A/N: Hello again. Enjoy another theme, which was kind of difficult to write. I'm pretty sure you're all tired of hearing about my personal circumstances, so Ill just say my physical state is better now I've started my meds.

I have the feeling theres something 'off' about this but I cant pinpoint it. Any suggests?

8. Too Late
Summary: Wheatley didn't want the lady to die, but when he was too late to break her out from the testchambers, he was in for a surprise.
Genre: General
Characters: Wheatley, Chell, GLaDOS
Warnings: Implied Character Death

"I've got a surprise for you after this next test. Not a fake, tragic surprise like last time. A real surprise, with tragic consequences. And real confetti this time. The good stuff. Our last bag. Part of me's going to miss it, but at the end of the day it was just taking up space."

When he heard those words, he knew he was running out of time. Any 'surprises' She had in store probably involved deadly neurotoxin, being the proper maniac that She was. He'd hate for the lady to die, and not just because she was his only hope to escape. Although the massive brain damage may have been a slight contributing factor, she had been the first human he'd met that didn't immediately tell him to shut up, who actually listened to his rambling - why did he have a complete and utter inability to shut up? - and who didn't treat him like the idiot that, deep-down, he knew he was.

He didn't even know her name. In all of the panic about "reactor core meltdown" and "emergency evacuations," he had completely forgotten to check the file on her relaxation chamber before awakening her.

He had been keeping an eye on her through Her tests, peeking through panels, looking for a proper opportunity to break her out. But now, he'd have to throw caution to the wind - funny expression, that, after all, there wasn't any wind in the climate-controlled facility - and break her out soon. Such as right now.

But ... how would he go about it? After all, he couldn't just open the panels and call her over ... or, could be? Actually, not a bad idea; bloody brilliant, if he did say so himself. He quickly made his way on the management rail to Test chamber 21 and found the mechanism for cutting the power. Brilliant.

Past the wall, he heard the lady's footsteps, the pew of the portal device as she placed another portal, then a dull clunk and a hiss as she dropped a cube on a button.

"Did you ever stop to think that eventually there's a point where your name gets mentioned for the very last time? Well, here it is: I'm going to kill you ... Chell."

Quickly, he slid a panel open. "Hey, hey, over here!" he said, but it was too late. The door to the chamberlock slid closed behind her.

"Oh no - oh no no no no no!" he said, his blue aperture dilating before constricting to a few tiny pixels of light. He just hoped that the lady - Chell, was it? That wasn't a name he'd ever heard before - was smart enough to get away from Her. After all, she'd been the one to take Her down in the first place; he wouldn't have believed it himself if She hadn't said so.

"Oh... it's you," She had said, looking down at the woman and the core.

"You know Her?" he had said. His initial alarm at Her rebooting may have been for nothing. Maybe She and the lady were on friendly terms.

The lady stood there, her eyes widening just a bit, her gaze shifting constantly between the two AIs.

"How have you been? I've been really busy being dead. You know, after you MURDERED ME?"

"You did WHAT?" he almost yelped. Of all the humans - it was her? The last human alive in the Extended Relaxation Center? Her?

The rest of it was a blur, and the next thing he was aware of was a bird pecking at his optic.

His hopes of escape dashed, he went back to work. Since his job as the Extended Relaxation Center Manager was now redundant - after all, there were no more humans, smelly or not, to look after - he was working the second-worst job, the Waste Material Combustion Managing Director. Perhaps it was even worse than working with the smelly humans. He didn't actually manage anything; his job was to make sure that every little bit of garbage in the test chambers made it to the incinerator room.

It was on a break - these days, with Her at them, they were pretty rare things - when he met a new core. Her optic was like none he had ever seen before; a black pupil in the center, immediately surrounded by an unnaturally pale blue-gray, fading to a darker gray around the edges.

"I'm the Testing Sphere," she told him, her voice soft, quiet and feminine. She had a sort of - what was that word, dignity? Yes, that was it - about her. "But you can call me Chell."

He paused, his inner optic plate momentarily popping out of the frame when he heard the name. He was left speechless for a long, long moment before he suddenly regained his voice. "Oh, wow, brilliant. I once knew a lady named Chell, who was a human, not smelly at all, to be honest, and ..."