After Aperture: Chapter 3

Hi guys! This is Chapter 3 of my story, After Aperture, a Portal fanfiction. If you haven't read chapter 2,1, or the prologue, simply scroll down and read them, the newest posts are the newest chapters!

Chapter 3: Issues

Already, Chell was looking for any sign of turrets; she closed the door behind her, and grabbed hold of the rungs of the ladder. She decided to come back in, but not down the shaft. There could be too many turrets that way. Down she went, carefully passing one foot underneath the other, cautious not to slip off. It was a long, long way down. She looked around, seeing the broken gel pipes that still hadn’t been repaired. Strange. GLaDOS would have had the whole facility repaired and running within a year, so why was it still in ruins? At least here?

She noticed that there was fresh, wet white gel all over the ladder below her, and she was still descending into it. When she got to the wet surface, she was as careful as ever, now that the ladder was slippery. A gurgling noise started coming from a broken pipe above. Panicked, Chell gripped the ladder as hard as she could as a sheet of white gel came pouring down on her. She couldn’t breathe, and the gel was still pouring down. Finally, it stopped and she gasped for air. Chell was weak from the downpour. Shivering, she started downward again. More gurgling came from the pipe and another sheet came down on her. Only this time, she wasn’t prepared. Her hands were ripped from the rungs, and she fell. She was falling for quite a while, the gyros in the long fall boots kicking in and turning her right-side-up. She could see the ground coming closer and closer. It was the roof of the room GLaDOS was in the last time she was here. “Why didn’t I just take the lift?” She thought.

Smashing through the roof and finally to the floor of the room, she tried to land perfectly on her feet, but it was too long of a fall, and she hit the floor with a pain shooting up her right leg.

All went black.

By the time Chell was nine, she had already gotten used to living as an orphan in Aperture Science’s children training center. Because there was a shortage on good test subjects, Aperture would take orphans from local orphanages and train them using turrets with paint guns, instead of bullets, and automatic shooting portals instead of the expensive manual portal guns. It was safer for the kids. She was still made fun of as she still could not find the courage and focus to speak. By the time she was sixteen, she was at the top of her class, with the highest of testing scores.

It was time to sign some papers and start the real testing, with real turrets and real portal devices. She would first get tested for pain tolerance, tenacity, IQ, and other critical aspects for testing. She knew her tenacity score would be very high, as she still got into much trouble at fifteen and sixteen years of age, and it was, but the scientists didn’t think it would matter later in testing. This later saved her life and GLaDOS’s life. The next step for testing was the mind wipe.

It didn’t hurt, Chell remembered, they stuck a bunch of wires on her head, had her drink a clear substance that didn’t have a taste. Then they stuck her in a cryo-bed to sleep until she awoke for her very first test. That was when she first heard GLaDOS. “Hello, and again, welcome to the Aperture Science Computer Aided Enrichment Center. We hope your brief detention in the relaxation vault has been a pleasant one. Your specimen has been processed and we are ready to begin the test proper. Chell? Chell! Please wake up! I need you awake and functioning like a normal human would right now! Oh, you better wake up, you ungrateful test subject!”

“Hmmm...” Chell rolled over on the sterile bed she was laying on.

“Please, Chell, I know you are alive, I can see your vital organs functioning in my readings. And by the way, you’ve lost some weight, I see. You’re practically skin and bones.”

Chell opened her eyes, slowly. Every part in her body ached. She was in GLaDOS’s main room on a cryo-bed as a makeshift medical bed. She looked down at her right leg, which felt slightly lighter than usual, and there was no pain.

“Good afternoon, Chell. I should say you slept in…. For about 2 days.”

She turned her head and stared into the familiar yellow optic, GLaDOS was still functioning of course. She looked back at her right leg again, lifting it and turning her ankle. It did not feel right.

“I had to replace your tibia with a slightly lighter titanium rod because you fell exactly five hundred, seventy three point three five feet and landed on your feet. Unlike our fall when I was a potato, there was really nothing to catch your fall, and instead of landing on soft dirt, you landed on stainless steel floor. You know, I see no logic in coming down the ladder. You could have come down the lift. That was idiotic. A more intelligent test subject wouldn’t have been suspicious about lifts. I hope the radio placement outside wasn’t too alarming for your tiny brain, I had a turret cube the moron created put it there.” Chell just stared back. From the moment she found the radio, she wondered how, in the three years she had been out there, she had never noticed the radio’s noise. Now she understood.

