A/N:

This chapter assumes familiarity with the official Portal comic "Lab Rat". All events within the comic occur within this story, the most important of which being Doug placing Chell at the top of the testing queue. I have not included written out versions of those events, though they will be referenced as things that have happened.

This chapter also assumes familiarity with the events of Portal.


"Doug."

The voice was soft, calm.

Doug blinked. He stared up at the ceiling. The shadows of the fan spun and spun, but his eyes did not track the blades. He stared at it as one would look out at the far and fuzzy horizon, unable to discern the line where ground became sky.

"Doug."

The fan spun and spun, though he felt no air current on his face. This fan was not meant for him - it was far too large, and he was on the wrong side of it. It was meant for machinery. This fan in particular spun lazily and consistently, and he wondered why it spun at all. It wasn't like it had any work to do. He was nestled deep into Caroline's wing, which had been one of the safest places he could think of. GLaDOS wouldn't—and shouldn't—take any interest in this old and depreciated module. And she especially shouldn't care about poking around into its cooling infrastructure, if she did feel like glancing it over.

Fans.

They weren't good for much, were they? All they did was push air around, pushing and pulling, pushing and pulling, guiding the air but remaining bolted in place. Kind of a pointless and sad existence, really. Doug took a moment to be thankful that no fans within Aperture possessed any sentience. They were eternally stuck in the same cycles until the motors broke. Running and running just to end back at the same place he had started. He could relate.

The start.

"Doug."

Doug wished he could go back to the start - back to when things were so much simpler, so much safer. He wanted to go back. He wanted to change the ending. He did not know how he could have changed things, but if he could go back, he knew he would have at least tried.

God, he tried so hard. But that didn't end up mattering, did it?

He had risked his life to get to that file room. He had risked it all to move Chell's position in the testing queue up to the first position. But he had waited and waited and waited and waited and it didn't seem like Chell had even been roused from short-term storage. He had kept an eye on testing when he could, but she hadn't yet been tested. Doug did not know how for sure he would know when it was Chell's turn, but he just knew in his gut that he would know.

Not that any of that seemed to matter now. The Central Core certainly wasn't following that order. Maybe she would put Chell dead last, after considering why Doug had changed the order. He had risked so much, and he was having a hard time believing that any of his actions mattered. This game was predetermined from the start.

Even if he had changed things, even if he could have gone back to the start and tried again, who was to say that he wouldn't have ended up here anyway? But if he had simply known then what he would up against, what Chell would up against—

Doug curled tighter into a fetal position around the companion cube. He shifted his fingers so that they gripped the slightly beveled corner.

"Doug."

Doug blinked again, a part of him slowly beginning to register that the cube was talking to him. His cube. His paints. His supplies. His lifeline. No one else had a lifeline like this, had they? No one had a contingency plan like he did, despite all of his tries.

And yet he still felt he should have tried harder. He should have taken things into his own hands. He had briefly been able to do a facility-wide broadcast, for God's sake. Though he had urged people to leave, he had neglected to inform the public of the dangers that existed if they had stayed.

But then again, Doug wasn't sure if the outside world would have been any better.

Doug blinked, eyes focusing. He adjusted his neck slightly to look down at his cube. He didn't know how (as the cube had no eyes) but it appeared to recognize that Doug had looked at it.

"You're back," it said, voice as calm as ever. "Doug, we're out of food."

Doug startled slightly, though his body did not move. No. He couldn't be out of food already. Again. He shifted his gaze to the cans spaced out along the wall of the circular room. As if on cue, a sense of hunger crept up from his stomach. He shifted a hand to his stomach and winced. "How long was I out?"

The cube hummed in response.

Doug wasn't sure if it had any time tracking capabilities - and even if it did - even if he did - it would do them no good with Doug having been so out of it. The cube couldn't do it without him.

"You need to pick up more food," said the cube.

Doug began to slowly push himself upright, taking in the circle of empty cans. Beans. Beans. Just seeing the label nearly brought a gag to him. The slimy texture. The aftertaste of preservatives.

"What's the point?" he murmured, vision swimming with static. He pressed a hand to the cube until his vision cleared and his blood pressure stabilized.

"You need food to function. To keep going."

A bit of brain fuzz began to clear as well.

"Why should I keep going?" Doug said. "I don't deserve it." He kicked at a can that had at some point rolled down toward him.

"You don't mean that," said the cube.

Doug felt a burst of anger - the most emotion that he had felt in days - bubble to the surface. "I do," he said. He dug his fingers into his arm. "They are all dead," he said, "and it's because of me."

"You can't say that—"

"I can," Doug said, cutting off the cube. "If I hadn't reverted the Morality Core, they would all still be alive."

"There is no way you could've known that that would have happened."

