A/N: OH MY GAWD! My first portal fanfic that actually follows canon! LA GASP! Really, writing this fanfic is very different from writing Average Life at Aperture Science.
Two kids ran eagerly into the wheat field that bordered the town they lived in. One was a 16-year-old girl named Gladys, but she went by Glade. She had black hair that extended a few inches past her shoulders, and bangs that fell in front of her blue-grey eyes. She was wearing a red T-shirt with a thin, unzipped, light grey, hooded jacket over it and ripped blue jeans. The other one was her little brother, 13-year-old Alex, who had the same colored hair and eyes, and his hair was messy and kind of looked like Harry Potter's. He wore a light blue shirt and jeans.
Here's what you should know about these two: They were total science nerds. Glade was quite a pyromaniac, and liked to build things like bombs and rockets. In fact, she was carrying a three-foot long toy rocket that she tweaked to make it go about three times as high as it was originally intended to go. Alex, on the other hand, was more interested in robotics. Sure, he could make your basic toy car, but he prefers to build large, remote-controlled wheeled robots designed to fight, complete with flamethrowers (help from his sister), hammers, crushing claws, you name it. He even came close to winning the fighting robots section of Robogames (you can watch that on the Science channel). He could also build robots that could walk or even dance.
Anyway, they kept running deeper into the field until they were just within sight of the town. Their mother always told them to never ever go too far into the field and to always stay in sight of the town. They always assumed that it was because 17 years ago she had stumbled out of the field and into the town, malnourished, pretty beaten up and overall in bad shape. She was mute, but even when given paper and pencil she still refused to tell anyone exactly what happened to her. She didn't even tell the kids or their father, who happened to be her doctor and had died a few years.
Despite not knowing exactly why, they followed their mom's orders and stayed in sight of the town. Of course, they were supposed to be at a friend's house, but said friend didn't want to have anything to do with their rocket, so they told them they were going home but instead went into the field. Hey, what their mother didn't know won't hurt her, right?
They stopped and began setting up the rocket.
"So, how high is this gonna go, again?" Alex asked his sister eagerly.
Glade pretended to think for a moment. "Oh, about 300 feet," she replied casually, smiling, "It'll go straight up, so getting it after it falls shouldn't be a problem."
The siblings finished setting it up and Glade took a lighter out of her pocket. She knelt by the rocket and lit the lighter.
"In three… two… one," she said before she lit the fuse. They stood back, waiting for lift off.
It might have just been unnoticed unevenness of the ground, a fault in the set up, or even the wind, but rather than going straight up, the rocket went sideways, away from the town and shooting over the field.
The two kids' cheerful faces fell. They wanted to retrieve the rocket to see what happened to it due to extra thrust, but to do so would break the one rule that mom had drilled into their heads the most since they were four. Though she couldn't talk, the kids could read her lips and expressions better than anyone else, and learned to read very quickly.
"Should we go get it?" Alex asked, eyeing his older sister anxiously.
"It would go 300 feet straight up, but with gravity not being as much of a factor it could have gone farther horizontally," Glade pondered, scratching the back of her head, "I guess we could run out there, find it, and get back in time for dinner, but…"
"It would break mom's number one rule," Alex finished sadly. They had broken rules before, but this rule had been hammered into them so strictly that they were scared of their mother's reaction to them breaking it.
Glade thought for a moment. Her mother was so worn out when she came to town that everyone assumed that she must have walked for days in the field. Surely whatever she was so scared of out there was more than 300 feet away.
"C'mon, let's go," she said confidently, tapping her brother on the shoulder. He nodded and followed her out into the field.
An hour later, after following the rocket's lingering smoke trail; they ended up at a long abandoned, dilapidated building. The trail led straight into a broken window.
"Ap… per… ture… labo, labor… a, tories," Glade read slowly, trying to make out barely legible words that were on the remains of a sign.
"Aperture Laboratories?" Alex wondered, "Sounds like a science company of some sort." He eyed the broken-down building curiously, "I wonder what they researched?"
"Who knows?" Glade replied, "Wonder if mom came by this…"
"Maybe she took shelter here," her little brother suggested, "Let's go in and have a look around!"
"No, let's just go back," Glade said sternly, even though she, too, wanted to explore. It was a real science facility, not the petty labs at school. Sure it was in extreme disrepair, but it was still cool! "We need to get back before mom finds out we went too far into the field."
