Chapter 25 - The Reunion
There will come a time, you'll see
With no more tears
And love will not break your heart
But dismiss your fears
"After the Storm" - Mumford & Sons
Caroline hesitated.
This had never been her favorite part of the job, really. The first few times she'd had to do it had almost killed her. Informing a family that their son or daughter had made a valuable yet fatal contribution to science was never easy.
Oh, she would—or well, used to—try her best to comfort them, spewing out statistics about how much their death had forwarded science, when in actuality most of the time nothing had been advanced at all. But she couldn't tell them that. The loss of a life could never be meaningless.
Honestly she hadn't minded when the company moved to recruiting more low-profile test subjects. Less paperwork, fewer phone calls, and fewer grieving family members to deal with.
She didn't mind the calls, and she didn't mind the fact that people sometimes died in Aperture. What she could only stomach so much of, though, was the little break in the voices of those she called. The moment when her words of apology stuck in her throat—that's what hurt the most.
She never cried. But sometimes, afterward, she had to take a minute before diving back into her work.
Today, though, she wasn't sure how to approach it. Most days the people who died were full adults, in some cases even older than herself. Never before had someone so young died within these walls.
She swallowed. It would be best to take care of this now, while Doug was busy testing. It'd take him a while to complete this next test. She'd have plenty enough time to call. She paused, then reached for a phone and cleared her throat.
"Hello?" said Caroline. "May I speak to Judith Mossman?"
"This is her," said a flat, yet vaguely curious voice. "Who is this?"
"Caroline. CEO of Aperture Science."
Judith's breath caught. She knew Caroline. Well, she knew of her. She was a bit of a legend among the women scientists she'd met. But for her to call Judith personally—well, that couldn't be good.
"I'm sorry, you must have the wrong number—" she said, words speeding up.
"Ms. Mossman, we need to talk about your daughter."
"Chell," Judith exhaled, the word barely coming out as a whisper. "Is she alright?"
Caroline adjusted herself in her chair, choosing to ignore the question. "She and I have come to know each other quite well. Have you spoken to her recently?"
Judith frowned. The last she'd heard from Chell was her frantic call from the dry dock of the Borealis a few hours ago. She'd been sitting by the phone ever since, just waiting to hear another call that she was okay, that the unstable portal hadn't sucked her through either.
"No," she said, voice quiet but hard. "We don't talk often."
"Look. I know you're a part of this. I've known for a long time—I've simply been waiting for the inevitable slip-up. And, well, it's happened." Caroline paused, twisting her finger around the phone card. "I'm sure you're well-aware of what your daughter's been up to."
Judith's hands trembled as she pressed the phone to her ear. "Look, I'm sorry if she's caused you any trouble—"
"You have to know that you're not the first to try this, right? That you're not the first to try taking my hard-earned research from me. Honestly, what were you expecting?"
"Well, no—" she said. "But I just thought—"
"What? That you'd get some promotion out of it? A larger office? A fancy badge for your desk?"
"No, I—"
"Everything that's gotten out of the facility and into the grubby hands of Black Mesa is simply because I've allowed it. We have a deal. They allow Aperture to live by funding us and then swiping our scientific achievements from beneath me. But the portal device—that remains the sole property of Aperture Science."
"What do you mean?" Judith said, voice wavering.
"You—and your company—have taken everything from me. And yet you still want more. It's just never enough for Black Mesa, is it?" Caroline said, her tone accusing. "They really should have warned one of their employees before sending them off on an adventure that could easily end in tragedy."
Judith paused before whispering her answer. "I don't work for them," Judith said, pausing, "for Black Mesa. I wanted to, but they didn't hire me."
"Then that's why you did this? To get a job? If that's all you wanted, you could've saved yourself the trouble and applied at Aperture."
All at once, Judith's surroundings felt so restrictive. This chair and these walls were too far away from Michigan. Her daughter was in huge trouble and she was across the country from her. "Look, I don't want that job anymore. I don't care about any of that right now—Just tell me what's wrong with Chell."