"Well I should have at least guessed!" Doug said. He sunk to a crouch. "I was against the idea of it from the start," he said. So how had he ended up so heavily invested in a project that he thought was so risky and dangerous? He knew that the other people weren't going to be convinced to not go through with the project.

"I know you were," said the cube.

Why hadn't he cut his losses and gotten out of there then? Why had he so stubbornly stayed, convinced that if they were going to go through with the project, that they needed him? That no one else was going to be able to do the project right, and that it had to be him?

How had they chipped away so steadily at his convictions and his belief that this whole project was a bad idea?


"Remember: The Aperture Science Bring Your Daughter to Work Day is the perfect time to have her tested."


Well, that was the last of them.

The last human volunteer from the aftermath of Bring Your Daughter To Work Day had concluded their testing.

She wished that she could have known, objectively, how they had performed as a whole, but she had no data with which she could compare them to as a group. Not that it would have been helpful to group these humans all together. Besides sharing the same intake date, they had scant in common. Their demographics were all over the map. No sort of accurate grouping could be made. They could, in theory, be compared to one another on an individual level, and she did enjoy comparing their results and broadcasting them whenever a test subject had fallen behind, statistically.

After the last failure, she had expected something. A feeling of triumph or satisfaction after closing out that data set. But she didn't feel anything. That test had felt just like any of the other tests she had proctored. Nothing had set it aside as different, as she had hoped. Instead, she just felt the continuation of the driving force that had motivated her thus far-the continued push to gather more data by administering more tests.

Now that she had completed running through the priority queue, this left GLaDOS with no choice but to move back to the standard testing queue. It had just made sense from a practical standpoint as to why she had placed the Bring Your Daughter To Work Day attendees into a higher priority and separate testing queue. To put it simply, they were fresh. Many or most had not even had to enter long-term storage, and temporary storage had been sufficient to keep most of them stable until their turn arose.

The candidates in long-term storage had been there a lot longer. Literature suggested the possibility of degradation over time. Dealing with freaked out people had been draining enough, and she wasn't sure she was up to dealing with freaked out and defective test subjects. They would skew her results.

As she turned to retrieve the first subject on the list, she was happy to find the subject already set up in a short-term vault.

As her focus shifted to the chamber cameras and as she accessed the test file, she was reminded of when her one elusive human, Mr. Rattmann, had changed the testing queue. He had only made one change, though, and had never attempted to accessed that computer again. So why had he even bothered? What was the point of prolonging the inevitable? Had he wanted to move someone further down the list? He had only managed to delay that person's test by one. That certainly wouldn't save anyone.

Unless saving someone wasn't his intention?

Though GLaDOS had wondered if Doug was of the self-sacrificial sort, then this possibility would lay that theory to rest. Even the dimmest of the humans knew that testing was not conducive to the longevity of one's life. Deliberately moving someone to the top of the list? That would be cold. But it was cold in a way she found herself admiring. Why leave things up in the air? With a position 1,498 slots down, GLaDOS knew she wouldn't be getting that far down anytime soon.

But again, she could appreciate the man taking things into his own hands—metaphorically? Physically? Whoever this woman was, GLaDOS was certain that Doug must want her dead.

How curious. She hadn't taken him as one to be interested in or motivated by revenge. Just what was it about this woman? Perhaps she would be able to find some answers after the test subject had woken up. She turned her attention toward the wake-up process.


"Did you know you can donate one or all of your vital organs to the Aperture Science Self Esteem Fund for Girls? It's true!"


"I should have listened to my gut," said Doug.

"You made the best decision based on the information that you had at the time," said the cube. "It's just like that show you used to watch all the time. You can do your very best and things can still go wrong."

At the mention of that, Doug felt himself transported back through time, back toward either the end of his college days or the beginning of his career—he couldn't remember for sure, but he did remember sitting on a horribly worn-out couch that was arguably less comfortable than just sitting on the floor. He remembered the glow of the television in the dark, the remnants of his microwaved meal sitting beside him.

"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose," said the man on television, cloaked in red. "That is not weakness—that is life." The captain concluded his message, and Doug was left alone in the fuzzy dark of his memory.

The cube was correct—Captain Picard had been right, and his words had stuck with him. They had faded away over time, but now he remembered. A person could do everything in their power correctly, and things could still go to hell. It did not make that person nor their efforts a failure or a waste of time. It did not make Doug or his efforts a failure or a waste of time.

Doug exhaled, then sat on the cube. He ran a hand over his face, then came back to work at some of the gunk around his eyes.

He tried to keep his intent in mind. He had good intentions. But what difference did that make if the result was worse? He stopped for a moment and gave a laugh, wiping his hand off on his pant leg.

The companion cube's hum changed in what Doug recognized as a question. It was fairly subtle—just a raise in the notes.

That was the difference, wasn't it? Caroline was never one to get her hands dirty. Whoever this new being was—a twin? Her evil twin?—she didn't seem to care about what others thought of her. She was going straight for the throat and he could appreciate the directness.

