I do not own Valve or Portal 2 (includes anything created by the company for the game) [UPDATED: 2/21/13]

Testing: You.

Chapter 1: The Courtesy Call…

Chell

I am experiencing a dream that I cannot remember. Something of the past. A dream of a white square room, with only me inside it. Someone else is by my side, but she is not visible. There was a soft sound, almost like an alarm buzzer that creeps into my subconscious. Uncontrollably the buzzer gained in volume until it is the only thing I could process. Fear rested in air around me. I gasp in the nick of time, as a strange artificial light poured into my eyes. Once I realized that I was awake, I erupted out of my bed and onto the floor. With my knees not holding my weight in what appeared to be a copiousness amount of time, I collapsed onto the soft carpet of my room. Lying there, I took notice of my surroundings. It seemed like a fairly standard room. I imagined that it could portray a hotel room on many occasions. The walls were lined with sunny beach scenes right before sunset. A decently standard T.V. mounted on the ceiling. A mini fridge was under a sturdy study table that you could see in most suburban homes. Along with a painting of a lake-side house in the middle of the summer, with green splashed mountains in the background. I was surprised on how nice this room looked. It even took me a while to realize that the buzzer has stopped. I used my arms to attempt to pull myself to my feet, with little success. I managed to help my legs support my body by resting on the bedpost. That was the moment where it dawned on me that I had no idea where I was, or what was going on. Panic sat in as I tried to gather my bearings. My heads stung with pain as I tried to think back to where I was last and why I was here. As if on cue, a male announcer most likely in his mid-20's, booms from a hidden sound system inside my room. I could easily tell that whoever this was, he was not human. His voice was calming and cheerful, possibly even a little too cheerful. The calmness of it alone soothed most of my mental stress. But his cheerful voice soon started to repeat strange pre-recorded message.

"Good morning. You have been in suspension for ("fifty-five Days"). When he said 'fifty five' it was then clear to me that some sort of a computer did a fill-in-the-blank to say it. I realized that I was right about him not being human. "In compliance with state and federal regulations, all testing candidates in the APERTURE SCIENCE Extended Relaxation Center must be revived periodically for a mandatory physical and mental wellness exercise."

My face contorts with confusion. I couldn't process what he was saying, especially after just waking up from a drowsy sleep. One thing did stand out however. The fact that he had said "all testing candidates" in the APERTURE SCIENCE Extended Relaxation Center… Was that all I was? A lousy test subject? "Why would I have agreed to this?" I thought to myself.

"You will hear a buzzer. When you hear the buzzer, look up at the ceiling."

The same buzzer that ripped apart my ears during my lethargy returned for vengeance. Without thinking, I looked up at the sky blue ceiling as if I had done it thousands of times before.

"Good. You will hear another buzzer. When you hear the buzzer, look down at the floor."

When the buzzer played again, I couldn't think. My head slowly made its way to the floor. I could not believe how stiff my entire body was. My head felt like it was being drilled into. My ears most likely bled from all of those strange sounds. But overall, I felt energetic and inexplicably rejuvenated.

"Good. This completes the gymnastic portion of your mandatory physical and mental wellness exercise." The way he said it, I thought he was finished.

"There is a framed painting on the wall. Please go stand in front of it."

I didn't even bother to move. My legs were not fit for any type of movement yet. "This…is art. You will hear a buzzer. When you hear the buzzer, stare at the art." Instead, I just looked above my bed where the lake-side panting hanged.

"You should now feel mentally reinvigorated! If you suspect staring at the provided art has not provided the required intellectual sustenance, reflect briefly on this classical music."

"Oh god no..." I thought to myself. I still didn't even know who I was personally. But I did know that if there's one thing I hated most, I was all types of classical music. I was silently praying to myself that the music would not even originate. But with luck out of reach, the loudest possible waste-of-talent music eroded out of the eclipsed speakers. For the first few moments I literary thought my head was going to shear open with all the congestion that loomed on my insides. With a quick sound of the now more used to buzzer, the music from hell subsided. Only my confused thoughts were left inside the room. I stood there for a second, unsure on what to do. My mind felt overworked, reeling from the way I was thinking. I was trying to figure out who I was or why I was truly here. I walked over to my bed to lie down. It felt so comforting, so safe. Before I knew it my eyes were already closed.

