AN: Hello all, and Merry Christmas! As usual, please leave a review if you enjoyed, and even if you didn't! Right now, I'm still uploading when I can, not on a regular schedule, but I expect things to get back to normal in a week or two. With that, read on!

Chapter Eleven

Abbi awoke to the familiar sterile white walls of home. Swinging her legs over the side of the stasis pod she usually slept in, she took two pills from the bottle on the table close by and quickly swallowed them down. Putting the now empty glass of water down, she rose and pulled on the familiar white and black boots that covered her calves. They fit snug against her skin, as they should, resting against the old callouses there, caused by years of wear.

She reached for the nutrient bar that served as her usual breakfast…and was met with an empty table surface. Abbi frowned. What was—

A quick jab in her arm shattered her train of thought, and she jerked her head around to see a needle sticking out of her arm, attatched to plastic tube of clear liquid. Abbi relaxed. It'd been awhile since her mother had fed her via intravenous tube, but it, like the pills and the boots, had been a constant, steady part of her life that was as familiar as breathing. Early morning breakfast, a few test chambers, then in the afternoon, she would study higher math and sciences with her mother.

Still…it was a little odd that after several months of eating nutrient bars almost exclusively, her mother had returned to the more direct route of an IV tube. Still, Abbi wasn't complaining, since already she could feel her blood sugar rise a little, and she felt a bit stronger. She walked towards the door. Unlike usual, it did not open at her approach.

"Mom?"

"Oh my. Yes, I suppose I forgot about you."

Abbi shivered. Her mother's modulated voice was normally not quite so warm, nor quite so…chipper.

"Aren't we testing this morning?"

"Mmmm…no."

"What's going on?" Abbi tried to look through the glass of her small chamber, but with everything the same color, the world was a wash of white through the blurry glass.

Abbi swallowed, suddenly tense. The knowledge of the kinds of things her mother had been capable of—for all she knew, still capable of—was always there in the back of her mind. Ever since her mother had sent her to the surface to retrieve the nanites from Sophie Newell, Abbi had learned the truth. She had become all too aware of the thin line she walked between an unconventional daughter and a disposable test subject.

Most days, however, it was fairly easy to push such thoughts to the back of her mind, packed up neatly in a box that was never opened—except in rare moments when her mother's tone of voice was sour from a poor round of robot testing the night before or something else had gone poorly. Then, the memories and limited footage she'd seen would flood to the forefront of her mind. Sometimes it felt like they were burned there, and the picture of a scientist crumpled on the floor with wide eyes devoid of light or the image of a sparking red phone wouldn't leave Abbi alone. She'd open her eyes, looking everywhere at once, desperate for something—anything—to take her mind off the horrible mental pictures.

Moments like now.

"What are we going to do?"

"I'm so glad you asked…"

The door whisked open with a gentle hiss. Abbi quickly walked through, trying to grasp what she was seeing.

She was in the central AI chamber, as she'd long known it to be called, and her mother's chassis hung in its usual spot in the center of the chamber. All around, rows and rows of panels rippled with a simulated sort of life, flashing glimpses of cold, blueish electronic light beyond their slick black surfaces. It seemed to indicate a sort of calm. Abbi didn't trust her mother's calm. In her experience, it was more of a veil for the churning anger beneath when her subordinate systems had failed to perform well.

Her mother's familiar golden optic flared slightly at her approach, and Abbi settled herself on the floor with her legs crossed.

"Good. You're here. I have a job for you." Her optic narrowed slightly. "You remember the little…thing that came through not long ago, correct?"

"Alexandria?"

"Yes…Alexandria," her mother's chipper voice grated on the name, as if it left a foul taste in her mouth. Metaphorically, of course, seeing as she didn't have an actual mouth.

"I need you to go find her and bring her back to me."

"Shouldn't be too hard." Abbi rose from the floor and dusted off her jumpsuit. "Do you know what wing of the labs she was in last?"

"She's not in the labs."

Abbi paused, glancing up at her mother's unblinking optic for a tick. The meaning of her sentence clicked into place.

"She's on the surface?"

"Yes, and I need you to go fetch her."

Abbi hesitated, knowing that it was probably a stupid question to ask, but, "Why?"

"B-because I need her-rr-r."

"Are…are you okay?"

"I'm f-fine."

"You don't sound…" Abbi trailed off, as she sensed her mother's gaze return to her in full force. Trying to unobtrusive as possible, she approached the elevator her mother sent down for her.

"Just g-go get her-r." There was an edge to her mother's voice. "Hurry, go get her, and hurry back."

Abbi stepped in the elevator and it rose. "Aren't you going to give me some kind of beacon like last t—"

"JUST GO AND GET BACK."

Abbi jumped. Something was definitely wrong. Her mother had never yelled at her like this, and never with such a dangerous, deranged sharpness to her words. Abbi shrunk back, uncertain as to what her mother might do. But if she was sending her to the surface, maybe there was a chance she could—

"On second thought, you're r-right. You do need a beacon so I know when to bring you b-b-back down." A claw extended from the ceiling, bearing a small box. The elevator doors slid open a crack and Abbi reached out to take the box. The claw suddenly jerked back.

"Unless, of course, you're planning to n-not come back at all."

Abbi flinched, struggling to control her expression as her mother's optic rose to her level.

"After all, your little friends are up-pp-p there, aren't they? What was her name again? Sophie? You could be planning to bring them all down here to murder me this time…"

"What?" Abbi asked, genuinely confused. Her mother often claimed to have been murdered twice—thrice, if you counted the incident that they didn't talk about—but this sounded entirely different. It was almost as if GLaDOS was speaking about herself as a distant person, a distinct person from herself.

But then, that would mean that—

"Ohhhh, I see. I see-e-e." Her mother's voice giggled in that chipper tone, then turned sharp on a dime. "You little t-traitor." She hissed.

"What? No! No, no no no, I'm not a traitor, I swear." Abbi protested. Oh no, oh no no no…

"I don't have room f-for traitors up here. W-w-we're under new m-management, you see."

The elevator doors hissed shut with a horrible finality, and Abbi felt the elevator move down towards the floor.

"In fact, I might even take a page out of the little moron's book…"

The shatter of glass filled Abbi's ears as the claw swiped at the top of the tube holding her elevator chamber. She screamed, feeling her stomach drop as the elevator lurched downwards, still barely caught on something above as it hovered precariously above the dark elevator shaft. Abbi stared in horror at the blackness threatening to swallow her whole.

"Oh d-dear, you're stuck-k. Here, let me h-help you with that."

Another swiping claw crashed through the elevator shaft, and all at once Abbi was free-falling into the depths.