A/N: Thank you to my lovely reviewers :)

Chapter Two – Lab Rat.

The movement stops. I have just enough time to look down and see where I am before the grip opens and I'm falling.

She's dropped me into the incinerator chute. It's dark, unlike when I used it before. I gather that it's not operating at its normal capacity. I hurtle downwards at an alarming rate, trying not to hit the soot-covered walls. By pure luck I miss the metal plates smashing together, and I'm spat out into space. I see the fiery pit out of the corner of my eye before I thankfully land on a pile of broken tiles. Even with the boots, it's a jarring halt, and I balance myself with my palms before straightening up. I try to catch my breath, but the air is stiflingly hot.

"Here we are," GLaDOS says conversationally. "The Incinerator Room. Be careful not to trip over any parts of me that didn't get completely burned when you threw them down here. The dual portal device should be around here somewhere. Once you find it, we can start testing. Just like old times."

I get to the other side of the room by crossing the pit on some very precariously balanced pieces of debris. There are cubes and turrets raining down around me, tumbling into the fire. The heat is unbearable, and I'm glad to slip into a cool, dim corridor. I pause for a moment, leaning against the chilly surface of the stone walls. The ends of my hair are singed.

I head on towards the end of the corridor, very much aware that the sooner I find the device, the sooner I can start looking for an escape route. It's just going to be so much harder now she's awake. Even with the hindsight of my first escape attempt, it seems an impossible task. If I was the giving up type, now might be a good time to do it. But I'm not. I never have been.

"There it is," GLaDOS informs me. "Hold on."

The panels preventing me from reaching it stutter to life, moving out of the way. There are only a few thin strips of metal between the gun and the incinerator.

"There."

I pick it up and it fits snugly onto my arm.

"Good. You have a dual portal device. There should be a way back to the test tracks up ahead."

She keeps up a torrent of speech as I negotiate my way to the elevator, occasionally moving rubble out of my path in a way that would seem uncharacteristically helpful if she wasn't so obvious about getting me back in the test chambers.

"Once testing starts, I'm required by protocol to keep interaction with you to a minimum. Luckily, we haven't started testing yet. This will be our only chance to talk. Do you know the biggest lesson I learned from what you did? I discovered I have a sort of black-box quick-save feature. In the event of a catastrophic failure, the last two minutes of my life are preserved for analysis. I was able - well, forced really - to relive you killing me. Again and again. Forever. You know, if you'd done that to somebody else, they might devote their existence to exacting revenge."

Her tone drops cold and low on the word 'revenge', a technique that's probably supposed to scare me. It doesn't. I'd expect nothing less from her.

"Luckily I'm a bigger person than that," she goes on. "I'm happy to put this all behind us and get back to work. After all, we've got a lot to do, and only sixty more years to do it. More or less. I don't have the actuarial tables in front of me."

I reach a corridor entirely blocked by frozen wall panels.

"I'll just move that out of the way for you. This place really is a wreck."

I continue, and so does she.

"But the important thing is you're back. With me. And now I'm onto all your little tricks. So there's nothing to stop us from testing for the rest of your life. After that...who knows? I might take up a hobby. Reanimating the dead, maybe."

I step into the elevator, feeling strangely detached from what she's saying. I don't intend to be a test subject for the next sixty years. She's probably aware of that, and it will make it more difficult to escape. But all I need is an opportunity. I'll just do what tests I can until I find one. With the facility in the state it is, I'm sure there'll be somewhere I can cut and run.

The first few tests are simple, which is fortunate considering how rundown the chambers are. GLaDOS taunts me almost constantly, which, although expected, is getting very old very quickly. I can't help but miss Pendleton. I hadn't even been aware that he'd dug his way into my affections, but now that he's gone I fully appreciate just how nice it was to have a friendly voice around me.

GLaDOS pipes up again as I exit chamber two. "Here come the test results: you are a horrible person. That's what it says. A horrible person. We weren't even testing for that."

