The half-crushed metal sphere lay abandoned on the floor of GLaDOS's chamber, still sparking slightly. His optic had stopped functioning-being crushed out of its socket would do that-but several of his other functions were still online. Pain was definitely still registering.
A bird, or something very much like one, had fluttered down, landed next to him, and started pulling at his wires, which had hurt like anything until a random burst of sparks scared the thing away.
There was the feeling of betrayal as well-that couldn't the woman perhaps have told him his 'talk their way out of having woken the power-mad AI up' idea wouldn't work, rather than getting them both (probably) killed-which stung a more than he though it ought to have, considering that he shouldn't have expected better of a human…
Then GLaDOS finally turned a bit of her attention to the task of sweeping the debris and plant life into the incinerator, and he felt that, too. Falling, then burning, then nothing at all.
GLaDOS had been wrong. It hadn't been a real surprise after all; at least, not considering the test subject's reaction. There had been a lot of running about, certainly, looking for a surface which would accept portals or some other form of escape, and then collapsing when the timer on the wall finally hit zero, but not a single look of shock, or other sign that the neurotoxin had been in any way unexpected. Still, she could content herself with the fact that the tragic consequences, at least, had been quite present.
All Aperture technologies were built to withstand temperature of up to four thousand degrees Kelvin. But what would be the point of Emergency Intelligence Incinerators if they weren't at least a few degrees higher than that?
