Wheatley was strangely thrilled to be back on the run with the lady. Just like last time, he led her through all the perils of the facility, lighting all the dangerous jumps for her and guiding her along, chatting her up as they went.
"Thank goodness for all these conveniently placed portalable surfaces, right?" he joked after illuminating a far away white wall for the lady to see and place her portal. "Otherwise it would have taken us a lot more effort to get you through here, if at all."
Her lips quirked in response, she placed her portal, hopped through, and on they went.
Things felt natural, like this was the way they were supposed to be, and not just because he had been through all this before. It was more like this - right here, right now - was where he belonged and feeling that for himself for the first time made all the difference. He felt optimistic, an overall state of well-being, like he knew that they were on the right path, that this was the correct choice, that his plan was the correct choice and that it would work.
Up ahead they had to part ways, but only temporarily and only because his rail did not go through the section of the facility the lady had to take in order to make it through to the Turret Control Center. He instructed her to follow the route to the bottom, he'd follow his rail down the back way, then he'd meet her in the middle. She nodded in confirmation of these instructions and jumped onto the Vent spiraling downwards towards the Turret Redemption Lines, carefully traversing it while he forged ahead on his own path as planned.
He again felt that spark of sunny optimism, just knowing that this would all work out. The Narrator hadn't even tried to stop them yet, so that had to be a good sign, didn't it? Then again, Wheatley was almost certain that if the Narrator could have, he would have tried to stop them. Then again, why would he have tried to stop them when so far they had been following the story damn near to a T? Or, he supposed, any letter could be suitable for this situation. But still. Was that the problem? Well, not problem, but was that the reason the Narrator was being so quiet? That they had not deviated? Wheatley had no way of knowing at this point, as they had yet to reach the part in their plan where they would need to deviate from the story at all.
He was just about to try checking in with the Narrator again when the lady emerged from her side of the passage sporting (very much to his horrified surprise) a turret on the end of her portal gun.
"AHHHH! What the- What the hell are you doing with that thing?! How did you get it through- Where did it even come from?! Are you insane?! Get rid of it!"
Instead of getting rid of it, she proved that she quite possibly might actually be insane and set it down right in front of him. She even had the audacity to quirk an eyebrow at him like he was the insane party. What was her deal?! Hadn't he had enough of these damned things to last him a lifetime?! More than a lifetime - multiple lifetimes, maybe even multiple stories, who's to say with how many he had recently been through.
He straightened himself on his rail, preparing to admonish her again when the turret's blood red beam suddenly leapt into action and locked onto him, like the deadliest of spotlights. His gears locked up and his optic shrunk right down.
"Oh- Oh God. Lady! Lady, help! It's- It's about to-!"
"Hello again, Wheatley," it spoke, its voice smooth and sweet as poisoned honey.
"Oh! Ohh God, oh no, this one knows me?!" Panic rose through him, sharp and swift as a mashy spike plate. "Look- Whatever it was, it wasn't me! I-I haven't even been around these parts until recently! I, I-I don't-"
"The end is never the end."
"...What."
"Dorothy could have gone home at any time."
"What is- Aw noooo, not this bloody thing again!" Wheatley growled, enraged by the reappearance of what was perhaps the single-most annoying thing he had encountered on his journey so far - save for the Narrator, who was, in fact, still not currently there to enrage him. "Lady, you have to get rid of this thing immediately. It's dangerous! It speaks nothing but spoilers!"
The lady cocked her head to the side, regarding him with gray eyes practically firing questions out at him in the same way that the turret was not firing bullets at him.
"You know, spoilers? Not like a spoiler on a car but like, someone spoils the ending of a book or a movie for you by telling you what happens?" he explained.
The turret chimed in: "Don't trust the sheep."
"See? Just like that."
Wheatley received a response from the lady in the form of a look that clearly illustrated to him that she either didn't see what the problem was or that she didn't follow altogether.
"Let's just say, for the sake of argument," he went on to clarify, "that it wasn't speaking spoilers. Like it's referring to something else. Okay, but who the heck knows what it's trying to say? 'Don't trust the sheep'? What kind of sense does that make? I mean, there aren't even any sheep around-"
"Callaghan wasn't actually dead."
"Pretty sure whoever that was actually is dead by now, mate... Look, lady," he said, addressing the lady again, "we can't have this thing spouting off this kind of crap to us. It could throw off ev- I mean, um... It just doesn't make any sense, now, does it?"
