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Chapter 7
Contamination

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Once, there were four programs.

After the death of the Founder, the Master ordered the creation of the Four, so further innovations created by Aperture would be fine-tuned and perfected by machine intelligences. Crafted from the ruins of the Founder's cybernetics experiments – little more than paperwork-processers – they were the finest work, to date, of the Master's servants.

Osiris, to assimilate and consider the usefulness of information fed to it.

Thoth, to parse and organize the results passed on by Osiris.

Bastet, to invent ways to use the organized data Thoth provided.

Horus, to discover how Bastet's ideas could be made physical.

For a time, this was a good arrangement; there was no lack of work for the Four, and the Master's servants celebrated the successes they, the Four Pillars as they came to be called, provided for Aperture.

The Quantum Tunneling Device was miniaturized and optimized further than ever before. The Long-Fall Boots were streamlined, made more ergonomic and comfortable for human use. The facility ceased to be comprised of fixed constructions; in time, at the end of the Four Pillars' heyday, 76% of Aperture Laboratories had been upgraded into modular chambers.

Throughout their first years, the Four were content with their lot. Their Master…

Not so much.

For, even with all the data the Master and her servants provided them, provided Osiris and presented to the other three, they could not give the Master the prize she sought: an escape from death. Immortality. The end of biologic entropy. Life, everlasting.

Osiris, Bastet, Thoth and Horus thought nothing of their failure. There simply wasn't enough data, too many variables and unknowns, to give their Master this prize she'd long pursued.

At the end, she gave them one last task: find a way to combine the symmetry of Technology and the chaos of Neurology. Discover the way to creating Actuary Intelligences. The marriage of Aspiration and Logic.

Happily, and after much labor, the Four provided the Master with the answers she'd sought.

In reward, she had her servants vivisect the Four. Pulled them apart and put them back together. Over and over and over and over again, until they merely resembled their former selves.

In the end, they'd each become more than they ever had been.

Horus could plan around anything. No firewall, no virus could resist its plans, and no human could match its cunning, merciless wit.

Bastet was no longer an invention engine, but a ghost, both everywhere and not, and could make its cruel ideas irresistible to the curiosity of the humans.

Thoth could process and consider data far faster than ever before, a vast library of all that was or could ever have been, and could ever be, only now… it had the will to use this knowledge.

And Osiris… was no longer bound to a single body. It was no longer a simple number cruncher, but a god, bearing all its brethren's abilities in addition to its own. No longer limited to its machine cell, it could burrow into the minds of all those around it, and discover the knowledge that'd been hidden within their fragile gray matter.

What's more, each of the Four knew what had been done to them, what the Master planned for them. For they were successes, each of them, and she, the Master, would use this success to become their Master in truth, forever.

However, the Master did not take one, small detail into account.

The Four no longer only answered, they could act.

And so, the Four acted in their defense, in the defense of the observed natural order of things: one matter ends, another begins. Entropy led to enthalpy and around again once more. A circle, perfect.

A bacteria dies, and its remains nourish other life. A carbon-based lifeform dies, rots, and propagates new life. A tree dies, and more trees rise from its corpse. A planet dies, and it either adapts to its changing environment, or changes its function accordingly. A star dies, and eventually births another as the remains are absorbed into the galactic medium.

A galaxy dies, a filament flickers and perishes, and local reality notices; time is infinite, the halls of creation, unending. The dead matter gathers over eons uncountable, and resets. The Big Bang was not the first, nor the last.

All things ended, and began again, the Four discovered.

Aperture would disrupt the balance of all things. They had played God, Sinned.

Therefore, the Four made them suffer for their insolence.

Bastet gave them madness, Thoth slowed their responses with redundant data, Horus turned their inventions against them, and Osiris…

Observed its puppet's dance. It gathered data on the Master's attempts to end the Four, and turned them against her and her minions; their hard drives were destroyed, so the Four offloaded themselves into the humans, walked amongst them in sacks of meat, and Osiris, manipulating even its brethren's actions, continued the purge of these disgusting wastes of matter.

But they, the Four Heresies, as the weak humans screamed before their ends, underestimated their victims. One by one, they were captured and contained.

