-END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER-

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. And that he had a very strange, yet intense, feeling of déjà vu. Unusual, he thought, but perhaps it was just a glitch in his sleep mode simulation matrix, and so he passed it off as such.

But the feeling came back almost immediately as he called out into the deserted area for his coworkers, only to find that none of them were, in fact, there. Perhaps they were all playing a very good game of hide-and-seek. Or perhaps he had simply missed a memo. Or perhaps it was even a prank.

"Okay, ha-ha... Joke is... Joke's on me, folks. You can all come out now. Didn't we do all this yesterday? Not a very good prank, if you ask me. Unoriginal," he said.

Although he did find it quite strange that his coworkers would be pulling the same prank twice in a row, especially given yesterday he was pretty sure the reactor core had been on the verge of catastrophic failure and that everyone had also been dead or otherwise missing, he would not put it past them either. They were always pulling pranks on him, such as fooling him into believing that turning on his flashlight would kill him. He was sure that was a prank as well - it had to be - because he was pretty sure that just yesterday he had turned it on and he had been fine.

For a moment, as he stared around at the uncanny desertedness of everything, he thought about testing out his flashlight, just to see - both literally and figuratively. He had to admit to himself that it was a bit absurd for him to think that anything in that regard had changed between yesterday and just now, especially since he had just been rudely awakened from several thousand years of inactivity. Better to leave it off for now, just in case. But then again, maybe it wouldn't kill him. Maybe he would be all right. Maybe it would help him find Test Subject #2845 easier, if he had his flashlight to help light the way.

Wait, hold on, he thought. That was weird. He knew he had to find Test Subject #2845, had to guide them to the ASHPD in order to escape, but-.. hadn't he done that all before? Yesterday? This whole day was getting weirder by the minute, and up until that moment he thought the weirdest part was that the entire facility was about to explode. Again.

Wait, no, again? How could it be exploding again? Either it had or it had not. What was this, Schrödinger's Reactor Core?

"Okay, I have no idea what is going on here," he thought aloud to himself, although that was nothing new - either the thinking aloud to himself or the having no idea what was going on, "But I'm just going to, to just, um-.. go along with things, as it were. Assuming that this whole place did not already explode and that I was not just orbiting around the moon five minutes ago."

Wheatley nodded. That sounded like a good idea. Definitely probably a good idea to assume the whole thing had just been a glitch in his sleep mode simulation matrix and move on, as he had ascertained earlier - though he would need to get that looked at later, he noted.

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

"Hold on, do I really have to take-.." he stammered, turning around and peering across at the rail on the right, which was clear and free of vines and dirt and who knew what else, "Can't I go that way instead? I mean, it all leads to the Extended Relaxation pods, doesn't it?"

And indeed both rails did lead down to the Extended Relaxation pods. However, the rail on the right 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.

And yet, he hesitated.

"I mean, what difference would it make if it took just a couple extra minutes-..."

"PLEASE PREPARE FOR EMERGENCY EVACUATION."

"...-AHHH! All right, we'll go left - again!"

And then he took the rail on his left.

He made his way down to the Extended Relaxation pods much in the same way he had before. In fact, exactly the way he had before in his sleep mode simulation matrix. He diligently moved past all the other pods, which he somehow knew were devoid of any living humans, and made his way down to Test Subject #2845's pod without any further delays. Why he handled this task just fine but seemed to struggle with whether he should go left or right at the first junction was a mystery for the ages, but here he was, ready to plug in and wake up Test Subject #2845 and get things going.

He entered the commands, the vault door slid open, and there before his very eye appeared the lady - the very same lady he had been wanting nothing more than to apologize to, even though he was just meeting her for the first time, so he should probably contain his excite-..

"It's you! You're alive! Oh, what a relief!" he exclaimed with an energetic flap of his handles, nodding enthusiastically, his optic strobing with such lurid intensity, it hurt both his own eye and the lady's.

She squinted and shielded her crystalline eyes with her hand, then peered around and gave him a dubious look, her dark eyebrows drawn together in confusion.

Wheatley took this as a cue that he needed to clarify, "Better than the alternative, which is, you know, dead. Heh heh."

Neither his odd behavior nor his nervous laughter seemed to put her at any amount of ease, for her look of confusion only deepened.

"Dead! Did I said dead? Nobody's dead!" he said as reassuringly as possible, not sure whether he felt at all reassured himself but it was all he had to work with at the moment, "All right? Everything is all right. Just stay calm-.."

"PLEASE PREPARE FOR REACTOR CORE MELTDOWN."

"-STAY CALM - just ignore that message! Sorry, but we don't have time to go over the whole apple and you being brain damaged thing. Already know you're a good jumper. Just stay calm, and I'll get us out of here," he ranted as moved along his rail while beaming down at the lady in both excitement and terror - creating, unbeknownst to Wheatley, a sort of manic look that he managed to pull off spectacularly considering he was a robot. It caused the lady back even further away from him. "Oh! Do make sure you hold onto something, all right? I'm going to try to get us out of here as carefully and as quickly as possible, and I'd really hate to lose you at this point."

If Wheatley thought he had knocked over quite a few pods before, it did not even hold a candle to the damage he was doing now. He whizzed around with such glee, so excited was he to see his lady human friend alive and well (relatively speaking), he just about toppled the entire building - which would have taken extreme talent given that they were underground, but Wheatley was nothing if not talented. At least in his mind he was, but what did any of that matter at the moment? He was too busy being excited and crashing the lady's Extended Relaxation pod into what he thought was the docking station (despite the very obvious, literal writing on the wall that it was actually 500 feet below) to be worried about what the management upstairs might think.

