As Chell fell through the floor into the dark abyss below, she almost felt a moment of peace.

There was nothing holding her up or holding her back. Just the wind soaring against her body and a large void of nothingness. Compared with the intense action of her past... well, who knew how many days? She finally had some tranquility.

Her eyes closed, accepting her new circumstance... her consciousness started to shut itself down and she let herself relax for the first time in ages.

Wheatley would've hated this.

Wheatley.

Her eyes shot open, all momentary contentment lost as if it had been a whisper of a dream. Her mind had automatically blocked itself off to the reality of her unfortunate situation.

Wheatley had betrayed her and cast her down below. Maybe it hadn't been on purpose, but he certainly hadn't done anything to rescue her. In fact, after hijacking Glados' mainframe control, he had become self-serving, arrogant, and downright horrible. She couldn't believe it.

She still couldn't believe it.

And had he really sacrificed someone's life to save himself when the neurotoxin flooded the facility? He had denied it when Glados accused him, and she wasn't exactly a pillar of truth herself. It was all too confusing... and it hurt to think about it.

After losing everything, she had gained a friend... and they were supposed to have escaped together. Seen the sunset together... watched the stars. She was going to be a normal human being again. How...

How dare he.

She squeezed her eyes shut, tears making their way up her face in the raging wind, her mouth trembling in both sadness and anger.

The darkness engulfed her as she lost sight of the enrichment center above and her heart quickened in fear. How far would she fall?

Her boots constantly pivoted her down, their center of gravity keeping her in balance as they were designed to. They would keep her safe from long-distance falls, but how long was long-distance? It certainly wasn't this, she decided.

She wondered briefly if she would black out before hitting the bottom.

As she was lost in her thoughts of despair, she was completely startled out of her wits as her boots connected with something solid, jarring her body roughly, then crashing through whatever it was, to continue falling.

No way.

Chell was shocked to find she was completely okay after that surprise encounter, and changed her mind as she winced, pulling out slivers of wood from her arms. Apparently she had crashed through some wooden planks or something. But after a fall like that? It should've killed her. Or at least have done some damage.

While contemplating her sudden flash of good luck, she found herself falling into a more well-lit area, and the ground was coming up fast.

She closed her eyes automatically and braced herself for a painful fall, then her boots connected with the ground, sending sharp vibrations up her legs and she gritted her teeth. She opened one eye. Then the other.

She was alive.

Completely and utterly alive.

She shifted both her legs slightly to test for breaks... nothing.

Her legs felt a little sore and her arms stung with scratches and splinters, but otherwise she was okay. Honestly, if she hadn't braced for the impact so much her legs probably wouldn't be as sore as they were. The long-fall boots were a thing of beauty.

Oh, if you weren't just refrigerator boots I could kiss you!

But seriously though, who designed boots that allowed you to fall for a good couple miles and live? Not like she cared. She hugged herself in congratulations, thanking the universe for her stroke of good luck. At least one thing had gone right.

And only a million others had gone wrong.

Chell finally came to her senses and started to observe where she had landed. In fact, it was extremely odd. She seemed to be in some old abandoned... factory? Facility of some sort? It was in ruins, and various fires burned old trash around her. She didn't see any signs of life, so that was a good thing.

Or maybe a bad thing.

She wasn't quite sure which she preferred at the moment. Her mind went into panic mode at the prospect of being stuck well underground for the rest of her life. It was absolutely terrifying.

It was damp, fairly dark, and chilly down here. She untied her jumpsuit and donned the rest of it on her upper body, trying to get a little bit of warmth. She patted her portal gun, glad to have its company, even if it was a bit useless outside the testing facility.

She fired various portals at different surfaces, testing for reactions. Nothing.

Chell figured that that was going to be the case, but she wasn't ready to abandon the device yet. It was her baby, after all. She hooked it onto her jumpsuit and began to traverse the unfamiliar terrain, readying to look for food, shelter, and a way out.

