Chell looked around her, eyes wide, not quite daring to believe what her eyes seemed to see.

She'd dreamed of this before. She'd planned out what she'd do in such a situation. But some part of her had always dismissed it as impossible. Now that it had happened, she simply stood there, temporarily stunned.

A blue sky. Fluffy clouds. Warm sunlight on her face, wind in her hair. Wavy thin plants everywhere: a field? She turned around: the storage shed she'd been kicked out of with due ceremony had opened its door to throw up a Companion Cube. It looked a little worse for wear, covered with scorch marks, but that hardly mattered to her. It never had.

She grabbed at the Cube, almost involuntarily. It still retained a bit of its comforting powdery smell and hummed softly as she held it. A parting gift of sorts? She pressed her cheek agaisnt the strangely warm metal, smiling. The turrets' song still echoed in her ears, sweet and sad and completely confusing. There were many things she'd have to iron out in her mind afterwards, but for now-

She ran forward into the field, feeling the stalks brush against her, up to her waist. Her shoes, unused to the pliant soil beneath them, sank a little into the ground with every step. All of it was so foreign after the clinical order of the Facility: even the time-abandoned vaults under the shinier blocks were suffused with a kind of industrial artificiality that shivered insignificantly before where she stood at this moment. She knew she'd lived in this world long, long ago, when she was a child, but she could hardly believe it. The sky, the field: it all seemed so new!

She started. A deep roar sounded up from beneath the ground, followed by several loud sharp noises, like large plates of metal being slammed together. Chell blinked once at the storage shed, then away: She had her world now, and Chell had hers.

She walked forward with the Companion Cube in her arms, breathing in the sun-warmed air. There was an entire world up here for her to find out. There would be other humans here, too. How long had it been since she'd seen another human face? She had vague recollections of a voice, a reticent mumbling, and all of it was in dream-like bits and pieces now. A few real, honestly alive voices would do her a world of good.

All she had to do was head towards the closest settlement. A city if she could. She had no idea how long she'd been asleep, and as for whether humanity was still around - well, humanity was a massive concept. She was quite sure - mostly - that there would still be a few people. Somewhere. All she had to do was find them, and they would welcome her back into society. It never occurred to her that they might do anything to the contrary.

The sun shone down on her, tireless, and she looked about her once more. Emptiness. Vast emptiness. The wind seemed to grow a little chillier. Realization after realization landed on her mind like anvils: there was day and night out here. With grass there were probably other plants, animals, too: what kinds of animals? Would they hurt her?

The paranoia was strong, and it wouldn't let go of her just yet. Something else, she thought abstractedly. Food - what about food? She had lived so long on alternate forms of nutrition: what did humans eat for food in this time? (She hoped they still had cake.) Would she be able to digest it? She wasn't entirely sure if the supplements they'd pumped into her would let her return to ordinary eats. The possibility that she might not be able to take any of it made her apprehensive: still. She would have to try.

In any case, she needed to get going. There was the sun above her. It was midday. In a few hours it would give way to evening, and then night. Night meant darkness, and she had no light sources with her. Would reeds make a suitable torch? There was no way she knew of setting them on fire. Perhaps it would be easier to find a settlement before the moon arrived. Get some food. A bed. Let her achy feet rest.

She set off with her Cube, resolute. She looked back once, at the storage shed, upright and sullen in its weathered stubbornness, a blob of Science among so much Nature.

No, she thought, and kept walking away.

...

There were plenty of things along the way to distract her.

At one point she came across something that strongly resembled a car, but it had no wheels. The somewhat-car was tilted awkwardly against a rock - had it crashed into it? Part of the irregularly concave roof did seem a little crumpled. An inspection of the bottom revealed a shiny dark surface, completely smooth. It seemed to distress the Companion Cube, making it whir loudly, so she did a quick examination of its contents and left promptly. She hadn't found much inside, only a small medical aid kit with bandages and a scissors that she stuffed into a jumpsuit pocket. There was also a bottle of slimy green water, the bottle's plastic all swimmy and softish: she doubted it was safe to drink, so she left it behind.

Soon after the discovery of the crushed somewhat-car, she came across a foot-wide black strip on the ground. Human-made. She would've missed it if she hadn't nearly tripped over it in the reeds. It seemed to be made of the same material as the car's underside, because the Cube seemed a little perturbed by it. Chell decided to follow the line, keeping a metre away from it to keep the Cube happy. Perhaps it led somewhere man-made, and there were settlements there.

