When Allan was thirteen, young and full of adventurous spirit, he was dared by two of his friends to crawl into an old abandoned mineshaft. He quickly accepted and soon enough found himself heading into the dark unknown.
The small Pennsylvanian town he grew up in was once a large Pennsylvanian city, blooming and prosperous with the deep coal mines that it was built around. His grandfather, in fact, was a miner - possibly where his interest in the shafts was inherited from. They were littered all over the city - secretive, dark tunnels that wound into the earth and held hidden treasures. At least that is how young Allan interpreted them. So when the opportunity arose to not only explore one, but also look fearless in front of two of his buddies, he jumped into the situation head first.
The tunnel's ceiling had slouched low from years of abandonment, forcing him to crawl his way into the dark on his hands and knees. When he arrived inside, a cool, forgotten air greeted him along with a damp smell that could only be described as used. His little knees banged over clumps of rock as he made his way, tiny bugs scurrying away from his hands as they searched through the blackness for foundation. The adventurous adrenaline, however, had been wearing off the further along he wnet, and after a few minutes of heading into the abyss, when he turned around to see the entrance of the tunnel in which he came from, the pin-sized speck of light he saw made his throat go tight and his heart skip a beat. His adventure was over, he'd had enough. He tried to turn around, but the narrowed walls which had been (unknown to him) shrinking in on him as he went along wouldn't allow it. He banged his elbow off the side of the wall and felt a sharp pain wring out from it as little clumps of dirt fell away from the impact spot. He almost screamed then, but managed to keep it in by biting his lip. Up ahead a noise scurried across his path in the blackness, and Allan's lip-biting trick failed him as he let out a shrill cry of fear. His own voice was thrown away into the dark, and instead of an echo, he was met with a flat, resounding silence that was somehow more terrifying than anything. Working with the adrenaline-fueled speed that only a boy's fear can produce, he began backing his way out. As he did so, the thought kept coming to him that the tunnel had somehow closed its mouth. Had somehow swallowed him, and that there would be no entrance to crawl out of when he arrived - just a row of sharp, interlaced teeth that only let foolish little boys in, but never back out again.
And then air was on his back - fresh air - and the refreshing, although blinding, sun was meeting him as he backed his way out into freedom. He stole one last glimpse into the narrow mouth of the mineshaft and then-
--
-Ten years later and he was staring down the ventilation shaft of the Aperture Science facility, and the whole thing felt eerily similar to him. Despite that, he moved along.
Down in his room, and in the halls, and even in the testing chamber, things were - in a word - clean. They were polished. They had a cold, slick elegance to them that fit perfectly with Glados' relentlessly calculated voice. Up here, in the shaft, the mood was painted a different color. The shaft was small and borderline claustrophobic (causing him to relive his mineshaft adventure from his childhood) and had a dusty, un-maintained feel to it. There was dirt on the floor and walls. There were cobwebs clinging to corners, and twice already he'd had to swipe a big one out of his way to continue on. Whoever had been maintaining the rooms below had utterly neglected this place, like the messy closet he'd had back home. It was a forgotten tunnel, Allan thought, and if it was anything like the mineshafts from back home, he wanted out of it. Fast.
It'd been five minutes since he'd last heard Glados' voice, and he was certainly thankful for that, but her last word still clung to his memory like a burn mark. She had called out to him by his name, and she sounded more human then ever when she did. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad one, and decided it was best not to think about it either way. He was here now, in the shaft, and he was moving on against Glados' will. It felt… liberating.
Strangely, after over five minutes of crawling, he hadn't seen another opening in the shaft. There was dim light coming from small slits in the ceiling, but they were so slim and spaced apart he couldn't make out what was behind them.
An idea hit him, and suddenly he felt very foolish very quickly. He stared at the floor of the shaft for a moment thinking it over and then dug his hand into his jumpsuit. He fished out the x-ray glasses and twirled them around in his fingers. Looking back the way he came, he tucked them onto the bridge of his nose and - low-and-behold he had been right!