I step into the elevator, watching the monotonous grey concrete pass by me as I'm taken even deeper into the facility. Every test chamber is another step in the wrong direction. It's difficult not to be pessimistic when faced with this much crap. The petty insults don't help, despite them being pretty easy to disregard. Many children learn to deal with comments of this type on the playground. 'Ignore them and they'll get bored,' my dad always said. He was right. But I guess A.I.s aren't capable of getting bored.

"Don't let that 'horrible person' thing discourage you," GLaDOS reassures me as I enter chamber three. "It's just a data point. If it makes you feel any better, science has now validated your birth mother's decision to abandon you on a doorstep."

I try to keep the frown from my face as I come into range of her security camera. It's not the first time she's mentioned the fact that I'm adopted, as if I'm supposed to view it as a tragic incident in my past. I've never felt the need to add the word 'adopted' in front of 'parents' when referring to Mom and Dad. They're just my parents.

Besides which, I was never abandoned. My birth mother died having me, and I don't even know who my birth father is…was. He's always been nothing more than a meaningless name on a document. If she really had my file available, she would know all of this. I can only guess that she's trying to provoke me. Unfortunately, since it's coming on top of everything else I've been through today, it seems to be working.

I quickly shoot two portals, one directly behind the camera. With no wall to support it, it drops to the floor and emits a few sparks. I smile to myself. A small victory, but a victory nonetheless. It seems she's been taking hints from my behaviour though: she doesn't react.

The room has finished rearranging itself, and the mechanical droning of the robotic arms she uses to move things around dies away. I study the chamber, working out the solution but also searching for potential ways out. There's a gaping hole in one corner, and a sound coming from it that's not part of the ambient noise of the facility. Puzzled, and instantly sidetracked, I head towards it. It sounds almost like…music.

The hole leads to a small room. As I drop down into it, I can see it's another one of my friend's sanctuaries. There are more empty food cans, and more murals. A radio sits in the corner playing a song I've never heard before. It's melancholy, but somehow soothing.

A large painting of a person, hands raised to their face in horror, dominates one wall. Like the other work I've seen, it's highly stylised, and I can't tell if it's supposed to be a man or a woman. The words 'sucker's luck' are written across it. The other wall is even more bizarre, and I can't make much sense of it, except for a bold, black phrase on the yellow background: 'Don't even try.'

As I'm reading it, I hear it in the song. It startles me for a split second, but then I sit down so I can hear the lyrics. My friend must have wired the radio to play this on a loop. It's obvious they were listening to it a lot while creating these images. The lyrics are sombre, and my friend has captured this pretty well in the paintings.

'You've got sucker's luck. Have you given up? Does it feel like a trial? Does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine?'

For some reason this both unnerves and comforts me. The thought that I've been on my friend's mind, and they are on mine…it makes me feel connected to them in a way that nothing else has. And it makes me sad. I'll never get the chance to thank them for their help.

'Have you given up?' the song asks again.

'No', I think determinedly, getting to my feet. 'Never.'

The best thanks I can hope to give them now is to live. And to get out.

I complete the test, GLaDOS insults me, and I head to the elevator. I just have to stay alive long enough to find my window of opportunity. She's talking about my weight now. As if that would be something I would be worrying about in this situation. Since she doesn't feed me, I'm not sure how she thinks I'm putting weight on. I can't say that hunger is high on my list of concerns though.

As I continue on, solving more tests, letting more taunts wash over me, I notice something worrying. The chambers are in better repair the further I go. Even in the decrepit ones I hadn't found any chances to escape. Any holes I discovered in the walls had only led to steep drops, but at least they had offered the promise of some kind of way out of the tests. If she keeps up the level of control she seems to be regaining, pretty soon I won't even have that.

I enter test chamber nine, shoot portals at various points in the ceiling, and step onto the aerial faith plate. As I'm catapulted up, I hear something I thought I'd never hear again: Pendleton's voice!

