Chapter Text
If you look to the north, there is nothing but the City.
She doesn’t know what it is – or was – called. Maybe she had, once, in the Before Times. Sometimes down on the streets or in an overgrown dark alley or even in the crumbled remains of homes and offices, she’ll get flashes of something like recognition. No actual memories – that would’ve been too easy – but little snippets. She’d come across a machine she’d never to her recollection seen before, and some dark, locked-away corner of her mind would go that’s a food processor. No memories of using one, or seeing one, or even having heard of one before, just the rock solid knowledge that it was indeed a food processor. It was like first hearing Her speak back in that wretched place and understanding every word of it, despite having no memory of ever before having heard the language – or any language, for that matter.
Chell’s mind is funny like that.
She sits atop a tall building, legs dangling over the crumbling edge, and watches the City spread out before her. It’s a big one; all tall, narrow skyscrapers slowly being eroded away by wind and sour rain, their walls and ceilings concealed by clinging plants and fungi; roads blocked by rusted vehicles sitting stranded on the overgrown pavement; remains of billboards where she can sometimes make out remnants of chipper words. She can read, too; that’s one of the things she just knows how to do. Could there be other languages squirreled away in the nooks and crannies of her brain, prepared to stay quiet forever unless she encounters something to trigger that instant understanding? Maybe she should hit the library; just start opening books and manuals at random to see how much she already knows. That sounds like a tedious way to go about self-rediscovery, though.
The sun is almost all the way up. Below her, alleys are still shadowed and dark, but there’s no use in waiting for daylight to reach all of them; the surrounding architecture throws too many long shadows. The wider streets are mostly lit, and Chell’s good at staying out of toxic spots and spills and the dangerously unstable parts of the ruins.
At least she knows where she acquired that particular skillset.
She turns in a half-circle before heading down, gazing to the south. The City is so overgrown that it’s hard to make out exactly where it ends and wilderness begins (though in all fairness, the City ruins are all wilderness, too). But before the sun crested the horizon, the faraway lights of the nearest settlement were only just visible, hours from the ruins and nestled between hills of farmland.
Even further away, not visible at all from here, is that place, festering underground like a tumor. Is She growing it bigger, down there? Hollowing out the earth and spreading Her domain, reaching Her claws out until they’re right underneath Chell’s feet, ready to snatch her back down?
It had been so all-encompassing when Chell was trapped there. The very idea of an “outside” seemed laughable, certainly not helped by the fact that she could remember no place other than the testing shafts, the catwalks, the hollowed ghosts of offices, the pits that just as well could’ve been bottomless. Inside, the Facility was the universe, and She was god.
From out here, it’s small, and almost a little sad. The actual world is so much larger.
Chell turns her back and toes up to the edge of the roof. She already scavenged the inside of the building for salvage on her way up; there’s no point in taking the long way down. Checking the street one final time to make sure she isn’t about to make some poor unlucky critter go splat, Chell steps off the edge.
It lasts for only a handful of seconds – wind screaming around her, tears forced from her eyes and hairs from her ponytail – before the ground rushes up and she bends her knees and her long-fall boots catch her with a well-oiled creak. It barely makes Chell’s heartrate raise, these days; there isn’t even any toxic goo to watch out for, and not so much as a single spike-plate making a go for her mid-fall. Adjusting her pack so it sits snugly on her back – she has a long walk ahead of her – Chell starts weaving her way between gnarled trees and the rusted skeletons of cars.
It’s a couple hours past dawn when the clouds start to gather, and nearly midday by the time the first raindrops fall, heavy and fat and strangely oily. Chell makes a sharp huffing sound of frustration – the closest she ever gets to swearing out loud – and quickly scans the nearby shopfronts. Most look to be in too bad a shape to safely offer shelter, but one seems to have survived the apocalypse with its architectural integrity (mostly) intact.
Chell dashes through what used to be a display window and moves far enough into the shop so as not to be splashed by the rainfall. It’s only a light rain, but something about the air of the bigger of the old cities – the ones hit hardest by whatever hit the entire planet god knows how long ago – tends to leave water oddly sour and clingy. There are still pockets of toxic air that’ll choke you out in moments if you stumble into them, but they cling together like thick, sticky mist and are easy to avoid if you know what to look out for. The rain, passing through them, is harder to dodge. Chell knows better than to drink it, but if she doesn’t watch out it’ll stick to her skin and clothes and start to fester. Better to just wait it out.
