Hell or High Water Chapter 29

Doug suddenly felt very old.

He gently pushed Chell aside and slid into his desk chair. His cane clattered against the desk before falling to the ground. With a sigh, he rubbed his eyes, wishing he didn't feel so hollow at this moment. A husk. As if the wind would churn through the empty hallways and into his office, blowing him into dust. He finally looked up at Chell and took a deep, unrewarding breath.

"What do you want to know?"

Chell traced her finger around in a single circle. Even her makeshift sign language seemed curt and angry. She wanted to know everything. She accentuated her sign by poking Cube with her index finger, giving a small whistle through her teeth, and pointing the same finger to Doug's chest.

"I swear I didn't tell her anything!" Cube declared, earning a reproachful glare from Doug.

"Yes, what I said earlier was true. I'm schizophrenic. Sometimes I-I see things, hear things. GLaDOS found my stasis capsule and woke me up; that part I told you. Since then, she's been using experimental medication on me, which I've also told you before, and while it's worked fairly well, there's been the occasional -"

Chell shook her head, wagging her finger at him in a fierce 'no'. Folding her hands together, she laid them on her cheek, tilting her head to mimic 'sleep', and then fiercely shook her head again.

"No, I was in stasis. I'm not lying."

She prodded his chest twice then turned to the wall, mimicking long sweeps of a paintbrush against it. Then she pointed to Doug again, mouthing the words of her actions.

"Wh-? Well, yes, I was the one who painted the walls. How did you know?"

She directed an accusatory finger to Cube.

"Oh."

"I swear I didn't tell her anything!" it squeaked.

"No, I know you didn't." It was the first time he'd addressed Cube directly in front of another living creature. And for the first time, he wasn't afraid to do so.

He expected the confused and curious look that Chell gave him, and with a defeated hang of his head, he waved a hand to the quadrangle on the desk. "Chell, this is Cube. Cube, I'm sure you know Chell."

Chell raised a brow at the cube, tilting her head like a bemused puppy. She turned back to Doug, touching her ear then pointing a finger toward Cube.

"Yes, I can hear it. No one else seems to, so it may just be part of my affliction." He cleared his throat. "However, this cube is a little different from the ones in the testing chambers. It's a prototype that is allegedly tuned to atmospheric pressure, oxygen output, and other elements that a person subconsciously expresses when they change emotions. Cat whiskers can do the same, actually. But whether it's truly sentient or not is... basically a question of my own sanity."

Chell nodded, still looking a bit puzzled but also a bit reassured.

"It says hello, by the way."

To his utter surprise, Chell brightened at his words. She waved to Cube as though it had waved first and gave it a gentle pat on one of its corners. Doug allowed himself a small grin, which disappeared as another thought crossed his mind.

"There's something else I have to tell you. I've tried to hide it, but I don't feel that it's fair. I trust you; I want to be completely honest with you so you can trust me as well."

The gravity in his voice told her that she ought to sit down for this one. She took a seat atop his desk, resting an elbow on Cube as if they'd been old friends forever. Doug tried to push that very endearing thought from his mind as he began.

"You may or may not remember, but you were labeled unsuitable for testing. They kept you in the vault for some reason, but you were pretty much the bottom of the barrel in the testing queue. When GLaDOS took over the facility, you were in stasis. A long time passed, and I-I didn't see any hope for the future."

Doug bit his lip, rocking slightly in his chair. The memories, the screams of his comrades, still plagued him. Now, reliving the memory, he heard their echoing cries. He could not forgive himself for their deaths. It was an albatross he did not mind strung around his neck. But what he did to Chell was another matter.

"I moved you to the top," he said quickly, ripping off the bandage of his sins and exposing it to fresh battery acid. "I knew you were the only one who could – who could bring her down. You were my only hope for survival, and when you defeated her, I was a free man."

Chell's eye twitched. Doug pressed on in his story hurriedly, an apology long delayed.

"I saw you being dragged in. I couldn't leave you. So many others died while I hid. I couldn't let the same happen to you. So I rerouted power to Long-Term Relaxation to keep you alive. In the process, I got shot." He rubbed his gimped leg gingerly. "To be honest, I don't know how I survived. I crawled into the nearest Relaxation Chamber, but all it did was keep me on the edge of death. I was able to leave it a bit later, but I was left to roam the emptiness here. I left monuments of your story. And eventually I found a Relaxation Chamber that kept me under for quite some time. She found me after you'd left."

He closed his eyes, wincing as he expected her to hit him. There he was, a dry shell of a man who deserved every bit of her wrath. Gulping hard, he gripped the worn plastic arms of his desk chair tightly.

"You have to understand my position. I'm a coward. And GLaDOS scares me. It doesn't excuse me, but... I'm sorry, Chell. I am so sorry."

Her silence, though predictable, worried him, and somehow he found the courage to look up. She remained on his desk, hands pressed together in her lap, eyes closed. She sniffled quietly as tears ran through her clasped fingers.

For a while, Doug could only watch her in silence, fearing anything he would say would either throw her into a deeper bout of crying or a whirlwind of rage.

("Why are you showing me this?" GLaDOS grumbled, propping her head on her palm. Left seat-less, she sat cross-legged in the middle of the room. "Are you supposed to be some kind of Dickensian caricature now, here to show me the errors of my ways?"

Caroline chuckled. "Technically, I am the Ghost of GLaDOS Past."