The strip led her past more strange things. Large billboards that still flashed advertisements, though they were so staticky and the boards so scratched down and blurred that she could hardly see a thing. Just blobs of wildly dancing colour. And lines that looked like distorted text. She squinted till her eyes hurt, but couldn't make out any of it.

She also came across many skeletons. It horrified her at first - peopel had died here! But on closer approach, they weren't quite so disturbing. None of them looked particularly human, several even resembling strange crab-like animals, so she passed them by. Wild creatures, most probably.

When she finally saw the outlines of buildings against the horizon, she wondered whether it was an illusion. She'd been following the strip for what felt like hours, and she'd only seen billboards, reeds and trees. But the dim cubiodal shapes didn't vanish or move away - they were there. Solid, substantial. Real buildings. She began to run. Her shoes sank into the soil with the force of her steps, slowing her down, so she ran on the strip instead, holding her Cube at shoulder level to keep it safe. Her body felt warm - uncomfortably warm - and she couldn't sweat to dissipate the heat.

Of course she couldn't. Sweat was inconvenient: the cocktail of drugs they served her with every nutritional supplement kept her sweat glands dysfunctional. And the Facility was far too chilly for any body to overheat, so there was still no need for it. They had doen quite a few things to her, all of which she was quite sure were mentioned in the Contract she'd so cleverly decided not to read-

Chell shook her head, squeezing her eyes tighter shut. The Facility was behind her. In the past. Why should she have to think about it now? It was not important to her anymore. A monster she'd run away from.

The Cube murmured comfortingly. She stared at it with newly cold eyes. This lifeless metal box was a reminder of everything she'd had to go through. For a moment she contemplated leaving it in the reeds and running forward, but she didn't. She couldn't. She knew it, too, which shamed her a little. Could she have any reasons for keeping it? Maybe she'd need a memento of all the trouble she'd gone through, of all the lessons she'd learnt. Of what she'd learnt about herself. She couldn't have tossed the Cube away, she realized, even if she'd wanted to. Eventually she'd simply have run back to retrieve it. All test subjects are required to keep the Companion Cube with them to the end of the Test. The conditioning was just far too strong to override just yet.

The Cube kept singing its quiet song as she ran.

...

The buildings she'd seen were warehouses. Large steel structures. One had a door partly open: she peered inside and saw only pallets and crates. Interesting but not particularly helpful. It was also quite dusty: a heavy breath sent a whole bunch of particles down and promptly back up in a gigantic sneeze that seemed to reverbrate through the warehouse like a clap of thunder. Chell sheepishly shut the door and returned to the strip.

There were more buildings in the distance now: a whole haze of them. Taller, sleeker, of so many sizes that she was quite sure she'd run towards a city. A few more minutes of sprinting in the fading light told her she'd been right - the strip led right into the city, joining up with dozens of other strips leading every which way. The city, arranged in a neat circle, sorted itself into quiet little suburbs with plenty of small similar-looking houses and the metal-sleek centre, all tall glassy buildings. There were more somewhat-cars here.

What was conspicuously missing were the people.

The whole city seemed deserted. She peered into house windows - they were neat little homey houses, but there were no people in them. No people in the somewhat-cars, or the buildings, or walking down the streets. There was even an elevated train running through the city that seemed to be some kind of public transportation system - it had simply stopped between two stations and was devoid of passengers.

Chell's heart fell. There were no people here. But that did not mean there were no humans left - just none in this city. She would have to keep searching. And, meanwhile, this was a settlement - she could rest here, get her bearings on the Surface, learn a little about this world. And heavens knew she could use some rest. Her legs ached something awful.

The sun began to set, and she stepped up to a house in the city's outskirts. It had a blue roof and a single large window on the upper floor, like every other house on its block. The gate was left open, and the door was unlocked: whoever had left the house had done so in a tearing hurry. She walked through the house, up and down the stairs, peeping into the bathrooms (where she found a plastic duck that she took a fancy to) and rummaging around the kitchen. There were five rooms in the house: two full of clutter, the other three on the upper floor left bare.

She found a few sealed packets of clear water in the kitchen, along with an electric lantern and a bucket of batteries. The bucket had 'Best Offer!' splashed across it on a brightly coloured sticker. The packets of water had labels on them, too, but they simply said 'Water.' She clumsily ripped one open, spilling a little, and had some of it. Ordinary. Of course. What had she been expecting?

