HELLO I AM STILL HERE and I am so so so so sorry it took me so long to edit it. BUT! It is still Saturday, at least in my time zone, so I'm still posting this on time! Hope you guys enjoy.

By the way, I've actually finished the fic now. Just have to edit the final chapters and everything will be set! So stay tuned…

"Why are we stopping?"

Doug leaned against the wall, staring down at the floor. It was only a short distance from the turret production line to the neurotoxin generator, but he needed to pause for a moment—this would require some planning, and that was hard for him to do without the cube by his side.

"Doug?"

He started out of his thoughts. "It's—the neurotoxin is more complicated than the turrets," he admitted. "We can't just throw a turret into it to shut that down."

"Maybe not, but we have a plan for this, don't we?"

"We do, by the loosest definition of the word." He shook his head. "If we can somehow use the pneumatic diversity vents to redirect acid into here… but to do that, we would have to find a chamber that has both vents and acid."

"And by going to a chamber, we would be putting ourselves directly in her line of sight." Caroline tilted herself on her rail. "This is a dilemma, isn't it?"

"And it's the only plan we have, unless you know of some other way to stop the generator."

"I'm afraid not," she admitted, her upper handle drooping. "I don't think there's any sort of sentient camera there for me to trick."

"Then it's our only option, isn't it?" Doug frowned, wrapping his arms around his middle. He wished the cube were here—it would have come up with a better plan. It always did.

There was a quiet beep, and Caroline twitched. "There," she said, and he looked up. "I think I've found a chamber we can use."

"Well, that's something," he muttered, straightening. "I guess I can set up the grills first, and then we'll go from there."

As they moved closer to the neurotoxin generator room—placed helpfully close to the daycare—Doug bit his lip, glancing up at the rail. It might, he thought, be better to set up the emancipation grill in here, in case it was out of reach in the next room, or if they ran into trouble when they got there. They passed through the daycare room, and Caroline flicked on her flashlight as they paused to admire the ancient science fair projects.

"Hungry?" Caroline asked, her optic tilted in a half-joking manner as she illuminated the old potatoes.

"Not enough to eat raw, rotten potatoes," he muttered, though his mouth watered anyway—when was the last time he'd eaten? It… it was when they'd first been attacked by a drone, and that had to have been at least a couple days ago. And he hadn't had a drink of water for some time, either… And, of course, his food and water had been in the cube. Heaving a sigh, he continued moving on through the room, getting closer to the neurotoxin generator room. Eventually he spotted where the rail led into the wall—it was up a bit high, but, tossing his tool kit up, he landed it in the passage and hefted himself up into it. Once he was up, his stomach growled audibly.

"Sorry," Caroline said, pausing to look around. "I shouldn't have brought that up."

"It's all right." He pulled the tools he needed out of the case. "I'm used to being hungry."

"…I think I'm starting to get used to it."

At first Doug only nodded and began his work, but when the words sank in, he froze, turning to look at her.

"Don't worry about it," Caroline said with a shake of her optic. "It's—it's been this way for a while now. I still get hungry, thirsty, tired… but I'll get used to it."

Doug's stomach churned—suddenly he didn't feel so hungry anymore. Sure, she didn't need to eat or sleep, but the idea of having those urges with no means to get rid of them… he shuddered. "We'll be out of here soon," he said quietly, and Caroline only nodded in response.

As he set up the grill—which hadn't been too difficult, since he remembered working with them before—his mind tried to focus itself around the whispers swirling around his head. Once the grill was set up, the two of them would have to go into the room, place a portal somewhere by the generator, set up the next grill, and get into that test chamber Caroline had found. The more he thought about it, the more he began to doubt their plan. But then, his other plan—sending her to take down GLaDOS—had worked, crazy as it had been… hadn't it?

The emancipation grill materialized over the rail, and Doug nodded in satisfaction. "That's done," he said, putting away his tools and easing himself off of the ledge. "How's the room ahead look?"

"Empty, from what I can tell."

