A/N: This was the hardest chapter to write emotionally for this fic so far. I came close to shedding a few tears, actually. I hope at least some of that emotion made it into this chapter.
Anyways, the writing on the walls comes directly from the game, just like in Chapter 14. Thank you, and enjoy the chapter!
Chapter 15 - Your Faithful Companion
Splash.
.
.
.
.
.
Silence.
Doug held his breath, straining forward to hear through the static. All he needed was a sound—a scrape of a heel against the ground, a sigh of relief as Chell moved away. He needed a sign, a sound, something to assure him that she was alright.
Silence.
Doug said nothing.
Caroline said nothing.
And out of all the sounds his mind could've conjured into being, that splash—and this deep and complete silence following it—hurt more than any real sounds ever could. He would take Caroline's words any day over that.
Doug stumbled out of the elevator and down the dark hallway. He swallowed.
Chell wasn't dead.
She couldn't be.
It was just a splash. Just a noise. He wasn't even sure if it had been real—Caroline hadn't even acknowledged it yet.
This was just a fluke. An accident. Sooner or later he'd hear soft footsteps or a quiet sigh and he'd know she was safe. Any second now, Chell would make a noise. She was usually quiet.
Surely this was just an extension of that.
In her room, Caroline raised her eyes to the window.
She'd heard that sound countless times before, and it could only mean one thing: the girl was most likely dead. Everything couldn't have gone more perfectly, really. She'd trapped Chell and she'd trapped Doug, and now her problems were more or less taken care of.
So that was it.
She'd won.
Caroline wanted to celebrate. She wanted to take her victory and rub it right into his eyes, but she couldn't find the words.
Instead, she felt empty.
She was only left with the most hollow sort of satisfaction, rising up for a fleeting moment before disappearing and leaving her devoid of emotion. A vaguely unsettling feeling clung to her, as if she should be feeling some sort of emotion other than this nothingness.
And yet, only anger crept up inside of her.
How dare Chell give up like that.
She'd been clever. She'd been resourceful. She'd been the first real challenge that Caroline had faced in a long while. And while the whole thing had been infuriating and stressful, it had also been exciting.
She'd fought so hard the entire way. And yet she'd thrown it all away when she threw herself into the acid. She'd just given up.
That wasn't the Chell she'd known. Even thinking of the possibility that she'd actually done it and died made her stomach churn with unease.
So what had changed? What had driven her to that point?
Caroline blinked, moving out of her chair.
Had she pushed things too far?
Chell had been a threat to this company, and she'd already done enough damage as it was. She had to be stopped. But looking back on all of the horrible things Caroline had done, she couldn't help but wonder.
She moved back toward a microphone.
Of course not.
"I'll be right back," said Caroline. "But first, a bit of explanation. This next chamber requires you to be accompanied by a companion. Please take better care of it than your last one," she said. "The Vital Apparatus Vent will deliver a Weighted Companion Cube in three, two one."
The vent hissed to life and a cube thumped to the ground. The bright warning panel buzzed to life.
17/19
He engaged the gravity feature and squinted. Instead of circles, six pink hearts adorned the sides of this cube. It looked so much like his cube, the little prototype he carted around to store his painting supplies.
But no paint splatters marked the sides, and the size of the cube itself was far too large—the size of a normal weighted storage cube. But he didn't know why an oversized duplicate of his own cube was staring him in the face. If Caroline thought she'd be able to hurt him with this, she was wrong. He had no connections, no shared memories with this companion.
The cube was like a couple of his favorite shirts—though they were faded and threadbare, he still couldn't bear to get rid of them. He'd never intended to become so attached to it.
But this wasn't his cube, and that was good.
Doug pressed the cube up against the gray ledge, using it to clamor up to the next level. He formed a patchwork staircase, climbing and then retrieving the cube until he'd made it to the top.
Sweat clung to his skin as he turned the next corner. More voice swirled around his mind,and no matter how hard Doug tried to pour his full attention into solving this test, they only grew more insistent.
While the test acted as a distraction, he couldn't keep the schizophrenia at bay indefinitely. If he had that much control over it, then he'd have no use for his prescription.
BzzzzZZZzzt.
