A/N: So here we are in Lab Rat territory. Any dialogue you recognise comes from there :)
2007.
Birth of the Rat Man.
It hadn't taken long for Doug to accept that he needed help. As far as he knew, the only people still alive were the test subjects. He'd spent several days running, dodging barbed comments from GLaDOS whenever he was careless enough to attract her attention, trying to get to a number of helpful locations. She wasn't making it easy for him. Various parts of the facility that she had total control over had been remodelled, becoming an intricate series of testing tracks. Fortunately for Doug, her control didn't stretch to the majority of the offices, or the many maintenance areas throughout the facility. Unfortunately, there were cameras everywhere, some of them unavoidable. His collection of supplies had gradually increased, and he'd been able to rig up a makeshift slingshot. Although his aim was still improving, he'd been able to shatter quite a few of the camera lenses he met on his travels. She scolded him every single time. He was growing to hate it.
He'd started leaving graffiti and murals in any camps he made, trying to keep track of places he'd already been. It was an effective strategy, and he was finding the process helpful. He was increasingly glad that he'd thought to bring the Art Therapy book from the lab.
Occasionally he'd found an Aperture motivational poster or two, and he'd spent a few satisfying moments defacing them with sarcastic comments, sometimes, when he was feeling particularly bitter, putting them up where GLaDOS's cameras would see them. They were petty, small victories, but he savoured them. They were all he had. Achieving anything more would take time, and time was something he was fast running out of. He only had a few days of clear-headedness left.
He needed more help. He needed an ally who would be strong enough to see the task through, who would be intelligent and moral enough to see that it had to be done. His first thought, of course, was Chell, but he couldn't stand the idea of putting her in danger. She was probably better off where she was for the time being. But it left him stumped as to how to a) find someone with the qualities he needed, and b) get them out of stasis so that they could actually help.
Cautiously, Doug edged his way along a corridor wall, peering around the corner to check the location of the next camera. He was trying to get to Test Subject Observation and Care, hoping that there would be something there that would be useful. Either information or a control panel would suit him.
There was nothing for it, he was going to have to dash past the camera. He took a breath, pushed away from the wall and ran. He'd left his supplies back at his current camp, so at least he was running light.
"Hello, Rat Man," GLaDOS said at once.
"Don't start," Doug spat.
His advice to Chell not to talk to the A.I. seemed more sensible by the minute. Pity that he wasn't able to follow it himself.
Hypocrite, he scolded inwardly.
"Good news," she went on, as if he hadn't spoken. "The Enrichment Centre would like to announce a new employee initiative of forced voluntary participation. If any Aperture Science employee would like to opt out of this new voluntary testing program, please remember, science rhymes with compliance."
Doug shot a sharp-eyed look at the camera as he shot underneath it.
"Do you know what doesn't rhyme with compliance?" she asked pleasantly. "Neurotoxin."
He ground his teeth against another ill-advised reply. The department door was locked, which was unsurprising. With a determined sort of calm, he pulled a screwdriver from his sleeve and set about rewiring the keypad next to it. Even if she did fire up the neurotoxin, he'd have a few minutes before it reached him.
GLaDOS didn't seem to mind his lack of response, continuing her speech in her usual unruffled manner. "Due to high mortality rates, you may be reluctant to participate in the new initiative. The Enrichment Centre assures you this is a strictly selfish impulse on your part and why can't you love science like [insert co-worker's name here]?"
Doug frowned as he worked. She had been talking a lot more lately, goading him, mentioning things about her behaviour on Bring Your Cat To Work Day. He wasn't sure whether she knew he'd been there and seen it all first-hand, but he wasn't about to enlighten her. Perhaps she was simply aware that he was beginning to hate the sound of her voice. Sometimes he wished they hadn't locked away the part of her that was Caroline, her memories and the elements of her personality that hadn't made it into GLaDOS. He suspected that he could have reasoned with Caroline if she had retained her human rationality. After all, he'd never known her in person, so she couldn't blame him for what had happened to her. In theory, at least.
"And now there's just you," GLaDOS pointed out. "All the others are dead. You've avoided capture for weeks. What makes you so different?"
He didn't answer, rifling through the wires by the door. His jaw was clenched tight, his posture tense.
GLaDOS, meanwhile, was theatrically making a discovery that he was pretty sure she already knew. "Ahh...delusions of persecution, pathological paranoia: it's all right here in your file." A touch of slyness seeped into her mechanical tone. "Have you refilled your prescription lately?"
"Bite me," he retorted curtly. She'd touched a nerve.
