Author's Note: Hey everyone! This chapter was one of the hardest things I think I've written before, for reasons I probably shouldn't explain because it might spoil you if you think too much about it. But it definitely required some skills to be refined. It also required me to sort of "rip apart" my writing. There was actually an alternative version of this chapter involving a new character I scrapped because the scenario itself felt cheesy, too convenient, and sort of cliche. Too bad I was almost 2,000 words (not counting what I did keep in) into it before I realized that. But that character doesn't fit in anywhere else, so I guess I'm kind of mourning that because I really liked him.

Anyways I'll stop rambling and let you read now.

My head was pounding, making the ringing in my ears fluctuate. The dim lighting didn't reveal much to me quite yet as my eyes tried to adjust. It was disgusting how much gunk I had to rub out of my eyes and lashes. There was a odd sound coming from my left, which sounded sort of like knocking. As I made my way there, I fumbled quite a bit. So much that I face planted, to be in fact. My legs felt awkward, like they didn't remember how to do their job.

"Hello! Anyone in there?" As I struggled to get up - and I do mean struggled, I ended up completely ripping the sheets off the bed in one of many attempts to pull myself up - a voice was calling at me. It asked me again and again to open the door.

"Ah…! Oh my god!" A blue bumbling ball with a bright blue light entered my room as he rambled. He made some sort of comment about my appearance but I was more concerned about him asking how I was and deciding I was fine. He said something about having time to recover, and I wasn't sure what from. He panicked when an announcer informed me about an emergency evacuation, and quickly tried to console me even though I didn't have time to react. Then, he retreated into the ceiling.

The entire room started to move, and I was pretty sure it wasn't me trying not to fall this time. However, I did fall from all the movement. I caught myself with my hands, which resulted in my wrist hurting so bad that I hit my head on the floor when I moved my hands to grab it. He said something, but my ears were too busy ringing for me to hear him. When he came down, I caught that he said I'd been 'under' suspension for a long time, and that I might have some brain damage.

He wanted me to tell him I understood. However, with how vaguely he spoke, I didn't. I tried to be a smart-ass and jumped instead of speaking, and that was the first time I learned his optic was brighter than he was. So he asked me to say apple, and something inside of me said not to speak. A glance of a bright white room of many layers flashed through my head, and in the moment I pondered it, he seemed a little more desperate for me to speak.

I had to play dumb. Something somewhere was telling me I couldn't speak, and I had as much reason to trust it as I did him. He was expecting something, and if I didn't at least show I knew this he may give up on me. In a state of panic, I decided to jump as a response again. He quickly retreated into the ceiling, seeming to dismiss this until later. I was thrown onto the bed as the room not only began to move again, but also started to crumble at the walls. I rolled off of the bed onto the floor and pulled myself into the closet.

As he was talking about his situation, which apparently was pretty bad, he said something about test subjects. Those two works poked at my brain, and a couple of memories popped up. Waking up in a cell of sorts, a blur of bright orange, something I was holding. The words "test subject" had applied to me at some point. I snapped back to the current moment and watched as he caused a domino effect with some rooms that I could only assume were like mine. I watched as an entire stack fell because it'd been bumped by another at the bottom.

The room felt like it was going to break apart. I was doubting his ability to steer considering he knocked us into everything he physically could. What he thought was a docking station was a wall informing onlookers that could read that there was a docking station down below. He did what he called a 'manual' override, which consisted of him bashing our room into the wall until it broke enough to let us through.

When we finally stopped, he told me to go retrieve something. A gun that makes holes, but not bullet holes. Somehow, this concept was vaguely familiar just out of the reaches of my memory at the time. When I headed in the direction he instructed me, the glass I walked on fell through and I gained a couple of cuts. Turns out the jumpsuit was tougher than I thought, though. The room I had landed in reminded me of the one I remembered a few minutes ago, where that orange blur had been. I turns out it was here too. An orange portal opened in front of me and I knew what would happen when I went through it as flashes went through my mind of me doing all kinds of things with the portals.

Not much of note happened.

The robot returned, startling me at first. He talked about finding where the portal gun should be but told me it was missing. As I approached it's empty stand, I noticed the floor felt a little funny. By time I had processed it, the floor broke beneath me. I landed below in what at first felt like a shallow river. Upon getting up, I could see that there was a lot of debris down here. The robot called down to me as I progressed, but I didn't bother jumping for someone who could see me. Up ahead, there was something fizzling.

I recognized it as a portal gun. That's what had been on my arm in those memories. This one had lest dimensions on the top and was clearly roughed up a bit. I also noticed it could only shoot blue portals. However, my attention faded from the gun very quickly to the paintings around the room. The first one i noticed was the one that gave me the creeps, which was what looked like a painted mural of myself. Above me depicted what looked like the moon phases. There were a couple of quite distressed looking people, and a familiar cube.

There was one of a large, wiry robot offering what looked like a piece of cake to who I could only assume was me. To the right, there was a picture the same robot depicted with orbs on it with brightly colored circles that looked like eyes. I could see the real thing in my mind, and hear the dull voice as it tried to talk me down into a calm state. It was angry with me.

GLaDOS.

But hadn't I escaped? How did i end up back here?

I had that sort of pins-and-needles feeling from cut off circulation. From my right knee down and from my my right hand to about midway up my forearm shared this feeling. As I lifted my head and squinted in the somewhat dim light, I saw that I had fallen asleep in an unideal position, which likely was the cause of the feeling. I glanced around as I got my bearings and recalled my last memories.

Ashton. Wheatley.

As I tried to crawl to Wheatley a little too fast, I ended up face planting on the carpet. I pushed myself back up and continued to head towards him. I picked him up and shook him, but the only noise I got back was rattling and a couple of patters as water hit the carpet.. I frowned and sat him back on the ground as I worked blood flow back into my right leg. I got back onto my feet soon, and picked up the globe from before. I could tell by the grooves pressed into my forehead that my head had been resting on it for at least a little bit, and I hoped I had set it there unknowingly and that I hadn't smashed my head on it.

