After Aperture: Chapter 2

Chapter 2: The Radio

Bursting awake, Chell gasped for clean air, finding it easy to breathe in her small hut. She looked around, seeing her cube sitting on the floor near the door, her dusty long fall boots leaning against it. She couldn’t stand it anymore, she wept. They were just tears at first, but wrenching sobs followed soon afterwards. She missed her dad.

For the first time, she felt completely alone.

She decided to get up, the sun hadn’t risen yet, but by the look of the moon and the purple shade of the sky, it would soon be morning. As Chell walked to the front door, she sat on the companion cube and strapped on her long fall boots. It had been a while since she wore them, two and a half years to be exact, but they still fit perfectly. She rolled up her pants so they wouldn’t catch on the metal of the boots and got up, testing her weight on the braces. It was fine, so she walked over to the other corner of the room and grabbed her pistol and a few bullets. She didn’t know what she was taking a walk for, but she needed some fresh air.

Walking for a few miles, Chell glanced at a crow pecking at some grass and laughed when she remembered how scared her dad had been of those birds, and how terrified GLaDOS was of them when she was a potato battery. She turned around suddenly, hearing a slight hissing noise far to her right. It sounded strangely familiar, yet she couldn’t quite remember what it was.

Slowly stepping closer to the noise, she pointed the gun at the general direction of the object. It sounded like static from a broken TV. As she stopped in front of the object, she burst out laughing, it was an Aperture Science radio. They used to play music in certain parts of the science facility. When Chell tested, she found fun in locating hidden radios around the test chambers.

So, she picked up the radio and took it with her. She felt a little less lonely. She walked a little longer, thinking of when she first started testing. She couldn’t remember any of her past when she first started. With the promise of cake at the end of the tests, she couldn’t wait to start testing, although the robot talking over the intercom was a little creepy. She loved being free, but she missed that feeling of dodging bullets and flying through portals. “Like an eagle flying a blimp” she could hear GLaDOS teasing her. She even missed GLaDOS’s nagging about her “weight” and the psychological games she would play with her.

Chell finally realized what she was searching for.

The back door to Aperture Science.

All of Aperture Science Laboratories was underground. The only door was the one she came out of when GLaDOS let her go. The forest cleared and the radio started playing the song it used to play in one of the chambers. Chell’s heart leapt, and she held the radio out to see if the signal would fade, it didn’t. She kept walking, and the signal kept getting better. She started running. The familiar tune got louder and louder until she almost ran into the small building she came out of three years ago.

The Aperture logo was still painted on the door. She shuttered, then sat the radio down and pressed on the door. Harder. Then she shoved the door with her whole body and it burst open. She looked around and saw the lift she came out of, and a ladder going down the same shaft.

Chell stood there, thinking about her life in the past three years. Freedom was wonderful. It took her forever to get out of that dark facility, yet she wanted back in.