Chapter Three

The Return of the Pixie-Cut Android

It's a strange feeling, being remade. The first thing that comes back is the mind, and that immediately panics because the mind is all there is. Then you experience tingling all over, phantom pains as you realize that you no longer have arms, legs, or a body but they're coming along. Somewhere along the line hearing comes back and you hear various little fizzes and clicks as the machine reassembles you, diving in and out, weaving your body back to the masterpiece it was.

I couldn't sit up, couldn't move until the machine had done its job, which made it a little dull. I kept waiting for it to repair a giant crack in the left lens of my glasses, but it never did.

Also, there was a giant bird staring down at me as if overseeing the work, which was a little unnerving. As soon as my voice was back I yelled at it, "I'm not dead yet. Come back later."

Still British, by the way.

The reassembly machine finished its work and hooked me onto a management rail, reaching out for the next thing. Still shaking a bit from my narrow escape, I slipped away, heading for the darkest recesses of the facility.

I could feel GLaDOS shifting, her presence moving through the facility like a snake through wheat. It was powerful and frightening, the methodic movement of panels responding to her presence, the world around bending to her wishes. Where there had once been a graveyard of sleeping mechanisms now machines blossomed into activity, shaping, building, forming tests for…

Lauren. I jumped as the memory came back, the thought of my sister trapped by that monster. Where was she? Where could I find her?

Where GLaDOS' presence was strongest, there her subject tested.

Spurred by this thought, I set off down my management rail at top speed. But still my mind would not stop spitting out questions. How long had I been out? What if too much time had passed? What if Lauren couldn't do the tests? What if she died?

I tried to stall these unhelpful doubts as the Presence became unbearably focused on a single chamber. Some of the moving panels shifted and I peered between them, hearing GLaDOS' voice intone her prerecorded lines. "—So now we'll both get to see how they work. There should be one in the corner."

There she was. Lauren, a dual portal device clenched in her hands, face pale and pinched with concentration. I could see her enter the room and glance around for the Deflection Cube. I waved my arms to make her look, but she didn't see. I leaned out a little further, determined to be seen.

Something grabbed my arms and pulled me back. The panels snapped shut and I struggled in the dark. "Stay still," whispered a voice.

"Who are you?" I hissed, wrenching myself free and backing up a bit on my management rail.

It was another android, male this time. It was dark, so every vein beneath his synthetic skin glowed with a rosy light. His eyes shone with a magenta sheen.

"You're the one," he said. "You're the Wheatley."

"What do you mean by 'The Wheatley'?" I asked, retaining my distance. "Who are you?"

"My name is Dan," he said, sticking out his hand for a handshake. "And you are?"

After some hesitation, I took it. "John," I said. "What was all that about, by the way? Grabbing me and pulling me back?"

"She can't see you," said Dan.

"What do you mean she can't see me? Of course she can!"

"Let me rephrase that. She shouldn't see you."

"Why not?" I demanded. "She's my sister. I need to get to her."

"Wait—" Dan whisper-shouted as I took the management rail from the room, going on to the next chamber. A floor panel raised and I saw Lauren looking around, raising her gun to shoot a portal. Before I could wave, Dan yanked me to the side again.

"Oi," I snarled, flailing. "You can't stop me from seeing her."

"You want GLaDOS to see you, too?" Dan asked, pointing savagely toward the chamber. "As Wheatley you can peek, and if she looks hard enough she can see you, but that's it. No talking, no drawing attention to yourself. You want to break the game?"

"Yes!" I exclaimed. "I absolutely want to break the game!"

"No, you really don't," said Dan, blocking me again as I tried to pass him. He was shorter than I, but a heftier build.

"Why not?" I said.

Dan paused. "I'm really not the best one to tell you."

"Somebody tell me, or else I'm going to do whatever I want," I warned, turning back to the panel.

I could hear Dan give an irritated huff. "Fine."

In a matter of seconds I was under attack. Some kind of fabric wrapped itself around my face, obscuring my vision. I let out a strangled squawk and tried to dart backwards on the management rail, but hands dragged me forward.

Brakes, I thought frantically. Brakes!

The brakes dug themselves into the rails, but the hands were too strong. Two sets of men's voices growled over my protestations and the hands dragged me along.

"There, we're safe for now," said Dan's voice.

"Detach him, then," commanded a new voice, deep and rasping. I could almost imagine the voice belonging to Indiana Jones.

"Keep your shirt on, I'm doing it. Jeez."

Fingers clawed at the back of my neck. In front of my darkened vision the message flashed: 'Manual management rail detachment activated' and then I was falling. The arms caught me and I was hustled along in the darkness, guided and guarded by Dan and the other mysterious man.

