There are moments when I can almost see the underlying grammar of this place. An impossibility, some mad architect's opus - a relic from an age that never could have been. It's a metastasised amalgam of add-ons, additions and appropriations, building itself out of itself. Beautiful and terrible...

And like any cancer cell, probably immortal.

-Lab Rat, page six.


What seemed like years passed as he traversed the dusty metal chutes, gathering supplies of beans and water jugs to bring to his home-made dens. In reality it was only a few weeks.

With a permanent marker he traced his paths, both on his maps and on the walls of the vents, marking his progress as well as the date. There was no use getting lost - he had no desire to lose track of his way, nor of his time. It was easy to lose yourself to the monotone of the air vents and maintenance shafts, all dreary cement and rusting metal walls.

For Doug had quickly found a routine in this new lifestyle - if it could really be called living - and to his grim dismay, he had been starting to feel a sense of normalcy in it all. Such was the elasticity of the human mind, he'd mused - so adaptable, but in all the same ways. A different version of the same story.

But then, one day - or what he considered to be day, in the least - he realised the true dangers of normalcy in Aperture.

He'd already surmised that GLaDOS had resumed testing, since the dreary conclusion of Bring your Daughter to Work Day. He'd even heard the noise of portal guns on occasion, vibrating the walls of several of his maintenance dens with their heavy static resonance, the air humming with energy. He'd assumed that GLaDOS had deemed him unworthy of pursuit in the face of her larger purpose; assumed that testing had taken priority over hunting rats.

But Doug had apparently underestimated the AI's ability to multitask.

Several hours ago he'd discovered a turret stationed outside one of his maintenance dens, the beam of its laser sight trained a few inches beneath the air vent from which he'd been about to emerge. Only the glowing red eye and a sliver of white had been visible. Ready to expel a rain of bullets at the first sign of movement.

Rattmann had backed himself into the shadows once more, heart pounding in his ears. GLaDOS was searching for him now, he'd realised. It had been then that he knew it was time to try something new. New plan, new den.

So right now, he was improvising:

Stocked with nothing but a map, a marker, and his pills - he ran.

Doug took vents he'd never traversed, ones that led to old catwalks and passageways that he couldn't even find on his map. He skirted around testing chambers, both active and inactive. He ran and ran. He didn't know where he was going - just that he had to keep moving.

And then just once, he paused for breath. It seemed, however, that his attempt at rest would be fruitless: out of nowhere, the PA system chimed to life for the first time in weeks. Doug's body went rigid as her voice resonated throughout the facility.

"You've avoided capture for weeks."

Her monotone was considerably colder than when she'd last spoken to him, lacking that undercurrent of joviality he would forever relate to the act of genocide.

It was a chilling development.

"There's just you now, you know. All the others are dead. What is it that makes you so different... doctor?"

Doug's already wild heart skipped a few beats. It was the first time she'd ever appropriated the use of a title to address him - the first time she'd ever addressed him so directly.

"Hmm," she hummed, and the computerised sound reverberated through the air."Ahh, yes... Delusions of persecution, pathological paranoia... It's all right here in your file. Have you... refilled your prescription lately?"

Her short pause following the question might have been a dark chuckle; it held the same foreboding weight. Rattmann felt his face scrunch into a scowl, his hand reflexively clutching at the Ziaprazidone in his pocket. That was a low blow.

"Schizophrenia is a culturally bound phenomenon," GLaDOS continued liquidly over the intercom. "Its pattern of expression is filtered through the cultural substrate in which its symptoms develop. In technological societies, this manifests as delusions of surveillance and a belief that advanced technology is deployed against you, usually with some vague unseen 'other' out to get you."

Doug scoffed as he lowered himself off a catwalk and dropped to the platform situated just a few metres beneath. 'Vague'? He mumbled to himself, his voice scratchy from disuse, "Sounds pretty damn specific to me."

A few silent minutes passed, but then she started up again, sounding much more agitated: "If you continue to selfishly evade me, it's not going to reflect well in your file."

…As if that was supposed to make him actually care. Doug knew quite well that he was mentally unstable at times, but he wasn't stupid.

At the same time, though... the demeaning comment gave him an idea.

Files... The files!

This time he ran on with purpose.


She continued to talk as he ran, her voice following him omnisciently but blindly. Everywhere and nowhere at once.

"I can't see you, but I know you're in there."

Doug thundered down one of the larger air vents, one in which he had more than enough room to stand in. He didn't even attempt to be stealthy. He was a man on a mission, and being heard had little consequence in comparison to being seen. Anyway – GLaDOS couldn't touch him, where he was headed.

"Is it just coincidence that you've been diagnosed with schizophrenia and now believe a homicidal computer is out to get you?"

Rattmann's defiant confidence in himself was growing as he neared his destination. Yes, yes it is.

"Come on, how likely is that?"

In Aperture? Very likely.

Doug's heart leaped as he finally reached the vent's end. With a burst of speed, he braced himself for impact and threw his weight forward, into his shoulder. Scrawny muscle and metal collided, and the grate at the end of the shaft screeched and groaned as his momentum ripped it straight from the wall.

Man and mental rocketed into open space, hanging briefly in a timeless void of nothing. Passing seconds were suspended as Doug felt his body untethered from the ground. He was weightless, flying, flying to freedom...

...No, falling.

Gravity regained its grip on his body, and with an extraordinary cacophony he crashed to the ground half a storey below. The grate beneath him skidded across the metallic floor of the file room, sparks spraying everywhere as it screeched to a stop.

For a while Doug just lay there atop the grate, recovering from the shock.

