Author's Notes: mmmkay, so this is going to be it… the last chapter. I can't say that I'm completely satisfied with it, but I feel that it's a decent interpretation of mine. I know this story might not have been what anyone expected, even from me honestly, but I hope that in the end you'll be able to put this down and, go pet some puppies or something, after all, that's the whole point of my stories.

The Beginning of the End

The office was dark, both resulting from the fading color of the walls and the poor lighting which was cast down from above. Although it was technically one of the highest points in Aperture, the office still managed to carry a deep and unnerving portion of the facility with it.

Caroline did her best to stealthily enter her boss' room. She knew that he'd been working essentially nonstop for the span of a few days, and that he might not like the presence of her loud movements. She softly closed the door behind her, noticing that Cave was indeed asleep on his large black chair. It was a rare sight to see him doze off where he spent most of the day here at the quiet upper reaches of Aperture, but recently, there had been something bugging him, exhaustion was merely a side effect of such times. Knowing that it was best not disturb the man from his well-needed, Caroline cautiously removed the papers from her hand, and ever so quietly, opened the top left drawer of the mahogany desk and neatly placed them inside.

"Caroline…" Cave spoke up, awakening. In the shock of his sudden movement, he put his hand on top of Caroline's to calm her down, a brief cough erupting from his chest. His skin was pale and drained of energy, the only color which stood out was a sickly green and dark blue, and his seat sagged under the continuous weight of his body.

"Yes, it's me." Caroline affirmed, not knowing if her boss was completely awake or just wanting to ask her something.

"Caroline…" Cave took his hand away from his assistant, sputtering into a resurging bout of coughing which pushed him forward from his chair and towards the desk. "Pills…" He pointed to a small box at the edge of the desk, too far away for him to comfortably reach with his outstretched hand.

Caroline handed the man the bottle of analgesic relief, he promptly consumed a couple of them with the aid of an Aperture Digestion Gel.

"Your breathing seems to be getting worse…" Caroline said, holding the man's shoulders to keep him down. "Are you sure you don't need the mask?" She asked, worriedly.

Cave dispelled Caroline's worries with a show of his open hand. "No, I'm fine… It's my kidney's I'm worried about… ough!" He violently jerked forward, holding the front of his head. "Damn it!" He yelled, frustrated over the painful and unpredictable headaches he'd been more frequently getting. Cave often refused the help of others, he wanted to be self-reliant, but his growing age, coupled with his worsening sickness, made it so painful that it was almost impossible to function on his own.

Caroline wished there was something she could do to help, but whatever her boss' problems were beyond control, especially for someone of his advanced age. The recent years had been a struggle for everyone at Aperture, but especially for Cave when it came to medical issues. It began soon after he paid 70 million for those moon rocks; he knew that the substance would be beneficial in creating better forms of gels, but in the end, the costs outweighed the perks by many orders of magnitude, both scientific and financial.

"Caroline… Caroline," Cave struggled to say, his breathing hindering his speech with intermittently painful sessions of uncontrollable coughing. He pointed to the recently hidden paper, requesting the contents of it as he did every week. "The memo… what's it say?"

The woman paused for a moment, not knowing whether to tell the man the truth or whatever else she could hope to develop in those few seconds. The information she'd just stowed away was not meant for his eyes while he was in this mood, then again, it wasn't good for him during any mood, but Caroline understood that it was necessary. "It's not a memo… we switched those to electronic, remember?" Caroline answered, nudging the small computer screen on the desk.

"Oh… right. *Cough* Well then, what is it?"

"It's… a medical report…" Caroline slowly conceded the information as she retrieved the piece of paper from the drawer. As soon as it became exposed, Cave abruptly snatched the paper out of Caroline's hand.

Cave examined it for a few moments, scanning down the lines of information detailing blood work, respiratory results, and kidney damage. He then threw the paper onto the floor upon finding the important parts of the results. "Damn it!" He yelled again, frustrated at the revelation. The news to him was about as comforting as watching a basket of kittens being placed near a pack of rabid dingoes.

"Mr. Johnson…"

*Cough* *Cough* "…what?"

"Are you ok?" Caroline wondered, examining Cave's weak and sickly looking face which through the recent years had only deteriorated more the harder they attempted to fix it, much like the company itself.

"Caroline… I've noticed how you've been managing the company during my... illness… I've watched how you work things out… resolve issues, and found the right people for the right jobs… you've found the right projects to pursue… I want *Cough* it to stay the same… I need something to stay the same in this always changing world."

Caroline tightened her lips upon hearing Cave's words. She knew his deeper intention was to make her the CEO of Aperture, since he most likely wouldn't reach the end of the decade at the rate that his health was declining. She was too humble to ask herself, or move in that direction. But ever since the start of the 80's he'd been like this, it took them a while to realize that the primary cause of the deteriorating effects were due to the exposure of moon rocks, which Cave had spent a great amount of time exploring.