"She crossed a line, Judith. You thought you could try to smuggle a portal device out of Aperture without consequence?" Caroline said. "No one does this to me and gets away with it."
Thoughts of Chell swirled into Judith's mind. When was the last time she'd sat down and just spoke to her daughter? When was the last time she played a game with her? And when the last time they'd laughed until they couldn't breathe over a joke?
"Please," she said, voice shaking. "I'm sure we can work something out."
"It's too late for that," Caroline said, voice biting. "I'm sorry, Ms. Mossman. Your daughter's not coming home."
Judith's knuckles turned white. This plan of theirs—she knew it could be dangerous. Aperture might twist adult traitors to their company into testing, but Chell was just a child. It was supposed to be her saving grace. No one would willingly hurt a young girl.
She hadn't considered that Caroline might do just that.
"No," Mossman said, straining to maintain her resolve. "No. That can't be true. She knows better—my Chell—" she choked. "She'd get herself out." No matter what situation they ended up in, she'd taught her daughter to use her head. She'd shown her how to work hard. She'd drilled it in over and over to never, ever give up. There was always a solution if one looked hard enough.
"She did. Well, she managed to break out of the room I was holding her in," Caroline said, voice walking the line between impressed and annoyed.
A flicker of pride flared in Judith's heart before the hot fear slipped back in. "And then?"
"I tried to get her back, I really did. She ran way to places she had no places being. Dangerous places," she said. "She refused to listen to me, and there was an accident—I'm sorry." Caroline's shoulders lowered. Even she could see that the words coming out of her mouth were as stiff as uncooked spaghetti.
"How dare you," Judith said, voice part injured and part disbelieving. She took a moment to gather herself, struggling to get out the words through her barely-restrained anger. " How dare you lay a hand on my daughter."
"Look," Caroline said, slipping back into her normal tone. "She was becoming a risk. A danger to my company. I had to put a stop to it."
Judith's hands tightened and her face hardened. "If your company is fragile enough to crumble at the hands of a twelve-year-old girl, then maybe you deserve it."
"I did what I had to."
"You hurt my daughter." Judith's voice wavered. "How could you be so heartless?"
"I'm not the heartless one here," Caroline said, voice bitter. "That girl poured her heart and soul into befriending employees here. She gained and exploited their trust, and you know why she did it?" she said, giving a slight pause. "She just wanted you to love her. You don't even feel anything for Chell, do you?"
Judith shook her head, using the sleeve of her sweater to wipe away budding tears. "I do love her, though. I love her with all my heart."
"She did all of this for you. Chell did this just to help you with your career. But you—you're the one that threw your own daughter into an incredibly dangerous situation, and then barely even spoke with her. You gave her away as if she meant nothing to you. Even I wouldn't sink that low."
"Everything had to look official, and calling often posed too much risk. I wanted her to stay safe."
"Well that went well, didn't it?"
You don't understand—I needed to make a better life for us. I needed to make a name for myself, too. This was all just something temporary. A sacrifice for the greater good. You of all people have to understand that," she said, voice dropping. "Just like you said—I did what I had to."
Caroline took a steadying breath. At one point, she had wanted kids. Her parents had cultivated that desire within her—get a reliable job, marry a fine man, and then have a handful of beautiful curly-haired children. And as a charismatic and surprisingly good-looking business owner, Mr. Johnson had seemed like he'd be just the man.
She'd thrown herself into her newfound career with the desire to impress him. First on a professional level, but later on a personal level. And yet never once he consider that her enthusiasm was motivated by deeper feelings than a simple love for science. To him, she was just incredibly dedicated to Aperture.
She understood his rejection of romance and commitment, though. Having to manage a family life on top of their own work would have been exhausting. Aperture would have suffered. Their potential relationship would have suffered. And their children would have suffered most of all.
And yet even without a single declaration of love from him, Caroline dreamed for years of a proposal. By the time she'd pulled her head out of her paperwork and realized he'd never admit to loving her, it had been too late to try and find another man.
