The lock clicked.
The act in itself felt forbidden. Doug had rigged the keypad for years to make getting in and out of his office as easy as possible. No point wasting time unlocking and re-locking his door. He had nothing to hide, nothing to keep stashed away.
Today, he locked his door before leaving.
Doug picked out two figures through the foggy glass of the daycare center. Henry leaned over a desk, a vial gleaming. Liquid beads dribbled onto Chell's potato.
"Eventually, it's going to grow roots," he said, tapping the vial. The remaining drops splattered down. "But that's not until this wears off. For now, it'll get an extra half volt."
"Still not enough to power anything important," she said as she straightened. The corner of Doug's mouth upturned.
"You just wait," said Henry. "I'll change that. But I've got to go." He'd prove her wrong—he'd adapt his artificial intelligences to run on one point six volts. In fact, he might as well make it one point one. Chell would have no more reasons to doubt the power of her potato. He patted the desk and headed toward the door. As much fun as messing around with potatoes was, he didn't want to get fired over it.
"Can I talk to you?" said Doug. He stepped into the hallway behind Henry.
Chell inspected her battery under the yellow wash of the desk light. She glanced up, elbow propped against the table as she watched the scientists through the clear door.
"Someone went through my office," said Doug.
Henry folded his arms across his chest, eyeing the man. "What, you think it was a spy? We haven't had those in years," he said, tentative. "Caroline's cracked down."
"But they were trying to steal something," he said. "Portal gun blueprints."
"You're sure?" Henry said. Doug's eyes darted, taking in the figures dashing across his vision—a streak of color here, an indistinct shape there. "Tell me again what happened."
"When I walked in, someone was sorting through blueprints," he said. "And the cabinet I keep them in is locked."
"Who?"
The door clicked closed. "Chell's father."
Henry shifted. "You know she spends all of her time either here or in your office. He was probably just waiting for her to show up."
"Then why was he looking through those files?"
"Come on. You fix the portal guns for his wife all the time. He's allowed some curiosity."
"I know he was going to take them," Doug said. His hand tightened around the door handle.
"But he didn't actually take them," said Henry. "You've got nothing to worry about." He ran a hand across his balding head. He exhaled through the nose. The man was paranoid. Yet he couldn't bring himself to tell Doug he'd made it all up.
The potato tumbled to the ground.
Chell growled, scooping it up and repositioning it on the tablecloth. Wires dented into her as she pressed a palm into. She waited, and then lifted her hand and froze to make sure the tuber didn't roll off the edge again. Up and down the 'science fair' hall, other projects sat, still and undisturbed—unlike her stupid, tumbling potato. She let the battery lean against the poster, then stepped away.
"Bet you'll take first place," said Doug, walking in. "I mean, if we ever do have one."
Chell just glared and threw her backpack over her shoulder, ready to walk out the door when both Emily and Jerry showed up. Strange. The walk to the surface elevator wasn't difficult—she didn't need accompaniment.
"What's going on?" said Chell.
"Nothing," said Emily. She gave a small smile and pulled back a strand of hair. "Just thought you'd like some company."
Chell gave them a wary look, then said her goodbyes to Doug before leaving the man alone with her potato and the dying sounds of her footsteps.
A purple haze dripped down from the evening sun. Chell squinted, though the sun had long since vanished behind a clump of clouds. The transition between the facility and the world caught her off guard, and she lifted an arm to shield her face against the setting sun.
"Your mom called," said Emily over the revving engine of their car. "Wants you to call her back."
"Okay," said Chell as she stared out the window. She counted every drop of water, watched every bit of condensation roll down and morph into larger drops.
She felt as if time flowed in reverse, pulling them back toward Aperture rather than letting them leave. Not even staring out the window made time pass by faster.
Chell felt the familiar crunch of gravel beneath the tires as they pulled into the driveway. She jumped out and ran for the telephone. A red light flashed like a beacon in the dark, signaling a new message. She punched the play button.
"Call me back when you get a chance. Have some news for you," said Judith Mossman, voice hurried yet tired. She listed a new contact number, and then the message cut off. A seed of disappointment bloomed through Chell as she picked up the receiver.
The phone dialed a cheery tone until the other end answered.
"Mom!" said Chell, her excitement barely contained. This had to be the call she'd been waiting for—the one where her mom told her she got the job and that she missed Chell so much that she was coming back to get her.
A pause. A swallow. "I didn't get it."
"What?" Chell said, voice coming out as a whisper. Emily and Jerry took one look at the girl's face before disappearing into another room.
