Chapter two, because I know you all loved the first one so much. Maybe I can even learn how to keep a regular update schedule if this goes far enough.
Ring Ring Ring, Phone Call, Phone Call
The room looked exactly the way it had in game. Each crack in the concrete walls was overgrown with ivy, and everything was covered in what looked like patches of mold. Some of the panels were bent inwards or broken off entirely and eroded to rubble. It was a wonder that the little room she was standing in was still intact. Stepping out of it carefully wasn't a choice she had, as there was already a challenge in leaving.
Portals seemed like a cool idea, and made for a challenging puzzle game. Many people, herself included, thought that they would want the gun in real life. They could use them to move to a different room more quickly, throw trash away, get the TV remote, and maybe even use the co-op function for travelling. Theory made it sound cool; looking into a portal terrified Angela enough that she stood in the room as if in a staring contest with her own side.
Wait, that wasn't her own side. It matched her movement perfectly, but it definitely wasn't her body. Not unless being here somehow changed her figure and dropped her down a bra size or two. There was too much of a distance to see details on her face, but she was positive that it didn't belong to her. This was the most surreal experience she'd been through, moving around and watching someone else's body in a mirror. No matter how she moved, it matched, but it didn't look real.
She realized that she was somehow inside Portal, and there were worse things to worry about than why she looked different. It was still a game after all, so maybe it had to change her, because it only had so many people saved. Right now, she needed to step through the portal and start the game.
Maybe a simple test first wouldn't hurt. She grabbed a shard of broken glass off the floor, thanking the game designers for boots that covered her feet this time, and tossed it into the portal. It flew out the blue portal to her side as naturally as it had left her hand. Glass was clear, and she decided it wasn't safe enough to go in herself yet. There was a clipboard behind her that she picked up, slowly putting halfway through the hole and waving it around. She'd expected some kind of distortion waves that let her now she was screwing over space and physics. Nothing. Just air. It fell through the same as the glass, hitting the ground noisily on the other side of the wall.
That test was as safe as any she could try. One deep breath later, she shoved her hand in and felt the wall on the other side. There was her hand, perfectly intact, reaching for her from another wall. Walking through it didn't feel any different from ducking under a low doorway. If the glowing orange ring was covered, she would have assumed it was just a round hole in the wall. Some force in the universe must have been crying over an automated message and a timer ripping through space like this. But she was out of the box, and there was an electric door leading into the next room.
"Cube- and button-based testing remains an important tool for science, even in a dire emergency." The announcer's voice greeted her here again, when the door opened. "If cube- and button-based testing caused this emergency, don't worry. The odds of this happening twice are very slim." How reassuring. This puzzle was simple, almost insultingly so, when it wasn't a tutorial showing her how to pick up a cube and put it on the large button. The machine dropped a Weighted Storage Cube onto the floor, letting it bounce and rattle a little before settling quietly. Angela walked up to it, nudging it lightly with her toe.
It moved like a cardboard box lined with lead bricks, just noisier. The sound of metal scraping against rust-coated concrete echoed against the walls, loud enough that she was sure it woke up some of the other subjects in stasis. However, other than being loud and deceptively heavy, it was safe. The gaps on the surface of the cube led to shallow handles on the inside, giving her enough grip to carry it to the button and drop it right on the red circle. On the floor, the dull blue lights leading to the door turned yellow, some of them obviously chipped or broken. Likewise, the door was jammed while trying to open more than halfway.
This was a triumph. I'm making a note here: huge success. Angela was sure that was the point she was officially going crazy, hearing Still Alive in the middle of a test chamber. The buzzing in her pocket signaled otherwise; she'd forgotten she'd changed her ringtone for the day. Caller ID said it was Will's cell phone. Even in these terrible conditions, Aperture had great reception. But, wait, this was Aperture. Aperture wasn't even real. Fictional worlds should not have cell phone reception, but there shouldn't have been anything wrong with just picking it up. Phone calls couldn't kill people. She answered the call with an unsure "Hello?"
