Pete's Story

Pete woke up. Was he in a bathtub with sheets and a pillow? Why did he woke up in there? Trying to understand the situation, he moved his hands up, to meet what appeared to be a glass barrier, he then started searching the insides, finding a lever. He pulled it and the cover popped open.

"Well, guess aperture died" He muttered looking around the abandoned room, to find Angie lying on the floor. Pete got up and tried to see if Angie was alright, but he was still dizzy so he decided to lean against the bathtub shaped bed for a few moments. 'Well, I'm hungry' he thought as he regained his balance and walked up to Angie, he sat down and started poking her lightly to wake her up. "Time to wake up, this place could crumble." Pete said as he heard muffled noises of walls breaking and ceilings caving in above them.

Angie's eyes fluttered open. Someone was poking her... She blinked a few times to clear her vision, and saw Pete looking down at her. She managed a small smile, being glad to see a familiar face.

"Time to wake up, this place could crumble." He told her. Angie looked down at her right hand, now equipped with the dual portal gun. She nodded to Pete, and managed to stand up on wobbly legs. Her long-fall boots helped her to stay balanced as she peered into her the encasing that had been her 'home' for nearly a year. She saw the small synthetic-leather satchel that held freeze dried food. She needed to eat something before she died of starvation. She opened the leather flap over the top, and pulled out a couple bags of trail mix. It looked like a three course meal to her.

She handed one of the bags to Pete, and opened the second for herself. She popped a handful of the dried fruits and nuts in her mouth, swallowing quickly. For all she cared, she had just eaten a full meal. Immediately she felt stronger, and more stable.

"Alright, we need to get moving before the ceiling collapses on us. I think something happened up there." She gestured to the ceiling, then shouldered the her small satchel. "If the elevator isn't out of commission we should be able to get out quickly." She said in a shaky voice.

Angie walked across the small office-like room. Old computers beyond repair sat in the corners of the room. Her feet crunched on old paper, broken glass, and porcelain. An old, stone stairway lead up into one of the more recent parts of Aperture Science. She took her first step up, and froze. She smelled something familiar, and deadly at that. "Neurotoxin..." She muttered quietly.

She climbed the steps, and arrived at the top of the stairway. Her eyes widened. Aperture was not what it used to be...

She found herself on a metal platform, about a hundred feet wide, and a hundred and fifty long. They were surrounded by a lake of muddy brown liquid. Neurotoxin. Around the edge of the platform was a railing. In some places the railing had had become so rusted that it had fallen into the lake. Angie decided not to trust these railings, or even go near them. "What do you make of this?" She asked Pete, gesturing to everything in sight.

Following Angie through the office and up the stairway Pete looked around the platform to find out they were above the deadliest pool they would ever come across. "Apparently they abandoned this place, somehow some neurotoxin tanks ruptured and flooded the room down there" He said, partly answering Angie's question "At least there are no sharks" he added jokingly before getting serious again and started to examine his surroundings.

Below them, a brown pool of deadly neurotoxin, above, a ceiling with a few cracks and broken light bulbs, showing the place's abandonment, with a few vines growing out of some of the cracks on the walls.

"We could try these out" He finally said, showing his portal gun. "This platform doesn't look really safe." he pointed to the rusty areas "We could create a portal on the ground below us and one in the ceiling at the end of the platform, and hope it doesn't break when we fall." Pete explained his quick plan then added "Unless you want to walk across."

Angie gave a short chuckle. At the moment, she didn't want to walk anywhere. "I like the portal idea." She said to Pete with a quick nod. Angie had never actually used a portal gun before... she had never even been in one of the tests she had helped to design. She stared down at the mechanism she'd seen work so many times. It couldn't be that hard... could it?

Angie aimed it at the dirty white surface below her feet, and with a single thought a blue wisp hit the ground, creating an oval shape, about six feet tall, and three feet wide. She stepped off of it, knowing that the moment she shot the second, orange portal, she would be able to fall through the blue opening, and come out of the orange oval. the concept made her head spin. But as she'd been told so many times before, when it came to portal technology, you didn't think about how it worked. You just did it.

A second later she directed the portal gun across the platform, and shot an orange wisp accurately, hitting the ceiling. A wide oval opened itself up. Peering across, through it, she could almost swear she could see herself within it. Angie shivered, and again told herself not to think about how it worked. Portal science had always been something that intrigued her. Just because... she couldn't figure it out. Every law of nature argued against it. And yet...