Besides—would she even have wanted that? Someone other than Aperture Science himself?
Dedicating her life to science was far more rewarding than trading all of this for the role of a cheerful housewife. She'd still be doing the same things no doubt—making coffee, cleaning up messes, taking care of finances—just on a much smaller scale. Oh, and with grimy, screeching children sprinting around the house and breaking things.
In comparison, her interactions with test subjects weren't so bad.
And yet she'd still managed to convince Cave to fund an Employee Daycare Center. She didn't want the working women of Aperture to feel forced into abandoning a career in order to start a family. Watching them every-so-often drag in a bouncy little boy or an adorable young girl, she felt a pang of something she couldn't quite place. It wasn't regret, of course. Perhaps wonder. Perhaps a sense of longing. More than anything, though, it made her wonder how her life could've taken another path.
If she hadn't ended up here—would she have been a loving mother?
Disgust dripped back into her voice as she turned her attention back to the call. "What kind of mother are you?"
"A better one than you'd ever be," Judith whispered..
Caroline paused before continuing.
"Do you know why I never started a family?" she said, voice surprisingly quiet. "Everyone always thought I was too dedicated to my job to pursue love. They thought falling for a man would ruin my career. They were wrong," said Caroline. "I loved. And I loved deeply. He and I—we inspired each other to be greater and grander people."
She and Cave had truly been partners in science. Without one another, the company wouldn't have lasted nearly as long as it had. "But I know Aperture Science inside and out," she said. "People die here, inside and outside of the test chambers. Knowing how much of my life I live within these walls, I could never bring a child into this world just to put them directly in danger," she said. "So how could you?"
Judith's mind strayed to her own relationship with science. When faced with a puzzling science concept or a new and fascinating theory, she found herself lost to the world for hours at a time. Any distraction that snapped her out of it was usually met with frustration, more often than not directed at her daughter.
Chell always needed so much. She was always asking questions or always bothering her to play with her or help her with homework. She was always asking about dinner or reciting some joke she'd heard at school or nagging her about where they'd be moving to next. The distractions became unbearable after a time.
"Haven't you said enough?" Judith said. She shook her head, breaking shaky. "Just stop," "I know I've never been able to give Chell the life she deserves."
Even thinking about this sent waves of shame and guilt through her. The woman on the other end of the line was right—she was right. Judith had never been skilled at expressing her love. Or any affection at all, really.
Images flooded her mind of the little moments with Chell: combing through her hair in the mornings, kissing her on the forehead, seeing her bright smile as she raced through reading a book. She couldn't even remember the last time she'd embraced Chell on her own accord—truly embraced her and just held her.
"I know I messed up. I know I'm an awful mother," Judith said. "I'd give anything just to have a second chance. Just to try again."
Caroline exhaled. It was one thing to play with this woman's emotions and to show her how awful she'd acted. But to have her react in this way—with genuine regret rather than just sorrow—made this call even worse than she'd ever imagined it.
"I love her," Judith said, voice quiet. "And I'll never forget that you took her from me."
"No," hissed Caroline. "You did that to yourself."
The back of her head bumped against the elevator as Chell leaned back. She could hardly believe this was true—she'd spent so long trying to get away from Caroline that she hadn't been sure she'd be able to find her way back to the surface. Eyes closing, she stretched out her fingertips to feel the worn walls.
She was so close to getting out of here.
As the lift slid to a stop, a familiar lurch swooped through her stomach. She'd gotten so used to that disorienting feeling from falling through portals that she barely noticed it this time.
Ding.
Chell clutched the nozzle of the Quantum Tunneling Device to her chest as the elevator slid open to white walls. Bare feet touched against cool tile as Chell tiptoed out, then shifted into a determined stride. Each twist and turn made the modern enrichment center feel just as labyrinthian as the chambers below.
Despite this being the modern level of the enrichment center, it felt wrong. No voices echoed and no doors slammed. She expected to bump into someone, but as she weaved her way through the halls she encountered no one. Chell had even come up with a handful of bad excuses and miniature escape plans for every scenario she could picture, from running into anyone from security to janitors to scientists.
