Ah, finally got this chapter done. It has not been easy, since I seem to have contracted a nasty virus on top of my allergies, but here we are.

Those of you that reviewed, thank you! Your encouragement helped me to write through this illness, even though at some points I was feeling a bit like Wheatley did in chapter two. This chapter was a bit more of a challenge than the others, but I did it.

Things are probably going to get interesting from here on out. I just hope I can write these next chapters well enough. But in the mean time, enjoy this chapter.

GLaDOS glared through the camera, waiting for the little moron to crash before she turned away. That was enough of him for a while.

Her yellow optic turned down toward the floor, where the injured crow was still lying. Its siblings were currently perched on the AI's chassis and preening their feathers, while it remained still, occasionally turning its head. Slowly the panel it was sitting on rose high up toward the ceiling, where another panel had pulled away to reveal a large nest made from sticks, wires, and potato plant leaves.

"Don't worry, Caroline," GLaDOS said, carefully tilting the panel at an angle so the crow gently slid into the nest. "That moron's pain will double for what he did to you."

The crow stretched its wings for a moment to balance itself, then turned to watch as the panel it had been sitting on lowered back to the floor.

The AI watched to make sure the crow didn't show any other signs of distress before switching her vision to the cameras in the cryosleep chambers. She flicked through a few of the screens, searching for a test subject that looked promising. After finding a few and sorting through their files, she finally selected one and began the process to transfer it to one of the test chambers.

Of course, the moron would be waking up soon, so she'd have to take care of him in a while. She wanted him to suffer, especially after what he did to Caroline, but more than that, she wanted—needed—to find a new subject that could actually make it to the final test, or maybe even into a second set of tests. Or a third. She did have a few hundred test chambers she hadn't used in a while, after all.

But she couldn't delay that little idiot's torment for too long. She didn't want him to think she was going easier on him, after all…

A thought occurred to her, and she gave a quiet laugh. Ah, there were many advantages to being a genius, such as not having to suffer through problems like this for very long. There was a very simple solution to this dilemma that would work just fine…

Her optic glowed in pleasure as the new test subject awoke in chamber zero.

"Hello, and welcome to the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center…"

It was a strange memory to wake to. The woman—not her, but one of the humans he'd tried to help before—had gotten… well, hurt. Hurt badly enough that she could no longer stand, let alone move. He'd called out to her, again and again, asking her to please get up, because they needed to find the portal gun to escape, but she wouldn't move. He'd apologized repeatedly for bringing her to the wrong chamber, but it didn't matter—she wouldn't move.

It wasn't as though she had died—he knew how humans died, and how they looked when they died. But she had still been conscious, and still… making noise. He'd known, because she'd screamed when she fell.

After yelling at her and encouraging her and trying everything he could to get her to move, and still she wouldn't get up, he'd finally left her. He'd needed to find another human to escape.

He hadn't understood how she could be hurt so badly that she couldn't move, though it could have had something to do with the way one of her legs was bent, and that red fluid—blood, he remembered the term later—he'd seen leaking from her. But could it really be that bad?

Yes. It could.

He finally understood as he lay on the floor in that cold, pitch-dark chamber, his whole outer shell aching, his vocal processor sore, and his lower handle… broken, to put it simply. That hurt more than anything, and he imagined it was about how the woman had felt when she fell down that pit and broke her leg. It hurt, and he could not move.

Well, he could, but to be more precise, he didn't want to move. Attempting to move in his casing resulted in various parts of his insides banging into or scraping against his badly-dented outer shell. And then there was trying to rock his casing from one side to another. It was more difficult than before, for one, but it was also excruciating if his lower handle touched the floor, which it would if he even tried to rock himself.

It was a wonder the handle was still attached to him. The spike plate had crushed it right into the ground, so it was probably looking more than a little flattened and banged up. Because one side of a spike had caught part of it, that part was dented at an ugly angle—not that he could see it, but he could definitely feel it. And to top it off, one side of it was threatening to fall out. It still hung by a few wires that were probably a part of the artificial nervous system so pointlessly strung throughout him, and once again he wished he could hurt his engineers.

Wheatley stared up at the ceiling, or at least, where he assumed the ceiling was. The room was as dark as it had ever been, and he couldn't tell what was what anymore. He could hardly even see his own handles—but then, he hadn't really tried, had he? Might as well; he had absolutely nothing else to do.

He moved his upper handle over his face, and the blue light from his cracked optic illuminated all the dents and scratches across it. It could be worse. Moving that handle back, he went to move his lower handle toward his optic—

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" he screeched, twitching several times. "Oh… th-that was not my best idea…" He twitched again upon hearing his own voice—it sounded worse than it had before. Had he hurt his vocal processor again somehow? "O-okay, no more yelling, right… n-no more yelling. A-and no more moving that handle, until… until…"

He paused.

