HOME | DD

Description
For one, it was obvious that the town was not a friendly place. Though the air was heavy with the gentle hum of whatever generator seemed to be keeping the street lamps running, there was nothing to give off the impression that the place was inhabited at all. Beneath the staticky murmur of the lights was a raw, musty smell, not unlike the atmosphere of the earlier remnants of civilisation Chell had encountered. It smelled abandoned, and looked its part. Mould crept up the sides of various apartment buildings, their white-painted bricks faded to the pale red beneath. Cracks netted their way down the sides of other buildings, giving way to the veils of darkness that had slithered into every crevice. Windows lay in shards, blasted across rusting, lopsided balconies (some of which were already halfway eaten away) and sprinkled the grass below. A good portion of the rooms, unlike the streets below, lacked functioning lights, and seemed to spew their darkness out into the city. If anyone lived here at all it was clear that maintenance was not their first priority.
Worst of all was the smell buried beneath the decay. Despite her years among cold, metallic machines, with not another flesh-and-blood soul to be found, Chell would know that smell anywhere; it was practically hard-wired into her head as a human being. It was the smell of rotting meat.
Maybe there were humans here. It was sickening to believe, but Chell could think of very few other reasons for a completely empty town that was soaked in such a scent. There were humans here, and something had happened to them. Something bad.
In the grassy clearing Chell and Wheatley had fallen into lay evidence for this theory. Though she had no clue what it was it couldn't have been good. Sitting on the ground, the only thing untouched by rust, was some kind of black, metallic torpedo. It had left ashen skid marks across the ground for a few metres, but, virtually, wasn't damaged in the slightest. At the back was an opening, revealing the device to be hollowed out for some reason, but upon closer inspection all that was inside was a black metal grate pressed against the inner circumference.
Chell's mind was already in survival mode, the mindset with which she could scan and interpret something in a moment's notice and act on it, when her reflexes were hair-trigger, when her one and only focus was to figure out what was going to let her live the longest. The “torpedo” clearly hadn't exploded – there'd have been a much larger scorch mark and the buildings didn't look damaged aside from the deterioration. It also didn't appear to have been sent as a torpedo at all – whoever designed the device was smart enough to make it resistant to the heat and friction of landing; they probably would have at least hit something. Not to mention, what kind of torpedo was hollow? The angle was wrong as well; the device had slid along the grass rather than stabbing through something – or someone; there'd have been a body..
Chell's best guess was that there had to have been something inside of it, some kind of poison (maybe neurotoxin, she mused with a shudder) that had been responsible for the lack of residents in this town.
A dull metal sign that had probably once been green lay on the ground, with scraped-off remnants of white letters. They were beyond recognition; Chell could make out only various points – they could have been an A, M, N, W, V, there were too many possibilities to try and deduce the name. Frustrated at how close she had been to knowing where on Earth she now was, and where she might have been able to find a decent shelter, Chell did a very un-Chell-like thing and kicked the sign with the toe of her long-fall boot. It flipped through the air for only a second, with a very satisfying metallic TWANG, landing face-down in the grass.
The second it did, a violent scream erupted. It was a single shriek, high-pitched but worn, and though it was clearly off in the distance it blasted through the town with surprising volume. The sound was enough to send flocks of birds rippling up into the sky, their dark bodies morphing into the night and vanishing.
The sound instantly tensed Chell's muscles; she was ready to fight or flee at any seaond, whatever she needed to do to keep them alive, but it set off an entirely different reaction in Wheatley. The sphere's plates began overlapping each other, contracting the central sphere containing his optic to almost half its normal size. He shuddered in the zero-point-energy field of the portal gun, glancing back every few seconds and making quiet, entirely human-sounding whimpers. As the screech faded off into the night, and its light but equally disturbing echoes clawed their way back on the rotting wind, Wheatley spoke:
“Um, you know what? Not trying to brag here, or anything, not trying to be cocky at all, especially considering the current, uh, situation, but, I'd like to think that when we were back in there, as I'm sure you remember, that I knew my way around pret-ty well, if I don't say so myself. Yep, think you'll agree with me there, had those corridors down like the back of my hand. Metaphorically speaking, of course, don't actually have hands... you knew that. Right. Carrying on. I was pretty much the expert navigator of the team, not gonna lie. Was kind of my speciality, you could say. Knowing the halls of Aperture Labs. Yup. You know what else, though? I'm kind of at the end of my rope here. Correction: I reached the end of that quite a while ago, actually, few miles back. And I am fairly sure we've just entered a world that is, um, neither of ours. I know for a fact that I've never been here in my life. Probably. So, I'm just making a quick little guess here and saying that you, geographically, are as lost as I am at this point. I can only presume that, since you can't actually speak, that you have no clue where we're going. Which is unfortunate. But, but, not to worry. Because, do you wanna know a third thing? I'm not really completely lost, guess I kind of lied there, I do know one thing about this place: we reeeally shouldn't be here. Yep, getting a definite, um, negative vibe, possible because of the screaming, or – or maybe the blood-stained walls had something to do with it. That, that could potentially be a factor in why I seem to have the feeling that this is not a good place. In fact, I think we miiight want to, maybe, evacuate the area, as quickly as possible, if we're on the same page here. Not to panic you, or anything like that. But this is, um, red alert, we should probably get out immediately. Don't worry, don't worry. We've done this before, remember? Just – do what we did last time, alright? Alright. So, yeah, pack up your stuff, y'know, get your bearings, all that, and, well, let's go. Away. From this, uh, screaming town.”
