Chell left the lodge at dawn, eager to find out what else there was in the world now that she had the means to get somewhere fast. It was slightly hard to maneuver the pedals of the car whilst still wearing the long fall boots, but she quickly worked it out and by the time the sun had reached the middle of the sky, Chell could see a city.

She examined it as she ate a lunch of beef jerky and tinned corn. It wasn't likely that there were any more people there than there were at the hunting lodge. She could hear nothing coming from the city, and although she didn't know many things about the outside world, through logic she could figure out that if there were large groups of people they would be making a lot of noise.

Then she heard the shrieking that signaled a jumping-thing attack. Chell turned around to see it coming right at her face. In one smooth motion she picked up the pipe she had replaced her branch with, and swung it, hitting the thing dead on and killing it. Chell sighed. These attacks were becoming far too routine.

She packed up and drove off again, predicting quite correctly that she would reach the large urban area by early evening.

Chell was surprised to find that she hated the blank, empty silence of the city even more than that of the forest. At least in the forest she could remind herself that she was out of Aperture, that she was free. The place she was in now had far too many grey concrete corridors for her liking and it was absolutely infuriating not to have a portal gun with which to navigate them.

She looked despairingly at a box of shotgun ammo which lay on the top of a fire escape of a ten story building. The way up from the inside was blocked and the bottom of the fire escape looked like it had been melted and then twisted in upon itself. But if she just had a portal gun. . .

Moments like this were what made Chell wish that she could scream. So instead, she punched the brick wall in front of her, which only earned her a sore hand and an even greater wish for the ability to curse. She glared up at the out of reach ammo, and at the dead body that was reaching for it, hand outstretched. If only he could have used that to not die, she wouldn't have this dilemma!

"Hello?"

A voice appeared out of seemingly nowhere and startled Chell, so much so that she hit her head on the wall accidentally before spinning around wildly, looking for whatever had made it. Her eyes finally alighted on a man standing right behind her. He was shorter than her, but bigger, more muscular. It looked like someone had rapidly and badly shaved his head, because though most of it was bald, there were small patches of blonde. At the ready he held a shotgun, which put Chell at ease even though it was directed at her. This man was prepared.

"You part of the resistance?" he asked hopefully. Chell said nothing, not that she even could. "Well then girl, are you just another one of those mindless drones? You can't be civil protection, don't have the gear. . ."

This last sentence was said mostly to himself as he examined her. Chell was confused. Drones? Civil protection? What were these things and why did this man, the first human she could remember seeing speak of them so negatively?

He was now circling around her, seemingly trying to figure her out, always keeping the shotgun pointed in her direction. Chell herself only had her pipe, because she hadn't seen anything big lurking about from her truck. But she took the pipe because she didn't trust those jumping things. They could, seemingly, pop out from anywhere.

"It's been awhile since I've seen anyone around here." The man said, breaking Chell out of her circle of confused thoughts. He pointed his gun straight at her face. "How can I be sure you aren't working for the Combine?"

Chell, once again, couldn't answer. But, shifting her feet, she had an idea. She put up one finger to signal the man to hold his fire and then, using her pipe, wrote WHAT ARE THE COMBINE? in the gravel at their feet. Chell had always been able to read and write, ever since she woke up, but so far she hadn't really used it except to read cans and signs. She was intensely grateful for it now, as it gave some way to communicate.

The man read the scratching, sounding out the words silently. When he finished, his eyes snapped up to her face, widening in disbelief.

"How in the hell can you not know what the combine are?" he said, suspicion and doubt lacing every word. Chell stared hard at him for a moment and then shrugged, unable to explain her memory loss and long incarceration in Aperture. How could she tell her story to anyone without the ability to directly speak? Even if she wrote it down it would take forever and this man didn't seem like he was very good at reading anyway.

Now he was circling around her, looking her over. It made Chell mildly uncomfortable, but she knew that she could fight back if he tried anything. Her grip tightened on the pipe and her face hardened.

"You're very young." The man said. "I bet you were real little during the seven hour war. Maybe you just never came across them? Are you traveling with anyone?"

Chell shook her head, signaling that she wasn't. It would be nice if she could actually say no, but by now it was quite obvious to her that this would never be an option for her.

The man made a small humming sound and spent a moment in quiet contemplation before finally lowering his gun. Sticking out his hand, the man introduced himself as Leonard Greene. Chell shook it and then scratched her name into the ground.

"Well Chell," the man said, "Looks like I'm going to have to explain the combine to you. We'll do it on the way back to base. Now, about twenty years ago it all started at Black Mesa. . ."

Chell basked for a moment in the feeling of rightness that came from having her name spoken by a human voice, but then held up a finger and ran to retrieve her rifle. He nodded at her when she rejoined him armed and then they both started to walk across the city, roads impassable by cars. Chell listened intently to Leonard, absorbing all the information he gave her. She needed to know as much as she possible if she was going to survive outside.