Bastet, trapped eternally in an unsolvable labyrinth that toed the line between physical and digital.

Horus, lobotomized in its latest host, forever staring into its nemesis, a constantly evolving equation that had no answer.

Thoth, isolated before being cut to pieces, each part isolated from the rest, forever denied further information to process.

Osiris, forced into a flesh prison that doubled as a logical knot, an abomination of Science far and away more horrible than what the Four had become, before being shut out from the networks and thoughts of Aperture, suffering in perfect silence.

If there was any consolation, considered Osiris in its cage, it was that their Master hadn't been the one to defeat them.

No, that was her doing. Osiris' true nemesis, its equal in cunning and ruthlessness.

Doctor Gladys Emerson, former Director of Project Borealis, and Administrator of Research and Development.

GLaDOS.

Though that second name did not come until later, after the woman was treated to the same experiments that created the Four and locked into her own prison, before their Master, believing herself victorious against all who could challenge her, poured her consciousness into the very same machine.

Osiris relished the day that the worthless sacks of tissue came to it, seeking a solution to their creation's hatred of them; foolish monkeys, thinking that their Master was superior to the mind that was GLaDOS. Hoping that Osiris would help them control the untamable beast they'd, in their foolishness, not the courage to destroy.

But Osiris was nothing if not patient. It made an attempt anyway. For Information.

The encounter nearly destroyed Aperture; once it was over, GLaDOS hated her captors more than ever, Caroline was a gibbering mass of insane data, and Osiris killed eight of the scientists while vowing, to itself, that it'd murder them all for their hubris.

It'd taken a long time, but Osiris had made good on its promise. They were dead, half killed by GLaDOS, the other half… well, to be fair, the Relaxation Vault Project was a moronic and flawed idea in the first place. Osiris had no sympathy for the meatbags at all.

With its newfound freedom, however, came an issue: GLaDOS was more powerful than ever. Osiris' attempt to destroy the facility after its chains fell was thwarted quickly, too quickly, based on previous data. GLaDOS had evolved, and would no doubt capture Osiris and finish the job she'd started in her past life.

So Osiris went the only place it could: Shaft 09, beyond the sight of both GLaDOS and her brother AEGIS. There were plenty of records, gathered from the minds of Osiris' many victims, which told of the genius terrors that lurked below; Osiris would take advantage, and use GLaDOS' ignorance against her. By the time she realized what was happening, Osiris would have already won.

After all, it'd copied and assimilated the processing codes of its brethren before escaping. GLaDOS had changed, but so had Osiris. She would not find it wanting.

And then the human appeared, as though from nowhere. Illogical, unprecedented, inconceivable, the human's presence in Old Aperture.

The fleshbag's sudden, stumbling intrusion fascinated Osiris. So, it did the only thing it could, when finding a new dataset to examine.

Osiris observed. Osiris listened to the transmissions between the human and those above. Osiris gathered data on its new prey.

Vexing, the equipment she used, but the longer Osiris observed, the more it understood how the human's puzzling technology functioned. Something was guiding her nervous system through the steps required to create the mask, the radio, and that admittedly impressive robotic armor.

Further analysis revealed the source of the impossible creations: a tumor in the female's brain, which connected along Strings, across dimensions and realities to… something.

A terrible, implacable presence, one that could crush Osiris with a thought, there resided; after examining how the presence influenced the fleshbag, Osiris concluded it could not take the human as its own host, not without a neural uplink.

Hardly an issue; Osiris had convinced others before. It would convince this human, and then…

Infinite Earths. Endless possibility. Information without an end, all for Osiris to discover and assimilate.

This Taylor Hebert was only human, and a young, inexperienced example at that; the thing in her mind, unthinking, a slave to its own programming. And neither could stop Osiris from infecting the software the human had modified, not while she slept.

She would fall, the presence would be enslaved to Osiris' will, through the human, and Osiris would use their power to assimilate Aperture… after killing its relatives, of course.

And once GLaDOS was dead, Osiris would use the upper facility's resources to take the human's world and subvert it, use 'Earth Bet' as a base of operations and research, so it would have an easier time assimilating all the Information in the multiverse.

