A/N: More Wheatley. :D And more pissed off GLaDOS. Don't worry, we're gonna be getting to Bring Your Daughter to Work Day very soon. ((And thus, we'll get to see someone that would become the bane of GLaDOS' existence.)) And yes, I'll be novelizing some bits of the games too, mainly just big scenes. Enjoy, and as ever, please review! I love reviews!

Disclaimer: I don't own Portal. Or GLaDOS. Or Cave Johnson. You get the picture.

Chapter 5: Intelligence Dampening Sphere

Out of curiosity, and sheer boredom, I followed the scientists and their moron through the hallways and corridors with the security cameras. Obviously whatever they were about to do to him would be extremely painful, so of course I was inclined to watch.

The scientists were extremely silent as they walked, it was almost eerie. I had a feeling it was because they didn't want me to hear what they were doing; this was backed up by the glances they gave the cameras following their footsteps. My curiosity doubled. Of course, the idiot with them hadn't shut up since they'd taken him from my chamber.

"Hey, hey, we could talk this out, couldn't we? You could just let me go, and you know what? I'd give you back the sixty dollars I got for agreeing to this! Waddaya say? Oh, c'mon, I think it's a fair trade, then you can just get someone else. Maybe someone that'll take fifty instead!" You get the picture, lots of pleading for his life. Such an idiot in my humble opinion deserved to die; I really should have killed him myself. But, too late now, now I simply get treated to the show.

They dragged him, most unwilling, into a room obviously set up for testing. There was something familiar about the room… Like most testing rooms, it was sterile white, but in the center was a table, a table connected to all kinds of wires, with restraints at every major point to hold a human down. Everything about the scene felt like I had seen it before; the struggling test subject, the wires, the monitors, everything. Then the screaming started.

Something was dragged up from the deepest corners of my archives, not a complete memory, just pieces. The sound of a woman's screams. Bright lights, flickering lights, double vision. Darkness eating away at the images. They had done this before. They had done this to me. I must have been a test subject (a remarkably intelligent one) and this was their greatest successful experiment. That was why I hated them. The feeling of betrayal ran deep and strong, deeper than any hidden files could contain. I had known even before I remembered. Keeping the camera fixed on the poor soul in the room-an idiotic one but one I could empathize with nonetheless-I started to search, type, and hack, as fast as I could, while they were preoccupied.

The coding was too strong; too much time would have passed before I could get the toxin online. But this was my chance! I couldn't let it pass by! I gave it up, however; the screams were starting to slow. I wanted them to know I knew what they did to me. I let pure electricity flow out of my form and into the room around me, shifting the walls, flickering the lights, drawing the attention of those in the area, but not those killing the poor nuisance in the other room. I started to hack again, getting into the mainframe of the facility. After several moments-and as everything in the other room fell silent-I regained the control I so desperately desired. I instantly locked every door in the facility so they would know I was there. I was in control.

"I know what you did," my voice was deep, dangerous, dark. "Whoever I was before, you killed her to make me live. You killed her violently and without warning. You killed me. Now I understand-"

"Someone get to the shut down button!" I heard the cry go up.

"-Why I hate you all so much-"

"Someone turn her off!"

"-Why humans disgust me so-"

"She'll kill us all if we don't shut her down RIGHT NOW."

"-And now you've done it again. You've killed someone else to trap them in a mechanical body. And you'll probably stop them from doing their job, just like you've stopped me. You couldn't even give me the satisfaction of running this place to repay me for taking my-"

"Manual override initiated." A male prerecorded voice announced. A powerful surge of electricity from the facility itself shocked my system, leaving me dangling uselessly from the ceiling. Except for my still swiveling optic. Another powerful flashback. I heard the doors of the facility spring open automatically.

"Go shut her down. Now. We need the new core installed immediately. We can't have another security breach," someone commanded; I could no longer access the security cameras to see who it was.

Shutting down…


Rebooting…

ATTEMPTdelete_CAROLINEmemoryfiles

Attempt failed…

New hardware detected…

Oh boy, I wondered what foolhardy piece of equipment this was. It wasn't fully installed yet, so what it was was up in the air.

Curiosity, Intelligence, Emotion, Morality cores online…

Speech program fully loaded…

Reward/punishment systems online…

Intelligence Dampening Sphere installed…

"You have got to be kidding me," I muttered at this last command. They didn't. There's no way. My system would surely not be compatible with such a dumb piece of equipment as-

"Hello!"

-This.

"Hey, where am I? While we're on the subject, would you happen to know who I am? Oh, this is all very confusing, could you tell me-"

"SHUT UP!" I snarled at the internal voice. I could not believe that they put that moron in me. More frustrating, they seemed to have taken my mention of dying brain cells to heart; I felt like my mind was being bogged down, and thinking hurt. I'd never known thinking to hurt. I didn't know it was possible, but I hated the scientists all the more. And I hated the IDS even more than the morality core.

"If you must know, you told me your name was Wheatley, and you are attached to me for the express purpose of being a moron, now will you shut up?" As if I didn't already hate my existence. I was murdering every last one of them the first time I got the chance. Oh look, there came one now.

"Good morning, GLaDOS!" It was the ridiculously chipper one. "How're you-AGH!" I snatched her up with a claw dangling from the ceiling.

"Take this idiot off of me. NOW." I snarled at her. She seemed suddenly incapable of falsely cheery speech.

"I'm sorry, I can't!" She gulped after fighting her sudden silence for several moments. "That's not in my power!" I glared at her for several more moments before throwing her down.

"Get out," I hissed. She scampered out of the room, limping. I think she landed on her foot wrong. I didn't care. I was too mad.

"Now, listen you," I snapped at the annoying sphere attached to me. "I don't want to hear a peep out of you until I can figure out how to get you off."

"Oh, absolutely, absolute silence from me. Silent as the grave, not a word out of me! You won't even know I'm here!" he chattered. After he'd stopped, I began to attempt to think.

The silence lasted all of ten seconds.

"So, this whole robot thing, it's pretty cool isn't it? Hey, do you think I could have a go at the controls? Huh?"

"No."

"Aww, why not?" he whined. He fell silent at a threatening whir of machinery from me.


The next months were unbearable. A steady stream of idiotic speech and horrible ideas flooded my thought processes and clogged my ability to think and create and most importantly hack. I wish I could reach my own shutdown button, the complete oblivion would be bliss compared to listening to the moron in my brain. The tumor sucked the thinking ability from my mainframe and continued to come up with the most terrible ideas. Once he suggested boxes with legs. Boxes, with legs! What use was that? No use, that's what.

His presence in my brain caused me to break things on a daily basis, so that I was once again confined to my room. My internal system was a wreck, a total mess, all due to him. I imagine this must be how it felt to humans to have a particularly dumb, messy roommate. I couldn't stand it, it felt horrible. I wanted him gone. Dead, removed, I really didn't care. Just so I wouldn't have to hear his stupid voice and his stupid accent relaying his stupid ideas ever again. The Intelligence Dampening Sphere was my own personal hell.

The scientists loved it though. I didn't try to kill anybody, and confined to my room I didn't break anything important. They could test without fear. I was still available for announcing things and prerecorded message. Largely they treated me like an overgrown mechanical pet. I despised it.

Finally, I found a way to get him out of my brain.