Chapter 11

PANG! PANG-PANG! PANG!

Bullets whirled around Wall•E and threatened to puncture into his front as he charged at the turret. He dodged them the best that he could, using a cube as a shield and battling ram. He hid his head behind it, so that he couldn't get shot in his optics and perhaps become partly blind and have more difficulty with speed tasks in the next tests.

A bewildered scream and panicked flailing of bullets shooting at a wall indicated to him that he had knocked down the turret. After it stopped shooting and announced "Shutting down," then he placed the cube down, pausing to take in the new environment and find out the next half of the test. Then he noticed something moving up the side of the dark platform he stood on, when he looked at it, he realized it was a button.

He placed the cube gently to the side, so that it did not fall into the bottomless pit below the narrow passage way that led him to this new clearing. Then he turned around and pressed the button. Immediately, alarms went off, things began to move, and he freaked out, hiding behind underneath the cube.

As he hid, he watched helplessly as doors in the walls opened, and red search beams stared straight ahead. Wall•E's brows sprung up. Twenty… No thirty… No…

About fifty or more doors with turrets that were in position opened in rows of five. They went in a complete circle around the chamber. Wall•E looked way up above, zooming in to see how far it went. That's when he realized that there was a platform that he needed to get onto to get out of there. Of course, it was above every single row of turrets. He shrunk down low into his cube, trying to make sure the turrets didn't see him, but it was too late.

"Deploying."

"Hello."

"Target acquired."

"I see you."

"There you are."

"AAAAAAHHH!" Wall•E screamed, grabbing the cube and his portal gun and racing fast like lightning to try and get out the way that he had come in, hiding in the in-cove that was at the entrance. He looked back at the huge clearing, then he noticed that he could portal into the rooms with the turrets, or at least most of them.

There were some rooms that were completely dark, and some that you could only put a portal on the top, side, or behind. But if he had to get into the rooms, he would have to do it fast, because the ones across from them would be able to see him and he would be doomed. He stretched his neck to try and see the ledge that he needed to get on to get to the chamber lock.

He could not see how he could get up there passed the turret rooms, but then he noticed that there was two tilted walls above two of the turret rooms, on different levels. He connected that with momentum immediately, but when he looked for the place that he would probably land, he saw that it would only make him fall to his death. The place in the center wasn't helpful, either, for it was brown, and he couldn't put portals on it.

Wait… Cube… He had to have gone through the previous part of the chamber to get a cube for a reason… He looked around, there seemed to be no places where there was a button. What if the button was in one of the rooms with the turrets? Which meant he was forced to have to carry the cube with one hand and shoot portals with his portal gun in the other hand; it wouldn't be that accurate, and hopefully accuracy wasn't the key in this chamber.

He adjusted to grab the cube with one hand and be able to carry the portal gun with the other. Then he searched himself over to see whether or not he was missing anything. When he concluded that he hadn't, he nodded to himself and began. Placing the red portal on the wall next to him, and shooting the yellow one in the highest room that he portal in one of the highest rooms he could shoot into.

As quick as he could, he put the cube in front of him and went through the portal, hearing the turrets of the opposite side target onto him, and he came up behind the other turret. He accidently crashed into the turret, and it fell to its doom. Feeling sorry for it but knowing he had to keep things going, he cubed up mostly and hid behind the cube, looked at all of the rooms as bullets flew passed him and clanked against the cube.

There was one room that was on the next level above, and all of the walls and ceiling could hold a portal, but it was glassed off except for one hole in the middle. He snuck his hand around and shot a red portal into that room. Thankfully, it made it in fine so he backed up through the portal, knocking over the turret that was behind the glass barrier, and placed the yellow portal on the opposite wall so that the other turrets couldn't shoot through the portal to get to him.

Thankful to be behind glass, Wall•E turned toward the back of the room, "Ooooh…" He whistled in amazement. In front of him was another clearing, but bigger. Much, much bigger. He looked around it, there was the button! Right in the middle of the room, surrounded by… Was that water? It seemed probably easy to wade through.

He placed the cube down in it, going to use it to stand on and he'd just hop along with it to get to the middle; but as soon as he touched the cube to the water, it started to sizzle and burn up, so he immediately pulled it off of it.

"Careful, that Aperture Science Emancipation Acid really takes a liking to metals of all sorts." GLaDOS said. It had been a while since she had spoken. Something started to move up above, and he looked up to see a huge screen coming out of the wall. Some kind of rectangular metal thing with a yellow light in the center was on it. Then it started to move some more and GLaDOS explained, "I'm installing a big screen television into every extremely difficult chamber. So you can have the pressure of knowing I'm watching you as you stare blankly at this big empty room. Now, I bid you good luck."

Wall•E groaned as he glanced around, wishing that this would just be over with. He wondered what was going on with Eve, she was probably doing a better job than he was… Wall•E sighed in exhaustion, his power level was started to get low, and if he didn't find a way out of there soon, he may be in some big trouble…