Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Something about this place felt off . Similar to the feeling of deja vu but with a strange twinge akin to that of foresight, like an out-of-tune instinct playing a premonition through her veins and putting her on edge. On edge in a familiar, one-slip-away-from-certain-death way, but something about it provided insight into the fact that maybe the feeling wasn't hers. Maybe it was the echo of the scientists and test subjects who wandered these halls in awe instead of frustration, years and years ago at this point. Maybe it was the nostalgic call of what Aperture Science used to be, lost to time and history. Maybe it was as simple as her companion actually feeling something. But, no matter how overbearing and overwhelming the feeling became, she would not give up.

Chell was stubborn. She prided herself on how she kept going despite GLaDOS's crude comments, how she pushed on despite Wheatley's unprecedented betrayal, how she never, ever let the crushing weight of this fallen empire get to her. What had to be at least a hundred puzzles at this point did not dissuade her. At most, they irritated her. She felt like Sisyphus, doomed to keep testing, to rot down here in these abandoned, poisonous test chambers—to struggle against the boulders that were her own motivations, her own goals and her own vows. Chell couldn't lie and say she'd never wanted to give up before, let the boulders tumble back down, despite all that she'd accomplished so far.

This was one of the times where she balanced on a tightrope, the seemingly bottomless pit below split into two sides labeled 'death' and 'torture' respectively. The only way to keep going was to balance, arms spread like the wings of the bird that nearly carried GLaDOS away, and hope that there was a stable platform on the other side. One where she was free, where she could live her own life without the incessant comments of the A.I-turned-potato speared on her portal gun.

"You didn't have to stab me, you know. You could have carried me like a normal person. Oh, but I guess you don't classify as a normal person. Normal people aren't murderers . " GLaDOS hummed, the passive-aggressive speech emanating from her incredibly compressed body sending a thrum through the prongs of her gun.

Chell didn't entertain the robot. She knew better than to let GLaDOS's remarks get to her. In fact, it was proving more beneficial to tune out the mean-spirited ramblings of the Disk Operating System in favor of much more pressing thoughts. 

Looking around this sublevel, a part of the facility that she'd never seen before, she couldn't help but wonder what the hell happened here. Parts of that question Chell knew the answer to. It was so desolate because of GLaDOS and her neurotoxin, and it probably didn't help that whatever was going on outside kept anyone from wandering by and noticing a strange irregularity in the ground, or from a large government-operated expedition uncovering the ruins of this horrible place. If no one had found it in all the time that had to have passed, then she had doubts that anyone was still out there after all. Maybe GLaDOS was right about the outside. The other parts of that query were as unknown to her as the Sun was to anglerfish.

However, GLaDOS didn't matter now. She was a potato, a small speck of dust in this vast underground establishment, and Chell even smaller. At least GLaDOS had been a part of Aperture's vindictive, twisted history.

Chell couldn't spend too long roaming about and piecing together a massive puzzle, but with what little time she did have before Wheatley tore this place to the ground—she was going to find out as much as she could. Maybe that would dispel this horrible feeling, nested deep inside her gut. It was the feeling you'd get right before something horrible and life-changing, and possibly life- ending happened, except deeper. Less fathomable. More sinister, in a sense. Chell didn't have any other words to describe it.

But for now, all she could do was navigate this junk pile, avoiding the few fires that sprouted like beckoning talons from the underworld throughout the area. Whenever she found a portal-conductive surface that looked semi-useful in whatever way, she took the chance and portaled up to it. Most were dead ends.

She slumped against the slanted railing, crinkled like discarded paper, guarding the platform of her latest attempt at progression with a heavy sigh. Of course, this foolish display of disappointment alerted her unfortunate companion.

"Isn't that sweet? Giving up when my facility needs you most. Maybe you orchestrated this with that little moron as a way to get back at me. It would be quite typical for a lunatic like yourself." GLaDOS paused for a moment, maybe in thought, maybe to construct another insult about Chell's weight and-slash-or lack of parents. She continued before Chell had a chance to groan in response. "I doubt that was the case. Even if that metal ball had the capacity to compose something along those lines, it's incredibly unlikely you'd go along with it. You know he'd mess it up. It would be quite an unfortunate end, dying at the hands of the only person you thought you could trust. Buried under piles of rubble with your worst enemy, with no chance of discovery."