I stumbled, sometimes, and tried to struggle, but my arms were pinned to my sides. Every so often I tried for a yell, but that was almost as unsuccessful my struggle attempts. I tried to activate my Aperture schematics to see where I was going, but for some reason it didn't come up. I was completely lost.

Finally I was dragged to a halt and dropped to my knees. "Take the bag off," I heard Dan say.

As soon as I could see, I shot backwards, blinking in the sudden blinding light. "Easy," said Not-Dan, putting his hands up. "We're not trying to hurt you."

"Could've fooled me," I growled, still keeping a safe distance.

My new kidnapper was another android, by the look of it. He was large of stature with a short, scruffy beard. A brown fedora was tamped down on his head, allowing a few untamed blond strands to escape. He wore an explorer's vest with a green shirt underneath, sleeves ripped to shreds at the top, displaying baseball-sized muscles. I was instantly jealous of those muscles, but didn't feel half so bad now about being unable to escape.

We were in an ivy-strung room behind one of the testing tracks. The floor was grimy with dirt and the walls rusted. It looked like a perfect place for Rattmann to take up residence, but there was no evidence that he had ever been here. That anyone had been here before.

"Why did you bring me here?" I demanded.

"I told them to," said a familiar voice.

I turned around so quickly I almost lost my balance. Hanging from the management rail above me was the cryptic pixie-cut android, moving slowly into the room with a whirr. She gave me a smile and detached, dropping gracefully to the dirty ground. "Hello, Wheats. We meet again."

"Alright, first, my name is not Wheats," I told her. "It's John. And second—"

Pixie-cut cocked her head. "I like Wheats better," she commented.

I gaped, at a loss for several seconds. "Who are you?" I gasped at last.

"Tell me, Wheats, have you ever played Portal 2 before?"

"Of course! Loads of times!"

"Then I'm surprised at you. Look around." She waved a hand. "Three cores, colored yellow, pink, and green. C'mon. You can figure it out."

My slow, stupid head! It was so obvious!

"Fact," I said, looking at Dan. Dan gave a slight inclined bow.

"Pink was not my idea," he said.

"Adventure," I said, looking at Muscles.

"Call me Rick," he said, giving a very Indiana Jones grin and crossing his arms.

I turned back to Pixie-cut. "And you…"

"Let me give you a hint," she said, leaning forward a little bit. "Planets. Stars. The big dipper. Ooh, the big dipper."

"But…" I stammered. "But you're a girl."

"Oh, well spotted," she quoted wryly.

"No, I mean… are there… I mean…"

"Confused about the gender swap?" she asked.

I nodded.

She shrugged. "I don't understand it very well myself. It hasn't happened before, to my knowledge."

"Before?" I asked.

Pixie-cut looked at me, biting her lip, mulling her next words very carefully. Her yellow eyes were bright and intelligent and I could see almost no part of the corrupted space core she was supposed to imitate.

"Rick," she said, turning to Muscles, "could you keep watch? We need to get Wheats back before Chapter Three starts. We're near the Core Peek chamber," she added to me as Rick nodded and ran from the room, "so as soon as Chell comes through you can appear to her."

"You're not keeping me here?" I asked.

"The game's doing that itself," she said.

This sounded like the beginning of an explanation, so I nodded encouragingly to her to continue.

"I don't know how we got here," she started slowly. "I have many different theories about how a video game could possibly have an alternate world we can visit. We," she motioned to Dan and Rick, "were taken, just like you were, through the cheat codes. Given a character to play. I brought you here because you're one of us, one of the taken, and you need to help us escape."

"Ok," I nodded. "Alright. So, how do we escape?"

Pixie-cut opened her mouth and made a strangled gasping sound, gulping. A sure sign of Spoileritis, which would be helpful in our world. Then I wouldn't have been told the whole entire story of Hunger Games before it was time. But that's another story.

"You… can't tell me?" I guessed.

She shook her head, rubbing her throat. "In order to escape," she said slowly, "you need to…" But there she stopped again.

"Do twenty questions," suggested Dan. "Go."

"Um, ok," I said. "Is it something only I can do?"

"Yes," said the girl.

"Alright. Do I have to get Lauren out of here?"

Pixie-cut tried to speak, failed, and growled with exasperation. "I hate not being able to say!" she wailed. She swiped her hair angrily to the side. "Ok, listen, Wheats. There is a way to escape to our normal lives, but it's going to take you to do it. That's why I had you wake up GLaDOS. That's why you need to—" She struggled. "Ok. Another tactic. Have you ever played the Stanley Parable?"

"Yes," I said.

"How does Stanley escape?"

I thought it through. That game had multiple endings and always started at the beginning again, but there was one way to get out, one way to step out into the sunshine, a free man. And that way was…

"You do exactly what the narrator says," I answered.

