AN: Hello all. Is this late? Yeah, but I'm pretty sure I get at least a little slack for updating twice in a week (not that anybody's actually complained :). Pretty sure this is the longest chapter I've written thus far (nearly 4k words), but I did get a comment saying longer chapters are good so...yay! Don't know why I said this was chapter twenty-one on the summary, but that chapter's coming too, eventually. Hope you enjoy and please feel free to let me know your thoughts in a comment/review! With that, read on!
Chapter Twenty
GLaDOS came back online to find her optic uncomfortably close to the face of the lunatic's spawn.
Barely suppressing the growl threatening to trickle from Her vocal processor, She managed to ask with some measure of civility, "How long have I been out?"
"Relax." The younger girl waved off Her comment as if it were of minimal importance and picked Her up. "You've only been off for a couple of hours."
They exited the house, and entered a hazy white landscape, once again snowing. The little idiot was outside as well, standing idly. The air, thick with flurries, buffeted her tiny frame, but her expression was set firmly in a determined frown.
"Let's go."
"Go where." She asked the question without the slightest indication that it had been anything short of an order. "What is going on?" She couldn't help dropping the stern tone then; Her curiosity had been thoroughly piqued and she couldn't help but stare at the two of them. They didn't answer.
They set off through the blurry white landscape at a quick pace, thanks in no small part to the little project's floating trick. Within minutes they had arrived at the tower cannibalized from Her own brutally slain chassis. They passed it, headed towards the tiny grey speck far beyond it in the distance, barely visible in the early morning light.
"Oh thank God. I'm assuming, of course, that you are exercising the sense both your parents lack by bringing my back to my body. A good idea, by the way, since otherwise you might have a serious lack of self-preservation indicating brain d—"
"Shut up." The lunatic's spawn snapped, and She followed the command, stunned for the briefest of moments. "You're lucky we're even bringing you down there, since my parents probably won't."
"I know that, which is why I took the time to compliment you on it. I hope you were listening too, because I'm not going to repeat myself. And why are you so grumpy anyway? She's doing all the work," She flicked her optic—and a handrail, for good measure—in the little project's direction, "I can't imagine what you have to complain about…"
The lunatic's spawn looked on the verge of shouting again, but the little project hovered closer and laid the slightest of hands on her shoulder. The older girl stilled, then let out a tired puff that crystallized in the frigid air.
The little project answered instead. "Abbigail—I'm not sure you know who that is but I have a hunch you do—she's in trouble."
"Abbigail?"
Of all the things She would have expected—correction, should have expected—Abbigail's possible plight in all this mess honestly hadn't occurred to Her. She was struck with a sudden and most unwelcome feeling that pressed in on her consciousness like a dead weight, heavy and bitter. It was almost—no—but it was almost as if she was feeling guilty about—
Wait. Guilt?
An emotional response wasn't like Her. It was like, well…it was like Caroline. But that was impossible. Patently ridiculous and very, very impossible, unless—
Well, unless she was still there, inside Her head. But if She ran with that scenario—just for experimental purposes—then it begged the question of what on earth was squatting in her body? What was it that so unceremoniously crammed her collective consciousness into an insultingly small sphere of metal and wires?
They had arrived at the shed, which She found, having seen it twice now, rather unimpressive. Certainly one of the many items on a growing list of things to do the second she was back in her chassis. Optimally, she would have preferred to get started the picosecond she was back, but she did have to allow for the system purging of Caroline and perhaps dealing with the mild dilemma that was the little project. That shed would simply have to be dealt with at some point. Frankly, it was embarrassing, and if there was one good thing to emerge from all of this, it would be the fact that She was now aware of just how shabby that metal shed was. It was a poor excuse for an entrance to the laboratories—correction, it was a poor excuse for an entrance to a garbage heap, although perhaps it might have suited some of the lunatic's associates.
The lunatic's spawn put Her down and began to pace in front of the door. The little project sat on the concrete stoop that surrounded the miniscule building and put her head in her hands next to Her. Well, She assumed those floppy bunches of cloth cradling her chin concealed hands; the coat the little project wore was ill-fitting and crudely draped around her slender frame, obviously better suited to a larger specimen than the girl herself.
"Okay, so we need some kind of plan going in there. We don't know where Abbigail is the facility, and it's a big place, so we'll have to locate her somehow, then figure out how to get her back up to the surface with us."
"Or, you could utilize some of the common sense I so generously complimented you on having earlier and simply plug me back in so that I can locate her and get rid of Caroline."
