*~II~II~II~[]*[]~II~II~II~*

Chapter Eleven: Playing Games

*~II~II~II~[]*[]~II~II~II~*

His real name was Silver Clancey. He was an award winning officer of Lunar City's military Special Forces, Elite Squadron, and a very important member of The Coalition. He had been on countless missions, some that could even be considered impressive outside the bounds of the city he helped to protect; some might say that he'd seen a lot for a man who was only thirty-five years old.

Clancey was a very smart man, and he had met Clifford and Mayor Jacobs nigh ten years ago when he had been twenty-five and fresh from his military training days and new as a resident of Lunar City. They had proposed that he join them, and he had accepted the invitation to The Coalition gratefully. He'd been working alongside Clifford ever since.

The main duty Clifford had assigned to him had been to oversee the retrieval of tech from the underground facility located due west of The Johnson House, known as Aperture Science. The activity within said facility had been monitored closely, to ensure their safety and to make sure they never walked into anything they had not been expecting; they had also ran many training courses detailing what should be done, should they find themselves trapped within the facility.

But Clancey was the only one whom Clifford had told the specifics of GLaDOS to.

The other members of the team that Mr. Clancey, a.k.a. Chief Silver, had led into the facility on that fateful morning when he'd first met Chell and Wheatley, had been kept in the dark about the murderous AI for fear that their curiosity might get the better of them on one of their thoroughly-planned-out expeditions. Clifford had ensured that they were properly trained in emergency protocol and had provided them with weapons that could be used in the event of aforementioned emergency instead, which they were required to keep with them at all times inside of the Laboratories.

But Clifford had not sent Clancey blindly into Aperture that morning; the two had discussed the gravity of the situation, and had decided that his team should not be warned that there was the chance that GLaDOS was active so that they could keep a clear head. He didn't like lying to his team, but it was for the best; these men were not as brave or as experienced as him. He could not expect them to have the confidence to walk into Aperture Science if they knew exactly what they could be walking into like he did, even if it was their job to do so.

And so he had led them in unaware.

*~II~II~II~[]*[]~II~II~II~*

The five men dangled helplessly like flies caught in a gigantic spider's web. The master of the Laboratories looked at each of them in turn, with something like amusement evident in the way she moved the white fiberglass of her faceplate and black optic housing. She thought she had them quite trapped, and it was true. Despite what Clifford and Doug Rattmann (who had had personal experiences with GLaDOS himself) had warned Clancey about, he had not expected the AI to be so hostile so quickly.

They had walked, quite plainly, into a trap—but it could not be helped, for he did not have the resources to enter the facility any other way. His mind was reeling for a solution, searching for a way out of their predicament, but he needed time. He needed to stall before the AI decided that it was time to start testing again.

"I am going to ask you one last time," GLaDOS asked the group of men swinging gently from the ceiling. "What are you doing inside of my facility? I know you didn't come here just because. Nobody comes here just because. And I'm not complaining, I'm just stating the facts."

With a meaningful glance at his team, he signaled for them to stay quiet. "We came here to talk to you," he lied. "We come from a place called Lunar City, it's a town not far from here. We work at a radio frequency monitoring station. We received a signal from your Laboratories a few days ago, and came here to investigate."

"A signal?" GLaDOS actually sounded surprised, which was a good thing for him—the longer he could keep the AI's attention on him and away from the test chambers meant he'd have longer to think.

"Yes, an electromagnetic signal—"

"I know what kind it was, you idiot."

She sounded angry, Clancey noticed, and distantly, he felt interested—why would that make her angry? Was she indeed as homicidal as Doug had said? At the time, he'd had a bit of trouble believing it due to Doug's… reputation, but now…

However, a moment later he noticed something. He saw that the cables the five were dangling from were all being controlled by use of a pulley-like system to his right, hidden away just behind the thick, armored panels. It gave him an instant idea, and he looked to his left to see who he could communicate it to.

It was Hadley. "When I say so, aim for two o'clock," he whispered as loudly as he dared, before addressing GLaDOS. "But our equipment isn't designed to read what it contained, just where it came from… and that it was sent from some kind of computerized network. Our records didn't show anything existing out here, as it's been farmland for decades, so we thought we'd investigate and we found you."

"You did not attempt to communicate with me wirelessly in return?" she asked him quickly.

For a split second, he was caught off guard—the tone of her voice had changed. She sounded less murderously chilling, and more—curious? Confused? Scared?

"No," he said slowly, feeling somewhat confused as to why she would ask this. "Why do you ask?"

"It is not important," she answered, and the hulking form of the AI seemed to shake herself and come to her senses. "I was just curious."

