Chapter Text
She was about to go to sleep again, for the first time.
Two weeks out there had made little difference down here. Some cleaning up had been needed after Aperture's very drastic, very destructive, but most importantly very temporary change in management, and had (besides some charred panels, cracked observation windows and the odd corridor with an endless pit in the middle) generally scraped itself back to operational condition again. Regardless, it had felt like a lifetime up there. Two weeks and she'd learned more about the world, about herself than she ever could down here, even if she was given that kind of liberty. She had seen the sky, the forest, a deer. Abstractions of crumbling concrete and skeletons of metal pylons on the horizon. She had seen people.
People, she quickly found out, operated still on instinct in order to survive. From death they sprint, they shamble, they crawl if they must, but they never stop. This also meant they make no exceptions, they don't consider the pros and cons of their doing, they don't sit everyone down for a democratic vote on what they think their next move should be. Anything that could be dangerous, will be dangerous. And Chell understood that tenet all too well. She didn't understand, however, how herself as a lone, scar-ridden, dust-streaked fellow human, with nothing to her name but an orange jumpsuit and the boots slung over her shoulder (although she supposed those still weren't hers) could have ever been perceived as a threat.
And yet there she was, a few hours of sprinting, hiding, sprinting again, and a few bullet wounds later, pounding on the door of the same tin shed she'd been so desperate to leave. It didn't occur to her that She might just… not let her back in. After what could've easily been twenty minutes or sixty, she stopped and sat backwards onto the cube she'd left out there. She brought up her aching legs and crossed her arms over them, staring into the blinking camera above the door. Smearing shadows and suffusing silence soon followed as night fell upon her, and at that moment the door swung open.
On the elevator down she pulled on her boots again, the resulting tension a comfort as she knew she'd at least be safe from a certain high-speed-and-splatter kind of demise if She had actually been serious about not coming back.
Of course, there was a long, lamenting "ItoldyousoIknewyou'dcomebackWhatdidItellyou" waiting for her, and she'd been standing in that chamber, hungry and sore, letting the words bounce off her and right back to the high ceilings. She wasn't so much as embarrassed, it was undoubtedly the right decision to come back, but the whole situation was less than ideal.
"…But enough about me. I've only been cleaning up after your trail of destruction for three hundred and forty seven hours, non-stop, right down to the deepest depths of the facility. But it's no big deal. How was your little séance? Did you make a friend?"
She paused, and Chell could feel the smug smile under the weight of her gaze as she subsequently avoided it. Instead she worked the spring heel of her boot into a new groove in the floor, trying not to notice the way Her chassis, while still punctuating each sentence with an adequate amount of temerity, seemed to angle away from her just so. The wide berth didn't go unappreciated, given the last two of three 'chats' in this same chamber.
"That was sarcasm, by the way. I'm not sure how your neurotrauma situation is coming along but the extra holes and general battering you took clearly hasn't helped. Or maybe it hasn't affected you at all, it's been such a long time after all, there's nothing to suggest you've ever been more competent. Anyways. The point I'm trying to make is, I did warn you of your scientific lack of likeability, your susceptibility to being abandoned and yet here we are, again. If you had just…"
She'd stopped listening at this point, becoming suddenly very aware of how out of place she looked now with her grass-stained shirt and mud-streaked calves. The thought arose that she'd likely dragged in more organic matter than Aperture had seen in centuries, the facility's cold air unaccustomed to the spoor of life. Although she never really considered Aperture itself to have a smell, coming back it seemed much more striking — the sharp, sweet smell of acetone and lingering ozone that caught in the throat. It was never there before was it? Surely she would've noticed.
"… and of course Orange and Blue have been, well, adequate might be too grand an appraisal. They've been… there. It's been difficult to get sufficient data. That's all I'll say on that."
But then again, maybe over the years she really had just stopped noticing it being there. Like coming home after a long trip, you get to see your humble abode, or your endlessly vast underground testing facility, with fresher senses. Much like a home, she'd been here longer than she could remember, and much like a home the decision to return was almost automatic.
"You're not even listening to me are you? Of course not. What did I expect? I only save you from a bludgeoning to death and you're sat gaping at the floor apparently bored out of your mind — I mean, really, things couldn't have been that much more thrilling up there. Not that you'd tell me about it, I'm sure."
On saying this last sentence, She paused and slowly swivelled her chassis 120° to the left, away from her. Chell forced down any sign of amusement her face dared to show and instead blinked emptily, maintaining the silence.
"No?" She turned back, "Given your history of needing to prove me wrong I truly thought you would've gone for that. Really, I did."
A longer pause this time, the silence equally as weightless.