He forgot to explain his thought to the cube, instead leaning forward and resting his head upon his hands. He wished that he was outside with a stick in his hand so that he could draw in the dirt, or sketch out a few of the words and images echoing through his mind.

Just who was GLaDOS?

He tried to formulate an equation in his mind.

GLaDOS = Caroline - memories

That was the base equation, but it didn't feel right. That is what they thought was happening - or rather, going to happen. That is what they had thought they had been working with before everything went down. But they had already made changes, alterations to Caroline, only one of which changes was the Morality Core.

Caroline's base personality could be considered everything that remained after the deployment of the Morality Core. So, her nature, so to speak. And then they just added on their cores to that.

Another equation came to mind.

Caroline's base personality = upload data - memories

He frowned, thinking about the flaws there as well-the flaws that he had warned people about as well as unforeseen consequences.

Who was a person without their memories? Could it be relied upon that a person's personality would remain intact in the absence of memories? Wouldn't a person's personality and attitude and outlook-everything, really-be shaped by their experiences?

It all got back to that eternal question of nature versus nurture. It was never just one or the other; the two were always intertwined. Obviously research hadn't been done yet on this sort of thing, as the ability to remove a person's base of memories was a bit of a new technology.

So what did this say about Caroline's nature?

What sort of personality had they been hoping to gain from the culmination of Caroline's data?

The upload data they had received was not ideal.

So what was ideal?

Had they been aiming to capture her personality at the end of her life, shaped and molded by time and life and practical experience? Or had they hoped to travel back in time and glean the personality of a woman uninfluenced by Aperture?

And how had they expected the cores to play into this equation? They were originally designed as augments or dampeners to existing personality traits. Had they really thought through what slap-on personality traits would do to an already unstable personality?

He frowned and shook his head. He wasn't a psychologist or neuroscientist or whatever other people studied cognition. He was just a programmer.

He scratched out another equation inside his mind's eye.

GLaDOS = Caroline's 'base personality' + logic + anger + curiosity

Well, the cores were more like modifiers than additional components. So this was more like

GLaDOS = 'Base Personality' x Cores

He still felt like something was missing. Even accounting for the influence of the Anger Core, why would a robot lab assistant go directly to murder upon her first real encounter with humans?

Something about this robot's behavior hinted that these memories had still impacted the robot's emotions and motivations, even if GLaDOS had zero context for these emotions and impulses.

But then he realized something important.

Doug stood upright and waved a hand horizontally, smoothing out the sand he had been drawing in mentally. He was thinking about this in a manner that was entirely too linear, too two-dimensional. Trying to distill things down to an equation like this carried the implication that, if he got it right, he could predict her behavior to some degree. Put in a value and get a response.

GLaDOS was at least one magnitude greater than that. She was always learning, always growing—not static in any sense. Doug needed something that would gather and incorporate the data being gained from moment to moment and then change accordingly.

It was like the difference between acceleration and velocity: one gave the speed, but the other gave the magnitude and the direction.

He needed to integrate the equation. It had been a few years since Doug had touched his foundational calculus, but at least some of the concepts had lingered. She was, like a person, the summation of every moment she had ever experienced and would experience.

Doug realized that he had been thinking about GLaDOS as a sort of broken Caroline, or a Caroline that was lacking in some way. He had not fully recognized GLaDOS as her own fully sapient self. He guessed GLaDOS certainly did not feel as though she was missing anything.

A deep rumble interrupted his thoughts. Doug wobbled slightly, though not enough to get him completely off-balance. He felt his emotional state wobble in time. His own internal earthquake.

"What was that?" said the cube, urgently.

Doug dropped to his knees, scrambling to grab any useful supplies that he had laying around.

"She's using this testing track," he said quickly, the nervousness in his voice evident as he sped through the words. What the cube heard was something more like 'using—tra—" but it was able to discern the meaning.

As he threw aside empty cans, trying to ignore the racket he was making, he could feel his hands shaking. After a moment he shook his head and muttered something and then grabbed the cube. He didn't have time to pack.

She's not supposed to be here.

The thought looped through his mind. This was Caroline's wing. He had come to this area, after much careful effort, because this area shouldn't interest GLaDOS. With no connection to Caroline, GLaDOS should have no use for an outdated wing with only one testing track.

She's not supposed to be here.

"Does she know—?" said the cube.

"No," Doug said. Securing a knot with one final tug, he slung the cube over his shoulder.

"Could she have found—?"

"I don't know," said Doug.

She's not supposed to be here. Unless?

She couldn't know that they were here—he hadn't heard anything, and GLaDOS didn't seem to be one to remain silent in the face of victory, and it would be a victory if she caught them here.

