She's walking down the hallway, but not of her own accord once again. She didn't try to fight it like last time. Instead, she wanted to see where she would go. Just a few steps ahead her was another figure. Unlike the others in the past, she could see they were wearing a white lab coat and navy pants, but their face was obscured by that same mist from before.
"Yes, Ms. Chell. Since you are Freelance, you won't get the same benefits as our fulltime employees, but that doesn't mean you won't still be treated any different. We're all equals here in Aperture!" They said, their voice sounding warped and muted as if muffled by a rag.
"You may see things down here that can confuse you, but don't worry about it. We know what we are doing. As for your security clearance, I'm afraid the highest we can go is level three. You'll be allowed into all servers rooms, but none of the security stations or labs without supervision."
She doesn't say a word. Even if she wanted to, Chell doubted she even could.
"Now I'm going to hand you off to one of our chief programmers. He's a little strange, but I think you'll get along with him."
As Chell follows the figure, another appears. The second figure is smaller and hunched over a desk. It's fiddling with some papers and a pencil, jotting down notes, and checking over a clipboard.
"Ms. Chell, I'd like to introduce you to your supervisor. This fine gentleman is D-"
The name fades into the background as the scene slowly shifted around her.
As the mist enveloped her then settled, Chell found herself sitting at a desk with a computer monitor in front of her. Her hand was absentmindedly tapping on the counter with a pen in annoyance.
Question 12: Not including periods of mandatory silence, what is the longest you have gone voluntarily without talking?
Weird and personal. Oh well. Chell typed out answer eight. Greater than one year.
Question 14: What is your favorite color?
Hadn't she already answered this question? Apparently, not as all the available answers were different. Whatever.
Question 15: Lying about my favorite color makes me feel:
1.] Sorry
2.] Not Sorry
Okay, the questionnaire was officially the worst.
She let out a groan and pushed herself back from the table. "So, what's the point of this questionnaire again?"
The small hunched figure from before turned their body to look towards Chell. In their hand was an orange tube of some kind. "Just something all employees have to fill out every year," the figure said.
Chell rolled her eyes and answered a few more questions.
She scratched at her head in annoyance once again. "Okay, but what do all the questions about cake have to do with our jobs?"
The figure shrugged their shoulders before popping something into their mouth just as the mist enveloped Chell's sight once more.
It took a little longer to clear away, but when it did, she knew she was in an argument. There was an anger in her chest that flared as she looked to the figure in front of her. Although his features were hidden by that mist, Chell knew it was her supposed father from her previous dreams.
"The whole reason I took a job here was to try and talk to you! And now you are just going to ignore me?" Chell's hand reached out to grab onto the lab coat of her retreating father. He wasn't going to get away that easily.
"I don't know what you want from me, Chell. I'm incredibly busy today and-"
"You are always busy! You never had time for me before I left home, so I guess that's still the same," she spat.
Her father turned to look down at her. Despite not having a visible face, she could feel the anger coming off the man. "It's not that easy. My work is-"
"Important, I know. But what about me? It was like you just woke up and were a different person. You haven't been the same since that day."
He took a step back in a mild panic. "I didn't think you remembered that."
Chell's fury spiked. "I don't! That's what I need from you. What happened on Take-"
"Don't say it!"
"-Your Daughter to Work Day? Why can't I remember?"
Her father answered by walking away, and the scene was once again overtaken by the white mist.
When the world came back into focus, Chell was in a cramped area between two terminal towers, a portable computer in her lap, and a mess of wires connecting from the towers to her laptop. She had a headset attached to her ear, it was plugged into the computer as well. There was a voice coming through the earpiece, but no words could be understood.
"So, I got it hooked into the system. I've already set up my proxies and other safeguards to act as a firewall. Don't worry, my VPN is undetectable. The data should be transmitted back to you soon," Chell said as she readjusted the headset to sit better on her head.
The voice was saying something, but it refused to become understandable. It was like the earpiece was covered in cotton and submerged in water.
"Yeah. I'll see what I can find... Still, I'm looking at their current projects, and they are working on something big that's protected by several firewalls of security. It will take some time for me to get past those."
The voice sounded annoyed.
"Look, I'm doing what I can here… Ugh! Yes! Stop asking me already, okay? It's true, and I've already changed my employee records. Not that it would have happened in the first place. They labeled me too stubborn…"
There were several minutes of silence when that voice piped in again.
