"Oh please don't tell me you've gone mad."

The Cube groaned in an exasperated tone as Doug covered the last corners of the office room in a thick, black sludge.

"No, I haven't." Doug replied, rolling his eyes. "And even if I had, this wouldn't be the first time it happened."

In his hand he held a large plastic container, the quantities of sludge it contained unevenly covering the already darkened and dirty office room. It was only after some minutes that he finally set down the now light and empty container with a small, contented sigh. His job finished, Doug took a step back from the room, checking to see the results of handiwork.

What had once been a clean, white office area was turned into a barren room of grimy black liquid, all the objects that once had a functional use reduced to wooden pieces of rubble, or stacked up in the corner where Doug and the Cube stayed.

"Tell me, what exactly is this?"
"Well, it's liquid, it's black, and it came straight from the factory. I don't know the specifics, but I'm guessing that it's obviously motor oil." Doug said sarcastically.
"…Well I'm sorry, I just didn't think oil would just be lying around there like that." Cube seethed at him as if hurt.
Doug shrugged.
"I got some left-over's from the old core manufacturing wing." He replied simply. "It didn't take much time for me to figure out where we were after we fell. What do you think we used to oil these damned robots? What do you think we used to keep them moving? Magic? Or wait, let me guess, the blood of my fellow workmates?"

A shocked silence enveloped the two.

Even Doug, who had said the words, was momentarily taken aback. He swore, it wasn't supposed to turn out like that. But as quickly as the flash of regret stuck through him, it was gone. This wasn't the first time this happened. He was losing focus. Again, he was losing control.
Slowly, subtly, his flimsy grip on sanity came crumbling down.

"…Hey, don't do this to me." Cube said silently. "I don't want to be in this room as much as you do."

Cube's voice wavered. It wasn't lying. It knew the office. It knew what happened there.
And even though it hadn't seen the actual day, it had seen its remains. It had seen the numerous bodies of humans littered on the floor. All of them inanimate. All of them unnatural, cold, and unmoving.

All of them a victim to the venom of Glados.

"Oh really?" Doug sneered at the cube.
"And what the hell do you think you know? What the hell do you think happened here?!" He gestured wildly at the room.
"Doug." Cube said calmly.
"You're a fucking cube!" He yelled. "You're not even supposed to fucking talk!"
"Doug."
"Oh I'm insane, I've definitely gone insane haven't I? Can you believe it? I'm talking to a fucking cube." Doug began to laugh.
"Don't do this."
"…You must be happy. You are happy, aren't you?" He glared down at the cube. "Everyone's dead. Oh, everyone's dead but me."
"Doug, stop it, you're having a fit again."

Taking no heed of the cube, Doug began to laugh once more. As if in a trance, his eyes lost focus, staring in and out of the air around him. It was then he began to shake. He began to sputter.
"I-I still hear voices." Doug stuttered madly. "It's them. It's them!"
He sank to the ground, covering his ears with trembling hands.
"I still see their shadows. They haunt me. The-they scream at me." He mumbled to himself. "They all want me to die too. They want to bring me with them."
"…" Cube remained silent.
"But I can't go with them. I know I deserve it, but I just can't. I can't go with them." Tears welled up in the man's eyes. "I don't deserve to live, but I-"

"-I don't want to die."

Silent tears hit the ground, but the man gave no notice of them, still trembling in fear as he tried, pitifully, pathetically, to hide away from whatever 'shadows' haunted him.

"Doug…" The cube murmured to him.
"…I wasn't able to save even one life." Doug said as he covered his face in his hands.
"But you did."

At that, Doug looked up from his 'Hiding position' behind his own hands, and stared, his eyes still hazy from his fit of confusion, at the cube beside him.

"You saved the girl." Cube said quietly. "You saved Chell."

Doug's eyes widened.
Images of the girl in the folder flooded through his mind, the silent woman, the tenacious test subject. Number 1498.

"...Chell."

Yes, that was her name.
Finally, from the pitch black pit of confusion and insanity he was in, a crack of light shown through.

For some long minutes Doug sat there, still dazed and gazing intently at his companion cube.

