Chapter 16: Strong Like Me

Red lights were blinking. When they were off, the dark corridor grew longer. When they were on, it was still a mystery where it ended. It laughed at them, giving them hope that they would understand where they were going, if only for a split second. Then, it would shroud them in darkness, knowing they would wait for the light to come on again.

The rummaging noises in the walls certainly didn’t help. The lights revealed nails and scraps and tools on the ground next to beakers, clipboards and crumpled up pieces of paper. They sat there for no particular reason, fulfilling no particular purpose. And complimenting the scene was an electronic ambience, droning mournfully like a piano out of tune.

It was very difficult to know for sure, but Chell thought Wheatley had a crack in his monitor. His little blue light was turned off, and he was completely silent. Whether he was broken or simply defeated, she didn’t know.

Dean was still tied around her waist with the orange sleeves from her jumpsuit. Sometimes, she wasn’t sure if she could feel him there. She would palm him in her hand every few minutes to make sure he hadn’t slipped off. His skin was so cold - he was so quiet. Even if he was there, it was beginning to feel like something inside him wasn’t there at all.

It just wouldn’t end. There was somewhere to go, but no way to know if they were getting any closer. If only Chell had a light… a real one that didn’t disappear after a split second. They would be some way of deciphering this ridiculous map. Invisible as it was, it might as well have been charting out the solar system.

Desperately trying to make out vague shapes and letters on the parchment, Chell was quite oblivious to the thin tripwire stretching over the cement floor. She caught her ankle inside, falling flat on the ground in a rather awkward position, letting her side take the brunt of the fall instead of Dean. 

She remembered falling off her bicycle when she was a child. The sidewalk exhibited a sharp incline near the general store. You would speed up suddenly, the wind flowing through your hair, zipping past the same old cars in the intersection. But you would go spiraling out of control, the pavement knocking the wind out of you, reminding you to stay in your place. Chell would always get up in a flash.

But this wasn’t a sidewalk, and it wasn’t the first time she fell down either. She knew she could stand right back up if she wanted to. She could march down this corridor as long as her body let her. Acknowledging that pain and surrendering to it (if only for a few seconds) was a nice change. 

“Are you alright?” Dean finally said something. “That was quite a fall.”

Chell was happy to hear his voice again.

“Yeah… just lying down I guess.” She smiled.

Again, she could feel Dean making himself comfortable on her waist. His elbows pressed softly below her torso as he stretched himself out.

“I get that.” He replied. “It’s what I would do too.” 

“Huh?”

“Oh, you know… just waiting it out. We’re probably never getting out of here, are we?” He said calmly.

Chell pulled the wire off her ankle, sitting up. Feeling down her chest, she pulled him out of her jumpsuit sleeve, holding him close to her face so she could see him - or at least his outline. His hair was all knotted in a bunch, falling untidily below his shoulders.

“Where’s this coming from?” Chell asked.

“I’ve just been thinking, you know? You couldn’t get out of here… I haven’t gotten you out of here… that robot threw us under the bus… I dunno. Nothing’s getting any better.” He was fiddling with something - Chell could only make out its sharp edge.

“Hey, that’s not true.” She said to him, “We talked about this. We’re gonna get through it.”

Dean held the sharp object close to his eyes, as if he were trying to look himself in the mirror in a room without light.

“I guess.” He conceded, half-heartedly. Albeit a little concerned, she decided he was just having a hard time, propping him back in his usual spot.

Chell had dropped Wheatley’s little box on the ground after her little spill, and it had tumbled out of sight. She felt around for it on all-fours, but it had disappeared into some dark corner of the corridor, somehow evading her reach. Dragging her hands along the floor, she could only feel those broken artifacts sprawled out everywhere.

Chell withdrew a bottle of nourishment mix from her jumpsuit, and began to drink. She had little idea how long this particular venture would last, so she made the careful choice to conserve what they had. She imagined Wheatley hovering around her, hardly giving her a moment of peace.