"Where the hell are you?" Will sounded out of breath, and he was panting methodically. "I'm on my way home right now; I couldn't find you and you wouldn't pick up before."
Angela almost couldn't believe he was running home. That had to be a half hour away if he ran the whole way. Why didn't he drive…she remembered hearing jangling in her pocket when she took out her phone. Will was stranded there without a car. But surely he wouldn't believe the situation. She barely believed it herself.
"It's kind of a long story-"
He cut her off. "Hey, this is going to sound weird. Are you in Aperture right now?" Either this call was part of her delusion, or Will was just as crazy as her. She continued the conversation assuming the latter was true.
"Yeah, I am actually…. How did you guess that?" There were no mechanical sounds in the background, save for the jammed door trying to open itself. Was he really that observant?
"Ugh, I told you that you shouldn't cosplay and you didn't listen. This is what I was talking about!" She could almost hear his arms swinging wildly, but he calmed down to keep a fast running pace. "It's a really long story. I got stuck in Tales of Symphonia once." He didn't wait to answer her questions, instead trying to say everything at once so he could put the phone down sooner and not waste his breath talking. "I'll explain when you're back if you want, just get through the game."
Angela didn't know much about Tales of Symphonia, other than the fact that it was a video game. "Wait, you too? But...how? How'd you make it out alive? What was it like?"
"I told you I'll explain later. You've got it easy, Portal's short and not a JRPG." Even Angela knew about the excessive levels of angst and death in most JRPGs. She had assumed the reason he hated them so much was their fame of sexy brooding teens with gravity-defying hair. "Look, just beat the game. Don't change anything. Where are you?"
"I only just beat the first test. A cube drops down and you put it on the button to open the door." She wondered about the rest of his advice. "Why not change anything? Wouldn't it be better to find where GLaDOS is and smash her before she wakes up? Or to just smash Wheatley maybe?"
"No!" He yelled loudly enough that it rang in her ear. "I'll explain it when I get home. Just finish the test chambers and I'll call you when I'm there. And don't let anyone see you with your phone."
"Okay, I'll be careful. Bye." He hung up the phone first. Making sure to turn the volume off, she dropped it in her pocket. She probably wouldn't even have the time to change anything about the plot, if she remembered it correctly. There were a lot of tests to get through. With a goal in mind, she stepped through the faulty door.
"Please note the incandescent particle field across the exit. This Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grill will vaporize any unauthorized equipment that passes through it." Angela knew what "incandescent" meant, and it most certainly didn't mean "invisible." There was nothing standing between her and the elevator. Same as testing the portals, she grabbed a small slab of concrete that had fallen off the wall and tossed it through the second doorway. Nothing.
There was nothing else to test with, except more concrete. She walked through it. Again, nothing. Unless they were suddenly impossible to see, and the announcer's voice told her that wasn't true, something was wrong. The fields were there to prevent players from using portals between chambers, so maybe they couldn't carry that over when they made everything real.
Unlike the rest of the potentially-dangerous things at Aperture, an elevator wasn't something she could test before using. There was nothing to gain in sitting around and waiting. She stepped inside, doors closing behind her automatically. There must have been a pressure pad on the floor, or a motion detector, or maybe something to detect when a human stepped inside. It started moving, taking her down to the next chamber.
The large backlit sign denoting "01" was right in front of her when she walked up the stairs. She was glad that the stairs appeared to be made of aluminum here, free of rust and weakened hinges. Either it was a brilliant move on Aperture's part, or a stroke of luck when using cheaper materials.
There was no announcer yelling directions at her this time. Just a ledge and a 10-foot drop. She hadn't gotten to see these boots in action yet, but was dreading having to try. It wasn't a lethal drop, but for someone who would prefer to read about adventures, it was the highest she'd even fallen. Bracing her legs, she jumped off, boots directing her legs for her. She landed almost instantly, feeling a simultaneous bounce of springs and something soft. There wasn't even a need to orient herself afterwards; these boots were amazing. This test was another tutorial, she remembered, the only challenge stepping around the fallen panels and wild ferns.
