A/N: Why do I suddenly imagine Red talking with a Scottish accent? No, seriously, don't imagine that…
Glade's POV:
"Commencing elimination process," Red said in an almost gleeful voice.
Glade, with GLaDOS attached to her portal gun, backed up against the wall of the relaxation vault as neurotoxin began to fill the chamber. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, Red wasn't going to watch as the girl died helplessly in the vault. He wanted to spice things up.
"Where do you think your going?" he asked mockingly as Glade backed up. A mechanical arm reached into the vault, grabbed her, and yanked her out. The girl, with GLaDOS still at hand, struggled stubbornly against the arm even as it dangled her high above the mainframe. She was wearing Long Fall Boots, after all.
However, the boots were useless when the mechanical arm threw Glade against the wall. Glade felt her breath get knocked out of her and she dropped her portal gun on impact. She then fell about 15 feet to the floor, and luckily the boots could help that time.
"Glade," GLaDOS called from a few feet away, still attached to the portal gun, "There's a core receptacle coming up over there," her optic flicked around to point to it, "If you can attach me to it, I should be able to stop him."
Red just chuckled as Glade got to her feet and grabbed the portal gun and ran to the receptacle. She attached the core, and a few moments later static came from the intercom.
"Did you hear that?" Red asked calmly, "That was what's left of your last chance at stopping me. I considered the core transfer procedure to be… corrupted."
"He's hacked the system!" GLaDOS explained angrily, "Well… Two can play at that game." She then seemed to freeze, and Glade had a sinking feeling that this could take a while.
"No you don't," Red growled, a mechanical arm reaching for GLaDOS. Glade, remembering that he couldn't focus on them both, shot him with her portal gun. The portal bounced off harmlessly, but it got the AI's attention, and the arm stopped.
"You know, I was designed to follow nothing but protocols and orders," Red commented, the arm now reaching for Glade, "It must have been something you did. You know, plug in something that wasn't meant to be plugged in. She should have told you."
Glade tried to run, but was grabbed by the mechanical arm. It brought her right in front of his face.
"I have to thank you though, since if you didn't plug in Wire F13, I wouldn't have access to a personality," Red explained, "But since you did, and since I'm in charge, corruption," he suddenly slammed Glade into the wall, "Is whatever," the arm pulled back and slammed her again, "I-" SLAM! "Don't-" SLAM! "Like!" SLAM!
The arm released her and she fell to the ground. Glade, with her arm feeling like it was on fire and the rest of her body throbbing, struggled to stand.
"And you know," Red went on in a deathly calm and quiet voice, "Two, no, three corrupted test subjects and one corrupted core running around MY facility is something I don't like. You just couldn't go along with protocol and let yourselves be properly eliminated, could you?"
A spike plate replaced one of the usual panels and lunged toward Glade, and she ran to dodge it. It slammed onto the spot where she had stood just a moment before, and rose again to give chase.
"You kept defying orders, staying out of sight, and dodging elimination! You just couldn't let a professional work!" Red roared, the plate constantly smashing into the floor in a violent attempt to kill Glade as she dodged around the room, "Sure, crashing together and ripping apart corrupted test chambers helped, but it wasn't like it would help stop you!"
Glade realized that while he was in power, Red had gone truly insane. GLaDOS had once mentioned something about some sort of test solution euphoria that was hardwired into her mainframe that would make an AI constantly want to test. However, now it seemed like that had no effect on Red. His programming to eliminate corruption, which was corrupted itself, seemed to have overridden that.
Glade had to pause a moment to catch her breath, but after just a few seconds she had to leap to the side to avoid getting crushed by the spike plate. She was breathing hard, and her whole body was aching. According to the timer, the neurotoxin would be at capacity and she would die in two minutes, so she must have been at this for three.
"Warning: Core Corruption at 100%," the announcer suddenly came on, "Core transfer mandatory."
"Impossible," Red seethed, "I shut the corruption sensors down! I'm the only one who can-!" He looked down and noticed GLaDOS staring smugly at him from the core receptacle. A mechanical arm reached for her, but Glade got between it and the core. It grabbed her instead, and she was thrown to the other side of the room.
"Substitute core, are you ready to start the-"
"YES!" GLaDOS replied before the announcer could finish.
"Corrupted core, are you ready to start the procedure?"
"No," Red replied with an unnatural calm.
"Stalemate detected," the announcer noted, "Third-party stalemate resolution associate, please press the stalemate resolution button."
Glade immediately got up and dived toward the button, but another arm grabbed her and threw her away from it. The spike plate was close behind it, and by the time she hit the ground it was in position to crush her.
Glade struggled to get to her feet, the plate accelerating toward her, but she wasn't moving fast enough. Before the spikes could impale and crush her, however, she was shoved aside and thrown to the ground, well away from the plate. She looked behind her and saw that it was her mother who saved her.
Before either could do anything, the plate rose from the ground and slashed its spikes across Chell's back. She let out a silent scream and fell to her side.
"MOM!" Glade screamed, running to her, feeling all of her adrenalin drain out of her. She saw that Chell's right side, mostly her shoulder, had been ripped to ribbons.
Chell stared up at her with steely, calm eyes. 'Press the button,' she mouthed, before her eyes closed.
Glade felt that she couldn't just leave her, but if she didn't press the button, they could both die. She stood up shakily and stepped toward the button, but a harsh wave of dizziness swept over her. Was that the neurotoxin? She wondered. She tried to stand again, but with the same results. Darkness was forming at the edge of her vision, but before she passed out, she could hear the announcer.
"Stalemate resolved."
Alex's POV:
Alex leaned against the button as he pressed it, the burn on his stomach stinging harshly. He got off of it, then stumbled to a sitting position on the ground as the core transfer took place. Somehow, during the procedure, GLaDOS had downloaded herself off of the regular core she was in and back into her usual central core.
The AI, back into control just as she was before, turned to look at Alex.
"You and your sister really can't follow directions when you are told to stay put, can you?" GLaDOS commented calmly, "Yes, I've already looked over the security feeds."
Alex's fists clenched. Why was she wasting time talking about this? He looked over at his unconscious mother and sister, his stomach clenching when he noticed the growing red pool around his mother.
The AI slowly followed his gaze to them. A panel on the floor beside his mother moved aside, and three mechanical arms gently picked her up and lowered her into the hole. Another arm reached toward Glade, shaking her slightly. When she didn't respond, the same thing happened to her.
GLaDOS turned back to him. "Considering the condition of those two, for once I'm glad you didn't follow directions."
"What… What did you do to them?" Alex demanded, trying to keep his voice from squeaking.
"I did nothing other than send them to the Aperture Science Medical Wing. You do realize that they urgently need medical attention, right?" she replied, talking to him like he was a child. Technically, he was a child, but she talked like he was a child under his age of 13. "And considering what happened to you," she went on, referring to the burn on his stomach, "You should probably go there as well."
A/N: Now that you've (hopefully) read the chapter correctly, now you can go back and read it while imagining Red talking with a Scottish accent.
You can probably guess that this fic is nearing its end. The action's over, but there will be one last chapter to wrap things up. Thank you if you've kept reading it this far, and I hope you've enjoyed. It might be a while before the last chapter is written, though.