Hey everyone! Apparently, Portal belongs to Valve. Only this story and my character Dawn belongs to me.
Hope you enjoy this story!
She watched the test subject wipe the sweat from her forehead before exiting the chamber.
Tired?
Well, she had a large stack of test chambers and an infinite capacity to create even more test chambers.
And this one was new. A new test subject, exactly!
GLaDOS had no idea how this one made it after all those years, but the fact was just over there, on the subject's files. In stasis since Aperture Science's "Bring Your Daughter to Work Day".
No significant brain damage, either. So, this one wasn't mute and didn't have homicidal tendencies.
Hopefully.
"Are you going to keep smudging your disgusting bodily fluids onto the panels, or are you going to proceed to the next test chamber?"
This test subject was honestly intriguing, though - she did have a couple of great comebacks when she insulted her, and that gave her a rather...different testing experience.
"Yes, precisely doing that."
Two portal shots, and then the dull thump of a camera landing on a white panel.
Vital testing apparatus destroyed.
"You probably have a billion of these, so there's actually no point and also, no harm of taking these down."
GLaDOS could see the young woman smirk, and honestly, for a sudden, she was unsure if she was enjoying that or bluntly hating it.
There was something familiar about this one. As if she had seen her before. Even before the incident. Even before the "Bring Your Daughter to Work" Day. Maybe she had seen her. Maybe she was one of those scientists' daughters, who worked on those horrific cores.
But none of this mattered to GLaDOS at the moment.
What mattered the most, was that this girl, Dawn Williams, was a good test subject. Along with that lunatic, of course.
Because two was certainly better than one.
The elevator descended once again, with Dawn inside, who was indeed happy with her situation, humming a song to herself. She surprisingly could remember things from her past, after all those years of sleep - for instance, she knew who was trying to instruct her during the test but chose to nag at her instead. The Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System of Aperture Science, the very last project to be completed. It was sad, really, the scientists had no idea on what she really was, and what she could become; and she didn't understand what had been going on back then.
It all had ended with a bang.
Neurotoxin.
Dawn wasn't being judgmental of the AI, though she sometimes wished that she would chill.
When the elevator came to a halt, a tad bit sharper than usual, Dawn jumped, dragged out of her thoughts in less than a second.
Was GLaDOS mad at her for that camera? Maybe she really was, sometimes she did get so childish.
"What was that, you were almost going to make me throw up all those delicious beans."
Normally, a sentence like this would immediately draw a response from GLaDOS, but at the moment, there was a delay. More than twenty seconds. Also, the constant buzz of the speakers was absent.
She wasn't here at all.
Dawn shot two portals, and dropped yet another camera to test her instead.
No response.
Maybe she is really giving me the silent treatment, Dawn thought.
She picked up the camera and dropped it in the goo pool nearby.
Still nothing.
"GLaDOS?"
The only thing she could hear was the constant airflow through the vents.
There was something wrong. Terribly wrong. For such an omnipotent, witty and bitter AI, this was wrong in all ways.
A loud, screeching sound - metal against metal - proved her right.
Stuff was happening, and Dawn had no idea.
The only thing she could do for now was to solve the test chamber. Without that, she absolutely had no way to reach the back of a simplest panel. Because, protocol.
So, she went right on it, like a lioness after her prey.
Portal here.
Portal there.
Grab the cube.
Jump right in the orange one from a height.
Fling.
Toss the cube on a button.
Profit.
The doors which led to the elevator hissed open, accompanied by an unfamiliar voice of a man.
"Congratulations, for solving this test chamber. Please proceed to the next test chamber. And remember: Testing is the future, and the future starts with you."
A roll of eyes, accompanied with a facepalm.
The Announcer.
Looking around with wide eyes, Dawn did not, could not spot an elevator where it had to be. It had fell to its demise, and all the panels in the area were down, revealing a metal catwalk right behind them.
Should she go?
She felt the whole facility shake. Violently.
As a result of the "fight or flight" reflex, Dawn rushed towards the catwalk, the Long Fall Boots thudding as she climbed the stairs. She then simply followed the catwalk - there was no other way she could possibly go for!
As she walked, fast, she couldn't help but ponder. What the hell was going on? Yes, this was Aperture, and anything, but anything was possible in here; but not this. GLaDOS would never go silent. This facility would never shake like that, as if it was collapsing because of disrepair. It just wouldn't.
Dawn caught her step at the very last second, the catwalk she walked upon was ending there, abruptly, and if she had taken one another step, she would have met her death quicker than anything else.
She could spot the pointy tips of all the ruined panels and such, even from the distance. Not a nice place to land on, not even with the boots.
With a long, heaved sigh, Dawn traced the area, for somewhere to shoot a portal at and get the hell out of that disturbing place. The pit looked deadly enough, and it certainly creeped her out.
"There you are, dammit!"
When she found one portal surface, she almost immediately shot the blue, and that was her fastest portal maneuver ever. She then shot the orange one on a wall next to her, and she let herself fall.
The blue one was over a stable looking platform, and in less than a second, she fell from the ceiling, her boots letting out a very loud clang when her feet touched the ground.
Now, what?
Dawn's eyes went wide in shock when she heard some metal creaking.
The creaking was accompanied by the trembling floor right beneath her.
"Shit."
It turned out it wasn't so stable at all.
Having configured portal shooting as a reflex, she found yet another portal surface and shot the orange one, but before she could get a place for the blue, the whole platform slid right beneath her feet.
"Shit, shit, shi-"
The horizontal platform she had stood on was now vertical, barely hanging on somewhere - probably more scrap panels were holding it , and Dawn was clinging at the rails for her life. The sudden fall had snatched her portal gun away from her - she could simply stare at it as it fell, the orange light of it visible in the dark. Then, it drained down to nothing.
"Crap."
She then held the railing with both hands, managing to pull herself up, to somewhere she could stand on. It was hard, honestly hard, when mingled with adrenaline and the fear of accompanying her portal gun and dying, but her feet were on the railing after a couple of minutes.
She was shaking, she did not certainly want to look down to that monstrosity - how did that happen anyway? Maybe the supporting pillars weren't good enough.
The truth was right there, though.
Dawn had no choice but to jump. She only had to guess the safest place to jump. Guess, huh? In Aperture, guessing simply did not work. But it was her one and only choice.
She eventually began scouting, and started looking for a place less deadly to jump on. The platform didn't help at all - it did seem stable as it now stood vertically, though she wasn't sure of that.
Dawn wasn't sure of anything at that moment. Without a portal gun, what was the possibility of her staying alive in this facility? Even if she did stay alive, for how long would that keep up?
After minutes full of squinting, some sparkle on her right caught her eye. She kept observing...nothing was protruding out of there, it didn't seem so deadly - actually, the only thing she could see was some light.
Better than broken panels, Dawn thought.
And then...she jumped.
