In the frantic crowd of hysterical people, running was the trio's only option; all they had to do was choose where to go…which was a bit hard to do while choking.
"Eddy, do you (cough) see the e-exit?"
"Nah, there's too many (hack) people blocking it. Ed, plan B!"
"Right, Eddy!"
"Wait, what exactly-"
A loud crash was heard, and there was suddenly a hole in the wall where there wasn't one before.
"…I suppose, given the situation, that there was no other way to escape without causing such significant structural damage, though I worry that-"
"Just run, Einstein!"
Rushing through their makeshift hallway was almost impossible, given the insane amount of wires and metallic poles barring the way; however, there were no poisonous vents in the area, and the Eds were still standing after much of the facility had already fallen silent. It was an ominous quiet, broken only by their wheezing pants and the pattering of tired feet. When they finally reached another room (access once again provided by Ed's head), the GLaD-whatever had cut off all neurotoxin supply, though the stuff still hung heavy in the air like an invisible blanket, smothering them as soon as they left their cramped sanctuary.
The room itself was particularly odd; unlike the other chambers, it had a high ceiling and small floorspace, with upright oblong structures lining every wall. Edd let out a yelp of disgust as he realized that one of those structures had ruptured when they broke through the wall, and was now leaking a pea soup-like sludge all over his shoes. Ignoring the cries of "messy, messy, messy!" reverberating around him, Ed peered into the pods with fear and interest, almost certain of what they contained. Sure enough, one could make out the shadowy figures of human bodies within, suspended in so deep a sleep that no amount of knocking and yelling could wake them up.
Didn't stop Ed from trying, though.
"Ed, what are you doing?!"
"Wakeupwakeuphellowakeup…nothin'."
"Hey, let the boss have a whack at it!" Knock. "Yep; nothin' doin'. Hey, Double Dee, got any clue what these are for?"
"Well, guessing from the timers and chemical contents of the capsules, I'd have to say they're a kind of long-term human containment device. Uh, not to be rude, Eddy, but…what now?"
Eddy put on a show of deep contemplation for the heck of it; really, there was just one thing for them to do now. The adults were useless, they were trapped, and leaving this room would probably mean death. He climbed into one of the empty pods and turned around to face his friends, grinning slightly. "Ya know what they say; when in Rome, do what the Romans do."
"It's as the Romans do, not what."
"Same difference."
And so began a year or five of boredom and sleep; the Eds set the timers for a couple of weeks at a time, then would spend perhaps a day or two out exploring for answers before they returned to their slumber. An old radio and a deck of playing cards – both inexplicably summoned from the infinite storage device that was Edd's hat – were their only waking entertainment. From the former, they learned that disaster had stricken the world up above not long after it had hit the world down below; another science company had screwed up, and now the entire human race was either fighting aliens or sleeping away the war as the Eds themselves did now. Eddy had made an attempt at simply staying awake about two years after the neurotoxin disaster (mainly because he noticed that the gooey gel seemed to have permanently stained his shoes barf-green), but had given up after a mere three days, and was now reclining in his pod while Ed and Edd took a break from resting.
They were only halfway through a round of Go-Fish when the walls started shifting.
Eddy was jolted right out of his loosely-fastened pod by the movement, stumbling upright with his eyebrows knotted as he yelled "Ed, what did you do?!"
"Wasn't me, Eddy; the crazy robot lady did it!"
"Ed, we can't be certain that the Genetic Life and Disc…uh, GLaDOS, is doing this…though in all likelihood, she probably is."
The room began to close in on them, squishing the still-inhabited pods and their occupants like grapes as the pressure grew.
"…yeah, it's her."
Approximately one minute earlier, GLaDOS had encountered an unforeseen error in a few of the main Relaxation Chambers; they weren't keeping the humans suspended in time.
She let out an annoyed sigh; it wasn't that big of a problem, but she'd lost a few valuable test subjects. They weren't dead, per say, but most of those in the broken units had aged to an extent that they were useless. Cutting most of their lifelines without a backward glance, She busied herself with looking through the rosters for any organism that might still be useful. One particular person caught her eye; Chell, a girl who had grown into a woman during her stay in the facility. Her name was highlighted for some reason, but otherwise, she was the average guinea pig. The only problem was the location of her chamber; retrieving it would mean crushing an adjacent pillar. A quick check told GLaDOS that no key structural damage would ensue from its destruction, so She moved the room forward, squeezing the doomed pillar's sides until they bent into an almost triangular shape. So eager was She to begin the latest series of tests that She did not think to scan that pillar's interior; She would've discovered something quite interesting if She had.
