Author's Note: Hello, everybody! I'm back from my holiday, and I have lots of writing for you. Three chapters, even. The first two are of my usual, average length. The third chapter, however, is HUUUUUUGE. It's 36 pages long in my word processor. That's longer than the final year project I wrote whilst I was still at university. Blimey :o . Oh, and the third chapter also has repeated use of the big "F" word. Just a quick heads up warning in case the word offends anybody, in which case I can only apologise.

I have decided to put up all of the chapter edits in one fowl swoop, because it means that it will all be done and out of the way with in one go. I'll let you all know when this happens, in case anybody wants to read the updates :) .

So, please enjoy :3 . It's all going to kick off soon enough!

Chapter Thirty-Four

The Runaway

'Alright, I've been thinking.'

Chell watched from the filing cabinet behind which she was hiding. She had followed her father to one of the observation rooms, just in case he needed any help, but he had, thus far, remained unaware that she had been shadowing him. He had almost fallen into his chair, holding onto his recording equipment with trembling hands.

Chell could see the Test Subject in the sphere below. They were wearing a white hazardous materials suit, which was now mandatory clothing for all of those working with and testing the Conversion Gel. Upon hearing her father's voice, the Test Subject had stopped and looked up to the booth.

The image of her father bent over his desk, with his head in one hand and the Dictaphone in the other, breathing heavily and shaking, absolutely terrified her. Couple these with his sickly face, the worrying weight loss and his now skeletal frame, his constant coughing fits that produced flecks of blood, and it all pointed to one thing; her father was ill beyond words. Of course she needed to keep him in her line of sight - he needed someone to be there if something went wrong, and her mother was too busy trying to keep the facility in full working order.

She had no regrets about breaking out of school.

'When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade: make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons, what am I supposed to do with these!'

Chell flinched at the sound of her father's fury, his voice returning to its former volume and strength, though for how long she could not be sure. There was one thing that she was sure of; he wasn't giving out angry advice to his staff, advising them to not take the worst that life can give you. He was shouting down every single person who had ever told him he was nothing, those who had belittled him. He was raging against those who had told him to just accept his illness. In short, he was shouting at everyone. Everyone, except Chell and her mother.

'Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am?' The falter of his voice in the question - it was unmissable, and it scared Chell that the strength in his voice was giving out so quickly. 'I'm the man who's going to burn your house down! With the lemons! I'm going to get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon, that burns your house down!'

And then he started coughing, and Chell considered diving out of her hiding spot to help him as he lay his head down upon the table, trying in vain to catch his breath. But then his head snapped back up with an almost dizzying speed, and Chell was genuinely surprised that he had not hurt himself in the process. With a quick, shuddering breath away from the equipment, he continued, his voice weakened once again.

'The point is, if we can store music on a compact disc, why can't we store a man's intelligence and personality on one? So I have the engineers figuring that out now.'

Chell froze, completely stupefied. Why did she suddenly have an uncomfortable churning in the pit of her stomach, and why was she so suddenly sure that she would not be fond of the next few words to escape her father's lips?

'Brain mapping. Artificial intelligence. We should have been working on it...' He thought, briefly. 'Thirty years ago. I will say this, and I'm going to say it on tape so everybody hears it a hundred times a day; if I die before you people can pour me into a computer...'

'No. No, no, no...' Chell knew it. She knew that she wouldn't like it. Her daddy just couldn't be a computer – he couldn't! She wouldn't let him do this!

'… I want Caroline to run this place.' He coughed again, forcing out yet more flecks of blood. 'Now she'll argue. She'll say she can't. She's modest like that, but you make her!' More coughing, more blood. 'Hell, put her in my computer, I don't care.'

Chell wanted to scream. This was all ludicrous, and now he had offered her mother to the engineers? Was he really so sick that he would do that? Why? What would it achieve? She needed to get out of here; her head had gone into overdrive, her thoughts clouded with various emotions that she had never felt for her father before; anger, fear, and loathing were the most obvious, but the one underlying and prevalent emotion was shame. She was ashamed of him, and if she stayed here then this feeling would only grow and grow. She needed... she needed...

Air. She needed air. And space. And the sky. She needed to be as far away from this place as she possibly could. She needed to be somewhere safe.

