A/N: This is my very first fanfic, so any and all feedback is much appreciated.
I don't view myself as a writer, but after I started reading Portal fanfiction my mind began coming up with ideas for potential stories, and I felt it would be a waste if I didn't at least try writing some of those stories down. I also have more of an analytical mind than a creative one, so writing fiction is challenging for me but I try my best. One more thing that's worth mentioning is that English isn't my first language, so although I do check each chapter several times before uploading they might contain some weird expressions and awkward sentences. Feel free to point such things out to me.
But now, without further ado, here is the first chapter.
The Moon was the only thing illuminating the desolate landscape that lay before Chell's eyes. It was close to being full again, which meant it had been roughly three months since she had left Aperture Science. After her departure she had been simply planning to wander into the first town or city she could find and reunite with civilization, but what she had encountered on the surface was far more grim than anything she could have imagined to even be possible.
No matter how far she had travelled, all she had been able to find were ruins of once great cities buzzing with life, reduced to nothing more than huge piles of concrete and bricks with remains of human skeletons lying everywhere. She had kept on believing there was still hope and that she would eventually find survivors, but after witnessing city after city and village after village in ruins, with no signs of any recent human activity, Chell had finally been forced admit to herself that she could very well be the last living human on Earth.
The former test subject had no idea how long she had spent in extended relaxation at Aperture, but during that time something horrible had happened to the human race. The only clues she had been able to discover that hinted at what had occurred were odd-looking remains present at almost every human settlement she had visited. They were clearly not of human origin, nor did they seem to belong to any animal that lived on Earth. In addition, every place where there once had been human life showed at least some signs of a large scale war having been waged.
From her observations Chell could only draw the conclusion that Earth had been a victim of some sort of alien invasion and that humanity had lost. It was impossible to guess how events had progressed, but it seemed that the aliens invading Earth were also no longer present. Whether this was due to them leaving after they had gotten what they wanted, or because of them somehow going extinct at some point for an unknown reason, was a total mystery. All that seemed certain was that whatever had happened had happened decades or possibly even centuries ago.
The valley that currently bathed in moonlight in front of Chell was almost devoid of any signs of the calamity, which was the main reason she had decided to settle down here. She was sitting on the porch of a very old wooden cabin she had come across on her journey and deemed good enough to serve as her new home. Good enough in this case meant that the house was still standing; unlike the rest of the buildings in the area.
The cabin was located on a hillside and immediately behind it began a large forest which had turned out to be an excellent source of firewood, berries and various small animals that Chell had learned to catch after much trial and error, although she was still not very proficient at it. The front of the house faced a valley which had very few trees and was pretty to look at but had very little to offer in terms of natural resources. Pretty much the only thing that was significant about the valley was the small lake that was located there. There were plenty of fish in the lake and it was only a moderate walking distance away from the house, which meant Chell had a pretty reliable source of both meat and fresh water.
A gentle night breeze blew past the cabin bringing goose bumps to the former test subject's bare arms. She was still wearing the same set of clothes she had been wearing when she had left the Enrichment Center having been unable to locate even a single article of clothing that had not decayed too far to still be of some practical use. Chell preferred wearing her orange jumpsuit with the sleeves tied around her waist because the suit hardly allowed her skin to breathe and reeked of her own sweat. Naturally she had been rinsing her clothes with water at regular intervals, but without any detergent at her disposal she could never get them to smell and feel fresh again. Her personal hygiene was hardly any better of; without shampoo or even a proper comb Chell's hair was constantly greasy, tangled and itchy, but she tried to ignore her discomfort and enjoy the fact that she was still alive and free to do whatever she wanted.
Looking up at the Moon Chell couldn't help but think about Aperture and all that had transpired there. She could remember nothing of her life before waking up in Aperture for the first time and being guided through the tests by a robotic voice which she had assumed to be just a series of prerecorded messages, until she had narrowly avoided being cremated to death, which was when it had become apparent that the voice belonged a sentient being capable of reacting to what was happening.
While traveling toward the chamber where her captor was physically located, Chell had found out that Aperture Science had been working on what was practically an artificial intelligence, and that the system in question was called Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. At first Chell hadn't been sure if the project was related to the woman who had lied to her and made her solve puzzles that were potentially lethal in nature. After coming face to face with the cold-hearted machine herself and emerging victorious from the resulting encounter, however, a large piece of metal that had been part of her nemesis had fallen in front of the young woman's face with the acronym GLaDOS written on it revealing that that was indeed the now dead supercomputer's name. Little had she suspected that the AI had a black-box quick-save feature which made it possible for her to be brought back online, and she definitely wouldn't have guessed even in a million years that she, Chell, would be the one to do that, even if it was unintentionally and only indirectly.
