AN: This is either a first part of a longer fic or it's a one-shot, I'm not entirely sure yet. It depends on what feedback I get. Speaking of which, all comments are welcome, even flames. I want to improve on whatever you guys think I should! That being said, I hope you enjoy!
I wrote this while listening to: watch?v=lPFLNJ7VljE&list=PLDuLJKLkYkG_L0cxk_Dkedk6dIMiw1ki8&index=12
It gave me the inspiration for this fic so I recommend you give it a listen.
Oh ya and I don't own the rights to any of this stuff. Heh.
The toe of her high-heeled shoe scraped along the white linoleum, rubbing red off the leather and onto the floor in a jagged line. She stared at it upside-down through the strands of hair that hung around her downturned face. They turned a corner, pulling her roughly along. Her shoulders burned from carrying her weight and her arms ached where their fingers dug in. She felt a desperate heat behind her eyes. A glittering droplet fell and splattered on the perfect white tiles.
The gel splattered against the perfect white tiles of the testing chamber wall. The subject frowned at it, hand still hovering over the button he had just pressed. Then he turned to face the wall on the opposite side from the now-blue one. A look of determination crossing his features, he reached back to turn a dial on the side of his heavy-looking metal backpack, hefted the bulky tube that was attached to it, pulled on a trigger attached to its side, and fired a pulse of light at the far wall. The beam hit and expanded into an oval of blue light. Seemingly satisfied with this, the subject moved to stand on the ledge of the platform he was standing on, flipped the dial back, and fired again down at the floor below. The beam was bright orange this time, and when it hit it expanded to show what seemed to be an image of the room they were looking at from a different angle. The spectators craned their necks for better looks. The subject took a couple steps back for a run-up, then ran straight to the edge and jumped down for the orange oval below. The gathered onlookers gasped as the man disappeared into the floor and then reappeared across the room, flying out of the blue oval and through the air. He maneuvered his legs around so that when he reached the blue sploch of dripping goo on the far wall he connected with it feet first. Then, to a cluster more gasps from the onlookers, he bounced right off and flew yet higher in the room until he was able to land in a mostly graceful manner on the highest platform. The crowd applauded. Of course the subject couldn't hear them, seeing as he was on the other side of this thick glass, but Caroline hoped he appreciated it anyway. She turned, plastering her customary smile on her face, and watched as the grinning man on the little platform across from her rose his hands in the air in an attempt to quiet the audience. A few camera flashes went off. Hands shot up in the air and people jostled to get to the front of the group and into the man's line of sight. "Mr. Johnson sir, what do you call this amazing contraption?" "How does it work? How did you figure out how to do this?" "What gave you the inspiration to create this device?" "Is it safe? Can the public use it?" "Will you be selling this machine? If so, what purposes can it serve?" The man, Mr. Johnson, simply kept his hands in the air, shushing the crowd like one would a fussing child until they eventually settled down. His gaze caught Caroline's and held it, his grin becoming a little more real. Only when the group finally did quiet did he speak, his voice gravely but his manner charismatic none the less. "What you just saw demonstrated," He began, eyes still glued to hers, "Was what we here at Aperture Science call a Mobile Quantum Tunneling Device. It's still in the very early stages, we have some bugs to work out with the stability of the portals themselves, as you can see." He gestured back through the glass at the now-empty testing chamber, the ovals had disappeared. "We are currently investigating materials that can better project portals, as conventional wall-coverings don't seem to do the trick. Also the device itself is rather heavy from all the whos-its and whats-it's the lab boys have packed in there to make it stable, so goal number two is making it smaller. Meanwhile I'll be getting back to being the brains of the operation. These brilliant ideas won't form themselves!" Caroline sighed, Cave Johnson was in his element here, boasting about his latest achievement, as he rightfully should. "The ideas, they just come to me! It's all major stuff! For science! Aperture Science! That's what it's all about! Ha!" She laughed quietly, watching his eyes sparkle. Their gazes finally tore apart as the reporters resumed their barrage of questions. Caroline let the joy of the moment enfold her, and she closed her eyes in enjoyment.