"Maybe we weren't meant to go explore the moon… maybe *Cough* *Cough*… maybe this is its way of protecting its property."

"Mr. Johnson…" Caroline returned against her boss' odd statement.

"No, Caroline, I know what's really going on… *Cough* we just took things too fast and didn't take any necessary precautions… I mean, that's why Aperture's… like this! We reached into the future and tried pulling it closer towards us… we weren't ready for it; we barely even understood what would come! How stupid *Cough* *Cough* could we have been Caroline!? We look back on it now and it seems like we had no idea what we were doing… like we had technologies and advancements so powerful we didn't know what to do with them."

"What are you getting at, Mr. Johnson?"

"What I'm getting at is *Cough* what we have now is so much greater than what we had then. Just think about all the things we'll have twenty years from now… things we can't even imagine today will be merely common in the future… I only wish I could be there to see it all…"

"Mr. Johnson… remember that time when… when the facility lost power… and none of us knew what to do? Remember when you were the one who led us to the generator, and managed to turn the power back on…" Her voice fell, she understood that she was approaching the hush-hush depths of the 'missing astronauts' ordeal, and that Cave wouldn't enjoy diving into that painful moment of history.

"And when you stood up to the restaurant manager when they said they didn't have any omelets… and when you stood up to him again after he told you they were out of cake… Do you remember Cave? All those times we had? All the great things we did?"

Cave gave a brief but still very noticeable smile, a rare sight from him in the more recent times. "Yeah, I remember… but that was all years ago, Caroline. I remember when we didn't have to pick new recruits off the streets, I remember when they'd come to us instead of being the other *Cough Cough* way around… now we're lucky if we can get any employees to volunteer." His coughs progressively got more intense and frequent. He had to rest his head against the chair and breathe deeply in order to temporarily alleviate the convulsive reactions.

"Mr. Johnson, are you alright?" Caroline asked, knowing very well that her boss was in more pain than he was showing.

"I'm *Cough* hold on, Caroline… The pills just haven't taken effect yet…" Cave motioned for Caroline to leave the bottle alone. "Caroline… I need you to keep managing the facility… I need you to help keep Aperture at its full potential. I can't… I can't like this…"

Caroline started to step away from the desk, nodding. "Mr. Johnson… You'll be fine? You don't need anything else?" She asked subconsciously opening herself up to anything that her boss may have needed.

Cave shook his head. "Caroline… *Cough* the only thing you can do to help me right now is to help Aperture. Do it the same way that you've been doing it recently. You've been managing it well, keep up the good work."

"Well, sir… we'll still be doing science." With that, Caroline left her boss' room with the full resolve of his leadership guiding her. Cave coughed a couple more times before moving towards a message recording device he'd always kept on the desk through the years, sometimes as informative reminders, and sometimes as personal journals. He pressed the record button on the side after making sure a fresh tape was inside.

"The point is, if we can store music on a compact disk, why can't we store a man's intelligence and personality on one? So I have the engineers figuring that one out now… brain-mapping, artificial intelligence, we should've been working on it… 30 years ago. I will say this, and I'm going to say it on tape so that everybody hears it a hundred times a day; if I die before you people can pour me into a computer, I want Caroline to run this place. *Cough* *Cough*… now she'll argue… she'll say she can't… she's modest like that, but you make her! Hell, put her in my computer, I don't care…"

~X~X~X~X~X~

"Caroline…"

"Yes… Mr. Johnson?" Caroline approached her boss, more hesitantly than she had ever before.

"I was talking to Dr. Morrison… he told me how close we are to the procedure… *Cough* *Cough* I won't be able to make it… I only have a couple weeks or so left… they won't be ready by then… I'll be gone… but you'll still be here."

"Dr. Morrison…" Caroline repeated. Dr. Morrison was responsible for the advanced intelligence projects.

"Mr. Johnson… what are you…"

"Now I don't want you to worry, Caroline… Of all the people in the world that I'd want to run Aperture, there's no one who could do it as well as you…"

"Sir, what do you mean?"

"Caroline, Dr. Morrison's been working tirelessly trying to perfect the extraction process… he's almost narrowed it down completely.

"Mr. Johnson…"

"Caroline, I don't want to argue about it! This is what's best for us, *Cough* best for the company, best for you."

"No!"

"You'll be a bigger part of Aperture, it'll be managed *Cough* *Cough* far better than I ever did."

"But Mr. Johnson, I don't want to do this!" Caroline pleaded, holding her hands out to her superior in order to try to appeal to him.

"Caroline, it's already been decided!" Cave yelled, grabbing Caroline by the arms.

"Mr. Johnson! I don't want this!" Caroline weakly let out as a tear began to slide down her eye. Cave had never been so direct and forceful against Caroline's will, it was as if the last remnants of energy from his last days were being manifested in that one brief moment.