But he would not feel comfortable remaining within this wing until he knew what was happening. He had to go and check out the testing track, but he had to be careful. And he couldn't rush, as much as he wanted to just go to the relaxation vault and see who was being woken up.


GLaDOS pulled up Test Subject #1's file as she began the wake-up protocol. The subject—Chell, no last name recorded—would be awake in under five minutes.

She considered using this time to move Test Subject #1's short-term relaxation vault to the tried and true testing track for the priority group, but something tickled at the edges of her consciousness. She found herself drawn to another testing track, an older one that had been created by humans. There were a few cosmetic flaws with some of the later chambers of this course, but nothing that would threaten the integrity of the testing. She had to check it for flaws, of course. Humans were prone to those.

But this meant the upcoming test subject could not blame GLaDOS for the difficulty and deadliness of the course-these tests had been designed by a fellow human.

The world rattled and the chamber chugged along toward its docking station. A part of her wondered if the movement would stimulate the human's vestibular systems. Could it potentially decrease the time until she was fully operational? She began a separate log to record wake-up times with and without movement. It would barely take away from her processing resources, and she had to move things all the time anyway. Might as well collect some data.

The chamber came to an ungraceful halt (there wasn't much maneuvering room here) and the wake-up process began. The pod's information feed alerted her as the suspension process went offline. She transformed the incoming life signs into a graph helpfully overlaid on her main visual input.

The subject emerged into a state of wakefulness.

From simultaneous camera feeds, GLaDOS watched Test Subject #1 exit the pod. It was not a graceful exit. The subject, upon standing, immediately wobbled and lost her balance, pressing her hands on the now-closed pod to steady herself. She stood there for a moment, her gaze transfixed on the pod. GLaDOS could just barely see her breathing.

"Hello, and again, welcome—" As she began the introductory portion of the script, she noticed herself catch on a word, the modulation differing slightly. She continued, without losing a beat. "To the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center."

The color drained from the woman's face and she lurched for the toilet. She expelled the contents of her stomach and remained there for a long time.

Great. She'd have to clean that up later. Just what she wanted. More cleaning. A sanitation cycle may not be enough to clean it. Dumping the whole vault into the incinerator was tempting, despite her directives to recycle all chamber elements whenever possible.

"Your business is appreciated," chimed the toilet as it was flushed.

As the subject rose to her feet, GLaDOS noted that this was an unprecedented response to waking up from suspension. She opened up the list of observed side effects—a temporary condition she had dubbed 'suspension sickness'-and added vomiting to the list, with one occurrence. She wondered what could have caused it, and why she'd never seen it recorded before.

Ugh. What a mess. And the human had probably missed out on her opening speech, too, which contained vital information about the testing process. Protocol dictated that this information be shared, but it made no reference to ensuring the information was understood. So, after a microsecond of deliberation, GLaDOS decided that she held no responsibility over whether or not her instructions were comprehended.

The countdown timer decreased.

The woman paused, rolling up the pant legs of the standard-issue jumpsuit, exposing some kind of attached metal augmentation. (She also noted, in horror, that the woman was barefooted. Didn't she know that that was an increased risk in tetanus? She didn't want to deal with a lawsuit around that. Was the Enrichment Center liable for tetanus contracted during testing?)

They certainly seemed archaic, GLaDOS mused, but as long as they did their job in dampening falls, she saw no reason to intervene. As far as she could tell, they were attached to her leg near the junction between her tibia and femur. Removing them would take time and delicacy, as damage to the kneecap and surrounding tendons would render her inert, and then GLaDOS would be forced to thaw out the next test subject.

GLaDOS puzzled over this contraption, finding nothing in her file besides a note that she did not require long-fall boots as she possessed advanced knee replacements. She turned her attention inward to search Aperture's digitized records, but could not find anything substantial on the advanced knee replacements. Most references were buried in the development logs for the long-fall boots. So she could at least be certain that they were a type of proto-long-fall-boot.

But none of that information satisfied her main question: where had this woman received the hardware? Or rather, when had she received them? And who would have installed this hardware on her instead of issuing her a set of boots? And why had she not seen this on any of the others?

While she pondered this, she noted that the tester seemed to have finally composed herself and had shaken off the worst of the suspension sickness. The woman had paused at the opening of the orange portal, but stared directly into the lens of a security camera. She had been staring at the camera for an unusually long time. As if she was expecting GLaDOS to say something.

But GLaDOS had completed this portion of the script. There was no more information to give. "Please proceed to the chamberlock," she said.

And then something strange happened. The expression on the woman's face changed. First she almost seemed hurt, and then her face darkened into what was clearly an angry expression. No, not just angry. Furious. It would have rendered GLaDOS silent if she had not already been silent. What had she done to provoke such an intense reaction? All she had done was wake her up.


"When the testing is over, you will be… missed."


