(A/N: The title and a few of GlaDOS's lines are taken directly from the game/the Lab Rat comic. Also, I suspect not all of what's here matches up entirely with canon, but trying to understand Portal backstory completely makes my head hurt... Originally written for the 12daysChristmas community on LiveJournal, prompt "ten great escapes".)
Maybe it's because there's so many more people than usual. Bring Your Daughter To Work Day is in full swing, kids and banners everywhere, and the meds have been working fine but perhaps the change of routine - additional variables, the geeky science part of his mind suggests - are making him twitchy. Whatever. There aren't any voices, there aren't any thoughts, but he feels... on edge, like he's waiting for a storm.
He's drinking coffee and watching people and the edginess isn't going away.
"C'mon, try and mingle a bit," Henry is saying to him. "Not long now til the big switch-on."
A smile. That's not good, the feeling that someone else is doing the smiling, the acting-like-a-normal-human bit. That is a bad sign. He's fighting the urge to clutch the bottle of pills in his inside jacket pocket. God, getting paranoid about the paranoia is a whole other level of ridiculous.
He says, "You're sure it's a good idea? It's been a bit of a rocky road getting it to co-operate, you have to admit."
Henry shakes his head, a pitying smile on his face. "You've got to take risks if you want to push the frontiers of science, remember." The smile. The smile is not good, it is the why are you being so strange? What's wrong with you? smile. Geez, this... it has to be a bad day. Just a bad day. But he's not missed a dose, and... it's not the people, the people are fine (whereas before it would be that they were all thinking about him, watching him) and there aren't any voices or any faces or movements that vanish when he looks at them. It just -
The mass of wires and machinery hanging from the ceiling, watching them. Not just him. All of them.
"Stop looking so gloomy," Henry is saying. "Nothing is going to go wrong."
ooo
Normality. It was a declaration to himself. Standing in the sunlight outside a pharmacy with a paper bag of pills in his hand, a diagnosis decanted into small square plastic bottles. Okay. You are... No, okay, you have a mental condition. That's good. That explains things. Always, before, those memories of bad times. Of times when everything became cruel and frightening and no one else could see it. It turns out they weren't anything. They weren't real.
Take responsibility, be functional, and this does not have to be anything big. And so he had. Managing his condition. And stopping, catching himself, saying no one else is seeing this. This is just you. This is just you and you need to ignore it.
He's telling himself that right now and he's swearing he's going to get a grip, he's going to stay here and smile and say the right things and make small talk because nothing is wrong. He's swearing all that but... it's just words. Panic in his chest and a long scream like a scrawled line under the normal thoughts: this isn't safe. Get out. Get out.
And he gives in. Coffee cup rattling as he lets it go onto the nearest surface, and he's turning, hurrying through people, trying not to shove them, hating himself for being such a goddamn lunatic, for god's sake, nothing's wrong, get a grip, why are you giving in to it? Smile. Mutter something about needing to get some air. This really isn't good and he had better not make a habit of it, if the paranoia's kicking in even with the pills then he's going right back to the doctor, he's going to keep this under control -
Normal thoughts. Normal worries.
They stop mattering approximately two minutes after he's left the main chamber. He is standing in the corridor resting his forehead against the glass, staring down at the emptiness below and the lights of the rest of the facility in the distance and trying to kid himself he's just suffering the after-effects of a stuffy room when he hears the doors slam shut, and a few moments later the screaming starts.
ooo
Normality falling away like a stage set being dismantled.
On the other side of the glass someone is writhing and clawing at it - a guy in Marketing - hands twitching and spasming, blood running like tears from his eyes and nose.
Red spots on the glass. He is staring at it and then all at once he's running, dashing down the corridor, almost tripping over his own feet. You never run in the corridors. There's too much risk of crashing into someone holding something that might explode. (Still no voices, but he isn't listening for them right now. Still operating on the overriding command that you have to get out.)
Back in the main corridors now, charging past closed doors. Everyone's at the switch-on. Everyone is - oh, god, they - everyone -
(Still no this can't be happening.)
He's thinking, neurotoxin. He's thinking, it'll pipe it through the rest of the facility next. He's thinking, crawl spaces - between the walls - He'd noticed stuff like that, bolt-holes, because sometimes when he'd still believed everyone was out to get him he'd been sorely tempted to climb into one. In the distance, more doors slamming. It's sealing us in. Oh, god. Fumbling with a creaking handle. The door glancing off the wall. Jumping onto the nearby desk, kicking someone's keyboard out of the way, wrenching at the heating vent. An older system, separate from the newly-installed neurotoxin emitters, falling apart, it was never truly warm anywhere. Rust under his nails. And then up and into the darkness and the clang and clatter as he scrambles along, and the sound of his own shaky, terrified breathing.
Then the shock hits and he's trembling so hard he has to stop moving. What the hell is he - no, what the hell just - they were positive, they all swore blind it was safe now. There must have - failsafes. No, they'd decided those weren't necessary, the morality core will be enough, save the processing power, they'd - everybodyhad been in the main chamber. Surely it couldn't be - surely he couldn't be the only survivor. Why the hell - why him, he wasn't anything special, other people should have figured it out too -
So, what, you'd prefer it to be a really bad breakdown? You've just completely lost it and now you're hiding in the vents for no reason? He tests the idea out, prods it. See this isn't real. See that everyone else is fine. No takers. Even if this isn't real, his mind's grabbed up the hallucination and isn't going to let go of it.
And then the voice. Its voice.
"The Enrichment Centre would like to remind all employees that entering areas off-limits to personnel is strictly forbidden. Areas off-limits to personnel include all areas not currently supplied with deadly neurotoxin."
Either he's gone so far off the deep end that he's never coming back, or little things like managing his condition have suddenly become massively unimportant in comparison to the malevolent computer actively trying to kill him.
He starts crawling again.