Granted, those had been made back when she'd first made it to old Aperture. Looking the way she did right now, Chell doubted anyone would believe her if she said she'd wandered off from a parent's office and gotten lost. Before she would've given anything for an ascension this devoid of personnel, but this time she needed to find a person.
Though she needed to approach someone, she wasn't sure how, or even whom to ask. She had to find someone here—someone who could easily reverse the situation with her body. Asking the right person versus the wrong person could make all the difference—the only problem was, she didn't know what the 'right person' would look like.
At the sound of other footsteps, Chell ducked into a doorframe. The steps didn't sound too rushes or too urgent. Perhaps just a regular employee taking a casual stroll. She pressed a hand to the wall and then took a peek out of the room. A blur of motion caught her eye as a man turned down another hallway. He didn't look right, though. She needed to find someone more approachable.
Chell leaned back, struggling to control her breathing. At once she noticed that the lights in this room—unlike surrounding ones— were on. Her forehead touched the wall and she briefly closed her eyes, trying not to think about what she needed to do next.
"Are you lost?"
Chell flipped around to see a woman digging through a filing cabinet. She glanced to either side of lady in the labcoat, noticing a few manila folders haphazardly set on a nearby desk. She took a backward step to the wall.
"I-" she breathed, finding that words didn't come out from her sore throat. She held a hand to it and coughed.
"It's alright," the woman said with a shrug and sigh, sticking a folder between her teeth as she reached toward the back of the drawer. "It's easy to get lost here. Just tell me where you need to go and I'll take you there," she said, plopping the folders on her desk and eyeing Chell curiously. "Better than just wandering around."
Chell's hands trembled as she clenched onto the end of the Quantum Tunneling Device.
"What's your test subject number?"
"Oh—I'm not a test subject." She shook her head violently, trying not to tremble. "I—I need to see a scientist."
The woman frowned. "What's your name?"
Chell," she whispered.
"Well, Miss Chell," said the woman as she gathered up her files. "I'm Karla, and it just so happens I'm a scientist. Just follow me." The woman tucked the files beneath her arm, eyes following the tube of the Quantum Tunneling Device all the way back up to the box strapped to Chell's back. "You can set that down for now if you'd like. I'm sure it's heavy."
Chell tightened her grip on the straps, giving a silent cue that this device was coming with her. As it was the most valuable object she'd come across in Aperture, she wasn't just about to leave it behind.
"Suit yourself," Karla sighed. "Come on, then. I'm rather busy with an important project. Let's get your situation—whatever it is—sorted out." The scientist moved through the door at a crisp pace, moving with a marked determination.
Chell hesitated, unsure about being lead to yet another part of the facility. It'd be farther into it no doubt, but at least she wouldn't find herself beneath everything again. At this point tt was better to be accompanied by an employee than to wander this place. She'd draw a lot less attention to herself that way.
Still, the woman in front of her moved fast and barely spoke to her, as if Chell was an inconvenience above all else.
She followed Karla through twists and turns and up staircases, until she found herself in an airy part of the facility she didn't recognize. She glanced around for signs or some sort of indicator as to where she was. The layout of this area puzzled her. Whereas before she had seen areas of the facility as huge chunks, this area seemed more disconnected. Long, rectangular cargo containers stretched as far as she could see, each one connected only to the catwalks and not to one another.
"Where are we?" Chell said, taking a few hurried steps to catch up with Karla. Despite this woman revealing herself to be a scientist, Chell still felt hesitant to speak to her. Her last encounter with a female Aperture employee hadn't gone over well.
"They call it the Long Term Relaxation Center," she said, glancing over.
"Relaxation?" Chell gave a sharp inhale, halting. "Like as in suspension?"
"Yes," said Karla. "But don't worry. You'll just be borrowing a room while we get everything sorted out. Personally I find that these rooms are a lot more comforting than those clear boxes."
Chell gave a shaky nod.
