Chell, who had fallen asleep to the peaceful sounds of a bubbling brook, woke up to the shrieks of a creature attacking her. She had barely opened her eyes before she saw a small, reddish brown animal launch itself at her face. Fear and adrenaline suddenly coursed through her and she managed to hold up an arm and bat the creature away before it reached her. The thing landed about five feet away, and Chell quickly jumped up before it could charge at her again.

The thing had no visible eyes or ears, yet seemed like it was watching her, waiting for her to fight or flee. Chell only knew it had a mouth from her brief glimpse at the beak on its underbelly. Chell couldn't really remember the outside world, but an instinct or maybe whatever was left of her memories from before Aperture told her that this thing was wrong, wrong, wrong, that it didn't belong here.

But the thing didn't wait for her to figure it out, and only a few seconds after Chell stood the thing charged again, flying at her face with amazing accuracy and speed considering its stumpy and awkward looking legs. Chell sidestepped and leaped across the creek, scanning the area for anything that might be used to fend the little bugger off.

The only thing that looked like it might be up to killing or at least fending off the thing was a reasonably large branch. Chell picked it up as quickly as possible and swung the makeshift club around out of instinct. Miraculously, it hit the small creature, who went flying off in the opposite direction and landed a good ways away.

'It can't be killed that easy' Chell thought, tensing up and holding her newfound weapon at the ready, waiting and watching for the thing to hoist itself up and run at her again.

But it didn't. The creature stayed on the ground where it landed, and after five minutes Chell began to inch her way towards it. When she got into range, she poked it once with her branch and, when it didn't react, flipped it onto its back. The legs didn't start to move and the beak like mouth on its underside didn't make any sound. Its entire body was limp.

Chell let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding and relaxed, letting her shoulders fall and her heels rest on the support struts of the long fall boots. It was only then when she realized just how awful she felt. Hunger clawed at her insides and seemingly every muscle she had was sore. The jumping thing had also wounded her; there was a bite on her arm where she had hit it the first time it attacked her.

Chell washed the cut in the stream and took another long drink, though it only seemed to make her feel hungrier. A few long, lingering looks were given to the dead creature. Would it be alright to eat? Chell didn't even remember what sorts of things she was meant to be eating, but she was certain that it wasn't these weird bitey thingys. For the lack of a better word, Chell decided to call them jumpers until someone could tell her what their proper name was.

That is, if there was anyone to tell her anything.

Chell ignored the pangs coming from her stomach and searched around the little clearing she found herself in more closely. And in the direction the jumper came from, there was what looked like a small footpath.

There WERE humans out here at one point! Yes! And this path, if she kept down it, would certainly lead to somewhere.

Chell felt like doing some kind of jig, but was too tired to really dance around. Inside she was filled with an almost overwhelming joy, but outside she gave no hint as to what she was feeling. She just began to walk down the little footpath, face as blank as it was during her first battle with GLaDOS. Her stomach growled and Chell let out a large sigh. She could really do with some adrenal vapor.

By the time the sun reached its apex, Chell had left the tiny forest trail in return for a larger one. The trees grew smaller and less impressive and everything had started to look a bit dingy, like another human had come before and covered the world in a layer of dust. But Chell's spirits brightened even more when the path she had been following connected to a larger road, this one paved. Paved!

She couldn't hear any cars rumbling along it, so she just walked in the middle of the pavement. This road was too narrow and bendy for anyone to drive too quickly on it, and she could probably hear a car coming from a mile away, with the forest being so silent.

Chell then pondered for awhile about how she knew the cars were loud, or that people couldn't drive fast on bendy roads, or even what cars were. The only conclusion she came to was that her memory was weird.

I was much easier to trek down the paved road than through a forest, and she was making great time. Jumpers occasionally popped out from the wood to try and eat her face, but her stick was always up and ready when they came.

It was sunset when Chell found herself in front of what looked like a touristy hunting lodge. The building was two stories tall, and was made out of what looked like faux logs.

It looked like heaven, an actual building after all that wilderness. And she only had to walk many, many miles and fight thirteen jumpers to get there. Chell ran the rest of the way there, too excited about the possibility of meeting another human being to care about how hungry and tired she was.

Chell raced across the ill kept fields toward the front door of the building. She heaved open one of the front doors and slipped inside. She then promptly threw up.

In the elaborate lobby filled with the remains of long dead animals, were the remains of long dead humans. The only difference was that the animals were displayed prettily high up on the walls and the humans were gruesomely mangles and spread out on the carpet. They looked like they had dies where they currently laid, female bodies wrapped around children and dead couples holding each other in terror. But that was the good half. The bad half was strewn up an all over the room. Some had bites in them, some were grusomeley torn apart, and some had jumpers attached to their faces.

