Author's Note: There has also been a small update in Chapter 3. Not anything big, mostly grammar and the substitution of words to improve the flow of the text.
A smile crept on Chell's face as she turned to go through the door. She passed through the emancipation grid and entered in the elevator which, for her surprise, did not take her to another test room, but to GLaDOS chamber.
"Stop testing so soon? Why? It was so fun!" the girl said, with a smirk.
"Shut it. I must have lost the testing euphoria resistance I used to have. Not to be worried. I am sure it will grow back up in no time."
"Yeah, sure. When you need me to masturbate you again you just need to say and I will do it."
"What part of 'shut it' has your damaged brain failed to understand?"
"Back with the insults, huh? Anyway, what are we doing now?" the girl said, placing her portal gun on the appropriate pedestal.
"While you were completing the test I reallocated the old dormitory so that it would be nearer." she said pointing to a door. "You may now rest until tomorrow."
"Great. Do we have something to eat? I am starving." Chell said, foreseeing fat jokes.
"Yes, I did remember about your excessive need for food. It is quite difficult to forget it when your fat occupies a fourth of my camera's vision."
Chell just sighed.
GLaDOS gave her instructions on how to get to the kitchen and the food storage area. Even though the huge machine wasn't following her through the corridors, since she was unable to move from the ceiling, she knew that the AI was following her every step through the cameras. After a small walk she reached the place where the food was kept. The place was filled with canned beans.
"Canned beans? That is all there is to eat?"
"Don't be ungrateful." Came the voice from the speakers "These beans were created in Aperture and are filled with a special single celled protein combined with synthetic amino acids, vitamins and minerals. They were made to last thousands of years and contain all the nutrients your body needs to survive."
She supposed she could stand those beans for a while, but she would have to find another source of food soon. She had eaten those once. While they were not bad, they weren't good either. But that problem she would solve another time. She grabbed a can and headed for the kitchen.
The place looked like something from a spaceship. I mean, even more than the rest of Aperture. As clean and white as the rest of the facility, but different somehow. If she hadn't been told that it was a kitchen, she would have thought it was some kind of lab. Why the hell did they even had an oven there if the only thing to eat was canned beans?
As she waited for her food to heat, she sighed. Things were starting to sink in. She really was back, wasn't she? The smell of cleanness and plastic and metal. The sterilization of the place. The white walls that once held her captive and now gave her a home. The omnipotent homicidal AI that ruled this place, one which she had grown fond of. The device that was able to bend the laws of physics with the click of a button…
Her Companion Cube. She wondered what had happened to it. Had it stayed on the middle of that wheat field where she had dropped it or had GLaDOS picked it up?
She grabbed her beans and headed to the dormitory. Those things didn't taste that bad after all. Or she was just really hungry. She didn't really care. She sat on her bed and finished eating her food, thinking about what her life had been in that last year and about what it would become.
She threw the can in the trash, went into the small bathroom near the bedroom. There she found a toothbrush and other personal hygiene products. Oh, how long had it been since she had taken a warm shower? She turned on the hot water flux and let it fall on her naked body. When she came out, a new set of clothes was waiting for her. That intimidated her a little. Had the AI been spying on her the whole time?
She finished doing what she had to do in the bathroom and went back to her room. "Her room" was a bit of an understatement, since this place had been made to hold about ten people in five bunk beds. She chose the bottom bed nearest to the door and put herself to sleep.
Or at least she tried. She turned in bed for a while. There was something bothering her, but she couldn't figure out what. It took her a couple of minutes to notice the camera in the corner of the room, watching her. She got up, picked a blanket from one of the other beds and placed it over the equipment. There, problem solved. She went back to bed and slept like she hadn't slept in years.
She watched over the subject as she made her food, brushed her teeth and went to bed. She also watched as the test subject got up from her bed and covered the camera she had placed in the bedroom. No problem, she just had to move to the hidden camera she had put in the room. She knew the test subject was going to block the main camera, so she had taken appropriate measures to ensure Chell's observation.
Not that she had been looking her sleep for the last three hours or anything. It was purely in the interest of science, of course. Just checking if she wasn't having any adverse reactions from the surge of Adrenal vapors in her system. Yes. That was the reason. Also, she had to think about a way to make her pay for that little stunt she had pulled earlier that day. Her revenge would take a few days to be complete, but it would be sweet nonetheless.
GLaDOS "awoke" Blue and Orange. She had work for them. While she had control of a big part of Aperture, the old parts of the facility were unknown to her. The amount of raw data that was lost in that place was huge and the AI could not allow it to remain lost. It all had to be cataloged and put in her databases. But there was a certain piece of information that she was looking for specifically, one of special importance to her. One that she could not allow Chell to see, at least not before her. So she had to take some measures.
She started to draw the diagrams. It would take a few days, sure, but it would make her life a lot easier. The possibilities were endless. Why hadn't she thought about this earlier?
While it wasn't ready though, she would have to use the human.
Chell awoke the next morning feeling well. Way better than she had felt out there. Not that she could look at the sun and say that it was morning. The clock by her bedside was the only way of knowing how much time had passed.
She went to the storage area and grabbed a few cans for the next days. In the kitchen she heated one of them and ate it. Those things were terrible for breakfast. She could stand them in lunch and at dinner, but she would definitely have to find a way to get some bread for the morning.
She entered the main chamber and discovered two little bots in there, carrying a few materials that did not look Apertureish in the least. She had seen them before, one and a half years ago. One with a blue optic, the other with an orange one.
"Atlas… P-Body…" She read on their sides. Their names?
"Blue, Orange, have you got everything I asked? Oh, good, you are awake. It is amazing how much idle time your species needs to function."
"Yeah. If we had some coffee over here I wouldn't sleep so much. And bread too. There is no way I am going to eat that crap for breakfast every morning. Anyway, what are we doing today?"
"Today you are going down on me."
"What?" she was not sure she had heard that right.
"I am Aperture, as you know. The parts far down are also me, and there are things in the depths of the Old Aperture Science that I need. So today you are going back down the shafts of Aperture."
"Oh" she had been scared there… just a little.
"I am pretty sure I have tracked one of the many documents storage areas there and I need to start joining the knowledge from there with my databases. It appears that it concerns other old and abandoned projects, which I have much interest on."
"Ok… where do I start?"
While she guided the woman through her preparation, GLaDOS couldn't help but silently chuckle at the memory of the face the human had made a few seconds ago. It had been a crude joke, surely, but it had got one of the best reactions that human had ever shown her.