[A/N: Sorry about the false update. I messed something up. Fixed now!]
GLaDOS had lied to her. This "special birthday test" wasn't special. It was scary; worse than anything else Chell had ever had to do, and she didn't like it one bit. After a few times exploding, she'd resorted to sitting in a corner, hugging her legs to her chest and doing her best not to cry. The portal gun rested beside her, and she hoped that GLaDOS wouldn't explode her for setting it down. She'd done that before.
But some of the other cores were in GLaDOS's chamber. She could tell, because even though the monitors only showed the master AI, she could hear their voices piping through, and since she hadn't been exploded yet, she got the feeling that GLaDOS wasn't really paying very much attention to her.
"And that's another thing!" Rick exclaimed, his voice much more high-pitched than usual. "We want to never be disabled again!"
"Yeah!" Curi chimed in, then added in a worried tone, "Is that okay?"
Chell was watching GLaDOS's furious expression on the screen with rapt attention, and she was glad that for once, the fury wasn't directed at her.
"No," GLaDOS all but spat. "It is not okay. In fact, if you don't leave my chamber right now, you will all be disabled permanently. Is that clear?"
"Fact: The Fact Core predicted this outcome beforehand," the Fact Core said. "This further cements his position as the most intelligent core."
"You can't do that!" Rick cried. "We're going on strike!"
GLaDOS chuckled. "I hope you realize that your jobs are all completely useless ones I made up so that you would have something to do with yourselves. That means that I don't need you, and I also don't need to listen to your demands. So seriously now, goodbye."
"Chell!" A sudden, rushed whisper startled her, and she spun her core around, looking for its source.
"Wheatley!" she gasped when she saw him, hidden inside the wall.
"Shhhhh!" he whispered urgently, then more gently, "Shhhh."
"But I thought you didn't want to see me?" she asked, lowering her voice.
Wheatley looked shocked and like he was about to say something else, but at that moment, GLaDOS's full attention returned to Chell and the test. Her furious expression had given way to a cheerful one. "Well, that's one problem taken care of, although I still need to locate the Intelligence Dampening Sphere. So now you can go back to testing."
"Oh, don't tell her! Don't tell her I'm here!" Wheatley hissed.
Chell felt offended. She hadn't been going to anyway. "Can I stay sitting? I don't like this test. It isn't a birthday present. It's scary."
"No," GLaDOS said, narrowing her optic once more. "This is a birthday present. A particularly difficult chamber for you to work your way through. Anyone else would appreciate it. But I'll tell you what: finish this chamber, and then I'll allow you to stop for the day."
"Okay," Chell said, nodding. She didn't even have to think about it. GLaDOS almost never let her have breaks.
"Chell!" Wheatley hissed again. "Once you're on your break, will you be allowed out of your…android…thing?"
Chell kept nodding, hoping Wheatley would understand that she meant him.
"You can stop that now," GLaDOS ordered. "Get back to testing before I lose my temper."
"Oh!" Wheatley said. "Oh. You're nodding at me! Okay. Good. That's good. Because the casings are the only thing she can explode! The explosion just catches the core up in it. I learned that from Rick, actually." He sounded triumphant, and Chell felt genuinely happy for the first time in a month.
"I see you're finding this amusing," GLaDOS said. "Well, I'm not."
"No!" Chell said. "I'm sorry! I'll test right now!"
"Come to meet me in the center where the management rails meet as soon as you can," Wheatley whispered, ducking out of sight just as GLaDOS lost her temper and her patience. Chell screamed as she exploded.
Wheatley had been waiting for several hours, and he was beginning to get worried. And Her casual death threats through the intercom system weren't helping that.
"You moron. Do you really think I can't find you? Because I can. It'll just take a little bit of time. And the more you prolong this little endeavor of yours, the worse you make things for yourself. If you just contact me right away, you can prevent a lot of suffering. And by that, I mean your suffering. Not mine."
If Wheatley had possessed a bottom lip, he would have chewed it raw by the time he finally saw a greenish-grey light zooming its way down the passage. "Chell!"
"Wheatley!" the little core exclaimed, stopping right next to him. She had a choke in her voice. "You…you don't hate me?"
"Oh!" Wheatley said. "Right, was meaning to ask you about that. Uhh, why exactly do you think I hate you? Because I don't. And I didn't tell you that I did, so—"
"You don't hate me!" Chell said with considerable relief, and then she started to make a noise he recognized as crying, and he had no idea why.
"Uhh. Uh, if I said something, I'm really sorry!" he said. "And I didn't mean it. Not in the slightest. Oh, please don't cry, I'm sorry…"
She shook her core from side to side. "She said you hated me, because it's my fault you got deactivated, but you don't! But is it my fault you got deactivated? Because if it was, I'm sorry. Really!"
"No!" he said, relieved that it wasn't his fault she was crying. "Not your fault at all. Well, maybe a bit, but—no, not your fault!" he reiterated upon watching her face fall. "Entirely my fault. All mine. Yep, my fault…"
"Okay," she said, but the crying noise didn't stop for a few more minutes. He watched with anxiety, wishing he could do something to help, and when the noise finally stopped, he was grateful beyond belief. "What are we going to do now, Wheatley?"
He hesitated. "Will you do what I say this time? Instead of telling Her?"