Chell made a mocking motion with her hand, like the mouth of a speaking puppet. It was accompanied with an exaggerated roll of her eyes to punctuate the point of her gesture.

"Oh, how childish. I'm only trying to help you. If I don't get back in my body, he'll kill us both."

That was probably the thirtieth time GLaDOS had repeated the same thing. Despite the truth behind the statement, every verbatim recollection only proved more and more irritating. Chell knew she had to work with GLaDOS. GLaDOS knew she had to work with Chell. They were an unfortunate duo crafted of utmost urgency, otherwise Chell would have abandoned GLaDOS in one of the various pyres or let that bird carry her away. There was no way around this unlikely partnership, and they both knew that. It stopped them from being too mean, or from throwing each other into fires (for Chell, it was more of a proverbial flame, as GLaDOS currently lacked the power to smother Chell in smoke). It didn't, however, stop Chell from anticipating their eventual departure from one another. She looked forward to it as much as she looked forward to leaving this place.

Hoping to move along from her current perch on a lopsided platform, she scanned the area. The most notable thing she spotted was the faded yellow paint spelling out Tartarus 09 in bold lettering on the side of a slanted structure, and even that wasn't as interesting as she thought it would be at first glance. She kept looking.

Her attempt proved fruitless. To be fair, it was quite dark down here, but Chell didn't accept that as an excuse—she'd done this same thing hundreds of times before. Why was this any different? It was darker? She could do better and she knew it. So she thought. And eventually, she thought of something that may or may not prove useful; exploring. Wandering around aimlessly might reveal something new, like a different route. Hopefully.

Before Chell could jump off of the platform to explore the junkyard for another thirty minutes, GLaDOS spoke, in a hushed, uncharacteristically quiet tone, "Wait. Do you hear that?" Chell narrowed her eyes in doubt at the A.I. She hadn't heard a thing. "I'm serious! I hear someone… humming."

That interested her. Chell was certain she was the only human bold enough to venture down here, even against her will, but maybe there was someone else. Maybe someone did stumble upon this place and got stuck down here while she was asleep, much to her previous disbelief. On the contrary, it was possible this was just another robot, maybe a defective turret that was yet to deactivate, but if even GLaDOS didn't know what it could be…

Chell didn't want to get her hopes up just yet.

She strained her ears, and true to her word, GLaDOS was right. Someone was humming a familiar, melancholic tune, the wordless song echoing quietly through the abandoned building. Chell recognized it easily. It was one of the few things she enjoyed about her forced stay at Aperture Science. If Chell had to describe it, she'd say it was nostalgic, offering a strange cathartic release that nothing had ever done for her before—the song the radios played. Perhaps the scientists had found a song that lulls the brain into a calmer state of mind, likely in an attempt to make testing easier. Or, a much more probable outcome, was that Chell just liked the song.

When Chell searched for the source, the song coming from somewhere below her, she had no luck. The sound was too quiet for her ears to decipher the exact direction it came from. And then, she had an idea. A good idea, mind you, one that wouldn't result in a frustrated groan or another dead end. Maybe if the thing wasn't a busted radio, she could prompt it to speak. With a smug smirk, she slammed the portal gun into the railing. The collision reverberated through the bones in her hand as much as it echoed around. She'd definitely been through worse, but damn if it didn't hurt her arm.

GLaDOS's optic flickered in the way it would when she spoke, but no noise came. Chell viewed it as hesitation, as opening your mouth to bear some horrible news, only for your voice to fail you and render you completely silent. The two sat in uncomfortable stillness, waiting with bated breath.

