3. The Tale of the Witch and the Maiden

Once upon a time, a maiden traveled to find a witch in order to save a wounded hero. The witch demanded the maiden's pure heart as payment to save the hero's life, and as the maiden traded her heart away, she wondered what the hero would think of her after that.


Her body had betrayed her. Why not? She should be used to betrayal by now.

The sun was streaming higher through the lone window by the time she'd forced herself to sit up. Her insides felt like they were on fire, and her appetite had yet to return. Through sheer discipline she managed to eat half of one of those wrapped spongy cakes Mari had found, trying not to think about why it still tasted relatively "fresh." She knew she needed something in her system, even if the system in question disagreed.

Of course Mari had gone off on her own. Of course she hadn't gone to the marketplace. Michelle knew the girl well enough to spot the subtle tell of lies. She took a deep breath, reminding herself that Mari was a strong girl for her age. Mari wouldn't forget how to fight if she did run into any trouble. She wouldn't be so foolish as to stay out past nightfall. It was difficult not to see her as the tiny child cowering in the wreckage of a store front, crying for parents who never came, but that was a parental illusion.

Yes, Michelle was certain, she'd fully poisoned Mari with every survival trick she'd had to learn herself. Take cat naps. Don't eat too much in one meal. This is how you tell if food is safe to eat. Here's how you identify a live wire. These are exercises to keep your legs strong. This is how you fall so you won't break any bones. Here's a look to give someone when you want them to go away. All of them perfect gifts to pass on from the adult who could never function in a safe place to the child who might not ever find one.

And yet, what was it she was doing herself? Sitting still in one spot, elbows on her bony knees, because her legs just wouldn't make the basic effort to walk today. If she thought back long enough she could probably pinpoint just what was doing it. Long-term damage from overuse of the long fall boots were catching up with her legs. The strange force fields between test chambers always did leave her mouth tasting faintly of blood; maybe they'd done something to one of her organs that she couldn't ignore anymore. That said, everything had been more or less under control until she'd decided it was a good idea to visit the city's threshold on the wrong day. What prompted that? Curiosity. Science.

"One more month," she told herself, speaking aloud to make sure she could still use her voice. It was rusty and hoarse from coughing more than age, but there it was. "Give myself one more month so I don't die on the road, and we're getting out of here." She knew she should have taken Mari when she'd had the chance. One of those days when the barrier was down they'd run, keep walking until they reached the nearest town and forget this damned city ever existed. She'd been able to do it with Aperture, hadn't she? It wasn't her problem anymore. Well, save for the fact that what outsiders called the Phantom City and what locals just called "here" was full of people, and Aperture just had Her.

But she wouldn't stay anywhere, would she? She, Chell, Michelle, whatever it was proper for a woman her age to go by these days, she'd keep wandering again because she'd just have more questions keeping her up at night. She'd wander until she died and Mari deserved better than that.

One more month. Chell gave herself one more month to find out what was wrong with this city after all this time. One more month to figure out the connections between the barrier, the Puppets, and just what it was they were so eager to protect. If Michelle survived that month and wasn't any closer to finding the truth at that point, she promised herself, she'd take Mari to a town that made sense and hope for the best.


"So, you came all the way down here to find me? You followed my lovely doll's directions. That's to be commended. Do you like him? I made him myself, mostly. Well, a chef can still say she made the dinner herself even if she didn't raise the chicken from an egg, can't she?"

Mari breathed through her nose to keep from gagging on an antiseptic chemical smell. The room where Muse hung from the ceiling was cluttered and chaotic, with painted red swirls on the stone walls and little humanoid figures built of metal and wire posing in the corners. The floor was cold enough for her to feel it through her sneakers. There was a jagged, rusty rail running through the room on the ceiling; Muse hung from there, blinking with her white, sideways eye.

Muse herself was a robot, obviously. Somehow Mari had expected a Puppet, a surgeon enhanced with a steel hand and blade-fingers or the same glowing implant eyes Cero wore. Instead Muse looked down at Mari with a spherical metal eye the size of a basketball with a crudely-painted smile on the rim, a few cracks visible on the lens. The ball-eye was mounted to a segmented body slightly longer than Mari's own height, each segment bearing a pair of metal extension legs. Some of the legs held blades, and others had lenses. Muse, whatever she was, made Mari think of a caterpillar with an open mouth.