She dragged one of the narrow beds up to a bedroom on the second floor. The sheets were grimy, so she stripped them off and covered the mattress with crackly newspapers she'd found lying around in the messier rooms. The walls were patterned a rather nice pale blue that seemed to comfort her a little. She kept the Cube beside the bed and clambered on, testing the springy mattress, bouncing a little for the fun of it. She unstrapped her shoes with fumbling fingers, wiped the mud off with a stray sheet of newsprint and put them to one side. Her feet, sore from ill-use, needed some airing anyway. She wiggled her toes and laughed quietly.

It was a nice feeling. No cameras. No turrets around the corner. Nothing shooting at her.

She let the Cube sing her to sleep.

...

In the morning, she decided to conduct a few more searches of the city.

She found a library at the end of her block. It was full of shelves carrying hundreds of books, real books: there were also a few computers around, but they wouldn't work. Chell gathered a few books and took them home, keeping them for examination later in the day. As she left, something fell to the ground with a sharp thump.

She wheeled around immediately, eyes large, heart pounding. Where was her portal gun-

There was only a book there. Her mind had been playing tricks on her. She cradled her head in her hands and tried to calm herself down: this would have to go.

She found supermarkets further away. It was like the library, only the shelves were full of lots of different items. There was a produce section full of crusty dried-out blackened things that might've been, some day in the past, fresh vegetables and fruits. There were frozen foods that had long thawed out in the broken freezers, and there were dozens of shelves carrying concentrated food packets of different kinds. The labels on these were more colourful, even if the contents of all of them looked exactly the same. There was Chicken and Curry and Cheese on one side, stacked together, and further on she found Egg and Ham and Lemon and Mint. She gathered several of these and put them in a basket, much like she knew she would have if the supermarket were still functioning, and there were other shoppers here also buying things for themselves.

She also got herself a couple of buckets and heavy coils of rope. She didn't know if she'd need them, but they seemed useful things to have around, and she hadn't seen any in her adopted home.

As she stepped out, out of the corner of her eyes she glimpsed a camera.

It was an ordinary supermarket camera, watching the nonexistent shoppers to pick out shoplifters, probably not even working anymore - things that didn't occur to her. Chell picked up a paperweight and lobbed it at the camera, shattering it. She didn't like being watched.

This would have to go. She shook herself hard. She couldn't go around smashing every camera in the city. It was vandalism! And, besides, it would take far too long.

On her way back to her hideout, she found a working somewhat-car. It'd been hovering above a strip, perfectly balanced. Were the strips roads, after a fashion? She clambered into the vehicle, being very careful not to unbalance it, and pressed a few buttons. Many of them seemed broken, but after a little disappointed rummaging in the contents of the car - the missing owner had also been doing her shopping, there were bags of packeted groceries in the boot - Chell found a scrap of paper with a code on it. Could it be-

It was. Once she'd entered the code, the dashboard display came to life. The engine coughed for a moment and then began to purr with reassuring regularity.

It took a few tries for her to learn how to stop and start the machine. It wouldn't move beyond a certain speed, but she could maneuver it satisfyingly, and thought it worked quite well for something that had been sitting out here for so long. The fuel display read half-empty. There were no petrol pumps around here to refill it, though. She would have to deal with this later. Now she had to get home.

The sky was beginning to darken again. It got dark awfully quickly, she thought: but, then again, she had woken up at about noon. She'd had only half a day today. And most of the sky were clouds now: heavy purple clouds that seemed to frown down at her.

Now. Which way was home?

She did a three-sixty: every road looked like one she could've walked through to here.

Confusion gave way to panic. The place was a labyrinth, and she'd quite forgotten the way she'd come! She drove through roads between endlessly similar buildings for what felt like hours. A few stars could be seen, peeping through the clouds, when she finally found her way out of the city's centre and reached the suburbs.

These weren't her suburbs, though. The houses did all look the same, but not like the houses in the suburb she'd decided to settle in. Red roofs. And she couldn't simply use one of these houses for the night. Her Companion Cube would be waiting for her. Her batteries and lantern, too. The books she'd carried back from the library.

She drove till she began to see more warehouses, then got an idea. It seemed farfetched and ineffective, but it was all she had right now. If she were to drive around on the city's circumferential road, she would, at one point, come across the the street her house was on. She sighed, threw back her shoulders and decided to go ahead with it.

