The cold air rushed into the room through the hole in the wall, licking the ends of her hair. She lay face down on the cold concrete ground, and the cold air sweeped across her face, blowing the rogue strands off of her face as she slowly opened her eyes to face the hole.

She closed her eyes tightly and and looked away from the wall, pulling herself up with her arms at the same time. Her metal powerbocks surgically attached to her knees scraped against the floor as she drowsily got into the standing position, still semi-conscious from the explosion.

"Where do you think you are going? Your much safer in here!" A female robotic voice called out, trying to stop her from going outside. "You have no clue what's been going on out there, do you want to die?"

The woman ignored her, and shielded her eyes from the blinding light filling the room. As her eyes adjusted, she stumbled outside quickly.

A light snow was falling in the gray sky, little specks covering the ground to the horizon.

She took her first step in the outside world after 20 years locked in the laboratory, with no outside information after the Take over. Trapped, sleeping for two decades, and she took another step. And another. And another, and another and another, until she broke into a jog, then into a sprint.

She clutched at the device in her hand as she sprinted, knowing she could let go but didn't. It had saved her too many times to get rid of it.

She eventually slowed down as she approached a piece of pipe on the ground, panting hard from her escape. Lifting her foot up to inspect it, she saw her feet were pitch black and charcoal-y.

Snow didn't used to do that.

She walked past the pipe, not stopping, and continued walking slowly. Impossible to tell from the gray/black/white charcoal ground, she was standing on a hill that over looked a large black area the size of an entire city on the couldn't remember if that had been there before she entered the facility on Take-Your-Daughter-to-Work-Day with her mother.

She slowly walked down hill, surveying her surroundings. There were no trees, only toothpick looking sticks layered on the ground, toppled over on each other. Something was not right.

Treading through the charcoal snow, she advanced towards the start of the blackness. It crunched under her feet and powerbocks with each step, with a few different sounds on an occasional step. A hollow noise like tin, or scrap metal, or even glass.

Steel stuck up from the ground in twisted shapes, bent and horribly disfigured. Wood stuck was scattered in splinters across the ground, glass shards littering the ground, chunks of conrete broken from the road. The charred metal frames of cars stood out against the ground. Sides of brick walls barely intact were dusty with the charcoal snow. A shilloute was on the wall.

She inspected it more closely. It was in the shape of a woman, who appeared to have been running from something bigger, but still in human form, holding some sort of baton, was burned onto the bricks in one titanic instant. The silhouttes of the woman and human-figure remained. The rest was a thin charcoal layer.

This isn't snow.

She stood silently, over looking the brick wall. Wind blew her black hair in her face, stinging her blue eyes. She looked down at the ground, and her orange jumpsuit popped out against the background. The ashes stung her lungs and eyes, and thick film of it coated her feet and hand, the one free of the device. She ignored it.

What happened while I was gone in the last 20 years?

An electronic whirring sounded next to her, but she did nothing. She knew.

"Humans have a tendancy to destroy each other. It's sad, really." The female robot said,a small robot with tank-like wheels with a transittor embedded in it.

"I warned you though, didn't I?" It said, after a long moment of no response. "Too much happened in the last 20 years. They were the only things standing in between them and us."

The woman stood, head hanging, looking at the ground.

"It's been a long time. Do you really want to be in this place?"

The ashes scratched at her lungs, and she began to cough violently, and when she tried to breath in more, it got worse.

"I don't think you could survive in this environment. What could you do without the flora and the fauna not within 100 kilometers of this place? No water, no food...I don't think you should be here. Let's go back."

She could not respond, she felt light-headed, and began to black out from the lack of oxygen. She fell to her knees, gagging on the ashes raining from the nuclear clouds.

The ground rushed up to meet her as she struggled for air.

"Thank you for assuming the Party Escort Submission Position." A male robotic voice said, and began to drag her away from the wall of silhouettes.

AN:

I should really be working on The Reunion, but today in class we read "There Will Come Soft Rains". I thought about how Chell would be if she hadn't been knocked unconscious from the neurotoxins, and if a nuclear bomb had been dropped on the town near the Aperture Science Labratories. I know, logically, that it would have been blown away with the blast of the nuke, but shut up. I just wanted to try this out. I don't consider this cannon at all, neither should you.

Just an idea. (The woman wasn't even originally intended to be Chell at all! After a few moments of thinking I didn't really know how to incorperate a character, so in the end I decided to use her. But, I didn't name her ONCE in the story, but it IS Chell; I like the feeling of anonymity.

Just and idea~

(I DID USE A LINE FROM THE STORY I READ, I APOLIGIZE RAY BRADBURY!)

And I AM working on The Reunion, but I've been a bit busy lately. *Has been working on it non stop*

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