Chapter 0 - Prologue
For the first time since she can remember, Chell was calm. There was no GlaDos, no Wheatley and the distance between her and Aperture was growing ever larger.
She continued to walk through the field. At first she had marveled at the expansive plains before her, the afternoon sun had lit up the golden grasslands, and when she looked up it was an eternity of blue, she couldn't even see the ceiling. It just stretched on forever, as if there wasn't one.
*sky*.
The word echoed fuzzily somewhere in her mind, a lost memory from a different time. But she knew where she was. Outside. She smiled at the thought of the charred remains of her companion cube. Even though she never suffered the delusion that the cube had any real sentimental value, she had thought it apt to push it under the shade of the shack before continuing away. A memory for someone else to find.
Someone else, she desperately wanted to know there was someone else out there, that this wasn't all some trick. She started running, through the grass field to the other side where there was a straight clearing.
*road*
Some level of understanding of the outside world remained, even after her prolonged coma under the questionable care of Wheatley. That had left her damaged. Some functions -like speaking- she feared she might never have again. She felt naked without her portal gun, but that was safely tucked away in the hands of Atlas and P-Body back at Aperture.
She started walking along the road, and soon she came upon a barely readable sign. The smell of smoke was in the air as she made out the words:
"Welcome to City 17".