AN: Welcome back to another chapter, and for those of you who've been following, thanks for your patience. 6.5k words takes a long time to write in the most ideal circumstances, but I hope the length makes up for some of the wait. With that, please enjoy the chapter and let me know what you think with a comment or review if you enjoyed! With that, read on!
It was his hair that threw Doug off the most, perhaps. It was a sad floppy mess that sprawled across the man's forehead like a pathetic octopus—clearly it'd been matted down with something other than water and unfortunately dried that way in crispy strands of ginger. Because that was the other thing: in his limited experience being friends with Stephen Smythe, the man had never had such bright red hair.
He laughed, laughed when Doug asked about it.
"Turns out, you can skip out a bit on being a ginger if you spend enough time out in the sun. I mean, not like it turns your head brown or blond or anything—nothing of the kind—but it does make it less, well, pronounced." His laugh turned uneasy. "Bit of a habit now, since what was it, sixth year? Always enjoyed taking an turn around the block, I mean, you never know who you're gonna meet…"
He hadn't noticed Doug yet, still stuck in a stupor, staring at Chell with some obvious confusion. Chell stared back, but it was a wary look, without a smidgeon of recognition. Her brows were drawn together, heavy and low, and her stature was tense.
Oh no. Doug frowned anxiously. He didn't—he didn't know—he didn't know what he'd done, what Chell remembered. He had to stop them before it burst and exploded in a horrible mess and the truth tumbled out like so much lava—
"Stephen." He tried. Too quiet. "Stephen?"
For a fraction of a second, Stephen's gaze flickered, then it returned to Chell and stayed there. After a long, long moment it moved, roving until it landed on Doug.
"Doug? Doug!" Stephen broke from his trance-like stare and then he was full-out sprinting without hesitation. Doug felt the air in his lungs leave them in a rush as he was hit with a bear hug from the spindliest kind of bear he'd ever met. He heard the rumble of a voice through the muffled layers of a dusty bomber jacket, laughing, or maybe crying.
"I can't believe you're here! You and…and Michelle!" He hesitated on the last part.
Doug pulled back a little to look at his friend in worry, momentarily distracted by the flurry of activity flowing around them like rocks in a river.
"Stephen!" Rovetta was yelling at him and pointing to a Combine van—all hard edges and black metal swallowing up what might have been a friendlier human car. "That one's having trouble starting up!"
Stephen gave her a wild thumbs up and gave Doug's arm a quick thump as he moved to obey. Doug turned with him, unsettled. Blue sky voice, he thought and had to fight to keep from muttering it aloud. From the look Chell seemed to be giving him at the moment, he might have failed. Everything had a strange sort of sharpness to it, even as the inside of his head felt like it was underwater, blurry and muted and so hard to understand. Chell came closer, clutching the ASPHD—her ASPHD—like a lifeline. Her jaw was set hard and still, so in contrast to the harried movements of the prisoners around her, shifting towards the vans in a human wave that swelled and ebbed into the black, vacuous vans…he shivered.
Caroline had been talking to Rovetta with a sharp sort of animation to her face, but she abruptly cut off and Rovetta let out a whistle loud enough to make Doug's ears ring and his head swim. The sun helped, it warmed him and made everything that much cleaner, but even so…he shook. Chell offered him a hand and he took it, even as she led him wordlessly to one of the horrible black vans—
They stood squished up against rows of other humans, pressed close to a small mass of humanity after so long alone. It was disorienting to say the least, and Doug quickly closed his eyes to keep himself from finding to the gleaming ruby lenses that would surely be glinting from every corner of the dark interior. They stood stock still like that, even as they were joined by Caroline and Rovetta. Rovetta ducked her head out and quickly pulled it back in.
"Brace yourselves!" Doug squeezed his eyes shut. He could feel Chell shift beside him to grip his shoulder, giving him an anchor, but it was such a small, small thing. The van rattled, and someone screamed as the impact made the entire vehicle shake on its axels. Rovetta nearly flung herself out of the van the minute it had stopped shaking so badly.