"Hey! Hey! It's me! I'm okay!"

I draw level with him, catching a quick glimpse of his bright optic before gravity pulls me back down. I can't go back up because the faith plate has decided to stop working and emit a steady beeping.

"The aerial faith plate in here is sending a distress signal," GLaDOS tells me. "You broke it, didn't you? There." The beeping stops. "Try it now."

When I bounce back up, Pendleton's still there talking away to himself. Well, to me, I assume. But since I can barely hear what he's saying, it doesn't really count.

"You'll never believe what happened, right. I was just lying there. You thought I was done for, but–"

I fall down again, moving out of range.

GLaDOS is calmly informative. "Hmm. This plate must not be calibrated to someone of your…generous…ness. I'll add a few zeros to the maximum weight. You look great, by the way. Very healthy. Try it now."

She's in full control of the aerial faith plates, I'm pretty sure. This is a cheap stunt to annoy me. Thank God she hasn't spotted Pendleton. I suppose if I'm keeping her attention away from him, then this nonsense is worth it.

"…a bloody bird, right?" he's saying when I fly up to him. "Couldn't believe it either! And then the bird–"

"You seem to have defeated its load-bearing capacity," GLaDOS muses when I return to the ground. "Well done. I'll just lower the ceiling."

The tiles shift into place, cutting Pendleton's hiding spot out of view, and I get on with the test. He knows where I am now, and I'm certain he'll find some other way of talking to me. I'm still not convinced that he'll be much help, especially since it's his fault that GLaDOS is awake, but it's better than having no ally at all, and he is familiar with the facility.

It seems GLaDOS has finally figured out that insulting my weight doesn't affect me. She's moved on to taunting me about going to the surface, selling me a story about it being lovely outside and how she saw a deer. I grew up in a city. Deer aren't high on my list of interests. She seems to figure this out too, and she tells me she's seen some humans. I hope she's just being facetious, because if she truly can't understand that I'm never going to trust a single thing she says, then she's not as intelligent as she seems to think she is.

The first thing waiting for me as I enter chamber eleven is a bridge made of some kind of strange, transparent blue material. I pause to stare at it for a moment. I have no idea what it is. It wasn't one of the projects Mom worked on.

"These bridges are made of natural light that I pump in from the surface," GLaDOS informs me helpfully. "If you rubbed your cheek on one it would be like standing outside with the sun shining on your face. It would also set your hair on fire, so don't actually do it."

I'm sceptical, to say the least. Bridges made of light? But since this first one is raised only a couple of inches from the ground, I feel confident enough to try stepping on it. It holds my weight, but it doesn't feel nice to walk on. Kind of…unstable.

Examining the room, I spot a button on the opposite side of a pit of toxic sludge. I portal across and press it, and the cube dispenser starts up. I immediately realise that to get to the cube, I'm going to have to place bridges over the pit. I get on with it, and try not to let my anxiety show on my face. As I walk out over the sludge, I'm painfully aware that if she wanted to kill me, all she'd have to do is turn off the bridge. Hopefully my value as a test subject will outweigh her need to get rid of me.

I make it out of the room, and can't help drawing in a shaky breath. I really, really, hate trusting my life to these harebrained creations. When Mom used to tell me little things about what she knew Aperture was working on, it sounded exciting and futuristic. I used to think of her as a pioneer. Since I've been here, my opinion has done a complete one-eighty degree flip. But I don't think she'd blame me.

I can't get into chamber twelve. GLaDOS tells me that the door is malfunctioning, and moans that she's going to have to go and fix it. I take the opportunity to rest, leaning back against the wall and closing my eyes. All I can see behind my lids are portals, and I open my eyes with a sigh of frustration.

"Hey! Hey! Up here!"

I push away from the wall and glance up behind me. It's Pendleton! He's back on his rail, peering down at me through the glass of the observation office. If he smashed the window for me, I might be able to climb up there.