Karla paused to swipe a keycard near a door. A light flashed, changing from red to yellow. "See, just look here," she said, briefly struggling to balance the files in her other arm. "The indicator light's only yellow, which means the suspension isn't activated. Just stay here for an hour or two, okay?" She pushed open the door to reveal a hotel-like room. "I'll be back as soon as I can."
"Thank you," Chell breathed. She took a few steps into the room, surprised at how welcoming it looked. But before she could say another word, the door hissed closed and locked with a distinctive click.
"Here's your damn files."
Doug glanced up, barely dodging the folders skidding across the table to him.
"Took me forever to find," Karla groaned, pulling her hair back into a tight bun. "Don't see why you couldn't have gone to get those by yourself."
Doug pulled the files into a neat stack, giving a quick nod of thanks.
"While I was down there I had to deal with a problem, too. Just my luck," she sighed, sinking into a chair. "You know that 'lost experiment' Henry and his goons are going after? I ran into it. Just got off the phone with him, too."
"Something crawl out of the acid lake?" Doug said, voice flat despite the joking tone he intended to convey.
"Close enough," said Karla, "Test subject. Possibly displaced from an old time-travel or teleportation test. We're still looking into it. Well, I need to look into it. Everyone else is too busy with more important things, supposedly." She gave another faint groan. She reached up her hands and turned them into mock puppets as she slipped into a sarcastic tone. "It's always 'Karla do this,' or 'Please take care of it because we're all too lazy to do it and you're the only responsible one here' or 'I'm a self-absorbed man who thinks I'm so much better than a regular scientist.'"
"It's always 'Karla do this," or "'Please take care of it because we're all too lazy to do it," or "I'm a self-absorbed man who thinks I'm so much better than a regular scientist."
Doug gave a snort of amusement and briefly joined in. His hand curled into a shadow-puppet swan as he slipped into a nasal voice. "'I'm an Aperture scientist and I have no idea how to interact with people so you're gonna have to do it, nyeh nyeh nyeh."
Karla broke into a rare smile, letting her hands fall back to her side. "But really though, the woman seemed incredibly disoriented—out of uniform, and using an ancient testing equipment. Just wandering. She seemed panicked, and asked for a scientist, not a test associate. Naturally I was the one she ran into."
"What did she look like?" Doug said, absently flipping through a folder on the top. He'd been scrounging up all the information that he possibly could on brain scanning and brain mapping—early research, scrapped research, whatever they could get their hands on. Though they'd already gathered as much as they possibly could for the GLaDOS project, Doug had requested Karla to bring up all of her old plans and research into personality cores. If there was some sort of way that they could merge the two, then it would the make the process so much easier and so less taxing, especially on the human volunteers.
"Dark hair, wide eyes. Typical skittish and unsocial subject. I barely squeezed a first name out of her—much less a test subject number. Can't find her anywhere in the candidate logs."
Doug glanced up, absently adjusting his tie.
"But Doug," she said, voice shifting from complaining to concerned. "She said her name was Chell."
"Just don't get your hopes up, Doug" Karla said, pausing in front of the relaxation room. "It's been— well, years. The woman in there is older than the teenager Chell would've been." She looked down, a sigh of sadness leaving her. "I just don't want you to hurt any more."
"I have to know," he said, reaching for the doorknob and turning it. Doug knew that this hope in his heart wasn't right, wasn't likely to bring him anything but renewed pain and regret, but he knew he couldn't live with himself if he ignored it altogether.
"Move quickly," Karla grumbled, swiping her card next to the door and giving Doug a gentle push in. Leaving a door wide open with a test subject nearby was a safety hazard, really. They could get vicious sometimes.
The soft buzz of an air conditioning unit filled the room, only interrupted by muffled energetic words coming from the television in the corner. It was set to the company's channel, which consisted of cheaply-made safety videos, cheesy instructional videos, and advertisements for the company's various discontinued good. Sometimes footage from experiments gone wrong showed up, usually as a way to deter the current employee and test subject population from screwing up.
