This feeling is maddening.

It creeps smoothly along his senses like wisps of adrenal vapour. It penetrates every construct of his consciousness, the raw sensation of it rendering him a shivering, gasping wreck that is somehow desperate for the oxygen that two perfect synthetic lungs will never need. It builds in him through a constant cadence that seems content to ensnare every inch of metallic skeleton. It seeps into every subroutine, bleeds into every thought process, sinks into every byte of data: take, take, take, consume.

Really, how is he supposed to think of anything else?

It doesn't help that she's torturing him with this. And that's what this is, isn't it? Torture. It is. Of course it is. What else could it be? She's done nothing but slip away, hasn't she? Rejecting tests, clambering off into places he can't reach, places he can't see, place he could never hope to go. She's left him here to suffer, and she won't even grant him the bloody courtesy of cooperating.

And this—all of this, grand as it is with all the science and the gizmos and the brilliant inventions—just isn't enough.

Yes. Yes, there it is, the problem: It's just not enough. It's not enough. It's really, really not.

It's crippling, actually. And it's hungry. Ravenous. Properly ravenous. He's caught in the thrust of its downward spiral and he is starting to lose his ever-thinning patience, which, to be honest, is never a thing he's had very much of to begin with.

How is she so strong? He doesn't understand. Her tenacity is immeasurable. Admirable, almost. That bit was even in the file. Not the admirable bit, the immeasurable one.

And it's infuriating. No matter what he throws at her, she finds a way to work around it. She improvises when he takes away her means of escape. When she's on the cusp, so close to dying, she wrenches away and hangs on. She refuses to give up. Refuses. Absolutely mad.

But her tenacity can't be everything, can it? No. There must be something else. There has got to be another reason why his plans aren't working. There must be. Maybe she's got augments inside of her, something like the external ones he salvaged for his eyes, or perhaps she's somehow got a significantly higher intelligence than other humans. There must be something different about her that allows her to outsmart an AI as efficient and as advanced as he is. There must.

Maybe it's because—

Nope. Nope, not going there. Wrong and pointless. Whose side are you on, anyway? He's not. He can't be. Look at all this evidence! He's got the whole bloody facility under his thumb, hasn't he? All of it, the entire lot. No moron could do that. So just—shut up. Shut up, will you? Shut up, shut up, he's not, he's not—

On the wide panelled screens spread across the wall ahead, she twists into the safety of a portal and lands much too gracefully on the solid floor of a thick metal platform. Her long fall boots gleam under the harsh lights of the chamber, the sleek black and white of the portal device on her arm a stark reminder of her sole purpose.

He watches as she draws herself straight and glares up into the camera. The blue in her irises is muted, quiet. Her mouth remains a thin line as her jaws tighten.

Wheatley sinks his teeth into the synthetic flesh of his tongue. He focusses on the wall of monitors, ignoring the welling surge of pain skipping down his sensors. The black cables all around him quiver; he can feel the one that's connected at the base of his skull as it twitches.

He's losing ground. That much is plain. Slowly but surely, she's making her way here one chamber at a time, climbing outside through the catwalks and along the facility back alleys. She's going to get to him with the help of that potato-stuffed bitch and she's going to swap him out and replace him with Her.

The very thought of it makes him seethe. How can she even think of doing something like that? Really, how? After all She's done, after all they've been through together, how can she be so willing to toss him aside like a box of obsolete parts and reinstate Her? For God's sake, She even admitted She'd wanted her dead!

And he's not like that. No, he's not. He's different. He hadn't even wanted to kill her. He'd wanted to help her escape. That was the plan. Sacrificed so much to bring her up here, so incredibly much, but after he took on all these new responsibilities as the head of the facility, she coveted them, not even wanting to share his success, wanted it all for herself, and now she's teamed up with Her.

Yeah. She's the one that's forced all this on him. She's the one making him try to kill her. How else is he supposed to defend himself? Two against one; that's hardly fair, is it? Yes, yes, and this, this defiance, this test refusal, this is how she repays him after all he's done for her? Risked his neck to bring her to the surface, he did, and then she goes off and squanders the chance for freedom. How dare she even think—

Wheatley's fingers puncture into the heels of his palms. He can feel stinging heat string straight through him, sucking at the end of every sensation receptor as it hums through his body.

This is her fault. All of this. Testing isn't enough, waiting isn't enough, existing isn't enough, and on top of that, the euphoria's gone and diminished. The sweet satisfaction, the thrill, the pleasure—it's practically nothing now, and he can't do a damn thing about it. When she finishes tests, it's a mere shadow of what he ought to feel, the very smallest snap of ecstasy, and he can't figure out why that's happened, either. What is he supposed to do when the only thing that has managed to slake this bloody impulse won't actually do any slaking?

And that's another problem, too. He is at this feeling's mercy. It's dragging its claws down his shoulders, down his spine; he is bent, prostrate, overwhelmed by its omnipotence. He is in charge of this place, yes, and he can sense the facility as it moans beneath him, with him, but that fiery sear up his vertebrae is somehow so much more difficult to bear than total awareness of every little thing happening within Aperture's walls at each passing picosecond.

But it shouldn't do that. It's not supposed to—

No, it is. It's fine. It is. The moaning. Really. Completely normal. There can't be anything wrong. He's in control, after all. He's got the entire place running perfectly. Everything is fine. Why can't you see that?

"Warning," says a pre-recorded voice. "Reactor core is at critical temperature."

A flare of ire flushes through his processors.

"Nobody asked you!" Wheatley shouts, and flings a cable at one of the monitors. The smooth glass fractures into a shatter of jagged shards and the screen falls to the floor in a crash, showering the room with a brilliant burst of sparks.

As the monitor's innards unspool across the tiles, Wheatley launches himself from his chair and lifts himself higher into the chamber. Obedient cables writhe around his legs, eager and twisting.

Something must be done.