"Rise and shine! Cave Johnson here. You've been slacking for- NINE NINE NINE NINE NINE NINE –"

The static filtered voice through the speakers dragged him to consciousness, and inwardly, he tensed. It wasn't even just the dread of preparing to receive another dose of electroshock 'guilt treatment'. No, there'd been something else. When his code had tried to reactivate him, and failed, his optic had flickered on. Only the impression of things still graced his RAM. Metal walls, nauseating swinging movement, and scuffed black shoes.

A human had been carrying him. Or at least he'd thought one had been. The idea that he was broken enough to imagine something dragged him to rush the boot up process.

…Something was missing.

The noises were gone. Not all of them- he could still hear the intercom overhead and someone breathing close by- but his noises were gone. The whir of machinery, the clicks of blinking lights, buzz of electricity coursing through him, fans whirring, beeps- any noise he was used to, completely absent. She must have done some serious damage. Pain cascaded over him like a wave though, so Wheatley knew that function remained intact. Brilliant.

Something thumped against his shell, bringing him to his next realization: the human who'd saved him must still be holding him. So, he didn't imagine it! Although, the Lady's heartbeat had never rattled his core like it was doing right now. The steady two beat rhythm jumped in frequency the longer he listened, but as the fog around his body cleared it became the least of his worries.

Wheatley felt wrong. A nauseating smell clogged his olfactory sensor, akin to the stench of corroded batteries or the human vegetables of the Relaxation Center. The human was breathing near him, probably right by his optic by the sound of it, but- like the heartbeat- it felt far more involved. Part of him swelled in time with the short gasps, like a sack or a bellow. Who in their right mind had strapped a bellow to a core? How broken had he been exactly? Something scraped against his- he didn't even know, a length of him, a tube of some kind, honestly who added all this? - each time the bellows compressed. The tube connected to a vent, where a soft squishy weight pressed into harder raised bits. A fluid coated the inside, and Wheatley had the strong urge to get rid of it.

And there was just more. When you live in a sphere your whole life, you get to know that sphere pretty well. For example, your general shape or your weight. But something about him was just too much. Like an unspooled clutch of cables, he was splayed out far beyond what should be possible, and it was so heavy. The pounding rhythm reverberated through everything, every wire and circuit, and out into a distinct pattern that was at once faintly familiar and so dreadfully foreign. The sensors across his body were going crazy as the rhythm against his shell continued to get faster, twitching against the settling atmosphere. Something further down gave way, like a weight that pulled taut.

His focus ripped away from the oddities of his core to the flipping rolling sensation. Something was- he couldn't- he needed to-

Wheatley's shutters opened with a quiet fwip instead of their creaky slide that cried desperately for some oil. It was dark, and he only had a second to see the ceiling before his body lurched against his will, the unexpected weight of rolling onto his side carrying him onto his front. In blind panic, something extended and caught him, and a foul-tasting liquid was violently flushed from his system. The force snapped his shutters closed once again. A few more potential expulsions threatened him, but the support ached and gave out, dropping him down onto the surface again.

Choked gurgles vibrated through his body, and the sensations that had winked off for a second came galloping back. The fluid coating his insides rushed back, and he felt something bob and click. Wheatley now realized how… damp he felt. Like he'd been covered in conversion gel again. And it was so cold; every inch of him was shaking. Never before had his core felt this malleable either. Whatever he'd landed on pressed up into him; he could feel it squish before hitting something more solid. It was a nuke of sensations, each vying for his attention and growing more prominent when he finally took notice. It almost distracted him from the complete lack of anything happening in his processor. No running wavelength with a databank, no call and response, not even an alert telling him what was wrong. It was totally and utterly silent save for his running inner monologue. It did, however, make him miss a distinct lack of the extra presence that he'd assumed was right behind him.

She'd done something to him. Had She ripped him open so he could feel death a bit better? Or had She grafted on parts of other machines now, just to humiliate him? Or, the not-better-but-nicer option, he had been more broken than he thought, and his savior had tried to fix him.

