Abnormally Stubborn

Chell sat in the corner of the room, hugging her companion cube in her arms as she vaguely watched the news on the TV. "Are you okay over there?" Phoebe, her room-mate asked her, feeling her stare. Humans weren't the best company, she thought sadly, but all the same she nodded and smiled in reply. Phoebe was one of her fellow students at night school, as Chell had started studying there to make up for the lack of education in the past.

But Chell didn't want to think about the past. That horrible, traumatic past was the cause of her disablitly to speak, her broken wrist and her ripped earlobes. GLaDOS had done everything She could to make Chell's life a misery, but now she'd finally escaped Her and could get on with her real life.

The news reporter's voice stated in the background as Chell worked, "A rocket from the moon that has just arrived..."

She tried to push the memory of Aperture out of her mind. It was the most cruel place she had known, and she would never return there for the life of her...

"Some people have been caught smuggling moon rock from it's luggage containers-" Wait.

Moon rock?

Chell looked up at the sound of the word. Why would they be smuggling moon rock? Well, maybe just because it was expensive. She was probably being paranoid. It wasn't her fault though, she had been trapped in test chambers full of the stuff for a long time. The reporter rambled on,"We have also discovered a robot with possible artificial intellegence, however it has been badly damaged..."

They'd found a robot?

Could it possibly be...?

Chell fought with herself for a moment. She didn't want to look up. She'd left Aperture behind her. She'd promised herself never to look if that moron's name was called. But he was more than a moron. He was a friend. He had been her only friend. She had to see him. Slowly, her heart in her mouth, her stomach churning, she raised her head and looked at the TV screen. She froze.

It was him.

He sat there in the middle of the TV screen, staring up at the camera with panic in his cracked optic. He seemed to be struggling to stay concious...

She felt her body collapse as she looked at Wheatley for the first time in years. She had never wanted to see him this way. She had to stop it. She watched helplessly as two scientists carried him off the scree, watched that flickering optic...

She was going to find them and make them fix him. They had to.

Chell picked up her compainion cube, strapped on her long fall boots and left the building. She was going to save Wheatley.

As soon as she arrived at the space station she ran to the nearest office. The woman at the desk asked; "Can I help you?" and looked at her inquiringly. Chell handed her a piece of paper she had written on. The woman read through it with slight difficulty - Chell's child-like writing wasn't the easiest to read. She nodded slightly unbelievingly. "Right," She said. "I don't know what you're planning to do, because they won't just give up an unidentified object smuggled from space."

She looked at Chell as if she was slightly mad, but Chell glared straight back with stubborn grey eyes. "Um, okay," The woman added, slightly taken aback and uncomfortable from Chell's stare. "They, uh, took it to a science research company, but I'm afraid it's top secret, only the scientists know where it is." Chell stood at the desk, wondering what to do next. Could she somehow get it out of the woman? No, it didn't look like even she knew.

Chell knew she couldn't do this alone. No-one could tell her where this hidden research facility was, it was top secret. No one, except maybe one person she knew... and that wasn't even a proper person. But she had to give it a go.

She had to see GLaDOS again.

Chell got out of her old car and sat down in the wheat field, enjoying some fresh air. Maybe it was breathing the same air over and over again for years on end at Aperture, but Chell had developed a minor case of claustraphobia since she had experienced freedom and she hated it when she didn't go out at least once a day.

As she sat there and enjoyed the feeling of the sun shining on her face, just like GLaDOS had described the feeling of a light bridge, memories of this place came flooding back to her. She remembered when she had sat here in this very wheat field with nothing but a Weighted Companion Cube for company, staring up at the moon and wondering where Wheatley was. She had actually debated, after her whole life wanting freedom, whether she should have returned back to the Facility and demanded to stay there forever. That had been her darkest moment, however strange it seemed. The Facility had been her entire life, her only memory. And she hadn't wanted freedom, not after what her and Wheatley had been through together.

But finally when she found civilization, she got support and started a job looking after the baby animals in the local wildlife sanctury. Her favourite animal was probably the deer.

She had never looked back after she had started her new life, and she had certainly never thought she would ever come back here. But then again, one part of her mind, in the back of her head, knew it was inevitable. Why else did she still keep her compainion cube with her wherever she went, and leave her long fall boots in the back of her car?

Chell shook herself free of her thoughts and got up. She lowered her grey eyes to the soft ground below her and started to pick her way through the long stalks of wheat. As she pressed on through the seemingly endless field, the hot, mid-day sun started to catch up with her. She was beginning to feel slightly tired, walking through the long grass, with nothing but wheat on the horizon. It wasn't easy walking on soft ground with the long fall boots and she was beginning to wonder why she'd brought them. She supposed it just felt... right to her.

What seemed like hours later, Chell was still walking. Her body felt so heavy she felt she couldn't bear a second longer walking, and her tounge was so dry it felt like a useless piece of leather that stuck to the roof of her mouth. Chell was surprised at how she had never noticed how heavy her long fall boots were; the further she walked the harder it was to pick up her feet, and she was starting to feel a splintering pain in her knees, which she supposed was the long term effect of implanting and removing leg braces.

Maybe the shack GLaDOS had let her out of was only a temporary exit, Chell thought. Maybe there was normally no entrance to Aperture, unless She wanted there to be. Chell sighed with fustration as she scanned the horizon; but this time her heart skipped a beat.

Was that a shack she saw, very far in the distance?