It was awful, to see Her hanging there in the middle of the room, staring down at them like an angry Goddess looking down on the people She was going to thoroughly smite. "The lunatic and the moron." Wheatley shuffled uneasily. "To be honest, I'm surprised that you got this far. Thanks to her, no doubt. Because, let's face it: you're useless." Her optic flickered between the two, casually roaming over them to come to a rest on their hands: he grasped her tightly, her fingers almost lax between his. "Except, apparently, for managing to corrupt flawless military androids. Congratulations." A slow, hollow clap echoed through the chamber. "Quite the achievement, to ruin everything you touch. Moron."
Wheatley cringed, hunching his shoulders and shrinking back from Her, from that word and the way She said it, as if it were the simplest, most obvious observation in the world. Moron.
He felt Chell's fingers tighten around his hand and she moved closer to him, snapping him out of his stupor. He muttered a thanks and they moved forward, circling the room and staying close to the walls, close to one another. "I'd say that we're not scared of you but that isn't entirely true. I'm terrified. But she isn't, not anymore." He said loudly, fully aware that he was trying to convince himself as much as he was trying to convince Her. As if to illustrate his point, she lifted the gun and silently snarled at the AI.
It was crazy and impossible, the man thought, that she was risking her neck to help him escape and come right back down and continue testing. He thought to ask her why she was doing this for him – was it because he'd pulled her from the chamber? Helped her in the den? Was it because he was the first friendly face she'd seen since activation and – if she was anything like him, less robotic and more independent and rational – she missed that? He nearly snorted out loud; that was ridiculous. In order for her to miss something - like him – she would have to remember it. She had no recollection of anything before activation. Either way, he should have asked her instead of babbling about anything that came to mind, anything to take his focus off of what they were doing, because now the questions would have to wait.
At the moment, he realized, it was merely a display of showmanship. Who was more intimidated by the other? It was, in reality, between GLaDOS and Chell – he was hardly part of the equation. It was between the omnipotent AI with an infinite capacity for knowledge and the woman who had dethroned Her – twice. Anyone's game, really, and he was fully aware of that, and was willing to do everything in his power to help Chell.
He heard the hiss of a panel and pulled her from the wall in time.
"Hello, friend."
She moved impossibly quickly, placing a dormant portal below them, and one behind the rising panel, where the turret was positioned. In half a second, the connection between the portals was opened and the world was turned upside down as they switched places with the smaller robot. She twisted her body in the course of the fall and disengaged the portals, landing on the tiled chamber floor gracefully next to Wheatley, who was a tangle of limbs, grasping at the displaced panel, holding it in place as he righted himself.
"Let go!" She demanded icily. "Get your hands off of me!"
He held the fast to the panel, perhaps just to annoy Her at first, as retribution for the taunts and misery and fear She'd gifted him in the last few hours, but he soon realized how useful the displaced panel was, providing protection as the next round of gunfire came, bullets pounding against the face of the panel, which was jerking and twitching under his touch. He hoped She could feel the bullets. He threw and arm over the mechanical joint, trying to keep it in place as it bucked underneath him.
Neurotoxin was useless against androids, sure, but bullets could tear them both to scrap metal. With one arm, he held the panel in place as the steady thudda-thudda-thudda of bullets rained down on them, the other wrapped securely around Chell's waist. He held her close as She reared up, her voice echoing through the chamber, louder than the sporadic gunfire of the turrets.
The small voice of the announcer was almost lost in the chaos.
"You can't do anything, now. You're just as useless as you were the first time, and more of a problem for her than ever. You are the cancer."
Wheatley looked down at his companion as they crouched behind the panel, which was beginning to protest against its position. Any second now, She'd get everything in order and that panel will tear itself from his grip, disappearing. He had to think fast…
But he already knew, he thought with growing dismay. The only option had literally just been presented to him, the apparatus rising from the floor as he crouched on the tile.
He kissed the top of her head "Please forgive me, luv," he said quietly in her ear, "We have to try. If we don't, She'll kill us both." His arm slipped from around her waist to run once through her hair before finding the ground to steady himself.
She knew he was getting ready to make a run for it, and systematically ducked back and forth behind the safety of the struggling panel that Wheatley held in place, using the portal gun to displace the turrets to the other side of the room. He looked down at his companion, sadly, and let go of the panel, which snapped back into place, hearing Her cold remarks echo through the chamber. "Oh, you are kidding me." She breathed. "Are you really going to try this again? Don't you remember what happened last time, moron? Don't you remember what you did to her? You're not fit to run this facility. You're not even fit to sweep it. The only reason they kept you was because you cost too much to be deemed a failure. Which you are."
