Subject 3281; Chell's Story

Her Injury

A melody.

A strange, static-riddled melody. It didn't belong here. Wait, where exactly was here? It was most certainly not the test chamber, nor was it— wait, there were things to be seen now, a wooden dresser, a radio and...

A girl. Yes there was a girl, standing in a small room before a mirror standing atop the dresser. Her face... what did she look like? Never mind, the oddly entrancing melody continued through the static. No, no look, the girl's face could be seen now. She was young, thirteen, fourteen at most. Her long, dark hair was currently being combed through by means of a hairbrush in the girl's hand. She had opened her mouth. The melody had reached a sort of climax. Did that mean—

Two voices started singing in tune; one male and full of static, the other female; light, clear, and airy.

"Sun is shining in the sky, there ain't a cloud in sight. It's stopped rainin', everybody's in the play, and don't you know, it's a beautiful new day! Hey hey hey!"

A sudden throbbing—no, piercing pain. Did the girl feel it too? No, I—she sang on, undisturbed. More pain, a flaming iron seemed to be pushing into the head of the beholder.

The vision of the contented girl and her radio slowly faded to black, and the beholder of the vision retreated, slowly but surely back into consciousness.

~ — — — — — — — — — — — — ~

A voice. A male voice. Not hindered by static this time, nor singing along with a young girl. No, this voice was the familiar push that drove that vision farther and farther into the unexplored depths of the mind of Subject 3281.

"'81? '81? Oh G— '81, can you hear me? C'mon now, don't leave me hanging..."

Subject 3281 could feel herself slowly regaining the uses of her mental faculties, though she was still a bit groggy, and more than a bit confused about the scene she had just witnessed. That girl... she knew that girl, and yet— a searing pain shot through the middle of her head and she felt herself wince. The wave of pain that came after that was mostly centered around the front middle and left side of her head, where she supposed she must've been hit when—

"'81? Thank God! 'Cmon, wake up now. We've still got a test to finish, you and I, remember? I can't do this alone; I need you—wow, that's depressing—I need you!" At those words Subject 3281 began to open her eyes. Yes, they still had a test to finish, and if she was still breathing, she still had a duty to complete it. When her vision eventually came into focus, she found herself looking up into the face of her partner. He had apparently propped her up against the back wall of the crevice she had fallen into after she had hit her head in that ledge.

"Please proceed to the Fifteen Hundred Megawatt Aperture Science Heavy Duty Super-Colliding Super Button, then move quickly to the chamberlock, as the effects of prolonged exposure to the Button are not part of this test." Subject 3281 gritted her teeth. She was starting to dislike the sound of their new female 'guide's' voice; the faint note of irony in the formerly colorless words, the subtle traces of cruel humor in its—in Her—inflections, though hard to catch, spoke of an intellect and power barely restrained by those feeble-minded enough to have created Her in the first place.

Nevertheless, the voice was right; the test still needed doing, and she wasn't making that process any easier by laying around. Subject 3281 struggled to get into a proper upright position, but a sudden jarring stab of pain exploded behind her temples, as well as deep within the center of her skull. She pressed her right hand to her forehead, as if she could staunch the ebbing flow of pain and blood that had originated there, though she only succeeded in enraging it. She winced again, groaned slightly, and drew her hand away; feeling warm, sticky blood beneath and between her fingers. She let her eyes close once more, releasing a torrent of speech from her companion's lips.