Chapter 11 - The Escape
"Turn left!" said Wheatley. "No, wait! Terrible idea. Your other left!"
Doug reached out to grab a corner, rebounding in the other direction like a snapped rubber band. Panel after panel whooshed by him, the white of his lab coat blurring with the white of the walls.
"Hurry up, hurr-y up!" called the robot, hushed yet urgent. "She could be here at any minute. See us lurking about. Sneaking."
He frowned—he knew that she could be anywhere. That's why he stayed silent; that's why he ran instead of walked. The further they went, the more terrified he became of coming face to face with Caroline herself.
The panels pulled away. Doug rushed across empty space, a long gap separating the previous area from the next one long. A quick glance back showed the testing track he'd just passed. Elevator tubes connected each chamber, extending up in a vertical stack. And ahead of them, Doug spotted the short-term relaxation vault.
Disconnected from the tests, it hung in the haze like an ornament from a tree. Black panel 'arms' jutted out. The circular chamberlock remained twisted closed. The catwalk ran alongside it, wrapping around to the other side.
"Entrance, entrance. Looking for an entrance," the robot hummed. "Don't see one. Anywhere. Besides, ah, that one hanging over that drop."
"It's there," Doug said, pointing out a dark door.
The robot jerked his handles, discovering it out a split-second too late. "You can't just go in there, though," he said. "Specifically told you that before: do NOT go into the observation rooms. You know fully well that she," he said with a gulp, "could be in there. I'm nothing to her. Just a pile of processors. I could die. "
"Then you'd better go in there and make sure it's empty."
Even if the room was occupied and Caroline strode out, Wheatley had a history of finding himself in places where he didn't belong. He could pass it off as an accident. A misunderstanding. He 'didn't mean' to end up knocking on the door—and if he was clever enough, Wheatley could make up an excuse for how he'd gotten in there. Perhaps the 'door' had been standing wide open.
That would send her rushing off in a panic.
"Go on. Just hit your handle against the door," he said, ducking around a corner and pressing his back against a wall. "I'll wait over here."
Wheatley's upper eye plate lowered. With a sigh, he glided onwards.
Knock.
Knock knock knock.
Nothing.
He couldn't glance around the corner. He couldn't tell what happened. So, he listened for the things he expected: a telltale creak of the door, or Caroline's bright and terrifying voice.
He really should have picked a spot farther down to hide.
"Hell-ooo?" the robot called, and Doug jumped. It took him a moment to place the source of the voice—he could have sworn that the turret-like phrase came from behind him. This place was messing with his mind.
Silence.
He heard the metallic glide of the sphere as he rolled back. The expression on the bot itself had shifted—while confused and worried earlier, he looked more cheerful now.
Doug couldn't explain how.
He wasn't sure if he wanted to, either. Describing to someone just how an artificial intelligence could have emotions would be difficult enough, much less arguing that they had expressions as well. Like everything else, they'd brush it off as another symptom of his schizophrenia—assigning human-like qualities to objects. Intelligent objects, yes, but still not human.
"Absolutely no one in there. I knocked, and even said hello. No one answered," he said. "I'd say with about seventy percent certainty that there's no one in there. But there is a slight chance that the boss lady's gone completely deaf, being as old as she is. In that case, I would highly suggest that we run for our lives."
Doug took one last sweeping look before approaching. His hand trembled as he twisted the door handle, barely cracking it open. He ducked down, peeking in through the minuscule slit between door and frame.
Just as Wheatley had suspected, the room was empty.
He opened the door, pushing his way past a faded yellow desk chair. Squeaky clicks came from the wheels as he rolled it aside.
A mug sat on the desk, rings of brown staining the surface. Doug pressed his palm against it, noting that no heat came from the slick surface of the cup. He dipped his index finger into the ice-cold coffee, jerking it back and splattering a few drops onto his shirt.
Caroline wasn't here. And she hadn't been here for a while.
It took him a moment to snap out of his hyper-focus on details, to shift his mind back to finding Chell.
He struggled to look through the thick, lined glass that warped his vision of the room below. Face pressed close, he raised his hands above his eyes as if to shield them from a bright light.