Wheatley grabbed Chell almost violently by the shoulders. He was nearly frantic with fear and anticipation. "No matter what, no matter what She says, please push that button. No matter what she tells you, I promise everything will be okay." He begged. She nodded, looking him square in the eye.
"Don't do it. You won't be able to keep control, just like last time. You're going to end up killing her, and then what? What will you do with yourself when you kill her?"
Wheatley's jaw clenched as he lowered himself into the core receptacle. He knew how dangerous this was. He knew that there was the chance that he would corrupt just as easily as he did last time, but they had to try. He felt the irons clamp down on his feet the moment he hit them. There was a hiss at either side of him as the second set of irons searched for his hands. He stretched out his arms and felt the cold steel lock around his wrists rather painfully, pulling his body taut. He looked up, the sudden, fully expected fear shooting through him as he watched the hatch spin shut above his head, leaving him in almost complete darkness. He could hear Her near-frantic testimony, telling Chell not to press the button at pain of an eternity in Android Hell or worse, both of them being under his control. There was a melodic click as the button was pressed and the announcer's voice over the speakers.
His breathing picked up, fans whirring in his chest because he knew what came next and God, he didn't want to do this! He grit his teeth and screwed his eyes shut, waiting for the pain. He felt the platform move underneath him and he knew he'd end up directly beneath Her.
The platform jerked to a stop and almost instantly, he felt something tear his top back port open. He grunted and tried to curve his body away from it – his remaining back port was always so sensitive after having been torn forcibly from the Chassis all those years ago. He remembered those earlier months, where he was still broken, still in need of repairs, and he'd fought her, fought and yelled and begged her not to touch his back ports because they hurt so much. It'd taken her weeks to coax him into biting the bullet and letting her set the broken panels, and even then she was only able to fix the top one – the bottom port, which he had connected himself to the main breaker room with, had been all but ripped from his body when She'd plucked him from the control panel. Chell had ended up having to unscrew the casing of the port to ease the pain, rendering it obsolete, a raw hole in his back that could never be repaired.
Then came the wires, pushing into his port and invading his body, breaking and removing things and installing others, making him adaptable to the Chassis. He cringed, curling in on himself against the irons, which held him in place to bear the pain.
He knew it wasn't over. Almost. Almost, he told himself, and then the pain would stop.
The wires pulled away, leaving him panting for breath for a split second before the final phase. Somewhere through the haze he could hear Her mechanical scream, the tell-tale noise that said She was being ripped from Her body, from the facility, and that soon it was to be his facility, his turn to undergo the procedure. His body was tilted forward on the platform so that he was facing the ground at a fifty degree angle. He screwed his eyes shut and threw his head back and all he could do was scream as a white hot drill pressed into his back, lighting up every circuit in his body. He thrashed, trying to free himself from the pain in his back port, but the irons held him in place, not letting him budge an inch as the drill pressed further, breaking him open to make room for the hook of the Chassis.
And then, there was light and the sudden dissipation of pain, replaced by the sprawling, unfurling mass of feeling. He could feel every panel, every square inch of concrete, every pneumatic vent, and Chell, standing in awe and terror on the other side of the room.
He took a deep breath and smiled down at her, shifting, stretching in the Chassis. "Well. That's that, then."
She looked up at Him with wide eyes, and He was so certain that she knew, somewhere in her suppressed subconscious, that this was dangerous, that she'd made a mistake by resolving the stalemate, one that could possibly mean her life.
He lowered the Chassis so that He was almost level with her – His feet couldn't quite touch the ground – and He was resigned to hovering slightly over her, in a manner he hoped was friendly. "Everything's going to be fine. I'll admit. We – we tried this before, and we had some, ah… problems. But things are so different now." He reached towards her. "Old Wheatley's not going to hurt you."
"Yes you will."
His brow arched in surprise and he snatched his hand back, looking down to the floor where the venomous sound had come from. He'd forgotten how helpless her core looked, lying motionless on the floor, so shocked to be out of power that it was difficult for her to put together simple sentences.
"You… will hurt her. You can't do… anything… right."
A light, sad smile splayed across His lips. "I know." He said softly. "I was built to be inferior. I get it. And that's what's different." He looked up to Chell, who was eyeing him curiously, her brow furrowed slightly as He beamed down at her. "We are going to get out of here." He said.
Wheatley never looked away from her, a constant, visual reminder that His confidence in who and what He is was so much greater than it had been when He'd last been in this position, because of her. The compulsive need to prove Himself was absent. The want for superiority, gone, and the only thing He wanted now was her, safe and sound and home, with Him.
He gave her a lopsided grin that was readily returned at His words.
