Hello again, travelers! I bring you the next chapter in my sequel story.
If you have not already read my first story, entitled "Portal: Carthage's Story", please take a look at it-events/characters in that story come into play in this one.
DISCLAIMER! I do not own Portal, Portal 2, Portal DLC, or any other of Valve's creations. I DO own Carthage, OlaTOS, Function Disks, Adhesion Gel (explained in this chapter).
WARNING! WARNING! This chapter contains scenes of machine-like blood and a visual of a broken limb. Viewer discretion is advised.
Onward to the Chapter!
A blast of gunfire resounded through the chamber as the last of a squad of Lethal Military Androids was defeated, clutching its chest plate where it had received a lethal shotgun bullet. As the machine fell to the chamber floor, Carthage jumped out from the cover a panel of bulletproof glass into a forward roll before standing up to his full height, scanner ablaze as he searched for more enemies to fight. Seeing none, the male android quickly stood upright, holding his shotgun with both hands as the smoke rose from the barrel. A click of the trigger confirmed to Carthage the weapon was out of ammunition. Carthage sighed as he power walked down the rest of the corridor. He had been forced to use his shotgun more than he had wanted to against these squads of androids that GlaDOS had sent against him. A quick glance behind him revealed the whole squad of machines lying on the floor, each one sparking slightly because of the bullets they had received.
'GlaDOS has already tested me enough on usage of firearms,' Carthage thought as he rounded a bend at the end of the chamber,'so why is she doing it again? Has she run out of ideas?'
This question was answered with a sudden whirr of hydraulics as the wall behind him suddenly closed without warning. Carthage was barely able to jump clear of the closing panels before they could rip parts of his body off. Breathing heavily due to surprise, a flash of white drew his attention down into the new chamber before him. Walking forward a few steps, he was able to see the full chamber in all of its glory.
This chamber seemed, at first, like nothing at all—a bottomless gap covered just about all of the space where a floor would be and there was nothing special on the walls for him to take notice of. The only thing of some interest was the exit door directly across the pit, with no portable surfaces near it. Was this chamber a fake, or was it not ready for his arrival?
A sploosh of liquid reached Carthage's audio sensors before he was suddenly covered in a strange purple liquid. Gasping, the android stepped back quickly, coughing and spitting as much of the substance from his mouth as he could and trying to rub the rest of it off his human skin and metal plating. This activity took about three minutes to fully complete—during this time the liquid had continued to fall in the spot where Carthage was standing just before, a few particles landing closer than the main pool of liquid. Carthage raised an eyebrow in confusion as large globules of the liquid continued to fall before him—was this the new gel substance GlaDOS had wanted him to test? If it was, he didn't know how he could test it—the chamber beyond had only a bottomless gap for a floor and the basic paneled wall structure. How could he cross when he didn't know how this gel would work?
Vhoooommm…
'What the…?'
Carthage's vision suddenly went white before returning to normal in a completely different location than before. Instead of a testing chamber, it looked like he was in a boiler room of some kind, with no portable surfaces around him. He looked down at his hands, and found an old model of the Handheld Portal Device held by his right hand. The device weighed down his hand, nothing like he Multi-Purpose Glove he used for testing.
The sound of splashing liquid directed his attention to what seemed like a curving waterfall of white gel spraying over a wall in front of him and outward onto the outside floor. Looking down at his feet, Carthage's first reaction was fear, and than confusion. Fear because his feet were shrouded in strange white boots with strange prongs in the back, confusion because the feet had no talons. A surge of worry ran through Carthage as this realization reached his mental processors—was this some kind of optical illusion or something? Looking at his hands, more emotions ran through Carthage as they realized they weren't his real hands—for one, they had the structure of a woman, and second, they weren't mechanical at all. Beginning to hyperventilate now from worry and fear, Carthage then looked around for anyone that could help him in this predicament, growing more worried about what was happening with each passing second as he saw no one nearby to speak to.
In despair, Carthage knelt on the floor, his hands covering his head as he began to shiver uncontrollably. How did he get here? Why was his body like this? Where the heck was he? How could he get back to where he was before?
"What the heck do you think you're doing? We don't have time to worry about the lack of human presence! Now get up and get us out of here!"
His eyes snapped open…that voice…it was so familiar to him. Raising his head, he looked at the edge of the Portal Device around his right hand. Attached to one of the three ends designed to keep the quantum energy of the device stable was a potato battery with a familiar yellow power core.
"…" Carthage opened his mouth to try and say the name of this construct, but no sound came out of his lips—or rather, the lips of whatever body he was in now. Shaking his head, Carthage felt a surge of energy fill his muscles. He wasn't alone here—he had GlaDOS by his side, and that was something that hadn't changed over the years of his time in Aperture Science. Steeling himself, Carthage then shot a blue portal into a pool of the white gel to his direct right before carefully getting an orange portal placed outside the wall on the outside pool of gel. Once on the other side of the wall, Carthage then redirected his orange portal to where the white gel sprayed onto the floor, resulting in him getting hit in the back by some splatters that sprayed over the wall onto him. Sidestepping out of the way, he then noticed how the flow of the gel remained curved when traveling through the portals. Taking about 3.5 more seconds to observe, he then changed the angle of the orange portal, spinning around on the heel of the boots to see the spray of gel had changed direction, now covering part of the wall with the gel as well as the floor before it. Nodding to himself, Carthage then angled the orange portal so that the gel sprayed at the bottom of a nearby pair of towers that had a small gap between them.
