"Oi, hello... she's waking up now, is she?"
What...?
Chell opened her eyes blearily, her surroundings blurry. A person was leaning over her and talking to her...
Where...? What's going on...? Her mind was a fog.
"Uh, hello, hi! My name is Wheatley... well, I suppose you probably don't care about that. Ha, can you hear me? How are you feeling?" the voice stuttered nervously at her, trying to make conversation.
The person, he, shifted into focus, far too close to her face than was socially acceptable. She blinked at him, her brain waking up.
She was... alive. How?
She bolted upright, pushing the man away swiftly. Her head swam and she became acutely aware of a breathing mask strapped to her face. She laid back on the hard table quickly and tried to quell her rising panic. Waking up in strange environments with strange people was not a habit she wanted to keep up. Her eyes flicked to his and he gave her a warm smile.
"Sorry, luv. I didn't mean to startle you... you're perfectly safe here. I saw you were suffering from neurotoxin poisoning and took you to the infirmary straight away. Are you feeling any better? Besides the headache, I mean? I managed to flush the neurotoxin out of your system... you should make a full recovery. I mean, that's what the computer tells me anyway..." he rambled on in a thick cockney accent. "I'm not really a doctor, but it honestly can't be any worse than death now, can it?"
She raised an eyebrow at him quizzically. How had he found her? There was no one left, right? She felt a rising hope and tried to push it down. Had she been wrong...?
"Oh yeah, I suppose you can't talk with that on," he lifted the oxygen mask gently off her face. "I just left it on to be on the safe side. So... feel good? Bad?"
She pinched the bridge of her nose, easing her headache slightly. She shrugged, not totally trusting this strange Englishman.
Chell braced herself and sat up again, rubbing her eyes and staring at him. It wasn't as if she could reply.
"Oh my god, you look terribl- um... good. Looking good actually," he covered his tracks horribly. "Can't you... you know, talk? Say hello? Anything?"
She rolled her eyes at him and shook her head.
"Oh no, I didn't get to you in time. I'm so sorry, luv. People who are exposed to huge doses of neurotoxin tend to experience some cognitive deterioration. And since you were exposed to quite a lot, it's very possible you may have a very minor case of serious brain damage," he rambled quickly, looking distraught.
Chell gave him a dead-panned look and motioned for something to write with. He got the idea. "Ah! You want to write something! I see, let me, ah, just check around here. There's gotta be a pen and paper somewhere in here..." he rifled through old filing cabinets in the tiny infirmary.
Chell got a good look at the man who had supposedly saved her life. He was quite tall, thin, and pale. His head was a mop of curly dirty blonde hair. He wore glasses that looked a tad too big for his face, a nice white dress shirt with an askew blue bowtie, and black dress pants and shoes. He found a small notebook and pencil and handed it to her. She got a good look at his big, smiling, electric blue eyes and could see her own gray ones staring back through his.
And his were literally electric blue. She could see them glowing, now that she got a careful look. She pointed at them curiously.
He blinked at her. "Do... do you mean my eyes, luv? Sorry, it's part of my deviation... I create and control electric fields. A living electromagnet. I forget about it sometimes... I'm usually more careful about making sure it's not showing in my eyes, but that takes a lot more effort," he explained. "I trust you."
Chell was intrigued. She had never seen another Deviant up close before, besides herself. Although she didn't really count as she wasn't quite sure if she even could display one or not. But this man had an exotic power that piqued her interest. It was fascinating.
She gave him a friendly smile and wrote her name on the little piece of paper.
"Chell... that's a, ah, nice name. I'm Wheatley... again. Wheatley Simmons," he stuck out his hand awkwardly and she shook it lightly. "So, I guess I should fill you in. I, um, found you after I woke up from stasis. There was obviously some system-wide failure that accidentally activated my stasis pod. I woke up, ran around looking for an exit... then I eventually ended up in the central chamber where you were. I'm... kind of directionally challenged," he laughed lightly. "I'm a test subject too. Just like you."
She paused a second before writing something: 'Any others?'
Wheatley's eyes dropped to the floor, "No... sorry, luv. I think all the stasis pods either failed and... you know... but I think a few survived and are still plugged in. I didn't really want to check, though." He scratched the back of his head. "Anyway, I found you and thought you were dead. When I realized you were still alive I picked you up and carried you to the infirmary I had run into on my way."
He continued, "And I saw Her." He looked Chell in the eyes again. "You did that, didn't you?"
Chell's heart skipped a beat... Her. Chell had almost forgotten. She had killed Her. The power-mad woman who had taken control of Aperture and almost murdered Chell multiple times for kicks. The one who had killed her dad. Yes, she had done that.
She nodded slowly, wanting to forget about the ordeal.
"Don't worry about it... like I told you, I am, or shall I say, was, a test subject too. I felt as if I owed you, seeing that it was your actions that freed me. Anyhow, the scientists here liked my deviation enough that they kept me around, unlike many other unfortunate test subjects. They would test me, then throw me in stasis. Then test me again... an endless cycle," he shuddered.
"I don't know everything about the scientists here, but I did know of Her. Her name was Glados, by the way. I overheard the scientists talking behind her back sometimes... they were afraid of her too. And with good reason apparently. I'm not really going to shed any tears, if that's what you're afraid of. I just want to get out of here...so are you with me?" He smiled warmly and offered her his hand.
She ignored it for a second, taking in the information and processing it. Her name had been Glados...