"Go on." He said, opening a set of panels in the wall. She gave a nod, raising the portal gun and entering the test chamber.
The idea of having her back on the testing track was almost enough to make Him sick but He knew, somewhere, that it would be okay.
The controls were familiar and alien at the same time; He disliked the feeling, but knew His way around the simpler functions from His first time attached to the Chassis. He could feel her every footstep, He was able to tell which Test Chamber she was in without even looking, but He wanted to look, He wanted to have that visual connection that reassured Him that she was okay, that He was okay, not monstrous and corrupt as He'd once been. Her look of ease – a look uncommon to those who happen to find themselves face to face with a mashy spike plate – would tell Him that he hadn't done anything wrong.
He picked up a video link, using the cameras strategically positioned around the chamber to see the subject at all times from a variety of different angles, to see her.
He watched as she entered the chamber. "Hullo!" He boomed, happily, His voice echoing throughout the facility. On the screen, He saw her cringe at the sudden noise, and decided to lower His voice, not having intended to be so loud. "Allright, here's what we're going to do. Instead of having you push buttons and all that nonsense, I'm just going to unlock the doors and…" Over the feed, there was the hiss of the released chamber lock. "Voila!" He said. She looked up at the security camera, knowing that He was watching – creepy, that – and nodded once, a tight smile on her lips, a silent thank you.
She was edgy, that much was obvious. Her mannerisms hadn't changed in the body transfer, and He picked up on little things, like how she kept her shoulders pushed back; how her hand, under the casing of the gun, kept flexing around the handle; how she bounced on her heels when she came to a stop, always moving.
He told her over and over that everything was fine, but nothing changed. She didn't relax, and she didn't smile once. He fidgeted in the Chassis, trying to convince Himself that it was just her natural demeanor when she was on the testing track. He'd seen that look on her before, but only when she'd been under the tyrannical watch of either Him or GLaDOS. It sent pangs of guilt through Him that He couldn't understand. He knew He hadn't hurt her. She wasn't actually testing. She was simply running through the test chambers while he opened the doors so that she could get out. He wasn't trying to kill her, He was certain of that.
But her face as He opened the doors, her expression as she ran through the chambers, occasionally portaling over gaps in the floor or small oceans of toxic waste, retained the same dour expression that she'd worn when being harassed by omnipotent AIs. It worried Him.
It didn't take much effort to open the doors, at first, and it had provided Him with an overwhelming sense of relief. Getting her out would be painless, this go around. He still regretted the fact that she had seemed to do some remodeling in the half a century that He'd been gone, and the main chamber no longer possessed a lift – also, count grateful in there, as He would have landed smack in the middle of her chamber right off the bat. Probably for the best, given. But seeing how utterly angry Chell looked, He couldn't help but wish there had still been one accessible for her.
She wouldn't shut up the whole time He left her lying on the floor. "You think you're helping her," she hissed, her voice softer and disconnected, lacking the hollow echo through the facility that had been lent to Him in the transfer. "but you're not doing anything for anyone but yourself. If you really wanted to help her, you wouldn't have put yourself back in the Chassis, and you wouldn't have put her back on the testing track. That's all you want from her, isn't it? The Solution Euphoria."
He frowned; trying to concentrate on the doors through her incessant insults was rather difficult, and He found Himself muttering replies, rebuttals to accusations that really shouldn't have affected Him to begin with. He didn't need her approval, but He certainly didn't need her telling him that He was a selfish monster.
It happened once or twice that He had difficulty opening the chamber lock. She'd make it to the opposite door and freeze, looking back at the camera expectantly and concerned. He'd laugh distractedly, telling her it was nothing to worry about as he fretted about with the controls. Her shoulders tensed and she glanced quickly around the room, looking for either a solution or an escape. "Now, luv, no need to worry. Just a little difficulty with the door, is all – ha! There, see!" And the door slid open with a low hiss.
Chell looked back at Him and nodded curtly before rushing into the next chamber. Wheatley set his concentration on the next door, afraid to linger too long on the feeling of her footsteps across the unfinished test. This was brilliant, it was working, and she'd be out in no time. A small part of Him felt a strange pride in finally making it up to her, finally providing her with safe passage to the surface, giving her the freedom she deserved.
He smiled to Himself, because, despite the pride, what really made Him happy was the thought, the looming possibility right there, that He was going to have her back, safe at home, for as long as they pleased. Things would take a lot of adjusting – daily routines would become obsolete and they would both have a lot to learn about her new body – besides the fact that he was built in almost the same way, she was unique in her programming, and learning the quirks and hiccups of her new android body wasn't going to be a walk in the park, but they'd make it work, together. They always made it work; this was just another challenge, easily tackled over time.
There was gunfire.