The person responsible for the whole fiasco was of course Wheatley, but Chell didn't even want to think about him right now. For all she knew he was still orbiting the Moon, and if it were up to her he could stay there for at least a decade thinking about the things he had done. He was a moron, that was a fact, but that didn't absolve him of his actions. GLaDOS's body had clearly been too much for the intelligence dampening sphere to handle, but nevertheless he had had plenty of time and opportunities to give up his power and allow Chell to leave, neither of which he had done concentrating solely on his own interests and needs. Even when he'd been sucked into space he had had the audacity to just yell "Grab me! Grab me! Grab me!" instead of saying even a single word about being sorry for what he had done.
Thinking of space made the former test subject remember being sucked into space through the portal and seeing her life flash before her eyes. She had been certain that she was going to die and even now, three months later, she could still recall exactly how she had felt at that moment. Reliving the moment in her head made chills run down the girl's spine. When the metal claw had grabbed hold of her she almost hadn't believed that it was real. The thought of GLaDOS saving her life would have never crossed her mind even thought they had worked together to bring down Wheatley. What had been almost as astonishing was to hear GLaDOS call Chell her best friend, followed by her giving the girl back her freedom and letting her leave the underground facility.
Now Chell wasn't sure what to think of the artificial woman who had killed everyone who had worked at Aperture Science along with what was possibly thousands or perhaps even tens of thousands of test subjects. Based on some of the things she had said, it didn't sound like the scientists who had created GLaDOS had had much, if any, respect for her as a person. She had probably been just a tool for them; a tool that they had desperately tried to control because she hadn't behaved like they wanted her to behave.
Being treated badly didn't justify mass murder, of course, but based on the behavior Chell had witnessed GLaDOS exhibit, she didn't seem to know how to appropriately deal with her emotions. No one had for example taught her how to deal with fear, sorrow, anger or hatred. It wasn't that surprising really that things had turned out the way they had; GLaDOS's decision to murder everyone who had been mistreating her was in Chell's mind comparable on some level to the reasoning of a child. Before meeting the girl the AI had probably never had any sort of meaningful social interaction with another person. The scientists had most likely given her instructions and commands, but none of them had probably ever tried to have a meaningful conversation with her, which would have given GLaDOS a chance to form social and emotional connections to others enabling her to value and respect them and also make it possible for her to empathize and sympathize with others.
Her interaction with Chell, combined with the surfacing of parts of Caroline's personality, had definitely induced a great change in GLaDOS's behavior, but Chell wasn't quite sure how much of that change had been reverted after the AI had deleted Caroline from her brain. The girl wasn't entirely convinced, however, that Caroline had been completely wiped from the AI's personality. She had no idea how a being like GLaDOS had been created in the first place, but she doubted that the supercomputer could just go ahead and delete entire sections of her personality and still function properly after the process. It seemed more likely that GLaDOS had only blocked Caroline's influence as best as she could, with the end result being that she was more like her old self again but still had small portions of the human aspect of her personality present as well. Whatever the truth of the matter was, it didn't really matter in the end, because that part of Chell's life was behind her; GLaDOS had let her go and she would never have to see the cursed place again.
The wind blew again, but this time is was a proper gust instead of a gentle breeze. Chell decided to head back inside. She had seen enough of the beautiful moonlit nature for one night anyway and was feeling sleepy enough to head straight to bed. Living all alone with practically no luxuries to speak of made it very hard for Chell to keep herself entertained. During the days she tried to keep herself busy by either going out to acquire food or to collect firewood, which she thought she couldn't possibly have too much stockpiled for the winter that was approaching rapidly. Evenings were a completely different case because it was too dark to wander very far from the safety of the cabin, which made it very hard for her to try to think of ways to pass the time before going to bed each night.
Chell hadn't seen any dangerous beasts in the area, but she had heard wolves howling on a couple of nights, and that made her very cautious about going out at night. She had found a pistol inside one of the ruined buildings she had inspected along her journey but didn't want to use it unless that was absolutely necessary because she only had one magazine's worth of ammunition and she didn't want to waste even a single bullet if she could help it. She never took the pistol with her when she went to sit on the porch because it felt improbable to her that a wolf would wander right next to an inhabited house. Furthermore, it wouldn't be very difficult for Chell to quickly sprint inside and slam the door shut behind her at the first sight of trouble.
