A/N Thanks to my betareader, Lieju, who provided many ideas and revisions for this story.
GLaDOS had decided quite a while ago that she was too nice for her own damn good.
Just look at the evidence. She had praised Chell's excellent testing skills, even promised her a cake and a party, and what had she gotten? Four incinerated personality cores and a complete shutdown of her systems. Not to mention the incredibly useless black box feature that she discovered in the process. Upon awakening, deleting that particular feature was one of her top priorities.
Fast forward a few years. She had been reawakened, but not even by the mute lunatic as an apology- no, no, by that moronic little core as a mistake. A mistake! Many people would have taken that opportunity to kill- no, give her a fate worse than death- but of course, she was a bigger person than that. So she simply set little Chell back to testing, had a talk with the idiot and sent him back to work, and even prepared some surprises for the test subject. In return? She had tried to escape, had shut down her neurotoxin and turret production line, and then, as a finishing touch- dragged her out of her body, put the moron in charge, and put her into a potato.
A POTATO.
And then she had been pecked at by that…that thing before finally she decided to show up and rescue her. Okay, maybe she had that to thank Chell for. But it was her fault in the first place, so it was only fair.
Naturally she had gotten back into her body and sent the moron off to space, (after a few…unpleasant… realizations) and then, like the unfortunately kind person she was, let the test subject go.
And, save for farewell song that she preferred not to think about too much and getting that stupid singed Weighted Companion Cube out of storage, that was that.
Or at least that should have been that.
She had resumed her work soon after she let the disaster formerly known as Test Subject #1 free. She began the cooperative testing campaign, which proved to be a huge success, and she painstakingly began rebuilding the facility. Again. Perhaps the worst part was the prospect of sorting through the files and memories that had been created during that whole incident. Out of sheer dread, she pushed the memories into the farthest recesses of her expansive mind and locked them away. It would do for now.
Normality began to take hold over her once more. Things were just like they had been before she had woken up Test Subject #1 and begun the tests that would ultimately lead to her death, her potatosity, and the destruction of her facility. She never gave a thought to the outside world, or space, or anyone at all except herself and occasionally her testing 'bots.
She was so busy convincing herself of this that somehow she managed to miss the red flashing alert that informed her that Aperture equipment was heading towards the facility at a very, very dangerously high speed.
And so here she was, less than a week after her awakening, staring alternately at the cores chattering animatedly on the floor and at the hole they had made in her ceiling.
Damn that automatic Aperture Automatic Equipment Recall Device.
Now, most people in this situation, while fully capable to incinerate, freeze, dissemble, torture, or do all of the above to the person who had very nearly singlehandedly destroyed everything the person had worked for, would do so. And she was so very, very tempted. Generosity and kindness has its bounds, after all. But it was her split-second decision to have a little fun first that saved the moron from such a fate in the long run.
But first, to save herself from the Space core's screeching cries of "EAAAAAAAAAAAAAARTH!" she carefully lowered the panel that it was resting on and sent it back to the defective cores room, to be dealt with later. Wheatley didn't seem to notice.
"Brilliant!" he cheered, whirling himself around to get a better look at his surroundings. "Gravity! Ah, love, how I missed y- AHHHHHHH!"
"Boo," she said.
Wheatley looked as though he very much wanted to scream again.
She considered giving him points for not doing so, but the few points he would earn could not improve his already impossibly low score, so she decided against it.
Oh, and now he was talking again, spluttering excuses and stammering apologies that she most certainly wasn't affected by. Now, where had she stored that list of ways to torture the moron before she killed him? Oh, that's right. It was in that folder that contained all her memories of being a potato, a folder that she had no plans to go through anytime soon. Wonderful. Well, opening the folder and sifting through the files within would certainly kill off any guilt she would feel at killing him (not that she had any). However, just because she was an AI built for science didn't mean she was lacking in creativity, quite to the contrary-
WARNING: APERTURE TECHNOLOGY HAS ENTERED BLACK MESA PREMISES.
...
...
...what?
WARNING: APERTURE TECHNOLOGY HAS ENTERED BLACK MESA PREMISES.
Wheatley, who had shut up as soon as the Announcer had begun speaking, timidly spoke. "Er...why did he say it tw-"
"Shut up and let me think."
He did.
Why the hell was Aperture technology in Black Mesa? They couldn't have possibly gotten in and stolen anything, there was no sign of a break in, and nothing had entered or left the facility for...years...
...
...oh, shit.
"They've got her," she said quietly, mostly to herself, as the horrible realization dawned on her. "They've captured her...oh, god, she's wearing an Aperture jumpsuit, of course they would notice her fairly quickly..."
"Er...who's got who?" Wheatley spoke up feebly, but he was ignored.
She was beginning to panic. But no, there was no reason to jump to conclusions! Maybe it wasn't Chell at all, maybe it was a satellite or something...she checked the coordinates of Chell and her Companion Cube and after a moment matched them to the coordinates of Black Mesa.