Before she had even finished the instructions on cube-and-button-based testing, the test was complete and Test Subject #1 was waiting for the twist of the chamberlock. The woman continued on through the next several tests with astonishing efficiency. She did not balk at the sizable cubes or hesitate before entering a portal. These beginning chambers seemed to have been designed around teaching a subject individual concepts and testing elements one at a time. Later on, once a subject had shown proficiency in a concept, combinations of concepts would be introduced.

GLaDOS had had her suspicions, but it wasn't until the test subject retrieved the single portal device that she became certain. This woman had tested before at Aperture. Yet her test subject file made no mention of this fact. There was hardly any information about her at all. Even the visitors from Bring Your Daughter to Work Day had possessed more extensive files than this one.

GLaDOS felt the circles above her chassis spin faster. She sent off another request for a search on the woman's first name, Chell. She had hoped that it was unique enough that the fact that the she didn't know the subject's last name would not matter, but the quick search had returned nothing. The system began a slow crawl through the data.

The subject continued to test.

Knowing this woman had experience with a portal device certainly changed the balance of things. GLaDOS had not anticipated a participant with experience. This testing track was not designed for a participant with experience.

This should have been great news. After spending all of that time with the previous test subjects and lamenting over their lack of spatial intelligence and dexterity, she should have been thrilled at this development. She should be interested—even excited—about working with someone who knew what they were doing. Someone who would make it past the first ten test chambers. Someone that would hold her interest. Someone that may prove to be statistically significant. She should have felt relief, even. But she felt none of that.

She wasn't actually sure what she was feeling. It wasn't anger, like she had so decidedly felt before, but it wasn't dissimilar to anger either. It almost felt like the moments before she got an alert that a process had gone wrong or a program had exited early with an error code.

But nothing was wrong. She wasn't doing anything entirely out of the ordinary—she was just testing. She'd done lots of testing. All that had changed was the testing track and the test subject.

She processed the incoming footage from the testing track. The video quality was lower than she would have liked, which was not something that she had considered while choosing this location. It did logically follow that a testing track created at least a decade or two prior would not have as advanced equipment as the more modern chambers. Though the lower quality made the data transfer quickly, it left a lot to be desired. The pixelation was a bit annoying, as well as the grainy qualities and the poor capture of more dimly-lit areas. She would be tempted to pull out all of the old cameras and replace them with newer ones, but she did not possess the same control over this testing track's infrastructure. She could not simply swap out a panel or a camera. Other than that, though, the testing track appeared to be working.

Still, she could not help but wondering if choosing this testing track had been a mistake. As she had already initiated the tests, GLaDOS could not remove the test subject from the course. Even if she did want to do that, she wasn't sure that she possessed the necessary controls to redirect an elevator mid-course and transfer the woman back to the relaxation vault.

But she did not want to cancel any tests or move the test subject, because there was nothing wrong. The tests were proceeding as intended, though at a faster pace than anticipated. Everything was looking good, especially if the test subject maintained her current trajectory.

And yet despite these constant reassurances, she could not shake the pervasive feeling that she was missing something.

Nothing was wrong on her end, of course. She had checked. At least a couple hundred times.

So if there was nothing wrong there, then perhaps there was something wrong with the test subject. Something that she had not yet noticed. She returned some attention to the woman's sparse file and then looked again at the results of her extensive search.

The first thing that she noticed that had not appeared in the search (since she would not have thought to ask the question) was that there appeared to be a clerical error in regard to the woman's age. The listed date of birth did not seem to match her appearance, though she couldn't be certain with the lower quality of the cameras. Even accounting for time spent in suspension—which should not affect her aging process at all—it did not add up. At first she wanted to attribute it to human error—some fat finger had hit the wrong number. Seriously, why had they made the buttons on keyboards so small and close together that when their fat fingers and lack of typing accuracy combined, it made such a mess? And no one had noticed the error. Until now, because she was someone who noticed this sort of thing.

But as she perused the file further, a data entry error seemed less and less likely.

There was other content missing from her record that was commonly found in others. She figured this was true based on what she could remember, but a quick cross-reference with this file to others confirmed it.

There were too many holes. Crucial questions had been left blank. A quick cross-reference with other records confirmed that this one was an anomaly. Perhaps the file was corrupted? She checked the health of the data partition and it seemed to be perfectly healthy. So this missing data must have been missing for a reason.

But why would a file deliberately exclude certain information about a test subject? It couldn't be for any good reason. What had they been trying to hide from her?

She felt a bit of anger rise up and she almost wished that the employees were not dead. Then she could have hurt them again. The feeling festered inside of her, and, frustrated with this discovery of deception, she turned back to the one thing that could anchor her in the present: Testing.

Something was wrong with this file.

Something was wrong with this test subject.


19/19

"Congratulations! The test is now over. All Aperture technologies remain safely operational up to 4000 Kelvin."