As sad as it was, sitting on the porch and watching the already all too familiar landscape was the best form of pastime the former test subject had available to her. After sunset it was simply too difficult to really do much inside the unlit house. Chell had found some candles inside one of the cabinets when she had first inspected the house, but she didn't want to use them just to brighten her mood preferring to save them for times when the light they could provide would be invaluable. She had also found several flashlights on her way from Aperture to her new home, but it had turned out to be an impossible challenge to find batteries that were still usable, so the candles were currently the only means for the girl to create light apart from burning wood in the fireplace. Setting a fire in the fireplace wasn't necessary quite yet but would definitely become during the coming weeks if the temperature continued to drop at a similar rate to how it had been over the past few weeks.
Chell opened the front door and stepped into the largest room in the two-story house, which served both as the living room and the kitchen, making sure to lock the door behind her. The house wasn't very spacious but it had more than enough room for one person, and Chell was content with just having a place she could call her own. Directly right from the front door when entering the house was the kitchen area which had the typical appliances one would expect to see in a kitchen, like a fridge, an oven and so forth, positioned along the right-hand wall. It also had a small kitchen counter which, aside from being very useful when preparing meals, also marked a sort of an imaginary boundary for where the kitchen ended and the living room began.
Located left from the entrance there was a leather armchair in the corner with a matching couch sitting right next to it. The leather covers on both pieces of furniture had survived the test of time surprisingly well, at least compared to all the textiles Chell had come across on the surface. The curtains in this house, for example, had hardly looked like they were anything more than a thin loosely knit net made of string, so Chell had gotten rid of them when she'd made the cabin her home. In front of the couch was a small living room table made of wood, and directly opposite from the front door stood a modest-sized fireplace with a dining table located next to it in the far-right corner of the room.
On the left side of the room, between the couch and the fireplace, was a flight of stairs that led upstairs and also a small corridor right next to the stairs which took one to the downstairs bathroom and a small bedroom, which Chell didn't use because she preferred sleeping upstairs. All the rooms located on the second floor appeared to have been used as either bedrooms or just storage. Attempts to strip-search the rooms hadn't been very fruitful; majority of the items that lay there had little practical use with most of them being things that had only had sentimental value to the original inhabitants of the house.
Since Chell had already eaten dinner earlier, there wasn't really any reason for her to stay downstairs. She moved closer to the stairway and unstrapped her long fall boots which showed signs of wear and tear from her adventures but had served her well and were surprisingly useful even in rough terrain. After placing the boots next to the living room table's end that was closest to the stairs, the woman headed up the stairs and straight into the room that served as her bedroom.
She practically threw herself on the bed and could hear the old springs squeaking underneath her. All the blankets in the house were almost useless, but Chell had selected the one that was the least ragged for her room and now pulled it over herself mostly for the feeling of being enveloped by something than the small amount of additional warmth it provided. Wrapping herself in a blanket was the closest thing the former test subject had to feeling like she was being held by another person, and that had helped her avoid crying herself to sleep on many nights.
Being completely alone wasn't easy for the girl to handle and she ofter talked to herself if she found herself unable to fall asleep, in order to keep her thoughts from wandering to dark places. During her time at Aperture Chell had been unable to utter even a single word in response to GLaDOS and Wheatley, but after leaving the facility she had slowly regained the ability to make sounds again. At first her voice had been very hoarse and saying more than a couple of words at a time had been very difficult for her, but eventually after practicing a little each day the girl's voice had started sounding much clearer and she could talk much longer now without straining her vocal cords too much.
She wasn't sure what had caused her to temporarily lose her voice, but she suspected the cause to be either the shock of waking up in the Enrichment Center, the adrenal vapor present in the air, or some sort of chemicals that might have been pumped into her before she woke up for the first time. Based on the fact that she had had close to no trouble relearning to speak, it seemed logical to assume that she hadn't just never spoken in her life before waking up in the first test chamber.
Chell had no memories of her life before Aperture, but it seemed unlikely she'd spent her entire life there, especially when she clearly wasn't a child but a young woman somewhere in her early twenties. She had a reasonably good base knowledge regarding a variety of things related to humans and possessed many of the basic skills that were useful in life, like how to prepare food, start a fire, treat wounds, and so on, but she also didn't have the faintest clue as to how she knew the things she did. The thing that puzzled her almost as much as her memory loss was the fact that she could clearly remember her first name but had absolutely no idea what her last name was. No matter how hard she tried to dig that one piece of information from the depths of her mind, she never got anything more than a headache in return for her efforts.
