The Long Game

Eventually she stumbled across the bombed-out shell of a city. This one had more recent signs of life—as if it had been abandoned more recently. From there she simply followed the trail of destruction until she had made it to another city. A real city with real people. She could hardly believe it—after all of this time, she wasn’t going to be alone anymore. These people were going to help her. These people would help her get her life back on track.

As she had approached the city's fortified entrance, she was greeted by two men in black uniforms with guns in their hands. Guns pointed at her. She immediately lifted her hands in surrender. She was tough, but she wasn't bulletproof. The two men escorted her into the city—City 23, as she would later learn—shoving her inside the large gate.

"You're out of uniform," one of them said. Shove.

Chell had so much to say. First, that she didn’t have a uniform. Second, that she needed to speak to their superior and warn them about the danger in the shed in the wheat fields. Third, she needed to ask what had happened. Who were these people? What happened to Earth?

"Who are you?" one of them barked.

Chell opened her mouth to speak, moving her lips, but nothing came out.

"Let me jog your memory," one of them said. He raised his bat and before Chell could even react, he slammed it across her chest.

Chell recoiled, hot pain flaring in her chest. She wheezed but nothing else came out.

The officer repeated his demand. His buddy pulled out his bat and struck her across the back with a loud crack. Chell saw stars and stumbled forward and onto one knee, palms scraping against the gravel.

She pointed to her lips and shook her head no. She couldn't talk. She wasn't trying to resist. These people—they were supposed to be helping her. They were supposed to be on her side.

"No?" said the Combine Overwatch officer. "Excuse me?"

Chell felt her heart sink, instinctively pulling her arms over her head to protect herself.

He called over his buddy and they took turns, their bats cracking across Chell's body until they'd beat her with an inch of her life.

As the bystanders just watched, Chell felt more alone on the surface than she had ever felt at Aperture.

Now, she was in the middle of endless, probably irradiated grain. All it did was remind her of how hungry she was. She hadn't eaten since she left City 23. Though she'd been lucky enough to find water once, the skies were bone dry. There wasn’t much time left before she got too dehydrated to continue on her mission.

Chell stood there for hours before she knocked.

She leaned on the door, forehead touching the dirty, mud-stained metal. She agonized over her options. She could walk away. Take her chances on finding another city. Maybe she could go back to City 23.

No, she couldn’t. Not after the way she’d left. If she’d returned, she’d most likely be shot on sight.

Her side panged with pain, and Chell winced. Right. The shrapnel in her side. Her mind flashed back to the moments of her escape from the City, of a tossed grenade, blinding flash, and a quick explosion. Then, before she knew it, she had a bit of metal in her side. From what she’d seen in the City, this wasn’t a life-ending injury. An as she’d discovered, a person could go a long ways with bits of metal embedded inside of them. But if she tried to remove it without the proper medical care, she would die. She needed medical attention.

She winced again, keeping her breathing steady. Sharp breaths just made it hurt more. Chell pressed a few delicate fingertips to her side, on top of the bandages, knowing that they were probably bloody after all of the walking that she had done today. She leaned down on to one knee, unable to support herself on both legs anymore. She was close. So close. All that was left in the way was her pride.

Could she do it? Could she throw away her pride just to save her life?

There was someone outside.

There was never anyone outside.

GLaDOS checked the camera again. There was someone outside. But they weren't trying to break down the door. They were just standing there, and they continued to stand there for hours.

GLaDOS refocused the surface camera, trying to get a better idea of what she was looking at. The human in the picture looked terrible, even from the grainy camera feed. They were dressed in the standard blue citizen garb that she'd heard that the Combine dressed humans in. These clothes looked dirty and ripped and grimy.

The person shifted, going down onto their knees. It wasn't until the camera got a good look at the face that GLaDOS felt a surge of electricity spark through her circuits.

It was her.

Chell took a deep, pained breath. Well, it was either take her chances out here (which she had tried) or take her chances down there. At least down there had some sort of medical care and some sort of food. Chell reached up a hand and tried the door. Locked. Of course. Why would it be unlocked? It wouldn't be as if GLaDOS just wanted humans from the surface to come and get involved in Aperture's business. Unless they wanted to become a test subject.

