Yooo, chapter 4. of filler. really.
"Why didn't she incinerate him?" Eve asked to no one in particular.
"She didn't?"
"No." Eve turned her attention away from the chamber to the cores surrounding her. The silver eyed core came forward.
"That's a surprise. I would'a thought that she would kill him immediately."
"So did he apparently. I don't know what happened to the other three cores, I'll just check that." Eve dove into the code of the facility, then resurfaced again.
"They went to the repair rooms, along with the portal gun. Strange. I thought they would have been incinerated, not repaired..."
"What's she up to?" the silver core asked.
"dunno, Terry, but I detected a whole lotta activity down in the manufacturing part of the facility. She's up to something, but I don't know what." Most of the other cores had drifted off back to what they were doing before the other cores dropped in. Eve went back into the code and went to investigate the manufacturing part. What were they building? She scanned the templates from the database and examined them.
"Human shaped android?" in her scramble to get back to the core hideout, she accidentally tweaked some areas of code. Hoping she didn't just cause a reactor core meltdown, she blinked back into the room and disengaged herself from the recharging receptacle.
"I think GLaDOS is building some new sort of testing robot."
The claw lifted Wheatley high over Aperture catwalks and onto a management rail. His fried processor sparked as he tried to figure out what was going on. Something on the management rail clicked, and he found himself being automatically driven along. The journey lasted about three minutes, and he found himself stopping in a small room. Suddenly, the panel behind him closed, leaving him trapped in the room.
"Well, I guess this is where I'm going to get repaired..." He looked around. Nothing but panels and a light. "Don't see any repairing equipment..."
"That's because you're not in here to be repaired, Moron." He jumped at the voice. A few sparks flew out of his casing and he twitched.
"I'd really rather crush you. But I have better plans. They will take some time to get ready though, so you will wait here until the time comes. Don't worry, it's no different from floating and doing nothing in space. Except you're in the facility, not space. Enjoy your stay." The intercom clicked off. Wheatley sighed and twitched again.
"I guess I'm not going to get repaired after all..."
GLaDOS felt strangely uneasy. While she'd been holding Wheatley, she'd felt like someone was watching her. Which was impossible. And just now she felt a pulse of code go through her system. She tried tracking it, but it was gone too fast to follow. There were a few malfunctioning panels here and there, and she fixed them quickly. Was it the virus? A quick scan with the virus's signature told her it was still as dormant and insignificant as ever. She sighed, and went down to check the machines building the android. They seemed to be progressing well. The framework was already complete and the central processors were almost built. She looked at the blueprints again.
Wait. They had been copied. Someone had stolen a copy from the database! She tried to track who, but there was no trail. GLaDOS stared at the file, and turned her attention away from it and scanned for any other copies. A quick blip came up, but it was extinguished so quickly GLaDOS only had time to catch the number 177. Whoever is doing this must be a very experienced hacker... she thought to herself. As a precaution, she set up several more layers of firewalls, then turned her attention to the cooperative testing initiative. The two robots exploded and were reassembled in a testing track.
"Get to work, you two."
Wheatley couldn't believe his luck. He slid freely along a management rail above a catwalk. For some reason, one of the panels in the room he was trapped in glitched out and opened. Wheatley found that he could, with a bit of a swing, throw himself out of the room onto a management rail outside. Granted, it hurt. His damaged insides caught against some loose part of his casing and jarred him painfully, but he was free, and that was all that mattered. He had decided that no, She was not going to repair him, and was in fact going to do something much worse. He had also decided that the panel malfunctioned, because unless it was part of some sort of elaborate plan of hers, and he wouldn't put it past her, he knew that she would not have let him out of that room.
"What a strange and lucky coincidence it was that one, huh."
He wandered blindly through parts of the facility. He tried to make out and markers that could tell him where he was, but his optic had too many cracks in it to see anything clearly. In the end he took to going in random directions. He turned into what looked like a corridor, thinking to himself. He felt another abrupt turn, and went down it, only to crash optic-first into what looked like a cube.
"OW!"
Eve, along with every other core in the room turned at the voice at the entrance. It mumbles something. Eve waited for a few moments for whatever it was to call out an identification and pass. But nothing. She called out:
"Identify yourself and give password."
"what? Password? Uh, let's see... AAAAA...A? AAAAA...D? did I try B? Oh God, someone write these down"
"I recognise that voice..." Eve turned to look at Terry.
"Who?"
He ignored her, and called out,
"I know you're there, Moron."
Moron! Several of the other cores stared shouting at once.
"It's the Moron? How did he get here? Shouldn't GLaDOS have him? What is he doing here?"
"Everyone shuddup, and let's see what this idiot has to say fer 'imself." Terry had moved the panel out the way. Wheatley was just behind, staring into the room.
"Hey, Moron."
He slowly inched into the room, looking around. Eve noticed his optic was cracked beyond repair, and guessed he could barely see anything.
