Wow. Just...wow. Let me say that I am completely blown away by the sheer amount of encouragement and support you guys have shown me already. My motivation now is tremendous.

Thank you so much, and I honestly hope you enjoy the next chapter. It wouldn't be here without you.

Ever, Lasts Forever

She dreamed of Portals.

It was the falling dream. Everyone had a falling dream, her therapist had told her. But hers was a little different than most people, because, she was sure, no one else had ever dreamed about falling through an infinite loop of flashes of orange and blue.

She woke with a jolt—that old, familiar feeling of impact, except that it never did really happen. All she knew was that she would keep falling until something goaded her into stepping out of that endless free-fall, and the kick shoved her through the glass into the waking world. It was a sensation she was accustomed to.

What she wasn't used to was the voice.

She pressed a hand to her forehead, and it came away wet. She shook off the heavy blanket and rose, her bare feet meeting the bare floor with a little shock of cold. Or cool, rather, but at the moment, anything felt cooler than the oppressive heat beneath that blanket. The AC must have shut down again. She'd asked the manager to send someone up to fix it, but...well, that was what she got for staying in a cheap hotel. Her therapist had offered to help her pay for the trip and a better hotel, but she had refused. This was her mission, after all. She had to be able to go it alone.

She crossed to the window and drew back the blackout curtains, sliding it open. The summer moon hung low and waning over the city, like a great, sleepy eye, half-open in the blackness. According to the weather reports, it was unseasonably hot for this part of the country—just her luck. At least the air outside was somewhat cooler than the air inside her room. And there was a little bit of a breeze. That always helped.

There had never been a voice in her dream before. The sense of urgency always varied, between a faint, nagging feeling that there was something she needed to be doing and a full-blown panic that she was trapped in free-fall and couldn't escape, but never had there been a voice outside. A voice from beyond the flashes of orange and blue that called to her, leading her out of the endless loop.

"Are you having fun? I mean, it looks like fun. All that falling. Without a floor to crash into. You look like you're having a grand old time in there. But, ah, I was just wondering. Did you forget that we're sort of trying to escape here? Right now? Immediately?"

She rested her elbows in the windowsill, chin in her hands. It couldn't be a coincidence. After what had happened to her today, there was no way that hearing that voice in her dreams could be a coincidence. The problem was, she didn't want to hear that voice again.

And yet, she did.

A gentle breeze worked its way into the room around her, cooling the dampness of her forehead. She checked the clock behind her, on the bedside table. It had been a little over two hours since she'd returned, and if she hadn't been utterly exhausted from the walk back to the hotel, she probably would have lain awake for those two hours, restless and torn. But she had collapsed into her bed, barely stopping to take off her shoes, pulled the covers up to her chin, and then she was gone.

Good thing she'd walked, instead of calling a cab. She didn't want to lie awake all night, agonizing, wondering. The problem was, she was awake now. Her eyes were heavy, her mind slow and groggy, but she was awake. And now there was no escaping the uncertainty that pulled at her in either direction, each one irreconcilable with the other.

It could have been her mind playing tricks on her. That happened sometimes. Not as often as it could have, but sometimes she still saw flashes out of the corners of her eyes—red beams that might have been turrets lurking around a corner, scribbles of graffiti that could have belonged to the mysterious writer, bright red dots of light on out-of-reach cameras that might very well be even more of Her cold, calculating eyes. It wasn't that hard to believe that her mind was projecting again. Showing her what she expected to see, what she wanted to see (except she didn't want to see this, see him, never again...or did she?).

The only problem was, she didn't believe it.

She hadn't turned around. Hadn't tried to open the door again or go back inside. She had simply walked away. And that should have been enough for her. But there had to be a reason she was awake now, her fatigue receding into the background. There had to be a reason that she had heard him again, when she didn't (did) (didn't) want to. And there certainly had to be a reason why she had asked the museum directors for copies of the transcripts.

It had felt like a whim, when she'd done it. Just a stupid idea, one that would have put even him to shame. But she had done it, and her personal datapad now sat on the table beside the alarm clock, full up to bursting with more information than she'd ever felt bothered to put on it before. She'd never really gotten the feel for them. She had only ever kept a few books, a few movies, the occasional game for when she grew bored and her mind searched out the one kind of distraction she had never been able to pass up (puzzle games, wasn't that ironic?)...and now this.

The urge was overpowering. She did her best to resist it. She needed to get back to sleep, after all. There were things she had to do tomorrow, and then a plane to catch later that night. If she stayed up any longer, she wouldn't be able to do anything in the morning.

She turned away from the window, crossed back to her bed, and sat down. Then the datapad was in her hands, and she cursed softly, tilting it away from her. Why was she doing this? Self-torture wasn't something she usually went in for.

This would have amused Her to no end, had She been here. And that thought made her look up again, carefully around at the corners of the room, the old suspicion rearing up once again. Logically, she knew that Her cameras could never have come this far—within the walls of Aperture Science, She was God, but without, She was only a memory, a mad tyrant ruling over Her kingdom of dust and bones. But even after so many years, that knowledge and fear of what it meant to be watched had never quite left her.

She turned on the datapad and dimmed the screen, so that it wouldn't hurt her eyes in the darkness. She didn't want to turn on her lights—it felt wrong, somehow. So she curled up on her bed in the darkness, her nose mere inches away from the screen, rereading the words she had promised she wouldn't touch again, wouldn't think about again, wouldn't even consider, now that she was supposed to have let go.

