A/N: The first scene here is based off of some concept art for Portal 2. There's a link to it on my profile, and I highly recommend looking before you begin reading. Also, the next chapter might take a bit longer to post up. It's long, and it's important so I want to make sure I get it right. Thanks!

Chapter 8

The bottle came up light and airy in his hands. Doug shook it, pulling the prescription close to his ear and listened.

Silence.

He smashed his palm onto the child proof lid and twisted, popping it open. The bottle was devoid of pills, but The yellow plastic greeted him, and no pills were in sight. He'd used them all, and yet he didn't recall running low. He frowned, glancing up at his Aperture-brand wall calendar. Sure enough, a cheerful yellow smiley face sticker clung to today's date, a not-so-subtle reminder that he'd need to refill his prescription if he wanted to keep on smiling. He slipped the empty yellow case into his pocket, locking his door before venturing out into the facility.

As he walked through the hustle and bustle of Aperture Laboratories, conversations murmured around Doug. The occasional careless laughter or raised voice lightened the mood, as most people spoke in low, serious tones. Many were like Doug, and made the minimal amount of social interaction as they sped from one place to another. And yet the stampede of footsteps and the streams of conversation brightened his heart— he desired these everyday sounds over the sinister silence of his office.

With Chell or without Chell, his lab contained the same amount of stillness. Neither spoke often, and yet the quietness hanging between the two seemed calm. Almost serene. But without her, his office just felt empty. Almost suffocating.
These people, these sounds provided a much-needed escape, a much-needed relief while he wound his way to one of the most visually-stunning places in the facility: The Aperture Science Medical Research and Employee Prescription Center.

During the early days of Cave Johnson's lunar poisoning, Caroline authorized—well, forced, really— the lab boys to construct a wing dedicated to finding a cure for the CEO's gradually worsening health. As time went on and Cave's body deteriorated past a point of no return, the focus shifted away from a medical miracle to a technological miracle.

Neither of which worked, of course—they hadn't even come close. But the wing had remained in all of its terrible beauty, eventually repurposed and expanded to provide not only research, but prescriptions, free of charge, to all employees of Aperture.

As always, there were those that preferred to buy theirs in town—a much safer source. This was the medical research wing after all, so not all prescriptions worked the way they claimed to. Side effects cropped up frequently—some intentional, some not—though none had yet affected Doug. He couldn't complain—the service was free, and Ziaprazione cost him a hefty amount everywhere else. It was better to take his chances with Aperture's pharmacists.

He cringed at the thought of going without antipsychotics for another day. The confusion between real and not real, between artificial and true was too much to handle alongside his job. If he didn't refill it soon, his mind would begin to lie to him.

Oh, it would be subtle at first, reminiscent of his illness's earliest days. A flash of a figure to the side—a glimpse of someone in a mirror, there one moment and gone the next. Intense, unjustified paranoia. Muffled, indistinct noises around him, originating from no discernable source.

He wasn't going back to those times.

He pushed in the clear doors, and walked into the wing that was made entirely out of glass.

It was open and airy here, a stark contrast to the closed-off offices and cramped test chambers. The area existed within one vast room, though parts of it were sectioned off by transparent walls.

Shades of white and gray drenched the area, with the colors blurring into each other like a chalkboard in a rainstorm. Huge vials and vats littered the ground floor, and catwalks spanned up and up across the open air until they disappeared into a gray haze. Silhouettes walked about, clinging to clipboards and observing bubbling liquids. Things hissed. Puffs of opaque smoke gathered in clouds, and the ventilation system whisked it away.

Three levels up, he saw a splotch of color. Caroline leaned against a catwalk railing, legs crossed. She observed—like Doug, this was her favorite place in Aperture. Her view of the facility expanded past the glass walls, and from this vantage point, high above the twists and turns of activity beneath her, she saw everything in the facility. And for a moment, she could stand here and revel in the fact that this place was hers.

It was clean; it was crisp; it had Caroline written all over it.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up as he turned to head to the Employee Prescription Refill Center. As irrational as it seemed, he couldn't shake the feeling that the CEO was watching him. He hadn't taken his medicine today, though, and his paranoia cropped up frequently—with or without meds.
At the prescription desk, the pharmacist filled an empty bottle, scooping out blue and white pills and then carefully counting them. She frowned, and reached into another container before tossing in another handful of capsules.

"Any changes?" said Doug, taking back the rattling bottle of pills.

"New capsule, but same effect" she said, a slight hesitation in her voice. "You might notice slight variations in side effects, but that's to be expected. It's nothing to worry about," she added, a bit too cheerful.

Doug eyed her for a moment before unscrewing the lid and letting two smooth pills roll into his hand. He tilted his head, swallowing them dry—much easier then hunting down a reliable source of water around here. The man remained convinced that, if no one watched, Aperture would lace their water supply with their latest 'research.'

He thanked the pharmacist and slipped the noisy container into his lab coat. As he wound his way back through transparent walls, he glanced up again at the catwalks.

Caroline was still up there, watching, and Doug still couldn't shake the feeling that she was watching him.


The camera swiveled.