I started smashing the paperweight into the door again, but I was gaining similarly unproductive dents as the ones I got before. It felt safe to assume this wasn't because I was still groggy from the sleep. I finally stopped and stared at the sporadically spread out dents in the door. I needed to keep calm and be more precise. I remembered Ashton smashing the lock on the shed with his wrench, and it almost winded me to think of Ashton before I brought him down here. I felt the pangs of guilt start to hit me, and that's when I started slamming the paperweight into the lock. As long as I kept working, I didn't have time to worry and let it it set in.

My arms were starting to get sore and tired like this. I had to work harder to will them to slam into the lock. I wanted to hit myself in the head with that paperweight for wasting energy on all the parts of the door except the important one. Ashton would've laughed at me and told me to 'try somewhere else' until I got it. We probably would've played hot and cold with the damn thing.

The door opened with a loud rattle. The entire locking mechanism had crushed out of place, and it didn't look like that door would be holding shut on it's own anymore. I didn't care, it wasn't like anyone had used it in the past few decades. I wasted no time grabbing Wheatley and my portal gun, then proceeded into the assembly room. I reminded myself that there was no guarantee that anything was going to happen in here. It was possible the room had been dismantled at a discontinuation or that I would need to have better knowledge of the cores to fix him. It was possible the part that held his personalities was fried. The odds were stacked against me, but they always had been. I had to try.

I set him on a table and took a look around. There was a conveyor belt, something similar to a large set of lockers, a few counters, one area with a bunch of switches, levers, and buttons, and a ton of boxes. I began ripping boxes open; I almost gave myself a heart attack. The first thing I pulled out was an entire arm without the hand, and I dropped it so quickly that I almost knocked the box over. It took me a moment to realize this was the android assembly room. I realized that the boxes had labels on them, in some sort of code. I noticed that all the ones marked "A15" had uncolored arms in them, while "A17" had arms that matched lighter tones of skin. "A16" had an albino skin tone, to be in fact. And from there, it got darker. There were about ten different shades of skin tones, which applied to all parts of the body.

I wasn't kidding when I say there were a lot of boxes.

I soon gave up on finding anything I could use for Wheatley in there. Unless adding arms to his sides was suddenly going to reverse water damage, I needed to start looking elsewhere in the room. I found a computer with a password on it, which made it nearly useless to me. However, there was an unlocked 'guest' mode. I searched eagerly through the computer, but only found access to a non-active internet browser and some sort of game.

Then I found a singular video file. My curiosity peaked, and I played it. It couldn't hurt.

"Have you ever looked at your daughter's boyfriend and thought 'Man, they don't make them like they used to.'" The voice was familiar, and it only took a minute to call it from my memory. Cave Johnson, the CEO of the company Aperture Science. He died a long time ago due to an illness caused by the space rocks he grounded up to make into a gel. Also the man who put Caroline's being onto a disk and made her into the monster I knew as GLaDOS. A semi-realistic looking family with a boy who seemed to fit the 'nerdy' criteria filled the screen, with an overlay of a big red X. "Have you ever looked at him and said 'I don't want him with my precious angel?'" Next was the same girl with a boy who was your stereotypical punk with piercings, long black hair an undercut, the whole nine yards. "Well, Aperture Science has the new technology you've been looking for to have better control over those varmints who are trying to get with your little angel! I present to you, the "A+ AI Guy"... name pending." There was a 360 shot of a seemingly normal boy with blonde hair and green eyes, which then crossfaded into some sort of diagram of a robot. "Design your girl's boyfriend to be whoever you want, hook 'em up, no worries! Don't have to worry about grandkids, or breakups. Perfect sola- Solu- Ah, damn it."

The video file was labeled 'test 1'. I assumed it was a prototype advertisement of some sort. The video had cut out after the diagram shot, so I guessed whoever was working on it had given up just as Cave Johnson had on that vocal take. I could imagine him getting angry and demanding the reschedule the recording for later. I looked around them room at the conveyor belt and tried to imagine androids like the one that had been on the screen being manufactured. I had a sort of suspicion that the 'exterior' was a real human put in the shot, but no doubt Aperture Science had funded this project. They had all the parts to prove it.

I started shuffling through the papers. One read that the project was canceled due to low reception and questioning from the government. Apparently, this project had taken out quite the pretty penny from Aperture's pocket, then tossed it away into a wasteland to never be found. Most people apparently didn't want their daughter dating a robot, it seemed. I wondered to myself if Cave Johnson had made this in anticipation of having a daughter one day.

More papers told me the complaints that people had. The fact that they couldn't reproduce was actually a huge problem to the consumers, apparently. Many fathers and mothers complained that they would want grandchildren one day, and that they should have control over when that happens as well. There notes stating to check 'File 32'. However, there was nothing that pertained to saving Wheatley in the file, so I deemed it unimportant.

I decided to check the lockers. Sure enough, inside was a huge array of android-men or boys, depending on how far left or right you were. Once I'd confirmed this, I returned to the papers. I looked for any sort of acknowledgement as to how the AI part of the androids worked. The best I found was a diagram showing some sort of 'personality chip' being inserted into the area where the head turns into the neck.

I glanced over at Wheatley. Surely his technology was too advanced?

I finally decided I had to dismantle him. I located a toolkit and started to unscrew things, cringing as I took the faceplate off my friend. This left behind the 'eyelids', so he still looked out cold. However the slid open and shut pretty easily, and I got a pretty chilling look of what it looks like when there's no power behind a core's optic. I tried not to think about it as I pulled him apart piece by piece, looking at each for some sort of label or similarity to the diagram.

There was a small blue chip similar to the SD cards I found in the camera I bought from my co-worker Reid a few months ago. The main difference is it was more rectangular, and probably double the size. I looked it over, but all I could find was the label 'IDS9987" and a miniscule Aperture Science logo. I held it gingerly in my hand and glanced at the diagram I had. I couldn't determine if it was the 'personality chip' they were talking about, but it certainly was the closest thing I'd found so far. So, I made my way to the lockers and picked an android at random. I wasn't too concerned with how he looked right now. After a few minutes of trying to make the thing budge, I realized there were a few places that it was locked into place. I went over to the switches to the right of the lovers and tried to count.