"You asking me that isn't going to make this go any faster. I'm only scratching the surface as there is a lot more going to this project. Although I do have a name for you. Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. I get the DOS, but what is the genetic lifeform aspect?"
The voice on the other end had an exasperated tone but then turned to the same questioning tone from before.
"…Why the hell is there a cake recipe in here written entirely in binary?"
The voice didn't respond as the scene changed once more.
The next scene is her feeling panicked. Her hands and gripping onto that smaller person's shoulders and taking deep breaths.
"Alright, just breathe. It's nothing. You know that, and I know that," Chell said, despite the anxiety in her chest, the words sounded calm.
The man's breathing was shaky, but as he heard Chell's voice, it grounded him back to the present. "You are real, right?"
"Of course, I am."
"How can I know for sure?"
"You just have to trust me."
Chell then picked up her supervisor's sketchbook and made a quick doodle in the corner. "See? I couldn't do that if I weren't real."
He eventually calmed down, but as he walked by a few minutes later, she noticed he had added wings and a heart to the little box she drew.
It made her smile for some reason.
The scenes shifting in and out of view were becoming old to her. Despite knowing she was in a dream, she couldn't wake up. Being forced along for a ride through what could be her memories wasn't exciting enough if she couldn't see the faces of the people she was speaking to.
When her surroundings cleared once again, Chell found herself back in the server room once more. She was tucked into a corner with her laptop, but there was an incessant feeling of something nudging her arm and knee while she sat on the floor.
A quick glance revealed it to be a cat of all things. What was it doing in the server room? It didn't belong there. As long as it didn't chew on any of the wires, she wasn't going to get rid of it.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm transmitting the data now. No need to get your tighty-whities in a bunch," Chell groaned into her earpiece.
The same voice from before, although completely non-understandable, spoke on the other end. They sounded angry.
"Look, I'm going as fast as I can here, sir. I may need to finish this up later because I need to get back to my post soon, or someone is going to notice me missing."
The cat that had been trying to curl up into Chell's lap is lifted and placed away. It meows loud enough for the person on the other end of the line to pause their tirade to say something else.
"It's just a cat. Aperture had a 'Bring Your Cat to Work Day' apparently… I-" Chell had cut herself off as the lights in the server room went dead momentarily to only be replaced by a foreboding red light fading in and out. Emergency lighting? No. It's probably a false alarm.
Then she heard the first scream.
Her associate on the other end of the line was in the middle of saying something else, but Chell cut them off. "Something's wrong. I've got to go."
She didn't allow them to reply before killing the connection and shutting the laptop. Chell had a sudden urge to keep quiet. No matter what happened next, she couldn't say a single word.
Without another thought, Chell stood to her feet, lifted the laptop over her head, and brought it crashing down to the floor. She did this a couple more times until the innards were skittering around the room. Picking through the wreckage, she grabbed the memory cards and hard drive before rushing out into the hall.
Her lungs were instantly assaulted by a sickly green gas. Having never seen it before, Chell held her breath as she moved through the hall as fast as she could. She saw a few people stumbling through the corridor, but then fall to the ground, unable to get back up. She ignored them. She had to keep moving, focusing on herself, or possibly suffer the same fate.
Her lungs were burning as she reached the elevator. Still, no matter how many times she swiped her ID, the security pad kept flashing the [Access Denied] light.
She couldn't take it anymore as she let out a breath and inhaled some of the sickly gas. It didn't have an immediate effect, so Chell held her breath once again and moved away from the elevator, trying to find another exit.
The further she moved, the more people she saw, but most were barely moving on the ground or not moving at all. Chell's mind was going fuzzy by that point. Her fingers had gone numb, and she was having a hard time remembering where she had been or gone.
She just knew she had to keep moving and not say a word.
Her vision was getting blurry, and she couldn't remember why she was trying to hold her breath, so she didn't. The world was becoming fuzzier by the second, and all she wanted was to sleep.
Her bedroom had to be close, right? Isn't that what she was looking for? It had to be just around the corner. Why was her apartment complex so complicated to maneuver?
Her eyes were closed as she stumbled into her bedroom. Strange, she didn't remember her room being so white or her bed looking like an egg. She was too tired to care. She had some trouble getting into the bed, what with the strange glass cover someone had put on top.
Once the cover was peeled back, Chell slipped into her bed and fell into her slumber, not really being able to move anymore as the glass moved back into place, effectively sealing her inside.
