Hello! I'm so sorry for the long wait, but I am really uncertain about my action scenes and have enter college, which requires a heavier , in return, this is a longer chapter than normal, and, I think, better. Please enjoy, and review if you like or have any constructive criticism for me. Thank you for reading!
Chell looked down at the end of her gun and aimed as well as she could for the soldier that was further away from her. She took a deep breath and pretended she was back hunting with Leonard. Without any more hesitation she pulled the trigger and was happy to see that her bullet went straight through the combine soldier's masked head.
But now the other one was on guard. He had jumped to attention and was looking around wildly, not even going to check on his partner, which she had been counting on to get her second shot off.
Instead, Chell could hear, he was walking slowly towards her and John's hiding place. Her heart beat at a mile per minute, and for a second she thought back to the small collapsed basement with Anna and tucker and wished she had listened to the older women when she said not to go.
But as the soldier was about to reach their hiding place, John jumped up and over the rubble. Chell watched in awe as he lit up like a Christmas tree, electricity arcing from his body and into the ground and into the soldier. The combine collapsed a minute later, twitching, but without any consciousness left. Chell emerged, openly amazed at what she had just witnessed. John had been holding out on her!
John at least had the decency to be the alien equivalent of bashful. Chell burst into silent giggles for a second before recovering and running towards the entrance to the convention center, motioning for the alien to follow behind her.
They both ran up to the door. Chell instinctively pressed herself up on the wall to the side and carefully stuck her head around the corner to peek inside. She saw, one, two, three combine soldiers walking the large space just within, two on the ground floor and one walking a balcony overlooking the larger area.
Chell did some quick calculations in her head. She could take out the guy on the upper floor in one shot, but that would alert the two others, and she really didn't feel like getting shot today. Chell pulled a memo pad out of her pocket.
How fast can you run?, she wrote.
"This one cannot outrun a bullet, if that is what she is asking." John replied quietly.
Chell shook her head and flipped to a new page of the memo pad. She drew a quick diagram of the lobby and outlined her plan like a football diagram. John nodded slightly.
"This can be improved" John said as he took the pen from Chell's hand. He squiggled out a few lines, drew some new ones and marked out a new place for Chell to stand.
She nodded. It was a bit better than her hastily thought out plan. She tucked the memo pad away in a back pocket and peeked around the corner. The guards wandering round the bottom floor were close to their position, so she waited until they had moved to the opposite end of the hall before running out of cover and shooting the balcony soldier in the head.
She almost immediately heard gunfire in retaliation, but she quickly ducked and hid behind a fountain, using it for cover. It was dry and chipped, and not a very good hiding place at all, but it would do for now. The top of the fountain was broken off. Chell wondered if this had ever been used as cover from gunfire before.
The firing stopped for a second, and Chell could hear their weird, garbled voices. They were getting closer. She quickly peeked out and saw that the pair was three quarters of the way down the hall, and would be over taking her soon, which meant that it was time for John to play out his part in their plan.
Chell waited a few more tense seconds, praying that John wouldn't miss his cue. If he had run into trouble, or abandoned the fight, or was only a little delayed, she wouldn't have a chance of survival.
But he was on time, ready and waiting. When the combine soldiers reached the edge of the fountain, he shot out behind them, running as fast as he could towards the other end of the hall. Both soldiers turned around in surprise and shock. They began to shoot at the vortigaunt, who was little more than a blur by now, leaving Chell plenty of time to stand up and shoot them both in the back.
They crumpled over, dead. Chell ran to where John was waiting. They would be going into the combine stronghold without a plan, but together. Standing beside the slightly shorter alien made Chell feel powerful, and her successful plan boosted her confidence.
Now that she could look at the area they had entered into more closely, Chell noticed that there were several exits to the atrium they had just entered. To the left she could see a doorway that looked like it led to a larger area. On the right there was an escalator that led up to the balcony with the first soldier she had killed inside the building. And then, also off to the left was a restaurant and even more stairs heading down, presumably out to the water behind the building.
Chell's head spun. This was nothing like the puzzles back in the facility, where there was always a first step, even if it took a while to recognize it. Here, she could start anywhere, and, moreover, her success wasn't guaranteed. She would have to be smarter than ever before in order to survive this.
Figuring that they would need an additional safe exit point, Chell headed across to the steps that led down towards the water, leaving John to survey the balcony. From the top of the steps she could see that there were two more combine soldiers standing with their guns pointed at some giant glass doors. Somehow, they had not even heard the yelling of their comrades or the three gunshots.
'Bad hearing' Chell marked down in her mind as one of these humanoids weaknesses. 'either that or they're really stupid'.
A quick, clean shot to the back of the torso and one was down permanently. The other spun around and saw her, but only managed to get off a couple of wild shots before he was dispatched as well.