It seemed the switches matched up with the twenty lockers. However, there were three extra switches. I didn't want to find out what they did, so I carefully chose the switch of the android. Even if it wasn't that android, it'd be the one three before it. I didn't care which it was, as long as it came loose. I flipped the switch, and I could heard some loud mechanisms chug to life. I returned to the android and saw that the latches were disconnected now as hoped. It was actually fairly light in comparison to before, though I still couldn't lift it. I scooted it out until I could get to it's neck.

I reached up and gingerly touched the back of it's neck. Chestnut-like brown, curly hair covered the slot in the back on it's way down past his shoulders. The length made it a little more difficult to wrangle out of the way, but I eventually got to the slot. I very slowly eased in the chip. It felt about the right size, there was no wiggle room, which reassured me of my choice. It finally clicked into place. I stood there a long moment, watching the thing for any signs of life. I let it's hair fall back into place the best it could, and continued to wait. I put my ear to it's back, but I didn't hear anything happening inside.

A wave of both frustration and some sort of grief washed over me like a ton of arrowheads. I fell back with a loud sigh - there sure as hell wasn't anyone there to hear me - and laid on the chilly, tiled floor. The fall kicked up some dust, but I didn't mind coughing. What I minded was that there was no seemingly British voice piping up about some ludicrous idea to get out of this damn facility. I glanced at the robot and let the realization that I was absolutely alone set in.

I realized then that maybe my process wasn't over yet. I hopped up and ran to the area with all of the levers and switches and started looking for anything labelled something like "activate" or "startup." I found a paper that told where the ID number for the androids were, so I checked. It was supposed to be behind his left ear. Upon checking, I found out that this particular android was "AD075598B." I looked for any switch that indicated that ID or more likely the pod which he had been in, but there was nothing.

I started looking through the papers for any indication as to how to activate it, but it seemed like someone had walked out with it on their lunch break and never returned. While I tried not to figure the realistic probability of that happening in a place like Aperture where people seemingly got fired abruptly left and right, I started swiping unrelated papers onto the floor so I wouldn't waste time accidentally rereading them again.

As I read, I had to accept another fact. GLaDOS was smarter than Wheatley. She more likely than not knew I was down here. She knew me well enough to know I would probably find my way back up. She wasn't one to wait around for danger to come to her. She had no control of the lower, old parts of the facility to my knowledge, or at least I assumed since Wheatley didn't do anything. Though, he could've not known how to. It could've been something he had to connect to outside of his normal connections to the facility. Something that would overload the chassis if always connected. However, either way, She would find a way to get me. I had to be quicker than her. She didn't even know about Wheatley's state, and She knew I was fast. I had to start moving, I was hardly a couple of minutes away from where I initially came down. Not to mention I was in a room I couldn't lock to try to buy time. I swiped the remaining papers off the counter and slowly made my way back to grab my portal gun.

I glanced at Wheatley's dismantled body and took a final glance for anything similar to the chip in the diagram from before. Upon confirming there was nothing else of similar size, I gathered all the miscellaneous pieces and put them in his shell. There was nothing more I could do for him now. I slipped my hand around the trigger for my portal gun and headed towards the door.

I took a finally glance back at the motionless android. The light glared off of it's glasses and made me feel like it was as cold as the disappointment it delivered. I finally left the room and didn't bother closing the broken door behind me. I had the sense I was forgetting something I brought in. I knew what it was, and it was now no more worth going back for than the globe paperweight discarded a few feet away.

Or at least that's what I was trying to convince myself.

Now that I knew I couldn't save Wheatley, the feeling of loneliness really set in. There was something about going from a group of three to a single person so abruptly that made silence really painful. I didn't usually mind silence, and often preferred it. But right now, it left too much time to think and feel. I walked through the halls, but none of them seemed to lead to anywhere of use. I figured I needed to find another point where I could exit into the area where test subjects typically stayed. I considered retrieving that paperweight and smashing one of the viewing windows open, but I didn't want to trek all the way back there, then all the way back here.

My portal gun felt obscenely light right now. Holding something didn't really add weight, but it did add a sort of pressure. I allowed myself another loud sigh and kicked a wadded up piece of paper to the side. These sorts of areas always seemed strange to me. It was always like everyone was living their normal lives up until the very moment these spaces became empty, like no one had been prepared to leave. Knowing Aperture, many of them had died without warning, but I wasn't convinced every single one of them did.

It didn't really matter now,

"Hey, Che!" I turned around to see a field of white panels. I felt my heart pound as they all started to race together. I ran for Ashton as my mind raced to think of a way out. However, he stood still and watched me progress. I knew I was going to punch him for not moving if I made it to him in time. As the panels became too close together to even run with my torso straight, he sat down. I finally hit my knees as the panels got too close. My nails were digging into my palms as I waited for the panel above me to crush me.

But it didn't.

When I looked around, I was a ways back in the hallway. There weren't any panels, nothing was moving besides my heaving chest. Ashton wasn't here. I let my sore palms rest against the floor and hold me up with my shaky elbows as I recovered from the adrenaline rush. I brought myself up to sit on my knees and wiped the cold sweat on my forehead onto the back of my hand. I got myself to my feet soon after that, and started heading the way I'd just ran from.

I was irritated that I'd gotten back as far as I did. That was all the more space I had to go through. I tried to avert my mind from the image of Ashton standing there, watching me. Though, that only progressed in the image of him being crushed into the panel up above, so I regretted that. I could see Wheatley in the back of my mind, lying in shambles as I left the assembly room. As I progressed down the hall, I decided I needed to think of something to focus on. Something to avert my mind from them.

I finally got to a door that lead onto a lift. Upon sending it down, I ended up on a catwalk. Not much changed between this Aperture and the Aperture above, it seemed. I found myself in a room of some sort of lever puzzle. However, it was already complete, and I got to continue. The next one was a similarly simple test, with what looked like buttons that lit up. However, it was complete too. It seemed whoever was in charge of the tests didn't reset them before they went wherever they went next. I progressed through about three more straight-forward puzzles that were complete before I found anything that was of interest.

