Chapter 11 - The Coloured Dots
Tammy POV - When I woke, I was back in the field. Hard soil supported my body, but my head rested on something soft, and a gentle hand stroked my forehead. Carefully, I opened my eyes, unsure of how my body would react. Wheatley was looking down on me; the blue of his eyes told me it really was him. "What happened?" I murmured. "I was in Aperture. I was with GLaDOS. What happened to her? How did I get out here?" My voice was weak and yet with strength in my tone.
"Darling," the girl with him said. "Hi. I'm Chell." Was this her? The one Wheatley had gone back for? How could it be? He had said she couldn't talk. She must have deciphered the expression of shock that crossed my face, because she went on to say, "I am the girl Wheatley came back for. You were unconscious when we found you with...found you. She is gone. You must have shut her down somehow. Anyway, you have quite a few injuries so be careful when you try and move. And...I'm sorry. About your friend." She looked down at the ground beside her. I followed her gaze. Thats when I noticed her body, beautiful and ever, still, lifeless on the ground a few metres away from me. I struggled to get up, to go to her, but Wheatley held me down.
"You won't do anything except hurting yourself further if you go to her," he said. I gave up struggling and just looked at her. Her perfectly brushed hair was in knots of blood and her skin was white, as if she was frozen and could be awoken at any moment. But that wasn't going to happen. Because she was dead. Grace was dead.
Wheatley POV - The look on Tammy's face as she looked at Graces body was heartbreaking. It was as if her body was too shocked and full of grief even to shed a tear. But I...we...had to get them away from here. Grace had to be taken back to her parents, and so did Tammy. Gently, I reached out and touched Tammy, hopefully reassuringly, on the arm. I was still getting used to having a human body, but it was slowly becoming normal for me. Gently, i tried to help Tammy to her feet. She was frail, breakable in her current state.
"Tammy?" I asked, hesitantly. "Tammy, we need to go home." She gave me no response. I quickly shot a 'help-me' look at Chell, who came and stood by my side.
"Tammy, darling," she said gently. "We have to go, Tammy." Carefully, she tugged on Tammy's arm. She responded but robotically, getting to her feet with the help of Chells supporting hands. No look of pain crossed her face. She must have been numb with the pain of grief. When she was on her feet, Tammy was limp, like a standing rubber representation of herself. Absently, she responded to Chell's action and shuffled her feet to face the direction that Chell was pulling her in, but her gaze never left Grace's face, cold and empty, frozen forever with frightened eyes and tense features.
Swiftly, I pulled Grace's lifeless body into my arms. It was cold, but not like it had been in cooled. It was a different kind of cold. She felt hard and yet soft at the same time, like her skin hadn't yet completely drained of all of its moisture and warmth. I looked up to see Chell staring at me expectantly. It was then that I realised that I had no idea where I was going.
Chell POV - I watched Wheatley, expecting him to start walking in a direction. He didn't move. His eyes were vacant, in some way. It was like he was desperately trying to remember which way he had come but couldn't quite find the way on the map that was his memory.
"Don't you know where we are going?" I asked him.
"Errrr...Well...It could be that way," he said, pointing to the right. "Or it could be that way," he continued, pointing to the left. "I'm not entirely completely certain."
"Ugh," I moaned. Great, i was stuck with a brain-dead idiot. Thoroughly, I inspected my surroundings. To my left stood the hut from which we had just come. Behind this was just field. To my right, however, past the endless fields, I thought I could see a little blue dot moving along the horizon. Surely that couldn't be my imagination? But then again, maybe it was? Finally, I decided that we should take to risk and head towards it. We couldn't get into a worse situation, at least. We were a party made up of a previously cryogenically frozen human, a metal core whose life had been injected into a human body, a girl who hardly knew where she was and needed desperate medical help, and a corpse. How could this possibly get worse? When I looked up, the blue dot was gone (thats how), replaced but a red one. And behind that was a yellow one. And then another red one. And then a green one. What were these dots?
"This way," I told Wheatley, heading in the general direction of these little coloured dots.
Wheatley POV - Chell started walking off to her right, and I followed, completely confused as to my sense of direction. I just didn't know which way we had come. To be honest, I guess I could see why. On the way, I had been a little metal ball carried by Grace. Now, unfortunately, the tables were turned, and i was carrying her. As i remembered this simple act, I hit a wall of grief. She had been so kind to me. So loyal. She had risked her life on the off chance that I might be right and have a friend still alive in this impossible place of my past. And yet, here I was, carrying her body to God knows where with no idea how to get her back to her family.
Chell was giving me a curiously worried look when I realised I had stopped following her.
"Are you ok?" She asked me.
"Yea yea. I'm fine. Just thought of something, thats all," I told her, keeping my eyes pointedly focused downwards.
"Ok," she said, seeming, reluctantly, to let the subject drop for now. We had more pressing matters to deal with. She carried on walking and I followed.
Chell POV - We continued to walk for about 3 hours, over field after field after field. Finally we reached the place I had previously spotted. It was a road, and the dots were cars. The cars were different to how I remembered them. Now, they had music pouring from their windows and poshly fitted electronic systems. I decided to proceed along the road. All roads had to lead somewhere, right?
We had been walking along the road for about 20 minutes when a car pulled over next to us. I stopped, and with me so did Tammy and Wheatley. The look in Wheatley's eyes was curious and fascinated and full of enthusiasm for the cars. I guessed that he had never seen a car before. A car door slammed in front of me. From the car, a little old woman had emerged. She seemed to be roughly 65 years old and a bit...not really with it.
"Would you like a lift, dearies?" She asked us, in her elderly, famine voice. Her short grey hair bounced around on her head as she advanced on us, with a slight limp in her step and a vacant expression. "Oh," she said, looking a Grace's body. At first I thought she was disgusted or shocked or both, but when her expression creased into a smile, I realised I was wrong. "Is your little friend sleeping, dear?" She inquired, resting one of her wrinkled, boney hands on my arm.
"Errr...yes," I lied smoothly. "Actually, we were hoping to find a hospital. Could you possible take us to the nearest one?"
"Of course, dearie. I was heading that way myself." Surprise, surprise. "It should only take about 5 minutes. Get in and we'll be off." I got into the car, pulling Tammy in after me onto the back seat, and gestured for Wheatley to do the same. He seemed to be very unsure of what to do. "In you get, dearie," the little old lady prompted. After what seemed like hours of contemplation, Wheatley got into the car. And we were off. But to where exactly, in what district of the country, was a mystery.