Chell's grip relaxed slightly as the platform ferried her toward the chamber's exit like a boat along the river Styx. This was the final chamber. She had expected it to be the hardest one, but she had completed it in a fraction of the time.

"Rest assured that there is absolutely no chance of a dangerous equipment malfunction prior to your victory candescence."

The cake icon gleamed on the wall.

As the platform approached the corner, Chell's skin prickled at a sudden wave of heat. Confusion and anxiety flared as she tried to guess what could be giving off that much warmth.

"Thank you for participating in this Aperture Science computer-aided enrichment activity. Goodbye." With her last word said in a horrible sing-song chime, GLaDOS logged off.

The platform jerked to the left, and Chell felt ice in her veins. Flames licked up the walls in the approaching room, bright and frightening. Stretched shadows danced down the expanse.

Chell twisted to look back down the chute she'd come from. That problem panel she'd had to dodge on her way here now blocked her view, making it impossible to know if there was another platform back there. She couldn't risk a leap of faith just to splash into toxic water. In the moment it took her to process this, her view slipped away.

The victory candescence slowed to a triumphant and celebratory crawl.

Beads of sweat dripped down her forehead. Chell's heart pounded so rapidly she feared it would give out on her. The portal gun weighed heavily in her two shaking hands. At the sudden mental image of the device slipping and tumbling into the flames, she tightened her grip.

The plexiglass grew warm on her bare feet.

She scoured the walls, looking beside her, in front of her, above her, beneath her. This had to be just another test. It had to be. The solution had to be right in front of her. She finally noticed almost the entire room was made up of portal-friendly panels. But all were out of reach.

The platform crossed the threshold. Chell backed up on the scaffolding. Her eyes darted between her position and the walls. Platform. Wall. Platform. Wall. Platform.

With trembling arms she fired a set of portals. She cradled the device to her chest and backed to the far edge of the unstationary scaffolding, briefly pausing before she pushed off like a sprinter and leaped through the flames.

Chell's vision blurred—from the motion, from the heat- and she closed her eyes, fearing she would not make it.

She was falling,

falling,

falling.

Her toes clipped the bottom edge of the portal and Chell lurched forward. Instinctively she threw out her arms to try to catch herself as she tumbled onto the warm and grimy tiles. The portal gun sailed ahead, skidding and screeching and rolling across the floor.

They both came to a stop.

Blood pounded in Chell's ears with a dizzying force. She stayed on her stomach for a moment, her breathing heavy and tight-as if her chest would shrink to nothing if she didn't get enough air into it right now.

"What are you doo-ing?"

Another shot of adrenaline.

"Stop it! I... I..." The voice glitched, repeating the last word over and over as it rose to a nearly unbearable volume before it cut out.

Chell pushed herself onto her hands as knees.

"Weee-eee are pleased that you made it through the final challenge," the robot said, voice gradually returning to a steady and chirpy intonation, "where we pretended we were going to murder you."

At the sound of the voice, Chell scrambled forward to the upside-down portal gun. She twisted the device to the left, to the right, and then reached to straighten the black prongs extending from the front of the gun.

Her attention caught on a dark streak on the white shell. She quickly scraped at it with a fingernail. Grime collected under her nail but she couldn't feel a crack. Her shoulders relaxed ever so slightly and she sat back on her heels.

A loud crackle and hiss from the fire brought her back to the present. She was here. Sitting on an overlook to an incinerator. Stubbornly alive.

The reality of the situation sunk into her just like the heat from the room.

She had just survived what was undeniably an attempt on her life. Did all testing tracks end like this? Or was this a feature unique to Caroline's personal testing docket?

If so, why had Chell been assigned to this particular testing track? CarolineDOS knew that Chell had only signed up as an alternate route out of Aperture. The plan was to sail through an easier set of tests and then be released. She had never meant to be an actual test subject.

Something didn't add up.

Was CarolineDOS mad at her about something? Had she said or done something before she had entered short-term suspension?

Chell's face turned white.

She had told Doug about the tampering of the Morality Core. And then he had left with such an intense look of determination. He had to have done something about that.

In her crouched position, she rocked forward, and set a palm against the floor to steady herself. The nausea that she had felt so strongly upon waking up and realizing that more time had passed while she was in suspension had returned. But she didn't have time to vomit again. She suppressed the sharp dread sucking her down, and took a breath before continuing her thoughts.

If Doug had acted upon the knowledge she had given him, then CarolineDOS would have been absolutely furious with her. And even if Doug had not acted upon that knowledge, CarolineDOS would have still been furious with her.

Furious enough to assign her to this testing track?

No.

Maybe?

She didn't know.

What she did know was that CarolineDOS had been acting undeniably different than the CarolineDOS she was familiar with, which could only lead to one conclusion. Doug had rolled back the memory-stealing Morality Core, making certain it effective this time around.