"Hello?" Wheatley tried to call, but all that came out was a wordless moan. The sound clanged against his shell and vibrated the tube, while the acrid taste finally registered as something he could actually do now. That, combined with the fact that nothing came from attempting a diagnostic run brought his eye open once again.

The floor was a mishmash of dull colored carpet that had a new spot of purple gunk, right next to the edge of a cryo-sleep pod. Next to… next to a…

Wheatley's optic slowly drifted down.

A pale gangly appendage stretched down in front him, draped haphazardly over the edge of a bed. A human arm. The hand twitched, and Wheatley felt it. Every inch of him jolted upward, bits that he didn't even know he had jumped to life in a chorus of needling sparks and bone deep pain once they smacked into something- his bed- and a startled cry tore out of him. Vertigo and uncoordinated flailing threw him to the floor, with plenty of bumps along the way, but there was no denying it. The long stretch of faintly blotched shiny skin and tangled limbs was a human body. Not the one that had saved him, but one he piloted.

The oddities had names now: mouth, tongue, teeth, throat, lungs, skin, bones, that bloody heartbeat. It didn't help the labored breathing, a thing that he was now fully aware was his own. There were no other humans in sight, meaning his first theory was probably the most correct. What the hell had She done to him?

The neat and tidy list of priorities he'd been thinking of- escape, find Lady, apologize- evaporated as he slowly drew the hand up closer to his face. Five digits, all fanned out in front of him. Experimentally, he curled them down, exhaling sharply as they obeyed his command. Each muscle fought and pulled, and, if he thought too hard, he could feel the very bones creaking. Wheatley turned his attention to the rest of his body. His body. He hated the sound of that. Was he supposed to be this massive? Panic buzzed through his head as he tried to figure out how to gain manual control of his breathing. No, it was fine, he told himself, She just put you in a big old smelly human, probably to get more fun out of killing you. And that other one is probably being put through testing or worse as we speak! Well, not we- more like I, there's no one else here. But that's no reason to panic! Wheatley had never been good at lying to himself or anyone else. Okay, maybe it is! But that's okay. There's probably a way to fix this. Unless there isn't, which is highly likely. And you'd probably bungle that up if you tried. But- She hasn't come back yet, so look on the bright side! You can now properly focus on escaping.

That was another thought, weren't it? Her voice was ominously absent. With Her track record, she would have been yammering as soon as he woke up, or expelled liquid in her precious facility. Wheatley wouldn't look a gift turret in the laser sight. He needed a plan of attack. First order of business, standing. He surveyed the position he'd landed in, back flat on the floor while his legs caught against the sides of the cryo-bed and one arm pinned under him. A very definite spike of pain ricocheted from the base of his neck, and since he couldn't feel it, he assumed he'd landed on something. Wheatley maneuvered his legs around one at a time, bracing his feet against the side as his body continued to shake. Blimey, he could feel every fiber in the carpet against his skin. It itched terribly, and the cold hadn't let up. Wheatley fought a shudder and started moving his free arm around to the side. With a low groan of effort, he hinged upward and slapped the other arm out from under him. Even lifting what looked to be an incredibly meager amount of weight left him gasping for air and feeling a rush of warmth that made him feel sticky all over again. Those useless legs slipped from where they were, and he could feel the underlying tendons twitch in rapid succession as he sprawled out fully on the floor.

Muscle atrophy: he'd heard test subjects complain before, but never realized how bad it felt. Probably shouldn't have moaned about it when they weren't listening. Wheatley would too if he could use his voice. He wondered how to get that working, though he knew the noise would draw her eye, so he left it for later. Wheatley braced his palms on the ground but paused.