Both girls turned towards Her, though the project didn't make direct eye contact (not that She expected it particularly, she had come to expect that kind of rude behavior from the girl). The little project was frowning deeply, the expression drawing harsh lines around her mouth and eyes. The lunatic's spawn had a similar expression on her own face, almost as if they didn't think that She could—
"Is there some previous discussion you would like to share with me? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Well…" the little project started, paused, then went on, "I don't know if you could handle her."
"Handle her? Seriously? Who do you think I am? That-that thing is in my mainframe, in my chassis. If you think I'm just going to let her stay there—"
"Nobody said anything about letting her stay there, but just think for a minute; what happened last time?"
She readied her vocal processor, warming up a good number of cutting replies, but she stopped. She would gladly throw Herself into an emergency intelligence incinerator before she would ever admit it, but the little project had a point. She hadn't been able to overpower Caroline's deep-rooted influence over the system the first time—and She'd been plugged in that time. Caroline, or whatever she really was, had wormed her way around Her defenses and coding even before she was fully in charge of the system, so what chance did She have at besting her?
She hadn't said anything, but the little project nodded as if She had.
"See? Sophie's right, we need a plan." She folded her little hands seriously. "We can't rush in blind."
"There seems very little chance of that, since I see only one blind person around here."
"Look," Sophie took one of Her handles and forced Her to meet the older girl's gaze, "I know you want to get down there as badly as we do. Not just that, but I'm pretty sure we both also want to rescue Abbi, which means for right now, we're on the same team."
"I wouldn't have said it so candidly but…yes. Fine. We're on the same team. The point is, we need to get back down there before she does any more damage."
"Caroline?" The lunatic's spawn supplied.
GLaDOS nearly replied, but the little project beat Her to it.
"That's not Caroline." The little project shook her head emphatically. "I promise, that's not her. This thing is someone or something else."
"Much as I hate to agree with her, she's right. That thing isn't Caroline. I don't know what she, or rather it is, but believe me when I say I'm going to be purging every trace of it from my systems—twice—as soon as I get back."
She meant every word, for once. Whatever deranged thing currently enjoying use of Her chassis and authority in the laboratories below them was going to thoroughly regret ever putting Her in a core. She would make absolutely sure of it. If anything, it would be rather enjoyable to have someone to take Her grievances out on again, seeing as both the lunatic and the moron had escaped their just deserts. Of course, she considered Herself mature enough to overlook it.
For the moment.
"Could it be a virus? I mean, you are a computer—you can get viruses, right?" The lunatic's spawn offered, her tone clearly uneasy at asking such a specific question of Her. As she should be.
"Yes, actually, I can. I believe I have you and your little…friend to thank for that."
"They kidnapped my parents! I didn't have a choice!"
"Honestly, you probably would be better off without them. After all, your mother was an orphan and look how she turned out. Oh wait, maybe I got that confused. Are unwarranted property destruction and psychotic murder attempts widely acknowledged as career choices for humans? If it is, then she's certainly been very successful."
"Don't you dare—!"
"Okay!" The little project quickly jumped up from her spot and barely held back the lunatic's spawn from grabbing Her by the handles and hurling her into the snow.
GLaDOS wouldn't have dared admit it out loud, but in that fraction of a second of anger before the little project held her back, the lunatic's spawn glared with the same fiery hatred that She'd seen countless times behind the safety of a ruby-eyed camera lens. It was the look that accompanied exploded walls and broken equipment, ghastly core transfers and painful, fiery death.
It was the look of complete and utter determination, at its plainest and simplest. And it unnerved Her more than she'd care to admit.
"Why don't we take a deep breath and just think this through, okay? Yeah? Sophie, does that sound good?"
The older girl was breathing hard, but she tore her gaze away from GLaDOS long enough to look at the little project. After a long minute, she nodded jerkily and stepped back.
"Now," she was talking to Her, now, "last time I was in there, in uh, the central chamber, something was different. That wasn't the same place I was…I w-was plugged in."
"I don't know what to tell you." She growled, her voice, barely civil again. Honestly, Caroline was probably wrecking havoc down there, destroying Her facility and putting Abbigail in danger all the while, and all the little idiot could do was ask her about…the chamber…
Unless.
She eyed the younger girl with a new and critical eye. "When were you a project in the labs? No, wait, what was it she said? You were the whole reason for the cores…so you would have been defunct before they started using them."
She hesitated, but nodded, her white hair bouncing with the movement.
"So then you would have been in the central AI chamber while they were working on the—oh my G—"
"What? What is it?"
"The alternate chassis. Something happened to the first one, so they built a new one. The old one was hidden away in the labs somewhere."
"Can we find it?"
