Blue sky (portal 2 fanfic) not by me

Chapter 13

Chell plunged into the spiralling tube of the Excursion Funnel feet first, her stomach giving a single giddy lurch as the soft slow-moving stream killed her momentum and brought her fall to an immediate, drifting stop. The translucent bluish material of the funnel ghosted over her skin like a dusty breeze, drifting in finespun eddies from her fingers.

Before she could hesitate- before she could let herself hesitate- she brought the portal gun up fast and fired, once, into the darkness. A burst of blue flared on a pale, near-invisible wall far ahead of her, the socky aimless thpt of an opening portal. Behind her, the oval of stars and silvery grass flicked out of existence, sealing the way back.

She refused to allow herself to think about what had just happened- about Wheatley, about what he'd tried to say, about the horrorstruck look she'd seen dawning on his face in the split second before she'd turned away. She denied it, the whole subject. It was only practical for her to do so, the situation demanded nothing else. She couldn't afford to waste concentration on her feelings- not in here, where the slightest hesitation could get you killed in a heartbeat.

She forced herself to focus. Stretching her unnatural powers of mental segregation to the limit, she grabbed the whole hurting splintering unravelling chunk of her that had become tangled up in him and shut it away behind a cold slamming wall in the back of her mind, where it howled faintly at her but couldn't interfere.

Instead, she turned her attention to her surroundings- dim, hazy, vast. She was drifting at the centre of a long pencil-beam of twisting blue light, arrowing straight between two endless charcoal-black walls over an endless drop. The emitter was a bright triple-spinning speck far behind her, weaving an infinite funnelweb that held her in place like a bug in amber.

"There you are."

The Excursion Funnel winked out, and she fell through the haze, bracing herself for the inevitable. She had a confused impression of thick, dust-buried panels far below her, thirty feet, twenty, ten, the panels sliding quicksilver-fast over each other in a stirred-up cloud of fluff and ash, opening a dark tessellating gash in the floor. She plunged through, hurtled down through a blur of charcoal darkness and landed- clunk- feet-first on a smooth, clean steel-grey surface.

She straightened up. In the dim underfloor glow, she could make out the too-familiar shapes of a standard elevator chamber, the slick dead wall-to-ceiling LCOS monitor screens which usually displayed the Aperture equivalent of a screensaver, instructional videos and waving stick figures, taunting stock footage of fields and grass. Her throat felt thick, full of a foul plastic taste- the disturbed dust, or maybe the liquid asbestos of the Funnel- and she coughed and spat, wiping her mouth on the back of her free hand.

"I'd like to think that, in your language, that's what passes for a civilised greeting, but we both know I'd be kidding myself," said the Voice. "I mean, really. Would you do that in your place? Because even if you would, this is not your place. This is my place, and your mucous is not a required part of the décor."

Chell stared flat blank-eyed hatred up at the nearest glassy red lens. There were three cameras in this smallish space, tracking her every movement- She, evidently, had wanted to make some kind of point. Hefting the gun in her hands, she circled the chamber, around the empty socket where the elevator should have been, looking for a portal surface, a crack, a sign, a way to begin.

"I can tell you're eager to get started," said the Voice. "That's good. So am I. I just think we should go over a few ground rules first. So far, we haven't exactly been reading off the same page. It's a shame, because my page makes fascinating reading. It's all about Science. Your page, on the other hand, was written by a mute, destructive psychopath who really can't take a joke. I think, in future, we should just stick to my page."