"Stephen!"
"All—" a short, vicious cough "—all right Rovetta! We're alright. But the van isn't in great shape."
Doug could hear the faint sound of a sticky globule hitting the dusty concrete ground. Rovetta grunted. "Can you make 'er run?"
"Probably."
"Do it. These vans are armored, if you can get us moving, we can stay in one piece long enough to get to Redwood."
"Will do."
Chell was stiff beside him, listening to that voice answer so shortly, so amicably. Sky blue—he began, but Chell gently shushed him this time, pinning him with sharp blue-grey eyes that could so easily skewer him through if she neglected to turn their intensity down. He'd learned firsthand what happened to things on the other end of that stare.
"They're circling back around!" A voice called from outside the truck and another man, presumably another mechanic, scrambled inside the van as the others rumbled to life and began their trek out through the thoroughly demolished entrance. The second mechanic swore and poked his head out of the van. "Stephen get in here you idiot! It just needs to run for a couple of miles!"
"Got it!" Stephen yelled and skittered aboard the van. Rovetta heaved a rough sigh of relief and slid the door shut, banging on the partition panel between the drivers and the passenger area.
"Let's move!"
The van came to life beneath them, but with small windows set so infrequently into the sides, it was impossible to tell if they were even moving beyond their own sense of swaying movement. For several minutes, there was absolute silence as the occupants of the van waited with bated breath to see if their volunteer drivers would bring them through, or if there was even anywhere to go. Doug trembled, uneasy and stiff with tension; he knew that the calm couldn't last—would never last. The walls pressed close, and for once, they offered no sense of security, no sense of safety that the crawlspaces of Aperture had always seemed to offer. He hadn't even minded the smell of dust and mold and decay after a while. Nor the bland taste of beans.
Chell was standing very close to him, so close that he could see her stationed rigidly in a single spot, barely swaying with the movement of the van, her muscles firm and unmoving as a rock. He followed her gaze as it flicked to Stephen, then just as quickly away. It stayed resolutely away from him, despite the ginger-haired man's frequent glances to her face. With every look, Stephen's face seemed to grow more and more grave, as if he was just now realizing what it meant to have the sky blue voice trapped in his throat. The voice made Doug flinch, and the memories ran together like so much blue and orange gel, swirling in a muddy mess. He struggled for some minutes, trying to separate them, but it was about as easy as trying to separate mixed paints; it simply couldn't be done—it was too far gone.
The van rocked wildly, as the exterior was pelted with a series of massive blows—Doug hadn't the slightest idea what had hit them, but turrets swiftly unfolded in his mind, inserting themselves so easily into the space around them. He grabbed Chell's arm, to warn her, to beg her to take cover before they shot her and came back to finish the job with him, then he flinched in pain. In all the excitement and adrenaline of escape, he'd been shielded from the ugly scar running down his leg. The stray turret bullet underneath reared its head, smugly reminding him that Aperture tended to leave painful parting gifts with its visitors. He ducked his head, hissing in pain and barely aware of Caroline talking anxiously to his left—
Rovetta was swearing, "—we've stopped, we've got to get out of open space and get to the forest. At least we'd have some cover there. Right now we're no better than sitting ducks."
"—Rovetta, listen we could help—we could—" Caroline's paused, and Doug could just barely see Chell putting a firm hand on Caroline's shoulder. He glanced up, and Caroline's face was a mirror of Chell's, set firm and hard. Chell nodded to Caroline, and the older woman gave a taut smile.
"If there's anyone who could help, it's Chell. Most capable woman I know."
"Listen, Caroline, I like you, but we're facing a hunter-chopper and several drop ships out there—"
The van rocked again and Rovetta swore.
"Yes, I realize they've got some kind of aerial advantage out there, but like you've said: we're sitting ducks. We don't have much of a choice but to make a stand and fight. Chell could get up there, do some damage with the right weapon, and get down again unlike anyone else in this van, I'm sure of it."