"Eh? Is there someone there? It's me, Cave Johnson, CEO of Aperture Science, and I want you to kill me! That's right, you!" Came the gruff voice of what could only be a middle aged man, within seconds. It was thinly veiled by the static-crackle of a faulty radio, so it couldn't be a human. At least, a human human. Chell did not ignore the possibility of Aperture Science using a human conscience in their experiments. Chell believed it even more likely that the CEO, of all people, was the willing volunteer, as disappointing as it was. "I would pay you, but I don't really have any money. Or… arms. Lab boys didn't tell me how horrible this would be."

Now, with the clarification that it was something possessing some degree of sentience and not some trashed radio, Chell felt more driven to find this thing, this person, this whatever it was. And thankfully, the echo of his voice provided a better idea of where Cave Johnson was. With the location set in mind—it was somewhere to the left, behind her—she portaled back down and started backwards.

Breaking her strange quietude, GLaDOS finally said something. "I know him," flashed her optic. Her tone was low, but not quiet. Weighed down by heavy thoughts like a sponge full of filthy water, but not fearful. It definitely wasn't an insult like Chell had expected it to be. Chell wasn't quite sure what it was; a reluctant admittance, or an uncertain possibility? Judging by her tone, GLaDOS wasn't sure either.

Chell quirked an eyebrow in questioning. Unable to sign with both hands occupied, and completely unable to speak, it was the best way Chell could think of to let her companion know that she was interested. GLaDOS would never know, but it was not simply confusion that drove her to prompting the A.I, but concern and maybe a small amount of fear, too.

" Cave Johnson," GLaDOS repeated the name slowly. She treated it like a poison, like a deadly virus that could affect even the most scientifically protected electronic, and that unnerved Chell. Never had she heard GLaDOS this confused.

Before GLaDOS could continue, Cave Johnson started talking again, much to Chell's dismay. "Just me, ol' Cave Johnson, sitting in a pit underground, talking to myself. There's no one there, is there?" He said, disappointment evident in the dip of his voice. However, he sounded much closer, so that was a good sign.

Chell looked back at GLaDOS, but she was silent, probably lost in an ocean of thought, so Chell continued moving forward. Every step over metal scraps and every stumble under destroyed structures brought her deeper and deeper into uncharted territory, further and further off course. If she were in a video game, this would be a side quest for sure. Thankfully, it had been a while since any quaking or destructive banging emanated from the world above, so Wheatley was probably distracted doing something that didn't involve the complete and utter destruction of Aperture Science—what remained of it, that is.

After roughly ten minutes of wandering about in the search of a long dead-man-turned-robot, Chell discovered a strange dip in the eroded, aged floor. Providing a fortunate turn of luck, the six foot drop was accompanied by a twisted metal frame, propped against the side like an urgently crafted ladder. There, at the bottom of the hole, lay a storage cube. A few things stuck out about it—in the center of the face of the cube most visible to Chell, was an optic, red in color like the eye of a turret. It didn't look nearly as advanced as the one GLaDOS possessed, and it was clear Cave Johnson's optic was the product of rushed, haphazard craftsmanship. The crosshatch pattern displayed on the optic gave the impression that he spoke from there, too.

"Oh! There is someone there! Hello, lady. It's me, Cave Johnson, CEO of–" Chell held a hand up to silence him. She'd heard his mantra before, knew he wanted her to kill him, but Chell was hoping to squeeze some information out of him before pulling the plug. One such point of interest was what link this guy had with GLaDOS.

GLaDOS's optic blinked, with the same sort of hesitation as before, catching Chell's attention as she descended the convenient metal scrap ladder. This time, she spoke almost instantly, having configured the words she wanted to say and the manner in which she wanted to say them. "This is a waste of our time," GLaDOS said, such a simple sentiment for the moment of thought beforehand.

"Huh? Did'ya say something? I didn't catch that," Cave Johnson commented from behind her, implanting himself into the conversation like he'd been riding along Chell's shoulder the entire time.

"I wasn't talking to you, cube ." GLaDOS hissed, voice laced with a hostility that even Chell was unacquainted with, a feat hard to achieve. In fact, Chell was so taken aback by the venom coating GLaDOS's voice like a rancid neurotoxin that her grip on the ladder fumbled, and she fell the last few feet down, landing next to Cave Johnson's cubic form in an almost cartoonish display.

