Separation
Normally when you're desperate, you'll accept any sort of hospitality. Any meal is great, any kindness is well-received, and any sort of help is welcoming. Well, you haven't stepped into the Aperture Science Medical Bay. I must say, GLaDOS has done a pretty good job with refurbishing and all, but this place is still intimidating.
The first things I see are the bright floodlights, making the white room look even whiter. Ugh, it kind of hurts my eyes. It's like snow on a sunny day, with all that white reflecting into your eyes and driving you mad from having to squint the whole time.
"Hello and welcome to the Aperture Science Medical Bay," the announcer says, "please remember that all sharp objects should stay locked in the cabinets and away from your wrists."
I walk through the area slowly, wary of any traps or new test chambers. As much of a rush I get out of the infinite fall, I'd rather not go through the whole "killing her" thing again, because that just worked out so well the last time.
As I move further through the long room, I can see that GLaDOS set up a small room for me. Well, there's a bed, a toilet, a radio, the Companion Cube (wow, she did bring it down here), and my backpack. There's a black liquid on the floor underneath my bag…oil from it, Wheatley, the traitor who turned overprotective.
Sitting down on the bed, I rethink everything that's happened today. The damned robot came back, turned my life upside-down, inadvertently caused two of my friends to be in major trouble or dead (Erik better not be dead), made me flee my home, and returned to Aperture Science. What the Hell is wrong with my life?
But, he tried to save me; he tried to keep my identity a secret. Those guys would obviously recognize me and bring me back to Black Mesa. They'd make me hand over the portal gun, the Companion Cube, and Wheatley himself. Was it doing it out of self-preservation? No, couldn't be…he wanted me to leave him behind, I just know it.
I jump a bit as a robotic arm comes down from the ceiling with a cotton swab. Something tells me that GLaDOS has treated enough humans to know what she's doing right now. That thought doesn't comfort me in the slightest.
How many others were here before me? Hundreds? Thousands? Are there any more? Instincts tell me yes while my mind screams no. I really hope I'm wrong.
My mind kicks back into the present and I remove my jacket so the cut can be treated. Wheatley pops back into my thoughts. What do I feel for the robot? Sure, I do forgive him, but I'm still incredibly mad at him. Even so, what good is it for me to hold a grudge? He came back, he apologized, and he nearly got himself killed trying to save me in the only way he knew possible. Then again, Wheatley doesn't know too much.
So, what do I actually feel towards him? Given time and the circumstances, I think we could be friends. I do not trust it with anything, but I'm willing to give him another chance.
The robotic arm begins to wrap gauze around my arm, stopping the blood flow. Man, how much blood did I lose? I'm starting to feel tired. Maybe a bit of sleep wouldn't hurt.
Yawning, I lie down on the surprisingly comfortable bed and close my eyes. A few hours peace is enough for me.
I'm running somewhere. Why am I running? What am I running from? Wait, I'm running from something? Why aren't I kicking its ass?
Thick rock walls surround me as I use the portal gun's weak blue light to guide me through the tunnel. There's a voice at the end of the tunnel. Not like one of those voices you hear in the "about to die" scenes in movies. No, this one sounds so familiar, and so confused.
Bursting through the door at the end, I enter a large room. One side is pitch dark; the other side is pure white. In the middle of the black section, I see Wheatley. He looks…terrible, on his last leg of life. Basking in the white expanse, I see GLaDOS. And here I am, standing right smack in the middle of the two.
"Chell, I'm so sorry. I never meant for it to happen, I really didn't. Do you believe me?" he asks desperately, as if this is the last thing he'll ever say. I nod at him. A look of relief washes over him, but his optic grows dimmer.
"Alright, you had your chance. Now, let's get to the killing." GLaDOS says menacingly. I shake my head furiously.
"Don't get involved. It's the best for both of us." Wheatley states, gesturing with his upper handle to something above me. I follow the handle and, sure enough, there's a crusher over me.
"Take one step towards him, and you both die." GLaDOS "warns." If she had the opportunity to, she'd probably kill us both in a matter of seconds.
"Chell, don't move. Don't panic. Everything will be fine." He tells me. His words sound so soothing, so true. I hold my ground.
"Good. Now I can begin." Suddenly, the beginning of a Thermal Discouragement Beam aligns itself with Wheatley. He looks at me with such sadness; I can't help but feel pity for him.
