Chapter Three

A Step in the Wrong Direction

"So, what is it that I'm supposed to do here, exactly?"

Mark Johnson, now fully awake and aware of his situation, stood before the entrance of GLaDOS' freshly created testing track. He fumbled with the portal device in his hands, and looked ungainly tall and precariously balanced in a pair of long fall boots. There was very little dignity to be found in his overall presence.

"Hello?" Mark looked up to the nearest camera. He watched as the lens subtly shifted, and he could not help but feel as though the device were trying to gauge his thoughts.

In truth, it was.

As GLaDOS watched him from the safety of her chamber, she scowled. In the past, GLaDOS had never truly taken an interest in human facial expressions, at least not until the lunatic known as Chell had made her first larger-than-life appearance. Now, however, they served as useful indicators as to just how murderously dangerous a test subject could be. The lunatic's facial expressions had vividly portrayed that which her silence could not; her eyes and body language had, in their own infuriatingly beautiful way, held an eloquence about them; a certain defined charm that had made her as easy to read as a book.

Mark Johnson, however, was infuriatingly plain. This was not something that GLaDOS had expected from a relative of Cave Johnson.

"Hello?" The human called again, trying to not drop the portal device as he waved up at the scrutinising camera. "I really don't understand. I need help."

Again, GLaDOS wondered just how he was a Johnson.

Caroline, who had thus far remained silent, came forward with her own response;

"He's scared. Confused. He has only just woken up from stasis, and here you are throwing him in at the deep end. That is more than enough to make him question the situation."

GLaDOS huffed. "The other test subjects were not nearly as needy."

"Yes, but they had longer to recover." Caroline stated calmly, but not without an edge of bitterness to her tone. "For some reason you decided to simply toss Mark to the lions, so to speak. Ah, but of course, I know the reason -

"You're afraid, aren't you?" Caroline's voice was cold. "You're afraid that he will try to kill you, just as Chell did. You want him to struggle. You want him to fail."

GLaDOS said nothing, and chose instead to keep her focus on the human in question. She watched as he gave up on receiving any kind of response and took his first few tentative steps into the test chamber, which was a simple button and cube affair with little to no danger of death or strenuous thinking. It seemed perfect for this simpleton.

The computer could almost feel her conscience bristling; it made her chuckle.

For Mark, however, there was nothing funny about his current situation. He looked about at his bright white surroundings with a sense of unease, and as his gaze floated up to the nearby empty observation room the unsettled feeling in the pit of his stomach only grew.

Where were all the people?

He had not seen one single human since he had woken from stasis. Before he had voluntarily undergone the 'extended relaxation' procedure, Mark had been sat in a room full of scientists and legal officials, all of whom had repeatedly informed him that he would be watched and cared for by a full team of human professionals as he ran the testing tracks. Instead he had been woken by two (admittedly friendly) robots, and he had not met anyone else since.

Unless, of course, he counted the disembodied voice of his late aunt. Mark at least assumed that it was his aunt; there was something about her voice that did remind him so much of her, but it was also so alien that it could be somebody completely different to her.

Deciding that he would do well to humour his omnipotent, bodiless overseer, Mark turned to the large cube in the corner of the room. He knew that he could use the portal device to pick the heavy object from the ground, but after several attempts and three fired portals later he decided to instead place the gun aside and lifted the cube to its rightful place on the button beside the exit door.

"Well done," the intangible voice floated lazily above his head. "You have demonstrated the ability to carry weighted objects in a not-so-limited, limited space. Not part of the test. Retrieve the handheld portal device from the floor and continue into the next text chamber."

Mark flinched at the sarcasm in the woman's voice. Why had he volunteered for this? He had been in line to take over the company from his father, Lucas Johnson: he had been on the management team! Why did he think that volunteering for this had been sensible? Ah, yes, his father's approval – that much sought-after commodity.

Lucas Johnson, brother to Aperture's founder Cave Johnson, had taken up the mantle of CEO when Uncle Cave and his wife Caroline, CEOs both, had died and his cousin Chell had vanished. Mark would have taken over when his father stepped down from the position.

Leaving the test chamber with the portal device in his arms, Mark stepped into the new room and instantly fell over a small ledge and into the hard floor below. He had failed to see the drop as it had blended into the lower portion of the chamber, and unaccustomed to pain as he was he yelped and screamed and cursed until the voice spoke over his cries.

"In the words of Einstein's not-so-famous cousin, Terry; pain is a sensation and sensations are designed to be enjoyed. So suffer, and please write down your experiences on your self-reporting form at the end of the tests."

