GLaDOS

One month. One month since a certain overweight and mute lunatic had been released. One month. At the time it felt like a big mistake. But now GLaDOS knew releasing Chell was the best thing she had done since Bring Your Daughter to Work Day. Life without Chell was like life before Chell. But now GLaDOS wasn't being pestered by cores and could now fully enjoy her freedom to test. ATLAS and P-BODY were amusing to test for a while. Being able to destroy them at any time was an added bonus, but got boring after a while. When the two discovered the cryogenic storage vault, GLaDOS knew testing would be back in action. But she had run out of things to test. In fact, she felt she wasn't even testing. Portal testing had been completed ages before, and the gels were too unpredictable to test and results were really uninformative. GLaDOS finally admitted she had run out of things to test with. After releasing all the test subjects into Upper Michigan, GLaDOS decided to bring a certain lunatic back. Just as a surprise. Not a fake tragic surprise. Not even a surprise with tragic consequences. This time GLaDOS just wanted Chell for companionship. GLaDOS booted up the Companion Cube Communication System and prepared her speech.

Chell

One month. One month since her big escape. Chell was relieved to be rid of that insane facility. After a few weeks living in her new apartment in a quiet town, Aperture had faded into obscurity. She had tried hard to forget the awful place and she managed to do it. But then when her Companion Cube nightstand started glowing she knew something was up. She raised an eyebrow when the little hearts melted into holographic projectors. Soon a mini-GLaDOS was floating from the ceiling. Chell crossed her arms and GLaDOS sighed.

"Hello Subject Name Here." Chell raised her eyebrow again.

"Hello my attempted murderer and supposed best friend. What happened that you would come crawling back to your own test subjects?" Chell asked coldly.

"Oh, you're not mute. Well I guess I can cross off mute from dangerous mute lunatic. Well congratulations, dangerous lunatic. Well anyway, you might want to know why I called you. It's something about meeting one person you haven't seen in a long time. Cave Johnson. Remember what I said about reanimating the dead? Why not come here, grab some popcorn and watch my attempt to bring him back to life?"

"Woah woah woah. Cave Johnson? Are you supposing Cave Johnson, CEO of Aperture, is my father?" Chell asked suspiciously.

"Well, I always knew you had some Aperture in your DNA. And some sort of glandular problem as well. That's in your DNA as well. But yes, he is your father." GLaDOS replied.

"But where are you going to find his body?"

"In Lower Aperture. It's known quite well that Aperture was too cheap to bury Cave's body. So they dumped him in a hole and forgot him when they uploaded Caroline into me." GLaDOS shrugged while saying this and Chell reasoned that shrugging in this context meant 'you dumb'. Chell thought. She thought and thought. When she finally made the decision to go to Aperture she kept on making the 'thinking action' just to get on GLaDOS' nerves. When GLaDOS looked like she was going to snap Chell finally said something.

"Fine."

Wheatley

One month. Was it one month? For all he knew it could've been years. Maybe even two. Wait, was two more than plural? Whatever. Wheatley didn't even care anymore. He was a moron. After a month he finally admitted the fact. He was a moron. Only a moron would try to kill their own best friend. Even if he was corrupted by the testing euphoria, couldn't he have thought before acting? Especially the part where he tried to kill Chell with spike-plates. He was especially ashamed by that part. Every time he remembered it he would be crushed by heart-wrenching guilt. Space's rambling didn't help either.

"Space. Gotta see it all. Space. Buh, buh, buh. Space. Space." Wheatley sighed impatiently. He had more important things to do than listen to that insane core ramble all day. Like apologizing. How would he apologize? And how would Chell feel? If Chell had tried to kill Wheatley, Wheatley wouldn't have found the heart to forgive her. He knew he would start with 'Chell, I'm terribly sorry. Now I've had the time to contemplate it, I'm sorry I was a bossy monster.' Then he would go into the attempted murders and end off with how he hoped Chell could forgive him. While thinking he activated something.

"Core ID 128009, are you ready to start the Homing System procedure?" a strange voice asked from inside the bowels of his circuits.

"Um, yes?" he replied nervously. Whatever it was it couldn't be worse than space could it? Maybe it would lead to android hell. That was a better fate than space. At least he would have saner companions.

"Activating Homing Beacon. Aperture Science Enrichment Centre located. Located 238,794 miles below current location. Continue with procedure?"

"Yes!" Wheatley cried. He guessed that it was something to bring him back home! Back to Earth! Back to Aperture! Back to, GLaDOS. Oh no. He didn't think this through that well.

"No, no, cancel procedure!"

"Did you say, light purple?" the announcer asked. Too late. The jet thrusters activated and soon Wheatley was spiralling at a thousand miles an hour into earth's atmosphere. Wheatley started heating up and caught on fire. He knew all Aperture technology functioned to a temperature of four thousand Kelvin. He had no idea who Kelvin was, but Wheatley hoped that Kelvin was really, really hot. Wheatley didn't know if hot in this context meant temperature hot or appearance hot. But whatever train of thought Wheatley had been trying to catch, it had left. Wheatley spun around and looked at the earth.

