To axel100: Dude, thanks, really for all the reviews, and I've fixed up the location plot hole for all the past chapters. Continue doing what you're doing, 'cause it's reeeaaally helpful.
Merry Christmas to the rest of you guys, and I wish you peeps a good new year.
In the midst of a hazy darkness, Doug saw a light.
Several lights actually, each of them a dull, dark, shade of red.
Up. I have to go up.
The single thought filled his vacant mind, propelling him to move.
It had been hours, maybe even days of this cycle. A countless loop of lights, each covered bulb seeming darker, more foreboding than its predecessor. The steps of the ladder seemed to grow slowly larger, and his body slowly smaller. Every step seemed more difficult, each step more grueling to reach than the last.
Salvation had reached him, not in the form of a beam of light, not in the form of a holy choir, or a beautiful orchestra, but in the dull, grimy form of a rusting step on a metal ladder. The last step of the metal ladder, and the scraped, dusty, almost invisible yellow words that adorned the shaded ceiling of the elevator chute.
'Surface Exit'.
His vision faded to black, and then back to colour.
What he first noticed, was his own, thin, bony hands. And then the cracked, once familiar concrete beneath it.
Frantically his eyes moved from below, scanning his left, then his right, taking in all the views of the surface as he could, as if it were a mirage that would disappear at any moment. Oddly enough, he could barely see. It was dark, suddenly so very dark after the dim, but still lighted elevator chute he had been in.
Eventually, his eyes moved upwards.
Above him, he could see the full moon. He could see the stars. The soft white light that radiated from all of them, and the peaceful, natural darkness that surrounded it.
Stunned, unmoving, barely even daring to breathe, he sat there, gazing at the stars, above the dead and decaying facility, a dizzying feeling of falling into the sky slowly taking hold of him.
What started out as a mere rumble in his body, an urge to move, a want to do something- anything but sit there, turned into a faint wheezing in his throat, then a roaring, crazy laughter that resonated throughout the whole area.
He was alive. She was alive. They had finally succeeded.
His gaze faded again, slowly focusing on to the roots of a tree he had apparently stumbled on.
Cursing under his breath he stood, his knees almost buckling beneath him as he held tightly on to the tree trunk for support.
He had decided to head east from the decrepit back entrance of Aperture, the original destination of the fire exit. In the west, opposite to his area, there were the wheat fields and the parking lot (if they had remained unchanged), the exit of the several surface elevators located near the test chambers. If he remembered correctly, there was a rather large town there, near the outskirts of another, larger city.
For some time he considered heading there, but soon changed his mind. It was too far. And walking far distances was risky, especially in the dark, when he still didn't know how much the nearby environment had changed. No, he eventually decided against it.
Instead, he would walk towards a small town the Aperture scientists constructed in the east. Though less a 'town' and more a large dormitory-like settlement, there were several other unrelated businesses and families living there, and Doug figured that if he needed help right away, it would be the fastest and best place to go.
If it still remained, that was.
It hadn't taken him long to figure out that there may have been a rather, large gap between his last escape, and his awakening from stasis.
Everything that had once been in pristine condition underground had been turned over, decayed, and reclaimed by nature. There was no wonder the situation would be worse on the surface.
What had once been a light, spacious woods had turned into a dense forest, and what had once, even then had been a spindly road was reduced to flat moss, grass, and almost nothing of the concrete that once covered it.
Time seemed to skip on as he walked toward his destination, a repeat of falling and rising up again as he kept tripping over obstacles in the dark, exhaustion threatening to drive him to the ground.
When he first heard the silent thumping sound, the sound of heavy footsteps, and saw the blue, glowing lights from two odd looking flashlights, he was relieved. He thought it was a person, maybe a part of the town security on night duty.
Finally, another human. He thought, relief spreading warmth through his veins.
Not willing to miss his chance, he called out to the mysterious stranger as loud as he could, raising his glowing pink cube (with some difficulty) to signify his location.