Legs crossed and a pillow held to her chest, the woman in the room sat on her bed. She didn't even look up when the door opened to allow in the two guests.
Karla folded her key card into an inside pocket in her lab coat, testing the door handle to make sure it had been locked properly. "Chell? she said, hesitantly moving forward. "I brought someone here to help. He's a scientist too, and he says he might know you."
Doug followed close behind Karla, hands clamped together in front of him. He couldn't see her fact just yet—she had it buried in the pillow. But from what he could see, she had gray in her hair—gray in her hair—and her clothes—a spark of recognition flared inside of him. He recognized that shirt and those sweats—those had been the ones she'd been wearing years ago.
"Chell?" he choked out, voice a mixture of disbelief and straining hope. "Is that you?"
He took a few steps closer to the bed, reaching out to touch her on the arm. He had to physically confirm that what he was seeing was true—he'd been tortured too many times by his own mind.
Instead, though, Chell dropped her pillow. "Get away from me!" she cried out, scrambling off the bed. She bumped her hip into the nightstand, wincing as the corner bit into her. She pulled her arms across her chest, shaking her head. She gave a pleading look to Karla, asking just who this was, and why she'd brought him here.
"Chell, do you know this man?" she said, glancing over at Doug.
Doug's vision blurred. He'd frozen as she had slipped as far away from him as she could possibly be, a sense of regret filling him. "Chell," he said, giving a heartbreaking exhale. "I'm here, Chell. It's me. It's Doug."
At the question, Chell looked up, arms still clutched to her chest. Her face was red, puffy, tearstained, as if she'd been struggling to calm herself from an earlier crying spell. And yet through the obvious pain on her face, Chell's face twisted into one of recognition. "Doug?" she whispered, pushing a damp strand of hair out of her eyes.
Doug nodded, head bobbing up and down. An overwhelming set of emotions—sadness, disbelief, but mostly overwhelming happiness—slipped through him. And yet despite the smile creeping to his face, Chell still slid farther away.
"Are you okay, dear?" Karla said, giving the subject a once-over. Despite her bandaged hand, she hadn't shown any other evidence of physical injury on their walk over. But then again, test subjects were perpetually getting themselves into trouble. Especially when left unsupervised.
Chell shook her head no. She sniffed, wiping a hand at her eyes.
"What's wrong?" Doug said, straining to keep his calm and keep his distance. "It's okay. You can tell us."
She fidgeted with a pad of paper on the nightstand, rolling it in her hands and then pressing the eraser end into the table. The pencil slipped from the force of her push, clattering onto the table.
"You left me," she said, voice quiet.
Unease slipped through Doug's body. Uncomfortable and cold, it felt as if he'd just dropped something valuable down a drain. "Chell," he exhaled.
"You left me down there all alone," she said, voice cracking. Chell blinked quickly. "I waited and waited but you never came back." She sniffed, crossing her arms and burying her face in them.
Doug paused, slowly moving to the edge of the bed. Thoughts scrambled his mind—he wanted to explain everything and ask everything at the same time. It had been years since they'd seen one another, and the sudden weight of that realization hit him hard. He sat down, both hands pressed into the fabric. "Chell, I—" he shook his head, struggling to hold back tears. "I thought you were dead. We all did," he said, clenching at the blanket.
Chell just shook her head a few times, barely able to think about what she'd been through much less talk about it. She rubbed her arms and she sat back down.
"Doug—go grab her a blanket, would you?" Karla said, folding her legs in the chair. "Should be one on the closet shelf."
Rising to his feet, Doug took a few shaky steps before his walking stabilized. All of this was so much to take in. He knew that Chell hadn't made it. Both he and Caroline had known it, so he couldn't dismiss it as a hallucination. Plus, Chell had known the way back to the elevator to the modern enrichment center. It hadn't been too difficult to follow, had it? Doug reached up, tugging down a think beige blanket. Folded nicely up in his arms, he carried it over to the shivering girl and with a sweep of his arms he unfolded it and lightly draped it across her shoulders.
