...
...his head hurt.
This was his waking thought, and now that he considered it, it was true. There was an awful throbbing behind his temples. He let out a small groan and squeezed his eyes shut, willing the pain to dissipate. Curiously, even as he did this, the pain had already begun to ebb away, the irregular throbbing replaced by the constant rhythm of his heartbeat...
...ah...
...
...
...wait, heartbeat?!
Wheatley bolted straight up, hands clutching at his chest. Panting, he looked frantically around at himself, his arms and legs and stomach and chest. He grabbed at his head, stared at his arm, and finally, shaking, brought his hands up to his eyes.
His fingers twitched.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" he screamed, scrambling backwards. "WHAT THE-"
He was human! He was a bloody human! He felt himself everywhere, frantically, stretching out his skin and pulling at his hair. Thousands of thoughts raced around in his mind, confusing him, scaring him. How?! Why?! Was he dead?! Why wasn't he dead?! What the hell was that thing and that thing and that thing and how where they attached to him and what did they do and why the bloody hell was he human?!
"Calm down," he muttered to himself, trying to slow his breathing (breathing!) and slowly relinquishing his grip on his leg. He remembered now. Her. She had done this to him...they were going somewhere...to find Chell. He relaxed. Something new had been added to his programming, he noticed dimly. Basic human stuff. He was now wired to control the body. He felt better at that. Of course, he had realized already that he could control it, but somehow it was reassuring to know that he wouldn't need to learn how to breathe or talk or whatever things humans did.
Suddenly he remembered that feeling of freedom that he had got when he had first disconnected from his management rail. All of a sudden, he could go anywhere! No rail required! Of course, that had required a human to carry him, but...well, he was human now! He could walk! He was free! Completely forgetting his fear, Wheatley jumped up from the pod!
...and promptly fell over.
He let out a rather girlish yelp as he found his nose squashed up against the floor and throbbing painfully. He managed to sit up and rubbed at his nose childishly, muttering curses under his breath. Once the pain had subsided to a dull ache, he leaned against the pod and contemplated his situation.
In all honesty, he had no idea what he was supposed to be doing. He guessed She meant for him to sit there and wait until she got back from wherever it was she had gone, but there was a door…a rather inviting door, truth be told, a door that promised far more interesting things than this undeniably boring room…he stood and was halfway to the floor when he remembered that he hadn't quite worked out the matter of walking yet.
Still, he managed to land on his shoulder instead of his bruised nose this time. He made a small noise much like a wounded puppy and nursed his shoulder for a minute before resolving to get out of the room.
"Right," he nodded to himself, sitting up for the second time. Well, at least he could sit. Hopefully that would come in handy some. Though, thinking about it, he didn't often see humans sitting. Humans, in his experience, mostly ran or walked or jumped (he winced) or occasionally lay on the floor, though usually only if they were asleep. Or dead. They both happened quite often. Humans were constantly sleeping or dying. No wonder that he hadn't interacted with them much. Anyway, if he didn't live up to Her impossible standards, he would likely be killed sooner rather than later, a fate he didn't much care to meet with. He had no idea why She was keeping him alive in the first place- some small part of him still thought She needed him, but the rest of his conciousness squashed that part mercilessly- still, if he wanted to survive, the first step was to…well, take the literal first step.
Gritting his teeth and gripping onto the pod for dear life, Wheatley rose to his feet.
Ah, this was the height he was used to. He grinned and looked down at the ground.
…it occurred to him suddenly that if he were to fall that there was no management rail to catch him and for that matter he was rather high up and he would have a rather long way to fall and it would be painful and he tried very hard not to think about it.
"Don't look down, don't look down, don't look down…" he chanted as he squeezed his eyes shut and tentatively took a step forward.
A nervous laugh escaped his lips when he didn't fall. He looked incredulously at his foot. Still…another step was in order. He took a deep breath and let go of the pod…and began to walk.
"Hah!" he beamed, flapping his arms in a little victory dance. "I'm walking! I'm really walking! Oh, this is brilliant! Haha! I'm like a bloody human now!"
He managed to navigate to the door, which, to his surprise, opened at his approach. He walked outside, but it wasn't until the door snapped shut behind him that he realized he had no idea where he was going.
…
Wheatley looked around for something more familiar-looking, but he recognized nothing. The same catwalks and panels that indicated he was outside of a testing area, but beyond that he had no clue which one. He could be in an area that tested how Personality Spheres responded to being stuffed into human bodies, for example. Or an area that tested turrets, or neurotoxin, or Mantis-men, or any number of horrible things that She would want him to exposed to…
There was a management rail. That calmed him. He had traveled just about every inch of the facility where the rail ran, so at least he wasn't anywhere he hadn't seen before. Still, that wasn't very helpful when it came to navigation. Nor was the fact that he still had no idea what his destination was.
He wandered around in a general direction for a while, partially out of a desire to savor his new skill, but mostly because he was bored out of his skull. Aperture was a dull place behind the scenes, really- not much going on but a bunch of crisscrossy catwalks that led to a bunch of other catwalks that could get you to some deserted offices or deserted test chambers or even more catwalks. He was used to having something to do. Even while She had been dead, he and the rest of the facility had done their best to make sure their home didn't collapse in on itself. Of course he'd gotten the worst job, but it was still a job. Besides that, he'd explored the whole facility, talked to other cores, gotten to know all the secrets of the place, done everything that miles and miles of facility had to offer. When he started running out of things to do, well, that was when the whole "the facility is about to explode" thing had started. And now he was in this mess. And he was bored.
Wheatley gave the side of the catwalk a light kick. That was when he made the unfortunate mistake of glancing over the side.
An echoing scream was the only trace that anyone had been there at all.
In the last year I got and lost a boyfriend, started my sophomore year, and did a bunch of other stuff you don't care about. There's no good excuse for my absence, but I can say for sure that you won't have to wait a year for the next one. Most likely a week. ^^ I have not given up on this story, and I do not plan to. Thank you for sticking with me thus far. I'll hope you'll wait out the rest of the journey.