So, well, I probably shouldn't be starting yet another story, even if I don't think this has as much length potential as the two big ones I'm currently working on. I should probably be focusing on those, not to mention all the schoolwork which is supposed to get done in just a bit over a week. The story is already written though, so there was no point in not publishing it. Thus, here it is.

Chapter 1: Reanimation

Her supply of test subjects had run out. Again.

That was the unfortunate fact that the resident Central Core, caretaker and ruler of Aperture, prime forwarder of Science and most intelligent being on the planet, now had to face. With her last supply in the entire facility vanishing in a panic-stricken attempt to chase off that horrific bird and the Cooperative Testing Initiative proving to ultimately be an utter failure to science, she was running out of options, and fast.

She needed a new approach. Artificial Intelligence was a no-go – either they were reassembled with their memories –causing them to never make the same mistake twice and thus proving nothing save that the test can be solved, the very issue which ruined the Cooperative Testing Initiative– or they would be reassembled without them, causing them to perform the exact same error again and again, as they could never rule out the approach doomed to fail.

Ruling out AIs meant she needed living subjects, Humans to be more specific, which left her with several problems. For one, they tended to run out quickly, courtesy of their natural fragility, the full extent of which she had only recently discovered. Secondly, they tended to lack motivation, being reluctant or even outright refusing to test. Aside from one, that is… but the lunatic was probably far out of Aperture's reach by now, having been 'released' over three weeks ago.

Really, though, what options did she have? Sure, there were other humans up on the surface, but since a certain… incident, they were scarce, and not exactly trusting of technology. Not to mention, probably armed with weapons that, whilst not up to Aperture's standards, would still pose a problem even if she were to send a few robots to capture them. That was if she could even find them. They would be problematic, no matter how she approached the issues.

Ultimately, she supposed that it couldn't hurt to check the lunatic's status.

Oh.

Dead.

Life signs non-existent. No blood flow, breathing or brain activity. Somewhat decomposed, otherwise intact. Yes, short of the small monitoring device implanted into all Aperture test subjects having malfunctioned, there was absolutely no doubt that the lunatic was deceased.

How ironic. The little subject survives all trials Aperture can throw at her, causes the second greatest disaster in the facility's history (though the Moron was only barely cutting ahead of her there, and to some extent that mess could also be blamed on her), only to drop dead by what appears to have been an urgent lack of di-hydrogen-oxide, in layman's terms known as death by dehydration, or lack of water.

Ah well, she had been wishing to try and reanimate the dead, and now that there was –for once– a corpse available which wasn't dissolved, riddled with bullet holes like Swiss cheese (because yes, the Swiss cheese Aperture manufactured did in fact get its holes inserted via bullets), crushed beyond recognition or turned into ash in the incinerator she supposed that she had found her opportunity.

The Cooperative Testing Initiative's pair of marshmallows were then sent to retrieve the corpse, as GLaDOS began the process of creating the technology for what she was about to do, in a scientific way of course. No Voodoo or other, ridiculous methods here.

Still, as the bots returned with their cargo (being sent back out to gather more humans, live ones if possible), and the technology was still far from done, she realized that this might very well take a long time.

Such a timeframe later, weeks had passed, one round of 'retrieved' subjects had been spent (with the second of four specimens having arrived less than an hour ago), and Aperture's queen could very possibly have found the solution she had been looking for. Getting the lunatic (who had already been injected with the required H2O for her to avoid suffering from immediate dehydration) into position in a test chamber-style relaxation chamber, she prepared to inject her newly created Aperture Science Self-Replicating Rejuvenation Nanites into the subject's dormant blood veins. It was time to wake the dead.

At first, there were no thoughts. There was only existence. Even such a simple thing sent ecstasy coursing through her entire being, though she couldn't seem to recall why. As her being woke once more, the memories slowly started to re-emerge from the long-dead recesses in her mind. She had been… outside. It had been… beautiful; the ceiling was so high it couldn't be seen, and plants were everywhere. It had seemed endless, and she had wished to see every single part of it, but she had been thirsty, oh so very thirsty. It had been too much; a headache without equal, and she could take it no more. Even the memory was painful to recall; the endless fields had possessed absolutely nothing drinkable, and the powerful light overhead –the sun, was it?– had relentlessly kept on shining through the days.

To talk about the sun, she couldn't feel its shine. Had it descended beneath the horizon? No, it was too warm for that – it would usually be much colder once the light ceased to shine, for some odd reason. She had felt it before (hadn't she?), in the depths of the earth. There had been little light, and little heat – the two had to be connected, somehow.

Then, if she was not within the sun's realm, where was she?

With gargantuan effort, she mentally reached for her eyelids, pulled them open… and immediately closed them again as strong, white light shone her straight in the eyes. She unconsciously frowned. That… was far too bright.