Rovetta hesitated, and another explosion left their ears ringing. Her face grim, she finally assented. "I can spare a pistol, but she'd better be a heck of a good shot."
Doug raised his head once again to look up at Chell, whose face was impassive as ever as she met his stare. An emotionless look, except for her eyes, which were an entirely different story—practically a different book. They were wide and fearful, and for once, he understood. Down there, she'd been an underdog, yes, but one who knew what she was up against and what would be required of her. This was a whole new, strange world. One that she didn't yet know how to grapple with.
But she knew danger, and she knew risks, and she now had something beyond raw, brutal survival to fight for. She glanced at Caroline and nodded, looked at him again, nodded again, and then met Rovetta's harsh gaze with an ice-cold one of her own. To her credit, the woman didn't flinch, though Doug could see the impulse shiver through her body language. She offered Chell a small pistol and a single unit of ammunition to reload it with.
"I hope you're a good shot, because otherwise we might as well dump you out on the road here for the headcrabs to pick over. That handgun's got about eighteen shots—plenty enough to take out a standard drop crew with ammo to spare, as long as you don't miss too many shots. Never know what might be on the ground though, so I wouldn't miss a chance to conserve ammo when you can."
Chell stared her down, communicating what he knew her vocal chords would not. What they'd forgotten how to say: she was ready and willing to get her hands dirty. Rovetta seemed to understand, even had the humor to chuckle. She cursed affectionately at Chell's taciturn silence.
"—I'd love to see you in the same room as the famous Gordon Freeman. Heard he isn't much of a talker either, but if you're anything like him, this oughta be a sight to see." She grinned.
Chell didn't react beyond tilting her head slightly before she secured the pistol in the waistband of her jumpsuit.
"Hey, if you can get the head, you can conserve ammunition. Though I'm guessing you'll have a bit of an advantage with that thing." Rovetta gestured to the ASHPD and Chell nodded once before sliding the van door open and disappearing amidst a flash of blue light.
Stephen hadn't seen her exit in the crush of people, squished as he was at the other end of the van. But he came over to talk to her and that was more than enough to make the startling discovery that she was missing.
"Michelle? Michelle!" He scrambled to Doug and Caroline's side, grabbing at them and begging, "Where's Michelle?"
Caroline tried to calm him, even as the vehicle walls shook all around them. "Easy, easy, Chell's gone to help."
"No—no, no! She can't—Michelle!" He yelled, his eyes wide and desperate, and Doug shook at the sudden memory that clicked into place—
"Why can't you just die?" Chell lay groaning under the shadow of an evil eye, a monster looming above her—
"—Listen! Mr., er, Stephen, she wanted to help, you have to let her help—" Caroline's voice was slowly rising in temper as Stephen refused to back down and a hundred pairs of eyes followed the argument in the van. Doug shrunk from their gaze, frantically trying to find something—anything—to take his mind off of the tense situation inside and the worser one outside.
Then his eyes chanced upon the case.
Doug paused and edged closer to it, sliding across the floor on his hands and knees to take the case in his hands. It was heavy and warm, and when he unclasped it and slid the smooth lid open, he found himself staring at a weapon of some kind—clearly alien in origin. He quietly pried open the cover of the weapon while the argument drummed overhead regardless of him. The circuitry was unfamiliar, obviously strange and not original to Earth, but on some basic level, he reasoned, electrical impulses were electrical impulses. He might not be able to do something sophisticated with this, but…he could do something that Chell would probably approve of: taking the route that was short, destructive, and so very simple. As quickly as the shaking of the van and the tremors of his own fingers would allow, he adjusted the circuit board and set up an unstable current. Ideally, he thought as he handled the weapon gingerly, it was stable enough to toss through a portal, but not much beyond that…
Before the doubts could creep in, he scrambled to the door and wrenched it open again with some difficulty.
