"Mr. Conagher, Doctor," She spoke up, suddenly quiet and collected.
All three men looked up in the vague direction of Her voice.
"An Employee Escort has come to escort you to your new workstation. Haste, without panic, is appreciated. Take nothing with you: everything has been saved and will be reproduced and provided for you in your new workstation, along with the groundwork for your next project.
We have a lot of work to do, gentlemen."
They nodded, and the Medic gestured to Heavy, but then She spoke again, more harshly.
"Leave him. He stays."
This caused both men to stop in surprise, but Heavy stood there calmly as they looked at him, both with confusion and with question on their faces. He answered their question with a slow shaking of his head and the savage grin usually reserved for those at the other end of his mini-gun. He crossed his arms, as the Engineer seemed to understand, the Texan closing his face off with a scowl, moving to the elevator and the blue-eyed robot in it, never sparing a second glance.
The Medic was not so quick to acknowledge betrayal, still looking at the Russian with confusion.
"You will have other assistants," was Her warning, "This one is needed here."
Heavy sighed as the Doctor still stared, shaking his head again a bit more kindly, "In this, we cannot be comrades, Doktor." the Russian told him.
The German moved, paused, then shook his head, "Aye." he said coldly, moving to join the Engineer.
Then the Heavy regained his bloodthirsty grin as the elevator saved his 'teammates', and he was left alone with Her cold voice.
"You think you are so clever, don't you, you obese ape?" She said in Russian, as the floor began to fall away at the edges of the room.
Heavy grinned up at one of the nearest cameras.
"Did you really think you could outsmart Me?"
"No, I really did not," he replied simply in his mother tongue, still smiling even as the tile started to shake beneath him, still continuing the mental countdown in his head. The cameras behind him went offline in one wave, and the lights flickered.
He began laughing, "But I do not think that You could outsmart a bullet, eh, witch?!"
He kept laughing even as the floor dropped from under him, "You are dead! You are de-e-ead!"
A laughing scream was his last sentiment before the explosion rocked the entirety of Aperture.
. . .
Miss Pauling held on to the desk as her room swung, clinging nervously as the A.I.'s text began to prattle about potatoes for some reason.
. . .
The innards suffered the worst, in some ways.
Doug ducked and dodged on the advice of his Companion as wires and chunks of metal parts and Lord knew what else was in here shook and shattered around him in a deafening cacophony of machine.
Like a living organism the place was already beginning its repairs, yet another session of shockwaves destroyed these efforts, leaving the human desperate to not get caught in the twisted battle between destruction and reconstruction.
. . .
The elevator shook and slightly tossed the two men about. The Doctor swore something in German as he bounced off a padded wall, while the Engineer's mechanical hand clamped firmly around one of the support banisters, gritting his teeth as he discovered slight claustrophobia, and was just now noticing the long faded dark red streaks on the door. The robot with the blue eye chattered anxiously, shaking, glancing around at the small cylindrical confines of the elevator, and Engineer could've sworn the thing was praying.
. . .
The Scount grunted as he rolled over on to his back, feeling something painful shift in his chest.
The...the whatever that was, that thing, was finally done...
"Aw-w, cheez..." he groaned. Ooh, yep, that was definitely a freaking rib in there...
He sat up, carefully, looking around at the mess.
"Okay," he said aloud, "Would...would ya say thas, that—that that was almost as bad or as bad as that one payload back in Hoodoo?"
"Drrndg be... Thrr sggd bn, Uh gedd..." was the answering mumble.
Pyro shoved up from underneath a fallen panel, stumbling up while holding its head, "Mddrhuddr..."
They stood up, looking dazedly at the remains of the chamber, full of broken or zonked-out robots and sparks and machine guts.
"Hey, Lady, You out there?! We're still alive, so You fa-ailed! HAH!" Scout shouted, and then got socked in the shoulder by the Pyro.
"Ow! What the hell, man?!" Scout whined, as the Pyro went to where the elevators would be.
Would've been. The elevators were filled with debris. And the Emancipation Grill was gone.
The Emancipation Grill was gone, and there were sparks and raw materials galore.
Scout stared as the Pyro skipped through the wreckage of the chamber to the wreckage of the elevators, wiping blood off his face.
"Right, yeah, whatever, Flambo!" he shouted, holding his side.
"Tha' you, lad?"
The Scout turned around, grinning as he saw someone haul themselves out through one of the many Swiss cheese holes in the wall.
"Hey, hey, Cyclops!" he greeted.
The Scotsman threw him a clumsy salute, "Yep, would know tha' squeakin' o' yours anywhere..." he mumbled, falling out.
"Bloody—!"
Scout chuckled, shoving the man up using his good side, and found that the bomber was laughing his head off.
"Oooh I don't think we saw that comin', HAH!" he cackled, and mimed the blast radius with his hands, "Ka-BOOOOOM!"
"You drunk, chief?" Scout said, laughing too.
"Not yet, mate, not yet, but I'm gonna be!"
They both sat against a wall, just sitting there as the wreckage idly twitched and sparked around them.
"Hell, I want a drink."
"Me too."
"Yer not old enough."
"Ya said that years ago."
"And I'm sayin' it now, if anyone's doin' the drinkin', is me!"
Demoman looked around and squinted.
"What's gotten into the mumbling devil?" he asked, and Scout shrugged, an arm thrown over his eyes.
"Eh, heck if I know. Let the nut do their thing, they'll get bored pretty soon."
"I doubt it, that's lookin' like a pretty fine bonfire righ' there."
. . .
The crows watched them from their perches on Her chassis, but Her optic only gazed down on the floor, dulled and almost listless.
The Medic was nervous, but the Engineer worked in stunned awe.
They had been building robots, for a robot. No, the Robot. No, She wasn't something so crude as a Robot, She was...She was...
Aw, he couldn't put a word to it, but shoot him if he wasn't trying to.
Just do the work She gave him, and dang, but this was a challenge, even more than the turret-sentries.
He chuckled, looking forward to seeing Her run...
. . .
He popped back into existence, immediately inhaling fine particles of something, and nearly choked back into Respawn.
"Mon Dieu!" he hacked, and then looked around when he'd cleared out his lungs.
". . . Cherie?"
Debris, debris and wreckage of machine everywhere, and he couldn't find her, yet he wasn't being shocked by his device.
Yet.
He rummaged frantically, searching, throwing aside rubble, shouting, as if the fille would answer.
Then he saw an arm, reaching out from under a panel, pale and paler with the dust as it clutched that portal gun, not moving.
He swallowed, hesitantly moving towards the panel, reaching down to heave it off, but fearing the worst.
He looked down at her, swallowing again.
"Oh, no..."
He knelt down, taking off a glove to check for a pulse...