GN: So let me get this straight. You went insane. And took over the entire facility.

IDS(W): Er, yeah. Sort of. Well, not sort of, there was no 'sort of' about it. Except you've got it a little backwards there, because I definitely took over first, and then I definitely went insane. But I'm better now, I really mean it. I'm not about to go bonkers on you. No idea what came over me, not the faintest idea.

[Subject appears to be genuinely remorseful. Beginning to wonder how much time AS spent programming this thing to make it seem human. It's doing a damn good job of it. -JS ]

GN: Okay. Well. What happened to GLaDOS?

IDS(W): Oh, her? Oh, that part was brilliant. I mean, not that going crazy was fun or anything, because I don't want to do it again, ever. But the potato bit was brilliant. I put her in a potato battery. All that power, all sealed up in a child's science fair project! Oh, it was grand, let me tell you. She hated it. Absolutely despised it. I am almost one hundred percent sure that if I ever go back there, she's going to find some dreadful way to murder me for it, too.

GN: And...what happened to the girl? Weren't you supposed to be getting her out of there?

IDS(W): Oh. Well. I was. Supposed to be, I mean. Except I didn't. And she, er, she was very cross with me. Very cross. Perfectly good reason to be, too. I would have been cross with me, too. I mean, it wasn't a very smart thing to do, was it? Pound her down an elevator shaft. Although I guess going absolutely bonkers wasn't a very smart thing to do either, was it?

[He gets nervous whenever Gabe mentions her. Either there's something he isn't telling us about her, or...well, the other option goes into a lot of arguments about the ghost in the shell and how much an AI can really feel, and I don't feel up to tackling that little piece of insanity today. -EM ]

She had to push the datapad away, closing her eyes against the sick feeling that clenched at her stomach. She had read every single one of these transcripts from top to bottom just a few hours ago—she already knew where the conversation was going, and where it would end. But she still didn't know if she wanted to see it again. To accept it. Because that meant taking everything that had happened to her because of him and just...throwing it away.

He had tried to kill her. Period. Bottom line. End of story. She had trusted him, and at the first test of faith, he had gone completely haywire and tried to murder her.

No...he had trapped her first. He had turned her into his own personal lab rat, just like She had done. And then he had tried to murder her.

...but he was sorry.

It shouldn't have made any difference. She almost wished it hadn't, because it would have made everything so much less complicated. But that one word had started a chain reaction inside her that was only now beginning to come to fruition. It had slammed into her before and kept going, like a shockwave riding past through the crust of the earth. But the earth was round, and that shockwave was coming full circle now, even more powerful than it had been before.

He'd been no different than Her. That was a fact. But the other fact that she had neglected until now was that She had never felt...anything. Not until she had reawakened the part of Her that had once been human. And then She had promptly deleted that part of Herself, negating the fact of its occurrence altogether. But him...he was different.

IDS(W): Look, this is all well and great, but are we going to be finished any time soon? I mean, you can't have that many questions for me.

GN: Why? You're an information goldmine. The data we can pull from your memory will bring us leaps ahead in AI technology, as well as in anything else Aperture Science was working on.

IDS(W): Wait—wait, nonono, you can't be thinking of pulling me apart! I'm too young to die! Oh, I should have stayed in space, even if I did have to deal with that obnoxious little—

[Is self-preservation only a human instinct? This thing reacts to the slightest hint of danger with total panic. That has to be more than programming, doesn't it? -JS ]

JS: Look, it's not like we have to tear you open or anything. Not entirely, anyway.

IDS(W): Eurgh, I don't want to be torn open at all! And have things stuck inside of me? If you're going to dissect me, at least let me out of here for a while!

GN: Out where? I thought you didn't have anywhere else to go?

IDS(W): Er, well, I don't. Not really. But it's not really a place I want to go. I'll come back , you can even send someone with me just to make sure. I just want to find her first. Is that really so much to ask? Just to find her? That's really the only thing I want, honestly, you can do whatever else you want—I just want to find her, there's something I have to tell her, something important.

EM: Nobody knows where she is. They never gave out her name, when the stories went out. She's always been called "Subject Omega" by the general public.

IDS(W): Omega? What sort of name is that? That isn't her name, not at all. Her name's [REDACTED]. Are you sure you can't find her?

GN: We'll see what we can do.

They never had found her. And...that made her angry.

It was unexpected, the way she found herself clenching at the sheet. That had been all he wanted from them. And she had never had any sort of contact, in the two and a half years between his discovery and the day the exhibit opened. Two and a half years of transcripts, and in every single one, he asked them if they had found her yet.

Had they even tried?

She shouldn't be this angry. Not for his sake. But she was, whether she ought to be or not...she had the feelings, and she couldn't explain or control them. Whether she wanted them or not. And the only thing she could do now was the one thing she did best.

Cope.

She didn't know what to do yet. Didn't know which direction to step, wasn't sure which placement of which portal was the right one. She was in free-fall, that infinite loop of everything she knew and nothing she had ever known at the same time, spinning past in a blur that made her eyes water.

"Come on, come on, we've got to keep moving!"

For better or for worse, there was only one direction she could move. And that direction led straight into the mouth of a beast she had never thought she would confront. But she had no choice.

She had to escape the loop.

She had to move forward.