Even though she didn't feel at all like smiling, she forced one onto her face anyways. Her father had always told her to keep on smiling, and it would make her worries seem a little less important, so that's what she did.

And on we go...


Glados was rudely knocked awake by a horrible deafening noise of metal being wrenched apart and an eerie feeling of...falling?

She was falling.

Glados, trapped in a plummeting metal and glass contraption was hurtling in free-fall through the abyss of the deep mines below Aperture. What a nightmare.

Pushing aside the pain in her head (no thanks to that moron), she worked quickly to ensure her own survival. At least what little hope of survival she could sufficiently calculate. Considering she actually had no way to process how long she had fallen for, she wasn't quite sure how long she had left until she hit the bottom.

She pulled herself out of the elevator through the hole where the glass had previously been shattered, noting the elevator had completely flipped upside down. She yanked upwards on it, trying to get on top and away from the dangerous falling contraption. If she managed to land on her feet, there was a smidgen of a chance that her boots could break her fall. But only a smidgen.

She tried hard to calculate her survival chances, but falling to your death tends to have a detrimental effect on brainpower. She had managed to pull herself almost free of the elevator when she was plunged into darkness, the elevator clipping something and spinning uncontrollably.

Finally there was light again and she was tossed from the elevator, her boots working to reassert her center of gravity. Then there was the ground and she was landing and she was crashing and there was sensory overload and then there was nothing.


Chell traversed the wasteland deep underground, admiring the sheer amount of empty space that lay above her head. Her father had once told her that Aperture had been built upon some old Michigan salt mines, but now that seemed like an understatement. These caverns were mind-blowing, tunneling down for miles. She realized that she had only ever seen the top floors of Aperture when she had gone to visit her father at work. Never knowing how much history it actually held.

All those skeletons in its closet.

Chell frowned, wondering for the millionth time how much her father had known about the Deviant testing chambers. Had he had any part of it? She wanted desperately to say no... perhaps his pay-grade wasn't that high.

That was stupid though, she knew. He had been one of their top scientists. At least, that's what he had told her. She wasn't sure what she believed, but since he was no longer with her, she chose to believe her father had been a good man and had nothing to do with the testing below.

But he took you to the stasis room where the test subjects were held. He did know.

She bit her lip and turned her attention to an old building, the bricks crumbling away at the side. She walked cautiously inside and looked around in surprise. It was an old office building?

The glass panes inside had long ago been shattered and frames that had managed to stay on the walls had tilted dramatically. The carpeting was faded and frayed, and the place was incredibly musty. She wrinkled her nose as another smell assaulted her senses, and she really really didn't want to know what it was.

Morbid curiosity had her turn the corner to investigate. After all, this place probably had an old kitchen somewhere. She was starving.

Speaking of starving, Chell was overwhelmed to find a room completely and utterly overrun with... potato plants? She closed her gaping mouth and pushed her way through the plants for the source.

Tables were strewn throughout the overgrowth and she pulled the plants away to investigate. A sign on one of the tables read, "Lily's Potato Battery Experiment." Adorable. This had been some kind of kids' science fair... how long ago?

The sign read the date '10-10-1978'. Chell was astounded at the sheer age of this place. She had known it was old... but this had been over a century ago. Lily would have grown up to have her own children who put projects in their own science fairs, then grandchildren. She would be long dead by now.

Chell stepped back to examine more tables strewn about, and was amused to find 90% of them were potato batteries. Then she located the source of the sheer mass of potatoes the room was filled with. A little boy's project had sprouted into a giant potato-making machine.

Chell smirked at the D- grade the boy had received; ironically his project was the only reason she now had a source of food.

She silently thanked the boy as she pulled off decent-looking potatoes and made her way out of the room with an armful of them.

Sitting on the front steps of the building, Chell chewed on her raw potatoes, trying to ignore the fact that they were totally disgusting and she could go for some butter right about then. Whatever.

She filled her pockets with more potatoes and made her way to the top of the building, as she had spied some catwalks protruding from the roof.

