The empty house:
He looked somewhat dead himself when he stumbled back through the cottage door. Dirt and mud coated him from head to toe, grass stains marred his jacket and pants, and the look on his face was enough to send any apocalypse survivor scurrying for their crowbar.
Spending a full day and night digging your best friend's grave was enough to put anyone in a bit of a mood.
He leaned the shovel against the wall haphazardly, and made no move to catch it when it tipped sideways, spattering the dusty hall carpet with clods of dirt.
Stiff, machinelike, he tramped through the house. He didn't bother about his boots either. What did it matter if he tracked mud all over the carpets? Chell was the one who would have told him off about it, but she'd never know.
He stomped up the stairs, slamming his boots down on them as if consciously trying to cause them pain. After all, he was hurting, why should he be the only one?
He didn't actually want to do this. Didn't want to face what was laying in the second bedroom on the right. No he did not. But it was going to have to happen one way or the other, and far too soon he found himself standing at the door, hand outstretched, resting on the wood, pushing it open.
He took a deep breath, braced himself, and started talking immediately, as if his words could act as a buffer between himself and the body.
"Don't talk to me about bloody grave digging in the middle of a bloody hurricane. I swear, I've had enough ice water poured down my neck that it is amazing, amazing that I haven't got any in my internals. Thought I was going to end up needing that grave myself-"
The flow of words stopped abruptly.
The bed was empty.
Just… Empty.
She was gone.
She was gone and the quilt was gone and…
What had she done? Just gotten up and walked away?
He stood for a good minute, just gawping before his mind finally caught up with what his eyes were seeing.
"CHELL?!"
He bolted out of the room, wild eyed and short breathed.
She was alive! She had to be! It had all been a trick, of course it had. He knew, HE KNEW, from first hand experience even, she was bloody impossible to kill. And if two omnipotent super computers with an arsenal of turrets, neurotoxin, spike plates and acid couldn't do it, then there was no way some tiny, insignificant germs could.
She'd tricked him! She'd actually faked her own death! Trying to leave him behind again, no doubt. She probably didn't care she'd near traumatized him, no, just as long as it tricked him out of the house and gave herself time to get a decent head start. Oh he was going to bloody kill her for this one!
He ran from room to room, calling her name with a strange mixture of relief and fury. When she wasn't in any of the obvious places- bedrooms, kitchen, Bathroom- he started looking in the less likely ones. Under beds, in the attic, in closets and cupboards.
He ran outside to see if she'd left any prints in the fresh mud, but found only his own, returning from the fresh grave on the hill. He checked the pantry to see if she'd taken the canned goods with her, but it was exactly as he'd left it days ago, when he'd decided to make her soup. He checked her drawers, but found all her clothes present and accounted for.
Eventually, he'd had no choice but to give up. For whatever reason, she just wasn't here anymore.
He wound up back in her room, sitting on her bed and holding his head between his hands.
She just wasn't anywhere. Either she'd run off, taking nothing but their quilt with her- the quilt being the only thing he'd found missing after three hours spent demolishing their modest living space in search of an unaccountably missing corpse- or… Maybe someone had taken her.
He'd met looters before. They tended to go for the food, clothing, mechanical parts. Things that they could use practically. It was unfathomable why some desperate scavenger would make off with a dead girl, but leave everything else in the house untouched.
Anyway, there was no point in continuing to hold onto the idea that she might have been alive after all.. After the injection of mad hope had worn off, he'd remembered how stiff she'd been, how still. Nobody could fake that. Not even her. His conscience nipped at him painfully. How could he have thought all those things earlier? That she'd do this to him. She was practical, and skittish and sometimes a bit cold, but she wasn't sadistic.
Alright, they hadn't always been what you'd call a happy family, but there had been times, hadn't there? Good times. Pleasant, safe, warm times when she'd been strangely at peace with him. Usually he was the one that had to approach her and beg for some time together, but sometimes, sometimes she came to him. She'd ask, in her strange way, if he wanted to come with her on a scavenging trip, if he wanted to help her with the quilt, if he wanted to watch some old film with her, and it had been the best feeling he'd ever had.
But that was all over now. She was completely gone, and now he wouldn't even have the closure he'd hoped would come from a proper burial.
God, what he needed now was something to yell at.
Resting his elbows on his knees, he eyed the Companion cube, sitting so innocently where he'd left it. Streaks of yellow broth and a few dried noodles still stuck to its side.
It was the perfect target. Just looking at it stirred anger, jealousy and disgust in him.
"She always liked you more than me, you know?" He growled. "I know I used to scare her. You could see it in her eyes, sometimes. But you, well, nothing scary about you, is there? You just sit there, all pink and white and safe and you play that stupid song all bloody day for her. Oh don't go feeling all smug about it." He pointed at the cube accusingly.
"Sure you never did anything to hurt her but you didn't bloody help her either, did you? You just, I don't know, just, let her wander right off in the middle of the bloody night or, or let some maniac drifter steal her body before she could be properly laid to rest! Useless! What did you do, be pink at him? Play that kitschy lullaby? What bloody use are you? No, honestly, I am asking. Well, say something you useless lump!"
He jolted to his feet, drew his leg back and delivered a kicked which sent box tumbling across the room. It slammed into the far wall and left a hefty dent in the plaster. It was a heavy box, and it felt absolutely wonderful to abuse it so physically.
"You deserved that. Y- and now look, you've left a hole in the wall! She'd be livid about that! It's not as if she doesn't spend enough time mending this place, just to keep it together!"
There was a quiet click, followed by a hiss if escaping air, and then, much to Wheatley's surprise, the box fell apart. Sections peeled away, moved around each other strangely, and lay flat on the floor.
He stared at it, first thinking he'd broken it, then registered the smooth white interior. The way the box had spread itself, not the usual way one would expect of a cube, revealed what looked very much to the android's highly trained eye, like an ideal portal surface.
Confusion shaded to fear, which blossomed into terror as this information filtered through his optic drives and into his head.
"AAAH!" He screamed, rocked back, slamming into the night table and sending the lamp tumbling to its untimely end. He scrambled over the bed and wedged himself in the corner farthest from the cube, trembling, and trying through sheer force of will to push himself through the wall and into the next room.
"It can't be, it can't be it can't be it can't be," He gasped, clutching at his hair. But there it was, sitting right by the door, blocking his exit. So menacing. So familiar.
It was then that Wheatley started to form a new theory on what had happened to the body of his only friend.