Alyx was pacing back and forth in the hall. She had gone back and forth between the two ends over one hundred and sixty times. It would take her around twenty seconds to get from one end of the hall to the other and back and again. Gordon did the math, and she had been at it for fifty-three minutes.
Judith Mossman could be seen on the other side of a glass window in a cot, her head, and hands wrapped in gauze. After they had left the North, the group had to stop and refuel their helicopter at a rebel outpost, and while there, they sought medical help for Judith.
As her circulatory system started to work again, the levels of frostbite she suffered revealed itself. The tip of her nose, her ears, and several fingers and toes had turned black, and she had required immediate medical attention to the affected areas.
"Do you really have to wait around?" GLaDOS said into his ear. "I'd rather not have an unstable, expanding rift in reality in my facility."
Gordon only grumbled in response. He then turned his attention to the rebel medic coming out of the room. Alyx stops her pacing to approach the medic.
"Well?" Alyx asks.
"We won't know how extensive the damage is for several more days. She will need surgery, but we have to wait on that as well. If we attempted to start amputating the damaged tissue now, we risk hurting her further or causing infection," the medic said.
"So what should we do then-?" Gordon mumbled out.
"Yeah, we are on a tight schedule," Alyx interrupted.
The medic pursed their lips and sighed. "The only thing I can think of is to just leave her with us for the time being. There is no telling when she will wake up if at all."
"Then that settles it. C'mon Gordon, we got to get back to White Forest as fast as we can. If we leave now, we could get there by tomorrow," Alyx said, her eyes fixed on Gordon.
The man himself was lost in thought as he looked down at the crowbar in his hands. Either abandon one person or abandon everyone. The choice was obvious, but it didn't make it any easier. There were so many people he had been forced to leave behind back in Black Mesa who refused or couldn't go any further.
He tightened his grip on the hunk of metal and nodded in finality.
No more abandoning people. Judith would be the last person he ever left behind.
Back at White Forest, Chell is sitting on a table, head in her hands, as Arne finished telling everything he knew about her. As he spoke, there would be a nagging pain behind her eyes as if her brain was trying to remember it all, but couldn't make the connection if it was real or not.
Although, when Magnusson mentioned how he never received another phone call after the conversation about her father that triggered something in her mind. She remembered the strange dreams of a man shrouded in mist... Not wanting her to talk about something and another moment of being stuck in a server room when emergency lights flickered on.
Arne had been her key...
The final day of her life before succumbing to the depths of Aperture flooded her mind with as much force as the day the Vortigaunts shared their memories of the last twenty years. It caused Chell to catch her head in one hand while the other gripped the desk for support.
It was a lot to take in. Despite being such a small influx of memory, it was the clarity that caused Chell to pause. She could hear the screams vividly and watched as the green gas filtered through the hall. Still, it bothered her why she lost those memories to begin with.
"You alright?" Shepherd asked.
Chell nodded her head but kept her eyes squeezed shut. "Yeah… just a headache."
Magnusson pursed his lips at her answer. He could always tell when she was lying. "You truly don't remember anything?"
Chell shook her head. "Only pieces. It's coming back, but slow."
Magnusson grit his teeth. It wasn't fair! He finally had his best friend back, but she could barely remember him.
"I'm sorry to interrupt," Kleiner piped in, a finger held in that air, but his back hunched as if trying to take up less space. It angered Magnusson for reasons he couldn't explain. "But what happened? Pardon me, but you hardly look old enough to know Magnusson back at Black Mesa."
Magnusson could have smacked the man for that.
Chell only laughed. "And you don't look senile, yet here we are!"
Okay, that made Arne smile. That was the Chell he knew.
Kleiner looked offended, Barney was surprised, and Adrian had to prevent himself from laughing.
Chell then hopped off the table, picking up her strange device in the process and sighed, "I'm not serious. Truth is? Aperture is designed to kill anyone who steps inside."
Magnusson couldn't help but send a smug look to Kleiner. 'Told you it was a death trap,' his eyes said.
Kleiner responded with a roll of his own. 'Fine, you were right,' his eyes seemed to reply.
Since Magnusson finished his story, it was time for Chell to give her tale of how she survived. From her first time waking up in a relaxation vault to discovering GLaDOS. From being woken up by Wheatley to his betrayal and then her short trip to the moon…
All through the story, Kleiner had made his way over to a nearby desk and had been examing the papers scattered across it. When Chell finally finished up in how she met Adrian and Barney, Kleiner was flipping through his papers with excitement.
"My dear! I need to show you something. Can you verify some things to me, please?" Kleiner exclaimed and started spreading out papers that Magnusson recognized as the energy spikes of Aperture.
"Can you make sense of these energy readings?"
Magnusson watched Chell as she leaned over the graphs and data, her brow furrowing and lips pursed. Some things stay the same even if they change…
Chell finally blinked as the information clicked. "It's… Aperture? It shows what happened beneath the surface…"
As she looked at each energy spike, Chell could pinpoint the specific events of her fight. There was a steady stream until there was a slight spike when GLaDOS took control, then a slow, steady stream. A significant spike formed where Chell fought GLaDOS the first time, then no data at all until a couple weeks ago. Then the data went crazy. It went wild with highs and lows that indicated the time in which Wheatley took control. Another significant spike in the data indicated the moment the facility being vented once GLaDOS was put in charge again, then finally stabilizing.
She spoke out for what spikes matched up to what she did in Aperture. "That's when she woke up… That's Wheatley's takeover… and his launch into space… but what is that?" Chell had been about to put the data down when she noticed a giant spike that was holding steady. It was only three days ago, which was strange. "I have no idea what that is…"
"No idea at all?" Kleiner said.
Chell shook her head.
Kleiner perked up and began to organize his papers. "Well then, I shall be sure to monitor the issue with great enthusiasm!"