To kill time, she begins half-heartedly scavenging the little shop, pushing debris aside with her feet and carving away roots and plants with a knife. It’d been an electronics store in its former life, judging by the many screens and gadgets lying abandoned on the floor and shelves. Probably the whole establishment was once sleek and white and chrome; now it reeks of decay, the once clean walls turned a muddy brown and green.
There’s nothing terribly valuable, but enough old tech to at least buy her a couple of warm meals. Phones, radios, computers; none of it would work, but some of them have parts that are salvageable, and if they look whole enough there’re even people willing to buy them just to put them in a shelf or hang them on a wall. Chell had once sold a box full of especially well-preserved CDs – barely a scratch on them, gleaming once she’d polished them off – to a collector who insisted on showing her his collection. He’d dragged her into a special room where CDs had been hung on strings of fairy lights, as if he thought they were some kind of flat disco balls.
She makes her way around slowly, taking her time to fill up her bag and discard whatever’s useless or too bulky to carry. Eventually she finds herself behind the counter, overturning boxes and opening cabinets. An impulse strikes her to empty the register, and she nearly snorts a laugh. Even if the money inside hasn’t moldered away to dust, it would be useless as anything but collector’s items.
In one of the last cabinets, closed by a rusted lock that she easily breaks through, there’s a soggy powder that might once’ve been a cardboard box, and a white, metal sphere. Chell pulls it out and stands, eyeing it curiously. No resurrected memory rises to tell her what it is, so she turns it over in her hands, searching for defining features. It’s entirely round, and on one side, proudly stamped in block letters, is a logo proclaiming Aperture Science.
Chell drops it. It hits the floor with a heavy clunk and she just stands there, staring at the thing like she expects it to fly out of the debris and bite her. When it remains respectfully motionless, Chell slowly edges closer, then gives it a solid kick with her long-fall boots. The thing flies through the air, clangs against a wall, and rolls to a stop against a pile of half-rotted leaves. There’s no optic, no handles. It is, literally, a metal ball.
Feeling slightly better about things, Chell gingerly picks it up. Touching it makes her skin crawl, like she’s made skin-to-skin contact with a dead animal or something toxic and sticky, but she suppresses the feeling and turns the ball over until she can look closer at the logo. The company name glares back up at her. Beneath it, in smaller text, are written the words ‘Aperture Science Signal Receiving Device, prototype, early access’. Beneath that, in even smaller but somehow stern letters, it says: ‘fragile, not for soccer, DO NOT KICK. In case of radioactive leakage, Aperture Science wishes you GOOD LUCK and reminds you that you signed a liability waiver!’
Chell winces. Well, nothing to do about it now. Just to be sure she digs out her Geiger-counter – you should always carry one with you in the ruins, that’s just common sense – and checks it; the metal ball is fine, only very slightly above normal measurements.
Aside from the logo and cheerful warning text, its only feature is a thin seam around its circumference. Chell imagines twisting it open like a ripe fruit. Seeing nothing else to do with it, she gives it a try.
…bambina, o ciel!
Che la stima! Che la stima!
O cara mia, addio!
Chell drops the ball. Again. It falls back into the leaf mulch, still emitting that cursed song, all high-pitched and beautiful but crackling from interference. It echoes between the walls of the old shop, making Chell’s head ring.
Frantically she picks the thing back up and twists the two halves the other way. The music snaps off all at once. The quiet that follows strikes her as almost deafening. Chell is trembling. It takes her several long moments to realize she can still hear the rain falling outside.
Why would it still be playing? How long has it been, three years? Yes; Chell distinctly remembers three winters out here, and at least two summers. Three years of Her transmitting that aria into the ether, with no way of knowing whether Chell is even alive to hear it, much less has the equipment to do so. Perhaps She’d forgotten about it, Chell tries to convince herself, knowing in her heart that that isn’t the case. You didn’t forget about someone you were that obsessed with hating.
Perhaps it’s to remind Herself, then. Chell isn’t there to throw abuse at anymore, and it isn’t like there are other people still alive down there for Her to harass and threaten with neurotoxin and incinerators. She’d need something to focus all that hatred on.
Chell is tempted to leave the device where it lies in the dirt and the dust, but functioning technology from the before-times are among the most lucrative of her finds. This stupid singing ball could buy her weeks’ worth of food and shelter, and despite the radioactivity warnings it doesn’t actually appear to be dangerous. It’s just a receiver of a stupid aria. Besides, the junkshops know to be careful with anything brought in from the ruins. Leaving it would be an emotional reaction, not a logical one, and being logical has kept Chell alive more than once. She glares at the thing, gives it a small, petty kick, and picks it back up.