It had taken him this long to draw his attention to the rest of the room. Wheatley would know it like the back of his handle. It was a Relaxation Center room, or at least some version of it. The wallpaper looked like it had been some kitschy plant pattern, but the details had long since rubbed away. Large cracks ran through the plaster over the ceiling, and chunks were loose on the floor. There was more space than the rooms he cared for, and the bed was different. Instead of the traditional wooden bed or the metal one with a hatched top, this one had a thick rubbery liner. It also must have been filled with some kind of gel, as remnants of it were still drying on his new body and the bed's inner wall. None of the fixtures were there either. No lamps, no plants, no bits of furniture. The only noticeable details were the additional curtain guarded a corner of the room above him and the off-white standing bowl with a spigot with a sheet of glass hanging above it. Shiny black paint in the form of an arrow dripped down the peeling paper, pointing towards the curtain. It looked fresh. It also looked like a trap. Wheatley darted his eyes away to the rest of the room, trying to find some place he could go besides where it was pointing. To his left was the door out, and near the corner on the floor a camera lay ripped from its vantage point on the wall. The sight stirred his chest again, and he watched, waiting for it to still flick on and bore into him.

But it was still so silent. Usually, She would take every opportunity to deliver instructions, just to throw in jabs and sarcasm. Not even his inability to use his body brought such scorn from Her. A trickle of doubt floated to the surface. Had She really been the one to do this? Who else was there who'd come along and turn him into a flipping human? Only a proper maniac such as herself. But Her modem operandi weren't giant painted arrows. Or rooms with broken cameras.

Wheatley clenched his jaw, turning back to his task. Maybe she was busy, which meant he needed to get this working, and fast.

Too bad this body didn't seem at all interested in doing this. It was pathetic how long it took him to even sit up. There were too many things to move. A core only had so much; the chassis swiveled around 360 degrees and the optic inside waggled a decent 180, the shutters went up and down, and his handles could waggle back and forth. Everything complex happened on the inside with the code and the electricity he wasn't in charge of moving. Cores didn't even have to carry their own weight; the management rail did it for them. That was nothing compared to the tangled physical network of joints and swivels that had to work in tandem just to sit up. No internal clock told him how long he'd been at it, but it felt like at least an hour. Every part of him protested the process, even his voice. Wheatley panted as he stood gripping the side of the bed on legs that threatened to give out at any second. The Lady made it look so easy, with her jumping and running. Wheatley bowed his head and rested his upper body across the metal. Aching throbs traveled up every muscle. If he closed his eyes, he could feel his bones creaking like rusty beams. With a few frantic puffs of air, he put a bit of force onto the bed and stumbled back. Gravity beckoned, and instinct flung his arms out in wild wheeling motions while his legs finally listened and went wide. For a second, he convinced himself he was going to fall. But nothing came, and he broke into a wide grin.

Okay! He accomplished one part of his plan! Wheatley's body quivered with the effort, and the biting cold was replaced with a melty sticky feeling that burned his insides. But he was standing! He eyed the room again. Everything was much smaller up here. Not as small as when he'd been in Her body, but he didn't think this was normal. The arrow took up his focus again.

…It had to be a trap. A really stupid, easy to avoid trap. But curiosity won out in the end, it always did. Wheatley was brought to another problem. Walking. He'd never done that before and staring intensely at his feet didn't seem to get the body working. How had the Lady and the scientists done it? One leg at a time, right in front of the other. Experimentally, he shifted his weight back and forth while hoping he wouldn't immediately fall apart. When the world remained pretty much upright, Wheatley leaned to the left and inched his right foot forward. His knee jerked wildly. Alarm sung in his chest. He quickly tried to correct by throwing himself in the opposite direction, but only tangled his legs further so he resorted to blindly groping for support.

Cold stone met his fingertips, and Wheatley held on for dear life. Everything jolted to a stop once his waist hit the fixture.

He peeled his eyes open, staring down into the bowl below. Black sludge clung to the circle around the drain, and mildew slowly blotted down across the edges. Everything was coated in a heavy layer of dust. Wheatley curled his lip back from the smell, but the important thing was that he was still standing, and closer to his destination.

