Chell stumbled slightly as she tripped on the stairs for the eighth time, her foot slipping as there was that horrible moment when your foot falls through the air. It made her head swim even more and the growing ache in her chest multiply by a thousand as she coughed again, clutching the stair-rail with one pale, sickly hand and covering her mouth with the other. Her shoulders shuddered, racking with great heaves as she drew breath, preparing for another coughing fit.
Her lungs felt as if ants were crawling all over them and her throat as if someone had rubbed sandpaper against it. Beads of sweat poured from her clammy forehead from the mere effort of breathing. It felt like nothing Chell had ever experienced before, and that was saying something.
To her relief, she had nearly reached the bottom of the stairs, but it had been incredibly exhausting and she felt as if she could collapse any second. Taking a strangled breath, she used the last of her energy to haul herself to her tiny kitchen, leaning heavily on the walls. Her head was pounding and her insides felt like ice. Chell dragged herself to the sink, fumbling around the cupboard for a glass and thrusting it under the tap, clumsily turning it and only relaxing after she could see the water trickling lazily into her cup.
After it was half-full, she could wait no longer and shoved the glass to her lips, downing it in one gulp and spilling water droplets everywhere. As the water streamed down her gullet, her head cleared slightly and her hands stopped shaking too badly, but she still felt like trash. She sighed as she placed the empty glass back on the counter, wiped her mouth with her dressing gown sleeve and leaned against the worktop while she regained the will to go back upstairs to rest. She felt too tired to do even that.
Oh, God help me, Chell thought. She knew why she felt like this. She wasn't ill, no, but that's what she had tried to persuade the doctor and herself, as she definitely didn't want to admit it. She could live a bit longer hiding under the pretence that it was just an illness that would pass. It wasn't a cold or a cough, but it wasn't side-effects of smoking either, like the doctor had thought. No, this was something entirely different. Something life-threatening that no other living person on this Combine-ridden world was experiencing. Something the doctor's couldn't cure.
She pushed these thoughts to the back of her mind, not wanting to think about them. She had to concentrate on something else, take her mind off things. But Chell couldn't. She couldn't help wondering why, why on earth she, the one who went through years of torture underground with no memories and an evil computer mocking her, criticizing her, doing everything in her power to make Chell feel as small as possible, and then as soon as she gets one breath of freedom, she gets shot in the leg and dragged back inside to face more torture without even knowing how much time has passed, and then as soon as things start looking good again her one friend betrays her and tries to kill her, has to face an end like this. Does someone out there hate her? Surely after all the hardships she went through, she should at least be granted a happy ending.
But no, instead she comes back to find that the world had been invaded by an evil, controlling alien race called the Combine that happened to be there thanks to her company's rivals, Black Mesa, so in fact, she would never be as free as she wanted to be. All her life, or at least the part she could remember, she had had someone breathing down her neck, making her feel useless, ordering her what to do, or trying to kill her. The Combine did all four, so she would have to go through that for the rest of her life, which, looking at the circumstances, wouldn't be much longer.
Because the truth was, Chell was dying. She had come to realise that now, and hated the world for hating her so much. She was experiencing side-effects of the neurotoxin. Although she had never inhaled enough to kill her at the time, she had inhaled enough to kill her later on, even though she didn't know it at the time. All the other chemicals and gases she had inhaled at the Enrichment Centre had gotten to her, and now they had fully started to take their toll. She had known it ever since the doctor asked her if she had been a smoker, which she hadn't, of course, because despite what GLaDOS thought, Chell was clever enough to work out what was causing the horrible coughing fits she had regularly.
So she had taken a break from work, telling her boss she was off sick and retiring to her bed. Things had only gone downhill from there. At one point she gathered enough strength to visit the doctors and get some pills, but they had done little help as they probably weren't designed for cases of 'neurotoxin'. In fact, no normal medicine nowadays, which Chell had figured upon arriving was the year 2020, would be able to cure Chell's predicament.