Straining his optic to the right, where Chell's face had met the floor head-on, Cave Johnson drew in a breath. Not quite a gasp, but far from the quiet sound of an inhale, too. "Hold on, is-is that you, Caroline?"

It took a moment for Cave's words to register in Chell's head, as she was preoccupied with contorting into a less painful position and checking for any cuts that would easily get infected. When the words sunk in, her hand still on her face, not close enough to touch, Chell froze. Strands of hair hung loose, swaying like the overgrowth clinging to the upper surfaces of the facility, in her face, but they were nothing but faint marks in her periphery, sidelined by the force of her stare as she watched GLaDOS with the same focus as a predator watches its prey through a bush. What could GLaDOS, artificial intelligence crafted to test, have to do with Caroline, a likely human woman that Chell had never heard a whisper of.

Chell waited for a response, as curios as she was put off.

"Yes sir, Mister Johnson. I'll have that report on your desk by four-thirty, sir," spoke GLaDOS, in a pacifistic tone so unlike the hostility in her voice before that Chell pinched herself to wake herself up, on the off chance that she was dreaming. "What the hell? What was that?" And then came the panic, the fear. Another emotion that Chell didn't know GLaDOS could feel—an emotion the A.I shouldn't feel—and yet another secret that better lay buried. 

Both the previous obedience and the ongoing terror chilled Chell to the core, and that was only a fraction of what GLaDOS must be feeling, if Cave Johnson's words had a meaning, and weren't just byproducts of delusion caused by years in solitude. She was not disturbed by the idea of human conscience-to-robot coding transfer. Chell was perturbed instead by what Aperture Science could do with that power, what they would do with that power, and now, seeing GLaDOS's fearful response to being perceived as someone else, someone human, that speculation was knocked up the metaphorical scale, into an undeniable truth.

And that terrified Chell.

"The heart and soul of Aperture Science. You were my assistant! You don't remember?" Cave Johnson questioned.

"No, Mister Johnson , I don't." GLaDOS responded, her voice bitter, and cruel, and heavy with backseat rage, that, to the ears of a stranger, would go completely unnoticed, maybe even perceived as a chill. Not to Chell though. As much as she hated to admit it, Chell knew GLaDOS, in a way that unlocked all those secrets , those hidden motivations and disguised intentions.

"Ah-hah, okay. Not quite what I was expecting." Cave Johnson cleared his throat despite having no throat to clear, likely an old human habit, and began explaining, "Before I got moon-rock poisoning from the conversion gel, I had the lab boys cook up a fancy-schmancy body to store my consciousness in, but that sounded dangerous—"

Under her breath, Chell heard GLaDOS whisper no to herself over and over, as if that would discredit the horrible news that was about to be delivered; the horrible news that GLaDOS already had a faint recollection of, if Chell was right about the direction of this conversation.

"—so I volunteered you to go first!" Cave Johnson said, simple as sharing a silly story with a friend. His tone , so disrespectful of human and not-so-human emotion, so lacking in empathy it made Chell shiver. "It's like… taste-testing, but with your soul!" He chuckled, "It's all in the name of science, and hey, looks like they found a use for you after all."

It was not her place to feel confused, but it mystified her still, how someone could have so little care for human life, but she supposed it only made some twisted sort of sense—this was the CEO of Aperture Science. Chell would've found it more surprising if he wasn't a douchebag, if she were honest.

In the best display of sympathy she could manage, which was no easy task, considering GLaDOS had no care for human gestures, she pointed at the Cave Johnson cube and dragged her thumb in a horizontal line across her throat. Death was what the monster of a man craved, but Chell thought murder could cheer GLaDOS up, if only stop any more rotten beans from being spilled, any more horrendous secrets being dusted off and revealed as the vampire they were.

No immediate response was provided. Both cube and potato did not speak, as if some greater evil had afflicted them with the same hex that locked up Chell's throat. Chell. The only one still human, not lost to immortality or forced to endure the neverending suffering that living forever entailed, both in stories and in reality.

