Chapter 21 -Turn Left
Caroline's eyes watered in relief.
Though some miracle, Doug had remained silent throughout her assistant's examination of the room. Even after Greg left, he hadn't said anything. For a tense moment neither spoke, each struggling to interpret the other's actions—and of course, motivations.
"You can let go," said Doug, vaguely motioning at Caroline's ghostly white hands. "That grate's not going anywhere."
Caroline relaxed her grip and edged her hands away. Her fingers stretched out, hovering near the vent's edge and tensed in case the grate faltered and slipped. She held her breath, but as she began to realize that the vent would stay in place, she gave a heaving sigh of relief and slumped against the wall of the duct.
Her eyes fluttered closed. The dim, reflective lighting of the vent made her head ache, sending waves of exhaustion and strain pounding through her temples. She pressed her palms against her forehead and allowed her breathing to even out—to simply process that he had helped her.
"Thank you," she said, voice a shaky whisper.
Still trapped in his back corner, Doug said nothing. He would much prefer to be out of this place and on his way out of the facility. And besides—he had no obligation to help her any longer, especially after essentially saving her.
"Look," she said. "I know you helping me back there was a stretch. But please, this is just us talking. Like regular people," she said. "I still need to get out of here—and I know you have every reason to leave me here alone. But I am in deep trouble."
Doug shifted, rubbing his hands together. He pressed his fingers into the bridge of his nose, then gave a deep exhale.
"Fine," he said, voice low. "One chance. That's all I'm giving you."
Caroline leaned forward to rest her chin on her knees. She wrapped her arms around herself and gave a soft squeeze. A long moment passed before she spoke again. "This wasn't supposed to happen. None of this was," she said.
"Oh, and you think I planned for any of this?" Doug said, making a vague gesture toward the interior of the vent. "I should've just walked away after that first interview."
"Sometimes I think the same thing," said Caroline under her breath.
"You really mean that?"
"No," Caroline breathed. The word danced across her lips before disappearing.
She didn't mean any of what she said—and honestly, she would never have wanted a life without Aperture. Even imagining that possibility—that she hadn't accepted a job here—and she couldn't picture a different life. "I just wish I could've had a different ending," she said.
"So what now?" said Doug.
"Well, I was hoping you'd have an idea."
"Well," he said, hesitating. "It's not much, but I could go ahead. Scout out a path for you."
Caroline's expression twitched. "Oh, and you think you know this place better than I do?"
"Hey, I'm trying to help you," Doug hissed, distain evident in his voice. "There's only one portal gun here. If I stick to the back areas they'll never see me."
"If they find you, you're done for."
"In that case," said Doug, shifting to his feet. "I won't be caught. And besides, it's you that they're looking for, not me. I can blend in—I look like an average scientist. You, on the other hand—" he said. "Well, there's only one Caroline."
"How do I know you'll come back?" she said, almost resigned. She didn't want to have to ask him to do this—but she didn't have any other options.
"You don't."
Her face slacked with something almost like disappointment. She wasn't sure what she expected—she was placing faith in a man that she hated, after all. "Then I'll wait here. Just go," she said. "After this, we can call things even between us. No hard feelings?"
"Don't push it," he said, grabbing at the portal device and powering it on. "After I come back, I'm out of this place. I'm done with Aperture."
Caroline gave a hesitant nod, then pushed at the grate. Doug needed to get out, and she was in the way. She clung to the edges and then hopped out of the vent, letting Doug crawl through before she hefted herself back in.
"Thank you," said Caroline softly. When the man glanced through the metal slats, she added a soft, "And good luck."
Without Doug, the silence felt suffocating.
Before—while she'd been trying to remain undiscovered—each noise felt incredibly loud and sent spikes of fear through her. But now, the gentle creaks and soft exhales of distant pistons only emphasized how truly alone she was.
But that was how she'd always wanted it, right? This was her wing. Not Cave Johnson's. Not anyone else's. This was only for her (and perhaps a few lucky others). And yet as she sat, alone and quiet in the vent, she couldn't help but think about how lonely it was back here.
