Author Note:
This is a new story that I am starting. I really hope you like it! I am passionately entranced with the video game Portal 2, and thought that I would start a story centered on it for my first story! I hope you all like it! Please review and give me suggestions! :D
Chell turned the corner, her legs pumping tirelessly beneath her. Her portal gun hummed in her hands, waiting for her finger to pull the trigger and send a portal beam whizzing towards its target. There was minimal light in the passages between the test chambers, and Chell had to occasionally put out her hand to find a wall when she could no longer see where she was going. Chell stopped her tireless run down the black corridor to catch her breath. There would be another test chamber ahead of her, she knew.
And another beyond that.
And another beyond that.
Suddenly, there was a voice coaxing her on towards the chamber ahead of her, a deep reassuring male voice that she had come to hate over the course of her training. When she had signed the papers that ensured that Aperture Science had no legal holding over what happened to her, she didn't know what she was getting into. After the dotted line had been filled with her signature, a man in a white suit had stepped out of the door to her right and motioned her to follow him. There had been no mention of what exactly she was going to be testing, and how long her stay would be for. She had started to regret her decision to become a test subject the moment that they had fastened the Long Fall Boots to her shins.
Chell hastened down the hallway, stopping only to gaze at the locked door at the end of the passage. The lock had a symbol that portrayed a stick figure running. The symbol had always been a foreboding sight for Chell, telling her that her nightmare was not over. The door unlocked, the little man swirling around, and slid open with a click. The voice prodded her on with words of encouragement.
Chell stepped out of the door, it closing and locking behind her, and gazed out at her newest hurtle. There was an Excursion Funnel humming away in the center of the room, pressing one of the many weighted companion cubes to the ceiling. There was a moat of what Chell described in her head as bile. Behind the funnel there was a slick of blue jell snaking its way towards the wall on the opposite side. This one was really a no brainer, and that put Chell on edge. The only reason that there would be an easy test is because it was a mind trick, or because Aperture Science was training a new rookie in the designing of test chambers. Chell chose the latter as the reason for its simplicity, and continued to solve the puzzle that it had presented her.
The reason that Chell had come to Aperture Science in the first place, is because she had always wanted to find her parents. She had been searching for them ever since she had turned 21. At that point, there had been a plethora of money to back her efforts, but after a length of time, that stash had run dry. Chell had realized that if she would want to continue her ventures, she absolutely had to get some sort of income. Aperture had been the first thing to jump into her mind. Earlier in the week, she had seen an advertisement for test subjects in the vast underground labs of Aperture Science. Chell had jumped at the chance to become one of the lucky few that where going to be chosen for the job. Too late had she realized that the apparent God send was really just a coy into free test subjects.
Chell vaulted over the lake of bile that was keeping her from the exit door. As she closed the distance to the door, it slid open and let her pass into the ending chamber. Instead of a long hallway leading to another chamber, there was an elevator. Oh thank goodness. Chell thought.
An elevator present in the ending chamber could only mean one thing: testing was over. She wouldn't be leaving the Aperture Science underground, but she would be able to go to bed.
Bed.
Had it really been that long? Chell wondered.
Chell stepped exhaustedly into the small, glass elevator and let the doors slide shut around her. The elevator gracefully jumped upwards, almost immediately traveling at the speed of any conventional rail train. Outside her encasement, Chell could see almost nothing, but she was sure that just beyond the dull, black metal sheet in front of her there were thousands of machines ready to build any set of complicated test chambers, and deliver her to them. She could hear a far off clanking that softly rattled past the metal barrier, through the cylinder glass doors, and into her ears. Chell would have wondered what could have been making such a ruckus, but she was too tired; exhausted after a long days' worth of jumping around and being flung around.
After a short trip, the elevator stopped at a small, cramped corridor that lead to an equally small, plain door. As they slid open, a ding from the doors prompted her to get out of the elevator, which Chell did so with great joy. Her day was done. Now she could sleep. Just beyond that plain, wooden door in front of her was her bed, calling for her body to curl up inside of its warmth and dream about a better life; a life with her parents.
But Chell just wanted to sleep.
Sleep for a long while.
To never wake up.
Gordon Freeman flipped a page in the folder he was carrying, revealing a picture of a newly built Electron Transistor. His newly built Electron Transistor. He had been begging the Black Mesa Board of Directors to allow the construction of one, seeing that it would be exceedingly helpful to his work if he had one to double check his work. Gordon could not keep his eyes off of the thing. He wanted to have it now, to play around with it and then get some actual work done.
A knock on the door to his office brought him back to reality. "Yes?" He answered, straining his eyes over the top of the manila folder.
A woman with dark brown hair, piercing blue eyes, and dressed in a white coat walked in. Gordon recognized her immediately. "Ah! Dr. Alice Chenevier! Thank you for coming all the way from Paris to talk to me!"
Alice waved her hand in gratitude. "The pleasure is mine, Dr. Freeman. I have always wanted to meet the man that came up with the world changing Time-Warp Theories. If it wasn't for the idiotic security guards here, I would have reached you sooner."
Alice sighed and brought a hand to her head, and then quickly removed it. "Well, I have not flown six thousand kilometers just to exchange pleasantries."
Gordon motioned her over to his desk with a nod. "Quite right, Dr. The reason I could not just call you here, is because of this." Gordon pointed to an equation that spanned the width of the paper that it was on. "This! This is a problem! It is a flaw in my own Time-Warp Theories that you were just talking about. If we are about to release to the public that we have come up with a way to teleport, well we must solve this equation. This simple math could undo everything that the Theories state."
Alice bent forwards, examining the equation. She looked up and gestured to a calculator on the side of Gordon's desk. "May I?"
Gordon gave his assent in a curt nod, and she punched a few numbers into the calculator's blinking face. After a few silent moments, she placed the calculator back on the desk and resumed looking into Gordon's face. Her own wasn't so pleasant. "You flew me out here just to look at an ANOMALY?"
Gordon looked shocked. "Anomaly? My good doctor, this is not just that. I was studying the charts of the mass spectrometer here, and the radiation particles were consistent for over an hour and at the same time period for many days afterwards! My theories state that they should be random, and they were not!"
Alice's face softened. "So you are telling me that at the same time each and every day, a consistent amount of radioactive particles from space were being detected? That is impossible! Unless…"
Gordon prodded her on with an inquisitive look. "Unless…? What doctor?"
Alice's head snapped up and she looked into Gordon's eyes. "Do you remember the break in that Black Mesa had a few months ago? Didn't you lose something?"
Gordon nodded. "Yes! We lost my Hand-Held Portal Device! I worked hours trying to…" He trailed off as light began to dawn in his eyes. "We'd better call Aperture Science and see what they are up to."