"Schizophrenia is a culturally bound phenomenon," she told him with a tone of academic interest. "Its pattern of expression is filtered through the cultural substrate in which its symptoms develop. In technological societies, this manifests as delusions of surveillance and a belief that advanced technology is deployed against you, usually with some vague unseen 'other' out to get you."
"You're not vague," he scoffed. "You're pretty damn specific."
She ignored his comment, warning lightly, "If you continue to selfishly evade me, it's not going to reflect well in your file."
A lightbulb ignited in his head. "Of course!" he muttered. "The files!"
Leaving the keypad hanging off the wall by its wires, Doug leapt to his feet and jogged back the way he'd come. The file room next to Lazarus Grey's office was the ideal place to find out who would be suitable to help him. There were employee and test subject records in there, and what was more, GLaDOS had no control in that part of the facility. He knew for a fact that none of the offices there had cameras in them.
He'd gotten pretty good at navigating the place while keeping out of her sight, choosing to creep behind the walls or in the ceiling rather than taking his chances in the corridors. He only had a short length of carpet to cross before he was able to duck into the air conditioning vents.
GLaDOS remained mercifully silent as he crawled his way through the bowels of the facility. For a moment, he knew he'd lost her. The problem this time was that she knew where he was going.
Sure enough, as soon as he kicked out the grid of the air con and listened to it clang to the ground, her voice started up again, echoing along the empty corridor outside.
"I can't see you, but I know you're in there," she announced as he dropped to the floor in the file room. "Is it just coincidence that you've been diagnosed with schizophrenia and now believe a homicidal computer is out to get you? Come on, how likely is that?"
Doug ignored her, beginning what looked to be a long search through the records. Chell had organised it all during her time with the company, splitting the records into logical sections. One for current employees, one for past employees, one for test subjects. Doug headed straight for the test subject cabinet, pulling out the entire contents. Methodically, he worked his way through them, skimming the details, then dropping the files back in the cabinet when they inevitably weren't suitable.
GLaDOS kept up her stream of chatter while he looked, not allowing him to forget about her for a single moment. "I mean really, you're a scientist," she berated him. "What is more likely, that you're being chased by a homicidal computer, or that this is all just the paranoid delusion of an unstable mind?"
Doug paused, lowering the file he was reading. He shook his head, looking away, grimly clenching his teeth. She was right, ironically. But he wasn't delusional, he knew that for certain. He'd had too many years of Aperture's madness to not be painfully aware that sometimes truth was stranger than fiction.
GLaDOS's voice turned gently cajoling. "Why not come out of there and you'll see. None of this is real."
If only that were so, he reflected sadly.
"I'd ask you to think outside the box on this, but it's obvious your box is broken. And has schizophrenia," she added spitefully.
Giving himself a shake, Doug forced his concentration back on the files, trying not to accept how mind-numbing it was to read the same things over and over again.
"Speaking of boxes..." GLaDOS said, as he fought hard to tune her out. "Do you know that thought experiment with the cat in the box with the poison? Theory requires the cat be both alive and dead until observed. Well, I actually performed the experiment. Dozens of times. The bad news is that reality doesn't exist. The good news is we have a new cat graveyard."
He allowed himself a moment to roll his eyes, refusing to be bullied into speaking. Whether she knew he'd been present during her activation or not, her speech was yet another attempt to put him off his guard.
"Why are you in the file room anyway?" she asked, at long last sounding annoyed. "What could you possibly be doing?"
A scribbled comment in the latest file he was flicking through caught his eye: 'Test subject is abnormally stubborn. She never gives up. Ever.'
"Yes!" he hissed excitedly. "This is the one!"
Hope surged, and he tugged the rest of the page out to see the name at the top. His heart plummeted like a stone. It was Chell's file. Of course it was.
He put it to one side, vehemently shaking his head. He would not put her through that. He refused.
GLaDOS, seemingly not discouraged by his lack of communication, continued her torrent of speech while he went back to searching. He truly had stopped listening now, too intent on finding a suitable ally who wasn't his best friend. The closer he got to the bottom of the pile, the more he began to realise the way things were going. He remained in denial for as long as he could, but eventually he admitted hopeless defeat, dropping the last folder back in the filing cabinet.
Leaning his elbows on top of the cabinet, he pressed his fingertips to his eyes.
No. I won't do it. There has to be someone else, he ranted in his head. But he already knew the truth, perhaps had known it before he even started searching. There was no one else.