She secured the vent covering again and crept back to the alcove Doug used earlier. She could certainly see why—compared to the duct itself, it was spacious.
Caroline rested her hand beneath her jaw, letting it slip into that bony area between her face and her neck. It dug in, uncomfortable and awkward, but she didn't readjust. Her feet slid forward together, and she pulled her arms beneath her outstretched legs and rested her cheek against them.
They were still out there. They were still looking for her.
And for all she knew, Doug Rattmann could be leading her directly into a trap—and honestly, it wouldn't surprise her. What was one more betrayal to a queen who built her kingdom on lies?
But she couldn't dwell on what was out of her hands. Instead, she needed to think ahead and figure out what she would do after getting out of this vent—and getting out of Aperture.
Frankly, she wasn't sure if the company would survive a week without her. This place was her home—but she couldn't just walk back into Aperture. At least, not without backup.
Packing up her bags and leaving Michigan wasn't an option. Caroline had nowhere else to go.
She'd cut ties with her relatives long ago—a few accidentally, the rest purposefully. She could only take so much of their mindless gossip and pointless drama; she could only handle so many dirty looks whenever her boss came up in their conversations. No matter how many times she denied it, there would always be speculation that her relationship with Cave was more than strictly professional.
She supposed she could stay at one of Cave's old houses.
He owned—well, used to own—a house a few towns away, in a more rural location. It was meant to be a vacation home.
She gave a small laugh. Neither of them had ever used it. And like so many of his other possessions, the ownership transferred over to her upon his death. It was surprising how much he'd left her, especially compared to what he left his own family.
Then again, he was just like her—more than willing to cut ties with family when necessary, and even when unnecessary.
They had both poured so much into Aperture, but that hadn't been without its costs. With a dull and detached feeling, Caroline realized that she didn't have any friends outside of these walls. There was no one out there she could turn to; no one she could call in the middle of the night and ask for help.
It wasn't until now that the reality of her decision came back to slap her in the face.
Caroline had no one, and it had been this way for years.
It won't be enough.
The words circled through her mind, nagging at her and sending a pang of disappointment through her. After all that she had done, after the years she poured into this place, she only wished that someone could have warned her that—despite all she'd done for this place and the contributions she'd made—in the end it wouldn't be enough.
She tried her hardest, and perhaps that was the problem. Throwing away human lives in a rush to get results and progress science—perhaps that wasn't the way she (or rather, Aperture)—should have gone about things at all.
Caroline pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes and heaved a deep breath. Leaving herself to her thoughts was too painful. She was simply so tired, so physically and emotionally exhausted that all she wanted to do was sleep.
She gave another shaky sigh and squeezed her hands together.
Slipping backward from her sitting position, she let her head rest in the tight corner of the room. Her face tilted to the right and against the wall. Exhaustion washed over her; Caroline closed her eyes.
At this point, the black nothingness of sleep was better than facing the failure she'd become.
She dreamt of Aperture.
It was only fitting that even in sleep she couldn't escape this place.
The setting swirled to life in her mind's eye, tinged with a dull yellow as though from a long-forgotten memory. Colorful designs patterned the floors and furniture, relics of fashions long since gone out of style. People bustled about. They chattered and talked and laughed with a different cadence, a different quality of voice that reminded her of radio dramas from decades ago.
This was a memory, but Caroline didn't notice. In her dreams those sort of realizations were lost on her.
Papers rose in stacks on her cramped desk, swaying and fluttering in the drag created when people rushed past. A rising sense of panic gripped her—despite working for Aperture for eleven months now, she hadn't adjusted to the sheer amounts of work-related stress.
As Cave Johnson's personal assistant, so much pressure was placed upon her. Besides the endless miles of paperwork that needed to be completed each and every day, she was tasked with every other job a typical secretary might have—making appointments, setting up meetings, answering phones, sifting through test results, among countless other tasks.
Her largest unofficial job, though, was keeping Cave Johnson balanced. She had to be careful as to what information she heard, and how she presented it. If anything too negative happened down in the labs, she had to put a positive spin on it. Otherwise, a failure in science could easily shift him into an extremely unpleasant mood.