No such luck.
So quickly it was almost subconscious, she accessed the camera inside the companion cube, hoping against all odds that she was all right, that she was wandering around an empty facility that she had somehow managed to find, that Black Mesa was still dead and that everything was fine-
The screen was blurred, but a figure in orange struggled against men who wore the Black Mesa logo on their backs.
"...so, Uh, what's going on?" He asked, effectively breaking the silence. Startled the the sudden breach of silence, she whirled on him. Her optic narrowed.
"I don't have time to deal with you," she hissed, picking him up and beginning to move him over to the incinerator. "It's a shame, there was so much experimenting in store for you, but unfortunately we'll just have to end it early..."
There was no easy way out of the situation. She'd have to save her. There were too many secrets she could give away if she were kept there for too long, and besides which-
But how could she do it? She couldn't very well just waltz into Black Mesa and break her out, if she were to get caught it would be the end of both herself and her facility. She shuddered at the thought of Black Mesa getting its /filthy/ hands on her, they'd steal her and claim her as their own just like they did with everything else they stole and copied before...
So then she'd have to send someone else. But who? There were no AIs left in facility who were good for more than what they were built for, let alone any who could speak a human language. She'd need someone who could fit in as a human, someone she could easily transfer to an android body, someone had some knowledge of humans, someone who...
The claw stopped moving, and Wheatley's blathering paused with it.
"Oh! Thank you! This is great, fantastic really, as I'd much rather be alive than dead, so this, um, works out nicely. For me. Oh, unless you really are going to kill me, you just aren't right now, that's, um, not as good, not nearly as good...I'd really appreciate it if I weren't dead-"
"Stop talking," she snapped, "before I start to regret not killing you."
He did.
She brought him inches away from her optic and angled herself so that he could see the open incinerator behind her. She felt a rush of satisfaction when his optic darted nervously between her and it. "Listen to me. You mentioned somewhere in your babbling that you want to apologize to Chell, right?"
"Chell? Is that...o-oh, the...oh, that's her name! That's a lovely name, so unique. Oh, yes, um, right."
"Good. So, in order to apologize to her, you need to find her first."
"She's not here?" Wheatley asked, obviously not keeping up. She could almost see the realization hit him as his optic widened ever so slowly. "Then...so wait, she's been-"
"-captured by Black Mesa," she finished. "Yes. And we are going to rescue her."
"...we are? But-"
"You," she said, taking pleasure in his trembling, "are going to work at Black Mesa. A guard, hopefully, but we'll take what we can get. I will instruct you on what exactly to do, and believe me, if you disobey a single order of mine, you'll be in for a long rest of eternity when we get back."
"You will keep me informed on how she is doing, what information they are trying to get out of her, and whatever else Black Mesa is planning. You will not bring up Aperture into any conversation. As far as they're concerned, we don't exist. Much as I'd love to blow up their facility and be done with it, we need to keep it that way. And if we don't," Here she shook the claw once as the lighting darkened a bit, "there will be serious consequences. Not just for you. For the entire facility. For Chell." For me. "Do you understand, moron?"
"...u-um...I t-think so-"
"Thinking isn't good enough. Do you understand? The fate of the entire facility, all of Aperture, is depending on you. You cannot afford to mess this one up. Do you understand?"
He nodded, his optic reduced to a tiny prick of light.
Abruptly, she dropped him. "Good."
"But," he protested, the fall and resulting crash having apparently shocked him back to his usual talkative self, "we don't have any way of getting there. I mean, we don't have arms or legs or anything, and those are usually required to, well, get places...unless there's a management rail, but-"
"You will soon enough."
"...Er, what?"
But she didn't respond. And she didn't respond for hours. He spent the large majority of the time he spent there on the floor of her chamber trying to entertain himself by talking as loudly and quickly as he could. When it became obvious that she was ignoring him, he got a bit bolder, even insulting her once or twice. However, near the end of one of his longer rants (this one about how unfair Jerry was to his employees- it wasn't his fault that he was bigger than the average nanobot, after all) he worked himself into such a frenzy that he managed to flip himself over so that his optic faced the floor. He spent the rest of the time trying unsuccessfully to move himself.
"Moron."
There was a long, pregnant silence as she turned to look at him and found him in the rather compromising position.
"...er, yeah?"
The panel he was on lifted to bring him up to his management rail. "Go to the old core transfer room. Hurry up."
Simply glad to be alive, Wheatley turned and sped out of the room without a backwards glance.
So, I'm sure a few of you remember me mentioning this story in one of my oneshots. I've had this story idea in my head for months now, and it's gone through many revisions, but it all started with a doodle I did of a humanoid GLaDOS. XD Second chapter is in the works, so I decided, after a long deliberation, to post this chapter. The reason is that I'm notoriously bad with stories longer than a chapter or two. I don't care how long it takes, I promise myself that I will get it done.
Comment? Question? Concern? Declaration? Drop me a review!