Author's Note: Hello, everybody! So sorry about the age long update. I literally have no excuses this time; I just got really lazy, and when I wasn't writing stuff for my books I got distracted by games and Youtube :c . Please forgive me. For those of you who read my TF2 fic 'Reality Bites' as well, I'll be updating that next month too. Edits of both fics continue :) .
So, here you all go, the latest chapter! Consider it an early Christmas present, if you will :D .
Merry Christmas to one and all, and a very happy New Year, everybody! I shall see ye all then :D .
Chapter Forty-Three
The Wrong Way
"Hey, moron."
Wheatley sighed in exasperation as GLaDOS' own voice drowned out the Space Core's true voice from behind him. Shortly after leaving the main chamber, he had managed to find some strong wire cable and had attached Spacey to his back in some manner of a Hellish papoose, and whilst practical it did mean that both Spacey and GLaDOS were speaking right into his ear. Quite loudly, in fact.
"You're going the wrong way."
"How am I going the wrong way?" He snapped in reply, looking over his shoulder to see that Spacey was looking directly at him – no doubt with thanks to her input. "You don't even know where I'm going."
"If you're going where I think you're going, you are most certainly going the wrong way."
"Alright then, genius, where am I going then?"
"The nearest control room to my position."
Wheatley snarled under his breath, but it wasn't as quiet as he had originally hoped – as GLaDOS' cackle of laughter betrayed.
Wheatley had thought it better that he found a room in which he could effectively work from; one with several computer interfaces that he could all work with should something have gone horribly wrong in his efforts. With the thought of many computers came the idea of one of Aperture's many control rooms, and whilst he wasn't particularly fond of GLaDOS he could at least count on her for some kind of safety should any security bots chase after him. It would only be a short run back to her chamber... or so he had thought, until he read one of the pieces of signage that confirmed that GLaDOS was indeed right: he was going the wrong way.
"Okay, so, on this occasional I'll admit you were actually right." He muttered, looking over his shoulder to find the bright yellow starburst staring at him once again. "So, any ideas?"
"I'm glad you asked..."
"I bet you are."
There was an uncomfortable silence whilst the optic dilated. "There is an IT suite nearby."
"Good enough, I suppose."
He followed the corridor until he reached the aforementioned suite, gazing in through the window to a room lined with several computers. A few cups sat here and there, but that sight alone made him uneasy. People had been drinking from those before they had died.
Actually, what did happen to the bodies? He very much doubted that GLaDOS would have left the facility in a mess, but what had she done with all of those people? A brief thought flew into his head, one that demanded that he should ask. And he did.
"Why would you want to know that know, moron? You have work to do."
"Tell me." He looked at the optic reflected in the window, giving it a stern glance.
GLaDOS simply seemed to shrug the glance away, but responded curtly with an answer: "maintenance bots and the incinerator. How else?" Her voice betrayed how little she cared, and that frightened him. Suddenly he remembered that she was, in fact, a killing machine, and he was entrusting his life to her. It had to be the single most stupid mistake he had ever made, but it was a mistake that he had no choice but to make.
He moved on.
"What are you doing?"
"Trying something different."
She fell silent for a few seconds as she tried to gauge his thought process. "Are you sure that's a good idea? With your fleshy brain?"
"If it works then I expect an appology."
"I won't make any promises, and I want to know what you're doing."
Wheatley cleared his throat to cover up the falter in his words. "His chamber. What better place to deactivate the bastard than in there?"
"What?" Her surprise was evident. "You really are a moron, aren't you? Security bots will undoubtedly be making their way back there to assess the damage."
"If I'm quick enough I'll beat them," he replied, pushing open one of the more age-stiffened doors.
"You're insane. What can you possibly hope to achieve by getting there first?"
"Well they say that they early bird gets the worm," Wheatley smirked, looking either way down the impossibly long corridor into which he had emerged.
"Yes," GLaDOS' voice seemed to smile – almost too sweetly – before replying "but the second mouse gets the cheese."
Wheatley had to think about this for a few seconds. "You think he's left some kind of trap in there?"