"Let's go, then." With that, the scientist and the core walked and whirred respectively through the blast door and tunnel, Caroline's connector passing harmlessly though the grill. They crossed another set of catwalks, walking past the generator itself, and passed by what appeared to be a set of grinders, though nothing was being sent through them. When Caroline gave Doug a curious look, he only shrugged.

"They're supposed to destroy the defective turrets that come through, but, since we've done our job…"

"Well that's good. Here's hoping this next part of our plan goes just as well." She moved ahead of the elevator, looking around the platform above. "You can get a better view for the generator up ahead, it looks like, but the rail doesn't lead outside the building again."

"Less work for us." Once the elevator reached the top, Doug stepped out and took a look for himself. A shudder racked his frame as old memories haunted him—he'd never liked this place. As many of the unethical experiments he'd participated in, he'd never understood why they needed such vast amounts of neurotoxin. And now…

"Science rhymes with compliance. Do you know what doesn't rhyme with compliance? Neurotoxin."

Why had he been the only one to survive that? Why hadn't there been others? Why had they been so foolish as to ignore his warnings in the first place?

"Doug? The rail here doesn't lead anywhere—you won't need to set up another grill."

He gave a start and shook his head. Now was not the time to get wrapped up in survivor's guilt, though it still nagged at him as he walked through the observation structure and over to the annex. The generator stood like a tower, with several large tubes attached to it, transporting the neurotoxin throughout the facility. But, looking around, he saw no portal-conducting surface nearby. He was almost certain that there had once been a route here where panels were shipped, but if there had been, it was blocked off now.

Doug stood there at the annex, staring blankly at the towering behemoth in front of him as the horror of their situation sunk in: Their plan required the use of a portal-conducting surface, and there were no longer any here. They had no way of disabling one of GLaDOS's strongest weapons.

The images flashed through his mind—the green-tinted air, people gasping and writhing on the floor, choking in the poison, mounds of dead bodies littering the hallways, and that voice, over everything else, that voice taunting him, constantly, never stopping—

"You're all that's left, you little lab rat DOUG! DOUG! WATCH OUT!"

What? That wasn't—

Screee!

Doug spun around to find the narrowed purple optic of a drone glaring up at him, blocking his path back into the structure—he was trapped. Why hadn't Caroline told him these things were coming?! They should have shown up on her map, and she should have alerted him…!

Grimacing, he dropped his tool case and aimed his portal gun at the drone, but when he tried to engage the grip, the gun only whirred and shuddered. Of course, GLaDOS would have fixed that flaw—every single time, she found a way to make these things closer to being invincible—

The drone lunged at him, and he darted aside, snagging his tool case and swinging it at the drone. He struck it in the head, and it reeled back, hissing.

"There's another one—!"

But the second construct, which stood in the hallway, was not facing him—in fact, it was turned backward, its abdomen facing out instead. Whatever it was doing, it wasn't attacking him yet, so he kept his focus on the one that was. It made another leap at him, and he kicked at it, trying to keep it far enough away so that it couldn't bite his leg. Still it spread its panels, baring its venom-injecting fangs menacingly as it shook his foot off of itself. Rearing its head back, it leaped at him again, and he met it with another strike from his tool box. The metal casing struck the inside of one of the drone's panels, knocking one of the fangs loose. It hissed again, drawing back as a clear fluid dripped out of the side of its head.

Doug was about to glance back at the other drone to see what it was doing when some thick, white substance suddenly splattered on the floor in front of him. He recognized the wet-cement-like smell immediately—conversion gel. But how—where had that come from?

The first drone looked down at the gel before turning around. An orange light shone on its back before it fired an orange blast at the hardened gel.

That was it—they could fire conversion gel and portals. That was how they'd captured him before, and that was how they would capture the humans in the outside world, where there were so few portal-conducting surfaces…

The orange light fizzled over the surface of the gel—it hadn't covered a wide enough surface to support a portal. The two drones screeched and chirped at each other for a moment before one of them fired another blast of gel. This one struck the end of the platform, and the rest splattered into the depths below.