I emerged into a little room. There were a couple of benches and chairs, as well as a small magazine rack. There was a sign that read "Congratulations on passing the Initial IQ Testing Course!" over an Aperture Science Innovators logo. The room had a particularly stale feeling to it. There were magazines sitting open to various pages, there was still garbage in the trash cans, and at the reception desk there was a paper with an incomplete signature.

What had happened to all of these people?

I decided not to linger and moved on. There was a rather large room that seemed to involve the familiar gels. There were a dozen or so pillars, and several buttons of both the cube-held and the one-press variety. I noticed that one of the pillars had seemingly fallen apart at some point, and I wondered if that was before or after all the people stopped in the middle of what they were doing and disappeared without a trace. This test, however, was like the rest. It was nothing complicated, mostly just bouncing on the gel to get to a button and press it, and catching the cube it released, then getting it onto a button before the ticking timer finished. There were processes similar to this with variants, but they were mostly the same. Once I had all eight cubes on buttons, the door at the end of the chamber opened.

Progressing through the chamber led me to the next. However, seemed to be rotated in some way. There was a sign on the way in that said, "Replicate it." I realized then that the gels were in dispensers above and not yet on the ground, and that I'd need to copy the last room. A screen behind a wall of glass told me that I had six minutes to work. Instead of trying to visually copy it, I decided to "solve" the puzzle. I was pretty sure that as long as I got the cubes on the buttons, I would progress. Maybe back when test subjects were being watched here, their way out would be denied by the onlookers if the room didn't replicate the last.

Once I exited that room, I was met by another waiting room with another sign informing me I'd passed the secondary IQ test. The chairs and benches all looked pretty dirty, and I was pretty sure one bench was caked in age-old dried mud. So, I opted to rest a moment in the chair at the desk to breath. The air wasn't recycled down here, and there was no energy-booster added to it. I felt like my ability to progress in a place like this was being stripped from me piece by piece.

I didn't have many pieces left.

Several more testing chambers proceeded that one, along with another waiting room. However, the next chamber I emerged into seemed to be broken down. Pieces of the ceiling had fallen in, there were broken pieces of the partially charred walls lying across the floor, and the gel dispensers were both broken open and completely dry. It seemed that they'd been turned off, since I was sure that they weren't out considering they connected to the same place as the other, functional ones did. At least, I assumed they did.

However, this still left the problem that the door was shut without a way to open it. Honestly, this room looked like it had been repurposed for bomb-testing, and you don't blow anything up with the door open. That being said, I didn't know what had happened to this room or if it was going to happen again or not by machine. Therefore, I made my way to the door and tried to see if it happened to be lose. I didn't, as I figured. My only reasoning for thinking so was the possible bomb-testing theory leading to the door being knocked loose.

I looked around the room for any sort of alternative exit, or entrance for the scientists. However, there was neither. As I walked around, I realized there were certain tiles of the floor that were loose. They were much too large for me to lift, but I kept in mind the fact that they may not be too sturdy for me to go plummeting through to whatever was below. I kept my steps careful as I examined the room for any way out.

My plan was the holes in the wall. If I could angle myself in a way that I could see any sort of portal-conductive surface, I could get over there using any uncharred panel in here. However, the holes didn't seem to align with any white panels. I kept myself calm as I walked, remembering to be careful for any loose tiles.

Finally, I could see the glimpse of what looked like a white panel. It was on the ceiling in the next room over, but as long as I could to it that's all I needed. I shot a portal and felt relieved when I saw the flash of blue. I made my way over there, Once I'd landed, I realized that this hadn't lead to the next room. It instead lead to the room above it. Which was fine, I didn't mind making my way up a little. It was a small pod of a room with a couple of buttons to do things like release the gels. Seeing as they weren't pressed down and there was a label saying "Do Not Activate; Rooms Need Repair." I decided against pressing them.

There was a stairwell of sorts that headed up and down. I didn't want to go any farther down by any means, so I chose to go up. It was almost odd, seeing as far up as the stairwell went. It was such a straightforward path, something extremely rare to Aperture Science. It must've been nice navigating in the older Aperture sectors with maps and grids. You could always trust that your office would be in the same place you left last night, and you knew that Chamber 3 would be in the same place when you finish your lunch that it was in when you started it. It almost made me uneasy to see such a clear-cut path. It felt like a trap.

On the way up, a few doors were propped open. However, each one looked like it lead to offices or chambers rather than anything of interest, so I decided to take the easy path. I progressed up seven or eight floors before I took a break. I sat down on the topmost step of the flight I just climbed and attempted to catch my breath. I would've killed for the backpacks right about then, because a bottle of water and one of those granola bars sounded as good as a five-course meal. I rested my head against the rail and glanced downward. I hadn't noticed that I started only a few floors from the bottom. Upon looking up, I could tell I was only about a fourth of the way there.

"I knew you'd take a break eventually," I jumped so badly when it sounded that I ended up soaring down the flight of stairs. I mostly was in the air, but I rolled down the last few enough to bruise a strip of my back and to give myself a pretty nasty headache. My eyes couldn't quite focus at where I came from, but there was nothing there. I didn't expect there to be. However, the intercom stayed silent. Nothing moved. After a few long moments of waiting, I realized that Her voice was as real in that moment as that turret had been when I shoved Ashton into the chair.

I decided to start moving again.

"Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?" My psychologist nodded with her typical plastered on smile, "What does that mean?"

"Well, when somebody experiences a situation to the degree of something like war, or an abusive relationship. Sometimes, they have spells where they can't get a certain thing out of their head. They'll relive a memory or be stuck in the emotion of it. Sometimes it'll continue in their head the way it happened, or it'll change based on what the person thinks should've happened or an alternative way it could've gone."

I sipped anxiously on my water as she talked. I had a habit of drinking until I got sick to avoid talking, so I forced myself to set my water bottle down. I gave her a nod to cue her to continue talking, "Very rarely, there are cases that disconnect from reality and think they're back in that horrible situation, or that it's followed them somehow. Like that second day you came and you later on explained to me that when you jumped, you were dodging a bullet."

Weeks later, to be exact. I hadn't wanted to tell her that in fear she'd deem me unfit to function around other humans or something. Once I had told her, she'd started asking me much more invasive questions. I didn't like it, but I did my best to answer them. Then, we came to this conversation.