It felt like every five minutes she would break off into a coughing fit, doubling over with great, racking coughs shaking her shoulders. Every time one of them ended, she would straighten up groggily and open her murky eyes, peering round at her small cupboard of a bedroom with everything distorted and hazy from her blurry eyes. She could never get enough sleep, partly because she was too busy thinking about the death that threatened her looming over her shoulders, but partly because of the pain her couching caused her. Then again, there was the fact that whenever she went to sleep she had nightmares about her time in the Enrichment Centre, but it was mainly the two ones before.
A lot of her daily life was haunted by her memories of Aperture. Throughout the nine months she had been 'free', many sounds and sights would reawaken those memories, and she would be thrown into a violent hallucination where the real world doesn't exist anymore and she's battling Wheatley again. There are loads of other memories, like defeating GLaDOS and the childish yet haunting voice of the turrets, but her battle with Wheatley was by far the worst. It hurt her even more to think of him now, partly because of the hatred and betrayal she felt towards him but the aching pain that she would never see him again, because despite what he had done, they had been friends at some point.
Enough about her memories. Chell was far too busy thinking about her death to think about the cause of her death, but she was thrown into another coughing fit again, and it was one of the bad ones. They hurt her throat so bad it was almost like when she couldn't, or wouldn't, talk, but this was a different kind of pain. It was like thousands of wasps were stinging the inside of her throat, whereas her lack of voice was more like a rough ache. But she wasn't a 'mute' anymore, and had regained her will to speak. She still didn't speak often, as she didn't have many, no, any friends, because no-one could relate to her.
No-one normal, anyway. There were the Combine Resistance group, the heroes of City 17, but they were far too busy fighting off the Combine to talk to Chell, and she had had enough hard battles to want to join them, even though she felt a little guilty at the fact she knew she would probably be a good help to them.
After her night in the barn, she had found a country road and had followed it back to the area of City 17, where the residents helped her, took her in, and gave her a place to stay and a well-paying job, and they didn't even ask her where she had come from. Chell guessed they got amnesiac, scruffy fugitives looking for a place to stay often. But she had been back in civilisation nine months, and it was long enough to know that people were managing, albeit struggling, to live as normally as possible under Combine-Rule.
Chell had started afresh and had began to piece together a little about her life before waking up from statis the first time, and had somehow decided that she was most likely a daughter of an Aperture Scientist, and some incident or whatnot had happened on Bring Your Daughter To Work Day. She hadn't bothered to go much further than that, as things were starting to go well for Chell... until the chest pains started.
After recovering from her latest coughing fit, Chell drifted back to the present and decided to trudge back upstairs, granted a lot slower than she had gone down them. Perching herself down on her Companion Cube at the foot of her bed, she thought hard about her options and whether she should rise to meet her fate, or whether she should just let the neurotoxin take her like it should have done all those years ago. She wondered if GLaDOS felt guilty, as Chell didn't want to bother thinking about Wheatley, for what she had caused. After all, GLaDOS had been merciful at the end after realising Chell was her 'best friend', and after finding out about Caroline.
That led to Chell wondering if GLaDOS would choose to do anything to help her if she had the choice. Would she? Would she use the hidden-away Aperture technology and the knowledge of what really happened to cause Chell's 'sickness' to cure it, or would she leave her for dead? Chell pondered on this for a moment, and decided that GLaDOS probably would help her. GLaDOS probably could help her. And that led to Chell's crazy, crazy thought.
Chell never had been one to give up easily, and was now wondering how she had been so willing to give up earlier. Now that she thought about it, there was an obvious solution that had been staring her in the face all this time and she had passed it by. Chell had often had crazy thoughts, but this by far was one of the craziest.
She wouldn't give up. She wouldn't give in to death. She would stare her fate in the eye and pass it by using sheer determination and willingness, which was something she had only recently discovered after realising there was a way to stop her death. With this thought, she shrugged off her dressing gown and rapidly got changed into something suitable as fast as her muscles would allow her. Pulling on some trainers quickly, Chell charged down the stairs and shut the door violently. Locking the door behind her and coming out onto the streets of City 17, Chell looked left and right, and crossed the empty road which never had any cars on it anyway.