Perhaps she was a fool to admit it, but Chell was worried. Not for herself, not for the facility, but for GLaDOS, and it was nearly sickening. Chell had never cared for the robot before, and this sudden flood of concern, of distress and dismay, nearly made her burst like an overflowing water balloon. It wasn't so suffocating that she drowned, and it was merely a fraction of the vast ocean of repressed feelings she had for GLaDOS, but Chell found herself sinking. This was a horrible situation for everyone involved, except maybe the careless CEO, but it must be magnified tenfold for GLaDOS.

"Yes. Do it. Kill him. Now." GLaDOS was not even halfway through her affirmation when Chell moved over to the cube, which was not very far at all, and searched around. She avoided eye contact. It provided no relief.

Feeling along the sides of the cube disgusted Chell further. It was grimy, covered in mud and soot and the remnants of a fallen empire, and knowing it belonged to a bastard of a man made it no better. Ugly in form and soul, Cave Johnson made Chell want to vomit, expel what little she had eaten and finally cough up all of the terrible words she wanted to say to him. Perhaps Chell's unbridled disgust for the man stemmed from the seed of lost memories, from the fog surrounding memories any older than waking up in the first test chamber. 

"Oh, it's just.. yeah, on that side. You got it," Cave Johnson muttered in an attempt to be helpful, and the sound of his voice did help. It made Chell flip the mechanism to shut him off—a simple gray switch—even faster, sending him into eternal nothingness.

Pulling away from the filthy, grimy, no-good son of a bitch, Chell waited only until she was balanced on her two feet to stomp Cave Johnson's face in, disabling the speaker in his optic with brutal force. Her glare dissipating, softening into a slightly-worried gaze, she looked at GLaDOS.

GLaDOS's optic flickered. With an empty, cold tone—not in the angry, monotonous hate kind of way, but in the literal sense that her words shivered—she spoke in the most shaken tone Chell ever remembered hearing, "I'd appreciate it if we never, ever talked about that again."

Chapter Text

Destructive explosions roiled overhead like an oncoming thunderstorm, anxious to free the water from its veins and the lightning from its belly. However, neither natural, authentic occurrence would be witnessed nor experienced by Chell, buried so deep underground that she felt like an earthworm, writhing around helplessly in the dirty confines of the Earth. No sunlight would reach these depths, and no cathartic liberation of the atmosphere could even be heard so far below the surface.

All of this desolate nothingness provided a breeding ground for despair, waves of doom-and-gloom washing over the asbestos-infected structures almost as naturally as repulsion gel coated the surfaces on which she walked—or more accurately, bounced—across. Of course, those waves were nothing more than personifications of despondent wandering, and could do no harm to the miracle-operated speakers, not yet rotted by the flow of time.

As if sentenced to damnation by a cruel judge, this subjected Chell and GLaDOS to the ear-grating sound of Cave Johnson's voice as a criminal would be subjected to a life sentence. Much like prison (what she thought of it, anyway, having never been herself), it was almost never ending, and horribly tedious. Whenever the pre-recorded messages stopped rambling on and on about why science safety is dumb, it provided no relief, as Chell knew one would begin again, just as mind-numbing as the last, within minutes, and as damning as it would be, Chell would much rather listen to GLaDOS's malevolent speeches on repeat.

Regaining her footing on a smooth, slippery orange gel—propulsion gel, she believed it to be called—Chell wiped some of the goo off of her cheek. Almost as irritating as Cave Johnson's nonstop commentary, haunting the pair like a greedy ghost upset that he'd been so disrespectfully stomped, note the sarcasm, repulsion gel clung to her long-fall boots and her legs. The feeling had long since dulled down to a more manageable sting, but when it first wrapped around her calves like a starved anaconda, it had burned worse than anything had ever burned—like her skin was disgusted and desperately trying to separate from the rest of her body. At one point, it had gotten so bad that even GLaDOS noticed, despite the layer of stony determination masking Chell's expression—and by extension, the agony—and asked if she was okay. Coincidentally, the pain lessened after Chell answered with a pained shrug, as if the question were a lock and her response the key.