"…I saved her?" Doug murmured.
"Yes, you did." Cube said calmly.
"She escaped?" He wiped his eyes.
"We both saw the main elevator move up." Cube replied. "She was in it."

Finally, Doug was getting back his senses.

Slowly, tiredly, Doug pushed himself of the ground.
"…I guess we better get moving too, then." Doug said quietly as he slung the cube back on his make-shift bag.
"That's the spirit." Cube said reassuringly.

In silence, Doug pulled out a broken computer from inside the mound of rubble at the corner of the room, and opened the plastic case, revealing the broken, dangerous-looking multi-coloured wires which once controlled a functioning machine. Once again sitting back down on the ground, Doug took out a small wire-cutter which he kept in his pocket, and set to work on cutting the wires open.
Cube looked on quietly. It had seen him do this multiple times before, when he used other broken computers as makeshift stoves to warm up his food.

"…Hey, friend, did I ever tell you about this?" Doug murmured absent-mindedly at the cube.
"Hmm?"
"Even before the awakening of Glados, a lot of the common elevators were rigged so that the workers couldn't easily get it to go topside." Doug let out a small, tired chuckle. "I guess Mr. Johnson really didn't like the lab boys skipping work."
"Many of the elevators were programmed to break down during office hours, for lots of reasons, ridiculous reasons, and automatically fix themselves by the end of the day." He sighed quietly. "Oh the troubles that it caused us."
"…" Cube said nothing.
"It was a guy- this guy I knew called Derik who was the one in charge of controlling the elevator signal for work hours and the end of the day elevator pickup. Yes, I remember him now. He was always complaining to me that people were always complaining to him that he wouldn't let people out even if it was in a dangerous emergency that could cost people their lives- unless it was the end of the day." Doug paused. "Actually, I don't think he ever did get the chance to prove them wrong."

"Ironically enough, he was one of the first victims of Glados's neurotoxin."

"…" Cube thought to itself.
"Of course, those weren't the only elevators which led up to the surface." Doug continued, carefully cutting open the wires of the broken computer as he spoke.
"There were also the guest elevators, the test chamber elevators, and the main elevators." He paused. "But amongst them, there were also the escape pods, and the emergency elevators."

"!" The cube seemed to take in its breath, as if surprised.
"…Well," The cube said, after a small pause, "I don't think I've ever heard you talk about that before."
"That's because I didn't think I needed to." Doug promptly replied. "I already tried getting to them several times before you came along, but it was no use."
"As much as I don't want to admit it, Glados really is a cunning machine." He murmured quietly. "She thought of every possible escape, and blocked each and every one of them, so that it would form a complete lockdown in just the first 48 hours she had gained power over the facility."
"Within the first hour of her control, she'd already barred access to, or destroyed all the fail-safe devices to shut her down. This included the main breaker room, now heavily guarded by rocket turrets - a chance nobody did dare take - and in extension, the escape pods activated by the switches in the breaker room. To places she could reach, she sent out turrets and neurotoxin. That would be the guest elevators, the main elevator in her chamber, and, though not an elevator, the main lobby as well. Just in case any of the remaining employees came up with the idea to call for help, she left them without access to the only phone that could contact the surface." He sighed. "The places she couldn't reach; the office elevators, the emergency elevators and stairs, she blocked off completely. She did an override of the functioning pass-locks on several doors which led to several of the office elevators, and to which she couldn't even do that, she covered the entrances with heavy objects and walls, impossible to move with human strength alone."

"But it was only after some time, after the majority of us died, when she finally did that." Doug let out a shaky breath. "She didn't need to, anyway."
"Everyone knows it's almost impossible to climb up to the surface from here just by the stairs. The office elevators stayed broken, too. Derik never did make it out to the end of the day. All that was left were the emergency elevators, but they didn't help." Doug paused.

"…It wasn't like they didn't work." He finally said.
"It was more like they didn't need to."

"The emergency elevators here have only two stops." He said quietly. "The office floors, and the surface."
"Nothing above, nothing below, and nothing in between. No spaces for turrets on any floor, and no pass-code locks to override."