People would be fired; papers would be ripped and thrown. Sometimes she swore he acted more like a child throwing a fit than a grown man. And whenever he sunk into one of these bad moods, he made sure to drag the rest of the facility down with him.
So it was her unspoken duty to stay upbeat and keep Cave Johnson positive as often as possible—probably the hardest part of her job.
Today, she wasn't sure if she could handle it.
It was getting late, and the vast majority of the employees had already left for home. Caroline tugged at the knot of her scarf and pulled it away from her neck. She gave the colorful scarf a few twists, then tied back her hair. The time for looking pretty and presentable passed by hours ago.
She wished she could go home and flop onto her bed and sleep until mid-afternoon, but work called. As badly as she wanted to leave, she didn't have a choice but to stay here and finish this—even if it took hours.
An abandoned, cooling cup of coffee sat on the corner of her desk, forgotten in her busy haze of work. Minutes ticked by; her eyes drooped. Without that extra boost of caffeine, she felt progressively sleepier.
She hefted her typewriter to desk's center and threaded in a fresh sheet of paper. Her fingers clacked against the keys; she easily slipped into a rhythm. The typing sounds mixed with the steady ticks of the clock.
Behind her she heard the soft voice of Cave Johnson, muffled by his closed wooden door. He'd been locked in there all day, speaking on the phone for hours to some other science big-shot. She'd barely seen him all day.
Focus, Caroline.
Caroline glanced back at the paper, eyebrow creasing. While her mind had drifted to thinking about Cave, she'd made a few typos in her previous sentence. She reached up and scrolled back the typewriter, punching at the correct keys and turning the incorrect letters into a smudge of indecipherable ink. So she hadn't fixed it—but still, it was marginally better than leaving the typo.
She blinked a few times then returned to typing, but within the hour the words on the page blurred together. She could barely think, much less work.
With a slight push she moved the typewriter, then leaned forward and crossed her arms. She leaned her forehead against her forearms and closed her eyes. All she needed was a short rest to chase this weariness away, and then she could get back to work.
Caroline inhaled sharply, giving that puffy sigh people gave when unexpectedly awoken. Papers crinkled as she straightened. The paperwork—a flash of panic slipped through her. She still needed to do it and she'd fallen asleep and she wasn't sure if she'd be able to get it done on time, and oh dear had anyone seen her crashed at her desk—
This had never happened to her before in Aperture—and she wasn't sure how long she'd been here, but the hot embarrassment made her feel as if she'd been woken up after falling asleep in a class.
She took a breath and glanced around, glad to find the room as deserted as it had been the previous night.
Caroline tugged at her scarf and let her hair cascade around her shoulders. She combed her fingers through it twice, then stretched out her arms and leaned back.
Something warm slid back from around her shoulders. Caroline froze and traced her fingertips back, feeling at a thick and heavy fabric on her—a fabric she didn't recognize. She twisted and yanked the cloth forward to get a better look at it.
It was a soft, tan coat with a warm flannel interior. It was undoubtedly a man's coat—something heavy-duty enough to keep anyone warm through a cold Michigan winter.
But it wasn't her coat, and she wasn't sure how it had gotten placed around her shoulders.
She folded it across her arm and set it to the left of her desk, resolving to figure it out later. Work took priority over unsolved mysteries. But as she turned back, a loose sheet of lined paper caught her attention. It was no official document—simply a note scrawled in instantly-recognizable handwriting.
Noticed you'd fallen asleep and didn't want to wake you. Work IS important, but please—after you get done with what's necessary for keeping this place going, just go home. Get some sleep. Take a break. Can't have my assistant get too tired.
Just leave that coat in my office—and don't worry. I'll survive the cold for one night.
Signed in curvy, extravagant letters, C. Johnson.
Caroline gave a half-hearted smile and tucked the note away.
Perhaps her terror of a boss wasn't so bad after all.
Caroline jolted awake and inhaled a sharp, cool breath. This was no false awakening. That dream had been a memory of her first time falling asleep at Aperture—and in the decades since, she'd done it countless other times. After all, she had a lot of work to do, and not a lot of time to do it.