GLaDOS rolled her eyes. "Switch to another camera."

"I don't think I will. You need to see this. Just because you don't want to deal with your own feelings doesn't mean you're exempt from doing it."

"You are an awful spirit, Caroline.")

"I fully understand if you hate me," Doug finally muttered.

Chell shook her head, wiping her eyes with a thumb. She made sure he was watching her before sending her message: first, pointing at him then making a stabbing motion with her fist. She pointed to herself before making the same motion then traced a circle in the air and stabbed again.

It took a moment for Doug to realize that the stabbing meant 'kill' instead of 'die', though, truthfully, both descriptions could be equally interchanged. He sighed and nodded. "We are a house of victims and murderers."

Chell nodded and gave a silent, brief puff of a laugh. She wiped off the remnants of her tears and hopped off the desk, giving Cube another pat before heading for the door.

"Hey, Chell?"

She half-turned.

"Are we okay?"

Chell didn't even have to think about that before nodding. She knew he'd been hiding something; she knew he'd been lying about sleeping the entire time. From Cube, she'd connected the dots to his unique graffiti. True, she hadn't expected his little secret to be that momentous, but she could forgive him. Without his interference, she would've probably been counted among the dead, rotting in the Long-Term Relaxation Chamber due to Wheatley's negligence. Yes, she suffered because of his actions, but she could not blame him for wanting to survive.

Given the choice, she would have done the same.

"Wheatley, your battery's charged?" Doug, who had not slept but an hour that night, was up first, rousing everyone far before the crack of dawn, citing that, in Greenland, it was hours later in the day.

"Charged and with a backup, jus' as you said, Doc!"

"Test the communication system, will you?"

"TESTING..." A whine of feedback, along with Wheatley's strong-voiced announcement, thundered through the Chamber. Doug clapped his hands over his ears until the reverberation ceased.

"Okay, well, that works. Where's Chell?"

While the robots didn't care if it was day or night, as long as they were powered, Chell was another matter entirely. Stubborn as always, it had taken a reminder of their mission's importance to finally coax her from bed.

At that moment, the door slid open, and Chell slogged through the door, hunched over and dragging her feet. She had dressed haphazardly in the scant amount of winter gear that Doug had been able to find – a bulky jacket with a faux-fur-trimmed hood, noisy snowpants, under which were stuffed her beloved white Long-Fall Boots, and clumsy mittens that were far too large for her hands. Everything was an unfortunate shade of white, with large and unmistakable slatherings of the Aperture logo.

Ignoring her attitude, Doug immediately dashed to her and started re-buttoning the jacket. He was, at least, glad to see a makeshift holster for her ASHPD at her hip.

"Chell, are you going to be warm enough? Did you eat yet? God, I hope you can – no, keep the hood on for right now – ah, you've got the zipper stuck; hold still. Did Wheatley pack everything for you? Did you sleep well enough?"

She nodded at most of these, slowly twisting from him like a stubborn child. Eventually she woke up enough to start batting him away, tossing off her gloves and correcting her own clothing. Rick piped up from her ASHPD.

"Hey, Doc, you gonna prepare her for this trip or you gonna parent her to death?"

Realizing what he was doing, he stepped back. "Sorry – sorry. Nervous. You have no idea how nervous."

Clearing his throat, he waited until Chell was finished before starting the announcement he'd practiced in his head hours and hours ago.

"There is someone, perhaps a team, already at the Borealis. I've confirmed them to be Black Mesa, and while our situation is a little too dire to dwell on past rivalries, you may encounter some resistance. Also, I'm not sure how Wheatley's programmed to respond to Black Mesa employees, so don't be surprised if he acts funny. It is vitally important that you keep your portal device holstered and do not use portals in front of Black Mesa affiliates. We don't know their motives, and we still can't allow the Combine to access our technology, even accidentally."

Chell nodded, yawning. Doug tilted his head.

"You're paying attention, right?"

"We got it, yeah," Wheatley answered for her.

"Orion and Rick will guide you to the crate. I've mapped it out for them. Once you reach it, you'll need to gauge its viability, so break open the crate and check the chassis out. Wheatley, your strength is especially needed for this part. Once you're sure it's okay, I'll give you further instructions. Hopefully, it won't take long. Chell, are you sure you're warm enough?"

He reached for her hood to tuck it up, and she slapped his hands away again.

"Okay, okay. I get it. Are you ready?"

("This is ridiculous. She shouldn't be risking her life for me.") Chell nodded firmly.

He walked to the control panel. Next to it was the entrance portal, fiercely glowing with fiery orange. "I'm going to open the opposite portal. There's no going back, so I need to be sure that you two are ready."

("Caroline, stop them. There is no need in this.") Chell gave a thumbs-up, coupled with an impatient sigh.

"Okay, here it goes." Doug entered the commands, his keys beeping softly. ("You should've thought about that last night. You had plenty of time to put a stop to this yourself. If you don't want them to revive you, then you have to do something about it.")

The opposite portal whooshed open. Its twin flashed before showing an ice-coated hallway. Snow and cold wind filled the Chamber. ("Stop! Do not go in! It's not worth it! Chell! Doug!")

Chell braced herself, shielding her face with her arm as she stepped up to the portal. After peeking in, she gave one last look to Doug before giving a wide grin and leaping through. ("What are you doing?! Stop! Come back!") Wheatley quickly followed, and both portals closed with a sizzle.

("Chell...")