Luckily for Chell, no Combine forces were about and the only people she could see were members of the Freeman Combine Resistance scouting the streets making sure everything was okay. She would probably have to stay low though, as as much as the Resistance were good-natured, they wouldn't approve of her leaving the City boundaries alone, because they wouldn't understand and don't realise that she is quite capable of looking after herself. Sticking to the shadows, Chell darted as stealthily as she could through the City, which was where her training from hiding from turrets came in handy. She stayed out of sight and hidden, yet still managed to stay as un-conspicuous as possible.
Eventually, she reached the borders of the city. As the amount of buildings began to lessen and slowly break out onto a country road, Chell broke off into a run.
It was physically challenging, as Chell had become somewhat less fit after being released from Aperture, added to the fact she was dying from the side effects of neurotoxin, which made things difficult to breathe. But Chell had a feeling if she didn't get there soon, she would never get there, so she carried on running, knowing that this could be life or death. She needed to get there soon.
Because 'there' was the Aperture Science Enrichment Centre, the only place with the technology able to save her life. With GLaDOS's cooperation, Chell might just live. She was nearing the barn where she had spent her first night now, the wheat field in sight. It was barren at this time of year though, in the middle of winter. It was cold out, and Chell was beginning to regret not bringing a coat. The little dead wheat there was left brushed Chell's arms and knees sometimes, making the cold seem even more noticeable. The cold seeped into her bones and made her breath sting against her throat.
She needed to get there even sooner now or she would die a lot sooner than she was expecting. Truth was, Chell didn't know exactly where she was going. She recognised some of her surroundings, but she hadn't been here since that first breath of freedom and she hadn't even been concentrating particularly then. She was just scouring the empty fields looking desperately for the old tool shed that concealed the lift down into Aperture.
After a long while, she saw it, sat wearily in the distance. Her heart leapt in her chest; Chell was beginning to have second thoughts. What if GLaDOS said no? She began to wonder whether she should head back and die. No, she won't give up. That little tool shed might be her only chance of survival, and returning back to that place might even help her tie up the loose ends.
So Chell headed back to Aperture, possibly the only place that could save her life. Also, ironically, the very place she nearly died multiple times.
{O}
Plug in wire there, screw in panelling here, screw bolt there, drill hole there. The whole routine was getting positively boring, which was pretty annoying given that it was the only thing GLaDOS had to keep her boredom levels as low as possible in the agonising wait for ATLAS and P-Body to return with the moron. It had taken three moths already, and GLaDOS hoped it wouldn't take much longer. They only had three months left before their batteries ran out, and surely it doesn't take three months to travel to Utah! Yes, ATLAS and P-Body's low knowledge on the human would slow them down a bit- okay, a lot, but GLaDOS didn't want them to have to run out of batteries because then she'd have to construct some new robots to test for the rest of eternity.
And now the days were even more boring than before. She was beginning to wish she hadn't released Chell, but her 'feelings' told her that that would be unjust, and that she had done the right thing. But that doesn't mean it was the right thing for GLaDOS. She had been through just as many hardships as Chell, being turned into a potato and all, but no-one seemed to care. No, she was just a robot with no feelings who wouldn't mind spending an eternity making android bodies that no-one would ever use, while her human best friend was happy and free above ground. GLaDOS had sacrificed so much, including her entertainment, and did anyone ever notice? No!
So now she was reduced to crafting android bodies on awaiting ATLAS and P-Body's return with Wheatley, so maybe she could get out of this limited-in-movements body and have a bit of a stretch. She wasn't looking forward that Core Transfer Receptacle though. She had also made one for Wheatley, so that he would be able to help more efficiently. The androids were just as perfectly crafted as ATLAS and P-Body's were, but God knows what Wheatley would do with it. She probably has to do some work on the Reassembling machine before he got here. That moron would be able to turn the android into a butterfingered, clumsy idiot no matter how perfect the design.
GLaDOS sighed and shook her core, the cables rattling behind her. She wondered how what used to be a life of excitement, had been reduced to this utterly boring thing. Something interesting needed to happen within the next month, or GLaDOS would probably go insane again. With no-one to test, life just wasn't worth living anymore.
She wished her designers hadn't allowed her to get bored. She was a computer, a machine, and machines don't get bored. Wheatley doesn't count. She was only supposed to get bored when she wasn't testing, which was what she was designed to do, but she had been bored long before ATLAS and P-Body left. Things had only gotten worse when they did.