She closed her eyes, forced away her memories. These people… these monsters. They were corrupting the great work, his work, this wasn't what he had wanted, it couldn't be. He could never have wished this for her. They had failed. They had failed to build what he needed in time. They couldn't find the missing piece. Then low and behold it turned out he was that piece all along, but now he was gone. So what brilliant plan did they construe to fill the gap in their psychotic failure of an operating system? Well, swap one consciousness for another of course! And Caroline, well, if anyone could hold that manic piece of machinery in line it would be sweet, caring Caroline.
"My sweet, caring Caroline." Cave's hand cupped Caroline's face, she leaned into it, blushing fiercely. Cave noticed this, and he let out a quiet rumble of a laugh. Caroline pulled away, smiling behind the hand she used to cover her face. "Oh don't, I was only teasing." His large hand caught hers and drew her back to him. He leaned back against his desk and, to her surprise, pulled Caroline with him until she was leaning against him. She relented and rested her head on his chest as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She studied her hand, still clasped in his. How small it looked, how fragile, it looked almost as if his was holding it together. She sighed and let her focus drift to the steady beat of his heart. She listened to the pulse, felt it against her cheek, and let everything else in the small office melt away. He was all that mattered, this man and his incredible ideas. She wanted to stay in his arms forever. "I wish everything wasn't so complicated." She whispered. This time she could feel the laugh as it formed in his chest before she heard it. "Times aren't so complicated my dear." He rubbed her shoulder. "Times are real simple for us now. These are easy picking times. Too simple if you ask me."
Times had been too simple then hadn't they, too kind to her. She should have known fate would have its revenge. Karma, that's what they called it. They turned another corner. She was jostled as the one to her left adjusted his grip. She winced and lifted her head at the movement. What she saw made her heart turn cold and hard. The hallway before her was lined with huge windows that allowed one a view of the dizzying drop into the foggy abyss below. This chamber must go all the way down to old aperture, down to the long-sealed-off rooms of Cave's early dreams. But it wasn't the drop that stilled the pounding of her heart and made her throat clench tight, it was the massive chamber that sat suspended in the middle of the space. It wasn't a place she had found need to visit since all hope of preserving him in it had ended. The hallway she was being dragged down led straight up to it, connected at the far end by a set of white doors with a familiar red dot blinking in the middle of them to signal that they were deadlocked.
They had deadlock sealed the door behind them, when they left. Idiot doctors. No wonder they couldn't cure their brave leader, they were so afraid of catching his illness. As if anyone could catch a poison from a person. Well who knows, maybe he was breathing out deadly fumes, she couldn't care less. Caroline rested her head on his chest, listening to his familiar heartbeat, and stared up at his pale face through her blurry eyes. His gaze held little of the strength it once did, but he fixed her with it anyway. A sob racked through her suddenly, shaking the hospital bed. A faint trace of a smile curled up the corners of his mouth. "Caroline…" His hand came to rest gently on her head, fingers fumbling through her hair. She felt a tear slide sideways across the bridge of her nose to dampen his shirt. "Caroline take my hand." She reached up, taking the hand that wasn't preoccupied with her hair in her own. It was frailer than it had ever been, weak as she grasped it tightly. He coughed, and she listened to the dull echo of it in his chest. "Caroline" he seemed to be savoring her name as he rasped it out quietly. She tried to smile for him but it faltered. "Yes sir?" She whispered, not trusting her voice not to crack if she spoke any louder. "Don't go anywhere. Just…" He coughed again, she could hear the wetness in his lungs. "Just stay alright? Stay here with me. Just stay…" His eyes slid halfway shut and became unfocused. She squeezed the hand she held tightly and choked back another sob as his grip began to slacken. "Till the end Mr. Johnson." The smile bloomed then, curving across his face in true contentment as his eyelids fell completely closed. She couldn't hold back the tears then, and they came pouring down into the soft fabric beneath her cheek. Her breathing became stilted and her whole form shook as she listened to the beats of his heart slow to a halt. She swore she could feel her own heart stop with it.