There had been no turns since he began his long crawl, and now, looking back, he could see his path was dotted every fifty feet or so with a grate in the floor - hidden to the human eye, but very visible to the x-ray eye. He looked back ahead of him and there were more. He realized how dumb he had been to not even give it a seconds thought when his knees were passing over them and he felt a strange shift in the texture of the floor. They were there though, and now he had to make a decision. Forward or backwards.
Ahead of him would put more space between himself and the little room from which he came. Inside that little room was a very large, very ominous presence he referred to as Glados. Any inch he moved away from her was an inch well traveled. But if the little theory he'd came up with when he first entered the vent was correct, it would only be right to go back the way he came.
He figured if Madison and Rick had been subjects 33106 and 33108 (which he distinctly remembered Glados calling them when she was opening and closing communications with them in the test chamber) and he was 33107, it didn't take an Aperture scientist to do the math and place them in rooms next to his own. That meant the girl, Madison, would only be two or three grates back.
He glanced forwards.
He looked backwards.
He started heading back.
The first grate he came upon he looked down into and saw nothing but blackness. There were no lights at all, and a familiar, cool, forgotten air seemed to be stirring around from below, lingering just above the surface of the grating. Allan stuck his fingers into it and leaned forward to see if he could make anything out below. The grate creaked and then gave out, rusty edges bending inwards and sending the little square tumbling into the blackness. Allan moved past the hole quickly, shaking off the funny feeling he had gotten from staring down there.
After a little more crawling, he'd made his way to the next grate in the floor. Looking down into the room below was like staring at a carbon-copy of the room he had made his daring escape from; a white bed, some white walls - same old story. No humans in sight. He sighed and looked ahead of himself in the vent. The next grate would be his own, and if he meant to check the room on the other side of his, he'd have to pass over it.
The sound of a sniffle traveled up to him from the room below. He leaned forward and pressed his face to the grate. In the corner of the room, sitting on a chair and appearing to be crying, was Madison.
"Madison!" He said more to himself than anything, thrilled to find another person that was seeming to share the exact same predicament he was. Just another lab rat in a cage.
In the room below, a look of shock fell across her face as she lifted her head towards his direction. Her eyes were red and watery and a little dark around the edges, her hair was a sloppy, tangled mess, and she was wearing quite possibly the world's ugliest orange jumpsuit, but he still thought she was one of the prettiest girls he'd ever seen.
"H-Hello?" Her voice finally broke the silence as it floated up to him - raspy and small and almost definitely scared.
"Hello," A voice answered, but not his. It was Glados'. Allan nearly answered he was so used to having to, until he realized she was talking to Madison. "What do you need subject 33106?"
"I… I thought… nothing." She answered, and there was so much sadness in the way she said 'nothing' that Allan thought she was in much worse shape than he was. Maybe he had been handling the whole situation better than he'd originally thought.
His thoughts fell back to Madison and how sad she looked and sounded, and all of a sudden he felt a surge of anger. It never ceased to amaze him how good an emotion - a real emotion - could feel in this place. He clenched his fists and tightened his jaw. This was all her fault - Glados' - and it made him furious that she wasn't even a thing. Nothing to focus your anger at. No face. No idea. Just a voice. A voice and a well-designed building with spacey technology and a clean-as-a-whistle interior and stupid invisible walls that hid stupid invisible cameras.
Without another thought. He leaned forward, sunk his fingers between the bars of the grate and thrust his weight down onto it. A sound like a cork coming unplugged exploded in his ears and then he was hanging upside down in the room below. He held the grate tight in his fists as he spotted out the camera within the wall, and without a moments hesitation, he swung the metal square at it with everything he had. The camera rocked off it's hinges and then some thin cables and bars snapped free as it banged off the side of the wall and rolled down onto the floor of the room.
"View obstructed. Vital testing apparatus destroyed," Glados' voice came - proper and emotionless.
The momentum of Allan's swing had taken his body a bit too far over the edge, and he felt his weight shifting off the side of the ventilation shaft's floor. He twisted his body to try and grab it, but just as he did he slipped off and came crashing down into the room. His knee banged off the downed camera.
"Shit!" He howled, grabbing his knee as he tried standing up to walk off the minor injury.
Before he could get to a stand though, he felt a sting of pain in his back and crashed back down to the floor.
