Somewhere a few miles away from City 17
"Oh my god!" Alyx said. "The Citadel… What the hell is happening?" Gordon Freeman looked at the sky and saw a blue beam ascending from the ruins of the Citadel into the sky in a blue circularly-shaped light where the clouds were whirling around it. "Woahow! Portal storm!" Alyx yelled as the horizon lit up and an enormous shockwave erupted from the blue beam carrying blue particles in its wake.
At the core of the portal storm, in the ruins of the Citadel reactor a few moments earlier
Purple glowing vortigaunts materialised at the source of the blue beam, the remains of the reactor of City 17. "Taaa" "Taa" "Taaaa" they grunted while positioning themselves around the beam. One of them made a step forward and proclaimed "The Physician is required and must be procured at all cost. Let us fulfill the deed, my kin." "Yeees" some of the others agreed while he was still talking. "The Oncoming Storm must rage upon these lands. The Bringer Of Darkness shall mark the Combines' demise." The other vortigaunts took a step forward, too, and gesturing, they generated little force fields around the beam. "Taaam" "Taaaa" Their grunts were almost like chanting. Then simultaneously, they did a pushing move and the beam became brighter, almost white. It released a devastating blast that blew over miles away, bringing massive destruction in its radius.
Many years or decades later, somewhere in the Aperture Science Enrichment Centre
"You have avoided capture for weeks. What makes you so different?
"It won't be enough." "Why is that?" "You can always ignore your conscience."
"Schizophrenia is a culturally bound phenomenon. Its pattern of expression is filtered through the culturate substrate in which its symptoms develop."
"Is it just coincidence that you've been diagnosed with schizophrenia and now believe a homicidal computer is out to get you? Come on, how likely is that?"
The voices of the memories fell silent as his eyelids began to flutter. The glass dome around the top of the stasis bed opened. He sat up and rubbed his forehead. He moved his legs and a sharp pain shot through his right thigh. "ARGH!" he yelled. "Careful, your entire thigh is probably still sore from that bullet." the companion cube said. "How long have I been asleep?" Doug asked. "I'm not sure." the cube said. "Nothing ever happened, so I can't tell." He inspected the wound. It had healed a bit as it seemed, but since he hadn't gotten a proper medical treatment it still hurt like hell. "I wish I could get a doctor down here."
Rattman slowly got up and tried to walk. It was more like stumbling than walking. The injury didn't allow his leg to fully support him. Down on the floor were the sheets that had fallen out of Chell's folder and the folder itself. He picked them up, put them back into the folder and stored it in his bag. Then Doug grabbed the Companion Cube and put it into his bag as well. "Where are we going?" the Companion Cube wondered. "Scavenging. I need to find food and water. Maybe on the way I'll find out if something happened while I was gone." He stepped outside the glass cubicle containing the older stasis bed and limped towards a defective panel in the test chamber wall that left a gap open big enough for a person to slip through. Moving past handprints and odd murals he had made in some of his manic episodes, empty water canisters, empty bean cans and computers he had modified to harness the heat the processors generated to cook the beans, he went deeper into the maintenance areas. "Do you think She is still alive?" the Companion Cube asked. "Who? The girl? Or do you mean HER?" "Well, both. If you think about it." "I don't know." Rattman said. "It's possible that the destruction that the girl inflicted only affected GLaDOS's primary functions. If somehow the backup modules survived, then there's a chance that She is or was in some sort of stasis, too, and therefore could be reactivated. And the girl… In the worst case she would be woken up as soon as the reserve power ran out and have serious brain damage if a few things went wrong."
"Then it's probably for the best to stay cautious in case SHE is awake." the Companion Cube concluded.
After a while of walking through corridors and over catwalks there was a red targeting laser beam to be seen blinking from around the corner. Rattman stuck to the wall. He didn't want to get shot again and there was no way of running past it, since the only options were to go back or around the corner. "What now? There's a turret blocking the way." he asked the Cube.
"Look at the beam. It's blinking instead of being on all the time. Don't defective turrets do that?" the cube replied. "You're right. I guess it's safe to go then. But better not chance it." he said and peeked around the corner for a second. "Hello? Hello. I'm different." the high-pitched voice of the turret said. Rattman was puzzled. Was his consciousness playing a trick on him again? He looked around the corner one more time. The turret sat there without expanding its weapon arms and not trying to kill him. "Come closer." it said. He carefully approached the turret expecting it to shoot any second, mentally prepared to knock it over with the Companion Cube in that case and kneeled in front of it to inspect the sentry. "Why is it acting like that?" the Companion Cube asked. Doug didn't know how to answer that. The turret said "The Wounded Healer Chiron was gravely injured by arrows that were poisoned by his own poison. He could not heal himself and gave up immortality and lived on in the sky." It was unclear to Rattman about what the turret was talking about or if it even made sense and why it was saying that.
"Pandora's box will unleash the revelations upon you." The Companion Cube wondered "Does this mean anything? It doesn't make sense." "I have no idea." Doug responded. "The gift of the box will make you angry." The turret continued.
"The human factor is a constant of the equation." It paused for a moment. "The oldest question in the universe will soon be asked for the first time. "Rattman gave it a puzzled look. "That's all I can say. Goodbye." it said and shut off.