"Simple, quick, and efficiently made." Doug looked at the broken computer in his hand, its wires cut and finally ready for what it was meant to do.
"If I were to praise any Aperture invention, I would praise that, and that alone." His lips curved upward, forming a thin smile. "Sadly, as with everything good in the world, even the elevator had its own faults."

"It's a fire exit." He said quietly. "It's a fire exit, created to react only when there's an emergency. It will only move when there's a fire."
"…Neurotoxin didn't affect the system." He finished quietly. "The gas wasn't dense enough to trigger the smoke alarm. But there were still some who believed it would come. The ones who had waited for that elevator, waited in vain."
"…" Cube said nothing.

Doug idly connected and disconnected the broken wires together, and slowly, surely, the already warm computer began showing weak, but nevertheless dangerous sparks and fizzes. Once again, Doug pushed himself away from the ground.

"I'm not sure how long it's been since then," He murmured to the cube. "And I don't think I'll ever know what's happened to the facility, but it seems as if everything's been ripped apart, aged, and flipped upside down."
"?"
"Everything's broken." He said quietly.
"What does that have to do with-"
"Do you see that wall over there?" Doug said, pointing at one of the entrances of the room not far from their position. "Do you see that door covered behind all the rubble?"

Cube in fact, did see it.
From behind several crumbled scraps of metal and rust, two simple, Aperture-generic automatic doors peeked out. It was hidden behind the rubble. Very well hidden, in fact. If Doug hadn't pointed it out to Cube, it might have even missed it.

"That's our exit."

"!" The cube gasped in surprise, finally realizing what Doug had meant to do this whole time.
"…You're planning to burn this whole place down, aren't you?" Cube whispered incredulously.

Doug nodded silently in reply.

"…Will it work?" Cube asked, excitement building up in its voice.
"So far the other elevators have been working without hitch." Doug replied quietly. "This elevator was built sturdier than the rest. There's no reason why this shouldn't."
"Then what are we waiting for? Come on, let's do this Doug!"

No response.

"…Doug?" Cube asked quietly, slightly unnerved by his sudden silence.

In the corner nearest to the exit, the exit which would set them both free, Doug stood quietly. Head bowed down, and clutching the computer, their fire, the very key to Aperture, Doug hesitated.
So close, so near to the sunlight he had dreamed for such a long time.

Doug chuckled quietly.

"…You know, it's weird." He finally said.
"I used to work here once, back when the world seemed to make sense."
"I used to have colleagues- friends even, who stayed here with me, alive and active. We all knew this place. This facility. This room." His breath caught. "Even with its shady past, we still trusted Aperture."

"To think it would turn to this."

Doug sighed, calming himself before he finally continued.
"…When we escaped, we promised to meet back here if anyone of us stayed alive 'till the end."
"We thought we could escape. We thought we would be free."

"…But in the end, I was the only one who returned."

The small catches in his breath soon turned to uncontrollable gasps, and before he knew it, he was tearing up again.
Cube stayed silent, gently observing the man as he attempted, and failed, to take a hold on himself.

"What did we do to deserve this?" He said quietly. "Did we do anything that bad, that terrible to be given such a horrible punishment? We were just normal people. All of us. Just doing our job, just obediently doing what we were told to do."

"…If I escape now, without giving the same chance I have to anyone else that might still be alive, I could never live with myself." Doug muttered, grinding his teeth. "This was our last hope."

"What right do I have to throw it away?"

Silence enveloped the two, the cube momentarily lost for words at what his friend had told it.
Finally, hesitantly, it broke the silence.

"…You're not throwing it away." Cube gently whispered.
"You're using it to save a life." It said quietly. "Even if it is your own, it's a precious life nonetheless."

"As long as you live, there will be hope."

Gasps turned to quiet sobs, and unconsciously, Doug tightened his grip on the computer.
He remembered those words. The last words that he heard from a dying friend.

"…Doug." Cube whispered to him.
"Our job isn't over yet."

Slowly, quietly, Doug took a step away. Away from the rubble, the oil, and the room. The memories. His memories.
And on whim, he threw.

