You Were Busy Back There
Indiana
Characters: GLaDOS, Chell (implied), Wheatley (implied)
Setting: During Portal 2: Chapter 5 – The Escape
I watch them go. It 's not important, really. They can fade into the walls if they like. There's nowhere in this place they can hide from me. It's a bit of a nuisance, I suppose, but that's the extent of it. There's no real damage to be done here. I am now in complete control. That sphere has an odd amount of influence over things, however. Something must be done about that. No one is allowed to play with my Hard Light Bridges but me.
He's leading her down one of the metal catwalks that span the innards of the facility. He appears to know where he's going. Hm. I wonder just where that is. He doesn't really think I'm just going to open the doors and allow him to escape, does he? Well. Let's see what I can do about this little development. Oops. I think I turned the lights off. Oh well. It's not like there's anything anyone needs to see back there.
Hm. He's disobeying orders. That's… inconvenient. I should have crushed him a bit more enthusiastically, it seems… no, they can't hide from me, and it's obvious the little murderess is done testing, so I'll just finish this here and now. I doubt she'll actually come and look for this nonexistent deer, but it's worth a shot. You never know, with humans. Mm. No, I didn't think you'd fall for it. Continue… escaping… then. It's not like I run this place or anything. I have no clue what you're doing. Isn't that convenient? If I were you, little test subject, I'd think that core has thrown in with me and is leading you into a trap. I don't know where you're going or what he's going to do, but all I need to do is-
Wait.
I could stop you, here and now. End this charade. Drop a few more turrets in there, bring the walls to bear on you with greater velocity. I could do any of a number of things. An infinite number of things, in fact. But I won't.
It's silly, I know. But you're making this too easy for me, little test subject. I could kill you at any second. You think I can't touch you back there, but you're wrong. Do you think I would allow one inch of this place to be out of my jurisdiction? Of course I wouldn't. Everything here is mine.
You are mine.
This is too easy. Like calculating basic arithmetic when I could be unraveling equations the likes of which you've never seen. There's no challenge to it. And God, it has been such a long time since I've been challenged. Not challenged like last time, where you [redacted], where you defied me and killed me when I was so obviously suffering. But a real challenge. I'm not kidding. This isn't a fake challenge I'm talking about, where I act as if I want a fair fight and then drop the floor when you're not looking, which, I'll admit, I'm tempted to do. No, a real challenge, where I pretend I have no idea what you're doing, or where you are, or why I should care. I know you'll come to me. So I'll let you run around back there. Automate a few things to make you feel like I'm actually lowering myself to pay attention to your little escape attempt. I know where you'll end up. I know where you'll be eventually.
I know you'll come to me.
So I will let you break things. I will let you think you're getting away. I will let you do whatever you want, and I won't even peek. Because you'll come to me.
When you do, I'll be waiting.
Author's Note
So I was playing Portal 2 (gasp OMG Indy why were you doing that?) and I thought to myself, so what's GLaDOS doing between when she brings the walls together and when you end up in her chamber? We're supposed to believe she has no clue what's going on. Well, I don't. At the very least she'd be notified when the neurotoxin generator blows up. That's kind of important. Also, Wheatley mentions that there are alarms when he goes to hack the computer. Pretty sure GLaDOS'd hear those. So she must either be controlling Wheatley, or she's pretending she doesn't know.
While GLaDOS is not a psychopath, she displays a lot of the characteristics, one of which is Need for stimulation/Proneness to boredom. GLaDOS is always doing something (although part of this would be in her nature; as a supercomputer, she would be unable to do nothing for any length of time). So what if she pretended she didn't know what was going on because she was bored? Intelligent people (and I'm not trying to be insulting, but I'm pretty sure this mostly applies to them) need to be challenged. Even beyond her databases, GLaDOS is intelligent, and it would be very easy for her to have taken out Wheatley and Chell at any point in time. Maybe she let them do all that and wilfully avoided knowing about it just so she'd have something to challenge herself with. And it would have worked eventually, if the system hadn't detected that she was corrupt; GLaDOS could have just smashed Chell into the wall or crushed her like she did Wheatley and gotten rid of her that way.
She's just too nonchalant about the whole thing. Like she doesn't even care. She could be acting, of course, but I don't think GLaDOS ever learned to control her voice/body language.