She pressed down the button in front of the room with a cube, having to force it down a little, and walked back to the orange portal at the beginning of the room. Still wary of these unnatural tears in reality, she was still stepping carefully. The closed-in room smelled badly, like must and mold, despite the cracked glass. Breathing that in couldn't be safe for her lungs, she was sure, and moved in and out quickly. After dragging the cube through the blue side, she left it at the entrance of the orange portal.
The next button also needed to be pressed down on to work, as if one of the metal bits inside had corroded. She wasn't even sure how the button was linked to the blue portals, since there were no guns inside the glass. Aperture's crazy technology didn't matter though, so long as she could complete the tests safely. With the cube only feet away from the button now, she could pull it through the portal and leave the tiny room sooner than she'd entered. Smash the last button down to put a portal by the exit, another room solved.
"Good. Because of the technical difficulties we are currently experiencing, your test environment is unsupervised." Apparently apocalyptic blackouts were only technical difficulties. "Before reentering a relaxation vault at the conclusion of your testing, please take a moment to write down the results of your test. An Aperture Science Reintegration Associate will revive you for an interview when society has been rebuilt." For a company that survived by testing captive humans like rats in physics-screwing mazes, they had a lot of faith in their cooperation. Into the elevator once again, leave the lift and up the stairs.
"If the Earth is currently being governed by a manner of animal king, sentient cloud, or-" Angela didn't listen, knowing it would cut itself off into static by the end of the sentence.
"Hey, voice. Are you a recording, or one of the robots?" she called out to the ceiling, smacking the wall nearest her. No response from it, and the only result was a gross dust-coated hand. With a disgusted face, she wiped it off on the jumpsuit legs. The glass here was cracked, too, the shattered pane being the only thing to prevent the sealed hallway from smelling like a jar of old cheese.
"Hey hey! You made it!" The panels were cracked and had fallen off, leaving a gap in the wall where Wheatley was hanging from his rail.
"Oh, yeah, I didn't expect you here." Angela had forgotten the portal gun was in such an early test chamber. But it was good to see a friendly face after all the loneliness, even with the temptation of picking up a wire frame from the floor and throwing it at him. "What's going on?"
Wheatley rocked on his rail excitedly. "The portal gun should be in here on a podium somewhere. There used to be a test chamber here, but I think it's too broken down to work by now. Do you see it? Maybe it fell off." He slid back and forth, trying to get a better view of inside the room.
"Yeah, I'll go find it." She walked away from him, knowing the floor would collapse when she got too close. Her legs were braced in preparation with each step.
"It's alright, just go and have a quick look and come back safe." It sounded as if he were trying to reassure her that the floor wasn't weaker than Styrofoam packing peanuts. "Somewhere around that way, I'm sure you'll do a lovely job. And even if you don't find it, you gave it your best, right?"
The podium was spinning in a slow circle, sparking at each quarter-turn. Only a foot away from it, there was a creaking, followed by the sound of wood being shattered by steel beams. The rusty metal frame bent inwards, dropping her down with a quick scream.
"Woah, are you okay down there? Hello?" Wheatley was yelling from his rail. Angela stood, pants dripping wet from the puddle of stagnant swamp-like water she landed in.
"I'm alive!" she yelled back to him, voice echoing.
"Oh, brilliant, worried for you there." He sounded relieved. "Can you see the portal gun?"
Angela could see it on a raised platform, surrounded by cave paintings. "Yeah, it's just ahead!"
"Okay, great, umm…" Wheatley paused in thought. "Alright, you go get that portal gun, I'll meet you up ahead. Come back intact though, don't want to have to bury you so soon." Angela hoped this was a joke. "We clear then? Go team!"
