GLiTCH

Footsteps echoed in the empty corridor. A figure in orange was on the prowl. Chell raised her portal gun protectively, peering around the corner. More corridors? That didn't seem right, but she continued on the path regardless. Whatever new trick the robot was playing, it would not fool her. She was better than an artificial intelligence, after all, and perfectly capable of taking whatever the insane robot could throw at her.

By this point, she considered herself an experienced test subject. She had crossed test chamber after test chamber in the time she had been trapped in Aperture – and how long was that, exactly? Hours? Days? – and she was a quick learner. As GLaDOS put it, she was thinking with portals.

GLaDOS. The thought of the android alerted her. Through the silence, she could hear a noise; a slight whirring sound, quiet but methodical, just audible over the sound of her own footsteps. She recognised the sound instantly. A camera, and close. She snarled. The test chambers were intimidating enough without the constant threat of surveillance from her invisible tormentor. Sharply, she turned another corner, and without hesitation fired on the offending camera.

That was when the accident happened.

As she went to fire a portal, her finger slipped on the trigger. Instead of just opening the orange portal, she fired both orange and blue, the twin portals speeding towards the camera faster than the eye could see. But instead of one simply bouncing to the side, as usual, the portals both opened.

The camera clattered to the floor, forgotten. Frowning, Chell approached the wall in front of her, staring up at this new creation. In front of her, the two portals were overlapping, blue and orange joined together in a way that she hadn't thought possible before. But that wasn't why she was frowning. No, the reason for that was what she could see through the portals.

They did not reflect her own face back at her, as she would have expected. Instead, she was looking out into a dark, empty void, a gap in reality unlike anything she had ever seen before. The darkness behind the portal seemed unending, impenetrable even by the harsh, blinding white of Aperture's lighting.

She probably should have let it be. Any sane person would have left, carried on down the corridor and towards the next test. But Chell had already accepted that she was no sane person, and the mysteries the portal contained were calling to her, much louder than the robotic voice of GLaDOS ever could. She had to know where it led.

After a moment's deliberation, Chell carefully placed her portal gun down on the floor. She gripped the bottom of the portals, pulling herself up with the strength she had accumulated throughout her testing, so that she was kneeling on the small chunk of wall that bridged this new gap in reality. Holding on to the sides of the portal, she stared out into the darkness.

Black. That was her first impression. Around her, everything was darkness, so thick and so unvarying that she could barely believe what she was seeing. How was this even possible? She had to have stumbled onto something mundane, something explainable. Maybe the double portals let her see through the wall to an empty, abandoned storeroom, maybe this was an elaborate hoax devised by GLaDOS to scare her, maybe it was another test chamber designed to mess with her psychologically. There were hundreds of rational explanations for this.

But she knew she wouldn't find the answer among them. Even as she peered out into the inky blackness, she knew that something was not right about it. Was it the lack of any sound whatsoever, the suffocating silence that buzzed in her ears? Or was it the stillness, the absence of even a breath of wind in the dead void? Perhaps it was that strange feeling in the air that went right through her, almost whispering in her ear that this place was wrong, wrong, wrong and she should just get out now before something happened to her, something bad, something wrong, something worse than anything she had seen in Aperture and beyond and she just had to get away...

With a jolt, Chell stumbled backwards, slipping off her ledge and falling back into the glaring light of the Aperture corridor. She blinked, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. A lesser person might have given up then, have picked up the portal gun and resolved to forget about that strange void behind the portals.

Chell simply heaved herself back onto the ledge, once again looking out into the black.

She wasn't entirely sure what she was looking for. After all, there was nothing there, not that she could see. But she needed to know. Perhaps there was something out there that could help her in her testing. Or maybe there was a way out of Aperture concealed under the cover of the gloom. Either way, she had to know. It couldn't all be darkness. There had to be something out there.

Come to think of it, what exactly was the portal attached to on this side? There had to be a surface, there always was. Did that mean she was looking out from a building? Twisting around, Chell pushed herself as far out of the portal as she dared, twisting herself around so that she could see what lay behind the portal.