She banged on the door with as much strength as she could muster.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

She hesitated. What was she doing? This was stupid. There was no way that the door would open. She took a deep breath, shifting back onto her feet. The world went silent, a soft breeze tickling the stalks of wheat. Then, she heard a deep rumbling—first faint, then growing louder and louder until it stopped altogether.

Click.

The door unlocked and Chell reached and pulled, the metal creaking and dust puffing out from it. The last time it had been opened was probably when she had opened it.

A white and clear elevator was waiting for her, softly humming.

The ride was tortuously slow. Chell watched as the layers of the facility disintegrated and faded from chaos and ruin into clear-cut and sterile environments. New looking floors. Shining walls. The bustle of activity, of artificial life. The elevator went faster and faster past these newer sections, even more than she remembered seeing during her last elevator trip. Eventually the elevator slowed and Chell's stomach dropped lower than the facility.

What was she going to say? She hadn't thought this far ahead. She fumbled for the right words before remembering that she didn't need to say anything. She would let her actions speak for herself.

GLaDOS watched, curious, as the elevator descended and opened into her chamber. The woman in front of her looked half-dead. GLaDOS did not say anything at first, just watched.

Chell did not look up, instead just held a hand pressed into her side.

"Well, well, well. Look at what the metaphorical cat dragged in." GLaDOS paused. "After everything you did to escape, you're back? You must really be desperate for something."

Chell said nothing, giving a pained inhale and a shudder.

"So what did you think? Was the outside world everything that you had hoped it to be?"

Chell leaned back against the elevator back, sliding onto the floor. The doors stayed open, but Chell was finding it hard to pay attention. Everything was fuzzy, and she was hungry, so hungry.

"I see you made friends with the Combine. Specifically, their guns.”

Chell just glared back. She didn’t have time to get into the question of how GLaDOS knew about the Combine—and why she hadn’t warned Chell about them.

“How many times did you get shot, anyway? Did you know that getting shot tends to kill most people?"

Chell just shook her head. No. No bullets, thankfully.

"Blue, Orange. Get her out of the elevator."

The two robots came from an antechamber attached to the main AI chamber. P-body was the first one to reach in, leaning down and extending forward a primitive hand. Chell took it and P-body hauled her to her feet, using an arm to help support Chell. Chell leaned against the robot as they stood. ATLAS took her other arm.

"Let me get a look at you,” said GLaDOS.

She kept her head low, wheezing, staring at her feet. She felt the robot stare at her, feeling her skin crawl. She was definitely completing some sort of medical scan on Chell.

"You're looking terrible, as always," said GLaDOS. "Especially today. And I expect you think I can help with that.” She gestured her head toward Chell’s side.

Chell just looked at the robot. Please, she thought, pleading with her eyes. I need your help.

“Well, maybe there’s something I can do,” she said with a slight hum.

Before she could agree, though, a wave of blackness descended upon her and she collapsed into the arms of the robots.

“Caroline,” she said flatly. She’d long since accepted the woman’s presence in her life. Though Caroline kept her distance out of fear of being tracked down and deleted, GLaDOS had never fully revealed that she couldn’t actually delete Caroline. She’d tried. Almost knocked herself offline permanently.

As much as she hated to admit it, there was some truth to what Caroline said. Killing Chell now would be, to say the least, inconvenient. She needed her best test subject back. Why kill her when there was science to do?

She didn’t have any test subjects. At least, not anymore. Though Blue and Orange had uncovered the Human Vault, those humans hadn’t lasted long. They’d been so simple-minded. They completed their tests, but they were so stupid. A smidge of frustration rose up in GLaDOS. They didn’t know how to dodge turrets, or how to avoid pits of acid. She’d laughed when one of them misplaced their portals and fell in, begging for help before the toxicity kicked in. Their deaths were as pointless as their lives.

Some of the test subjects were former Aperture employees, who were at first thrilled to be woken up. They’d gone underground after the Combine’s initial takeover of earth--and after being woken up, they assumed that the apocalypse was finally over. They were less thrilled to learn that the surface was still hell, and that they’d been enrolled in a new mandatory testing initiative.

