Chapter 1: Abandonment
" Chell, I've got to get back to work, so I'm going to leave you here. Try to stay out of trouble." Caroline said with thinly veiled contempt, as she left the room and sealed the door behind her.
Chell wordlessly reached after Caroline, feeling a deep sense of abject abandonment as her mother left her there. The room had four gray walls, a cube, and a pressure plate, with another door at the end of a tunnel, one just the right size for 7 year old Chell. She shrugged off the abandonment and solved the puzzle, knowing that it would only help with her separation anxiety temporarily. She'd developed a process for staving it off. At least when she was here, the familiar walls were friends. The cubes simple, the puzzles, while physically harrowing at times, took her mind off of her mother's rejection.
" After solving the puzzle proceed down the hallway, because you solved it that door is now open." A dead emotionless computerized voice told her from a speaker somewhere behind the audio neutral wall.
She proceeded through the set of doors, which sealed behind her. There was no going back, but she'd already known that. This wasn't the first time she'd been taken to 'take your daughter to work day', in fact it was the 3rd time so far. Another puzzle was presented to her. This one another cube, but two pads, there were a pair of platforms for her to climb up, on one was a tea set, with some gray earl tea quickly cooling. The other platform held the second cube.
I wonder if the other kids get this treatment. She acts like I'm an accident, like she hates me, but then these days come once a year. I never see the other children. But sometimes I find notes from the other children. They don't get tea, but I do. I do.
Chell solved this puzzle too, letting her hand rest a moment longer on the last cube, it had a heart painted on each side. Why am I doing this?
In the next room was another puzzle, and some disgusting water. I don't know how to swim.
She saw cameras in this room, but she had no way to make them stop watching... yet. The course was mostly designed for the agile, who had to land lightly on the platforms spanning the water, either jump onwards before the platform sunk beneath the murk, or before they shifted outside her jump range.
After a couple of near soaks in the water, Chell had made it to the cube, and now had to plot her course carefully back over to the button that it naturally would rest on. Something the computer didn't tell her, but she later found out, was that these cubes, while heavy enough to depress the button, doubled as flotation devices. Which left Chell wondering, Does everyone get a cube that doubles as a floatie? The murky water had no answers for her. But after crossing the remaining span of the water on the cube, she took it from the water, and brushed it off before placing it on the button.
A door back where the cube had been found opened up, the platforms moved into a line forming a bridge to the door. What's that sound? Chell thought to herself as she neared the open door. The sound of muted weeping growing louder and louder as she continued onwards.
" Hello?" Chell said hesitantly into the poorly lit room, the motion activated lights hadn't yet come on. Or if there was another person within, they hadn't moved enough to keep the lights on.
The crying died down to a muted sobbing, and a single light came on to reveal a small form laying on the ground, it reminded Chell of a creature found in a game she sometimes played when Caroline worked late hours at the Laboratories.
" Hello, are you hurt?" Chell said, careful not to activate any of the lights close to the sobbing heap, reminded vividly what had happened when any of the people she sometimes played with shined a light upon it.
" Who...who's there? You aren't like the voice from the wall." It said.
" I'm Chell, my moth... Caroline left me here. It's bring your daughter to work day." Chell said, biting back her declaration that Caroline was her mother, Caroline HATED being referred to that way. And sometimes had appeared to know that Chell had called her that even when she hadn't been around.
" That's what my mommy said, she said that I'd get to see what she was working on. Then I got left here, in the dark, it got so dark." The person said, peering out into the darkness, her eyes passing over Chell in the dark.
" The lights turn on when you move, you probably just waited too long and they shut off." Chell explained, moving and activating the light directly over her by gesturing with her hands. She's not like that creature in the game, she talks instead of screams.
" Waited too long to do what?" the girl asked, meeting Chells eyes.
" To finish the test, the lights come on so you can see what to do, you finish the test, and then at the end, sometimes you get a treat." Chell explained, walking about the room it light it. It seemed as though the poor girl hadn't even made it from her starting area. The room was plain, a hallway leading to the next, much like Chell's starting room.
" But, what test? What am I supposed to do? Mommy just put me here, and told me to be good, which usually means don't break anything." the girl said with a frown still on her face, and her eyes still puffed up from the crying.
" I'll show you... say, what's you're name?" Chell asked, remembering with some unease that she hadn't asked for the sobbing girl's name.
" My name is ... Mohs, mommy said that it was an... an... anaglam?" Mohs said, sniffling, and her voice catching when she tried to pronounce the word.
" An anagram? For what?" Chell asked, getting distracted by the trivial information that Mohs offered.
" Some thing about being difficult, the doctors wouldn't let her name me Ohms, so she decided on Mohs." Mohs said conversationally, her voice leveling out as her distress visibly tapered off.
" Well Mohs, if there's anything I've learned while stuck in these rooms, is that it's never over until 'they' say it's over." Chell said, her arm sweeping to encompass some unseen multitude.
" I guess it won't be as bad as having to do whatever we're doing alone." Mohs said, following Chell from her starting room.
Reader's Note: I know that this isn't exactly in keeping with the 1k+ rule I've self inflicted upon myself, but I can't do that kind of quantity of story generation whilst attempting to keep up with my school work. I tried it in November, and it just didn't happen... At all. I hope you enjoy my foray into the Portal Fandom, and will be at least mildly interested in the other stories I write. I'm not sure when my next chapter update for this will be, I'm trying to work it into the schedule with my other stories.(If you check my profile I have a three month outline of works I'm attempting to complete.)