"Goodbye Chell. I want to let you know…I love you." He whispers to me, yet I can hear all of it crystal clear. We both hear the hum of the laser, knowing that we have seconds to say what must be said. "You don't have to back, I just want a-"
His last statement is cut off as the beam lasers through his circuitry to the central power core. The optic dims to a deep navy, then to black. My knees give way and I collapse. What should I be feeling? Sadness for losing him again? Anger for abandoning me once more? Pity for something that could never be?
I don't love him, but I don't want him to die. He needed that second chance more than anything in the world.
The whole scene begins to dissolve around me, slipping more and more from my vision. The last thing I here is GLaDOS.
"Mathematical error corrected."
My eyes snap open. Bad move. I try my best to adjust to the harsh lights, but it takes me a minute before I can actually manage to sit up without making myself go blind.
"Oh good, you're awake now. You fell asleep three hours ago. I just wanted to let you know-no, I'm forced to alert you of a certain moron. If you really want to see him, he's back on his management rail. Also, I managed to get your blood stains out of the floor. Impressed?" GLaDOS says over the intercom. I take a moment to clear my head before walking back to the lift. Weird, I actually feel better now.
Once I'm in the lift, some music begins to play. The tune is so melancholy and yet so familiar. I swear I've heard this song in a test chamber before. It had something to do the trials and exile.
"I had to adjust the bed for you before. I didn't realize how much weight you actually seemed to gain from the last time you were here. Maybe a few tests would fix that up right away. However, I know you are not here for that, nor do I actually have the time to test you. ORANGE and BLUE have done surprisingly well." She tells me. Yeah, it's great to see you to GLaDOS.
"Hey! I'm up here! Oh, I am so glad you're here right now, She's been giving me nothing but grief!" Wheatley shouts, sliding to the scene on his rail. As much of a pain in the ass as GLaDOS can be, she did a pretty good job for three hours of work. Wheatley looks a lot better; his handles are back, his optic is fixed, and most of the dents are gone. He still sparks randomly, but it doesn't seem to bother his cheery personality in the slightest. Yup, this is definitely the old Wheatley in front of me.
"Don't stress yourself out moron; you could easily die within the next 20 minutes without any assistance from me." GLaDOS says in that cold, calculating voice of hers. Wheatley shakes off the remark and continues to just…look at me. I raise an eyebrow and he sheepishly looks away. I have a hunch that if robots could blush, Wheatley would be an impressive shade of scarlet right about now.
"I…um…the repairs aren't done completely. I'm at 85% functionality right now. But that's a B, so I'm perfectly fine with that right now." He nods to emphasize his point. I'm slightly surprised that GLaDOS hasn't pulled anything on us yet. Maybe my luck's finally turned around. Just as I'm about to smile, an alarm goes off.
I turn my head quickly has a hissing reaches my ears. One of the lifts is rising out of the ground. Crap, are there actually people in there? GLaDOS' optic pops out a bit in surprise, and then dims to a dull yellow. What the Hell is going on?
The lift opens and I feel vulnerable as the people walk out. How the Hell did they find me? How the frigging Hell did they manage to get in? A mixture of frustration and dread cloud my thoughts as two of the Black Mesa survivors walk out.
"So, we find you here. Ah Chell, I expected as much." The lead man says. He has a nasty bruise on his head from where the portal gun hit him. I smirk with satisfaction. "Now, come with us peacefully and we'll let you go easy." Yeah right. I don't move from my spot.
Faster than I can think, the other man lunges at me. I hate to say it, but he manages to stick a knife to my neck. "Try anything and I'll kill you." He whispers into my ear. Ok, I may be mute, but I'm not that stupid!
"Get away from her!" My eyes dart to the source of the voice, Wheatley. He's sparking like crazy now, either due to his unfinished repairs or anger.
"Or else what? From the looks of it, this place has been out of it for a while now. It took me so long to jack the elevator." The other man says, casually walking towards the personality sphere above him.
"Or I'll send the whole place crashing down! I know how to do it!" Wheatley threatens. I want to smack my forehead. GLaDOS was right about him making terrible decisions…
"Then you're friend will be killed too."
"Oh…um, I didn't quite think of that…" Yeah, no duh!
"I'll be going then." The man turns his back on the small robot and the one holding me drags me towards the lift. Oh shit, oh shit, there's no way out. I don't even have the portal gun.
"Wait!" Both men and I are startled by the cry. It wasn't the unexpectedness of the shout, but the tone. Wheatley sounded really desperate, almost too human.
"What do you want now moron?" the lead asks. I can see Wheatley just steaming at the comment, but he applies his own form of self-restraint and calms down. Wow, impressive.