A small figure perched on top of the curved relaxation pod, her back pressed against the wall facing him. She fiddled with a radio, twisting a knob and jumping through stations. Little numbers dashed, and the tunes clashed into one another. Soft strains of a cheerful song came through a speaker in the corner.
"Chell!" he said, loudly yet not quite a yell.
She didn't turn around.
He tried again. "Chell!"
No reaction.
He slapped a hand against the glass, window only hearing a muffled thump as the window deflected his hit. He hit again, this time bouncing his fist off of the glass. "Come on," he said. "Turn around."
No reaction.
The spherical robot lingered in the doorway, hesitant to enter. Adding Wheatley to the already-cramped room could only cause more headaches.
A desk. A chair. A coffee mug. Doug swept the room once again, eventually settling on a box beside the computer monitor. He reached for the small gray thing, tugging at the attached cord so that he could hold it in his palm.
An intercom—an old-fashioned version of the intercoms he'd seen around Aperture. He punched at a red button, clearing his throat and tapping on the mic as he turned back to the glass.
Pop.
Hisssss.
A finger tapped on the microphone.
Chell lunged forward, letting her radio clatter onto the floor. She scrambled back into place, throwing a fearful look at the camera in the corner. There was no way she'd ever let Caroline know how much she loved the radio and the break from monotony it provided. She couldn't allow her that satisfaction.
The sheer isolation caused her mind to conjure things into being, voices and shapes and dreams she knew, in hindsight, couldn't be true. One moment there, then gone. But after she'd gotten the steady streams of music from the radio, the—hallucinations, for lack of a better word—stopped.
Another day must have passed. Caroline was back, and it was time once again to listen to her hurl words from the safety of her perch.
A voice came in over the speakers, low and male. At first she heard her name, broken and faint. Then, louder and with more confidence. Her heart leaped, and she twisted, pressing a palm against the unbreakable glass of the vault. She'd tried throwing everything at it—a clipboard, a nightstand, herself, but never the radio. It meant far too much to her.
She looked up to see a young man pressed against the window, drenched in Aperture white.
"Doug!" she said, breaking into a smile.
He nodded, and the fact that he was here instead of Caroline, though, made her anxious. The part of her that wasn't filled with relief remained convinced that something horrible could happen at any moment.
"Hold on. I'm getting you out of there."
Chell slid from her seat, scrambling into her shoes. She didn't bother to untie her double knots, instead shoving in her feet. The back of her heels folded in and dug into her feet.
Doug lifted his finger from the live button, turning back at the robot lingering in the doorway. "Help me get her out of that room," he said.
"Can't really help you there. No real door in there. Just portals. And unless you can get into that computer, I cannot help you. Most likely a complicated password, with both numbers and letters. Could be here for days hacking that one."
Doug wiggled a mouse and a lock screen surfaced on the computer monitor. Two empty slots blinked at him. Username. Password.
He got the feeling that his standard employee login wasn't going to cut it.
The robot was right—they didn't have time to sit here and go through every possible combination. If anything, he might make a lucky guess. If only there was some sort of admin login, some sort of code that could access even her network of computers back here.
Doug exhaled, glancing back into the sealed-off room only accessible by portals.
"Can I access those directly?" he said, pointing toward the portal panels. Little bars stretched above and below, and produced a twin set of portals when activated. No gun required.
"Of course not," said Wheatley. "What, d'you think Aperture just has some sort of 'Press to Open Portals' button? Ah-hahaha aaha aah oh," he said, dropping into a lower, softer voice.
Doug readjusted the bulky white monitor, revealing a warning poster and a small, singular switch.
CAUTION
Do NOT disengage inter-dimensional portals when subject is inside!
THANK YOU!
The diagram was split in half, with two different scenarios. On the top, the portals were open, and the switch on the side flicked to 'on'. A test subject smiled as he walked between them.
To the right, a bright checkmark.
Below it, the switch on the side changed to 'off'. The portals were disengaged, and two halves of the man laid on the ground in a pool of scribbled blood.
To the right, a large X.