"Well?" Muse arched her long body, moving in closer to Mari until the girl could feel the heat from the machine. "Either speak up or run away screaming. You don't come down here just to say nothing. Don't tell me you just want to admire my art? Nobody ever wants that. You can't fool me. Everyone wants something, so what do you want?"

Mari's neck itched. She crossed her arms in front of her chest in a weak display of false confidence. "You can fix sick people, right?"

"Sick people? Is it just sickness? Oh, little hawk. Of course I can fix sickness! Unless you want to be sick, of course. You could argue there's something a little poetic about illness, couldn't you? All the weakness and vulnerability. There's the romantic image of the poet, wasting away…" Muse drifted off, perhaps catching Mari's glare in her camera. "Yes. I can cure it. But you look well! And even if you're sick, those humans aren't so heartless that they would let you die before you reach adulthood, would they? You have all that growing to do…" Her tone suggested unease and disgust as she spoke the last bit, and the eye swiveled in a shudder.

"I told you, it's not for me." Mari tried to remind herself that if Muse wanted to kill her she would have done so already. She could have had Cero do it even, if the man was indeed a Puppet. Muse wanted something from her. Was that what Grandmother had said? If you have something someone wants from you and they can't kill or hurt you to get it, they'll keep you alive no matter how much they hate you. Muse didn't seem to hate Mari at all.

"Grandmother," she added. "It's for my grandmother. She's really sick. They told me you could help her, because they won't…"

"Oh! Oh, I see. Because she's old, right? Something like that, I bet. Yes, I saw your hands clench there. No, I won't turn away the elderly. I could help her live forever! You know, if she wanted it. As it is, I'm sure if I replace this and fix up that…"

"…So like a Puppet. You'd turn her into a Puppet?"

Muse laughed, which seemed to involve a sugary trill from her faintly French-accented voice and clicks and clacks from her arms. "Is that what they're calling themselves now? Oh, I'll figure out the treatment when I fully know the problem. Better to be a Puppet than dead, right? What, does she dislike alterations? Well, she'd take it over being dead, I'm sure. But…" The voice deepened slightly, and the sideways eye narrowed. "I'm sorry, I just cannot work for free. That's what a commission means, after all. You want something from me. So I want something from you. That's fair, isn't it?"

Mari immediately went for her bag. "I have canned-"

An angular metal insect-arm touched her shoulder, and Mari tried not to flinch both at the unexpected touch and the feel of cold metal. It felt more like a pat than a threat though, and Muse was even polite enough to dim the glow of her eye as she stared right into Mari's face.

"Oh, little hawk, it's more than that. More than that! I understand what you are now. A heroine! You're a heroine, a journeyman-well, journeywoman in your case, so of course you have to go on a quest. Of course."

Mari stared. The robot was mad, if it was possible for machines to be mad. Perhaps she was hooked up to a patchy part of the power grid and it had fried her machine-brains. Mari understood very little about the workings of robots and drones; Grandmother had a distaste for them, for reasons unknown.

The stare didn't deter Muse, who was tapping her "mouth" with one of her arms. "You know, I might send you somewhere very dangerous."

"It's fine. The city's dangerous. Everywhere outside of your room is dangerous."

"True, true, but some parts of the city are stranger than others. Now what use can I make of my brave heroine? What delightful story can I spin from your adventures? I could send you to cross a checkerboard and become a queen."

Heat reached Mari's cheeks. Was Muse making fun of her? "It's not a story. I'm serious. Please listen to me!"

Muse just swayed back and forth. "I could, perhaps, send you to slay a witch and bring back her broom. Oh, and I know JUST the witch, just the one! But alas, you wouldn't stand a chance against Her, no, not Her. She'd kill you and I'd never get to know how your adventures went. Well, next time, next time. If only you were a full grown bird…"

Again the childish comparisons. Mari snorted and narrowed her eyes. "I can handle a...'witch.' Is she competition or something? It's not the first time I've killed someone." That was a lie. Mari had seen Michelle kill someone in self-defense, only once. Michelle had covered her eyes afterwards and held Mari to her chest until the girl stopped crying and they never spoke of it again.