There was no mist this time. There was just darkness.
A darkness that gave way to bleary eyes and a grayish-blue ceiling that was distorted by a glass film sliding back.
The only thing on her mind was two questions, "How did I get here?" and "Why can't I remember anything?"
Then… a voice.
"Hello, and again, welcome to the Aperture Science computer-aided enrichment center."
Chell didn't say a word.
She sat up with a gasp as she was assaulted once more by her dreams. It has been two days since her conversation with the people at White Forest, and yet she had the same dream two nights in a row. She couldn't be sure if they were actually memories or if she was just trying to fill in the gaps somehow in a desperate attempt to know who she was.
It was driving her mad.
As she was slipping her long-fall boots on, one of the rebels appeared near her bunk with a CP helmet under his arm. "It's time," he said.
Chell nodded as she reached under her bunk and pulled out the Portal gun.
Chell made sure to grab her own CP helmet from under the bunk as well before moving out of the sleeping quarters. She was soon flanked by Crow and Apollo as she made her way to the bridge of the ship.
Several of the other rebels were walking around on the deck with helmets already on and attempting to look busy.
The shipping crates had come in handy in an unexpected way when the ship had come within range of a Combine hailing signal. When they realized the docks they had been heading for was currently being used as a terminal for Combine forces, there had been an initial panic. Still, it had been Roger who suggested the idea of a Trojan Horse situation. They just needed to look the part, and one of the crates just happened to be filled with uniforms. In all, there were some people dressed as Overwatch Soldiers, two Overwatch Elites, and the rest were standard CP units.
"Remember, stay out of sight until it's safe," Chell instructed her vortigaunt friends.
They both bowed to her. Apollo moved away from the windows while Crow stayed by her side. "Traveler, this one shall keep watch over you in the battle to come."
"What about Apollo?" Chell asked, eyes flicking in the direction they went.
"We have discussed at length, and my kin will aide the others, but I shall stay by your side." Crow gave one of their crooked smiles while moving away from the windows to stand in a corner. Chell looked to Crow once more before slipping the helmet over her head and clicking it into place. The familiar beeping noise entered her ears as her head pressed into the pressure pads. Moira had done some tinkering with the suits to enable the rebels to communicate with each other for privacy with just the click of a button. Everyone was thankful for that. She also fixed it so people wouldn't have to hear the vocoded voice of friends.
"Remember," Moira said after a couple minutes of silence, "keep chatter to a minimum. We need to stay vigilant."
There was the sound of people checking in to confirm her command.
"Alright, Chell, they got us hooked up to a ferry. Just give us the signal, and we'll light the place up," Rita said. She was one of the people in a standard soldier uniform. Someone said she needed to be in the elite uniform as she was a 'heavy gunner' and needed the protection, but she refused based on losing visibility with the single red lens compared to the standard lenses of the soldier helmets.
They had also argued that Chell needed an elite or even a soldier uniform, but she refused. It was too bulky and to properly move around when she tried it on. Yes, it had better padding than the CP uniform, but she needed speed over protection. To compensate for lack of protection, Chell made sure to keep one of the spare heart plates tucked into the chest of her jacket.
When they had arrived close to the port, they had been hailed by the Combine post. Their instructions were to stop the ship in a designated area to idle where they would be met with a ferry. It would then attach itself to the ferry and be pulled the rest of the way into port for docking purposes.
The dock itself was, at one point, a seaside community going by the still-standing buildings around. If it wasn't for all the Combine activity and low sea level, it might have been beautiful.
If Chell wasn't so preoccupied with planning the assault, she might have noticed how desperate they were to get the ship into port. She was more focused on ensuring that everyone played their part in pretending they were an ordinary Combine ship.
When they were only fifty yards from shore, Chell clicked her coms button, "Rita… Do it."
There was a tense moment of silence while everyone waited. The missiles Chell and Roger had reprogrammed had been loaded up into the cannons as soon as the plan had been set.
So when there was a jolt through the entire ship from the launch, everyone on deck gripped their weapons a little tighter, as the missiles launched high into the sky. At the apex of their journey, the sun glinted off them beautifully, and all in attendance watched as they fell to the earth, increasing speed by the second, to only bathe the ground and surrounding buildings in a blaze of shrapnel and destruction.
Then the gunfire started.