'Alright, test's over. You can head on back to your desk.'

Now was her chance to make a break for it. To run, and run, and run...

If only she had left sooner, because her father would have been too busy to hear her scuffle to her feet. He wouldn't have turned to see her emerge from behind the filing cabinet and out of the room.

'Chell?' She heard him, but she didn't stop. Instead she flew down the walkway and into the waiting elevator, hammering the button to make the lift ascend. 'Chell! Kiddo, please... just hear me out a minute!' Chell turned around in time to see the shutters close her in, and beyond that her father. He looked mortified that she had overheard him.

'No.' She replied, as firm as could possibly be. And the lift carried her away, high above the ground of the Enrichment Centre and up towards the offices above. There were no labs near here, only offices, so that staff could return to their desks immediately after testing. Unless, of course, they were currently supposed to be doing some form of lab work. From here she made her way to the surface elevator, which took her the parking lot and the main foyer. Both overlooked the Academy from which Chell had escaped but an hour ago.

She should have stayed in school.

Darting past the security guards that gathered around her, Chell bounded through the numerous cars and aimed for the tree-strewn fields that lined the perimeters of the lot. Once in the trees she was able to loose the guards, making her way instead through a long golden field of wheat. So far, Chell had been unaware as to where it was that she was running, but as she saw the outline of the farmhouse grow in the distance she knew it was the only possible option. Of course her parents would come looking for her here, but if she hid... Well, Chell had always been the best at playing hide and seek.

There was a small opening in the foundations of the house that allowed her enough space to get inside, if she held her breath and did a lot of squirming. The sharp edges of the opening tore her skin and her skirt, and snagged at the wool of her jumper. At one point she thought that she were stuck, but managed to free herself and eventually made her way into the basement. She had just found the perfect box to hide inside, an old wooden container with a heavy lid and a few old holes that were perfect for letting her breath, concealed behind a mountain of other junk that had been discarded to the basement,when she heard a car pull up in the drive outside.

Chell froze, listening intently. Doors opened. Her mother spoke, calling out her name. At first, Chell considered going to her mother, to stop her from worrying about her, but then she heard her father's voice call for her too. She dived into the box instead, pulling the heavy lid over her.

The darkness was all consuming. It was only the few holes that allowed a little light to shine through, but it kept her safely hidden from the world outside. From here she listened as her parents came down the basement stairs, searching behind every box for her. She did not even dare to breath when they came anywhere near her, fearing that a single exhalation would betray her location. Eventually they left, never suspecting that she had been hiding under their noses the entire time.

Chell felt terrible for inflicting this kind of pain on her mother – she hadn't been the one to drive Chell to this insanity in the first place. But her father? He deserved this. He deserved to worry.

For two days Chell hid in the farmhouse, making her way around the rooms above. The scars left by the gap had become infected, but she had nothing to heal them as her family always brought medical supplies with them on the weekends. She returned to the box to sleep, fearing that someone might find her in the night. Her parents returned several times, hoping that she may have turned up there. The police had even accompanied them twice. Yet she remained hidden, refusing to end the torment that she had created.

And then one night, Chell fell to sleep in the box as usual, counting the holes in the sides to help her sleep and wondering just what she and Wheatley could use it for. A fort, maybe? It was cold and hard, and very lonely, much like a real fort would probably feel like. When she later woke, she felt comfortable. Something was enveloping her in a warm embrace. She became aware of a breath that wasn't hers, and then of another, more ragged and uneven breathing behind her. Something stroked her hair and, in panic, her eyes snapped open to find her mother's tired face looking back at her.

'Shh,' she cooed as Chell's breathing became rapid, 'it's okay. It's okay.'

They were in her parent's farmhouse bedroom, laid out on the bed. Her mother lay before her, holding one of Chell's hands in her own, whilst using the other to gently stroke her hair. Someone else lay behind her, and had wrapped their arms around her in such a way that Chell could never hope to escape. And she knew exactly who it was.

Her father coughed into his pillow. He did not wake, but his grip on her tightened as he caught a shuddering breath into his lungs.

In a flash of fury, Chell angled her leg to kick him. But her mother caught her foot before she could even think about going through with the plan. 'No.' She whispered, a tone of anger coating the word. 'Do not kick your father.'

