5 – Days Pass into Time
There was a loud clang, shaking Dr. Anabelle out of unconsciousness. She opened her eyes to the near-complete darkness that surrounded her, and saw but a single ray of light above. She remembered her fall (or was it a pull?) down the elevator shaft. And a hard landing it was. The surface beneath her was smooth, but quite grimy. Apparently she'd only descended a short distance, for she heard the cries of Smithfield above.
"Doctor, are you there? Hello!"
"I'm okay, Rod, but I can't get back up."
She looked around. Above, and far out of reach, was the opening to the surface. Before her was a deep black archway. She chanced stepping just inside it to get out of the elevator shaft.
"Just stay there, ma'am! I'll find something to get you out."
An elevator rose up to fill the archway inside the shaft, and then she covered her eyes from a burst of brilliant white light emanating from inside the pod-like elevator.
Hoping to take it back to the surface, she hurried inside. Pressing the button for the highest floor, the door slid shut and all seemed on the right track. But then, there came a voice.
"I have a job for you. Don't worry, it's nothing hard. In fact, this will be the easiest job you've ever had. You might want to get it right, though. It will probably be the last one you ever do."
The floor seemed to give way underneath her, followed by a floating sensation as the elevator sped downward rather than up.
"What are you doing? I want to go back to the surface!" She cried.
"You sound like a bird." GLaDOS replied. "I should probably tell you how much I hate birds."
The elevator came to a sudden, horrendous stop, and the door rolled open slowly. Her heart seemed to stop beating as she beheld the unwelcoming foyer that led to a test chamber littered with trash and scraps of metal.
"What's that? I'm not going in there."
"I could make you, but I know you'll go eventually if you want to survive."
"There's definitely some mutual hate now."
"It's alright, I won't be listening to your voice much longer. Remember: as long as you distract them, you'll stay alive."
"You're crazy, lady. I'm not giving in."
"Oh! Here they come. You'd better hide before the power-"
Her voice cut off, along with the light within the elevator. At random, the lights began flickering and dying section by section throughout the test chamber. Anabelle held her breath as the room got darker, and darker, and darker. The faintest amount of light remained, barely allowing her to see her own hands in front of her, that allowed Anabelle to sprint from the elevator and cram into a crevice between two wall panels before total darkness set in.
For a short time, there was nothing more than the hums of machinery resonating through the walls, but eventually even those waned to complete and total eerie silence. A flicker. Then a beam. Suddenly there was pure white light emerging from an adjoining passage. And then, slow clacks of footsteps.
"'Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me. The carriage held but just ourselves, and Immortality. We slowly drove—he knew no haste, and I had put away, my labor and leisure too…'"
The voice was deep, and slightly garbled. The words were melancholy, and washed over the ruined place with a sad sense of belonging. They were magnified by the hall, and echoed as if the words were rising from a deep well. She chanced another peek, and saw the room getting brighter and brighter from the swiftly growing light. The voice was louder.
"Days pass into time; and stone into dust. Foundation bathed in grime; and beams consumed in rust."
Footsteps echoed, and shadows scattered in twisted and jagged shapes across the walls. Anabelle reached for the pistol at her side, though she was supposed to save ammo for Combine encounters.
"Silence filled with pain; and the heart with regrets. No sun, no wind, no rain; only shells and broken cassettes."
A haggard figure emerged from the yawning doorway, and came to a halt with bowed shoulders. The blinding light from the three eyes, arrayed in an upward pointed triangle, from his plaster white mask swept slowly across the room like a threefold spotlight. It passed Anabelle's hiding place, and illuminated the elevator.
She tried to stop breathing as he stepped closer. His shoes slowly grated against the dirty floor, and only when he spoke in that solemn, booming voice did she dare take a breath.
