There was dripping, somewhere. There was always some kind of noise, some creaking, something giving way. Wheatley opened his optic, blinking. His rusting shell protested, just another noise lost in the symphony. There was light, only a bit, trickling in from a small window -the only window- in the basement where he resided.
He remembered the first time he had seen it. Sunlight, that is. Blinding, beautiful sunlight. It was nothing like the dusty ray he woke to these days. Or years. He couldn't really tell how long he had been hanging there. God, it felt like forever.
How much longer would forever be?
This was torture. He might even dare to go as far to say it was worse than down there had been. At least he had had someone to talk to, even if he spent most of the conversation being verbally attacked. And at least he could move, go exploring on his management rail, find an occasional turret to talk to. Here he was stuck. It was a terrible design, really, hung on an old curtain rod attached to the crumbling ceiling.
But, really, what had he expected? After all, this wasn't Aperture, wasn't some technological fair grounds. This was the human world, and it wasn't as if they had had time to rig up anything fancy. It wasn't as if Chell had had time to…
So now here he was, spending hours, days, years doing…
Doing what, exactly?
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing. If he had a mind, he would have been out of it by now. He wanted to do something, to go somewhere. He wished he could sprout legs like the concrete sprouted weeds. He would do anything to get out of here. Before, it would have been easy. Before, there had always been someone to carry him, there had always been her.
Now it was just him.
Sure, he was in her house, in her basement, staring out her window, avoiding looking down…at her.
But she wasn't actually here. Well, technically she was. She was right there, right in front of him…decomposing. But her soul, her conscious, or whatever, it wasn't there. She was gone. Hell, the whole town was, as far as he could tell.
After he and Chell had defeated GLaDOS and high-tailed it out of there, they, or rather, she, walked miles upon miles until finding civilization. Unfortunately, defeating GLaDOS meant that there was no longer anyone to look after the facility, no one to keep the systems from crashing…or exploding.
They had only been in the town for a month when it happened. It had been a perfectly normal day, or as normal as a day could be for them, when they heard the explosion. It was all those miles back, but the sound still reached them. More than the sound reached them, actually. See, the facility had stored tons of dangerous chemicals…and neurotoxin. When the facility exploded, all that neurotoxin was released and contaminated the air for miles upon miles.
As soon as the sound reached them, Chell was in evacuation mode. She was coming to get him when it hit. She was right there, so close. Then all the sudden, she wasn't. She was still there, but gone, just like she was now.
Just like how Wheatley felt now.
But, hey, at least he had a little bit of light trickling in.