"I found some bird eggs up here. Just dropped 'em into the door mechanism. Shut it right down! I – aaggh!"

A bird finds its way into the room, and he goes nuts, scooting away from it.

"Bird! Bird! Bird! Bird!"

There's a brief moment of silence. I'm too bemused to react, caught between mild concern and amusement. Then he returns, bird-free.

"Okay. That's probably the bird, innit, that laid the eggs? Livid!"

I smile. I can't help it.

"Okay, look, the point is we're going to break out of here, all right? Very soon, I promise, I promise. I just have to figure out how. To...break us out of here. Here she comes! Keep test-, just keep testing! Remember, you never saw me, never saw me." He vanishes into the shadows.

"I went and spoke with the door mainframe," GLaDOS announces. "Let's just say he won't be, well, living any more. Anyway! Back to testing."

I make my way through the test. A large ceiling panel falls into the toxic slime beneath me, leaving a space above. I think it might be a route to another of my friend's hideouts, but there are several cameras in this chamber, and I don't want to make it obvious to GLaDOS that I'm looking for ways out. Reluctantly, I continue on without exploring it.

The next test is guarded by turrets, and I take a moment to brace myself before solving it. If I get hit by a bullet, I'm done for. I'm not convinced that furthering the cause of science is enough incentive for her to fix me if I get injured.

The elevator is missing when I complete the test, and I have to take an alternative path through the industrial maintenance area. There's no chance of escape here though. All that awaits me if I try is a drop into the seemingly bottomless pit.

"To maintain a constant testing cycle, I simulate daylight at all hours and add adrenal vapour to your oxygen supply. So you may be confused about the passage of time," GLaDOS says. "The point is, yesterday was your birthday. I thought you'd want to know."

Adrenal vapour. That explains a lot. I'd been wondering why I hadn't felt the need to take a proper rest.

A couple of chambers on, she actually says something worth listening to.

"I'm going through the list of test subjects in cryogenic storage. I managed to find two with your last name. A man and a woman. So that's interesting. It's a small world."

It's not the hint about my birth parents that catches my attention. I know she's making that up. My surname is not the same as either of theirs, and it's possible that they're both dead by now. What interests me is the information that there are people in cryogenic storage. A stasis even deeper than the suspension in the relaxation centre. Which probably means that the risk of brain damage is lower. Hopefully. I'm clutching at straws here.

I don't know what's happening outside. If it's true that there's been some kind of disaster, as she hinted to me long ago, I'm going to need more people to rebuild a community. Just thinking that sounds ridiculous. Who do I think I am, deciding people's fate like that? If it's truly bad out there then maybe it would be kinder to leave them all where they are. I don't know what to do. I want to find them and wake them all up, but maybe that's just my selfish need for company.

Since it doesn't look like I'm getting out of the test chambers just yet, I don't have to think about it right now.

I find yet another of my friend's hideouts in the next test, guarded by a turret that I manage to explode by redirecting a laser beam. I think GLaDOS's cameras must pick up on my disappearance from the test chamber, but she doesn't comment. I guess she knows there's no way out through there. As I'm crawling through the vent to explore the space behind the walls, I hear what I can only describe as bizarre, mechanical-sounding music. As I pass over a grille, I notice turrets below me. The music is coming from them.

Musical turrets? I run a weary hand through my already-messy hair. I must be going crazy. But then a long-forgotten memory comes back to me. Mom sitting at the kitchen table, talking to Dad and me about her work while I stirred pasta for dinner.

"I've been programming a musical element into the turrets," she said, beaming at me over her coffee cup.

"Turrets?" I exchanged a look with Dad. "As in, dangerous…things?"

"They're for security," she clarified. "They can be put on various safety settings. The lowest is suitable for guarding children, so we think they could double as a sleep aid. You know, sing lullabies and stuff. Tomorrow we'll record the songs."

