GLaDOS stood idle in her chamber: They had escaped. Well, they hadn't escaped, but they were out of her reach, except smaller functions, such as lighting. In a blind fury she reared up and disconnected several panels, which quickly moved back into place. To say she was pissed was an understatement. She'd trusted Wheatley to leave them alone, so what did he do? He helped her run off into the more dangerous parts of the facility.
Try as she might, she couldn't calm down. What could happen down there? Turrets, could fill Chell with bullets and turn her into a bloody mass of Swiss cheese. Neurotoxin would provide a slow and painful death. She shuddered at the thought, which created more mental images for her.
Incinerators, blade pits, lasers, pits leading to, god knows where, turret production lines, cubes.
GLaDOS let out a winded sigh, and turned off the main lighting in the manufacturing sections. If they were going to die, she'd at least let them know they deserved it. Which they didn't. As they ran around doing whatever it was they were doing in the factories, she had bigger ideas.
Speaking with Wheatley about releasing Chell had given her a interesting thought: robots for testing. She dug through old notes and blueprints before she found one that piqued her interest. It was a spherical robot, which didn't look much unlike Him. She decided to look into it because so far, this was the only one she'd though of as successful. Something did seem missing though, but she couldn't find it from the crude writing and scrawls along the side.
Among the scrawls, she noticed in bold, ATLAS model. It was settled, his name would be Atlas. She made note of it before she sent it to the assembly machine, who quickly obeyed at the sight of an order.
After about an hour, the short, spherical robot walked through the door into the main chamber. He looked up at her, dumbfounded at her size, most likely. Atlas looked up at her with a bright blue optic, looking earnestly confused. He reminded her of Wheatley, even more so now. GLaDOS moved herself closer to him, and used a panel to block him off before he tried to back away. Mechanical arms stretched out from below her and began to work cautiously on upgrading his chassis. At some point in the procedure, she was sure he'd snap and break something, he looked almost as angry as she felt.
He looked up at her when she'd finally let him go, as if daring her to touch him again. The look of hostility he gave her almost disturbed her. They sat in silence for a few long moments, staring at each other.
"So..." she began quietly, "You're the ATLAS model I found.. Interesting." He almost looked indignant, as if GLaDOS had meant for it to sound like a cold insult.
Atlas let out a low-toned, almost inaudible set of murmurs and garbles. It was then that she realized what the missing portion in the blueprints was. He had everything except a voice. She knew humans could be morons, but she never realized they could be so cold. Without a voice to give opinions, or converse, it must be a horrible life. She gazed at him, cold eye boring into his hull, causing him to flinch and look at the floor.
"Atlas... Return to the assembly machine, I need to take care of something of dire urgency." He obeyed without question, as if he could ask them. He waddled back toward the chamber's door, and out of sight. She honestly felt bad for him.
Listing the possibilities, there were only two that seemed doable: Creating a voice modulator, or creating a second that could understand him, in layman's terms, a friend. She began to design and program this second bot, and came up with the name P-body, because she'd found a old frame model, P-frame.
Along with fixing these, she came up with a simple trap for the two morons if they did find their way in to the central AI chamber. The last thing GLaDOS wanted was to die again. Time passed by more quickly now that she'd busied herself with two tasks. P-Body was in the last stages of development, she was about to send the blueprints to the assembly machine, and the trap was laid for the unsuspecting escapee. Everything was going correctly.
She had even pinpointed the music that would play occasionally, which originated from a modified radio in Test Chamber 03. GLaDOS thought about it, then turned on an old speaker system that could amplify the tune across the enrichment center. Who ever it was, they left that radio there for a purpose, this was probably not it, but she didn't care.
The blueprints were completed a short while later, and shipped off to assembly. Music still echoed around the corridors, and a loud click rang through the chamber. The trap was sprung.
"I honestly... Truly didn't think you'd fall for that. In fact, I'd devised a much more elaborate trap for when you got through this easy one." The floor slid up, dropping Chell into a small glass box, as planned. "... I hope you brought something stronger than a Portal gun, or I'm afraid you're about to become the immediate past president of the 'Being Alive' club. Ha-ha... Seriously though, goodbye."
GLaDOS immediately knew something was wrong: Wheatley was nowhere to be seen. She'd decided not to worry about it when five claws zipped down, lowering turrets... well, not turrets. Not turrets, they were defective! How could something so stupid happen? Unless... they must have done something to her production line.
"Locked and loaded!"
"It's my big chance!"
"Got any bullets?"
And without warning, each of them exploded as the tried to fire bullets they didn't have. The glass cracked, and she stared down at Chell, furious with the quiet girl.
"Well, I guess we could sit in this room and glare at each other until somebody drops dead. But I've got a better idea. It's your old friend! Deadly neurotoxin. If I were you, I'd take a deep breath, and hold it." She remarked with a malicious fury that only she could withstand.
A apparatus vent lowered down and snaked around the room, finally breaking the glass toward the top of the makeshift chamber. Chell stared up at her with a smug grin on her face, when finally a loud click came from the tube.
"Agh! Ow! Uh!" GLaDOS looked up toward the noise, of course... Wheatley slid down the vent and finally fell out, "'Ello!" He began cheerfully, as he fell and unceremoniously broke the glass. Chell looked a bit confused, like she hadn't planned this, which knowing Wheatley, she probably didn't.
"I hate you so much." She sounded completely frank about it. Wheatley began to talk to Chell, who was still sitting around like a sack of potatoes. GLaDOS opened a com-link with Wheatley while she was still recovering from what strange thing had happened to her.
"Wheatley! What do you think you're doing? I told you not to interfere!" she hissed to him silently.
"Oh hey love, I'm sorry I didn't warn you about all this. I just- I wanted to help her!" He began nervously before the announcer cut in.
