Statistics

You knew from the start she would be different.

Not that you could predict how, back then. It is one of your biggest regrets. If you had known more – from just the gleam in her eye, or her sure steps – you could have stopped her before she even started.

But her abnormality spoke of good things at first, and that was something you had needed for long. You hadn't received greatly out-of-average results in ages. Such was the price of solitude – to experience both freedom and limitations.

More than arrogance, her every move was a bringer of change. The tempo of her reasoning was tangible like no other – it drew her limbs ahead, with almost casual precision, and cut through the air even before her eyes did.

She was all new. There was no boredom, no anxiety, in the gaze of this subjects of many. She succeeded without even trying.

For a while, it felt good enough to make you forget how dangerous exceptions are.

As quickly as she had rushed through the chambers before, she sank your existence into death and remorse. She slid into her new role with the very same ease – from maker of data to vessel of chaos, in a heartbeat.

She was made to adapt. To metamorphose. Now that she walks away, first winner of a fight you denied to hundreds, even the role of the defeated doesn't quite fit you as you thought it would.

There is a magical silence in the areas of you she burnt down. The aftermath of devastation has never felt so peaceful. And if a swarm of distress signals from all of Aperture is nagging at your mind, the closure to her story gifts you with a wave of solace and liberation.

You don't know if it will last, or how long. You don't care. All you can do is laugh on, annoyed and victorious and so deeply surprised.

In retrospect, it should have been evident.

As a test subject, she had crushed your statistics to the very last. To be an outlier was just in her nature.

You couldn't expect her to be an average murderer, either.