While she spoke, Clancey tensed, wrapping his hand around a small, round object clipped to his belt, and nodded once to Hadley. Just a bit longer—

"What's important is that you're here with me, now," finished GLaDOS. "And there's no one to stop us from testing for the rest of your lives."

"NOW!" he shouted, and simultaneously, each of them pulled a small, metal pin from the devices they held in their hands and threw them, hard. Clancey was aiming for a space that was maybe a foot wide, the gap in the panels behind which he'd seen the pulley; the grenade met its target and exploded violently, the force multiplied by Hadley's which hit a second later. The chamber shook like it had been hit by an earthquake as the pulley system was blasted into dust and the cables fell freely—all five of the men braced themselves for impact with the chamber floor as the metal claws disengaged.

GLaDOS yelled in pain and shock as an opaque cloud of dust and chunks of cement and panel rained down from the ceiling and the walls. Clancey fell about ten feet and landed hard but immediately flowed into a tuck-and-roll to save himself from injury, as did his partners. Knowing he had only seconds, he grabbed his nearest teammate by the arm—he could not make out who it was through the dust—and ran blindly, tripping on the loose panels that littered the floor.

They dodged more falling rock and panel arms and ran straight into the hole that had been blasted in the wall; the explosion had subsided enough for them to pass through safely, although it was still extremely hot. Fires became the only source of light as they plunged into what appeared to be a dark tunnel, blurred with smoke and waves of heat.

It wasn't until they had put a good amount of space behind them and had reached the entrance to an undamaged service stairway that Clancey stopped and turned around. The comrade who he had pulled through the hole with him turned out to be none other than Hadley; he had suffered a few cuts on his cheeks and hands and his forehead was singed but he looked to be okay. Clancey looked to the hallway behind him, expecting to see Parker, Eckley and Warner bringing up the rear, but it was empty.

"Where are the others?" Clancey asked Hadley immediately.

Hadley groaned and fell back against the wall and slid down it, holding his head in his hands. "I don't know, Chief," he said shakily. "One second, they were behind me, and then the next…"

The man groaned again and Clancey bent down on one knee. "Here, drink this," he said, and handed him a bottle of water.

"Thanks," mumbled Hadley. "I'm sorry, Chief…"

"It was not your fault."

He stood up and stared down the corridor, praying that in a moment, he'd see the three of them round the distant corner, but he knew they wouldn't. Hating himself for not going back for them, he threw his pack from his shoulders and unzipped it. The distraction they had created would only serve its purpose for so long; time was precious, and if he didn't make use of it now, none of them would live to see the surface world again. Eckley, Parker and Warner had been trained. They'd know what to do.

He pulled out a long metal instrument, and set it down. "We've only got one shot at this," he said to Hadley seriously, "So let's make it count."

*~II~II~II~[]*[]~II~II~II~*

GLaDOS had previously thought that the mute lunatic was the most infuriatingly stubborn human she would ever meet. She had been even worse than Doug Rattmann, which was saying a lot, because he had been quite bad himself—for almost an entire month he had evaded her.

But she'd learned a lot a since then. Which made the fact that these newcomers—who had never even heard of her before, according to them—had managed to surprise her even worse. It was insulting. They had just met. They had no reason to hate her. She hadn't even said anything more than the word 'test' and they'd already embarked on a personal attack against her and had destroyed half of her personal chamber.

She was absolutely not used to such a …forward… kind of foe.

Perhaps that was the most infuriating thing of all—it was the fact that they had gotten the best of her and had made the first move when she had not been ready. It was a low blow.

She had got them back, however; three of their number had been captured. Three of them was good enough for now—she'd deal with the other two later. She was currently prepping the first of the lot for testing, having placed the remaining two in long-term relaxation. The final two had adopted a more Rattmann-style of doing things, but she felt confident that they would not get far. She had Blue and Orange now, after all—and she sent a nonverbal ping to the two robots to be on the lookout for intruders.

The anger that had consumed her since she had been attacked subsided somewhat when she started testing. The sight of him down there, clad in bright orange, made something else begin to take its place instead. The subroutines that existed inside of her brain responded to the optical input, manually lowering her internal clocking rate and the frantic cycling of her CPU. This was what testing was like; when she was doing Science, all the world seemed right. It was the one thing that she found calming no matter what… call it base programming, primary directives, whatever, it all came down to one thing—it was what she was built to do, and it had been so long… she had not tested a human since before she'd been reunited with her body.