Until an Aperture scientist repairs him? Until GLaDOS accidentally tosses him right into a nanobot work crew site?

"I'm… I'm n-never getting repaired, am I?"

The thought had never occurred to him. He hadn't really had the chance to consider it between getting electrocuted, swung around from the ceiling, attacked by birds, crushed by plates… After going through that hell, he was never going to get repaired.

And things were only going to get worse from here.

His eye aperture contracted, and after a few moments he realized he was trembling.

"N-n-no," Wheatley stammered, shutting his eye shields tightly. "The lady… sh-she'll come back for me. She'll forgive me and she won't leave me here when she does. I-I just have to wait. That's all. But would she know how to repair me?" He opened his eye and shuddered. "Oh, it doesn't matter. Even if she didn't, so long a-as she just got me out of here…!"

He twitched again. "But… w-would she find me in here?" He didn't even know where "here" was. Mentally he cursed himself for keeping his eye shut on the way here; it had helped a little with his motion sickness, but now he didn't know how he'd gotten from GLaDOS's chamber to this room. "She'll… she'll probably bring me back to that lair, though."

The thought was barely comforting. Yes, the lady would be able to more easily find him in GLaDOS's chamber, but the only reason GLaDOS would bring him back there would be… He shuddered.

"Hang on… How long have I been here, anyway?" If he'd ever had some kind of internal clock, it had stopped working ages ago. Even so, it still wouldn't have helped—the last thing he wanted to do was find out just how long he'd been tortured like this.

But now it was starting to bother him. How long had he been out, and how long had he been lying here, lost in thought like this? And, more importantly, how long would it be until GLaDOS dragged him back to her lair?

"P-probably busy doing one of her bloody tests again," he muttered, eye shields narrowing. "Right, 'Science goes before little morons.' 'Cept I'm not a little moron." He cringed suddenly, as though expecting to be zapped for the comment, but relaxed when he remembered he wasn't hooked up to anything. "…Y-yeah, you hear that?" he said, a little louder. "I'm not a moron! And you can't do a bloody thing to make me say otherwise! Can't zap me with that stupid electricity of yours when I'm not hooked up to anything. Hah!"

Wheatley was proud of himself for the realization, and let his lower eye shield pull up in a grin. He let that feeling of pride fill him, trying to drown out all the other feelings—his worry of what would happen next, his fear of GLaDOS and the darkness around him, the pain from being zapped and pecked at and crushed and—

He jerked back, emitting a sound that was halfway between a gasp and a yelp, then screeched again when his body rocked back forward and caused his injured handle to hit the floor. "Aaaaagh…!" His optic, the pupil of which had contracted considerably, darted around uselessly as he tried to see the ceiling. "Th-the spike plates! H-how did I manage to forget about those bloody things…?! Oh, i-if you heard that, p-please don't—suggestion, right, j-just a suggestion, not really telling you—don't crush me again? Y-you've already done that once, a-and doing the same thing twice would—would be j-just a little repetitive, wouldn't it?"

He twitched, the sparks briefly lighting a small section of the floor next to him. "…N-no, but then she'll just move on to s-something worse…" But what could be worse than what had already happened? Crushing his other handle? Punching him in the optic and blinding him? Ripping off his outer shell? Cutting out his vocal processor? Which of those was even worse?

Realizing he'd just said all that out loud, he twitched. "O-oh, er, I know you d-don't like to take my suggestions, s-so you don't have to take any of those, right? R-really, bad ideas, th-that's what I was made for." His insides twisted; it hurt to admit that.

But if she didn't take any of those suggestions, what would she do? He couldn't think of much else—which was something of a blessing, since imagining all the torments GLaDOS could put him through was not on his list of top ten things to do—but not knowing what she had in store for him was all the more terrifying. If she didn't do any of that, then maybe all she could really do was just leave him alone.

Wheatley lay there, blinking, and slowly his eye widened as the idea sank in.

The reason GLaDOS hadn't dragged him back yet was because she had no plans to. She would leave him all alone, just like he'd left the poor woman in that test chamber.

"O-okay, okay," he tried to reassure himself, though his voice had taken a slightly higher pitch. "N-not as bad as it sounds. If she doesn't drag me back, that means she won't be hurting me anymore. Y-yes. That's a good thought. She won't hurt me. I'll just stay here, not hurting any worse than I already am—" he twitched again, "—e-even though it bloody hurts—but what if my handle falls off? W-would that hurt worse? A-and then I couldn't put it back on, a-and… I'll never get repaired, s-so it won't stop…!"

