Chapter 26

Eve was leaned back against the side of the cage when inside the wall when suddenly the darkness was destroyed by light, and something else was slammed into the back of the cage. Eve freaked out, thinking that it was something dangerous that could attack her or maybe it was something designed to start taking her apart. She raced for the exit, but the door closed and the panels fell back into place before she could get through.

She scratched at the bars, whining for Wheatley to let her out of there. Then she heard a familiar whirling sound from the opposite side of the cage and she looked back to see Wall•E up-side-down and sprawled all over the place, he whistled when he saw her, and Eve just stared at him in disbelief.

"WALL•E!" She raced over to his side to hold him, but then saw the Emancipation Coat still on him and looked down to see that it was still on her as well. She sighed, unable to help him turn himself upright.

"Oh no! I put you both in the same cage, didn't I?" Eve could hear Wheatley from the other side of the panels. "Oh blimey… Could you just… Kinda destroy each other in there? You know? While you're in there, could you? It would help me out a lot and…" He drifted off as the sound of some more alarms went off, then followed by some mechanical sounds.

"Well, well, well. Welcome to my lair! Lemme just flag something up: According to that control panel light up there, the entire building is going to self destruct in about six minutes." Wheatley was clearly talking to someone that was in his lair. Eve exchanged an uneasy glance with Wall•E at the news that Wheatley was telling that person.

"Pretty sure it's a problem with the light, I think the light is on the blink. But just in case it isn't, I'm actually going to have to kill you. As discussed earlier." Was Wheatley talking to GLaDOS? Eve pressed herself against the cage opening to listen to what they were saying. "So let's call that three minutes, and then a minute break, which should leave a leisurely two minutes to figure out how to shut down whatever's causing all these fires. So anyway, that's the itinerary."

Eve started to try pulling the cage opening up, to escape and help take him down, along with whoever was in there right now. Maybe Wall•E and her wasn't enough, but that leaves the person in there at half the probability to succeed in this battle. Although, if they were all to work together, it could at least up the probability.

Wheatley continued to talk as Wall•E came up beside Eve to help pull up the door. It was budging, at least a little bit. Maybe if they had something to wedge down there then they could pry it open. Eve quickly used her hands to ask Wall•E if he had at some point put something like that in his compartment. He shook his head and Eve grunted in frustration.

There was suddenly an explosion right next to the panels that were hiding then in the cage. Eve looked over to the now-open area to the right of the cage. She hadn't noticed it before, but there was a tube going passed them that had been running white liquid. As part of it exploded, Wheatley started yelling in frustration.

Although the sound that really caught Eve's attention was when she heard the sound of a portal becoming active. She recognized the gel immediately: Conversion Gel! Whoever was in there had a portal gun, and knew how to use it-and hopefully use it well.

Eve's senses went into hyper drive, the situation pushing her to help the test subject battling Wheatley on the other side of the panels. Eve motioned for Wall•E to get out of the way, and she charged at the side of the cage. It moved, but just barely.

"Evah!" Wall•E was bouncing up and down in anxiety, he pointed to Eve's right arm, then at the tube, then at the floor. She followed his gaze at each one, knowing he meant the portal gun, the gel, and the cage floor. She realized some of the gel had leaked onto their side of the panels, and the bottom of the cage actually was a portal surface.

Eve laughed in the excitement of the moment, taking out her portal gun and shooting a large puddle of Conversion Gel with one portal, and the floor beneath her with the other.

Wall•E motioned Eve to go first, so she did, putting her portal gun away for the moment while she climbed on top of the tube, then looked through a crack in the panels caused from the explosion.

The entire place was a mess, white was everywhere on the floor and some spaces on the wall, things were falling apart, blue gel was also covering some parts of the floor. Bombs billowed out from above Wheatley, following a woman in orange pants and white tank-top. Her short black hair was pulled back in a small pony tail, and her gray eyes darted from place to place.

She looked like she knew what she was doing. But either way, Eve wasn't about to believe that she could do it completely alone and leave to let her do the entire thing on her own.

Some of the roof above them fell apart, revealing a night sky with a full moon. Eve gasped, flinging her arms around to try and tell Wall•E what her plan was, but the quick excitement of the plan made her react too fast, so Wall•E probably didn't understand a thing. She just ended up motioning him to follow her up the dome of Wheatley's lair.

She had remembered that the conversion gel was made from moon rocks. All in all, the moon was a portal surface. If Eve were to make a hole on the top, warn the test subject to stay clear of Wheatley, and shoot a portal under him and on the moon, then their biggest problem would be solved.

Wall•E jumped onto the tube as well, and Eve started to climb, hating that she couldn't just fly up there and do it for the test subject and finish Wheatley off once and for all. The events that were happening inside the dome made it loud, adding to the pounding wind that they were beginning to encounter as they got out of the facility through the hole that had been made.

When they were finally at the top, Eve saw a little area that looked weak enough to just punch through it. They moved over there fast, and she started to bang on the piece as hard as she could, and Wall•E joined her quickly.

An extremely powerful blast from inside the dome hit Eve just as she was lifting her hand to give it one more powerful strike, it knocked her away from the little place, and she started to tumble down the side of the dome. She only barely heard Wall•E as he screamed her name.

Time seemed to move in slow motion when suddenly her tumbling reversed, and instead she started to be pulled in toward the hole. Wall•E was nowhere to be seen. Eve was yanked into the dome once more, gravity pulling at her hard, but she reached out and grabbed the first thing she felt.

It took her a while to realize what was going on, that she was clinging to Wheatley's body as his head was being dragged into space, the test subject clinging onto his head, holding her breath with wide eyes.

Wheatley was screaming at her, and Eve could barely make it out, "Let go! Let go! I'm still connected, I can pull myself in! I can still fix this!"

Then GLaDOS's familiar voice cut in, even over the loud sucking sound that came from the portal below, "I already fixed it, and you are not coming back!"

A claw grabbed the arm of the woman and pulled her in after swatting Wheatley away and into space.

Suddenly the portal closed, and everything fell ominously still. Eve lost control of herself, and fell down onto the ground with a loud thump.