"Uncle Aaron is the Prowler."
"It's- Who now? See, lady, it's just speaking gibberish, talking about sheep and prowlers and telling us things we already know, like this Callaghan person being dead. Well, duh, of course we already know that - everybody's dead around here these days, yeah? Except for you and me, of course. And the crazy boss lady, pretty sure She is definitely still alive up there in Her big ol' boss chamber. Plus-"
"There are multiple endings."
"-Shut up! Sorry, sorry about that, like I was saying- In addition to everything else - and this part is perhaps the most important - it's a bloody turret! One of Her minions! A creepy little red-eyed, bullet-filled minion!"
"It's not his final form."
"Ugh, just- Now, I know you might think it looks and sounds cute and all, but it's dangerous, lady, really, it could turn on us at any moment, I don't even need to look into its red, beady little eye to tell. So just go on," Wheatley said, nodding to the side and inviting the lady to look to where he was nodding, "pitch it right over this railing here and let's-"
"The pies are people."
"Oh really?" He looked from the lady, who was still standing there watching the tennis match like a hyper-focused referee, back to the turret. "Last time you said the people were Soylent Green - now you're saying they're pies. Which is it?! Yeah, bet you thought I wouldn't remember, didn't you? I don't even see any bloody pies around here! Or anything that's green, let alone people! I'll tell you what they are - they're DEAD! Okay? All DEAD! All of the humans! Except for this one right here! That's all anyone needs to know! Moving on now! And by moving on, I mean," he said, returning his attention to the lady, "let's get rid of this thing."
"She's not his real daughter."
"Oh come on, lady, just get rid of it already. Please?"
After a shrug, the lady finally moved her portal gun in the direction of the turret.
"She throws it over the railing," it said calmly.
"Of course she does, mate! It's just common sense! And that doesn't even count as a spoiler! Now you're just repeating what I said!"
Without any further hesitation, the lady lifted the turret with the zero-point energy field manipulator on the portal gun, walked over to the catwalk railing, and dropped it straight over the edge. It banged and clanged against objects on the way down, ultimately landing on one of the Redemption Lines below. Wheatley and the lady both leaned over the railing, gazes following it as it traveled along the conveyor towards a very large-toothed, open-mouthed grinder poised at the end, waiting to catch, chew up, and spit out little remaining pieces of its mechanical victims.
It called up to them, almost cheerfully: "So long, and thanks for all the fish."
"No, so long to you and thank you for all the fish, you loony!" Wheatley called after it, then looked back to the lady. "Did you get a load of that thing? Told you it was nutters! You did the right thing, luv, don't even feel bad about it, all right?"
There then came a distinct Crunch! as the turret was dumped straight into the grinder and then, blissfully, no more spoilers.
"Ugh, I hope that's really the end of that thing this time. What was even the point...? Anyway, you ready to move on?"
The lady nodded and Wheatley wasted no time in leading her down a short staircase, around a corner, and into the Turret Control Center, where they would enact the first phase of their plan. Feeling that everything was back on track now, he explained,
"All right, now, what we have here is the Turret Control Center. Might look a bit complicated-"
The lady began to shrug, but Wheatley interrupted, continuing on with his explanation.
"-but it really is quite easy to figure out. So let me go ahead and just cut to the chase, save us a bit of time, right, I mean our audience already knows all th-"
She then gave him that puzzled look again - the same look she had given him many times during their story so far - like he was a Rubik's Cube - Sphere, Rubik's Sphere - and she was trying to figure out how to solve him.
Wheatley shifted on his rail and looked away. "Er, I mean, just that since this is all, um, quite obvious, if we had an audience, they'd be looking at us like we should just get on with things, right?" he amended. "So, ah, again, cutting to the chase - well, not a literal chase, although we are technically on the run and all, but, ah- So yeah, this scanner here is deciding which turrets are fit to keep, and which ones to toss. See?" He nodded towards where, just as he had described, the turret sorting mechanism was doing its job. "Good turret. Bad turret. Just like the squirrels and the walnuts in Willy Wonka's factory, only much less cute and furry, and nutty. What we need to do is remove that template turret in this little room here, and- Oh wait, we could have used the- No, no, then we might have had a bunch of spoiler-spouting turrets running around, and we do not need that, so- All right, never mind, all we need to do is replace the master turret with a bum turret. See what I'm getting at?"
The lady lifted her portal gun and nodded, ready for action.