Eventually he picked himself up off the floor. His shoulder was badly bruised, the rest of his body throbbing and aching all over. Maybe that hadn't been the smartest move, he reflected. Busting through the grate like a line-backer. He'd always hated football.

Doug found his glasses several feet away from the mangle of metal that had just barely broken his fall. They were irreparably broken, the lenses shattered and the frames badly bent. Squashed by pieces of the grating, cracked into a thousand shards by the force of the fall.

Well. At least he was near-sighted.

And of course, her voice as omniscient as ever, GLaDOS carried on as if she hadn't heard a thing.

"I mean, really, you're a scientist," she put in long-sufferingly. "What is more likely, that you're being chased by a homicidal computer, or that this is all just the paranoid delusion of an unstable mind?"

Doug grunted as he leaned upright, struggling to his feet. "You tell me," he grumbled through his teeth. Gradually he was able to stand, and stumbled to the nearest bank of filing cabinets. No time to lose.

"Why not come out of there, and you'll see. None of this is real."

Doug just scoffed.

"I'd ask you to think outside the box on this," the AI went on, musingly, "but it's obvious your box is broken. And has schizophrenia."

Deciding to ignore her, Rattmann tugged open a cabinet and started rifling.

No, not this one… not here, not here… Why the hell do we still have filing cabinets, anyway? This is the digital age! Giving up on that cabinet, he moved to the next, and the next. One after the other. Searching.

He'd remembered one particular subject on the way to the file room, remembered overhearing one of less respected neck-bearded lab boys complaining about her. Stubborn, strong, unbreakable will. Hadn't been here but for a very short time, only been tested once or twice. Said he'd filed her permanently under…

"Rejected!" It left his throat in a harsh whisper. He catapulted across the room, toward the filing cabinet in question. It was much smaller, much emptier - underused. Aperture was not very particular about its subjects, and there were only a spare few of the thousands in the system that were stubborn or incapable enough to make the Reject list. Doug flung open a drawer and tore through its files and spare papers.

"Speaking of boxes… Do you know that thought experiment with the cat in the box with the poison? Theory requires that the cat be both alive and dead until observed."

Oh, yes. Schrödinger's Cat. Who could forget.

"Well, I actually performed that experiment. Dozens of times. The bad news is that reality doesn't exist. The good news is that we have a new cat graveyard."

...And all those scientists had actually believed that so many of their precious felines had just 'run away' on Bring Your Cat to Work Day.

Idiots.

But GLaDOS' mood swung sharply once more on its ever-fluctuating pendulum, and she suddenly snapped, "Why are you in the file room anyway? What could you possibly be doing?"

Eating cake, Doug wanted to respond. I'm having a birthday party for myself. His fingers continued to flit through pages and pages of rejected test subjects, but none of them seemed to match what he remembered. Maybe he'd been wrong. Maybe—

"Ah!"

Maybe it was his birthday after all. Only this – this was better than cake.

"Yes!" He launched back from the filing cabinet, slamming it closed with wild relief. "Yes, this is the one!"

Across the room he bounded, racing to the corner, the slim file clutched in his hand. A small computer bank was buried at the far end of the room, nearly submerged beneath masses of paper and binders. Doug haphazardly pushed the dusty mess into the floor, unearthing the keyboard. He booted the computer and it quickly hummed to life.

Silently he breathed a prayer to whatever soul had kept the GLaDOS construct separate from the local computer hub.

Clutching the files between his teeth, Doug pounded in the password for accessing Aperture's extensive list of test subjects; the list that held the randomised order in which the subjects were woken from cryo-sleep for testing.

He searched her by last name – more accurately, the lack thereof – and wondered at it briefly. Redacted. Why would they redact her surname?

And then, almost as if his tampering with the list had accidentally awakened some related area of the AI's consciousness, GLaDOS spoke up once more.

"In the event you do not survive the testing process, DNA may be harvested from your body – with your consent – and used to create clones in the furtherance of science. Failure to survive the testing process shall be viewed as granting consent."

It seemed slightly out of context; most likely it was just another of her attempts to screw with his mind.

The AI's informative monotone gained a vindictive edge, "Also, clones don't have souls. Just so you know. Like twins."

Doug let out a sigh of relief as the computer found the subject he'd been looking for. Number fourteen-ninety-eight on the testing order. He highlighted the entry and pounded a command – to transfer her to the top of the list.

When the transference completed, Doug leaned back on his heels and gazed up at the reordered list, feeling numb.

Subgroup Alpha, Subject One: Chell [Redacted], it read.

This woman was his only chance in bringing the power-mad, omniscient AI to her knees. His only chance at freedom. He knew it. Knew she could do it. He knew she would succeed. He felt it, deep in his gut.

All he could do now was wait. Hope. Pray.

It has to be her.

Rattmann shut down the computer, waded through the piles of discarded binders and folders he'd dumped off the keyboard. He tucked Chell's file down the neck of his filthy, still tucked-in workshirt; it rested against the half-starved hollow of his stomach. Faintly he'd noticed that GLaDOS had fallen silent; perhaps she had given up on him for the time being. He was glad for the time to himself.

Doug felt the tendrils of fatigue wrapping around his mind, the fallout of an adrenaline rush; heaved a sigh of numb accomplishment.

My work is done here.

Doug stepped up onto a desk and carefully scaled the metal ledges of the wall; hauled his numbing body into the gaping air shaft. Stood up, started walking again. Slowly, carefully. His energy had left him, his body becoming heavier and heavier with each second that passed.

He didn't know what to do next. Just knew that he was very, very tired. Needed his medication.

The Rat Man trekked farther and farther away from the file room, eyes fighting to stay open.

Wait, hope, pray.

It has to be her.