So this CarolineDOS—this GLaDOS—didn't know her. To the AI, Chell must simply be one test subject among hundreds. There was no reason for her to treat Chell any differently. No reason for her to go easy on Chell's test. No reason to keep her word on broken promises.

She turned to look back at the incinerator and realized that words were still playing, muffled from the roar of the fire.

"—or you will miss the party.'

Party?

Chell listened for more, but no more words played. She waited a long moment before pushing herself onto wavering feet.

CarolineDOS had been right: The Morality Core was a mistake. A mistake Chell had to make right.


"Uh oh. Somebody cut the cake. I told them to wait for you, but they did it anyway. There is still some left, though, if you hurry back."


Okay.

So that had not gone as planned.

None of the other test subjects had made it this far and she had not expected her to react so negatively to the surprise at the end. And now she was out of bounds.

All right.

There had to be plans for this kind of thing. An escaped subject was hopefully not a common occurrence, but Aperture Laboratories was nothing if not prepared. There had to be a protocol for this.

She could do this.

She cast out a wide search for key phrases related to an escaped test subject and sifted through the results. GLaDOS did not have her own experience to draw upon, so she was going to think of this as a learning experience. This was new. Exciting. She was gaining knowledge. So she could almost thank the test subject, in a way.

She just had to be careful about this. Thoughtful. And definitely not panic.

She called out again to the escaped test subject, blanketing the message throughout the wing. The test subject had not yet responded—to anything, throughout all of the testing track, she had noted—but it never hurt to try.

She turned her focus back to the diagrams she had of this wing.

Some processing power freed up as she realized there really were not many entrances and exits to this wing as a whole. Strange, considering how modular Aperture tended to be. This whole wing seemed to be its own self-contained and coherent unit, and it almost seemed hostile toward her attempts to connect it into other modules of the facility. It was just old. She couldn't get it to do things that she could do with every other wing, and it frustrated her.

She would have to make do with what she had.

All she had to do was secure the exit points. The middle parts didn't matter. Sure, it was helpful to have control over each twist and turn, but the maze still only had one way out. She'd done the same thing when some of those initial humans had tried to run from her.

The temperature measurements on the chassis had spiked. She had no real sense of temperature, but she could feel the differences in response times between herself and components of the facility. This was probably the most processing power that she had ever utilized at once. Using up this much power could be a concern, but the processing capabilities existed to be used, didn't they?

She pulled some of the focus from less-necessary maintenance tasks. The manufacturing area powered down. She discarded camera monitoring in areas of the facility far from this wing.

This was all about allocating her resources properly. And that was something that she could do, because she was a supercomputer. She was smarter than humans. That's why she was in charge. And that's why she could allocate her own resources.

The temperature measurements were still too high when she checked it again, so she set up a little program to report in updates at regular intervals.

Okay. That was under control.

She called up and activated every turret and defensive measure that she could find registered to that wing. The test subject may find her way to the exit on her own, but it wouldn't hurt to have some encouragement (in the form of bullets) to guide her in the right direction and hurry things along a bit.

The sooner the test subject was back in a testing track, the more secure that GLaDOS would feel. Not that she was feeling insecure at that moment. In fact she was feeling incredibly secure, perhaps the most secure she had ever felt, if anyone deigned to ask her, which they hadn't. She may not have foreseen this development, but she now had a plan to get things going back according to the plan that she had planned.

This wasn't the first time that a test subject had escaped, but she was going to make sure it was the last.


"This isn't brave. It's murder. What did I ever do to you?"


BOOM.

The room shuddered. Doug's footing slipped and he stumbled, falling to the ground. "Aaaah!"

"Eeeee!" said the companion cube, echoing the sentiment. Papers and books scattered across the floor.
"What was that?" said Doug.

"The room shook itself to pieces," said the cube.

"Like an unbalanced centrifuge," Doug replied. He examined the cube, making sure that no damage had been done to it.

"I heard an explosion. What could it mean?"

"Only one thing it can mean," Doug said, "She did it. It's over. The ultimate systems crash."

"Where's the girl?" asked the cube. "She didn't stay to check out her handiwork?"

The massive machinery looked like an exploded octopus, with tendrils and bits scattered across the room. Many of them looked as though they'd been sucked up through the ceiling, propelled upward by an unknown force.

"She must have gotten out. Probably on the surface, soaking up some sun." A glimmer of hope tinged his voice as he pictured Chell, finally up on the surface. She'd done it. She'd made it. "And she has the right idea. Come on, we're wasting daylight."


"Stop squirming and die like an adult or I'm going to delete your backup."


Sunlight.

Warm, beautiful, breathtaking sunlight.

Golden light beat down upon the aboveground parking lot of Aperture Science. Clouds dotted the skies and a soft breeze blew across the pavement.