She walked forward, into the room surrounded by paintings. They were done well, and told the story very clearly. Although it may have been cheating, reading the Lab Rat comic, but that didn't lessen how much emotion was in these pictures, from GLaDOS's creation to her destruction. The portal gun was at the center of the circle, up a short staircase made of concrete panels.
Dropping it was one of her worries at first, until she noticed the Velcro strap, metal clamp, and rubber grip for her to hold onto. She couldn't help but wonder how many subjects had dropped the gun and smashed into walls at high speeds to warrant this kind of efficiency. According to the promotional videos, the long fall boots weren't invented until after the gun. With a quick shudder, she shoved the thought aside and tested out the gun.
As it turned out, aiming an arm cannon with no scope was much harder than using the crosshairs on a computer screen. Frustration didn't help, either. There would be plenty of time to practice, she reminded herself, jumping down off the platform and standing in front of the wall for maximum accuracy. It was like flipping on a light switch; the instant she pulled the trigger, she was looking at the platform above.
She stepped through onto the higher platform, and walked along it far from the edge. There was another metal staircase, leading into an office of sorts. She recognized the copy machine that was in high school's offices, locked file cabinets, old computer monitors, and dusty cushioned rolling chairs. The floor was checkerboard-print linoleum, worn away in several places.
A familiar buzzing in her pocket alerted her to Will calling. "Yeah, I'm here," she answered. This was a logical place to take a rest. Shaking the dust off one of the chairs, she sat down on it, slouching over.
"Good, you're here." He was out of breath and gasping, she could hear it over the phone. "I'm pulling up level maps so I can help you through it."
"Thanks so much, Will." She meant it. As a casual gamer, she hadn't memorized the puzzles, and making the wrong choice could get her killed. The trial and error allowed by auto-save wouldn't work here. "I just got the first gun, taking a break in an office room right after it."
"Okay, I'll fill you in on what's going on." His keyboard was loud enough that she could hear the furious tak tak tak tak of his typing. "I told you I got stuck in a game. I was the main character, Lloyd, and had to beat the game in his body. It took about eight months, but I came back after about four hours of our time."
"Wait, there's a time difference for the worlds? Then I should come back really soon, right?" Angela was hopeful, since Portal 2 was a fairly short game.
"I don't think there's a time difference if we can talk on the phone like this. You should be able to get out within a few days if you follow the game path. If you change anything, it'll try to correct itself and might get you killed." Will sounded serious enough for her to not doubt him. But there had to be a loophole, somewhere.
"Well, the end of the game is the surface, right? If I can get to the surface, it should send me home. Maybe if Wheatley lets me up-" He cut her off.
"No! Don't get to the surface early!" His voice was frantic, in a panic. "The surface of Portal is Half-Life, remember? Unless you can survive a shooter better than a puzzle game, stay there. I don't think the trigger to the end is just the surface, it's GLaDOS releasing Chell, so that everyone's story is wrapped up."
Angela knew next to nothing about Half-Life, other than Gordon Freeman and Chell were supposed to be similar, and it was hard. "Good point, not doing that. Next question, do you even know how I'm here?" It was a long shot, but he had also done this before.
"That's kind of complicated; I don't know all the details. There's this thing called the black space, it connects all the worlds. I got pushed through a black space hidden behind a door. And if you beat a game world, you go through the black space again to come home."
"Okay, that makes sense. But how did I get here?" She had so many more questions, but she also wanted to go back home. Any information beyond what happened to her would only slow her down.
"I don't know, umm…." He paused to think of a solution. "Maybe there was a rip in space, and you just happened to fall through it. And then it brought you to Chell's body, since you were dressed like her in the second game."
"That makes as much sense as anything, sure. You're the expert." She stood up. "I'm going on ahead. There's nothing else to do here."
"Alright, tell me when you get stuck. If someone shows up, hide the phone and stop talking."
"Will do. I'm leaving the office now." With the phone still clutched to her ear, she walked out and jumped down the short drop to the next part.