Subject 3281; Chell's Story

Mr. Blue Sky, Where did We go Wrong?

Fwooft

A purple portal bloomed into existence beside Subject 3281's head so fast she actually flinched. You were doing it again, she chided herself. It's been two full days since your dream about the false wall, and you've been seeing him everywhere. You really shouldn't get hung up on anyone like that.

But he's my birth father, a part of her protested, I have a right to get hung up on him, however it affects my reflexes.

He was a bad person, she reminded herself, and didn't care about you or your birth mother in the least. You shouldn't waste your time or energy on thinking about him; he didn't want you, remember? He put you up for adoption, and if it hadn't been for your Aunt and Uncle—

I suppose you're right, she agreed with herself—wondering for a fleeting moment what her mental debate could have to say about her sanity—picked up a Weighted Storage Cube with the energy field on the tip of her gun, stepped through her partner's purple portal, fell twenty feet onto an Aperture Science Super Colliding Super Button, and placed down the cube. The button let out a satisfying sort of blocky chime, and the—once blue—strip lighting connecting it to the chamberlock now glowed a sunset orange.

It had indeed been two days since she had dreamt of that undeserving man, and her mind needed a break. If she had any more visions or dreams, she felt that her head may explode.

The chamberlock opened with a hiss, and the robotic female voice, Her voice, could be heard over the loudspeaker, bidding them to exit the chamber. The girl turned to face her partner, and—placing her lightest portal on the wall to his left, and her darker one on the ceiling above her—allowed the boy to join her next to the button.

As soon as the two had dropped from the ledge the button was on and onto the floor across from the chamberlock, they began to head for the emancipation grill-covered door. Subject 3281 heard her portal's pop out of existence as she passed through the blue shimmery particle field before the opening that lead—rather surprisingly—to the two's sleeping quarters. She threw a glance at her partner.

That was it? No more testing for today? She thought. I suppose we've filled our quota though, she thought upon further reflection. After all, four tests wasn't all that shabby if you factored in all of the breaks she had taken when visions from the past—or wherever it was that they came from—had threatened to overwhelm her.

She didn't like to factor those in.

As soon as the door of the two's sleeping room closed at her partner's back, the girl allowed herself to relax, if only a tiny bit. They were still being watched after all, and her knowledge of that meant that she would never again have any sort of illusion of privacy. A part of her was glad that she at least knew in what conditions she was living in, while another part of her mourned her previous ignorance. It was true what they said, she realized with a rather painful little tightening-of-the-lips. Ignorance was bliss, but not while you were in the midst of it. You only came to realize how comparatively content—or rather, blissful—you had been during your innocence after that innocence had been completely done away with. The girl continued to brood on subjects such as those—innocence, misery, privacy, depression, and the like—as she moved to her cot, and the room started to descend.

The jerk and then slowing descent of the two's sleeping quarters finally shook Subject 3281 out of her contemplation as she looked to her arm and remembered that her day had not yet finished. She rose from her cot and, leaving her gun behind her, took the three strides necessary in getting to the chamberlock. As soon as the room had made a complete stop the boy joined her before the door. It opened on the sanitation facility with a hiss, and the two entered.