She reached a hand and brushed away a few stray hairs in her face, fabric shifting and rustling beneath her.
She frowned, glancing down to see an unfamiliar dirty white lab coat draped across her like a blanket. Immediately, she pushed it aside and glanced around for Doug. It had to be him—this coat couldn't belong to anyone else.
He sat on the edge where vent met room, looking rather uncomfortable and cramped. "You looked cold," he said, giving a dismissive shrug. "And I didn't want to disturb you."
"Thank you," Caroline said absently. She tossed his coat lightly, and he clapped his hands into the soft fabric to catch it. "Sorry," she said. "Everything just hit me at once, I suppose."
Her mind drifted back to that dream and back to that coat. Cave's had been warmer and cozier of course, but she still appreciated the gesture on Doug's part. For someone who disliked her so much, he certainly showed a lot of compassion.
Bits and pieces of the memory drifted into focus, bringing the contents of Cave's note to the forefront of her mind. She couldn't help but agree that she needed a break—getting out of Aperture and just resting for a while sounded like the best thing in the world.
"I went as far as I could go—hit a room full of turrets and had to turn back, though," Doug said softly. "You'll have to get by them yourself."
"Ah," said Caroline, voice shifting with recognition. "The turret room. I placed several of those along the edges of my wing—at least, in less-secure places. Can't have anyone wandering in here. Since their instillation I've cut down on trespassers one hundred percent. Before you, of course."
"In that case, good luck getting by them," said Doug. He rubbed at his sore arm, cringing at the memory of bullet biting flesh. "They're brutal."
"Sorry about that," said Caroline, wincing internally. "I—well, I'm sorry about everything. I really don't know why I'm even still here—but what you did means a lot. Thank you," she said. "And I promise you I'm not going to forget this."
"Just don't count on it happening again," said Doug, giving a resigned sigh. Even he wasn't sure what had possessed him to not only remain silent but help this woman. He shifted, then passed the portal device over to Caroline. "I didn't run into anyone on my way up their or my way back, but they're out there. This won't be easy."
"I know," said Caroline. "But you've gotten out of here, so it is possible."
Doug gave a small nod of thanks and appreciation. "Good luck," he said.
Caroline's gaze softened. "And you too," she said.
You haven't escaped, you know.
Curls of acidic fumes drifted up from a massive pile of sludge. Caroline wrinkled her nose, then continued crossing the walkway. A common by-product of failed experiments, Aperture simply had a lot of acid and not enough places to store it.
Thankfully, it doubled as a testing element.
And while it normally filled pits within test chambers, the overflow tended to slide its way out into any available open space. Back when tests sat inside spheres instead of tracks, Aperture had collected their possibly radioactive sludge into what was affectionately nicknamed 'the lake'— an enormous area beneath the spheres now filled with acid.
Now, though, at least they had other uses for the acid. The fumes given off by it tended to be just as toxic as the acid itself—so the scientists constructed a immense neurotoxin 'generator' to convert the fumes into someone more concentrated and deadly.
Caroline wasn't sure what they could use so much gas for, but she had wholeheartedly endorsed the idea. They could figure out more scientific uses for it later.
She crossed the room in hurried, clipped steps and flipped around a corner. A skeletal set of metal stairs rose, dropping off into a compact room.
A splash of color on the far wall caught her eye.
It was the same symbol used to signify an exit in test chambers —the figure of a running man. But instead of standard green or black, a vibrant red painted the walls.
You're not even going the right way.
Air screamed and hissed from a broken tube.
Black handprints smeared the walls. Doug had been here—Caroline could just picture him pressing his hands against the panels for balance, then kicking at the tube again and again until cracks spiderwebbed across the thick plastic.
Her gaze drifted over the messy panels, breath hitching as she caught sight of scrawled lines of text to her right.
the cake is a lie
the cake is a lie
the cake is a lie
the cake is a lie_
Where do you think you're going?
Sometimes, his signs and signals for her changed.