The propulsion gel was not nearly as agonizing. It brought with it no pain as it clung to her arms, a product of the many times she had slipped on the gel, caught off guard by the incredible speed boost it gave her. Direct contact with the gel actually proved beneficial, in some ways, as she felt awake and energized, a surplus of adrenaline coursing through her body as surely as blood did. Chell related the feeling it gave her to that of the adrenal vapor added to her air supply during time as a test subject subjected to the tests run by GLaDOS.

Speaking of GLaDOS, she'd been almost entirely silent, as if she'd finally fried the potato that served as her momentary host and her systems had shut down without a proper vessel for electricity. Of the few things she had said, most were in trance-like response to things now-dead Cave Johnson said through the speakers and were subsequently followed by a panicked reply and a long period of thoughtful silence. The only thing Chell remembered coming from the potato entirely of her own agency since the Cube Johnson encounter, was her question on Chell's wellbeing. There were no sideways remarks or exasperated exclamations. Even of the words she did say, they formed short, incomplete sentences incapable of hosting mean spirits.

After stomping that cube into the dirt, Chell had no clue what would come next. She didn't know if GLaDOS would resume her insults, or if she would grow even more agitated and aggressive due to emotions and memories Chell believed the robot to be unfamiliar with only hours prior. Chell knew it was possible for GLaDOS to fall into quietude, but she thought it was unlikely, and prioritized aforementioned possibilities over this small one. Evidently, she had been wrong in her selection, and GLaDOS was so shaken that not even berating Chell with needless insults could reverse all of the thoughts and ideas implanted in her brain by Cave Johnson.

Worried, Chell was. It was, what, the third time she'd felt that today? And, with the state of this place and her relationship with GLaDOS, three was a lot of times for Chell to feel concern, especially of such a psychological approach.

Despite having absolutely no fraction of an idea how GLaDOS would react to such a sympathetic gesture, Chell decided to return the favor GLaDOS had given her an hour or two before. Of a more emotional, intimate kind, of course.

Raising her eyebrows and tilting her head slightly forward, she pointed at GLaDOS and signed "OK" with one hand, and the accompanying movement of her head provided the substance of the question. Chell had asked "Are you okay?" and now she only awaited a response. 

GLaDOS did not respond immediately. This did not dishearten Chell. Such a loaded question, one so unfamiliar to the A.I it required more thought than it would if asked to another human, especially considering what prompted Chell to ask, would take time to construct a suitable reply. Chell was certain even she'd take a moment to mull over the words she chose to sign in response to that question, during these circumstances.

"Ah, so you are capable of human emotions like worry. That's great to know." GLaDOS responded. Chell knew that it was deflection, a desperate attempt to change the topic so she could disappear down that well of thought and horrible possibility. Chell stared at GLaDOS, her expression still, no longer determined to progress but determined to squeeze an answer out of her companion. "Oh, fine. I don't know. I don't know if I'm okay, or if these feelings are mine. I only know that I am an echo of someone who didn't want this. Of someone who never wanted to live forever."

Chell curled a brow inquisitively, urging the A.I to continue. GLaDOS's optic flickered akin to how one would draw a slow breath into empty lungs, dry with the weight of communication and hoarse with the settlement of not-quite-human emotions. Chell did not rush her, only waited patiently, sitting on the edge of a platform overlooking a propulsion gel depository. She pressed the button and watched globs of thick orange gel drip from the pipe, splattering helplessly on the ground. The sound distantly ricocheted through the aged test chamber, and the clearness, profoundness of the sound was almost unnerving.

Aperture Science had never been this quiet, she was sure.

"You humans are so obsessed with immortality. You think you have the power to overcome the force of death, and you will do whatever it takes to validate that impossible ideation. You claim it's for the sake of 'science', but the stones on which you trod to achieve that goal aren't stones at all." GLaDOS paused. Chell tilted her head like a crow infatuated with a shiny object would, just as interested by GLaDOS's sudden vulnerability as she were by the philosophical nature of her nearly emotionless expression.