What a terrible poster.
Inaccurate, too.
In his time—and even before his time, developments in the handheld portal device ensured that test subjects would be pushed either one way or another when portals were disengaged—both manually or remotely. Too many test subjects had ended up split into pieces due to a careless error.
While Aperture was never against death as a result of testing, there were far too many other, more creative ways for them to stupidly die. At least those mistakes contributed to science-.
Doug almost missed the white paddle switch beneath the poster. He stuck his index finger underneath and flipped.
Sparks.
The lights in the chamber dimmed, and then brightened. Chell backed up as the timer flickered to life.
1:00:00
0:59:00
0:58:00
0:57:00
Doug pressed the button. "As soon as that portal opens, you get out of there," he said. "I don't know how long it'll stay open."
Chell nodded, dipping her head as she approached the flat portal panel.
"Not to, ah, rain on your parade," said Wheatley. "But someone—not entirely sure who—just opened one of the doors into this wing. If I had to guess in some sort of life-or-death scenario—which I seriously doubt would ever happen—I'd say it's her. So, a friendly reminder to hurry up with whatever you're doing in there, because she could be here soon. Very soon."
Doug's heart jumped—forty-five seconds left on the clock. He could get her out of the vault itself, but he had no idea how to get her out of the chamber. The only exit dropped off into empty space, and with no access to the computer he had no way of changing that.
Forty seconds.
Doug moved to the window, strumming his fingers against the glass.
What to do, what to do…
He turned back to Wheatley. "Get in here," he hissed.
"Oh, I really shouldn't—" he said, but after a glare he darted into the room. Doug ducked under the sphere, pulling at the door handle and closing the door.
Doug wasn't sure how much the metal ball could endure in terms of damage. That's what Henry's department, not his. But he could think of two possibilities.
One, Wheatley was incredibly fragile.
Two, Wheatley was indestructible.
In Aperture, there was no in between. But judging by how dense this robot could be, Doug would have put money on the latter.
Only one way to find out.
Doug reached and wrapped a hand around Wheatley's lower handle.
"Ahh, so you are, in fact, trying the computer hacking thing? Not entirely sure we have time for that, but you are the employee here. Not me. So I'll trust your greater judgment. Assuming you have some."
"Disengage from your rail, Wheatley."
"That's an awful long ways down, though—"
His hand tightened on the handle and he glanced up. "I've got you," he said. "Don't worry."
Thwop.
The portals opened, and Doug glanced over. The girl darted through the portals, undaunted by the fact that she'd just leaped through an inter-dimensional tear in time and space.
With his other hand, he reached for the microphone. "Stay back from the window!" he said. "I'm going to try something."
The girl backpedaled, sizing up the distance from the floor to the observation room. Even if he broke the glass, she wasn't sure if she'd be able to get up there. With a portal device it would be easy—but Chell couldn't blame Doug for not having one. The devices themselves had to be under close watch, considering what had, well, happened.
"You've got quite the grip there, you know," said Wheatley, yammering on. "Excellent. You won't let me slip. I'm sure of it. Might as well just drop now and save some time."
Pop.
Wheatley dropped from his rail like a boulder into a pond. Doug's arm lurched downward with the unexpected weight of the sphere, and he gave a little yelp as he scrambled to readjust himself.
The sphere rolled to the side, groaning slightly. "Ow," he said as Doug grabbed both of his handles. "Could've at least warned me that you weren't actually going to catch me…"
Doug hefted up the robot, backing up to the wall. And with all of the strength he could muster in his arms, he flung the robot at the window.
Crash.
The robot sailed right through, leaving a circular shaped hole. A moment later it shattered, glass raining into both the office and the chamber below. Doug threw up his arms to shield his face, but the danger had already passed.
He dropped his arms.
Jagged bits still clung to the window frame, glass teeth waiting to draw blood. On the ground below, the sphere wobbled, complaining as he tried to get away from the piles of sharp fragments.
"Well THAT was quite the hack!" he said, rolling to look back up at Doug. "I like your, ah style there, mate. Need to take a few tips from the master himself. When computers won't work, might as well attempt a full-on manual override. Genius!" His handles pulled inward and then back outward.