Doug darted as a high-energy pellet warbled by. He charged forward, shifting the portal device so that his cube acted as a fearless gray shield.
A pellet ricocheted, scoring the walls with black marks before dissipating. Doug turned the corner, hovering between pellet generators to size up the next hallway.
Those stairs, combined with the generator behind him made advancing twice as difficult. He'd either have to walk in reverse and hope one wouldn't hit him, or deflect the current pellet and hope he didn't get hit in the back of a skull by the next energy ball.
He chose the latter. The pellet bounced off of his cube, ricocheting into oblivion.
An l-shaped staircase wrapped around to a ledge, which dropped off into the chamber's main area.
He threw a portal onto the level below and painlessly hopped through. Above him hung another blurred observation window, still devoid of Caroline's figure.
Well, at least she wasn't back yet.
He turned, and then jerked. He'd missed something upon his first sweep. Just like in the previous test chamber, a white panel partially jutted out from the wall. Doug stuck his free hand in the space between them, hand curling around the edge. He pulled, hard, shoulder straining and portal gun slipping in his right hand.
He sidestepped, then crouched to get a better glance in the room. Portal-friendly panels coated the interior, and he raised his gun. The portal spun as he fired, twisting and then popping open. Doug ducked inside.
Wheatley had gotten lucky his first time around—this room was far smaller, and with no exit in sight. Just empty panel after empty panel, no different than the remainder of the test. Old calendars and old posters littered the edges of the room like fallen leaves. These papers slipped in between cracks and lingered, untouched by this wing's nonexistent cleaning staff. With few people allowed access to this wing to begin with, maintenance tended to slip aside in back areas like this.
He glanced away, staring up at the unmarked panels.
Part of him insisted that Chell was dead. So many of his delusions he'd experienced in these past few days had been anything but fabricated, and even though Henry tried to convince him otherwise, he knew what had happened was real.
So how could that splash be any different? He knew he hadn't imaged it, but that sound could only mean one thing.
And yet Doug still clung to hope, a soft whisper in his heart telling him that Chell was still out there, wandering the facility and in desperate need of help.
He pulled his pen from his pocket and covered the wall in a zigzag trail of words as he mentally descended through the levels of Aperture in search of her.
Where
Are
You?
I
Will
Find
You.
He would get out of here. He would find her.
He had to.
Doug wouldn't give up until Chell was safe, however long that may take. And so long as she was not confirmed to be dead, Doug clung to the hope that she was still alive.
In hindsight, leaving Doug unsupervised wasn't her best decision. She'd made sure he couldn't escape again, though. Any attempts at accessing a panel would lock it down before it fully extended. The gap between panel and wall wouldn't leave enough space for him to crawl through again.
She stepped into one of her own elevators, tucked away within the depths of her wing. There were other ways to access Old Aperture, and Doug had been an idiot to believe otherwise.
She had to go back down there and double check that chamber. Her audio feed couldn't confirm anything, and she had to be absolutely sure that that the splash she heard had come from Chell herself.
The familiar ride dragged along, letting questions bounce around her head.
What was she doing?
The damage had already been done to her—she couldn't reverse that now. She couldn't gain any new data from testing the two, and even watching their responses to her comments wasn't helpful. None of this was for science.
At this point, it was just revenge.
She blinked. The doors opened and Caroline moved through the familiar areas until the reached the 1960's test chamber control room.
Click.
She stuck a fingernail beneath a switch and flipped, disengaging the testing track's lockdown. If she wanted to investigate that area herself she needed to be able to open the door.
She moved through the back areas of the enrichment spheres, easily dropping in to the second test's entrance. The door slid open as she approached. and f
For a split second she hoped to see Chell sprint through the door, ready to fight her way past Caroline—but nothing happened.
Caroline wrapped a hand around the doorframe, a motion similar to holding back the automatic doors of an elevator. She leaned in and scanned the room.
Nothing.
An unengaged button sat beside the exit. A cube lingered up on that high ledge, untouched. White surfaces mixed with dark ones, creating a patched-together mosaic of a chamber. She looked and she listened, glancing over every possible area, every possible hiding spot but seeing no one.
Well, that confirmed it. She was gone.
Caroline exhaled. There was no test subject in this chamber, no more girl to worry about. Now, she just had to break the news to her other test subject upstairs.