And: reminder. Next day, she would have to pick up a road map of this place. If there were any. Find out her street's name and memorize it.

The moon's light was weak and subdued through the cloud cover, which didn't help her in identifying one block from the others. She'd had to step out of the car, walk up to one of the houses and examine it at close range. By the seventeenth block, Chell began to feel tired. She looked out at the wilderness, at the reeds, and saw a worryingly familiar storage shed. Memories forgotten for a few blissful hours resurfaced, and she was filled with a sense of sickly dread. Hadn't it been further away than this? It had. Much, much further.

So what was this doing here?

Apprehensive, she approached this new shed. It looked a lot like the one she'd been pushed out of, only markless. No designation, no litter around it. Absolutely plain. Even a little ridiculous, sitting there all by itself.

She got closer. Her foot landed in something soft for a second, and she fell back, alarmed. What on the Surface was-

-oh.

Well, she hadn't expected that.

She went to the car and switched on the headlights. They picked out a person on the ground, curled up foetally. Sandy hair, a rather asymmetrical nose. Slight in build. He didn't seem much older than her. A torrent of thoughts ran through her mind - how had he ended up there? Who was he? Why was he the only person she'd seen here? - before she saw the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

Here was another human being, and he was alive.

She swayed gently on her feet. Her knees bent on themselves, a shaking hand reached towards the human's face. The skin was soft. Warm.

Questions could wait for later. She allowed herself a choked sob before getting to work, heaving the body into the car. It lolled softly against the seat: very much alive. She decided to leave the questions for when she got home: after all, there was plenty of time to answer them. In the state he was, this human wasn't going to run away any time soon.

...

Her block had taken five more tries to find. The car had run out of fuel when they were a hundred metres from home, and it had been drizzling. Chell pushed the car as far as she could, then pulled the basket of food out and ran indoors with it. Running in the rain was a novel experience, by all means, and she felt a little guilty for enjoying it as much as had.

She brought out one of the old bedsheets for the body. She tied it around him to stop him from tipping out, and then dragged it up to the house, soaking them through. Still, it was worth it. She dragged him up the stairs, wincing at every bump - he'd feel it the next day. She would try using her nest of newspapers on the floor today: the carpet was mostly free of fluff and, besides, he probably needed the bed more.

Where did he come from, though? Once he'd been safely deposited on the bed, a few papers on top of him for a blanket, she sat by the bed with her legs crossed, looking curiously at him. At his clothes. A jumpsuit, though not of the exact same pattern as hers. His arms crossed his chest, shielding any insignia that might be printed there. She gently pulled at an arm, and read a disconcertingly familiar patch printed behind it: Aperture Laboratories.

She peered at him for a full minute, nonplussed. She had told her she was the last one in there. Even that little wretch of a core Wheatley had said the same: if he'd lied, he'd lied very convincingly. Which wasn't in the least like him. It was common fact between the three of them that every other test subject had died in suspension, so who was this?

Was it possible that there were yet other test subjects alive in there? If there were, what was She doing in there with them? There had been some mention of robots, an initiative involving robots, phasing out of human testing… Chell shook her head, confused. If there were still any poor souls in there, heaven help them. Not for the world would she ever even consider going back in there.

So how had this test subject escaped? She'd only barely scraped through herself...

Chell's sense of paranoia kicked in, and for good reason. She took her papers and the Cube to another room, and heaved a set of dressers against the door of the room she'd left the person in. She wasn't having the house open to his fancy if and when he woke up. Particularly if he woke up while she was still asleep.

She settled down for the night with an uneasy mind, and not even the Cube's mindless mumblings could soothe her.

...

The next morning, when she shoved aside the dresser and entered the room, he was still asleep.

She had a couple of food and water packets with her, as well as dishes and cutlery she'd tried to wash. All the packet labels told her about preparing the stuff inside was to 'add water'; keeping the person in her line of sight at all times, she shook some of the powder into the dishes and dribbled some water on top.

The tiny granules the powder was made of swelled into rice-sized grains, soaking up all the water. She added quite a bit more, and they became the size of peas. She tried one: the label had said 'Chicken'. She supposed this was what chicken tasted like: she'd forgotten how the real thing was. It wasn't bad: a little salty, rich enough; it didn't feel very artificial on her tongue. She filled a dish full of them, stuck in a spoon and pushed it to one side. Now to wake him up. His sleep was soundless - she would know. (She'd woken up halfway through the night from a terrible dream, gasping for breath, scared witless.) But there'd been nothing amiss. Was he drugged?