She went halfway down the stairs, but only far enough that she could tell there weren't any more soldiers on that level. Then she checked out the restaurant, which hid a couple of headcrabs and a zombie, but nothing that was sentient. The kitchen cupboards were bare of food, but there was a distinct smell of rot coming from what she could tell had used to be a walk in refrigerator. Suddenly, a strong pulse of fear came crashing down, nearly paralyzing her.
But after a moment Chell got a hold of herself again and ran out of the restaurant and towards the other end of that hall. At the very end she spotted about 5 soldiers huddling around something. From underneath them she saw a flash of green struggling and kicking. She pushed herself to go even faster and brought her gun up , shooting at the figures.
They looked up and, having subdued the first intruder, began to advance on Chell. She took two out quickly with shots to the torso, and tried to take out the third, until she realized that she was, unfortunately, out of ammo.
She reached into her back pocket to grab a clip, but one of the soldier's wild shots hit her leg. She clutched her thigh in pain and crouched down, trying to make a smaller target. But not for long.
She pulled the PVC pipe she had picked up earlier out of her belt loop and charged forward, the pain in her leg diminishing in the adrenaline. She smacked one of them upside the head, connecting at its forehead and knocking it out. She then swung the pipe around to hit the soldier standing next to her, but it shoved the butt of its gun into her ribs, knocking the wind out of her and causing the hit to land across its knees instead of the midsection where she had aimed.
But that was still enough power to knock it to the ground, and as soon as it hit the floor Chell's long fall boot connected hard with its head. An electrical crackle then came from behind her, taking care of the last soldier before she could beat on him.
Chell sank down next to John and noticed a few slices in his skin, from which dripped green blood. Almost unconsciously, she reached and toughed the largest of these, a long slice on his arm. He flinched away and Chell pulled her hand, now covered in the dark green blood, back towards her body.
"More" John gasped, "Two who guard in the center."
'Guard?' Chell thought, ' Guard What?'
She cautiously limped forward, more grateful than ever that her long fall boots softened her footsteps until they were almost silent. She then, with her back up against the wall, peeked through a glass window in one of the doors that led, presumably, to what was one the main conference hall.
She didn't bother to stifle a gasp at what was inside. Humans! Almost fifty or so, she guessed, huddled around each other and guarded by two of the combine, who had their backs facing the door. Then she spotted out of the corner of her eye a third one up on a balcony that overlooked the large area. That one was equipped with a sniper rifle pointed at the people. That one would have to be taken out first.
She motioned for John to stay there, and he gratefully sank down against the wall, stretching out injured legs and cradling one arm in the other. Chell was worried about just leaving him there defenseless, but he did have his electric attack, and she didn't think that there were any combine left except for those she was going to take out now. Concentrating, she tried to project her question toward him, as she had tried during their many nights by various campfires.
"This one will be fine." John responded, receiving her mental message with little trouble. Chell gave him a smile and then ran off in the other direction, up the escalators and onto the second floor, which, as she expected, was filled with various conference rooms. She carefully prowled through the upper level, peeking her head around every corner before turning, trying desperately to find the balcony that overlooked the main area which she had seen earlier.
Then, finally, looking around one last corner, she saw the distinctive figure of the combine soldier standing behind a mounted gun. Chell raised her rifle up to her shoulder and carefully took aim. She was at the other end of the hallway, and this was the longest shot she had ever tried to make, but she was confident. the combine wasn't moving and there was nothing in the way.
The gun only had to fire once, her bullet going straight through the soldiers ' head. But then she heard an additional spread of bullets. She jumped and looked around hurriedly, but there was no one around or behind her. And then, suddenly she realized it was coming from the ground level. Worried about John, she ran to the edge of the balcony and quickly ducked down behind the fortified gun, on top of the dead soldier.
They were shooting up at her!
How the hell did they notice?
She looked up at the gun, hoping that maybe she could use it, but the controls were obviously made for a combine, and worked differently from any gun she had ever seen, including the portal gun.
She could take potshots from the top here, but they were more likely to hit her than her them, or she could do something crazy.
Well, she never expected to make it out of Aperture in the first place, and she had taken turret bullets before. How much worse could this be? It was time to get crazy.
In one smooth movement, Chell stood up and vaulted over the balcony wall, shooting at the two soldiers as they fell. One went down while she was in freefall, and the other, clearly stunned at her little stunt, couldn't readjust its aim quickly enough and went down right afterward.
The people next to Chell were equally stunned, though considerably less dead. One man at the front of the pack stood up, fists clenched, and looked straight into Chell's eyes.
"Who are you? And why did you fight off the combine like that?"
Chell sighed at having to painstakingly explain herself again, and went to pull out her memo pad from her back pocket. but, before she could even pull it out, a door opened behind her and John wearily limped in.
"She is the Chell." He said. "And she speaks for freedom."