AN: Hello all. Welcome back to another wild adventure-please see the end of the chapter for notes. For now, read on and enjoy the show!
Caroline didn't recognize the world outside. Oh sure, she did at first, but the novelty of seeing wheat again and the sky and the sun only lasted so long before the reality of being out sunk in with deep claws. It was then that Caroline realized that the wheat was not the kind you saw neatly planted in agricultural textbooks but the kind that grows wild and abandoned without the touch of human hands. Tangled and free and twisted. It was beautiful, but in the same way old cathedrals were beautiful—something loved and tended by human hands buried beneath a growing layer of grime and neglect, growing blacker by the day. But she shook off the terrible feeling and reminded herself that Aperture had its fingers in a great many terrible and irresponsible pies, and people had probably left the surrounding area ages ago because of-of…a radiation leak, or a chemical disaster, or an attack of mantis men…or something. Anything but the nagging, horrible feeling that maybe, just maybe they were alone out here, and there was no one at all.
The sun was hot and bright, the sky was a pale blue, and she could hear the buzz of crickets and life amid the grass, but Caroline was terrified. With every crunch of dry wheat and grass under her feet, they took another step without so much as another hint of another human being. What if there really were no more? What if they'd been under the earth for too long, and they'd lived beyond everything else? What if something had happened to the rest of humanity and—oh heavens-to-Betsy, Caroline, get ahold of yourself! She'd run a multi-billion dollar company and helped open holes in space and time! She could survive this! She could—
Something wavered in the distance, as if it wasn't quite sure in the heat if it were real or not. But there was a weakly beaten-down dirt road and a road meant people and people meant…well, good things, she would hope. Caroline nearly dropped Doug's arm and sprinted right then and there to the distant building. At the last minute, a sense of guilt washed over her in a sickly wave and she braced Doug up again. The man muttered incoherently, and Caroline's sense of guilt deepened to a nasty brick in her stomach; she'd only met Doug vaguely before, well…before, and though it had been a short meeting, she'd been made well aware by HR that he suffered from various mental diagnoses that were strictly medicated. Schizophrenia, if she recalled, had been one of them, and he'd been on medication for it. Medication which he now clearly had been lacking for some time, if the mutterings and strange behavior was any indication. But if they could just find someone out there, maybe they could find something for him, though Caroline highly doubted they'd find anything approaching the proper, calculated dosage that he truly needed.
They drew closer, and Caroline fought the urge to begin sprinting on wobbly legs to the distant buildings. They were so close—so close to finally seeing another human being for the first time in literal years and she was so excited she wanted to yell. She wanted to squeal and scream as childishly as she had when her college acceptance letter had arrived in the mail—when it suddenly became real to her just what she'd accomplished. She couldn't put into words how much she wanted to just to speak to another human being—of course, that wasn't to say Chell and Doug weren't human. They just…they'd suffered and chipped to pieces at the hands of Aperture. Caroline needed a shred of normalcy. Just a shred.
Not to mention she'd found that Chell wasn't particularly fond of talking.
Her breath caught in her throat, and she shivered. The house, now up close, was not a lone structure out here but instead surrounded by a dozen other houses. A small country lane, if she had to guess. There were darling houses covered in chipped, peeling paint in soft pastel colors, run over with vines heavy with blossoms. Little wooden fences, suffering much the same treatment as the houses, insisted on standing tall despite the dense vegetation pulling them down.
There was not a single soul in sight.
Caroline swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. She lifted Doug's arm from her shoulder and passed it awkwardly to Chell, who took it without comment.
Approaching the house with a sort of delicate anxiousness, Caroline creaked open the gate and picked her way amongst weeds to the front door. She pressed gently, but the door was little more than a shell now, its oaken strength long-ago leached away by the elements. It swung inward, squealing on rusting hinges. Caroline slowly stepped inside the house. The door gave a sudden groan and crashed to floor, making her jump. A great cloud of dust flew up into the air, making her choke. Chell appeared moments later in the doorframe, Doug hanging draped helplessly over her shoulders. The younger woman's face was taut with strain. The way her eyes roamed sharply over the contents of the house only deepened Caroline's sense of unease.
She swallowed the last of the dust as best she could. "I'm going…I'm going to examine the rest of the house, er, dear. If you would just, ehm, maybe you sit with Doug?"
Chell gave a mute, emotionless nod. Caroline didn't like the bland, robotic way the younger woman did it, but it was a problem to be addressed at a later time. For now, however, their priority, as no doubt Chell would appreciate, was to find food and water and shelter as soon as they could. The house was flimsy, sure, but it might do for a night of rest before they had to move on. That just left food and water. In the meantime, Chell was perfectly capable to standing guard, with the portal gun still knotted firmly into the top of her jumpsuit and bouncing threatening against her hip.
Caroline tiptoed around the house, feeling a pervasive sense of ghostliness lingering about the place. As if something old and gone was lurking just behind her, peeking over her shoulder as she checked the cabinets of the kitchen for any sort of canned or preserved food. She found a can of beans, and another one of tomatoes—both untouched and so old that the expiry dates had long ago faded into illegibility. She could only pray that the air-sealed nature of the tin cans would surely be good enough to keep them alive a little longer.