"But Mom, you can't sing a note."

"I'm not singing, silly. Caroline's going to do it."

"Caroline can sing?" I asked, thinking of what I'd been told about Mom's strict boss.

"Oh yes, she's very good. I think she's in the wrong job, but she just loves the science."

I blink, coming out of my brief trip to the past. Perhaps what I'm listening to is a product of my mom's hard work. But I still think it's a strange thing to program a turret to do. Mom would be horrified if she knew what they were being used for.

The mural that my mystery ally has painted in this little room is as disturbing as the rest. It shows a pile of corpses and some unintelligible scrawls. They look a bit like equations. My friend was a scientist here, I'm fairly sure. I keep finding bits and pieces that hint to it. I've gathered that they saw GLaDOS activated, and that somehow they survived her neurotoxin attack. The shock of what they saw, and the loneliness of being the only one left, drove them kind of crazy. That's my theory, anyway. I doubt these are the drawings of a sound mind.

Once again, my heart clenches in sympathy, and I reluctantly make my way back through the vents to the test. As unsettling as these secret rooms are, I feel more comfortable in them than I do in the test chambers. Perhaps it's the human touch.

In the next few, GLaDOS keeps up a tirade of comments about my birth parents and how she's going to reunite us all very soon. Then she springs her 'surprise', which is no surprise at all: she made everything up. I can't understand why she hasn't gotten the correct information from my file. Unless...unless somebody tampered with it. My friend again?

I enter the elevator, feeling weary yet unable to feel tired enough to rest thanks to the adrenal vapour. It's a frustrating, almost torturous position to be in. She doesn't have cameras in the elevators, and I allow myself to rest my warm forehead on the glass.

"Hey! How's it going?" comes Pendleton's voice.

For a brief moment I think I'm going mad, hearing things, but then I glance up and see him outside the elevator, sliding down a vertical rail. It seems GLaDOS's claw did quite a bit of damage when it crushed him. His optic is cracked, and he sparks every few seconds.

"I talked my way onto the old nanobot work crew, rebuilding this shaft," he tells me, and I believe him. I think he can talk his way into anything. "They are really small, so –" A high-pitched squeaking sound interrupts him. "I know, Jerry!" he calls. "No, I'm on a break, mate! On a break. Aggh!" He bumps into a wooden beam, which goes tumbling into the abyss. "Just hang in there for five more – what? Jerry, you can't fire me for that! Yes, Jerry, or maybe your prejudiced worksite should have accommodated a nanobot of my size. Thanks for the hate crime, Jer! See you in court, mate. Anyway, look, just hang in there for, for five more chambers."

The elevator reaches the next level, and I lose sight of him. I can't help but be curious about what he has planned. I really hope it doesn't get me killed.

In the next chamber, GLaDOS informs me that the facility is fully functional again. Looking around at the pristine test, I conclude that she's telling the truth. It doesn't bode well for me at all. Pendleton is my best hope now, and that thought makes me incredibly nervous.

In the chamber after that, she tells me she has another surprise for me. Whether it's a real surprise that I really won't like, or a false one like last time remains to be seen. Either way, she's really messing with my head. I try not to let it get to me. I need to keep my thoughts clear.

I'm halfway through solving the test when everything goes dark, and the light bridge I'm crossing switches off, dropping me to the ground.

"What's going on?" GLaDOS demands. "Who turned off the lights?"

Ahead of me, a series of wall panels open up, revealing Pendleton.

"Hey, buddy!" he greets, in the worst imitation of an American accent I've ever heard. "I'm speaking in an accent that is beyond her range of hearing. I know I'm early, but we have to go RIGHT now! Walk casually toward my position, and we'll go shut her down!"

"Look, metal ball, I can hear you."

"Run! I don't need to do the voice! Run!"

He doesn't need to tell me twice. I'm across the chamber like a shot, darting through the wall panels onto the metal walkways, finally out from under her gaze.