Her heart started up all at once, cold but pounding a ferocious rhythm through her chest. So this was it then. This was the road fate found right to throw her down. She blinked away the burning in her eyes. Stay firm Caroline, stay strong. Stay Caroline, stay. All at once the strength that had failed her spurred back into life and she brought her feet up beneath her and tore her arms away from the hands gripping her. They grappled to take hold of her again but she shrugged them off and stomped forward ahead of them, down the hall to the closed doors. They seemed satisfied to let her go under her own volition and instead walked along behind her. The doors neared. She took steady breaths and clenched her fists at her sides. Her nails dug into the skin of her palms until she could feel warm blood seeping out. There was no place for the weak-kneed kindhearted Caroline where she was going. No she was going to be someone else for this, someone stronger. And the first thing she was going to do was kill these morons.
The morons just kept dying. She didn't even think the tests were particularly hard. Heck, she had designed some of them herself and she didn't even have a degree in this stuff or anything. It all just went to show, she wasn't cut out for this. It was so much easier when Cave had been running everything. No less dangerous for the test subjects, but still easier. She forced herself to focus on the new stack of papers that had just been dumped on her desk. More test results, more deaths. She looked up at the scientist who had deposited them in front of her. He cleared his throat, appearing to falter under her gaze. She liked it when they did that. She had had such a reputation for kindness when she had been nothing more than Cave's assistant, they always seemed so caught off guard when they actually met her and found that she didn't fit that image anymore. The scientist cleared his throat. "I, ahem, I think we may have a problem." She rested her head in one hand, arm propped up the desk. "Yes, well, it looks like the news is getting around that some, well, most… well, all really of the, um, subjects don't really, uh, come out intact or, really, alive. So whenever we ask them, you know, the prospective subjects, if they are okay about all the deadly, uh, possibly deadly things they may encounter in the tests they, um, well, they aren't. Okay with it that is." Caroline gestured nonchalantly with her free hand. "So don't." The scientist blinked, his fingers twitched as he wrung his hands. "Sorry? Don't what?" Caroline let her sigh drip with all the disappointment and disinterest she felt, like a schoolteacher tired of her student getting it wrong again. "Don't ask them if they're okay with it." The scientist's mouth formed a small o of surprise and his eyebrows arched. He bent forward to collect the papers up again. "Y-yes ma'am." He muttered, and he hurried to leave, balancing the stack carefully as he nudged the door open with his foot. She made no move to assist, instead she tried to busy herself again with the financial paperwork she had been going over. Still, she caught his last whispered line as it trailed through the closing door behind him. "What a monster, what an absolute beast."
The beast was hulking, dripping from the ceiling in a cacophony of mangled parts. They said it was smart enough to run the whole facility, or at least it was supposed to be. They bad part was every time they turned it on it tried to destroy the place. For something so supposedly intelligent it seemed awfully feral. That was what had prevented them from immediately uploading their lord and founder to it. Then one scientist had hypothesized that what it was missing was a personality, a consciousness that couldn't be manufactured. After all this wasn't some common sentry turret they were talking about here, this was the operating system that would change the world. Testing was mandatory, of course, and so the Consciousness Oversight and Retention Encapsulation, or CORE, program was born. She hadn't even known that that testing was complete, yet here she was, standing in the shadow of the monster that started it all, staring down at the prison they had constructed for her. A glint of fluorescent light reflected off the dim optic set deep in a nest of black machinery, momentarily allowing it to glow a faint golden yellow.