* * *
The rain stops eventually, and Chell makes her way out of the City, careful to avoid puddles and dripping branches. Whereas rainfall normally makes for a fresh and clean feeling, in the ruins it instead gives rise to a fetid smell. Wherever water has gathered on the streets there’s an oily sheen on its murky surface. Mutated vegetation stretches greedily upward to drink its fill, and animals that are no longer quite alive stalk the dark allies, invigorated by the pollutants that keep them going past their due-by date. Chell makes for a quick exit.
Her hoverbike is left safely in a glade outside city limits (working technology doesn’t always play nice with the flare-ups and toxic spots of the ruins). Its solar panels are folded out and sparkling with drops of clean water, its saddlebags waiting for the day’s finds. It had been tricky to drive at first – she assumes “hoverbikes” weren’t a thing back in her time, or at least that she’d never used one – but she’d caught on quick, and it’s incomparable when traveling in uneven terrain. Couldn’t keep her face safe from low-hanging branches, though, but you couldn’t get everything. It is, alongside her long-fall boots, Chell’s most prized possession.
Without it, getting from the ruins to the nearest settlement would’ve taken her most of a day; with it, she gets back and has her salvage handed off before nightfall. Marla, the junkshop owner, digs through Chell’s bags of scraps, mumbling about transistors and coffeemakers and exclaiming delightedly over a particularly well-preserved toaster. When she gets to the metal ball, she stops her muttering and holds the thing up, squinting at it. While as stained and wheatear-beaten as the rest of the scrap, the clean design clearly stands out. Marla gives Chell a suspicious, narrow-eyed look over her thick glasses.
“What’s this, now?”
Chell lifts both hands and mimes twisting. Marla’s done business with Chell enough times to pick up on what she means and mimics the gesture, turning the upper and lower halves of the sphere in different directions. Despite being prepared, the sound of the aria still makes Chell wince.
Marla blinks. “It’s a radio?”
Chell shrugs.
“Can’t be worth much. Hasn’t even got an antenna.”
This time, Chell just levels a look at her. They both know damn well that the receiver is the most valuable object in the haul, possibly the most valuable thing to come in in months, even if it can’t do more than play the one song. It’s unique, has at least some functionality, and if you cleaned it off it would look pretty on a shelf. Museums will pay out the ears for it, and private collectors even more.
Marla squirms under Chell’s look before buckling. She knows Chell too well to think she has a real chance of screwing her over; if the price isn’t fair Chell would simply take her things and walk out. She’d had to do it a couple of times before Marla stopped thinking she was bluffing. It doesn’t mean they’re friends; it simply means Marla knows not to throw away her best salvager. Bad for business.
“Fine, fine, 5 000 for the lot, and you can pick something from the bargains shelf.”
She waves without looking at a shelf by the display window. It’s mostly garbage; antique teacups that have survived the passage of time remarkably unharmed, magazines kept in plastic sleeves to protect the delicate yellowed pages, chipped porcelain figurines with faded colors, an old electric kettle that can’t possibly work. Hardly more than souvenirs for people nostalgic for a past they’ve never seen. Chell, who presumably has seen the past, feels slightly unnerved looking at them, as if they expect something from her. Luckily, on the bottom shelf is a handful of spare parts for various machinery. Nothing she needs at the moment, but it’s always good to be prepared if her bike acts up. She nods her agreement and holds out a hand for payment.
As she walks out of the shop, she can’t help the feeling of having left part of herself behind.
* * *
The settlement is nothing like the City ruins. It’s much smaller, for one, with only a handful of buildings reaching more than three stories, and cobbled streets meant for bikes and pedestrians rather than bigger vehicles. Mostly, though, it isn’t crumbling before her eyes. Living people chat on street corners, windows are clean and gleaming in the evening sun, plants are kept in check and prettily displayed. Most of the larger buildings have rooftop gardens; leafy branches hang over the sides, allowing passersby to snag a fruit or flower if they’re feeling cheeky.
None of it gives Chell that same back-of-her-mind itch the old ruins do. Everything is this strange mix of rustic and sleek: flowers and gardens mingling with faintly glowing algae tanks and deep black solar panels set into walls and windows; trees shading the streets as hoverbikes and tiny electric cars crowd underneath; children with scraped knees and grass-stained clothes playing with hologram devices that cheerfully and stupidly croak out canned phrases (Chell had learned quickly that they were nothing like Her). Chell can only assume it’s a better world than the one she left behind – that world had destroyed itself, after all, and left behind toxins that still sour the earth – but it isn’t hers. This place, alive as it is, is alien to her.