Nothing. She was hovering in the middle of an abyss, with nothing to support her but a pair of misaligned portals. Suddenly, she was very aware of the fact that she was horribly unbalanced, with only the tiniest section of wall keeping her from falling. Her breath caught in her throat. She began to inch backwards, her hands scrambling for a proper grip on the edges of the portal, but it was too late.

When she fell the second time, she fell out into the darkness.

Chell slammed her eyes shut the second she felt her balance waver. This was it. After all that time spent testing, taking insult, every challenge, every little taunt in her stride, she had fallen foul of her own curiosity. GLaDOS would laugh at that, if she knew. At least Chell hadn't given her the satisfaction of killing her though her traps and tricks. Instead, she was going to fall forever, until she died here in the mystery of the void.

Wait. If she was falling, then why didn't she feel like she was? And why could she still hear the faint hum of the opened portal behind her?

Hesitantly, Chell opened her eyes. In front of her, the portals glowed mockingly. She looked down. Nothing. No platform, no ledge...she was standing in the air.

She took a shaking breath. Okay. So she can hover now. Or, more specifically, she can hover in the black world. That wasn't too unreasonable. In her time in Aperture, she had seen more illogical things. Like the portals, for that matter.

Once again, she was faced with a choice. She could just do the sensible thing. She could turn around, climb back through the portal and forget about this whole thing.

Chell was never one to make the sensible choice.

Slowly, hesitantly, she took a step away from the portal, out into the gloom.

She didn't quite know how, but she was flying. Actually, not quite flying. Hovering was probably a better word for it, hovering in the vast abyss. She took another step, conscious as she did that she was probably breaking all of the laws of physics. Well, all the laws of physics that she hadn't already broken in her time in the test chambers. She didn't even bother to wonder how she could step forwards without her feet being supported by anything. She was no scientist, after all.

Another step, and a new revelation. Out of the foggy darkness, she thought she could almost see something, some sort of structure. She resisted the urge to smirk. There was something here; something potentially useful. She increased her pace, heading towards the vague shape. Yes! It was definitely some sort of building – it looked like the very corridors that she had come from, in fact. Maybe she was right. Maybe there would be something useful there! Maybe (a maybe that she didn't want to consider, for fear of hoping too much) it was even a way out.

She took another step forwards, and her world changed.

Around her, the dark, emptiness shifted. Suddenly, everything surrounding her was green, a green psychedelic mess that strobed and pulsed with her every footstep. It flashed before her, green and red, pulsating and flashing enough to give her a headache. She stopped, rubbing her eyes. How did that happen? And, more to the point, why? The void around her held no answers, continuing to shift and morph before her eyes. She peered behind her. The portal was still there, hanging in mid air as it had done before. The only thing that had changed was the black.

Chell considered going back, but the structure was getting ever closer. She'd come too far to turn back now. She had to see what was inside. Determined, she began to run, faster and faster, until the shifting emptiness blurred and warped around her. Her bare feet were throbbing from the exertion, and even that didn't make any sense. How could her feet hurt? She wasn't walking on anything! But there was no point on dwelling on it. Thinking too hard would slow her down, she needed to keep going. She forced her feet to carry on, ignoring the continuous stabs of pain.

Finally, it was in front of her. A large, blank wall. Another room, and within it? Hopefully, something good. Something she could use. Something to help her test, or, better, help her escape. A gap between the walls allowed her entry. She squeezed through carefully, almost holding her breath from the anticipation.

The first thing she noticed was the darkness; her eyes needed a moment to adjust from the glare of the void outside. She closed them for a second, rubbing them with the back of her hand. Other than the dimness, she was standing in what seemed to be a fairly generic Aperture corridor – the white walls, the white floors, the bleak atmosphere...everything but the lighting was normal.

Chell sighed, slumping slightly where she stood. This was it? This was what she had gone through all of that to find? Just another Aperture corridor, without even a camera to its name. It couldn't be right. There had to be something more to it.