The broken body of the computer, fizzing and cackling away on its own, didn't need much persuasion to light.
The room flared into a blaze, and the wooden desks, the tables, and document-filled pile of rubbish burnt along with it. Everything burned. The newspapers, the old lab reports, and the numerous pictures of people's families- Everything burned to the ground.

Amidst the blaze, the steadily growing smoke, Doug stood quietly. Idly he heard the weak remains of what would have been an alarm once upon a time, and the faint whirring of an elevator coming down behind him. Slowly, he turned toward the doors.

The fire exit.

"…Hey Cube," Doug said as he made his way to the elevator.
"I'm sorry I yelled at you awhile ago." He paused to cover his mouth from the smoke. "…I'm sorry I ever doubted you."

"Hey, no worries."
"We're just going through hard times." It chirped optimistically. "And sticking together is what friends are for, right?"
"…I guess." Doug replied with a smile. "I guess."

Glados, as uncharacteristic as it was to say, was confused.

For the last 0.73 second she had scanned and rescanned the facility for any errors, any traces of what could have caused the sudden outburst.

For what reason, fire had risen in one of the main office rooms in the left wing of the facility.

Her thought-processors acting up in her head, Glados had started on her third security scanning of the facility, momentarily stumped.
What happened? Why did it happen? Was it caused by the meltdown? Had an explosion damaged the room enough to set it ablaze? She thought she had solved the problem-
No…no, it wasn't that. It couldn't have been that. Even though she couldn't see it, she could still feel it.

The room was intact.

No extensive damage had been done to the other connected rooms. Not yet, at least.

Inwardly, she cursed.
Even when she was fully functional the office sections of the facility had been a pain to reach. Erasing that fire wasn't going to be any easier now. She wasn't exactly in her prime condition, especially since some idiot had to go and wrack the place up.

She fumed. Whatever caused the fire, whatever dared to deface her facility, was going to pay.
Whatever it was- She was sure she would soon find out.

~oOo~

It was out of luck, out of pure chance that she hadn't felt the footsteps. She hadn't heard the voice. She was too busy with fixing the facility that she hadn't noticed that one, single little tank of oil from the production area go missing. She hadn't thought it was possible, so she had dismissed the fact completely.

It had been twenty years from her initial breakdown. And by the time she woke up, Chell was the only survivor left. She was sure of it.
No human, however resourceful, could survive in Aperture for that long.

In her anger, she didn't sense a certain elevator escape.

"Come on, come on, come on…"
Doug muttered as the elevator swiftly ascended to the surface.

So close to freedom, so close- but just not there yet. It was no wonder that Doug had begun to feel impatient.
The ride was taking forever.

And the annoying, supposedly 'calming' elevator jazz was definitely not helping. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to stick it in there, anyway?

Doug sighed agitatedly.
The more he stayed still, the more he could feel himself get nervous by the second. He knew as much as anyone, even more than most, that you weren't safe until you could be absolutely certain (And certainty was a flimsy thing in human minds) that you were safe.
They had won. They had found a way out of Aperture, and taken the exit. Yes. But had they escaped?

No, not yet.

Almost automatically, Doug began assessing the nearest possible entrances and escape routes from inside the elevator. Idly noting an air vent he could most probably pry off above him on the ceiling of the elevator, Doug continued to fuss and worry. He had fallen off an elevator once, and that wasn't a particularly pleasant experience he was willing to re-create anytime soon. Especially not now, after getting so far, and getting so close to the outside.

Closing his eyes, Doug thought he could almost feel it.
Sunlight.

The feeling of sunlight on his skin, the natural brightness of the sun in his eyes, gave him the chills just thinking about it. For the long duration of his hiding he dreamt about the sun, its bright light, and the real, non-artificial sky. In his hideouts he kept track of the moon, the full moons, the half moons- he would draw pictures of them on the wall, keeping track of how long he had been underground.

Oddly enough, he had missed the sky the most.
Out of everything he could have missed, his family, his home, he missed the sky the most.

And now he was so close to it.