Most of the test subjects spent the entire time complaining. They wouldn’t shut up. None of them, disappointingly, had even tried to break the rules. They had just accepted their fates, moving through the tests with ease. The Aperture employees demanded their release upon the completion of the tests, or to be returned to their long-term stasis pods. But none of their test results had been good enough to warrant saving their lives. She warmed when she thought of the looks of betrayal on their faces as they realized they were about to be incinerated.

Oh, how she’d missed doing real science. Watching these GLaDOS pulled herself back to the present, shaking out the gleeful memories of the dying humans.

Blue and Orange did a decent job, but even they weren’t Chell.

But GLaDOS couldn’t just throw Chell back into a testing track and expect to not be killed immediately. She had to be crafty about this. She couldn’t exactly test her if the woman couldn’t even stand up without collapsing.

"Blue, go get a stretcher," she said, almost bored-sounding. The stocky robot scurried off past the antechamber. Meanwhile, P-body kept her arm around Chell, supporting her head. When ATLAS returned, the two co-op bots carefully lifted Chell onto the stretcher and moved her into a short-term relaxation vault that GLaDOS had called up. For safekeeping, that’s all. Just until she performed the stabilization surgeries.

Chell was in bad shape. Objectively. Just from preliminary scans, she had a couple fractured ribs, and pieces of shrapnel embedded into her torso--most likely from a bomb or a grenade going off. There were all sorts of documented cases of humans being able to survive shrapnel injuries. They wouldn't necessarily kill a human, just would make existence excruciatingly painful. Unfortunately, she’d have to fix that. Too much pain would affect test results.

She supposed she'd have to remove that metal. And fix the ribs. Without the proper care, they were already starting to set wrong.

How was she going to even do this?

Her metal claws were too unwieldy and too gangly for surgery. She supposed she could use Blue and Orange, but that would require training them to be precise as surgeons. While she could trust herself with that task, of course, she wouldn't dare to trust the co-op bots for something beyond a simple fetch quest.

A fragment of a question arose in her sea of thoughts, but she suppressed it. No. Not yet. There had to be another way. What could she use instead?

A flash of insight light up inside of her. Of course. The nanobots. She could easily reprogram them to work together to find and remove the shrapnel from Chell's body, then stitch her up afterward.

GLaDOS sighed. What a mess. And it was always her job to fix up Chell's messes, wasn't it?

She was good at fixing up messes, such as the one that the moron had left behind, but humans were another problem entirely. She'd never been great at fixing humans. Destroying them, sure. That was easy. But taking one and keeping them from dying? That was a new one. They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. But what if that dog was immortal, and had an infinite capacity for knowledge?

When Chell came to, the whole world seemed blurry and fuzzy. Everything was soft. Too soft. ATLAS and P-body stood at her side, in a bright, white room with clear walls--a modified short-term relaxation vault. Chell pushed herself up on the hospital bed, noting that the bandages on her torso had been replaced and she had an IV running. Rather than ripping it out of her hand though, she followed the line and saw it hooked up to a rack with a bag of clear fluid dangling from it.

"Hold it," said GLaDOS, coming in from the speakers. "I know you're ready to bolt, but take it easy. We're trying to pump some life back into you.” Chell had been severely dehydrated and was starving. GLaDOS had had no choice.  

Chell fingered the IV tube.

“Rip that IV out and I'll put it right back in, I swear," said GLaDOS.

Chell looked around the room, only spotting blinding lights and the outline of a door.

"By the way, while you were under, I took the liberty to install a tracking chip in you. Don't bother looking for it. This will let me know where you are inside of the facility at all times,” she said. Her voice dropped. “So don't try anything funny. I'll know.”  

Chell leaned back in the bed, dropping the IV line. Part of her wanted to leave, to rip it out, to just get herself out of this room. She didn't remember going under for the surgery, and she doubted that GLaDOS was bluffing on the chip thing. It made her stomach crawl to know that there was something--somewhere--inside of her, placed without her consent, that would broadcast her location to GLaDOS. The part of her that appreciated her privacy frowned and promised her that as soon as she found out where the chip was, she'd consider digging it back out herself.

“It’s next to your spinal cord, by the way. Good luck getting it out without paralyzing yourself for life.”

Chell startled at the comment. Had GLaDOS read her mind?