In all likelihood, seeing where he'd come from, he was.

She shook his shoulder. Wake up! He didn't so much as twitch. Drugged so soundly he'd be able to sleep through a war. Well, he'd have to wake up soon, or his body would begin to starve.

Pushes didn't work. She tried rolling him off the bed: a forceful shove landed him on his back, slightly unfolded. No change. She pinched the back of his hand in desperation. This seemed to work a little, for his mouth moved, and he moved his hand away. Getting through! But waking him up properly would need some more encouragement. She padded to the kitchen, filled a jug with water and returned. When sprinkling water on his face failed, she tipped all of the jug over him.

He coughed and spluttered, opening his eyes - extraordinarily bright blue eyes. Chell sat back on the balls of her feet and peered quietly at him. His eyes darted about, unfocused, as if not quite sure they were doing - when they landed on her, his face changed into that of genuine surprise.

"Chell?"

She reared back, nearly tripping. She had the door to her back, she could run if she wanted to - that voice, another she would've paid dearly to run away from a couple days ago: why was it here? And how - how had it-

"How'd you - how did I-" His arms flailed: one caught the side of the bed, and he painstakingly levered himself up. She looked on with a kind of horrified fascination. Some part of her had registered that he was no threat to her right now, and, besides, she wanted to see his reaction to his new surroundings.

It took a moment for the change to register.

"Aaaaagh - how - I demand an explanation: this is terrible! I'm stuck in a - in a human-" At this point he turned to Chell, and she was not a little surprised by the genuine alarm in his eyes. "Not expecting you to know - but just in case you do - how did I end up like this? Last thing I remember, you were dragging me back in, and there was a crashing noise, and then I wake up looking like this! No - it's obvious. It was her, wasn't it? I should've known. Wouldn't have put it past her, but of all the terrible-" His voiced faltered, and he started to cough. It was obviously something new for him, and his alarm only seemed to increase, but Chell felt no sympathy.

His coughing petered out after a bit, and he looked at her a tad sheepishly. "Now. I know there's been no love lost between us, but if you could just explain what's happened, and how I'm supposed to, uh, use this, erm, body of mine, then perhaps we could, uh-" Chell raised an eyebrow. "Right. I shouldn't expect that from you. Not after what I did. Which I am sorry for. Yes. Was sorry for it from quite a while back, actually, curious how I'd never mentioned it, but yes. I'm sorry I was stubborn. And bossy. And commanding. I take it all back." He shrugged, looking disconsolate. "King of hindsight, I know."

Chell wondered if she ought to have left him where she'd found him, or in the rain yesterday. It sounded like an extremely good idea right now. She didn't feel like forgiving him: not after she'd seen how quickly he could change, and how he would - and could - adjust the story to make himself look the victim. There'd been more than a few nightmares where the turrets did get her, where she hadn't been able to portal away from his home-made 'surprise' in time, where she had fallen to her death off a funnel by mistiming a shot.

She wouldn't be forgiving him any time soon. And particularly not now.

Chell stepped out of the room. ("Hey! Don't leave - you can't just leave - help! Help! Help me! Look, I'm sorry, I really am, I'll make it up to you later, but right now I'm in more of a pickle than you think. I can't even get myself off the ground! Well. I couldn't do that before, either, but you get the point, don't you?") What Wheatley did now was none of her business, and right now he was incapable of hurting nobody but himself. Just desserts, she thought. She'd leave him to figure it out for himself.

How, though?

He'd asked the very same question - and no wonder - but what had She done this time?

It was all still very confused in her head, but Chell understood that Caroline was part of GLaDOS. If, as the old Chairman of Aperture Laboratories had put it, she'd been uploaded as a personality into a computer, had the reverse been done to Wheatley?

She thought of the pitch-identical voice and large blue eyes of the pathetic individual in room just beyond. No. Wheatley had been human to start with. His personality had simply been returned to him.

Story notes: this is my first story, and its first chapter. I've edited it a bit since I first uploaded it, but here it is~ I'd like critique if you have it. Or if you want to simply drop by with 'Hi!', that's good too. :3

I hope you liked it: though I really don't know, and I won't know unless you tell me. ^^