It was the only time when true order existed inside of Aperture. Once she had purged and stripped away the decay of decades, leaving behind only pristine halls and surgically-sterile chambers, and had fixed the many damaged and broken connections, they were able to move with her once more as a single organism. For when she slept, it slept; and when she tested, it tested, too. It was like having many sentient nerves that could move on their own and reacted to her barest whim, her most internal emotions. Through them, she could See; the sensory information from each panel and doorway and button was connected to and processed by her.

At the moment, though, they were telling her that something was wrong. Curious, she focused her attention even further on the test subject; the small servos inside of the closest observation camera whirred as she zoomed in.

The problem was apparent at once. There must have been a mistake—it was not possible. She must have forgotten to calibrate the emancipation grid. She watched as the test subject reached the corner of the room, and used the portal device to gather the cube. She was focused on the strange, computerized device that had been strapped to the test subject's left forearm, so focused that she failed to notice that something else was off, too—the static charge that existed within the frequencies she used to communicate with the chamber itself was much too high. Her last thought before the test subject dropped the cube on the button was that the test results wouldn't matter if he was cheating—

Oh, how very wrong she was. The button closed the circuit, sending a final signal through the already static-overladen network and the result was a shock of feedback that whined straight through the AI's system, resonating at her core and—as had been programmed many years ago by the scientists—her body read the stimulus as pure, unaltered pleasure.

It was electrical bliss. The visual input of the chamber swam before her optic and the next thing she knew the test subject was already in the elevator, waiting. She tried to focus through the aftermath and then was brought back to her senses by an unpleasant jolt—she knew for a fact that this emancipation grid had been calibrated correctly, and yet the test subject still had the strange contraption attached to his arm.

Well.

Two more chambers passed without incident, save for the …rather breathtaking… conclusions. GLaDOS was beginning to grow frustrated. She had still not managed to remove the machine from his arm, and because the pleasure center in her brain kept being overstimulated, it was very hard to keep focused and to decide what to do about it. Part of her did not care and just wanted him to complete the tests as quickly as possible, and that really worried her, because it was a sign that the testing protocols were indeed clouding her judgement and she was developing a dependence. The other, more logical part of her brain told her that this contraption was probably trouble and that she should remedy the situation as quickly as possible.

But as soon as she'd got to the point where she was ready to make a decision and forcibly remove it herself, he'd solve the test and all the world went to hell.

*~II~II~II~[]*[]~II~II~II~*

Testing, thought Eckley, was a piece of cake.

He had of course learned about Aperture's preoccupation with testing, and the function of the dual portal device through Clifford. At the time, he'd thought the training chambers they'd gone through in the basement of The Johnson House's laboratory were a waste of time, but now, he swore that if he were to ever see Clifford again, he'd have to think of some way to properly thank the man.

Who'd have thought that learning his way around Clifford's portal device replica would have paid off.

The device he'd learned on had been a little bit different; for example, it did not have the built-in function of being able to levitate objects. He'd had to use the PDD—or Personal Defensive Device—for that. He'd asked Clifford once, why he could not have just combined the ability to shoot portals with the other functions of the PDD, but Clifford had just laughed and said that if the PDD were any more complicated, it wouldn't fit on his arm.

It was fair enough. He had already designed the PDD to wirelessly manipulate the compound signature that a portal would bind to, anyways, making virtually any flat surface portal-able when used in conjunction with an Aperture-made portal device. He supposed this was enhancement enough.

This was why, when Eckley found himself captured by the omniscient AI and first in line for testing, he had not panicked. He was ready, and fully planned to give the AI exactly what she deserved.

What he had not counted on, however, was that the AI would be so thoroughly—pleased—by that fact.

"Aaaoohhh, I—well done, subject name here," she'd very obviously moaned.

"Did you just—?" Eckley looked at the button he'd just compressed with the cube, equal amounts horrified and intrigued.

"That was nothing," said the AI, and was it just him, or did she sound—drained? "You have performed admirably. Please proceed to the chamberlock."

Eckley had done as she'd asked, scratching his head in disbelief.

The following chambers had been similar. Not sure of what to make of the situation, he'd been keeping as strictly to the guidelines as he could and had not used the PDD yet. The chambers were still somewhat easy so there was no real good reason to use it, and if he was honest, he did have a little morbid curiosity about the noises she'd make whenever he finished and was worried they would not happen if he used the PDD.

It was… well, it didn't sound like the sort of thing he should be eavesdropping on, but his hands were tied… not that he minded much. He'd even sniggered quietly as he'd solved the last one.

Then, he'd reached a chamber that was the most difficult he'd seen yet. Acid pit, thermal discouragement beam, cube-and-button, check check check—Eckley was growing tired and impatient. There was still the matter that he had been split from the rest of his group—though he was sure that they were all okay wherever they were, time was wearing on and they needed to do something about it. They could not stay here forever.