Dreams of an impossible world filled my mind, dreams that would normally send a person into a complete state of mental disintegration. Dreams showing a world that at once lived but has now perished. Darkness has erupted onto a city that once thrived. Surrounding me, buildings became one with the earth. I sat in the middle of a abscond population. I thought to myself "something of this magnitude could have not happened on earth." My entire body felt numb. Vaguely, I remembered this particular area. Within a couple seconds, I remembered that it was at once my very own hometown. I was standing in the middle of a cul-de-sac where my house once stood. Memories flood back to me as I tried to piece together what had happened. Nothing looked normal. The world itself seemed to be swaying, changing in color and texture. Behind me I heard strange sounds, sounds of suffering. But whenever I turned, not a single person is within sight. But those people…they didn't match. They all found a way to have a seemly good connection. But at the same time, have no part in each other. I never had the time to ponder. The ground started to shake, as if the earth was about to swallow me whole. Vibrations sucked away the air, making it impossible to respire. Strange things were occurring to the gravity of the situation, literally. Gravity started to shift from side to side, up and down. Suddenly I rose in to the air, and dropped several hundred feet. My arms Fluttered around in trying to control the decent. The black stricken earth approached with untamable speed. I was just seconds away from being completely obliterated. But just before hitting the ground, I rose again without control. I was some type of airplane breaking up in mid-flight. As I rose, the pressure in the air decreased significantly. My ears would shear from the sudden difference. The ratio from falling to rising became unbalanced after a couple minutes. When I would usually make my free-fall back to earth after climbing, I did not. I just kept climbing. I could sense that I rose several thousand feet each time. I also knew my body could not take much more. Dark tunnels were forming around my vision as I commenced to blackout. The air molecules around me exploded as the last of my sight perished.

Something is wrong. Things looked different. It appeared to me that I was still in the same room that I was in the first time I awakened. Everything was naturally in the same place as before, but different. Almost degraded. Shadows were shattering across the dark and gloomy room. The closet door next to my bed was broken straight off the hinges. The T.V. hanging on the wall, was sputtering images of the horrifying events that must have occurred within the past couple days. The ceiling of the room was starting to collapse revealing small sections of railings. Erie darkness sparked the realization that it must have been night. Memories re-reeled of last night's dream. Although I was almost positive that I could have not been asleep for that long, the things I did see wile asleep still gave my entire body the chills of Goosebumps. The sensation of falling from the dream somehow found its way to return to my stomach. I became nauseous and grabbed the bedpost directly next to me. "When did I ever get up out of my bed?" I thought to myself. The room shook violently from an outside force. I knew this must have reactivated something. The walls seemed to flicker, and then reignite their usual glow of faint light for the room. Almost as if there were internal light sources inside them. Just then, the male announcer from the day before came back to life over the intercom.

His voice sounded strange and completely distorted. In the distance, I could still hear rumbling and feel the vibrations afterwards.

"Good morning. You have been in suspension for ("-nine-nine-nine-nine-nine-nine-nine-ni-")

Static replaced the infinite counting as the recording became unclear and continuously changed in pitch. But after a couple seconds of him reading "nine", the static dismissed and his normal voice returned without distortion. I could now clearly hear what he was saying.

"This is a courtesy call to inform you that all test subjects should evacuate the Enrichment Center immediately."

"That is not good" I said aloud to no one.

My mind was barely processing that this voice had just told me to evacuate an enrichment center that I didn't even know existed until a couple days ago. I then thought of what he had said at the beginning of his message. The part of "You have been in suspension for ("-nine-nine-nine-nine-nine-nine-ni-) ". Was that actually true? Or was the system just malfunctioning? I couldn't believe that I was here that long. I didn't seem much older, or heavier for that matter. It might have made sense though, because I highly doubted that the things I saw on the T.V. could have happened in only a couple days. But on the other hand, was it even possible for me to have been asleep for over several years? I was still trying to piece together all of the events when a suspicious sound erupted into the room. Several loud bangs occurred within a reasonably close amount of time. At first I thought they were more parts of the facility failing, which would have caused the need for evacuation. But these bangs were much softer and less destructive. They turned into light knocks as a voice from outside the door attempted to call through to me. He had a very strong British accent, along with a tone of complete urgency.

