A/N: Portal: Prelude is an awesome fanmade mod, though difficult as hell. For more advanced Portal players than I am, or at least ones with quicker reflexes. Still, it gave me inspiration for this. It was fun to write, actually.

15. Cake
Summary: The cake wasn't a lie, although she never got to eat it because of a slight issue involving trying to escape being actively murdered by a giant omnipotent supercomputer.
Genre: General
Characters: Abby (Portal: Prelude), GLaDOS
Warnings: Character Deaths

"Congratulations, Abby. You made it!"

The blond girl, exhausted, sweaty, dirty, a bruise on her arm and a wound on her cheek where she didn't escape a turret's fire quickly enough, look around the room, wondering what they were all cheering for. After all, hadn't one of them said that he was "here to see dead people"?

"Look, guys! Our very first test subject to reach the end of the test alive!"

"It's fantastic. I can't believe it's happening right now."

She blinked a few times, an icy, sick feeling gripping her stomach as the realization that had been laying in wait in her subconscious finally settled in. People had died in those testchambers, the testchambers that she, herself, had nearly died in. And they were cheering?

Her fists clenched; she wanted the beat them, wanted to make them cower, and beg for mercy. But she couldn't. The adrenaline that had kept her going, that had kept her alive was gone, and it had left her weak, barely able to keep her balance.

"Okay, listen, I know we promised you cake, party and all..."

Abby's head snapped up. I'd better get my damned cake, considering what you jerks put me through.

Blah blah blah, GLaDOS, global artificial intelligence, fifteen years ... she honestly couldn't bring herself to care one iota about all that. She just wanted to finish up with the party and cake, go home, then go to sleep.

"With these two great success in a single day, prepare yourself for the greatest part of the century!"

"Take that, Black Mesa!"

For a moment, Abby considered just leaving, but ... this GLaDOS thing shouldn't take more than a half-hour (plus, she was the tiniest bit curious as to what exactly a GLaDOS was).

And the cake looked so delicious and moist.

So she agreed.

"Trying to escape being actively murdered by a giant, omnipotent supercomputer" had not been on Abby's bucket list, nor was it anything that she was expecting from a GLaDOS. She hadn't thought much of it when the scientist who had been sent to show her the way had mentioned that the morality module wasn't yet ready and that the GLaDOS was likely to be activated without it, but somewhere in her subconscious there was a big, bold, red warning, probably in Impact font, saying 'THIS IS A VERY BAD IDEA.'

Of course, she hadn't listened. If she had of, she currently wouldn't be running around the circular room, tripping over dead bodies, trying to escape that giant white laser-thing that was chasing her while the GLaDOS said that her life was a mathematical error that she was about to correct. And now it was speaking again.

"You chose this path. Now I have a surprise for you. Deploying surprise in five, four..."

The countdown never finished; instead, Abby was flung against the walls again, in the grip of one of those greenish beams spiraling around the room. She hit the walls over and over again, and the crazy notion that this would probably become a successful video game entered her mind. Then it stopped, and she hit the ground hard, thankful for the knee replacements.

Then the lights went out. She paused, looking around nervous. The GLaDOS in the middle of the room hung silently, completely still, while a fire burned somewhere to her right.

"Abby! Abby! It's Mike!"

Just twenty minutes ago, she would have been happy to never had seen - well, heard, as his voice was coming over the speakers - any of those three test supervisors ever again. She would have been hard-pressed to believe that she would actually be ecstatic to hear one of them. But she was.

"Goddammit! Peter and Erik are dead! Everyone is dead here!"

She visibly flinched; more than once in the testchambers, after a particularly difficult and nauseating maneuver, when she nearly got grazed by the turrets' fire, or when that one testchamber had burst into flames ... well, now she wasn't proud of what she had thought at the time.

The rest of his words swam in her head. Her goal: Find and attach the morality module.

"First, try to find another portal gun and... and... what the hell is that?" There was a pause, interrupted only by a small roaring noise. "Oh, shi -"

She didn't know what had happened next; a beeping noise, then an explosion. Abby swallowed, pushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She was on her own.

The Enrichment Center had become dangerous; rocket launchers and weird little flying robots that tore you to shreds were all over the damn place. When Abby finally reached the employee lounge where the party was to have taken place, it was a mess, and the cake was gone