'Monster.'

'What?' Her mother looked so confused. Did she not know what had happened? Did Chell really have to tell her mother everything? It seemed so, and so she began with the speech in the observation room, and then her father's plan to be put into a computer, along with his back-up plan to put her mother in the computer instead.

'That... is why he a monster. Not my daddy... no more.'

'Chell?' Her father's voice sounded hoarse.

Chell froze. Had he really been awake this whole time? Had his coughing fit really woken him up after all? And why should she even care – he deserved to hear the truth.

'Chell, I...' His voice broke, defeated. 'Please, kiddo, I...'

'Let go.'

'Sweethea...'

'LET GO!' Chell screamed, as loud as she possibly could, making her mother flinch and her father loosen his grip. Diving from the bed and out of the room, Chell returned to the basement to find that the mountain of junk that had been protecting her box had been moved. The box itself now lay revealed, the lid removed and discarded to the floor. How had they found her?

Her mother's voice told her all that she needed to know. 'You were crying in your sleep, sweetheart. That's how we found you.'

Chell said nothing, choosing instead to gaze sullenly at her former hiding spot.

'Have you been here the entire time?'

She nodded.

'Oh, Michelle...' Her mother sighed, but for what reason Chell did not know. 'We've been worried sick! How could you just run away like that?'

'I t-told... why! You... com...comp...'

'Daddy was joking, Michelle! He doesn't want me to be put inside a computer!'

'Did not sound like a j-joke.'

'Michelle, daddy would never do that to me. It was a joke, and I know that. The Test Subject in the room probably didn't, but I'll reassure them myself if I have to.'

Chell snorted, crossing her arms across her chest. She became all too aware that this was something that her father did when he was angry, and so she quickly unfolded her arms.

'Anything could have happened to you. Something did happen to you – look at those scars! And you look famished! What happened?'

Chell shrugged, choosing not to answer.

'You've got infected wounds, Michelle! They need to be cleaned. Soon!'

'No!' Chell screamed, turning on her mother. 'I doh... don't care!'

'Michelle! Get yourself up those stairs now!'

'No!'

'Why are you acting like this?'

''CAUSE IT MY FAULT!'

Chell had not meant to say that. She had meant to say it was because of her father, because he wanted to be a computer, because he had been cruel enough to joke about her mother being transformed into a computer. Why had she said that instead? But then the answer was obvious. Her father would not have decided on becoming a computer if she hadn't been the one to poison him. The computer business had just tipped her over the edge, and she was trying to find a scapegoat for the rage that she felt for herself. And that scapegoat had been her beloved daddy, the one who had protected her from the terrible fate that he now suffered.

She turned away from her mother and jumped into the box. There was no lid, but it made her feel a little safer. She had a space in which she could hide herself away, somewhere where she wouldn't be able to hurt people.

Hurt people. She had now not only hurt her father, in more ways than one, but she had hurt her mother too, by tormenting her for these past few days. Who else would she hurt? Wheatley? Aunt Sofia and Uncle Gregg?

Suddenly, she became all too aware that she was no longer wearing her Companion Cube charm. She must have torn it off in her anger and had never realised it. Oh God, what if she had lost it?

'M-my Cube... gone.' She choked, on the verge of tears. 'Lost it.'

'No you didn't, kiddo.'

Out of the corners of her blurred vision she could see her father's hands gently draping the charm back around her neck. He fastened it in place before moving into her line of sight, sitting on the edge of the box. Chell couldn't look at him, too ashamed as she was after everything she had done. 'We found it on the floor of the Enrichment Centre. Kept it with us since.'

Chell still couldn't look at him, even when her mother lifted her from the box and up the stairs to the living room. Chell simply flopped against her, resigned to fatigue and the burning sensation that had begun to prickle inside her. Her father followed them. He was wearing the same suit from two days ago. Her mother was wearing the same dress too. Had they even slept? Somehow she doubted it – the heavy bags under their eyes told her so.

She was carried upstairs to her parent's room, where her mother gently lay her down on the bed. Her parents looked at one another, and then at the multitude of scars left by her exploits in the opening. 'I'll have to go and get the stuff.' Her father whispered. 'We can't take her back in this state, it won't do her any good.'