"Doug what are you doing?" Caroline's voice was thin in comparison to the angry roar of guns and the violence that lay beyond the van's door. Doug hesitated, but threw himself outside before he could think too hard on it. Outside was loud, so very, very loud—he ducked hastily as another volley of shots roared over his head. Looking up, he caught the monarch butterfly orange of a jumpsuit, flying from one massive dropship to the next in a flash of unstable portals. The ASHPD wasn't meant for use outside the labs, at least not in a tactical military sense. Chell was a fast-moving woman, but even she had her limits, high as they might be.
Sooner or later, the odds would stack too high or the exhaustion would rear its head, and she'd be a second too late.
He had to give her an edge. But he was so quiet amidst the chaos and the noise. He shrunk back from it, fearing the sharp sounds and the angry explosions battering at his ears. In the next second, he barely registered that a blast had gone off until he was flat on his back with a ringing in his ears and dust in his eyes. As he rolled on the ground, struggling to regain his footing, Doug felt something hard press into his side. Tearing open his tattered and disintegrating lab coat, he found several potatoes he'd gathered from earlier, dusty but intact, and several stained tubes.
The gel.
Uncertain of when he'd be able to access the gel restricted to the lower levels until Chell had so unabashedly opened every hatch between the two sets of offices, he'd collected samples of the gel in tubes. If he remembered correctly, he'd left several dozen tubes scattered around his small havens and dens in the upper labs. As poisonous as they might have been, he'd been going crazy down there, and so using them was a necessity. Murals preserved the few slender threads of normalcy he had left.
They were bright, and colorful, and very, very visible.
His fingers trembled as he scrabbled for the tubes. He skittered across the rough ground, splattering and smearing in the fastest mural he'd ever done in his life. Everything pulled at him all at once: take care, work fast, add every detail, there's no time! At last, blood rushed to his head as he stumbled back. The tube of bright orange acceleration gel in his hands gave a gurgled choke and loosened last of its contents, staining his fingers and the ground. From the haze of gel was birthed a solid oval of slick white gel, ringed sloppily with orange. He only prayed that she could see it from way up—
Doug flinched as a rollicking explosion rocked the air with the shriek of twisting metal and the scream of an engine struggling to fight gravity. He tried to place the sounds that surrounded him, staring squint-eyed into the green-tinged sky. There was muffled yelling from behind him, as the people in the van he'd just left screamed at him get to cover! and get back in the van you idiot! He stood, trembling yet sturdy, staring and watching for any small speck of a figure flying through the air without fear. The ship crashed and burned alone; no figure came flinging through the air with nothing more than a prayer and a set of near-miraculous boots. He began to shake, hard. Could she have…?
A familiar sound sent him flinching away from his hasty mural. He turned, and the freshly placed portal sent flickers of orange light cascading over his nose and cheeks. And he grinned. The kind of grin that generally comes with blood-tinged teeth and a wild-eyed look. A hand, scarred and bandaged, reached through and he handed his package over without hesitation. The hand snatched it away and the portal closed just as quickly. He quickly turned his gaze to the sky again, eyes nearly shut against the dusty road and the bright, sickly-color sunlight. Footsteps made him jolt and take some shabby semblance of a defensive stance. Stephen joined him, well out of breath and looking wild, toting an additional case.
"I," he paused to gulp in a breath of air, as much out of nervousness as windedness, "I thought I'd help." Stephen flinched and ducked, as some kind of shell cracked the earth too close for comfort. Wordlessly they took off running, heading vaguely for a rocky outcropping. Doug doubted it would actually hold up to a hit, but you had to take the dens you could find. Safety was an illusion. He muttered to himself, trying to banish the scattering thoughts before they could lead him astray. He barely noticed when Stephen took his arm and guided him in their slipshod run towards the rocks. They flung their backs against the rocky outcropping as Stephen carefully extracted another handgun from the lining of his dusty leather jacket.