Finally he opened his eyes, covering his mouth with one hand as he strove for another solution one last time. Heartsick, beaten, he placed his palms flat on the surface of the filing cabinet, head bowed. His promise to Chell, whispered through the glass walls of her relaxation pod, floated back to him.
"I'll find a way. I'll take her down. Whatever it takes."
Whatever it takes.
It's no good, he thought. Out loud, he murmured, "It has to be her."
With it spoken aloud, his resolve settled around him like a cloak, and he chided himself for even considering that it wouldn't continue to be the two of them against Aperture Science, the way it had always been.
The fact that he was about to put the one person he truly cared about in the entire facility through a manipulative ordeal did not sit well with him. Only the thought of what Chell would say if he could ask her kept him resolute. She would want to help, as she always did, and he knew she'd scold him for trying to protect her.
Along with the realisation, came the knowledge of how to get her where she needed to be. Once GLaDOS had built enough test chambers, she'd want to start testing. He needed to make sure that Chell was the first one to be woken. If he could find a way into certain parts of the tests, away from the security cameras, he could leave her warnings and advice, maybe even point her in the right direction. He knew now, although he wasn't sure how, that he needed to bring Chell face to faceplate with GLaDOS. That thought terrified him more than anything else, but he had a hunch that it was the only way to get close enough to the powerful A.I. to take action. He couldn't get there himself. He knew GLaDOS would never accept him as a test subject after he'd been involved in building her.
Resolved, yet anxious and unhappy, Doug sat down at the computer in one corner of the file room. He accessed the list of test subjects, automatically updated from the control panels on the relaxation pods. With a jolt, he realised he recognised some of the names on there. Lazarus Grey was test subject 2, his co-worker Robert was number 4, and he spotted Marlene placed as subject 16. Somehow, others besides him had survived, only to be captured as test subjects for their own tests. It was as ironic as it was horrific. He couldn't see Lazarus, who played his role of stern, delegating CEO with relish, getting very far as a test subject. They would all die if the plan failed.
Doug ran a search for 'Simon', just in case, but Chell's father wasn't among the names it selected. He thought it was a long shot, but he owed it to her to check. He opened the search bar up again and quickly typed her name. There she was, number 1498, next to Doug Hopper, the employee that her father had never liked. He selected her name and dragged it upwards. The scrolling page blurred past, too fast to read, until she was at the top. Test subject number 1, Chell, surname redacted.
His fingers hovered over the keys, his heart beating almost audibly in his chest at the thought of what he was about to do. Last chance to turn back.
I can't.
He hit Ctrl S and the file saved. Down in Test Subject Storage, he knew that her pod number would be updating itself. It was done. He'd either saved them all, or doomed her to die.
The guilt made him feel physically sick, and he had to force himself to leave the room before he could change his mind. As he crawled back through the vents, he fought to focus on other things, and began the steady process of building up his strategy.
Doug stared at the tiny scrap of paper, a self-made label that read: 'For the end times'. Grimly, he taped it to the small plastic bottle, listening to the two precious capsules rattling around inside. He placed the bottle in an empty locker, closing the door on it firmly before taping yet another piece of paper, this one saying boldly: 'Do not open'. He stuck it to the locker door, gave a single satisfied nod, then left the room.
He'd pulled down all the cameras in the corridor, so he had nothing to fear as he walked. He'd taken to doing that now, and he was building up quite a collection of them. He hid a lot of them in the rooms he discovered behind the walls of the test chambers, hoping they would serve as a warning to Chell when she passed through. He had no way of knowing which testing course GLaDOS would put her through, so he left warnings in as many places as he could get to, while he still had the clarity of mind to do so.
Apart from the two capsules he'd just left in the locker for when he really needed them, he had enough medication for another four days. He was starting to get edgy, dreading what would happen when he ran out completely. But it didn't help to dwell on it, he knew that. It was inevitable. He just had to find a way to cope.
What also didn't help was the remorse he continued to feel about his plans to manipulate Chell into defeating GLaDOS. Even the thought that she'd volunteer in a heartbeat if she could was no comfort. In an attempt to distance himself, he'd tried to train himself not to think of her as his friend, to simply refer to her as 'the girl' and focus on her role as a test subject. It was proving difficult, though. She was ingrained in his thoughts about Aperture, as they'd spent so much time together discussing what they'd found. It would get easier with time. Part of him hoped so, anyway, because he wasn't sure he could deal with the gnawing guilt indefinitely. Another part of him felt that he deserved to feel it.
There was very little he could do now except survive. Survive and wait. When GLaDOS woke her up, he would be needed again. Until then, he would keep out of sight, hidden, like a rat.