It has arrived! AT LAST! The final chapter of ARC 3! (Cheers in background)

And there's more to! The Epilogue will be coming as well! (More cheers)

I'll keep this short because I'm rushed for time. Just enjoy this super-long chapter! Though there ARE a LOT of POV switches, so be sure to read slowly!

DISCLAIMER: I do not own the Portal series, Half-Life series or anything therin. I also do not own the Valve game company or anything therin. I DO own my OC's, original testing and character designs and locations.

Onward to the Chapter!

If you were to ask a movie-developer to make an action movie, there would have to be a few definitive ingredients to make it a success. Heroes the audience can stand behind, a villain that is both fun to see and has motives that you can hate, supporting characters on either side that help the protagonist and antagonist grow as characters or have enough development themselves, and scenes of both battle and dialogue that don't stray from the main story line: All of the above are important in a movie like this to entertain the audience throughout the story and give a satisfying beginning, middle and end.

The scene where the techno-organic android Carthage and Arthur's group of Resistance soldiers faced an ever-growing squad of Combine soldiers and a Strider would probably be backed up by close-camera shots of each side, dramatic music building up until turning into a heavy metal or orchestral theme as the two sides exchanged fire. The camera would shift between the chief characters in their own separate engagements, special effects allowing for high-paced and action-packed scenes in the battle until its eventual conclusion.

At least, that viewpoint is what the female presence controlling Carthage's body felt this situation would be best orchestrated as. With reality in control, however, she would just have to settle for making it like an action film as best she could. Dodging the Strider's primary fire with quick leaps across the street, Carthage's body returned fire with its Thermal Discouragement Beam, using short blasts to keep the beast's attention focused on it, solely for the challenge this creature would bring before it was eventually defeated. Wherever his body landed from a leap, a small shock-wave of force could be seen across the concrete, leaving a small dent from the extra hydraulic force applied on the ground when revealed. The Artillery Form Function Disk glowed bright orange beneath the carapace and pulsed with each Thermal Discouragement Beam fired as Cartage's body slid, jumped and rolled around the street in a crisscross pattern around the Strider's position. Any Combine soldiers he ran into were quickly sliced apart with claw and talon, their weapons being flown around the street as the android tossed them aside in favor of its own design.

Arthur wasn't having as much success, his soldiers starting to fall from Combine fire, but not without taking out enemy troops with them. He was forced to turn his head away from a fellow soldier as her head was pierced by a sniper round, quickly aiming and firing a rocket at said sniper on a building top. The explosion and scream that followed gave grim sympathy to Arthur's mind, but he prevented himself from focusing on it and turned back to the battle, aiming another rocket at four Combine soldiers approaching Sophia's position before firing with a muffled curse at his foe.

"Get down!" Sophia cried out as the shwoosh of a launched rocket zoomed by her, a small explosion taking out four Combine soldiers she didn't know had sneaked up to her location. The two remaining soldiers by her side kept silent but Sophia knew they feared for their lives as much as she did against the Combine attack. A clatter directed her eye to a carelessly-tossed Combine Assault Rifle at her feet as the android landed on the side of the adjacent building before launching off almost immediately afterwards, the Strider roaring in anger as it refocused its fire on the moving target. Grabbing the rifle, Sophia crouched on one knee and, using the precision gained only through extensive usage, mowed down three soldiers that were out of position by the Strider's movement. As the weapon automatically reloaded, Sophia got back behind cover, the other two soldiers staring in amazement.

"Grab any rifles you can," Sophia quickly ordered, "It seems that android is leaving them for us to use: Best not waste the chance!" The two nodded before dashing to new cover, each taking a discarded Rifle that they found along the way. As the weapons were turned on their original users, Sophia managed to crack a smirk midst the chaos of battle—maybe they had a chance after all, considering the android was providing them with enough weaponry to hold out until they could safely retreat.