"I didn't get the job. Some silent guy fresh out of MIT got it instead." Disgust dripped from Judith's voice, and she gave a shaky sigh. "So much for equal opportunity employer."
Chell exhaled, heart sinking. "How? They should have hired you on the spot!" she said, voice rising. Pictures of plans, of blueprints, flashed through her head. She'd spent hours explaining it to Emily, hours making sure every detail was perfect.
"That's a little unrealistic—"
"That technology's still new!" she said, edging toward hysteria. "It was perfect."
A pause.
"Chell, you're not making sense. What are you talking about?"
"The blueprints!"
"What blueprints?"
"The ones I sent you," Chell said.
She went silent, heart beating faster.
"I didn't get any blueprints"
"But Jerry and Emily said—" Chell blinked twice, biting her lip and glancing into the other room. The two adults lounged on the couch, flipping through channels on the new TV they'd just splurged on. This was the happiest she'd ever seen them, and they'd been that way since their promotion.
You sent them to me directly?"
"Well, no," Chell started, stomach sinking. She felt like hitting the wall. How stupid could she be? She should have known they wouldn't share this info. She shouldn't have clung to the hope that they had still told her mom, that somehow she would have gotten a job out of it. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She knew this was going to happen, and yet it still felt like a kick in the stomach.
"You were supposed to do that."
"Mom, I tried!" said Chell, voice cracking. She had called her, and she told her that she had something really important—but Judith had hung up on her anyway.
"Then try harder."
"I don't want to," said Chell.
"Well, you're going to have to," said Judith. "Get something bigger. Something better. And be sure to send it to me directly this time. I can send you some cash-walk to the post office yourself if you have to."
Chell swallowed again, thinking back to Aperture and back to Doug. She thought about how she clung to him as much as he clung to her, both equally happy with the other's companionship. And every time she had to look him in the eye and lie to him and steal from him, she felt sick inside. "Mom, just come up here," she said, shifting into a pleading tone. "Work for Aperture."
"I'm not going back there," Judith said. "I'll go get another degree—a doctorate, if I have to. But I will never work for that company."
"Did you have a nice chat with your mom?" said Emily.
Chell wrapped her arms around her knees, not moving. She shook her head. "She didn't get the job."
Emily sighed, smoothing out a piece of the girl's dark hair. "That's the way it works sometimes," she said.
The girl fell silent, struck with awe at just how easily the lady blew past it—as if helping Judith had meant nothing to them as soon as the promise of a promotion, of a raise—had surfaced. Her throat swelled in anger, and she was done. She didn't want to talk to Emily. She didn't want to talk to Jerry. Not now, not ever.
And yet she wanted them to notice her silence. She wanted so desperately for them to take a half-second and ask what was wrong, so that she could let the floodgates open and spill out her anger and tears. But they didn't know she was angry. Chell was usually quiet.
They did not ask, and they could not tell the difference.
The door slammed as Chell walked in. Her backpack crashed to the floor.
Doug straightened. "Something wrong?"
Chell felt both angry and relieved that he asked, that he had picked up in two seconds what her 'parents' had yet to notice. She was so happy he'd noticed, but Doug was the one person she couldn't tell the truth.
"I'm okay," she said. Another lie. She walked over to the paint-splattered companion cube, pulling out a tray of colors. "This thing needs a bath," she noted, nudging it with a foot. As Chell set up her station, a small picture fluttered from her back pocket and landed on the tiled floors.
"What's that?" Doug nodded his head in the direction of the photo.
She twisted, patting her pocket. Her fingertips met denim as she felt for the picture's sheen edge. On the ground, a bit of glare on the photo's slick surface caught her eye. She bent to scoop it up, and dusted it off with the side of her hand. "Nothing," she said.
"Can I see?" said Doug. Chell pulled the picture close, staring down the man for a moment or two. He stared back, and realized that neither of them would give in. Begrudgingly, she handed over the photo, letting her hand suspend in the air until he took it.
Chell and an adult woman he didn't recognize stared back at him, their faces ringed by furry coat hoods. Hazy blue mountains cluttered the background, and the girl and the adult donned matching artificial smiles. Little white specks streaked across the frame. "Who's this?"
"My mom."
"Doesn't look like her," said Doug, inspecting the picture closer. The woman's hair was too light to be Emily. The face, too, didn't look right. The photo wasn't the highest resolution, but he could still tell.
"That's because I'm adopted," Chell said flatly. Doug fell silent.