"Hello? Anyone in there? Helloooo?"…"Are you going to open this door? Because it's fairly important."

I reluctantly went over the door on the far right side of my room. This was the first time I even noticed that the room had a door. I reached out and grabbed the handle.

"HA! I knew someone was alive in here."

I pulled the door in, letting it swing into the room completely, Just as the man saw me.

"AH! Oh. My. God! You look terribl- ummm... good. Looking good, actually."

As said this, he started to… well not exactly "walk" into the room. He had no legs or arms. As a matter a fact, he had no body at all. He was not human either. He was a metal sphere with one big blue digital eye right in the center. Both above and below his eye were bars. Each one had a small handle in the center of it. On the side of him, he had a printed logo of 7 triangles forming in a circle around the letter "A" in the word "Aperture Laboratories". And under that, he had his name: "Wheatly". He looked strange because he had no mouth, ears, nose, or any other human-like quality. Well… besides his voice I would guess. He just had his big, blue, screen/eye thing. Above him, he was connected to the railing I could barely discover earlier hanging on the ceiling. He moved silently along it while he made his way inside, making the door shut behind him automatically.

"Are you okay?" he asked. "Are you- never mind. I'm absolutely sure you're fine. There's plenty of time for you to recover. Let's just take. It. Sloooow."

The announcer came back on over the speakers suddenly.

"Please prepare for emergency evacuation."

Wheatly was obviously nervous about me hearing this. His eye was jumping around the room to examine everything. He jumped back into alertness to attempt to reassure me.

"Stay calm! Prepare. That's all they're saying. 'Prepare'. It's all fine, alright? Don't move. I'm gonna get us out of here."

Right after he said that, two doors opened above his head in the ceiling. Still connected to the bar, he rose into an open chamber that the door had revealed. As he inserted himself, the door closed behind him. I could hear moving parts as it locked itself shut. I could hear Wheatly's voice, but it was muffled. But within seconds, the entire room shook and began to move! It moved harshly. some pieces of the wall began to break off, revealing the inner walls wires and support bars holding the room intact.

"Oh. You MIGHT want to hang onto to something. Word of advice, up to you" Wheatly added.

The entire capsule began to drop several hundred feet faster that I thought possible. My body became a feather, but other articles from around the room became ragdolls. The sudden shift of gravity seemed way too familiar. A spark of energy explodes throughout my muscles as my mind remembers my terrifying dream from the night before. If felt as if it was all happening again. Except this time, I had Wheatly talking constantly asking "You alright down there? Am I steering this thing right? Hello?" I kept on ignoring him, spacing out in the mess of the situation. After a while, the capsule seemed to smooth out. We made a couple more turns and dropped two or three more times. And before I knew it, the capsule grudged to a slow and steady stop.

"Aaaaannnnnd done. Perfecto, some might say." Wheatly boasted to himself.

The doors in the ceiling opened up once again to allow Wheatly to descend back into the room. He seemed proud of what he just did, and a snippet of calmness entered his body language. Even so, he still had the slight urgency in his voice.

"Now, most test subjects do experience some cognitive deterioration after a few months in suspension. Now you've been under for... quite a lot longer than that, and it's not out of the question that you might have a very minor case… of serious brain damage."

"What?!" I cried aloud in my mind. "This idiot is the one with brain damage! Or wire damage, whatever. He's the one who's kept me here all this time without telling me what I was actually doing here, or how long I was here." Overall it surprised me that I was left dumbfounded with no way to defend myself... because mostly I still didn't know who I was. For all I knew I did have brain damage and was making this all up. "Oh, how wonderful that would be" I passionately thought to myself. To be able to wake back up wherever I was from and brush this entire mess off and get on with reality. But I had a sense of feeling, a sense that this was not just one big dream and that I was going to have to play this out to the best of my abilities.

"But don't be alarmed, alright?" Wheatly intervened. "Although, if you do feel alarmed, try to hold onto that feeling. Because that is the proper reaction to being told you have brain damage."

"Well, at least I'm proper…" I thought to myself.

The doors above Wheatly's railing re-opened. He rose into his chamber. The entire room restarted once again. Making grinding noises as Wheatly started to move it again. With I little bit of nudging, the chamber finally urged itself forward with ease.

