Wheatley's Story: Part C
Chapter Eight

Martha, Victor, Rick, Hannah, and I made our way to the Extended Relaxation Center to figure out what was happening. Seeing as the lack of electrical power from the facility's power station was a recent discovery, we knew that none of us had fed the reserve power to the Extended Relaxation Center. So who did?

When we got there, we found that only the test subject's chamber had been hooked up to the reserve power. A scan of the control areas turned up fingerprints in the expected places, which were identified as belonging to Doug Rattmann.

And since no human had trodden outside the testing tracks in the last 12 years, these prints had been left quite recently.

It was a puzzling find indeed. But then a brainwave came to me.

I looked to Martha. "Is there any recordings of the parking lot from when I went to fetch the test subject?"

Victor shrugged. "I can only think of the black-box quick-save data in Her system."

Martha knew what he was talking about. "Yeah, there should be enough data saved on it to see what was going on at that time." She turned to me. "What were you looking for?"

"I heard someone shout out in the parking lot as I was bringing the test subject inside, and I'm wondering if it'd be possible to figure out who it was."

Rick straightened his tie. "You thinkin' it might've been Doug? Is that it?"

"That's my hunch. He's the only human that's unaccounted for in the facility."

That's when Hannah noticed something. "What's that?"

We looked to see a light blinking in the Stasis Pod Monitoring Station. I went over to look and saw that one of the stasis pods was open. We headed over to the stasis pod in question to see what was happening.

When we got there, we found the stasis pod of interest closed with Doug Rattmann inside. Nearby was a Companion Cube and a file whose contents were spilled on the floor.

Naturally, Hannah picked up the papers and started looking through them before Martha got a hold of them and put them all back in the folder.

"So, what was that?" Victor asked.

"It's a personnel file for the test subject."

I looked to the stasis pod. "Didn't she grow up with Doug as her guardian?"

"Yeah, she did." Martha tapped the manila folder in her hand. "Judging by the fact that the pod was opened recently, it seems to me that he could've sealed himself in this pod."

"Hmm..." This was very strange. "We should probably get a hold of Her quick-save data and see what could've happened up on the surface."

With nods of agreement, we went to what used to be Her chamber to collect the records.