"Now all we need to do is get into this room - so, again, just cutting straight to the chase, I'll break the window open like this-"
Not even bothering to ask her to turn around this time, Wheatley reared back, ready to smash the glass with his face the same way he had last time, when the lady held up a hand to stop him.
"What?" he said, in response to which she shook her head at him. "It's no big deal. I've done this sort of thing before. Won't even hurt me - promise."
The lady shook her head at him, holding her hand up again.
"All right, well- What's your plan, then?"
Wheatley watched as she went into the adjoining room and came back with one of the rolling office chairs.
"Ohhh, brilliant idea! No need to go bashing our heads against any glass if we don't need to, right?"
She nodded, he shifted out of the way, and next thing he knew she was slamming the chair, wheels-first, against the glass with enough force that it snapped off a couple of the wheels. The glass, however, remained intact.
"Oh, well, it was worth the try. Right, here I go- Oh, you've got another idea? Okay, lay it on me, then. Glass - lay it on the glass."
The lady went into the other room again -
"Or don't lay it, probably wouldn't do much damage in that case."
- ripped one of the flatscreen monitors out of the wall -
"Throw it instead."
- and bashed it up against the glass. The high-pitched sound of glass shattering, along with the glass itself, filled the air, tinkling as it sprinkled across the floor, shining like many jewels only far more sharp and far less valuable.
"Look at you go!" he cheered, waving his handles in excitement. "Great work, luv! From here on out, if we need to break any glass, I'll be sure to let you do the heavy lifting on that."
Wheatley smiled when she gave him a thumbs up.
"All right, so," he said, "go on down there, grab one of the bad turrets, bring it up here, and place it there and then we'll be good to go!"
The lady nodded and went to complete her task. As she departed, Wheatley grinned and said, "Oh, Narratorrrrr. You there? Did you see what we just did? We didn't follow the story! Not by your standards, anyway. Instead of me breaking the glass with my face, the lady broke it with a monitor! She's good at hacking things, isn't she? Who'da thought - she's a bloody natural! Oh, also I sent the lady to collect a defective turret without waiting for her to figure it out on her own. I mean, I'm sure she would have figured it out on her own, it was pretty obvious and she did last time, it's just that I made the whole thing a lot quicker for us. Anyway, that is to say, just now we didn't follow the story precisely. Don't you have anything to say about that?"
He waited for a few seconds, the turret controls going on in the background - Template, Response - along with the wails of defective turrets being discarded.
More like template, NO response - not the one he was looking for, anyway.
"Nothing? Really?" he said. Part of him was disappointed; the other part... still didn't know how to feel, though it did keep trying to put a label on it and throwing up mismatch errors when none of them seemed to fit. "That sort of thing usually gets your goat. Really gets your goat, like gets it all up in arms and everything, like a- like an armed goat. Yes, an armed goat - that's what you are. Or- what you've got. A goat with arms... Anyway, this- whatever you're doing, this pouting bit because you lost, it's rather silly. I mean that - you just look silly. I mean, if I could see you, I'm pretty you'd look just as silly as you're acting. So, maybe you should just snap out of it now and come on back-"
At that moment, the lady returned with one of the defective turrets perched on the end of her portal gun, the turret commending her for rescuing it.
"Ah!" Wheatley started. "Hey there, lady, good work! Was just having a good talk with myself, you know, perfectly healthy thing to do, talking to oneself, absolutely not an indicator of anything else going on, not at all, just a person- um, core, keeping himself company in your absence, which is a rather big hole to fill. Not that- Not saying that you are a big person or anything like that, just that your presence is difficult to recreate in your absence, you know, with- with-... You know what? Are ready to move on to Phase Two, then? Shut off Her neurotoxin?"
They made their way to the neurotoxin generator next, passing by some offices and directions stenciled on the walls between them.
"Look at that, would you? Employee Daycare Center. Nestled up all nice and close to where the neurotoxin gets produced. I tell you, lady - they've said all kinds of things about me, moved me around to all kinds of positions throughout this whole place, called me a moron, idiot, all of the above - but at least I would never bring my kids into this place. I mean, theoretically speaking, of course, if I had any children, I would never have brought them into here. I would have kept them out on the surface or something, you know? Certainly not around any neurotoxin generators."
He led her down some more hallways, entering the room with all the potato batteries, continuing to fill the silence as they went.
