"Hello? Alex? Where haft thou gone?"
This was very much suspicious, Chell thought. One moment, he was standing right there, and the next moment, poof! Blammo! It was almost like he was never really there in the first place.
There was no sign of him on the inside of his room, with only one locked door leading anywhere. While Chell attempted to find the keys, she was rather certain that Wheatley had taken the chance to poke his nose into Alex's stuff, for he was shuffling through the man's belongings, muttering something about a pendant. Come to think of it, Wheatley had been acting very much strangely, as of late- and Chell wanted to know why.
"Hey, Sir Starchy."
"Hmm? Yeah, Chell?" he looked up from his snooping, hands buried under stacks of papers and blueprints. "Whatever's going on with you and Mr. Pretentious? You two seem to be very much on edge with each other."
"Oh . . . um- it's a long story."
"Well, it looks like we're not finding those keys anytime soon-so I wanna hear it," said Chell, arms crossed and leaving not a millimeter of space for debate.
"Argh- okay, okay!" Sir Starchy surrendered.
"That bloody snob picked on my brother and I a lot back when we were in school," he started. "Turns out his father was a real jerk-argh! All puppy-killing and child-ruining. . . Then, once, I thought we could be friends- so I got together with some of my mates at school and tried to bust him out of his house when his dad locked him in. . .thought we could call the police or something to help him once we got him out," Wheatley stopped to breathe for the first time, before continuing.
"Then when we got in his dad was already waiting there like he was ready for us, crossing his arms like some big champ- then Alex went and basically just declared that none of us were his friends and bloody banished us from his house. . . the ungrateful bastard!"
"And the pendant?"
"I gave it to the guy the day before- he didn't even return it! Must have been lying about his dad, too!" exclaimed Wheatley. "Never saw him again in school since. Bloody good riddance too . . ."
The sudden rattling of a key jolted Wheatley out of his dramatic narration.
The door opened, just as the Sanitization Duo turned their heads. "Sorry about that. . ." said the scientist as he walked out, locking the door again behind him. Chell noticed a tie clasped in his right hand, stained with a red she could only assume was blood.
"I had some . . . matters to attend to," he said, simply, before putting on the tie.
"Okay. . ." said Chell as she quickly backed out of the room. "Wheat- how about we go clean the other section, now?"
"Sure," Wheatley agreed quickly, dashing out of the room to join Chell where they had placed their buckets and mops, leaving Alex alone at his desk.
Chell noticed that her partner wasn't cleaning with the same gusto he usually was. He scrubbed slowly and tediously at the blue gel, muttering something incoherent.
Honestly, Chell had absolutely no idea what to do- her best option at this point would be to try to finish up the job at a very much fast pace, and then get out of there and hope Sir Starchy would return to his usual bubbly self.
She cleaned the last of the repulsion gel off the cube, before placing it on the floor and examining their work. The place was almost completely clean, save for the splotch that the other janitor was working at. "Hey, Sir Starchy- when we're done, how 'bout we just get outta here and forget we ever saw that guy, okay? 'S not like we're gonna be running into him anytime soon, if I can help it."
Mr. Wholegrain Wheatley seemed to relax a little bit at this. "Sounds like a great idea," he said.
"Kid, what have I SAID ABOUT INVITING FRIENDS OVER?!"
"I-I'm sorry, papa . . . but they're not my friends, okay? Please don't hurt them. . ."
". . . Now, now son, don't cry. . .If you just show me they're not your friends, nothing's gonna happen, alright?"
"O-okay. . . I love you papa."
"Hmm."
"Stop crying kid, and focus."
". . ."
"I said FOCUS!"
Focus. FOCUS. Focusfocusfocusfocus. . . .
Papa's gone.
There's blood everywhere.
D-Did I do this?
Whose blood is it? Mine or papa's? I can't tell the difference. . .
I have no clue where I am. There's a persistent beeping. Where's papa?
I still have Carl's pendant. Is it in my right hand? Or my left?
I can't tell. . .
My head hurts. . .
The pendant. . .
Alex reached into his pocket, finding the blue whale-shaped pendant still sitting there, like it always was. He turned it over in his fingers, slowly, contemplatively.
"Hey, Alex! We're . . . gonna be going now- bye!" Chell waved at him, out of courtesy before stepping into the elevator.
The scientist waved back, his other hand still clasped around the pendant. He could hear papa whispering to him- something intelligible, but urgent. He stroked the tie, slowly. It was still too big for him, after all those years.
"Gah! Why won't it bloody work!"
Junior's sudden shout made Alex raise his head. The janitor was pounding his fist on the elevator button. "Argh, the power's out! Just great. . ."
Alex cast a quick glance at his control board- yes, the power was indeed out, which meant . . . oh, god- the mantis men!
The scientist almost yelled for the two janitors to take the emergency stairs, but cut himself short when he realized that there was no emergency stairs- "Too expensive!" Mr. Johnson had said. "And it's not like our generator's going to just up and die anytime soon, right? Heh heh. . ."
Oh, the cruel truth.
He could already hear the mantis men growling from where they were kept- damn it, he knew the force field doors were a bad idea! Alex reached for his gun and keys quickly, jamming them into the door.
"Chell, Junior! Come on!" he yelled as the two dashed into the observation room. Chell shut the door behind her with a slam as the test chamber filled up with hissing mantis men.
The scientist kicked open the entrance to the corridor, shoving the keys into Junior's hand. "There's a couple more doors before the Vital Apparatus Vent- use that to get out!"
Just as he spoke, the glass shattered under the pounding fists of mantis men.
"Now!"
AN: Finally after so many chapters- the real meat of this "Periwinkle Eyes" arc! Sorry it took so long to get to this point- I got a little bit carried away with fleshing out the back story and stuff- but stuff's gonna hit the fan in the next chapter, so stay tuned!