Still, wasn't seeing death the same as dealing it? She could kill someone to save Grandma. Certainly she could kill a bad person to save a good one.

"No, no." Muse's eye swiveled as if she were shaking her head. "No, wait, I know exactly it! There's something that was taken from me some time ago. I forgot about it, because it wasn't terribly important to me, but it seems like it'd be more fun to have it around. You know how you can lose something and not care, and then weeks later look for it only to remember it's gone? It's like that. I mean, you might die doing this, too. But at least She won't have the satisfaction of killing someone else."

Mari bit her lip to prevent an outburst. She wanted to shout at how Grandma needed help now, not after she went on some quest for a half-mad robot to find something that probably didn't even exist. She didn't even have proof that Muse could fix Grandma, or even that she made Puppets. Maybe she just had one working for her.

"…Quest. Fine, fine, fine. What is it? Where is it? I'll go find it for you. I can sneak into tight places and people won't bother me because they think I'm just a dumb kid."

"It's, it is…let's see, I don't know WHERE it is, but I know who took it. If you find them, you'll probably find it, because they were like magpies hoarding treasures. I doubt they even know why they wanted it…ah, what I wouldn't give for a visual screen! As it is, I can only describe it." Muse moved in close to Mari again, so the girl could hear the faint hum of machinery and the screeching of her joints. "It's a black box adorned with orange and blue, no bigger than a loaf of bread. There are all kinds of buttons, and if you press the wrong one, you disappear forever! Or maybe you go somewhere else. Either way, don't push any buttons. Just find it and bring it here. I bet if you keep going further into these tunnels, you'll find them, those magpies who…"

Muse cut herself short when Cero opened the heavy doors and tapped the edge of the door three times. It must have been some kind of signal, as Muse's pupil contracted in alarm. "Oh, what awful timing! Well, I guess you'll get a preview of what you might be dealing with. Go hide. Go hide! This sort of person shouldn't see you." Muse gestured with her body at a door in the back of the room. "Cero, go hide her! Our guest can find his way in himself."

"Hide? I don't need to hide! I can-ugh! Let go of me!" Mari pulled away from Cero as he clamped a hand over her arm. He he had the vice grip of a Puppet as picked her up with more care than she expected before carrying her off around the corner into the hallway. She prepared to bite down until she realized she might just bite metal, and besides that, she wanted to stay on Muse's good side. If listening to the odd whims of a robot-thing and her cybernetic Igor would keep Grandma alive, Mari would swallow her pride and do it.

She expected Cero to shove her all the way in, but instead he kept the door open just a crack, as if inviting her to watch. He held a spindly gloved finger in front of his wrapped mouth and dimmed his eyes.

Mari wasn't scared, not exactly. The pounding of her heart was adrenaline, leaving her itching to go on her 'quest' now that she had a way to save Michelle, no matter how odd that way might be. As for Cero, before he shut the lights off in his eyes, he looked like a frightened child in a too-big body.


Cero was not a Puppet. A few of Muse's patients had called him one, but whatever kind of monstrosity he was now, he was nothing like them. They wore their alterations like medals of honor, openly brandishing extra arms or half-faceplates. Most of them weren't even sick or hurt. They just wanted to change their bodies. Why? They had been complete humans once, why would they want to be something in-between like he was?

Then again, those were their bodies. They could do whatever they wanted with them, he supposed, because those had always been their bodies. This thing he occupied wasn't his body and he knew it. His real body was sitting in storage; a burnt-out husk for the most part, its guts carved out and implanted in what was left of this human. Making himself look more human was all he could think to do to get himself out of this abyss between bodies.

Sooner or later, he'd have to ask Muse what the term "puppet" meant, after he learned how to communicate again.

The stubborn human kid thankfully didn't wriggle too much as he held her back. He breathed a sigh of relief when he realized she was going to listen to Muse's orders and just hang back. It wasn't that he was afraid for her, exactly. He was afraid of her, and that glare like broken glass she was turning on the narrow space between doors. It was too familiar.