Movement in his peripheral caught his attention. He popped his head up. A cold clammy feeling crawled over his body, and the grip on the bowl tightened. A human face stared back at him.

No, not a face, his face. Shiny blonde hair clung to his cheeks and forehead, dried purple gel keeping it in place as his shoulders drew further north. Hollow cheeks were partially hidden under the scruff on his face growing in a line over his thin lips and twitching jaw. The only familiar details, the ones he clung to with a vice, were the owlish blue eyes bugging out of his head. Wheatley could recognize those. He could stare and pretend that was all he saw, but everything else eventually came back into focus. First it would be the purple tinted skin around said eyes, then the flex of his eyebrows, and then the whole feature would hit him again. It sunk in now. Wheatley was Human.

The already blurry world smudged further, and a painful ringing attacked his ears. Oh. He was leaking. That must be some kind of alarm too. His chest started to burn. It was coming eventually, but he'd finally managed to break himself.

Those already shallow gasps had stopped, and every limb felt like it had flooded with lead. Breathing was supposed to be natural for humans, but no, of course Wheatley got the one human body that couldn't do that properly. He took a forceful gasp of air, then another, and the burning faded, but the world remained smeared. The only thing keeping him up was his support on the bowl. Everything told him to let go- the floor would be better than this- but he persisted. If Wheatley fell, he didn't know when he'd get back up again. Carefully, he eased his right foot away from the basin. He just needed to stop looking at this.

His weight dipped onto the right foot, but the overtaxed body finally gave up the ghost. In a cascade of movement, Wheatley felt his muscles give out, and send him toppling into the curtain. It slipped past before he could attempt a stranglehold on it. Cracks of agony exploded along his hip and skull, and sounds burbled through his lips.

It sounded like a crying test subject. Wheatley was crying.

Icy squares pressed divots into his skin, and the world danced a kaleidoscope through his eyes. Everything was tiles and grime and metal. He drew his limbs closer, trying to form into a ball. Trying to block it out. Just the vague familiarity of the shape made him feel a little safer, but the tears didn't stop. That cresting wave of self-doubt and loathing broke against his chest, and not for the first time, he wished he'd been left powered off in space. It had taken its time settling in, it seemed. Wheatley gasped softly as his organs decided to start flip flopping and his throat constricted. Emotions for a human being were a full body affair it seemed. He couldn't imagine how anyone got anything done with this happening all the time. The rhythm of breathing rattled his insides, stung the back of his throat, but something prickled the back of his brain. In for seven, out for seven. With no idea where the knowledge came from, he curled his fingers tight and forced his lungs to follow the instructions. After what felt like a few minutes the pain ebbed, and wall propping his head up came back into focus. Or… as in focus as it would get. Everything had a tint of fuzz still clinging to the sides.

It was painfully clear now that whatever had done this hadn't been Her. That reality opened up too many scary possibilities, none of which he wanted to think about. Wheatley never imagined something could be worse than Her, but whoever had done this was a different kind of evil. The urgency to leave finally came back. He stole himself and reworked into a sitting position. That same patch on the back of his neck was throbbing- everything was really- but beyond that, he was okay. Now what had been so important behind this curtain?

Instead of plaster and carpet, he sat on tile. The grout between was intermittent, having either cracked or been picked away, and near him a few metal pipes with a valve rose into the blurry shape near the ceiling. It looked to simply be the end of the pipe, but he couldn't tell. A drain dug into the skin of his thigh, but none of the same sludge that had been in the basin clung to it. In fact, it was fairly clear save for a few swipes of grunge. So, they must want him to turn this thing on. Wheatley stretched his arm toward it, knobby fingers catching on the rusted circle and dragging downward. A teeth rattling squeeeaak emitted from the ungreased screw. How long had it been since anyone had used this place? Where was he? His thoughts blanked out as a blast hit him from above, and he cared more about scrambling out of the way of the sudden onslaught.

