A week later, I took him to the outpost with me.
I had to get supplies. The clothes I had were fine for fall, but I would need some sort of coat if the winter here was as bad as everyone said it was. I was almost out of shotgun ammo, and the first signs of winter were bearing down on me.
On us.
He was here now, too. The realization made something inside me feel warm. I felt my face stretch into another grin.
It was a long hike. Maybe ten hours. I had made the pilgrimage to Houghton only when needed to, but this time I had to stockpile. There was no way I was walking ten hours to Houghton in the snow.
I woke that morning to his face looming over mine. His eyes were so close, so blue; I woke up and thought I was seeing the sky. Seeing my eyes open, he pulled back and grinned, chirping:
"Are you ready, love? Early bird gets the worm, and all that prattle. Come on, gogogogogogo!" I tried not to hit him. Instead, I peered out the window. The sky was barely lit with the orange light of dawn, a few stars were left twinkling over the hills like dying embers, washing the world in a blood-tinted glow.
I groaned and rolled over onto my side.
"h-hey! C'mon, Lady! Get up!" He shook my shoulder.
"Look, I packed the packs and everything, all you have to do is bloody get up…" he sighed heavily. The mattress dipped as he sat next to me. I pulled the covers over my head.
One of his hands stroked my head over the duvet, and he sighed again as he slid down next to me.
"I guess I'll just… wait." He muttered. His hand continued to idly stroke my head, and I almost purred, feeling the soothing motion lull me back to sleep.
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I woke up for good about two hours later, to find him still awake, twiddling his thumbs and whistling quietly. I propped myself up, sighing heavily.
"Hey, you're awake! Brilliant!" I stood up, pushing past him. I didn't like the way that echoed. He had said something like it, before.
Hey, you're alive! Brilliant! The exact same tone. The only difference was the one word. They were two different things.
I don't really think he understood the concept of death. Robots didn't die. They could be shut off, lose battery, even be destroyed. But their consciousness was always meticulously preserved, in a line of ones and zeroes on some sort of backup, if not permanently carved into their system.
I didn't know what happened when you died. Just thinking about it made a chill snake down my spine, trigger goosebumps on my arms.
I refused to die out here. From anything. A head crab. A fall. Drowning.
I had nothing to lose back There. I was already a dead woman if I didn't keep stepping, keep solving, keep going.
I had gone to Hell and back, beat it to a bloody and unrecognizable pulp, and emerged victorious.
Now if only I could do that with my fears.
But fears followed you everywhere, just on your heels, no matter how long you kept stepping, solving or going. I could see where I was headed, like a deer stuck in headlights, so afraid of the future I knew was coming I could do nothing to stop it. I was going to run myself ragged trying to escape my fears, and eventually collapse in a bloody heap in thirty or forty years, too tired to run any longer.
And this time nobody was there, forcing me to get up and keep testing.
I would die swallowed by fear and regret.
I could feel myself shaking. Shaking with that horrible, ugly, icy fear that crept over my limbs like a sickness, contaminating everything around me with a blackness at the edge of my vision and a horrible sick feeling bubbling up in my throat, searing my esophagus with its ugly taint. And I could feel the sickness curling itself around my voice box, simultaneously making me want to scream for help and forbidding me from doing it.
So I ran faster.
I was a pro. I had been running my whole life. Just keep stepping, Chell. One more test, one more day, one more week, until time blended together into a mangled mess full of adrenal vapor and that cold, mechanical voice that cut like knives.
But there was another one. Another voice in the jumbled and twisted mess that was my head.
A chirpy voice with an odd accent that beseeched me to keep going, talked to me like I wasn't another subject, gasped and awed at my testing skills, which I had taken for granted, knowing they couldn't help me now. The voice was sunny, it supported me with the abundant words, the odd vocabulary, and my feet felt lighter and I could run a little while longer.
His soft, warm voice was like a drug, I could feel it surging in my bloodstream, and now that he was finally here it was that much more potent. This drug didn't have side effects. It was just happiness and cake and sunshine.
And for a second, when I closed my eyes, I could feel the sunshine on my skin and in my hair, feel it filling me up to the brim with life.
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Nothing preceded the attack. They were simply there, filling the space that was once occupied by just an empty patch of air.
And then they surged in, surrounding me on all sides. I didn't know how to explain them. Impossible biology, wreathed with rings of pale blue on an ugly gray, hot feet scraping the ground, and I could hear the earth crying out in pain, a horrible skittering noise, and they were all around.
"What the bloody Hell are those?" Wheatley screamed, his hands twitching, half-heartedly going up to his sides, almost as if to ward them off. The nearest one stared down the barrel of my shotgun.