He hated things that reminded him of memories lost because they were like itches that couldn't be scratched. Apples were significant, as were potatoes, though how he couldn't even imagine. (He didn't have a stomach in that previous body, after all. What need did he have for fruits or vegetables?) Sometimes he'd look at a certain shade of orange and find himself overcome with loneliness. The associations made no sense, as if his own damaged memory files were taunting him. Maybe they were, the little traitors. Served them right being damaged or deleted if they were going to be such little tricksters.

That gaze in Mari's eyes, though. It wasn't the eyes themselves, or their dark brown-black color. None of that was significant at all. The expression was what did it. He'd never seen that expression on anyone before, not even in the most arrogant and defiant patients, and yet it felt horribly familiar. It brought to mind a wave of guilt like nausea; guilt and paranoia that he'd be held responsible for something he didn't remember doing. Would he have done it? He couldn't have done anything to this girl, could he? Muse didn't recognize her, unless the two of them were in on some game made to play with his mind. He wouldn't put it past Muse, really, except that it seemed like a lot of effort just to pull one over on him.

To try to fight off the shivers of guilt, he turned his attention towards the laboratory, peeking through the doorway. As expected, he heard the step-clang-step-clang of the visitor, who greeted Muse with an off-kilter bow. He wore a long coat and the parts of his skin visible were bone-pale. His movements suggested he'd been consuming alcohol. ("Stay away from that stuff," Muse had warned Cero. "It will interfere with your medications and your sense of creativity.")

"I come," the man said, "on behalf of a friend. But you know that, don't you, fair lady?"

Muse tilted her optic. "What are you doing here at this time, Hooper? You don't have an appointment. That's very rude. Well, what is it you want? I told you, I can't give you more alterations for another week. You'll bleed too much as you are now. And you've been drinking."

Hooper had implant-eyes like Cero's, though the other man's weren't still rimmed with bruises, much to Cero's jealousy. They glowed a faint yellow, a shade off from Cosmo's optic. "Not for me! He wants to know if you have any parts. You know. Have anything to trade."

Cero felt Mari tense and let go of her reflexively, though thankfully she stayed put. He couldn't imagine what was making her so angry, but her light brown skin was turning a shade of furious dark red in the dim light. That stare was back, so cold and accusing he couldn't bear to look at it even when it came from a child and even when it wasn't directed at him.

Muse tapped her little arms together, oblivious to Mari's awful stares. "Not much today, I'm afraid. Do you need kidneys? I suspect you'll need a liver if you keep drinking like that."

"Are you moralizing at me, my lady?"

"Of course not! Morals are a social construct, or something, somesuch. I'm just saying." Muse rolled her optic. "That said, if you have a special request, you're welcome to pass it on to me. I'm sure sooner or later someone will decide they want something replaced, and what am I going to do with it?"

Cero's hand inadvertently went to his chest, where the bubbling tubes and vents took the place of lungs. If Muse had 'spare parts,' why hadn't she given this human regular lungs instead of things that hurt whenever he breathed in?

Hooper just chuckled. "I think you are hiding something, my lady. I think you are hiding something and we are going to find it, and we are going to find something to trade it for. Something you cannot go without. But if you insist I keep playing your game, so be it." He spun around and wandered out in that strange, drunken gait.

The moment the door slammed shut, Mari broke free of Cero's grip and ran back into the room. He stared, mortified, as she glared right up at a startled Muse.

"You're an organ trafficker. You're stealing 'parts!"

Muse's optic shrank again, and her voice sounded flustered. "No, no! No, you misunderstand. You misunderstood that entire exchange. I don't TAKE things from people that they NEED. Not unless they offer it, or they're too dead to do too much with it."

"That's disgusting."

The sideways eyelid narrowed. "You can call it that if you want. You know, all that about personal morality and everything. If I have spare human parts laying around, and they have machine parts I need to keep functioning, we make a trade. I have to do it to keep myself alive, and they do it because…oh, who cares? I doubt they eat them. Obviously you feel moral enough to judge me for this, but if I shut down and die, who else can save your grandmother?"

Mari fell quiet, though the glare didn't subside. Oh, it was awful! It made him want to curl up in a corner and hide in the closet, and he hadn't even done anything.