Chell wormed her way toward the broken remains of the window, tiptoeing her way to the wall. She reached up an arm. Her heart sunk-she hadn't realized just how far down she was.
Doug stared down, scanning the room for something, anything they could use.
"Grab that nightstand—" he said, and Chell darted back into the vault with only a split-second hesitation at the portals. She pushed it against the side, throwing her arm up once again with fingers outstretched.
Still no luck.
"The—use the robot," Doug said, and Chell reached out for the artificial intelligence.
Her heart stopped.
This was him. This was the robot responsible for her being in here, for her to have been caught in the first place. If he hadn't shown u, she might have had a chance at getting out of here on her own.
"Why is he here?" she said, face darkening.
"Look—I'll explain later," said Doug. "Just—use him as a step for now."
He looked so much bigger in her arms, and Wheatley raised his lower plate into a pathetic half-smile.
Chell dropped him onto the nightstand, optic first. His handles caught him, balancing the sphere on the flat surface. She scrambled to stand on him, once again going up on your toes.
"I know this can't be helped—we are in a hurry. Just, could you be a bit more careful? Really, please do be careful. I'm not indestructible," he said.
Doug yanked off his lab coat, tying one sleeve to his ankle and another to his desk. He leaned over the edge, metal frame biting into his stomach as he reached out to her. The jacket pulled taut, and he heard the faint sound of seams ripping as his hands closed around her outstretched ones.
He dangled. Arms fully extended and legs locked straight, he gave a halfhearted pull and realized with a twist of his stomach that he couldn't do it. She was too far down—and he couldn't get in a good enough position to yank her up. Upper body strength alone wasn't going to work.
Doug muttered a quick apology, slipping his hands away. Chell searched his face for an explanation, but the man had already turned away. He yanked at the knots, pulling both of his sleeves back to normal.
With one sleeve now wrapped around his hand, he tossed the jacket down to Chell. He couldactually pull her up, now that he had proper footwork and a makeshift rope.
"And how exactly do you plan on getting me back up there?" Wheatley said, piping in.
Doug didn't answer.
And neither did Chell.
The girl clung to the tips of his white jacket, her grip shifting into handfuls as she climbed her way up. She hovered, glancing down at the tilted robot. He'd rolled on the nightstand, twisting so that his optic faced the ceiling.
"Wait. We can't let Caroline find him," Doug said softly. "You'll have to grab him."
Chell gave Doug a long stare and then sighed. Her foot swooped down, pointed as she stuck it between his handle and his casing. Chell flexed her foot outwards, letting it stick out at an angle as she drew the robot closer to her.
He was heavier than she'd expected.
As soon as she climbed high enough, she reached for the window ledge and let go of the fraying lab coat. Years of hot summers, of pushing herself out and over pool ledges whenever she was too lazy to swim to the ladder meant she had enough upper body strength to heft herself over the edge.
"Got it?" said Doug, reaching out to grab her shoulders. Chell threw a leg over the edge, pointing her foot to let Wheatley roll aside. Bits of glass jabbed at her stomach, tearing and ripping stripes into at her clothes and drawing red lines on her skin.
She scrambled, glass shards snapping as she rolled to safety. After pushing herself to her feet, she pulled her shirt down to cover the rips in her undershirt and brushed off clinging squares of glass. There. Good as new. A smile broke out on her face, a burst of color and expression in this emotionless place.
"Thank you," she said, almost a whisper. He could never know what had gone through her head, how truly frightening that sense of total abandonment had been. She could've gone crazy in that room, left alone to her thoughts. And he—he had proved her wrong. People did care about her.
Doug gave her a small pat on the shoulder. "You're welcome," he said, "but save it. Caroline's on her way and we have to get out of here. And don't worry about the robot. He's helping us now."
Her smile drifted into a more serious expression, a thin mask to hide her terror. Doug reached for the sphere, standing up on his tiptoes to latching him back into the management rail.
"Oh—this is very, very bad news," said Wheatley. "Can't tell quite where she is at, but she should be arriving here at any moment. So I would suggest we start running. NOW."
