The forest was alive in the evening. It was summer and every tree was busy as animals went about their business. Suddenly there was a loud boom and everything went silent. Small creatures dived for cover as a flaming streak shot through the canopy, a high garbled shriek coming from it, before it crashed hard into a tree and landed in a burning pile on the ground. When after a minute the smouldering heap didn't move the forest noises began again. The little lump of twisted metal lay beneath the tree, blackened and forgotten.

Chell shot up from her relaxed sprawl on the sofa, shocked out of sleep by a noise she knew all too well.

Blinking away sleep, she glanced around. Her living room was exactly as she'd left it when she'd got in from work. The TV on quietly, creating just enough background noise for it to be relaxing, all doors shut and her laptop sitting charging on her desk. So the loud boom hadn't happened in her house. It hadn't been that noise that woke her properly anyway. It was the terrified scream and the loud sound of crunching metal that followed.

In the eight years she'd lived in her house, she had never heard anything like that. Those noises were the ones that haunted her dreams, the sound of metal folding in on its self, quiet clatters that turned into empty echoes, that background hum that never stopped and showed her that the place was alive and always watching her.

When Chell had eventually stumbled across civilisation she had immediately been swarmed by people, wanting to know what had happened to her. Having, as far as she could remember, never even looked at another human, Chell had panicked and ran, going as far as tackling and punching someone who tried to catch her. It wasn't long before she was carted off by the police. Shocked by the state she was in they took her to a hospital. Then, patched up, clean, all wounds and burns tended to, Chell was taken back to the police station.

Then the questioning started. What had happened to her? Why had her arms been all burnt? What had she been doing wearing an aperture jumpsuit? Aperture had been inactive for decades, hadn't they? And what on earth were those white things she'd had strapped to her feet?

She stared through them all, not answering a single question. She knew that if she did then the authorities that had her under lock and key would want to investigate. That would be just what She would want. More test subjects.

So she never said a word and eventually they realised that this woman wasn't going to talk. She heard words like 'Post Traumatic Stress Disorder' and 'withholding her voice to give her something to control' and then eventually, to her great relief, 'house', 'her own space', 'give her a chance to recover'.

They set her up in a small semi detached bungalow, on the very edge of the local forest, noticing that the closer she was to nature the more relaxed her behaviour was. They promised that the government would support her until she felt well enough to work and not to worry about anything. This house was hers, no one else's, and she was completely safe here.

It had taken her a while but she eventually got a job at a local law firm as the assistant for her boss, began to make money and get actual possessions, things that were hers, that she owned and looked after. The bungalow had started off empty, with the exception of a sofa and a bed. When she'd saved enough she replaced them and then bought what she needed. She even began to trust electronics again, getting a television and a laptop so she could work at home.

She made friends with the people in her street, letting them into her home on a regular basis. She wanted the whole human experience, damn the consequences and she needn't have worried anyway. Her neighbours never pried or asked her personal questions. They were just content with having her as their friend. Chell swore to herself that if anything ever tried to hurt them she would be there to stop it.

She never forgot Aperture or what had happened to her but as each year pasted it began to feel more and more like a dream. Until tonight.

That metallic screech was so familiar it had to be one of Her creations, running about in Caraway forest. In her mind there was no doubt. Chell swung her legs onto the floor and walked to her storage cupboard. Yanking open the door, she spotted the two dusty long fall boots lying at the back- the only thing that she'd gotten returned to her from the police- along with the other things she'd prepared incase She changed her mind and one of Aperture's robotic abominations came after her. She pulled out the boots and strapped them on, testing her weight on the long braces before dipping back into the cupboard and pulling out her shotgun.

She was going to send whatever made that horrid, garbled shriek back into the hell hole it had crawled from.

For the inexperienced hiker the deeper part of Callaway forest was a jungle of tall, twisted trees, roots that grabbed your feet and sent you sprawling into the mud and the occasional call of a roosting bird. And this was during the day. By the time Chell got outside and began to follow her usually walking trail the sun had sunk below the horizon the night creatures had begun to move. However, Chell wasn't worried. She'd been in this part of the forest countless time before and knew the patchy trail almost a well as the back of her hand.

The only difference between now and the last time she was striding along the trail was the long far boots -they somehow made her feel a little bit safer when anything she wasn't sure about cropped up, plus she could run like hell in them if she wanted to- the shotgun and her needlepoint focus, watching every tree, listen for any type of movement. All it would take was for one thing to be out of place and-

Chell could smell it before she saw it. The smell of burning leaves and bark, musty and strong. She followed it, eventually finding herself staring at a large burnt hole in the canopy of leaves.

And then she saw it.

A smouldering pile of metal that was so familiar she almost turned and ran.

AN: Hi, so this is the first chapter of my fic. Please review if you like. Thanks for reading. It does get better I promise.

EDIT: So I added the page dividers to both chapters so it's not as confusing. The second chapter more so. And I'm doing my A Level exams at the minute so I can't write as often as I want to, but I am working on chapter 3, slowly.