"Okay, quick recap," Pendleton says as we hurry away from the testing track. "We are escaping! All right? That's what's happening now, we're escaping. Uh, so, you're doing great! Just keep running. Um, quick word about the future plans that I've got in store. We are going to shut down her turret production line, all right, turn off her neurotoxin, and then confront her. Again, though, for the moment, run!"

I sprint down the walkways, and he more or less keeps pace with me, scooting along the rail as fast as he can.

"The irony is you were almost at the last test," GLaDOS says, as the wall I'm running alongside opens up to reveal the chamber she's talking about. "Here it is. Why don't you just do it? Trust me, it's an easier way out than whatever asinine plan your friend came up with."

I don't stop running, but I manage to see that she's programmed in a heart pattern on the wall, as if that would be incentive for me to cross the light bridge to the test chamber that is so clearly a trap.

"Oh, what?" scoffs Pendleton. "How stupid does she think we are?"

Good question. I leap onto the bridge, but head in the opposite direction. Of course, she shuts it off, and I find myself falling. Fortunately I land on a walkway below.

"Run, for goodness' sake!" yells Pendleton, as I hurtle around corners, often clipping the railings and bruising myself in my haste. "Come on, come on!"

When I run out of walkway, I have nowhere to go but underneath one of the test chambers. I don't like it, but I have no other choice.

"Agh!" he exclaims, as the floor panels flip up to become walls, trapping me inside.

I pull up short as I realise that there are turrets in here too, ducking behind one of the support struts.

"Can you get out?" I hear him call.

Taking a deep breath, I leap out from my position, running behind the turrets and knocking them over. Pendleton's wittering again, but I can't hear a word he's saying over the sprays of gunfire.

I'm able to place a portal on a wall outside, and I jump back onto the walkways.

"You're okay!" he says. "Great! Come on!"

I follow him through the weaving path of walkways.

"Turret!"

It's just a solitary one, waiting for me to pass by. I quickly shoot a portal underneath it and it disappears. I run to the metal staircase ahead, taking the steps two at a time.

"Go! Go, go, go!"

The walkway I'm on opens out into a huge area, behind the test chambers, I assume. I'm seeing the robotic arms from the other side. There are hundreds of them.

"There's the exit! We're almost out of here!"

As I turn the corner and head towards the service elevator, the walkway begins to shudder, and I hear a loud, terrifying crashing sound behind me.

"She's bringing the whole place down!" Pendleton yells, his optic shrinking to a pinprick in his panic. "Hurry! Hurry! This way!"

I don't need to look behind me. The noise is motivation enough. Out of the corner of my eye I see the walls moving towards me.

"Hurry, this way! Get in the lift! Get in the lift!"

I duck to avoid a nearby girder, and stumble into the elevator.

"We made it, we made it, we made it, we made it!" Pendleton gushes.

I flatten myself against the far rail, trying to catch my breath. My heart is pumping like a piston. The elevator starts to rise as I watch the walkway I've just come down buckle and break apart under the pressure of the huge walls, before the whole room vanishes from sight.

"I'll meet you on the other side," he says, moving through a hatch high up in the wall.

The elevator stops, and the rail I'm leaning against opens, depositing me on my backside in a corridor. I lie back for a moment, feeling the chill of the metal floor against my bare shoulders, and stare at the ceiling until my breathing becomes more regular. Eventually, I get to my feet, and follow the corridor until I'm back on the maintenance walkways. Pendleton's there, waiting patiently for me.

"Ah! Brilliant! You made it through. Well done. Okay, follow me. We've still got work to do. At least she can't touch us back here."

I've only taken about three steps when the lights begin to shut off, one by one.

"What's happening? Um...hmm...okay. Okay! Uh...don't move."

By the time he finishes his sentence, it's pitch black. The only light I have is the small, coloured L.E.D. on the portal gun, which isn't nearly enough to see by. I take one hand off the gun and reach for the nearest railing.

