Caroline's eyes opened quite suddenly. She had been dreaming. She had had a nightmare. She was running away, but she couldn't escape. She didn't know what she was running from, or why she was running. All she knew is that she had to get away. She had heard him yelling at her, yelling things she had never wanted to hear.
But then she had woken up, and for a split second she felt an overwhelming sense of relief, a sense that she would be entirely safe, and that she wouldn't have to run anymore.
Then she remembered.
She was locked, as she had been the day before, in a small room inside Aperture. The walls were all made of glass, and all she had in there was a bed, a toilet and a small bedside table with a radio on it. It was playing Mad World. Caroline knew the song quite well. She was tempted to sing along to it; Cave had always told her she had a lovely singing voice.
Cave.
She missed him, but in some other ways she was firmly glad he was gone. He hadn't been very good to her. Oh sure, he had admired her. He always pointed out to the test subjects how great she was. But $200,000 a year, some nice words over the intercom and the occasional bunch of flowers was less then she truly deserved. She was extremely modest, but deep inside her she knew she deserved more. But things had gone from bad to worse a little later on.
Since Black Mesa's portal technology had gotten ahead of them, Cave had insisted that construction be immediately started on DOS: Disc Operating System. It would be an intelligent robot that could speed up the process of researching for the project. In the meantime, he decided to think about public issues with portals. After a fairly graphic accident involving a poor test subject having a portal shot into her stomach, the engineers had edited the portal device so that portals only appeared on a flat, white surface. Cave had been strictly against this idea, what with him having little to no care for safety. But nobody wanted a repeat of the Repulsion Pudding incident, so he had to put up with it.
But the restricted portal placement meant that it was harder for the public to use them. So Cave had instructed research into new portal surfaces, although when people started leaving their jobs, Cave started doing the research himself. He spent $70,000,000 on some moon rocks to see if it would make a good portal conductor. It did. But the moon rocks poisoned Cave, and he became desperate. DOS was nearly completed, and Cave decided that brain mapping and artificial intelligence was the next thing for them to take care of. Apparently it was a "necessary continuation of the timeline of science". Everyone knew that Cave was just chasing immortality, but he promised good pay, and if it worked, it really would be a revolution. And then, that one day, when Cave's sanity and life were starting to fade, he made that final wish.
"If I die before you people can pour me into a computer, I want Caroline to run this place. Now she'll argue, she'll say she can't. She's modest like that. But you MAKE her! Hell, put her in my computer, I don't care…"
After he died, Caroline had desperate tried to convince people that he was barely sane, and that it was an insane statement. Henry spent hours talking to her, trying to convince her to go through with it. She didn't want to be a human-machine hybrid! She wanted to live with her new baby, to have a good life with her.
She really hadn't expected them coming to her house. She hadn't expected them shoving her into the car. She hadn't expected the stiff-faced woman carrying her baby away. And she certainly hadn't expected her being locked in the old testing room to wait for her life to end.
The portal suddenly opened, and two men came through. Caroline didn't care anymore. She knew she had no choice anymore, she had to do it. She didn't fight against the men grabbing each of her arms and "escorting" her through. She was almost carried past the cryogenic sleeping wing, with all the floating boxes designed for the upcoming refrigeration experiment. As she went through the lobby, many of the employees paused and looked sympathetically at her. It was no secret that Caroline was going to be "transferred", and it wasn't a secret that that she had no wishes to be this way. Through one of the maintenance halls, where there were some old pieces of testing equipment being stored inside some small cages, past the sign-up centre (thankfully empty) and into the hallway that led to the to-be GLaDOS chamber.
A small medical bay had been set up beside the great hanging body of GLaDOS. Caroline stared in awe at the massive creature. As she looked at it, she felt an overwhelming sense of fear. If she didn't die, she would be trapped forever inside this… thing. She suddenly realised, looking at the shape of the huge thing, that it looked rather like a woman tied up, hanging upside down from the ceiling. She shuddered uncomfortably.