"Look, I'm not sure what you did with the other case, but it worked; Mich—er, Chell took down one of the dropships with it. Far as I can tell, we've got another one on our tail and something else flying around. Not sure what it is, but it isn't carrying soldiers from what I can tell, so I'm guessing we'll need something else to take it down, since Chell can't get onboard."
Doug nodded. His fingers set to work, more of their own accord than his own personal concentration, though he tried his best to lend his focus to the task at hand. An aching, groaning noise sounded just to their left, and Doug glanced up. He wished he hadn't. The creature in front of him could barely be described, for all the crimson tatters that made it up. He froze, even as Stephen took aim with the handgun and unloaded multiple times into the head region of the creature. It screamed and grieved in response to the attack, giving a moan of what, if Doug didn't know any better, sounded like relief. It collapsed, and the head detached immediately to reveal that the head hadn't been a head at all, but instead a creature all its own. He felt the panic rising, telling him to run and to hide and to squirrel himself away within the bowels of the nearest structure. A hand on his shoulder nearly set him sprinting away, but he looked up and caught Stephen's gaze. It was a familiar gaze, one he'd seen before, known before everything had fallen to pieces.
It was safe. It could be trusted. The sky blue voice was treacherous and unwise, but the sky blue gaze was a friend he knew. Doug nodded weakly, gathering his strength, and returned to the task at hand. In a few shaking moments, the makeshift explosive was finished, and they snatched up the case and ran. Sprinting as one, they made their way down the hillside and back into the open, shooting as they went. Soldiers, like the ones they'd seen before being bundled into armored vans, were swarming the area and shooting at them with a ruthless sense of dedication. They ducked and dived, doing their best to avoid the bullets whizzing their way, lucky enough only to get a brief clip on the ear and the odd graze on an arm or leg. If Doug hadn't been running with someone else, he might have thought he'd hallucinated the entire thing for all it made sense.
Doug took a chance as they ducked behind a barrel—shabby cover, he knew—and he looked up into the sky. The second dropship was flaming out one engine, and he could just barely see a small figure in orange, desperately holding on with one hand while the other held something. It wasn't going down, but the figure was waving wildly, desperately trying to get their attention. She had her long-fall boots on, so theoretically, she didn't need their help to get down, so the only other reason had to be that Chell needed another bomb, now.
"Stephen!" Doug yelled, earnestly trying to overcome the roar of the gunfire and the engines stalling and the chaos that threatened to envelop all of them. The man was preoccupied, shooting with increasing panic at the soldiers, and meanwhile Doug's leg had begun to throb again with its own heartbeat, only adding to Doug's confusion. He struggled to clear his thoughts and looked out through the dust and the clouds of debris to spot his own pathetic mural. A flash of white—but not his mural, only the falling sight of a soldier's white mask crashing to the ground, dead. Then—there. A flash of white and orange on the ground, partially covered with rocks and dust.
Doug ran, pushing all other thoughts out of his mind—no matter how helpful or detrimental they might be—nothing mattered but the present moment and his pounding lopsided footsteps and the aching of his lungs and the goal in his mind. Get to the circle get to the circle gettothecircle—
She must have seen his mad dash; as he slid wildly towards the circle, he found a hand already reaching out for the bomb and he slid it in. The portal closed and he choked on his own breath as he struggled to tamp down his racing heartbeat. He squinted up into the sky, straining against the bright light and the dust and the smoke, but he couldn't catch sight of Chell. Then Stephen was grabbing his arm and dragging him along again, and they were stumbling along the rugged texture of the landscape. Doug nearly planted his face in the rocks several times, distracted as he was trying to follow the action above them. Stephen pulled him behind the burned-out shell of a building, and the other man gulped in air, similarly trying to catch his breath.
"She's—she's got the—the bomb?" Stephen asked between gasps. Doug nodded in response, and Stephen leaned back against the charred wall with obvious relief.