Normally, Chell would have questioned the term "stuff", but right now she just could not find the energy to care. She only wanted her parents to be happy. If she had never been born, would they have been happy without her? What if they had had another child instead of her? She knew they would have been better – they wouldn't have run away, they wouldn't have failed at speech or writing, they wouldn't have poisoned daddy...

When she woke the sun was just about to rise. Birds sang beyond the window, and orange shadows were cast throughout the room. She was sat in her mother's lap, dressed in one of her thin nightgowns, whilst her father wiped a cloudy liquid into her now clean scars. With a vague sense of wonder, she watched through the slits of her drowsy eyelids as the scars simply vanished from her skin.

'She still got that fever?' Her father asked, taking particular care with one of the deeper gashes on her arm. Chell felt her mother gently press the back of her hand against her forehead. 'Yes. She's burning up, Cave. What do we do?'

'I honestly don't know.' He answered through a small cough, sounding utterly defeated. 'Clearly the infection's gone much deeper than the scars.'

'We have to take her to a hospital. Aperture's infirmary won't have any space left.'

'I don't care, Caroline. She's our daughter, she's getting in there whether the quacks like it or not!' He coughed again, leaning his head away from both wife and daughter. 'I don't care how many people need urgent skin grafts, Chell comes first.'

What had happened? Had something terrible happened in her absence? It sounded like it had.

'Mesa will be loving this.' Her father snarled as he tipped more of the strange concoction onto a cotton ball. 'Half of Aperture's warehouses go up in flames, just because some old Test Subject bears a grudge? They'll be laughing.'

'At least the fire didn't spread to the Borealis.'

'Yeah.' His answer was short and grim, as though his thoughts had clouded over with dark shadows. But then his voice softened as he began work on the scars of her hands. 'Oh God, if she'd been in there...'

'But she wasn't. She was here.'

'Yeah, all alone. Starving. Poor kid. I wish she hadn't overheard me.'

'We really should have told her sooner.' Her mother said in a soothing manner. 'But what's done is done. We've found her, and that's all that matters. Now we just need to get her to a doctor.'

'At Aperture.'

'At the nearest hospital, Cave.'

'Dammit, Caroline! I hire those guys for a reason!'

'I know – they're the best at what they do. But there's no room: we'll have to go to a hospital.' A hand was placed against her cheek. 'Cave, she's really burning up. We haven't got any other option.'

Chell no struggled to keep her eyes open. She knew that her father finished his work on her scars. She knew she was wrapped up gently in a blanket to protect her from the cool morning air. She knew that her father drove them to a hospital, whilst her mother sat with her on the backseat. She knew all of these things because she floated in and out of consciousness that often that she could put together a montage of her morning. She saw doctors and nurses, white washed walls, and caught the acrid stench of sterile cleanliness up her nose. She was prodded and poked, injected with a multitude of liquids, and had her temperature taken on more than one occasion. She even thought that she saw the blurred figure of a man watching her through the glass of a door. A man in a blue suit... A blue suit. Where had she seen a blue suit before?

For a while she could remember nothing. There was no montage of sights, sounds or smells. There was no confusion or fatigue. No Aperture fire. Her mother and father were gone. Then a light, too bright for her to feel comfortable to open her eyes. Instead she listened to the conversation happening above her.

'Why are you telling me to leave!'

'Please sir, I will call security...'

'Why?'

'Because you are being violent...'

'No, you idiot! Why are you trying to make me leave!'

'Because it's parents only, sir. No grandparents...'

'I'm her father, you stupid bastard!'

'Wow. Really?'

'Why you stupid, no-good excuse for a doctor... I've seen sub-species that are more useful than you! And I...'

Chell moaned, trying to get her father's attention. 'Da-ddy...'

'Chell?' His voice changed from loud and furious to quiet and calm at a breathtaking speed. She felt his hand gently rest against her head, his thumb stroking her temple. 'Chell, it's okay. I'm here. Shh. I'm here.'

'Daddy...' She wanted a hug. That was all she wanted. She wanted her daddy to give her a hug and to read her a story, and she wanted her mommy to kiss her and sing to her to sleep. A real sleep, not this drug-addled stupor that she had woken from, one that made her feel more tired than she should have been. She felt pathetic.