"He'd be a fool not to." She paused. "That, or the security bots will get to you, regardless of whether you deactivate him or not. They're on his side. I'll never have control over them, even with Prometheus gone. They are extremely loyal to him.
"What you need is to go back to that IT suite. I've seen you hack now and, as much as I'm loathe to admit it, you're not half bad at the job."
Wheatley surged with pride, and made no job of hiding the smile on his face. But now he was conflicted: did he trust her and use the IT suite, or did he try to find his original destination or, dare he think it, his newest plan of returning to his chamber?
He stood in the corridor for the longest time, thinking over the options in his head in great detail. GLaDOS had been thankfully silent, until Spacey was brought back into full life. She had left, but for what reason he could not know.
"Hey, hey," Spacey said, right into Wheatley's ear, "hey. Space buddy. Hey."
Wheatley looked over his shoulder with a small smile. "Hey."
"Space computers."
Wheatley scowled. "Not now, okay little guy? This is serious."
The core frowned. "Space. Computers."
"But there are no computers in space; not ones we could use anyway."
"Computers in space."
Wheatley sighed in exasperation, leaning against the wall with his palms. His head hurt from all of this thinking, and Spacey's stubbornness wasn't helping his situation at all. Looking either way up and down the corridor once more, Wheatley set off to the right for no particular reason. He could at least hope to find something of use on the way, as all three of the plans he currently had in mind seemed to be either exceedingly dangerous or a complete waste of time, now that he had over thought on them.
"Nooooooooo!" Spacey called from his back, his frame grinding against Wheatley's spine as he tried to spin in a bid to attract attention – something that put Wheatley in a great amount of pain. "Space computers!"
"Stop doing that. Okay, will you stop doing that. Please? It kind of hurts."
"But space computers!"
"They're in space and completely useless to us!"
"No!"
Spinning with a force great enough to throw Wheatley from his feet, the Space Core turned both himself and his human friend around, pointing Wheatley in the opposite direction of the corridor. "Astronauts. Space computers."
"You what?" Wheatley hissed, trying to rub at the painful spot on his back. "What are you on about, mate? You're not making any sense!"
"Space computers. Astronauts. Computers for space."
"What are you..? Hang on," he looked over his shoulder to find Spacey looking up at him. "Did you say computers for space?"
The core nodded in agreement.
"As in, computers made for space?"
Another nod, followed by a cheerful "space!"
A thought dawned on Wheatley suddenly, and it was one that made him smile back at the core, who knew that his friend had finally realised just what it was that he had been trying to tell him. "The astrophysics department."
"Space!"
"The astrophys... Spacey, you're brilliant, you are!"
The astrophysics department had been in development when Wheatley himself had been downloaded into a core. He had never really had any reason to give it a passing thought, but now that he was thinking about it he could see what an excellent proposition it was for him; it was closer to Prometheus' chamber than GLaDOS' own, but far enough away for him to escape from danger if he needed to. Plus the extra proximity to Prometheus meant that any information either he or Wheatley exchanged would be a few valuable nanoseconds faster than if he were further away.
Without a second thought, Wheatley hurtled in the direction of what he assumed to be the astrophysics department – he was completely lost, after all – with a very excited core screaming "SPAAAAAAACE!" in his wake.
Chell reluctantly followed Zeus as he led her through ever increasing volumes of corridors, past empty conference rooms and far away from any of Aperture's more vital, machined and computerised areas. Neither spoke a word to one another, and the silence for her was wholly uncomfortable. For Zeus it was no better, but the cold, hard attitude that Chell had about her made it hard for him to find anything to say to her, especially now that he had returned her charm to her. With a brief glance over his shoulder he found her subconsciously holding it in her fingers as her eyes darted here, there and everywhere. The Portal Device rested against her shoulder, but her arm was rigid enough to tell him that she was neither calm nor relaxed.
With an internal sigh he returned his face forward, leading her further towards the nearest entrance to the older facility below. It had been vitrified, but the little information that he had gleamed from both Prometheus and GLaDOS now led him to believe otherwise; GLaDOS, it seemed, had opened up this route to allow her testing initiative access to the lower facility. It had to be the only way in which Prometheus could have had Caroline taken down there as the way in which he had originally escaped captivity in Chell's wake had been sealed off for good by GLaDOS herself, leaving only two of three original return routes available. The second of these lay inside her chamber, elevator unfixed, unless of course your desire was to be taken to much higher ground.