But when the footsteps turned to quiet, mechanical growling, and the growling turned to aggressive yaps, a warning in his head had begun to tick quietly. Lowering the cube, Doug frowned. Something was off.
Doubt turned to fear, and fear to confirmation as he heard the odd sound of something charging toward him, and the blue- unnatural creature appeared from the bushes before him.
Some distance from him the double-eyed, alien-like tripod creature crouched, incessantly growling as if readying to pounce on it's pray. Instantly, his mind snapped into action. This creature, whatever it was, was not his ally.
Instinctively he ducked down behind his oversized cube, just a flash before blue, glowing darts projected from the creature's eye-like fléchette launcher, digging themselves straight into the companion cube's metal casing. Sound whirred from the darts, and before Doug could react, they exploded, flipping the cube over him with its knock back.
Exposed and in panic, Doug relied on the one, single instinct that drove him through his fight underground. The instinct that helped him live to this very day.
Flee. Flee and survive.
In the distance he heard a mechanical screech, another blue dart flying straight at him as his vision blurred again, fading quickly into darkness.
This time, he didn't feel impact.
"…must…wake…"
In the distance, Doug thought he could hear someone mumbling.
From the dark, stagnant pit he was in, his mind began to clear, feeling and vision gradually returning to the other parts of his body. Soon he heard the voice talking quietly to him again, an odd voice with a mysterious accent he couldn't quite place his finger on.
"…The Rat Man must wake…"
The voice mumbled again, closer than he had ever heard it before.
Slowly his eyes glazed into focus as he blinked lazily and stared up at the bright, green light, sluggishly not registering what he saw.
Right by his head there seemed to be a glowing, green orb, floating by itself, seemingly connected to nothing at all. Surrounding it where two brown, alien-looking branches of a sort, maybe a tree or an odd arrangement of fingers-
Wait.
From above him, two faces where peering down, a man he recognized – though from where, he couldn't quite remember yet – and another, an oddly different-looking person with wrinkly, greenish-brown skin and a single, wide red eye-
Wait a second.
"Good, you're awake." The man – Igor, he remembered now – said contentedly.
The green orb faded as Doug blinked again, his vision now clearer than ever.
"It seems we have been fortunate to have found this man at this time." The man- the thing said next to him.
The sharp yell of surprise came long before the urge to clamp his mouth shut.
"Aa-AAAGH!" Doug yelled, instinctively scrambling backwards until he hit the wall in the back of the bed, complete shock and fear sobering his once drowsy mind like an electric shock.
Beside the discernibly normal looking man was a lanky, seemingly hunched-up bipedal alien, with one large red eye in the middle of its face and two, less obvious eyes sitting above it. Two arms protruded from its sides – similar to that of a normal human's – but from the two arms branched out two, long claws that could only be described as nothing less than a large bird's talons. From the middle of its torso a short, third arm rooted out, which, much to Doug's surprise and disgust, moved exactly like the other two. Three functional eyes and a third, functional arm. Whatever they are, Doug thought, They sure do like coming in threes.
"Woah, woah! Easy there, Mr. Rattmann!" Igor calmly said, a mixed look of mild surprise and amusement on his face as he observed Doug's violent reaction to his partner.
"Have you never seen a Vortiguant before?"
Unconsciously crouched on the back of the bed with his arms covering his head in a defensive position, Doug blinked. Wa- was he supposed to know that thing?
Slowly, he shook his head.
What had already been a poorly concealed smile on Igor's face bloomed into a full fledged grin at Doug's actions, as he coughed politely in feeble attempt to mask his obvious amusement.
"…Well then- that there is our local Vortiguant. Voritguants are one of the few- no, most likely the only friendly aliens that've landed to earth with the Combine. Odd society they have, but if you get used to them they aren't half bad. This one's been helping me heal you this whole morning."
Beside him, the creature – Vortiguant had been eyeing Doug quietly, an unreadable expression etched upon its face. Holding out its left hand as if to invite him to a handshake, the Vortiguant waited patiently for the still-dumbstruck Doug to react.