Chell felt a kiss plant itself gently on her forehead. 'Shh, kiddo. Get some rest, okay?'

'Doh... lea...' She could barely get her words out, with each one dying into a breath. Yet somehow, her father knew what she was trying to ask. 'I won't leave you kiddo, not until mommy gets back from the cafeteria. She's bringing you some chocolate, isn't that great?'

The doctor cleared his throat. 'Actually, Mr Johnson, the worst thing for her right now is choc...'

'Shut it, you!' But shouting only made him cough, and clearly the doctor had seen the blood that he always managed to catch in his hand.

'Sir, you're coughing up bloo...'

'I said shut it!'

'But...'

'No! I have doctors – real doctors – who have been looking after me at my facility! I don't need your incapability!'

The doctor, it seemed, suddenly realised just who he was speaking to. 'You're not... Cave Johnson?'

'Congratulations. Your I.Q is better than that of plankton. Get you and your sorry ass out of here! And while you're at it, I'd say you can take that phony medical degree down from your wall because I'll be talking to your manager, pal!'

Chell phased out once again, managing to hold her father's hand before she fell back to sleep. When she next woke it was her mother who sat in her father's place. 'How are you feeling, sweetheart?'

She felt better. She definitely wasn't groggy anymore, but she was tired. She ached all over, and she was so beyond hungry that even her stomach had decided to give up on telling her just how famished she was. And so Chell nodded. 'Feel okay.'

'Oh, thank God. You had us both worried, sweetheart.'

They sat in silence for a long period of time, and her mother slowly fed her the chocolate that had been expressly forbidden by the doctor. When Chell was half-way through the bar, she asked where her father was. 'He had to go back to Aperture, sweetheart. There was an... incident.'

'Fire?'

Her mother simply blinked. 'You heard us, didn't you?'

Chell replied with a curt nod.

'Yes. It's the fire. Daddy has to try and fix the problem, but he'll be back later.'

'Are p-peep-al okay?' She could already tell what the answer was, just by looking at the expression on her mother's face. 'How many?'

'Eleven people, sweetheart. All gone to Heaven now. And there are others who are badly hurt, so we need to be strong and pray for them.'

'And strong for daddy.'

Her mother smiled. 'And for daddy.'

Hours passed in which her mother was constantly pushed out of the room so the doctor's could prod and poke at Chell some more, but towards the end of the day her mother returned with her father in tow. She could tell that his smile was forced, but she appreciated it none the less. 'Hey, kiddo. How are you feeling now?'

'Better. Go home?'

'Yeah, we're going home tonight, sweetheart. I promise.'

And they did. Not to Aperture, but to the farmhouse. The doctors had tried to stop them taking Chell, but nobody stopped Cave Johnson. Not when another doctor had been accused of misconduct by the same scientific mogul.

Once they were back at the farmhouse, Chell was wrapped up in the thickest and most fluffy blankets she had ever seen. Her mother got her to eat as much as she could, whilst her father made her a hot chocolate – one of Chell's favourites, and the one thing that she simply refused if anyone other than her father created it, just like her mother's cakes; no one could bake a cake like her mom. After they had got food and drink into her system, Chell was put to bed and guarded by her parents, who took turns to stay awake and watch her just in case she had a relapse into the fever.

Chell had woken once to find her mother holding tightly onto her hand, but this period of wakefulness was short lived. When she next woke she found that it was her father who now took his place by her side. She sneezed, alerting her father to her sleepy, but awake, state. 'Bless you.' He said, rearranging the blankets that had moved out of place when she sneezed. Chell curled into them, trying to find a little extra warmth and somehow managed to find her father's hand as well. When her father returned the gentle grip on her fingers his face curled into a look of suppressed concern.

'You're a little cold, kiddo. I'll get you another blanket.'

'No. Stay.'

He did as she asked, but tucked the sheets under her in a matter of compensation. 'There. Any better?'

Chell nodded. It was a lie, but it made him relax just enough for his facial muscles to ease back into their regular state.

They sat in silence, while Chell tried desperately hard to not shake. Her father simply held her hand in his. He coughed at regular intervals, but hid the flecks of blood with his tissue in the hopes that Chell would not notice. It was too late for that – she had noticed it a long time ago.

