The Fox Test Subject (OC X Portal)

Part 2: Wake Up

Years had past, more than anyone could count, but Nora had only grown a little bit. The last time she was awake, she had been in a large bedroom, curled up in a ball on a queen size bed, wearing a pink Aperture Science tee shirt and dark blue jean shorts. Caroline had put her here to rest for a while, and never came back. Nora heard a loud creak, starling her, and waking her from her slumber. She looked around the room, everything was much older, broken and falling apart, covered in a thick layer of dust. 

Nora got up and looked around. The floor boards creaked as Nora carefully stepped through the room. A floor board broke away, falling far beneath the small room. Nora looked down through the hole, beneath her room was many other rooms, all old and falling apart. A male voice spoke over the P.A.

Announcer- "Welcome back. You have been in suspension for; 9,9,9,9 — Warning, catastrophic core failure imminent. All personal please evacuate."

Nora panicky hearing this. Just then, the floor beneath her gives away and she falls a long distance before crashing through the roof of another room. She lands on a soft cushion like substance, expecting the end, but feels nothing but softness. She opens her eyes to see she landed in a room full of perfectly preserved, feather soft pillows.

Nora- "Wow, I'm so lucky that happened."

She gets up and climbs out of the room. She walked for a bit before she finds a room made of pure white panels. In the middle is a pedestal with a starve device on it. Nora walks over to it and picks it up.

She sticks her hand in the open end and grabs a handle with a trigger. She pulled the trigger and a blast of blue light shot at the wall, making a large blue oval on the door. Nora feels a button and presses it, the blue light changes to orange. She fired the gun again at a different spot, leaving an orange oval with an image on the other side, and the blue oval had changed, it was showing another white room. Nora walked over to it and stuck her hand through it, it came out the orange oval. Nora pulled her hand out of the oval, wondering if she could go through the whole thing.

She took a deep breath, let it out, and ran through the blue oval, coming out the orange one. She looked at the device and wiped off some dirt, reveling black lettering that read; Aperture Science Hand Held Portal Device.

Nora- "It's a Portal gun? This'll be useful."

She noticed a box sitting in the corner. She walked over to it and opened it. Inside was a pair of strange looking boots.

On the side of the box it read; Aperture Science Long Fall Boots.

Nora- "Hm, these could be useful as well."

Nora takes off her sneakers and puts on the long fall boots. She takes a few steps in the boots, having trouble keeping balance, stumbling and falling on her face. She gets back up and catches her balance, taking a couple more steps and feeling more confident with the boots she now wears. For a few minutes, Nora experiments around with the portal gun, learning that the portals only work on white surfaces, even if those surfaces are dirty it still works. She messed around and played with the portal gun for a while.

Suddenly, the room shook, beginning to disassemble itself, the dirty white panels making up the walls and roof shifted and moved away, revealing the rest of the facility, large rooms and structures, all assembling themselves, the wall pieces appearing to be attached to mechanical parts, everything assembling itself perfectly. The platform Nora was standing on began to shift and disassemble, leaving Nora to stand on a singular plate. She knew she couldn't stay here, that she would soon need to eat something. She looked down off the edge of the platform, it was a long fall to the ground, and among Nora's many childish fears was high places. She clung to the stand that once carried the portal gun. 

The platform began to tilt, turning vertical. Nora clung to the poll, which now began to unscrew itself. Everything confused her, did she do something? What was happening? The poll finished unscrewing itself, sending Nora falling into the depths of the facility. Nora looked around as she was falling to her doom. Then it hit her, she still had the portal gun! She aimed at a white painted wall and fired a blue portal onto it.

She looked down beneath her and shot her orange portal onto a white platform. Nora fell through the orange portal and came out the blue just as fast, sending her flying onto a catwalk.

Nora- "Ok... so, speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out. Good to know."

She walked along the platform, alone, watching as Aperture sprung to life once more, as androids started walking along the platforms, working on their own, and the spheres moved along their rails. Nora couldn't remember what the spheres were called, something with a C. She noticed that there weren't many robots, most of them must be damaged beyond repair or destroyed entirely. Nora walked along until she came across a large door labeled; G.L.a.D.O.S Central Operating System.

Nora remembered that Caroline and Mr Johnson would talk about something called Project GLaDOS a lot. She never knew what it was, besides, it was in development while Nora was only ten, she probably wouldn't have understood what it was. She stood by the door, grabbing the handle and opening it. Inside was a dark control room, with a skeleton sitting in a chair by a control panel. Nora walked up to the window by the control panel, the other side of the glass was pitch black, until a bright yellow light shone into the control room.

???- "Hello, and welcome to the Aperture Science Computer Aided Enrichment Center. I am GLaDOS, the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. Hmm, lets see what exactly you are."

The yellow light looked right at Nora, examining her short, slim body from the tips of her pointed fox ears to the end of her large soft tail.

GLaDOS- "Hmm, you seem to be in proper physical conditions for testing, although much heavier than I initially read on your file, and you have a portal gun and long fall boots. I think you'll do fine, for now."

A trap door opened beneath Nora and she fell for a large chamber, with a large red button on the floor, an exit door, and a tube attached to the roof. A box fell from the tube, and GLaDOS spoke.

GLaDOS- "We're going to have fun, with science!"