"The Rat Man has my greetings." Its voice rumbled quietly.
After some moments of gaping in disbelief and quietly assessing whether or not he was seeing things, Doug raised his right hand in return to the creature's left, and weakly shook the Vortiguant's hand.
"Uh, hi." He sputtered quietly.
Beside the two Igor nodded, his arms folded in front of him
"…Well, I'm glad we've come to a peaceful conclusion." He said, a faint smile still playing on his face. "But right now time is of the essence, and we have to hurry to the main base as soon as possible."
"Thanks a lot for your help," He nodded to the Vortiguant. "I'll take over from now."
As the Vortiguant turned to leave, Igor nudged at Doug to rise from the bed.
"Come on, we have to go now." He said quietly.
"-May I ask a question?" Doug timidly asked.
"Go ahead."
"Where are we, and where are we going to?"
"…Ah." Igor blinked. "Yes. I suppose I haven't told you about that yet."
"Well…" His explanation went like this:
Shortly after his rescue from the Hunter, Doug passed out, leaving the two to have to drag him back to their resistance base. When they returned, a message had been left by the main base- the White Forest base to update as soon as possible on their current standing, and any news they had. After some discussion from within the members of the base, the leader of the Resistance in their area sent them the recent news of their sector; the hunters that had come to terrorize the surroundings of the base, and their number of surviving citizens- along with the one, new recruit that had been found with no citizen's uniform, and nothing to tell them where he came from or what he was. The only thing that had told them where he had had come from was this single, worn out ID tag on his apparent lab coat that read: Douglas Rattmann, Aperture Science. A place nobody in the base had ever heard of before.
Soon after the radio message was sent, a reply from the White Forest base was given, telling them to bring the man to the main base as soon as he recovered. Interestingly enough, the haggard man they had unknowingly saved from the Hunter was a man of high interest to the upper rung of the Resistance.
"…What would they want from me?" Doug asked quietly.
"I don't know," Igor replied apologetically, "If I did, I would have told you that first. But if it makes things any better, me and Cindy are going to the main base with you to help you out."
Inwardly, Doug sighed. The very little he knew of this current world was slowly crumbling down. Hunters? Resistance? Combine? What the hell did that mean?
Exactly how much of the world had changed to make him a wanted man?
~oOo~
A short meet-up with Cindy (in which she subsequently had begun chattering excitedly on how she was definitely going to get an autograph from this woman named 'Alyx' when she got to the White Forest base), and an almost panicked search of the companion cube later (to which Doug awkwardly explained that he literally couldn't go anywhere without), the three (and cube) met up at a rather large warehouse bordering the small, run-down dormitory town of Aperture that acted as their resistance base.
Inside it were several other people fixing up cars and tending to certain weapons Doug didn't recognize- many of which was later explained to be hand-held rocket launchers. Making their way to the very back of the warehouse, Igor typed in a pass code by a security lock on the wall, which after a small beep, proceeded to slide open and reveal a concealed door, neatly hidden by the seemingly unsuspicious wall in front of it.
Within the door was a small and narrow stairway leading down, which then lead to another spacious room below it. This room though, was slightly different.
In the middle of the dim, bare, concrete block of a room was a large and bulky contraption, with numerous electric plugs surrounding it and a single, complicated-looking control booth beside it.
"What is this?" Doug asked as he timidly laid his hand on the large machine. Even working as a scientist in Aperture Laboratories, the literal origin of 'Mad Science'- this machine was unlike anything he had ever seen before.
"That," Igor started, already typing commands into the control booth, "Is our key to the main base, Mr. Rattmann."
"Though it may be slightly hard to accept for a man who's been underground for the last twenty years or so," He paused as a small beep came from the control booth and its screen flashed; 'Coordinates accepted'. "This is essentially a teleporter, which can move a man large distances – as long as there is a receptor on both sides that is – almost instantaneously."
Doug blinked. Was this bulky, alien-looking thing supposed to be a portal?