A low growl tore its way out of my sandpaper-rough throat. They watched me; various antenna twitching, and I wasted no time loosing a bullet into the eye of the nearest one. Using my open hand to signal, I grabbed his shoulder and pointed to the ground. His knees buckled, and he sat on the ground with his arms around his head, shaking in fear.
I swung the gun around, prepared for the kickback, and shot again.
It was nothing like wielding a portal gun. The thing kicked in my hand like a stubborn mule, no doubt bruising me, but I gripped it harder and prepped my finger on the trigger again, reloading quickly before standing back up and pointing it at one of the two left. The smell of gunpowder filled the air, and while I used to hate it, it was also accompanied by the smell of singed flesh. One of the things reared back, screaming a howl that just shouldn't be, and I had to cover my ears. The gun slipped from my hand, and I doubled over. Blind for a moment, I fumbled around in the dirt for the shotgun. One of the things brought a claw down, narrowly missing my hand. I blinked to clear the black spots in my vision, spun around, picked it up, and pulled the trigger.
There was no satisfying kick, no harsh whiff of gunpowder, and no noise. Just a tiny, metallic click. I pressed it again. And again and again and again and they were closing in on us and I was out of goddamn ammunition. There was more in my backpack. I ripped the buckles off, trying to unzip it in time. One of the monsters stepped close to me, so close I could smell the unnatural tinge of ozone it emitted, and clamped a claw around my shoulder, dragging me back, away from my bag and my ammo. Pain lanced through my entire arm, and as a reflex, I tensed, fingers twitching. The shotgun fell out of my grip.
I was being dragged backwards and Wheatley was watching through his fingers in horror, tears streaming down his face and I opened my mouth, trying so, so hard to scream but I couldn't, only a pained whimper slipped through my lips.
I twitched and struggled, feeling the claws rake through my shoulder but I didn't really care, just trying to get away, away from it, and I could feel tears pressing against my eyelids but they just wouldn't fall.
"Stop! Nononono!" He scrambled up, face frozen in a tableau of horror, hand gripping and reaching and clutching for me, but only managing to capture empty air. He tripped forwards, bashing his chin on the ground and clutching my ankle. His fingers wrapped around my boot and pulled. It wrenched me towards him, but no further out of its grip. And I could see the panic in his eyes, and he got up, fingers clumsily flexing. He launched himself forwards, kicking and punching and hitting the thing, and it shouldn't have done anything, but his fists fervently pounded its armored head, slamming on its eyeholes, and its grip loosened further. Ripping away, I rolled over my injured shoulder and snatched up the shotgun, furiously reloading it, and filled its head full of bullets.
Without a break for a breath, I turned around, another round primed, only to hear a scratching as the last one receded into the forest, not nearly as quietly as it had appeared.
I stared at my shoulder, oozing blood from a three dark purple cuts. My coat was completely ripped open, exposing a hot, wet, stinging wound to the air.
He sat there, staring at his hands. They were covered in puffy, fresh red cuts. I eased the coat off, grabbing the first aid kit from the pack and wrapping a strip of linen around my shoulder. He didn't even turn around. He didn't even look at me.
"I'm sorry." Came the whisper, so quiet I almost didn't hear it. Oh my hands and knees, I crawled over to him, turned him towards me with a hand on his shoulder. I looked into his face.
Tears poured freely from his eyes. He took one look at my shoulder and his entire body convulsed, and he coughed, a dry hacking noise, followed on its tail end by a heavy sob.
"I'm so sorry!" I stared at him, confusion surely showing plain as day on my features.
Why?
"I didn't mean to do it! I was just so scared! I didn't want to die! I can't die!" His words were incoherent, smashed to bits by his tears and his cough.
I shook my head in pure, utter bewilderment.
"I can't die because Android Hell is a real place and if I die, that's where I'm headed! Whoop! No more Wheatley! I won't be around to try and make it right anymore, I'll be gone, I'll be gone, and I'll go back there! To that horrible, awful place, because Android Hell is a real place and that's it! Aperture Science! The worst place on this goddamn blue sphere that's hurtling through space that can possibly exist!"
"I have to make it right so I don't have to go back there, ever, and when I die, I can die like a human, I can die with you, that's all I want!" His voice petered off into a pitiful squeak. The tears had stopped flowing, and for all his height and the bruise forming above his left eye, his shattered glasses, the unbrushed hair, he was still a baby. His fingers had burrowed themselves into the dirt while he was talking, and he started to rip out clumps of grass.
I lifted a hand to brush the hair out of his eyes. My fingers were trembling and bloody, but he didn't seem to mind, leaning his head into my hand, hands stopping their busy work on the grass, instead splaying outwards, twitching slightly.
"When I die, I want it to be with you."
