Chapter 2: Testing

As Shepard stepped through the Material Emancipation Grill, she felt it like a mild electric shock along every nerve in her body. It made her eye twitch and she saw a brief flash of white light, but there seemed to be no ill effects. Thank God for small favors.

What the AI had called a "chamberlock" turned out to be pretty much just an elevator. There were no controls inside, but as soon as all three of them had entered, the doors slid shut and it began to slide slowly and jerkily upward.

There was a camera in here, too. Shepard looked up at it and addressed the AI again. "So… Voice. Computer. Do you even have a name?"

"I am the Aperture Science Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System," she replied. "You may call me GLaDOS."

"Okay. I think we got off on the wrong foot here, GLaDOS. I'm—"

"I know who you are," GLaDOS interrupted. "You are Commander—Shepard, Chell—and your companions are—Krios, Thane—and—Lawson, Miranda." An instant's pause preceded and followed each name, and her voice changed as she said them. It sounded like they'd been prerecorded for an audible fill-in-the-blank. A weird cadence for a self-aware AI.

"That's not creepy at all," Shepard muttered under her breath.

"At Aperture Science, we pride ourselves in taking personal interest in all of our test subjects. We hope this makes you feel more comfortable, as elevated baseline stress levels are not part of any standard test protocol, and may invalidate the results."

"Really?" Shepard drawled. She glanced at Thane and Miranda and saw the same thought on their faces that now flashed through her mind. It couldn't be this easy, could it? It was worth a try regardless. "I don't know about you two," she said loudly, but my stress levels feel pretty damn elevated right now. How about you?"

"I'm definitely stressed," Miranda agreed. "Krios?"

Thane nodded. "I, too, would make a poor test subject, under the circumstances."

Eyebrows raised, Shepard turned back to the camera. "Well, damn," she said, hoping her disappointment sounded more genuine to GLaDOS than it did her own ears. "Looks like we're useless to you. So why don't you just let us go and stop wasting everybody's time?"

"I cannot do that, Commander. Validity will be determined after testing is complete. Please exit the chamberlock."

The elevator stopped, and the door opened onto another corridor. Around a corner, another lighted panel flickered to life, this one numbered "01." The corridor ended abruptly at a two-meter drop into the room beyond.

From the edge, Shepard surveyed the chamber below. Three walls were made of glass, with other rooms beyond. One contained a storage cube; another, a "Supercolliding Super Button." In the third, directly ahead, was the door. A blue portal appeared in each room in turn, remaining open for several seconds before moving on to the next. From what she could tell, it connected to another portal just below them.

"You have got to be kidding me," Miranda muttered.

Shepard agreed with the sentiment. "I am so not here for games. Stand back. Let's see what GLaDOS makes of a little shortcut." She aimed her rifle at one glass wall. "Test this," she muttered, and squeezed the trigger.

A long burst drilled into the glass. Shepard held the rifle rock steady, sending bullet after bullet slamming into a spot the size of a quarter. A web of fractures spread across the glass, but it held. She gritted her teeth, waiting for it to shatter. Any second now.

But it didn't. The thermal clip finally overheated, and the rifle stopped firing. And still the wall held.

"Son of a bitch," Shepard spat.

"The glass in each testchamber is bulletproof. Do not attempt to break the glass. This will only result in injury, and an unsatisfactory mark on your test."

"Look, GLaDOS," said Shepard, "we don't care about your tests. We're not interested in this maze… puzzle… thing you've got going on. We just want to find out what happened to all the people here, and go home. Is that really so hard?"

"My programming prevents me from giving out sensitive Aperture Science information to test subjects."

"Of course it does." She hissed in annoyance. "It was worth a try, I guess. Onward and overboard, folks."

She jumped to the floor below, Thane and Miranda following suit. Turning around, she saw that she'd been right: there was the yellow portal, with the Button on the other side. Now the door. Now the cube. And back to the Button again.

When the portal cycled past the door again and back to the cube, Shepard darted through and seized it. But she couldn't get it back to the portal fast enough, and it closed, sealing her inside an instant before she could heave it through. The cube smashed into the solid wall, and Shepard had to leap back before it could fall on her foot and crush her toes.

