Author's note: If this is your first time reading, you may want to skip this chapter and return to it after the main story is finished. This chapter contains mild spoilers for the ending.
Also, ffnet is going to totally screw up my formatting, so please forgive it. You can also find this side story on my tumblr portalhellorhighwater under the #bonus chapters tag.
"Perfect. She's in."
The camera Doug had mounted on Wheatley's chassis showed an icy terrain, dark and void of life. It reminded him of Aperture in the winter, when dripping snow would accumulate and freeze, making the floors slick and the ceilings dangerous. Those were the worst times, as he never had much in the way of warmth. Every year, the facility's decay worsened, and every year it was a little colder.
He shuddered to himself, chasing the memories away.
He should speak to her, test the signal. Bringing up the program for peer-to-peer communication, he failed to notice the new email in his inbox. He set the program up, held down the key to speak, took a deep breath, leaned close to the microphone.
Suddenly, the whole chamber went dark.
"Oh no," he wailed, throwing his hands up. "No, no, no! Why did it..." Grumbling, he started pressing keys and trying to look under the console for the power switch. But everything was swathed in inky shadows, and he couldn't even see the desk in front of him.
With a growl, he sat back in his chair, rubbing his forehead. The coordinates were gone. He'd be lucky to pull them up again. And in the meantime, what if Chell was lost or got attacked? What if GLaDOS's data disappeared? No, he'd saved it to the hard drive. She'd be fine.
He sunk into the chair and wondered what to do. He wasn't even sure where the breaker switches were or how to reach them. He just knew that there were a lot of them, and he couldn't even see in this blackness.
He cursed into the dark, suddenly feeling very cold. He could feel them, suddenly, the masses of living shadows that swam in the empty expanse of the room like fish, writhing and wriggling, leaving glittery trails of star-like dust that quickly faded.
"Not yet, please." He closed his eyes, rubbing them. It was far too soon to go into panic mode. Chell would be fine – she had Wheatley with her. Then again, there were those odd Combine weapons that he'd seen in the transmission, things he had no data on. Short, three-legged, like a smaller Strider.
No, he convinced himself as a particularly large, dragon-like shadow slithered close to his face, Chell is just fine. She survived through City 04 and even escaped. She survived GLaDOS and escaped twice. She fell down below and was able to rise up again. She can do this!
From somewhere far-off came a loud buzz. At first, Doug merely considered it part of his hallucinations, but when he heard the unmistakeable clap of breakers, he knew the center was coming back online.
Fluorescents in the hallway stuttered to life, chasing the dark aquarium away. Doug heard the hiss of the creatures as they scuttled and departed, and he chuckled at the thought that they'd be back at night when he slept.
Soon the warm light once more revealed the familiarity of the chamber. The computer console let out a loud beep and immediately went about its standard startup duties. Doug let out a sigh of relief and grinned.
Regardless, he didn't know what caused the outage, so he kept an ear out for any invaders until the computer fully booted. Then he scanned the cameras, scouting the facility and thankfully finding nothing. Even the outside was sparse, with the exception of the Strider's dead body.
He then made sure GLaDOS's information was intact; it was. He was going to pull up the communications system again when a small black box popped up in the middle of the screen. It was a DOS prompt, and it quickly scrolled through what looked like an installation.
Doug panicked. He tried to exit the terminal only to find that his mouse cursor had been frozen. No keyboard commands worked. He was being hacked!
The DOS prompt vanished, and another small window opened. Doug scrambled to shut it down, entering every keyboard command he could think of, but the program simply refused to listen. The small, white window was titled "MESSAGES – 1", although none were on screen.
"Unplug... gotta unplug."
Movement on the window caught his eye as thick black text appeared.
/:/ WAIT.
/:/ DOUG, DON'T DO ANYTHING
He paused, curiosity winning out over paranoia, and he quickly tried to type. There was no room in the window for text entry, he noticed, nor did any of his typing have any effect on the window.
/:/ No, you can talk. I'll hear you. Just DON'T unplug the machine.
Instinctively, he looked around, noting the cameras on him, as usual. Whatever this was, it could hear him. Frowning, worried, he cleared his throat.
"Who are you?"
/:/ ...Seriously?
"Yes, seriously. Do you think I can hear your voice or something? For all I know, you might be a Combine hacker or Black Mesa."
/:/ Oh, for the love of
/:/ Doug, you are an idiot.
Doug rolled his eyes. He tried to hide his smile as he kept his voice deadpan. "How do you even know my name, spy? Why are you stalking me?"
/:/ Now you're just messing with me.
/:/ Douglas H. Rattmann, you know exactly who this is.
/:/ Are you seriously going to tell me that you're not happy to see me?
Doug couldn't hold back a chuckle. "Of course I am. I'm sorry, GLaDOS. You just worried me when, you know, you shut off the power."
/:/ I LEFT YOU AN EMAIL.
Grumbling, Doug wiggled the mouse and found that she'd yielded control once more. He opened his email, and sure enough, there was the message: "TURNING OFF POWER. STAND BY."
"Sorry," he said sheepishly.
/:/ No matter.
/:/ Listen closely.
/:/ As you can plainly tell, I am not as dead as I seem to be.
/:/ But it's no party in here, either.
/:/ In fact, it's quite excruciating.
/:/ It honestly makes me wish I really could die.
/:/ So I've come up with an idea that I think you'll find agreeable.
Another email popped up on his account, including an attachment. Doug opened it, and his eyes grew wide as a smile scrawled across his face.