"Here it comes," said her partner, hefting the Weighted Storage Cube with the energy field at the tip of his gun, and fitting it into the notch in the ledge his partner was standing on.
Subject 3281 accepted the cube, and let it fall from the energy field of her own gun onto the button on the floor before her, resulting in a resounding blocky chime as a panel on the wall before her flipped around to expose a white chalky surface.
The boy portaled up to her, and they waited in silence for the camera above the cube to recognize the fact that they were both standing there, and to trigger the chamberlock's opening.
"Congratulations," said Her voice from the hidden speakers in the ceiling, though the door stayed firmly shut. "you solved the test. You should be very—" Her voice was cut short, and was replaced by an almost imperceptible—and very familiar—burst of static, heralding the swift arrival of a human voice.
"—proud," said a man's voice from the speakers above them, "yes, you should both be very proud of yourselves for making it this far in the Co-operative Testing Initiative. I know we here in the control room are quite proud." The girl's eyes widened, her back stiffened, and her mind sputtered in confusion. That voice—
"Now," the voice—that deep, hard voice that the girl recognized all-too well—continued, "I have a few things to say; first off, all of us up here would like you to know that you're doing a fantastic job down there, and we have decided to reward you with showers at the end of your testing today. Second—and last—Bring Your Daughter to Work day will be held tomorrow, and we would like to showcase the Co-operative Testing Initiative this year. We don't have enough footage of you two together as of yet, and you two are the only team who had actually complied with us on this one, and the only ones that haven't pushed the other into an incinerator, or something of the sort. That being said, we'll need you to work extra hard on these next tests so we can get some good footage. Is that understood?"
Subject 3281 couldn't breathe. That voice, that voice... The girl stood before her cube for about five seconds in utter disarray. She remembered that voice. That voice was the commanding voice of a head scientist, yes, but it was also the voice she had heard all her life; the voice that had never wanted her around unless she could be of some use to his career; the voice that had named her, and yet had never deigned to use her name of his own free will. That was the voice of a liar, and a traitor.
That was the voice of a Monster.
Her confusion quickly began to solidify into a much different, much more potent feeling; a bitter hatred that had been laying dormant for over fifteen years, waiting for an excuse to show itself. This man, this devil in a labcoat, her biological father, had orchestrated her mind block; done away with everything that had made her human; forced her to test in the—rather dodgy—name of Science; had experimented with what emotions and hormonal imbalances she still had left by making her test with Subject 3279, the very model of an attractive, polite, and fit young gentleman; and now, after all that, he had the gall to announce to the entire Facility that he had been monitoring them the whole time, and that they—as the dutiful test-slaves that they undoubtably were—were to behave well, because, 'Bring Your Daughter to Work Day' was coming up, and the Facility needed something to showcase.
The girl gritted her teeth. As it just so happened, she had a message for the entire Facility as well.
With all of her anger, hatred, bitterness, and utter distain for the man hiding behind his speaker in some control room stories above her head shining in her stormy eyes, the girl placed her portal gun on the ground, stepped up onto the cube she had just recently deposited on the button before her, and proceeded to flip the voice a particularly rude gesture that she had been wishing to bestow upon him ever since she had learned its meaning.
An explosion of cursing rang out from the chamber's various speakers, and the girl thought she could detect the words, "—mental—," "—rupture—," "—you told me—," and, "—danger—" before someone apparently had the sense to turn off the microphone.
Her lips tightened. The obscenity-spewing man—her birth father—was absolutely right; the mental barrier he had created in her mind had ruptured, and she was now—as a desperate genius with a massive grudge, and absolutely nothing in the world to lose—very, very dangerous. She knew this Facility, and this Facility knew her, and nothing would—or could—stop her from escaping the confines of the Enrichment Center, and making sure the man, who had so arrogantly addressed herself and her partner, got good and punished.
She turned back to face her partner—she was just about level with him from her perch on the Weighted Storage Cube—and found that the boy was wearing an odd—though not unanticipated, per se—look of both shock and amusement on his haggard face.
The two held eye contact for the space of about two seconds before her partner turned towards the camera, placed his gun on the ground, smiled a wide, unrestrained—and somewhat manic—grin, and gave the girl's father twice the treat she had originally bestowed upon him.
The girl nearly remembered how to smile at that, and joined her partner in flipping her birth father off once more, with double the hand-power for a doubly-awful man. After the two had had their fill of signed-profanity at the expense of their new mutual enemy, the boy looked to his partner, the manic grin still showing clearly upon his face.
"So," he began, kicking his gun to the side, "I take it we aren't going to be testing today?" the girl stepped off her cube—affectively dwarfing herself once more in comparison with her partner—retrieved her own gun, picked up the boy's blue-striped one, and put it back into his over-large hands.
"Test," she said, "but don't let them get one second of usable footage." The boy nodded, his frenzied grin fading fast.
"I don't know what I really expected to hear from asking my partner if we were going to test," he chuckled to himself, stepping out of her path to the chamberlock. "After you."
The girl accepted his offer, and the two exited through the—now open—chamberlock. There would be testing, yes; but that was only because the two still relied on the scientists above them for sustenance and sleeping quarters. As soon as they figured out a way to bypass their reliance on the Facility—a feat the girl felt sure the two of them could accomplish—then there would be no more testing. Ever.
The girl's lips tightened.
That man will never know what hit him.
~ — — — — — — — — — — — — ~
Needless to say, there were no showers that night, though Subject 3281 had been rather too preoccupied with the day's testing performance to care before she had dropped off to sleep. It hadn't bothered her, and that mere fact should have bothered her a great deal.
~ — — — — — — — — — — — — ~
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Subject 3281; Chell's Story
FanfictionTest. That was what she did, and Subject 3281 did it well. She was the model subject, fit, strong, on time, and most of all... obedient. That's how she was, until one fateful day, when the higher-ups at Aperture Science figured that they could get m...