She ventured inside another cabinet and nearly screamed as a small skeleton fell out with a disturbing clatter. After she'd ceased to shake quite so badly, she examined the scattered bones more closely. They resembled no animal or human bones that she'd ever seen, though the closest thing she could think to compare it to would be a crab. It had four long, thin limbs gathered around a central spine and ribcage, but there was little else to say of it. A tuna can, long ago emptied through a haphazardly ripped open lid, had fallen out of the cabinet with it. She could only assume that this poor, likely-mutated creature had been lured inside the cabinet by the promise of canned fish, only to be trapped within the cabinet door. She swallowed nervously, only too glad that the poor creature hadn't been fresher when she'd found it.
And she'd thought the kitchen was bad.
She'd handed the non-perishable food she could find to Chell, knowing the younger woman would easily be capable of divvying up three portions that could keep them alive until morning. She and Doug had quickly made preparations to bed down in the kitchen for the night, seeing as it was on the ground floor and easily defensible, should the need occur. A back door to the kitchen would provide an easy exit in the morning, and a quick one during the night, if it came to that. So far, so good; they'd found shelter and a, albeit limited, source of food.
But the minute Caroline made her way to the bedroom, she got a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach as she pushed open the door. The room was dimly lit, thanks in no small part to the curtains held firmly in place against grimy windows by crawling vines. Those were normal enough; the great splotches of bright blue-green goop on the walls and the floor, however, were decidedly not. Wherever they touched, wooden floorboards withered, carpet shriveled, and the back wall of the house had dissolved in parts, the edges ragged as if they'd been dipped in acid. Sunlight, fading fast already, barely filtered in through the holes—but it was enough to see the horror laying on the bed.
Words could not express what she saw. Caroline heaved on first impression, and a second and third glance did not improve things. Whatever—whoever—the thing had been, it had ended its existence in anguished agony, if the contorted posture was anything to go by. There was not enough left of the thing's face for Caroline to discern any sort of expression.
She backpedaled out of the room with a violent speed, desperate as she was to leave the poor thing in relative peace. She wedged the door shut, laying a hand against the grimy wood. She did not consider herself a praying woman, by any means, but she felt that after so rudely intruding upon the thing's resting place, she ought to do something. So she did her best to wish the thing, whatever it may have been, a happy existence beyond the pain it seemed to have escaped.
She came back to the kitchen to discover that the sinks did not work, but that Chell had somehow ferreted out a hand pump outside that yielded some relatively clear water. Not much water, mind, but it would be enough to let them survive. For the moment, that was enough for Caroline. They nibbled on tomatoes and beans chased with mossy-flavored water and though their meal had much to be desired, it was safe to say that it was the best sleep they'd had in years.
Even so, Chell kept the portal gun close by on the floor.
Another thing she'd noticed about this new world when she woke up: the sky out here had taken on a sickly sort of green tint that activated some buried instinct in her bones to seek a storm cellar and wait for roaring, twisting winds to pass by. There was also the minor issue of jagged tears of purple and blue ripping across the sky with wild abandon, clearly in the shape of portals, though like none she'd ever seen, in the far distance. From beyond wherever the portal had originated from, Caroline caught a glimpse of dark space in between great masses of things that easily floated through the tears as though gravity were a preference. Ships, great ships unlike anything she'd seen aside from the one sci-fi flick she'd watched with her father once upon a time. But that was a stupid movie for gullible people looking for entertainment; they had aliens with tinfoil hats for crying out loud! This…this was something completely out of her realm of experience. Something entirely different altogether.
But…she considered the strange skeleton in the cabinet and the horror she'd found on the bed and the strange green blots scattered across the bedroom. She thought of the silence and the strangeness of everything they'd seen so far and the strangeness that they'd only just left. And she decided, that in light of everything, aliens would hardly be any more of a shock than anything else. It was a surprisingly calm decision on Caroline's part, but she felt that there was truly little else that she could feel about it. It was hardly easy getting out, but that didn't mean that coming back to the outside would be a cakewalk either.
Still, she'd hoped that there would have been more people around.
They'd begun walking early the next morning—Chell naturally was the first to rise amongst them—and they'd explored the small settlement of houses to gather what little resources they could find for their journey onward. They'd amassed a small collection of canned and tinned foods, and after the discovery of some empty jugs, they'd milked the small hand pump for every last drop it could give. Its small pocket of relatively clean water had given out after about two and a half jugs worth, but it would do for now.
They collectively decided that it would be for the best if they avoided the direction of the great purple tears in the sky, at least until they could get a better grasp of the strange world they found themselves in. With little further discussion, they set out resolutely in a carefully selected direction that was neither the way they had come nor towards the rifts. They cut a swath through the tall grass before them, expecting so very little and yet hoping for anything.