"'Bring Your Daughter to Work Day'. Yeah, like I've said before, that didn't end well. Nope."
He sighed and shook his chassis, watching while the lady briefly glanced at the projects before looking away, like the whole set-up made her uncomfortable. He couldn't say he blamed her, if he was honest. The whole thing was making him uncomfortable this time around, too. He could almost feel the ghosts of the past watching him through the eyes of all those rotten potato batteries.
"And that was just one incident," he said, leading her away from the grim scene. She still looked a bit unnerved, so he proceeded to do what he did best and kept talking. "What kind of idiots would leave their homicidal central AI hooked up to the neurotoxin generator, right? I mean, why even have a neurotoxin generator to begin with? What kind of science does that qualify under? Stupid. Stupid science, that's what kind. Probably up there along with giving people horse dewormer to cure a contagious disease or creating a testing chamber that consists of nothing but fire, moving platforms, spike-pits, and buttons, and has no exit. I mean, even the potato batteries were a better idea."
The lady nodded at him, either in agreeance or understanding - whichever, it only encouraged Wheatley to yammer on some more.
"And something else, back in the day - back when everybody was still alive - I even tried suggesting to the scientists that they have some back-up oxygen masks or something on-hand, you know, in case the neurotoxin was ever to be released again for whatever reason. Say there was an accident or, even more obvious, the crazy central AI decided to try to murder everybody again. And you know what the scientists said to me? They laughed, first of all. And then they said that they were the scientists and I was just some stupid personality core so of course they weren't going to listen to me. And then they laughed some more. Well, ha... who's laughing now, am I right?" he said darkly, then caught a tight-lipped glance from the lady and scrambled to fix what he had just said. "Uh- I mean- Well, obviously they can't be laughing now because- because they're all, you know... dead. The point is, I did try to warn them, and who knows, maybe this whole thing could have been avoided if they'd just listened to me, you know? Hindsight. Not for me, though, hindsight for them, although they can't have any hindsight now on account of... on account of being dead. Er-... That was rather grim, sorry about that. I would say let's change the subject, but as it turns out, we've reached our destination!"
Up ahead, there stood the towering white monolith that was the neurotoxin generator, suspended in the middle of the room like a massive spider, ready to strike at any unsuspecting victim on any part of its web upon command. Wheatley led the lady, who kept staring up at the enormous structure in awe, up the lift and to the corridor just outside the Implosion Observation Annex. Here, he stopped her.
"Okay, now this part... this part could be a bit tricky, luv, I'll admit. This button here-"
He nodded at a red button situated by the catwalk railing -
"-will open that door-"
- and then nodded at the door across from the button.
"-and inside is an observation and control room of sorts. Go on, push the button and I'll show you. It's perfectly safe, I assure you."
The lady pressed the button, the door opened, and in she went, with her arriving at the annex itself while Wheatley followed his rail through into the control room. He got her attention through the glass separating them by waving at her.
"You see that?" he called through the glass. "That is, of course, the neurotoxin generator. Now, you see those big tubes there, connected to it?"
The lady's sharp eyes followed his directions and she nodded, presumably to show she understood what he was saying.
"Those are all the lines directing the neurotoxin out of the generator itself. Easy enough to figure this out, right? As you saw back out in the hallway, there's a conveniently placed Thermal Discouragement Beam just out there. And in here, we have the moving panels just back there. See them? Now, thankfully you can actually place your portals on them and use the beam to cut the lines - although I thought that portals couldn't be placed on or remain open on moving panels - never thought of that before now, actually, but at least that trick works here, right, otherwise why have the panels back there at all? Honestly, it's like the scientists designed this place as stupidly as possible. Again, convenient for us. Anyway, still with me, luv?"
He waited for her to give him another nod before going on.
"Now that's all the easy part," he said. "The tricky part is going to be figuring out how to accomplish all that without us both getting stuck in this room, because once you cut those lines, it will trigger an implosion, which will then cause this door to seal. All for safety - again, funny they thought of that particular safety measure, yet they left the neurotoxin generator- Right, see our dilemma here? Come on, back out into the hallway now."
She nodded at him again and followed him out to where he sighed and looked down a bit sheepishly.
"I honestly- I'm honestly coming up blank on this one. Maybe it's not even possible. I guess you could always go in and cut the lines while I wait outside the door, and when it closes, try to hack it back open, but in the interest of transparency, that's never really worked all that well for me in the past - hacking doors - so I'd rather try to accomplish this without sending you in there by yourself."