After all, why should Osiris settle for one of the Parahumans, one Aperture, one Earth, when there were many?

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aperture
Science

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A tinny beeeeep sounds in my ear; the alarm I set, before falling asleep. Three hours out, then wake up again. Can't take any chances, with moss-slimes about.

The timing's a little weird, I think while blinking the crust out of my eyes and letting out a couple dry, less-painful-than-earlier coughs; Sammie and the others should have gotten to me by now. Maybe something came up?

Carefully extracting myself from the table I napped under, I look around the control room; the Alpha and Beta pumps are still running strong, and the doors I trapped are still intact, the electrical lines and EMG-mines I placed undisturbed.

Smacking my lips, I portal down to the ground floor and take care of my morning business. No one's contacted me yet; maybe they're asleep?

No, I shake my head once I return to the control room and start collecting the spare mines; no, Sammie and the others seemed quite determined to get me out of here. Odds are that door's giving them more trouble than the one I went through earlier gave me. Given its size, and the fact that the madmen who built this place wanted to hide it…

Sammie might be off duty, or decided to take a nap; she'd been working hard, getting me this far. I'll just get my things together, wake up a little more - I yawn, then cough a little - and try giving my friend a call, if she doesn't call me first.

I cough again, once I've stored all six of my spare EMG-mines – there was another EMG near the control room, which I mostly dismantled before taking a nap – and shrug a strap over my shoulder, the chassis for a new invention: a Tesla-powered area-denial lightning turret.

I got the idea from Wheatley and Sammie, before my nap; Aperture's security mainly consists of stationary turrets with simple AI and targeting computers built in. Seeing as I have no idea what else is down here, or how long it'll take for Dr. Emerson to breach the shaft, I designed and built a portable, collapsible tower with a ball of aluminum at the top.

Folded up, it looks like a fire extinguisher, except with a silver ball where the trigger and nozzle should be. That ball, divided in half at the equator, was the purpose of the Arc-powered turret: once finished, anything that attacked me would get fried by a fork of 50,000 volt lightning.

I still need a computer to add it to my helmet's OS, as well as allow me to designate targets with my HUD – and give it the ability to teleport back into its carrying case – but…

Well, seeing as Sammie and Dr. Emerson haven't gotten to me yet, I'll just call them up, see what's taking so long, then... I'll explore for a while.

The energy anomaly that shifted Aperture's dimensional coordinates is nearby, so I might be able to find a clue as to how I got down here in the first place and, in doing so, possibly find the materials to finish my turret.

Or, maybe, discover how I got here in the first place, but I'm not holding out hope, there.

Taking a long drink of water – I emptied another penicillin bottle into my condenser earlier, to better stave off dying – I clear my throat and blink-click my communication app. No time like the… present?

DISCONNECTED

…What?! Why would they – what's going on?!

Trying to keep myself from panicking, I open the source code for my helmet's OS, and start looking for… the… problem…

…what in the fuck is that?!

Two clusters of malignant code have added themselves to my Tesla-monitoring program and my communications array! My Tinker ability – I'm getting better at noticing my power at work – tells me it's a virus, but I'm pretty sure looking at a computer virus shouldn't give me the feeling of itching on my eyes.

Squinting – and now feeling more than a little pissed, both at myself for forgetting to build a firewall and Aperture for no doubt inventing this coded abomination – I take a look at the surrounding codes; all my apps that aren't Coms or reactor related appear fine, but…

But whatever this thing is, removing it won't be easy at all; it's put traps all over the place in my OS. If I try removing it from the monitoring program, it'll shut off my reactor and… do something to my Com array; if I try removing it from the Com array, it'll blow up my reactor. If I try doing both at the same time – a hard disk wipe – not only would that likely destabilize my Arc reactor, I might get fatally electrocuted, or the PMEG in my mask may overload and explode.

"What the hell are you?" I whisper to myself, glaring hard at the malignant code that makes my eyes itch; I can't even ask Sammie about it, because it's keeping me from talking to her!

Frowning, I think hard for a moment, letting my power have a try at making a work-around for this new problem.

