Madison came out of the bathroom quickly, wiping her hands dry on her jeans. She rounded the corner into the living room and sat down on the armrest of the couch. On the television, the news reporter was still making small talk with the anchors back at the station. "Nothing new?" She asked, knowing the answer, but asking anyway. Her mother's mouth curved into a wan smile as she shook her head. Madison let out a breath of air and nodded; it was what she was expecting. It had taken them three weeks--three weeks!--to finally take action. Madison had to bite her lip and grab a hold of her own arms to stifle her anger. Still, after all this time, the thought of it made her as mad as hell.

Her older sister, Emily, came into the room and put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. Madison looked up at her and she cupped her chin with her other hand. "How are you doing, Maddy?" She asked with the same wan smile her mother had given her not fifteen seconds earlier.

"Fine, I guess... still no word on him," She told her older sister and looked down at the ground. And I'm starting to think there's not going to be.

"Did they give the names of the other two?"

"No," Madison answered but it brought her no hope. "But it doesn't matter. We found two other people when we were in there. A guy and a girl. Just like the reporter said the police got out of there."

"Well... keep your chin up, kid. A little hope never hurt anybody," Emily said and sat beside their mother on the couch.

Madison stood and folded her arms. "Call me in if anything happens," She said and walked into the kitchen.

Things had been such a blur since that day on the roof, she still barely knew where she was sometimes. If it wasn't for her Dad's constant cigar-stink, she might have forgotten she was in her parents house at all. In fact, she'd been living there for the last three weeks, but it still felt like a strange place to her. She'd moved out a year earlier, and coming back now--especially after everything that had happened--she felt like a guest. Not like the little baby girl who'd chipped her tooth on the end table when she was five. Or the budding young twelve-year-old singer who'd sang 'Amazing Grace' while her Dad played piano and smoked rolled cigarettes. She felt out of place, and the sad thing was, she knew where her place was. I should have never left you.

She circled around the big oval table in the kitchen and pushed open the back screen door. The quiet summer night greeted her with the chirping of crickets and the cool breeze coming in from Struble Lake to the West. The sun was giving up; the moon was starting to climb. Her father sat on the wooden porch swing beneath the kitchen window puffing on a fat cigar and staring out at the soft, purple, twilight sky. He looked over at her when she came out and grinned, and for a second she saw his face. Allan... where are you?

Her dad stubbed the cigar out and motioned to her. "Come here Maddy-Baby," He cooed and scooted over on the swing. Her father was the one person in the world who could make her feel like a kid again. She couldn't keep herself from slightly grinning as she walked over to him and sat on the swing. He draped his arm around her shoulder and kissed her on the cheek.

"Dad, you smell like a cigar."

"Do I ever not?" He teased and gave her a wide grin.

"I guess not," She told him and sighed. He gave her a long look, studying her face in that way that only he could. "I really liked him Dad. I don't think... I don't know if I did the right thing."

Her father pulled her closer. "That boy saved you, Maddy. He chose your life over his own. There's nothing more noble a man can do. Don't be sad for him, baby girl. Be proud of him."

Madison sighed. She kicked off her shoes, brought her knees up to her chest and let her head fall against her father arm. She looked at the big oak tree silhouetted against the purple night sky and thought of him. I'll come back for you, she had said. I trust you, had been his reply.

Falling through the sky was about the scariest thing Madison had ever done in her entire life. The initial jump hadn't been so bad, but once she was out in the open, with nothing but the air around her and the dress above her to keep her company, the world seemed to grow huge around her and made her head spin in circles. Breathing felt funny. Not breathing felt funny. Her heart was pounding in some strange pattern she'd never heard. She probably would have let go of the ends of the dress out of sheer panic, but his words clung to her mind like magnets: You don't let those go. Not for anything. Those are your lifelines. The words repeated over and over in her head like a chant, and every time she heard them, her hands made tighter fists around the dress ends. It felt like she was falling fast. Too fast. The foggy surface below, with its tree tops poking through, rushed up at her. She didn't know what was under that fog, but she knew she didn't want to fall through it. If only the fog was like a big pillow: soft and squishy and perfect for catching falling girls. But then she was sailing through the fog, and the tops of trees became the middles of trees. The surface--the actual surface--showed its ugly face. She screamed then. Screamed loud and shrill, but it didn't matter. No one was around to hear her. The trees stuck bony, naked hands out to grab her, but, miraculously, none did. The ground awaited though: deep browns and light greens and bushes and leafs and twigs and stones; she saw them all! Keep your legs beneath you. You have to land on your feet. His words came back to her and she focused. She could remember how stupid and useless she thought her bare legs and feet looked jutting out in front of her; how silly and ridiculous she thought it was going to be when her body was effectively squished into nothing, and heronly defense had been her dumb legs.