"Ah!" He cried out, landing with his hands beneath his chest. He spun around to see that the source of the pain was Madison hovering over him with a chair in her hands.
"What!? Wh-Why did you do that!?" He pleaded, flipping onto his stomach and putting his hands up in a defensive position.
"Call it off! I'm done with this place! I want to go home!" Madison shouted at him, threatening to bring the chair down on him after every sentence.
"What? What are you talking about!? I'm stuck here the same as you, I swear!"
"That's crap!" She told him, edging closer. "I saw you. I remember you. You were working here when I showed up my first day."
She was saying so many confusing things he couldn't even comprehend the situation as real.
"I…" He struggled to find words but didn't have to because Madison brought the chair down at him. He jerked back and the legs of it slammed off the ground before him.
"I want to go home!" She cried out. Her voice cracked and her eyes looked like they were ready to burst with tears for a moment, but then the look was replaced with more anger and she edged even closer to him. "Let me GO!"
"I-I… I just DON'T KNOW what your TALKING about!" He yelled and threw his hands up. "OK!? Really! I don't know WHY you're here or WHO you are! I swear!"
Her sky-blue eyes searched his as she examined him.
"No… I saw you. I'm positive it was you."
"I'm Allan, that's all. I'm the guy that was behind the glass wall in that testing chamber. The one who threw you the glasses? You recognize my voice? That was me! Why would I have been down there if I was working here!?" He explained, seeing the hostile look slowly fade from her eyes into a more confused one.
"It can't be. Unless…" She said with a low, thoughtful tone as she lowered her head. When she raised it back and her eyes met his, she had a distinct look of understanding on her face. "So you're saying you woke up here? No clue how you got here?"
"Yes! That's exactly what I'm saying!"
"And you don't remember anything that happened before you woke up here? Like… about your life?"
"Well…" He began, thinking it over. "Not exactly. I know where I grew up. I can remember my parents… their names and faces… I know I was going to a community college in Pennsylvania. I… I don't remember how I got here though. Thing have been sort of just coming to me, you know? Like popping in every now and then, slowly piecing my life together."
As he spoke, he watched the anger finally and completely dissipate from Madison's face. Instead she just gazed at him sympathetically.
"If you're telling the truth, which… I think you are, then the same thing is happening to you that happened to me."
"That's what I've been saying!"
"I'm… sorry," She said, and put the chair down. Allan breathed a sigh of relief. "I think you signed a contract."
"A contract?" He repeated confused. But just as he said the word, an image flashed into his head. He could see his own arm resting on a table. His hand held a pen, and beneath it was a white sheet of paper with black writing all over it. "A contract…" He mumbled and rubbed the side of his temple.
"Alien presence detected in relaxation chamber. Vital testing apparatus destroyed. Deploying Mobile Armed Turret," Glados' voice rang out. "Please lie face down and place your hands out to your sides while the procedure is taking place."
Allan looked up at Madison in a confused fear as to what-the-hell Glados just said. Madison was staring back at him with the same, wide-eyed look.
"What do we do?" She asked him and rushed over to his side.
Her hands came down in front of him and he took them to leverage himself as he stood up. They were small and cold, but he was thankful for some human contact.
"I really am sorry," She told him sincerely when he was standing. Her hands were still in his and she was staring up at him.
"Uh, yea." He said nervously and pulled away from her. "No permanent damage I guess."
"What do we do?" She asked.
"I need to know what you know. I need to know… why I'm here." He said, pacing around the corner of the room, rubbing his back with his hand.
A screeching noise came thundering through the walls of the room, and then another sound began - one that sounded like a bowling ball being slowly rolled down an alley. They both froze in the room, subconsciously watching each other, but really just listening. The sound was growing - snowballing - and getting closer.
"I think… maybe we should leave this room." Allan said nodding.
"I think you're right." Madison agreed, swallowing a lump in her throat. "How did you get through the wall?"
"The wall? Oh the… the vent shaft. It's… here." He picked the x-ray glasses off the floor and handed them to her. "These show you things that aren't there. Like x-ray glasses."
"This is what you tried throwing me in that testing chamber?" She said and took them. She studied them for a moment before placing them on the bridge of her nose.