"I understand if you are shocked," Igor said, misinterpreting Doug's reaction as surprise to his words. "I guess it would feel as if you've suddenly been put in the land of science fiction."
Doug bit back his reply, the retort almost spilling out of his mouth without thinking.
I've been living in science fiction my whole career.
"Well," Igor looked back down to the booth, inputting commands as three, once unmoving braces of the contraption slid back, clicking to place as it created an opening just large enough for two people to fit through. "Mr. Rattmann, Cindy, it's time for you to go."
"Gotcha!" Cindy chirped as she proceeded to firmly grip on to Doug's arm and drag him straight to the middle of the machine.
"Cindy, if in any case this teleport goes wrong – though it shouldn't – I need you to protect Mr. Rattmann, and get him to the closest resistance post you can access." At this Igor turned to Doug. "They should already be expecting you at their base. It may take some time, but I'll be following you two as soon as I can find someone else to help me get there."
"Wait-" Doug hurriedly sputtered as the middle of the machine- the machine's platform slowly began to lift, and the braces of the machine began to rotate, blocking his only exit out of the contraption."-What do you mean, 'If something goes wrong'?"
"Are you worried about that?!" Cindy laughed almost inaudibly beside him, a large whirring and a light quickly beginning to envelope the both of them. "Don't worry Dougy-boy, it should be perfectly fine-"
A flash of bright light and then the odd sensation of wind.
From the outside, the two had disappeared from the machine with a single, silent, fwoosh.
Here we go again.
~oOo~
There was the odd feeling of being deconstructed, and reconstructed again.
Doug hadn't found it particularly pleasant to go through portals- even in Aperture, for the odd, tingling feeling that passed around his whole body as he entered or left. As much as possible, he tried to avoid it.
It hadn't been long before he realized, what he had been feeling then was the same sensation he was enduring now- except much, agonizingly slower.
He could have been there, in that white, whizzing space for mere seconds, or even a millennia of time. Whichever it was, he couldn't tell. Thoughts criss-crossed his head faster than he himself could interpret them, and around him the bodiless voices rose and fell, each as disconcerted as he was.
Before he could react, before he could even begin to form words to describe his flight, he was back.
In the same machine. On earth. In a different room.
"-See?" Cindy chuckled beside him. "Wasn't so bad, was it?"
Before he could reply to the girl (something on the lines of; "That was terrible."), a small, timid-looking balding man in a lab coat stepped up before them, lowering a clipboard he had once been holding tightly on to.
For a minute he looked up at them, a brief look of surprise crossing his face. An awkward moment of gazing at the two, (Doug could've sworn that he was staring chiefly at him) the man looked back down at his clipboard and coughed, clearing his voice.
"You are- Dr. Douglas Rattmann, I presume?" The older man said, arranging the big, black-edged, thick-rimmed glasses that adorned his head.
"…Yes." Doug slowly replied, unused to having his full name called. "That would be me."
"Ah, good." The man looked up from his clipboard and guided the two out of the machine. "Greetings, fellow scientist, my name is Isaac Kleiner. Please, call me Dr. Kleiner if you would prefer to do so."
Doug blinked. 'Isaac Kleiner' was a familiar name.
Where had he heard it from, though? This man definitely wasn't a scientist he knew from Aperture.
"Well, come now, you two. I do believe the others are already waiting for us in the lab." Dr. Kleiner said as he guided the two towards the door, and out into a bare, unknown hallway.
Inside the twisting, underground complex of a resistance base, the trio walked silently, each holding their separate thoughts and comments on their own. Cindy was noticeably quieter without the presence of Igor by her side, but Doug figured it was just because of the lack of anything to commentate on. Even Cube stayed silent, gazing in awe around its surroundings. This was its first time outside of Aperture, and its first time to see human's other than him. There was no doubt it would take some time to let things set in.
The voices on the other hand…
"He's not taking you anywhere good, and you know that."
"Come back, you don't belong here."
"What are you even doing here?"
"You're forgetting about something…You're forgetting about something very important."