Chell supposed she was lucky that they had all died long before she had gotten there. Dried leathery bits of human were strewn out all across the floor, nearly every bit unrecognizable except for the heads. Even so, every step she took further into the building made her want gag. The smell was awful. She had seen horrible, awful things in Aperture Science, but nothing had prepared her for this.

She could only stand pondering the dead people when she wasn't looking at them. Chell knew that she was a strong person. She had defeated both GLaDOS and Wheatley, climbed out of Tartarus and solved countless puzzles. Most of the time, she would take on any problem face first and soldier on until it was solved. But finding those bodies torn apart like that, the only humans she could remember, it was . . . horrible,

Chell continued to think her morbid thoughts while comfortably situated on a balcony in one of the upper rooms, eating canned something or the other and resting one of her hands on the gun laying down next to her as often as possible. She had taken the rifle off the floor in the entrance room, and had automatically checked, loaded and cocked it. It was a bit scary, but the weapon felt right in her hands, and came in great use when she had opened the door to the kitchen only to find a mutated and disgusting humanoid pawing through the cupboards.

Maybe the weapon felt familiar because she was actually part of the military, Chell mused. That voice down in the depths of Aperture had said that he had hired war-heroes as test subjects. Or maybe it felt good to carry the gun around because she had spent such a long time carrying the Handheld Portal Device in the same position. Chell suspected that she would never know, but it was nice to speculate on her past.

But mainly, her thoughts were centered on wondering about what, exactly, had happened to humanity. She might not have remembered much, but she was sure that the world had once been populated by something more than demented jumping monsters and the things they had attached themselves to. She had to shoot the horrible creature in the kitchen twice; once to kill the humanoid and once to kill the jumper that detached itself from its face.

GLaDOS had said, once, that the world had changed since she had left the building. And even though she had only gotten glimpses of what had once been outside, Chell believed her.

Aside from food and guns, the lodge provided one more very importance resource: Cars. It had cars, as Chell found out when the sun rose the next morning. Awesome. And somehow, Chell knew instinctively how to drive cars. Double Awesome.

She instantly fell in love with a huge, cherry red, pickup truck. She had found gasoline in a backroom when she had been investigating the other day, right next to a huge generator Chell assumed was for when the place lost power. But it didn't have any power to begin with now, and Chell didn't need any power.

She, Chell thought smugly, wasn't a robot.

Even if they had gotten out together, Wheatley probably wouldn't have survived for very long. Chell took a long, lingering look at the sky and sighed. She couldn't see the moon now, it was mid-morning. He had been up there for four days now, maybe longer. He was stuck up there with the spacey sphere, the manly sphere, and the ego sphere. She almost felt bad for him.

Almost.

But she took the gas, filled up the tank and loaded the rest onto the back. Tins of food were also arranged neatly in the truck bed and strapped down. The guns and ammo went into the passenger side seat for easy access. The only thing left to do was leave, but looking at the setting sun and the darkness encroaching on the forest, Chell decided to stay, if only for one more night.

It was actually rather disturbing how alike the guest rooms at the lodge were to the long term relaxation chamber at the enrichment center. But really, nothing bad had ever happened to Chell in her quaint little relaxation chamber and so she felt rather comfortable in the hotel room. If she found herself in more endless white and gray concrete puzzle rooms, then she might freak out.

Chell fell asleep on her fifth day of freedom full, well armed, and staring at the moon.

When she woke up there was something in her room. Chell woke up to skittering and whining sounds and automatically tightened the grip on her gun. When her eyes adjusted to the light of the room only illuminated faintly by the moon, she sat up and held her gun up, ready to shoot whatever was inside. I could have been friendly, she later supposed, but showing kindness toward anything hadn't exactly helped her in the past, example Wheatley.

And when the four legged thing managed to send out a shockwave that hurt like a bitch before it died from the gunshot wounds , and remorse that Chell might have felt at killing the oddly cute thing disappeared.

Out of the corner of her eye, Chell could see another one of the thing scurry around the corner outside of her room.

'Oh No', she thought 'there is no way that I'm letting them get away. No one is allowed to wake me up now that I can sleep!'

And so Chell reloaded her rifle and set out after the soundwave things. They headed towards the kitchen and rooted around the cupboards Chell had emptied earlier and searched through every room before circling back to the main hall. The soundwaves snuffled around for awhile, and one of the smaller ones even tried to eat some of the leathery skin was left of the floor. It was nearly daybreak, and Chell was considering just shooting them there when they disappeared into what had looked like a wine celler when Chell had investigated earlier. Seeing no reason to go down there, Chell hadn't. Now she wasn't sure whether that was a good idea or a horrifically bad one.

Then she saw a gigantic tentacle snake its way out of the doorway and pull the soundwaves into the downstairs room and was quite sure that it had been a good idea.

She ran out of the lodge and spent the rest of the night sleeping under the stars and pondering what else had changed since she left the building.