Gritting his teeth in focus at his next shot, Carthage fired a blue portal onto the freshly created pool of white gel…and jumped for joy when he saw the blue portal open and the gel spray onto the opposite wall, starting a noticeable pattern that he could use. Calming himself, Carthage quickly fired the blue portal onto the highest point the new spray of gel had made, watching with satisfaction as the white gel now sprayed even higher up the wall. Now he could escape this place and get back on track.
A few minutes later, Carthage had completed the pattern—the gel was placed at its highest point in that he could place a portal onto a high-placed catwalk that led further upward. Smiling at his accomplishment and that he was able to do it with his own determination and GlaDOS beside him, Carthage jumped through the portal…
Vhooooommm…
'Well, at least you did SOMETHING right for a change, lunatic…'
…And gasped as his vision turned white again before clearing back to the chamber where he was before. Looking over his body, Carthage found that it actually was his body this time. He sighed in admiration, and then sucked in a breath as the last words GlaDOS had said in…whatever that had been came back to him…
'…you did SOMETHING right for a change, lunatic…'
"Lunatic"…GlaDOS had never called him by that name before. Was that some designation GlaDOS had given someone else—another test subject perhaps? Or maybe someone special to GlaDOS...
Then it hit him—it had been given to that woman in his visions! Which meant that the puzzle he had just solved had been in her body…
Carthage shivered as he recalled the feeling of being in a fully human body after so long. If that was another vision, why did it have to feel so realistic to him? Did these visions have some kind of meaning, some hidden purpose that he had to figure out himself?
Carthage looked back at the pool of purple gel before him, his mind still reeling from the vision he had just experienced. He wondered how that vision could help him—the main thing in the vision was using the gel to get to a previously unreachable surface.
Then, in a burst of mental energy that made him pump his right fist involuntarily, he got it; use the purple gel and spray it all over the walls of this chamber. Quickly shooting an orange portal onto the paneled piece of floor below the gel pool, Carthage fired a blue portal onto a random spot on the right wall and watched as the next ball of gel flew across the gap onto the opposite wall and spread over part of the wall. Exhaling in satisfaction, the male android continued this process on both walls until both sides were as covered as possible with purple gel.
"Well, it seems you have figured out how to get the Adhesion Gel onto the walls before you," GlaDOS's voice rang out as soon as the final part of the wall was covered, "Good job. The next part is, of course, how you will cross…"
"Right," Carthage responded with a heavy trace of sarcasm, "That should be simple enough to accomplish."
After scratching his head for a moment, an odd idea hit Carthage's mental processors. Before his mechanical side could respond with a rebuttal, the male android already had initiated the plan. He stuck his left hand into the path of the falling balls of Adhesion Gel, wincing as the liquid made contact with the techno-organic skin of the limb. Once the hand was covered, Carthage quickly spun to his left and slammed the hand onto a paneled wall with a THWACK. After waiting a few seconds, Carthage then attempted to pull the hand away from the wall…and widened his human eye as his hand became fastened to the wall! No amount of tugging or pulling could break the hold the gel had on the metallic hand, and the physical strain that Carthage put onto the hand and corresponding wrist began to get dangerously high the more he struggled to break the hold. The android was forced to stop his tugging efforts before he ripped his hand clean off at the wrist. Sighing, Carthage felt that his plan wasn't working out as he had planned it to be. There had to be SOME way to break the Adhesion Gel's hold after he had immersed his hand in it. He can't have just trapped himself indefinitely by his own planning!
Reality, however, was quick to sink in; escape seemed nigh impossible. Still, it couldn't be impossible—if it were, than GlaDOS would have not put this item into the testing chamber without having some way to solve it. Growling in frustration, Carthage put all of his reserve energy into one final pull against the cement-like purple gel, ignoring all warnings of physical stress and mental overload that flashed in his mind…
CRACK!
…And stopped short in surprise with a scream as his pain processor went into overdrive. Unbearable amounts of pain registered in his mechanical brain from his left hand and wrist, his human brain temporarily blacked out from the mental stress. The entire limb quickly locked in place to prevent further injury, but Carthage could already see the damage he had caused—his left hand had been partially ripped out of its corresponding wrist from the severe exertion of strength. Tears sprung into the android's human eye as clear oil began to leak out of the broken hand. Carthage couldn't believe that he had been so stupid—he should have known that something that sticks to surfaces of walls should not have been used this way. He felt like crying right then and there out of sheer humiliation and despair.