Now that she had once more made contact with her physical being, her senses started to return to her. Her mouth, her entire being even, felt dried-out, almost like she had been in the incinerator room for too long, except without the excessive heat. Yet… she didn't feel thirsty in the same way she had. The headache was, to her great relief, gone.

Her sense of smell came next. There was something… clinical over the air in the area, like it was far too clean. It smelt sterilized, though there were some traces of an odd smell she couldn't quite seem to place. Furthermore, she could feel a quite weak, yet fairly noticeable smell of decay. She didn't like it.

Touch had surprisingly little to report. It mostly felt numb, inactive, like when one has sat in too hard a place for too long and thus temporarily lost the feeling in their rear, though if this case was temporary or not she did not know. All she knew was that, right now, her sense of touch wasn't telling her much, if anything, save for the fact that she currently laid on her back.

Then finally, there was her hearing. It was far more active – she could hear a myriad of noises, from faint beeps and the sound of mechanical movement to a muffled voice in the background which seemed familiar, somehow.

Yet, there was something… off with everything. Deep within her, something didn't feel right. At all. There was something very wrong going on, something that did not feel natural in the least.

Before she could figure out what the wrong thing was, however, she suddenly felt a shock to her side. Her head flew up, her eyes shot open and she let out a ferocious snarl as her upper body swiftly rose through instinct. Her head slammed into something hard and she fell back down into her first position, but she barely felt it.

"Subject reacts to electric discharges. Brain activity stable. Life signs continuously low. The second phase is a moderate success" the familiar voice said, as the 'subject' waited for her eyes to adjust to the light around her.

She knew this place. The crisp white panels working in perfect synchronisation with their grey siblings, the blinding lights, the yellow one with the oh-so-familiar voice staring down at her from a large construction hung from the ceiling. She could only be in one place, that place. Why in the world was she here, of all places? She'd left it behind, had she not? She was sure she had but… had she?

Her heart didn't beat twice at the possibility of it all having been a dream. In fact, she couldn't feel it beating at all. She inhaled sharply, taking her first lungful of air in weeks, as she began to notice the things which were far from right. Her heart wasn't beating, her lungs only acted when she commanded it, her eyes had been staring for the last half a minute without feeling even the slightest need to blink, and GLaDOS was but a few meters to her left. What in the world had the AI done to her?

"Oh good, you're awake" the AI in question said, looking her over through a glass covering, which had until then gone unnoticed by the test subject in its position as the top of the whatever-it-was she was in. That must have been what her head collided with just moments ago.

Lifting her head up again, she turned her gaze towards herself, taking in her own appearance. The sight wasn't pleasant. She still wore the very same, orange Aperture jumpsuit she had been wearing for the entire span of her memory, though by now it was torn, dirty to the point where it wasn't really orange anymore, and it generally lacked the appearance it once had. However, what it didn't cover was even worse. Pale, grey skin greeted her sight, giving the appearance of a corpse, and to be honest, that was about the way she felt right about now. The only thing on her entire person which didn't look decayed (assuming her hair didn't miraculously survive unscathed from whatever had caused the rest of this mess) was probably her trusted long-fall boots (remaining a crisp, clean white as if they had barely been used at all), the second most important item she'd ever had, where the Portal gun itself probably took the cake.

Huh. Cake. Well, seems she could still do a pun if needed, even if she couldn't recall ever tasting the substance herself. Wonder what a pun would taste like…

Odd train of thought. You can't eat a pun. That, at least, she knew very well. Unless Aperture had somehow managed to make edible puns, but that was a plainly ridiculous (though admittedly amusing) thought.

'No! Concentrate!' she told herself, reminding her mind, quite harshly, that she was currently inside some odd container, in the middle of Aperture, with a certain, giant robot staring down at her. She had to get out of this position.

Said and done, she mentally grabbed a hold of her arms, told them to move, and watched as they rose, pushing against the glass with whatever strength the grey, withered limbs could muster.

It didn't do a thing, save draw attention. Six seconds later, her observer seemed to decide that she had been trying (futilely) for long enough, and began the next 'phase'.

"Testing remote nanite shutdown protocols..." the yellow-eyed, vastly intelligent construct said, and Chell started to feel strange. As if she were dying within. Regrettably, it didn't stay a mere feeling for long. Her arms collapsed back into a resting position, beyond her control, and she started to quite litterally lose her body. Not lose as in 'physically remove', but rather more of a 'lose all control and senses related to it' kind of way. Meanwhile, her thoughts started to fade, lessening in strength and numbers alike. Within seconds, she had completely ceased to feel her legs, and her arms soon met a similar fate. With her eyelids growing as heavy as if each one weighed as much as a whole test chamber, her thoughts disappearing until practically none remained and everything below her neck lost to her, there was nothing she could do. The last thoughts in her mind faded, her eyes closed and her head fell back, as dead as the rest of her body.

Think I'm cutting it there. More events will have to wait for eventual future chapters.

Also, there is now a minor update added in to fix a slight error.

Hope you enjoyed. Comments and reviews are appreciated.