Behind him he could hear Chell clear her throat as the faint sound of singing turrets wafted into their ears. The sound grew until at last they came to a vast open space lined with crossing and intersecting metal walkways. The chasm-space echoed with the turret's voices, and both he and Chell looked up to find a small choir of the things abandoned on a ledge above them. The turrets watched them as they walked by, leaving them alone to progress unhindered and bullet free. It was only their melancholy song that followed after them as they found their way back through an automated door and into a firmer concrete and plaster corridor.
"We're almost there," Zeus said, finally breaking the unease between them. "There's a lift that'll take us right down to the eighties sector." Chell, who seemed suitably agreeable with the arrangement, nodded in reply. Feeling a little less tense, Zeus relaxed enough to try and strike up a conversation. But Chell darted past him in a blur of white and orange, vanishing into a conference room in which a whiteboard stood, riddled with age old comments.
He entered the room after her to find her struggling to write with a dried out pen, but he could vaguely make out her words regardless of the pen's quality: Why did you not tell me you were made by my dad?
The question took him quite by surprise: he had not been expecting her to care so much for the whys and wherefores. Not able to think of a convincing lie, he instead replied that he believed that the knowledge had not been important.
And what about the photo in my old backpack? Was the writing on the back of that some kind of sick joke? She looked angry as she turned back to him, and she had every right to be so. But he simply stood there, shaking his head lightly, subtly enough to confirm his trepidation in answering her question. "I... I just wanted to write that down for you." He replied, hoping beyond hope that she would believe his lies. "You know, because that's what he would have thought. I just wanted to help you feel a little more, I dunno, at home."
Chell scowled, but put the pen back down in its resting place nonetheless before rearranging the weight of the device on her shoulder, and motioning for him to lead the way. She wasn't convinced, he could see that all too well, but for now it would have to do.
It was not long until they arrived at their one way down into the Aperture of old; the large, rounded elevator with soft padded walls inside. Chell smiled at the familiarity of it all, recognising it as the old company elevators used by staff (and, on occasion, for the testing tracks should the usual Enrichment Centre elevators be unavailable – just as they had been used in her first round of testing all those years ago). Zeus motioned for her to enter before doing so himself, and she sank into the soft, plush padding with a small smile on her face. She knew all too well that the walls were padded as to prevent people purposefully trying to knock themselves out, but this little fact didn't bother her at all. Besides, if staff or test subjects had really wanted to render themselves unconscious, all they had to use was the hand rail.
Zeus closed the door behind them, his fingers leaving the button that had signalled the close before floating upwards to where the buttons for each floor were embedded. It was as he read through the numbers that they felt the heavy but dull thud on the top of the elevator, one that was strong enough to rock them but weak enough to not force them to descend. Both android and human looked up to listen as footsteps tapped above their heads, accompanied by a deep but faint hissing sound that sounded very much like a blow torch. "I got 'em." Crackled the voice of the security bot. "I'm getting rid of them now... No, I won't fail miserably this time... Hey, if you think you can do this better than me then head on over, pal!"
The lift moaned as thick metal supports strained and broke. Slowly it tipped, and Zeus found himself scrabbling to open the doors before a sharp jolt threw both of them against the wall. Chell narrowly missed the hand rail, but clung onto her Portal Device for dear life. Zeus landed next to her with a pained thud.
"I can do my job properly, you know!" The bot screamed outside. "I'm not an idiot like you!"
And with a rush, both Chell and Zeus found themselves pinned against the roof of the elevator as it hurtled down, carrying the screams of the security bot with it in it's wake: "Wait! I take it back! HELP!"
Trapped and unable to move against the forces keeping them in place, Zeus, as calmly as he could, joked that Chell didn't seem to have all that much luck with descending elevators. She didn't appreciate the sentiment.