WhoOooOoooOOOOOooOoooOoo.
Doug slammed into the ground, air rushing from his lungs. His companion cube sat on a ledge behind him, holding open one door while he crouched on a button to hold the other. The high-energy pellet hissed by his ear, giving a slight click as it hit the receptacle at the far end of the room.
He pushed himself to his feet and then retrieved his cube.
Three platforms needed to be raised, and in Caroline's absence he'd activated all three. The complexity of the test, along with Caroline's absence, had been enough to quell his growing dread.
He portaled back to the main chamber's ledge—the one he'd walked in from. Three stationary platforms sat in place, raised high above the chamber floor.
The scientist exhaled.
A sizeable gap stretched between each stationary scaffolding, and he realized he wouldn't be able to just hop across. He'd slip through the cracks if he didn't get a running start.
Doug backed up until his heels touched the platform's border, and then sprinted forward and leaped. The soft glowing hearts of the cube partially blocked his vision, but as he landed the gun's energy field kept it suspended.
Well, at least he knew his modification worked correctly.
He backed up and leaped again, footsteps soft on the hard plastic platforms. A hallway extended to his right, and just he gave one last nervous jump her dreaded voice came back on.
"Well, I'm back. You've actually made progress since I left," she said, voice flatter than usual. "I'll admit that this test was patched together, but it just fits your situation so perfectly."
As Doug moved down the new hallway with his companion, he glanced up and frowned.
"Your faithful companion has proved to be nothing but loyal, keeping you out of harm's way and helping you as it accompanied you through this chamber. Does this situation sound a bit familiar to you? You've had plenty of time to think it over," she said.
Doug's eyes widened. "What are you saying—"
"I needed to repeat the experiment, of course, to make sure your actions would be consistent in both scenarios. It wouldn't be science otherwise," she said. "But what I'm saying—and what you've been too dense to realize—is that that cube is meant to act as a placeholder for someone. Another faithful companion of yours," she said. "I'll let you piece together just who that might be."
Doug's stomach twisted.
The cube was Chell.
His heartbeat quickened.
The cube was Chell and he'd been so focused on the chamber itself that he hadn't even made the connection as he carted along the now beat-up box. He'd tried to keep it unscathed, but burn marks dotted the sides much like Chell's cuts that she'd gotten during their escape.
He dropped the cube onto a red button. A chamberlock twisted. Behind a glass pane, Doug spotted a single button.
"Still, your weighted companion cube brought you some luck—but you of all people know that luck can't last forever," she said. "That cube cannot accompany you through the facility any longer."
Doug got the feeling that Caroline wasn't referring to his box with hearts. "And how do you expect me to do that?" he said.
"Press that button and you'll find out."
He jogged down the steps and pressed his palm against it.
A countdown timer sounded off, ticking steadily.
Tick tick.
Tick tick.
Tick tick.
A circular, dark chute hissed open. Reds and oranges coated the chamber, heat swirling out as he ran back to his cube.
"Deposit that cube into the emergency intelligence incinerator," said Caroline.
This wouldn't work on him. He wouldn't let it work—this was just a cube, after all. Just a cube with hearts instead of circles, one that he should have no problem tossing into a fire.
The cube hovered over the incinerator's opening, and the heat made his hands prickle. Colors flashed off of the metallic edges, but Doug wasn't focused on the cube.
Even pressed against the warm edge, Doug couldn't see the bottom of the incinerator. Instead he saw a wavering glow of intense heat, broken only by distinct flames.
His stomach twisted.
It would just take one click to let the cube fall—
—and as Doug imagined it falling, his mind flashed and substituted in Chell. He could only see her, falling farther and farther with a hand desperately stretched up as she hoped for Doug to catch her.
Click.
The incinerator's aperture closed.
"Your companion cube must be euthanized," said Caroline.
He squeezed his eyes shut, but image burned just as brightly in the dark of his mind. He couldn't let the cube go. He couldn't do it.
"Rest assured that eight out of ten Aperture Science engineers believe the Companion Cube is most likely incapable of feeling much pain," said Caroline. "The process itself is remarkably painful. Still, though. It's nothing compared to the acid."