"Ah! Caroline, you made it!" said Henry, coming over with a huge grin on his face. Caroline glared at him. They both knew she wasn't here by choice.
"Please follow me. The procedure will be starting in just a moment."
"I'm sure you must be thrilled! What an exciting day this must be for you!" said Henry.
Henry gestured for Caroline to lie down on a small medical stretcher. She sat on the edge of it and looked around the little setup. There were a lot of machines set up around the area, with various dials and monitors connected to them. Caroline was a physicist; she didn't know what any of them were for. But she assumed they were going to be used for her transfer.
That's when she saw it.
It was written on the side of one of the tanks, above a biohazard symbol.
NEUROTOXIN.
She started screaming. She was terrified. She began to run, but someone stopped her and stabbed a syringe into her arm. Tears began pouring down her cheeks as she cried and begged for mercy. She called to her mother, to her father, to Cave, to her daughter, to god. She was laid on the stretcher, and people began hooking her up to various tubes and machines. She had stopped struggling, now. She cried and cried and cried but nobody listened. Things were being inserted into her, and people were turning on machines and she thought she could hear her heartbeat in her ears. Or perhaps it was on one of the machines. She couldn't tell.
"Caroline? Can you hear me?" she didn't know who was talking to her, it was a woman; probably one of the scientists.
"Sweetie, in order for the transfer to complete, we're going to need you're organs down with you're brain still operational, so we're going to have to use neurotoxin."
Caroline knew neurotoxin. It had been used a few times in some experiments. It was an appalling substance. There were many different kinds, made of different things. The kind that Aperture used was a green gas that stopped the flow of blood from the heart. A painful way to go, but Caroline didn't even care anymore.
"Painkillers." she mumbled.
"Sorry?" said the woman.
"I want painkillers."
If she was going to be gassed, she didn't want it to be too painful.
"Uh, sure I guess, let me see if I can go get you some morphine…" said the woman, moving away from Caroline.
Caroline didn't struggle when the gas mask was administered. The other scientists were impatient to get on with the procedure, but the woman wasn't back yet. When she did return, she administered the morphine via syringe, and all the other scientists sprang into action. One scientist – she couldn't see who – stroked her hair and muttered some soothing words.
"Quit it, Doug!" said someone else, and the soothing words stopped.
Caroline wasn't scared anymore. She closed her eyes and waited for the end to come. The morphine was making her drowsy, and she was sure she would drop out of reality soon. She waited.
"Stop!"
Her eyes snapped open. She administered what strength she had left into sitting up.
And there it was.
Henry was standing to one side, holding a baby. Not just any baby. Caroline's baby. She was screaming, yelling at the scientists to stop. It was her first word, surely.
"Stop that, darling. You shouldn't be talking to daddy's co-workers. Especially not her." said Henry sternly.
Caroline had never been more angry. There was a burning fury inside her, one that she had never felt before. He had stolen her life, and now he had stolen her daughter! Caroline could literally feel her heart stopping. She was so angry, so angry, so angry …
Henry smiled hugely as he saw the light in the yellow light in the centre of the machine light up like a brilliant yellow flame. At the same time, Caroline fell backwards onto the stretcher, dead. Cheers erupted from all around the room, followed by applause. Henry felt triumphant. He had done it! He had conquered the challenge that they had said was impossible. Artificial intelligence! The scientific accomplishment of… the decade? The century? Ever!
Suddenly, the baby started screaming. Henry told her to shush, but she went on screaming. That's when he saw that green gas.
"EMERGENCY STOP!" yelled Henry "IT'S USING THE NEUROTOXIN!"
Doug was the fastest runner in the centre, and he was the first the reach the emergency kill switch. He pulled it down, and the yellow light went out from the machine. Henry frowned, confused as to what had happened. What did they do wrong? Could this GLaDOS be a danger to the public?
He mentally shook himself. It must have been a minor mistake at the drawing boards or something like that. Something they could iron out with ease.
It shouldn't be an issue.