If this had been any other time, Doug's first urge would've been to ask the nearest location where he could get his medication. Anything, anything to shut them up.
Though he was holding on, it was getting slowly harder and harder to maintain absolute sanity.
The next he looked up from the ground, two doors slid open before him, revealing a group of people – two men, a woman, and a Vortguant – reconciling in what seemed to be a very basic laboratory. As he hesitated to enter, not realizing how far he had come from the teleportation room, his guide- Dr. Kleiner went in first, clipboard in hand and a pleasant smile ready on his face.
Clapping his hands to catch the attention of the small crowd, Kleiner said,
"Dr. Magnusson, Alyx, Gordon, I would like you to welcome our fellow Aperture scientist, Dr. Douglas Rattmann."
~oOo~
What had come into the lab was far from what she had expected.
Though she had heard of the several, rather famous rumours of Aperture science and their scientists from her father, Eli (most rumours consisting of their founder who had apparently gone crazy after falling ill to disease, and their amazing lack of consideration for the safety of their test subjects, whatever tests they were doing there), the scientist she had been expecting to see was a white-haired, Einstein-like crazy scientist-looking person, not an actual madman.
Inside the room, behind Kleiner walked in a painfully bedraggled, gaunt man in a dirty lab coat, oddly splashed with the bright colours of orange, blue, and red- no, she was pretty sure that was blood.
On his back he had strapped a large, unnatural-looking pink cube adorned with hearts – whether it was supposed to be a machine or another sort of contraption she couldn't tell – and when he looked up, the pupils in his clear blue eyes were of uneven sizes, strengthening, if not embodying his appearance of insanity.
In the room he entered with a small limp, his injured, still bloodied right leg dragging behind him as he stood in the entrance, slouching timidly as if to make himself seem smaller. As if to hide himself.
Though she didn't want to admit it, she could tell the other people in the room shared her opinion.
Whoever this man, this scientist was, he looked completely, utterly insane.
Some distance from her, she could see Dr. Magnusson's disgusted sneer of a frown, now more intensified than it ever was around the other members of the resistance. Gordon looked on at the man with a blank, quiet stare, and beside him, Uriah observed the man as well, the usual, unreadable expression of all Vortiguants embedded in his face.
From behind the man, another person, a female resistance member rose up beside him, taking charge of the small, awkward silence that surrounded them all.
"Hello," The young, ginger haired woman chirped, breaking the ice. "-Um, am I supposed to be here for this? 'Cause, you know, I could step outside if you guys wanted me to." She said, momentarily glancing nervously toward the wall on her right.
At that, the man beside her, Doug, turned sharply toward the girl, loudly, audibly muttering; "Goddamnit Cindy, I thought you were here to help me!"
In reply she shrugged, an expression that read, tough luck man written all over her face. "Well you know, rules and stuff, right? I mean, confidentiality issues and such-"
"No." Dr. Magnusson coughed quietly, interrupting the girl. "You can stay. In fact, please do."
By that time most of the people in the room had calmed down, a relaxed breeze replacing what used to be a tense, cramped space. Alyx, for one, was sighing quietly, generally just relieved that the insane-looking scientist wasn't as irregular as he seemed. Maybe this man could even come to use.
"So," Dr. Magnusson boomed, regaining his straight, strict posture.
"I am Arne Magnusson. These two here," He said, pointing at Gordon and Uriah, "Is Uriah, my personal assistant, and Dr. Gordon Freeman, a colleague from Black Mesa."
At that, Doug's eyebrows rose in question and surprise. After all this 'Resistance' and 'Combine', Black Mesa still exists?
"I'm Alyx Vance," The brown-skinned woman in the room, Alyx offered quietly, "But you can just call me Alyx." She said, flashing him a tired smile.
"You are, Dr. Douglas Rattmann, I presume?" Dr. Magnusson questioned him, still skeptical of the man's true identity.
"…Yes," Doug replied hesitantly. "But please, there is no need to call me by that title. I've lost that name long ago, along with the fall of Aperture Science."