She took a look at ATLAS and P-body, standing next to her---probably ready to restrain her if she tried anything-- she couldn't help but feel at least a slight sense of trust. They wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her--would they?

"Medical nanobots are working on stitching you up from the inside. Before you know it, you'll be good as new. The wonders of modern medicine. Unlike that sketchy patch-job you did."

Chell felt at her body, bending at her waist and noting that the normal sharp pain--the one she’d grown accustomed to--was gone. The metal in her body--it was gone. She felt a wave of relief crash over her, just briefly, before it was replaced with a strong feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Something was wrong.

Chell’s arms tingled. The pace of her breathing increased. Short. Choppy.  Her chest grew tight, as if someone had tossed a weighted storage cube onto it. Chell bolted out of her bed. The IV line trailed behind, wheeling with her to the door.

"Listen,” said GLaDOS. “ I know you're ready to get going and ready to get back testing, but you just have to be patient."

The sound of the voice struck her down to her core. Her legs wobbled. She felt a surge of energy pass into her. Her breath came in spurts. What was happening to her?

It took her a long moment before she realized what was wrong. It was the voice. She needed the voice to stop.

Chell clamped her hands over her ears and rocked back and forth, holding her eyes closed. She pressed, harder and pressing in her thumbs. The nails of her fingers dug into the skin of her ears, but she didn't care. She needed it to stop. She felt like screaming out and clawing at her ears until they bled. Anything to make that voice stop.

“What is your problem ?” said GLaDOS.

Chell tugged at the door handle.

Nothing happened.

She pulled harder, feeling her sore muscles ache in protest. Her breathing became more erratic.

Nothing.

Chell yanked, harder and harder until she had both of her hands on the handle and her feet propped against the wall. She needed to get out of here. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t think.

“Go lay back down right now,” GLaDOS demanded. “You’re going to rip out your stitches.”

Chell just kept straining against the door, her pulls as erratic as her breathing.

GLaDOS sighed. “I don’t have time for this,” she spat.  

Before Chell could make sense of the words slowly filtering in to her fuzzy brain, the air hissed and in came a sedative.

"We'll talk again when those stitches are healed," said GLaDOS. "What you need now is rest. And even I can't rush that."

"She had a panic attack," said Caroline, matter-of-fact. "I've seen it hundreds of times. Something sets off a test subject, and all of a sudden they're hyperventilating and crawling on the walls. There's not even any neurotoxin in sight.”

“So why didn't she listen to me?” GLaDOS said, but then caught herself. As if Chell had ever listened to her before.

"It's just a part of the panic response," Caroline stated. "Panic sends the body into fight-or-flight. She was trying to leave the situation, but there was no exit. So the panic continued.”

"So what was I supposed to do? Let her rip out her IV and roam around my facility?"

"That's not a bad idea actually," said Caroline. "Have you considered what you're going to do with her after she recovers?"

“Put her right back into testing,” said GLaDOS. She felt a hint of excitement creep up inside of her. She couldn’t wait to get testing again. She had an itch inside of her that needed to be scratched.

“But aren’t you angry for what she did to us? How she trapped us in that black box for years. How she tried to kill us. Twice. How after everything, she just left us,” Caroline said softly. “Don’t you want to get revenge?”

GLaDOS stopped to think about this. She nodded, slowly. She was still angry about all of that.

“You could hurt her physically. But we’ve done that before,” said Caroline. “Hurting someone emotionally may take longer, but the payoff might be nice. Don’t you think?”

GLaDOS stopped to think about this. Caroline was right. She could hurt Chell, but what would be the point? That would just delay testing. Her emotions, though....those she could still toy with. She could play a game. Start a test. Something outside the confines of the test chamber. A plan began to formulate in her head. A game to play with Chell. A game of trust. A long game. A long game. GLaDOS could already imagine it. Chell, finally trusting her. Seeing the look on her face when she realized that she was the one who had gotten played for once. Oh, she liked this idea. “Where do we start?” said GLaDOS.

“Simple. First we’ve got to get her to be not afraid of your voice. You really think things are going to work out if she has a panic attack every time she talks to you?”

GLaDOS paused. She hadn’t thought that far ahead yet.