Angie took a deep breath, and looked down at the blue oval. Now she could see through it, as if she was standing right above the orange portal, looking down at the floor, from the ceiling. Before she could start thinking about it too hard, she jumped into it, and appeared a hundred feet away, falling the eight feet to the ground. With how undernourished she was, that fall would have jarred her, and possibly broken a bone. But luckily the flawlessly designed boots she was wearing took all the impact of the fall, and directed the energy elsewhere.

She heard the platform groan under her weight, but it seemed to hold steady. She waved Pete over, gesturing for him to follow.

Angie glanced around as she waited for her friend. Looking towards the center of the back wall, a circular door stood. Sparks flew from the jammed exit. Angie watched it curiously as it struggled to open and close, but the mechanism was broken. Through it was a dark passageway. This was the only exit unless the two were willing to cross the lake of neurotoxin.



Meanwhile, in decomposing test chamber, the voices of the test subjects filled the void silence. In the otherwise quite outside the small intact section of the Relaxation Center, a metal railway lead through an old door. Other than the bottomless pit, this appeared to be the only exit.

Pete looked at Angie as she walked into the portal, coming out of it on the other side. He walked to the edge of the portal on his side before shouting "Hey Angie, look up". As she saw him and stepped aside. This thing wasn't supposed to exist, it makes no sense, he thought as he looked at the portal. "This can't be that hard" Pete muttered to himself before closing his eyes and walking in as the world seemed to briefly disappear from under his feet, before they met the partly rusted metal platform, that made a terrible sounding noise, like it was screaming in pain because of Pete's weight.

"Well, i guess I'm still pretty heavy even after a year without eating real food" Pete said casually, as another grinding noise started. "This thing is going to break, let's get to the exit, move slowly." He said seriously, pointing at the only door out. "We'll try to open it if we ever get there." He said as he walked cautiously towards the malfunctioning door.

Angie heard her friend warn her as he got ready to portal jump. She moved out from underneath the orange portal, and watched as Pete dropped through, seeming to appear from through the ceiling. Again telling her scientist brain not to think about how portals worked, she quietly agreed that they had to be careful.

She nodded, as Pete gestured to the door struggling to open and close. She pursed her lips, seeing sparks fly out of it in different directions. Angie gingerly walked towards it. She could feel the stability of the platform beneath her increasing as the got closer to the walls. "It's more steady here." She said quietly, fearing that if they stood in one place for too long she or Pete would break through and fall into a lake of deadly poison. Dying of neurotoxin... Not her favorite pass-time.

She cautiously reached the door. Angie figured her best bet was to prop the door open. She examined the floor, and found a suitable candidate; a three foot long pipe. She picked it up in frail hands, and jammed it in between the two electronic sliding doors. The mechanism whirred, no longer able to move. Angie gave a small smile of satisfaction, then started walking through the doors. She suddenly froze. She knew this portion of Aperture like the back of her hand. Through these doors was a huge dome, that seemed the descend endlessly down. Metal railways spanned through empty air, and trailed off like spiderwebs to different sections of Aperture.

She stood back from the door, knowing that there would be a small tube-like lift which, if it was still operational, could bring them higher, where they would need to go if they wanted to get out. But to do that, the acrophobic young scientist would need to cross the railway which lead over the bottomless expanse.

Angie told herself she was being ridiculous. Living and working at Aperture had required her to cross the bridge ways multiple times a day. Even then she had struggled with it. Angie steeled herself to get across it, and grit her teeth. She stepped through the complaining door, and paled at the sight before her. She shut her eyes, and tried not to listen to the echoing creaks, and groans of the decomposing center. The grate she was standing on felt stable enough. She was sure she would be safe to cross. But her paralyzing fear would stop her. She knew it.

She dared to crack an eyelid open, and immediately backed up, and felt for the wall behind her to know she was safe. Angie chastised herself for well-known phobia (In truth she suffered from three). She told herself she was being ridiculous. That didn't stop her from looking anywhere but where she could fall.

Angie forced her fear away, and took her first step out onto the rail that would lead her to the lift. She moved stiffly, then froze completely. On shaky limbs she walked back. "I can't do it." She said, almost angry with herself.

~

While the recently awakened test subjects began to interact, a small mechanical whir echoed through the cavern. The sound reached the ears of Abigail, though the other two, older test subjects remain unaware of it. The sound of metal joints moving against each other also echo out. Again, this is for the most part, unnoticed.

Underneath the old, decomposing bed where Abigail hid. A small red light glowed.

"Hello." The turret's animated voice said clearly.