GLaDOS pushed these thoughts from her mind and focused on the task at hand. It would keep her occupied and if she was concentrating more, maybe she would feel less bored. She was surprised she wasn't concentrating before; if GLaDOS had something to do, she would do it as quick as possible. It was hard to think she was bored even when she was doing something. Maybe she was making herself bored.
She stuck the last few panels into place and got the artificial skin ready. For Wheatley, he would look as human as ATLAS and P-Body's androids did, but as much as GLaDOS enjoyed human company, she wouldn't want to look like a human herself, so her android's skin was just going to be metal panelling, without any skin on the surface. She wouldn't be using it much anyway, as it was very limited in control and she wouldn't be able to do nearly as much as she could do in her main body.
She knew that Wheatley would probably take great joy in the ability to walk, and as much as GLaDOS despised the fact she was doing something good for him, it was necessary if he was going to be useful. She was probably going to enjoy watching the Core Transfer though. Oh, was going to enjoy that very much, because although she usually didn't like hearing the screams and was glad ATLAS and P-Body didn't have voices, she would take great joy in hearing him scream. She knew she was going to have to forgive him eventually though.
Forgiving him. Ah. That would be hard, and the concentration she would have to put into that would probably keep her from being bored for a while. Oh, but how GLaDOS needed something to do! While the machines got to work at covering the body in flesh, GLaDOS had nothing to do but wait. Nothing to construct. No-one to torment. Nobody... to test.
GLaDOS had never had that before. She didn't need to test all the time, but it was what she was programmed to do, and had always had someone there to test for her. She had never, ever not had the ability to test before. There had always been resources available. Now there were none. She was alone. With no-one to test. She wasn't bored. She just wasn't testing.
She needed to test. Now. If a robot didn't do what they were programmed to do, they had no purpose. They were created for no reason. They were meaningless. And GLaDOS didn't like feeling meaningless. If GLaDOS felt meaningless, there was no point to anything anymore. She had never been meaningless before. GLaDOS needed to test. If she didn't soon, she would stay meaningless. She wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything, and if she couldn't concentrate on anything, she couldn't concentrate on testing, which means she wouldn't be able to regain her ability to concentrate, which means she wouldn't be able to concentrate on testing-
Oh no. GLaDOS had come close to creating a paradox.
PARADOXESOHNODON'TTHINKABOUTITDON'TTHINKABOUTITDON'TTHINKABOUTITDON'TTHINKABOUTIT. Banana. Testing. Dance. Pizza. Earth. Sea. Space. Science. Testing. Horses. Grass. Rabbit. Toilet. Electric fence. Pillow case. Car. Pencil. ANYTHINGBUTPARADOXES.
Okay. Great. Everything is under control. She managed to think about something else-OHNOSHETHOUGHTABOITITAGAIN. Okay. Stop. She would need to concentrate on something else, so she checked up the android to see how the machine was doing on the skin job. She was glad no-one was there at that point, because she would have been awfully embarrassed as her system became overridden and sparks had jumped everywhere. She genuinely switched off when she thought about- DON'TTHINKABOUTIT, and was lucky she would never have to watch what happened when she did. She shook herself down and cursed the programmer who made robots switch off when thinking about- DON'THINKABOUTIT, and whoever gave robots the ability to feel embarrassed.
Or bored. Or guilt. Or anger. Or anything really. Actually, what was the point again? It was so much simpler just to have a core for every feeling, but it was also a lot more pointless. COMPUTER'S SHOULDN'T HAVE FEELINGS. There. GLaDOS said it. Although she wasn't quite sure, as a part of her liked the feelings. Wait, wh-what? Okay, no, they were alright, but she much preferred it when she didn't have feelings. Feelings were bad. Feelings clouded her judgement. Like Wheatley.
Wheatley was like a feeling. A very annoying one. One of those feelings when you can't quite decide what it is, whether it's anger or happiness or something of the sort. Oh, well. GLaDOS didn't know much about feelings anyway. It was probably the one subject she wasn't a genius at.