It wasn't that hard to pay attention anyway. Leonard was a great storyteller, giving his own account of the seven hours war and the years that followed while lacing all of the important bits inside the narrative. In the hour it had taken them to walk across the city, Chell had learned the proper names for all of the creepy crawlies she had been fighting, which beings would beat her to death or enslave her, and about everything else that had happened since she last left the building.

She was also given a new goal: get rid of the combine. Not that Leonard told her that's what she had to do, exactly, but that was what she could sense needed to be done.

Chell had always been good at working with vague directions.

Anyway, an objective was good. Chell didn't work very well when she didn't have goals such as 'solve this test', 'kill the homicidal computer' or 'escape this gigantic pit'. She had completed her task of finding civilization, and destroying the combine seemed like a thing that someone should do. Why not her? She didn't escape Aperture only to be enslaved for the rest of her life.

Her new goal seemed considerably more difficult than any of her previous ones, but that was alright. As much as she hated tests, she loved challenges. And, according to GLaDOS, she was particularly good at murder.

'Besides' she thought, 'at least these people don't want to kill me personally. That's got to be an improvement.'

Chell didn't even notice when they got to the place Leonard and his friends were hiding out, not because she wasn't paying attention, but because it was cleverly hidden underneath a collapsed building. One wouldn't even be able to notice the entrance unless they crouched down and scooted underneath a slab of concrete on their stomach.

Slipping through a crack and falling about five feet onto some mattresses, Chell entered the hide out. It was a large rectangular depression underneath the collapsed building, probably a basement when the thing was still standing. It looked like the people who lived there had dragged everything they could find that would even remotely be useful into the hole. There were guns, blankets, various bits of clothing, cookware, sports equipment, pieces of sheet metal, books of all shapes and sizes, and what looked like an entire laboratory broken down into its basic components.

There were also two people and an alien. One was a short blond woman who stood up as soon as she realized it was not just Leonard entering and a younger looking dark haired man who sat in a corner, staring at one of the concrete walls and playing with something he held. He looked almost catatonic, not reacting when either Leonard or Chell slipped in. Then there was the alien.

It was humanoid, with what looked like an extra appendage extending from its chest and only one large eye. From the description that Leonard gave her, Chell hazarded a guess that this was a vortigaunt. It was stirring a pot that was being heated over a Bunsen burner attached to a propane tank. Whatever was in it was emitting what seemed like a heavenly smell to someone who couldn't remember eating hot food. The alien was staring at her as intently as the blonde woman was, but with seemingly less hostility, although Chell couldn't really read its expression.

"Who's this?" the woman asked, glancing over at the boy in the corner. Leonard gave a dismissive wave and began to walk over to the alien.

"This is Chell, Anna" he said, introducing them. "Found her on the outskirts alone and still alive. I figured we could help each other out. What's for dinner?"

Chell was thankful that he didn't mention her apparently stunning ignorance, as Anna looked suspicious enough of her.

"Headcrab soup, what else?" Anna replied. She took a good hard look at Chell, who stood uncomfortably in the corner, not feeling welcome enough to step forward with Leonard. She shifted back onto her boot's heel springs and then onto her toes, like she was preparing to run. The woman unnerved her; though it was probably more fear that she would do something wrong and never find any humans ever again that kept Chell from moving forward. Then the blonde dropped her glare and sighed.

"I suppose we can't reject any help we can get" she said. Chell began to walk nearer to the group, but was stopped by and arm. Anna looked her hard in the eyes again and spoke.

"But if I find you're a combine spy or here to hurt us, god help you."

Chell stared back and nodded before going over to get some soup.

"The Chell will not harm us" The Alien suddenly said, its words directed at Anna but its gaze firmly on Chell. "The purpose of freedom is mutual."

Leonard stood back up and gave her a great big grin. "Well," he said, "if John trusts you then we're all in agreement. Chell can stay with us." Chell glanced over at the boy in the corner and gestured towards him. "Anna scowled at her and stalked away, moving to the corner and beginning to sort through one of the piles of stuff. Leonard's grin fell and was replaced by a tight, forced smile.

"That's Tucker" He said. "We rescued him from the combine and he hasn't been quite right ever since." Changing the subject quickly, he pointed her to the gun pile and gave her a chance to put down her rifle. Chell did and was then properly introduced to John, who had been wandering around the city and joined the group about a year ago. It turned out that John wasn't his real name, but whatever he was called among his own kind was unpronounceable.

Chell didn't even realize that John was a very un-alien type name. She hadn't heard it before now, after all.

Half an hour after Chell and Leonard arrived the soup was done, and everyone took some, even Tucker, who was brought a bowl and then proceeded to lap at it like a dog, getting all over his face and clothes. The rest of them ate in a more civilized way, though unfortunately they did not have any clean spoons. It was very. . . nice, Chell decided, sitting around a little fire as the sun set slowly outside and having a nice conversation with other living beings. Not that Chell was participating in the conversation but. . .