"How about I make you a deal?" What could he possibly be doing?
"I'm listening."
"You leave Chell here and pretend you never found her or the facility."
"What do I get?"
"You can take me back to Black Mesa with you. That way, you and your friend get all the credit for finding me. I mean, your technicians will take me apart and they'll eventually find all the information they need about this place, so you won't even have to tell them the way. Just tell them that you found me out in the woods abandoned by someone and then once your scientists crack me open, you'll get all the credit. How does that sound?" He…just offered himself up for me. Wheatley, you frigging idiot!
"It's a deal. I won't tell them about her. Besides, they won't care about her once they see you." The man snaps his fingers and the knife leaves my neck. I'm in too much shock to do anything at the moment. I barely register Wheatley detaching from his rail and landing on the cold, hard floor.
The leader scoops him up and whacks him for good measure. Anger builds up inside of me and I grab Wheatley back.
"Chell, don't do this. I'm doing this to let you go free. You wanted your freedom, right? Do me a favor and take it. I want you to be happy. Just grant me that one wish." He whispers. No, there's no way I'm letting him go this fast. I shake my head furiously.
"Don't make this harder than it is Chell, please. Let me go so you can keep going with your life. You can be with your friends again! How about that?" Something wet rolls down my cheek. Suddenly, I feel a small shock and I let go of him.
"I'm sorry." That's the last thing I heard as he is dragged away by them. I don't move from my spot even as the elevator leaves. I can't move.
He's gone, and there's nothing more I can do.
A/N: Yep, I split them up again. *insert evil laugh here* It's really to set up a longer story arch so I could develop Chell's feelings a bit more. Just to let you know, this is not going to turn into a Human!WheatleyxChell, a Robot!ChellxWheatley (should I make one? Could be interesting), or a "Wheatley has a new body" romance in any way, shape, or form. I don't have a problem with any of these since people have done a wonderful job with them.
Yes, I am talking to you: CrystalLotus98, RisuQ-theQisslent. Awesomeness, right there beside this sentence, that's a load full of awesome. Don't forget x Mostly Harmless x who I've mentioned before. Thanks for the kudos and kudos to you too! That also goes for everyone reviewing, favoriting, and alerting this story. I honestly cannot thank you enough for making this story such a huge success.
Anyway, I know I disappointed a lot of people with the Space Core/huge A/N interlude, so as an apology, I'll try my best to update three times this week-end. I'm going to have quite a bit of time on my hands tomorrow so I'll try my best for two updates in one day. If I'm lucky, this should all work out.
Oh greg, I saw your review and, as I stated above, I'm sorry that the SPACE chapter was disappointing. I had a feeling a lot of people would be. Also, I didn't mean to curse you. I've been having the same trouble. The game crashes on me whenever I die (I had to go through the free fall scene three times before actually moving on) so I just restarted Steam and I guess it got an update today. I've yet to try it out, but I read from a previous update that the game had started crashing on people. If you're using the Steam PC/Mac OSX version, I suggest you wait and restart Steam. Sorry that the game's crashing on you.
Alright, I'm going to tell you all a little secret that will no longer be a secret after I type it out. Now, please don't flame me or make this ten times more dramatic than it needs to be. I'm going to lay it on you, it's pretty heavy. Here we go:
I haven't finished Portal 2 yet.
There! I said-er, typed it! Don't say anything please! I know what happens, hence this story, but I refuse to spoil any lines for myself outside of the dialogue previously revealed by Valve before the game came out. I know the lemons line since my friends decided to tell me about it. Please, no flames for this. Astonishment, yeah, go ahead, but nothing over-the-top like, "WTF? WHY THE HELL ARE YOU WRITING THIS? GET OUT OF HERE YOU IDIOT!" The reason that this is up is because I had the idea and I didn't want it to fade away until finally deciding to discard it. So there, now you know. I really am serious about reviews though, I really don't want a flood of them coming in and being angry that I started something before I finished the game.
Next up will still be a Wheatley POV chapter so we'll see what he encounters as Chell expresses her anger to GLaDOS for doing nothing when Black Mesa infiltrated Aperture. Cave Johnson was not in this chapter, but he'll have a few lines later on. Well, of course they have to go back to the facility! Also, ATLAS and P-body are going to really be introduced to the story next Chell chapter.
Warning! Paradoxes will occur in this story. Later though, when more stuff happens. Now if you excuse me, I have to run away from the Legion of PortalAnons. Bye!