She would need to learn how to control these 'feelings'. To get them out of her head, she focused back on the android, whose skin and flesh was now complete. It was also faceless, but GLaDOS would have to mould the face later on, much like doing plastic surgery.
GLaDOS sighed to herself and stared emotionlessly at the blank face before her. Her yellow optic flickered. If she had a face, she would have looked miserable. To anyone who knew her, would have taken the flicker of her optic as a sign she was sad, but to anyone else she looked as if she was dangerously angry or malfunctioning. But no-one was there to see it anyway. GLaDOS was just about to set to work, when a red light started flashing and a loud, high-pitched alarm started howling. She had only heard that alarm twice before; one, when a Black Mesa scientist had discovered the facility, and two, when she had set the neurotoxin on the scientists.
Disregarding the lifeless android, she span round and glared the Update screen up and down, trying to keep calm as a big red sign reading INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT! was flashing on the screen. GLaDOS switched the camera feed onto the outside of the lift and stared at it, her optic flickering and this time, it was anger. Very dangerous anger.
Her optic searched it, trying to pinpoint the location of the intruder. When she saw the intruder, however, she wasn't angry or furious. No, GLaDOS was very, very surprised.
On the screen, stood panting and shivering in front of the old shack, was none other than Chell. GLaDOS's eyes would have widened in surprise if she had any, and if she had any legs she would've taken a step back in disbelief. She could see Chell pounding against the old shed, tears streaming down her face. She could hear the knocking from above her.
GLaDOS was frozen. She had no idea what to do as her hardware tried to process what was happening. Yet in a split second, she came up with a decision. She hadn't followed all the warnings her Thought Processor sent her, or her instinct, or her super-computer intellect. Instead, GLaDOS followed her 'feelings'. She dived into the Control Panel, taking supreme access to every single thing in the facility. Using this access, she opened the shack door so it looked automatic from anyone up there.
Anyone but Chell. GLaDOS watched in interest as Chell paused on the screen, looking up uncertainly at the shack as doubt flashed across her eyes. She had pulled her jacket round her and rain poured from the sky, sticking her fringe to her forehead. GLaDOS would have held her breath if she had any, swarming with unexpected relief as Chell stepped inside the shed, and the door closed. As GLaDOS was expecting, a hole appeared in the roof of the Central AI Chamber and the bottom of the lift came circling slowly down to the ground. The electricity in GLaDOS's circuit's stopped. She definitely wasn't bored anymore.
She made herself comfortable and turned to face the lift as the doors slid open with a zip and out stepped GLaDOS's only friend, only test-subject, and the only human she knew, Chell. Her eyes were bloodshot and her face sweaty despite the rain and the cold. Her chest heaved with deep, ragged breaths that grew hoarser every time. GLaDOS racked her mind for something to say, but for the first time ever, she was lost for words. After a long time of staring at each other, GLaDOS said the first thing that came naturally: "Oh. It's you."
Chell nodded, opened her mouth to say something, but only managed a croaky, "Help me..." before collapsing to the ground in a feverish coughing fit, clutching her chest.
Trying not to overload from all the information her Thought Processor was sending her, GLaDOS stated, "So you're not a mute," before injecting a sedative into Chell's arm and whisking her away to the infirmary, hidden away in Aperture all these years.
{O}
When Wheatley woke up, he ached all over. His optic simply refused to open, and if it did, he probably wouldn't have wanted to see his surroundings anyway. Chances were, it'd be broken and fuzzy like the rest of his body. But he was glad he was only a sphere, because he didn't want to think about what a human might be experiencing in his predicament.
Wait, how did he get here again? The time before he woke up seemed a bit blurry, and Wheatley began to wonder if his Memory Storage Disk was broken. He hoped it was, because that way he'd be able to forget all the bad things he did to Che- oh, wait, no, not broken. Wheatley groaned slightly in pain, and was happy to see that his Voice Modulator was working. He could also hear it as well, so that's his Sound Modulator working.