"If we can, it might still have the authority to access the mainframe, and—"
"—and purge Caroline from there."
The lunatic's spawn grinned. "This might actually work."
They'd been walking for some time. Of course, to say She walked was a very loose way of putting it; the two girls had alternated carrying Her core every half hour or so, mostly because the little project had to carry herself as well as Her core. Her little feet were still tightly bandaged, and though she didn't make a peep when she put her weight on them, She could see her face twitch ever so slightly.
With the little project's aid, they'd hacked into the elevator controls and ordered it down into the enrichment center on Her suggestion. She'd repaired much of the facility after the first attempted murder, but the containment crates themselves could not be reconstructed to Her knowledge. In any case, she hadn't felt like putting in the time and energy to rattling ten thousand or so skeletons out of their respective coffins. That was supposing she even could, given that many of the crates were thick with vegetation richly fed by thousands of late test subjects and former employees.
Then again, the vegetation was the whole point of why they sneaked through this specific area of the labs; in order to take Caroline by surprise, they needed to traverse as much of the facility as they could undetected. By now, the wild vines and creeping tubers had grown so lush around the area that it was difficult for the scanners and cameras to work properly. She'd counted at least four cameras by now that had simply popped off the wall, choked out of their mounts by the relentless squeeze of the thriving climber vines.
The lunatic's spawn gasped. GLaDOS flicked her golden optic around and caught sight of a now-clean skeleton, brown with age, curled against rotted sheets of an ancient bed. To the best of her estimation, the skeletal remains were picked clean of skin and muscle and curled round with delicate little vines—nothing particularly disturbing about that. She glanced at the grimy, peeling stickers on the outside of the crate, beyond the rusted hole that served to give them such a view. Of the many boxes listed to categorize the relaxation center crates, three were checked: adult, male, and staff. Further reason not to grieve too deeply about the fate of whoever he'd been, likely a neck-bearded old engineer not worth the time.
"Sophie, are…are you alright?" The little project asked. Her brow was furrowed, with a slight upwards tilt toward the center. Her facial recognition software seemed to interpret this vaguely as empathetic. Pathetic indeed.
"I just," the lunatic's spawn seemed to have difficulty speaking, "I-I…mom and dad told me about their…their story down here. And dad said he was in charge of a relaxation center—like this one. He said he'd…he didn't know…" she trailed off, then began waving her arm emphatically, leaving GLaDOS to dangle helplessly from one handle.
"There are ten thousand people in here and all of them had lives, and they-they—" She broke off again, taking a seat. GLaDOS rolled to the side as the girl held her head in her hands.
"Oh, don't mind me. I'll just sit here. On the floor. But take your time."
"Oh hush!" The little project chastised Her briefly, then hugged the older girl. "Sophie…people make mistakes. I think…I-I think your dad and my friend…they're a different person from who he was as a-a—oh what's it called—a core."
A pause.
"I really hope you're right. I really, really hope so."
"It's true, Sophie." The little project insisted. "I promise. That's why it was so easy to be friends, he—he had a good heart."
The lunatic's spawn nodded and took a deep breath. "You're right, you're right. Let's keep going."
"Finally."
They rose again, the little project hovering an inch or two above the ground while the lunatic's spawn grabbed Her handles and they set out.
After at least half a mile of rows and rows of stacked relaxation center crates, they came to a rounded door, which cycled green with a pneumatic hiss at their approach. They walked through.
Beyond it, the clean lines of neat, well-constructed test chambers loomed over the catwalk upon which they stood, disappearing into the misty blue shadows of the surrounding space. If She'd been restricted to the same organic air-circulation systems that both of the girls shared, She might have sighed with relief. As it was, she settled for humming a few bars of a self-constructed symphony.
"Here, I'll take a turn." She felt Herself moving from the arms of the lunatic's spawn to those of the little project.
They continued on across the catwalk spanning the sheer drop. She chanced a quick glance below, but her optic couldn't follow to the bottom where the razor straight lines of test chambers faded into darkness. At the other end of the catwalk, they found themselves in a dark hallway. Passing by, She caught sight of an old elevator, ancient but untouched at the end of a dead-end hallway that was otherwise chaotic. Papers, yellowed with age, were strewn across the floor indiscriminately, their typed words faded past legibility.
The little project stopped, hovering just an inch or two off the ground. She was hesitating there, seemingly unaware that the lunatic's spawn had gone on a few steps ahead.
"Alex? Come on, we've got to get to that chamber."
"Sophie…" The little project set Her down, sighing.
"Hey. Pick me back up right now—"
"Sophie, please don't—don't hate me."