She gave him a thumbs up.
"Oh, good to know you agree with me! I mean, what if you end up stuck in there? How will you get out without jumping over the railing? I don't want to risk that - that would be tremendously dangerous! Far more dangerous than anything else we've ever done - or at least I think so. No, let's not do that. Suppose you could cut all of the lines but one and the weight of the thing might drag it the rest of the way down? No, it's held up there pretty well even without the lines, isn't it? Hmm... Maybe we could go back, grab a turret, and somehow get it to shoot- No, no, that's really stupid, that idea, sorry about that one, luv. Oh! How about-"
Wheatley looked up and alarm shot through him when he realized the lady was missing.
"GAH! Where'd you go?!" he called out, voice strained with fear, spinning around on his rail in search of her. He then noticed that the panel across from the Thermal Discouragement Beam held an open portal on it. And he caught a faint whiff of neurotoxin in the air. And he could hear destructive noises coming from the other room.
Putting one and three together, he looked back into the room and realized-
"Lady! Lady, come out of there straight away! I mean it! Come out of there right this instant, we'll figure out another way! Please! Come out!"
When she did not respond, he moved to race in after her. Hell, if this was what was going to happen - if she was going to cut all the lines and get stuck in that room and have to end up going straight to Her anyway - then there was no way he was going to leave her to all that by herself. They would just have to ditch the last part of the plan and figure something out along the way, hopefully before reaching the crazy boss lady's chamber.
Instead, he found himself staring at the lady, stunned, when she came running back out of the room, ushering him back along his rail, seconds later followed by an immense, concerning tremble and the door slamming shut behind her.
"Oh my God! Did you just-"
She beamed at him, panting to catch her breath, while from the other room Wheatley could hear alarms blaring and what sounded like the crumpling of a massive tin can.
"Ha!" he laughed, relief and joy flooding through his circuits. "You did it! You really did it! Look at you! You're a regular genius, you are! How did you do it?"
The lady, still smiling, began to move her hands, explaining to him how she had solved the puzzle. Wheatley watched her miming as closely as he could, not wanting to misinterpret or miss anything altogether.
"The moving panels, yes," he said, reiterating back to the lady what he was understanding as she was miming it, whereupon she would nod to show that they were on the same page. "You shot your portal onto the moving panels on the right first, okay got it. Cut all those lines. And then the moving panels on the left side? The ones moving up? You placed a portal on the very bottom panel and then booked it out of there? Did I get all that right?"
She nodded.
"Brilliant! That's brilliant, luv! Simply amazing! I should have known you'd figure it all out! I mean, what was I even worried about in the first place? Excellent problem-solving skills employed there!" he cheered. "High five for teamwork! Okay, well, fair enough, you did most of the work there, but still- and I don't have any fingers with which to form an actual high five, but nonetheless- high five!"
He leaned down on his rail and offered one of his handles to her, which she pushed her hand against and smirked. He pushed back and nodded at her, sunny optimism flowing through him again.
"Okay, now let's get moving! We've still got one more step after this before we can confront Her!"
Wheatley pressed them both along, leading her away from the neurotoxin generator, to someplace at a fair distance and with several doors between them and the generator, so she wasn't breathing in as much stray neurotoxin. The plan was for them to follow his map through the facility until they could find a way to make it as close as possible to the scary boss lady's chamber without getting caught, where they would then enact the Third and Final Phase of their overall plan, but they had only gotten a few corridors away from the neurotoxin generator when he noticed that she seemed to be lagging a bit more than usual. He wasn't too concerned at first, knowing that she had probably inhaled at least some neurotoxin. However, that non-concern seeded, sprouted, and rapidly grew into fully-bloomed concern when he actually witnessed her stumbling.
"Woah woah woah, hold on," he said, stopping her. "You all right, luv?"
She began to nod but Wheatley immediately cut her off.
"No no no, you don't look all right, not at all. Are you hurt? Are you-" That fully-bloomed concern then swiftly became a complete overgrowth of panic. "Oh no, oh nononono, did you breathe in too much neurotoxin back there? I mean, I knew you had to have breathed in at least a little, but I didn't know just that little bit could do this! I should have thought of some other way! This is all my fault! You're going to die now and it's all my-"
The lady sighed and shook her head at him, placing a hand on her chest, taking a few dramatized breaths in and out, and then giving him a thumbs up.