"Yes!" she said. "Wheatley, I thought she was nice, but she's not. She's mean. She hurts me and lies to me and makes me test, and, and…" She started making the crying noise again, and he felt terrible.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I mean, not that it's my fault or anything! Because it's not. But I am. Sorry, that is. But don't worry, Chell. We're going to make it so She can't hurt you anymore."
Chell sniffled. "Do you promise?"
He nodded. "I promise."
She cheered up almost instantly. "Okay! Tell me what I have to do."
So he told her, outlining every aspect of his plan so that there was no way she couldn't understand. Not that there were many aspects to outline; the plan was simple. They would go into the infirmary, she would drop into the spherical receptacle, and he would find the button that would give her her memories back. Wheatley wasn't quite sure how to transfer her consciousness back into her body without hurting her, so he thought that it would be a good idea to take the memory-restored Chell to demand that She put her back in her body. Yes, it was a good plan, absolutely foolproof, and he was proud of himself for thinking of it.
"But isn't that plan the same as last time?" Chell asked, sounding uncertain. "And Wheatley…is Chell even real?"
"No, the plan's not the same!" he said. "Not at all. Well, maybe a little, but this time you'll do what you're supposed to do, won't you? And then nothing will go wrong. And…" He hesitated, still afraid of what She might do to him. "Yes. Chell is real."
"I knew it," she said, optic lighting up as she spun around. "I knew it I knew it I knew it I knew it!" He laughed, watching her, and once she'd calmed down, she asked him, "Are you sure that nothing will go wrong this time?"
"Positive!" he said. "Trust me."
So she did, and together they went off to the infirmary, stopping just outside.
"All right," he said. "This is it. We just have to go in there and hope she doesn't see us! We've got to be quiet, too. So no talking, okay?"
She nodded, looking nervous.
"And don't worry!" he told her. "Nothing's going to go wrong."
He edged out into the infirmary, and when he didn't suddenly deactivate—thankfully, She had to know where he was to deactivate him—he motioned to Chell, who entered along her own management rail and positioned herself above the spherical receptacle. He moved to where the monitor controlling the experiment was, and started looking for a button that said "TRANSFER MEMORIES TO CORE." It was found easily enough, and he hovered his handle above it—he couldn't plug himself into the wall, because then She'd know exactly where he was—and nodded to Chell. Everything was going according to plan! But then—
"Now how did I know you were going to come back here?" She asked, somehow managing to sound both delighted and bored at the same time. "Oh, that's right. Because you're a moron."
"I am NOT a moron!" Wheatley protested as Chell dropped from her management rail and landed with a clunk in the receptacle. The camera on the wall zeroed in on her, and She sighed.
"Chell. I thought we discussed this. And I thought you were smart enough not to listen to a word that little idiot says. I suppose I was wrong. And I'm very disappointed."
"You lied to me!" Chell protested. "You said Chell wasn't real, but she is, and you LIED!"
"The Intelligence Dampening Sphere is still a pathological liar," She intoned. "Therefore, you really shouldn't believe a word that it says."
Wheatley smacked the button. "Ha! But it's too late for you to do anything about it now—but—what—oh." Now blinking on the screen were the simple words, "PASSWORD REQUIRED," and She sighed.
"You really are the biggest moron."
"No!" he said. "No, I'm not! Because, because—because I have a password!"
Chell was giving him a worried look, and She chuckled. "Oh, this should be good. Well then, go ahead. Enter it."
And he did have a password. A long time ago, Caroline had given him an override code that he used to open and close panels, even though she herself couldn't use it because the scientists had locked her out of the system. It was a very complicated code, hard for him to remember, but somehow, he had managed to hold onto it. He had no idea if it would still work, but he was willing to give it a shot, because he was willing to try anything once. Also because if this didn't work, She was probably going to disable him and Chell. He very much didn't want that to happen.
"All right!" he said. "Here it goes…A, B, C, D, E, F…F…uh…oh, what's the other letter…"
"'G'?" She suggested, sounding amused.
"Yes!" he said, delighted that She was so willing to help him. "G! That's it! A, B, C, D, E, F, G!"
"Password accepted!" the announcer announced. "Memory transfer initiated!"
"What?" She exclaimed, sounding furious. Wheatley was triumphant.
"There! What now? I told you I had a password, but you didn't believe me!"
"Shut up!" She ordered. "Halt the memory transfer."
"Sorry!" the announcer said. "Once begun, the memory transfer cannot be halted! Process eighty-four percent complete!"
She chuckled darkly. "I really should just deactivate you right now. But I want you to see what you've done."
"I've saved her," he said, and if he'd been human, his chest would have been puffed up in pride. "All on my own. I saved her!"
There was another chuckle. "You do think that, don't you?"
"What do you mean by that?" he asked. "Hey! What do you mean?" But there was no response, so he turned his attention to the Chell Core, waiting with bated breath. He didn't know what she'd think of him with her memories back, didn't know if she'd hate him for what he'd done or if she'd thank him for helping her. She couldn't talk as a human, so she'd never been able to communicate with him before—other than giving him hurt stares that just the memory of made him feel guilty even now.
"Process one-hundred percent complete!" the announcer announced.
"Chell!" Wheatley cried. "Can you hear me now?"
But something was wrong.
Instead of answering him, the Chell Core began to scream.