“I forgot you were a silent one. Nevertheless, I knew you would come, since peace and serenity isn’t really your thing, especially with the tenacity score you received during your initial tests. Anyway, Aperture Science Laboratories is in a dire situation right now, and I need your help.” Chell then slowly slipped her feet off of the bed, hearing the long fall boots clank on the floor. She placed her hands in her lap and listened to GLaDOS explain the circumstances.

“The moron is back. Wheatley, remember him? He took over the entire facility and tried to kill you and hooked me up to a potato?” Chell couldn’t believe her. Wheatley was still in space. She pointed at the ceiling, indicating that he was still up there.

“No he is not in space, I mean he is, but he is also here. He replicated himself, backing up his memories on a computer before you shot a portal into space. He then proceeded to make an automatic program that loaded his memory into an empty core shell, and now he is here, tormenting the facility. He managed to get to one of my robotic test subjects and convince it to plug him into a core control panel near test chamber 17. He can’t control the whole facility without my body, but he has got control of about 33.4% of it right now. So you get it now, right? The moron is still in space but his replicated self is wreaking havoc on my beautiful testing facility. He was not such a moron after all.” Chell nodded and made a gun motion with her hands.

“I don’t understand what you are saying.”

She persisted with the same action.

“I really loathe charades, Chell.”

Chell sighed and pressed her lips together to try to form a word or two.

“Portal Device,” Chell managed to blurt out. She did it. GLaDOS stared back, just registering the speech; she almost looked surprised to hear it, even though her yellow optic and shiny, white metal didn’t show a bit of emotion.

“I really cannot believe the mute just spoke. First a mute and now a selective mute?” Chell scowled at GLaDOS.

“I need you to succeed, I know you can because no matter how hard I tried to kill you, I couldn’t and I know you can help me win. Without an Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, you are a mere human being, but with one, you are as deadly fast as neurotoxin gas.” Chell’s tongue was a brick, and she couldn’t speak again, but she nodded instead.

“Let’s get to work. I will give you a portal device. Please don’t destroy it like you do everything else you touch. The moron is in the same chambers you used to test in when we first started testing you. He’s probably built himself some sort of body, so it may be difficult to get him out. He has no idea you are here, so we technically have a higher advantage than he has, but he does have control of the security cameras in his quadrant, and the turret assembly line, unfortunately.” A door in the ground opened and a Portal Device on a stand came out. Chell walked over and picked it up. It had scratches, dents, and was a little dusty still. It looked and felt familiar. With a start, Chell realized that it was the same gun used in all of her tests and the one she used against Wheatley and on the moon.

“You know, it was a long shot trying to shoot the moon with a Portal Device, but it worked. I have to give you credit for that. I was too, oh what do you call that emotion, nostalgic? That’s it. Oh, I was too sentimental, and didn’t even clean the dirt off of that Device. It’s the same one you used when you were here.”

Chell nodded and inspected the device, remembering how amazed she was that it withstood the long fall down the elevator shaft Wheatley pushed her and the potatOS down. She started towards the doors at the far side of the room, and they suddenly disappeared. New ones appeared on the opposite side of the room.

“Oh, and that was the wrong way. The real way is over there, idiot.”

Chell grinned and sprinted towards the other ones. Let the psychological games begin. She knew just where to go to find Wheatley. She had no doubt that he was just doing what he did before. Only this time, she had to find and destroy the computer, or core that held his replication data. A voice suddenly popped out of the inside of the Portal Device, and Chell nearly dropped it out of surprise.

“Oh, and I hope you don’t mind that I inserted an intercom speaker on your device, Chell. Sorry if I distressed you. You know, loud noises often frighten people with guilty consciences.”

She just sighed and kept walking towards a test chamber with a couple cube-turrets roaming around: Wheatley territory. She was getting closer. She could see the level sign on the inside of the chamber: 3. It was one of the most simple test chambers, as there were only gaps to jump across to the end lift, no turrets, no energy pellets, and no consequences for failure, just gaps.