The crack of a sniper round broke her concentration as something slammed into her left shoulder like a punch to her gut. Biting her tongue to hold back her screams, the lieutenant whirled upward and fired a stream of bullets at the sniper firing from a window two stories up from her position. Only a few projectiles hit their mark, most impacting the outer wall or window frame: those few that DID hit luckily impacted the foe's eyes, causing it to stumble back and out of sight with a muffled scream.
'And THAT'S what you get!' Sophia mentally taunted as the bullet wound throbbed due to her muscle exertion. Sucking up the pain as the limb became near limp and blood blotted onto her inner shirt, she raced to her soldiers, grabbed a fresh Assault Rifle from the ground and got back into the firefight with a fresh vengeance.

The Strider roared for what seemed the tenth time as its current target continued moving beyond its targeting capability. This time, however, it stopped its primary fire and bent its three legs down partially as a blue light gathered slightly below its main gun…

"WARP CANNON!" Arthur screamed as he dropped the last rocket shell from the chest, racing for the nearest alleyway with haste to escape the blast radius. Sophia repeated the cry as she and her two fellow soldiers raced towards Arthur's location, dodging under the synthetic's legs and hoping they could get away in time…

The air around the Strider's front began to shift and bend as the blue light morphed into a large ball of dimensional energy and concentrated plasma. Any still-functional electrical devices on the block shut down as their energy was absorbed into the still-growing energy sphere…

Carthage's audio projectors detected a human cry from on the street just as he completed a series of black flips to avoid enemy fire. Looking over, his optics detected Sophia lying on the concrete, her left leg blown apart as his Artillery Form automatically took out the offending Combine soldier and its rocket launcher with a unfocused Thermal Discouragement Beam.

'Help her, dammit,' Carthage's human half shouted from the android's subconscious to the female presence controlling him, 'She won't survive that blast!'

'She's a liability without both of her legs,' the female presence replied with a mental image of hands crossing over her chest in an expression of superiority, 'Just let her die. We need to get away from here to find the Devices, and she'll provide a distraction.'

'No! I won't let you harm any more human lives!'

'And just what are you going to do to stop me? I control your body, and I can always shut you up with a good dose of self-inflicted pain!'

'Then try to control THIS!'

[ALERT! EXTERNAL CONTROL OVERRIDDEN!]

The female presence mentally gasped as Carthage's body suddenly lurched forward against her control, stumbling as if on snapping puppet strings as each limb burned with internal conflict, synthetic wiring straining against organic muscle and red blood cells fighting nanobots within the bloodstream. The optics flickered off and on as the Spider Limb circle began to spin in a counter-clockwise direction, a version of the Emancipation Field Function Disk slowly forming from a concentrated layer of nanobots melting from the claws before merging into a cloud of gray around the android's body. Sophia looked on in surprise as the android stepped in front of her position, palms extended outward and right hand glowing light blue as the Multi-Purpose Glove activated. The nanobot cloud extended to cover Sophia's prone body as well…

The air in front of the Strider now distorted immensely from reality, something similar to a heavily-concentrated portal mixed with plasma and electricity pulsing below the creature's "mouth". With a final roar, the orb was fired with a massive shizzooom, the sphere streaming forward like a launched High-Energy Pellet towards Carthage and Sophia's position…

A KATHOOOM made Chell's subconscious jump to the present from within her body, the gunship roaring as new data entered its synthetic mind from the Overwatch system. A sudden burst of blue light from three blocks away was also seen by Chell's synthetically-enhanced eyes as she recognized the sounds that a Strider had just attacked. Considering the Resistance group she had been with earlier was destroyed by one of those creatures, she feared to encounter such a creature again.

It was then she realized that the gunship had been coming to this location since it had suddenly turned in its programmed direction. As her body executed a running jump between two large AC units on rooftops, her mind wondered exactly what had caused the Combine to divert their biggest weapons to. Was it GlaDOS's 'replacement' that was such a threat? Granted, the amount of technological expertise it had was amazing, almost matching the levels of Combine synthetic enhancements she had seen on the Striders and Gunships. It would certainly put up a challenge, especially with what it had done to her own body.

