Chapter 37, everyone! Which is nice and long-ish compared to the others….And hopefully we'll be enjoying some regular updating for the next month or so.
And question—how exactly was that bird surviving down there? It's not like food was thrown down that shaft on a regular basis—and wasn't that place supposed to be miles underground? How did it even get there?
Don't Starve © 2013 Klei Entertainment
Portal © 2007 Valve
Okay, despite the fact that she had been walking for ages and thus far had only found dilapidated wrecks, the fact that some of it was on fire boosted her morale somewhat.
It did make her worry, though—how much of this was broken-down junk? Were the stairs broken? What about the elevators? Trying to scale rock walls was last on her list for a reason—one wrong move, and she'd go splat. Unless she landed on her feet, she supposed—but she'd run out of steam sooner or later, considering she didn't have that adrenaline-stuff in the air down here; she could feel fatigue sneaking up on her.
At least she was alone down here. She thought. Maybe.
She tipped her head, listening—nothing but the warming crackle of a fire and the occasional drip of water. It was quiet as the grave down here.
A caw jolted her out of her reverie—she looked up to see a crow fly away.
She couldn't help but frown at the sight—what was a crow doing down here?
Wait—if it was down here…maybe there was a way out it utilized.
She hustled after the bird, thinking of all the things it being down here signified—food, water, shelter, escape….It might as well have an olive branch gripped in its beak.
She ran past signs, barely paying them any mind—condemned and keep out stood out to her, but she kept most of her focus on the bird—
She slowed to a halt, staring, as the bird flew over a fence and was lost from sight.
It was similarly plastered with condemned and keep out signs, and was high to the point that it wasn't any easier to scale than the sheer rock walls surrounding her. She growled in frustration and stomped away—freedom was beyond that fence, she was sure of it! But how to get through?
She explored the surrounding area, found an oil tanker that had somehow made it down here, returned to the fence when she couldn't figure out how to get on the ship.
She sat down and stared at the fence, with its chain link and signs and concrete. How to get past it?
She looked up—
And could have slapped herself.
You're not thinking with portals, Miss Willow.
She scowled at the thought and scrubbed it from her mind, instead focusing on aiming, firing, traversing portals and gingerly maneuvering along rusted catwalks—
Until finally she was beyond the fence and following a large pipe….
And arrived at a large cave with a…well, it looked like one of those bank-safe doors in the cartoons, or the hatch on the top of a submarine, but thirty stories tall.
And it was closed.
"Oh…kay," Willow noised, glancing around. "Maybe there's another way out…."
Or…those glass-walled rooms looked promising….
She portaled up, examined first one, then the other….
Within a few moments, she had set up the portals so both could be pressed within seconds of each other—
And then dropped the portal gun after doing so, clapping her hands to her ears to try to blot out the klaxons blaring, screwing her eyes shut to avoid the whirling lights—
And above it all, a deep boom that she felt in her bones.
She opened her eyes, looked—
The safe was opening.
She watched as a scaffold slid into place and the door finished opening with a loud clang—and then silence.
"Wow," she decided to say, if only to break the silence—it was unnerving.
Although, she supposed as she scooped up the portal gun and headed for the scaffolding, she'd rather there not be anyone else down here with her.
Or anything.
Behind the safe door was a simple push-lever door, oddly enough, that when she pushed on it, opened with no difficulty. What, these people couldn't invest in ordinary locks? Beyond that was a hall ending in another push-lever door, and another, and another….
She continued through the push-lever doors into a large room with a stylized atom hanging from the ceiling as an announcer named Cave Johnson started talking. She examined the room, barely paying him any mind—if he was anything like Maxwell, he had nothing useful to say.
"Now, as you know from the Fortune 500 magazines, Aperture has entered into a joint scientific venture," Cave Johnson said as Willow picked out a likely trajectory and tested it. "I know what you're thinking: 'Cave, why work with other companies?' I'll tell you why—because Black Mesa isn't. Anything that Black Mesa won't touch puts a smile on my face."
She ended up in a room filled with switches, saw one that looked like it could be useful, and flipped it. Something echoed further ahead.
"And so, since I'm a busy man and need to delegate, I'm handing over the handling of these pre-recorded messages to this fellow! Say hello, Will!"
Repulsion gel, the tube in the next room said—and that's where the noise was coming from….
"H-hello Will," a new voice said.
Willow blinked and looked up—that voice sounded vaguely familiar….
"Mr. Johnson," the new guy muttered, sounding like he was away from the mike. "I really don't think—"
"Nonsense!" Cave Johnson said, sounding like he had just clapped the guy on the back—a tad too hard, if the pained oouff! was anything to go by. "Will here has the skills needed to go far in this business—"
"I-I'm a street magician, not—"
"So keep an eye on him, investors! Listen," Cave continued, sounding like he was holding his hand over the mike. "All you have to do is read this—" paper rustling. "Into that mike. Simple, right? Like acting in a radio drama. Now let's see some emotion and above all, science!"
Long pause as Willow walked along another scaffolding.
"Oh boy," Will muttered finally.
She had to admit, she felt a little sorry for the guy—and Cave Johnson sounded like Wilson's kind of person. She wondered if Wilson had had some sort of little nerdy scientist crush on the guy, and that was why he wanted to work here—
No. Don't think about it—focus on getting out of here first.
And to do that, she had nowhere to go but up.