A certain silence washed over the group of scientists, each looking around with surprise at one another.
"Is it true then?" Dr. Magnusson asked quietly, his voice low. "That Aperture Science fell- not to the Combine, but to its own machinery?"
Doug grimaced, clearly uncomfortable about that statement.
What was so bad, so powerful about this 'Combine' that it could be suggested to wipe out the entirety of a large company like Aperture Science? Was it a sort of governing body now? Was that what they needed a Resistance for?
"…Yes. That is true" Doug finally replied. "But I still don't understand the meaning of this 'Combine', you people keep mentioning."
Dr. Magnusson blinked, then briefly looked around. Whatever gazes returned to him were as blank as his were, and similarly confused.
Slowly, he turned back to Doug. "…Exactly how much time, did you say you were underground?"
"I'm not entirely sure myself." Doug replied, looking at the floor in poor attempt to avoid the eye contact of the others.
"I presume I was in there for a couple of months. Maybe even half a year, calculating the rotations of the moon." He looked up, resisting the strong urge to look right back down. "…The most I know is that when Aperture went to hell, it was still in the warm spring of 1998. I put myself into stasis sleep after that- and I don't know how long it's been since then."
The crowd of scientists looked around, their tense, silent gazes now broken with the hushed tones of whispering and shock.
"Please," The woman- Alyx said rising from the small, comfortable-looking sofa she was once sitting on. "Don't be surprised if I tell you this- but you've been underground for far longer than what you seem to believe."
"1998 was twenty years ago." Alyx said, looking at the dumbstruck man straight in the eyes. "The year everything went to hell."
~oOo~
A story of an apocalypse- of aliens and the enslavement of mankind followed in its wake.
She told Doug about Black Mesa, the large portal storms originally generated by them, and then the seven hour that followed. In a single day, the earth had fallen to the aliens, and had succumbed to the rule of them, the 'Combine'. She spoke about the absence of movement that happened afterwards, the steady growth of the Combine army, the synth creatures- the monsters the Combine had created from human's that dared rebel against them. Then she told him about the Resistance. The return of Gordon Freeman.
That was when everything changed.
Now the Resistance – and in its wake, humanity itself – was on the verge of regaining their freedom, after being captured for so long. They only needed one last push, one last thing to eliminate all the Combine forces on the planet. But what they needed, couldn't have been created, nor found, by any scientist in Black Mesa. No, what they needed was not a contraption of their own, but something much bigger.
"-That is where you come in." Dr. Magnusson said, facing Doug.
"As you may be able to tell, the little that remain of us scientists are from Black Mesa- and though we are more than fully capable of creating ingenious weaponry, we have spent very little time creating portals and teleportation channels, with only minor successes. At the end of our own line, what we needed to find was an alternative solution." Dr. Magnusson paused, a sour taste rising in his mouth as he said the next words. "…And what we found was you. That is what we need. A portal-creating device from Aperture Science."
Doug looked up from where he was now sitting in obvious shock.
Where Black Mesa - the company that had always been blamed in Aperture for stealing their creations - knew this confidential information from, was a mystery.
"But," Dr. Magnusson added, cutting Doug off before he could reply. "It is not the handheld portal device that we require right now."
"No," He added quietly. "It is what is concealed within the Aperture ship, the Borealis."
At that, Doug almost flinched.
There was no way in hell they could have known about that. Even in Aperture the true existence and the whereabouts of the ship where kept a mystery. Only few people knew about the importance of the ship, and those who did, had sworn on their life to keep it concealed.
Though, even that had become all for naught.
"…The ship is gone." Doug mumbled, almost inaudibly to Dr. Magnusson. "I don't know its whereabouts, or what's happened to it after the accident."
Dr. Magnusson sighed, shaking his head.
"We do not need you to tell us the ship's location, Dr. Rattmann. We know that already."
Pointing a small controller at the screen of a computer near them, Dr. Magnusson pressed a button, displaying a map, a blueprint, and the short video of a seemingly normal cargo ship- with the large logo of Aperture Science written across it.