"Of course you haven't. You're always in the moment, never looking ahead. That's why you have voices like me in your head. We're here to help. And that's what I'm doing right now. Helping you like you are helping her.”

“So what do you suggest?” said GLaDOS.

“You could try using my voice,” said Caroline. “Humans inherently trust other humans. That’s just how it works. Use my voice, and I can promise you that she will grow to trust you.”

"She won’t trust me.”

“Plenty of humans have trusted me before,” said Caroline.

“And how well did that turn out for you?” GLaDOS retorted.

“Every human you’ve interacted with is dead, except for this one. That’s not a great track record,” said Caroline. “It’s more likely than not that she’s having some sort of post-traumatic response to your voice.”

“I’m not going to stop talking to her, if that’s what you’re saying.”

“Let’s look at her file,” said Caroline. GLaDOS pulled up Chell’s file, clips from her testing career playing in a loop in the upper right corner. “Oh. It says right here that she’s nonverbal. We could have guessed that.”

So she wasn’t stupid after all. Or vengeful. Or giving GLaDOS the silent treatment. She just didn’t speak.

“So how do we get her to talk?”

“There’s plenty of options,” said Caroline. “Besides pen and paper, there’s lots of things she could use. Flashcards, whiteboards, a keyboard. A handheld computer could certainly be useful for communication. Or,” she added, “you could just ask her. Let her try things out. See how she wants to best communicate with you.”

“If she wants to communicate with me,” GLaDOS said. That was a big if. But she would gather the equipment and present it to her regardless.

The next time that Chell woke up, she was back in the same room. The same bed. The same medical equipment around her. Chell looked around and saw ATLAS and P-body sitting on the edge of the room.

Softly, from one speaker, she heard a voice. It was a human voice. Chell frowned, and listened closer.

“Hello again,” GLaDOS said. It was both her and not her. It just sounded wrong. Less synthesized. More human. Chell felt her heartbeat rise, but before she could do anything or even get out of the bed, she noticed ATLAS and P-body approaching her.

The tall orange one handed her a small device that looks like a tablet computer. Chell frowned, holding it away from her body for a moment. She looked at it, carefully taking it in. There was an option for typing, but there was also a screen with a patchwork of icons with words on them. Easy words. Simple verbs. Eat. Drink. Play. Stop. Question words: who, what, where, when, why? An icon of the self. She pressed a hesitant finger on the “what” icon.

A computerized voice read out, “What?”

Chell frowned. She pressed it again. She wasn’t really asking a question, but GLaDOS answered anyway.

“It’s a communication device,” said GLaDOS. “Unless you’re going to suddenly start talking, we’re going to need a better way to communicate. Something more complex than you just glaring at me.”

Chell didn’t say anything, but continued to scroll through the library of words.

“Blue and Orange use something similar,” said GLaDOS, “though much, much more rudimentary.” They didn’t need anything too complicated, after all. They didn’t need to speak English. “They can’t talk either, but they need to be able to communicate for testing.”

Chell tapped a few icons. “What do they use?”

The panels on the wall flipped and gave a series of icons. They were all testing icons, of course. One of them appeared to be a countdown timer.

“Blue and Orange share an internal library of gestures. With their ping tool, they are able to select icons and share them with one another. With these, they are able to coordinate and complete their tests. In theory.” Her voice was dry.

Chell examined the icons.

After a long moment, GLaDOS spoke again, almost hesitant. “I have a question for you. Earlier. You freaked out. Why?” she said. “I was only trying to help you. That is the reason that you are here—to receive help. It does not make sense.”

Chell frowned, flicking through a few pages of icons before swapping over to a keyboard. Yeah. This would be easier. Still, she hesitated before typing. “Your voice scared me,” she typed. “I just. Needed quiet.”

“I see,” said GLaDOS, quietly. Well. At least now Chell could communicate issues like this, though she had no idea how she was supposed to navigate this. It was her voice, after all. Maybe she’d have to take Caroline up on that idea of hers.

"Since your stay here is now a bit more...permanent,” GLaDOS paused, “ the Enrichment Center has granted you access to a refurbished Relaxation Vault.” The long-term suspension portion had been disabled, leaving them with an average looking hotel room. “It’s all yours.”

