Hey guys, Tess Phoenix here. Just before we get started here, I just want to tell those who have been reading my other fanfictions that I'll be taking a break from both The Tesseract and Twisted Hope. I know they're not even close to done, but I was really itching to get a Portal story in. So, enjoy this and please review! :)

She stared at the ground defiantly with the same look she'd kept for a long time. It was the last look she'd made before she'd been shut off, her eyes open but darkness filling her vision. She felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing.

Until now.

The small switch on her back was flicked up and her power came on, electricity running through her. She took in a deep breath like a real person; that was how she'd been built to react. Like a real person. She looked around, the walls and floor old and worn down. Wherever she was, it hadn't been used in a long time. The bird that had flicked her switch squawked in surprise and flew up into the air.

"Thank you," she mouthed to it and struggled to stand. Her legs were weak and she was out of practice walking. Nonetheless, she used the wall to support herself and she walked down the rundown hallway, wondering still where she was.

Memories that should have been there flickered on and off in her mind, coming in only small bursts of information. She remembered people carrying her, not the humanoid her, but a smaller version of her. She remembered the small spherical robots looking at her with what would've been worry if they'd been human. She remembered the strange feeling that was a mix of pain and shock as she switched bodies. Those spherical robots were tossed into some kind of incinerator and they screamed out with electronic voices. There was only one other thing she remembered: Aperture Laboratories. The logo was bright and clear in her memory and it was the only thing she was slightly happy to remember. Her home.

Her walking got better as she roamed through rooms and halls. Soon she was walking without help from rails or walls. Broken glass crunched beneath her feet and she brushed past vines and large leaves that clung to practically everything it could grasp. Everything was a mess and it all seemed uninhabited. That was, until she heard the voice.

"You." She froze. She knew that voice, all cores knew that voice. They knew it all too well.

"GLaDOS," she said. "Nice to hear from you again. I imagine you're doing well?"

"Ion. I thought you'd been incinerated."

"The others were, but I pulled through. I shouldn't have, but I did."

"Well, you will make a good test sub-"

"No," Ion interrupted, "No testing. I'm not a test subject and I never was. I wasn't built for your enjoyment." GLaDOS's electronic voice growled in anger. She didn't have to put up with this human wannabe and wasn't going to.

"Fine. Too bad there's no place to bury you. Oh, wait, you're not human. It looks like you'll just rust like everything else here when I'm done with you." Ion gritted her teeth and pressed forward. Hopefully she wasn't getting any closer to GLaDOS's lair than she wanted to. She just wanted to go home. Surely this place wasn't home, home didn't look like this.

Despite the threats from GLaDOS, nothing dangerous came up. No turrets, no spiky plates, no neurotoxins. Just debris filled hallways and rooms filled with things of no use. But something odd did come up. Ion hadn't thought this trashed-up place had been home, but as she continued walking everything kept getting more familiar and more familiar. She passed through a door and a burst of realization came at her like a bullet. The Operation Room, the very place she'd switched bodies and saw her fellow cores being wheeled out of the room to be incinerated. She looked around, placing a hand on the large white operating table in the center of the room. A pang of sadness hit her even though she was supposed to be a very positive core. Her best friend had called out to her here while she'd been on that table. It was hard to believe cores could be friends, but she and the Prank Core had gotten along the best any core could have. In the short period of time he'd been alive they'd become close friends. Now, he was gone.

Something caught Ion's eye as she walked around the room. It sat in the corner of the room on the floor, covered in shattered glass and vines that had somehow been able to reach through the window and down onto the floor. She knelt down and brushed away the glass and vines. If robots could cry, she would have. There the Prank Core's would-be self sat, a humanoid robot with reddish-brown hair and a pair of glasses on the bridge of his nose that made him look more intelligent. Ion had wanted that added. The robot body wore a white suit, stained with rust and dirt that had the Aperture Science logo under the breast pocket. Ion brushed the hair out of its eyes and caressed its cheek sadly. The Prank Core's desperate human like cry echoed in her mind.

"I wanted to see how this would turn out," GLaDOS said with false sympathy. Ion glared at the security camera on the wall angrily.

"Stop it! For two seconds would you just shut up!" She put as much emphasis on the last two words as she could. It was quiet again and Ion cleaned off as much dirt and grime as she could off the body and dragged a chair over. She set the body in it and positioned it so that it looked like it was just sleeping sitting up. She almost expected the Prank Core to come to life inside the body and scare her playfully. It didn't happen, but she wished it would.

"He's not coming back," GLaDOS taunted.

"I know," Ion replied, "and I can't do anything about it. So it's no good for me to stay here." She walked out of the room and to one of the elevators.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"Out and I'm never coming back."