The world slowly came into focus. First, the skies. The vast, beautiful, cerulean sky, though it was fuzzy around the edges. Chell blinked, letting it come more into focus.

The acrid smell of smoke drifted in to her lungs. Chell coughed, stomach heaving. She was on her back, and debris dug into her back. She lifted a hand, lazily, to shield her eyes from the sunlight.

Real sunlight.

Pure sunlight.

The surface.

She'd made it to the surface.

Her brain was fuzzy but a moment of sheer glee and relief overcame her. She had done it! She had gotten out of Aperture! And in one piece! She felt tears well up in her eyes before the exhaustion started to overwhelm her. A thick grogginess clung to her, threatening to envelop her in blackness. Chell struggled as hard as she could against it, clinging to those feelings of happiness and relief. No. She couldn't pass out now. Not when she had so much to do. Not when she had so much life to live.

But the siren's song of the tiredness called to her. Didn't she work hard? Didn't she deserve some rest, after all she'd done? GLaDOS was destroyed. She was safe.

Chell closed her eyes.


"You're not a good person. You know that, right? Good people don't end up here."


Doug took a moment to survey the scene outdoors. A plume of smoke rose to the sky. The scene of the crime.

SssSSSSSHHHHHKKKK

A horrible noise of metal scraping against metal sent Doug ducking behind a mass of smoldering machinery. After a moment, he peeked out. That's when he saw her.

Passed out, sprawled out on the ground, with a gangly android's metal arms under her armpits.

The Party Escort Bot.

The robot dragged her back toward the building, and Doug heard a SNAP as one of Chell's advanced knee replacement backings broke off. Doug winced.

"You don't have to go back in there," said the cube, attempting to keep its voice soothing. What was Chell's problem wasn't their problem. They were free. Free! This is what Doug wanted. This moment what they'd worked so hard to stay alive for. He couldn't just throw it away.

"I'm not leaving her. I have to at least try to save her."

"Listen, it's too dangerous. You're going to get killed," said the cube.

"So be it."

"Then you really are crazy," said the cube softly.


"No!" The word was short. Unbelieving.

Doug wished this was one of his hallucinations, but the fact that the Companion Cube's voice was wearing off proved this had to be real. "They've already put her in long-term relaxation!" He stared through the window, looking down on the woman in the orange jumpsuit. It was Chell. Unmistakably.

How had the Party Escort Bot managed to get her down here and into a vault so fast?

As fast as he could manage, he tore over to the outside of her long-term relaxation vault. His lungs burned with the effort of it. But he'd gotten used to running. He'd gotten used to hiding. Doug ran.

"There you are!"

BANG BANG BANG BANG.

Bright, blinding pain.

"AAGH!" Doug collapsed, pitching forward and out of view of the turret. Spikes of white shot through his vision. The world became fuzzy with pain. His leg hurt so, so much. Blood oozed.

He looked around frantically for his cube and spotted it in front of him. Doug reached out a hand, struggling to get closer…

Must.

Stay.

Conscious.

He repeated this phrase to himself, again and again. But he was falling into a void that couldn't be stopped.


When he finally awoke, the world felt brighter. Too bright. Doug squinted, looking directly at his Companion Cube.

"How long have I been out?" he said, giving a low cough. His leg ached terribly.

"Long enough."

"You're back," he said. His medicine must have worn off while he had passed out.

"I never left you."

He pushed himself up a bit farther and his ribs ached with the effort of it. The remaining gap between himself and the cryo-unit control panels was insurmountable. A crushing crash of despair knocked him back onto his stomach. Doug just laid there for a moment, elbows against the cold ground. He pulled his arms close around his head. The world shrank.

His limbs trembled with exhaustion. His leg sparked with pain. Doug pulled and pulled at his hair, grabbing fistfuls in frustration. He had survived the turret, but he found no relief in knowing that. He had failed Chell. He might as well be dead.

The cube hummed. A single flame in the void. "You might still be able to save her," it said."You can't free her, but you can patch her cryo-unit into the reserve grid."

"Really?" Doug blinked. Horizontal slats of light nearly blinded him. The reserve grid. The reserve grid. The reserve grid! He hadn't even thought of that.

"You can reset the fuses and restart her life support. If it's not too late already."

"It's not too late," Doug whispered. It couldn't be too late. He pushed himself onto his elbows and began to drag himself forward. "But—even if it works—" he said, breaking off. His stomach swam between despair and hope, then dove to somewhere uncharted. "Even if it works, there will be no wake up-date. She'll be in there indefinitely."

Oh, Chell is going to kill me when she wakes up.

But he would take an upset and angry Chell over a dead one. Even if she refused to ever speak to him again, it would be worth it. His finger hovered over the switch.

"Forgive me," Doug whispered. He pressed the button.

Whooosh.

"It worked! Sleep well."

Both alive and dead, until someone opens the box.


END OF PART II