Still, this is where she finds herself returning again and again. Chell doesn’t have a home, but the settlement is the closest she has to a place. There are bigger cities out there – proper metropolises, with forested skyscrapers and wide streets and everything – but most communities are small farming villages like this one, and all are further away from the Facility.
She keeps her head down as she walks. No one tries to stop and speak with her; they know her for the stranger she is.
There is a small inn in the center of town, with room for only a handful of guests (which is generally more than the Settlement sees in a month). Chell practically has a standing reservation there. With how much she travels, keeping a place of her own would be silly, but the innkeeper, like Marla, has come to recognize her face and know her preferences. They exchange keys and currency with only a nod and a gruff noise in greeting; Chell finds herself quite enjoying the exchange. Even she requires some kind of human interaction, she supposes. This ought to set her up for the rest of the week.
In her room – and it is her room, in all but name – Chell kicks off her long-fall boots and falls into bed. She is asleep in seconds, the aria playing as soundtrack as her mind goes dark.
* * *
She comes awake to cacophony.
Flailing her way out of bed, feeling naked and vulnerable without her boots, Chell frantically turns to find the source of the noise.
“…ello? Can anyone hear me? We need help. I can see that Aperture has come back online but I can’t reach the Facility, and I don’t know for how much longer we’ll last. We’re running out of power and there’s nothing out here to help, not even air! Can you believe that? I mean, of course there isn’t any air in a vacuum but you’d still think–”
The voice cuts off with a crackle, is quiet for a handful of seconds, then starts over.
It’s coming from the TV in the corner of the room (technically it’s smart screen; TV and computer and communications device all in one, but Chell prefers to think of it as a TV). The screen is all white noise and static like crawling ants. Heart still thumping in her chest, Chell marches up to it and hits the off-button; the screen goes black, crackles once, then switches right back to static and the voice of a stranger.
“…need help. I can see that Aperture has come back online but I–”
Chell twitches involuntarily at the name of that place. Figures that it would follow her all the way out here.
She’s tempted to tear the whole setup from the wall and give it a good old stomping, but that would probably mean the end of her standing room in an inn that knows exactly how she wants her breakfast (fatty and fried and brought directly to her door, thank you very much). Instead she glares at it, puts on her boots, picks up her bag, and leaves the room.
And immediately realizes she’s in much deeper shit than she imagined.
The message is everywhere. Two more room doors stand open, guests ambling blearily toward the reception for help, and Chell can hear the same noise from behind closed doors, all over the inn. Clearly this is bigger than her.
Chell doesn’t like that.
She doesn’t stop in the reception like she’d planned, instead sweeping past the other visitors and out the front door.
A wall of noise greets her. She hadn’t even known the settlement had an emergency broadcast system. Now, it’s impossible to miss: that same message has not only intercepted seemingly every single TV, radio, and handheld comm-device (not phones, no one calls them phones these days, just comms, which is a silly made-up word Chell refuses to use), but is also blaring from cleverly concealed speakers on street corners, filling the entire town with a woman’s crackled voice on loop.
“…can’t reach the Facility, and I don’t know for how much longer we’ll–”
Chell slaps her hands over her ears and heads for Marla’s shop. The closer she gets, the less crackle there is, white noise clearing out until the message is crystal clear. It’s just a matter of time before someone else figures out how to follow it to the source.
Just as she thinks that, the message cuts out. What would normally feel like peaceful night silence now strikes her as almost unnatural as it envelopes the settlement. Did the device finally break? Did someone manage to shut it off? Did someone take it away?
Chell speeds up, and already has a hand raised to bang on the locked door – it is the middle of the night, after all – when she speed-walks up to the shop. Instead, she’s faced with a lit display window and the door left ajar. Heart thumping, somehow expecting robots with glowing optics and sharp pincers, she flings it all the way open.
Two faces turn abruptly to her; luckily, neither is made of metal, and both have the decency to display an even number of eyes. Behind the desk is Marla, who’s clearly stayed up well past closing to fiddle with her new toy, and in front of it stands a strange red-haired woman, middle-aged with the toned physique of a runner. They’re huddled over two halves of a metal ball, cracked open on the checkout desk like a ripe and disturbingly symmetrical piece of fruit. Marla’s fingers are still buried up to the knuckles in its shiny wire-guts. Her face stony, Chell points at it.
