The Goddess spoke in what could barely even be called a whisper.
"Silence."
She stood, dropping me and the metal core on the ground. She raised her hands, looking around as a soldier came out of the shadow, gun trained on her. This one looked different, as if it'd started as something less humanoid, and been molded into this.
"What are you?" It said, in a low voice. "And what are THOSE things?"
It pointed towards myself and the little core, who by this time was murmuring various commentaries, namely that "Why is it that this place can never have a SINGLE day without things blowing up and death and that sort of thing!?"
I was silent, as the Goddess requested.
And apparently, the Goddess also seemed to stay silent.
She tilted her head, making a brilliant 'confused' face.
"You do not look like the normal bots, any of you. Explain."
The Goddess relented, speaking a few simple words. Lying through her metaphorical teeth.
"We're nothing special really. Just some artificial intelligences going along our merry way. So-"
"You sound like the voice from the other side. The AI that my superiors would speak to."
The Goddess simply watched, a look of irritation on her face. "That voice is merely a default. It doesn't mean anything, not really."
"Come with me."
"No. Now let us by."
The soldier quite literally picked her up, and began to carry her. She thrashed with those new limbs of hers, and her leg eventually made contact with his central chest, knocking him to the ground.
As he called for backup, she ran towards myself and the core, grabbed us, and began to run. Footsteps were heard as they rushed toward our location, and all three of our little lives lay in the balance of one robot's stride.
She let out a sound like a modified computer binary, and ran out onto an uncovered platform, with the sounds of the invaders behind us.
Out of nowhere, her army, her very own killing machines, flew down, and looked at her.
She seemed to whisper instructions to the main one, before leaping on top of the giant crow.
Myself and the little core were grabbed in the mighty talons of the beast, as it began to fly up and away from the soldiers.
May the ghost of Mr Johnson save us...
Chell walked carefully through the old facility, flipping around corners faster than light.
She was the only one who was at all cautious. Copper was tripping over himself, Bronze was stopping every three feet to look at some contraption, and Silver would not stop jabbering.
As in physically incapable of shutting up for three moments, Chell thought to herself. She loved the kid, but sometimes Silver drove her up the wall.
"Um, Chell?" Quietly murmured Copper.
"Where in all of Xen are the Combine?!"
"Wish I knew." Chell gently responded. They could hear the footsteps below, and they could hear the gunfire and screams, the echoes from hundreds if not thousands of feet below them, but...
It was like a ghost town up here. And Chell began to fret over another thing.
It's not just that there were no Combine trying to murder them, it's that there was nothing.
No scrawls from scientists long gone, no roaming little cores trying to talk to her or kill her...
And most disturbingly to Chell herself, no omnipotent, sadistic, terrifying AI trying to test her.
This was strange, and wrong. It just didnt feel right. But if she tried to tell the rest of the troupe about this, they'd either freak out more than they should, or think she'd lost her mind.
And poor little Silver, well anything could happen. What would Silver's reaction be, Chell thought to herself, if she knew how much she looked like the old portrait of Caroline, just younger? What would Silver think if she knew how much she sounded like the recordings?
What if little Silver knew how much Chell was scared of her, those first few days?
The crow landed, after just a few moments, dropping myself and the metal core on the ground, letting the Goddess get off the monstrosity. She looked at us, and almost seemed to smile in satisfaction.
Then, her face narrowed again, as she got back down to business.
"Now. We have these betraying aliens in my facility, and we're going to get them back outside."
She pulled aside a little curtain on the wall, which hid wires and wires and wires... I didn't have a clue what half of that stuff did, but it looked important.
"Mor-" She seemed to stop herself, and backed up, her voice slightly lower than normal. "Well, we're working together, so I have to put up with you. Wheatley."
The little core perked up at hearing its name. "Y-yeah? What is it? Anything I should do, involving not being killed, ideally..."
"Stop talking. You're going to plug into this, and be our watcher. And keep us from walking into a trap. Can you handle that much?"
Her voice was dripping with condescension, but it seemed to go over the core's head.
"Right, right! I can do that! I can definitely handle a little thing like that! Um... how do I do that?"
The Goddess sighed, Shoving him into the wired mess. Something sparked, as his eye lens contracted slightly, which made the already broken lens crack a bit more.
That's when he made the power go out.