Chell's Voices, a portal fanfic

!Warning!

!This story contains spoilers for "Portal" and "Portal 2!"

If you plan to play either game and want to be unspoiled (which is a good idea) then do NOT read this. After you've played them both I hope you will come back.

Spoilers begin immediately after this warning.

-spoiler space-

"Fire detected in the Stalemate Resolution Annex. Extinguishing."

Water fountained from overhead sprinklers, snuffing out the flames, soaking Chell to the skin and sluicing most of the white portal-conducting gel from the floor.

"Oh that just cleans right off, does it?" huffed Wheatley from his armature, "Well that would have been good to know, a little earlier."

With the fire eliminated the system's mindless administrator resumed its script.

"Stalemate Resolution Associate, please press the Stalemate Resolution Button."

Another order from another goddamn machine. But if she wanted to escape this insane automated slaughterhouse, or ever see another human, or eat anything besides raw potato, what choice did she have?

Unlike her countless predecessors (hundreds? thousands? tens of thousands? more?) she might have a shot. At escape. Leaving this place behind. Just getting outside.

"Go press the button, go press it!"

GLaDOS's auto-tuned alto cut through Chell's thoughts, rattling her. More commands from that digitized bitch. But if it meant freedom for herself, even a chance of it, this was her only option.

"Do not press that button!" barked idiotic Wheatley.

Though wasn't it she who had put him in charge? And wasn't she just carrying out that same plan again—swapping one electronic overlord for another?

Dammit, the klaxon was making it so hard to think, and all she wanted was to get out. Just let GLaDOS have her insane revenge.

GLaDOS: "We're so close! Go press the button!

Wheatley: "No! Do not do it! I forbid you to press it!"

She sprinted to the annex and found it blocked by a grill. On the other side was the button, the same button which… which had sent her even deeper into Hell, come to think of it.

GLaDOS: "Press it! Press the button!"

Wheatley: "Don't press that button!"

Never mind that. At least the grill was no problem—directly over the button was a white patch of ceiling perfect for a portal. Plunk one there, plunk another back on the last patch of gelled floor behind her, and maybe she could finally resolve this.

She raised the device, took aim… and froze.

The instant stretched for an eternity for Chell. The klaxon, the rumbling, the shouts of the maniacal computer balls muted… as from somewhere in the bowels of the labyrinth beneath her she thought she could hear screams, cries, howls. Human voices, not artificial ones.

"When life gives you lemons…!" For some reason, Cave Johnson's insane rant about citrus had risen above the others.

"They'll always be with you," someone else said. And she knew that voice was real, because it was hers.

The moment ended, panic and chaos resumed full force.

GLaDOS: "Press it!"

Wheatley: "Don't press it!"

Chell spun. Her delicate features knotted, her eyes harsher than lasers. She shuddered as though it was she that was about to explode.

"SHUT THE HELL UP!"

Wheatley's entire rig recoiled like a serpent, his robotic "eyelid" clanging shut over his lens. GLaDOS's potato abruptly stopped spinning, and her amber light began blinking rapidly. The AIs were flummoxed, desperately trying to process this sudden anomaly.

Wheatley cracked open his eyelid and peeped at Chell.

"Oh my God, you can… talk? So the brain damage is… uh, all healed up then? Brilliant."

GLaDOS, ever the pragmatist, forged ahead.

"We only have seconds! Go press the…!"

"No!" Chell roared, tearing the device from her arm, "You have centuries! Millennia! You'll just keep doing this forever!"

"Space-space-wannagoto-space! Space! Up! Up! Go up!"

Wheatley's rig twitched, still trying to knock his hitchhikers loose.

"You tell her, love! You're nobody's fool!"

"Oh yes I am," tears were streaming down Chell's face now. She'd just made her first independent decision in a long time and it hurt.

"But not right now," she fixed GLaDOS with her glare and held up the portal device, "I just realized you're not my enemy, and neither is he. It's this place, and this… thing. And I'm the first person, maybe the last, who has a chance to stop all of it."

"I'm different," GLaDOS wheedled, almost like a turret, "Listen! I, I'll… I'll just use robots from now on, I'll… no more humans, OK?"

"And would they get cake afterwards?" Chell sneered, "Everything you say is a lie. How long would you be satisfied with robots? If he's a moron then you're a torture machine, just like this whole damned…"

Chell raised the gun over her head.

GLaDOS screamed.

Wheatley bellowed that he wasn't a moron.

"The square root of rope is string."

The device shattered on the ground sending a thousand shards of plastic, glass and metal skittering around the room as the last stray portal winked out. Freed of its constraints, the pinpoint of infinite blackness which had been the machine's heart plunged straight through the steel floor like a bowling ball through smoke.

The rumbling abruptly grew louder as a sourceless white light began to fill the chamber.

"So, how do the two of you feel about a little, um, 'hyper-implosion'? I mean know how I feel about it, since I totally know what it is, but just in case either of you…?"

"I hate you," GLaDOS snarled and somehow gave the impression she was gritting her teeth.

Chell could feel herself coming apart. She grinned.

"I hate you too, Caroline."

[Author's note: I generally can't stand the "Joan of Arc" cliche, or most "How whatever should have ended" fan works. I think having a heroine die for a cause is a horribly sexist trope when so many heroes defeat their nemeses and get huge rewards, and I just prefer fan works that try to stay faithful to their sources.

But considering Aperture Science is a mechanized Inferno rivalling Dante's, and that GLaDOS is about as trustworthy as a scorpion, I feel that leaving the place operational and simply escaping was short-sighted and selfish of canonical Chell. The place needed to be destroyed right down to the last atom, even if it took out most of Michigan's U.P.. Not for revenge or spite or anything—because why seek revenge on a machine? But so that GLaDOS or some successor of hers can never resume human experimentation.

I tried to think of a way out for Chell, like maybe when the roof blew off she'd see a mountain range in the distance. But I've been to that part of Michigan and there's nothing like that. I even checked Google Earth and the only "mountains" in the U.P. barely qualify as hills. And I figure the blast range of the Enrichment Center would be pretty big.

So if someone can suggest a believable way for her to portal to somewhere else outside the blast range, please let me know.]