“That’s mine.”
Mel blinks at the woman who has just barged into the shop. She looks to be in her mid to late twenties, tan and dark-haired with steely eyes that make the back of Mel’s neck prickle as if she’s being eyed up by a predator that hasn’t yet decided whether she’s prey.
“Nuh-uh.” The shopkeeper wraps her arms around the pieces of the strange device and hugs it close. “I payed you. It’s mine.”
The stranger, still glaring, stomps up to the register and slaps a handful of bills on the countertop. In doing so she all but elbows Mel out of the way, not giving her as much as a look, which is unfortunate since Mel had been in the process of giving up most of half a year’s worth of salaries to buy the damned thing. She tries to lean forward, tapping her writing tablet to call attention. Neither of the women cares; the shopkeeper is arguing loudly and the newcomer is digging through her bag before unearthing some kind of half-rusted mechanical device and slamming it down next to the money. She points at the split-open sphere again.
“Mine. Or I’m not coming back.”
“I payed you fairly,” the shopkeeper complains, but her voice is whining and her shoulders slump. Even having known her for only minutes, Mel can tell she’s buckling. The newcomer must hold a lot of sway here. Or maybe she’s just good at taking up space.
Mel slaps her own palm against the countertop, hard enough to sting. She cringes while doing it – she was raised better than acting out like this – but isn’t about to roll over and give in just because politeness failed her. Finally the other woman acknowledges her, albeit only with the barest of glances. Not wanting to lose her attention by writing out a message – and, frankly, being too frustrated to take her time – Mel signs, with heavy emphasis to show her feelings even to those who don’t know sign language, “It’s mine.”
“No it’s not,” the woman snaps back. Then she stops, as if surprised by her own words, before her expression goes carefully blank. By her side, her hand moves slightly, half-shaping words in an almost experimental manner, as if reminding itself of a language it thought forgotten. She turns her eyes from Mel. “I brought it in. Didn’t think it could do more than play the one song. If it can actually receive messages, it’s worth more than she payed me for it.”
Much more, judging by the exorbitant amount the shopkeeper had demanded Mel pay compared to the fairly small sum the woman offered for it. Of course, Mel had stumbled in off the street, sweaty and wearing only a jacket over her pajamas, demanding to know where the message was coming from. Any saleswoman worth her salt would jack up prizes by the double when a customer was that desperate.
Retroactively, it’d been foolish to not have kept her head cool. She’d just been caught so off guard, not only by being rudely woken but also by the message itself. It mentioned Aperture. Nowhere has she either seen nor heard the company name dropped since escaping three years ago; part of her almost thinks the entire experience a dream. She’s found no mention of it in historical records (though to be fair, most records are very lacking) and whenever she tries carefully lifting the subject people look at her as if she’s insane. All remains of the before-times are either toxic waste pits or crumbling ruins, they assure her. Fully functioning, sentient robots? A Facility keeping itself going in perpetuity? Don’t be silly. Is she feeling alright? Does she maybe need a bit more support in her daily life? They’d all be so very happy to help.
Now, finally, here’s a chance at real, solid information. Mel isn’t about to let it slip through her fingers.
She slams the countertop again; the shopkeeper’s face goes all scrunched up and prune-like. The newcomer just breathes out slowly through her nose in a sigh, vaguely annoyed. Since she clearly understands her, Mel doesn’t bother with her slate.
“That thing is important,” she signs. “It’s from someplace dangerous. Someone there needs help.”
She gives the last few motions extra weight, hoping to appeal to the woman’s humanity. She doesn’t look impressed.
“I know where it’s from,” she says, signing along with her words this time. “And I’m not going to let that place wake back up.” She turns back to the shopkeeper, holding her hands out in a demanding gesture. Reluctantly, the woman shoves the two halves across the counter towards her.
For a moment, Mel is too stunned to protest the exchange taking place. Instead she takes a step back, fully taking the stranger in for the first time, tip to toe. Her eyes widen when she notices the boots on her feet. Much sleeker than the pair that lies tucked in the bottom of Mel’s closet, but undeniably of a similar design. Long-fall boots. Aperture equipment.
The woman has finished her purchase – if you can call it that – and is already striding toward the door, jerkily trying to shove the two halves of the sphere into her bag without stopping. Coming to her senses, Mel throws herself in front of her.
She doesn’t have a sign for ‘Aperture’, so instead she spells it out one letter at a time, eyebrows raised in a perhaps slightly desperate question. Do you know it? she doesn’t have to ask. If this stranger does know it, if she’s been there, she won’t need the question spelled out.
