[A/N]

In today's Author's Note; a little summary. A guest called Brendan Wolff commented about not gripping the storyline, and I figured maybe some of you out there have the same problem. If you don't need further explanation, feel free to skip ahead to the chapter.

In the last few chapters, Wheatley has been retrieved out of space, using a satellite. While connected to said satellite, he accidentally dropped bombs onto the Earth, covering it in radiation for decades to come.

When he was back in the facility, GLaDOS had tried to reconstruct his digital encoded DNA into organic, physical DNA, to counteract the problem with inbreeding mentioned in the last chapters.

(For the record, GLaDOS' synthetic DNA couldn't be used, because of Caroline being Chell's mother, which wouldn't exactly be helping the inbreeding problem.)

This reconstruction failed, however, and the only option for Chell to… repopulate, would be to transfer her into a computer instead, so that the synthetic DNA would be 'compatible'.

And for the last chapter before this; for Chell's future android body, GLaDOS required a full body scan to model it after.

There you go! You're up to date. Now for the actual chapter!

The girl was in her bedroom. Her seventh, in fact, after the AI had destroyed the first bunch. On the ceiling above her, hung the little blue-eyed core, with a confused expression.

"Just what was going on there? I mean, if you don't, actually want to tell me, that's okay, that's fine, I'm just, you know, curious. Really, curious, in fact."

The test subject looked up from her book. "It's private, okay? And no, she didn't hurt me. Happy?"

"Um, yeah. Okay, happy with that. You don't want to tell me then. That's fine."

"Could you just… leave me alone, for a bit? I'm trying to read." She replied, as sweetly as she could manage. After all that he did to her, she still couldn't manage to be angry at the little core.

"O- okay. I, um, I'll go then."

And with that, the core left, and Chell was alone with her thoughts. She knew she was going to have to test soon enough, so she'd better get some rest.

She was currently reading an Aperture article about space travel. She was still lightly traumatized about space, but she wasn't the one to back out of something because of that. Besides, it was the only remotely interesting book she could find.

It turns out Aperture did a lot of research on space travel. In the little book were templates for space stations, rockets… satellites. Loads of things. Some were completely ridiculous, of course. One of the templates featured a speaker the size of a small truck to phase out radios.

At some point, she didn't even see the book anymore. She still couldn't accept the fact that she, of all people, would volunteer to be jammed in a computer. It's true, she did have a good reason for it, but it just felt… weird.

She was scared, too. Aperture technology never really proved reliable, except for the smaller stuff. Portal gun? Worked perfectly. Panels? Cores? Sure did. But turning a person into a core? Hasn't really proven its worth yet.

Then there was another dilemma. Wheatley functioned fine, a true gentleman, actually, just… not quite on the smart side. But that was his primary programming. Had he ever been a human? He did seem like it. The only proof of a human-to-core transfer she had was GLaDOS, who… wasn't quite the same person as before, as far as she could tell from the recordings, anyway.

Would it work better, now? The AI didn't have anything to test it on, apart from the girl, so there was no way to tell. And what if the human version of Chell didn't… die? It was horrible to think of it like that, but it had to be done. Two different versions of Chell? That wouldn't work out. But if her human body did manage to survive, killing it wasn't an option, either. It was unethical.

Sure, she might've been a murderer, or at least, that's what the AI claimed her to be, but it was only out of self-defence.

At some point, her imagination became too much for her. She found herself laying back on the bed in tears. She just sat there, silently sobbing to herself. What would she do?

Eventually, the AI's voice sounded over the PA.

"Get up. We're going testi-"

She cut herself off mid-sentence upon seeing the human in her crying state.

"What's wrong?" She sounded surprised. Never had the test subject showed any emotion of this kind, especially not since Aperture Science.

"I'm… I'm scared." Neither has she shown any of that in the past. Just what made her this scared? If a homicidal supercomputer couldn't bring her down, then what could?

"About what? What is it?"

The human wiped away a tear. "It's… It's the transfer. What if it goes wrong?"

"It won't. I'll make sure of it. I wouldn't be able to live with that mistake."

"What?" Now it was the girl's turn to act surprised. For the same reason, too. The AI had never shown any in-depth emotion like that. She always sounded monotone, controlled, completely at ease. This time around, she was far from her usual self.

"You heard me. Now if you don't mind, we're going back into the test chambers. The lift's waiting for you."

Even though it wasn't the nicest thing in the world to ignore her crying like that, overtime she learned that the test subject didn't want make a lot of fuss about these kinds of situations either, so she did it anyway.

As expected, the girl slowly stood up, and walked out of her room.