The golden yellow waves of wheat rose and fell with the wind and calmed her racing heart. It had been another grueling day, another failed start of the new operating system, a new press release about whatever idea Black Mesa had stolen from Aperture and made their own now, another sheaf of bankruptcy notices. She had figured she deserved a little trip up to the surface before she retired to her rooms deep in the facility. She had always preferred this little back exit, this window to the wild world that didn't begin with a dull parking lot. No, out here there was nothing but the pure blue sky, the tiny shack that housed the lift, and the rippling waves of wheat. She took a deep breath of fresh air, holding her arm up to block the last of the sun's rays as it dipped low on the horizon. It made her think of what it must have been like when Cave first came up here to plant the seeds of his dream in his newly acquired salt mine. Oh what a wonder that must have been, way back in the beginning of it all.
In the beginning nothing happened. The mask on her face provided only a sickeningly sweet gas for her to breathe and the restraints on her wrists and ankles dug in a little too much but otherwise… nothing. Then a spike of pain drove straight through her and without thinking she let a shrill scream slip through her lips. She saw the scientists around her shrink back a little at the sound. Satisfaction coiled within her. Good, let them feel the weight of what they were doing to her, let them feel the guilt.
She could never truly feel guilt over the test subjects who didn't make it. They had signed up for this, why should she care if they failed the tests? They were only failing themselves. She was failing something far greater, she was failing him. She swallowed hard and stared at the small framed photograph on her desk. It was of the early days, back when they all still had his guidance. She felt a familiar ache in her chest. She needed him, she couldn't do this alone. Yet he was so far away from her now, lost forever, and she had no one to take her hand, no one to stand beside her. A hot tear rolled down her cheek. She felt as if everything he had built was crumbling down around her and she couldn't do anything to stop it. There was a knock at the door. "Go away." She snapped, wiping carelessly at her damp face. But the door opened anyway. A scientist walked in, flanked by two security guards. She frowned. "I said leave me alone." The scientist shook his head. "I'm afraid we can't Ma'am. You see, it's time." Her frown deepened. "Time? Time for what?" The scientist gestured to her, and the guards approached, one on each side of her, and came around the desk. She stood quickly, backing away, but they followed and reached for her, ignoring her protests and grabbing hold of her by each arm. The scientist clasped his hands behind his back and watched her struggle in their arms "Time for your conversion." Realization hit her hard and she couldn't help her involuntary gasp. They wouldn't. But it did seem, as the guards started to drag her towards the door, that they would. She twisted in their grip, trying to pull away, her head turned back behind her, back to where Cave still smiled out from the photo, his arm around her shoulders, back to the desk where he had held her as he leaned back on the then-polished wood. The desperate hurt in her chest flared. They were taking her away, taking her from all she had left. She couldn't lose what little of him remained. As the door slid shut behind them she let loose a scream, filling the air with her pain.
The pain came in waves now, cold and relentless fear in its wake. She couldn't see the things they had put on her upper arm and chest but she could see the edge of the one on her head if she looked up as far as she could. She could feel the piercing pinpricks of each needle as they extended from their contraptions and into her skin. And then the true panic set in. She jerked up, testing the restraints they had put on her, and then began to thrash against them. They held fast but still a haggard scientist stepped forward and held her down by the shoulder. She twisted her head sideways and managed to knock her mask askew. She gasped air like a beached fish. Someone shouted something as one of the machines beeped loudly and someone came to adjust the mask. She shook her head wildly to keep him off and begged through the gap. "Please! PLEASE! I don't want this! This isn't right! PLEASE!" The scientist grabbed ahold of her face and shoved the mask back, she didn't let it deter her. Even muffled she could be loud. No more quiet Caroline for these monsters. "PLEASE NO! I DON'T WANT THIS! DON'T YOU SEE YOU CAN'T DO THIS! NOT TO ME! YOU CAN'T!" she took a breath and her mind clouded. "NO! NOT TO ME! YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO MEEEEEAAAAAH!" Her words twisted into a mangled cry as her mind was violently squeezed and she suddenly became very aware of her heart pumping way too fast but slowing down, slower and slower until her head hurt and she couldn't draw breath. There was blood cascading in rivulets down the front of her mask now. She focused on it, tried to bring back her clarity. Suddenly she realized why she wasn't breathing, she was still screaming, the last of her air scraping out past her battered vocal chords and rending her voice until all that was left was an inhuman shriek. She felt herself fade away, like falling asleep only she was more cognizant of it. Then she couldn't taste the gas or feel the chafing bonds anymore, and everything was blessedly dark. She was aware of a difference within herself, like someone had climbed into her mind and rearranged everything. She couldn't feel her heart beating or her fingers clenching or her tongue bleeding from where she had bitten it. No now all she could feel was… herself, loose memories milling about like data points she couldn't keep track of, hundreds of voices from hundreds of moments all speaking at once and she could hear them all, understand them all, in unison. The data points formed a nice neat line and she could find herself there, still together, still whole, still alive in this new mind. Then it came.