It took some time before they caught sight of the caravan. Caroline had to snag Doug's ragged lab coat sleeve—accidentally tearing at least two inches of material free in the process—to get him to halt in his zombie-like shamble. Chell had stopped ahead of them, her face keenly focused on the distant shapes readily growing closer by the second. But once they were all fully looking, it was almost comically obvious.
A great caterpillar of black and steel greys wove their way through the barren landscape, slowly approaching their island of swaying, sickly grey grasses. They reminded Caroline of photographs her father had shown her of tanks used in the war—great mammoth things that would cut through almost anything in their path with abandon, at least, until a shell hit.
"Nothing survives that," her father whispered, before he shook himself and hugged her tight. Caroline hugged him back, even though she could feel him trembling—
She'd smiled then, to let him know it was alright, but she'd been frightened of the blank look of terror in her father's eyes when he'd talked about war, even in passing. So she looked at the tank-like vehicles with a certain measure of trepidation, though a thrumming, wagging sense of hope pawed at her to get excited, this could be other people! These could be the first people you've talked to in years!
Caroline drew Doug back, standing in front of the schizophrenic man with a red-hot sense of motherly responsibility. She would have done the same to Chell, but the younger woman caught on to her scheme and came willingly to her side instead. She stood close by, united but independent, that ragged old scarf of hers flapping in the breeze from her pocket. They gathered in a group against the grey behemoths lumbering over the uneven hills. They didn't look as though they would stop.
A screech of metal brakes rent the air, and Caroline let out a breath taut with worry. The vehicles hadn't been moving quickly, true, but they could have very well accelerated, chewed them up with those ridged masses of rubber that bore them up. Caroline flinched as a metal door snapped open harshly, and she could feel Doug trembling beside her.
"They're not…n-not…" he muttered, anxiously rambling, "—on the surface, strange things…c-can't be trusted…"
Two figures descended from the front vehicle, and Caroline felt a chill run down her spine. Definitely military and human enough in physique, though their uniforms bore no insignias that she recognized, but their masks…their masks…
"Oh, little Caroline, I pray you never have to put on a gas mask. I pray you never have to fight to breathe." Her father held her close, squeezing a bit too tight.
Caroline swallowed at the memory, but she forced the iron to enter her spine and she stood tall.
"Excuse me, but we are looking for the nearest settlement—could you please direct us?"
One of the soldiers—the leader, if his bearing meant anything in particular—raised a halting hand. "Please identify yourself. Where are your identification papers?"
"Papers? Oh, well," Caroline scrambled to pat down her jumpsuit, though she had a rather firm feeling that she wouldn't miraculously find her driver's license—likely very out of date. "I'm so terribly sorry, but I don't think I have anything on me to identify myself. I'm sure if we could just get to a town, I could find some records of my history if that would satisfy you."
Clearly, it wouldn't. "Please do not move." He touched his comm. "Razor One, we have possible Anticitizen without papers, proceed to collection—hey!"
Chell had brushed against the portal gun dangling from her waist, worming her fingers into the well-worn handle. Their reaction was all the cue she needed. Caroline ducked with Doug as Chell fired quickly. Incredibly enough, the portals held on the regular dirt, and within seconds the soldiers had been flung unconscious against the side of the truck. But the commotion didn't go unnoticed, and before Caroline could blink, they were surrounded by dozens of soldiers in similar gear.
Chell got off one more portal before she went down, yellow-striped scarf fluttering down after her like some overenthusiastic piece of confetti. Doug was next, yelling in the loudest display of anger that Caroline had yet to see from the man. Caroline desperately tried to reach them, to offer a word of courage or urge them up, but the buzz of electricity filled her ears, and she knew nothing but the black she'd swum in for so long.
AN cont'd: I hope you enjoyed that chapter! Now first things off the bat: I can't promise this fic will be as consistently updated as Of Ratts and Men was. Since this story is plot-based early on and more drabble-based later, the update schedule will probably be a bit iffy, especially towards the end, where my writing will be more based on inspiration and my ability to spin out ideas about the combined Portal and Half-Life casts.
This story will comply with canon to the best of my knowledge. This includes the ending of HL: Alyx, so if by some chance you haven't played the game by now (understandable, VR is expensive) or watched a playthrough, then please be aware, the ending of HL: Alyx feeds directly into this story, making it very spoilery. The first chapter is pretty clean of spoilers, but please beware going forward if you don't like spoilers.
Disclaimer: I have not actually played the half-life games myself. I have watched playthroughs, and the official wiki page is a well-used bookmark, but I'm ultimately a bigger fan of Portal than I am of Half-Life. That said, I do try my best to write characters, locations, and details as close to canon as possible, but I'm only human. However, I am always open to constructive feedback, so if you're a half-life fan and see a glaring error-please pm me! I'm always happy to fix details or errors as long as you're polite and respectful.
Finally, if you have the time, please feel free to leave a review-one of the reasons I've enjoyed writing for the Portal fandom is that the fandom has been super receptive and sweet about my stuff, and I do reply to comments as much as I can.
I don't usually have author's notes this long, but since this is the first chapter, I had to get some stuff out of the way. Hope you enjoyed and see you guys soon!
Toodles,
Little Inkling