Purposefully, she strode down the corridor, towards the bend. There would be a room there, she told herself. There had to be something here, at least. Even just another test chamber! But this place couldn't just be empty space. Not out here, in the void.

As she turned the corner, Chell gasped.

In front of her was...a test chamber? By the loosest definition, it could be called that. The place was chaos. Lasers sliced across the room at odd angles, seemingly at random. A pipe endlessly dispensed cubes into a large pit. Upended turrets blinked sightlessly at the ceiling, one seemingly stuck halfway into the floor. Portals opened and closed spontaneously and unpredictably on floors and walls. Energy pellets, summoned from nowhere, occasionally hurtled across the room.

She stepped forwards, crossing the threshold. Instantly, a voice came over the intercom, making her jump.

"Please proceed to the Aperture Science-Science-Science-Science-Science-"

The word repeated, over and over, faltering and jumping like a broken record, louder and louder until Chell's ears felt as though they were bleeding. Instinctively, she threw up her hands to cover her ears – but as she did, her eyes widened. Her arm looked longer, stretched out somehow and wrong, but that wasn't the worst of it. Her skin, usually peach, had become a garish checked pink and black. Astounded, she checked her other arm. It was the same, coloured with large blocks of neon pink and solid black, the likes of which should be impossible on a human. It looked more like a patchwork toy than her skin, Chell reflected inanely, before shaking her head sharply to clear her thoughts.

This wasn't real, she thought, becoming suddenly desperate. It couldn't be. It couldn't be happening. This was all just some sort of freakish nightmare, and she would wake up soon. There was no other explanation for it.

Dimly, she was aware of movement, a change in the scene before her. Almost in slow motion, one of the turrets had swivelled to face her. Instinctively, she dodged to the side, but the turret did not shower her in bullets as she expected. Instead, its red 'eye' blinked at her, pulsating on and off rhythmically. There was a crackling noise, barely audible above the din of GLaDOS' booming voice. The turret's voice box stuttered into life.

"I-I-I seeeeeeeeeee..."

Out of the blue, an energy pellet spawned directly across from her. She didn't hesitate. She flung herself back around the corner, back into the dimly lit corridor, letting it rebound off the wall behind her. Chell's breath caught in her throat. This was real. It was real, and she had to get out.

The gap between the walls looked smaller this time. Still, she gripped the sides of it with her fluorescent hands, forcing her way back out into the void. She turned, running in the strobing green air until all around her was dark again, until her skin returned to normal, until she could no longer see the faint outline of that room behind her. She ran on the air, her hands trembling, until the air was quiet and the sense of unease almost past. She ran, though her feet still ached, until the portal she had entered through was once again visible, and only then did she allow herself to give in to that overwhelming emotion of relief and smile.

Her heart racing, she flung herself back through the portal, landing sprawled on the floor next to her discarded portal gun. Grabbing it, she fired at the wall, an orange portal blooming on the white surface, erasing the link back to that...place. As she did so, GLaDOS' voice echoed around the empty corridor, breaking the silence.

"To ensure the safe performance of all authorised activities, do not destroy vital testing apparatus."

Chell had never been so glad to hear the robot's normal voice. She was back. Bizarre and terrifying as Aperture Science could be, at least it wasn't out there. At least it made its own sort of twisted sense.

Taking a deep breath, Chell carried on down the corridor. Back to the testing. And this time, she was almost grateful for it.

Author's Note - What if video game characters experienced the glitches we sometimes get when playing their games? That was basically the inspiration for this little fic. All glitches here are based on real things I've seen in games - Chell essentially noclips out of the wall and ends up in an unfinished level that makes her textures go a bit weird. This is also a spiritual successor to my earlier fic, Respawn, which had a similar theme of looking at video game concepts within the world that Chell experiences. If you liked the fic, why not give that a read too? Either way, please leave a review and some criticism if you have any!

Disclaimer - Portal and all related concepts, belong to Valve. If I owned them, I would have a lot more money than I do right now.