AN: I got a request a while ago for a RattmanxChell fic. I can't guarantee this will go that route entirely, but at the very least, it will end up with close friendship. I'm mostly following the story of Portal 2, just with Rattman in it and my own interpretations of character interactions. Hope you enjoy, person-who-requested-it. With that, read on!
Every day was more or less the same. Beans that had long ago become nothing more than a tasteless paste. Perhaps a muddied mural on the wall, capturing the swirl of reality. Sometimes he would come upon a mug and in a sudden flash of clarity, a name and face would accompany it, hovering anxiously in the air before his eyes. Their eyes would watch him then, boring into the deepest fibers of him. He could never leave it—leave them—behind.
Mind the gap.
He smiled, briefly, reaching back to give his cube friend an affectionate pat. He leapt over the small cap in the catwalks. But his smile disappeared as his mind returned to the task at hand.
He'd woken from stasis some hours ago, a hideously puckered scar on his leg where the bullet wound had been. He strongly suspected that the turret bullet was still inside, but there was little he could do. He was walking well enough, though there was a curious ache that he suspected would never leave.
Perhaps he'd been asleep long enough that it was all over. Perhaps she'd escaped and reached the surface—awoken out of her slumber during a routine exercise wake-up and used that peculiar tenacity to find her own way out. Without…Her to make things difficult, nothing could stand in her way and she'd be out in no time. She probably already was.
But he had to know.
Prepare for the worst, but hope for the best. His cube friend suggested. He nodded mutely, making his way to the relaxation vaults. Even if she hadn't escaped, he could wake her and lead her out.
Perhaps he would even have a chance to apologize for putting her back in.
Everything was a smear of utilitarian greys, occasionally broken up by the odd exposed panel of moldy yellow insulation. It must have been a long time since he'd gone to sleep and woken up; the facility was as run down as he'd ever seen it, and there was a thick layer of dust over everything.
But when he arrived at the vaults, the only dust disturbed was by his own two feet. The boxes remained untouched, apart from the horrible, reeking smell of death and endless, musty sleep.
17C, that's the one she was in, remember?
He nodded. But vault 17C wasn't there.
The entire space where it should be—had been—was empty. Metal hung from the mounting station at jagged angles, evidence of some violent and sudden movement.
She'd been moved. But they when and where of it escaped him.
Could She…could She have woken up?
He dared not consider the thought, but his errant mind had other plans and went rampant. If She had woken up, Her first thought would surely be revenge. Her black box auto-save feature would practically guarantee that she would vividly remember being taken down; he would know—he had helped to build the feature. And if her previous behavior was anything to go by, he was fairly certain that She would engage in revenge at any cost, no matter how petty.
He'd heard the things She'd said and the way She had so mercilessly treated her most durable test subject. She was ruthless in the extreme, and with the aid of experience, nothing would keep Her from crushing the young woman without a second thought.
He had to find out where She'd taken the test subject, if indeed she was still alive. It was his fault after all that she was still in here, and he hadn't starved himself of air and sun just to give up now.
I'm sure she's…fine.
Even his cube friend sounded concerned, and it usually was his sole source of optimism. He had to step carefully. If She was indeed awake, then what semblance of safety he might have had was now gone.
He was nearly to the central AI chamber when the lights turned on. Scrambling for cover, he listened intently, glancing rather warily at the ruby-eyed cameras beginning to perk up. He heard the faintest sound of panicked voices—no, one voice—perhaps accented?
He knew for a fact that there was a monitor station just a few doors down from his catwalk. If he could just get there, he could access the chamber cameras and get a better idea of what was going on. Assuming he could get past the cameras along the catwalk without being seen. And assuming that all of the equipment was still functional enough to, well, function.
The camera above him gleamed and snarled. He flinched as it snapped at him. With a violent shake of his head, he clasped his temples with shaking fingers. He couldn't lose his grip on reality. Not now, when it counted.
The camera began a movement cycle, rotating gently several inches to the left. Then to the right. He caught the rhythm of the camera's movement, waited, then sprang. His bad leg buckled under the sudden force, but he ignored the pain. He ran, sprinting wildly to the fourth door in the corridor. It was locked, but he forced it open with a horrible creaking of aging metal. He fell into the room, the cube on his back tumbling free and rolling awkwardly across the floor.
Ow ow ow ow owww…
"Sorry." He murmured to his cube friend, but he had to do this quickly.
Sitting in a chair that released small mushroom cloud of dust, making him cough, he coaxed the old computer to life. He hadn't accessed one of Aperture's desktop computers since, well…it didn't bear thinking about.
[Password:]
He pressed his lips together tightly.
I know it.
He turned and listened.
"Thank you, friend." He paused for the barest second and gave his cube friend a pat.
[Password accepted] [Welcome user Dr_D_Rattman] [It has been 374,000 days, 8 hours, and 17 minutes since you last logged in]
There was no time to let such a number sink in. Someone's life might just very well be at stake.
[Accessing camera_01_central_ai_chamber]
A camera feed popped into view, showing her just as he remembered. Or perhaps as he didn't. It was hard to tell from the feed, but she looked well enough. A core, of all things, was plugged into the central power control dock and waving its handles wildly.
And chattering away, frantically.
"I don't—I do—okay, here's the plan. Just act natural, just act natural—we've done nothing wrong here—hello!"
A chill ran down his spine and made itself quite at home in the pit of his stomach. Her optic, dirty now and slick with grime, rose unsteadily from the earthy floor. It reminded him far too much of an old flick he'd seen about zombies—the insistent, persisting movement that was unsteady and uncoordinated but so very, very unrelenting.
Her optic raised itself to the level of the test subject and her core companion. It focused for a bit and the entire grubby faceplate titled mildly to one side:
"Oh. It's you." Her tone was heavy with unbridled passive aggression. "It's been a looooong time. I've been really busy being dead. You know, after you murdered me?"
So She did remember. He hated being right.
"Wait—you did what?" The young woman's core companion interjected, aghast. Suddenly he recognized that voice. At least, that simulated version of a voice.
If she's being guided by that particular core, then we're all in big trouble.
"Y-yes." The strangled answer managed to escape his mouth, but he couldn't speak.
"Look, we both said a lot of things that you're going to regret. But I think we can put our differences aside. For science. You monster."
He croaked as She picked both the woman and the core up with multi-service claws. She flicked the core away like so much lint and held the woman over the emergency intelligence incinerator and—oh no.
She was going to die, and there was nothing he could do.
"I must say, since you went to trouble of waking me up, you must really love to test. Don't worry, I love it too. And now I'm on to all your little tricks."
No—
"So there's nothing to stop you from testing. For the rest of your life."
The claw dropped her and the young woman disappeared from view.
But for the first time in as many minutes, he breathed a sigh of relief. If She was intending to exact Her revenge the long, painful way, then there was still a chance he could save her.
He could make things right.