"U-uh... Hello!" several core's optic narrowed at him. He gave a synthesized gulp and backed away a bit.
"Uhm.. s-so, how are all you doing? Me? I'm f-fine. I..." he trailed off, intimidated by all of the cores staring at him.
"I'm not welcome here am I? Ooh, I get it, shouldn't have thought I would be welcome anywhere after... what... I did... Okay, I get it, I'm not welcome here. I'll... go now... If you want. Of course, if you want me to stay, just stay so and I will. Not that you will of course, but..." he trailed off again, then turned and fled out of the room.
"Fact- the intelligence dampening sphere is feeling deep regret for what he has done."
"Shut up Facty, you can never get your facts straight." One core knocked into the fact core, making it gasp. The rest of the cores drifted away, leaving terry, Fact and Eve by the entrance. Terry turned to look at the Fact core.
"He can sometimes say something useful..." Terry mumbled to himself. Eve turned and went after Wheatley, Terry following behind.
Wheatley blindly sped along the management rail faster than he thought his mangled body could go. His auditory processors picked up squeaks and creaks of some cores on the rail behind him. Chasing him? He should of known that the other cores would not of welcomed him back. He did nearly destroy the facility, and by extension, them, when he was in power. He tried to make out where he was, but apparently his optic was starting to glitch, and half of his vision went blank. Inconveniently, the half that had the less cracks. He heard a core saying something behind him, but couldn't make out what it was, as he was more worried in making out the turns in time with his less than adequate vision. Failing to do this, he jerked to a stop at a sharp bend, feeling some components on his inside grate painfully against one another.
"Ow!" He went past the bend, and crashed into something. Squinting his half-vision, he could make out a lilac optic of a core.
"Uh oh..." the optic seemed to flash red for a moment. Wheatley backed away a bit, the crashed into something else. Spinning around, he saw another optic, this time silver.
"Oh no..." He tried to retract into himself, but a broken rod or something poked painfully against the back of his optic, making him twitch and flinch. Several sparks flew out of his casing. His half lit optic shrunk to a dot, and he quivered, something inside him rattling. He waited with his shutters closed for the abuse that would be thrown at him. No less than he deserved, though. After all, he did nearly kill them.
"Yo." Wheatley opened his shutters a crack. The lilac optic was staring right into his. He whimpered a little and shut his optic again.
"Yo. Seriously, open your optic." He slowly peered though the crack of his shutters. Half of a lilac optic appeared in front of him. He shifted so he could see slightly better.
"Not sure why I said that, seems like you can't see a thing anyway." Wheatley slowly nodded in agreement.
"I'm sure Tecchie could fix that for you." The core nodded to the on behind it. He turned around to look at the other core.
"Hey, I'm Terence, the Technology Maintenance core. But you can call me Terry. Or Tecchie. Whadever you prefer." The core introduces itself in a gravelly voice. "I used to have a job of maintaining the technology around here, but after the main building robot went missing and were destroyed, I took the job of creating tech for them. Before She took over, of course. But I still build things here and there."
"Yo." The lilac core said again. "I'm Evelina, but call me Eve. I'm a programming core, but I took up a hobby of hacking things early and am now an expert at it. Seriously, no one can detect my-"
"Shut up Hacker. You such a show off at times." Terry shook his casing and sighed. "Me an' Eve, we work as a team. I build robots, she programs them. Foolproof. I don't think we ever built something that malfunctioned. Eh, Eve?" Eve sighed.
"Now you're the one showing off." She turned back to Wheatley. "So, where are you going now that everyone in this place hates your circuits?" he twitched his handlebars a bit in a shrug.
"You're not going anywhere moron."
"GAH!" Wheatley screamed, and started panicking. The half of his optic that was still functioning stopped working, plunging him into darkness. He dimly heard the two other cores dashing off over the sound of his overworked processors.
"Think you could escape, huh? Well, I have control over the whole of the facility. You're never out of my sight." He felt a claw grab him and wrench him for the management rail.
"AH!" he struggles, but it was no use. The claw gripped him tighter, and he felt his casing buckle under the pressure. His useless, blind optic drooped, and he shut his optic shutters.
"Good news, Moron. I have just finished an experimental project of mine, and the last piece I need is you. That means I'm not going to kill you. Unfortunately. But by the time I'm done with you, I bet you will be wishing I had."
"What sort of experimental projects? Ooh, I know, you're going to-"
"You'll see." GLaDOS cut him off. "An ironic statement. For it seems that your optic has malfunctioned and you cannot see at all."
"I can see that." Wheatley muttered. Then realised what he had just said. GLaDOS just laughed.
"All the better, Moron."
Eve and Terry watched the badly damaged core get carried away.
"Why did we run?" Eve asked.
"I dunno. I guess something came over'us. I feel bad, leaving that moron to GLaDOS..."
Eve nodded in agreement. they turned and slid off into somewhere in Aperture.