Credit where credit is due: this was partly inspired by the live action film "No Escape" by Dan Tratchenberg. Portal belongs to VALVE :3 If you want some ambiance while listening, try Android Hell form the game's soundtrack. Hope you enjoy this~
"Searching."
I can hear their eerie, inhuman voices right around the corner I'm slumped up against, panting pitifully, uncontrollably, like a dog.
"Are you still there?"
The beam of light teases at the corner of my vision, perfectly circular where it meets the wall and stares out of the whiteness like an angry red eye. But I focus, I look straight ahead. Opposite me there is a stelated crack in the uniform panels, smeared with scarlet liquid, adhorned with small black holes from the firing of bullets. I no longer have the resolve nor the energy to be disgusted by the thoughts of how such an imperfection came to smear the otherwise pristine surface.
The device in my hands shines in the harsh white light like a knife. It's curved, slippery in my sweaty grip, fragile enough that if I smashed it against the wall it would shatter into millions of pieces. Fragile and useless.
When I close my eyes, I see the symbol dance behind my lids, eight arrows interlocked like black bones. Trapped in an infinite circle, in an exhausted, futile pursuit.
Opening them, I see a mounted security camera, scrutinizing me, judging my every move. Being watched makes my skin crawl, so I heft my Portal gun with considerable difficulty and discomfort, flicking the trigger. The unmistakable sound of a portal opening, and then, the crash as the camera falls to the floor. The things waiting for me around the corner go nuts, spraying bullets indiscriminately. I hear, in the cacophony and chaos, some ricochet, and I throw my good arm up in front of myself in an effort for protection. However, luck is on my side, the worst I get is a graze to the cheek, and I hear the buzz of the turrets as they revert from attack mode. I lay my head back against the wall, wincing slightly from the new pain, thought it is nothing compared to my other injury.
I cannot recall when I last slept or ate. My tongue should feel like sandpaper in my mouth from thirst, but it does not. The memories from before are unclear, as if I am watching another person through a heat-haze. All there is are tests, puzzle after puzzle until by brain feels like it's been smashed to a pulp with a mallet and shoved back inside my head. I know nothing of myself at all, save for five letters. C, H, E, L, L. My name, I suppose, though it pains to me to admit I am not even certain. The word could mean something entirely different, or not be a real recollection at all, something artificial, planted to strengthen the increasingly weak hold on what's left of my sanity.
She is quiet now. I have yet to see her face to face. Her voice tells me She is not human, but Her words make me wonder. Without Her comments, I have no way to measure the time passing. No way to tell if any time has passed at all. I have never once seen a clock within the facility, nor a window. I do not know how many days, weeks, or months may have passed since the testing began. When I think of the past, it is usually in terms of test chambers; "Four chambers ago..." or something along those lines.
Maybe, an eternity ago, I was curious. Maybe I paused in the halls, stared, naive, at the flickering screen that displayed all the possible ways in which my demise might take place. The stick-men drowned in squiggly black lines of water, faceless and emotionless, like puppets on a string, unable to even question their untimely fates. I might have traced a finger over these images, mull and muse over the number of test subjects who had died in this way. Had they families, friends? Had they remembered these people, or had their memories already become so fuzzy, so distant, that it seemed nothing more than a dream? An imagining? Something invented up sewn together out of desperation and hopelessness to validate their existence? Something to prove they were.
I began to doubt that my own vague collection of past experiences were the truth some time ago. Or, I shift uncomfortably, it could've been just moments ago. Was I just imagining up scenarios to keep total madness at bay? Or had I already failed? I'd read somewhere that humans in complete isolation begin to hallucinate within just a couple of days, once. It had been too long already, I was sure of it, and in a place like this...
My breathing remains ragged, and blood starts to soak through the orange jumpsuit that I've come to despise so much. I clench my teeth, but there is nothing I can use to bind the wound and stop the bleeding. At least in a sterile environment like this, infection is an unlikely eventuality.
Eager to forge ahead, I try to hoist myself up, albeit shakily, my hand slipping on the impossibly smooth wall. It's painful, unbelievably so, and dark spots cloud my vision. Several times, I fall back down, and lie shaking uncontrollably, grimacing into the floor, before I can try again. I hope vainly that she will speak again, an insult would spur me on, and it'd be heavenly just to hear something other than the constant adjustments of the turrets.
Finally, I remain on my feet, swaying unsteadily as I do, head pounding. The device, my only means of survival, slips out of my grasp, and I scramble for it without a thought, falling forward onto my knees, and crawling desperately as it rolls. , and I breathe a momentary sigh of relief, before the thought crashes down on me.
I am exposed.
"I see you."