Now he just needed to try and open his optic a crack to take a look at his surroundings. His thoughts drifted to how he had got here in the first place, and all at once the memories resurfaced. He had been in space, before that meteorite hit and he had been dragged in it's trail, and the last thing he had seen was- oh no. Not Earth. Earth was covered in water, what if Wheatley had landed in the sea, was he dead, was he dying? He didn't want to think about it.
No, he wasn't in the sea, he could tell because his panelling had fallen off on one side and if he was in the sea, water would have gotten in and short-circuited his wires straight away. So he was on land, that's for sure. With the knowledge that he wasn't dead, which he wasn't sure was good or bad, Wheatley summoned the willpower to open his optic. When he did, he quickly shut it again from the amount of dust her saw hanging around. That can't be good for him.
From the glimpse he had seen, he was in a very dust area where the ground was reddy-orange. He wasn't quite sure how to describe it though, as he had never been outside before. Outside. Huh. That was a strange feeling. To be outside for the first time, not counting space. He wriggled slightly on the ground, feeling some of the life squeeze back into his hardware. Oh, that felt better. But he still hurt terribly, and his Thought Processor seemed to go a bit haywire. He was alive, that was for sure. He didn't know where he was, only that he was outside and he wasn't in the sea. His database alerted him that he had been down here 90 days- wait, 90 days? That's nearly three months!
Okay, so he had been here 90 days. He'd just have to sit and wait until someone found him, or if no-one did, until his battery died down. Which would be another 14,339 days. Great. So with the thought that he was meaningless, Wheatley went into temporary shutdown, also known as 'offline mode'. He didn't willingly, as GLaDOS told him he would die if he ever went into offline mode, but his body didn't protest as it needed time to repair the internal damages, which it wouldn't be able to do unless someone found him. Oh well.
The days passed, and still, no-one found him. To any normal person, he would have looked like a broken, dirty piece of junk someone had left behind and abandoned. Now he had gone into offline mode, he would show no signs of life until some repairs had been done. And if no-one found him, he would stay in offline mode until his battery died, and then there would be no chance of waking up, so he would be as good as dead.
He only managed to wake up one day when there were some mild disturbances. Wheatley hadn't been repaired, no, but while in his unconscious state someone had lifted him up and was now carrying him. Due to being programmed to wake up when disturbed in offline mode, so that he could be alerted, he woke up even groggier than he had been the first time. He opened his optic and peered round, his vision murky, before realising he was being carried in someone's arms.
The arms looked human enough, but Wheatley had lived with robots and cores and machines and computers long enough to recognise the certain air the person carrying him carried about them. He could even feel the mild vibration underneath the layers of skin and flesh tissue and hear the faint whirr when they moved.
Yes, the person carrying him was robotic. Meaning that he must have come from a very advanced science-y place, and as the world couldn't have advanced much in the few months Wheatley had been gone, Wheatley was probably headed to somewhere like Aperture, if not Aperture itself, because nowhere else would have the technology to create this. Despite some belief, even Wheatley was clever enough to work that out.
So now he felt safe in the arms of one of his kind and the prospect he was going somewhere he could be prepared, Wheatley had a look at how long he had been out. Thirty-two days, his database told him. Only around a month. After his body figured out the disturbances were not a threat, he slipped back into offline mode, as he still hadn't been repaired. So he waited in his unconscious state to be taken to the one place he could be repaired.
The third time Wheatley woke up, he was actually able to open his optic. This new area had no dust, so he could look around fully, and to his delight, his vision was clear. His Memory Storage Disk was working perfectly, he saw, and he remembered that the last time he was conscious was when he was being carried by that human-looking robot. They must have taken him somewhere to be repaired, Wheatley realised. His circuits bubbled with new electricity and sparks seemed to dance around his body. He could feel new panels screwed onto his side, where the old ones fell off. Wheatley had never felt fresher, and it was as if he was as good as new.
After lying there in blissful harmony, not wanting to think about all the gritty stuff that probably came with it, as it was slightly too good to be true and too-good-to-be-true stuff often came with tonnes of garbage. But he realised that he couldn't lie there forever and eventually had to try and gather information about his location.
He was in an awfully familiar place, with white, sterile walls and complicated-looking equipment lying about. Everything was bright and clean and looked artificial, and Wheatley realised with a horrible jolt that he was in the Repair Chamber of Aperture. He squeaked and looked around frantically, finding himself face-to-face with the scariest sight he had ever witnessed.