Wheatley's rambling had a point to it this time. There was something seriously wrong here. Chell knew she had to get the two of them out, ASAP.
But one thing he said had stood out the most to her, like a thin pinprick of a splinter sticking out in what was usually well-polished wood. And it was just that, a splinter; it stuck her mind, needle-sharp, forcing her to stop and pluck at the phrase one more time.
Blood-stained walls. Chell inwardly admitted that she hadn't noticed any blood, but in hindsight that was probably where the rotting meat smell had come in.
She did another quick survey of the immediate area and realised with a mental shudder of horror that Wheatley was right, that the heavy smears on the sides of many buildings was too fluid-looking, too obviously splattered to have been rust. Now that she knew what it was, Chell realised that it was everywhere, really: spattering the unintelligible sign she had kicked earlier, coating the rotting fence she'd climbed over in streaks like a horrifically done paint job, plastered around the edges of a few windows as though it had once been oozing out by the gallon.
Chell forced herself to remain calm. She was still in survival mode; her main focus was still to find a way to the other side of the city. A little – well, a lot of – blood couldn't hurt her. Chell needed to keep her logical composure, to imagine she was back in Aperture, obliterate whatever stood in her way and blur out any distractions. The bloodstains weren't important; upon slightly closer inspection Chell found them too dark to be fresh. Her real problem was finding out what the hell had done something like this.
Another scream pierced the air, so close it could have been breathing down her neck, and as Wheatley jerked his vision towards it Chell realised she was about to find out.

Description
For one, it was obvious that the town was not a friendly place. Though the air was heavy with the gentle hum of whatever generator seemed to be keeping the street lamps running, there was nothing to give off the impression that the place was inhabited at all. Beneath the staticky murmur of the lights was a raw, musty smell, not unlike the atmosphere of the earlier remnants of civilisation Chell had encountered. It smelled abandoned, and looked its part. Mould crept up the sides of various apartment buildings, their white-painted bricks faded to the pale red beneath. Cracks netted their way down the sides of other buildings, giving way to the veils of darkness that had slithered into every crevice. Windows lay in shards, blasted across rusting, lopsided balconies (some of which were already halfway eaten away) and sprinkled the grass below. A good portion of the rooms, unlike the streets below, lacked functioning lights, and seemed to spew their darkness out into the city. If anyone lived here at all it was clear that maintenance was not their first priority.
Worst of all was the smell buried beneath the decay. Despite her years among cold, metallic machines, with not another flesh-and-blood soul to be found, Chell would know that smell anywhere; it was practically hard-wired into her head as a human being. It was the smell of rotting meat.
Maybe there were humans here. It was sickening to believe, but Chell could think of very few other reasons for a completely empty town that was soaked in such a scent. There were humans here, and something had happened to them. Something bad.
In the grassy clearing Chell and Wheatley had fallen into lay evidence for this theory. Though she had no clue what it was it couldn't have been good. Sitting on the ground, the only thing untouched by rust, was some kind of black, metallic torpedo. It had left ashen skid marks across the ground for a few metres, but, virtually, wasn't damaged in the slightest. At the back was an opening, revealing the device to be hollowed out for some reason, but upon closer inspection all that was inside was a black metal grate pressed against the inner circumference.
Chell's mind was already in survival mode, the mindset with which she could scan and interpret something in a moment's notice and act on it, when her reflexes were hair-trigger, when her one and only focus was to figure out what was going to let her live the longest. The “torpedo” clearly hadn't exploded – there'd have been a much larger scorch mark and the buildings didn't look damaged aside from the deterioration. It also didn't appear to have been sent as a torpedo at all – whoever designed the device was smart enough to make it resistant to the heat and friction of landing; they probably would have at least hit something. Not to mention, what kind of torpedo was hollow? The angle was wrong as well; the device had slid along the grass rather than stabbing through something – or someone; there'd have been a body..