Pixie-cut nodded as if I had given the grand-prize answer. "Exactly," she exclaimed, jabbing a finger at me.

"So, you're saying," I said slowly, "that to escape I need to play the game exactly as it supposed to be played?"

Pixie-cut nodded again, clasping her hands together. "It's the only way," she said.

This answer flowed through my head, and I came alive to the realization to what this meant. The betrayal. The itch. If what she said was true, I would have to betray my sister, punch her down a pit, have the Itch, test her, have bombs thrown at me, be thrust into space. "No," I whispered. "No! I can't- I can't do this!"

"You have to," said Dan, "or else we're stuck here forever!"

"How do you know?" I snapped. "For all you know, we have to break the game to get out of here!"

"John," said Pixie-cut gently, the first time she had used my name, "we have broken the game."

"You… you have?"

"Why do you think we're still here?" Her eyes bore into mine. "Do you think this is the first time we've gone through? No. Every time we break the game, it glitches. When it glitches it starts over again at the beginning. New characters. New people from the outside."

"You've gone through this before?" I asked.

She nodded. "Dan's gone through twice before. Rick's gone three."

I looked at him. "You have?"

"I was Chell the first time I went through," said Pixie-cut. "There was only one person left from the outside, and she played the oracle turret. You know. The one from the redemption line?"

I nodded. "The 'Prometheus was punished by the gods' turret?"

"Yep. That's the one. She told me that the only way to escape was to… well, you know. And I didn't listen. I made Wheatley detach as soon as he summoned the lift to the surface. Then the game started glitching." She bit her lip, looking down at her feet. "It glitched and glitched and everything went dark. I was put In-Between until the game collected another person from the Outside. Wheats…" She looked at me and her expression tortured as if experiencing the most horrible of memories. "You don't know what it's like being In-Between. The game is ripping at you, reforming your mind. Not everything makes it out."

Dan was nodding slowly, eyes fixed on the ground. He knew what she was talking about.

"I don't even remember my own name," Pixie-cut added softly. "I did at first, but every time I go through In-Between you lose more of yourself. More memories, gone. That's what it does to you." Her voice faded away into a whisper.

"What about the others?" I asked. "There should be more people from… Outside. Shouldn't there?"

Dan looked up, and even his expression was pained. "Not everybody survives the In-Between process, Wheatley. During In-Between, you are given two choices. You can be reformed as another character, or…" He shook his head. "You can let go."

"And by 'let go', you mean…?"

Pixie-cut looked up with a sigh. "You die."

A shock went through me and a shiver raced up my spine. "People would choose that?"

"You haven't gone through In-Between. You don't know what it's like. That's why you have to do this." Pixie-cut looked at me, and none of her teasing manner remained. Her expression was bleak, woeful. "I can't take it anymore, Wheats. I've gone through this game five times already, being shredded to pieces by In-Between. If the game glitches again… I'm letting go."

"It can't be that bad!" I exclaimed, feeling horrified.

"It is." Pixie-cut didn't meet my eyes. "It's worse."

We stood in silence, each contemplating our separate thoughts. As horrible as it sounded to betray my sister, as terrible as it would be for her, wouldn't it be a hundred times worse to let her go through the In-Between?

"Lauren hasn't played the game before," I said. "She won't know what I'm trying to do, after the…" I couldn't say 'Core Transfer'.

Pixie-cut knew what I was trying to say. "I know. And that's harsh, because even if you don't feel like it, you'll have to act the part. I don't think that the game will let you explain to her. Even if it would, I don't think it's a good idea."

"Why not?"

"Think about the end of the game," she said. "You need her to be angry enough to try and hurt you. To care more about herself than about you."

"I need to be that mean?" I asked, horrified.

Dan nodded. "You want to get out of here, don't you?"

"Well, yes, but…"

"You might not have to pretend that hard," Pixie-cut admitted. "The system has a… strange quality. You know how it corrupts Wheatley? It'll try to corrupt you. The farther you go into this story, the more you become like the characters, and that goes for all of us. With any luck, you'll be acting mean without trying to."

"That's not making me feel any better about this," I snapped, ruffling my hair and walking around in a small circle. "What if I do something terrible? What if Lauren dies?"

Pixie-cut shrugged. "She probably already has."

I opened my mouth, maybe to scream, but Pixie-cut reached out toward me, eyes wide. "Sorry, sorry! I shouldn't have said it like that. She's fine," she said quickly, trying to pacify me before I strangled something. "She's Chell. If she dies, she regenerates, just like in the game. She'll be absolutely fine."

"Are you… are you sure?" I asked, still rattled.