Even though Doug had previously fought the urge to get excited, a wave of giddiness had begun to spread over him at the mention of the sky, successfully blocking out every negative thought.

Finally, finally this hell will en-

A sudden jolt from the elevator almost tossed Doug off balance, and soon after, a loud, conspicuous, creak emitted from outside the elevator. The music of the elevator glitched, then stopped, instead turning into an eerie white noise.

As quickly as the wave of optimistic thoughts washed over him, they disappeared.

"…Cube," Doug croaked, shaken. "What the hell's happening."
"…I'm not sure Doug," Cube paused, "But the elevator's stopped moving."

Doug looked up with alarm at the ceiling of the elevator, quickly calculating his best route of action.

Setting the cube down, Doug used it to clamber up to the ceiling, prying off the vent opening and crawling out on top of the elevator. Once he got up, he reached for the cube below him (A very difficult task to do, he barely even reached it) and once again, strapped it on his back.
Cautiously, they looked around.

Around them was a rather small, metal opening, much like the background areas of Aperture Doug was used to, with the ropes of the elevator in front of them, and emergency ladders leading up and down. With only the minimal weak red emergency lights in the area, it was dark, but that wasn't his greatest concern.
Doug wobbled slightly, trying as best as he could to not look down below him.
His biggest worry, as it was now, was of how near they were to the surface, and how incredibly far they were from the ground.

"…Doug," The cube whispered, startling him out of his thoughts.
"These ropes." If it could gesture toward objects, it would have. "They're pretty worn out."
"Well that's no surprise, after all the time the elevator's just been hanging here, I guess that could have happened." Doug said, squinting at the ropes. It was pretty damn hard to tell the details in the dark red light.
"The elevator's jammed." Cube continued.
"It doesn't look like it's been maintained in years. I'm surprised it even worked so far. I guess no one bothered to touch this since it was an emergency lift." Cube paused. "This is in worse position than the guest elevator."

"Doug… I have a bad feeling about this."

As if on cue, the elevator gave another jolt, and from the back of his head, Doug could swear he heard another, small snap.

"GET ON THE LADDER!" Cube roared.

Without even a moment of hesitation Doug did as so, running and agilely jumping on to the ladder as the elevator, slowly emitting a loud series of creaks and snaps, unsteadily descended.
Soon, the rope cut off completely, and the elevator fell, crashing into the depths of the dark pit below.

Shaken but unharmed, Doug clung on to the ladder for dear life.
"…Oh my god…" Doug barely rasped out, speechless.

"We're alive." Cube said in a human, shaky voice. "We're alive. That's good. That's very good."
"…Well being alive is perfectly good and all, but what are we going to do now?!" Doug snapped at the cube.
"You know that there's only one way to go, right?" Cube replied in a still shaky, but optimistic tone.
"Up."

Above them, the ladders and dark red lights continued upwards, forming a seemingly never-ending loop to the surface.

"…You've got to be kidding me." Doug muttered.
"That is our only choice." Cube replied matter-of-factly.
"Unless you want to stay and most probably just let us fall to our deaths here, I suggest we begin moving up."

Doug sighed quietly. As much as he didn't want to admit it, Cube had a point.

It was do or die here.

In the end after the thinking, after the countless choices and pointless backtracks and attempts of escape, that was what a lot of things came down to.

Warily, Doug looked up.
The ladders seemed to continue on forever, and no sign, not even a hint of light from the cracks of a door or the rays of an exposed sun gave him any clue that he was near the surface. Tired, shaken and discouraged, negative thoughts began to creep back into his mind.
Nevertheless, he took his first step.

To everything, there is an end. To everything, there is a goal.
And there exists some people who would not give up until they reach that goal. Some people who can't. Desperate people, just like him.
He knew that more than anyone else. He knew he believed in that strength of humans, more than anyone else could.

Tenacity.

Steeling himself, Doug continued his ascent.
He wouldn't die. He wouldn't stop. Not now, not until he went back up and saw the sky again.

"'Atta boy!" Cube cheered him on. "Don't worry Doug, I know we're almost there."

"I can almost see the lights."