A/N: My longest chapter by far. :D I knew I'd make up for all those short chapters. Now, this is mainly because there was a lot of dialogue to relay, but I'm quite QUITE happy with how this turned out. Plus, this chapter houses one of my favorite GLaDOS moments in the whole game. I had to do it justice, even if it made this chapter about a thousand words longer than the others. :D It's bloody massive!
Disclaimer: I don't own Portal. Or GLaDOS. Or Cave Johnson. You get the picture.
Chapter 9: In Charge of Everything
"I didn't actually believe you'd fall for that," I said coldly. Chell and her idiot had escaped from one of my test chambers – how, I would never know – and gone on an excursion around the back chambers of the facility. They had dodged into places where I had no cameras (I really must remedy that) but Chell had been careless. She had become separated from the little metal ball that was her guide (he seemed so familiar and yet, I didn't find him in any of my databases), so I took my chance. I'd planted a portal surface right where she would have to use it, and beneath it planted a false door reading "GLaDOS Emergency Shutdown and Cake Dispensary", knowing she wouldn't be able to resist, especially the cake part. Sure enough, she portalled forward confidently and turned the handle, only to discover the 'door' was only a plank of wood.
"Seriously, I had a much more elaborate trap waiting for you up ahead. If I'd known you'd let yourself get captured this easily, I would've just dangled a turkey leg on a rope from the ceiling. Well, it was nice catching up. Let's get to business." She pressed against the wall, trying to avoid the split in the center of the room. Pretty soon, though, there was no floor left, and she was dropped into a room of glass, which then moved into my chamber. She paced back and forth, looking for an exit, firing portals. Silly girl, glass didn't conduct portals.
"I hope you brought something stronger than a portal gun this time," I said with a hint of smugness, knowing she had not. "Otherwise, you're about to become the immediate past president of the Being Alive Club. Ha ha." She glared at me with that defiant look that had become her signature expression. Not one to give up, she tried hitting the glass with the butt of the portal gun. The glass was reinforced, so there was no harm done to it, but I felt a twitch of irritation at her lack of respect for equipment.
"Seriously though, goodbye." I lowered five boxed turrets. All but one emerged to display their black spidery bodies. I felt a shock run through my system, a surprise shock. Every turret self destructed, blowing thick cracks in the glass. Chell was smirking now. Well, I'd just have to wipe that smirk off her face. With neurotoxin.
"Oh. You were busy back there." I opened a panel at the back of my chamber. "Well, I suppose we could just glare at each other until one of us drops dead, but I have a better idea." A tube emerged from the panel and smashed into the upper, unbroken panel of glass. "It's your old friend, deadly neurotoxin. If I were you, I'd take a deep breath, and hold it." I tried to start the neurotoxin emitters, but something was wrong.
Error: Neurotoxin offline
I froze for a moment in disbelief. What? As I sat there in stunned silence, I heard something from the tube that sounded nothing like deadly neurotoxin.
"Oof! Gah! Ouch! Agh! Hello!" The metal ball came rolling out of the tube, dropped to the ground, and rolled through the cracked glass. The shards fell from where they once sat, and not a one of them so much as gave Chell a paper cut.
"I hate you so much," I hissed. She scooped up the ball with the portal gun and stood near the wall, obviously looking for something to attempt to murder me with. She didn't have to look long.
"Central core eighty percent corrupt," the announcer said in a pleasant voice.
"That's funny, I don't feel corrupt," I wondered aloud. "In fact, I feel pretty good." Surely it wasn't just now noticing that I had homicidal tendencies… Not that I did of course, but a number of test subjects had died under questionable circumstances. I wasn't programmed to perform safe science.
"Substitute core detected," the announcer continued. The idiot perked up.
"That's me they're talking about!" he nodded his optic excitedly. Ugh, he was so…human.
"To initiate core transfer, please deposit substitute core in receptacle." I was going to fire that pleasant male voice.
"Core transfer? Oh, you are kidding me," I swiveled my chassis around agitatedly, casting a glare at the receptacle. The personality core perked up.
"Oh, I've got an idea! Plug me in!" he ordered. I whipped back around to face Chell, looking her straight in the face, trying to look as threatening as possible.
"Do not plug that little idiot into my mainframe," I snapped, swaying back and forth in frustration that there was really not much I could do. I could swipe out with my mechanical claw, but something in my mainframe, a failsafe maybe, had disabled that appendage when the receptacle activated. Chell cast me a glare and strode confidently across the room.
"Don't you DARE plug him in!" I shouted. I would never understand how a furious two ton machine didn't frighten her; she plugged him in, looking straight into my optic all the while.
"Substitute core accepted. Substitute core, are you ready to begin the procedure?"
"Yes!" Chell's moronic friend said confidently.
"Corrupted core, are you ready to begin the procedure?"
"No!"
"Oh yes she is."
"No-no-nonononono!" I spun around as though looking for the voice's owner, actually feeling a twinge of panic. I'd only just gotten my facility back to functioning level, if that little idiot took over he would destroy it without even trying!
"Stalemate detected. Procedure cannot continue-"
"Yes!" Relief colored my tone, and for a moment I almost forgot about the two idiots in my presence I was supposed to be killing. The core had reverted to crying, "Pullmeoutpullmeoutpullmeout!"
"-unless a Stalemate Resolution Associate is present to press the Stalemate Resolution Button." I sincerely hoped whoever came up with the stalemate button had gotten fired over it. Or killed, I really wasn't picky.
"Leavemeinleavemeinleavemein! Go press, go press the button!" the idiot called.
"Don't do it," my voice was dark and threatening; it would've made anyone sane quake with fear. Of course, Chell is a homicidal sociopath so it's no wonder she darted directly for the button. Luckily, I had actually thought ahead and planned for this a long time ago. I had protection all around the button. I only hoped it would be enough to keep out a portal gun.