"Are you going to turn away from me and leave? You can, you know. There's no contract or anything. You can walk away from this whenever you like. Cero will show you the way out and from there you just follow the tunnels until they lead you up or down, depending on where you want to go. Up takes you home, and down leads you to where the thieves likely live, if I'm correct. Eventually, anyway. It's funny, the subway tunnels beneath this city, they're very…long and complicated…well, anyway. Leave if you want. I won't mind. Frankly I don't like the presence of children. You're so mercurial, you unnerve me…"

Cero figured that Mari would do just that, but the girl stayed put, finally looking down.

"Oh, but you're willing to work with 'morally compromised' people for the sake of love!" Muse's sugary tone returned, without a drop of irony. "I should have expected no less. Well, it's getting late anyway, and neither one of you wants to be out at night, of course. Cero, lead the girl to the exit. Little bird, if you do want to work with me, show up tomorrow morning and find my friend again. He'll accompany you down to the tunnels."

Wait. What?

Perhaps Cero's stunned expression was obvious, or maybe Muse caught on to Cero shaking his head, crossing his arms, and desperately trying to signal his displeasure in every way possible. She just laughed. "Of course she needs a guide! It'll be good for you, experiencing something dangerous, Cero."

Cero's stomach turned and he gave a desperate look to Mari. Maybe the brave, terrible girl would develop a sense of compassion and insist she could go by herself?

Instead, Mari hesitated before squeezing one of his metal fingers, looking up at him. She wasn't glaring at least, even if she wasn't smiling. "It's alright. We can do this. There's nothing to be scared of." Her voice sounded hollow, but there was a different look in her eyes, one he couldn't place.

How selfish and cruel of her, insisting he accompany her! The resentment already blooming in him brought about another unfamiliar twitch. He smothered it so as not to encounter another unscratchable itch.

Still, how terribly selfish.

"You know what you are? Selfish. I've done nothing but sacrifice to get us here."

Oh, there was another one of those internal audio files. Of course he was the only one who could hear it, as he didn't exactly have speakers. He didn't expect it to start playing on its own, though. Maybe the mixed emotions were messing with his memory files. Maybe those pesky files were being mischievous again. What good did it do him? A sentence like that only meant that he'd been used as a selfless martyr before, which was not at all a surprise.

Mari said very little as he escorted her back to the entrance, which hardly helped endear her to him. When others didn't talk, he felt the need to fill the silence, which left him thinking of things he would say if he could. What were you doing there, yelling at Muse? She's batty, you could tell that! You really shouldn't have anything to do with this place, but got to save your old Gran, I guess? What, did she lose her false teeth? Needs metal ones, now? Let me tell you, it's quite a mess you've gotten me into, kid. Also, if you could perhaps never turn that weird glare on again, I'd really appreciate that. It's dangerous! You shouldn't just point that at people. Sure enough, she'd never glared at him that way. Thank goodness for small miracles. No wonder Muse disliked children; they were little monsters, cruel enough to shut up at just the wrong moment.

Mari paused at the entrance, holding a hand up to shield her eyes from the reddish-orange glare of the setting sun. "I'll be there tomorrow, okay? It'll be fine. We'll fetch her thing and I'll fix Grandma and you'll never have to see me again. I can tell you don't like me."

Cero stiffened and waved his arms in front of him in denial. What? Dislike? Oh, not at all, please! We just had a bad first impression. Please don't think poorly of me, I can't stand it when people do that…

"No, it's fine. Just promise when you meet Grandma, you'll be nice to her. You won't make her mad. Okay? If you make her mad, I don't care if you're a Puppet or not…"

Seeing even the faintest sign of That Glare on Mari's features, Cero nodded in frightened panic. Mari's mouth quirked up, almost as if something was funny, but she turned away before she would explain anything else.

Was she laughing at him?

"You always look so scared. I don't know what's frightening to someone like you. Muse is a robot, right? She'll never…" Mari bit her thumb and looked back at Cero once more. "Bye. See you tomorrow…"

She ran off, probably to avoid the things that came out at night. It was the same reason why Cero started bolting for the tunnels the moment he realized how low the sun was. Long bloody days of summer indeed! He had no idea what exactly came out at night, but if Muse wanted nothing to do with it, Cero certainly didn't.

