~ So I'm back guys. You have permission to murder me for not posting anything for the past few months. I'm currently working on For Science and also still brainstorming for the big crossover thing I'm doing. But until I finish up with those, here's a little alternate ending to Portal 2, if you will. It's just kind of a random idea I had, so don't be too hard on it. Also, starting about halfway through this story will be the first time I write in Chell's point of view, so I hope I'm not rubbish at writing for her, haha. Anyways, enjoy! :) ~
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"You are NOT coming back!"
"Oh no! Change of plans! Hold onto me! Tighter!" wailed the moronic personality core that had ruined absolutely everything. GLaDOS could see his bright blue optic contract into a tiny dot and his entire body convulse in fear. He was desperate, scared out of his mind. And She didn't care in the slightest. With all the venom She could muster, She smacked the side of his hull so hard that he flew out of the human's fingers and went spiraling into orbit. "AHHH! GRAB ME GRAB ME GRAB ME! GRAB MEEEEEEEEEEE!"
So that was how it would end for the Intelligence Dampening Sphere. Solitude in space for years, until his stupid little core batteries wore out and he perished from exhaustion. He didn't deserve such a light punishment. Perhaps She should have saved him, just to think up something even worse. But it was too late now. With that, She pulled Chell inside and closed the portal to the moon, dropping the human to the ground. She then proceeded to reattach her own head to the chassis.
Once that was in order, She began to examine the facility, to see what damage the moron had done. But something was wrong, horribly wrong. Her whole body seemed to stop working. Wires frayed, signals wouldn't send, Her vision flickered. The damage was too great, She could barely function. And the facility was only temporarily fixed. It would be in danger of imploding on itself again, and soon. And She no longer had the capacity to fix it. An agonized cry reverberated around the room, and She realized that she had been the one to utter it.
Dimly, She heard a voice in the back of her mind, one that, if She'd possessed a heart, would've made it stop.
"Central Core damage at 97%. Beginning Emergency Transfer Procedure [0000001]. Once complete, please exit the facility within sixty minutes, after which self-destruct will initiate. Thank you."
Emergency Transfer Procedure [0000001]? But that was...
Before She could fully register what was about to happen, everything blinked off, and GLaDOS was shut down again.
0 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~0
GLaDOS' eyes blinked open and She stared at what appeared to be the ceiling of Her chamber. She was aware that She was on the ground, or at least on a surface and not hanging from the top of the chamber. So She was out of her own body, again. Wonderful.
She sensed the chamber floor beneath Her and noted that it was cold. Very cold. Colder than She should be able to feel with Her temperature sensors. But then, She wasn't in Her old, familiar body anymore.
An incessant thumping distracted Her. Was that the facility about to self-destruct? Or...
Transfer Procedure [0000001].
She inhaled sharply and realized simultaneously that it was not a simulation, She had actually taken a breath...the thumping in her chest that seemed to gain speed with every beat, was actually a heart – Her heart. Her head swam as She remembered what Transfer Procedure [0000001] was, what it was designed to do, why it had been put in place. A human body had been kept in store, so that in case of irreversible damage to Her body, She could be placed into it and at least get out of the facility alive. It had always puzzled Her why it was the first emergency procedure created, and why there just happened to be a body She could be transferred to. But now, with all the memories and knowledge that had resurfaced in Test Shaft Nine, the realization hit Her like a battering ram.
The body was Caroline's. They had kept it, presumably in stasis, for all this time. Mr. Johnson may have thought of the backup plan himself, in case the transfer to the central computer didn't work out. It all fit.
But She didn't want it to.
Slowly, She sat up, long brown hair falling into Her eyes as she did so. The body had been cleaned, dried, and clothed before the transfer so that She could leave the facility as soon as She awoke. She stood up and noticed how quickly the action came back to Her, like the years She'd spent as an AI had never happened. Her stomach churned uneasily.
And then She saw the chassis.
It hung lifelessly from the ceiling, unmoving and...dead. The yellow optic was dark, not even a flicker of light or of life was within. She felt lightheaded and Her vision blurred. And as She stepped back from Her old body, she glimpsed through the reflective side of the chassis, the body she was in now.