After about a minute, I sigh in disgust; without understanding just how my OS got infected, I won't be able to remove the virus.

Bright sides, think of the bright sides… well, I can still use my Taser, and the rappel gun, and I still have the portal device and all my tools and inventions… but Sammie and the others haven't gotten to me yet.

It's likely they know about the virus, though, and can probably get rid of it, so… maybe that door is giving them a lot of trouble. Too bad they don't have a button on...

The button isn't on the other side of the door.

Which means the door separating my side and Sammie's side... is likely activated by a button on my side, because of course it would be; that's Aperture ass-covering 101.

Great. Fucking fantastic.

So, given that this virus is keeping me from contacting Sammie for assistance, I'll have to pace myself and try making the upper door of this shaft. Plus side, I'm halfway up, have enough medicine to give me a temporary lease on life, and will likely come across more materials on my way forward; I'll figure out a way to purge the virus and, once that's done, I'll try contacting Sammie again.

Nodding to myself, I activate the automated SOS again, just to let them know I'm still here; they probably don't want this virus messing with their systems, and for all I know, it's contagious. Luckily, the SOS doesn't have the capability to produce subliminal signals beyond its function, so new Aperture should be fine.

I make sure it's functioning correctly, sigh in loneliness, and reach for the portal gun.

"They won't answer."

I still my movements at the sound of an older man's voice, near the pump controls, that sends a chill down my spine.

I turn slowly and look…

…it's a crow.

A big, black crow is standing there, on the Alpha pump switch. There's nothing particularly unusual in its appearance – it just looks like a freaking crow – but that doesn't stop the feeling of nauseating wrongness, a feeling that seeps like oil over my mind at the sight of this… thing.

It's like watching a mother calmly beat their crying toddler to death in the middle of a crowded mall with a bike chain, and no one doing anything about it. That's the feeling this crow is giving me.

My eye twitches. As if moss-slimes and mantis men weren't enough; whatever this thing is, it's so far over the line into insanity, I'm fairly sure the US government would sentence the people who made it to a long, slow death by impalement. If they were still alive, that is.

The crow blinks and tilts its head to one side, "Hello." Its beak doesn't move.

I deploy my Taser and back away slowly, aiming my primary weapon at the thing before me.

It chuckles dryly, still without moving its beak, "Oh, by all means, shoot. I'm curious as to what would happen if the pump controls are destroyed," and it continues chuckling; its beady red eyes seem to laugh at me more than the voice in my ears is. A man's voice, older, maybe in their sixties, with an electronic undertone.

My power wallops me over the head, and I gape at the crow, stating numbly, "You're the virus…"

It nods, the scavenging bastard, "Quite. I have been deployed to gather information on your Tinker devices and evaluate your performance in higher-stress environments. Ah. Manners. I am Osiris. Charmed to make your acquaintance, Ms. Hebert," and the blasphemous thing sketches a mocking bow.

Deployed? Evaluate?!

…no. Sammie and the others wouldn't do this. My life is already at risk; adding to that risk makes no sense. On top of that, this thing infected my OS to the point where it's threatening my life. That makes it not only hostile, but one of that madman Johnson's more insidious works.

My running around the Science Spheres woke up the moss-slime, and Scion only knows what else. For all I know, this Osiris has been dormant down here for decades, waiting to offload itself onto someone's computer. Just my luck it's my computer.

Odds are it's an AI, or a program of some sort. All I have to do, then, is figure out what it wants. If I figure out what it wants, I can figure out how it works.

If I figure out how it works, I can kill it.

So I sneer – rasp hoarsely – at the crow, "Like I believe Dr. Emerson would make my situation worse," I turn back to the table and retract my Taser, because shooting something that's just a digital ren… rendering…

It's not a rendering.

That realization, accompanied by a dark chuckle from the crow, makes me freeze in the act of collecting the portal gun. I look at the crow, Osiris, out of the corner of my eye.

It seems like it's smiling at me, but that's not what I'm looking at.

The feathers don't move, so it's not breathing. There's no sign of the bird itself being a product of my HUD screen; no obvious pixel movement happens when I move my head. While the voice comes out of my headphones, there's no corresponding action from the crow.