The wildlife seemed to stay rather quiet tonight not counting a couple of birds that were singing somewhere barely within earshot and a lone owl that was hooting in the forest a bit closer to the cabin than the birds. Chell didn't mind the birds at all, though; unlike a certain super-intelligent AI, she didn't have ornithophobia and actually found that their calls had a mildly soothing effect on her state of mind. She could feel her awareness starting to slip into the blissful world of dreams and welcomed the temporary oblivion with open arms knowing a good night's rest would help her make it through the next day like she had made it through all the previous ones.
Just as she was losing her last thread of awareness, Chell's ears picked up the tiniest of sounds, and in an instant she was wide awake her hand shooting for the pistol she kept on her bedside table when she was in bed. After what she'd been through at the Enrichment Center, the girl's senses had been constantly on edge, and when anything seemed even slightly out of place or potentially threatening her survival instincts kicked in immediately. The hairs on the back of her neck had stood up and while clutching her gun Chell listened closely focusing to detect even the tiniest disturbances in the otherwise close to silent ambience inside the cabin.
This wasn't the first time she had woken up in the middle of the night because of a sound she'd heard. There had in fact been very few night when the girl hadn't gotten up at least once to check the source of a suspicious noise that had come from somewhere inside the house. Most of the time she would get woken up by some part of the house creaking because almost everything, including the walls and the floors, was made of wood, which was constantly living a life of its own expanding, shrinking and bending because of constant small changes in temperature and humidity.
That's what the sound had been this time too: a small creak. But the survivalist that lived somewhere within Chell wouldn't let her ignore any possible threat, regardless of how insignificant it might have seemed. She was thankful for her instincts, for she was certain they would save her from countless dangers, which they already had done several times in the past. Having to wake up a few times every now and then was a small price to pay in Chell's mind when compared to the worst that could happen if she was too careless.
Slowly Chell got up from the bed and turned off the safety on her pistol making sure to move carefully in order to make as little sound as possible. She opened the door to the upstairs hallway and began advancing very slowly toward the stairs which led back downstairs.
For the first couple of weeks after settling down to live in this house Chell had been both afraid, but also partially hoping, that someone would break into the house attempting to find supplies, shelter, or both. Even if they hadn't been friendly, encountering another living human would have been a huge boost to Chell's morale – proof that she wasn't the last person alive. The closest thing to that ever happening, however, had been when the girl had one night forgotten to close one of the windows before going to bed and a wild cat had jumped in attracted by the scent of leftover fish from dinner that lay on the kitchen table ready to serve as Chell's breakfast the following morning. She had driven the cat away and made it a routine to ensure that all the windows were tightly locked each time she went to sleep from there on.
As the former test subject descended the stairs she made sure to do it very cautiously. She had familiarized herself with each stair and knew exactly where she needed to place her steps in order to avoid making the steps squeak and reveal her presence to the possible intruder. Unfortunately almost every successive step had a different spot that was safe to stand on, which made descending the stairs silently a challenge that required both good memory and very precise movements. To make things even trickier, not all of the stairs could be stepped on without causing them to emit a noise, which meant that Chell was sometimes forced to stretch her leg far enough to reach the next one instead.
After a minute or two of careful maneuvering Chell finally found herself at the base of the stairs having navigated all of the steps with success. Even though her eyes had pretty much adjusted to the darkness while she'd been descending the stairs, it was very hard to make out more than the general shapes of the objects in the room. Normally the Moon provided enough light to make moving around the house relatively easy, but it seemed that Earth's little companion was currently behind some thick clouds, which reduced the amount of light that came through the windows down to almost nil.
Chell kept scanning the room with her eyes trying desperately to make out as many details as possible, while at the same time frequently checking that no one was trying to sneak up on her from the corridor that led to the two other rooms on the ground floor. The corridor wasn't very long so she was fairly certain that nobody was standing there trying to blend in with the shadows. She also knew that both of the doors in that corridor made a lot of noise when they were opened and closed, so no one was going to emerge from one of the rooms without her getting an advance warning.
Concentrating on making sure that the living room was clear, the girl held her gun at the ready and started making her way toward the kitchen counter which was the only practical hiding place in the room. But as she took a step forward, Chell's foot hit something. This made her fall down on one knee, almost causing her to accidentally fire her gun in the process. In her panic the girl's free hand happened to brush against an object that lay on the ground, and she recognized it immediately just by touching the surface; it was one of her long fall boots! She had forgotten where she'd left her boots and tripped on her own footwear. This information allowed her to rule out that she had been attacked in the dark, but if there truly was an intruder in the house, they had definitely been alerted to her presence and current position because of this rudimentary mistake.
