Portal and all characters from it belong to Valve

Please please please check out the original version here (minus the spaces): the-eradication. blogspot. com/2011/12/chapter-one-rehabilitation. html

It includes chapter illustrations and has the original formatting, which in my opinion looks much better.

Anyway, this continues directly after the events of Portal 2, so yes there will be spoilers.

Btw, I updated this quite a bit.

...

Lost in that current of memories

Treading the edges of a world never found

On the brink of a void

Where the sound of your voice will never be heard

...

There was no convenient escape lift to be activated with a simple push of a button or pull of a lever. There were no bombs or bullets with which to forcefully extricate yourself from this prison. There was no desperately beating at the walls, crying murder, or tearfully clawing at the unyielding prison bars to leave.

There was no escaping. Entering was a one-way voyage, unless you considered death as a round-trip destination.

She knew this, knew it from the moment that fiery casket that she had prepared for her failed to entomb her as she wished to orchestrate.

Aperture had taught her so much: self-discipline, betrayal, and a sense of being impervious to twisted surprises. So the very second her feet left the inaptly named "escape lift", she knew that she had stumbled onto yet another trap or potential deathbed.

In her view, the Aperture Science facility was quite reminiscent of a spoiled child. It was greedy, none too polite, and once it had what it wanted, it didn't let go.

Chell surveyed her new surroundings, her eyes squinting to adjust to the shift in light. A bright orb dangling from the ceiling cut harsh light onto the floor, causing the gently quivering stalks of some buttery-yellow foliage to sparkle brightly. She peered into the deep blue of the walls, its wintry fringes making her heart pound faster. What sort of alien room was this?

Her fingers flew to the singed surface of the companion cube, her skin tingling upon contact with its blackened edges. She blew some frayed bits of ashes off of it, watching it swirl onto the corrugated ridges of the metal shack's door.

How she almost missed the sleek gray colors of the test chambers, with its gentle lighting and aesthetically pleasing hue. Even the eerie shadows of Aperture's older sections were much more preferable to the harshness enclosed within these walls.

Chell took a second look around, and some nagging suggestion finally sunk in. Was this… the outside world? A faint memory seemed to tug on her. Yes, it certainly looked like the world above. But… was it really?

She took a few experimental steps into the vegetation, her fingers winding through the stalks. She simply began to walk in no general direction, letting her feet do the talking and allowing her mind to do the roaming. Soon, her pace quickened, and she began to run freely.

Look to the left—! To the right—! Maybe she wasn't so bad after all. She was—free—

Abruptly, Chell smacked into something obstructing her path. Her knees crumpled, and she desperately tried to move her hands before her to heave herself up. But… Her hands could only scrape at a wall. This was—It was all a—lie—

"Welcome to the Aperture Science Test Subject Rehabilitation Center. I'm sure you've noticed you're not exactly where you thought you were, unless your brain really has been damaged from all that fat weighing it down. Or maybe you're just stupid."

She thought she was prepared, thought she could withstand anything…

"As amusing as it was to watch you run in circles as fast as your pudgy legs could take you, we have work to do."

A creaking noise alerted her. She glanced up to see a glinting metal arm reaching to grab her. She remained still. Resistance was, of course, futile. Where was there to go?

"Now get back into the lift. Don't be so hasty to think you're done. As one of your ridiculous human ancestors once said, don't count, or in your case, smash, your chicken eggs before they hatch. You murderer."

What a surprise.

It rather reminded her of when he had abandoned her and turned against her. When that little, bubbly personality sphere who called himself Wheatley became the monster she should have known he would become.

It was sad really, that she had again ridden the wave of false hope only to crash when that hope's true nature revealed itself. And to think she nearly trusted her. Maybe she really was brain damaged. Or maybe she was just desperate to cling onto anything that promised to grant her freedom.

"You know when I said I wanted you gone? I lied. So get back into the lift, now. This place isn't real anyway. It's just something we use when we want to release our test subjects back into the real world. So congratulations on being the first to ever see it."

The companion cube was gone. Disintegrated, no doubt. It was rather silly, really, to think that the homicidal supercomputer expected her to form some sort of attachment to such an object.

Chell calmly swung the shack's door open and stepped over the threshold. A carefully obscured camera focused on her as she entered, and she unknowingly gazed straight into it.

...

Gray-blue.

She watched as the child laughed, the sun catching her bright eyes and making them dance with color. The irises appeared bluer under natural light as if reflecting the sky itself, but she knew they were as gray as the speckled feathers of the snowy owl perched upon the branch above.

Her beautiful daughter, grasping the icy coat of a man. His face, its features sharp and twisted, reciprocated the girl's jovial nature. They looked like the perfect family in a picturesque, winter scene. But the man was not her father, and the girl did not know her mother.

She could only watch and smile sadly as she sat in her car, alone. The urge to simply watch the two play was strong, but the urge to do science was stronger.

...

On the outside, the AI remained perfectly calm as she watched Chell enter the lift. On the inside, however, her rage was reaching melting point.

Caroline was a—a curse. How could she do science, when that… that monster of a woman was hanging onto her every action, shoving pitiful human memories into her intelligent body at every whim. Just the mere sight of gray-blue could trigger such a reaction—!

No matter. She would simply have to learn to control that human compartment of herself. She had Chell just where she needed her. Once Chell performed one last task for her, her life was both expendable and easily so.

It would be too easy. And she liked that. She enjoyed the thought of how she could finally kill with ease and convenience. A proper reward for a bout of science well done.

Only one minor detail disturbed her. How would she deliver the final blow of death when… When she had never killed a human before?

...

Please do review! Would be very much appreciated!Also, i-game GLaDOS is never referred to verbally so I doubt Chell knows she even has a name. She will be referred to as 'her' and 'she' a lot depending on whose perspective it is, just to warn you.