"I've been Chell several times," Pixie-cut said wryly. "I should know."

So, Lauren would be fine. Even if she fell into a pit of acid, she'd be fine. That was good to know.

Rick came skidding back into the room on his management rail. He pushed up his fedora and gestured to Pixie-cut. "Just about time," he said. "Three test chambers to go."

"Good," Pixie-cut said, and turned toward me again. "What's your choice, Wheats?"

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Thought for a few more seconds. "I'll play the game it's supposed to be played," I said.

Pixie-cut visibly relaxed with relief. "Thank you," she whispered. She jerked her head towards the management rail. "Let's get going."

"You know," I said as I attached myself to the rail, "we need to figure out a name for you."

"I don't—"

"I know you can't remember," I interrupted. "So, we'll have to make one up."

"What do you suggest?" she asked, now dangling above my head.

"Well, if you were a boy I would go with Kevin. 'Cause, you know, Space Core… but with circumstances being what they are… how about just Kay?"

"Kay?" she asked, contemplating with her eyes rolled up toward the ceiling.

"Yep. Like the name 'Kay', but also 'K' for Kevin."

"What do you think?" she asked, turning to Rick and Dan.

Rick shrugged. "Sounds good to me." Dan nodded in agreement.

Pixie-cut swiveled around and stuck a hand out to me, grinning. "Hello, Wheats. My name is Kay."

"Nice to meet you, Kay," I said.

Her grin was cute. She wrinkled her nose as she smiled and her eyes held little golden gleams. Actually, a lot of her was cute. She was a pretty girl.

"Stop gawking and get a move on," suggested Rick, jerking his head.

I shook my head to clear it and followed the others out of the room, out to the mass assembly of test chambers. The four of us drifted in between them, making our way unobserved.

"So… Rick," I called up ahead, "is that your actual name, or are you just going by that because you're the adventure sphere?"

"It's my actual name," he said, not looking back.

"It's not," whispered Kay, turning slightly so Rick couldn't hear her. "I don't remember how he introduced himself the first time, but this is his third time through. He doesn't remember his actual name."

I felt a chill go through me. If I did this wrong, that could be me. I could be the one forgetting.

"What about you?" asked Rick, Kay's whisper gone unnoticed. "Are you actually British, or is that just Wheatley talking?"

"Nope, I'm American," I said. "I tried talking with my normal voice before, but whenever I do, it just sounds like I'm using an accent beyond her range of hearing."

Kay began to snort with laughter, but Rick and Dan looked at us blankly. "Beyond her range of hearing," Kay giggled.

"What?" asked Dan.

"Chapter five, or, actually, the end of chapter four," I said. Dan still looked blank.

"They haven't played as much as us," said Kay, still smiling from my little joke. "They don't get much outside of 'the cake is a lie'. Believe me, I've tried."

"If you haven't played it that much, why did you try and use cheats?" I asked the other two.

Dan, taking up the rear, shrugged. "I wanted to get through as quickly as possible."

"I wanted thirdperson," said Rick, grinning. "Chell is hot."

"So, that's got to be your… what? Second time through?"

Dan nodded noncommittally. "Something like that."

"It's sad," said Kay.

"Well, you've come to the right guy," I exclaimed. "I won't say I know everything there is to know about portal, but… yeah. I know a lot."

"Really?" Even though she was facing away, I could hear the challenge in her voice. "Who's your favorite character?"

"Chell," I answered without hesitation. I had once had a crush on Chell. But now she was my sister…

Ew.

"Have you played Portal Stories: Mel?"

"So great!"

"I know!" she squealed. "Have you made videos on Source Film Maker?"

"I tried. I wasn't very good."

"Me neither. I couldn't figure out how to get the maps to work."

"Did you try…"

"We're here, nerds," said Rick, sounding thoroughly exasperated with us. "Wheatley, or whatever your name is, get over here. This is where you peek through."

"I thought you haven't played it through very much," I commented, moving into position.

"I've lived it," he said. "I played Wheatley my first time through."

"He forced the lift to go up," said Kay. "I was playing Chell, and I tried to make him stop, but I couldn't talk. It was a very easy ending for the game."

"So, you stand here," ordered Rick, pushing me to the center of the hole, "and we'll go hide. Chell can't see any of us when she comes through."

"Ok, her name is Lauren," I called as he and Dan exited.

"Whatever," he called back.

Kay grinned and rolled her eyes. "See you in a bit, Wheats." Then she was gone.

A/N: Hey, it's me again. Just a disclaimer, I do not own the Portal games or The Stanley Parable. Those belong to Valve. I don't own Indiana Jones either. As always, I would love to hear your insights in the comments section. I'll post again soon (hopefully). Probably next week.