"Alright, I wasn't going to mention this to you, but I am in PRETTY HOT WATER here. The reserve power ran out, so of course the whole Relaxation Center stops waking up the bloody test subjects! And of course nobody tells ME anything. Noooo. Why should they tell me anything? Why should I be kept informed about the life functions of the hundred thousand bloody test subjects I'm supposed to be in charge of? And whose fault do you think it's going to be when the management comes down here and finds ten thousand flipping vegetables for people?"

The gravity of the room shifted awkwardly to the left, sending the broken lamps and pictures on a careening crash course with the wall. I started to worry for the first time that he might get us both killed if he keeps getting distracted. I thought hard on my chances of survival.

"Hold on! This is a bit tricky!"

The entire room suddenly smashed into an object, tearing off the walls completely. "yup, I'm dead." I concluded. The support bars around the room were still intact, but I now had a slight glimpse of the outside. Unfortunately, there was not enough room to see anything clearly. The mini fridge on the floor flew in to the frame of the room, stretching the hole bigger instantaneously. What I could now lay eyes upon will have most likely scarred me for life. My room was suspended on a railing much like the one Wheatly was traveling on, only much bigger. This railing was inside a warehouse of biblical proportions. From as high as I could see up, and as far as I looked down. Capsules just like the one I was in, were scattered all around me. I'm talking thousands of them. They were strung about for what seemed to be miles in every direction. Moth of them in lines still connected to their respective railings. But the eerie problem was, not a single person was residing inside them. Not a single one. They looked to have been tossed about, engulfed in flame, or broken of their rail. Only to fall endlessly to the bottom of the hanger. A chamber not too far below me looked strange. As we got closer, I could see some writing. It was dark red, like the color of blood. There were no words, just lines. All lined up I columns and rows along the white walls. There must have been hundreds of them. Eventually, there was not enough room to write any more. I wondered how he did this. The Relaxation Center stopped arising any of us from our deep sleep. I thought of the horrible possibility that he was never able to go to sleep, and he was living out the rest of his days waiting for someone to rescue him. That someone was going to be me. As we got even closer to his room, I caught an eye on him. There was a man, sitting in the corner of a room with no escape. He sat there holding a note in his hand, slumping to one side. My chamber began to rise to eyelevel with his as we sped closer.

"Oh, it's close! Can you see? Am I gonna make it through? Have I got enough space?" Wheatly called down to me.

We were rocketing toward the dead man's chamber. My room tilted forward slightly as Wheatly attempted to gain in speed. I knew we couldn't make it. For a split second, my body was numb. Then, front of my chamber slammed into the side of his. The walls imploded from the impact. His chamber got knocked it straight off the suspension railing. It dangled in mid-air for a second, with only the ruined wires of the facility to hold it. Looking down, I saw nothing below it in sight. For a moment I thought it might hold, but the weight was too much. Lifelines of hope broke, sending it to plummet endlessly into an abyss of darkness.

"Aggh, see, now I hit that one didn't I? Yep, I definitely hit that one..." Wheatly said with a hint of fake disappointment.

I watched mournfully as the chamber, with the guy still in it, tumbled through the air for miles till it was out of sight. Wheatly was still maneuvering my chamber as if he has had only minutes of practice with it. Which, I guessed was probably true.

"Okay, listen, we should get our stories straight, alright? If anyone asks - and no one's gonna ask, don't worry - but if anyone asks, tell them as far as you know, the last time you checked, everyone looked pretty much alive. Alright? Not dead."

We made a quick turn to the right, barely ducking underneath two chambers that were barely holding their own weight on the tracks. In front of us, there was a wall of chambers. Below us was a small opening just big enough for us to get through. Wheatly however, just slowed down enough to 'controllably' plow are way through the wall of chambers. Many of them tumbled downward, colliding with chambers as they fell. Ours however, took mostly no damage at all. Just a couple of support bars were dislodged in the walls that are securing my chances of survival…but no big deal, right?

"Okay, almost there! On the other side of that wall is one of the old testing tracks. There's a piece of equipment in there we're gonna need to get out of here. I think this is a docking station. Get ready..."