She wanted to sleep, but there was a pressing issue that now weighed heavily on her mind, and which prevented any form of sleep whilst it remained unresolved. She had been too ill or too preoccupied for it to have bothered her before, but now that she knew her mother was not going to become a computer, and that the worst of her fever had passed, the issue of her father becoming a machine plagued her mind with worried thoughts.

'Daddy,' she whispered, just loud enough for him to hear her, 'do not be a com... ter.'

He could only stare at her in sympathy. 'Chell, I have to.'

'Please.'

'It's the only way that I can stay around, Chell.'

'But med...sen.'

'Chell, kiddo, I... I need to talk to you.'

Why? Was she in trouble? It wouldn't have surprised her, given the circumstances.

'I... I...' He seemed to be struggling for words. Gulping down the lump in his throat he continued. 'Chell, I'm not going to be around forever. In fact, well, not for much longer.'

'Daddy?' Chell already knew what he was trying to say, and she shook her head in disbelief. He knew that she had already figured it out, her burgeoning tears told him that, and so he lay down next to her, pulling her into a hug.

'This is why I've got to do this, sweetheart. If I don't, I won't be around anymore. And I don't want to leave you and mommy here alone. I can't leave you.'

Chell could say nothing. Even her tears were close to silence. Instead she sobbed into his shirt, refusing to let him go just in case he vanished into thin air. She heard him coo to her, she felt the kiss that he gently lay on her forehead, but neither of these quelled her distress. 'Do not die, daddy. Please...'

'Hey now. Shh.' He whispered, starting a rocking motion to help lull Chell into some kind of peace. 'It's okay. I'll still be here...'

'W-what if not?'

He thought for a moment, though the rocking motion continued. When he spoke, it was with a great amount of determination. 'If it doesn't work, if something goes wrong, I need you to be strong. You need to be strong, Chell. Like metal. Like... like...titanium. You need to be like titanium. Mommy will need you, and you will need mommy. Don't loose each other. And remember: titanium.'

'Ti...tay... nee... um.' She tested the word through her sobs. She rather liked the term.

'Yeah. Titanium.' He smiled. 'But for now we'll keep going until my plan works. I'll make sure that it does, so I'll still be here for both of you.'

'No lemons?'

'No.' He chuckled, something that put Chell at ease. If he was so confident that he would survive, then Chell could see no reason to argue with him. 'No lemons. What will we do with the lemons?'

'Throw them back at l-life!'

'Yeah we will!' His enthusiasm earned him a coughing fit, and Chell clung onto his shirt until it was over. He fought for breath, and Chell fell into silence so that he would too. Once he had relaxed, Chell asked him just who the Test Subject had been on the day of his recording – she would find out for her mother, so that she could put them straight. Chell was horrified to learn that the Test Subject had been Lucian Johnson, and this fresh horror forced her into silence.

Silence led to drowsiness, and drowsiness led to her eyelids growing heavy. Eventually, she forgot to care about Lucian Johnson. Instead she thought about the lemons that life had given to her daddy, and she decided that they would throw the lemons - in all their flaming glory - into life's back yard. Together.

As she fell into a comfortable sleep, Chell heard her father's voice next to her, repeating the words that her mother so often sang to her at night. He was actually singing for her. 'Que Sera Sera, whatever will be, will be. The future's not ours to see...' But then his voice broke off into his regular speaking tone. 'Well, if we could see into the future, that would be witchcraft. And I'll have none of that paranormal bullcrap...'

'Daddy.'

'Right. Sorry.' He gave her a gentle squeeze. Chell tried to burn the memory of the sensation into her brain – he wouldn't be able to do this when he was a computer. He wouldn't be able to do a lot of things when he was a computer. But, she supposed, with a bitter sense of resignation, that to become a computer was her father's only chance to survive. She would just have to become accustomed to it. Above her, her father's voice sang once again. 'Que Sera Sera, whatever will be, will be. The future's not ours to see. Que Sera Sera: what will be, will be.'

It wasn't long until Chell fell to sleep, plagued with dreams in which her mother was throwing flaming lemons at Lucian Johnson's head, and behind them there was a great, vast computer that spoke with her father's voice...

Her father's voice...