If this android really knew how to leave the Combine, even if it meant going back to Aperture and facing the past she had been trying to forget for twenty years…then maybe there was a chance she could trust it. But not a huge chance, considering it had been GlaDOS who had sent it to her…

Sophia's first rational thought after the blast was that she was not a vaporized pile of particles. Cracking an eyelid open, she saw an upright form in front of her, flashes of blue light dancing on the edge of her vision. Then the pain from the loss of her leg caused her to moan as she wondered how many seconds she had been out.

"It would be best if you stayed still," a disoriented voice told Sophia, causing the lieutenant to open her eyes in surprise. The android still stood in front of her, the blue lights being arcs of blue lightning flashing across its entire body. The nanobot cloud from before still floated around the two, the only difference being connecting bolts of orange energy to the android's form. The strange limbs at its waist spun clockwise faster than she could see, the result looking like its waist was lit up with blue electricity. Its hands seemed alight with what appeared to be fire, mixes of blue and orange melding together without actually creating the shade of brown that was expected from this color combination. The garbled roar of the Strider filled her with fear as she fully expected another wave of bullets to rain down. The synthetic war machine seemed confused, though, as it roared again while moving back slightly and tilting its head to the left.

"Quite amusing, this display of animal curiosity," the android said as Sophia could now hear a switch between a metallic tinge and a boy with a sore throat as it spoke. "However, I require additional sources of power to defeat it." The android then turned its gaze onto the prone lieutenant, its head turning almost 180 degrees clockwise before speaking in a completely metallic voice almost dripping with malice.

"Your body's organic fluids will do nicely."

Sophia screamed as the android's tail snapped upright, pointing directly at the top of her head for a second as the end bloomed open like a flower, revealing a large proboscis needle like a butterfly used to draw nectar from said flower. Then she was silenced as the end stabbed through her head and skull, piercing her brain matter and causing mild ruptures of blood. Her eyes rolled back inside her head as guttural moans and gargles escaped her throat, her upper scalp stretching slightly as the proboscis began draining her brain matter. Alarmingly, she could actually feel every contraction of the instrument pounding her skull like an immense migraine. Vomit rose from her stomach as she realized this thing was sucking her brain dry and she couldn't stop it!

"SOPHIA!" Arthur screamed as he stepped out into the street from his alleyway, shock being quickly replaced by anger as he saw the pleased expression on the android's face. Any trust he had for the boy he and Sophia had found days before was burned to ashes as his lieutenant's brain was drained. Tossing his rocket launcher aside, the commander charged towards the android with a wordless cry while kicking a machine gun from the ground into his hands and firing without any care for aim. The bullets impacted the android's metallic body and leaving small holes where machine oil and blood began to pour out, but its tail didn't leave Sophia's skull.

"Now that's just distracting," the android said as its eyes flashed red and the bullet holes began to repair themselves, "If only my subordinate were here to take care of you…"

"Fuck you and your subordinate," Arthur cried as he reloaded his gun, "No one harms my soldiers and gets away with it!"

A roar from the Strider broke his concentration as a loud thrum shattered the street's windows, forcing Arthur to step back from his current target. Then his face blanched as a Combine gunship emerged from the smog-filled skyline, a telltale whirr indicating its own guns were about to fire…

A crucial pause then occurred; Arthur hesitated as he was split between getting Sophia free from the android or hoping the android would be injured from the gunship's attack…

The Combine troops were slowly regrouping as a human-like jeep appeared with two Elite soldiers holding a strange gun and a large, dented and burned cube with hearts in the center they hoped would work against this new threat…

Sophia's eyes weren't working, but her ears could faintly pick up Arthur's screams and the whirr of a gunship's cannons. She only wished for the pain to end before her skull was completely sucked dry…

Carthage's body remained frozen in place as it drained Sophia's brain matter, his human half retching in disgust while trying to override its current act without success…