"Okay, all right," he says, "so, I've got an idea, but it is bloody dangerous. Here we go." A bright flashlight snaps on, and he yells, "Aaggh!"

I blink to clear the glare from my eyes. It's unpleasant, but I doubt that was why he was shouting. I don't think robots are programmed to have trouble switching from dark to bright.

"Oh, for God's sa - they told me that if I ever turned this flashlight on, I would die! They told me that about everything! I don't even know why they bothered giving me this stuff if they didn't want me to use it, it's pointless! Mad!"

We begin to move cautiously on again. He trundles ahead of me, directing the flashlight beam downwards. Despite this minor setback with the lights, it seems he was right when he said she can't reach us back here. There are no cameras, and no speakers.

"Ooh, it's dark down here, isn't it?"

I don't even dignify that with an eye roll.

He rambles on, adopting the tone of someone telling an atmospheric, spooky tale. "They say that the old caretaker of this place went absolutely crazy. Chopped up his entire staff. Of robots. All of them robots. They say at night you can still hear the screams. Of their replicas. All of them functionally indistinguishable from the originals. No memory of the incident. Nobody knows what they're screaming about. Absolutely terrifying. Though obviously not paranormal in any meaningful way."

We've reached a manufacturing plant of some kind, with bits of broken down junk scattered across a stationary conveyer belt. Pendleton lights up the way out on the other side of the area, and I use the belt to get across.

In the next area, the conveyer belts are moving, and I halt on the edge of the drop down.

"This looks dangerous. I'll hold the light steady."

I bob him a nod of thanks, and jump down, managing to time it so I land safely on my feet.

"Oh, nicely done!"

My lips twitch. After all of GLaDOS's put-downs, it's quite nice to receive a compliment.

I make my way down the production line, dodging hanging circuit boards and cutting lasers. Pendleton chatters on, telling me a story about how he got the job of tending the test subjects. I listen with half an ear, but I'm more involved in studying my path. We've moved into an area with no railings on the walkways, and I have to watch my step. I go as far as I can, hitting a dead end.

"Okay, we have to split up here for a moment," he tells me. "Portal up to that passage and I'll see you on the other side."

I look up at where he means, and shoot my portals. In the next area, he uses the flashlight to guide me across, lighting up the walls that I can place portals on. We pass through part of the turret production area, where hundreds of turrets are being boxed up for shipping. Pendleton is praising humans, backtracking from an earlier insulting slip that he made.

We split up again to traverse the next room, and I make my way down to the corridor I need by climbing down the transportation tubes. It's not easy with a portal gun in hand, but I make it in one piece and head through the corridors. Eventually I find myself at another conveyer belt, which the male announcer from before refers to as a turret redemption line. The belt is littered with wrecked pieces of turret, heading towards a furnace at the far end. It's the only way to cross the room, so I portal my way onto it.

"Turret redemption lines are not rides," the announcer scolds. "Please exit the turret redemption line."

I hop onto a ventilation shaft of some kind, and jump on the next conveyer belt. As I'm negotiating my way along it, stumbling over bits of turret, I notice one ahead that is still emitting a blinking red laser sight.

As I grow nearer, it chirps at me. "I'm different!"

I think it's the same one that Pendleton and I passed earlier. On a whim, I pick it up.

"Thank you," it says.

Still slightly unsure as to why I'm doing it, I carry it down to the corridor with me. As we go, it spurts out random phrases that I don't understand.

"Get mad. Don't make lemonade. Prometheus was punished by the gods for giving the gift of knowledge to man. He was cast into the bowels of the Earth and pecked by birds."

I can't help but wonder how it knows all this stuff. I'm pretty sure that knowledge of Greek mythology was not included in the basic phrases that turrets were programmed with.

"It won't be enough," it says. "The answer is beneath us."

Ahead of me, I see an emancipation grille, and I put the turret down on the walkway. Better it stay here than get fizzled.