"I wasn't the only one, you know."

The thump of the gel making its way through the pipe stopped. The dripping of the gel stopped. Chell's quiet breaths quieted further. Even GLaDOS fell silent once more, leaving the idea hanging in the air like a balloon filled with water, only waiting to be popped. It didn't take long for the proverbial needle to find its mark, digging deep into the rubber flesh of the balloon and raining rancid water down. If Chell was not already accustomed to the atrocities Aperture Science endorsed, she might've popped herself, the exhaustion—physical, mental, emotional—finally getting to her. Unfortunately, that was not the case, and the registration of GLaDOS's loaded statement reinvigorated her as much as the propulsion gel did.

She was talking about the personality cores. The cores that scientists had made to regulate her—that dark blue intelligence core, that red anger core, that orange curiosity core, that purple morality core leeching off of GLaDOS's technological brain like a parasite.

"Death is man's biggest fear and immortality its worst vice," GLaDOS spoke, her tone resigned yet restless, intrigued yet uninterested. Chell couldn't blame her for this emotional confusion. After all, Chell's consciousness was not squeezed into a Genetic Life and Disc Operating System, so to blame GLaDOS for feeling whatever she was feeling would be, to put it simply, wrong. Chell didn't think she'd blame GLaDOS either way, even if it were considered morally correct. As much as the robot and human had fought, bickered, and argued, they'd still nurtured some sort of bond, some sort of relationship that kept them bound to one another, no matter their distance (a bit of reflection led her to realize how damning this statement would be if anyone heard… seriously, who said that about their enemy?).

Nevertheless, the situation was horrible all around, and there was absolutely no way to deny such a statement so fundamentally true in nature. But the horror of it did not come from the cause, but by the effect and the aftermath. As rotten as Aperture and Cave Johnson were, as sour as a lemon at its ripest, there was no way to go back and change things. One, because loopholes could rip apart time and space, but two, because it would just happen again. Cave Johnson would just try again. Aperture Science would just. Try. Again.

Sure, somewhere, in the fabric of time and in the vastness of space, maybe Chell and GLaDOS never met. Maybe Caroline lived, and GLaDOS was nothing more than a supercomputer, an artificial intelligence ran by lines of binary code instead of a human conscience transformed into ones and zeros. Chell's eyes wandered back to the potato, speared crudely on her portal gun out of haste, and she sighed, rising to her feet to emphasize the point she was about to make.

Just as she recalled the signs for the words she wanted to convey to the A.I, a tremor rocked the facility, nearly causing her to slip off of the platform she sat upon. A nauseating feeling of distracted balance flooded her brain from her ears and she scrambled to get both feet back on the ground, explosions overwhelming her ears with ringing despite her distant proximity to the source. Whatever Wheatley was doing up there… she had no more time to dawdle, even on the wellbeing of her companion or the wellbeing of herself.

Once the shaking of the building calmed, she jumped off of the platform as GLaDOS's optic flickered with speech, "Look, this conversation has been great and I appreciate your worry, but that little idiot is getting closer and closer to tearing my facility to the ground. We need to go, now." Chell nodded in affirmation, though it was somewhat difficult to decipher the exact words over the echoing tinnitus in her ears.

Fortunately, Chell had already solved the puzzle. It was decently simple; propulsion gel here, there, jump, get cube, go back, put cube on button, blah blah blah, nothing she hadn't done before. This time was different, though. She moved fast, not just from the propulsion gel, and no longer motivated by the tantalizing thought of freedom, but instead by a strange urge to preserve this place, as much as it deserved to be torn down. Perhaps it was the thought that humans would simply repeat the same thing again if there was no evidence of how wrong it had gone the last time, if society were ever rebuilt, or maybe, she just wanted to help GLaDOS, who was not quite a friend but hardly an enemy either at this point.

