Subject 3281; Chell's Story

The Question of Humanity

The boy took longer than usual to take his place beside her, and Subject 3281 had grown so impatient while waiting for him that by the time he actually did show up, she refused to acknowledge him in any way, and instead stepped through the newly opened chamberlock ahead of him, and sat down on her cot next to her yellow-striped portal gun.

As soon as she had properly positioned herself on the stiff sheets covering it, she inserted her arm into the hole on her left. Her mouth twitched as a thousand little needling things—what they were exactly she didn't know—danced and played across the underside of her left forearm as they did every night and day; removing the schedule that was printed there, and filling her veins with enough nutrients to sustain her 'till morning.

When the process had been completed, Subject 3281 removed her arm, giving it a slight shake and rubbing-down in an attempt to disperse the lingering itch the procedure had left in place of her schedule. With that done, she finally looked over to her partner on the cot across from her. He was staring at her as he had been before—with a mix of apprehension and resentment clear on his face—though while his earlier glare had only served to give her a slight surprise; the look on his face now made her blood boil.

Why was he pointing such a poisonous glare her way? Didn't he have something, anything, to do other than to stare at her? Why couldn't he scowl at the floor, or the chamberlock, or that blasted back wall? No, she thought as she felt the beginnings of a headache forming at the base of her scull, no, not the wall.

Subject 3281 stared her partner down; her anger re-kindled by the sudden throbbing in her temples which was—if not excruciating—at least quite annoying. Not unlike the boy who sat on the cot before her's.

After the two had been glaring at each other for almost four minutes, Subject 3281 finally became fed up with her usual silent approach. She liked to get places after all, and this staring contest wouldn't get the two anywhere.

"What?" She asked, more than a hint of malice coloring her voice. "What is that look for?" It was as if she had detonated one of Aperture's patented Aperture Science Bomb-For-Throwing.

Needless to say, the boy exploded.

"The look?" He yelled, and let out an almost hysterical laugh. "The look? This look that we're exchanging right now? Let me think," he said, face growing redder by the second. "I was taken from my family over half a year ago; forced to participate in these mindless logic puzzles alone for no reason whatsoever; the only decent roommate I had was terminated because of these people's stupid rules; and then... you show up," he said, practically spitting with rage at this point.

"You show up," he continued, "you, with your roommate's rumors following you, and that unnatural silence of yours. You test and test with impossible determination and strength; and the one time I do try to show you kindness, you brush me off without so much as a word of thanks, and insist on continuing the test! You've never listened to a word I've said, and yet they still have the gall to call us partners." He was breathing quite heavily now, and Subject 3281 wondered how much more shouting his body could take before he passed out.

"Are you done?" She asked dryly.

"Not a chance," the boy growled. "I haven't even mentioned your completely infuriating lack of emotion, your high-and-mighty attitude, and your total surrender and willingness to comply with the good-for-nothing bastards who put us in here together in the first place."

Subject 3281 took his accusations silently. She had no defense; all of the charges the boy had set against her thus far had been justly founded; and, as he had said, nothing he said now or ever was likely to make any impression on her.

"In short," the boy summed up, "you have no consideration for human life; mine or yours." He let out another laugh that sounded dangerously hysterical.

"Heck," he said, "I'm beginning to doubt the fact that you are human! You could be an android, or an illusion, or the creation of my wandering mind, or—"

"No," her word was quiet but affective, and her partner halted his rant and stared at her with a mix of astonishment and anger. Apparently, he hadn't expected his taciturn partner to interfere with the teenage temper tantrum he was currently putting up.

"No," she said again, this time in a more decided tone. "I am not an android, I am not an illusion, and I am not a figment of your—obviously—declining mental state. I. Am. Human."

The boy scoffed. "And how, pray tell, do you plan on proving your point?"

In one swift motion, Subject 3281 put her left hand to the muzzle of her gun and slid it against the three tips of the spikes protruding from it; releasing a spattering of blood onto her white sheets, and leaving three shallow gashes in her left palm. With a slight grimace, she flicked her wounded hand towards her partner, pelting him with droplets of blood. The boy flinched as the drops found their marks across his face and jumpsuit.

Subject 3281 kept her eyes locked on those of her partner as she lifted her left hand to her lips and flicked her tongue out, tasting the blood that had accumulated there.

"Human."

The boy offered up no protest. She had proven her point.

With one last rather wary look at his partner, Subject 3279 lowered his gun to the floor, unstrapped his Longfall boots, and crawled under his blood-flecked sheet.

Subject 3281's lips tightened as her palm re-filled with the scarlet liquid leaking from her three self-inflicted wounds. She swung her legs off the side of her cot and bent over to unstrap her own Longfall boots, ignoring the river of red that snaked down her left hand onto both of them.

With that done, she set her gun on the ground beside them, and drew her sheet up around her in preparation for the night's rest, her left hand curled in a tight fist. She would have to make a bandage in the morning, but she didn't seem in any danger of bleeding out; neither from her head—which had all but scabbed over entirely—nor her hand. Not tonight, at least.

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