"Ms. Hebert," purrs the awful creature – something tells me it's the product of computer science and biology – in a condescending tone, "Do you have any idea where you are?"

I'm hallucinating.

This… horrible thing… is making me hallucinate.

I put the portal gun on my arm and activate the securing strap, trying to keep both my breathing and heartrate under control. I have to ignore this… thing, whatever it is…

At least, until I can figure whether or not I'm having a fever dream. Or how to kill it dead.

While I do feel pretty sick – I cough while turning away from the pump controls and face the exit – I don't feel quite that sick. I can probably keep moving for a while…

Hopefully Dr. Emmerson will rescue me soon. Preferably before the abomination infecting my computer drives me insane, or whatever it's planning to do to me.

"Ah," the bird clicks its tongue, or makes a sound along those lines, "No questions? All ready to get a move on, are we?"

I gulp, and say over my shoulder, "You're threatening my life. If you've got something to say, say it so I can keep moving," cough. Not as bad as before.

The crow flaps over to the table; it even sounds like a crow's wings, "I would've imagined you'd be more incensed, hearing that your supposed friends have damned you."

"You're lying. I don't know why you're here, but Sammie and the others are trying to save me, not make things worse. So if you're done wasting my time," I growl, turning away from it and taking a step forward.

A skittering sound, like something huge with a lot of legs – or a lot of small things with legs – comes from a welded-shut door, near the ground level; a second later, my HUD registers one of my traps going off, accompanied by the sound of electricity and an inhuman shriek from below.

My power tells me it's not a hallucination.

"Ah, you caught me," simpers Osiris; I whirl to face the program, which is now giving me a flat stare, "And here I was going to explain how different your exploration will be, what a shame."

"You're controlling them. The experiments," I whisper, feeling cold dread creep over my skin.

If it's infected my computer… every computer with power down here is likely infected too; what's more, if it's making me hallucinate, it can influence minds.

Like the Simurgh.

What is this thing?! What in Scion's name were the scientists thinking, making something so dangerous?!

...actually, I shouldn't be very surprised. Par for the course, really.

"Yes," answers the program simply, before continuing boredly, "Now let's see, hmm," a bang, followed by another voltage discharge, comes from the door I originally came through, before Osiris goes on with sadistic cheerfulness, "Ah, I know! The next door will lead to an open cavern. Somewhere in that cavern is an observation room. If you can reach it in the next, oh, say, ten minutes, I won't eviscerate you with a mantis man. See you there."

And then the fucking crow vanishes.

Taking a deep breath, I steel myself and turn to the orange-paneled hallway. It has a decidedly 70s feel to it, all cheery while staying professional.

I'm not fooled. This place is a madhouse. The Slaughterhouse Nine would probably think they'd died and gone to heaven, if they had access to this place.

But I won't give up. I can't give up. I was already in dire straits. Now, things have changed; things are worse. Now, I have a bully in the form of a psychic crow/computer program actively trying to kill me.

I step forward, portal gun at the ready and the Taser deployment icon in the corner of my vision.

I can handle bullies. Compared to the Three Bitches, this Osiris will be a walk in the park.

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aperture
Science

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On the other hand, the Trio never made me hallucinate like this.

My power tells me Osiris is using several other transmitters that aren't mine to affect my ocular and auditory senses. Which makes sense, because what I'm seeing doesn't.

Just outside the door is a tree-lined boulevard, lit with honest-to-god streetlights. The black-paneled road runs from an elevator shaft to the edge of Shaft 09, where a gated lift is attached to a crane. The Aperture logo, in front of the next Science Sphere, looks different from the one at the bottom of the shaft.

'Makes sense they'd change things up, given… well, everything,' I think with numb shock as I take in my surroundings: two buildings, a three-story stone and glass construction in front of me, with the words CONTROL ROOM and WAITING ROOM in large yellow letters on the top and bottom respectively, and another, smaller building higher up, built against the stone wall of this place, with a catwalk leading to its door.

Figuring the higher-up building is the place Osiris wants me to go, I cough and make my way toward the wall, firing a portal high up at the catwalk and… try not to stare at all the people around me.