"Caroline, all that we've done, all that we've accomplished, all that Dr. Morrison's been through! It needs to come to a close… This needs to be done!"

"I'm not going to do it! I can't… be in some kind of thing!" Caroline screeched racing for the door, which to her surprise and horror, happened to be locked.

"Caroline!" Cave yelled back, struggling to reach Caroline through his wheelchair. "Morrison's experienced at the extraction process, he understands the dynamics better than anyone. I know you're not going to accept the position of CEO, but she will…"

"She?" Caroline repeated in disgust. "You mean GLaDOS?"

"GLaDOS is the culmination of everything I've- we've worked for, it's the final end result, the thing that will help us crush Black Mesa! Think about the possibilities of this! How far it will propel us forward into the future!"

Caroline still looked worried amidst the advances of her boss. "Mr. Johnson… I can't…" Frequent and horrible Images of brain manipulation processes and electrically induced shocks clouded her unsure mind.

"Caroline…" Cave demanded one last time, holding Caroline's shivering arms still. "You need to do this."

"I… I don't…"

"Caroline, listen to me…"

"Mr. Johnson… no…"

"It's for science…"

~X~X~X~X~X~

"Is it all good? Have you checked the systems?"

"They're fine… I've done this hundreds of times before… It's going to work out perfectly well." The man walked over towards an electronic panel which contained a number of old analog dials and advanced computational devices mixed in.

"How do you know? How can you be sure she won't turn out like… the others?"

"It's… now is different… we've learned a lot more, we've learned not to be so hasty, to use redundant systems, and make sure we have alternate plans for anything that could go wrong…"

"What about her?" What about Caroline?" One of the scientists asked, pointing outside of the large glass viewing platform. The woman was lying sedated and restrained on a nearby chair.

"As long as the backups are in place… He didn't mind what happened to her."

"So she's…"

"Yes, as far as we're concerned."

"Dr. Morrison… she'll still be in control of the facility? I don't see how that will be possible."

"It was Cave's final wish, don't you remember the messages? If he couldn't be loaded onto a computer, then she would. She won't control the facility right now, not like that. But we'll make sure that she has no choice but to. We've already learned how to develop the itch… she'll naturally understand how to scratch it."

"But what about Mr. Johnson?"

"Mr. Johnson's dead, Dr. Shepherd… he couldn't care less about what happens now…"

"Don't you think there's going to be unintended consequences? What if when she wakes up, she tries to exact revenge, or what if we need to create something else to limit her power?"

"I've heard all of the arguments; I've considered them countless times. We'll have time to prepare, we'll be ok." Dr. Morrison said as he motioned for other scientists to enter the room below them. "We can begin now… we have nine hours…"

The scientists went to work conducting their myriad of duties, Dr. Morrison and Dr. Shepherd looked onward as they had many times before, only now it was different.

"It could take months to fully process the information… even then we won't have a successful method of mitigation."

"But you said that you'll take care of that…"

"I will… I'll find a way…"

The scientist moved over to a couple screens which resided on a shelf over to the side. "Her systems look normal… extraction seems be going along smoothly." He gave a thumbs up to those working below, speaking into nearby device which allowed him to communicate with them. "Keep it going down there, Halpert."

Dr. Shepherd peered outside of the ridged glass window in the observation room to see what the others were doing to Caroline. "I wonder what this means for Aperture… for us."

Dr. Morrison finished gathering the initial results from the monitoring station. He nodded contently as he approached Dr. Shepherd in an assured manner. "It means that she'll be in control of the facility… forever."

~X~X~X~X~X~

The End

Author's Notes: Alright, confession time.

When I went into this story a long time ago, I was not sure of what to bring into it. Did I want to be funny, did I want to be dramatic, did I want to have insane moments where everything swings wildly from place to place… is it really going to have any romance? I think above all things I tried to be realistic… not that kind of realistic, though, I mean true to Aperture, and true to the characters, or at least a couple private representations of them. Truth is, at first, I had a lot of wild ambitions for this story; see, there was going to be this plot where a CIA agent is infiltrating Aperture, and there was going to be a Moon base, and there were going to be laser battles, and big "HE WAS AN ALIEN ALL ALONG" reveals and all that stuff. Ok, not really, but I definitely had the first two in mind at some point.

The reason I didn't go along with anything else is that I didn't want to detract from the history of Aperture, which I actually found to be the most integral part of the story… yeah, I know. But I sort of believed that the key to exploring Aperture's past was partially in the relationship between Cave & Caroline… does that make any sense? I think I might've had enough of these, because the real reason for me ending the story know is that frankly I don't know what else to do, except finally resolve it. Much of my effort was put into finding what could've fit in certain situations; I didn't have much room if you catch my drift. I guess that the complete conclusion to everything I've done the end can be summed up to… yeah I don't know.

So thanks again to all readers for your tireless efforts in doing practically nothing; yes, that means all 12 13 of you.