At last, the woman’s eyes goes wide in realization. She glances back at the shopkeeper, who’s grumbling and loudly banging about behind the register, clearly wanting them to leave. Gaze darting back, the woman gives Mel a sidelong, narrow-eyed look, as if taking her measure. Then she jerks her head toward the door and starts moving again.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Mel follows her outside.
* * *
The woman leads her to a small inn – the village’s only inn, as far as Mel knows – without speaking a single other word. Mel stays half a step behind the whole way, nearly stepping on her heels, having to hold herself back from clinging to the woman’s elbow like a child scared to get lost. The inside of her head is buzzing with possibilities, and she’s terrified of losing this one thread to a past she’d thought completely and forever gone. She wants to bombard her with questions.
When they enter the reception, a frazzled-looking woman shoots up from behind the desk.
“Chell! Do you know what any of that was about? It just stopped and I–”
She stops abruptly when the stranger – Chell, apparently – just glances at her, this coldly detached look to her eyes. She gives a single shake of her head, not even slowing down, like the receptionist isn’t worth her attention. The woman shrinks back in her chair.
“Okay then. Um, if you hear anything…”
Chell raises a hand in acknowledgment, not turning around. Mel glances at the receptionist as she hurries after. They exchange uneasy smiles and a little wave.
Once she and Chell finally arrive in what she presumes to be the Chell’s room, door closed and locked between them and the rest of the world, Mel is unable to bear the silence any longer. She taps the floor with her toe to draw attention and then points at herself.
“I’m Mel.” She spells the name out with her fingers. “You have no idea how happy I am to meet you.”
Chell, who seems unable to slow down even now that they’ve reached their goal, is jerkily clawing through the contents of one of the dusty bags that lies discarded by the side of her unmade bed. She glances at Mel as she pulls out and opens a cooler bag.
“Chell,” she says, either not realizing or not caring that Mel has already picked as much up.
She offers no further information. Mel shifts from one foot to the other, then awkwardly signs, “Cool.”
From the cooler bag emerges – two cans of beer. Mel blinks in surprise as Chell snaps one open and takes a long swig before tossing the other to Mel, who catches it without fumbling. You don’t survive Aperture with slow reflexes.
Chell all but falls into the room’s only chair, gesturing for Mel to sit on the bed.
“So.” She takes another drink, slower this time as if to let herself breathe. Mel suspects she’s a lot more upset than she lets on; a perfectly calm person doesn’t empty half a can of beer in one go. “Let’s talk.”
Mel slowly sits on the bed, careful not to spill as she opens her can and takes a sip. As an athlete who’s spent most of her life getting up at ungodly hours – the running track is always at its most peaceful at dawn – she’s never been the biggest fan of alcohol. This, however, seems like the kind of conversation where it’s required. She grimaces at the taste before placing her can on the bedside table. She can do basic signing one-handed, but this isn’t shaping up to be a basic conversation.
“You’ve been down there, haven’t you? You must’ve been, if this is your reaction to even hearing about it.” She gestures to Chell’s drink, which she’s clutching with whitened knuckles. Chell glares at it as if it snitched on her.
“Yeah,” she finally admits. “Got out a few years back. You…” She hesitates. “Did you meet Her?” She says the last word strangely, like it’s capitalized, more a name than a pronoun. When Mel only blinks at the question, she reluctantly adds, “Glados.”
Mel opens her mouth in an ‘oh’, then shakes her head. “Virgil told me about her. Said she was a monster, but that someone killed her.”
A smile tugs at Chell’s lips. It makes her look kind of scary. “Someone. Yeah.”
She doesn’t ask about Virgil, but there’s no gleam of recognition in her eyes at the mention of his name either. Mel narrows her eyes at her.
“Did you meet her?”
“Killed her and resurrected her.”
They stare at each other. Eventually, Chell sighs.
“I’m guessing you woke up from relaxation down there too?” She waits for Mel to nod, then keeps going, her words slow and a bit stilted like she’s unused to speaking. “So the place was a mess, right? When I first woke, it wasn’t. She was still running it, going on with testing even if all the scientists were dead. I got out of my testing track and managed to shut Her down, but some kind of automated system got me and put me back in stasis. The next time I came to, I’m guessing after you got out, something went wrong and She was reactivated.”
Her voice has gone hoarse. She clears her throat, grimaces as she takes another drink. Mel leans forward.
“But you got out that time?”
“Yeah.”