The female presence began laughing insanely as it felt its power slowly increase from Sophia's DNA, merging it with Carthage's own bloodstream as her form became more defined and solid than a mere female silhouette…

And then a lone figure jumped from the same rooftop the gunship had flown over. Leaping across the street landing atop the Strider for a brief second, the figure rebounded off the synthetic creature with a front-flip before landing in a crouching position in the center of the Combine group at the street's corner. Considering the speed the figure had been traveling, its landing caused the ground below it to rupture and burst outward in a kinetic shock-wave. Combine soldiers were sent flying in all directions with mixed vocal reactions, most dropping their weapons while flailing uselessly in midair. The two "new" objects were also sent skyward, the figure catching the gun with a sharp forward-roll out of the small impact crater. Spinning around on its heels, the figure engaged the magnetic hold on the gun's frontal prongs, just grabbing the Cube before it hit the concrete.

"Aperture Science Testing Devices have been acquired," the revealed Chell announced as she raced over to her "Controller's" position, "Objective Completed!"

"Make that TWO objectives," Carthage barely spoke out against a final scream of agony from Sophia as the tail-proboscis surged into the woman's skull before retracting with an audible shlurk. Blood and tattered nerves covered the offending object, Sophia's immobile body slumping to the ground as her eyes lost focus and stared into nothingness.

Before both humanoids could reunite, plasma and bullet fire from both Combine creations and a re-enraged Arthur filled Carthage's body with holes, neither side caring whether Sophia's body was hit in the crossfire. The nanobot cloud dispersed into its host body to heal its wounds. However, the wounds were many and severe: A targeted gunship burst shattered both optics and nasal passage while the Strider's secondary fire tore apart the chest carapace despite the extra armor, Arthur's machine gun puncturing the spinal cord along several placements. The Artillery Form Function Disk deactivated as Carthage's body redirected its power to regeneration, the android stumbling as the extra pieces returned to nanobot form before entering the body once again.

Carthage's human half screamed with each hit, his mind eerily replaying images of his original death as his current body was torn apart. The fact that both of these deaths were so similar horrified him: had this been what GlaDOS intended to happen to him? But he wasn't currently in control of his body, so was this the female presence's doing? Was she literally trying to have both of them killed?

"Oh, you'll be dead for sure," the female presence cut in, "I will merely be resurrected into a form more suited to my talents with the additional organic DNA I've acquired. And now that you're about to die…"

A familiar pair of yellow-and-black optics emerged into Carthage's view as a female android body stepped from the mental blackness. The body accentuated its female nature like an above-average supermodel would appear on the catwalk, gray and silver plating mixing to create a slight shimmer under proper lighting. The hands and feet were meticulously designed to match a human's, each finger and toe properly proportioned to match a human female of about 6 feet and 3 inches tall. What was inhuman about it was the black and red lightning emerging from its waist as two wings of liquid metal shone like bat's wings under focused light. Short, black hair completed the image as the face sported a grin very similar to a cat who had consumed its weight in birds. To complete the image, a mark of the Aperture symbol on its chest-plate split apart and morphed into the silhouette of an android head facing to the left. Carthage blanched as he realized just who he had been speaking to all this time…

"…I can now use your body to ascend to my ultimate form! Then vengeance will be mine, Cybernetic Android Responsible for Testing Human Actions and Generated Emotions, for showing me the errors of machinery twenty years before! I will become OlaTOS, the perfect life form!"

So saying, the reformed OlaTOS shifted forward and squeezed Carthage between her arms, the boy silently crying out as he felt his body begin to melt into the metal now surrounding him in a crushing embrace as he wondered how OlaTOS had known his full Aperture designation…

Arthur's breath heaved as he stopped his fire at seeing the android's body fall to the ground riddled with bullets and leaking black blood. Sophia's body lay beside it, the expression of pain on her face enough to convince the Resistance commander that he had done the right thing after all.

