Wheatley rapidly flailed his handle bars trying to teeter himself forward, eventually he succeeded and toppled over the edge, and bounced down into the darkness. He bumped against many objects along the way, responding to each impact with a grunt or a yelp. It was uncomfortable, but better than the birds pecking at his wiring. After about twenty minutes of falling, Wheatley eventually he found himself landing on a poorly maintained catwalk. He looked directly up to see a conveyer belt rolling into the incinerator. He looks back down directly in front still trying to figure out where he is, and sees an emancipation grill covering a doorway. The place seems vaguely familiar, but Wheatley was having trouble remembering, until his escape attempt with the test subjects he never left the management rail and was not used to looking at things from this view. It was not until he heard a sweet voice that it he knew where he was.
"Hello," Wheatley flipped around to see someone had left a turret on the end of the catwalk, "I'm different." The turret said, but Wheatley ignored it, and tried to think of a way out of there. The turret redemption line was not too far from a management rail, but in his current state an even few inches were a hassle to travel. He had rolled onto his side and neither one of his handles could make contact with the floor. It was times like these Wheatley wished he had legs, or at least someone to carry him. Unless someone came by and picked him up he would be stuck there for a very long time.
Wheatley sat exasperated; being stuck in some dark catwalk was not much of an improvement over floating around in space, at least now his companion was not a corrupt core incessantly chattering about space. The turret at the end of the catwalk would occasionally say something cryptic or reference Greek mythology, but most of the time it was quiet. He had been sitting in complete silence for a good twenty minutes before the turret at the end of the catwalk pipes up again.
"She won't do it." It squeaked quietly, and paused for a brief moment before continuing, "After suffering many trials Odysseus received aid from the goddess Athena."
"What is that supposed to mean?" Wheatley asked, but the turret gave no answer. Instead he heard a familiar high pitched squealing and chirping echoing throughout the redemption center. The nanobots had come, probably to inspect the course before quickly resuming other duties.
Wheatley had briefly worked with the nanobots before; they were all over the facility helping with the repairs when a few came across his crushed body lying just outside of GLaDOS's chamber. Having been ordered to repair whatever they found to be broken they took Wheatley to the maintenance room and rebooted him. When he regained consciousness and realized what happened he was unsure of what to do, he did not have a job anymore, all the test subjects where dead and he was unneeded. If he was not of any use GLaDOS would probably crush him again if she ever saw him. He could try escaping again now that the management rails where being repaired, but it was unlikely he would go undetected by the omnipotent AI and he was powerless against her. Wheatley was sneaking around the facility trying to stay out of sight when he noticed that the test chambers where activated. Out of curiosity he poked his head in between a few panels to see what the test rooms where being used for when he saw her; the test subject, the one that defeated GLaDOS, she was alive. Amazingly enough GLaDOS had not killed her, then again she was the very last test subject and GLaDOS was built to test. Wheatley quickly withdrew himself behind the panels before the lady came over; if he stayed in near test chambers too long GLaDOS might find him and he would probably die, and then there was the test subject in the chambers. GLaDOS was probably planning to kill her eventually, that is if she survived the turrets, acid, and lasers, inside the tests. They needed to escape.
After briefly speaking to the test subject and being attacked by a bird, most of the facility was repaired and the nanobots were working on rebuilding the elevator shafts. When Wheatley found out about this he tried convincing them to let him be a part of the crew. He could use it to communicate with the test subject; after all she would be the only one using the elevators.
All of that was but a distant memory, the task hand (so to speak) was getting the nanobots to aid him.
