhoun, Rosenberg, and two other scientists (Walter Bennet and Simmons) try to restart the prototype teleporter. Calhoun is briefly teleported to a ruined human research camp on Xen to operate a triangulation device.
After discovering the teleporter had used its entire supply of batteries to transport Calhoun to Xen, Calhoun is again forced to go down to a power facility level and find the batteries and recharge them. Calhoun fights through a team of HECU marines and aliens before he reaches the power generators.
Finally nearing escape, Calhoun helps operate the simpler parts of the teleporter to get all the scientists through. Once the scientists escape, he faces some HECU resistance before finally teleporting to the other scientists.
In this final chapter, the other scientists have teleported to a safe location outside Black Mesa with some cars laying about. Barney Calhoun also arrives and sees Simmons and Rosenberg trying to fix an SUV and Bennet breaking open a gate with a crowbar, but some kind of discharge has affected him. Calhoun is glowing green and is teleported to several locations, such as a Xen platform and a storage room in Black Mesa where he witnesses Gordon Freeman being carried off by a group of HECU soldiers to a trash compactor before transporting back to the scientists (a reference to the chapter Apprehension of Half-Life). Calhoun finally ends up back at the yard with the scientists, no longer glowing. They have fixed the SUV, and Rosenberg expresses his relief, explaining to Calhoun he is lucky not to have been caught in an infinite loop. Walter pulls the gate open, and the game ends.
