AN/...I hope you enjoyed the last chapter and that you will enjoy this chapter as well. So, without further ado, enjoy!

Chapter 3 - The Metal Ball

Grace POV - What was this thing? I had never seen anything like this, ever. Was it a robot? It looked like some sort of robot, but it couldn't be. Things like this just didn't exist in this world. It was too paranormal. Too weird. Too real.

"What are you?" I asked it carefully, unsure of its intelligence and gender.

"I am Wheatley. I am a core from Aperture Science Laboritories. I fell from space after being hit by this big, white, flying bird thing. It was weird and on the side of it was the word 'Atlantis'. I dunno what it means though. Do you?" Wheatley said this in a rush. I was surprised that the 'core' could even talk, let alone talk so fast. Its blue eye looked straight at me and its handles, if that's what they were, moved like eyebrows, displaying Wheatley's emotions to me.

"It sounds like you were knocked through the earth's atmosphere by the last space shuttle as it landed. Today is July 22nd. It landed yesterday," I told Wheatley, making sure to hide my fear. I was scared of Wheatley, because he was the unknown. It is only natural for humans to be scared of the unknown.

DING DONG. The doorbell. Tammy was here.

I practically ran through the house, with Wheatley shouting after me, "Hold on! Where are you going? What was that?". I opened my red, aluminium door to let Tammy into my home. As soon as I let her in, she started questioning me.

"What was that crash in your garden? What's going on? Why do you look so worried? GRACE?! What is going on?" She sounded frantic. I didn't realise how much I had worried her. I looked into her confused sapphire eyes and started forming the words in my head that I was going to say to her.

"Calm down, Tammy. There is nothing majorly wrong. All it is is that a little metal ball has fallen out of space and landed in my garden. Calm down." At this she just got even more frantic.

"A...a metal...that it MAJOR!" She was practically shouting at me now. "What are you going to do with it? Your parents can't find out. They'd freak."

"One: It is He. Two: HIS name is Wheatley. And three: I'm going to keep him in my room until we figure out what to do," I retaliated.

"Ok then. You seem to have this all planned out. I'll help you." She had finally calmed down and her being calm had resulted in me being calm.

"Oi, where d'ya go?" Wheatley shouted from the garden.

"Who's that?" Tammy asked. I would have thought that would have been obvious, but apparently it wasn't.

"Wheatley," I said simply.

As I lead Tammy into the garden, she seemed to get more and more nervous. I guess I could understand why. She was about to meet a robot, well Core, that she has previously thought did not and could not exist. I would be nervous to if I were her. As we stepped out of my glass double doors and into the garden she gasped. Wheatley was staring at us through his one cracked eye.

"Finally. I've been waiting here for ages. Could one of you please put me on something clean? I hate this brown stuff, whatever it is," Wheatley said, directing his speech more to me than to Tammy. I wondered why and looked over at Tammy. Immediately I could see Wheatley's reasoning. Tammy was staring, wide eyed and still, at Wheatley. She was like a statue, which I took to mean that she was very shocked to see Wheatley.

Wheatley POV - The girl just stared at me, like a cryogenically frozen test subject when they weren't expecting to be frozen. She didn't move. I started to think that she had died on the spot or something, until she blinked. Surely I wasn't that scary, was I? The other girl, the one with the hazel eyes and dirty blonde hair, walked over to the first girl.

"Tammy, are you ok?" she asked. I guessed this must have been the girl's name, so I shouted her name at her, to see if she would respond.

"TAMMY!" I shouted. What was wrong with her? She didn't seem much younger than the mute girl back in aperture. Maybe she was mute too. The mute test subject hadn't been scared of me. She had been my friend.

"Is she mute?" I asked the girl that was not Tammy.

"Is she what?" She returned my question with a question. It always annoyed me when someone did that. Why not just answer the question. Honestly, that what the point of asking a question. To get an answer.

"Why can't you just answer my question" I asked her as politely as I could manage.

"Because I don't know what you mean by mute," she answered. At least she answered with an answer this time.

"A mute," I said calmly, "is a person or living thing that can't make a sound."

"Oh." She sounded a bit embarrassed. "No, she isn't a mute. She's just shocked. She has never seen anything like you before. I'm Grace, by the way."

"Nice to meet you, Grace," I replied formally. I felt the need to be formal since I didn't know these humans very well. I wondered why I was still positioned on this weird brown stuff. It didn't look very nice. "Where is the management rail?" I asked Grace.

"I don't know what you mean, but I don't think we have one anyway." No management rail? Then how were us cores meant to get around.

"In that case, would you please put me on something cleaner. I hate this brown stuff." Grace giggled at this.

"That 'brown stuff' as you call it, if mud. Plants grow in it and worms live in it." She said. I wondered what worms and plants were, but it didn't feel like the appropriate time to ask. Finally, Grace took me inside the big, solid box think that was beside us. I guessed this must be where Grace lived. Tammy followed us, like a dead person walking, unsure and unsteady. Grace placed me on a soft thing, but I didn't know what it was. It was then that I started to explain about Aperture, and GLaDOS, and the little mute test subject.