It was silence, apart from the sounds of Copper's pain and the rattle of Flame's desperate attempt to find something to help him. The Combine had seemingly vanished off the map, leaving absolute silence from the outside. She'd gotten some painkillers and bandages on his arm, but the next step was a cauterizer, or even something to clean it up.

There was just metal, and silence.

"Chell?"

She sighed, promptly turning back towards him. "Noah?"

"Are you hearing that noise?"

Flame interrupted. "You're hearing a noise?"

"It's like intercom chatter, but very static and dead... it's coming from below us."

Flame stopped, and tried to listen. She could just barely hear it, layers below, recognizing the old messages. The messages of the old CEO of this place, and his assistant, that poor young girl.

Who became her nemesis, and arguably, closest friend.

Who's now alone with Silver and Bronze, where who knows what would happen to them.

Flame let out a slight hiss of irritation as she cut her finger against the sharp metal edges along the ruined hideaway. Finally, she found a small bit of an old antibiotic spray, dated '1996'.

She chuckled, spraying a tiny bit onto her finger, checking it, before running back over to Copper.

"Hey, Noah. I've got this, and I'm just going to help, ok? This is going to sting..."

She cut off, taking the bloody bandages off his arm, and spraying the antibiotic on it. He winced as the wound bubbled slightly, and she started to comb his hair with her fingers.

"There you go. All better, Noah."

He leaned closer, for a hug. "Chell?"

"Yeah?"

"Where're the others?"

Bronze was about ready to kill everyone as it was. He had two missing friends, a nervous kid, and two robots shouting at each-other. And then, of course, there was always the jabbering little link in his ear.

"I've lost track of you, down there! This thing says it lost you after 102J, but that's clear on the other side of the facility, so I don't quite know what that's even doing! Anyways, they're still hanging out up where you were before the slice-y things, sorta staring and talking with this dude who's in a suit for some reason. I don't know why he's in a suit, it doesn't make sense down here! I mean, it's got to be hot for them, if they're from space. Believe me, all my temperature readings said I should have frozen up there, but for some reason I'm fine..."

And so on and so on.

GLaDOS picked up the turret, staring it down after her loose-handed commentary had gotten a loud response from the turret.

"Listen. Stop screaming at me like a model A design and focus. Yes, you got us caught, and separated us from the other two, and I may have called you a defectively garrulous turret. But you do not have to scream at me. Deal?"

"Goddess, I'm telling you here, I was having one of my moments! I couldn't stop it!"

"I know that, but when else do I ever get to say 'garrulous'?"

Bronze chuckled softly, thinking of who else in his ear deserved to be called garrulous.

Silver spoke up, in the chaos. "Guys, what do we do without Flame and Copper?"

Silence in the room.

Silver responded again. "GLaDOS, do you know where they are, from the birds or something?"

She chuckled. "I already tried to get the location from Dahlia's cybernetics, but her Aperture Science Location Reader is offline."

Bronze finally spoke up. "We need to find th'm. Anything else yinz should get?"

Silver jumped up at that. "More ammo, and more weaponry."

GLaDOS's eye widened slightly, something like a smile appearing on her face. "I know how to get ahead of them. But we'd need to split up. Someone'd have to stay here and keep Little Pain from hurting himself, and I should have someone with a weapon with me for where I'm going."

Silver looked hopefully towards Bronze, and he laughed mildly.

"Sure kid. I can watch the Cybernetic crows."

He turned towards GLaDOS, and whispered so that Silver couldn't hear.

"Should I getta earlink to yous too?"

"Yes, definitely. We dont need to get any more lost than we already are."

She pulled out a bit of wiring from where her calf would be on a human, and started shoving wiring around to create another earlink, and quickly coding it to Bronze's.

"Testing connection seven four two."

Bronze nodded, and pulled the kid aside.

"Don't drive her insane, alright?"

Silver hugged him, taking his hand comfortingly.

"I'll be ok."

And with that, she ran off towards GLaDOS, and the contraption lead the way, leaving him alone with an ear-link and a turret.

This will be fun.

The Leader watched the cameras, staring calmly. It seemed that the rebels had separated, with two down by 102L, and the rest unknown. But the most fascinating part to him was who was there. Clearly, the artificial intelligence known as GLaDOS had taken another body, but more fascinating was the human rebels there. Two of them were officially recognized, while the others weren't known.

The bulky dark one was clearly the man known as Carter Washington, that common thief. The one they called 'Bronze'. He almost got taken out by an energy pellet. A shame, the Leader thought to himself. A shame that he couldn't just have gone away then and there. It would have made this job much easier.

Of course it could never be easy. Not with this job. He knew that if worst came to worst, he could bring in one of his... assets, but they're far away. And they wouldn't be too happy about working for the Combine. They were always too self-centered for that. They could never see the future, only their own motivations.

He smiled to himself, clenching his fist slightly. When this job was done, he could take his asset and leave.

Maybe he'd even get the girl as a bonus. After all, even aliens can dream.