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She wasn't going to make it.
The portal thunked closed and Chell tumbled onto the cold, broken floor her chamber. As a claw dragged her head by, GLaDOS could immediately tell that the test subject would not survive.
She'd seen it all before. After all, her databases of video files dated back to long before her creation. The tanks and tanks of conversion gel in the lower reaches of the facility hadn't come from thin air, after all. After Cave Johnson made the incredibly stupid decision to BUY seventy million dollars worth of moon rocks, a few of his lab boys quietly informed the CEO that they could have just as easily shoot a portal to the moon and collected their own rocks.
And so they did.
The astronaut-slash-test-subjects had agreed to it, of course. They were retired, with little chance of ever going to space again, so what could be better than returning to the place they loved so much?
What they hadn't expected, though, was that Aperture didn't have the money, time, or patience to develop 'safe' spacesuits. Instead, they had a few people sew up something that looked good enough, slapped it on them, and portaled them up into space.
A newer, lighter, more useful spacesuit, Cave Johnson had reassured them. It was so good, It would knock the socks off of whatever crap they were wearing before.
But when the astronauts went into space and began gathering as many clumps of space rocks as they could, their suits didn't hold up. Even with protective suits, the immense vacuum of space had been too much for their bodies to handle. The lab boys only brought back lifeless pieces of what had once been famous people.
But Chell...she didn't even have a shred of a spacesuit to protect her. The thirty seconds or so she spent suspended in space sucked out the little strength that remained inside of her, literally crushing parts of her.
Lack of oxygen. Immense pressure on the body. Third degree burns scattered across her body. A shattered wrist. Broken bones in over ten different place. Blood loss. Wiplash.
All of these combined left Chell with a grim outlook. Even GLaDOS could tell that her stubborn and unkillable test subject could only take so much everything.
That moron wasn't joking when he promised to kill her. He'd done a good job with it, too.
GLaDOS stared at the unconscious test subject sprawled across her floor. With a few clicks and beeps, she assembled her two robots. If it were up to the supercomputer, she wouldn't trust such a vital task to two clumps of metal that had never done anything remotely worthwhile before.
Blue and Orange slid up in their respective elevators, and with a quick command blared into their brains, they cautiously approached the human. With gentle, precise movements, they lifted her into their arms and nervously glanced around.
With a soft, pained hum, GLaDOS summoned the 'escape' elevator from beneath her chamber. It slid into the room with a hiss, and the two robots glanced back at the supercomputer for clarification.
" Please deposit the human inside the Aperture Science Escape Elevator," she said with a sigh. " And this is important, peabrains. So don't screw it up." P-body gave a series of high-pitched squeals, and stared back at GLaDOS before sending her a quick image of a hospital from her databases. Her head tilted to the side slightly, asking the obvious question.
"No, Orange. She's not going to the Aperture Science Employee and Test Subject Recovery Annex." The lights dimmed slightly in the chamber, and GLaDOS flipped around the panels to block out the rest of the facility.
ATLAS and P-body set her into the elevator, and the clear glass doors swooshed closed around the human. The two robots took a few steps back, hesitant to leave the human alone and slumped against the elevators.
"Don't worry. I'm sure she'll be fine," GLaDOS tried to reassure the two. "The last time she slept, she had just finished killing me. And then she woke up. And almost killed me again."
The two testing robots shared a look before returning back to their vigilant watch over the human. If what GLaDOS said was true, then this test subject was virtually unkillable. She would wake up no matter what, even if it took years to happen.
Chell stirred slightly in the enclosed elevator. ATLAS gave a rough shove to P-body and sent a ping signal centered on the human, bouncing up and down with a childlike excitement. GLaDOS pulled herself higher in her chamber and let out a slight sigh of relief.
"You see?" she said, pivoting slightly in her chassis. "She's awake." GLaDOS's golden eye focused in on the human, quickly running a scan. The results blared back at her in a bold red font, but GLaDOS pushed them away.
"Oh, thank God you're alright," she said as Chell flickered back into consciousness. The human struggled to pull herself up, not knowing she was trying to stand on a broken leg and a number of shattered ribs.
Huge flashes of pain surged through her, and Chell nearly collapsed back to the bottom of the elevator. With an uncontrolled grimace, she staggered against the wall and clenched her teeth. A dull thunk shook the elevator. She shoved a few wispy strands of fried hair out of her eyes and struggled to meet GLaDOS's gaze.
A bolt of fear shot through her as GLaDOS spoke. The computer's tone...it wasn't right. At all. Chell froze in place, listening to her speak about being her, what did she say? Best friend? Chell's heart pounded, sending even more sparks of pain through her chest.
Whatever this was, it couldn't be good. She was trapped in an elevator, and GLaDOS was not acting anything like herself. For a fleeting moment, the human realized through her fog of pain she was at the complete mercy of the supercomputer.
And so far, she knew GLaDOS didn't have an ounce of mercy in her.
A sickening dread coursed through her, but GLaDOS shrunk down closer to the floor. The computer's plan wasn't working. Her attempts at soothing the subject with a shift in attitude had only elevated her heart rate, and that was only sending more and more blood out through broken veins. Little splatters of blood dotted the glass of the white elevator.
GLaDOS fumbled through her system, naming and saving an empty text document. She quickly deleted it, shoved the message through the announcer's voice, and soon enough a strong, "CAROLINE DELETED," message blared through the facility. GLaDOS leaned in towards Chell, noting that the human seemed almost expectant of this. Betrayed, but not at all stunned. A bit calmer. As if she wasn't surprised in the least that GLaDOS had once again turned on her.