But then she hit the ground--dumb legs first--and nothing happened. She stood in the forest for a second, dazed, with her mouth agape and her heart racing a thousand miles an hour. The pink dress came down on top of her, smothering her under its hefty size.

From that point on, life was a series of fleeting images for awhile. She remembered running through the forest. She remembered looking back at the massive building behind her that towered over the trees and disappeared up into the fog. She could still see the look of the woman's face on the highway that she'd first come across. She had burst out of the forest and directly in the path of an oncoming car, and was damned lucky she didn't get squashed right there and then. But she didn't; the woman had swerved and slammed on the brakes and almost hit the guardrail on the opposite side, but only wound up skimming it. She remembered crying her eyes out and telling the poor woman the whole story and pointing back towards the building telling her that Allan was still up there. She remembered the ride in the ambulance and the kind old man at the hospital that kept telling her it was going to be OK. That's when things came back into focus in her memory.

The police didn't believe her. About anything! Not about the RIC robots or the MAT machines or the portal gun or GLaDOS or... or even Allan. They thought she had been raped or drugged up or both, and she was delusional and building stories from the ground up to protect herself from 'the truth'. They brought shrinks in to the hospital room, and they didn't believe her either. Her parents didn't even believe her! The whole world might have been able to convince her she was nuts, except for the fact that she was wearing the proof around her calves: the leg shocks. The cops gave each other funny looks and took them away from her. She cried that night, thinking they were going to throw them away and pretend they never existed. They didn't though, and when she was released from the hospital a few days later, the cops wanted to talk to her all the time. They had questions galore, but she only had one answer for them. Go save Allan! Please! She had screamed at them and pleaded with them. They told her they'd checked the place out, but it had been abandoned for years and didn't have a trace of anything or anyone inside it. She called them liars and threatened to go back herself if they wouldn't help him.

It might have all ended that way: her constantly yelling and fighting with the cops to do something; the cops telling her to calm down and threatening her with 'institutions'; the fat, balding psychiatrist constantly trying to convince her she was hiding some sort of repressed memory. But after a week, a report came down from a few counties up about a missing college kid named Allan. The cops starting paying attention to her after that.

The rest of the story she only had gotten from the news and a few scattered policemen that would still talk to her after she had berated them for two weeks about saving Allan. Glados was a clever girl. The bottom five floors of the building were dummy floors: dark, useless, rotting floors with nothing but broken tables, peeling wallpaper, and broken office supplies inside them. But after the fifth floor--and Madison had no clue where or what secret passage they'd had to find to get there--things were 'sinisterly wicked' and 'ingeniously constructed' as all the newspaper headings had said.

That was all yesterday when they had first entered the building. This morning, they pulled out the first two 'victims'. A guy and a girl; both remained nameless for their own protection. Madison thought of those two poor people they'd found up high in the building: The man the RICs had been modeled after, Matthew; and the girl who Glados had copied for her own body, Cassandra. She was happy for them, but they weren't him. They weren't... Allan.

Her father stirred beside her and she pulled herself out of her daze to look up at him. The old bear was sleeping. Madison smiled and kissed him on the cheek before carefully slipping away from his arm and standing up. She stretched and headed back into the house. When she walked into the living room, she sensed the mood immediately and her heart froze.

"What is it?" She asked fearful of the answer. Neither her mother or sister spoke. She looked at the TV, the ticker scrolling by on the bottom read: BREAKING: One body found. Police say the body has been identified as a young male-

The ticker scrolled on, but Madison turned her head and held her breath. That's it, she thought and tears swelled in her eyes. Her mother and sister were on her, squeezing her and kissing her and apologizing, but she could only think of him. Allan... I'm sorry.

Her family was good to her. They consoled her in every way a person could hope to be consoled, but Madison wanted to be alone. She swore to them she was OK and slipped out the back door again. She stuck her hands in her pockets and walked barefoot through the grass and up the low slope of the yard to the big oak tree. It was there waiting for her, as she knew it would be. She sighed, sat beneath it, and laid back on the grass; her hands lacing behind her head for a makeshift pillow. Crickets sang behind her, and the stars twinkled above her. The soft purple of twilight was deepening to the dark blue velvet of night. She cried then. Until she fell asleep.

When she awoke, she knew she was actually dreaming, because Allan was sitting there; his back to her as he gazed into the night sky, which had finally turned black. What a cruel dream, she thought and rubbed her hands against her eyes to clear them. When she sat up, life felt too real to her to be a dream. And Allan was still there. She tried to say something, but no words came. He looked back at her and smiled and at that moment she knew it wasn't a dream.

"You're the girl of my dreams," He told her as he swiveled around to face her. He looked her up and down. "You're actually much prettier than in my dreams."

"This... this isn't a dream?" She asked and put her hands against the sides of her head.