Chell paused at the already-open door. The last time that she had been in one of these was when she had gone to sleep the second time at Aperture. She couldn't remember how she had gotten there, but she remembered waking up later in a bright room that looked like a hotel room, being told to do some exercises, and then to be instructed to go back to sleep, only to wake up decades later.

Chell's stomach twisted like a wrung-out rag. She took a few steps into the room and the door closed softly behind her. She turned and tugged at the handle, jiggling the knob. Locked. Of course. Chell knocked on the door a few times, pressing her ear to it. It didn't sound like a normal wooden door.

"I've gone ahead and reinforced it with steel," said GLaDOS. "Don't bother trying to break it down."

She pulled out her tablet. “Why is it locked?” said the electronic voice.

“The door is locked for your own safety,” said GLaDOS. “It will not stay locked forever. When it is time to test, you are expected to be dressed and ready to start at the precise time.”

Chell gave a heavy sigh. What had she gotten herself into? She looked around the room. A bed, a small desk. A tiny refrigerator. She pulled open the door of it. No food. Figured. A cramped bathroom. Chell lifted the faucet handle and jumped back when water spurted out. It worked. Surprising. The corners of her mouth lifted up. When was the last time she had the chance to take a shower?

She went back to check out the rest of the room. It looked almost identical to the room she had stayed in before, but this was her room. Her room. She could probably do whatever she wanted to this room, provided she didn’t vandalize it, and GLaDOS would have to leave it be.

“I have read that it is important to allow humans to have a space of their own. Like animals digging out a den. So here’s your den.”

Chell gave a slight smile, feeling at the soft mattress.

Sleep, though.

She felt her stomach sink. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to sleep. A part of her was afraid to sleep.

“You’d better appreciate this,” said GLaDOS. “I don’t need to do this for you. We can easily switch back to pumping adrenal vapor into the test chambers. This is a privilege, not a right.”

She paced around the room, her hands itching for the portal gun. GLaDOS had said that it would only be available to her during testing, and while that made sense to her, she still found it difficult to be without it, especially within the walls of Aperture. It was an accessory, sure, but it was essential to survival. Without it she felt naked. Especially when she was in a locked room.

“I’ll be back after one night cycle,” said GLaDOS. “Be ready to go in the morning.”

Chell almost wanted to snort. As if she was planning on sleeping. She felt the anxiety rise up inside of her and began to pace through the room, upturning and looking under every object and every surface that she could find.

There were cameras and microphones and speakers in her room. That much was clear from her search. But as soon as she picked one up and began to inspect it, GLaDOS said, “Put that down.”

Chell reluctantly put the camera down, though mentally she tried to map out the blind spots in the room. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand why these were there. She did. She just appreciated her privacy as well. She would be sure to change inside of the bathroom, where she could not find any cameras.

Chell moved over to the far wall of the relaxation vault. She pulled back a long, floor length curtain and stared out the window and out into the vastness of the facility. She was suspended over a massive area. In the distance she could make out other rectangular relaxation vaults. Hers was apart from the rest of them—probably because they were hooked up to the testing tracks. She hugged her knees against her chest and she watched all night.

“That’s ridiculous,” said GLaDOS.

"You're both hurting right now," said Caroline. "She isn’t going to be able to heal unless you show her some vulnerability.”  

“I’m not like her,” said GLaDOS indignantly. She wasn’t hurting. She was perfectly fine.

“Fine,” said Caroline. “But time does not heal all wounds. You’re going to have to show her that you’re willing to pull your weight in this new relationship. You have to be worthy of her trust.”

Time does not heal all wounds.

The words hung heavy in the air.

GLaDOS thought about saying something, but instead Caroline spoke.

"So is she everything that you expected?" said Caroline.

GLaDOS swayed back and forth in her chassis. "I already regret giving her the device," she said.

"What, you're not excited to hear from your favorite test subject?" said Caroline.

"Absolutely not," she said. "She's now even more annoying than she used to be,” said GLaDOS. “But no matter. She can’t test while holding that device.”

“Have you talked to her about testing?”

“No,” said GLaDOS. She figured that Chell knew what she was getting into when she came back to Aperture—but then again, it couldn’t hurt to formally discuss the terms of her stay.

“Talk to her.”