"All we can do know is wait. If anyone can do it, it's Mic—it's Chell."
Doug nodded again, glancing up to the sky. The ship was still sinking rapidly through the sky, flaming all the while. But no sign of Chell.
"Was that her name?"
Stephen looked startled by the question.
"Yes—er, yes it was. Michelle Kekoa. She was my—my friend. Before, I mean."
Doug took this in slowly, mulling it over in his mind. But there wasn't time. An explosion rocked them on their feet and they straightened, staring into the sky for any sign of Chell.
"There!" Stephen pointed.
And there she was. From the flaming wreck of the falling ship he could see her falling—a controlled fall that he'd seen her pull off before once or twice. She was holding the bomb in one hand and the ASHPD in the other and approaching fast. Then, in a move that Doug would have to relieve in his mind to believe it, she acted. A glowing orange portal stuck to the pale white gel to mirror his own orange-ringed mural around it, and Chell just…falling. Falling and falling and falling until she wasn't anymore; she was shooting a blue portal in a fraction of a second and then she was shooting back up into the air, bomb in tow, which she hurled at the last gunship. Doug watched as Chell pulled something out of her waistband mid-air and presumably fired.
The world went nearly white with the explosion. He ducked his head and next to him, Stephen did the same as a wave of heat rolled over them and washed them in smoke and intense warmth that prickled his skin and made his hair stand on end under his sleeves. Doug shivered, despite the warmth, and dared to dart a glance out at the world. The world was made of fire. Golden yellow tongues that lapped at the sky and the grass and the dust like it was starved for any kind of sustenance, no matter how inflammable. His sleeve was on fire, and he rolled wildly to put it out. Fear curdled in his stomach, a genuine, cold-as-ice fear in his belly that made him wonder if this was it. If Chell was dead. If for all her stubborn perseverance she simply couldn't escape the jaws of death from things that couldn't be survived. It would be a sad irony, he supposed dully, that she would be the first to ever escape the fires of Aperture, only to have the same thing sweep her off into the afterlife without much further ado, albeit a few years down the line.
"Chell? Chell!" Stephen rose beside him, yelling uselessly into the flames for any sign of the woman. Any sign of the test subject who was all too frail and human, when you really stopped to look at her. Doug took his time getting up; he almost didn't dare look, for fear of what he might see when his eyes finally lifted from the safety and the known of the dusty ground beneath his feet. But lift them he did. Because he had to know, and somehow, not knowing was worse because it allowed his frightful imagination to run wildly from disaster to disaster.
The sight that met his eyes was at first terrifying. Her face was splattered with crimson up one side, as if she'd shot and turned away from the sight, only to get partially caught in the spray. Or perhaps it was her blood. He couldn't tell. The glow of the fire behind her caught on the edges of her head and her neck and her shoulders, like a queen crowned, the light blazing so freely across the edges of her skin and hair that he had to make sure she wasn't aflame herself.
But her eyes, oh her eyes. Doug shivered easily at a passing glance, and a longer stare only deepened the trembling in every limb. Those eyes were the coldest he'd ever seen them. Not an attempt to hide her emotions from a ruthlessly perceptive AI, not a carefully crafted façade of determined fury that hid every doubt—no, this was frigid, and it was cruel. It was the stare of a woman who had finally thrown aside the murky morality of killing blurrily human AI's and turrets and who had crossed into the black and white picture of war and death and destruction. A stare that had quietly taken stock of the world and seemed to accept the horrors that must be accomplished.
It was not quite her stare, but it was enough to scare him. And to make him worry.
The ride back was uneventful, if you didn't count the massive number of stares centered on Chell and her bloody visage of determination. Doug had known she was impressive—it'd been the whole reason he'd put her at the top of the list, because if anyone could do the impossible, it was her. But from the way people were staring in awe, you would have thought that she was the free woman on earth. The only one left who possessed the kind of bull-headed, white-knuckled determination you read about in the legacies of legends and the annuals of history.