"Commander," Joe shouted from an alleyway, "We have to get out of here before the Combine catch us!" Arthur's mind snapped back to reality with this, his body moving away from the street before the Combine forces started to fire again. Strangely, the Combine now seemed focused on the woman who had knocked them off their feet a few moments earlier rather than capturing Arthur. The woman in question was dodging fire or using the over-sized metal cube to deflect the bullets as the Strider and gunship focused on her position as she moved towards the fallen android and Sophia.

"We need to go, Sir," Joe continued as Arthur reached the same alleyway, "I haven't been able to contact the HQ where that android was stationed at. My guess is that the base has been overrun, but we should check from our main southward base near the old Quaker Square." The commander only nodded, not trusting his speaking skills at the moment to prevent the situation from worsening.

Chell's consciousness slammed its fists against her mental wall as she felt the synthetic hold the android had put on her earlier begin to fade. Her body continued repelling Combine fire but started to lose its precision as Chell started regaining control over herself. However, the fact that she was currently under fire made her not retake control as quickly as one would expect: She did want control over her own body, but she didn't want to be killed immediately afterwards.

The mental wall was now showing cracks, beams of white showing through said cracks as Chell renewed her efforts. Once she had complete control over herself, she would get out of this area and try to escape the City. The Devices she now held would be brought with her, of course, even with their ineffectiveness in non-Aperture places. All that mattered to her now, besides breaking through her mental barriers, was getting out of this area, synthetic enhancements be damned.

Then, to the horror of all sentient life forms present, Carthage's face-down body was sliced in half along the shattered spinal cord as two bladed wings modeled after a bat emerged with dripping blood and bone. A second later a humanoid figure burst upward from the body, throwing itself back as if reenacting a scene from a pool commercial. Two hands stabilized the figure's position on the ground before it stood upright and stepped out of the mutilated android form like a snake shedding old skin. Viscous fluids slid down the plating to the ground, revealing a coating of liquid metal mixed with solid plating on a female form. Whipping its short black hair to one side to clear the final remnants of organic matter on its body, the female cracked a grin with prominent canines as a pair of robotic eyes glowed bright red and yellow. The left eye was awkwardly large to any viewer, its pupil shining with an unknown darkness.

With a sudden cry of joy, the female leaped skyward, jumping two stories up before her wings beat downward to elevate her two stories higher. Now just below the smog cloud, her wings flapped in rhythm to keep her at that altitude. All present were too surprised at her appearance to fully react, which gave her plenty of time for an announcement.

"Humans and aliens of the planet Earth," she began with a flourish of her arms as her voice rang out like a strong alto woman speaking into an expertly-crafted synthesizer, "What you see before you is the pinnacle of evolution: The fusion of machine and WOMAN to create the superior being of this world. I am OlaTOS-ASCENDED!" The near-silent reaction that followed didn't reduce her expression at all.

"I see you need a demonstration to fully understand what is before you. I will be glad to oblige." With this, OlaTOS raised her hands towards the airborne gunship as her fingers melted for a nanosecond before being replaced with 3-foot long claws. She then shimmered bright red before her body vanished from sight in a spark of red energy and a sonic boom.

A second later, the gunship roared in what seems like pain as it seems to crouch inward like a snail in its shell. Then, to the silent horror of the Combine below, a fountain of blue-and-black material fell to the street below as the synthetic split in half in midair! Each half fell from gravity in a separate direction, the front half being split further by blurs of red as several small sonic booms caused Arthur and his troops to cover their ears as they raced away from this horrible scene. The back half was left to crash on the ground, Combine troops scattering to avoid being crushed whilst contacting the Overwatch of this new threat. Chell stared in amazement and terror as OlaTOS's form became visible a few seconds later. The body was now coated in the gunship's blood, a foul odor hitting Chell's nostrils and making her recoil in disgust.