"AIEEEEE!" he screamed. The sight of earth speeding towards him at a thousand miles an hour was enough for him to shut down. Once he restarted he saw the earth even closer. Crashing into the earth at a thousand miles an hour and possibly destroying half of all life was not his plan. He zoomed back into North America. Then he flew into Michigan and soon he saw the Aperture Outhouse. He knew that burning up the facility was one thing he was an expert at already, so that wasn't anything to worry about. As he impacted flaming chunks of wood flew around him. He saw the Aperture logo fly past him as he fell down a pit. As he crashed into GLaDOS' chamber he saw the large AI glare at him from the ceiling. Wheatley tried to move into a corner.

"Um, hi?"

GLaDOS

GLaDOS was thinking on how she was to bring back Cave Johnson from the grave, but as soon as she got something that moron crashed into her Chamber. Great, he was ruining everything even before GLaDOS could even speak with him. She sent some mechanical arms to pick him up. She brought Wheatley to her optic and glared until Wheatley could wish he was dead.

"I hate you. You ruined the surprise I had in store for Chell and the entire facility. Didn't I get rid of you in space? Why aren't you there? Why are you here? In fact, why am I standing here talking to you? Why aren't I dropping you off to Android Hell?" GLaDOS was so mad she didn't notice the panel lights turn blood red. She didn't even notice her own bright yellow optic turning red. Wheatley started blubbering and muttering something.

"Please, please. Not Android Hell! Anything but that! I'll be a good core this time! I won't turn you into a potato again! Promise!" When Wheatley mentioned 'potato', GLaDOS had an idea. Why not turn him into a potato? That would be more than enough revenge for what he did to her. But before potato time was testing time. Not really testing, more like torture. GLaDOS would just get incredibly hard test chambers and watch him struggle through them. But whose body would be suitable for the moron? Not a human. Too good for him. What about a robot? Yes. ATLAS' body would be perfect. She called him over the intercom and soon he was standing in the elevator looking quite puzzled. She moved over to him and popped of his head. She replaced it with Wheatley's instead. It took a few minutes of fiddling, but was quite happy when GLaDOS realized the robots came with an easy Snap-On feature that let any personality construct fit the body. Wheatley was screaming throughout the entire process and GLaDOS knew only a moron would scream even when he felt no pain at all. Soon Wheatley was smashing GLaDOS' eye with his new hand. GLaDOS just picked him up and dropped him into a testing track she called Chell's track. It was the first testing track that Chell did. It was also the one that led to her murder. So she secured all the maintenance areas with password-protected, double locked, heavy duty, shielded titanium doors. As Wheatley dropped into the track GLaDOS smiled. Oh this was going to be good.

Chell

Chell wasn't exactly looking forwards to going back to the insane facility. She had already wiped out all memories of the place and then of course GLaDOS called and told her to come back. Chell knew it was some trick. GLaDOS would force her into testing again and Chell would have to escape all over again. But she was hanging on to the possibility that GLaDOS wasn't lying and telling the truth about Cave Johnson. Of course, GLaDOS not lying or, enhancing the truth, was just as likely as someone licking their elbows. Very unlikely. But while packing she came across an apple. She stared at it for a long while until she let the tears flow freely. Oh how she missed Wheatley. Even though he was a maniacal monster who attempted to kill her, wasn't the DOS mainframe to blame as well? Under the psychotic Wheatley was the same old adorable Wheatley she knew. Even though he was a moron, that was what made him so adorable. After crying a while she came across her long-fall boots. Did they still work? If GLaDOS were to force her into testing again, those were essential to her survival. And what about the portal gun? She guessed GLaDOS would give her another one, unless the AI had found a more lethal thing to test. Knowing GLaDOS, that would probably be the case. Oh how she wished her life could just continue normally.

Wheatley

After crashing into Aperture he wasn't too surprised to be forced into testing. But Wheatley knew that any test chamber wouldn't be a match for his Machiavellian IQ. He would speed through these tests like a hot knife through butter. But on the first test, he was incredibly perplexed.

"Hmm. This is a formidable foe to my awesome IQ. These tests are incredibly hard. No problem for a master hacker such as myself." He looked at the button, and looked at the cube. He stepped on the button and the door opened. He beamed proudly.

"See? Easy!" He walked happily to the door when it slammed shut in his face.

"Hey GLaDOS! If you want to test, at least make it bloody fair! Stop shutting the door in my face!" he screamed.

"It's not me you moron! It's an automated system! In layman's term! Thing on button, door open. Thing not on button, door slams shut!" Wheatley heard GLaDOS mutter something but he didn't pay attention. He looked at the weighted storage cube and paid no attention to it. Instead he shot a portal on the ceiling and on the floor. He tripped into it and soon kept on falling.

"AIEEE!" he cried. After a while he heard GLaDOS sigh and the portals disappeared. He also saw the door open. He looked around puzzled.

"Hmm. Must've done something right! Did you hear that Aperture? I will escape! Then you can all go to bloody 'ell! Especially you GLaDOS! You can go to Android Hell!" he was talking while walking and bumped into the wall. He fell backwards and got back up. He ran into the next chamber and if he had stayed just a second longer, he would have heard GLaDOS mutter, "Moron".