It was true that his simulated pain was very close to human pain, but there was a difference: while human pain could fade after a while because the human's body would eventually repair itself, most robots had no such ability, and the pain would persist until someone repaired them. And if things kept going as they were for Wheatley, that would never happen.

He would lie there in that dark room, alone and hurting until his processor wore down.

He shut his eye shields tightly. "N-not the first time I've been alone, not the first time," he muttered, voice strained. "I-I was alone, when the scientists all died… But then I was on my management rail and I could actually move and explore places." A shudder racked his casing, and he choked back a cry of pain. "Okay, but when I was in space I couldn't move, exactly… B-but then I was with Space Core—oh, I'm actually missing him?—and, and I wasn't hurting all over… And there was sleep mode! Man alive, sleep mode! I-I don't even have that—"

His voice cracked, and he choked back another sound—this time a sob. "…Only she c-can put me in sleep mode, w-when she has me all hooked up…" And able to dig through his memories, and listen in on his thoughts, and shock him until his processor was nearly fried, and he would rather have that, just for the chance of her putting him into sleep mode so he could be dead to the world for a while.

"But she—that lady—is going t-to come back and save me," he whimpered, cracking his eye open. "Sh-she has to. H-however long it takes, she has to come back because she can't leave me here." Glancing up, he waved his undamaged top handle a little. "I-I'll wait however long… If she just holds me again, i-it'll be okay."

If he could actually see anything, he would have noticed that his vision was blurring a little.

"J-just… don't be too long, luv? Please?"

She didn't come for him.

He knew he could exaggerate things sometimes—just a little—but if he was any judge, he had been sitting there for days, if not longer. Days, and he hadn't heard a sound—not GLaDOS's mocking voice, not any mechanics in the walls, not even the squeak of rusted metal. All he had heard was his static-y, whimpering, bloody pathetic voice as he tried to convince himself that the lady was still going to come for him, trying to talk himself out of absolute despair.

Even Space Core's incessant ramblings were better than this.

And the pain hadn't stopped, of course. His casing still hurt, his vocal processor was still sore, and he was pretty sure one of the wires on one side of his poor handle had finally given way.

It hurt. All his artificial nerves burned in pain when he felt the wire give in his handle. But on the bright side—and that was very, very loosely speaking—it had given him an idea. It was an absolutely crazy idea, and probably as stupid as most of his other ideas tended to be, but he was so desperate to get out of his agony and loneliness that he didn't care at this point.

…Well, he did care, since if something went wrong, he might even die. And dying meant he wouldn't be able to apologize to her, wouldn't be able to be able to see her lovely face, wouldn't be able to feel her gentle grip on his only working handle… But if he didn't at least try, he might lose his mind before any of that happened.

Wheatley could not activate his sleep mode. Hacking didn't work; he'd gone through literally every password combination of the six possible characters, which had fortunately eaten up a good number of hours. Apparently GLaDOS had done more than simply change the password. But there was something else that could make him dead to the world for some stretch of time. Half of him was terrified of the thought, while the other half was desperate enough to try it.

If he was overloaded with enough pain, he would crash.

And since GLaDOS was doing nothing to hurt him, he would have to do it himself.

He shuddered in his casing. Yes, it was probably a horrible idea, but his horrible ideas were all he had at this point.

"Th-this… is going to hurt," he muttered, wincing. "But—but that's kind of the point. If I can just bear a little more pain, I-I won't feel it for a while. …No, wait, I won't bear it because it'll m-make me crash." He was starting to feel sick to his circuits. "W-what am I supposed to do? There's my lower handle, th-that already hurts a lot… And moving it makes it hurt worse, so—so maybe if I try to move it around a little, I'll—why am I doing this to myself, what if I break it?"

Wheatley shut his optic. "No, no, stop it, j-just stop thinking about it and do it, and then you'll be out for a while. Right. On three." Mentally bracing himself, he prepared to move his handle. "One…" He took a useless, simulated breath. "…Two…" He was starting to shudder. "Thr—OH NO NO I CAN'T DO IT!"

His optic contracted and his handles jerked toward his spherical body in an automatic response to his jolt of terror, unconsciously doing what he'd been too scared to do to himself.

Bright, beautiful, horrible colors flashed in front of his glitching optic, partly distracting him from the pain that seized his circuits. If his vocal processor was doing something other than screaming, it was probably saying something like, "Please just crash please just crash please please!" He wasn't even sure what was going on now, his processor was getting so jumbled from the overwhelming sensations.

When the colors finally began to fade, he was, for a split-second, distraught that they did not give way to the blackness of unconsciousness. But then he became very aware of his surroundings.

He was no longer in the dark room, and a claw was carrying him, very rapidly, around Aperture's vast innards—out of the frying pan, and into the fire.