"Oh. You- You're all right on that front, then? Not dying from neurotoxin poisoning?"
She shook her head.
"That's a relief... but you still look bloody awful. Well, I don't mean you look awful, per se, just that you look-..." She looked just the way that other human - Stanley - had looked when he had seen him, Wheatley thought - the way he had had those dark patches around his sunken eyes, paleness in his cheeks, malaised, very clearly run down. Even with the lady's darker complexion, Wheatley could see all this now. "I mean, you look tired. There! That's what I meant. You look exhausted, utterly exhausted."
The lady shrugged and moved to continue walking, and this time Wheatley lowered himself as far down on his rail as he could, right in front of her, forcing her to halt again. She sighed and gave him an exasperated look.
"Don't you give me that look, young lady. No, you're going to lie yourself down for a bit. No no no, no arguing. You pop yourself down right here and have a nap. If nothing else, we can't go facing off against Her with you in this condition, you see what I'm saying?"
The lady looked down, raised both eyebrows, and then put her arms out while she gazed around.
"Where? Right there, of course," he said, nodding downwards to indicate where she could lie down, although really anywhere could have worked in his opinion.
Instead of agreeing with him, though, the lady put one hand on her hip and gave him one of the driest looks she had ever given him.
He blinked. "What, you don't want to lie down right here?"
She nodded.
He blinked again. "You do want to lie down right here?"
She shook her head.
This time he squinted at her. "Okay, wait... I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Let's try this again. Do you want to lie down right here - yes or no?"
She sighed and shook her head.
"No. No, you don't want to. But you do agree with resting for a bit?"
She nodded.
"All right. Ummm... Oh! Hang on a mo, I think I saw- just, just a sec," he said and then went about accessing his internal map software. After a moment, he said, "Aha, I was right! We passed a section of human employee dormitories back there. Want to go check that out, see if it's worth anything to you?"
She nodded, looking a bit more enthusiastic about that idea than lying down on a cold hard metal catwalk. Humans really could be such persnickety creatures, he thought, but if this was what she needed to recharge her energy levels back to normal, then it wasn't like he could begrudge her. After all, he was the one who had suggested she rest in the first place.
He led her back a short ways until they reached the employee dormitories. As luck would have it, the door was not locked. As luck would not have it, Wheatley had no way of going into the dorm without hopping off his rail first, a thought that made him feel greatly uncomfortable, considering what had happened the last time she had tried to catch him after hopping off his rail.
"Umm..." he said, hesitating while she peered into the open doorway. The room was dark. Very dark. Not a speck of light to be seen, aside from the beam of his flashlight. Still, he hesitated. "Why don't- Why don't you go on in without me. I'll stand guard out here."
The lady shook her head at him and held her open arms out to him.
"You really want me to go in there with you?"
She nodded.
"You're sure?"
She nodded again.
"No, I mean, are you sure you can catch me? Without dropping me or me hitting you in the head and killing you or something?"
She held her arms out straighter to him for emphasis and moved closer.
"...And you really won't go in there without me?"
She shook her head and stood there looking a bit impatient now.
"Well-... All right."
Wheatley steadied himself above her, trying to calculate exactly at what angle he should release from his rail and where he would land should he have miscalculated, but the fact that he could be miscalculating on both fronts only made him feel more nervous. He couldn't hang around here all day, not when the lady needed to rest and apparently needed him to go into the room with her.
Realizing he had no other choice, he held a simulated breath and let go. He had a moment of sheer panic, somewhere between letting go and her arms enclosing around him, when he was sure he was just about to accidentally kill her again. He even imagined hearing that wet thunk again and shuddered. But then she dropped down to one knee with him in her arms, his combined weight and momentum having dragged them both downwards. Thanks to her superior strength, though, he only bumped lightly against the catwalk and she did not appear to be sporting any new fatal injuries.
"Phew! That was scary! But great catch, luv! Good to know the hand-eye coordination is still all there. Now imagine how much better it'll be once you get some good rest!"
The lady carried him into the room with her, Wheatley using his flashlight to help her find her way around in the dark. The white beam revealed to them a dusty common area furnished with a couple of couches, some coffee and end tables, a television, and some other amenities. There was also a small adjoining kitchen with a refrigerator, an oven and stove combo, a toaster oven, and very little counter space.