"Her name is Caroline. Remember that."

I turn and look at it. "What about Caroline?" I ask. My voice hasn't been used in a while, and it comes out as more of a rasp. Does it mean Caroline, my mom's boss? If so, what?

"That's all I can say," it tells me, sounding more than a little apologetic.

I leave it alone, and step through the emancipation grille. I pass through an area where turrets are being tested. Bizarrely, the defective ones have different voices to the functional ones. After that, I reach a place where the defective turrets are being discarded into the incinerator. I spot Pendleton waiting for me in the office there, so I head over to him. He comes out to meet me.

"Ah, brilliant! You made it through, well done. Follow me. You're going to love this."

I follow him into the office.

"Ta da! Only the turret control centre, thank you very much. Here, come and have a look out the window. It's good. See that scanner out there? It's deciding which turrets to keep and which to toss, and it's using that master turret there as a template. If we pull out the template turret, it will shut down the whole production line."

The scanner is contained in its own little office space tagged on to the main one, overseeing the production line. I glance back at Pendleton, giving him a nod of encouragement. It sounds like a good plan. Anything to shut down the turrets is fine by me. He scoots along the rail, pausing in front of the office door.

"Right. Umm, I'm going to have to hack the door. So that we can get at it. Technical. Ummmm, you'll need to turn around while I do this."

This again? I turn. Anything for an easy life. There comes the sound of breaking glass, and I cringe, spinning back around.

"Done!" says Pendleton proudly. "Hacked! Okay, go on, just pull that turret out."

I aim the gun through the window he's just 'hacked' and shoot a portal into the office. I drag the turret out of the scanner, leaving it on the floor.

"Well, that should do it."

"Template missing," the announcer states. "Continuing from memory."

"Oh, it hasn't done it. Right, let's figure out how to stop this turret line."

I glance out of the window at the defective turrets, and the answer hits me straight away. I head back towards the incinerator, preparing to catch one as it's thrown into it.

"Wait, where are you going? Where are you going?" Pendleton asks. "Ohhh, have you got an idea?"

I aim the portal gun upwards, and manage to catch one of the defective turrets as it comes hurtling towards me.

"Oh, thank god!" it exclaims. "You saved my bacon, pal! Where we going? Is this a jailbreak? I can't see a thing."

Why does everything in this place talk so damned much? I drag it back to the office, ignoring its prattle, and head back through the portal to put it in the scanner.

"Wha - what do you have there?" Pendleton says. "Wha - what...are you...Ohhh brilliant! It's - that's brilliant!"

"New template accepted," the announcer declares.

"If we're lucky, she won't find out all her turrets are crap until it's too late." He chuckles. "Classic. Okay, keep your eye on the turret line, I'm going to hack the door open."

Outside the window all the pristine white turrets are being discarded, and the malfunctioning ones are going through. I smile to myself. I would never have been able to do all this on my own, but it's a really smart thing to do.

"Okay, I'm about to start hacking!" Pendleton calls to me.

I turn and see him on the other side of the glass, across in the adjacent hallway.

"It's a little bit more complicated than it looked from your side. It should take about ten minutes. Keep one eye on the door."

Almost immediately, the door unlocks and opens. My eyes widen in surprise. If I'm honest, I hadn't expected him to get it open that fast.

"This door's actually pretty complicated," I hear him say as I pass through the short corridor and emerge on his side. "Agh!" he yells. I think I made him jump. If that's even possible. "How long's the door been open? I mean, was there any sort of announcement before it opened, like a - like a buzzer or an alarm of some kind, or like a hacker alert? I mean, y'know, fair enough, the important thing is it's open, but just mention it in the future. Cough or something."

He slides along his rail, and I follow, shaking my head. We've got a long way to go yet, but I'm glad I'm not alone.

A/N: Next chapter, Chell remembers her experiences of Bring Your Daughter To Work Day :)