"Anyways, the facility is mostly operational regarding the essentials, but it could be a while until everything is running smoothly. You know, because of the murder. But I can set you up in the Relaxation centre until then."
'Operational'. Funny, because as far as she was aware, most of the 'operations' carried out here have historically been lethal, and have recently involved her. Exclusively her.
"Oh, don't look at me like that, you can't have expected to stay here and for me to just — well, do whatever human things you do when you're not testing. Or murdering. Besides, it's good exercise. And we both know you need all the help you can get in that department. Did you know your cardiovascular capacity increased by 24.556394% from your first test chamber to your last? I've been reviewing the data in your absence. Very impressive."
She supposed it was somewhat of a fair deal, and even if it wasn't — what real choice did she have? Her stomach turned at the thought of testing again — the slick floors, the taste of blood, running on nothing but adrenal vapour and a fifteen minute corner nap while hurling herself in and out, up and down, here and there within the same blank walls. But it was that or the surface again, and her chances lay exponentially better down here.
She swallowed the sick clot of fear that had risen in her throat and nodded, putting her cracked and bloodied hands on her hips to mask trembling that was not there.
"Well I wouldn't get too ahead of yourself, the tests are designed to gauge mental capacity not physical capability. And you weren't particularly-"
Chell shook her head, before taking one hand to point at herself, and then the floor.
"I know. You made that choice when you came back and I won't be giving you the option again."
The latter half of Her sentence was interrupted briefly by a pair of heavy clanking and softer clicking respectively as two figures raced each other into the Main Chamber, chittering away at the tone and tempo of childish glee. One was stocky, rounder, and could generate more force in its shoving of the other, which embodied a sleeker build that made it ever-so-slightly more agile without the burden of heavy limbs and load bearing joints. Most poignantly, they were coded with the same colours Chell had seen in tandem, bound together, no matter where in the facility she went. This was 'Blue and Orange'.
She followed them down a maze of corridors until, eventually, she arrived at her room in the Extended Relaxation Centre.
The journey was prolonged by their bickering and fooling around, even more so when She had to intervene over the intercom. It was, as always, nice to see artificial intelligence sharing the more lighthearted human traits, Chell thought, recalling the times when she'd witnessed first hand a panel frustrated at not fitting flat against the wall, or a turret relieved of being signed off duty — less so when said machine holds any actual power, but given the current situation, it was better not to linger on that set of memories.
"Back to where you started, how depressing," Her tinny voice buzzed in the room over the camera, "Not that you'd care to notice, but this room is a little bigger than your first. So you're welcome."
She was right, it was much, much bigger. An ensuite kitchen and bathroom, a side table with a few books, a desk along the far 'window' side (overlooking a chasm of crisscrossing catwalks and cables as thick as vines, but a window nonetheless), a pen and paper, a working terminal. It was the room of a slightly better than average hotel, which, again given the circumstance, was equal parts delightful and terrifying. Despite the latter contributing to the sudden, very urgent need to do something with her hands, Chell couldn't hide the spring in her step as she strolled over to fill the room's kettle (with clean water) and flick it on at the bottom.
"I wouldn't have too much caffeine. Your performance has been- -mediocre at best, I dread to think of how a night of lacklustre sleep might affect the data."
She shot a glance at the camera by the archway of the kitchen, feeling the steam from the boiling water rise behind her.
"Okay. Yes. I know. I'm getting ahead of myself. You're not testing tomorrow, but I will find some way to put you to work. There's a lot to be done before the facility is up and running to its fullest capacity again."
Opening the countertop draws, she found a small, white tea towel with Aperture's round logo printed in the bottom left corner, and promptly threw it over the kitchen camera.
"Ha ha. Ha. Was that fun for you. Did you have fun? Well, good news. There's another fifty seven cameras hidden in your room that you can go and do the same to, if you can find them. Which you won't."
Chell rolled her eyes, poured herself a tea (or what she hoped was tea, labelled 'Aperture Science Employee Soothing Herbal Mix') and sat back on her bed. She unstrapped the long fall boots and kicked them to the floor, pulled her hair out of its strangled ponytail and then laid there for a very, very long time. Breathing, she became aware of her dirtiness to that of the sheets, which smelled a little dusty but otherwise clean, the grease and grime that cut into the creases of her skin, to that of the carpet, and the clothes she noticed hanging in the open wardrobe, which were flatly pressed and freshly laundered. She did wonder how long this particular room had been laid out this way, who had arranged it and for whom. As far as she was aware, there were no higher ups in Aperture that stayed down here, and when the testing branch started to auto-cannibalise, she doubted the employees destined for that fate were kept in a conscious condition for very long.
Much to think about, and plenty of which to be concerned, she found herself drifting into a dull, dreamless sleep.