"Yea… I guess it wasn't the best throw then, huh?"
"Oh wow." She said, impressed.
The sound of the bowling ball was almost on top of them.
"Come on, I'll boost you up." He said with some urgency in his voice and walked beneath the hole. "I don't know about you but I don't want to meet a Mobile Armed Turret."
She took a deep breath and nodded her head.
Allan laced his fingers and leaned forward. She walked up to him and stopped.
"How will you get up?"
"I'll use the chair, come on. Hurry."
She bit her lip and nodded before stepping into his hands. He lifted up as she jumped up and then he was watching the lower half of her body disappear into the ceiling above. It looked bizarre without the glasses on, like a gateway to another dimension. Like a Portal.
He turned to get the chair before Madison called to him.
"Here." She said and then the glasses came dropping down to him. He managed to catch them, tucking them onto his nose.
Allan grabbed the chair and set it up beneath the hole, but ran into a large problem.
The bowling ball was coming down the hallway outside the room.
"Oh no." He muttered and tilted the chair back to look at it.
"What?" Madison's voice came from above.
"Chair's broken. You must've chipped one of the legs when you were taking batting practice at me." He said and put his hand to his forehead.
"It won't stand?"
"Well… maybe I can get it to balance long enough to-
The panel of wall in the corner of the room slid open. Allan spun around and came face to face with a giant egg.
The egg was about the size of a small boy. It was as white as the walls of the room if not whiter, and it had funny looking compartments on it that reminded Allan of the old patches he used to have his mom sew onto his book bag. It rolled into the room and stopped just inside. Allan stared at it and listened as little gadget-like noises came whispering from it's inside.
"Allan, come on." Madison's voice fell down to him with urgency.
He shook his head to get rid of the dazed surprise and got back to the task of getting the chair to stand up.
The sound of things opening caused him to look back, and what he saw was no longer an egg. It was a Mobile Armed Turret. A MAT. Three legs had sprouted out from beneath it - two in the front and a longer one in the back for balance. In the middle of it's 'face' a single circle had began to glow red. He stared into it, and then a laser
("Somewheeeeere over the rainbow.")
was staring him down. It hit him in the eyes and he lifted a hand to shield himself from it.
"Target acquired." A voice came from it. The voice was innocent, practically child-like, and seemed to almost be singing the words instead of saying them. It was also robotic and strange… like Glados'.
"Target?" Allan echoed.
The MAT's side panels popped out and revealed double-barrel gun nozzles on either side of it.
"Target!" Allan yelled in panic.
He spun around and propped the chair up the best he could. He planted one foot on it and leapt upwards, instantly feeling the chair give out and collapse under it's odd, broken structure.
"I see you." The little egg-shaped killer stated cheerily.
Allan's hand came up just shy of the ceiling, but Madison's came jutting out and grabbed it. He gripped her hands with his and was able to buy enough leverage to swing his other arm up and into the shaft.
An explosion of gunfire rang out from the room as the MAT unloaded at him.
He yanked his body and legs up into the shaft as bullets ripped into the wall behind him.
"GO!!" He yelled when he was inside of the ventilation shaft. Madison's smaller physique was able to spin within the tight walls and then she was off crawling as fast as she could. Allan stuck close behind her.
Bullets tore into the walls of the shaft, nipping at Allan's heels as he made his way.
Suddenly he remembered what direction they were going.
"Wait… Madison stop." He called up to her, but it was too late.
She fell into the exposed hole in the shaft he'd made earlier by dropping the grate down.
"Madison!" He cried out to her as he crawled to the edge of the hole.
He heard her groan from below.
"You ok?" He questioned.
No response.
Before when he'd passed the hole, he'd had a funny feeling about it. About the smell and look and temperature of it. He couldn't pinpoint it before but he knew why he'd felt that way now. The hole was the mineshaft from all those years ago. It was the Pennsylvania mineshaft that was long and dark and deep and mysterious. Mysterious and cold. His buddies weren't around to watch his brave move this time though. He hopped down into it, and as he did so he thought of hopping into a big mouth with sharp teeth that let little foolish boys in but never back out again.