"Well, I hope not. If it is..." His face grew distant with remembrance. "Please don't wake me up."

"Allan?" She began to believe it. Her heart fluttered and her blood felt hot and prickly under her skin. "Really?"

"That's what everyone keeps calling me," He answered and smirked. "I don't... I don't remember much of anything, though, so... I don't even know your name."

She got to her knees and scooted close to him. She brought her face up close to his and studied it. It was him. He was alive.

"I-" He began to say, but she hugged him so suddenly and strongly that the wind flew from his lips. He laughed and hugged her back. "Were we... boyfriend and girlfriend or anything?"

She pulled away and brushed tears from her eyes. She looked deep into his and searched them. "You really don't remember me?"

"Don't take it personally. I don't really remember anything."

"What happened?"

"Heh, seems like an easy question, right?" Allan began and ran his hand through his hair. "I've been asked that by more cops and lawyers and people in suits today than you could possibly imagine. I don't really have an answer. Like I said, I don't remember really anything. I woke up and there was a voice telling me what I had to do. So I did those things. That's about it."

Madison was shocked. She leaned in and tilted her head. " You don't remember Glados?" He shook his head. "Rick? The portal gun?" He kept shaking. "The... the journal? The x-ray glasses? The leg shocks?" He kept shaking. Madison could beat around the question she actually wanted an answer to all day, but it was inevitable. "And... you really don't remember... me?" He looked down at the ground for a moment, then back up at her. He shook his head.

"I'm sorry," He told her. "I know you're important to me though." She listened carefully. "Look, I don't even know what my parents look like. I honestly can't remember anything. The one thing I dreamt about when I was in that place and was able to remember... was you. I knew what you looked like almost before I knew what myself looked like. I have spent the last fourteen hours talking to cops and being checked out by doctors, but the whole time I couldn't stop thinking about finding you. When they told me some girl had been begging them to come after me for weeks... I knew it was you. The girl of my dreams."

Madison smiled and wiped more tears away; there seemed to be an endless stream of them.

"The doctors said there is nothing wrong with me, but I don't think I'm ever going to remember things before... before I woke up in that room that day. So I'm asking you for help, I guess. You know how long it took me to convince the cops to bring me to you?" Madison looked towards the house and saw two officers sitting at her kitchen table and drinking coffee with her dad. "I just... I kind of want to remember, you know? I don't know if I ever can or ever will, but I know I want to try."

Madison hugged him again, it was hard not to. She still couldn't believe he was there. Really there. "I thought you were dead. The news reports..."

"Yeah, they told me about that before they brought me over here. Can you believe there was two people right next to me the entire time? Some girl they got out of there and a guy... he's the one they found dead."

It suddenly made sense to Madison. The guy, Matthew, was Glados' model for her human-machines. Allan had become the new model. It didn't make sense for her to keep him around so she... she killed him. Glados. Are you still alive somewhere?

"What are the cops going to do about the building?" Madison asked, suddenly aware of the threat of Glados.

"I'm not sure. Apparently they're finding all sorts of things in there, and, according to the police commissioner, they haven't even scratched the surface. I kept telling them about the voice but... they think it was in my head. They didn't find anyone else--yet--that could have been doing the talking."

Glados was alive, Madison knew then. Hiding probably: biding her time until she was ready to strike. The cops wouldn't do a thing about her before it was too late. She had to be stopped, but Madison had no idea by who. She looked at Allan. Could the two of them do it? Could they stop her?

"You never answered my question before," Allan cut into her thoughts. She looked up at him. "Were we boyfriend and girlfriend?"

Madison put aside the thoughts of Glados for the moment; there would be a day when she was ready to think about that, but that day wasn't today. She smiled and shook her head. "No."

"Oh," Allan said sounding surprised and a bit disappointed. He thought for a moment and then looked up at her frowning. "We're not... brother and sister are we?" She laughed and shook her head. Allan look confused. "Oh... well... then who are we?"

Madison looked deep into his eyes and found the answer. She stuck her hand out. "I'm Madison," She told him, realizing they'd have to start fresh again. He looked down at her hand, then up at her eyes and smiled. He shook it. She let a deep breath of air out and laid back on the grass. He watched her for a moment, curiously, and then scooted next to her and laid beside her. They looked up at the sky together.

"This feels familiar," Allan said and looked over at her. "That's a good thing."

The sky was the inky black of night, but the stars poked shining holes all over it. They watched it, picking out constellations; the big oak tree behind them watching over them. Madison knew then that things were going to be alright. They had both been through hell and back, but at least now, they had each other. The cool breeze started to become a cold breeze, so they scooted closer together. Allan's hand found hers. She smiled.

They talked all night.

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The End

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( 0 )

"Are you still there?"She asked into the darkness of the building. No answers came. "Still alive," she said to herself melodically.

"Still alive."