Feeling the pressure, he decided to go ahead with the PDD and cheat. "All right, GLaDOS," he muttered under his breath with a devilish grin, "let's see how good you feel after this."

*~II~II~II~[]*[]~II~II~II~*

When she first saw it, she didn't believe it was real. She thought that somehow, the reward from the testing protocols must be causing her to hallucinate; it wouldn't be unprecedented. But alas no, she knew it must be real because the panels were picking up on it, too.

A portal had materialized where no portal should have been; right smack-dab in the middle of portal-resistant panels. It had been the panels' signal of agitation and distress that had alerted her to the phenomenon—this was really happening.

She watched as the test subject shot the adjacent portal on yet another portal-proof surface and it sent a shock of disturbed outrage through her.

"Test subject name here, I demand you tell me how you are doing that. This is not a game, and that is against testing protocols. I command you to stop. So stop."

Predictably, he did not answer, and continued to do it. She watched, feeling more and more static charge build up in her anger and helplessness. This was not how Science was to be done. Perhaps there should have been less static in her system, considering she ought to be building up a resistance to the solution euphoria soon, but she felt so angry… he really was cheating! Only the protocols kept her from forfeiting the test subject and squashing him with a pair of crushers. At this point, doing so might have qualified as being as satisfying as a burst of solution euphoria, so it was a hard decision… but in the end, her thirst for Science and disturbing enjoyment of watching what he was doing won out. It was much like picking a scab—she knew it was gross and painful and disgusting to watch and it really wasn't Science, but something inside her just didn't want to stop. She'd knew how good it would feel when he was finished.

Unless… unless it wasn't him. Unless it was actually something wrong with her and that was the reason why he could suddenly cheat. Had something happened, when she'd received the euphoria? Had it messed with the tests somehow?

That was impossible. And yet, she had thought she'd never feel the testing rewards again… and that even being transferred out of her body and back into it would not do it… she had been wrong before. Could she be wrong again?

It wasn't until she saw him do something even more uncanny and unacceptable that she knew for sure that it was not an oversight of her own or a hiccup or glitch in her system. He had used the device on his left wrist to shoot a laser into the thermal discouragement beam receptor. And what was more, it had worked.

How he had done it, she did not know. It was downright impossible—the system was not designed to accept anything but an Aperture Science thermal discouragement beam! But she could do little more than feel absolutely astonished before he'd finished the test and both the reward protocols and the anti-cheating protocols kicked on at exactly the same time and the heady, incoming rush of stimulus had been so much that she'd shrieked loudly and crashed.

*~II~II~II~[]*[]~II~II~II~*

The power surge had zapped through the entire facility. Clancey and Hadley were both working hard in the service stairwell when it hit. They'd just been about to test their machine—which took up most of the topmost landing—when the overhead lights flickered and the everlasting thrum of generated electrical power and moving components ceased.

Hadley swore loudly. "Shit! Did we blow something?"

Clancey had looked immediately up at the ceiling in surprise. "No," he said in confusion. "I didn't even hit the button yet."

"Damn it. Where'r we gonna get our power source, then?"

Clancey had hardly had a moment to consider this before there was a great rushing roar as the facility rebooted itself and the lights switched back on.

"Excellent," Clancey grinned, and pressed the button, causing their great machine to whirr to life.

*~II~II~II~[]*[]~II~II~II~*

That, thought GLaDOS, she had not been expecting.

The double surge had crashed her. Nothing in the history of Aperture, aside from the mute lunatic, had ever crashed her. She had not expected the effect of cheating—and as she remembered, she brought up the live feed from the test chamber in her brain—cheating!—to be so… intense.

But god, if it weren't a particularly nice way to be crashed.

She'd meant to congratulate the test subject, who was waiting patiently in the elevator, on completing the test, but at that moment something else happened. She suddenly felt more utterly exhausted than she'd ever felt in her entire life. It was a swelling, spreading, consuming exhaustion that was fogging her very brain. She thought, at first, that it had been an effect of the overstimulus, that the power surge had physically damaged her and that was why she could hardly think, but no—with a massive effort, she was able to diagnose the root cause of the problem as being an absolutely huge draw of power from an external source.

Something monstrous and was sucking her energy, and she didn't have the resources to deal with it. She could not lift a panel. She literally could not defend herself in any way.

The chamber before her pitched and swam. Her world, her body, faded in and out of blackness. She was so, so tired… she wanted to sleep very badly… but she never, never engaged sleep mode… ever… she was scared…

For the second time in her life, GLaDOS had been beaten at her own game.

And that was terrifying.

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