Thane coughed once, and she turned to find him holding his fist to his mouth, eyes downcast, his face very carefully blank. Miranda wouldn't look at her, either.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, you two." The portal opened in the Button's room, and Shepard picked up the cube again. As soon as the portal opened in front of her, she staggered through as fast as she could and set the cube heavily on the floor. She let the portal cycle through all three rooms once more while she caught her breath, then hefted the cube again and dropped it on the Button.

"Perfect," said GLaDOS. "Please move quickly to the chamberlock as the effects of prolonged exposure to the Button are not part of this test."

Startled, Shepard took a few steps away from the Button room. "Are you telling me that thing's radioactive?" she demanded. But GLaDOS didn't answer.

"I suggest we do as she says, siha," said Thane.

"Yeah. Let's get out of here." As soon as the portal flipped back to the door, Shepard charged though. The door stood open, another Material Emancipation Grill just beyond. She shivered as they passed through it into the chamberlock, sending the same electric-shock feeling shooting through her. "Ugh. That's gonna get real old real fast."

Thane's brow ridge furrowed, and he frowned, instantly tense. "What is?"

"You mean you didn't feel that?"

He shook his head. "I felt nothing."

Shepard held his worried gaze for a moment, then turned to Miranda. "What about you? Did you feel anything when we came through that particle field?"

"No." Miranda already had her omni-tool open, scanning Shepard. "What did you feel?"

"You know that feeling when you touch something and get a little static shock? Like that, but all over."

Miranda studied her readouts. "Some of your implants are definitely reacting to the particle field," she said. "It's putting some stress on them, but I don't see any serious damage yet. If we can get out of here before you have to go through too many more 'Material Emancipation Grills,' you should be all right."

"That's a very big 'if,' Miranda," Shepard replied. "How many more do you think I can take? And what happens then?"

Miranda shook her head and gritted her teeth. "Impossible to tell, on both counts. I can't extrapolate stress patterns from one scan. And as for what happens when enough is enough… it all comes down to which implants start shutting down first. Pain, cognitive impairment, paralysis, or organ failure are all on the table. The effects could be immediate or delayed. And there will be little I can do for you until we get back to the Normandy. Or preferably a Cerberus medical facility."

"Well, that's… not exactly reassuring," Shepard said slowly.

"Just keep me apprised of any additional symptoms." Miranda closed her omni-tool, and the chamberlock shuddered to a halt.

Outside was yet another test chamber, and GLaDOS spoke up again. "You're doing very well," she said, and Shepard could swear she heard sarcasm in the mechanical voice. "Please be advised that a noticeable taste of blood is not part of any test protocol, but is an unintended side effect of the Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grill, which may, in semi-rare cases, emancipate dental fillings, crowns, tooth enamel, and teeth."

"Now she tells us," Shepard growled. "Hey, GLaDOS, I thought you said that particle field would only affect 'proprietary Aperture Science equipment.'"

"At Aperture Science, we design new technologies for the betterment of all people. Experimental devices like the Material Emancipation Grill are often found to have… bugs."

"Bugs. Great." Shepard shook her head. "All right, let's see what hoops we have to jump through this time." She snorted. "No pun intended."

Directly ahead as they stepped out of the chamberlock was another glass wall overlooking the test chamber proper. On the far side was a raised walkway with a yellow portal near one end and the exit on the other, separated by a door that spanned the entire width of the ledge. Below, a device in the middle of the floor rotated slowly, firing blue portals into the walls every few seconds. On the right side of the chamber, a high retaining wall with a small, square hole blocked off a narrow area whose entry and purpose Shepard couldn't see.

To her right, a door slid open to allow the team into the test chamber. A short flight of stairs led down into the area behind the retaining wall, where they found a dead and. The only exit seemed to be through the unglazed window, but it was far too small for any of them to fit through. Shepard peered through it into the test chamber. The portal device in the center still rotated, firing a portal first into the opposite wall, then to the left, and then—

As it swung around to point in her direction, Shepard swore. "Everybody get down!" she shouted, and the three of them hit the deck as the device fired through the hole to create a portal on the wall behind them. They dove through it before it could close again.