When GLaDOS had pushed him out of the mainframe, he had clattered down pretty hard against the ground. The little trip through the air tubes couldn’t have made things any better. It did feel a little strange carrying a killer around like a pet. 

Chell thought about what Wheatley might say. He would probably go and lead them off course, straying away from the map. He would lead them into stupider and stupider situations until they were completely dependent on one of his silly plans.

“You think we should leave him?” She asked Dean.

“Your call.” He replied in a sleepy monotone.

Some time ago, Chell recalled that Dean was annoyed at how little input he had in their little adventures. Now, when he had the chance, he was practically falling asleep...

Anyhow,  Wheatley was heavier than he looked, his components all dense on the inside. Besides, if he woke back up by some miracle and wanted to join them, he could always fly over. It’s not like they’d be out of here anytime soon. And so, Chell and Dean continued on without him, still encumbered by pounds and pounds of nourishment mix.

The ambience grew louder as Chell marched closer and closer to wherever it was they were headed. At first it seemed completely random - forging notes together without a rhythm or purpose. Gradually, it began to sound less and less like music. It was a long mixture of muffled audio, springing back and forth between pitches.

She heard the beginnings of a pattern. It would pause between hectic strings and phrases of sounds, resuming shortly thereafter. Something occurred to Chell - she tried to imagine the variations in pitch as exaggerations of much smaller variations. When she did, it most certainly stopped sounding like music. 

“Hello?” She called out to it.

There was no response. The ambience belted on, weaving up and down. The rummaging in the walls persisted too, as if the duo were surrounded by wild animals. GLaDOS had hinted that they might not make it out, and Chell could scarcely count the number of reasons why that might be the case.

Just as she was beginning to consider giving up for the day (or perhaps the night), a shine from down below caught her eye. It was a tiny light, streaming out of Dean, clashing with the deathly blood red that blinked off and on. It had always been an orange light that shone out of his ring when he was due for a tantrum or a trance. This time, it was a lazy cyan - the other side of his ring that had been quiet up to this point. The light seemed to crawl out of his hand, forming a channel of blue in front of them.

“Dean…” Chell whispered, “What’s going on with you?”

“I’m just a little drowsy I guess.”

“No, the blue light.”

“Yeah, I know. I think it’s… connected to me.” He said.

She rolled her eyes, looking down at the map, the blue glow shedding light all over it.

“Can you keep it on?” She said irritated, the light beginning to fade. “I might be able to te-”

BANG!

Chell slipped over another tripwire and face planted on the floor. More frustrated than hurt, she slammed her fist against the ground:

“I can’t see anything in this place!” She screamed at the cement floor.

When she looked up, everything was different. 

At long last, the blinding red light stayed on, painting the corridor in blood. It exposed the difference between the perception of infinity and what it actually looked like. And yes, the corridor stretched on and on, as far as the eye could see. Chell almost fell down again, just at the sight of it.

The light coating the walls, she gagged at what they contained. Seemingly human arms were glued to the surface, most of them extending themselves as if for a handshake. At different times, they would pull themselves back at the walls, slamming, tapping and rubbing their hands across. In unison, they created that awful rummaging noise.

Other arms tapped away at silent little keyboards and typewriters. Others awkwardly grasped sharpened pencils, scrawling away at piles of paper that neatly stacked up several feet high. Even more traded beakers of dark liquid between one another, pouring and intermingling and staying the same. Dean was oddly unmoved by the horror show. 

The ambience shifted. As Chell had reasoned, the pitch variations grew smaller and smaller, until they vaguely resembled a man… speaking in sentences. Regular sentences. The muffling gradually faded away, until the voice was much quieter than it originally seemed. And then it spoke in plain English:

“Hello there, test subject of the future. My name is Dr. Douglas Rattmann and this is my uh… laboratory. It’s not much to look at, but my hope is that it can save you… however little is left of the world whenever you happen to be hearing this. I don’t know who you are for certain, but if we do some basic probability calculations, I can guess that you are almost certainly… Chell ‘Surname Redacted.’ Huh. I guess we never figured that out.”

