Wheatley lay on the floor of Her chamber and tried very hard to think solid, non-leaky thoughts as he clutched at his side and felt blood. He tried to stay still, but he couldn't breathe (hopefully the wind had just been knocked out of him). Everything hurt, and he couldn't help but squirm in attempt to find a position where things didn't feel quite so terrible.

"Oh please," She rolled her optic as She watched him writhe on the floor. "Don't be so dramatic. You got what you wanted. She's free." Wheatley closed his eyes. "And she thinks you're dead. So she's not coming back. Which means I get what I wanted, too. Everyone wins! Isn't that right?"

There was a flash of red light, and pain. Searing, white hot pain.

Wheatley screamed.

"Oops." She said gleefully. "I always forget how sensitive to pain you humans can be. Fragile little things. But I'm sure you'll agree, I can't have you bleeding all over my floor. Really, I've just done you a favor." Her voice turned sticky sweet. "What do you say, moron?"

He grit his teeth.

"Thank— you."

"That's the third favor I've done for you today." She mused. "But don't worry. I know just what you can do to repay me."

Wheatley yelped as the floor opened up, and he fell, and fell, and fell. The last time he had been Here, on That Day, She had said something about a fall as a punishment. Now he fell until the light from Her chamber disappeared, until there was nothing but him and darkness and gravity, the wind rushing by in his ears and the ever present thought of the word splat.

This was it. She'd decided to drop him down an elevator shaft with no long fall boots, just like he'd done to Chell. Wheatley didn't bother to scream (he deserved this), but he couldn't help the high pitched whine that escaped his throat.

He was going to die, he was going to die, he was going to die, he was going to die, he was going to die—

Then, as suddenly as he'd started falling, he stopped. Wheatley opened his eyes (he hadn't realized he'd closed them) to find he was surrounded by a pale blue light. He reasoned that it must've been an excursion funnel. The world was still pitch black beyond.

There was something almost numbing about the languid movement of the funnel, but even as he calmed Wheatley knew that if She wasn't going to kill him it was because She was going to do something worse.

"I've thought long and hard over this." Her voice echoed around him as he fell, slow and sadistically gleeful, and Wheatley wondered what the darkness was hiding. "I could put you through everything you did to her. Drop you down an elevator shaft. Force you to test while her voice screams insults at you. Shoot you into space as a human." Wheatley screwed his eyes shut, though the view wasn't much different. "I could transfer you back to your core. Shut you down and give you your own black box feature, replaying the worst moments of your life, endlessly. Or I could keep you online and disassemble you piece by piece, rebuild you, and repeat until your parts give out. Better yet, I could put you in an infinite transfer loop from your core to your human body." Wheatley shuddered. He honestly didn't know which of those would be the worst. "But I'm feeling generous today. So I've settled for something a bit more… psychological."

And then there was light.

Wheatley blinked, blinded, shielding his eyes and expecting something murderous and deadly to leap out at him from the whiteness at any moment. Then, when his vision returned, and he lowered his hands, he saw-

Nothing.

It was just… a regular room. Though it wasn't nearly as pristine as Her chamber had been: plants grew in the cracks between filthy, crumbling panels, and water dripped from the ceiling into a rather nasty looking pool where the floor drooped.

"It's a mess, isn't it?" She said. "Three years— almost four— have passed since you took your little joy ride with my facility, and I still haven't managed to undo all the damage." He found that hard to believe at around the same time Her voice became defensive. "Make no mistake— I could fix it if I really wanted to— and it is fully operational, but it isn't… perfect. Not like it was. But I've had more… important matters to attend to, as of late." She hummed. "So you're going to fix it."

The funnel blinked out of existence, and Wheatley plummeted to the ground below, landing hard with a fresh bout of pain.

"What?" He choked.

She ignored him.

"You remember the nanobot crew whose worksite you destroyed all those years ago?" She asked. Wheatley blinked up at the ceiling (was that the angry buzzing he was hearing?). "Well, they certainly remember you. And they know you made this mess, too, so they really love you." She sounded entirely too cheerful. "You wanted a position of power? You're in charge of cleaning up the mess you made. And while you're at it you'll return my surveillance to every inch of this area. Now, I know you have no idea what you're doing, but the nanobots should help. You'll tell them what to do, and if you ruin everything like you always do, you'll start over. Your co-workers will be thrilled, I'm sure." Wheatley could hear the metaphorical smile in Her voice. "When you finish here you'll move on to the next floor. And the next one, and the next one, and the one after that. On and on and on, all the way down to the bottom of the facility, back to the end of the godforsaken elevator shaft you left her to die in. Then you get to restore my control to the very roots of the facility, where you'll clean up the chemicals you nearly killed her with." Wheatley closed his eyes and resigned to lay on the floor for a little bit longer. He felt like he belonged there. "And every time you finish a task, and you feel that tiny spark of pride and joy, I want you to remember something. You're going down. With every new project you'll be descending deeper and deeper into the facility, farther from the sun, and the sky, and the grass, and the dirt. Farther from the surface. Farther from freedom. Farther from her." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "You're never going to see her again. I'll make sure of that."

"Now get to work."