We are nearing the end now. Is there going to be a grand finale, a giant fight for life or death? who knows? Oh yes, I do.
Chapter 10
It had taken a while, (well, quiet a lot of whiles to be exact), but CC had finally come to the terms he was now a cube.
And he was not even kidding. He was literally a cube. A companion cube to be precise. Not that the teen had any idea what that entailed. He had no eyes, no mouth, not even a real body.
He was just a lingering awareness, fading fast, of what he had once been, vaguely conscious enough to realize he had once been another being.
But he knew it wouldn't be long before he lost grip on the slight sense of self he had left.
Please, someone help me!
Chell bit her lip hard in an effort to subdue the tears threatening to spill from her eyes.
What an idiot she had been. What had she been thinking.
All her life she had spent yearning for some far fetched sense of adventure. Something greater she was destined to become. Some adventure she had yet to experience.
But in the process, Chell had closed her eyes to the reality of danger. And now this had caused her to lose her only real friend.
She thought it had been bad when she realized CC was gone. The cool boy, sympathetic to everyone, who even spared her a smile once in a while.
This was infinitely worse. Wheatley had been there next to her all along. Questioning her every step of the way, but never actually leaving her side.
And now he was gone, captured. God knows what they where doing to him right now. Judging by those files the mute had a glance at earlier, it would not be anything good.
Her hands slapped against cold metal as she squirmed her way through another ventilation duct she had encountered, apparently the only way of the small landing she had jumped upon.
There was a light at the end of the tunnel, and maybe she could still find and save her friends.
She pushed against the grate with all her might. Apparently it wasn't stuck to begin with, for she easily pushed it open and tumbled out, 3 feet to the ground.
Chell found herself lying on the cold floor of what looked to be some kind of lab, though it was suspiciously bare to be of any use. Walls, floor and ceiling... everything was white.
There was some kind of elongated display on the wall, sporting various weird looking symbols and the number 2.
Every corner of the room had a camera in it, it's light blinking a dull red glow.
Suddenly, a mechanical voice started talking.
"Hello, and welcome to..."
This was officially the worst day of Wheatley's life. And yes, he was counting the day his family took a trip to the zoo and he managed to fall into the chimpanzee enclosure.
Though that had been a breeze too.
Still, it was slightly better than being painfully ripped out of his own body and put inside a small metal ball, attached to a railing on the ceiling.
He still had eyes, or at least 1 eye, though he found his vision to be slightly blue tinted. He could actually see his discarded body laying for that on the floor, giving him a sick feeling in the pit of his (now absent) stomach.
He could also still talk, though he kind of sounded like a speak-and-spell and he didn't need to move his mouth to do so anymore. Figures he would still be a horrible stutterer, even with technological enhancements.
And of course he still had the ability to move, though it was slightly restricted to a horizontal movement along his rail.
Still, there were worse things to become, he had no doubt.
With not much else to be done. He started sliding left idly. If he was going to be a ball, (or a corse, as the scientist who had 'operated' on him had insisted) he might as well do something else besides, hanging around.
Ha, good one. He had to make sure to remember that one for when Chell came to save his ass.
Glados had been wandering the halls of the 'aperture science testing facility' for a while now, and had determined 2 very important facts.
First of, everyone seemed to know who she was, so at least her reputation as Cave Johnsons daughter came in useful once in a while. They seemed to be rather scared of her in fact, and they might as well be. She had to employ most of her carefully maintained patience to deal with these blubbering morons thinking they can play god, with her rechearch.
Secondly, this place needed a map. Or some carefully constructed directions. Typically her father to make the most impractical, farfetched layout for a science facility anyone could ever come up with.
Except maybe that Wheatley guy in her science class. He seemed pretty vague too.
But that was entirely besides the point.
Rounding the next corner, Glados finally found herself coming upon the main observatory, the place she deduced her father was most likely hanging out. He was just the kind of man to be obsessed with watching everything unfold. He was also one to plan ahead, so she was slightly unsure of what she would encounter.
Quiet an anti-climax, it turned out. Her father was indeed sitting in a chair, observing various monitors displaying feeds from all over the facility. He was most probably running tests, even now.
He swiveled around like some second rate James Bond villain, taking immense pleasure in the show, and looked his daughter straight in the eyes.
"Ah, there you are." he said. "That took longer than I expected. I take it by now you have seen what I have accomplished. What we have accomplished."
he indicated the displays with a vague gesture. There was not a trace of remorse in that carefully arranged face, not that Glados had expected there to be.