Doug backpedaled, grabbing the cube and sprinting back toward the main chamber. He tried to ignore her. He tried to ignore what would inevitably come out of her mouth, the words he didn't want to hear—
"It may be the quickest way to go, but it's also the most painful. She didn't even have the strength to scream out before she died," she said. "And I DID go down there and check myself."
Doug's heart jumped—so there was another way down there. He just had to look harder—
"But the chamber's empty," she said, voice flat. "She's dead."
A sudden, crushing weight hit Doug as if a weighted cube had been thrown into his chest. The air disappeared from his lungs and he inhaled sharply.
No.
It couldn't be true. Caroline had to have been lying to him. She must've closed off the audio feed, she must have been hiding something—
He swallowed.
Chell couldn't be—
Even though he barely think and barely breathe, he weaved through three gleaming metal pillars and back into the main chamber. He needed to get back to that room, and out of her prying eyes to give him a moment of privacy to process what he'd just heard.
Pop.
Thwop.
Two portals opened, and Doug shoved his companion cube through the opening.
"Hold on," said Caroline. "Where do you think you're going?"
Doug shifted his weight to the side, shooting a glance over his shoulder. A red-lens camera twisted, light in the corner blinking as it focused in on him. A surge of anger rose through him and he pulled the gun close to his face, firing again. Sparks hissed as the device clattered to the ground, and Doug pivoted toward another camera.
Thwop.
Again and again he fired at the cameras, knocking each and every one of them offline. Without those, Caroline was left with nothing but her observation rooms—and she'd have a tough time seeing into that den without those.
His work done, he darted back into the den and disengaged his portals. But before he could take a minute to calm himself down, he grabbed his pen from his pocket and scrawled up a phrase on the wall.
STOP WATCHING
Doug slumped to the ground, pulling his knees close. He steadied himself with several shaky breaths, wiping a sleeve across his eyes. He couldn't allow himself to break down here. Not with her so nearby.
Doug bit down on his lip to stop the hot tears welling up in his eyes.
She was dead.
Caroline had confirmed it.
She was as dead as dead could be, a decomposing body in a pit of acid. In a matter of days she'd be reduced to nothing—nothing but a collection of memories. And he had no one to blame but himself.
Doug pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets and pushed. He couldn't do it, he couldn't let her see or hear—
The pressure built to an almost unbearable level, letting tears leak out anyways, silent and warm as they slid down his face like droplets on a car window.
He could face turrets. He could suffer through lasers. He could navigate his way across acid and every other deadly testing element. Caroline could throw anything at him in the name of revenge and he could survive.
But Caroline taking it out on Chell hurt him more than anything she could've ever done to him.
When he closed his eyes, he felt her arms wrap around him in a hug. The sensation flung him full-force back into their last conversation, where she'd begged him not to leave and she'd told him to stay, but he'd left anyways. He'd clung to that hopeless optimism that a solution was within easy reach, that if h e made it back up to the upper levels he'd figure everything out and that she'd be safe.
He sniffed and wiped his nose.
The realization that he'd never again see Chell hit him, a pain so sharp and biting and overwhelming he felt as if he'd been ambushed by turrets and sprayed with bullets simultaneously.
He'd never again see that stoic concentration, or her slight twitch of an eyebrow as she drug her pencil across paper or a paintbrush across canvas. He'd never sit in the company of her content curiosity, happy to just sit in quietness as she watched him work. And he'd never see that subtle smile of hers when she though no one was watching, and he never again hear her snort of laughter whenever Doug messed something up.
All of that—he'd never see it again.
Doug gave a string of chocked sobs, chest heaving. He pulled his companion cube close and leaned his upper body across it, fingers clinging to the metal edges. Though the hard surface and glowing hearts provided little comfort, they were still better than the cold floors and the cold walls.
The finality of it hit him like a punch in gut, and he couldn't breathe. Doug buried his head in his arms and pressed his hands into the back of his head. He couldn't hold it in any longer and he didn't care if Caroline heard him.
Panicked and overwhelmed, Doug cried.
Hours passed. While steady at first, they began to come in waves, dying down momentarily until an unrelated thought flung him back into grief that felt as fresh as it had been hours ago.