The Chell in the photo looked the same as the Chell in front of him, as if the picture had been taken days ago. But weren't children usually adopted out at a younger age? "This looks recent," he eventually said.
"It is."
The question hung, unasked and unanswered. Why would she get adopted out when she was almost a teenager? And to two Aperture scientists, no less? A sinking feeling came over him. "I'm sorry for your loss," he said. Doug met Chell's eyes, turning the picture in his hands before offering it back.
The girl slid it back into her pocket, looking away. She wanted to expand, but she couldn't. She felt that her mother must hate her for always getting in the way of things. College, career, everything. She didn't mention how much of a struggle Judith's undergraduate years had been, with her pregnancy and subsequent newborn to care for. She didn't mention how the years following were spent in regret, usually hidden but occasionally directed toward Chell. She didn't mention how Judith had rebooted her life a few years ago, uprooting Chell and attending a graduate program.
And now that meant starting her career without Chell. A true reboot.
"This must be hard for you," said Doug, at a loss as to how to comfort her. Losing her mother after twelve years and then having to adjust to two strangers as her primary caretakers must have been so hard. He felt that there was more to the story, but he didn't want to pry. She had already told him so much just now. He exhaled, walking over to sit on his companion cube. He glanced at his watch and shifted, picking up the discarded paints.
He handed her a brush and began to paint.
Clicks. A space bar. A squirrely-looking man typed, glancing up as Doug approached the CEO's office. He hovered, watching the man use his computer while balancing a phone on his shoulder.
"If you need the CEO, give me a minute," he said, his name tag identifying him as Gregory—or, Greg. Caroline's assistant. "Only so much a man can do."
While he waited, Doug slumped into a plush, outdated chair—Caroline had insisted upon bringing them up from a lower level, supposedly for budget reasons rather than sentimental ones. He smoothed his off-white coat, frowning at a stain he hadn't noticed before. Just as he was about to pull it off—he wanted to make a good impression, after all—Greg waved him back over.
"She's open now," said Greg. "Go, but make it quick. She's got a company to run."
Doug nodded, edging open the door. A sense of dread came over him as he pushed his way in. He'd spoken to Caroline on more than one occasion, but he never was able to shake the feeling that the world would dissolve into chaos if he lingered around her too long.
"Hello?" he said tentatively.
Caroline set down a pen and smiled. "Douglas," she said, her voice lower than the higher, exuberant voice from decades ago. She didn't offer him a seat.
He pulled in a breath. "I think there's spies in Aperture," he said, deciding to dive into the conversation. He didn't even bother to correct her on his name and how he preferred Doug, actually.
"What makes you say that?" said Caroline, but she already knew the answer. In fact, she knew that Aperture had spies within its ranks. It would have been surprising if there hadn't been any. She knew about every spy in this place—she had every Black Mesa employee under her watch, all assigned to menial jobs like manufacturing or test observation, all jobs that wouldn't cripple Aperture when information 'leaked' out.
"Someone went through my office," he said.
The woman showed no signs of emotion, only blinking as he summarized what happened. "That does happen from time to time," she said.
"I know who it was. A man named Jerry Naransky."
She twisted around and dove into a filing cabinet. Doug slipped into a chair while she picked up Jerry's file—the man Doug claimed to be spying. Sure enough, Black Mesa markings were stamped across his page. So Doug was correct in his suspicions, but he didn't need to know that.
Doug exhaled. "He was about to take portal gun blueprints," he said.
"What?" Caroline finally looked up, remembering all at once that Mr. Rattmann worked with portal gun repair. Oh, this was suddenly a lot more serious than she thought. "They weren't locked?"
Doug hesitated before shaking his head no. "I had them out for a project I've been working on," he said. "And no one's ever in my office."
"You know how important those are." She stared at Doug, unmoving. "Never leave those out. The portal device is all we have left. Without it, Aperture is nothing," said Caroline, maintaining eye contact for a long moment before shifting into a calmer voice. "If you lose those files, you're as good as dead to me." She straightened and smiled, standing to escort him out of her office. "With that said, I'll look into it. Thank you."
The door clicked behind him. Doug leaned against a wall, eyes briefly closing.
"I know what you mean," said Greg, laughing at the man's sigh of relief. He didn't look up from his monitor. "Pretty scary for a woman in her 60's, right?"
A/N (2/3/2013): As always, thanks for reading! I've done a lot of writing for this story these past few weeks. I've got the rough drafts done for another five chapters, ahaha. Anyways, Caroline's going to be playing a major part from now on. There's a lot of important things about her that have yet to be revealed.