The woman in the reflection stared back at GLaDOS with chocolate brown eyes that had dark circles underneath them. Long, wavy strands of hair formed a curtain around the pretty but aged and exhausted face. She wore a simple, formal dress that GLaDOS recognized as the one she had been wearing in the portrait She and Chell had seen in Old Aperture. This was most definitely the same woman that was in that portrait.
Caroline.
And in that moment, She realized that this was...H-her. She and Caroline were not separate entities as she had hoped. Memory upon memory flooded her mind, and it was devastating. Mr. Johnson, the testing, the moon rocks, the sickness, that fateful meeting where he told her what her fate would be...it was all too much for her to take.
She lifted her hands, which had begun to shake, and stared at them. All she could hear were Cave's words ringing in her mind.
"If we can store music on a compact disc, why can't we store a man's intelligence and personality on one? We should've been working on it thirty years ago."
She fell to her knees and put her head in her hands. She didn't want this, she had never wanted this...
"If I die before you people can pour me into a computer, I want Caroline to run this place."
Yes, she had run the place. And she'd lost her humanity, become a murderer, a killer, a psychopath, a...
…a monster.
"Now she'll argue. She'll say she can't. She's modest like that. But you make her!"
Those three words...
"You make her."
Her whole body trembled and her heart pounded in her ears, drowning out everything else. What had she done? What had she become? They forced her into this, he forced her. And she had transformed into this, this AI with a need to test and a temper that could not be tamed. She'd killed hundreds of people in cold blood, and almost killed Chell, her only friend, her...
...wait...
...her daughter?
"Oh my God..." she said aloud, as yet another flood of memories came rushing back. The affair with Cave, the baby that she'd been forced to keep a secret, that she'd given to one of the scientists to look after, just so she could save Aperture's reputation. The few times she'd gotten to see the little girl when the scientist, Doug Rattmann, brought her to work. The strange attachment she felt to the human when she'd tested her as an AI, the reluctance to kill her, the recognition of those steely blue-gray eyes...
She'd nearly murdered her own daughter. And she hadn't even known it.
Hatred, guilt, and pain all boiled up inside of her...emotions that were stronger than any emotions she'd felt in years, ones that were distinctly and unmistakably human. Tears welled in her eyes and as she blinked them back she looked up to see...
Chell. She had been unconscious on the floor where GLaDOS had dropped her earlier and was now waking up. She sat up and their eyes met, intensifying the guilt, the sadness, and the memories.
GLaDOS – Caroline? She wasn't sure anymore – shook violently and broke down.
0 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~0
Chell faded back into consciousness and noticed that she was on the floor in the central chamber. Her head throbbed and her vision swam as she recalled the events of the past few hours. Wheatley was gone. She should feel happy. But all she felt was loneliness and guilt. The first and only friend she'd ever made in this godforsaken place was never coming back, and it was her fault. And even though he'd betrayed her, tried to kill her, there had been a part of her with just the tiniest hope that she could save him, that she could have that old friendship back. But it was too late.
Tears in her eyes, she looked to the center of the room, expecting to see GLaDOS staring at her and preparing some snarky comment for when she woke up. Her stomach dropped at what she saw.
The chassis hung limp from the ceiling, as if GLaDOS was sleeping, or...
...dead?
Chell pushed the thought out of her mind and sat up unsteadily. Her brain was still fuzzy from lack of oxygen, but as she rose, she could clearly see a woman knelt down beside the lifeless chassis. Their eyes met and recognition sparked in Chell's mind. That woman, that dress she was wearing, all looked strangely familiar...
Chell rose to her feet and cautiously approached the woman, who was muttering nonsensically to herself. Chell caught little snippets of what she was saying and was shocked.
"Mr. Johnson...Mr. Johnson, I don't want this...Sir..."
How could it be? This woman would be dead, or at least very old, but here she was, looking just as she had in the portrait down in Test Shaft Nine.
Caroline...?
The woman looked up and Chell saw that her eyes were full of tears. She swallowed hard and spoke with a quavering, all too familiar voice.
"Well...are you surprised?"
