A/N: I've taken a lot of liberty here with the integrity of Aperture equipment. Basically, if you like our turret friend more than you like emancipation grills, read on!

)O(

And then there were three.

Wheatley had his objections with the turret coming along, and even though Chell was physically incapable of arguing back, she made it pretty clear that it wasn't his decision. They needed any allies they could get. Besides, it knew more than it was letting on. Maybe they could get it - Chell had actually begun to think of the turret as a she - to talk again.

They rigged the machine so that it would categorize functioning turrets as defectives and destroy them in short order. Defectives were harmless, which is what Chell wanted to explain to Wheatley...That is, until their newest companion shot one of its fellow turrets before it even had a chance to harm Chell.

"Wow! That was...unexpected." the personality core remarked. Indeed, she expected the turret to simply say "I'm different." as an explanation.

"'Thank you!'" the turret replied instead, which seemed like a very odd thing to say until Chell realized that she was quoting herself. That's what she had said after the human saved her life; she felt that she owed her something in return.

Did robots even think like that? Or was it a glitch in her programming? Perhaps part of the reason she was to be redeemed other than knowing too much.

For now though, they needed to locate Her supply of neurotoxin and shut it down. It didn't matter if robots could be trusted, because obviously the personality core and the turret were more trustworthy than the AI.