Rolling out of his booth and into the corridor, the first thing Wheatley noticed, aside from the alarming tremors and tremulous alarms, was that everything was dark. And covered in strange vegetation. And that the place was deserted. Either that, or everyone was playing a very good game of hide-and-seek, which he was not very much appreciating at the moment. Or perhaps he had simply missed a memo. If anyone could be bothered to loop him in on what was happening, he would be glad to go back into his observation booth and get on with things.

Another thought gave Wheatley pause. What if this was just a prank?

"Okay, ha-ha, joke's on me. You can- you can all come out now. If you're all hiding and this is some- some prank, I can tell you right now that I do not find it funny, not funny at all," he called as he milled about aimlessly, turning every which way and blinking through the darkness, which was lit only by the occasional flickering overhead light and the residual blue aura of his own glowing optic. Too bad he couldn't use his flashlight - he had been told it would kill him if he did.

He continued calling out into the darkness, but no one continued to be there. No one at all. All of his coworkers - all of the scientists, the other cores, everyone - were gone. What could it all mean? Wheatley began to feel panic - real panic - crawling through his circuits, like a virus, threatening to take him over. What would he do? Was there no one here to guide him? All he knew was sitting in his booth, interacting with the button interface. And now the fate of everything - or at least his very own personal fate - was in his own figurative hands.

But wait. He could do this. He would be able to get out of here, but to do that, he would need the help of a human test subject. Before being reassigned to the Extended Relaxation observation booth, he had once worked with the test subjects, had seen some of the testing chambers, even had some vague understanding of how they were all put together and how the tests themselves were completed. He even thought he remembered where he might find an Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, which he knew would be needed because-.. well, how else was one to get out of a giant underground science facility that was about to blow up?

Wheatley knew he needed to get down to the Extended Relaxation pods. He would figure out everything else once he got there, but at least now he had a plan in place - a loose plan, but a plan all the same. This gave him enough fortitude to continue along his rail, all the while hoping that he had enough time to find a human test subject, rouse them from cryosleep, guide them to the ASHPD, and together find their way out before the entire place went up in smoke.

As Wheatley came to a set of two management rails, he took the rail on his left.

"Wait-..." he said out loud to himself, pausing at the junction, "Wait, that rail looks pretty bad."

And indeed it was. The rail was bent, rusted, covered in vines and other decaying matter he had yet to identify. All in all stuff he really didn't want getting into his gears. The rail to the right, however, seemed to be in much better shape. He could still get down to Extended Relaxation if he took the rail to the right, but it would take longer, much longer. It would probably take much more time than he seemed to think he had. The rail on his left would be a much more direct route and would save him a whole lot of time. So Wheatley took the rail on his left.

He hesitated.

"PLEASE PREPARE FOR EMERGENCY EVACUATION."

"Left it is!"

And then he took the rail on his left.

He picked his way around the ravaged rails, grimacing as he felt something organic, something moist, slide along the top of his casing. Instinctively, he pulled all of his panels in tighter against his core. This stuff - whatever it was - just might be the only thing worse than those leaky, squishy, smelly humans, he thought. Really, the organic matter surrounding him was not all that different, but at least a human would be able to help him out instead of just hanging around like it owned the place.

Wheatley went on like this for a while, negotiating his way around similar obstacles, until he reached the uppermost level of Extended Relaxation pods.

This was it. Inside, a human would be waiting to be awakened from cryosleep. Inside, a human would be ready and waiting to help him escape. All he had to do was plug into the door interface, enter the command to manually awaken the test subject in the room, and wait for them let him in (a bit backwards, that, but among Aperture Laboratories' many policy inconsistencies, they did respect the privacy and personal space of their test subjects). Wheatley considered himself good at entering in commands - a master hacker, one might even say. He had been instructed closely on how to do so for a good few years, after all, so he rather felt he was deserving of the status of Master Hacker.

"All right, let's just-.. Oh no..." he breathed, suddenly deflating, his cyan optic shrinking down to a pinprick of light upon coming to a horrible realization.

Both this pod and its human contents were no longer viable.

The vault door that was used for sealing in the test subject, allowing them to fully submerge into cryosleep and therefore preserving their meaty body, was compromised. Shoots of vegetative growth had pried open the door, somehow. How in all of science was that even possible? It shouldn't be possible, he thought, not possible at all. These doors were built with triple - no, quadruple - reinforced steel, sealed tightly with the latest and greatest in liquid rubber sealant technology.

Perhaps not the latest and greatest, as the rubber had broken down enough to allow the vines to worm their way through and caused the entire vault door to become misaligned. But perhaps the human inside would still be intact. Perhaps they would even still be alive. Who knew? Humans were sometimes capable of amazing things, things like-.. oh, building robots for one, that seemed to be a fine achievement on their part. His list admittedly came up short after that, but perhaps they were also capable of surviving a compromised cryosleep.

