AN: Hello all. Yes...I know I didn't upload on Friday as promised. Sorry. Been a nutty week last week, but here's chapter nineteen. Since the rest of the story is pretty much outlined, these next few chapters should be along shortly, and ideally, chapter twenty will be up Friday. With my current outline, that means it won't be long before we hit chapter 25 (the final one!). Thanks to everyone currently following the story and I hope you enjoy this chapter. As usual, feel free to leave a comment/review and let me know your thoughts. With that, read on!
Chapter Nineteen
They'd been lying in bed for at least a half-hour, unable to sleep.
"Something's bothering you, luv, I can tell."
She was silent for a moment, then asked, "How much do you remember about Alex's project?"
He tilted his gaze towards the ceiling thoughtfully before meeting her gaze again. "Not…not everything. But more and more as time goes on. I think Alex triggered more memories, like a, like a key in a lock—it's like it was all there, just sort of, sort of tucked away where I couldn't see it." He bit his lip, then continued in a rush—
"And I mean it sounds crazy, making friends with a kid down there—kinda just a bit of luck we met at all—but of everyone and anyone I'd met down there, 'cept you, of course, she was something good. This-this kid who just looked at you and smiled. I mean, we'd met once, but when I saw her a second time, I mean she remembered my name!" He smiled at that.
"And…and I didn't know at the time, but when we'd met, she'd been trying to escape—but-but she didn't, you see, she stayed. And she told me…she told me once that she didn't mind being down there so long as she could talk to me. To me! And I was still a janitor then!"
"You were a janitor?"
Wheatly sat bolt upright, dragging the blanket with him. "Oh right! Yeah, it was, i-it was my aunt, my aunt worked at the company, and she job me a job as a…a janitor." A look of realization dawned on Wheatley's angular face, and for the briefest moment, he frowned. "Really not much of a favor, now that I think of it—still, not all bad, not all bad, I mean I met Alex, so not all bad…plus, I mean, I eventually got promoted, and then I met you, so…"
"Wheatley." He stilled at her serious use of his name. "Why did they plug her in?"
His face screwed up a clear expression of disgust.
"Not exa-actly sure, but it had something to do with the rather obvious problem that She'd try to kill 'em every time they turned Her on for so much as a second. Plugging Alex in was sort of a…sort of a stall while they figured something else out. But then she ended up working so well that they, they—" He broke off, his brow furrowing. "Actually I don't remember what happened after they plugged her in the one time I was there, because, er…well, that was when I tried to talk to you and, er…" He trailed off, but he didn't need to finish. She understood.
He didn't know what happened next because he'd been taken.
From his own mouth, he'd told her that the very first memory he could properly recall was being woken up as a core for the first time. They wouldn't have needed cores unless Alex had failed, so something had to have happened in between the time when he'd been human the first time and when he'd been woken up as a core for the first time.
Something that only Alex would be able to tell them.
"Almost poetic, really—sad, of course—but they tried to use her like a conscience. She wasn't human enough, and they had to train Alex to be robot enough, in a way, so that they could fix it. Rather on-brand of them, isn't it? Never could get the hang of extremes."
A conscience. Something sparked at the word—some distant memory of a cold, sterile room far, far beneath this house—but Chell couldn't place it. Something close and yet just out of reach; she couldn't figure out how it was connected. It frustrated her, but at least she could satisfy her other curiosity.
"What was that thing you did with Alex just now?" She asked.
Wheatley grinned briefly, then gently reached over to tap her arm in the same rhythm: four short taps, a short, a short-long-short, then a final short.
"Alex had to read all these sorts of books, you know like, erm, like well…I dunno, Machiavelli or something I suppose—not much of a kid-friendly sort of repertoire down there, to be honest. Not really much of a selection, if you get what I'm saying…still, not terrible, not terrible. Certainly very, ah, very clever sort of library in there.
"Point is, she found a bit of a code of sorts in one of those books, and she taught me some of it. Don't remember a bit, 'cept of course that little bit. Spells out a word, if I remember correctly."
Chell had been sitting up to talk, but now she leaned back, letting her muscles relax. "What was it?"
"Hmm?" Wheatley sounded sleepier than he'd been mere moments ago.
"What was the word?"
"Oh, right. Yes…I think it was 'here'. Course, you have to understand she was blind…couldn't-couldn't see, of course…think she liked being able to talk," he yawned, "without actually having to talk…"
He was sound asleep, softly snoring.
"Don't worry, Alex, I'm not going to get you."
Alex nodded, but her eyes stayed tightly scrunched shut. She could feel the cold steel of the scissor blade against her skin as Chell maneuvered around her face, clipping the hair around her forehead into neat bangs. She could hear the neat shiiick as thousands of hairs were cut, severed from their homes, and fell in teasing, itchy clumps. Yet she didn't dare move, for fear that the razor-sharp blades would miss their mark and slice her skin instead.
"All right. Should be a bit more manageable."
Alex tentatively reached up and felt the short strands, suddenly aware of just how light her scalp felt. Suddenly able for the first time, she ran her fingers through her scalp, sighing with delight at the lovely feeling. The sudden freedom pleased her and she grinned.