"It's nothing to be too concerned with. I mean, after all, you've been living with it. There's nothing new here, just a name for the phenomenon is all. It's not an easy thing to live with, but you seem to be coping well. If you ever have those attacks, I want you to take one of these pills. It's similar to your anxiety medication, but it's a quicker acting, lesser strength, you see."

She continued to ramble on about my medications and my symptoms. I had no reason to doubt her, so I decided I would listen to her. She was right in saying that it would stop the process of many of those attacks happening one right after another because it calmed me down. However, I didn't like the way the pills made me feel. It was almost like I was being sedated. So, I very rarely took them. I usually tried to cope with them unless someone else was going to be around. Matty seemed a lot more cautious when I had to turn in my new medication form that said I may have to leave work if I had to take the medication, but she told me not to worry.

I hadn't thought to bring those pills with me. These attacks were emerging from the blockade at full force, and I worried that they'd result in my fatality. However, if I took those pills, I'd like be unable to function the way I needed to. So I tried to not be too hard on myself for forgetting them. I did, however, wish I remembered my nerve medicine so my mind wouldn't race like this.

It took a while, especially with my freshly bruised spine, but I did reach the top of the staircase. I felt rather worn down, but I knew better than to take a break longer than a couple of minutes. I checked through the halls. It seemed this was where the higher-ups were. Probably because it was closer to the surface, meaning in an emergency they'd be out first. However, I had to wonder how they got out. Surely they didn't have lifts all the way to the surface directly from here. Besides, in a fire they'd be no help. I finally took a break and sat down in the hallway, letting myself call for more energy from my tired body. It wasn't long before I dragged myself into one of the offices.

I stared at a case of water for a long time. Who knew how many years they were sitting there. Forty? Fifty? A hundred? Who knew, it could've been even longer. But I could recall my crewmembers at Matty's cafe telling me water didn't go bad. So I decided it was time to take my chances and I ripped open the case of water.

I cracked open the first bottle my hand landed on and started chugging. It tasted foul, but I trusted what I'd been told. Besides, if I didn't drink something soon, I was going to die of thirst. I wasn't sure how long I'd been out of the reenergizing, all purpose air from the active layers of Aperture, but I knew a human could only go twenty-four hours without water. They would also become weak from dehydration way before that.

I downed water until I felt nauseous. While I let my stomach settle, I searched around the office. I knew I wouldn't find any food that was still good, but I was hoping for something easy enough to carry the water bottles in without getting in the way. However, all I found was a suitcase, and I couldn't imagine lugging the heavy thing around for long.

I decided to check the other offices, but was met with similar circumstances. I finally found a woman's purse and dumped the contents out. As much as I would've loved to figure out her birthday with some sort of ID so that I could start to get an idea as to how old this place and that water was, I needed to keep moving. I went back to the room and stuffed as many water bottles in as I could, and adjusted the strap to be long enough to go from one shoulder to the opposite hip, that way it wouldn't slip down my arm so much. I zipped it shut and decided it was time to progress.

I passed several offices. However, upon passing one, I caught a glimpse of a figure sitting there. I threw myself onto the ground, expecting my eyes to have been tricking me and there secretly being some sort of danger to it, however when I looked up I could see it was in fact a motionless person. Their facial features were ever-so-slightly odd and seemed to shine in the light a little. After a moment or two of staring, I realized it was an android.

It looked like it hadn't moved in years with the way it was covered in dust. I walked into the office and began examining the android man. It certainly looked older- in both model and design- than the one I had tried to port Wheatley into. I could see where the personality chip slipped in, and tried to pull it out to get a look at it. However, it was really snuggly fit in.

I located some tweezers in the desk drawer - I wondered if this android was filling in for someone who would have a reason to own these - and managed to coax it out with those. Upon looking at it, I could see it was very similar to the chip I had found inside Wheatley's core. However, it was yellow and had a different code I didn't bother remembering. I could see why the android wasn't working anymore. His chip was melted at the end. I wondered if that was because the old model's chips fit too snuggly, or if there was some other malfunction this bot had been fated for.

I wondered how long he'd been inanimate. The dust told me a long time, but that was a terribly large variable. With no way to find out, I decided it was time to get back to moving. I set the chip down on the desk and headed back into the hallway. The door's creaking as I shut it was loud as a bomb in all of the silence here. I moved at as quick of a walk as I could manage, which was a little slower than usual with my back still aching. When I heard turrets activate, I kept my pace against my will to sprint.

They're not real, Chell.

I wanted to run. My mind told me to dive to the floor or to enter an office. I had to fight to keep grounded in the real world. I couldn't forget what I was doing and get messed up by delusions. I needed to find another staircase. There had to be one. Somehow, all of the people were supposed to be able to get out.

Or at least the higher-ups were.

Something nearly nicked my nose on the way across the hallway in front of me. As I fell back, I felt reality start to slip. I heard dozens of gunshots, and I crawled along the hallway floor into an open office. Once I confirmed it was turretless, I shut the door behind me. My heart was pounding so hard that my breath couldn't catch up, and the gunshots didn't stop for a good minute or two. When they did, I decided not to move.

Turrets don't have that much ammo. Turrets don't fire for that long without seeing a target. They aren't real, Chell.

The words felt empty and foreign in my mind, but I repeated them several times anyways. Something had to click. It felt like being caught in a nightmare and knowing it, but not being able to get wake yourself up. I pulled at my hair and pressed my back against the wall, trying to do anything to distract my mind.

I coaxed myself up onto my feet and decided to walk around the room for a couple of minutes. I glanced around the cookie-cutter office; it wasn't much different than the one the android had been in. I sat at the desk and started looking through the drawers. I imagined being an employee for a place like Aperture Science, and I couldn't imagine it being nice. You really had to stay in line, or else you got the boot. Your office was god knows how many miles underground and you had to work on projects that went against mosts' morals- yours too even. Then again, it had to be better than being a test subject. As a test subject, your life meant nothing to the scientists. You were simply another tally for the data they were collecting. You were to risk your life for the sake of science you both knew next to nothing about and also didn't care about.