'Chell!' She had to think. Was that her father? Had the upload been successful? No, it hadn't. It had never happened. She would have remembered if it had. It was just a memory, and the voice was fading in and out of existence all too quickly for her to be sure if it even was her father. 'Wa... ke up, kid... You... ne... get... here.'

Colours swam as she opened her eyes. Lights blurred into one, collective source of illumination.

'Che... ll! Get... now..!'

She felt a hand rub gingerly at her aching temples, and with a slow and addled process of elimination, she came to the realisation that the hand was her own. But gone were the bandages that she wore around her wrists and hands. Gone, too, were her Long Fall Boots. Her hair was no longer in a ponytail as it lay freely around her shoulders. And Wheatley... Wheatley...

'Wheatley!'

She sat up all too quickly. The sensation of vomit rising in her throat was immediate, and she instinctively moved to the side so that she hacked up the bile onto the floor, rather than herself. Her throat stung and her eyes watered as each new wave of rising fluids forced her body into a tighter ball, trying in vain to make the stomach cramps end. Her hand slipped, and she almost fell with it from the mattress that she had been laid upon.

A mattress. Why was there a mattress? And why was she a bright orange? The fabric that she wore was all too familiar, like the touch of an old friend. As her vision cleared, and she wiped the tears from her eyes, she could see why. She was in a jumpsuit. An Aperture jumpsuit. And the white walls that surrounded her, filled with the pungent smell of surgical spirit and adorned with a framed painting or two, were the walls of a private Aperture medical bay. The logo imprinted into the bedside table beside her confirmed her suspicions. She was home.

But how?

She remembered walking. The rain. The field. Something about her mother and Companion Cubes. And then nothing. Now she was in Aperture. Had Wheatley brought her here? If so, then where was he? She had to find him. She had to see him.

She had to make sure that he was safe.

Carefully, Chell swung her legs over the side of the bed that did not have a pile of vomit upon the floor, and stopped when her naked feet touched the linoleum. She had to breathe before she could do anything else, and there was an odd prickling sensation at the base of her skull that she found to be deeply unsettling. She ran her fingers across the surface, finding an odd scar beneath her fingertips. 'What in Hell is that?' She wondered, taking her fingers away to check for blood. They were bone dry.

With deep breaths Chell took her first few unsteady steps towards the door, feeling her sense of unease grow. Her gut told her that there was something amiss, but she could not be sure just what this was. Why had she heard someone who had sounded exactly like her father? What had happened to the back of her head? And where was Wheatley?

Chell began to panic.

And then she heard her father again, but this time in memory. 'And remember: titanium.' Titanium. How could she have ever forgotten that he had told her to be like that particular metal? Yes. She was titanium. She was, as her mother had called her, a bird. She was a titanium magpie; one of a kind, and more than capable of survival.

She could do this.

With forced steps she reached the door, her hand fumbling with the handle until she was able to pull the door ajar. Slipping out into the corridor beyond, she cast her eyes left and right, searching for any sign of him. There was no one. Not even the cameras twitched as she emerged.

Cameras. GLaDOS. 'Oh God.' Her mother was still trapped within that monster! Could she see her now, even without the cameras that could, to all intents and purposes, be playing dead? Was GLaDOS plotting some terrible scheme right now, with her mother powerless to do anything about it? It wouldn't have surprised her – GLaDOS was nothing if not deceitful. Chell knew that she would just have to be careful, to not do anything that would antagonise the insane computer until she knew how to rescue her mother.

And she still had to find Wheatley. Hopefully, this task would not be too daunting. She would make sure that she would find him, even if she had to search the entire facility to do it, and to do so she would start with this corridor and the adjoining rooms.

As luck would have it, she found him in the room two doors down from hers. Chell was relieved, if not a little disappointed that she did not have to search the facility for very long. It seemed as though GLaDOS were loosing her touch.

Wheatley too had been adorned in an orange jumpsuit. His wounds had been cleaned, as had his hair. The scruffy beard had even been shaved away. With a deep sense of curiosity, Chell looked at her own reflection in the sole mirror in the room. She had been cleaned up too. Her hair was soft and shiny. Her bushy eyebrows had been neatly plucked. And, like Wheatley, any trace of blood had been cleaned away. The scars, however, remained, and Chell could not fail to notice the large scar on the back of Wheatley's leg. It had obviously been a terrible gash, and she didn't want to think about what could have done it. Instead she searched the base of his skull for a similar scar to hers and, sure enough, she found it. It was messy and uneven, as though the healing process had been rushed, but why was it there in the first place, and why did they both have it?