Being still convinced that, if this hypothetical person existed he or she was most likely hiding behind the kitchen counter, Chell quickly returned her gaze and aim toward the counter and waited to see if something was going to happen. Each second felt like a minute, but once more than five seconds had passed and nothing had happened, Chell made a quick decision to rush next to the dining table where she would have a clear view behind the kitchen counter. She got back on her feet and dashed to the spot she'd picked without taking her eyes off the target even to blink. As the space behind the counter came into view Chell tightened her grip on the pistol and focused her eyes hoping they would succeed in penetrating the darkness.
As the first images from behind the counter arrived to the girl's retinas, it took her brain a moment to process what she was seeing. Finally, after numerous milliseconds of anticipation and complex brain activity, Chell's brain told her that behind the counter was… nothing more than air. Relieved, the former test subject let out a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding.
Chell flipped the pistol's safety switch back to the on position and walked over to the small kitchen area placing the gun on the table. She let out a sigh and poured herself a glass of lake water from the bucket she kept on the dishwasher. After downing the glass in one go, she wiped her mouth feeling already much more refreshed. Cursing her own paranoias, Chell grabbed her gun and started heading back to her room feeling there was no need to check the other two rooms; the bathroom had no windows, and the ground below the window in the small bedroom was so low that the other windows on the first floor were much more suitable for breaking into the house. The fact that she had almost fired her gun by accident when she'd fallen was weighing heavily on Chell's mind, and she made a mental note to handle the gun more carefully in the future.
As she arrived at the foot of the staircase, the Moon finally emerged from behind the clouds filling the cabin with its silvery light once again. From the corner of her eye Chell could see a silhouette of someone sitting in the old leather armchair. Unable to believe she hadn't noticed the figure sitting in the dark corner earlier, Chell turned to directly face the mysterious individual. Because no direct moonlight hit that specific spot of the room, Chell still couldn't make out the other person's face, but based on the shape of their outline the intruder was definitely a woman.
"I'm sorry, did I wake you up?"
That voice! Chell's eyes opened as wide as they possibly could and she froze in place. The voice that had spoken was the one she had hoped to never hear again, but also the one she'd been afraid would someday return to her life outside the realm of her own nightmares.
Even as her mind was still in a complete state of shock, some of the most primal instincts somewhere deep within her core reacted to the situation and guided her to raise her pistol at the intruder. Her body moved very swiftly, and less than three seconds after the words had left the other woman's lips the barrel of the handgun was pointed straight at her chest. Chell wasn't sure if what she was experiencing was real or if this was all just a dream, but dream or not, she didn't need even a picosecond to decide her next course of action. Without hesitation she pulled the trigger and was greeted by a mechanical click. The safety was still on!
Right after she had pulled the trigger, the woman who had up to that point just been sitting still in the chair gazing directly at Chell, sprung up from the chair leaping toward her with almost inhuman speed. Trying to get as far away from the woman as possible, Chell bolted up the stairs seeking a strategic advantage by taking the high ground. If she could just make it to the top of the stairs she should have enough time to spin around and… However, before she had made it farther than the first couple of steps up, a strong arm wrapped around her waist and tugged her back down on the first floor pulling her tightly against the woman standing behind her.
With all her strength Chell attempted to free herself from her captor's grip using her empty hand, while at the same time trying to move her gun, which already had its safety switched off, into a position where she could use it against the other woman. Yet before she was able to do that, the woman's other hand grabbed her wrist twisting it so far that Chell was forced to drop the weapon on the ground. Immediately after the gun had hit the ground her hand was set free once more, and despite the pain she moved it to assist her other hand in her struggle against the attacker's incredibly strong hold of her.
Just as she was about to try kicking the other woman as hard as she could, a hand appeared right next to her neck and stuck a needle into her. Chell could feel her consciousness starting to fade rapidly and right before she passed out the other woman brought her lips right next to her ear to say something. However, before the girl's brain could register what the intruder was saying, everything faded to black.
A/N: Wow, this chapter turned out much longer than I had anticipated! I wasn't very thrilled about writing this one because the story doesn't really start unfolding before chapter two, but this was something that needed to be done. Still, I did have some enjoyable moments while writing this, especially during the second half of the chapter, although I did kind of start to run out of steam close to the end but I'm not sure if that shows in the writing or not.
The rest of the chapters will most likely be much shorter than this one (maybe half as long), but that depends entirely on the story so other super-long chapters are still entirely possible. I will attempt to upload one or two chapters per month, but once summer is over I'll be busy with my studies so that might not always be possible.