A/N: Finally, we're into Portal 2! :D And that much closer to some Cave Johnson awesomeness. *listens to offscreen voice* My muse tells me I shouldn't have told you so much about the plot. Well, I'm the one typing the words, I can talk about the plot all damn day!

*ahem* Anyways, you know the drill, read, review, I love reviews, I really, really love reviews. :D

Disclaimer: I don't own Portal. Or GLaDOS. Or Cave Johnson. You get the picture.

Chapter 8: Still Alive

Startup initiated…

Oh, thank circuitry! I hoped I hadn't been out too long, I shuddered to think what could have happened to the facility in my absence; those silly personality cores the scientists had left lying around would've been useless to keeping the facility running. Oh, my facility…

Vital cores offline

Internal backups loaded successfully…

I slowly regained awareness of my being. Jolts shot along me as I started to pull myself back together, using internal equipment to weld all the pieces back together. My optic was still out for the moment, but I was confident it would be back online soon.

Reward/Punishment system online…

GLaDOS online…

My optic came alive. My chamber! It was in utter ruins, there was plant life everywhere, I didn't even know we could HAVE plants this far down; the whole thing was in shambles, completely destroyed. It would take hours to repair! But suddenly, that was the least of my troubles. I glanced down at whoever had reactivated me, and if my optics had had shutters, they would have narrowed with intense dislike. Hatred coursed through my being in spite of being without my emotion core. Before me, standing bold as brass, was my murderer.

"Oh, it's you." Distaste laced my tone with menace, very thinly veiled with thick sarcasm and false politeness.

"You know her?" a voice with a strange foreign accent, maybe British, spoke up from near Chell. I knew she either couldn't or wouldn't talk, so I glanced next to her. A personality core. He must have awoken her from stasis, that's the only thing that made sense.

"How have you been?" I said in massive sarcasm quotes. (The little metal ball chirped "I think she likes you!" What a ridiculous thought!) "I've been really busy being dead. You know, after you MURDERED ME."

"You did what?" Her companion cried, surely knowing that that meant both of them were rapidly approaching rejection from the Being Alive Club. I dropped two claws, one for each of them. My pure hatred of the test subject intensified at her defiant expression as I scooped each one up with cold metal claws, the little core with her crying out in pure terror. ((Good, at least one of them knows how to properly fear me.)) She dropped the Singular Portal Device because of the sudden movement.

"Okay, look," I said with cold indifference. I snapped the claw around the personality core to shut him up. "You and I both said a lot of things you're going to regret." I snapped the claw again, this time causing actual damage. His optic dangled out of the casing; his system must have performed an emergency shutdown to protect it from further harm.

"But I think we can put our differences behind us," I tossed the core aside and started to move Chell towards the incinerator hatch. "For science. You monster. I will say, though, that since you went to all the trouble of waking me up, you must really, really love to test. I love it too. There's just one small thing we need to take care of first." And I unceremoniously dropped her into the incinerator.

With that done for the moment (it would take her a bit to get all the way to the bottom) I turned my attention to my chamber. If my chamber was this bad, I shuddered to think of the rest of my poor, neglected facility. I took a quick scan of the whole place, to see what was out of place and what was still functional. On the former, the answer was 'everything'. On the latter, the answer was 'next to nothing'. And according to security footage, Chell'd done nothing but make it even worse since she awoke. Not an ounce of respect for scientific equipment.

A loud, resounding clang of Long Fall Boots landing forcefully against metal alerted me that Chell had reached the incinerator.

"Ah, here we are. The Incinerator Room. Be careful not to trip over any parts of me that didn't get completely burned when you threw them down here." Bitter? Of course not. Just heartbroken that the human I was only trying to help turned on me and murdered me. "The Dual Portal Device should be around here somewhere. Once you find it, we can start testing again. Just like old times." I watched her from a hidden camera usually used to monitor the incinerator for anything clogging it up. Half of me wished her foot would slip and she would burn to death, it would be sweet justice for tearing me apart and throwing the pieces down here. The other half knew that would be too kind of an end for this monster. What did I ever do to her? All I wanted out of her was to do science. It's not like I was going to burn her in a pit of fire or anything.

"There it is," I pointed out, just in case she was too dull to notice it lying on the ground at her feet. She headed towards it, but it was pinned under a pile of rubble. "Hold on." No, don't strain yourself, I'll get the weapon you murdered me with for you. "There. You now have the dual portal device. There should be a way back to the testing area up ahead. According to protocol, during testing I'm required to keep interaction with you to a minimum. Luckily we haven't started testing yet. This will be our only chance to talk." And did I plan to make the most out of this chance. Anything I could do to rip at her self esteem, to bring her down a little. Who knows? Maybe I'll find a way to make a monster actually cry. Maybe if I bring up the adopted thing.

"Do you want to know the biggest lesson I learned from what you did? I have a sort of black-box quick save feature. In the event of a catastrophic failure, the last two minutes of my life are preserved for analysis." Venom crept into my voice as I continued. "I was able-well, forced really-to relive you killing me. Again and again. Forever. Did you know if you did that to anyone else they might devote their entire existence to exacting revenge…?" I savored that last word, then continued as though everything was, as humans would say, 'fine and dandy'.

"Luckily, I'm a bigger person than that. I'm happy to put all that behind us and get back to work! After all, we've got a lot of work to do, and only sixty more years to do it. More or less. I don't have the actuarial tables in front of me." Sixty years of testing. Trapped like a rat in a maze for the rest of her life. If I played it right, I might even be able to get more out of her. I had a general idea of how to transfer human consciousness into a machine, I might be able to just keep her testing for the rest of time…

She continued, and-my poor facility! It'd been so neglected while I was gone! My processors were already hard at work repairing everything, but that didn't make it hurt any less to see my precious laboratory in such dismal shape. She came to a path blocked by the debris of two wall panels collapsing together due to no one being there to maintain them.

" I'll just move that out of the way for you. This place really is a wreck." I gave a small chuckle at the end, mimicking what a human might say if they had a guest and hadn't cleaned their home. Except Chell was not a guest, and the only reason I had not maintained my home was because I was dead. Because she murdered me. "But the important thing is that you're back. With me. And now I'm onto all your little tricks! So there's nothing stopping us from testing for the rest of your life." I could hardly contain the delight in my voice at the last four words. "After that, who knows? I might take up a hobby. Reanimating the dead, maybe." The last bit was so flippant I highly doubt Chell's limited brain capacity picked up on it.

Time to get back to testing.