She was taunting her.
Of course, this in itself was nothing new. From the very first time Her jerky, constrained voice had echoed from the hidden speakers and told Chell in no uncertain terms that the device in her hands was worth more than she was, thinly-veiled insults had been pretty much par for the course, along with endless passive-aggressive digs about her unenviable situation and cracks at her self-esteem.
Fat- she knew damn well she wasn't- stupid- the evidence suggested otherwise- adopted- she didn't remember either way and wouldn't have cared much even if she had- unlikeable- with no other humans around or even alive as far as she'd known, back then, she hadn't given a damn if she was. That had always been the ridiculous thing about Her taunts, the thing which had always caused them to fall so far short of the mark. As aggravating as they were, it was as if they had been thought up to hurt someone living a normal life in a normal place, someone less worried about how to survive the lake full of acid in the next chamber than they were about how big their arse looked in their new jeans.
This was different.
Chell stared dully at the gaping hole in the chamber wall. It looked as if a couple of the jointed arms behind the panels had just given up the ghost mid-build- the panels themselves stuck out at ugly angles from the surface, forming an irregular hole. On the other side she could see a warren of stripped rebar walls, red-lit mesh, nooks and crannies full of bare wires and piles of scrap and scattered containers- a tantalising glimpse into the world behind the scenes.
The faulty arms fizzed and twitched, sparking gently, for all the world as if they had only just happened to malfunction a few moments before she'd flung through a portal on the angled wall opposite and landed, crouched and hard-breathing, on this very spot. It all looked very natural and accidental, and suspicious as hell.
Come on in, said the hole. Break the rules... if you dare.
Chell made herself turn away, walked slowly to the furthest point of the narrow ledge. This part of the chamber was barely ten feet across and easily two hundred feet high. It had taken her a long time to work her way up this far; her legs from the knees down ached dull grey murder and the half-healed place on her ribs had started to yell fresh outrage. She'd brought a single cube this far, dragged it up every single convoluted, trap-filled level of this towering chamber. Now, she set a tired foot against it, got ready to shove it off the edge of the thin walkway.
"Is there something wrong up there? Because if there is something wrong up there, I can't see it. I guess I should have put a camera up there, because if there is something wrong up there, someone could just walk right out and I'd never even know."
Another angled panel, another portal, another jaw-clenching run-up and swan-dive into empty space. She twisted as she fell, the cube turning end-over-end ahead of her, bringing her knees up sharply and tucking the portal device against her chest. She plunged level after level through a yawning column of dry, dead air, the blue-framed oval at the very bottom rushed up to meet her and- thht- the world twisted inside out and she staggered to a painful heels-first stop on the highest ledge. The cube bounced off the wall ahead, tumbled back to a standstill at her feet.
"Oh, remember just now when I said I couldn't see what was going on? I lied. I can see everything in there. I'm still surprised you didn't go for it, though. I would have thought that the kind of person who would happily choose to abandon their only friend to a hideous, fiery death would have no problem with leaving one hundred and fourteen innocent people to die just to save their own skin. But hey, it's your decision. Maybe they owe you money."
There was an exit-lock, a flat, floor-mounted button. Chell dumped the cube (paid for in full with one brain-bending timing puzzle and a dangerous skid through a slick of gel to reach the dispenser, costing her a painful assortment of bruises and half the skin off her left palm) and watched the neat track of cold blue dots flick to orange between the button and the exit. The cross symbol cycled to a tick, and the exit-lock slid open to reveal the rippling surface of an Emancipation Grid, and a waiting elevator beyond.