That's it!

Quickly Doug chucked his tool case at one of the drones before leaning over to fire a portal down below—it was blue, remember blue. The one drone was still recovering from being struck in the head, but the other one was drawing closer. Snatching up his tool case again, he chucked it at this drone as well before charging past it and down the hallway.

"Hurry!" Caroline called, watching desperately from her spot on the rail—it would only allow her to go into one room in the structure. Once he was out, she darted alongside him, following him to the lift. "That's going to take too long—can you jump it?"

Doug looked down at the catwalk below with a wince, but the tic tic tic behind him reminded him just what he was running from. Scrambling over the railing of the lift, he fell onto the catwalk, landing on his feet with a BANG. He wasted no time in rushing away, Caroline following above him.

"I—I got a portal by the generator," he panted as he ran. "But—why the heck didn't you tell me those things were coming?!"

"I didn't know," she called back, and he looked up to catch her apologetic look. "They aren't showing up on the map anymore!"

"She's not making it easy for us, is she?" He shook his head and glanced over his shoulder—one of the drones was several feet behind him, and, up above, one was crawling over the rail. "You've got one behind you!"

Caroline turned to look back, and her optic widened before she blasted toward the drone, ramming into it. It fell off the rail with a screech—and directly into the grinder below. "There's that one!" she called as she strained to catch up with Doug.

"Nice one." He turned to look at the other drone, which was still in hot pursuit. "Now where's this test chamber you spotted?"

"Still got a little ways to go. I looked for the closest one I could…" She turned when her rail finally came to a branch. "This way!"

Doug's breathing grew heavier as he continued to run—there was no adrenal vapor here, and no way he could run for too much farther. "C-Caroline…!" he panted, his legs aching with each step. They'd gone far too long without a rest.

"Keep going! We're almost there!" She may have been motioning to something up ahead, but he didn't care at the moment, for he could hear the horrible shriek of the robot just behind him. There had to be something he could do to stop it…! Gritting his teeth, he lunged forward, activating the portal gun's grip and yanking Caroline off her rail. "Sorry…!" he whispered as he swung around to nail the drone in the head with the core.

"Agh—!" she cried out, snapping her optic shut as her hull clanked against the other robot. The drone reeled back, stunned, and Doug kicked it under the head, knocking it onto its back.

"Got it!" he called triumphantly, moving to put Caroline back on her rail.

"Wait!" Throw it over the rail while it's down!"

Fighting through his initial fear at the idea, Doug reached down and grabbed the thing by one of its legs. Immediately it swung at him with a hiss, one of its fangs slicing against his arm.

Doug screamed out in pain, throwing the drone and not caring where it landed. He nearly dropped the portal device, but forced himself to hang on, charging back to put Caroline on her rail.

"Are you all right?!" she cried, her optic wide in horror.

"What do you think?" Doug hissed back, moving the portal device under his arm so he could hold the bleeding cut. Still he tried to keep moving, urging Caroline to continue leading him in the direction of the test chamber.

"You need to do something about that cut."

"Not with that… that thing still… following us." But finally he could see the structure looming up ahead—that was it. "Once we get there… you need to open a panel… and hack… hack into the chamber."

Caroline came to a stop at the edge of the chamber and narrowed her optic. "I can open a panel, but hacking this chamber—"

"There'll be a receptacle." He stopped, letting go of his arm and ripping off part of his already-torn lab coat, pulling up his sleeve to tie the scrap of cloth on.

"Got it!" The panel closest to them swung open, and Doug scrambled to hold the gun and poke it into the chamber, instantly firing at every camera he saw.

"Vital test—vital testi—vit—vital testing apparatus destroyed."

"Come on." He snatched Caroline off of her rail again, darting into the chamber and looking around frantically for the correct panel. Once he spotted it, he held the core close until the bottom section of the panel flipped open, revealing a core receptacle, which he connected her to. "Okay, now…"

A screech sounded behind him, and he jumped to see the drone darting into the chamber. He saw the white panel underneath it and automatically shot an orange portal under its feet, sending it back into the neurotoxin room.