He barely heard it the first time—a calm, gentle voice beneath his sobs that silenced all of the other voices.
Doug.
His chest hurt and his head hurt and he could barely think through the pain, and yet he was still thinking too much. He wished he could just shut off his brain and forget about what happened. He wished he could just go back in time, to how things had been hours ago before Chell's fall.
Doug, listen to me.
He jerked his head up from the cool metal, the voice jarring him back into reality. The sound was sudden and unexpected, and yet so familiar that chills went down his spine. There was no mistaking whose voice he heard.
"Why do you have her voice?" he asked, words wavering with accusation and disbelief. I can't help it. I was meant to represent Chell, said the cube. But listen to me.
"I can't," said Doug. " I'm sorry. I can't."
It was too raw, too much of a slap in the face to hear her voice come from beneath him, so clear and eerie as if nothing had happened at all.
She was dead, and he didn't understand why, or even why she had to die in the first place. There was nothing justified about Caroline's actions. It wasn't brave—it was murder.
The word why repeated itself in his mind, momentarily drowning out the voice of the cube. He pulled out his pen and rose to his feet, scrawling out a red outline of the cube, his friend, his companion. With a few quick slashes he filled in the empty middle—where a heart should be, still beating and alive—with a skull and crossbones.
He repeated the phrase over and over and over, red words wrapping around the cube drawing.
Why why why
why why why
why why
why why why
why why why why why why why
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Why did this have to happen why did she die why why why—
Caroline's voice cut him off, speakers crinkling in the other room.
Doug heard the speakers crinkle on in the other room.
"Who are you talking to back there?" said Caroline, her voice genuinely curious. "I know it's not me."
Doug said nothing.
"I'm sure your schizophrenia's to blame, but still. That voice you're hearing is in your head and is not coming from that cube."
Doug frowned. Of course that voice was coming from the cube. Where else could it be coming from?
"You're delusional and hallucination and seeing an inanimate object as alive. I'm adding these things to your file, by the way. If you were better at taking care of your companions this might not be happening."
Don't listen to her, the cube said faintly. More words and phrases returned, swirling around his mind and he needed them out of his mind and onto the panels.
"Don't worry," he said. "I won't." He picked another panel and started scrawling.
The vital apparatus vent will deliver
Oh it will
WILL
The weighted companion cube DOES speak.
Superstition, perceiving inanimate objects as alive, and hallucinations. I'm not hallucinating. You are.
Considering the events of these past few days—and how many events Henry had been willing to pass off as a wild hallucination—he knew that this voice couldn't be more real, and no one could convince him otherwise.
Besides, other Aperture products, like the turrets and the personality sphere had the ability to speak. This companion cube was no different.
Doug.
He heard the voice again, soft and gentle as if an angel had descended and softly touched him on the shoulder.
"What?" he said.
It's going to be okay.
"Seems to me like you're taking this representation of Chell a bit too serious,'" said Caroline. "While I did want you to take care of the cube, I must also advise you to ignore its advice. Weighted companion cubes cannot speak."
Doug continued his writing on the walls, listening to Caroline's words and then morphing them into a jumbled and frantic answer. He began writing the word Companion Cube in alternating shades of black and red.
COMPANION CUBE
You said to take care of it.
How can I?
You won't let me.
I should disregard your advice.
Leave me alone!
"Really, though. I'm getting tired of this. You've been in that room for hours and you can't stay there forever. Eventually you'll have to come out."
The words sent another chill through both him and Caroline. She couldn't help but notice how similar those words were to the ones she'd spoken about Chell. Both she and Doug had hidden from her—but neither one could stay hidden.
His mind kept confusing the cube and Chell, until they were almost inseparable from one another. He moved to the side and started on another panel.
Because I could not stop
For Death,
He kindly stopped for me
The cube had food and
Maybe ammo
And immortality.
Chell had everything she could have needed. That place in Old Aperture could sustain her for a long time, considering the shelves upon shelves of food and water. The supplies wouldn't keep her alive forever, but close enough.
And they had found their ammo; their one weapon to use against Caroline had come from the mouth of dead company owner himself.
He sunk back to the ground. "What am I supposed to do now?" he said, keeping his voice as low as possible.