"Then go!" Doug hissed, diving beneath the robot. No sense in standing here any longer—the room was trashed. No chance of covering up this one—he couldn't just readjust the swivel chair and walk right out as if nothing had happened. It was only a matter of time until Caroline realized what had happened—and that she was missing one test subject.
Chell paused to close the door before sprinting to catch up. The robot zoomed ahead, darting left to take a new route. After all, they didn't want to risk running into her on their way out. Especially since she'd most likely come in the same door as they had.
The two might have been hurrying on their way in, but it was nothing compared to how fast the three were going on their way out.
They struggled to remain silent, shoes slapping against metal and breaths deep and heaving. Another door came into view, just as plain and simple as the first entrance. Doug punched open the numbers, giving silent thanks that the code for exiting matched the code for entering. He threw the door open. Chell and Wheatley slipped through.
The elevator to the surface wasn't far from here—just a few more winding hallways, past a few more offices. Five or six people stood around, chattering amongst themselves.
They slowed to a walk as they approached, chests still heaving as they squeezed their way through and pushed the 'up' button.
"Press all you want," said one of the scientists. "We've been here for ten minutes waiting. They say it's stuck."
"You're kidding," said Doug, but the other man shook his head. He took a deep breath, glancing at the closed doors and wishing that they'd just open, that they could slip in and glide up to the surface.
A tense moment passed.
He glanced back at Chell, her face the same stoic expression. She refused to make eye contact with the sphere. "Come on," he said, voice hushed. "Caroline must've called and had them block the lift. I think I know another way out—just trust me."
"I do," she said, voice soft. "Just please. Don't let her find me again."
"I won't," he said, pulling the girl into a hug. She only made it about three quarters the way up on him, and for a moment she just rested her head against him, breaths steadying. "I won't let her find you," he repeated, the hug itself reminiscent of his mother pulling him into a hug when he was younger.
"Just follow me," he said, pulling away. Chell blinked twice, wiping a palm across the corner of her eye.
No alarms blared through the intercom. No security 'guards' rushed out to grab them. No test subject had ever successfully escaped from Aperture. Caroline could deal with it herself—plus, she couldn't risk exposing anything about her own wing. So even if she had discovered Chell's escape, they could never know for sure.
Doug heard murmurs of discontent as they pushed their way back out of the crowd. Chell reached out a hand to cling to the back of his lab coat. Wheatley whizzed ahead, taking a few sharp and incorrect turns before relinquishing leadership to Doug.
There—at the end of the hallway.
A dated elevator hummed in place, a few dimmer lights illuminating it. It was an old-fashioned lift, and one that could only take them into the lower levels of Aperture. It wasn't the surface lift, but it was a lift nonetheless.
With only one elevator in and one elevator out of Aperture, Caroline couldn't stop it forever. They couldn't leave now—they didn't have a choice. But at the same time they couldn't stay in the modern Enrichment Center.
She'd find them in a matter of hours.
Doug pressed a button, breath held as the elevator creaked to life. Wheatley hung a few feet down the hall, unable to progress any farther on his rail.
"Guess I'll just let you two go, then," he said, glancing down. "Though it has been fun. All of that hacking. Escaping."
The elevator doors slid open. "
"Don't mention any of that," said Doug. "Understand? You never helped us. You never 'hacked.' And you definitely didn't lead us anywhere. If anyone asks—you just got lost."
The robot gave a cheerful nod, and Doug reached up and gave the bot a pat in the same way he would give a dog a pat on the head. "Good job with your hacking, though. You really saved us back there."
Doug could have sworn that the robot beamed. For once in his life, the artificial intelligence had done something right.
The elevator clicked again, and Doug and Chell slipped inside. He pressed a button, watching it light up and the doors closed. Strips of light danced across the walls.
They descended.
A/N: Hoping to get chapters up quicker now that it's summer.
ALSO, Cakeybots on tumblr drew a FANTASTIC picture of Caroline based on a bit of dialogue at the end of Chapter 8. I will be putting up a link to it on my author page!