The rebels on the deck started firing their weapons into whatever they saw moving on the docks, not wanting to give them any chance to mount a counteroffensive. They had the high ground after all. It was a battle of attrition, and they had plenty of ammo.
Rita was up on the deck and firing her weapon through the smoke at anything that was moving. Chell was running across back and forth, dropping off caches of ammo for those running low. Roger was calling out orders for fire to be localized on specific points.
The chill ran down everyone's spines as the deep mechanical groan filled the air, followed by heavy footsteps. In the distance, everyone could see the trees thrashing wildly as something big was coming towards them.
No one had thought about it since it couldn't have been seen, but once the Strider made its way out of the trees, everyone started to go into a panic.
"STRIDER!" Someone yelled as if everyone didn't already see it.
Chell saw Rita, her helmet gone, pause for a moment to look at the giant synth before grabbing two other rebels by the collars of their uniforms and barking orders. They nod at her before running back to the bowels of the ship.
Chell called out for the mounted guns to be fired at the Strider, but they didn't seem to do anything. It stepped closer, and she could only watch as it unleashed high powered rounds of pulse fire in their direction. One rebel didn't get a chance to run as he took a shot through his collarbone and obliterating everything in its path. Another rebel took a round to the arm, but it wasn't fatal. Although it would result in the man being unable to fight.
Everyone else ducked below the edge or behind shipping containers as the synth continued its onslaught. Chell barely managed to dive behind a shipping container in time; the metal denting and sending off sparks only inches from her face where she moved to hide.
"Anyone have rockets? We need rockets!" Someone yelled. No one made a move, too busy trying to stay away from the hail of bullets.
Then the firing stopped.
Peering out from behind the storage container, Chell could see the Strider spreading its legs wider and lowering its triangular body to the ground. The giant cannon that had been waving wildly with each step was pointed straight at the ship. As Chell continued to watch, light seemed to blend and gather into a concentrated point at the tip. Then it released.
The beam of pure energy hit the side of the ship with enough force to nearly knock Chell off her feet. Some of the other rebels did fall from the power, but they were up and ready for orders the next moment.
There was a crackling sound in Chell's ears as the com device she had strapped to her ear fizzled to life. "We're taking on water! We need to get everyone off the ship!"
"We can't until that thing is dead!" Chell called back, using the MP7 she had hanging at her side to fire off a few blind shots at it. The Strider responded with its high caliber rounds towards her hiding place.
"Leave it to us, Chell!" Rita said through the coms. There was the sound of rushing water in the background, and it made Chell freeze up.
Before she could even ask, Chell watched as another rocket was launched high into the air, but this one didn't come down in a straight line. It changed course mid-flight and made contact with the triangular body of the Strider. It made a pained noise as it turned its attention to where the attack had come from.
"Now's your chance, commander! Get moving!" Rita yelled into the coms. "I'll catch up!"
Chell didn't feel right, but she had to keep moving. If she stopped, she would die.
Looking around, Chell tried to peer through the fog to get an idea of where to go or what was a useable portal surface. Then she saw it. On the roof of a building, over a hundred yards away, was a concrete shack that would lead to a set of service stairs. In an instant, she fired off a blue portal and smiled when it stuck. She shot the orange one at her feet before activating her coms again. "Everyone! Fall back to me! We are going to shore."
Chell went through first. The change in the direction of gravity was something she was used to, so she made sure to reach through the portal and drag each person out and help them as they came through. She had nearly twenty people on the roof with her, but there was still some left on the ship, and the Strider was focusing its attacks on the large canon on the back of the ship. Another missile fired off and hit the strider again. It started leaking a yellow ooze and looked as if it would fall over at any moment.
"Rita, talk to me!" Chell called, the roar and splashing of water was still prevalent.
There was a sputtering as if someone spitting out water. "Working on it!"
Not good enough. These were her people, and Chell wasn't going to let someone die if she could help it. When Crow finally came through, Chell jumped back through the Portal. Once through, Chell heard the sound of footsteps behind her. She expected to see Crow but was surprised to see someone else.
Turning around, it was Roger. She opened her mouth to say something, but he beat her to it. "I'm going with you! She's too stubborn for her own good!"
Chell didn't have the time to argue with him, so she turned back and started running across the deck of the ship. The Strider fired at their direction momentarily, but the shots missed them due to the Strider's weakened state.