Regardless of her motivation, she moved urgently, with haste, as subtler explosions thundered in the background. Into portal, out of portal, hit button, go through door. It would've been the same monotonous flatline as all the tests before it if the explosive ambience and the exigency of the situation were missing from the equation.

She moved forward at a steady pace, her speed not once faltering nor increasing, as she sprinted fast along the molded, rotten, rusty, no-good structures before they could give out under her, on the off chance that the explosions were enough to finally bring the ruins of 1970's Aperture to the ground. GLaDOS was expressionless, as she was forced to be, and she was silent as she had interchangeably been through their journey. But this silence was not brought on by disgust and sadness and nostalgia, but instead by the intensity of the situation, just as determined as Chell was to go go go, until they reached Wheatley and got GLaDOS back in the body she belonged in; the central core.

The few lights that remained lit as she ran flickered like a warning of what was about to come, like a withered old oracle would whisper premonitions over her crystal ball, and the worst explosion yet wracked the facility. It reverberated through her bones, weaving through her tendons and squirming through her tense, strained muscles. She bit down hard on her tongue, drawing the metallic taste of blood into her mouth. The sheer force with which the building shook gave way to a primal fear, an instinctual panic driven from the need to survive. If not for herself, then at least for GLaDOS and for the sake of Aperture Science.

"Oh my Science, what is he doing up there? What is he doing to my facility?" GLaDOS despaired as Chell braced herself against a pedestal, careful not to press the button at its apex, even if the worst it could do was fill the room with gel. Chell had no time to even think of a response to GLaDOS's clearly rhetorical question, raising her portal gun to fire a blue portal on the accepting wall ahead of her, on a separate platform sticking up like a watch tower, and an orange one under the propulsion gel receptacle. The placement of her portals was wonky, as the building was still shaken by the slightly less brutal attacks on the higher parts of the structure, but she managed. She pressed the button and thick globs of orange gel painted a path for her to run across, though she would only dive into the poisonous water below without a third of the path farthest from her smothered in repulsion gel. As she replaced her portals, she was careful to avoid the splash zone, not wanting to undergo the near endless torment she had to endure when the gel had last brushed her skin.

Once the echo of the rattling explosion subsided, Chell steadied herself on both feet and slid onto the propulsion gel, running with increasing speed until she reached the splatter of blue at the end, propelling forward in the air so fast that she just barely hit the platform without breaking a bone or two. The metal railing shook with a cacophonous sound once she made contact, the force and power behind her landing startling the walkway and causing it to shake. Thankfully, no part of the watchtower-esque structure faltered, and she walked around it on the unstable metal mesh that still buzzed under her feet. She peered below her, at the busted pathway sitting around the nape of the structure like a necklace, a near copy of where she currently stood, give or take some rust.

On the opposite side of the opaque watchtower was a gap missing in the rail, giving Chell easy access to the main platform, where she could shoot through a portal on this side and reach the exit.

"Hm. It's quiet now. I think we have a moment before that moron finds something else to destroy," GLaDOS commented, her words seeming much clearer in the silence that had since befallen the room once the explosions had ended, void of the panic before. "You should rest. Our chances of beating him are low, and that's with some generous rounding, but you being exhausted will not help our odds."

Chell had not expected GLaDOS to recommend her rest, especially because it was something she had never, ever offered Chell during her time as a GLaDOS's subject, but it was a suggestion she agreed to, despite her past scorn at dawdling . Even with the propulsion gel pumping a concerning amount of adrenaline through her bloodstream, Chell was still exhausted mentally and emotionally. Too many emotions had been felt, and too many things had happened. She could feel a headache brewing in the cauldron of her skull, melting her brain into stew.

And so, she sat against a wall. She gave a thankful thumbs-up and nod to GLaDOS, then closed her eyes for the first time in what felt like forever.

Chell slept. Not quite peacefully, but not entirely dreadfully, either. There were no dreams, and she would not remember GLaDOS's robotic humming by the time she woke, but until then, the sound of the A.I's melodic, melancholic, wordless murmuring provided some solace in the unfathomable inkwell of her fleeting rest.