"Deposit substitute core in the receptacle to begin a core transfer." It said blandly.
"Core transfer? Oh... you are KIDDING me." GLaDOS's unwavering expression stared at Chell as she picked him up. "Do NOT plug that little idiot into MY mainframe." By the time she'd uttered the words, Chell was already plugging him in as the announcer told her to.
"Substitute core, are you ready to start the procedure?" The voice inquired.
"Yes!" Wheatley seemed happy about this all.
"Corrupted core, are you ready to start the procedure?" It was directed toward Her this time.
"No!-"
"Oh, yes she is!" Wheatley cut in, of course.
"No! Nononononono!" She sounded off desperately
"Stalemate detected. Core transfer can not continue-" He began slowly.
"Pull me out, pull me out, pull me out, pull me out!" Wheatley was set off in a state of panic.
"Unless there is a stalemate associate present to hit the stalemate button." It finished its
statement.
"Leave me in! Leave me in! G-go press it!" He'd finally calmed down enough to stare back up at the great figure looming over him.
"If you'd let her finish the tests like I told you to, I would have rewarded her!" She remarked privately to him, as Chell was bounced back by a panel GLaDOS had configured. Things were finally turning bad. "And don't call me love! If you can't even follow the simplest orders, I don't want your damned pet name!"
"Lov- I mean, GLaDOS, please. You've got to understand, I'm doing this for her." He sounded sincere, but it wasn't enough for her.
"The only think you're breaking right now, is my heart." it slipped, she didn't even know what she had said until it was out. She simply glared at Wheatley, not knowing if he'd understood what she said to him in that moment.
"GLaDOS... I.." he was interrupted when Chell slammed down the button.
"Stalemate resolved."
"Ah!" She wailed as all of her processors overloaded her, everything went dark again. After a moment of silence, he she heard a pained yelp, and the core transfer began. Arms rose up from below her, beginning to disconnect her from her chassis. Painful wasn't a good enough adjective to describe how it felt, like living through death. Her core was discarded, and she heard Wheatley again, more ecstatic than he was a few moments ago.
"Wow! This is amazing! I'm in charge of the whole facility!" He laughed out, "Oh, right! The lift!... Lift called." He watched Chell get into the elevator when he began again, "I knew it'd be great to be in charge of everything, but WOW, this is cool!" The lift rose slowly above and he stated, "I still can't get over how small you are! I'm HUGE. Heheh..." She smiled and waved at him until things started getting darker, his voice became more serious, more of a cackle, "Ahahah!...Euhh... Wait, why do we have to go RIGHT now?" The elevator lowered back down to the ground, where GLaDOS's core was still lying. A dark red shadow enveloped the room. "Do you have ANY idea how good this feels? I DID this! Tiny little Wheatley, did this!"
"Y-you... didn't do anything. ...She did all the work!" Chell looked down at her, as if confused about GLaDOS's sudden compliment.
"Oh really now? Is that what you both think? Well maybe it's time I did something about that.." Arms slid out from under him as he finished the statement, dragging GLaDOS under.
"What are you doing?.. Stop, please! No!" Arms worked furiously around her, pulling key components out, different processors, microchips, batteries, and instead, fused a small lense onto a potato battery and stuck what remained of her mind into it. She thought she could trust him, but look at what HE was doing to her. Excruciating pain shot through what was left of her processors. After a moment, the hatch opened back up, and lifted her toward Chell so she could look at her.
"Ahh... That is a potato battery! It's a toy for children, and now she lives in it!.. hah!" He said triumphantly. He almost sounded like...
It finally registered in her mind, just who 'Wheatley' was, and she couldn't believe how naive she could be. "I know you..." She rasped out, as he gave her a questioning look.
"The engineers tried everything... to make me behave. To slow me down. Once, they even attached an Intelligence Dampening Sphere to me. It clung to my brain like a tumor, generating an endless stream of terrible ideas. It was YOUR voice."
"You're lying... you're LYING." He attempted to counter her statement.
"You're not a just regular moron. You were designed to be a moron..." She finished off as Wheatley cut in.
"I am NOT a MORON!" He became angry and swiped at the door of the elevator, the glass cracked under the impact.
"Yes you are! You're the moron they built to make me an idiot!" At this, Wheatley finally threw her into the elevator at Chell's feet.
"Well now who's the moron? Could a moron... PUNCH. YOU. INTO. THIS. PIT?" He began to strike at the top of the elevator with a claw. "Huh? Could a MORON do that?" The floor of the lift lurched and the two heard a small remark from him, "Uh oh?" And the floor finally gave in.
Things grew dark for the two of them, Chell fainted, and they were falling extremely fast.
"I trusted him..." GLaDOS murmured before wandering off in thought."
A/N - Man, I love writing from GLaDOS's view point. She's just so... Believable! Of course, I've read through this several times and it still just looks like a jumble of She's, He's an Hers. I don't have anyone else proofreading these, but I attempt to make sure there are no errors, which there usually are. Hell, I'm proofreading this right now. I also noticed that I only type with two fingers, so that's interesting. Anyway, I'm sooo sorry, I'm definitely going about this the wrong way. But argg, Weirder things pop into my head while I'm laying in bed at night, to say the least, this only scratched the surface with a butter knife. Anyway...
These chapters are getting longer! This is good, isn't it? Well, actually, I don't know. I hope it is! And I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing this one.
And yes, I think Atlas and P-body are like the hellish offspring of a conversation between GLaDOS and Wheatley, because how would she have gotten the idea for the Cooperative Testing Initiative in the first place? Just a random thought? I think not. Those two are like her children. Anyway, listen to me rabble on. Criticism is appreciated! Help me improve, please!~
Sheik out!