"…The Borealis." Doug said in quiet awe. "I never thought I would see it again."
"Yes. It is indeed the Borealis." Dr. Magnusson said, cutting the video feed off impatiently. "But right now, you are here for more important things than to gaze at the ship."
"-Right now, we need you to use it." He finished sharply.
"Of possibly all the scientists remaining on this earth, you are the most qualified to take control of what is in there. It is not a slim chance that you may be the only one who understands how to control it." Dr. Magnusson looked at him straight in the eyes. "And god knows what we need most from the unstable Aperture science is control."
"…I can't do it." Doug replied, his voice quavering slightly. "Science like this has never been tested before. I can guarantee nothing will go wrong-"
"We don't have the time to leisurely test this!" Dr. Magnusson snapped, his short span of patience suddenly cutting loose. "If we wait any longer than now the Combine will regroup and strengthen, and all our sacrifices would have gone to waste!"
Doug flinched, cowering slightly as the crowd around him silenced all other sounds.
"…Maybe you haven't been enslaved by the Combine for the past twenty years," Dr. Magnusson spoke, a flame in his eyes. "But I have, and I refuse to be held back any longer."
Around Doug the people looked to each other, some reflecting worry for the poor scientist, others reflecting a strong sense acknowledgement to Magnusson's words in their eyes. They had all gone through so much, for so very long. Too much had been lost to hold back, and they couldn't continue like this anymore- not now, not ever.
"-Still, I wouldn't be able to use the machine, much less control it if I couldn't access what was inside the ship." Doug replied quietly. "And as of now, we don't have the means to."
At that, Dr. Magnusson raised an eyebrow in confusion.
"The Borealis," Doug continued, "Was a top-secret project, meant only for the eyes of the Aperture employees concerned with it."
"I was lucky enough to be included in that project once or twice during my career, and I have been inside the ship." Doug paused. "And it is, for lack of better words, a single, gigantic, test chamber."
"…Built by Aperture, and until its release, meant for Aperture's eyes only. Of course, we planned to conceal it using one, large container. Within the ship we tested it, and within the ship we concealed its blueprints, ready to move it or hide it when we saw fit. But underneath the docks, there were other precautions we took to hide the technology inside it."
"Within the ship, all normal entrances and exits are concealed, each of them replaced by a white panel, and guarded by automatic sentry turrets. If you know as much as I think you do, you will understand that there is only one way to get through to the machine."
Dr. Magnusson frowned, sudden realization hitting him hard.
"The ship is a single, large test chamber, both for the machine, and the Aperture Hand-held Portal Device. If we don't have that, it would be impossible to navigate inside the Borealis." Doug paused. "And even if we did, it would still be too dangerous. The only person I would let through, the only person with even a slim chance of success-"
"-Has not been seen since her escape from the underground." Cube ended, speaking up for the very first time in the conversation.
For a second, Dr. Magnusson looked at Doug, puzzled as to why he stopped talking mid-sentence. It wasn't long though, before he realized he wouldn't continue.
"…The Aperture Hand-held Portal Device is attainable, is it not?" He questioned him.
"-Yes," Doug answered hesitantly. "But only through desperate measures."
"The only way to attain possession of the portal device would be to take it from Aperture- and I-I don't want to go back there."
Another silence spread amongst the small crowd, nobody wanting to push the man any farther than he was willing to go.
In the corner of the room, Gordon sat beside an oddly very quiet Alyx, listening to the mysterious scientist's argument. Sooner or later, Gordon mused, he would have to raise his hand and scarfice himself, as he usually did.
But before he could, just a flash before he could stand up and intervene, Alyx had risen beside him, a determined, solid look on her features.
"If you won't go- I will." She proclaimed to Doug, fire burning in her eyes.
"We've come so far, and we've sacrificed so much- nothing, no Combine, no Aperture, no machine is going to stop us- is going to stop me now."
"I'll get that device from Aperture, even if I have to do it alone."