“And she’s still…?”
Chell presses her mouth into a flat line. “Still alive.”
Virgil can’t be happy about that. He’d seemed genuinely scared of her. At the time, Mel had been hard-pressed to imagine anything scarier than the cold, calculated hunting of AEGIS. It hadn’t been the smartest system, but somehow hearing it loudly announce her imminent death was worse, as if she was less a sentient being and more a virus to be systematically wiped out. If this Glados is worse, Mel doesn’t much want to meet her. She decides to change the subject, hoping to relax Chell a little.
“If you came from… down there, too, how come you can…” She hesitates, then gently places a hand on her throat. Chell shrugs.
“Couldn’t, at first. Voice was gone when I woke up. It came back after a while, but there wasn’t much point in talking down there, and no one for me to really speak with up here, either. I don’t get much practice.” A small furrow appears between her brows. “Still gets stuck, sometimes. Like there’s something – between my brain and my mouth. Keeping the words back.”
Mel nods, making a gesture that doesn’t really mean anything but also clearly communicates “I feel you”.
“That why you learned sign language?” she asks, and Chell looks confused for a moment before it visibly clicks.
“Oh. No, never learned it. I get by, always do. I think I… I probably knew it, before. Didn’t even realize before tonight when I saw you use it.”
“You–” Mel cuts the sign off, frowns, changes direction. “Probably?”
“Don’t remember.”
Mel stares at her. Chell stares back.
“You remember–”
“You don’t–”
They start and stop both at once. Chell shakes her head.
“Nothing before the Facility. Just – woke up. That’s it.”
“Nothing?”
Chell shrugs. It’s a wholly unsatisfactory answer, which is a shame because it appears to be Chell’s favorite mode of communication. Mel leans over her knees and wheezes a laugh. It’s a breathless, choked sort of sound, fittingly desperate in quality. Chell sits quietly and waits her out.
“This is so ironic,” she finally signs. Her gestures must be a bit slurred, her hands still shaking with a near frantic reaction, but Chell seems to be following alright. “I finally meet someone from my time and you don’t even remember it.”
“What year was it for you?”
“1952.”
Chell frowns. “That feels early. I think it was probably later, for me.”
“Probably, yeah. I was one of their first test subjects. It seemed the right thing to do, furthering science and all that. Didn’t expect to get stuck in stasis for a few centuries.”
“One of their first? Wait, were you one of their Olympians or astronauts, then?”
Mel makes a face. She doesn’t much like talking about her days as a professional athlete. The ugly end to it still stings, even centuries later. At least that’s one good thing about living in the future: no one to recognize her and look all sad and disappointed about her squandered potential.
“Olympian,” she signs reluctantly.
“Shit.” Chell falls back in her chair, appraising Mel with new eyes. “No wonder they got into trouble if they just stuck you people in vaults and left you there. They were stuck scraping the bottom of the barrel at the end, you know. Picking people off the street and forcing employees into testing.” A coldly amused smile twists her lips. “Wasn’t very good for employee retention, I hear.”
“You know a lot about that place for someone with no memory.”
Something dark crosses Chell’s face. She looks away as she speaks.
“Got stuck in Old Aperture for a bit. There were… recordings.”
“Those things were still around?” At Chell’s questioning look, Mel adds, “They were the first thing I heard when I got there. That man, Cave Johnson?” She painstakingly spells his name out. “He kept telling me how important I and my contribution were. Not important enough to meet me in person, though.”
“Sounds just like him.”
They drink in silence for a bit, processing the new information. Chell finishes her beer and opens a new one, generously offering one to Mel, too. Unused to drinking, Mel is already starting to feel fuzzy.
“I wish I could forget too, sometimes.” She realizes too late the insensitivity of her words and winces. But Chell doesn’t look upset – or rather, her face remains that chilly neutral expression it’s had since she first walked into the junkshop. If it doesn’t bother her, Mel decides not to be bothered by it, either.
“There’s so much to miss, and no one to talk to about it. It’s silly, but I miss talking about sports, you know? No one here even knows what the Olympics are. It’s all magneto ball this and virtual kickball that.”
Chell squints at her, clearly not following. Makes sense; no reason for her to know the signs for concepts that didn’t exist back when she first learned the language. Mel quirks a smile. Most of spoken English is similar enough to the way people spoke in the fifties, but she’s run across a lot of slang and specific terminology that leaves her scratching her head. She assumes it’s the same with ASL – not that it’s called that anymore, America being a thing of a bygone era and all – she just hasn’t noticed because she didn’t learn it until after waking up in this time.