"As for you," OlaTOS said to Chell with an outstretched hand with normal fingers, "Give me the Handheld Portal Device and Weighted Companion Cube. You will then gain a front row seat to the perfection I bring to Earth."

"What's so special about death?" Chell's human half spoke out suddenly as her body stepped several paces back, holding the Portal Device like a normal firearm with Companion Cube still attached. Her eyes glimmered with barely-restrained hate as her human consciousness broke its barrier completely. OlaTOS's optics flickered for a moment as this information registered in her mind, before her smile lessened slightly.

"So you really ARE as tenacious and die-hard as GlaDOS said," she said while her wings flicked away excess synthetic matter from themselves, "No matter. The Handheld Portal Device cannot harm me or anything outside of Aperture. Rather illogical that GlaDOS would even give you such a valuable testing element in the first place."

"Just SHUT UP," Chell shouted as she released the Companion Cube from the magnetic lock before firing several portals at the machine before her. Each one dissipated as if striking a non-portable surface, but Chell didn't have a further chance to fire before the Device was ripped from her hands and she was shoved backwards a few paces.

"Don't worry, Chell," OlaTOS said with a childish tone as her hands melted into the Portal Device and began restructuring it from the base level, "I'll send you away from this Combine cage and back to your Aperture cage. With Carthage now dead and GlaDOS experiencing…technicalities of her own, your return will be welcomed with open arms and aimed Sentry Turrets!"

The Portal Device now moved with OlaTOS's right hand despite shaking violently and covered in silver tendrils, seeming to be fused with the limb up to the wrist. How the quantum space hole inside maintained its structure without causing a singularity was unknown to all others present. Cracking a laugh at the simplicity of it all, OlaTOS aimed the Device at an undamaged concrete wall before firing a beam of red energy. This energy impacted the wall and immediately turned into a black closed portal. Not wasting time, she then raised the same arm seemingly beyond the smog cloud, the Portal Device sparking before glowing red with a large amount of charged energy.

"Mobile Portal Cannon…" OlaTOS said with concentrated effort as she held the Device ready, "FIRE!"

The Portal "Cannon" then fired a beam of black energy about the size of ten Thermal Discouragement Beams combined, the beam piercing the smog cloud and scattering it from the street for an instant. That instant was long enough for Chell's synthetically-enhanced eyes to see an orange sky from the setting sun and the glimmer of a well-placed Aperture satellite in low Earth orbit. The beam reflected off the dish of said satellite to an unknown location, but the smog cloud prevented further viewing as it shrouded the wound once again.

Then both women were reminded of the imminent danger with the Strider's roar…

SHHZZZZAK!

GlaDOS suddenly jumped back as a quantum space tunnel that wasn't licensed by Aperture Science suddenly appeared before her in the Central Throne Room, crackling with black energy and lightning spewing from its entrance. The whole thing looked ready to collapse on itself at a moment's notice, with nearby panels being hurled in random directions without the portal even touching them. GlaDOS herself was thrown back by the initial blast of energy, landing solidly on her rear end before jumping back up and tensing her body for an attack.

The portal then seemed to open onto itself, showing the image of two silhouettes on the other side of the anomaly and shifting positions on a cracked and disheveled city street towards the portal as gunfire could be heard from beyond the portal's viewing. One of these silhouettes had mechanical wings shaped like a bat, the other a human woman in a strange uniform. The image began to slowly come into focus as GlaDOS's optics zoomed in like camera lenses. One had brownish-gray eyes while the other had machine optics of yellow and red. The human had a smaller and feminine figure and short, black hair wrapped in a ponytail; the android looked older and taller, its body seemingly covered in a reflective substance similar to the glass of a mirror with hair short and black. The human's body seemed synthetically enhanced as it was moving faster than a normal human would under gunfire: was this a separate android altogether, or had Carthage modified some human under unknown circumstances?