Roger and Chell slid into the interior of the ship and beelined their way to where Rita and her cohorts were. The entire ship was shaking, and Chell could already hear the water pouring into the vessel from their location. They needed to move fast.
Reaching the staircase that would lead to Rita was blocked by a torrent of water gushing at high speed to the opposite side of the corridor and running down to fill the lower levels.
"It's the only way…" Roger said.
He was right. There was no other way to her, and the lower levels were filling fast. They had to hurry or risk losing her.
Chell was surprised when Roger took her hand and started counting down from 3. When he said go, they jumped from the top of the stairs and into the powerful stream of water rocketing across the hall. The water hurt. It felt like the time she took several rounds of fire from one of the aperture turrets in her leg and side. Thank Cave that they didn't use actual gunpowder or she may not have survived...
Her grip on the portal gun tightened as to not lose it, and she made a conscious effort to keep it above the water. Despite Chell finding the portal gun half-submerged in a puddle, she didn't want to find out what would happen if the entire thing got wet. She remembered the warnings.
They pushed their way through the continuing to rise water as another boom echoed through the ship. Either the Strider had attacked with its strange canon again, or another missile was launched. Either way, they couldn't stop to rest.
There was the sound of something crashing against the ship, and Chell felt everything shift upwards then back down. With renewed vigor, she and Roger kept pushing forward until they came into the room with Rita.
She was slumped back, head barely above the water as she blinked slowly at her surroundings. All the controls were dead, but a quick look around showed no one else around. Roger was at Rita's side in seconds, holding her close, so she wasn't struggling to keep her head above water. Chell only then noticed the water around Rita was red.
"Said I'd catch up. Didn't know when, though," Rita said as she talked through her pain.
"The others?" Roger asked.
Rita shook her head. "One was heading up the stairs when the bastard hit us. The other had to manually detonate the missiles when the controls went dead. Don't know where they are now…"
Chell looked back, frowning that she hadn't noticed anyone. Maybe they were already on deck? No. She would have seen them.
"We've got to go! We can't stay here any longer!" Chell shouted as she aimed her portal gun at the nearest wall.
"Wait!" Roger called.
Too late, Chell shot the orange portal again, and it was like being sucked into a vacuum. All three were pulled towards the portal as the water attempted to drain from the ship. Roger managed to keep hold of Rita as they went on a rapid adventure through the hole in reality.
Chell felt herself come out on the roof, but her journey didn't stop there. The force of the water was sending her closer and closer to the edge of the roof. Water cascaded over the side like a waterfall. She didn't see any other rebels caught in the stream, but she had to get free.
Without thinking, Chell started firing off the blue portal again in hopes of getting it to stick to anything. And luck is what she had as she felt the water stop pushing her almost immediately. Still, she didn't take into effect the amount of force two people directly behind her would have if they crashed into her back.
Had Rita and Roger not been there, Chell might have stopped with only her feet hanging over the edge of the roof, but seeing as they were there… There was the moment of relief, then pain, then weightlessness as she was hit hard enough to send her toppling over. It was a four-story building, and she caught glimpses of rebels having stormed the ground to take out the soldiers, and the dead Strider sprawled across the sinking ship in the harbor. Then finally a second, still alive, Strider making its way out of the trees and towards the fighting.
Chell landed hard, and she was instantly running for cover behind a large slab of concrete. She stayed there as she assessed her portal gun for damage, the steps of the Strider pounding the pavement coming closer.
She heard yelling from above and saw Roger and Rita asking if she was okay. She responded by raising a hand in the air and waving. They then turned their eyes up, and both scrambled back from the edge of the roof, and presumably, into the stairwell. Chell knew the Strider was coming closer, but if she moved, then she'd risk being seen. Her concrete slab overhang was the closest cover, and anything else would risk her getting taken down by the powerful pulse fire.
The strider stopped walking, one of its long legs crashing down only feet from Chell's hiding place. All the while, she had heard the gun firing at anything that moved, but it grew silent. It made a loud groaning noise, and Chell dared a peek at the creature. It was squatting down, that strange bending of light that seemed to be drawn to the cannon appeared. The energy being brought to the synth was making Chell's scalp tickle at how close she was. It hadn't seen her, but the Strider was aimed at the building she had just fallen from.
She was too close to it. If she stayed, she'd be caught in the blast as well.
Time seemed to slow down around her. She saw a group of three rebels running out from a hole in the wall of the building, one of them firing shots in a wild spray at an approaching soldier. They weren't looking as the bending light reached a crescendo, and Chell's body reacted before her mind caught up.