She blinked at the mere mention of her name. The voice was quite a polite one… modest even. At the same time, it was terribly troubled and evidently in a rush to get the recording over with. Chell realized it was quite likely this man had met or even worked with her father. There was an enthusiasm about his tone, as if he were excited to even address her, but rushed and hurried all the same.

“As I record this, the Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System has taken over this entire facility. Thankfully, my laboratory rests just outside her field of vision. I can’t stay here much longer… my medicine dwindles by the day. But if all else fails, I want to give you one last failsafe - one final means by which you can leave this awful place. Truly, I owe it to you. No one has ever told you this Chell, but you are… exceptional. You are potentially the most resilient people on the face of the Earth. It is a subtle quality, but it is one that outdoes the rest. I have faith that you can do this on your own - it is in your nature. But if you can’t… there is another way.”

She just stood there, her jaw dropped. She felt herself beckoning at the voice, trying to communicate to a recording from however long ago to get on with it. Instead, it looped back to the beginning, leaving Chell more frustrated than ever.

“It might be one of her traps,” Dean mumbled obliviously.

Chell shot him a look. They were finally getting some information, and the first thought in Dean’s head was to dismiss it all as a hoax. She began to realize there truly was something off about him now. Why was he so willing to shrug everything off? Why was he suddenly so sure their quest was doomed?

Something about this enraged Chell deep inside. It felt like someone was telling her she had wasted thousands of years. How wonderful it was to know that someone felt the same way as her about the facility - about the world. That no matter how many obstacles she faced, she could overcome them. She wondered if that feeling was a lie she told herself. She wondered if Dean had ever felt that way.

But at the sound of his voice, the recording came to a stop. A significantly more grizzled voice, muddled in even more desperation emerged. It sounded as if the man had a gun to his head, driving off insanity or even the perception of it with all his might:

“Chell! When I recorded that first message, I was lying. I didn’t know what the plan was. I… made the lab figure it out for me! Brilliant, no?” The voice broke out into congested laughter. “That’s his voice - Dean’s voice. It means you brought him here with you. Out of all the possible solutions… this was the one that happened. Good. Good! Time for a refill!”

One of the arms tore its way through the wall until it was parallel with Chell and Dean. It sprawled at the two, and she stepped backwards reflexively. Its fingers waggling, the hand spun itself all the way around and unscrewed a series of bolts on its wrist. Removing something from inside, it extended towards the two until Chell couldn’t back up anymore. Proudly, it held up a beaker of orange liquid, bubbling excitedly at the brim.

Facing away, eyes firmly closed, she tried pushing the arm away. It wouldn’t budge. The orange in the little beaker kept fizzing like soda, the wrist just hovering there expectantly. 

“It’s you, Chell.” The recording said. “And now it’s him too. You know what I realized? I didn’t need my pills! They don’t do much when everything’s already broken! When I was medicated, I spent far too long looking for the perfect fix - the moral one. But I remembered… I had Dean - I trialed him in hibernation after his little accident. He’s not like you Chell - he’s the opposite of you. But the arms made me realize… I could do science forever. They spoke to me… they wondered… what if anyone could be like you? And so we worked, and we studied and we solved it! We found what makes you tick, and we injected him with it!”

Dean stared at his ring, which was glowing blue more prominently than it had ever done orange. That sinking feeling he was so accustomed to fluttered through his stomach.

“But it’s only temporary. The little man is only human, after all. For you, Chell, setbacks are obstacles. They waste your time more than anything else. But for Dean, they drain the tenacity out of him. You need to give him the formula, Chell. Alone, GLaDOS has bested you. But no machine can withstand two beings with your… drive.”

Dean suddenly sparked up, a glint in his eye. He tried to protest, untying himself from the jumpsuit. He fell onto the floor in a heap.

“N- no! That’s bullshit!” He cried.

Chell gazed at the beaker. It was there - bubbling proof that she was different. It was evidence for why she was the way she was. It was strangely gratifying to know that there was a reason - that there was something tangible setting her apart. She hardly considered what it might mean for Dean.

