Subject 3281; Chell's Story

The Back Wall

Subject 3281 opened her eyes, and scowled. The ceiling was wrong, the room smelled off, and the sheets covering her jumpsuit were most certainly not her own. Where was she, and why had she awoken here instead of—

Ah yes, she remembered, the Co-operative Testing Initiative. Her face relaxed somewhat, though her troubled eyes still showed the state of her mind. Why had she been roused? What had woken her? Then she felt it again. A small vibration passed through the floor, and she could hear the steady breathing of her partner falter as he woke.

The room moved again. Subject 3281 whipped away her sheet, reached for her Longfall boots, and began to strap them on. She could hear rustling from the other bed, and suspected Subject 3279 was doing the same. When she had finished, the room was moving in what she believed to be a continuous downward motion, and she forced her legs to un-tense. They were going to their next chamber, nothing more.

She swung her legs back onto her bed to sit against the wall, and let her head rest on its hard surface. In a few seconds however she brought it back down to look in her partner's direction, where a great rustling could again be heard. Her partner had moved back onto his bed—he had apparently been standing before—and had inserted his left forearm into the hole on his wall.

Subject 3281 gave herself a mental scolding for neglecting her own, and proceeded to do likewise, slightly surprised to feel her breakfast being pumped into her, instead of being delivered at a later time. She grew even more surprised—and rather incredulous—when she withdrew her arm to find three things, and only three things listed on her schedule.

Subject 3281
800: Hygienic break
840: Begin training
2100: hygienic break, sleep

She wondered as she examined her schedule again, if this strange new Testing Initiative would last long. The longest that she had been involved in one of Aperture's pilot tests for a new initiative had been two weeks, and she had always, always tested alone. Her face tensed. Could she survive two weeks of testing with another human being?

Subject 3281 pushed her thoughts to the side however, as the room came to a shuddering stop. She looked to the boy across from her and stood with her back to the wall which had given her such unease last night. The door opened as her partner joined her, and the two came into a room almost identical to the female subject's hygienic center. The only real difference was the cleanliness of the place. There were five stalls, five sinks, tiled floors and ceilings, and a camera in the corner, all shining and clean.

The two headed into separate stalls without a word. Subject 3281 relieved herself, and came out to find her partner washing his hands and face in one of the sinks. She took the closest one to her, and began to do the same, rinsing the crusted sweat from her arms, neck, face, and hair.

With that done, the partners waited in silence. What would happen now? Would they receive orders? As if in answer to her unspoken questions, a small burst of static could be heard, shortly followed by the usual human voice.

"Both subjects will return to the sleeping chambers, and exit at the next training room."

"Our sleeping chamber," the boy said under his breath, casting a venomous glance up at the camera in the upper left corner. "You only gave us one room. To share." Subject 3281 stared up at her partner. His exasperating habit of talking back to the people providing all of his daily needs was going to get him killed, just as Subject 3265, his—former—roommate had been.

Not that she cared. She couldn't afford to care about every brainless male in the Facility, and certainly not the one that she currently worked with.

The two re-entered their sleeping room, and Subject 3281 glanced up at the back wall as they did. It unnerved her no less than when she had first seen it, but she still couldn't say why. As she continued to stare at the wall in an endeavor to discover the source of her discomfort, her head began to throb, and she was forced to look away, baffled as ever.

She moved to her cot as she had the night before and sat, looking down at her boots. The main body of her left boot was white, with a black bottom and toe. The strip of metal that was made to break her fall protruding from the back of her boot was also black. Her right boot looked just about the same, though there was what appeared to be a black scuff mark on the inside near the sole.

Subject 3281 looked up as the room began to move again, this time in a manner that suggested ascent, rather than descent. She took a quick glance at her partner on the opposite wall, and saw that he had registered the change in direction as well. Her eyes strayed across the room. What was going—

She stopped. That wall—that unfathomable back wall—was changing color. Subject 3281 felt her mouth go dry as her headache returned, and in greater proportion than last time. How was it changing? Why was it changing? And most disturbing of all; how had she known to look for the change? For—as much as she would have loved to tell herself otherwise—she had known to look for it, and had found it too, just as—

No, she told herself, these emotions might trigger memories that will interfere with the test. I cannot dwell on them any longer. With that, she shoved her concerns to the back-burner, forced herself to swallow, and turned her attention once again to her life-saving Longfall boots, where it stayed until the room came to a shuddering halt.

Subject 3281 picked herself up, and looked to her partner, who gave her a jerky nod. She returned the gesture, and the two waited before the circular doorway in front of them. The time for testing was at hand.