“It’s lonely,” she adds. “Not as scary anymore, but lonely.”
Chell’s face has gone back to being coldly neutral. Mel has a feeling it takes a lot for her to get scared. Maybe that’s how she survived the Facility.
They’re both decently drunk when Mel finally asks, “What was she like?”
Chell doesn’t answer right away. The longer their conversation runs on, the more time she takes with her words.
“She’s… large,” she finally says. “Devastating. Dangerous. Controlling. Mean. She was everywhere. You need to understand, she wasn’t in charge of the Facility, She was – is – the Facility. Without Her it was dead, rotting. With Her, it’s alive.”
“That’s… bad?”
“It’s terrifying. Even when She can’t see you, She can sense you, like you’re a flea crawling on Her back, and you know it’s only a matter of time before She gets around to dealing with you. You’re inside her. The very floor you walk on hates you. She’s both what’s trying to kill you and what keeps you alive, if only to make you suffer. You’re either nothing to Her, just a tiny cog in Her testing machine, or you’re everything, the only thing She focuses on, and She will use all that focus to try and kill you and both hate you and admire you for not lying down and letting Her, because everyone else died so easily that it’s like – like – like She thinks you’re doing it just to spite Her.”
Despite the harsh words, there’s something like awe in Chell’s voice. For the first time, Mel realizes that there isn’t actually anything keeping either of them to this place, this specific village, except that it’s the closest settlement to the Facility. Like neither of them has really left.
Mel could’ve moved away, could even have gone back to Germany – not that it’s called that, anymore – but that place deep in the dirt is her only connection to her life before. The same isn’t true for Chell, who should have no reason to feel tied to a time she has no memory of. Perhaps what keeps her here is the Facility itself. Maybe it’s some kind of toxic home to her, if it’s the first thing she knew.
“When are we going back?” Mel asks.
Chell goes unsettlingly still. When she speaks, her voice is low and dangerous. “Back?”
“The message,” Mel reminds her. “Someone down there needs help.”
“I’m not going back.”
Mel stares at her, shocked. “But they need help. You know what it’s like to be stuck there, and if this Glados is really as bad as you say, then we can’t just leave them.”
Chell says nothing. Her eyes have gone cold. It’s like meeting the gaze of a corpse. Anger heats inside Mel’s chest.
“Why did you take that receiver thing back, then?”
“I didn’t know it still worked,” Chell snaps. “It wasn’t any more than a music box when I found it. If it’s still a part of that place, then it’s mine. I’ve earned as much.”
“But you won’t go back.”
“Never.”
“You will just leave them.”
Chell sets her jaw. “I got out. So did you. They can, too. I’m not anybody’s rescue party.”
Mel can only watch her, stunned. She doesn’t know why she expected better from this woman. Maybe she just wanted the only other person who could possibly understand what she went through to be a little bit less of an asshole, and ignored all the warning flags.
She stands up.
“Thanks for the beer. I should go home. I’ve got work in the morning.”
Chell doesn’t stop her. Doesn’t say bye. Just raises one hand in a half-hearted wave before turning to the bag containing the two halves of the metal sphere, brow already furrowed in thought as she starts digging them out. Mel closes the door when she leaves. A plan is already taking form in her less than sober mind.
The receptionist is still awake if bleary-eyed at the front desk, so Mel stops to leave quick message. If her idea goes bad she might not come back, and she’s left enough people behind without them ever knowing what happened. Chell might not deserve the heads up, but Mel was raised too well to just leave her hanging, whether she’s a terrible person or not.
She has to use her slate to communicate – everyone here learns some sign language in school, she’s found, but most everyone has so little use of it in their daily lives that they hardly remember how to do more than fingerspell – but the receptionist is happy enough to take a message.
“I never see her with other people,” she says, speaking of Chell as she hands Mel a pen and a piece of paper, a technology which has thankfully yet to become obsolete. “It’s nice to see she has a friend.”
The sky is still dark when Mel steps out on the street, but dawn can’t be more than a few hours away. Enough time for Mel to get home and take a quick nap before setting her probably stupid plan into motion.
She does, in fact, have work in the morning – she assists at a small shop nearby, twenty hours a week, plus some volunteer work at a local community garden, which seems like a ludicrously short work week to her but which is apparently perfectly average in this time – but she has no intentions of going. Instead she sends a message about a particularly bad flu to her shift manager, knowing he won’t read it until the workday starts, and packs a bag.