Screeching, the drone bounced between the constantly shifting gravity of the two rooms. Doug watched, waiting until he had the timing right, and re-placed the orange portal over a nearby acid pit. The drone dropped through the portal, flailing its limbs before crashing into the acid pool with a splash.

Doug heaved a deep sigh of relief as he watched the ripples in the acid fade. He felt a second wind, though whether that was from having destroyed the drone or from having inhaled the adrenal vapor, he wasn't sure. "Have you got it, Caroline?" he asked, turning to face the core.

She was studying the chamber intently from her position on the core receptacle. "The tube there—the pneumatic diversity vent… Part of it goes over the acid pit. If you put your orange portal on the other side of the vent, I'll see if I can move part of it to face the acid."

"And then… let's hope this works." Biting his lip, Doug fired his orange portal underneath one end of the tube and glanced back at Caroline. A few nearby panels flicked—apparently she was getting a feel for the test chamber, figuring out what was what in the strings of coding that linked the parts together. Eventually she found the pneumatic diversity vents, and Doug watched in amazement as they slowly began to move. "You'll need to change that direction of the suction on them, if you can."

Caroline might have nodded if she had been capable, but for the moment, she continued spinning in her casing, entering the commands until a segment of the vent detached and turned to face the acid. A few commands later, she shook her face. "I think that did it. Try the button now."

As Doug began to approach the button that would start the suction, he heard something that made his blood run cold.

"Oh. So that's where you scurried off to."

Doug spat out a curse as he bolted toward the button, and GLaDOS continued talking.

"I see you've blinded me to this chamber. Oh no. Whatever shall I do."

He'd already punched the button and watched as the vent sucked up the acid and began spewing it out through the portal and into the neurotoxin chamber, and he could hear the acid hissing up into the room, eating through the base of the generator.

"What are you doing—!"

Doug sprinted back across the chamber, which was starting to, for lack of a better word, ripple as the panels moved this way and that, moving closer together. The panel supporting the orange portal shifted, cutting off the portal and trapping the acid inside the neurotoxin room. But the acid continued to spew out of the vent, splattering across the shifting floor.

Both Doug and Caroline swore loudly as the movements of the panels became wilder, the chamber slowly starting to crumple in on itself. Doug yanked Caroline out of her receptacle and cried out as a panel rammed into his stomach. He staggered back, but the panel did not strike at him again—GLaDOS was blindly collapsing the room.

"You don't know what you're tampering with," she said, her voice echoing in spite of the rapidly-shrinking free space in the chamber. "You can't run into the facility to hide from me. I am the facility."

"The catwalk," Caroline whispered desperately, motioning to a spot where the panels had cleared, revealing a path to the catwalk. It wouldn't stay open for long. Doug pushed past the shifting panels and jumped, just barely making it onto the catwalk.

"Say goodbye, Caroline, like you should have a long, long time ago."

Doug's feet and braces pounded against the catwalk as he ran as far away from the collapsing chamber as he could. At first he worried that the AI might be following them, ready to shake them right off of the catwalk, but when he stopped to look behind, all he could see were the panels of the chamber twisting against each other in the distance. But why wasn't…?

"She thinks we're still in there," he gasped. "She couldn't see us, so she thinks…"

"So she… she won't see us coming."

The two slowly exchanged glances, staring into each other's respective eyes and optic as the realization sunk in. But before either of them could speak, the noise from the collapsing chamber grew significantly louder, the screeches and groans of abused metal heightening to a near-unbearable level. Doug staggered back, covering one of his ears with his free hand. Just when he felt as though he could no longer stand the noise, there was a tremendous CRACK, and the chamber plummeted into the depths of the facility.

But the noise didn't stop—farther off in the distance, they heard more metal groaning and crashing—the neurotoxin room's unprotected floor was eaten away by the acid, and the generator was collapsing. When the cacophony finally stopped, Doug and Caroline were left alone on the silent catwalk.

They'd done it.