Perhaps they were only too happy to look delicately past the deadened coldness in her eyes. It meant they were saved at a cost only she had to pay.
"Welcome to Redwood." Rovetta held her arms akimbo with a particularly jaunty sort of panache as she grinned and ushered them into the base.
Doug blinked, trying to adjust his eyes to the darkness of the underground interior of the base, even as he felt a sudden sense of comfort wash over him. He was back inside, within a small hollow, a small den where he was safe and protected and hidden. He relaxed, slowly, taking in the low-ceilinged space with appreciation. Sturdy, plain concrete bordered them on all sides, with no windows to speak of, save the few in the short stairwell they'd just left. A few wooden crates, some of them quite grimy, still full of supplies stacked in neat piles against the walls. Then, at least three passageways, closed and blocked off with patched-up metal doors, leading to who knew what unknown tunnels that perhaps led deeper into the earth than they'd already come.
Separating from the group, he sat gratefully on the cold concrete, shuffling his back until the wall was firmly behind him, supporting him as he leaned weakly against it. After the incident with the dropships, they'd quickly assessed that the vehicles they'd stolen would likely draw more attention and be more trouble than they were worth. Faced with a monumental task of scouring every inch of the trucks for trackers of any kind and fighting off patrolling dropships that would likely spot the starkly black vehicles against the dusty landscape, Rovetta had decided to cut their losses and simply ditch the vans altogether. It was a long and hard journey without them, however, and his legs ached from the climb. Not to mention the bullet in his leg had reared its head again and was making itself well-known with a dull, hot pain.
Rovetta suddenly caught his attention again, speaking with authority as she directed their various forces. With a painful slowness, he carefully rose again, abandoning wall to join Caroline, Chell, and Stephen once again.
"Alright, you, you and you—" Rovetta said, pointing to several of the original resistance group in addition to Bert, "—first priority is get everyone fed and patched up so they're ready to go. Medical first, then ration the rest of the potatoes. I doubt we'll be getting a supply run any time soon, so we need to be ready to hunker down for a while."
As they took off to ration supplies, Rovetta turned to rest of them. "Meanwhile, I need you, Stephen, to help me make sure our communications array is online so we can coordinate with the main resistance forces. Not to mention, pretty sure Eli Vance and the rest of them would be pretty interested in that fancy gun of yours." Rovetta grinned and tapped the end of the ASHPD clasped tight in Chell's hands. Chell edged away, her face taut with suspicion, but Doug was suddenly struck by Caroline's reaction to Rovetta's words.
"Did you—did you say Eli Vance, as in Dr. Eli Vance of Black Mesa fame?"
Memory bloomed, and Doug was struck with a sudden awareness of the many rants he'd heard over the intercom system during work hours. Many of them had been prerecorded, more so as time went on, but they all expressed the same vehemence against a certain rival science company known by that very same name. Profanities in every possible combination, along with a great many bizarre and unrelated day-to-day objects, had frequented the recordings in increasingly random insults. One came vividly to mind: something to do with a coat-hanger, a coffee mug, and several words that he didn't dare voice aloud.
"I dunno about fame," Rovetta looked a little taken aback, "but yep, one and the same. You mentioned a 'Dr.' title—you work with him?"
"No, I—no." Caroline hesitated. She abruptly threw up her hands in surrender. "Oh what the heck, my confidentiality contract probably expired ten years ago. At the very least it's voided under the circumstances. In any case, I doubt there's currently a functioning legal system to prosecute me at the moment."
"What on earth are you talking about?" Rovetta stepped back, her face slightly suspicious. "You aren't working with the Combine, are you?"
"What? Oh the—oh heavens no! No, I'd rather be shoved into a main—er, well, there's a lot of nasty things I'd much rather tolerate than work for that horrible bunch." Caroline chuckled a little, and Doug caught her sudden retreat from the word "mainframe". "No, but I do need to get a message to Dr. Vance if I can. I'll keep it brief, but if he's as interested in Chell's gun here as you say he is, then I think he'll be interested in what I have to say."