At first glance, things might have appeared normal. But the longer they looked, the more Wheatley noticed that some things were out of place - or, perhaps, in place. A soda can here, a pack of cigarettes there, a pot sitting on the stovetop, a long-since dead houseplant knocked off the counter, dirt trailed across the floor. It looked like one of those historic house exhibits, where everything was set up to look like someone had only just up and left, except in this instance everyone had just up and died. At least there were no skeletons anywhere, none that they could see, which was a relief. Wheatley was still chilled by the scene, though, and if the lady was at all unnerved by it, she was doing a lot better job at hiding it than he was.
At the end of the room, there branched off a hallway that led to the actual individual dormitories. The lady first located the bathroom, set Wheatley down just outside with the door cracked so that she could see, answered the call of nature, and then returned moments later to pick him back up.
"Please tell me you washed your hands," he said. He couldn't see her response, but he did hear a small puff of air come out of her. And her hands did feel suspiciously dry grasping onto him. "Ugh, never mind. Just go ahead and pick one of these rooms, then."
Pushing one of the dormitory doors open, the lady entered, shifting here and there so Wheatley's flashlight could illuminate the dark corners until they located a twin-sized bed. The sheets had presumably once been white, but were now just as dull and faded as the rest of the place, even with everything up and running at Her beck and call, but that didn't stop the lady from shuffling over to it the moment she spotted it.
"Why don't you set me down on this chair right here?" he suggested, fluttering a handle at a chair that was situated nearby. "That way I'll be able to kick back too and I won't disturb you. Plus I'll be able to keep an eye out for any danger should, um, should anything come charging in at us. Don't know what could at this point, but you never know. Go on, go on and lie down now."
She nodded, setting him down on the chair as indicated. She shoved everything off the nightstand - inoperable alarm clock, lamp, and all - and replaced it with her portal gun. Then she peeled back the top sheet of the bed, crawled under, and laid her head down on the pillow.
"Here, I'll turn this down for you." He turned down the beam of his flashlight and aimed it away from her. "All right? Now- Now sleep as long as you need, though I might suggest keeping it under a hundred years this time," he said with a light chuckle. In response, the lady pressed her lips together in what Wheatley interpreted as a sardonic manner. "Just, ah, just joking, just joking is all, luv. Have a good nap."
The lady closed her eyes and then proceeded to roll around for the next ten or so minutes, by Wheatley's estimate - not that he had a good estimate of time, what with his internal clock eternally flashing 12:00 just like any other around the facility. Still, she was quite restless and he couldn't help but notice.
"Look, I know I said I wouldn't disturb you while you slept and all, but you, you seem to be a bit restless there, definitely not sleeping by any measurement of human sleep I'm aware of. Everything all right? Something you want to talk - or mime - about?"
She sighed, rolled to face him, and shrugged in the muted darkness.
"Too excited from everything? Ohh, or I'll bet it's a bit too quiet for you, is that it?"
She sighed and shrugged again.
"All right. Well... I can't do anything about that being excited bit, but, but I do have an idea for if it's too quiet."
She nodded her consent at him and Wheatley felt suddenly nervous - foolish, even - at the idea he had in mind. But if there was even a small chance it would help, then he was going to do it.
"It's- Now, don't laugh, I mean, I'm no Backstreet Boy and, and it's probably not the cheeriest of tunes, but, but- here we go."
He then simulated clearing his throat, closed his optic, and began to sing the first song that presented itself in his mind, like the clouds had parted and it had been gifted to him from a higher power.
"Sing me to sleep. Sing me to sleep. I'm tired and I... I want to go to bed. Sing me to sleep. Sing me to sleep. And then leave me alone."
He paused, cracking open his eye plates to see if she was bothered or otherwise disgusted and wanted him to stop. She was neither of those things. Instead, her eyes were a little rounder, like she was surprised, and he definitely had her full attention.
Encouraged, he continued, "Don't try to wake me in the morning, 'cause I will be gone. Don't feel bad for me, I want you to know, deep in the cell of my heart, I will feel so glad to go."
He carried on through to the end of the song, softly humming some of what would have been the instrumental bits in between, to where he sang the last few lines a little quieter, noticing that she had settled down.
"There is another world. There is a better world. Well, there must be. Well, there must be..."
He trailed off, watching as her breaths evened out and she finally stopped fidgeting. He smiled softly at her in the darkness, feeling happy and like the world wasn't so bad and that everything would be all right.
"Good night, poppet."
Special thanks to ProtoChan for suggesting some of the spoilers from the Spoiler Turret! :D