"I had nothing to do with these." She said in obvious disgust. "It was just supposed to be a theory."
She quickly composed herself, knowing anger would be most pleasing to her parent. He had always been a drama queen.
"Like you didn't know what they were for when you were designing them." he said it in an idle way, nonchalant even. Truly, he couldn't care less about what she thought. He had already accomplished his goal.
They had been doing the same room for 2 hours now, and still were no closer to solving it. The fact that their communication was limited to awkward hand gestures and mechanical beeps didn't help much either.
It hadn't taken Penny and Atlas long to figure out the basic concept about the strange devices they had been given. It made portals, simple as that. Gateways that would under any circumstances be breaking every single rule of physics, but in this case made only slightly less sense than the obvious fact that she and her friend were now robots.
Penny controlled one half of the portal, Atlas the other, and all tests could basically be broken down to them helping each other from point A to B to C, until they reached an exit, leading to another room and starting the same process all over again.
This room was quiet an enigma though. It was equipped with a blue-ish, slightly shimmering screen, translucent. When passed through, their guns gave a slight jiggle and all portals they had carefully placed disappeared on the spot.
It was an enigma, and neither had any idea how to evade it's effects. And the fact that the supporting robot voice telling them what to do was getting quiet impatient, swinging mashy spike plates around, didn't help either.
Chell had been finishing rooms at an alarming rate, moving from 2 to 11 in a matter of half an hour. She had found an 'aperture science hand-held portal device', which she concluded was just a fancy way of saying she had a gun that could shoot gateways through reality.
Had she not been in a life-threatening environment, Chell might have been intrigued by this strange anomaly. She had been studying the possibility of teleportation for quiet some time, even planning on writing a thesis about it, but this technology was entirely new to her.
Still, kind of cool.
She had broken a view of the camera's observing her, but found none of them to be very usefull in figuring out the reasoning behind this place or a way to get back out again.
Chell did notice there were a view spaces being prepared to be observatories in the walls, with glass walls watching out over the testing chambers, but they were still under construction, and therefor empty.
A faint thumping from a wall caught her attention. A rail was coming out the wall, moving through the room and disappearing into an opposite side. There was a hole just big enough for the rail to fit through, but upon closer inspection Chell saw the entire panel could be opened. Exposing an opening of just 2 by 2 feet tall.
She went to work doing just that, prying at the edges to open the hatch, when the thumping stopped and a voice reached her.
"You, person. Would you be so kind to open this thing for me. I seem to be a bit... Indisposed at the moment. That is to say, I don't have any hands."
The voice seemed to be a bit too familiar for Chell's tastes, she set out pulling even harder, knowing for sure she wanted this thing gone.
"Well, I used to have hands, but now i don't. Well... I still do, but I'm not in me anymore, if you catch my drift. It's like..."
The voice cut of as Chell finally managed to pry the lid open, revealing a small, round device, attached to the railing. It slid out wearily, casting a glowing blue eye onto it's surroundings.
Then it fell on Chell and seemed to open wider in surprise, for as far as that was possible.
"Wow, I actually found you pretty easily. That must be the very first time in my live god actually had mercy on me." The thing exclaimed excited. Chell just raised her eyes in confusion. She had a decent idea who she was looking at, there was no-one else that talked like that really, but her mind hadn't quiet registered it yet.
Seeing the confusion in her eyes, the ball went on:
"It's me! Wheatley! I know I don't look it, but I'm actually here. Well, not really, since I'm also back there, but..."
He trailed of as Chell just face palmed. Typical Wheatley to get changed into this thing.
"What do you mean, 'it's already done'?" a shrill voice called out, disturbing the heavy silence hanging over the facility.
Was her father for real? She could barely believe it. If what he said was true, not only had he completed her research without her, but it was already over. There was nothing left to do. They could basically shut this place down.
Well, except for the fact that the schools most generous sponsors had a lot of other science related things (and less science related) they needed testing, so at least building place didn't go to waste.
Still, if this was true and there was absolutely no reason to believe it wasn't, then...
"Is she gone? What did you do to her?" She questioned, finally able to regain her well practiced monotone of disinterest.
"She is. She is already in here." Cave responded, patting the huge console next to him. "She is not yet activated though. I needed to make sure of a few things first."
He smiled, his eyes never leaving her face as his hand moved over to a suspicious set of buttons.
"With one small press, Caroline will live forever..."
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