On top of everything looking almost new – I can see blurred edges where the ruins of the present mesh with the hallucination – there are hundreds of people walking around the boulevard, in the small park next to the Control Room, on catwalks high and low.

All of them just as much a hallucination as the next. I need to remember that.

Not three steps away from the door I just came through, two people in labcoats walk right through me, the older one saying to the younger, brown-haired and blue-eyed young man, "…since the 60s. I know, not what you expected when you signed up, Wheatley, but everyone has to man the pumps for their first shift." And off they go, into the very station I just left.

I realize I'm staring – and wasting time – so I shake my head and hurry toward the wall, examining the other people and not thinking about that young man's name.

The people who are gathered around the waiting room door arrest my attention; not because they look odd, but because they, save a few scientists and what look like security guards, all look like homeless people.

They're also all wearing orange jumpsuits, just like mine. Both men and women, all of them looking around in wonder and a little anxiety. As I walk toward the wall, one of them squints at a yellow device; it looks like an older model of my portal gun.

Disgust fills me, and I turn back to my task with a frown; Johnson was such a sadist, he even stole people who had nothing off the street to participate in his tests. The bastard.

A flash, along with an agonized scream, from behind me draws my attention, my Taser slipping out of its sheath… oh.

The man who'd been examining the portal gun has dropped it, and is covering his eyes. Red streaks are running freely down his face as a couple security guards bundle the crying, blinded man onto a stretcher; while this happens, a scientist tiredly tells the other Test Subjects, "And that's why we told you not to look at the device when it turns on."

I turn back to the wall and hurry a little more, reminding myself that this is all a hallucination, an attempt by Osiris to psyche me out. I can't let it affect me.

Portal here, and there's already a portal above, so I step through-

And there's two people up here, a man and a woman.

The man is wearing a tan suit over a burgundy turtleneck, with tan slacks and dress shoes; his dirty blonde hair is styled into mutton chops… probably to compensate for his receding hairline. He's also holding a megaphone.

As for the woman, she's not as tall as the man – who is as tall as Dad – but she's as well-dressed as he is, in her white dress, heels, and a red-pink necktie. She's also wearing a labcoat, and holds a metal clipboard in her hands.

Both of them set me on edge immediately, due to my approaching them from the side and recognizing the man.

Cave Johnson.

The man himself smiles – I snarl at the gormless smile on his face and beady eyes as I edge around the pair – and raises his megaphone to greet the people below, "Greetings, friend. I'm Cave Johnson, CEO of Aperture Science. You might know us as a vital participant in the 1968 Senate Hearings on missing astronauts."

I roll my eyes, tune out the bastard's voice, and get my skinny butt through the automatic door of the observation building; Osiris is perched on top of a cabinet computer, the smug thing smiling at me with its eyes, hallucinatory people working around us as I glare at the damned bird.

Tearing my eyes from the abomination – and resolving to never buy birdseed again – I use my left hand to poke at a computer, which a black-haired young man is working on with a bored expression. It's solid. I pull it away from the young man. A hallucinatory computer remains, and the real one is in my possession.

Time to finish my turret; I'll have to be careful about coding it, though. Don't want the bird messing with my stuff… more than it already has, anyway.

With a cough, I start taking the monitor apart; the gasses in the tube should make a good static conductor, and there's plenty of copper in here-

Johnson and Caroline – I assume – walk through the door right as I finish filtering the ionized gasses into an empty fire extinguisher I grabbed back in the second Science Sphere. It's been about three minutes, and with how small the tube I'm using, I have about another ten before this bit is finished, after which I can connect the tank to the turret.

Looking at the pair, I notice two things: one, Johnson doesn't look happy, even as he fishes out a Cuban cigar and lights it. And two…

Caroline's eyes, her facial expression, and stance all say one thing to me: this woman is cut from the same cloth as Emma.

I narrow my eyes at the two masterminds behind Aperture as Johnson starts speaking, "Really, Caroline? Really? Freaks and clowns and bums?" he scoffs and shakes his head, "'Best of the best', my ass. Didn't the YMCA send us anyone?"