There was something terribly wrong here, and the sooner they found out the better.

She needed to wake Wheatley. Giving him a gentle shake did nothing. In frustration, she tried a little harder. His only reaction was one loud snore and then silence. Chell would have screamed if she could, but only a small squeak escaped her lips. She froze. A squeak.

She had made a sound with her long dead vocal chords. She tried again, achieving the same result. Actually, it was less of a squeak and more of a chirp. It was a happy sound.

Again and again she repeated the noise, shaking Wheatley until he woke. He moaned, sitting up slowly. Chell passed him his glasses from the bedside table, and he put them on with a small thank you. For a while he blinked, oblivious to the sounds that escaped Chell's lips. But then he heard them and stared at her in wide-eyed wonder. 'You... do that again.'

Chell happily obliged.

'That... that's amazing.' His smile was as bright as hers. 'But how?'

Chell could only shrug, rolling her eyes to accentuate her lack of knowledge.

'Well, I think it's bloody amazing. Seriously.' He slowly got to his feet, turning suddenly green. Chell took a step towards him, ready to offer support if he too gave into the urge to vomit. Wheatley, however, managed to keep his bile at bay, though it was clearly a less than pleasant experience. 'Let's just go and see what we can see.' He said flatly, his skin still tainted green.

Chell led the way, walking slowly to accommodate Wheatley's weakened legs. Occasionally he looked down to his scarred leg, his eye twitching with the memory of whatever it was that created it. Eventually Chell caught his eye, and he answered the question that she wanted to ask. 'Antlions,' he replied, 'there were loads of the bloody things in the field.'

Chell nodded, before circling her hand in mid-air, prompting him to continue.

'Er, well... you kind of passed out. So I carried you. Good thing you're so tiny, really, otherwise we'd have been a big bug buffet.'

Chell smiled and patted Wheatley on the back as a thank you. He understood the gesture by now. 'It's alright. I'm just glad we're alive, to be completely honest.'

They left the medical bay and continued on down the corridors until they came to the walkways. Below them all was darkness, apart from the few lights of further walkways, and the illuminating glow that seeped out of the windows of fully lit offices and labs.

Suddenly Chell felt at ease. The familiar tang of ozone, the faint hum of working machinery and the echoing expanse of space assured her that not much had changed since she had left. If only there had been the added smell of the salt mines, but they were too high up for that. 'Well, you can't have everything.'

As they continued along their path, leaving the walkway to enter a brightly lit corridor, Chell felt a slight tingling at her skin, like static electricity was playing at the delicate and unseen hairs of her arms. Yet, determined to ignore it, she continued to create sounds using her vocal chords with gusto, something that told Wheatley that she was clearly trying to make a new sound. Her mouth moved in strange and alien ways, trying to form words. Yet, for all her hard work, she still could only produce a squeaking chirp.

'I'd say take it slow,' Wheatley began, grinning from ear to ear, 'but I have the feeling you'd just ignore my advice anyway.'

Chell shot him a knowing glance, but she grinned none the less and continued with her production of sound.

'Like I said: won't listen.'

A cool, multi-tonal voice spoke out above them, shocking Wheatley into stillness and causing Chell to pull both herself and Wheatley to the side of the corridor and into an alcove. Welcome back, Mr Morrison. It is good to see you again. However, I must extend a most warming welcome to Miss Johnson. Welcome home. Please, come out of hiding. I mean you no harm.

Chell didn't like how this voice lingered on the word "harm", but Wheatley seemed extremely happy to hear whoever it was who spoke in such a unique way.

'It's okay,' he said, pulling away from the alcove, 'it's Prometheus.'

Prometheus. So, this was the one who had pulled Wheatley back from space? She supposed that she should thank him, but there something about his tone that made her stomach churn in a warning gesture. Somehow he must have seen the look of distrust on her face. Please, Miss Johnson. I wish only to help you – you are the future, and the future starts with you.