Her finger twitched on the orange portal as it made contact with the ground beneath the Strider's leg.
The thing about a Strider's warp cannon is that it has massive kickback to the point the Strider had to squat down to position its weight correctly or risk falling over. So when Chell's portal connected, the Strider was in a precarious position with its center of gravity.
Chell watched as the leg fell through the portal, its massive carapace hitting the ground. Before it could even adjust, she closed off the orange portal and saw yellow liquid pouring from where the leg used to be. She had always wanted to test what would happen to something so big being cut between two portals…
Then the cannon fired.
Being so close to it made Chell's ears ring, and everything around her was like being underwater. Her concrete cover was destroyed, and she went with it, but instead of hitting hard ground, Chell landed against something soft. She smiled at seeing Crow.
"Greetings. I apologize for being away after my promise, but someone decided to run off without me," he said with a sheepish, yet at the same time accusatory, grin.
She had knocked the vort to the ground, and as she crawled out of his lap, they helped each other to their feet. She saw a line of yellow blood oozing from Crow's arm, but he seemed to be fine everywhere else. Chell, on the other hand, realized she was bleeding from her head, her left wrist hurt from falling off the roof, and it was difficult to breathe, but she was alive. At least that was something.
Turning around, Chell saw how the Strider's cannon had blown a crater into the ground, but due to its body being within such close proximity to the blast, half of the carapace had been blown away. As they walked past it, Chell couldn't resist kicking it.
One by one, rebels starting filtering their way into a cleared off area, free of any soldier corpses or potholes from explosions. Out of the twenty or so rebels, only nine were left. Some were using each other for support, while others picked through the wreckage, looking for anything of use.
She felt eyes on her. She did this. She cut the group from over twenty to less than half, and it was her fault.
Then something surprising happened. Someone placed a hand on her shoulder and laughed, "Good job out there. You managed to get us to victory."
After that, the small group offered up humble praises for her ingenuity and quick thinking. No one had ever seen a Strider killed in one shot before, so seeing how she got it to kill itself was terrific. She neglected to mention that it was an accident in killing it.
Once the initial buzz of victory vanished, the group began to administer medical attention to each other. Chell finally got to see first-hand what and how the medical kits were used. They were either in two forms. A glass canister or a white box with a larger cartridge attached. The canisters were filled with a green viscous fluid that, when spread across scrapes, the skin would stitch itself back together as if nothing had happened. For more severe wounds, every kit had an attached needle that would inject the fluid directly into the body and provide extensive work.
Chell remembered how the grub the vortigaunts had crushed and spread across her back contained a glowing yellow ball that behaved similarly. Is that what the goo was created from?
There weren't enough kits to go around, so only the most severe wounds were treated, while other scrapes and bruises would be left to heal themselves. Chell's ribs were deemed vital as it interfered with her breathing and to ensure they weren't broken. So she was given one of the small canisters injected into her side to fix the cracked rib she suffered from falling off the roof.
When they started pilfering through the wreckage, it became clear that the Combine was low on health kits and ammo. Made sense for why they were in such a hurry to get the ship to port, but what was going on with their munitions?
As the group gathered up their supplies, a new noise could be heard. A loud droning noise of an engine.
"Aw crap! Reinforcements!" Someone yelled.
Everyone got into position, Chell being flanked by Crow and Apollo, but no one was prepared to see a yellow muscle car tear up the road in their direction
It screeched to a halt, small stones bouncing around the tires as they left black lines on the hard concrete ground. Two people jumped out, guns at their sides, but they didn't raise them to fire. Instead, they just looked at the group of rebels in relief as they took in the damage around the port.
The first man was around Chell's age with brown hair, denim pants, an urban camouflage shirt, and some sort of vest. His expression was calculating as he took everything in, but paused when he saw Chell. He looked at her for several seconds before blinking a few times and shifting his gaze to the other guy from the car.
The second guy was older, with dark hair graying at the temples. He wore a full civil protection uniform minus the helmet, but he had a faraway look to his eyes as he looked at everything. When he turned back to the group, he had an easy-going smile on his face that would make anyone trust him.
So, naturally, Chell was skeptical.
He looked the group over before clapping his hands together and allowing his smile to grow, "First things first. I'm Barney. That's Adrian. Now… Who's in charge here?"