"Oh, c'mon!" Alex said, already running toward the building's door, which was little more than an overgrown hole.
"ALEX!" Glade called, rushing after her reckless brother.
Inside, it was dark and cool. There was a sign over the remains of reception desk that read 'Welcome to Aperture Laboratories, a trusted friend in science!'
"I think the rocket went through a window over here!" Alex called, sticking his head into a room.
Glade walked over to the room to investigate it with him. Over the door was a sign that read 'Te… C..a…be...s'. The room wasn't much; it was pretty small and by the door was a set of buttons.
"This is just an elevator, Al," Glade said, using the nickname she always used when Alex made a mistake and she was teasing him about it.
Alex stepped into it and Glade followed.
"It must have a basement, since they have an elevator in a one-story building," Alex suggested. Before Glade could nod, the doors suddenly closed and the lights in the elevator turned on.
"Wha-?" Glade gasped as it made its rickety way downward.
After a minute of scared silence, the elevator suddenly opened, revealing them to be in a small overgrown room. Close to the elevator was a large red button on the floor and on the other side of the room, a large tube was suspended from the ceiling with a large, damaged box underneath it.
Suddenly a female, synthesized voice filled with static came over an intercom system. "Hello, and ag(fizzle), welcome to the Aper(fizzle) Science computer- a(fizzle) Enrichment Cen(fizzle). We hope your (fizzle fizzle) in the relax(fizzle) had been a ple(fizzle) one. Your (fizzle fizzle fizzle) and we are now ready to (fizzle) test proper. Before we start, however, keep in (fizzle) that although fun and learning are the (fizzle fizzle) of all Enrichment Center (fizzle), serious (fizzle) may occur. For your own safety, and the safety of others, please (fizzle fizzle fizzle)."
The siblings stood still in shock, not sure what to think.
"I though this place was abandoned…" Alex muttered.
"I… I think that was a pre-recorded message," Glade replied, trying to comfort her brother, "I wonder how it's still working?"
Alex, curious, picked up the box and placed it on the button. After several sparks, the door on the other side of the room opened.
"Excell(fizzle) work. Please note that (fizzle) are pre-recorded, and your test(fizzle) is not being monitored. Please remember to fill out a (fizzle fizzle) form at the conclusion of the testing, before you are returned to the surface," came the female voice.
"See?" Glade said, forcing a smile, "We'll be able to go back to the surface once we complete these tests." They had found that the other elevator wouldn't reopen.
"Man, we'll have to work fast then," Alex muttered, "or we'll be late coming home and mom will know where we've been. What do think she'll think if we tell her about this?"
"I think she'll be mad and say that we made a bad choice coming this far into the field, and even worse choice for coming in here," Glade concluded solemnly as the entered the elevator to the next test.
GLaDOS's POV:
In all the years after the incidents with that lunatic, GLaDOS had grown bored of testing the humans retrieved from the vault. They didn't have the same attitude, the same defiance, or the same overall determination to complete each test as she did. It was the fact that she was a dangerous lunatic that made her such a great test subject.
Those children were the only truly interesting things that had happened in the last 17 years. True, they appeared to be a bit below Aperture Science's required testing age, but that just made it more interesting.
Tricking them into thinking she was pre-recorded was easy enough, and the fact that they appeared to need to get home soon to avoid getting in trouble with their mother meant that they would test harder. Of course, she would kill them afterwards, but she can't have them telling other humans about her facility.
Chell's POV:
Chell glanced at the clock anxiously. It was nearly 5 o'clock, Glade and Alex should be back by now.
She grabbed her cell phone and texted the mother of the friend they were with, 'Are Glade and Alex coming home soon?'
A moment later a reply came. 'They left hours ago to go home. They said they wanted to test some sort of rocket in the wheat field, but Alice wanted nothing to do with it. So they left.'
Chell's blood ran cold. A rocket in the wheat field? Glados had told her about it; she said it would go 300 feet in the air straight up. What if they instead went to the field with their rocket and something went wrong and they ended up…?
Another text came. 'Are they not back yet? Is something wrong?'
Not wanting anyone to know, she replied, 'No, they just came back. Must have been playing elsewhere.'
She set the phone down and left her house, heading for the field. Just as she feared, she found their rocket supplies on the ground, with the launch pad tilting outwards into the field. It must have gone out there rather then straight up, and they must have followed it. They would have headed straight to… Oh, no.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no!