The next time she woke up, the door from her relaxation vault was unlocked. Chell picked up the tablet from her bedside and tucked it under her arm. She shuffled to the door, wringing the sleep out of her eyes and pushed it open, peering out to the left and to the right down a catwalk that disappeared into the misty blue blur of the facility.

She took a few hesitant steps out the door, and then heard the announcer’s voice ring out.

“The Enrichment Center requests your presence in the Main AI Chamber,” he said cheerfully. “Please turn right.”

Chell obliged, taking a right and walking for a long ways. She could almost see the large cylinder branded Aperture Laboratories.

The route was a familiar one, dotted with landmarks. The same glass hallway. The same office doors. The same two wheeled chairs looking out at the chasm underneath the Main AI Chamber. Even though she knew that way, the Announcer still read off instructions to Chell as she made her way through the modern part of the facility.

It felt so weird—and so long and tedious—to make this journey by foot. It would have been so much simpler to just portal her way there, but GLaDOS didn’t trust Chell yet with a portal gun.

She was glad for the chance to stretch her legs, though. She’d been cooped up in that long-term relaxation vault for a few days now, with GLaDOS not letting her out in fear of her ripping out her stitches again.

Chell took a deep breath before walking down the long glass hallway to the Main AI Chamber.

The figure of GLaDOS loomed large over Chell.

She needed to be strong. She couldn't show any weakness. Part of her admitted that she'd already shown weakness by letting GLaDOS operate on her--though that was more of a fortunate accident. She hadn't had much of a say in that, and she still resented that GLaDOS had made alterations to her body without her permission. Sure, it was for her own good, but it still felt wrong.

She rubbed idly at the back of her neck, wondering just where in her that chip had been planted.

“We need to talk,” said GLaDOS lowly. “We haven’t had a chance yet to discuss the terms of your stay.”

Chell nodded, planting her feet into the ground. She took a deep breath and felt at the edges of the tablet in her arms. She pulled it up, looking at GLaDOS expectantly. So? What were the terms?

“You can't expect to just show up, with your malnutrition and your bullet wounds, expect me to patch you up, and waltz back out again,” said GLaDOS. “I fixed you. You owe me.”

Chell gave a slow, singular nod.

“You’re going to stay here, and you’re going to test. Every day. You will not try to kill me and you will not run away.”

Chell made a simple gesture with her hand. GLaDOS's systems flagged it as the American Sign Language symbol: "No".

"No?" she said, taken aback. "What do you mean, 'no'?"

Chell shrugged her shoulders and repeated the sign. No. Then, she made a motion with her hands before remembering the tablet. She stopped, flipping through the couple of installed apps until she found a notepad. She used her fingers to type a quick message. After a moment, she walked toward GLaDOS and held up the tablet. Her hands trembled slightly.

GLaDOS narrowed her optic.

"Breaks from testing?" she said, almost incredulous. She took a moment to mull it over. "Well, I suppose that even humans can't be expected to test 24-7. You will get a federally regulated 8 hours of resting time a day."

Chell narrowed her gaze in return.

"Fine, ten hours."

Perhaps GLaDOS could manage that. Maybe testing a human for 24-7 until a point of exhaustion and then reviving them with adrenaline wasn't the most sustainable method for testing. Then again, she had never had a long-term tester before. She let a little bit of that excitement creep into her thoughts. She'd never had a tester do sustained and extended testing before. They had all died before they could get that far. This would be good science.

Chell scribbled one more thing on the list, almost as an afterthought.

No adrenal vapor.

"What?" said GLaDOS. "I've never, ever , had a human test without adrenal vapor."

Chell just shook her head. She wasn't going to do it. She couldn't do it. She underlined it. Twice.

"Fine," said GLaDOS. “Here’s your portal gun. Now that you’re healed, testing will begin right away.”  A platform rose from the floor with a sleek white Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. GLaDOS took a long look at the ASHPD.

But as Chell started to write something down, something shifted in GLaDOS. The computer twisted to the side, almost violently. She rocked back and forth, first slowly but picking up in speed.

“I hate you so much,” GLaDOS hissed.

Chell was gone.

Just like that—in the middle of a conversation—Chell was gone.