Chell's best guess was that there had to have been something inside of it, some kind of poison (maybe neurotoxin, she mused with a shudder) that had been responsible for the lack of residents in this town.
A dull metal sign that had probably once been green lay on the ground, with scraped-off remnants of white letters. They were beyond recognition; Chell could make out only various points – they could have been an A, M, N, W, V, there were too many possibilities to try and deduce the name. Frustrated at how close she had been to knowing where on Earth she now was, and where she might have been able to find a decent shelter, Chell did a very un-Chell-like thing and kicked the sign with the toe of her long-fall boot. It flipped through the air for only a second, with a very satisfying metallic TWANG, landing face-down in the grass.
The second it did, a violent scream erupted. It was a single shriek, high-pitched but worn, and though it was clearly off in the distance it blasted through the town with surprising volume. The sound was enough to send flocks of birds rippling up into the sky, their dark bodies morphing into the night and vanishing.
The sound instantly tensed Chell's muscles; she was ready to fight or flee at any seaond, whatever she needed to do to keep them alive, but it set off an entirely different reaction in Wheatley. The sphere's plates began overlapping each other, contracting the central sphere containing his optic to almost half its normal size. He shuddered in the zero-point-energy field of the portal gun, glancing back every few seconds and making quiet, entirely human-sounding whimpers. As the screech faded off into the night, and its light but equally disturbing echoes clawed their way back on the rotting wind, Wheatley spoke:
“Um, you know what? Not trying to brag here, or anything, not trying to be cocky at all, especially considering the current, uh, situation, but, I'd like to think that when we were back in there, as I'm sure you remember, that I knew my way around pret-ty well, if I don't say so myself. Yep, think you'll agree with me there, had those corridors down like the back of my hand. Metaphorically speaking, of course, don't actually have hands... you knew that. Right. Carrying on. I was pretty much the expert navigator of the team, not gonna lie. Was kind of my speciality, you could say. Knowing the halls of Aperture Labs. Yup. You know what else, though? I'm kind of at the end of my rope here. Correction: I reached the end of that quite a while ago, actually, few miles back. And I am fairly sure we've just entered a world that is, um, neither of ours. I know for a fact that I've never been here in my life. Probably. So, I'm just making a quick little guess here and saying that you, geographically, are as lost as I am at this point. I can only presume that, since you can't actually speak, that you have no clue where we're going. Which is unfortunate. But, but, not to worry. Because, do you wanna know a third thing? I'm not really completely lost, guess I kind of lied there, I do know one thing about this place: we reeeally shouldn't be here. Yep, getting a definite, um, negative vibe, possible because of the screaming, or – or maybe the blood-stained walls had something to do with it. That, that could potentially be a factor in why I seem to have the feeling that this is not a good place. In fact, I think we miiight want to, maybe, evacuate the area, as quickly as possible, if we're on the same page here. Not to panic you, or anything like that. But this is, um, red alert, we should probably get out immediately. Don't worry, don't worry. We've done this before, remember? Just – do what we did last time, alright? Alright. So, yeah, pack up your stuff, y'know, get your bearings, all that, and, well, let's go. Away. From this, uh, screaming town.”
Wheatley's rambling had a point to it this time. There was something seriously wrong here. Chell knew she had to get the two of them out, ASAP.
But one thing he said had stood out the most to her, like a thin pinprick of a splinter sticking out in what was usually well-polished wood. And it was just that, a splinter; it stuck her mind, needle-sharp, forcing her to stop and pluck at the phrase one more time.
Blood-stained walls. Chell inwardly admitted that she hadn't noticed any blood, but in hindsight that was probably where the rotting meat smell had come in.
She did another quick survey of the immediate area and realised with a mental shudder of horror that Wheatley was right, that the heavy smears on the sides of many buildings was too fluid-looking, too obviously splattered to have been rust. Now that she knew what it was, Chell realised that it was everywhere, really: spattering the unintelligible sign she had kicked earlier, coating the rotting fence she'd climbed over in streaks like a horrifically done paint job, plastered around the edges of a few windows as though it had once been oozing out by the gallon.
Chell forced herself to remain calm. She was still in survival mode; her main focus was still to find a way to the other side of the city. A little – well, a lot of – blood couldn't hurt her. Chell needed to keep her logical composure, to imagine she was back in Aperture, obliterate whatever stood in her way and blur out any distractions. The bloodstains weren't important; upon slightly closer inspection Chell found them too dark to be fresh. Her real problem was finding out what the hell had done something like this.
Another scream pierced the air, so close it could have been breathing down her neck, and as Wheatley jerked his vision towards it Chell realised she was about to find out.