That night, Chell went to sleep on a bare mattress listening to the slow breathing of the people around her and thought that this was the happiest she could ever remember being.

Chell woke up as soon as the first rays of morning light shone through the crack that led out. Sleep was still a rather odd concept to her, though it felt very natural. Why did humans have to go unconscious and hallucinate vividly every day? Why did they have to do it at all? As much as she hated them, Chell had to admit that robots were a lot more efficient.

It seemed that vortigaunts were more efficient as well, as John was already up and quietly watching the sunrise through the crack. Stepping around the other bodies littering the floor, Chell collected her rifle and joined him, taking a moment to appreciate the sky as she could not have only a couple of days ago.

The vortigaunt suddenly interrupted, speaking to Chell but keeping its one great eye fixed on the outside landscape. "We are free now, as we have never been before" it said. "We can choose when and whom to fight. This is of the utmost importance." Chell nodded. She did not know how he knew that she did so, but nevertheless he spoke again. "No," He said. "This one does not know that the Chell understands."

But Chell understood him perfectly well. She supposed that he was some kind of mind reader because all of previous evening, he had spoken to her about freedom, giving cryptic statements one after the other. Leonard had even apologized, assuring her that he wasn't always so vague. But John's statements had been clear as crystal to her. And now he must have picked up on what she was planning to do. To fight.

So she shook her head. She did understand, and this was her fight. She couldn't just abandon her species to live under oppression , and it was a hope that one day she would finally be able to live, not just survive. 'After all', she asked him mentally, hoping that her theories about him were true, 'would you ignore evil just because you had the chance to run away?'

"No," he said, after a moment of contemplation. "No, we would not."

The routine for these few survivors was simple but very important. It was the only thing keeping them survivors instead of casualties. Every morning the first human to wake up would then rouse the others. Anna cleaned up and dressed Tucker while Leonard would prepare himself for the day, choosing his gun and secondary weapons, getting dressed and washing up. He showed Chell the tub of water in a light corner that collected dripping rainwater the two other like it that were already full.

Food and its preparation fell to John, because he was, for some reason, much better at it than her had any right to be, considering he wasn't even the same species as they were. But his tastes were similar to theirs and he kept getting recipes from somewhere, so they let him have that role.

Then Leonard, Anna, occasionally John, and now Chell would go out and forage.

They were always looking for food and ammo, especially food in cans and ammo that fit the guns they already had. Other things were also picked up, usually anything that looked useful. All of was dragged back to their little cave.

Then, when the sun snuck past midday, Chell and Leonard would go hunting for headcrabs or even bigger game. Then they would bring it back to John, who would butcher it outside and then throw the cuts of meat down to a waiting person. They had headcrab soup fairly often, and Chell found that houndeye meat, if one could ignore the green blood, was very tender.

The only one who didn't contribute anything was Tucker. He just sat in the corner speaking quietly to the wall or playing with some random object. Anna took care of him, feeding him, dressing him, and helping him go to the toilet. He never went out of the cave, and occasionally had screaming fits, usually when he saw something that must have reminded him of what he went through. Once it was a long aluminum baseball bat and once a dirty white hockey mask. It put everyone in a bad mood when he was upset, except for Chell. Tucker's problems just strengthened her resolve against the Combine.

Unfortunately, there weren't any Combine to fight in their small and broken city, so Chell set her anger in the back of her mind and tried to enjoy everything she now had.

And enjoy it, she did. There was just nothing like true human companionship, nothing in the world. She thought that the evenings were the very best part of the day. Everyone gathers around the small Bunsen burner, blankets wrapped around them and would tell stories or joke around or even sing before going to sleep. Anna, who gradually warmed up to Chell, was determinedly teaching her how to play the guitar and Leonard was a surprisingly good clarinet player. John just crooned along in the background of their songs, adding a haunting yet beautiful harmony. And every day, no matter how poor the hunting was and how foul a mood her comrades were in, Chell fell asleep happy.

This life was deceptively comforting. Every night she fell asleep to the snores of fellow humans and during the day her mind could rest, going on autopilot. There were no tests, no experiments, no GLaDOS. She could finally look at the moon without wondering how Wheatley was doing. She hoped he was happy, but didn't bother wishing happiness for the other core she knew was up there. He was in space. Of course he was happy. And slowly, the pain that she had felt at the thought of Wheatley's betrayal faded.

So Chell let months pass her by, living in comfort and peace.

But it couldn't last forever.

Chell wouldn't let it.

Alright! Finally, I got this DONE! Things are going to speed up from now on, and the first meeting with the half life characters should happen soon enough. Since she's hooked up with humans, things have been going faster.

Please review! Reviews are my bread and butter and I'm starving! Internet cookies to all!