Her voice was like a combination of GLaDOS' and Caroline's; it had lost the mechanical modulation that was characteristic of the central AI's speech, but it had also lost the peppy exuberance of Caroline's. And she definitely recognized Chell, so that meant that this was GLaDOS. In a human body...?
"I assume the look on your face elicits surprise, though I've lost the ability to read human facial expressions, what with being a computer for so long." She halfheartedly faked a smile, but Chell could see her shaking. "You know what my days used to be like? I had a pretty good life. Nobody murdered me, or fed me to birds. Nobody put me in a potato. Or a human body, of all things. And then…you showed up." She paused for a moment, gazing at Chell thoughtfully. "But through it all…I'm glad you did." This time, her smile was genuine, albeit sorrowful, and Chell couldn't help but grin back.
Suddenly, GLaDOS' eyes darkened and she lowered her voice. "Listen, you don't have much time. The facility is still going to blow up, and soon. I only temporarily solved the problem. That moron broke my body more than was possible to fix. This one–" she held up both arms "–was literally the last resort. And I didn't exactly have a say in the matter. They want me to escape the facility..." She snorted, though Chell could see she really didn't find it funny. "How could I, especially now?"
As if on cue, that irritating announcer chimed in with a cheery message.
"This facility will self-destruct in thirty minutes. Please exit as quickly as possible in order to avoid perishing in the resulting explosion. We thank you, and hope you enjoy your day."
GLaDOS' face twisted, and she put it into her hands. "Just go..." she said, voice wavering. "I have to stay...I'll never have peace if I go with you. What I am, what I became...I can't help feeling I shouldn't get away with that for nothing." She took a deep, shuddering breath. "My facility...I can die with it. Just go."
Chell felt a strange pity for the emotionally broken former AI in front of her, and reached out a hand to comfort her. GLaDOS jerked away from the touch and looked into Chell's eyes.
"I don't understand you," she mused, eyes boring into Chell's. "I nearly killed you. I was a monster. And yet you still want to save me? I mean...thank God you're alright! I threw everything I had at you, and yet you survived. How did you do it? How can you even look at me after what I've done to you...?"
She turned away, and Chell was stunned by the utterly raw human emotions and remorse that the now human GLaDOS was experiencing. It must be overwhelming, especially after not feeling real emotions for so long. Chell wanted more than anything to speak to her, just to show that it was alright, but something stopped her. She couldn't go through with it.
The entire facility quaked and GLaDOS looked up. She glanced back at Chell and her eyes fell to the ground. "You know…what makes it worse is that...I thought you were my enemy...while all along you were my friend. I...I'm sorry...Chell." Tears streaked down her face, and Chell couldn't help but feel that there was more to the story than what she was telling, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. Her train of thought was interrupted by GLaDOS' abruptly sharp tone of voice. "Just go! While you still can...go!"
Chell backed away reluctantly as the facility began to crumble again, and GLaDOS knelt on the ground with her head clasped in her hands. There wasn't going to be any changing of her mind. She was resolved to die here. And as guilty as she felt, Chell could do nothing to aid her. She should be happy to leave her behind…but something had changed, something was different. This was not the same being who had hated her, tried to kill her so many times. She was human now. And she wasn't capable of holding that kind of blame on her shoulders.
Chell tore her eyes away from the figure of GLaDOS in the chamber and turned, quickly finding the escape elevator that the announcer had conveniently provided for them. She boarded it and faced the room as it rose, watching the former AI and leaving her to go down with her ship.
As the lift rose, she imagined that she heard a mournful chuckle, and the parting words of her…her friend.
"It's been fun. Don't come back."
0 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~0
As Chell marched through the seemingly endless fields of wheat on the surface, she distinctly heard a muffled BOOM, felt the subsequent quaking of the earth under her feet, and knew that Aperture Science had self-destructed. Despite how she hated the place, how scared and hopeless and near death she'd been while she was there, she had lost not one, but two friends there. Leaving them behind hurt like hell, but now she was ready to move on, to live a normal life.
With tears in her eyes again, she trudged on, hopefully on to that life she'd missed for all these years.
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~ P.S: If you guys can figure out where I got the inspiration for this story, then you most definitely deserve cake! ~