At the bottom of a drawer, below some candy bars coated in mold and smelt like all of the test subjects that had worked in the day they were good puked on them, was a map. I scraped the crud off it with a nearby ruler, and I could almost read it. I grabbed a pen and marked where I came up from, then mapped out what way I had gone. According to the map, I needed to go back to an intersecting hallway and follow it, then turn into another, and then I'd find the staircase that headed upwards another forty-two floors.

I slipped the map into the bag with the water and chugged another bottle. I tossed it aside as I left the office and started to follow the path laid out for me by the map. I wondered how many floors were between this one and the Aperture I was semi-familiar with, or even how this Aperture connected to the old parts of Aperture I trekked though with GLaDOS.

A chill crept down my spine as I remembered working alongside her. I hated listening to what She said, but She turned out to be serious about helping me for the sake of regaining control of Her facility. She seemed genuinely okay with me leaving four years ago, but I'd made the mistake of coming back. She almost seemed to have completely reverted back to Her the state She was in when I met Her. She didn't worry about me screwing up Her facility or what I wanted to do. She wanted me to test, and that was all She cared about.

I stumbled as the image of Ashton being swiped off the catwalk forced itself into my mind. I put a hand on the wall to steady myself and attempted to calm my breaths. I kept my eyes shut, willing the memory away. I couldn't be upset right now. I'd be irrational, and I'd lose my grip on reality again. I had to be sure I made progress towards those stairs without any more stops. I could feel the pressure knotting around me, reminding me that GLaDOS could be just a step behind or in front of me, trying or preparing to catch me.

I started walking again. I didn't have time to think like this.

There wasn't much more to go. I only had the last stretch of the hallway before I could enter the staircase and head upwards. However, I had no clue what was coming after that. With how far I fell, there could be a few hundred flights between me and the floor that lift had been on. I knew that was my only option to lose GLaDOS at the time, but I was regretting it more and more. She was just going to find me the moment I got back, and falling down here had killed Wheatley.

My decision had killed Wheatley.

If I hadn't jumped down that lift, Wheatley would still be alive. He wouldn't be much help, but he would be company. More importantly, my entire reasoning for coming back to Aperture wouldn't be gone. Now, Ashton's death and my time had all been for nothing. All because I didn't think things through and acted too quickly. If only I'd been able to crawl up the shaft like I tried to. If only I had been able to catch myself in the tube so we didn't go down so far. If only I could've stunted at least a little of the fall. Maybe I could've stayed awake. Maybe I could've stopped Wheatley from rolling into the water and getting fried.

Maybe he'd be rambling on, thanking me over and over. He could've finally finished his apology too, because there was no GLaDOS down here to interrupt him.

I made it to the stairs and started my way up. My portal gun had that odd light feeling again. I wished I hadn't dismantled Wheatley so I could've at least carried him. Maybe he'd have eventually been able to turn on again. He would've filled the silence so that every little squeak didn't have me jumping. The old metal stairs seemed to squeak and creak a lot.

I had to stop and take a break after a good ten or so floors were behind me. I sat on the stairs and willed my mind to stay put as I drank half of a bottle of water. The stairs looked quite similar to the other except this time I had emerged from the bottom most floor.

I was exhausted. I wasn't sure how long I'd been underground by now, but it had to have been at least a day. I wanted those spaghettios I had to leave behind up above in the alcove we'd hidden in. I wanted to sleep. I needed to rest before I absolutely collapsed somewhere. I looked up at the top of the staircase. I couldn't fathom climbing thirty more flights of stairs before I slept, but these stairs were too open. I took a glance at the door to my right and made the decision to head in.

It lead to a waiting room. There were similar benches and chairs to the ones that were in the IQ tests' waiting rooms, but I certainly wasn't sleeping on those. I was almost disappointed I didn't find more offices with the nicer chairs, but I didn't have much room to complain right now. I walked behind the receptionist's desk and ducked down under it. I pulled the chair in and took the bag off my shoulder. I didn't like being closed in like this, but this was the best place I could think of where I wouldn't be seen. GLaDOS would have over 80 floors that I was aware of to search for me, and I hoped she expected me to be better at hiding than this.

This was the best I had.

I finally laid my head down and curled myself into a ball. I convinced my eyes to close, and tried not to listen to every little noise. I couldn't sleep on high alert like this. I also couldn't let my mind wander, because it brought me to Ashton and Wheatley, or to how bad my predicament was. It took a while, but I did finally fall asleep.

"Hey, Che!" Ashton was at the stove, flipping burgers. He was sweating from the heat, but he had his huge grin on his face all the same. Matty and Blu- his nickname, he never told me his real name - were putting burgers on buns. I found it odd, considering we didn't made burgers. Matty was obviously aware, though, so I didn't worry about it.

I started making the boxed salads. I was cutting tomatoes when the door to the back opened. On his rail, Wheatley made his way to Matty, who pulled a sticky note off his faceplate and called out the order. I dropped the cheese I was holding and decided to step out a minute. Wheatley called after me, but I went ahead into the main room. There, the android from the office and the chestnut-haired android were sitting at a table, eating lunch.

I bolted outside and grabbed onto the lamppost just outside the shop. The metal was cold against my hands, but I didn't mind. I needed to ground myself. I started looking around, but all I saw was an empty street. I started running, my tennis shoes clacking against the pavement of the sidewalk. I stopped when that turned to the sound of something hard on metal. I looked down to see a catwalk instead of the road. I looked back towards Matty's shop.

Matty was watching me from the window and waved. I tried to get back, but the catwalk came to an end just before the door. There was nothing to walk on between me and the door, and I suddenly felt very trapped. I called for Matty, but she just smiled and headed towards the backroom. I backed myself slowly away from the building, trying to think of a reasonable explanation, "Miss C?"

I turned myself around to see Ashton behind me on the catwalk. He was out of his uniform and into his casual clothes. He reached his hand out, offering a piece of gum, "Rough first shift?"

I looked around and motioned to the catwalk. When I tried to speak, my voice didn't come. I tried hard to speak, but nothing would come out. Ashton repocketed the gum and walked closer, "Are you feeling okay?"

I shook my head and put my hands on my throat. He stared at me a moment, "Che?"