"'She walks in beauty, like the night—of cloudless climes and starry skies; all that's best of dark and bright—meet in her aspect and her eyes;'"
Passing Dr. Anabelle, he lumbered to the door, and she caught glimpse of a bare, scarred scalp covered by the five interlocking straps of the mask over the back of his pale head. Much of him was in shadow, but the strong reflections of the light revealed a faded orange Aperture jumpsuit, tattered and ripped on the arms and legs. Peering into the elevator, he looked upwards towards the surface.
"Days to time, and stone to dust." His voice resonated through the elevator shaft. The sheer peculiarity of his demeanor had so distracted her, that she did not even think to move.
The man wailed briefly, like one who's been long heartbroken, "Forever lost: her hope and trust!"
Then he turned around.
Terror took its hold on Anabelle, and the three haunting eyes of the Regretful Soul's mask stared as afterimages with every blink as she took flight.
Regret straightened his stance a little, and two red orbs ignited above his left shoulder. A stripped turret trained its leftmost guns, the only ones that could fire, on Anabelle running in the light. She ducked out of sight just prior to the moment shots began ringing out.
"BAM-BAM-BAM! HOW'D YOU LIKE THAT?" The turret yelled.
Bullets ricocheted about the debris. Kneeling below cover, she drew her pistol, suddenly feeling very alone and uncertain.
The light grew again, and she waited, taking steady breaths to control her nerves, as she had learned to do when fighting the Combine.
"COME ON OUT. LOTS OF BULLETS LEFT."
The sweeping motion of the light brought the muddled path ahead into clarity; as if an artist was painting back and forth with strong brushstrokes, but darkness continually erased the painter's work as the brush travelled. Picking out a clear path, Anabelle quickly committed it to memory, and took up a piece of debris in her hand. When the light was farthest away, she broke cover and hurled the bar in the opposite direction. It clanged to the ground, and, as she predicted, the spotlights were drawn straight to it. Anabelle took to her heels as the gunshots began again.
She had traversed a great distance with barely a stumble before the light was drawn back to her, and the chilling sight of her own shadow stretching forth across the chamber made her adrenaline rush.
The spotlight swayed as the shots began again. Anabelle ducked and continued to run. Tracers of the bullets showed them scattering this way and that. Regret lumbered slowly to keep the turret steady.
Suddenly, she tripped. The light had vanished, and she had run blindly into the unknown darkness. There were some scuffs, but she felt no pain or blood. Looking around, she saw that Regret's light had been shifted upwards to a white patch of ceiling. Then, came a sound she'd never heard before; a pulse, and then a bright orange orb flew across the room to the center of the light on the ceiling tile.
A portal formed instantly across the white surface. She was in awe of the spectacle for just a moment, but it turned to fright once more. Through the portal came the beams of Regret's mask, casting her completely in light. He was looking through a second portal and the turret was readying another volley of fire.
She rushed through a hailstorm of bullets, amazed to be untouched as she left his sight. The pulse sounded again, impacting a panel leaning against a pile of rubble ahead; Regret's blank white face appeared again, and the shots resumed. Each time afterward, she dodged by plunging into the darkest shadows, disappearing for just a few moments of respite before he inevitably found her again.
She hid herself to catch her breath, and felt her shoe scraped against something. There was a momentary glow that lit her like a dim candle. Anabelle stopped breathing in that instant, afraid she would be seen, and three circles glowing from a mask on the floor. It was cracked along the edges, and seemed very old.
Just when she had taken it, and was contemplating using it, her right foot was suddenly swept out from underneath her. Anabelle gasped, and covered her face before crashing into the hard floor. There was a forceful tug, and she began to slide backwards through the dirt and litter of trash she'd just run through. Some kind of cable, wrapped around her leg, was pulling her backwards.
With a whimper, she looked back and could see a few glowing dots in the direction of the cable, but her view was blocked. They turned out to be three more glowing eyes standing over an arm to which the cable was wound into a gauntlet. The eyes were arrayed in a straight, horizontal row, and did not seem to move. The voice of Regret called from far off.
"Days to time, and stone to dust. The foundations will be broken, and Aperture's future be crushed."