The deed done, GLaDOS swiveled Her sinisterly glinting optic upward to glance towards the unseen sky, wondering whether or not the situation required precautionary measures against future mistakes of its kind. A one in a thousand, no, one in a million chance problem like that would probably never happen again; all she could do was put someone in charge of watching the system, a task which promised to be mind-numbingly tedious.
A low chuckle shook Her chassis as She sent a message out across the management rail to a certain personality core; it was about time he got what he so deserved…
It was a testament to Ed's strength that he managed to keep walls apart for so long; his eyes were scrunched in pain and concentration, and the thick, green goop was smeared all over his arms and torso, dribbling off his head and coat in long, slimy strands. The other Eds weren't doing much better; sharp glass littered the tiled floor, parts of which had fallen away to reveal a terrifying plunge into a pit of dimly lit hotel rooms and gray walls.
"Anyone see the exit?" Eddy shouted, his voice echoing off the cracking walls as he fell down once again.
"I think it's been closed off! Ed, have you-"
"GUYS, I CAN'T FEEL MY ARMS!"
"…I suppose that's a no, then."
Edd tripped over yet another bulging contortion in the floor, shrieking as the ground rushed up to meet him. To his surprise, though, the fall was broken by an unusually positioned wall; looking around, he noticed that the room was being squeezed from the bottom up; while it was dramatically decreasing the amount of space available, it was now possible to scale the pod-laden walls, which led up to…
"The roof!"
"Huh?"
"Climb towards the roof! Ed, grab my hand, quickly-"
With difficulty, the flimsy Edd managed to yank his taller companion out of the mass of metal; unfortunately for the both of them, however, moving Ed had removed any force of resistance keeping the walls from collapsing in upon one another. All three of the Eds clambered upwards in a hurried panic as the room completely caved in, yelling as scraps of ceiling battered their heads and bruised their fingers. Eddy reached the top first, and burst through what little remained of the ceiling to perch atop a counterweight that hovered above their would-be sanctuary on a thick wire, suspending them far above the floor of a cavernous pit. Ed and Edd were too slow starting to escape the approach of the fast-deteriorating walls; Eddy only just managed to grab ahold of the former's hand before he plunged into the abyss.
"You alright, big guy?"
"Yeah…uh, where's Double Dee?"
Both Eds looked down into the depths with horrified looks on their faces, their anguish growing until they heard a shaky "P-pres-sent" emanating from somewhere around Ed's left foot. Closer inspection revealed that Double Dee was suspended from the former's shoe, sockhat tangled in its laces. Edd himself was gripping the edges of the aforementioned hat tightly, his knuckles white and his eyes wide. An awkward silence had filled the expansive area, the whirring of mechanical marvels all but unheard in the mist, when Eddy realized that they were not, in fact, dead.
"WOO-HOO, WE'RE ALIVE! WE'RE-"
SNAP.
More disgruntled than fearful, Eddy looked at the broken wire in his hand with a scowl. "Seriously, what are the odds?"
Their terrifying fall was punctuated by many collisions with the box-like chambers also occupying the room, every scream jumping slightly as the trio smashed into cube after cube after cube. When they finally reached the dusty floor, their clothes were ripped and tattered beyond repair, and the plunge had become much more annoying than scary.
They landed headfirst, of course.
Anyone else would have died from the impact; they looked dead enough, faces glued to the floor and bodies unmoving. The thinnest of the three twitched slightly, though, then leapt up with a shrill screech, which pierced through the air like a light through the dark:
"GOOD LORD, WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME SOMEONE CLEANED THIS FLOOR?!"
Somewhere on a management rail not far from Her chamber, a blue-eyed sphere suddenly shuddered to a stop as a mysterious tremor rippled through his circuits. 'Probably just the stress of being summoned to...Her…chamber, not anything too complicated' he though with a shudder. It was nothing, really, just a new assignment…though why, he was not sure. Had he done something wrong in his current job? It was hard to mess up janitorial duty; just find the mess, call the nanobots, problem solved! Unless he forgot to clean something…
Blue iris dilating rapidly as he ran through a computerized map of Aperture in his system memory, the core gave a slight nod and concluded that he had not, in fact, forgotten to clean anything.
Really.