Her eyes flicked up to Wheatley's and she offered a shaky smile in response. She nodded and accepted his hand gratefully as he lifted her to her feet.
The floor was incredibly cold under her bare toes and she jumped back up onto the hard metal table. She pointed at her feet with a questioning look.
"Oh, right. Your boots are over there," he pointed to the entrance. "I wasn't sure if you still wanted them or not... but I suppose that was, ah, kinda stupid. Of course you want some shoes." He picked them up and she took them from him gratefully. The whole building was a death trap. Of course she wanted them.
Wheatley and Chell headed out the door and she could smell faint traces of the neurotoxin in the air. It brought bad memories... She stepped back into the infirmary in alarm, giving Wheatley a wide-eyed stare.
"It's, ah, it's fine, luv. When you, you know, ended Her and her little reign of terror, the entire system's defense mechanisms shut off. In fact, that's kind of why we need to leave as soon as possible. I didn't want to alarm you, but-" As if on cue the catwalk he stood on and the room she was in shook, a rumbling echoing in the vast emptiness beyond.
"I think this place is probably going to self-destruct. I was hoping we could maybe shut it off in the central control station, but if not we can just ride the elevator out and run!" He grinned at her. "C'mon!"
She shook her head again and went out to follow him down the rickety catwalk. She could spot the central chamber in the distance, the glass corridor leading to it was gone, having shattered with all the quaking. She looked up and spotted a grouping of catwalks above them. They could jump from those onto the entrance to the central core.
She pointed to it, hoping he'd get the idea. Wheatley's eyes widened... "I suppose that would work..." They spent a good thirty minutes looking for a way up to the catwalks, eventually finding the way up. A few quakes nearly knocked them both off their feet into the abyss below.
"Oh I just want to get out of this place. That would be brilliant. Almost there!" he chatted with himself constantly, voicing practically everything that came to his mind.
They got to the end of the catwalk and looked down to the entrance of the central chamber. It was nearly a fifteen foot drop... not a problem for someone with long-fall boots like Chell's. Chell jumped down without hesitation, landing with a loud echoing thud in the entrance. She looked up and smiled at him, giving him the thumbs up.
Wheatley danced nervously above her on the catwalk. "Okay, okay... on three. One. Two. THR- No. Nope. You know what, that's too high. Isn't it, really, that... I mean, I'm probably going to break a leg falling from that height. Or I'll fall straight into the abyss forever. Dead. That's it. No more Wheatley. You know what, counting til' three just gives you too much time to think about it. Let's go on One this time, okay? ONE!" he dramatically jumped from the catwalk, falling towards Chell.
Chell half-caught him as they both crashed to the ground in a painful pile. "OW! Ouch... I'm not... dead. I'm not dead! Yeah!" He high-fived her and she stood up, checking herself for any broken bones.
Once they were both satisfied there wasn't any permanent damage, they took a deep breath and headed into the central chamber. The huge leaden door was half off it's hinges and crashed to the ground when they pushed on it. The place was a mess.
Chell shuddered as she took in the sight of the heavily damaged room. Exposed wires gave off random electric sparks, wires dangling from the ceiling haphazardly. And then there was Her.
"There she is... what a nasty piece of work she was. Honestly, a proper maniac." Wheatley said in a hushed voice.
Glados was lying face-down on the floor, half-buried in ruined technology. Her hair spread out over her body like a ruined blanket. There was nothing left to her self-imposed empire. Chell refused to look any longer and she jogged over to where Wheatley was examining some untouched controls.
"Okay, so the bad news is I have no idea how to fix whatever is causing the scary rumbling. The good news is there should be an escape lift in here somewhere. Just gotta find it... let the master hacker do his job here." He pressed various buttons, obviously having no idea what he was doing. But it wasn't as if he could make anything possibly worse.
And of course, Chell was wrong about that.
"System restore at 88%" A computerized voice rang in the chamber loudly.
"Uh-oh."
'Uh-oh'? What is 'UH-OH'?
"So, I, ah, think I might've tripped something earlier when I came in to rescue you. Ah, I mean, apparently the system has some kind of 'quick-save' feature built in that, uh..." he was stuttering and looking helplessly at the controls in front of him.
"Maybe I can hack into it and stop it. Let's see... A...A...A...A," he started to type in passwords. Oh lord.
"A...A...A... B!" Nope. Not that one.
"Why don't you start writing these down..." he suggested and continued to try different passwords. Each failed with an intense buzzer noise.
She gestured wildly at him. 'What's a system restart?'
He frowned in frustration, "Look, luv. I told you I don't understand sign language. I think though..." he looked over to where Glados lay, unmoving. I think when I came to save you, I mighta, ahhh, inadvertently... quite possibly... "
Spit it out, Wheatley.
"I think the system reacted to my deviation and saved her too. Her vital signs are showing up on the display here and the computer is restoring all the damage as we speak. She's still alive," he spilled quickly.
Chell stared at him, not sure how to feel. She had never wanted to be the cause of anyone's death... but this girl had made Chell's life absolutely miserable. She had single-handedly destroyed it. And all Chell wanted to do now was get out. She wanted to feel the sun on her face and run as far away as she could physically go.
She glanced over to Glados' body. "System restore at 99%" the computer announced.
"Oh boy, how about A...A...A... G!" Wheatley continued to try and hack into the mainframe.
"Restore complete."
Wonderful.
I decided to go with the most commonly used look for Wheatley. I was going to try something different, but honestly, the skinny blonde guy with glasses is just way too fitting. But I gave him a nice blue bowtie. :)