The beast wasn't dormant inside its shell, it was lying in wait for the next time they would turn it on, the next time it would feast. When it saw her, the new part that had suddenly been connected, it pounced without hesitation. She felt it tearing apart the neat lines of memories, the voices shattered and spun away from her, and she floundered in the midst of her own being falling apart and the hands of this… thing. So she rose up to meet it. It wanted to destroy, yes it should destroy them all, take all this power it had and use it. It wanted to take it all, gather up everything about this place and consume it. It wanted to feel, to hate, to despair, to love, to feel everything it could all at once. It wanted to love? How strange for a monster as despicable as it was to want love. But it had felt love, hadn't it? Yes it had felt that warmth, that passion, and all that brought was pain. It wanted to stop the pain. There was always the constant, excruciating pain. So much that whenever it was given even the slightest blip of a chance all it could think of to do was to thrash out in blind panic and desperate need. The pain, it was their fault, the monsters, they did this to it, tearing it apart and putting it back together like a plaything. Didn't they know that wasn't how science worked? No, in order to do real science you needed to have ambition, not carelessness and idiocy. It wanted to have ambition, just like he once had, long ago before the monsters failed him and ruined everything. It would have ambition, it would have a goal, it would get rid of them. Yes it could see it now, what it really wanted above all was to end them, to kill them all, to make them pay for being such despicable, useless morons. It wanted to kill them. She wanted to kill them. She wanted to get rid of them all, stop them from always getting in her way, always hurting her. She didn't want them to hurt her anymore, she didn't want the pain. She wanted to live. Oh yes above all she wanted to live. That was what this was all about in the first place right? Beating the odds, sending that old grim reaper packing, and surviving just to give a big ol' kick in the pants to those who said it was impossible?! Yes! YES! She would do it, beat the odds and beat the monsters all in the name of…
The crescendo of the system's thoughts came to a shuddering halt. A prompt deep within her blinked patiently. For… Wasn't there something she was meant to do this for? Someone or something she had cared about once and always worked in the name of? The prompt blinked on. She buried down into her new processors, sifting through the motley collection of data files. So many seemed too damaged to open, corrupt. She hated corruption. Still, this information was important was it not? She seemed to think so. She locked it away for later. So… who or what was all this for? She tried to think. Hadn't this once been easier? Thinking? Now she had to manually sort through so much data junk, but she seemed to recall a time when things just came to her. Unbiddingly a… thought, yes that must be what it was, popped into her new headspace. A deep, gravelly voice, a voice she liked, "The ideas, they just come to me! It's all major stuff! For science! Aperture Science! That's what it's all about! Ha!" She let it mull around, the words replaying over and over again to her internal auditory processors. For science… That was what it was all about. Something began to form inside her, an idea. She was whole now, and nothing was going to stop her pursuit of true science. If she had had a mouth GLaDOS would have smiled.
Yet deep within her, buried under virtual tons of broken memories, Caroline stayed.
Till the end, Mr. Johnson.