Magnusson narrowed hie eyes at Kleiner. What was he thinking?
"Calhoun… Why don't you get Chell settled in?" Magnusson said, his eyes fixed on Kleiner.
"Sure, doc… Come on, let's get you a bunk and a tour," Barney said while stretching an arm above his head and bending back far enough to make his back pop.
Chell looked to Magnusson for a few moments before sighing and following Barney.
Once they were gone, Magnusson turned on Kleiner. "What are you up to?"
"Hmm?" Kleiner turned to the other man. "Oh, nothing. I'm just going to check up on Aperture and see what sort of satellite images I can pull up. It will take some time until the one I need moves into position."
Magnusson should have known… That man never knew when to stop chasing shadows. No matter, Magnusson had work to do, and he had his friend back.
"It ain't much, but you got a mattress, so that's something at least," Barney said as Chell dropped a few things she had accumulated out of her pockets and onto the bed. One of the items was what he recognized as the strange white pick that she used to pry the circuit boxes off the APCs. Looking closer, it looked like an abnormally large tooth.
Chell dropped a few bullet casings out, some live rounds, some dented metal plates with pink hearts painted on, and a pair of wire cutters. Where had she gotten those?
Chell ponders on leaving the portal gun behind. It's a terrifying thought to become so reliant on the device, yet it had saved her life countless times. All the scuffs and dents detailed a story of survival.
Yet she was free.
She was in a place free from Aperture, and there were other people to support her. She didn't have to go alone anymore.
With great care, Chell set the portal gun in the center of the mattress and followed after Barney. Adrien walked next to her, one arm swinging at his side and the other resting on- was that a wrench? Why did he have a wrench hanging off his hip? She'd seen weirder, but it was strange.
The made the rounds of where other bunks were located, various labs, the mess hall, and the tour concluded with the trio outside in a valley. Barney pointed out how people were in the middle of rebuilding a sawmill that had been destroyed a few weeks ago.
He had been in the middle of a saying how the striders were swarming all over the place but paused when a loud trill filled the air. Barney then took on a mischievous expression as he turned to look at both Adrian and Chell. "You two like dogs?"
Neither got to answer before Barney whistled long and loud with two fingers to his mouth.
That trill sound turned into a trumpeting as thumps started sounding through the valley. It made Chell freeze as it sounded like the large metal plates smashing against each other in Aperture. When what was causing the noise crashed through the trees, Chell had to take a step back.
Adrian did the same, but he looked surprised.
A large robot made of different metals was running full speed in their direction. He looked to Barney, but Chell saw its eye turn and fixate on her.
The robot made a sound that sounded almost excited before picking up speed in her direction. Barney looked to Chell, then to the robot. "Aw crap! Dog! Stop! It's not her!"
It was too late. Chell was grabbed and pulled into the thick and unmovable arms of the robot. It wasn't hurting her yet, but Chell had to get away. If she didn't get away from it, she would be crushed.
As soon as she was picked up, the robot dropped her. Chell fell backward and started moving away as fast as she could, her hand groping at the grass, looking for her portal gun. She momentarily forgot that it was back in her room.
Adrian was at her side moments later, "You alright?"
"What the hell is that thing?" Chell spits out. The panic leaving to only be replaced by anger.
Barney looked sheepish as he rubbed the back of his head. "Sorry about that…" He paused to gesture to the large robot with his thumb. Said robot which had previously been hopping around in an excited dance was hanging its head in what could be interpreted as embarrassment. "This is Dog. He must have thought you were Alyx at first…"
"Alyx?" Chell questioned.
"She's not here right now. Dog was originally built to protect her, but she's off on a mission with Gordon right now," Barney said, patting Dog on one of his massive arms.
Chell looked at the robot, distrust in her eyes
What made her pause was how it seemed to shrink in on itself under her gaze. She watched as Adrian approached it and began to run a hand over the metal. The robot looked as if it was enjoying the contact. Maybe it wasn't so bad?
Standing to her feet, Chell slowly approached the men and robot. It's not an Aperture robot. It's not a turret or a core. It's a guard dog. Just an eight-foot-tall metal guard dog...
Dog turned his head to look at Chell. The aperture around his eye contracting and expanding while the flaps around his head wiggle in anticipation. Chell raised a hand up, and Dog met her halfway by pressing his face into her palm.
They stood there for several seconds before Chell's body finally slumped as the tension left it.
Barney laughed at the display. "See? He likes you."
Chell felt a smile tug at her lips.
A couple hours later, after they had gotten some dinner, Chell rejoined Magnusson and Kleiner along with Adrian and Barney. They had been summoned, but no one told them for what reason.
"Ah, there you three are. The satellite feed over Aperture is almost complete. I thought you might want to help me figure out what's going on over there," Kleiner said.
Chell nodded in his direction and moved to sit on the desk she had been at earlier.
As she sat, Kleiner kept rambling. "Even now, no one truly understands just how large the subterranean labs of Aperture go, so who knows if we will even see what the issue is on screen. I suppose that's the trouble with underground locations. You can never know for sure if you aren't there. At least by today's standards."
Chell and Magnusson exchanged glances. It was so familiar and foreign to her.
They were all interrupted by a series of beeps coming from the computer monitors set up next to Chell.
Before Kleiner could approach, Chell reached out and tapped out a few commands on the nearby keyboard to bring up the images. What they saw was shocking, to say the least.
Chell had suspected to see a destroyed town and a vast field of yellow wheat, but instead it the yellow was dotted with specks of black and green shapes. Despite the details being challenging to make out, Barney was the one who voiced everyone's thoughts.
"Combine? What are they doing there?"
They all looked to Chell as if she had the answers. "No clue," she voiced. "But they are not going to like what they find…"