One time—in a room full of dancing, crisscrossing pistons, a black arrow with swirling circles directed her upwards. Underneath, and in large letters he wrote: OVER HERE.
She followed his scrawled directions through area after area, squeezing her way through tight escapes and crashing into a few hard falls. Caroline was never meant to be a test subject—she couldn't make every leap, and she couldn't place every portal correctly the first time around.
Mistakes were inevitable; Caroline was just glad that nothing serious had happened yet.
This place wasn't safe for her.
Because I don't think you're going where you think you're going.
Squeak.
Caroline clung to the hard plastic vent, glancing out and over the edge. Beneath her—and directly above a pit of acid—sat another white plastic tube perpendicular to hers.
Honestly, that man couldn't have picked a more crazy, impractical plan. It was almost as if Doug Rattmann was trying to get her killed. But his roundabout directions lead her this far, and Caroline wasn't about to turn back now.
She edged her way off the tube and dropped, slamming hard against the plastic. Her fingers skidded and scrambled to cling to black edges with her free hand, while the other clutched the portal device as if her life depended on it—because in all honesty, it did.
Caroline gave a heave as she centered herself on the pipe.
She'd made it—but judging by the hissing of the piston in the room adjacent, she still had countless challenges left.
You should have turned left before.
With a hand pressed against the wall, and Caroline leaned her weight onto her back foot. She rolled her ankles then shifted forward again, giving a pained flinch.
She hadn't landed correctly.
Lasers had danced and bullets had skimmed by her as she'd picked her way across the turret-infested room. No wonder Doug turned back earlier. Besides being deadly, disabling the sentries required getting up and personal—sneaking up behind them, knocking them over, then dodging the dying fire.
She gave a silent thanks as she engaged the device's recently-added gravity-manipulation feature. With synthesized cries they cascaded toward the hard concrete, and Caroline couldn't have been more grateful.
But the combination of angled panels and falling from dizzying heights without the aid of long-fall boots resulted in one ugly landing.
A flash of pain turned her vision white as she gave another experimental bounce on her knees. She pulled in a breath and braced herself against the wall, resting her forehead on her outstretched arm.
Caroline wasn't a young lady any more.
She couldn't bounce back from anything like a cube against repulsion gel. She wasn't that overly-cheerful and energetic voice she was years ago—the one she'd heard in her dream. Right now, she could barely walk—and if she had to run anywhere, she would fail.
She was old and she was tired and she didn't know how much of this she could take.
Caroline limped around the corner with as much poise as she could muster.
Her steps were quiet, absorbed and muffled by the expansive empty space. Catwalks, suspended high by cables, zigzagged back and forth across the gray-blue haze. Dark red support beams extended upward, reaching up and disappearing into the distance. It really was rather beautiful in an industrial sort of way.
She assumed she had exited her wing from perhaps the left or right side—tumbling through tubes and crawling her way through the back areas had left her disoriented as to her location in the facility. Maintenance areas like these were rarely used—especially in her wing, when she had no reason to stray from the main paths.
"Caroline!"
The voice boomed across the space, and Caroline jumped. At the far end of the walkway, she picked out the source of the voice—her assistant.
She twisted, immediately moving to head in the opposite direction. She didn't care if she had to go back to that awful turret room—she needed to get away from him.
"Come on, wait!" he said. "This isn't something you can just walk out on."
"Watch me," Caroline hissed, picking up her pace.
He watched her march away with a determined limp for a moment, then called out to her again. Running after her would be unnecessary and unproductive. If anything, she'd injure herself further.
"Caroline, please," he said.
She paused, turning back to glare at him. An arm crossed over her stomach, hand tightening around her opposite arm. For a moment her look rendered him silent, then sent him scrambling for his words.
Caroline switched directions and moved ahead, keeping her gaze focused on a spot past him—as if he wasn't standing in her way at all. But her assistant did not move; Caroline slowed to a stop a few arm-lengths away.
"Look, I'm going to make this easy for you," said Caroline. "Just step aside. Pretend you never saw me."
Greg shifted on his feet, spreading them shoulder-width apart. Caroline's hands clenched up, and she straightened her posture and looked him dead in the eye. The two were mirror-images of stubbornness—each waiting in vain for the other to give in.