But then a hard, tight-squeezing hand gripped her arm. The scene shifted with an alarming speed as everything around her suddenly took on a colder, more sterile feeling—
The hand was still tight, but not a comforting snugness; no, this was a grip devoid of any warmth that Alex could feel, and a strange collection of shapes were just above her, in a hue that she couldn't describe…this was sight, she was somehow certain of it. She wasn't sure how she was seeing or even what she was seeing. All she knew was that there was a glow of light behind her and the grip was suddenly gone and she was falling and falling—
Everything was fire and flames and burning and horrible, horrible pain…and then everything had gone back to black and the void that she now knew was a void without the shapes and the colors… The fire was gone but now it was so much worse because there was water surrounding her, crushing her, drowning her before the blackness and silence made it all go away—
Alex woke up to find her arms still shaking. She lay there, silently rubbing down the hairs standing on end all down her arms and listening to Sophie's gentle breathing. It was so even, Alex was certain she had to be asleep, and Alex carefully hovered to the door, too uncertain of walking on her knees to risk waking Sophie.
Once outside Sophie's room, Alex carefully navigated her way to the kitchen table where she'd all but bared her soul—if she indeed found herself in possession of one after everything that'd been done to her—hours before. Could it only have been a few hours? The little clock far away upstairs, gently humming away on a trickle of electricity, certainly seemed to think so.
Alex folded her hands, summoning every bit of concentration she could muster, and reached for the mystery dream already fading from her mind. It was connected to some distant memory—she was certain of that. She'd met this woman, this Chell, before, and even if her waking mind did not remember it, her subconscious intuition certainly did. It practically bared its teeth every time the woman approached and snarled a vicious warning in Alex's gut, something along the lines of "GET AWAY".
But Wheatley, her giant friend, her best and only friend, trusted this woman. Even if Alex wasn't able to sense the innermost flutterings and shufflings of the mind, the emotional bond he shared with Chell was palpable enough for anyone to see. Well, not see, per se—but the point stood. There were things that had happened that Alex didn't understand, perhaps would never understand, and while she didn't harbor envy (at least not that much envy) for the connection this near stranger shared with her friendly giant, Alex worried all the same. What if he was wrong to trust—
A great big something rushed into her mind with all the force of a freight train (she hadn't ever seen one, but the metaphor still applied, she thought). A warm rush, thick with information and lush with a chorus of voices swirled around her mind like a small eddy in a stream. The trickle dried up within seconds, leaving only vaguely warm echoes.
Alex breathed in, trying to understand what had happened when another rush hit her. This time, it was so, so much bigger—a great big universe of sound and flashing warmth that was benign and yet so ominously familiar—
[Incoming message for user_null]
What are you? Alex thought as forcefully as she could, sending the message spiraling towards the mysterious signal. There was a brief silence, then—
[Welcome admin:alexandria-alpha-one]
[Query: admin override?]
Why would I want an admin override?
A pause. [Query: view message?]
Ohhhhhhh. Alex made a little puff noise with her lips, finally understanding. The message from this, this thing, this entity wasn't for her. It was for "user_null", whoever that might be, and to access it she needed to exert her override authority. Alex sighed. Second time today. But she did it. Must be another Aperture device if it recognized her user authority. Too late the thought occurred that perhaps this was a terrible idea—
[Processing command…]
[Begin message: Hey Sophie. GLaDOS is acting kind of weird. Any chance you could come down to talk? Abbigail.]
Alex's blood ran cold. There was somebody still down there, down there with Caroline but not actually Caroline. "Abbigail" was down there with a monster, and if her message was any sort of indication, she might not even know—
It might even already be too late.
Alex caught the sudden sound of feet shuffling along the floor and cringed. After everything that'd happened, she didn't really feel like walking the whole house up again. Granted, it hadn't been her fault that Sophie had woken up, then Wheatley, then Chell…
It was Sophie. The nanites in her system greeted Alex in a politely deferential sort of way before returning to their scheduled tasks, which apparently included making Sophie's eyes glow. Again.
"Alex." Sophie seemed to have suddenly noticed her. Her voice carried a touch of surprise. "What are you doing up again?"
"Is there—" Alex halted mid-question, unsure of how to phrase it, "—is there a-a like a something…a something that's…like a radio? Or something else nearby? Something with a strong signal?"
"Are you talking about Foxglove?"
"What's that?" There was a shifting noise, and Alex heard Sophie come nearer.
"It's the tower you were on top of when we first found you. It boosts the wifi signal in Eaden…and the radio…and the tv connection—"
"Can it receive messages?"
A pause.
"Why do you ask?"
Alex shifted, uneasy. "Because it said there was a message for somebody—'user_null' it said—and I wasn't sure who that was but I saw it and then—"
"What did it say?"
"I think there's somebody in trouble down there."
Strong hands gripped Alex's arms rather suddenly.
"Alex, what did the message say exactly?"
Alex rattled off the message.
Sophie let go of Alex's arms, and Alex could feel her fear gently bubbling to the surface of her consciousness. Pushing the unwanted mental sensation away, Alex reached for Sophie's hand and squeezed tight.
"Something is definitely wrong."