Minutes later Chell had made her way to another level of the salt mines, only to discover some more old buildings. She rubbed her hands together and smiled at her newfound luck. Then she saw it...

A large white wall had been placed against the side of the mine, stretching behind multiple buildings in a row. She lifted her portal gun with rising hope and fired.

A blue portal burst to life above the ruined complexes and Chell spun around, taking in various other portal surfaces scattered about the place.

Oh yes. Yes. Yes. YES.

She jumped through a portal she shot nearby and landed on top of one of the old buildings, getting a better view of the new area. The cavern stretched upward for thousands of feet. It was an incredible view and made her feel very, very small.

She scanned as far as she could see and stopped abruptly when she saw a large sign hanging high up, displaying the name of this facility.

Aperture.

The logo was much older and the wording was a different font than she was used to, but this was still Aperture. She closed her gaping mouth and took in the wording painted high on a metal structure protruding through the ceiling. Test Shaft 09.

What in the world was this place?

She jumped down from her perch and made her way to the building with the Aperture Logo hanging above it. Peeking inside she saw an entrance hall and several display cases. There was an old reception desk, the light above it flickering with age.

Chell wondered what the electric bill for the enormous structure cost Aperture. Surely Glados hadn't paid the electric bill...?

They probably had their own source of electricity. Whatever it was, Chell was astounded.

She made her way into the reception area and glanced at old newspaper clippings in the display cases. Stuff about purchasing salt mines in Michigan and selling curtains in the 1950's plastered the headlines in bold print. Ancient news.

Chell about jumped out of her skin when a booming voice blared around her, filling the cavern with a man's bass voice, "Ladies and Deviants, astronauts, war heroes, Olympians, welcome to Aperture Science! You are here because we want the best of the best: and you are it. Now, who's ready to make some science?"

A woman's voice piped up, "I am!"

Chell looked around, searching vainly for the source of the voices, "Now you've already met one another on the ride over here. Let me introduce myself. My name is Cave Johnson. I own the place."

She spied multiple megaphones riddling the facility inside and outside the buildings. The voice was coming from everywhere.

"That eager voice you just heard here is my lovely assistant, Caroline. She's the backbone of this facility, and pretty as a postcard. Sorry fellas, she's married. To science," Cave Johnson announced.

Chell continued to search the various buildings scattered in the area... most were just office buildings and waiting areas. Her eyes followed the paths of catwalks reaching upward into higher levels. Some old elevator shafts also went up into the ceiling from a couple of the facilities.

"There's a thousand tests performed daily here in our enrichment spheres. I can't personally oversee every one of them, so these pre-recorded messages'll cover any questions you might have, and respond to any incidents that may occur in the course of your science adventure," Cave continued.

Chell must've tripped something to activate the pre-recorded messages then. She listened carefully, hoping for a clue as to how to get out of the place.

"So those of you who volunteered to help us test the repulsion gel today, just follow the blue line on the floor. The rest of you who volunteered to be injected with praying mantis DNA, I have good news and bad news..." Chell noted as he spoke that old lines were painted from the reception area to each of the buildings, leading upward into unseen testing areas.

"The bad news is we're postponing those tests indefinitely. The good news is we've got a much better test for you: fighting an army of mantis men. Pick up a rifle and follow the yellow line. You'll know when the test starts. If any of the rest of you have some kind of laser-eye deviation, we could sure use your help," Cave Johnson didn't seem fazed by his announcement. Chell's face twisted in distaste. She patted her portal gun affectionately... apparently the testing experience could have been much more brutal.

They had had some weird moral guidelines in the 1950's.

Chell shifted her gaze upward again, taking in the various routes to the upper levels. If she could follow one of the old testing tracks, it could eventually lead her up to the modern facility. And a way out.

Better than staying down here anyway.

But first she was going to finish investigating the old complexes, and then she was going to take a well-deserved nap on one of the couches in the reception areas... granted she not activate Cave Johnson's pre-recorded messages again.


Had to throw the potato batteries in there somewhere... ;)