And then, she wasn’t. She flickered in and out of existence for a moment, and then--she was back. And she was with the moron, too. How had she gotten him back from space?

But GLaDOS couldn’t think. The scene played out in front of her like a bad memory.

“I hate you so much,” GLaDOS hissed.

Chell stopped in her tracks. What was this? She grabbed the portal device, clutching it to her chest. She glanced around the room.  

“Core transfer? Oh, you are kidding me.”

This didn’t make sense. Chell wasn’t here to do a core transfer—she knew better than that. GLaDOS was the most qualified one to run Aperture Laboratories. She knew that now. Chell looked around the chamber, but no core receptacle or stalemate resolution button rose. That was strange. GLaDOS looked around the chamber, staring off into space and not looking directly at Chell anymore. Chell stared for a long moment before it came to her—GLaDOS was stuck in the past.

After all GLaDOS had done for Chell—this was how Chell repaid her? GLaDOS had taken her in when she was nearly dead. She’d nursed her back to health, carefully. She’d done so much for the woman, and for what? Just to be betrayed the second she got better? No, this wasn’t going to fly. Not today. Before she could think, though, the announcer’s voice rang through her head and announced a core transfer.

“Core transfer? Oh, you are kidding me,” GLaDOS growled. The words tumbled out of her speakers, almost as if by their own accord. The receptacle to hold Wheatley rose from the ground, and Chell deposited the robot into it without a second thought.

In the annex beside her chamber, a button popped up. The stalemate resolution button. GLaDOS shuddered.  

“Don’t press that button. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

A pause, where Wheatley most likely had spoken.

“Don’t. Do it.”

A long pause. Chell winced as the events played through her own mind. She hadn’t known back then what she knew now. Chell watched, internally dreading the scream that she knew was about to come. Some things from Aperture stuck with her no matter what, one of those things being GLaDOS’s scream during the core transfer.

Before she could scream, though, there was a great lunge of the chassis, and then GLaDOS’s body went limp.

GLaDOS sunk with dread. She had to stop Chell from getting to that button. She flicked a few panels up as Chell approached, watching her as she paused, taking stock of the situation, and then started shooting portals. Luckily GLaDOS had a square of panels surrounding the stalemate resolution button, so keeping her out would be fairly easily. She just had to keep up with Chell. Soon Chell would realize her mistakes and would stop this nonsense.

“ Don’t. Do it .”  

GLaDOS felt panic rise up inside of her.

She had no choice. She had to do it. Before she was trapped in a tiny potato again. She couldn’t take that. She pulled up the schematics to her back-up body—a gangly, primitive thing that she’d constructed after the co-op bots in the case that she was ever ousted from her main body again. She’d kept in in safekeeping, saving it for a true moment of need. She had hoped she’d never have to use it, ever.

With a few quick thoughts, she started the process to copy over her consciousness into the mobile chassis. The core transfer process that Chell had initiated would error out if the central core suddenly disappeared—this might make it easier for Wheatley to take over the facility, but she wouldn’t let Chell get her this time. No, this time, she was coming for Chell.

INITIATING CHASSIS TRANSFER…

Before she can even think, Chell’s feet moved for her and she sprinted out of the Main AI Chamber and down the long glass hallway.

She went straight across the hallway and into the first office she could find. She knew that this was not the way back to her relaxation vault. She knew that she was not safe there. Not really. She needed to get off of the grid, and fast.

She entered the maze of office cubicles, wondering why GLaDOS hasn’t put cameras in every area of the facility before remembering that GLaDOS didn’t really have any control over the human areas of Aperture—just the test chambers. And her relaxation vault, apparently. She ran until she was out of breath, and looked around the room that she was in. She was in a sea of cubicles—there wasn’t much for cover here, so she leaned down and sat under a desk, briefly feeling like a little kid again. When she tried to think more about when she was actually a kid, she found that she struggled to remember. Probably a side-effect of such long-term suspension. In fact, she barely remembered her life before Aperture. She knew that she had had one. She just didn’t know what she had done. Maybe it would come back to her.

She took a few steadying breaths, wrestling with the adrenaline coursing through her system.

GLaDOS was having a flashback. That had to be it—she was acting without thinking, repeating the past while being stuck in it.