Rovetta stared Caroline down for a long, long moment, then finally relented on her hard glare. She seemed to come the steady conclusion that Caroline could perhaps be of use and allowed to talk to this Dr. Vance at least from a distance. "Alright—Stephen, let's get this bad boy fired up. I'm not sure how much power we'll have to work with, so we may have to make it extra quick."
Kleiner was on monitoring duty for the communications array. It was a task he gladly took on, considering the multitude of unsavory jobs that always needed to be done around a base as large as White Forest. Of course, whereas other jobs tended to be messier in the physical sense, like cleaning the latrines or working with the Vortigaunts to prepare meals out of the scant selection of un-irradiated foods they had in stock—communications came with its own set of drawbacks.
Like the news of the City 19 executions just a few days prior. Kleiner swore that when it was all over, when the war was over (if he'd even managed to survive that long), those images would still be burned into his brain with an undeserving clarity. Revolts had begun all over as a result of the destruction of City 17, but in the few cities where the Combine still held tight-fisted control, executions had been swift and brutal. In the beginning, they'd simply gone door to door, building to building, and asked every human citizen if they would consider joining Overwatch. If yes, they lived to see another day, albeit a darker one. If no, then their death would be quick if they were lucky. Just another stain against the wall of a back alleyway.
Kleiner paused for a minute to rub the bridge of his nose, lifting his glasses slightly with the motion. For as much good news of successful uprisings was pouring in, the cruelty of the Combine came flooding in with near-equal measures. At times, he wondered if they'd even—
"—hello, testing, hello. This is Redwood to White Forest, please confirm."
Kleiner grabbed for the mic. "Yes—yes hello, this is Dr. Kleiner of White Forest. Please report."
"Status report: we've got about a hundred or so Combine prisoners here, freshly broken out of Cam Novine prison, and a special lady who needs to talk to you."
"Excellent news, but er, who needs to talk to—"
"Hello Dr. Kleiner. It's been some time. My name is Dr. Caroline Teiger, formerly acting CEO and one of many head scientists of Aperture Science."
Kleiner could feel his heart drumming in his ears. An Aperture Science Scientist, alive. Impossible, and yet…
"Yes, yes! Yes, I remember Aperture—"
The video camera abruptly came on, and though the video was a bit fuzzy and lagged behind the sound, there was no mistaking what he saw. A woman, mid-forties with greying brown hair jumped into view. She wore a bright, prison-orange jumpsuit with a small white logo on the breast pocket, an outfit mirrored by a tall man and a young woman standing on her right. To her left, a thin, gaunt-looking man with a haunted look to his face slouched in a lab coat—or what was left of one, anyways.
But it was what the younger woman in the jumpsuit was holding that caught is attention. A good-sized device, covered in glossy, scratched white plastic with three black metal prongs extending from the barrel. A blue glow pulsed from the barrel, speaking to some unknown function that surely couldn't be a mere gun. Yet despite his limited knowledge of the device, considering what Dr. Teiger had already mentioned in connection to Aperture, he could hazard a guess. One that made his pulse accelerate and his head begin to race to conclusions.
The older woman—Caroline, he presumed—grinned.
"I hear Dr. Vance is interested in portal technology."
AN Cont'd: Whew! Quite a ride to go through, but I'm hoping since you made it to the end note that you enjoyed it! Since I've actually started playing the Half-Life games more in-depth, I'm debating whether to possibly do further chapters from the Half-Life cast's POV or to stick with the Portal cast as a steady perspective on the world they're new to but the Half-Life folks already know. If you have an opinion or simply have something you want to say about the fic, do feel free to leave a comment or review! Also, just as a real quick reminder, this fic is illustrated! You can see the illustrations either embedded directly on ao3, or on my tumblr under the same username.
Til' next time,
Little Inkling