“It makes sense.” She disagreed. “It’s why I keep going - I just do. It’s in me.”

“But Chell… when Cave Johnson had me strapped up, I found a way. That was before this… Rat Man says he found me. It… it can’t just be you.”

She knelt down in front of him, lifting him up again, and cradling him like an infant. Dean wanted to struggle, but he felt oddly helpless in her grasp -  paralyzed with cowardice. For the first time since their essences merged, the scale of everything became apparent again. Chell was massive, and he was nothing compared to her. If she wanted to, she could blot him out of existence. 

“Dean,” she cooed “I know you. I saw what you were like - how you acted. You have to be honest with yourself… you’re not a very strong person.”

A terrible feeling came over him, as if his head was playfully, firmly held underwater. He could practically feel himself slipping through the lines in her palm. Dean hadn’t considered everything else she might have seen in him when they were together. He looked down at her hands, trying to hide the tears that streamed through his eyes.

“Listen to yourself,” his voice cracked. “You sound like GLaDOS. Why… why are you saying these things?”

“Dean, no. I’m not making fun of you. I’m showing you the light. You don’t have to be this way… I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.” She collapsed her fingers into the sole of her hand, so that they towered over him like massive support beams.

“W-what do you mean?” He inched forward on her palm, seeing if he could slip through a crack between her fingers.

“Don’t you get it? GLaDOS broke you, but not me.” She carefully accepted the beaker of orange liquid from the arm. “I just need to fix you.”

Chell felt him crawling through her fingers, and shook her hand backwards. He went tumbling back onto her palm. Yes, this was how things were. It all made perfect sense now, and this was how it had to be.

“Chell, you’re scaring me.” Dean said, her soft hands surrounding him in pitch black. “Did- did she drug you again? Please… let me go.”

“You have no will-power. It’s why you were so hopeless before you met me… before you had me in you. Think about how much happier you’ve been, with all that spirit. Just a little serum will do.” She poked the glass beaker through her fingers, inching it towards him.

He drifted backwards again:

“Chell, stop. Please! Listen to me - I don’t want this.”

“You need this.” She pinned him against her ring finger, rolling the beaker to his lips.

“Don’t make me do this,” he begged her, “I…don’t want to hurt you.”

She laughed boisterously, tilting the beaker into his mouth, and reassuring him:

“You’re gonna be alright.”

He had to do it:

“GUHHHHHH!” Dean screeched, desperately trying to recapture tantrums from the past. He expected his ring to burn with fire, forcing Chell back. Instead, the cyan only intensified, knocking him backwards and leaving him more helpless than before.

Chell drew the beaker back.

“Christ Dean, really? Over this? Give that to me.” Her massive fingers descended on him, planting themselves on his ring like giant tweezers.

“Chell, I’m sorry. Don’t do that. Please don’t-”

She ripped it off his hand.

“Why the Hell did I let you keep this?” She said, turning it in her hand. “It’s too dangerous for you.”

Chell finally opened her fingers, dropping him onto the ground again. Everything was gone. Everything had been taken from him. He wanted to stand up. He wanted to fight back somehow. Try as he might, he couldn’t move a muscle. He just lay there, like a worm in the sun. 

That same fierce energy shot through Chell like a locomotive. She wasn’t drugged or impaired or even angry… she just was.

“You wanna be like this? You wanna ruin our only chance at getting out of here? Fine. Enjoy yourself.” She poured the sirum out next to him in a puddle. Quite purposely, she stamped her long fall boots around him, shaking the ground. Further on down the corridor, she turned back, smirking:

“You know what’s funny? Even if GLaDOS is lying - whether or not we’re stuck in a different millenium - when you die, no one will miss you either way.”

He was stunned. As she walked off into the distance, Dean felt the tiniest bit of movement building up in his hands. He wriggled and budged and stretched, but it was no use. He could barely get them to move.

But he believed she was wrong. He had done these things on his own. With all the strength he could muster, he withdrew the glass shard from his cloak…