Chell's Story: Part D
Episode I, Chapter Five
Wheatley grabbed my shoulders desperately, but then instantly released. "Oh, She's off! She's off. Panic over; She's off. All fine! On we go."
I let off a light laugh as I strolled through the ruined chamber over to where GLaDOS's lifeless parts lay strewn about in puddles of rusty water.
"There She is," Wheatley whispered to me. "What a nasty piece of work She was, honestly, like a proper maniac." I could hear him breathing uneasily as he spoke. "Do you know who ended up purging Her? Do you know who ended up taking Her down in the end?" He didn't give me a chance to answer. "You're not gonna believe this. A human!"
I was taken aback by what he said.
"I know! I know; I wouldn't have believed it, either. Apparently, this human escaped and, erm,... nobody's seen him since."
I wanted to tell him that it was me who did that, but he continued talking.
"Then there was a sorta long chunk of time where, erm,... absolutely nothing happened,... and then there's us escaping now. So yeah, that's,er, that's pretty much the whole story; you're up to speed. Don't touch anything."
We had reached the other side of the chamber and were walking around an incinerator hatch at that point. Wheatley took the lead to a flight of stairs.
"Okay, down these stairs." He waved for me to head down.
At the bottom, the catwalk had collapsed, leaving a long drop to the ground.
"JUMP! Wait, actually - " he stopped right in my path, "look at that; that's, erm,... that's quite a distance, isn't it?"
He shimmied behind me and climbed onto my shoulders. "Okay, you know what? Er, go ahead and jump. You've got... You've got braces on your legs, so... you're all set." I started to lean forward for the jump. "Er, but no... braces on your arms, though; so... you're going to have to rely on the old human strength to keep a grip on the Device, and... in addition, me. So, do - do really... do really keep a grip on me."
I made another lean for the jump. "Also, a note: erm, no braces on your spine, either. So,... So, don't land on that." Another lean forward. "Or your head, no braces there; that - that could split like a melon, erm,... from this height." He gave a nervous laugh. "So,... er, do definitely focus on landing with your legs."
I took a few steps back for a running start, but as I took my first step, he started talking again. "Er, quick question: have you been working out? Because (I'll be honest) there's no evidence of it, you know? I mean, I'm not - I'm not, like, you know, like, just a plastic cup; er, we will be landing with some force, so, er, a bit of... bit of grip. Just use the grip, classic grip."
I sighed and made another go at the running start, but again was interrupted. "Right. Let's go! Jump! What's the worst that can happen? Oh. Oh, I just thought about the worst thing that can happen. Oh! Oh, I just thought of something even worse! Er, better plan, new plan: no imagining of any... any potential outcomes whatsoever, okay? Okay, just jump! Just jump into the... into the abyss, and... let's see what happens."
I turned around and saw Wheatley squeezing his eyes shut. He cautiously opened one. "Oh, I'm still there! I'm still there!"
I smacked him with my free hand (it did sting a bit, but not much) and signaled for him to zip it.
Returning my attention to the jump, I ran for the edge and jumped in a front flip.
Wheatley screamed as we fell, and we landed with a loud, metallic crunch. "Ah, still held! I'm still being held!" He hopped down off my shoulders. "That's a great job; you applied the grip, and we're all fine. That's tremendous!"
He continued leading the way through the hall to the catwalk.
As we started to traverse, Wheatley screamed and stopped. "Agh! Sorry, I... I just looked down; I - I do not recommend it." We walked about five more steps. "Agh! I just did it again!"
I started pushing him forward until we reached the end of the catwalk. There, he threw open the door on the left. "This..." he showed off the inside, "...is the main breaker room." He took the first step toward the door. "Let's go in."
We both stepped inside, and I shut the door behind me. It was dark except for Wheatley's glowing eyes, the glowing light on his chest, cracks of light coming in from the ceiling, and the glowing switches lining the wall.
"Look for a switch that says 'escape pod', alright?"