Chell sniffed, tugging the blanket tight around her. She gave another few long breaths and pulled the blanket up and around her head like a hood. "I was so scared and nobody was there," she said, looking down. "And you never came back."
"Caroline—" Doug said, breaking off as he saw Chell's eyes grow wider and her grip on the blanket tighten. "She had me in a chamber too, and the audio patched in from yours. I'm so so sorry, Chell," Doug said, looking at his hands. "I wanted to be there for you—it killed me to hear the things she said to you, and, well," he swallowed, "when we heard that splash we both assumed the worst."
Chell shook her head lightly. "I pushed a grate out of the way and fell." She held up her bandaged wrist and absently rubbed it. "And then I don't know what happened. I fell asleep, and when I woke up—" she said, looking up with tears in her eyes. "This isn't me. This isn't my body and this isn't how old am and I don't want it." She rested her head on her knees. "Just change me back, please," she said, shoulders trembling as she started to sob. Chell buried her face in the blanket, burrowing inside of it to muffle her cries.
Karla finished writing, setting the clipboard and pen in her lap. Though Doug could see that she was becoming more annoyed with the situation, he didn't know what to do. She jerked her head to the side, urging him to do something, anything, to get the woman to stop crying.
He knew he should do something to comfort her, something to help her. And yet besides the vague feeling of guilt, he didn't know how to handle this situation. He'd never been the best at engaging in social activities or coming up with the appropriate responses. Scrambling to come up with the right facial expression or tone of voice didn't come easily to him, and combined with the hallucinations, this had lead to his initial diagnosis of schizophrenia.
Still, he wanted to try his best.
"Oh, Chell—" he said, scooting over and reaching out to touch her shoulder. "Come here," he murmured, letting her fall forward and into his arms. She buried her face into his shoulder and cried. At that moment it became clear to him that Chell was not the woman she appeared to be—she was still that girl, scared and alone and trapped in a body that didn't feel like her own "I'm so, so sorry," he said, using a hand to gently rub her back.. "I never meant to leave you."
Chell cried harder, breathing coming short as she leaned farther into him.
"We can fix what happened to you, alright?" Doug said, giving her hair a slight ruffle. "The more you tell us about down there, the more we can help you. Take your time."
She took a deep inhale to steady herself. Then, slowly and quietly she detailed her escapades from the test chambers through the acquisition of the Quantum Tunneling Device to the accidental teleportation of the Borealis.
"Then," she said, bunching the blanket under her chin. "There was a room with beds, except they weren't normal beds." She frowned. "Like the one in that vault, but older. And they made me look like this."
"Relaxation pod?" Doug said.
Chell nodded. "You can fix it, right?" she said, voice faint but begging.
Karla paused, looking at Chell with an expression that bordered on sympathetic. "Well," she said. "I know early experiments with short-term and long-term relaxation had—" she cleared her throat, "an unintended side effect of advancing the age of a subject at a rapid rate, instead of halting it. With the integrated healing of current suspension, we can partially reverse the aging."
Chell glanced up, staring over Doug's shoulder at the woman. Being told that she'd done something irreversible to her body—something that even Aperture couldn't completely undo—brought another wave of tears to her eyes. "I don't want to look like this though," she pleaded. "I don't want this. Please just fix it."
"If you're lucky we'll able to get you to look like a younger adult, but that involves time and more suspension," said Karla. "I'm so sorry, dear. You're never going to look like a kid again."
"No—no," Chell said, barely able to choke out the words. "I don't want to stay here. I just want to fix this and go home."
"Please, Chell," Doug said, pulling back and giving a sad smile. "We're going to do our best to help you. We'll keep you safe here."
"I don't care," Chell cried, wiping her tears. "Please. Please."
"Chell—" Doug said, giving her shoulder a small squeeze. "We're not going to let anything else happen to you. I'm still going to get you out of here. I promise."
Chell gave another sniffle, gathering her blankets and leaning back into his shoulder to cry.
She'd lost hope in Doug's promises a long time ago.