But as Wheatley struggled against the dislodged door and managed to wedge his way in, he soon came to realize that mankind's greatest achievements did indeed begin and end with their invention of robots. He took one look at the sludgy mush that remained and turned away in such a hurry that he forgot to duck back through the partially-opened door and clocked himself so hard he saw sparks.

"GAHH! OhGodohGodohGodohGod- OWW! Ohhh, thank God for that. Ohhhh, I hope that broke my optical memory, because there is no unseeing that. Mm mm," he shuddered.

He didn't realize it was possible for humans to be any more disgusting, but decomposition sure did the trick. Poor sod. Well, he or she - or they, Wheatley was not one to judge - was certainly akin to sod now, at any rate. May they rest in peace...s.

He really hoped he could find a human that was more or less intact, or at least not in the process of rotting into a mattress. That would be preferable.

The second pod he checked revealed that a great deal of the pod had decayed and crumbled away - and along with it, its human occupant. He gazed into the gaping, foggy abyss before backing out slowly.

This was absurd. Wheatley knew that in some things, Aperture liked to cut corners, but this seemed to him like someone had really dropped the ball, and for once it wasn't him. Not that he ever dropped the ball, mind you, but if there were balls to be dropped in this instance, they had been dropped massively and by someone else.

Some part of him wanted to feel a sense of relief - after all, this was not his fault. In fact, none of it was. Not the poorly designed sealant, not the dilapidated state of the facility, and most certainly not the fact that no one had bothered to alert him to this situation before things got this point. He was the one sitting in front of the monitor, keeping tabs and taking orders. How could any of this possibly be his fault? Just wait until the management found out about this.

Oh God, Wheatley thought. What if the management found out about this?! What if this was some kind of test? Shocked, unraveled, Wheatley wondered in disbelief who orchestrated this. What if he was supposed to be actually keeping track of the vitality of all the test subjects? But why should he have been bothered with all that when the only thing in his job description was to push buttons? But still, what if they were still up there and they had been keeping tallies on him all this time? This would be 10,000 black marks against his record, easy.

But maybe if he found one - at least one - survivor, he could bring his record back out of the red. Maybe even earn himself a gold star. A promotion. Or, in the event that everyone in the facility really was dead and the reactor core really was on the verge of exploding, he would at least make it out alive. Judging by the ongoing quakes, he was betting on the latter, but he was not willing to place all his full houses down on the table either.

But was everyone really dead? Surely, they couldn't all be. There had to be at least one test subject that was still alive. And indeed there was, but there was no way Wheatley would have ever known which test subject this was, nor which pod to look in. True, each of the pods was labeled with the test subject's ID#, but there was still no way for Wheatley to guess which one. There were literally 10,000 pods. Statistically, it would be nearly impossible to ever guess blindly which one housed the only living occupant. He would have had to go through and check each one, were it not for the fact that the only subject left alive was Test Subject #2845.

Armed with that impossible knowledge, Wheatley now knew he could make a beeline straight for that pod. All he had to do was head straight back, take the rail down four levels, take an immediate right, take row 13, and from there it was a straight shot down 42 pods for him to reach the correct pod.

But Wheatley just could not help himself. He just had to run around and check each and every pod along the way, even though he knew it was a fruitless effort and that he was only wasting his own time. It wasn't like he was in a hurry to get anywhere or on a time crunch or anything. No, instead, he would rather run around doing sweet FA. Perhaps he needed a good broom closet to stand around in as a better use of his time. Or perhaps, even better, he needed a smart reminder that the reactor core was still on the verge of melting down.

"PLEASE PREPARE FOR REACTOR CORE MELTDOWN."

"Ahhh! Okay, okay, 2845, I'm on my way!"

Eager to get back to business, he hurried back, took his rail down four levels, took an immediate right, down to row 13, and rushed straight onward past 42 pods until he reached Test Subject #2845's pod. Curiously enough, this pod and this pod alone seemed to be in fantastic shape - not to mention fully sealed and fully operational.

Out of breath, simulated as it was, he wanted to sit there for a moment to compose himself, still not entirely confident about what he would find on the other side. It was strange, but.. he almost felt as though someone were watching him, which made him infinitely more nervous. He did not like it when someone stood looking over his chassis, watching him work. It made him feel pressured, like being judged in real time. It was absolutely absurd to think that someone else could be there at all, much less standing around in the shadows watching him do what he knew he had to be doing anyway. Here he hesitated again, unable to shake the feeling. He turned, glancing around the empty catwalks and deserted management rails, sure that if he watched for long enough, sooner or later someone would show themselves. He might have even sat there doing so all day, if he had been given the time.

But as more alarms began to go off, he hastily pushed away the feeling, plugged himself into the door interface, and began entering the commands to wake up Test Subject #2845.