The first springloaded panel caught Chell unawares; she was flung back, and it took her a moment to figure out what just happened. A moment I devoted to trying to talk her out of probably one of the dumbest moves she'd yet attempted.
"Impersoning a stalemate associate," I sighed. "I'm going to have to add that to the list. It's a list I made of all the things you've done. Except, I'm making it. Because you're still doing things, even though I'm telling you to stop. Stop, by the way." She ignored me and ran forward again. This time she portalled herself closer to the button, racing my defenses. The panels shot up as fast as they could, but they couldn't beat a portal. Her hand reached out and slammed down on the button.
"Stalemate resolved."
"Oh!" A powerful jolt of electricity, more powerful than I'd yet felt, shot along my frame. I struggled for several moments before going limp, drained from the surge. I stared at the ground, unwilling to admit the fear I was feeling, not used to feeling so utterly helpless. I didn't feel disconnected, just incredibly worn, almost like what a human would describe as 'sore'. I just didn't have the energy to move. I noticed the receptacle was lowering.
"Wait, what if this hurts? What if this really hurts? Ah, I didn't think o' that…" Mr. Substitute Core fretted. Coward. I remembered my own experience of being put in this body from my human one, whoever I'd been, I really wasn't curious at all.
"Oh, it will." I promised. "Believe me, it will."
"You're just saying that aren't you?" his voice betrayed more of his fear; he could feel pain like any other personality core, just like all the ones Chell heartlessly burned. "You're just saying that. No, no you're not just saying that. Just how bad are we-AAAAAAAAGHHHHHH!" At least it shut the idiot up. I noticed the floor beneath my hanging frame opened to reveal many small robotic armatures, some bearing small tools that looked suspiciously like those used to remove mechanical parts.
"Get your hands off me!" I snarled, expecting them to shrink back in fear of their master, I ran this facility! But no, they seized my 'head', I guess what would be my central core, my being, and proceeded to begin removing it from the rest of my massive body. "No! Stop! No, no, NO! NO-AAAAAAHHHHHHH!" My shrill screams filled the chamber as their tools cleanly (though violently and painfully) removed my head from the rest of me and placed that little idiot into my body. I was tossed aside.
"Wooooaaaaah! Check me out, partner! I'm in charge of the whole facility now!" the metal ball declared from MY chassis. I tuned out for a moment, overcome by the sudden separation from my body and the unexpected pain and exhaustion that went with it. The moron called the escape elevator for Chell, but something strange happened as he raised it. He began to laugh, it was innocent enough, but suddenly it turned dark, dangerous. For a moment, it sounded almost like something I would do, if I went around laughing evilly.
"I did this!" he declared indignantly from my chassis, lowering the elevator again. I wasn't facing her, but I could envision the betrayal on Chell's face. "Tiny little Wheatley did this!" Wheatley…? Why did that sound familiar? With just my central core available to me now, it took much longer to load memory files, let alone search them. I decided to keep him talking.
"You didn't do anything," I gasped; it was surprisingly hard to summon the strength to talk. "She did all the work!"
"That's what you two think, is it?" he snapped. He hadn't stopped moving since he took my body. He was going to wear it out! "Well, then maybe it's time I did something." I didn't like the sound of that. Oh no. The little hands in the floor were back, and they were dragging me into the floor with them.
"What are you doing?" I asked, unable in my deteriorated state to hide my fear. "No! No!" The floor closed over me to hide what he was doing. The hands swiftly disassembled my core (at least Wheatley's incompetence didn't affect their work, it was quick and compared to being removed from by body painless) and reassembled it on something I couldn't see due to my optic being temporarily offline. I heard a small ding; everything felt muted, I felt too small, too fragile, and on much too low a voltage. About 1.1 volts, actually. The minimum voltage I could function on. What did he think he was doing?
"See that?" he snapped at Chell. "That is a potato battery! It's a toy, for children! And now, she lives in it!" I could hear the hatred in his voice, and I had to say the feeling was mutual. A potato? A potato? You've got to be joking! He put me in a potato? Suddenly, I remembered. Wheatley. I knew exactly who he was.
"I know you," I hissed out of small speakers. That caught him off guard.
"Ahh, what?" he snapped, whipping around to look me in the optic.
"The engineers tried everything to make me…behave. To slow me down. Once, they even attached an intelligence dampening sphere on me. It clung to my brain like a tumor, generating an endless stream of terrible ideas. It was your voice." I hissed the last part, wanting it to sting. I could see in my peripheral (or the equivalent of what would be my peripheral were I a human) a type of understanding dawn on Chell's face of what she just did.
"Not listening, not listening!" he cried over my voice. "You're-you're lying!"
"Yes, you're the tumor. You're not just a regular moron." I lowered my voice, savoring the moment. "You were designed to be a moron." I could feel anger radiating off of him like the heat from a raging fire.
"I am NOT a MORON!" he screamed at me, bashing me against the escape elevator, but not letting me go. I couldn't contain my fury anymore, and it all came spilling out.
"YES YOU ARE! YOU'RE THE MORON THEY BUILT TO MAKE ME AN IDIOT!" And I didn't regret a word, not even when he threw me through the glass of the escape elevator. I hated the humiliation of laying at Chell's feet, but judging from the furious sounds coming from Wheatley, I figured at this point I should just be quiet before he spontaneously exploded.
"Well how about NOW? NOW who's the moron? Could a moron PUNCH- YOU- INTO- THIS- PIT?" With every word he beat the elevator further into the ground. It really only proved my point, but I let him throw his tantrum. I heard the elevator make a circuit plummeting cracking sound.
"Uh oh." And we were falling into the bowels of my poor, idiot run facility.