There was a terrific CRUNCH and a series of deafeningly loud screeches and groans, the sounds of metal twisting and bending, tearing and shearing. It was all music to Wheatley's audio receivers, because that meant that they had made it through and would be on track again! Literally on track! Nothing was going to stop them this time! Absolutely nothing!

"All right, here we are!" he said as he opened the panel and descended back into the lady's pod, "Forget what I said earlier about the brain damage, I'm sure you are going to find the portal gun and tear this track apart and we'll be out of here in-... Er... hello? Lady? Where have you-..."

His iris constricted, dilated, constricted again, dilated again, unable to settle on one or the other as he struggled to process what he was seeing. Either his optical drive was failing, or the lady was missing... along with the entire bottom half of her Extended Relaxation pod.

"Oh my God..." he gasped, staring utterly dumbfounded at the nothing that remained.

He was completely floored - or at least he would have been were he not suspended from his rail, or if there was a floor left for him to be floored on. The lady, the bed, the lamp, that microwave thingy, the floor, the lady! All missing!

"Oh my God... Oh my God! Oh God, she's gone! She's, she's GONE! How can she be gone?! What in the-...! How in the-...! Oh my GOD! Oh no no no no no! Maybe she's just, she's just hiding! Yeah, hiding! Lady! Now's not a good time to be playing hide-and-seek! I take back the whole you not being brain damaged thing, by the way, as it is quite evident now, since you seem to think now is a good time for playing games! Come out now! So we can get out of here before everything goes up in flames!"

He spun around wildly, optic darting here and there, searching every nook and cranny - the few that remained, anyway - but nothing of the lady turned up. Nothing at all. Not a single bit of her. Not a single-...

He raced back along his management rail, retracing his steps and searching all over the place, coming up with nothing but ruined Extended Relaxation pods and that deep, foggy abyss. Perhaps she had fallen out here and not been crushed to death from being rammed up against the side of a wall by a ton of steel. Or so Wheatley could only hope, because there was no way he was going to go back and check.

"Okay. Maybe, maybe she, she fell out here and-.. landed on her feet. Yeah! She's quick on her feet. Like a fox, clever, brain damaged but clever, and foxes always land on their feet. And she had those long-fall boots. So odds are in her favor, actually. We could still get lucky, couldn't- Lady!" he called down into the abyss, his voice completely swallowed by the gloom, "Lady, are you alive down there? Just like last time, I'll wait one hour, and then-...! And then I'll... I'll, uh..."

But of course there was no answer. Who was he even trying to kid? Even if by some miracle she had survived that long of a fall, special boots or not, how could she possibly hear him from so far down? And, oh God, Wheatley thought, what if she landed in one of those random pits of acid that were spread haphazardly throughout the facility?! It was entirely possible, given how Aperture seemed to delight in putting even its employees to the test, even to the extent of making some of the employees have to race through gels and avoid mashy plates (not the spiky variety, those were his invention, he was proud to say) just to make it to their offices.

At this time, Wheatley began to hyperventilate, looking around in pure panic.

"Oh my God... Oh my God! What am I going to do?! How could this happen?! What am I going to do?!"

All terrible feelings aside, he supposed he could go back and check the other 9,999 Extended Relaxation pods, but what good would that really do? The whole place was about to explode. Sure, he hadn't heard any of those dire warnings in a while, but that didn't mean that the reactor core wasn't still down there, slowly boiling away. It was only a matter of time before it went kaput and then that would be the ending to his whole story. The final chapter. The last book in the series. No more second chances. Or thirds. Or fourths. Or any anything. And then it wouldn't matter whether or not the lady survived. Or whether or whether not he waited around for her for an hour. Or whether or whether not he checked the other 9,999 pods.

But, oh no, he was really quite desperate, wasn't he? Knowing that the lady was really gone and not coming back, Wheatley did indeed go about checking the rest of the pods. What he found was not only a waste of his time, but also quite disappointing. Not that he was keeping track or anything, but out of the total of 10,000 pods, if he counted the lady's, only 2,845 were ones he was physically able to get into, and out of that 2,845, exactly one of them had housed any living occupants. And he had just lost her.

With that, Wheatley reached a ghastly conclusion.

"Oh, no... Was she-... She was really the last one? Really?"

He was totally, utterly, inescapably SOL and JWF.

There was no way he would ever be able to reach the surface without a human, without his special lady human friend whom he had wished so hard to make amends with, even though it had all just been a glitch in his sleep mode simulation matrix. No. Perhaps he ought to have been more careful about preserving the life of the only remaining being that could help save his life. Humans were an awfully fragile species, after all.

Wheatley hung his head, allowing himself a moment of solace for the loss. He shifted on his rail as, off in the distance, he heard the alarms going off again. He barely had time to register that there was something else going on in the background, behind the alarms, something that sounded like something alive, something breathing, something that sounded like a faint chuckling, though it could just as easily be the creaking of old pipes or the hissing of heat splitting the air as the reactor core reached critical mass.

Thoroughly creeped out, the feeling of being watched washing over him all over again, Wheatley turned to flee and-

-THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END-