Chell bolted, smacking her forehead against a plexiglass shield. She pressed her hands against it, beginning to panic—she was in a tight space, enclosed in a small sleeping pod.

She couldn't remember climbing into it.

The glass hissed as it slid back, and cold air swirled in. She coughed once, gunk rising in the back of her throat. She raised a hand to rub her sticky eyes, blinking away the chemicals responsible for keeping her asleep.

Her body ached, and a dull headache throbbed—a definite indicator she'd slept for too long. A day or two or three—she couldn't tell. She was still in her sweatpants, she noted, and her t-shirt.

She flipped her legs out of the bed, blinking as she pushed herself out of her cocoon. White overwhelmed her vision. The only hints of color came from the gray-blue tint of the glass and the red lens of a security camera, perched in the outer room's corner.

Slick tile covered the floor, and glass walls enclosed her in a box-like space. Outside of the sleeping pod, a small nightstand, a clipboard, and a toilet furnished the cube. A distant hissing came from far-off in the facility, the result of thousands of parts moving together in a steady rhythm.

A flat white panel stood where an exit should be, the material itself similar to the panels tessellating across the room surrounding her prison cell of a room. A thin gray bar ran across the top, its purpose unknown to Chell. Above it, a broken clock with four dashes blinking instead of numbers.

Chell circled the square room, trailing her fingers along the glass. She sought out an edge, a ledge, a ridge she could latch onto or smash at until she got out of this place. But the walls were slick and uniform with no imperfections.

She was trapped.


The video feeds cycled, streaming live from three relaxation vaults tucked far away within Caroline's private wing. Back there, no one would find them. After all, if anyone in Aperture could cover up a triple-disappearance, it was Caroline.

She watched the steady rotation from her office, only pausing when a red flash notified her that one of the sleeping pods went offline. She stopped the automatic cycling, and pulled the third chamber up into full-screen.

Caroline smiled—it looked like the youngest of the spies had awoken.

She leaned into her microphone, the action itself reminiscent of when Cave Johnson spent hours recording messages to guided test subjects. But, unlike him, these messages weren't prerecorded—they were one hundred percent live.

"Oh good, you're awake," she said, as nonchalant as she could manage. The fact that the girl was even moving surprised her—she hadn't anticipated she was awake surprised her-she hadn't anticipated that Chell could so easily throw off short-term cryosleep.

The girl startled at the voice, checking the observation window and half-expecting to see Emily standing there. She was a test associate, and after what she'd been through she wouldn't be surprised if this had been an elaborate ploy to get her into testing.

"Hold on a moment. I'll be right back," she said, tapping the chipped red record button to stop recording. The communication line cut off with a small pop.

Greg leaned into her doorway, holding a phone at an arm's length and gesturing wildly. "Black Mesa's on the line," he said, hissing.

Caroline nodded, answering her phone with an instant scowl.

Her assistant wandered in, hovering by the video feed. In his career at Aperture, Greg had dealt with test subjects and unending amounts of testing-related paperwork, but he'd never seen a test subject that young. Not that she was young, per se—a quick glance showed her to be on the verge of a teenager. Compared to the old hobos waddling through testing, though, she was definitely youthful.

She didn't sport the standard orange jumpsuit, but seeing the girl in short-term storage worried Greg. Sure, he had spent hours hunting her down, but seeing her in her sweatpants, huddled against the harsh white of the chamber made her seem so small. Vulnerable. He couldn't see why Caroline felt so threatened by this girl— or what could have warranted such drastic measures against her.

He blinked, refocusing on the CEO's conversation.

"Those weren't the real files, you know," she said, standing. She placed a hand on the sleek hardwood desk, steadying herself. "They're useless-You can't get anywhere with a single portal device, you know. Besides," she said, fingers curling around the smoothed edge, "you've got a hurried description from an idiotic employee. You're honestly bragging about that?"

Greg considered picking up a receiver to listen in, but thought better of it. A move like that would get him fired.

"Stop gloating and forget about those files," she said, other hand clenching around the phone. "It's not worth it—and I can promise you Black Mesa will never build a portal as well as Aperture."

She thanked them in a disgustingly cheerful voice, but slammed down the phone to hang up. Caroline braced both hands against the desk, staring down through strands of disheveled hair. She trembled slightly, and Greg took a hesitant step back and glanced again at her monitor. She said nothing, and instead taking a moment to compose herself and smooth her dress before walking to her assistant.

"A little young, isn't she?" he said, voice small.

"Black Mesa got a working gravity gun thanks to that girl, and with the help of her parents, they've had their first glimpse into the mechanics of a quantum tunneling device," she said, giving one choked laugh.

A dull blue glow from the computer illuminated half of Caroline's face. "They've got enough for one portal, but if they finish developing that technology, we're finished. And she's to blame, and I could care less how old she is."

"What do we do now?" he said.

She folded her arms. "I have the girl, and I have her parents. I'm going to make sure that Black Mesa never attempts to steal that technology from us ever again, and their little spies are going to pay the price. As far as what to do," she said, "well, I'm still deciding. But I've got lots of time for that."