The robot outside had stopped screaming now, but the sound of rushing air and scraping metal had not. The cab caught something beyond the walls and jolted, throwing its occupants aside as their gravity rearranged itself, converting the floor into the new ceiling. "How much longer is this going to be?" Chell thought to herself with a sense of urgency that only impending doom could convey, trying to raise her legs in an effort to ready herself for the imminent crash; but only if she were lucky enough to get out of this accursed cab that would be compacted under its own weight. Her gaze turned itself to the doors ahead of her and Zeus, who seemed to be thinking the same thing, turned to look at her. "The doors?"
She nodded.
She watched as Zeus stretched as far as he could pulling at the seam of the doors. "Hold onto something!" He screamed, and Chell was more than happy to oblige, hooking her arms around the hand rails whilst still miraculously keeping a tight grip on her Portal gun. Satisfied that she had a sturdy grip, Zeus hooked one foot around the same hand rail, placed one hand firmly against the inside of the cab, and forced the doors open.
The change in air pressure hit her hard, pulling at every muscle and tendon in her arms. Zeus, however, did not fare as well as his hand slipped and he fell, falling through the door and out of sight. And suddenly Chell felt lonely, and scared and completely terrified as to what had happened to him.
The cab rolled, and Chell slid with it. With little time to think about Zeus, she held on as the cab rolled again, looking beyond the open doors for any sight of the ground. She saw it fast approaching. She really needed to get out of here.
The cab rolled again, with the door nearly above her. Just a few more seconds and she could let go, and the elevator would simply fall away from her, allowing her time to brace herself against whatever crashed, sharp mass remained of the cab itself.
Three more seconds...
One more second.
And then she was falling, free to feel the wind rush by her, and free to turn herself so that her feet would be the first to touch ground. Her eyes scanned the falling lift, quickly catching a faint glimpse of Zeus as he climbed towards the mouth of the cab, his hands reaching the door, as he and the elevator crashed into the ground.
Chell could have screamed.
Dust rose from the wreckage, and her feet collided with a rough, steep and sharp corner. With her landing softened, she fell to one side with a crack, gauging her leg on a broken piece of metal as she slid, and landing on a small, sharper piece of metal that quickly embedded itself into her back. A strangled cry broke from her throat as she rolled on the ground in pain, though she forced herself to her feet none the less.
As the dust subsided, the full extent of the damage came to light. There was nothing left of the elevator but crushed metal. If she had been inside that cab she would have been killed, she knew it. But where was Zeus? He had been under it as it landed...
"Oh God." He couldn't have survived that, he simply couldn't. He would have been crushed under his own weight, before being flattened by the elevator itself. And she couldn't quite understand how to feel about that. On the plus side, she wouldn't have to worry about him turning psycho or making her life difficult. She wouldn't have to worry about his obvious lies. But it also meant that she had lost the one thing that her father had left to protect her. And he had, at times, seemed so very familiar to her. So familiar...
The debris moved, and Chell jumped back fearing that that the floor were about to subside, her Portal Device raised in an effort to find any kind of portal conductive surface to use. Yet from underneath the wreckage emerged an unscathed (but filthy) Zeus, completely unaware of her presence, and whose first reaction to the wreckage was to scream.
And he didn't scream with his voice.
Chell fled. She ran, and she continued to run through old, battered and broken corridors. She ran through open areas of the old salt mine without even a passing glance at the old Enrichment Spheres. She ran until her legs began to ache and blood lose made her feel faint, and then she stopped, when she was fully convinced that she was far enough away from him to be safe.
That scream: it wouldn't leave her ears. It was the same scream that had haunted so many of her nightmares, the same scream that she had heard as a child in that damnable pump station.
Zeus wasn't her father, so why had he screamed like him?
Felling sick with a combination of a loss of blood and negative emotions, Chell sat herself down against the nearest wall. Pulling the shard of metal from her back (which was not as deep as he had originally thought, and nowhere near as life threatening), she used the bloody mess to cut off a sleeve of her jumpsuit and use it as a bandage around her leg, wrapping it tightly around the gash until the blood soaked through even that.
With white dots flooding her vision, and her head becoming so uncomfortably light but heavy, Chell dragged herself to a reasonably safe spot inside a vent and hid inside, laying the Portal Device beside her, making a solemn vow to her mother that, when she woke, she would find her, without Zeus' help.
