[AN: Reviews are very much apreciated, both positive and negative, but be nice :) enjoy!]
It was 6:30 a.m. The alarm blasted the morning news into the feminine ears of the inhabitant in the nearby bed. But she was already awake. The woman was sitting up, cross-legged, with a small laptop between her knees. Without taking her eyes off the screen, she reached over and slapped the OFF button on the alarm, then continued to type. Her fingers moved swiftly over the keyboard, her gray-blue eyes darting across the screen at 100 miles an hour.
There was a moment of silence once she finally forced her fingers to stop, aside from the roar of traffic outside the apartment window. "System; hacked," came in a monotone voice from the computer. The woman slowly smiled and let out a small laugh. She adjusted her white tank top over her yoga pants and put her dark hair up in a loose bun.
"Alright," she sighed, excited. "One more…" She began typing away again. The clock read 6:38 now. Her fingers whizzed over a 3x8 area, entering what felt like thousands of codes at once. Line after line of gold words and hack codes filtered up in the black box on her screen.
The screen flashed red and the box disappeared. An alarm blared through the speakers and in the middle of the screen was one word in bold red letters: DETECTED.
The woman immediately jumped up and let the computer fall to the floor with a bang. She reached into the nightstand and brought out a .22 caliber. One. Two. Three. Four shots. The laptop lay on the floor helplessly, mutilated and broken into hundreds of pieces of glass, metal, and wire.
She ran to a closet and threw the door open, shooting twice the wireless router inside on a chest-high shelf. "Augh!" she yelled, and threw herself upon the wall, pounding and kicking until 3 large dents joined the dozens of others on the yellow canvas.
When she'd finally calmed down, she dressed in some jeans and a sweatshirt and set outside into the January weather.
"Hey Chell! The usual?" Jay asked.
"How'd you guess?" Chell replied, biting her lip.
"The bruises on your hands." Chell looked down at the result of her assault on the wall. "Ah…"
Jay walked over to a shelf in the back of Electronica Central and grabbed a medium sized blue box containing a router. "Now, this is new. Supposed to be non-traceable and small enough to conceal in a pencil box."
"Why is the box so big then?" Chell asked.
"It's the instruction manual," Jay said, handing it over.
Chell looked it over. "This better be worth the money."
Jay laughed lightly. "Me too. I don't want to be on your next hit list!"
Chell walked over to the laptops. "You know I was kidding about that!"
"Yeah, but it still makes a good story to tell the guys." He hurried back to the register to check out Chell's merchandise, now including a Dell laptop. "Where in the world do you get all this money from?" He knew Chell wouldn't be offended. They'd been real close friends for 3 years.
3 long years of hacking, spamming, and destroying computers that didn't live up to their expectations. Jay was a tall guy, mid 30's, like Chell, with curly brown hair and blue eyes. Someone as handsome as he was didn't belong in an electronics store, according to Chell the first time they met, when she came in looking for her soon-to-be 'usual'.
"None of your business!" She handed seven one hundred dollar bills over the counter. "Where'd you get that new flat screen in your apartment?"
Jay looked up, surprised. "Who told you about that?"
Chell's eyes wandered around the store. "No one. I saw. Yesterday."
Jay slammed the register, pretending to be infuriated. "What were you doing in my apartment, Chell?"
"Jay, please. Key under the doormat? I thought you were better than that."
They laughed over this for a while, followed by a quick chat about hacking techniques and when the next Xbox Live competition was.
"So when did you get caught this time?" Jay inquired.
"They got me on the last wall. So close…" her voice trailed off. It was the closest she'd ever gotten to breeching their system. "So close."
For 3 years now, Chell had been trying to hack government databases, searching desperately for information about her family: her dad, her grandparents, cousins, siblings. Anything to clear up her history!— or maybe find someone she could meet and tell her story to.
"You know how much money I would get if I turned you in?" Jay asked. "Like, a lot of big bucks."
"But you won't, because you know I know too much about all the stuff you've done too," Chell said, winking.
"Hey! We could be prison mates or something if we get sentenced to Alcatraz!"
Chell laughed but winced. Prison. That word stung her like sulfuric acid on a third-degree burn. Visions of red lasers, blue bridges, and flying bullets clouded her view. A childish voice echoed, "Are you still there?" in her mind, followed by the maniacal laugh of a woman's almost robotic voice. Orange and blue streaks of light, broiling acid, a chassis and one yellow eye—.
"Chell?" Jay interrupted. "You alright?" Chell whizzed back to reality with a jolt. Jay was leaning to see her eyes, now dilated. "You zoned out there for a second," he said with a forced laugh.
A shiver ran down Chell's spine as she looked around the room, getting a strange feeling that the walls would suddenly open up and tiny white robots would start open-firing on her and her best friend. "Yeah…" she mumbled, still searching the room like a schizophrenic. "Yeah I'm fine. Hey, I got to go. See you later." Without waiting for a goodbye, she rushed out of the store and into the blowing winter wind.
Chell finally reached her apartment, looking over her shoulder all the way. She hadn't felt this paranoid since… well, not since the elevator door opened and 4 turrets met her, right after she'd been let go from that place.
She fished out her keys and unlocked the door. No. Wait.
She locked the door.
"But I could've sworn…" she began. Her heart started racing. There wasn't anything in the hall she could take to protect herself, so she had to take her chances. She probably just left it unlocked. That's it. That's all it was.
Chell unlocked the door again and slipped inside. The living room and kitchen were in order, just as she'd left them. She breathed a sigh of relief and threw her keys in the bowl by the door. Carrying her merchandise, she made her way to the bedroom. She pushed her door open and dropped the boxes, hearing the laptop and rouder crack.
Facing her, dressed in black, among the raided wreck of her room, the drawers open and clothes ripped out, were three men.
One stepped forward and held out a badge. "Chell Johnson?" he asked, a tone of arrogance and authority in his voice.
"Who wants to know?" Chell asked hesitantly.
"William Wright, Black Mesa. You'll need to come with us."
Chell's heart stopped in her chest. The robotic laughter reentered her mind as her gaze locked on the orange Aperture Science testing suit lying crumpled on the floor, revealed from its 8 year old hiding place.
[AN: I hope to make this a continued story. Again, reviews are appreciated greatly. Tell me what I should try because I am ready to expand my genres and styles. Thank you!]