A small emotion panged in the back of the supercomputer, begging her to stop, to just tell Chell the truth-that she was going to die-but she pushed on with her facade. This was the only way that Test Subject #1 would relax in the slightest. This was the only shot she had at a peaceful death.
Still, the hate and betrayal oozing from the hurt human's eyes left GLaDOS unsure of what to do.
Chell slipped in her chamber, slamming against the glass with a breathless scream. Another flashing red message covered her screen, and this time GLaDOS couldn't push it away and hope for Chell to just push through it like she always did.
She wasn't going to make it. At this rate, Chell would die within the hour.
"And I'll be honest," GLaDOS continued, "Killing you...is hard." But not impossible, she added to herself, watching Chell's vitals drop lower and lower by the second. "So you know what? You win. Just go."
Chell's eyes shut with another burst of pain. She squeezed her shoulder with one hand, and used the other to keep herself against the elevator. The test subject tried to mentally prepare herself for whatever might be coming next. A convenient elevator failure. A mashy spike plate hidden in the walls. An army of turrets behind a panel.
Not once did GLaDOS see a flicker of hope slip into Chell's eyes.
Not until she added on a few words as the elevator slid out of her chamber.
"It's been fun," she said flatly. "Don't come back." Something flashed through her face-something GLaDOS almost missed as the human slipped from her view for the last time.
The plan from this point on was simple enough. If Chell was going to die, GLaDOS owed it to her to at least ease her suffering as much as possible. GLaDOS retreated back into the ceiling and sent out a command into the facility. The elevator glided to a stop, and four turrets focused in as the trembling test subject nearly doubled over in pain. Chell clung to the railings, gasping for air she couldn't find.
That computer was going to shoot her. GLaDOS set up turrets to just to get it over with, after she'd promised to let her go. What, did the computer think dying on her own wouldn't be good enough? She just HAD to be the one to have the final word, didn't she?
The worst part was, there was absolutely NOTHING Chell could do about it.
The human didn't even notice as GLaDOS flodded in a clear, odorless gas into the elevator. As Chell took panicked breath after breath, the anesthetic sunk into her lungs and sped through her blood.
Her breathing relaxed ever so slightly as the turret's lasers flickered off, and the unbearable pain faded into a throbbing hurt as an unexpected flood of music crashed through the facility.
As the elevator slid into a gentle pace, Chell felt her head relax against the glass and gave a shaky sigh of relief. An army of turrets popped out their panels and began singing her the most beautiful melody she had ever herd inside of Aperture.
"Cara bel, cara mia bella..."
A faint, hoarse cry poured from Chell's lips. The turrets. They were singing in Italian. If there was anything Chell understood in her life, it was the beautiful rise and fall of her true language-her one true obstruction to speaking perfect English. She understood it well enough, but whenever she went to speak, she could never find the same grace that she was used to talking with-the effortless beauty of Italian.
Chell slid to the floor of the elevator, holding her head and letting a few sobs wrack her body in a moment of pure emotion. This was unexpected. Happy. A surprise that, for once, she wasn't terrified of.
The pain slipped away as the seconds ticked on, and GLaDOS couldn't help but let a twinge of satisfaction surface.
Chell had understood every word of that turret opera. And she was actually happy.
The elevator slowed to a stop, and the glass doors slipped open. Chell's heart skipped, and then slowed as the dull pain continued to flow from her system. She found a strength she didn't even know she had and pulled herself onto her feet. A blinding light flooded the shack, and she raised her arm to cover her eyes.
With a few hesitant hobbles, Chell made her way into the overwhelming light. A few blinks cleared her vision as her foot crunched into something real. Something alive. She glanced out, and an endless field of gold stretched out in front of her.
She took another cautious step, waiting for the ground to collapse beneath her and back into the bowels of Aperture. Her pace quickened and her heart rose as she took step after step into the field.
Ever since that little blue core had introduced himself as Wheatley, Chell had been struck with the vision of a golden field of wheat. For days, it had driven her on-the promise of life, the promise of the surface.
This was her heaven-a place away from testing. A place away from science.
And now she was here. A smile poured onto her face, warming as the sun covered her face. A soft clang brought her out of her trance for the most brief of moments; Chell looked back to see her Companion Cube tumble across the grass and stop at her side.
Her eyes flickered closed, and her smile stretched across her face. Chell gave the cube a pat and a huge hug before slipping into the grass to ease her dull, yet insistent pain.
And for once in her life, Chell was completely, absolutely happy. She glided into a bed of grass and let the warmth blanket her body. The anesthetic pumped through her veins, pulling away the last shards of pain
GLaDOS watched quietly as Chell's vitals slipped farther and farther away. Eventually, her eyes flickered closed, and her breathing slowed. The monitors she had tacked to Chell slid farther and farther into the red.
Chell was slipping away.
GLaDOS was struck with the sudden urge to collapse the ground beneath her, to send the subject hurtling back into Aperture-where she was certain she could fix up the subject as good as new. She would be healthy. Maybe even grateful. And then they would test. Forever, perhaps.
Yet somehow, the computer knew that Chell had done enough tests for a lifetime. One last look at that subtle, heartfelt smile that literally embodied happiness, and she knew she had done the right thing.
And, like the times before, GLaDOS was aware of the exact moment when Chell slipped from her grasp. But this time, she knew she was gone forever.