I couldn't read any of the labels, and Wheatley's banter didn't help me in finding the right switch.
"Don't touch anything else; we're not interested in anything else. Don't touch anything else; don't - don't even look at anything else. Just - well, obviously, you're gonna have to look at everything else... to - to - to find 'escape pod', but, erm, as soon as you've looked at something that doesn't say 'escape pod', look at something else. Look at the next thing, alright? So, don't touch anything else or look at - well, you can look at other things, but don't - do you understand?"
I was thrown through a loop with the order not to look at anything else, so I was lost for words. (As if I wasn't already.)
He started looking around. "Can you see it anywhere? I can't see it anywhere. Er, tell you what. Plug me in, and I'll turn the lights on."
The lack of light forced me to do everything by touch. I removed the lid from Wheatley's back, and he sat down on a seat in the middle of the floor.
Lights shot up from the floor, and he held his hands above his head. "Let there be light!" He held the pose with an awkward look on his face. "That's, er,... God; I was quoting God." He put his hands down and put a hand on the floor next to him.
It just so happened that the spot he was leaning on was another button: the "emergency startup" button.
Suddenly, the floor rotated to the right.
"Whoa, look at that! It's turning!" I was thrown off balance and fell over. "Ominous! But probably fine, you know? As long as it doesn't start, you know, moving up. Now, 'escape pod', 'escape pod',..."
As I got up to my feet, the platform started to rise. "It is moving up." He realized the enormity of the situation when the rising platform started flipping all the switches it went by. "Okay, don't worry, I got it! I got it! This - This should slow it down." He pushed the button repeatedly to slow the platform. It paused as the ceiling opened, and then started shooting up faster. "No, it makes it go faster." The platform reached the top of the shaft back in GLaDOS's chamber. "Uh-oh..."
The PA system buzzed on. "Power-up initiated."
I turned to run back to the entrance, but a concrete wall barricaded my progress. I turned around to watch as GLaDOS slowly pulled Herself together while Wheatley tried to shut Her back down.
"Okay, don't panic! Alright, stop panicking; I can - I can still stop this. Erm,... er, oh! There's a - There's a password! It's fine, I'll just - I'll just hack it; not a problem."
It wasn't reassuring to hear him try to enter every single six-letter combination one by one, even considering that he skipped AAAAAB.
"Power-up complete."
"Okay, okay!" Wheatley pulled himself from the seat and scrambled to his feet. "New plan: just act natural. Act natural; we've done nothing wrong." He gave a large fake smile and fake happy tone filled with fear as GLaDOS snapped to full attention. "HELLO!"
GLaDOS's eyes narrowed as they bored holed into us. "Oh,... it's you!"
Wheatley dropped his pretense and turned to me in scared confusion. "You know Her?"
GLaDOS and I both nodded as Her lips stretched into a smile. "It's been a long time. How have you been?"
I gently flicked my free hand into a thumbs-up as Wheatley whispered in my ear. "I think She likes you."
Before I could interject, She continued speaking. "I've been really busy being dead. You know? ... After you MURDERED ME?"
Wheatley nearly choked on his shock. "You did what?!"
She loomed down upon us and grabbed hold of me with one hand, shaking the portal gun from my grasp.
"Oh no! No no no no no!" Wheatley tried to run back to the other end of the chamber, but GLaDOS grabbed him by the seat of his pants. "OH NO NO NO! NO! NO!"
She bounced him once to silence him before turning Her attention to me. "Okay, look. We've both said a lot of things that you're going to regret."
She tossed Wheatley in the air before grabbing him by the torso. "But I think we can put our differences behind us."
She tossed him over Her shoulder toward the chamber entrance. "For science. You monster."
She then carried me away from the entrance. "I will say, though, that since you went to all the trouble of waking me up, you must really, really love to test."
I realized Her intentions when She held me above the opening incinerator hatch. "I love it, too. There's just one small thing we need to take care of first."
She held onto me for a split second before dropping me down the long, dark shaft.