I pointed to Matty's shop and to the catwalk. He laughed and turned around, headed away from the shop, "I know. I wish we could go back too."

I followed him, trying to figure out what he meant. The farther we went, the more scarce the buildings around us got even though last time I came, it was near the middle of town. The catwalk gave away to a dirt road, and I noticed Ashton's truck. The back right wheel had a nasty flat and caused the whole truck to be uneven. Ashton walked past his truck, however, and into the wheat field past it.

The shack came up faster this time, In fact, I could still see his truck as we neared it. I seized his wrist and shook my head, "Hey, Ashton? I don't think we should go in there-"

"It'll be fine," He shrugged my hand off and kept walking.

"No, no, no. No it won't be fine. Ashton- I mean it. We need to stay here. We can't go in there- There's nothing good in there Ashton."

"I'm just grabbing a few tools."

"That's not a tool shed, Ashton- Ashton stop!"

He turned to look at me and grinned. I watched the wheatfield divided up into screens. Patches of it disappeared as all the monitors shut off. Upon looking down, I could see I was on the outer edge of a catwalk. I dove to stop the panel from grabbing him, but my chest just slammed into the catwalk and I fell after hitting my hip on the edge.

The fall was surprisingly short, but when I looked up nothing but darkness loomed above me. I got to my feet and looked around. I saw the brown-haired android again, and he smiled, "Oh, hello luv! Where'd you come from?"

"Where'd I- Wheatley?"

He grinned and grabbed my hand. He pulled me along as he ran, despite my attempts to stop us. He brought me to the end of a broken catwalk and turned to look at me, "Isn't it awful here? Nothing here is put together as it should be."

I nodded hurriedly, "Wheatley, we need to get out of here."

"Right, right, we should do that… Except one problem."

"What? Wheatley- come on-"

"You left me," His voice didn't sound it's chipper tone. He frowned at me and took a step towards me. I took a step back as a precaution, "You gave up. One little try and 'Oh well, I tried. Little ol' Wheatley's dead. Better get goin' to save my own hide.' Right, Chell?"

"No! Wheatley - You were fried! There was nothing I could do!"

"Nothing you could do? You didn't try half the things you could've! All you did was try to put me in an android! You didn't try looking for replacement parts or even drying me properly! You didn't even bloody take me with you! What if you went to the core room up above just a bit and just put me in one of them, hm?"

"I couldn't! I would-"

"Would have been weighed down by me. My dead body really would've been in the way, wouldn't of it? Sorry I became such a bother, Chell."

With that, I watched him back up off the edge of the catwalk. I ran to catch him, but he plummeted down in the water below. I stood stunned for a long moment before I had the nerve to move again.

"Thank you for participating in the Aperture Science Mental Examination. You have failed. However, we recommend you to sign up as a test subject-"

GLaDOS' voice was interrupted by me hitting my head on the bottom of the receptionist desk. I grabbed my head as it pounded around the spot that I could only imagine was making quite the bruise. I was drenched in cold sweat and my throat felt dry. I quickly grabbed a bottle of water and chugged it. I tried not to focus on the dream as I tossed the now empty bottle aside and got up. I was a little dizzy, definitely disoriented, and sore in several places from how I slept. Not to mention I likely had a concussion now. I rubbed the place tenderly, but the pain recommended I didn't continue.

I wasn't sure how much better I felt now that I slept, but at least now I felt like I could keep my eyes open. As much as I would've liked to go back to sleep, I knew better than to after the injury the desk had dealt to my head. I made my way back to the staircase and began progressing upwards again. My steps were slow and groggy, but I was okay with that so long as they were steps in the right direction. I'd get there eventually or die of old age, whichever came first.

The grogginess didn't fade very quickly. Ten flights later, when I took a break, it still was holding strong. I chugged down a bottle of water and tossed it down the center straight to the floor below. I heard it land with a crackle and wondered if falling from this height had been enough to make it split open. I didn't bother looking down since it was so far below me. As I sat there, I noticed the cracks in the walls. The structure was starting to fall apart from old age, long forgotten by anyone who could attempt to repair it.

This was definitely a place left to rot.

I had gotten up and made it up another good six flights or so when I heard something. It sounded sort of like the sound of an air conditioner droning on way off on the other side of the house. I glanced upward, but there wasn't anything to make that noise to my knowledge. I certainly hadn't noticed any sort of heat or air conditioning, and it probably would've been too expensive for Aperture to afford - especially way down here - anyways. By time I was on the last set of ten flights, the sound was starting to get loud enough that I heard it without having to stop and listen. However, it wasn't getting louder in proportion with my progress up the steps. It seemed to be getting louder on its own, like it was getting closer.

I tried to keep all my thoughts in reality as I paused to listen. As I was standing there, I felt the railing begin to tremble. I suddenly felt a lot less safe. I considered ducking for cover on the nearest floor, but I wasn't sure where to go to be safe. I didn't know what the noise was. I willed myself to keep moving up the stairs despite the inevitable fact that I was moving myself closer to the noise. I wasn't even sure the root of the noise was dangerous, or even sentient.

I didn't know what to do when the stairs started shaking. I was stuck between two levels, and they were shaking too much to progress or go back. I grabbed onto the railing, but it felt like it was going to give away any moment now. The ceiling began to crumble and turn to a state that seemed almost like powder on it's way down. A hole began to form in it, but I didn't have much time to look. The railing gave away, and without something to try and balance myself on, I fell onto my stomach. My torso slid off the steps and over the edge, and I was quickly being pulled downwards.

I grabbed onto the edge of the stairs, but I lost my grip when my weight finally hit. As I soared down past all those flights I had travelled, I pointed my feet towards the ground. I wasn't sure how well my long fall boots were going to work on uneven ground, but it had to be better than how my spine or skull would do. When I landed, it sent a rush of pressure up through me. It seemed the long fall boots had done pretty well.

Something that looked similar to a ridiculously oversized hunk of coal landed a few feet away from me. I started taking steps back, and I found out that was a good idea. A dozen or so little mechanisms crawled out. They seemed to have three little metal legs that reminded me of turret legs, and also had some sort of core-like optic on their black, oddly shaped bodies. They looked a lot like rectangular cubes on top of another rectangular cube of sorts, with all kinds of metal welded together to make them.