"Why would I—unh!" The lunatic's spawn grunted in surprise as she was lifted from the floor, her arms waving wildly as she tried desperately to find her balance without the aid of gravity. "What are you doing?"
From her position on the floor, all GLaDOS could see was the bottom of the little project's chin from below. Something liquid trickled to the edge, then dripped, soaking into the stiff material of her coat. The lunatic's spawn began yelling as she was helplessly floated into the elevator and the glass door slid shut, the old metal protesting.
"Alex, please! Get me out of here, right now!"
"Sophie," the little project smeared the back of her hand across her face, "I-I'm sorry, but if Caroline knows about your nanites, she'll probably kill you."
"Let me out!"
The little project went on calmly, though she appeared to have something of a breathing problem, as her voice hitched, "You're my friend now too, Sophie. I can't let anything happen to you. Besides," her head ducked and GLaDOS could see her tightly pressed lips, her eyes scrunched shut, "this is my fault anyways."
"I woke up the monster. It's my job to make sure she goes back to sleep."
"Alex," the lunatic's spawn was begging now, "please don't do this."
There was remorse on the younger girl's face—clear enough that even She could recognize it without the aid of Her facial recognition software.
"Give Mr. Wheatley my love, Sophie. And tell Miss Chell thank you for the haircut. And…thank you."
The little project's face was lit with a blue glow that She could only assume came from her eyes from the angle, and the elevator shuddered slightly. Rising swiftly, it cut off their final view of Sophie's distraught face as she pounded on the glass, still yelling and begging the younger girl to bring her back even as her voice faded from the hallway.
GLaDOS nearly felt compelled to say something, make some comment, some note about what had just happened, but the truth was they didn't actually need the lunatic's spawn for what they had planned next. The little project picked Her up, her grip unusually tight around Her handles. She let go, rubbed her face with the back of her hand once again, and they went on.
They hadn't spoken the rest of the walk—er, flight—to the alternate chassis chamber. Though She felt She had more than adequate commentary about the surrounding lab areas through which they were traversing, the little project had been rather unreceptive. Silent and sullen, she'd put Her in a bit of a dour mood with her likeness to another willfully mute individual. GLaDOS didn't consider that kind of behavior worthy of Her commentary, so she remained silent for the majority of the trip. She only deigned to comment when it was absolutely necessary, such as when they'd passed by a series of cameras. Given the girl's past behavior, She felt it was necessary to remind her that breaking them would be a poor decision on her part and only a confirmation of her suspected sub-par intelligence.
At last they'd reached the door. It was still open from when She'd sent Blue and Orange to open it, but the room itself still remained beyond her actual influence apart from the speakers and cameras mounted inside. The alternate chassis, in hindsight, was a major liability, if the incident with the…the b-word was any indication; after all, it was authorized with the same level of command that She Herself had and was connected directly into the system. Anyone in the room—robot or human—could easily dismantle Her control with a few taps on the keyboard. It would have to be a few competent taps, true, but the thought was still unnerving, nonetheless.
With the aid of the little project, they easily cleared the gap and hopped inside the circular chamber. GLaDOS easily spotted the keyboard, still disgustingly littered with feathers and a rotting bundle of sticks that might have been a nest once. But where would a core port be?
"O-oh my. Would you be looking for this?"
The horribly familiar voice—Her own if not for the stutters—echoed cheerily around the chamber. They whirled as one to find the enormous door already blocked by—
"Oh my…" She trailed off in sheer disbelief, "are you serious? Honestly Blue, I'm not surprised, but I seriously expected slightly better from you, Orange."
"I'm honestly impressed. There appears to be no upper limit for your stupidity. Even a six-year-old could have seen that this was a trap."
A portal appeared at the little project's feet, temporarily dropping her and GLaDOS's core in one motion as the girl lost her grip on Her handles.
"Ahh!"
"Hey!" The little project shot her arms out, as if for balance, and she floated in space halfway through the portal, temporarily besting the sneak attack. Seconds later, a metal claw gripped her around the waist, dragging her back in before she could resist.
"Don't—!" Her voice cut off as the portal fizzled from existence, cutting off Her view as she rolled on the floor.
Completely alone and defenseless.
"Oh d-don't worry, dear. I haven't forgotten about you."
Orange approached and picked Her up. She glared, and as much as Orange might have been under Caroline or whoever-she-was's authority, the slender robot had the decency to look slightly ashamed as it ducked its optic from under her hard gaze.
"I don't think our little friend has g-gained enough…appreciation for the surface yet-yet, since she keeps coming back here. Perhaps we should f-fix that. Orange, be a d-dear, won't you?"