"Now we just need to find the Button that opens this door," said Miranda.

"Just a minute." Shepard jumped down to the lower level and approached the portal device, careful to avoid getting struck by whatever kind of energy it was emitting. "I want to see if we can take this thing with us. To be able to control at least one end of these portals could give us a huge advantage."

She paused, waiting for some snark or a vaguely threatening warning from GLaDOS, but none came. Shrugging, she inspected the pedestal to which the portal device was mounted.

To her astonishment, she found the device wasn't actually built into the pedestal at all. A small button marked "Release" caused two small clamps to pop open, and the device, clearly designed to be handheld, simply lifted free.

"Very good," said GLaDOS smugly. "You are now in possession of the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. With it, you can create your own portals. These intradimensional gates have been proven to be completely safe; the Device, however, has not. Do not touch the operational end of the Device. Do not look directly at the operational end of the Device. Do not submerge the Device in liquid, even partially. Most importantly, under no circumstances should you…" And once again, she crackled away into silence.

Shepard turned the Device over in her hands. It weighed about the same as her assault rifle and was balanced similarly, but it was covered in a smooth white ceramic casing along most of its length. On the underside were two triggers, though one seemed locked in place, and two indicator lights on the side were marked "Portal Active." Both were dark.

"Shepard, the door just opened on its own," Miranda reported. "You'd better get up here before it closes again!"

On the walkway above, the yellow portal was still there, but the golden glow covered its entire surface, not just the outline. Looking around, Shepard found that all the blue portals were gone. "Guess it's time to test drive this thing," she said. She pointed it at the wall in front of her, and pulled the trigger.

A blue portal opened up before her. She could see Miranda and Thane on the other side, and beyond them, herself. Stepping through the portal, she found herself looking back at where she'd been, without ever turning around. "Okay, this is trippy."

"No argument here," Miranda agreed. "But are you sure you'll be able to get it out of this test chamber?"

Shepard glanced at the floating lights of the Material Emancipation Grill. "Pretty sure. GLaDOS sounded a little too pleased that we'd gotten a hold of it. I suspect we're going to need it for further 'tests.'" She gestured toward the exit with the portal gun. "Let's move out."

They passed through the Material Emancipation Grill once more, and Shepard bit back a hiss of pain. That electric-shock sensation was getting stronger, the flash of light in her eyes brighter. It left a pinkish afterimage that was slow to fade, and she nearly collided with Thane as they entered the chamberlock.

He steadied her with his hands on her shoulders. "Are you all right, siha?"

Shepard blinked the last of the light away and his worried face swam into focus. "I'm fine," she said, and gave him a lascivious grin. "I just couldn't resist the urge to fall into your arms." She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek as his frills flushed red, and Miranda huffed.

The chamberlock shuddered to a halt, and they emerged into another dingy gray corridor. "Please proceed to the chamberlock," said GLaDOS, and Shepard could almost hear her chuckle as she added, "Mind the gap."

Rounding the corner, Shepard could see what she was talking about. The floor abruptly dropped two or three meters, then rose again on the far side of the room, a sharp vertical change that would be impossible to scale. A yellow portal glowed in the far wall.

"Okay," said Shepard with a shrug. She turned and shot a blue portal into the wall on her left, then raised an eyebrow at Miranda and Thane. "After you."

On the other side, the corridor continued on to the right, and Shepard could see the exit door standing open. Another gap yawned between it and their position, but a portal beside the door solved that issue. They stepped back into the yellow portal, and this time Shepard marched through the Material Emancipation Grill first. She gritted her teeth and tried not to let the others see how it affected her.

Miranda seemed oblivious, but she couldn't fool Thane. As the chamberlock lurched into motion, he hovered protectively close, resting a hand discreetly on the small of her back. Glancing over at him out the corner of her eye, she gave him a faint smile, and he nodded back, almost imperceptibly. He understood: despite all her playful flirting, Shepard didn't want Miranda to see just how grateful she truly was for his presence.

Once again, the chamberlock squealed to a halt and opened, depositing them into yet another puzzle room. "Welcome to Testchamber Four," said GLaDOS. "You're doing quite well."