The entire chamber burst forward with speed. The front tilts dangerously close to the ongoing wall of chambers below us. Up ahead, there was a colossal, compact surface that stretched in both directions eternally. Painted on it were the degraded letters of "Docking station, 1000 meters below" with an arrow pointing down. With Wheatly not slowing up, the entire chamber flagellated into the wall. Causing minute fractures in the walls hard surface. Articles of the room were instantly thrown out and tumbled downward. Luckily I held my firm grip on the bed, so I was more or less unaffected.

"Good news: That is NOT a docking station. So there's one mystery solved. I'm going to attempt a MANUAL override on this wall. Could get a bit technical, Hold on."

My heart started to race. Here I was dangling 1000 meters above the nearest platform, and Wheatly was going to knock us straight out of the air! The chamber shook violently as the wheels turned in order to gain momentum. The thick air of the warehouse blew throughout the room, creating a draft of discomfort. Wheatly was not wasting any time to protrude the immense wall before us. He backed up just enough to get a moderate amount of speed on his second attempt. The room felt like a swing as it came around to slam into the wall,

causing chunks from it to fall the thousands of feet below. The shell of the chamber twisted and groaned from the strain it was being put under. Supports of the floor and ceiling were ripped from their housing, causing holes to form all around me. Light fixtures such as lamps shattered from the impact, sending glass shards all across the room. Many pieces chose to embed themselves deep into the wall, about 6 inches from my head. The wood on the opposite bedpost split in half, contributing splinters to the mess of miscellaneous objects. Wheatly of course, saw no problem in the madness he was doing, and shook it of as if it were just a mere bump.

"Almost there! Remember: you're looking for a gun that makes holes. Not bullet holes, but… well, you'll figure it out. Really do hold on this time!"

Wheatly pushed the chamber as hard as he could. The motors were squealing as the forced the chamber back much further than he had on the first 2 attempts. The transfer from moving backwards to forwards alone was enough to catch my balance off guard. The chamber accelerated faster than I thought possible, even after the previous strain put upon it. It was going to be a war between us, and the wall. I just hoped that somehow we could win. The wall was approaching with an amassment amount of speed. With every second, I saw the shortness of what my life has been flash before my eyes. "If I do die" I thought "it might have been better that I didn't know what happened in the past". We were getting so close now, that the shadow of the wall was forming around the chamber. The supports groaned and moaned as the chamber pendulum into position. I closed my eyes expecting the worst. Turns out…I can make expectations better than I thought. We collided with the wall, and the worlds itself seemed to fall off its axis. It was total chaos. The wall did give way, but not before the chamber did. Chunks the size of cars got thrown about like pebbles. At this point I lost my grip on the bed. My entire body was lifted off the ground and forced into the hole created be the impact. The shell of the chamber collapsed behind me. A fireball of dust etched into my back as I flew. Sharp pieces of concrete and possibly even glass embedded themselves into my clothing. The upper part of the hole created dismantled from the wall and pancaked part of the chamber. Now, I feel lucky that I was thrown out. Mostly because if I had not, I would most defiantly been crushed. I lay on a thick chunk of concrete next to a slab of glass on the floor. I noticed that the glass next to me was actually a ceiling to a smaller type of room than the one I had woken up in originally.

The room itself was mostly white. It had a toilet, radio, TV, but no bed. I did think that was a bit queer. In the corner of my eye, I saw Wheatly lower down from his little control room in my ceiling, just barely missing from where the wall had pancaked the chamber. He looked a bit surprised, but somehow still calm and focused.

"Whew. There we go! Now I'll be honest, you are probably in no fit state to run this particular type of cognitive gauntlet. But... um... at least you're a good jumper. So... you've got that. You've got the jumping on your side. Just do your best, and I'll meet you up ahead."

I didn't quite understand that jumping part, but I was sure it was nothing. I cautiously got up and slowly made my way to the glass roof of the old, degraded testing track. Spider-webbing stress cracks epicentered out from the center of the pane. I slowly put my foot down on to see if it would hold. I started adding more and more weight onto it. It held all my weight. I brought my other foot around to step on it, but in that very moment, it shattered. I was caught so off guard that I tumbled un-coordinately into the room. I hit the floor with a thud as tiny pieces of glass torrented down on me.

"That's the spirit!" Wheatly called behind sarcastically.

Thanks a lot for reading the first chapter! Feel free to review with comments/suggestions (I am still open to change any part of the story from here on)

Andrew Randelman,

TeamCudou