Just A Slice
Portal and the Chell character do not belong to me, but to Valve.
Chell dragged her weary feet into the darkened chamber, sweat rolling from her brow down her bright red face. Her hair was tangled, and pulled into a messy ponytail as a poor attempt to keep it out of her face, to better focus on this task at hand. Dried blood flaked across her cheek, and the tears in her orange jumpsuit from wounds long ago. The portal gun long lost, only a few stray pieces of wire hung off her arm. The pain was no more, the loneliness no more. It was all just an echo that ringed through her mind constantly, reminding her of a time when she didn't have to work to survive. When she had human contact, when she felt alive… surely this wasn't living? A dark, desolate world, remote, nothing more than each fateful puzzle. Nothing more than acid floors..energy balls…and the voice of her constant tormentor. This was truly hell. The work of the Devil to punish her for crimes she was yet to commit..before she was pulled from it and placed here..
The chamber was dark, but a dim light shined through the many shelves somewhere in this labyrinth. Each shelves contained..something. What, she didn't know. What she did know, was that she didn't want to awaken them, whatever they were. Didn't want any more bright red eyes staring at her…perhaps shooting a few bullets into her unprotected skin. Perhaps taunting her, in that horrible, calm spoken mechanically sweet voice. It knew her… even if she didn't know herself. Forcing her to believe in her insignificance. It was cunning… and convincing. And then her only friend… the Cube would be remembered.
She worked her way through the maze-like room with cat like precision. She was delicate.. one might even call it graceful. But it was all memory and fear.. one mistake might result in pain..constant, burning pain. Then everything would turn black.. but the hurt lingered. As if it were so deep that it worked its way into her soul. Then suddenly a bright light would flood her eyes, and she awoke again in this relentless place. She knew that she couldn't make a mistake. She had to keep going. Force through the stings of previous bullet wounds, the burning exhaustion that her legs had endure.
It promised a party. It promised her friends. It promised her help.
And cake.
Chell was ready. She was done. The last thing she remembered was an explosion and the mechanical cry of her tormentor as she destroyed her, once and for all.
Chell wanted to laugh, and cry. She didn't think she was done. She knew she wasn't done. It wasn't over. She stifled back tears, and rubbed her eyes vigorously. She could make it, it was right ahead. The reward.
But she couldn't hold it back. Tears began running down her dirt covered face, quick breathless sobs escaping her. She couldn't make it. It was watching her… always watching her. Constantly, never ending. It wasn't dead. It couldn't die. Not while there was science to be done… it wouldn't let itself die. No.. no..
Her thoughts were clouding her mind, and she stumbled across her feet slamming into a shelve. A metal ball rolled into her hand.
Not unlike the ones she destroyed from her tormentor…
No…
No..
NO!
She stopped, her world spinning before coming into focus.. right on the prize.
A large cake laid on a simple wooden table, in the only clearing of this labyrinth room. Chell recognized the single, lit candle, as the small source of light. It was small, wax dripped off around it over the middle of the cake. But it didn't matter.
Chell smiled. It took a moment or two, to remember how, for it had been so long since she had a reason too… but she managed. She brushed a matted piece of long black hair away from her eyes and walked towards it. It was here, nothing mattered. Nothing else.
She reached for the cake, viciously. But her hand seemed to move in slow motion. She couldn't quite reach the cake. It was in her grasp- why couldn't she grab it? Why?
And the next thing she knew, she was blown back, maybe one hundred yards, slamming into each shelve and knocking each sphere over. She groaned, and struggled for breath. Her hands still reaching out to the thin air in front of her.
Everything, was going dim. She knew she broke her arms, and her splayed, twisted legs indicated that those were too.
But as she strained to keep the view of the dark cake in the distance, she saw a mechanical arm drawing down from the ceiling, with two single mechanical fingers, drawing towards the cake. And it extinguished the flame of the candle.
And as her eyes slowly closed, she saw the view of each of the spheres blinking a large red eye.
And she was gone.