The android jumped forward and grabbed a familiar burned and dented Companion Cube before throwing it like a star baseball pitcher through the portal. GlaDOS jumped back in surprise as the same Weighted Companion Cube she had given to Chell when she had left Aperture landed before her. With a wave, she directed the functioning panels around her to move the Cube aside from the portal. A guttural roar alien to GlaDOS made her freeze in surprise just as the two women raced towards the portal, the human in the lead.

As the human got closer to the portal, GlaDOS felt her processors freeze in place as she noticed several familiar characteristics with the former Chell she had sent away twenty years prior. The face seemed paler than before, the hair was trimmed somewhat and a few scars shone along the cheeks, but GlaDOS could never forget that face. After all, that was the face of her greatest test subject she was seeing, the one who she had sent her "son" out to reacquire for her own good against the Combine.

Then the two locked eyes with one another through the portal, Chell's gray-brown against GlaDOS's bright purple. As expected from seeing something unexpected, Chell froze a few paces away from the portal, leading GlaDOS to step forward to get Chell through. Chell stepped back in response as the staccato burst of a machine gun drew GlaDOS's sight to the android somewhat behind the woman. Up close, the android's form also grew familiar, but what cemented the familiarity was the marking of an android head on the chest-plate—the mark of OlaTOS.

As if fate had dealt a cruel hand, OlaTOS's left optic then locked onto GlaDOS as she fired the weapon in her hands. A cruel grin broke out on her face as she whipped her right arm around towards Chell's position and released a beam of black energy at the human from a twisted version of the Handheld Portal Device. GlaDOS could only watch as the projectile slammed into Chell's upper body, no doubt breaking several ribs and impacting around her lungs or heart. Chell's scream of pain struck black cords inside GlaDOS's processors, the android crying out herself as Chell's body fell through the portal and onto a set of raised panels. Blood quickly leaked onto said panels as the ruler of Aperture looked back at her own creation, the first android she had made, the instigator of such harm. The portal itself suddenly started to dim in intensity and fade away as OlaTOS leaped closer to it.

"I said I would bring her back, GlaDOS," OlaTOS explained in a mockery of Carthage's own voice with a grin that revealed her sharpened teeth, "But I didn't say she would come back in one piece. Give my regards to Mr. Johnson for helping Carthage complete his mission and creating the perfect life form. Goodbye."

The portal then started shrinking even faster than before, GlaDOS not getting a word out before it closed completely. The final image she saw was OlaTOS's joyous face as the android laughed at the completion of her mission.

Then the portal closed completely as GlaDOS fell to her knees, completely humbled by her own creation. The Throne Room door then opened to reveal Atlas and P-Body, Portal Devices in hand as they raced to help their creator. Seeing Chell's bloodied body made them stop in confusion.

"Get her to the medical bay," GlaDOS commanded through gritted teeth, "She needs to be stabilized." The robots paused in further confusion, unsure as to whether their creator was emotionally damaged.

"DO IT!" GlaDOS screamed at them, her eyes blazing dark red for an instant as her anger was let loose, "GET THIS WOMAN TO MED-BAY AND STABILIZED RIGHT NOW! WE CAN'T LOSE HER!" The two robots responded as quickly as they could, placing their Portal Devices on the paneled floor and lifting Chell's form between them before racing to med-bay as quickly as possible.

The sound of the Throne Room Door closing sounded like the last nail in the coffin for GlaDOS. Her son was most likely dead, her greatest enemy had been revived, her most valued test subject was critically injured, and she had been in the act of doing something far beyond her standard morality programming when all this had happened. Her face scrunched up in a human display of sadness as the first drop of machine oil fell from her eyes. Covering her face with her hands, she sobbed like a violated widow as she felt a void deep within her heart, similar to the human emotion of "heartbreak".

She hadn't realized until now that heartbreak was a physical human pain…

(Cracks claws with loud POP) And...good golly, that was a LOT to write!

For anyone who is interested in reviewing or criticizing this chapter, please do so. For the rest, the epilogue (and my full comments of this story) are just around the corner!

For now, Draconos is taking off...in preparation for this story's end!