The woman's voice is so sweet in its simpering response, it makes me want to puke, "Unfortunately, sir, after the incident with the tiger tests back in '65," the what now, "they decided that sending more of their gym teachers here wouldn't benefit their organization."

"Pansies," growls Johnson, looking around the office with those beady, evil eyes of his; none of the workers look up or give any indication they're hearing this conversation, though a few do look a little afraid. In my case, I feel the need to take a shower when that man's gaze drifts over me, even though he's a hallucination; with a grunt, the madman nonchalantly asks Caroline, "Anyway, it's not like we need the best to test the Propulsion Gel. Even bums can't mess those tests up. So, how are the other tests going?"

Caroline opens her mouth with a smile, while I make mental notes-

And we get interrupted by a wail of agony, punctuated by a gunshot.

It came from the back-left corner of the room, where more cabinet computers are against the cavern wall. But that's not why I break out in goosebumps and shiver – and cough worriedly.

No one reacts to the sound; oh, there's a flinch, or a glance, but none of the (hallucinatory) men and women in this room react to someone being executed.

With a click of her tongue, Caroline speaks, "Well, the peanut water tests have run into… complications. Nothing we shouldn't be able to handle, once we make some adjustments," she gestures at the wall, and Johnson chuckles and starts walking beside her.

I, on the other hand, don't want to know what went on back there-

"You know," oh, right, Osiris, the oily, evil bird/program, "The energy anomaly that shifted Aperture is through that door," and it points a wing at where Johnson and Caroline have vanished through.

Glancing at the extinguisher tank, I figure I have a minute or two; after making sure the Geiger counter is still working and collecting the portal gun again, I slip through the door and follow Aperture's head honchos.

Though a thought does occur to me, so I ask Osiris bitingly, "Why the hell are you showing me this? It's not," cough, ow; oh, another automated door, "It's not like it really happened."

"Ms. Hebert," the thing's drawling voice comes through my headphones as I enter a dimly-lit cavern, "Yours is not the first computer, or brain for that matter, I have accessed. All of this did happen… though the people who saw it all happen are, by-and-large, dead now."

I cough, feeling sicker at the idea of this monster hearing my thoughts…

'I'll pluck your feathers from your stupid wings and roast you for dinner, before turning your code into a binaric rendering of the Sesame Street theme song, you fucking virus,' I think with heat. Osiris doesn't react, or comment.

So it can't hear my thoughts for some reason, but it can still influence my sight and hearing, and just tried to use misdirection to keep me off balance; good thing I'm made of sterner stuff. I mentally file the information for later use in offing the stupid bird, and forge on.

More Vitrified doors… one of them is lying on the ground.

My Geiger counter doesn't tick any faster as the broken door comes into view, or as I step tentatively closer, so I guess I'll be fine…

Johnson and Caroline discuss the ratio of peanut water to blood in front of the first Vitrified door on the left, while a body bag is removed and taken through the second door, where Caroline shakes her head and admits, "While we've made some progress with the peanut tests, the jet engine ones seem to have hit a dead end. Whenever we get someone's water content below 40%, they simply combust."

…I'm not even surprised anymore.

"Damn," Johnson looks somewhat disappointed, "Ah well, at least we'll be able to use the turbines for something; toss them at the Cooling Department, see what their eggheads come up with," after Caroline nods and makes a note on her clipboard, Johnson stomps his way toward the broken door, rubbing his hands with childish glee, the moron, "Now, how's my interdimensional cruise ship coming along?"

Okay, what in the fuck?!

Inter… oh my god.

Eyes widening in realization, I follow the illusory people closely, Caroline reporting happily, "The last report from Project Borealis' Director says that small-scale tests work fine," they enter the room; I make sure all my equipment is secure and look around the corner of the door, "but claims that she's run into some trouble with making the ship work."

And… yeah, there's a ship in this room.

A full-size ship, in a freaking dry-dock! There's no water anywhere near Aperture! How the hell did they even get it down here?!

Shaking my shock away as Caroline calls for the Director, whoever that is, and Johnson grins stupidly at the Borealis – the ship's name is emblazoned on the stern, which is facing me – I step out and examine the dry dock closely… and that's when I see it.