As he dashed inside the clinic and bolted the door, something inside of his mind flashed. No, it was more like a switch had been turned on, and he realized if he wanted to, he could backtrack through that audio file which had played itself earlier. Maybe that way, he could reconstruct what exactly was going on.

"Well, maybe it's time I did something, then." That was useless. It meant he did something, apparently. Though he did wonder why exactly he sounded so angry and cold. Perhaps someone had turned on him? He rewound a bit further.

"I did this! Tiny little Wheatley did this."

Wheatley. Wheatley? Was that his name? It had to be, didn't it? If it had just been 'Tiny little Wheatley did this,' that would have been of no help, but he was referring to himself. Yes. Wheatley felt right. Wheatley.

Cero meant zero. Wheatley meant…something about wheat? Odd. Was he involved in industrial farming, maybe? Was that why all the non-memories surrounding apples and potatoes?

"Oh, my little doll, your eyes lit up like stars!" Muse hovered above Cero, blinking. "Did something happen? Did you get a memory back perhaps, or figure something out?"

Cero nodded eagerly. Wheatley. Yes, Wheatley! He was Wheatley, not Cero. He'd tell her to call him that now, it was only right.

He opened his mouth, and nothing came out. Oh, right.

"Well, that's good! You were so brave today, for such a little coward, I might have a reward for you later. Go to your room and wait for dinner now, and make sure to take all your medications. Goodnight, Cero."

Cero. He was Cero, until he could tell anyone otherwise. His real name was a secret he didn't want to keep.

When he fixed his mind and his voice, he'd delete the name 'Cero' right from his databanks, and that would be that.


P-body was Peabody now. She didn't quite understand the difference, but God told her it was important, and she wouldn't question God's wisdom.

The new body would take some getting used to, in part because it felt so impractical. The fingers were too tiny, the arms too spindly and the legs didn't even have built-in long fall capabilities. She had to remind herself that the sturdy-built man standing next to her was Atlas, her Atlas, wearing a different kind of skin at God's request. He was just as handsome in a different way, but he didn't look like her Atlas. At least his movements were still Atlas's, the way he stomped his foot in impatience, or walked just a step ahead of her with a cocky grin. She knew enough about human faces to at least recognize expressions when she saw them.

There were other differences between their bodies. God had told Peabody that her body was shaped like something called "female," and Atlas was "male," whatever that meant. ("It has to do with how you call him a 'he,'" God had explained, though that had been of no help at all.) Peabody had long, thick black hair, and Atlas's was cut shorter, with some of it on his face.

They stood at the entrance to Aperture where, as God had promised, they'd found a jeep. Of course, they'd had to dispose of the jeep's driver, but God had insisted She knew what to do with such humans. Thanks to God's programming, Peabody knew how to drive as naturally as she understood the Dual Portal Device, which was stashed in the jeep's trunk.

It shouldn't be too far from here. If my indications are correct, it's just a few hours' drive. I'd floor it if I were you, if you want to get there before midnight. Oh, and you do want to get there before midnight, if you don't want to be stuck in those bodies for a month doing nothing. I'm certainly not letting you back in while you look like humans.

Whatever Peabody thought of this body, there was something reassuring and comforting about hearing the voice of God in her mind, thanks to a built-in wireless connection. God would be able to contact them wherever they went. She would see what they would see, and tell them what to do. If they disobeyed, God would blow them up. It was a brand new kind of test, and more importantly, it meant that God really did trust Atlas and Peabody.

How merciful She was, and loving!

Don't be surprised if you get some stares, God added. The Aperture Science Human Likeness Androids are designed to look slightly better than humans are supposed to look, in part because no matter what I think of you, you're still superior to all of humanity by virtue of not being human. So I made you look better than human. It's called the Uncanny Valley effect, in which humans feel discomfort at seeing something not quite human because they are hilariously stupid.

Now, hurry up and drive. Aperture tech has a common signature, so you'll know when you're getting close. Get in there, take back what is MINE and bring it back to me. There should only be two things, though you know what to do if you find any more.

Penelope smiled at Atlas, which is what happened when she moved her face while she was happy, and gave him a playful hug. He grunted and rubbed the back of his neck, nudging her on while she drove towards the sunset.

Believe me, GLaDOS said, the city's really hard to miss.