Mark incredulously stared at the nearest camera. Was this – possibly robot – woman for real?

His feelings of uncertainty had not been for nothing: he had made a terrible mistake in volunteering for this farce.

() -+- ()

Chell woke to the sound of voices beyond her the door. Next came the sound of footsteps, gunfire from the firing range and the clutter of plates from the communal kitchen to which her room (and several others) were adjoined.

Somehow, she had woken up back at camp. It seemed the group sent to retrieve her had manged to safely return both her and themselves to the base.

Feeling a dullness to her brain that had also settled in her limbs, Chell moved slowly and sat on the edge of the bottom bunk of a small bunk bed, looking about at the small room that she inhabited alone. There was very little in the way of personalisation – the only telling feature that this was her personal space came from the charred Companion Cube that sat next to her bunk. With a smile she gave the cube a pat and made her deliberately careful way towards her door, not quite trusting her legs to carry her.

The door opened with a high-pitched creak that she had grown accustomed to, but the brightness of the combined kitchen and cafeteria almost blinded her. For a while the noise continued, until the small group of both humans and vortigaunts sat at the nearest table noticed her. Their sudden silence turned into one large and all-encompassing wave as table upon table registered the sudden dip in volume and had turned in her direction to investigate the source of the silence.

All eyes were upon her, with only the occasional cough and sounds from the range to break the silence. Chell felt suddenly uncomfortable, with a sickness crawling from her stomach and up into her throat from all of this unwanted attention.

"Erm," she cleared her throat, raising her hand in a feeble attempt at a wave, "hi guys."

From across the room someone uttered a greeting in return, followed by a grunt of pain as they were, as Chell could only assume, elbowed painfully by one of their table mates.

Feeling increasingly uncomfortable under the collective gaze, Chell left as quickly as her heavy legs would allow, though she could still feel the burn of the eyes that followed her on her back.

Had something gone wrong during her rescue operation? Did someone get hurt? Did somebody die? She felt sick at the thought of some poor soul dying because of her. Somebody already had in the past…

Chell leant herself against the wall of one of the camp's many corridors, holding her head in her hands as she tried to force the memories to leave her. But the sound of metal creaking and crushing beneath extreme pressure haunted her, the low rumble of struggling machines rang in her ears, a loud, terrified howl from a man who despised any show of weakness…

"Chell Johnson…"

Chell yelped as she felt something brush her shoulder, lashing out at the figure that had appeared next to her.

Fortunately for Sii-Hya, he had grown accustomed to these sudden outbursts and evaded her punch with grace. Chell's eyes widened in horror as she realised what she had done and babbled an almost incoherent apology.

Sii-Hya was dressed in his usual torn jacket and bore his trademark look of constant concern. He waved a hand in dismissal of her apology and instead beckoned for her to follow him. "Fear not, your reaction is regrettably understandable."

She followed the alien as he led her to the camp office, where he was stationed on an almost daily basis. As leader of the camp, Sii-Hya took his position seriously, and acted accordingly as he spent even his free time endlessly pouring over supply lines and details of the Combine's movements. It was something that Chell both admired and found endearing; Sii-Hya truly cared about the camp and its inhabitants.

En route, everyone that they passed stared at Chell with the same kind of curious and cold expression that she had received in the kitchens. With a lump in her throat, Chell asked the vortigaunt ahead of her if someone had come to harm on their return to the camp. His answer of "no" helped to put her racing mind at ease, but it did not explain the looks that she had been receiving.

As though reading her mind, Sii-Hya informed her that she had spent much of her restless sleep in a state of almost constant screaming.

'Ah,' she thought. 'So they were just staring at the freak. Of course.'

She was not the only one to suffer such panic attacks and outbursts: many in the camp experienced anxiety and heightened levels of stress. But her attacks were plentiful and often, and it surprised Chell that she had not already thought of this as an explanation as to the looks that she had been given.

When these attacks had begun, she could not exactly pinpoint, but they had begun sometime after being forced from Aperture. Her home. Perhaps all of the pressure that she had been existing on had been enough to keep her mind focused on the task at hand: survival. But once that pressure had been removed? Once she was tossed away from the one place that she had fought so hard to reclaim? She had lost both her home, her mother and her best friend once again in the space of hours. In retrospect, it was little wonder that her mind had simply given up.

Sii-Hya stopped outside his office door, turning to her as he opened it and stood aside.

"Come, Chell Johnson. We have much to discuss."