GLaDOS was staring down at him from a screen in the corner of the room, her yellow optic glistening dangerously. The fact she could show no emotion made it even scarier, and Wheatley found himself yelping and spluttering meaningless words that made no sense. It could have been translated as something like, 'I'm sorry, so, so sorry, I'm really very sorry, please forgive me, I'm sorry,' but he spouted them so fast it became an unintelligent jumble.
GLaDOS just looked at him, before speaking in the same robotic, monotone voice that was so unnervingly terrifying, "Welcome back, moron."
Wheatley would have protested that he wasn't a moron, but figured it wasn't the best thing to do in this situation. He was about to speak and managed, "I'm-" before GLaDOS interrupted him.
"I already know you're sorry. I saw how guilty you felt in space when looking into your Memory Storage Disk. Forgive me for invading your privacy and searching into every thought and feeling you experienced. I only did it for science."
Wheatley winced, trembling. GLaDOS continued. "Don't worry; my new 'feelings' that I've developed have persuaded me to forgive you, even though I still think you're a moron. Later on, though, I have a surprise for you."
"What is it?" he asked miserably, his situation beginning to dawn on him. GLaDOS's surprises were never nice.
"I would tell you, but then it wouldn't be a surprise." Then the screen switched off, leaving Wheatley as clueless as ever as GLaDOS disappeared from view without a word.
After an agonising wait, of which Wheatley spent staring at the door dreading the moment it opened, the thing that actually happened was when the screen in the corner flickered back into life and GLaDOS appeared, once again. Wheatley groaned.
"Why are you back?"
"Time for the surprise. I think you'll like it. Well, part of it anyway."
Wheatley only had time to grumble, 'what was the point in the wait?' before the door opened and what he recognised as the old bodies of ATLAS and P-Body came in. ATLAS came and picked him up despite his strangled protests and carried him down the dark, grotty 'basement' of Aperture. His old arms weren't nearly as comfy as the android one, Wheatley noted as he blinked at his familiar surroundings.
Eventually they brought him to the Central AI Chamber which had been cleaned and redone, looking like it did all those years ago. Wheatley yelped and started shaking in fear at seeing GLaDOS face-to-face. "Welcome back, moron," she said, her voice almost threatening. But then, Wheatley realised, her voice was always like that.
"You-you've already said that."
"I know. I just wanted to say it again, prelude your surprise."
Then a robotic arm dropped from the ceiling and pressed the red button next to GLaDOS, from which appeared the Core Transfer Receptacle, slowly rising from the floor.
"Surprise."
Wheatley started trembling even more. "You-you're not going t-to put me b-back in th-the main body, are- are you?"
GLaDOS laughed, a horrible metallic laugh. "Of course not, you moron. How dumb do you take me for?"
"What a-are you going t-to do th-then?"
Then something else started rising from the floor. An android body, similar to that of ATLAS and P-Body when they had collected him. Wheatley could not even squeak.
Then GLaDOS spoke again, menacingly. "I'm going to give you a new body."
Surprise.
A/N. I'm not too pleased with this one, I think my writing started failing towards the end. Did they seem out of character at all? I hope I didn't do too badly. :/ Anyway, my first fanfiction with more than one chapter! Yay! I'm glad this one's finished. Third one's up soon. Updates will probably be around every four days, depending how busy I am. Anyway, I was half way through this when I realised how similar it is to loads of other Portal fanfics out there. I'm sorry it's been done so many times before. :( Also, although it did mention Half-Life earlier, it's not a crossover. It's just cause they're set in the same world and even though Half-Life is mentioned, the characters don't interact, therefore it's not a crossover. For those of you who are expecting Gordon Freeman, I wouldn't get your hopes up.
Moving on, forgive any mistakes as although I proofread it, the website screws it up somehow and mistakes that I didn't even make appear. Oh well.
Reviews are greatly appreciated!
Thanks! :)
~Franki
EDIT: I've changed a few things in this chapter, thanks to some advice from a reviewer. Hopefully it's not too noticeable. :P