HISSSS…
A strange sound then reached Carthage's ears as he felt the gel's grip starting to loosen! A sharp look at his broken hand revealed that the leaking oil from his hand was counteracting against the gel's grip. Amazed, the android let his arm drop to his side once his left hand was released completely before looking at it closely. Part of the hand had been completely separated from the wrist, leaving some wires broken as well as the human bone snapped apart. The hand itself was bent at a rakish angle but still functioned moderately well. The clear oil was leaking at a moderate rate out of the open wound, and a pool of it was already starting to form on the paneled floor below him. Carthage then realized that he was bleeding out due to the broken hand and that he should solve the test as quickly as possible. But how could he get across without being stuck on the walls?
Then it hit him—it was a bizarre plan and GlaDOS would most certainly not approve of it if she knew what he was going to do. With a smirk, Carthage activated the Spider-Limb Function Disk, his body's center of weight instantly shifting to accommodate the mechanical arms and legs. Now standing on the four spider limbs while his regular limbs were about 3 inches off the ground, Carthage initiated the next stage of the process. Focusing his thoughts, he mentally commanded the spider limbs to separate from the human limbs. The command was accepted and the spider limbs fell limp and hung on Carthage's back, almost making him stumble backwards due to the extra weight. Recovering quickly, Carthage then mentally brought up his upper left spider limb and held it beneath his broken left hand. The oil from his hand slowly dripped onto the mechanical limb, forming a gelatin-like coating over the electromagnetic tip and giving it a shiny keen that looked nice in the chamber's light. Not waiting for the mixture to dry off, Carthage then quickly applied the same procedure to the other three Spider Limbs. Once all four limbs were covered, Carthage quickly re-synched the human and spider limbs together and raced forward into the main chamber. He took one look at the walls and how far they would go, took a hard gulp in order to gain courage and adrenal vapor into his body, and leapt towards the right wall with all eight limbs splayed out for maximum possible landing.
The nanoseconds seemed to slow down as Carthage slammed onto the gel-covered wall with a THUD, spider limbs scrabbling onto the wall as his human limbs tried to get a stable grip as well. The pain from Carthage's left hand registered sharply as the upper left Spider Limb began to flail uselessly about on the wall due to the corresponding limb being almost useless. It seemed three Spider Limbs alone wouldn't get him to stay on the wall, and every nanosecond counted.
'I can't fail now!' Carthage thought to himself as he slid further down the wall, "My plan was so close to working! It HAS to work! It HAS TO!'
And with that, Carthage slammed his spider limbs right through the gel and panels below him, pulling himself up along the wall in a surge of inhuman motion. Once he was higher up, Carthage then turned rapidly to his left and began to run along the wall! His Spider Limbs made rapid taps and pushes against the wall and rose up again before the gel could attach to them, the coating of his own machine oil making the points where the limbs touched the gel begin to disappear. The motion was so swift that an observer would just have seen a blurring spider-like creature racing across a purple wall faster than a real spider could ever move.
It took about 30 seconds—thirty hair-raising, back burning, pain-filled seconds for Carthage to get across the wall. Taking one final step to gain tension for the leap, Carthage then launched off the wall, all eight limbs splayed out again in order to land on the chamber exit. For a brief moment, a flashback popped up in his mind, a time when he was testing out this Function Disk for the first time while OlaTOS was in power. That felt so long ago…
…But there was no time for that now. Carthage felt a shudder run through his entire body as his upper body impacted the exit floor, leaving his lower body hanging uselessly over the bottomless pit. A new surge of pain hit Carthage's processors like an anvil to his head as his broken left hand began to snap further apart. The pressure was almost unbearable as Carthage's face took on a very humanlike expression of pain, his human eye fluttering as his optic began to shorten out. The two upper spider limbs began to scrape the paneled surface in hopes to get a hold, but Carthage saw the exit getting further and further away. He would fall over the edge any second now, and his limbs just didn't have the strength to get him over the edge.
Filled with fear, Carthage suddenly shouted a wordless battle cry as he savagely impaled his two lower Spider Limbs into the non-portable wall below him, ignoring all flashes of pain that occurred because of this action. Then, he raised his front Spider Limbs up over his head and slammed them down onto the panels with as much force as he could muster. The pain was now at a critical level, a piercing frequency emitting into Carthage's audio sensors and distracting him for a brief moment. Trying his best to focus on getting to the exit, Carthage pushed his front Spider Limbs further into the panels and drew his back Spider Limbs out of the wall below him. Then, in a move that would have made anyone other than GlaDOS stop and stare, Carthage bent his back limbs almost to his stomach before slamming them down in what could only be described as a frontal stab. The two limbs slammed into the paneled floor with a bit of grinding, allowing Carthage to then shift his weight forward and begin walking as normal on the paneled surface. He didn't go to far, though, before the pain in his body became too much to keep aside. He was fortunate enough, though, to stumble into the elevator and fall on his right arm before blacking out, his left hand hanging on by just a few wires and bone shards as the Spider Limbs automatically deactivated.
And that should do it for now. I apologize if the flow of this chapter was not what you expected. Comments, reviews, suggestions and constructive criticism are all accepted. I also hope you are enjoying the story so far, there's more to come!
Draconos is taking off!
