Internal repairs at 92%

Initiating reboot...

Internal repairs at 99%

Reboot complete

Wheatley gave a soft groan of pain as his systems came back to life. Everything hurt, everything felt broken and sluggish and sharp, and he did not want to move. He wasn't sure where he was or what had happened to him, but something in the back of his mind told him that it was very very important and he needed to remember it now.

Think.

Wheatley remembered the reactor core. He remembered that it had nearly caused the literal heart he did not posses to fail when the dark brooding silence he had become so used to had been shattered by the sound of ten thousand blaring alarms. He remembered that he had wanted to get out so badly that he had found a test subject, one in ten thousand, the only one that was still alive, and he had broken them out. He remembered that he had tried to get them out of the facility, but he had messed up-

Suddenly Wheatley sprang back to life, his previously dim optic flashing a blindingly bright stratospheric blue for a split second before it shrank to a pinprick.

He had woken Her.

His test subject was the test subject, the one who had killed Her. And, in his attempt to free both of them, Wheatley had undone all of her (her, yes, that was right, the test subject was a woman, the lady) handiwork in under a minute. She had woken up because of him, and She had grabbed both of them, and then She-

Wheatley yelped as his vision flashed. He felt his optical shudders jerk involuntarily before an urgent red message flashed across his optic.

Warning! Core corruption at 22%!

"That can't be right!" Wheatley cried, "I was, I was at 2% last time I checked! There's no way I could've gone from two to twenty two without-"

He remembered that She had grabbed him with one of Her claws, tossing him into the air like a toy before She caught him and crushed him.

"Oh God."

She had grabbed the lady too. He remembered looking at her, how strikingly calm she looked at first, but in the last image of her he could pull from his memory banks her expression was one of pure open pain.

"Oh God."

Wheatley felt a wave of artificial nausea wash over him as his optic shrank to a pinprick. She could have crushed her. She could have killed her. Easily.

He shook his head vigorously as he thought. "Ok, ok, so, so maybe she's hurt. Maybe she's hurt, um, badly," He cringed, "very badly, but she has to be alive. I mean, she doesn't die. Honestly. That's just- no. She doesn't do that. She survives everything. So, so, I just need to find her, wherever she is, and I can save her, and we can get out of here."

Wheatley sped out of the dark little office with a sense of urgency. He knew he had to find the test subject, he just didn't know where she could be.

"Ok, um, even if She did hurt the lady, She probably wouldn't keep her in Her chamber. The lady is dangerous and She knows it, so that wouldn't be very smart." He noodle to himself, "So if she's not with Her, where is she?"

Suddenly Her voice flooded his mind, a soft venomous hiss.

You must really love to test. I love it too.

"Testing!"

Aperture had quiet a lot of testing tracks but it wasn't all that hard to figure out which one was being used. All Wheatley had to look for was movement: little maintenance arms rushing back and forth, panels heaving themselves into place, a flash of orange through the cracks in the walls, and he found her in no time.

"She's alive!" Wheatley cheered, his optic spinning around in a happy arc as him chassis flooded with relief, "Of course she's alive! She wouldn't kill her when She could test her!"

Just to make sure she was ok, Wheatley peeked through the panels to see her. Nothing was wrong that he could see, but some of the relief he had previously felt began to drain away the longer he watched her. He didn't know why he hadn't noticed it before, or why he was noticing it now, but her presence felt sort of... Threatening. Almost as if she were some wild animal about to spring from a cage and attack him.

Her eyes were cold and bright like steel. They burned with focused determination, carefully sweeping over everything in the room before analyzing the tests and swiftly devouring them. She glared daggers at every camera in the room with a hatred so intense that, had it been directed at Wheatley, would have likely made him burst into flames. Her hair was a dark blur that swept behind her, a few strands that had managed to escape her ponytail trailing a little farther behind than the rest. Her jaw was set in an hard stoney expression, a mix of anger and pure stubbornness. She looked as though she was more than ready to take Her on.

Again.

She was a force to be reckoned with if the tests were any indication. She absolutely destroyed them, aced every one without a single flaw. She was careful. Her every move was calculated, timed, precise. Wheatley found it ironic that she was the last human left in the facility yet she obviously worked much more efficiently than any of the remaining machines.

Watching her test was mesmerizing and terrifying, and Wheatley would be lying if he said he wasn't afraid of her. He was very afraid of her.

She was the human who had singlehandedly killed down Her.

Wheatley wasn't like Her at all; he was tiny and fragile and not the least bit intimidating. She was like a giant venomous spider with fangs the size of swords (while Wheatley was more like an ant), and the lady had squashed Her like it was nothing. She could easily do the same to him, and Wheatley could only imagine what she might do to him if he were to anger her.

He had already been afraid of her, but watching her test made him fear her even more.

He backed away from the panels as a feeling of unease began to settle over his core.

"Maybe... Maybe I should just leave her here." He started slowly, "After all, no one helped her on her first trip through Aperture, right? She was in the testing tracks then and, and she still made it out perfectly fine on her own." He nodded to himself. "It might not be very nice... But Aperture isn't a nice place. Nice people, er, cores, don't survive in Aperture. That's just not how it works. I mean, the lady hasn't always been very nice either, right? She killed Her. She did what she had to do to escape, and" He slowed, his shutters scrunching up in confusion. "And... She somehow ended right back where she started..." He shook his core. "But that's beside the point, point being, I need to get out- both of us need to get out- of here, and she doesn't really need my help to do that." For some reason that almost made him feel worse. "If I leave now, she can finish things up with Her, I can live, and both of us can escape once she's done the dirty work! Besides, she doesn't even know I'm back online. For all she knows I'm dead." He cast a guilty glance at the test chamber behind him. "What she doesn't know won't hurt her..."

Wheatley decided to peer through the panels at her one last time before he left, but this time he moved out farther than he meant to and she spotted him.

Her eyes brightened at the sight of him, but not in a bad way. They didn't look angry or annoyed, they looked lighter. Softer. Her glare snapped out of existence the moment she saw him. She seemed to visibly relax, almost as if the anger was draining out of her.

Her reaction at seeing him made something in Wheatley's core feel warm, making all of his previous fear towards her melt away instantly. He only stayed a moment but he flashed her a happy look before he disappeared back behind the panels.

He sat in stunned silence for a moment, his emotions chasing each other in circles.

"Well..." Wheatley started, his optic, now back to its normal happy Wheatley blue, glanced behind him at the dash of orange between the panels. "Maybe I was wrong." He said softly, "She does look... Angry, when she's testing, but, er, that, that doesn't mean she's angry all the time. I mean, she didn't look like that when we were escaping together." Another bout of warm blossomed from his core. "And, yes, she, um, deactivated Her, but She had it coming, honestly. She was a murderer, She'd been horrible to, to everyone for years before the lady came along and ended Her, um, Her reign of terror." Now all the uncertainty had faded from his voice. "That's not a bad thing, that's a good thing."

Wheatley quickly turned on his rail and sped out of the room, trying on one of his own determined expressions for the first time in decades.

He did trust the lady, and he was going to get her out of here no matter what it took to free her.

Author's Note:

This was a flashback chapter. After talking about Chell being afraid of Wheatley last chapter I wanted to write something about him feeling the same fear towards her. Next weeks chapter will be back in the present time.