It was a trap- it was a trap, and you fell for it because of course you did, and now you're going to die because you're such a moron-

The last harried thought took on the tone of Her voice quite effortlessly, and Wheatley found himself trembling yet again. He wasn't sure he'd ever actually stopped, only gone through the ups and downs of its frequency. His hands flew up to see how badly he'd been damaged, again. Wetness met his fingertips.

The gushing sound of the pipe continued in front of him. Wheatley stared up at the torrent of murky brown water that was now gathering over the tile and swirling through the drain. Water. They were trying to fry me! He scowled, then stared at the foot still getting soaked by the downpour. The droplets faded to a hazy brown, then finally trickled clear. A core would have fried, yes. The thing that he no longer was. Wheatley groaned softly. He'd just panicked over this realization not long ago. Ignoring the simmering in his stomach, he inched back under the stream.

While the water had cleared, it had in no way warmed up. A chill passed over the inches of skin that it struck, and the shaking was starting to make his teeth chatter with its intensity. Still, the goo from the bed started to clean away, and the smell washed with it. The tightness in his muscles dissolved, though the soreness remained. Wheatley cast his fingers across the limbs, dislodging any stubborn gel while exploring with the new sense. Hairs along his legs and arms raised under his scrubbing, and small knicks and lines of faded tissue dotted his body. This human must have been very accident prone. If he pressed down, Wheatley could feel the shapes of his bones. It seemed like a poor design choice, to have all the hard bits on the inside when that was what protected you. Along his spine, he felt small, raised bumps. Not the edge of a vertebra, but something akin to a ball bearing the size of his pinkie on each disk. Wheatley swallowed as he traced upward. The edge of a piece of metal caught his fingertips in that space at the base of his neck. The space he couldn't feel but kept hurting him. A whimper passed out from his lips, and he ripped his hand away. Telltale signs of blooming panic bristled in his chest, and he wasn't about to have another episode, so Wheatley went back to cleaning.

"If you're hearing this, it means you've exceeded your company allotted shower time," a gruff voice knocked him out of his thoughts, "bean counters say we can barely afford the science but complained when I tried to lower the water bill. Now I enjoy a good wash the same as you do, but at least I don't need to have someone else pay for it! You know the drill: cut the shower or I cut your pay."

Wheatley frowned up at the ceiling. What a terrible incentive; he didn't even get paid. He huddled up under the water more, almost in defiance to the annoying gravelly voice. An inkling of a new feeling oozed down his temples, something about the voice that he couldn't place. Familiar and not. Like the body, like the room.

It reminded him of another thing, though. There were other functions he needed to get working, specifically talking. He really needed that, especially if he wanted to work back around to the 'escape-find-apologize' plan. Wheatley opened his mouth slightly. Aaaandd… talk!

"..hhhHH.."

That was just a hard breath. Wheatley felt his face contort. He'd been making noises this whole time, screamed and everything. Why was it so hard to make that vibratey thing happen now? Maybe he just needed a word, a simple word. His mouth twisted again, this time into what he knew was a smile, and he sucked down some air.

"…hAabbo."

Heat flashed on the skin of his face, along with a crippling feeling he knew far too intimately: embarrassment. Wheatley had told the Lady that it was an easy word, and here he was, struggling to say it. No wonder she'd been so silent. It was too humiliating to do it with no audience, let alone a zippy little Personality Core that said you had brain damage. But he knew the word, he knew what it sounded like and everything, and this stupid mouth just wouldn't work.

Wheatley gathered himself up. It couldn't be that different. Cores used a voicebank; they just needed to knit the sounds together and they'd come out. Humans were the same, they just had a bit more of an analog speaker. They used their tongue, right? He opened his mouth again.

"Aaapple."

Pride swelled in his chest, glowing under his skin, and causing him to drum his fingers against the tile. His voice, despite everything, was still his own. It lacked a tinny rasp, but it was his voice.

Before he could really soak up the sunshine in this new development, he heard the door to the Enrichment Room open.