I decided to run before I could find out what they were.

I could hear the small bits of metal grinding as they ran. I raced through the hall, recalling the way out from yesterday. Or at least, I was going to call it yesterday on account of the lack of calendar. I found myself at the last staircase. I was hopping down flights at a time, but I knew those things were catching up. Once I was certain my boots would be capable of handling the fall, I swung myself over the railing. I heard them each pop off the railing and follow suit. I didn't waste time when I landed, and kept running. I shot a portal back into the broken down chamber, and threw myself into it. I tried moving the portal, but a couple got through anyway,

They also sounded like they were finding their way through the holes. I was glad there was no one to reset the puzzles I'd done, or progressing out of the test chambers would've been impossible. I usually shot portals to save time, and I went from a dozen following me to, based on the glance I caught in a portal, four. I had forgotten just how many test chambers I'd done, and I was rapidly running out of energy to keep going. By time I made it to the first waiting room I encountered, I wanted to go back to sleep for a while.

However, I ignored my instinct and got through the last five chambers that stood between me and the one lift I'd been on since I got down here. However, I climbed over the railing and hopped down instead of waiting on it . The catwalk below rattled like an angry snake the entire time I was running on it. It also sounded like one of the bots got stuck in the catwalk in their pursuit of me.

I didn't know where I'd be going after I got back to where we started. I felt trapped, though I was sure there was another way to go in that first space I had landed in. I felt tired and my pace was decreasing against my will. I was going to be caught up with soon, and I had no clue what would happen after that. These things had a purpose of some sort, and I was certain they weren't here by accident. Entire ceilings don't fall out by accident.

As I turned the corner, I tripped over something. I scrambled to my feet, but was startled when something else moved behind me. I didn't have the time to look, so I just kept running. If it was bad, that's what I'd be doing anyway. I hopped over the globe on my way back towards where we - I - entered from, "Wait, luv!"

Not now. I couldn't lose a grip on reality now. I swung the door open and shot a portal to go down below, "Wait for me!"

I hopped into it and landed out the other side, "Hold on a tick! Don't-"

I shot the portal away from there so those little bots and my hallucinations couldn't follow me. I heard him yell from what sounded like pain, and I couldn't help but glance back. The brown haired android was trying to bat off the little bots, but they looked almost like they were well attached to him. I lost my sense of the fact I was hallucinating and shot a portal behind him.

I ripped the bots off of him and chucked them into the hallway. I slammed the door and pushed some nearby rubble in front of it to assure myself it wasn't going to pop open. I returned through my portal and laid down on the layers of metal, rock, and in general just old pieces of facility. I was trying to catch my breath, but it was doing a better job evading me than I did those bots. My limbs wouldn't stay still as they came down from the adrenaline; they shook like the stairs back there had. I closed my eyes and let myself lay there just a moment.

I knew I had to keep moving. Those things probably had some sort of feed to GLaDOS, meaning She knew right where I'd just came from and the direction I went now. I knew I had to keep moving, but I couldn't will my body to move an inch to grab a water bottle more less what would likely be several miles. Right now, the metal beneath me felt better than my bed from home. Right now, I was more exhausted than I was the time I did three back-to-back shifts at Matty's cafe to cover for Blakely. There was nothing I could do but lay there to let my body catch up with me.

Something cold touched my forehead. I shoved at it, trying to pull my feet beneath me so that I could get up, but I didn't have the strength and I fell instead. I glanced up to see the android leaning over at almost a right angle above me with it's hands on it's knees. It seemed to be wobbling a little, but otherwise I had to admit it looked like it was in better condition than me right now. A pair of glasses were slightly askew on the tip of his nose, and they slid right off the moment I noticed them. When he reached for them, he fell forward next to them, just narrowly not crushing them, "Oh, for god's sake! How do you humans do this, anyways? This whole legs and arms and spine thing. I don't get it!"

I closed my eyes and tried to will it away. I didn't need any extra hell from my head on top of the hellhounds GLaDOS had sent in the form of two-inch tall bots. I focused on seeing Wheatley's body in the pool of water, trying to remind my subconscious that he was dead. However, something metal poked my forehead. I knew what I'd see when I opened my eyes, so I decided to keep them shut.

"Are you sleeping?"

I didn't respond to it. I couldn't. It would just lead me into another delusion, and I had to keep grounded. It was too dangerous to leave reality now. I felt my fingers along the fresh tear in my jumpsuit to the side of my right knee. I tried to focus on the way the fibers frayed at the cut, the feeling of going from the jumpsuit to my skin. However, another poke to the forehead snapped me right out of it. I looked up at him, and a grin spread on his lips, "There you are!"

I looked away from him again. If I interacted with him now, who knew how long it would take to get out of this state of mind. He started rambling a little, "When I woke up, no one was around! I stood still for ages, because I thought I was still a lil' old core! But then I noticed that I was above the counters! I thought i was on my rail, so I tried to move on it, but instead this body bloody collapsed! It took a minute to get the hang of walking - actually if we're being truthfully honest, it took a lot longer than a minute - and I went to look for you!"

My delusions didn't usually last this long. I tried not to listen, but he kept rambling, "The last thing I remember before that was we fell. You were out like a light, and me- I was rolling. Where did I end up? No where else but face down in a puddle! Well… More like a river than puddle… Oh! You probably know that though! I saw my little core body back in that room. Did you do this?"

Did you do this. Do what, got you killed and then tried to atone for it? He sat down properly in front of me and poked my shoulder, "Did you go back to sleep? WIth your eyes open?"

I finally gave him a nod. He seemed a little upset, "Oh, you are asleep then? Well could you wake up?"

Not what I meant. I looked at him and pointed to him, "Wha, me? I'm not asleep!"
I shook my head and pointed again. He stared at me for an uncomfortable amount of time before he looked down and seemed to jolt a little straighter, "Oh! My new body! So you did do this?"

I gave him another nod.

He grinned at me, "Brilliant. As always. Um- Lets see- Update me! What's been going on while I've been out? How long have I been out? What's the plan on getting out?"

I wasn't sure how to answer all of those in body gestures.