A/N: This is where things get AU. Most of my stories are.
)O(
Chell had first noticed the writing on the walls in Chamber 17, just before the computer told her to incinerate her companion cube. She hadn't wanted to do it. The cube was the closest thing to a friend she had, yet these scattered messages provided a new kind of companionship.
They also planted the first seeds of doubt in her mind, taught her to question her world.
But just who was this mysterious person? If what the walls said was true, then the AI had lied to her, and continued to do so.
It was a troubling thought, one that somewhat distracted Chell from completing the tests in a timely manner.
"Welcome to the final test!"
Chell could hardly believe it. She would finally get the cake she had been promised as an incentive for testing. Although she wasn't entirely sure what cake was, the pictures looked fascinating, and the AI made it sound like the best thing in the world.
She completed the final test, and as the moving platform she stood on slowly rounded a corner and ebbed closer to the flames, her mind instantly made the connections.
The cake is a lie.
"Thank you for participating in this Aperture Science computer-aided enrichment activity," The voice remained just as flat and emotionless as ever. "Goodbye."
There was no cake, only death by fire.
Chell decided at that instant exactly where her loyalties lay. She refused to die at the hands of some power-mad AI, and the portal device was still in her possession.
Escaping the initial death trap was easy. Escaping the facility was going to be a different story. After all, her friend who wrote on the walls hadn't managed to find a way out yet. Maybe he didn't have a portal device. Maybe she just had to find a way to shut Her down.
Chell wanted cake. She did not appreciate being lied to.
She made her way through the bowels of Aperture, the part of this place she was never supposed to see. All rusted machines and abandoned offices. It looked like everyone had just simply vanished. GLaDOS kept urging her to turn around and come back. There really was cake, the suddenly more expressive voice said, and escape was impossible anyway. But Chell was done believing Her.
This felt slightly wrong. She recognized the scribblings on the walls and didn't want to intrude upon his space. At least there were no cameras here. This was one of Her blind spots. Temporarily safe from anything not human.
Suddenly overtaken by a feeling of extreme weariness, she curled up on the floor and fell asleep remarkably fast considering everything on her mind.
When Chell woke up from her nap, bleary-eyed and starving, she was no longer alone. A man who had wild black hair sat on the ground with his back against a cube. Not just any cube either, but a companion cube like the one GLaDOS forced her to incinerate.
He watched her with eyes the color of honey.
They both waited expectantly for the other to do or say something.