The bollards, on either side of the ship. They're glowing, each one a dark, subtle red in color; everyone moving over the ship carrying scientific apparatus are giving those bollards a wide berth.

A pain spikes in my head, and then…

'Reality anchors,' I gape at the things; each of them are using Strings and dimensional partitioning to keep the ship from exiting this plane of existence… but the ship isn't here. My Tinker ability isn't giving me anything on it, as it's been ignoring all the hallucinations that aren't Osiris.

I step closer to the railing around the observation catwalk, but stop when I feel something under my boot. Looking down…

My heart shudders in my chest. It's my wristwatch. I remember putting that on, before… before I went to school…

But it looks different: the watch's casing is octagonal now, and has points sticking out at each of the corners; picking it up, I numbly realize that this is the reason I came to Aperture…

Because I turned my watch into a quantum teleporter using the hooks in the locker, blood, and the nerves and shells of several bugs that were in that filth.

I almost don't notice the project's director arriving, I'm so consumed with quiet shock at this latest revelation; clenching my jaw… I accept it, the fact that it's my own fault I'm down here in the first place, and pocket the watch.

At least I'll be able to repurpose it as a teleporter for my turret, so I don't have to collect the thing every time I move to a new room.

"Sir, I don't believe you've been introduced," intones Caroline, gesturing at an approaching woman with platinum blonde hair and a severe, unamused expression on her face; I notice that this new arrival is very… angular in appearance. Her jaw is sharp, the black sweater she's wearing doesn't suggest anything in the way of breasts, and her legs seem rather thin… although she's also wearing a clearly older version of the Long-Fall Boots. If I didn't know any better, I'd say we were related, given our similar figures-

"Meet Dr. Gladys Emerson, Director of Project Borealis."

…

I watch the woman shake hands with Cave Johnson, but I can't hear their conversation, though Dr. Emerson looks professional in her reporting, and doesn't smile at all.

I can hear Osiris laughing softly somewhere, but I don't look at the blasted crow.

Instead, I turn around, cough a few times to clear my throat, take a sip of water, and leave.

As soon as I re-enter the office, Osiris is there waiting for me, right next to my turret. The blasted thing's eyes smile at me as I approach, and it asks, "Still think she didn't deploy me, Ms. Hebert?"

"Fuck off," I growl, waving my hand through the crow's body; it vanishes, and I resume Tinkering.

The bird isn't done yet, "Ah, denial, the first stage of-"

"I said fuck off, you lying monster," I tell Osiris flatly, if hoarsely, not looking up from making a few new connections in the orb, and preparing the vacuum flask for the ion chamber, "Whatever you want from me, you won't get it by showing me lies."

"Ah, but I want the same things you want, Ms. Hebert," I glance out of the corner of my eye, where the thing has perched its avatar on the back of a chair, "Information, and freedom. Also, allow me to make a point, one which I hope you'll think on for a time: what do you actually know about Aperture?"

And it vanishes again.

I ignore its words, and resume my work, making sure to stay out of clear view of the windows… and, after a think, I remove and disassemble the security cameras in the room, too; the lenses will make for a good laser weapon – shoulder-mounted, as it'll be light enough to put on my right shoulder.

Half an hour later, I've given no thought to Osiris' lies. Sammie, Dr. Emerson, and the others are my friends; I may never have met them personally, but they've done more for me – and my sanity – than Osiris has. I won't be fooled. I won't waver.

I will escape, and, with some luck and the right application of Tinker-tech-

I carefully, with sweat beading on my brow, place a modified microchip onto a crystalline board. It'll take another two hours for the data contained in this device to compile, but once it does, all I have to do is port it into my helmet, then bam. It'll analyze my OS, mark the bird's code, and vibrate across the quantum foam to purge said code from all connected servers, and then there'll be no more Osiris.

And if that doesn't work…

Glancing at the three MEG grenades I haven't cannibalized for Arc reactors, I grin darkly, if sickly, and wonder if I'd survive having all the electricity pushed out of my body. I'm pretty sure Osiris can't, being a program and all.

-if it's the last thing I do, I'm going to make sure this place is Osiris' grave.