First Words

First Words Chapter 1

Chell walked through the large, seemingly endless wheat field, small beads of sweat running down her face. The long fall boots made her feet sore, the tendons aching more and more so as she walked on. She put down her soot-covered Companion Cube and sat down on it's edge, taking off her long fall boots, she gently massaged the sore tendons in her right leg, the skin rubbed raw from the straps keeping them on her. She winced, the long days of testing in Aperture, running, jumping, falling, finally taking it's toll, as she had really never rested before now. Chell put her Long Fall boot back on her right foot, and repeated the process on the left foot. The heavy Companion Cube just made more weight for her to carry on in the field, putting more stress on her elevated feet. She groaned ,putting on the left boot and picking up the cube once again. But up in space, it was different. Wheatley let out a simulated sigh, opening his optic shutters and looking around again. Space. Only space. The happy, energetic core floating around him was excitedly gasping and muttering "space" constantly. Wheatley had become used to it, even though he had been up here for only a day now. He wondered what Chell was doing. If he ever made it back to earth, would she forgive him? Probably not, considering what he had done to her, tried to kill her, with the many death traps he had set, only for all of them to fail. He had gone almost insane because the Mainframe coding had a euphoric response to testing, but it eventually develops a resistance to it, resulting in a build up of tension, causing frustration to set in, making him more and more frustrated. But when he found the cooperative testing initiative, he didn't need her anymore. The mainframe changed him completely from the small bundle of code he was. But now, he was truly sorry for what he did. "Earth." The Space Core said unexcitedly, far from his usual excited tone of voice while talking about space. Wheatley opened his optic shutters again, the earth WAS much closer than before. He thought about the situation for a moment, before his cracked optic narrowed to a pinpoint. He was getting pulled back to earth. He glanced around nervously, making his spherical body spin from the lack of gravity. He could feel the rubber on his handles start to heat up as he moved faster and faster towards earth. The space core gasped again, happy he wasn't leaving space. "YAY! SPACE! I'M IN SPACE!!" The core yelled happily. Wheatley searched his files for a protocol on what to do when you're being pulled out of space, surprisingly, he found one. "Ok, no need to panic," He said to himself, with the panic not hidden in his synthesized voice at all. "alright, open the 'SpaceFall' program... SpaceFall... uh oh. WHERE IS SPACEFALL?!" He yelled, the panic even more noticeable in his voice. "Hello, Moron." A cold, dark, Voice rang through him, even though the Space Core was still babbling about space. "Oh! It's you! Hello..." Wheatley nervously said. "And I'm not a moron." He commented. "You know, after you almost DESTROYED my facility, I decided not to let you die in a fiery death you deserve so much. Fortunately, for you, your makers decided to give you a parachute, it's made out of the strongest material, so it won't burn up and break during your fall." She said. "Oh! Ok, thank you for the tip!!" By now, he was so close to the atmosphere, he was ready to fire the parachute at any moment, as soon as he reached it, bam, he would fire it. His train of thought was interrupted by the white-hot burning in his outer shell. The parachute opened with such force, Wheatley's optic bounced after the rush of air hit the fabric. "I have a feeling this is gonna take a bloody long time..." He muttered.