Siren Song
Her vigilance grew along the size of Aperture.
If Chell had believed to be lost, back where the hidden pipes drenched her in red, its immensity unfolded to prove her wrong. That first testing track was but a shell – she had been spat out, unwanted, to end up roaming the open sea.
The more gashes tore apart the chambers, the farther her eyes could reach. She laid her gaze outside wherever possible, eager for information. The end of it never came.
She adapted herself to counterbalance it. She measured distances gone rogue with her short, balanced steps. Even just to small segments, her jumps brought back its harmony.
It was simple. There was no other secret to survival – no point in reaching for more than you can hold.
The grandeur men were drawn to split open in the decaying spaces all around, so she would know better. The result of their miscalculations creaked just beneath her soles. It saved her, to learn the end of the story in advance.
She reflected on it on the way back – while the last living example of their greed, ever unable to learn, raged on the corpse of the place they had killed.
It would have been so easy, she thought at last, to bet on the right things. That no one could shy from risks did not mean care was in excess.
Like that, she had gotten the chance to kneel in a field of gold, and made a memory out of the acid seas. The rust, the trembling catwalks – they had become but an ancient nightmare.
She bent her head back, proud of herself.
She always knew what she could afford. She had fought for nothing more than that.