Move on, said the Cube. You will have plenty of time to mourn her later. But you've got to get out of here.
Doug leaned his forehead against the wall, one black hand pressed against it. The cube slipped from words into a comforting tune, as if it was an oversized music box rather than a testing cube.
"Just give me a minute," said Doug. "Let me draw one last thing."
With a deep breath, he lifted his pen. He wanted to draw a figure of Chell, but the mere act of calling up her image in his mind dragged up memories like a stick stirring up mud in water.
He couldn't do it.
Instead he sketched out the shape of his other companion, unable to even attempt to draw Chell. It was almost as if sketching her out with give some sort of finality to this, as if drawing her as an angel would seal her fate the same way Caroline had sealed the chambers.
His hand swooped to the side, leaving black ink wings extending from the companion cube. He circled the ink above into a swirling halo.
Another phrase rose up in his mind, vaguely poetic in comparison to the other phrases he'd heard. Doug glanced down at the cube, and the humming stopped.
Say it, said the cube. I know you're thinking of it.
"You're going to die too, aren't you?" he said, voice resigned. While he was calm now, the overwhelming sense of sadness lingered just out of sight. One small motion, one wrong word could let it all flood back in. He wasn't sure how much longer he could hold it back.
She's gone, Doug. And I will be too soon, said the cube.
"Don't say that," he said. "I can't let you die too."
But I'm slowing you down. You need to move forward, and I would rather die in that fire than be a burden to you, said the cube.
Chell was gone, and soon enough the cube left behind to represent her would be gone as well.
His pen hovered for a long moment before Doug let it glide across the textured surface.
Not in cruelty,
Not in wrath,
The Reaper came today;
An Angel visited
This gray path,
And took the cube away.
He paused, inspecting the panels before scrawling one last word in red.
R.I.P.
Goodbye, Chell.
His chest heaved again, and Doug took a few deep breaths and pinched the bridge of his nose. The cube was right. All he had to do was hold it together for a few more chambers, and maybe he'd finally be out of this place.
He lifted his knocked-over portal device, one hand sliding around the handle and other resting beneath the gun's middle. The device whirred out of its sleep mode with a jolt. He fired twice, portals linking and tearing open a pathway out of this small den.
Click.
The button sunk as it accepted the weight of the cube. The doors slid open again. Doug rested a hand on the cube's top.
"You're sure about this?" said Doug.
Yes. Keep going—you're almost done.
This time, he detected a mechanical undertone to the voice that sounded so much like Chell's.
"She said it might hurt," said Doug.
It will, said the cube. But that's okay. Don't let me stop you now.
Doug gave a heavy, defeated sigh. His shoulders slumped and his face sunk as if he hadn't slept in days. And yet he was struck with a sense of gratitude toward this box—he hadn't known before that cubes could speak, and that the voice of one could drive away the other voices he heard like a floodlight in a dark room.
He gave it a small pat before trudging down the stairs. He activated the incinerator's timer and then ran back, heaving up the cube and taking it to the incinerator.
The countdown clicked, a constant reminder as the cube hovered over the edge. Waves of heat made it look as it was wavering.
Goodbye, Doug, said the cube. I'll see you again someday.
"Goodbye," said Doug, almost a whisper. He couldn't stop; he couldn't let himself think too much or he'd never be able to go through with it.
Click.
The gun disengaged, and the cube slipped into the flames. He closed his eyes and the image of Chell flashed back in, again, desperately reaching out to him as she fell to her death.
The incinerator slipped closed. Doug backpedaled.
"Once again, you led your faithful companion right to her death," said Caroline. "Congratulations."
Doug said nothing for a moment, leaning against the wall and summoning as much control as he could muster.
"Watching her die like that," he said coldly. "Was it worth it?"
A slight pause.
"You know I couldn't let her live."
"You didn't answer my question," said Doug. "Was it worth it?"
Caroline's voice wavered. "I did this for the good of all of us," she said.
"But was it worth it?" Doug yelled, the echo bouncing through the chamber and dissipating.
Caroline drew back in her seat at his unexpected rise in volume, glad for once he'd moved out of view from her window.
The silence stretched between them, and an unreadable expression passed over her face.
"No," she eventually said. "It wasn't."