"I trusted you, you know," she said, voice cold. "You've done everything I've ever asked for you. What changed?"
"I've been the assistant to the CEO for years now. That's my job—it's what I do," he said. "But you of all people would know how it feels to be stuck under someone's thumb for that long."
Caroline's gaze narrowed, but Greg only saw betrayal in her look.
"I have no idea what they promised you for this—but whatever it is, I hope it's worth it. Because if all of this was just about you wanting my job—" she broke off "—well, you can have it."
The weight of her words hung between them, cutting into Caroline like a snapped rubber band.
This place meant the world to her—but if it came between Aperture and her life, she couldn't justify staying here.
As she stared at him, Caroline noticed he seemed changed. Hardened, almost, with a crisp and confident posture. She gave him another look over, at his dark, dusty-red hair and clean-pressed shirt. He was younger than her, yes, but he looked far more like a well-respected, well-put together CEO than her.
On the other hand, Caroline had the look of someone who had gone to Hell and back. Her clothes were mangled and dirty; the bags beneath her eyes made her look as if she hadn't slept in days. With every shift on her knees, pain twinged through her—not to mention her slight limp with every step.
"It's yours," she said. "No strings attached. All you have to do is step aside."
Greg gave a reluctant exhale, resolve crumbling. "Fine," he said. He shifted to the handrail. "But if I—or anyone else—sees you, I won't stop them."
Caroline's gaze softened and she moved forward, bumping his shoulders as she went by. Her head bobbed with a nod of thanks for a brief moment, then shifted back to a outwardly-focused, inwardly panic-stricken face.
Greg stood there for a long moment, shoulders lowering as she limbered down the remaining stretch. She moved with as much of that broken strength she could muster—standing straight and moving sharp despite her slight limp.
He stretched out a hand for a split-second, mouth opening then closing.
He should have said something—should've asked one final question as to where she was headed, and how she planned to get there—but by the time the thought crossed his mind, Caroline was too far away.
And besides that, it wasn't as though he could help her now.
A sense of unease grew within her—a twisting, sickening sensation like watching the hot red of a sunburn spread across her body after a long day in the sun. She mentally retraced her previous path through the facility as the catwalk spilled into a standard hallway.
She wasn't entirely sure where she was.
Like she realized before, she'd managed to get herself turned around within her own facility—her own wing, in fact. On any other day she would know her exact location—every hallway, every back-area.
Her spatial awareness was legendary, after all—it was the driving force behind her skill at designing testing chambers. Caroline had always been one to make tight, efficient chambers by figuring out just how walls and panels and platforms fit together within the confines of testing.
But for now, Caroline wasn't entirely sure where she was headed.
A plain white wall marked the hall's end, adorned by a single door and three small posters.
Danger
Admittance
To Authorized
Personnel Only
Danger
HIGH
VOLTAGE
CAUTION
This Equipment
Starts and Stops
Automatically
She pulled open the door and stepped into another bright corridor. On the far right she spotted another built-in keypad—the mark of any relatively secure or secretive place in Aperture.
Caroline turned left and moved past another closed door, still bent on getting out of here as quickly as possible. If her tentative guesses at her current location turned out to be correct, then there should be an exit around here somewhere.
A glass alcove caught her attention.
The box-like room split off from the main hallway, textured glass providing an atmospheric, warped view of the facility. A few swivel chairs sat scattered, one tipped over as if left in a rush.
Caroline glanced out the windows and into the deep blue haze, heart dropping like a shattered plate against the floor.
This hallway overlooked the Main AI Chamber.
A/N: So sorry for the delay in this chapter! I've been focusing more on college applications recently, so updates might be slow for a little bit longer here. Hang in there!
Also, this part came about when I stopped to think about where Doug's graffiti lead. In the game, you'd think it would lead to an escape route-but actually, it only leads to the main AI chamber. And when you go back and think about GLaDOS's lines during the escape portion of the game, it makes sense. She's warning Chell that the 'escape route' she's following won't actually get her out of Aperture.
